Chapter M: B. Winchell, who is engaged in general merchandising in Touchet,

Walla Walla county, ranks with the foremost business men of this section of the state. A spirit of progress and enterprise actuates him in all that he undertakes and his course has been characterized by a determined purpose. He has ever recognized the fact that when one avenue of success seems closed there can always be marked out another path that will lead to the desired goal. Alert and energetic and thoroughly reliable, his position among the business men of Walla Walla county is indeed enviable. A native son of Washington, he was born at Lyons Ferry on the 28th of March, 1888, his parents being Hezekiah and Alice L. (Palmer) Winchell. The father was a native of Michigan and the mother of the state of New York. They were married, however, in Minnesota, where the father was identified with timber interests for a number of years. In 1883 he brought his family to the west, settling in Walla Walla county, Washington, at which time he filed on a homestead near Lyons Ferry but resided thereon only long enough to prove up on the property. He then took up his abode in Waitsburg and for twenty-two years the family lived in or near that town. The father was engaged in farming during this time. He died in 1905, at the comparatively early age of fifty-six years. The sons in the family continued to make their home with their mother, her death occurring on the 5th of June, 1917. Mr. and Mrs. Winchell were worthy pioneer people of this section of the state and contributed much to its development and progress.