Joseph B. (Joe Buster) Chandler was apparently born 9 September 1899 in Spokane County, Washington,
but no records have been found of his family. His son Dave,
a Chandler DNA Project testee, so far does not match anyone else in the project.
Joe told his family that his mother died about 1902, when he was around two years old. He believed her to be a native of England. Joe’s father, whose name was John J. or possibly A. J., ran a grocery store in the state of Washington.
Few memories remained from the time after his mother’s death and before Joe left the state of Washington. Joe recalled making a trip with his father to Yakima, Washington, on a buckboard. He left school after third grade and left his father’s home at age 10 (approximately 1909). He remembered being cared for by a “red-headed” aunt, so possibly he stayed with relatives for a while after leaving his father. Joe saw Halley’s Comet in Spokane in 1910, and he later spent several years off and on in Yakima, Washington. Joe believed he had a Chandler uncle, probably a younger brother to his father, who served in World War I (1914-1918) in Czechoslovakia. He remembered swimming in the Snake, Palouse and Tucannon Rivers of Washington.
Joe’s early life was tragically impacted by the loss of his mother. His son Dave believes Joe was so emotionally traumatized by this and unknown other events in his early childhood that, until the time of his death at age 85, he had “genetic amnesia.” Genetic amnesia is described by at least one source as being “cut off from your past.”
Joe would have been of draft age before WWI was over, but there is no record that he registered for the draft.
Records of Joe’s life pick up after he and two friends drove a car from Washington to California around 1920, working as migrant fruit pickers along the way. Joe drove – he was the only one of the three with a driver’s license.
His first job in California was as a ranch hand at the Santa Fe Ranch in San Diego County. San Diego at that time was surely a wonderful place for a young man to settle.
Rancho Santa Fe began as the San Dieguito Land Grant, a 9,000 acre tract of land deeded in the 1830s to Don Juan María Osuna. In 1906, the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company,
a division of the Santa Fe Railroad, purchased the San Dieguito Land Grant and changed the name to Rancho Santa Fe. Several million eucalyptus trees were planted as part of an experimental program to provide suitable wood for railroad ties. The program failed, but the young forests continued to grow and soon blended with the area's natural vegetation. In the 1920s the ranch was divided into several hundred parcels for orchards and country estates.
Joe must have come along right at the end of the historic ranch's life as a working ranch.
One story he told of his time at the Santa Fe Ranch was when he and his lifelong friend, Bert Dugdale, rode horses east of the ranch and came to a swollen river. Joe was very apprehensive about taking his horse through the water, as it was a new experience for him, but after watching Bert urge his horse into the river, he had no choice other than to follow. Joe said, "It was a breeze,” and was such an exhilarating experience that they both came out laughing on the other side.
Joe is in San Diego at the time of the 1930 census — a single 30-year-old, he is "head of household" with two male "co-lodgers." His occupation is given as trucker for Sea Food Packing.
The next recorded document is of his marriage in San Diego County on 11 September 1930 to Nellie Winora Gilson.
Money was tight during America's Great Depression, which was at its height when Winora and Joe married. Their main pastimes in the early years of their marriage were socializing and dancing at the Bostonia Ballroom and playing cards with a circle of friends.
Joe was an avid card player and gambler and an excellent ballroom dancer. Dave says his dad always wished he could take a “steamboat ride to Canada” and that he admired 
