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The Enterprise, White Salmon, WA., July 5, 1956, page 1

FUNERAL SERVICES TODAY FOR MRS. DELLA TUBBS

Funeral services will be held at 2:00 p.m. today, July 5th, for Mrs. Della Tubbs at Gardner's Funeral Home with Christian Science services.
Della Tubbs was born May 4, 1873, in Waterbury, Neb. She is survived by five sons: Ben, Howard (Bill), Earl, all of White Salmon; Elmer of Woodland, Wash., and Bert of Merlin, Oregon; also a very close friend, Frank Burden.
Della Tubbs had lived in Bingen the past 12 years.

The Mt. Adams Sun, Bingen, WA., July 5, 1956, page 4

DELLA TUBBS, PIONEER WOMAN, PASSES AWAY

One of the truly pioneer women of the area died in Skyline hospital Saturday June 30 following an illness of nearly two weeks. For the past four or five months her health had been failing.
Della Tubbs, daughter of Benjamin and Caroline Fuller, was born in Waterbury, Nebraska May 4, 1873.
As a very little girl she made the trip west around the Horn with her parents from Maine to San Francisco and then on to the Oregon country, where the Fullers settled on a homestead at Lake Vancouver. When this was sold they moved to another homestead plot where the Stage Coach Inn is now located on Salmon Creek. Pushing ever inland, the Fullers took up a homestead claim at Chenowith where Delia grew up. Here her mother died and was buried.
It was in this Chenowith country that Della Fuller met Charles Tubbs and decided to marry him. They journeyed back to Spring Bank, Nebraska for the wedding which took place on June 9, 1889. Here the two eldest of six sons were born to them. But the lure of the west was strong in both Charles and Della so they returned to take up a homestead for themselves at the old Mill B site at Chenowith.
Four more sons were born on this homestead property one of them, Delbert Merle, passed away in 1906 as a small child. Charles Tubbs proceeded his wife in death in 1931 at the home of his eldest son, Elmer, who at that time was living in Toledo.
Life was rugged in the west when Della and Charles were hewing out a home in the wilderness and rearing their boys.
Supplies were packed into the back country. Each fall Charles Tubbs, with some of the older boys and neighbors made a trip to a nearby town for the winter grub. One year they were forced to live almost exclusively on deer meat. The wagon load of flour, sugar, coffee and other staples was washed away in the swollen stream they had to cross.
Somewhere near the winter of 1907, as nearly as one of the sons could recall, the family did live on chicken and sauerkraut; it was all they had. So terrible was the winter ice and snow it was impossible to get out until spring to add to the larder.
When they first made their home in the forest of trees Charles Tubbs supplemented the family income with work at the Oregon Lumber company driving an ox team. He ran cattle in the Mill A district with Porter and Price. He used a pair of mules to clear the ground for his wife's first garden.
And she always had a vegetable garden and a few chickens. She traded with the Indians when ever she could and looked upon her trading materials as her own to use as she pleased.
Della Tubbs' father, Benjamin Fuller, made wagons in his home town in the midwest. He fashioned for his daughter and her sons a stout little wagon she could push or pull, carrying the boys to her parent's home or a neighbors. Once she met a cougar across the path she intended to take. Although she always carried a rifle she chose this time to frighten off the beast by unloading the boys and pushing the wagon into the waiting cat. Without fear or undo hurry she did exactly that. Her would-be foe departed in haste.
Della Tubbs did not have a stove in her log house until 1900. She used an open fireplace with huge pots swinging from cranes, to cook the family meals. When finally the precious stove was brought into the house it was packed up the steep trail from Cook which at that time was only a boat landing. As far as could be ascertained there were only two people who lived at the landing then, Indian Joe and a Frenchman whose name we could not learn.
Up to about a year ago Mrs. Tubbs was quite well and. could have taken care of all her own needs. It has only been within the past few months that her sons and friends noticed that she was failing. Several times during the spring she was hospitalized but seemed to rally from each seige. On June 19 she was admitted to Skyline and did not return.
She is survived by five sons, Elmer, Woodland; Albert (Bert), Merlin, Ore.; Ben, Portland; William, Glenwood; Earl, White Salmon; a dear and close friend, Frank Burden, Bingen, and one sister, Blanche Kautz, Vancouver, B. C.
A Christian Science service is being held for her in Gardner's Chapel this afternoon (Thursday) at 2 p.m. with burial in the W. S. Odd Fellow cemetery
Pall bearers were Harold Lewis, Omer Foster, C. O. Johnson, Fred Ransier, Bob Brock and Amos Larsen.

The Enterprise, White Salmon, WA., August 2, 1956, page 7

IN MEMORY OF AUNT DELLA TUBBS
(Who passed away June 30, 1956)

The roll is called, another one has gone to the Beyond,
Another one so sweetly kind, of whom I was fond.
Her work worn hands are now at rest, her gentle voice, is still,
Her sweet kind eyes no more light up at the children's voices, or wild birds' happy thrill.
Her worldly cares are left behind on this rough old path She trod.
But grief and heartaches which it bro't served to bring her nearer God.
I like to think she's found a place with hills and valleys green,
Where She can rest in quiet content beside a cooling stream,
That she will find her path is smooth, and strewn with bright hued flowers,
That God has given for work well done, in this rough old world of ours,
May gentle hands guide her small barque across that crystal sea,
And may you guard and bless her God, and keep her close to thee.

(By her niece Grace Graham Lloyd, Maupin, Oregon)