Personal History of Lydia Jane Babcock Cook

Personal History of Lydia Jane Babcock Cook

Lydia Jane Babcock Cook

Daughter of Henry Babcock S. and Mary Jane Parsons

Wife of Ray Curtis Cook

Mother to - Arthur Cook 

                     Mary Cook

                      B. Floyd Cook

                      Laurel Cook

                      A. Austin Cook

                      Berl B. Cook

                      Hemla Cook

                      Lucy Cook

                      O. Curtis Cook

                     Paul B. Cook

                     Rulon Cook

                     Vardis Cook

Personal History of Lydia Jane Babcock Cook

Told by herself

re-typed by Kierston Scott

I, Lydia Jane Babcock, daughter of Henry Babcock Sr. and Mary Jane Parsons was born in the town of Spanish Fork, Utah County, Utah, on 26 of April 1881 in a two room adoby (adobe) house. 

My parents were pioneers my father, the son of Reodolphus Babcock and Jerusha Jane Rowley, was born in a covered wagon in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 15 July 1848; my mother, the daughter of George Parsons and Lydia Rebecca Fisher, was born in the state of Illinois on 10 May 1854. 

My father had went to work on the rail road in Colorado in August 1880 the year before I was born and my mother went into the grain fields that fall and gleaned the grain off the ground and traided (traded) it to the Spanish Fork Co-op for baby clothes and that was the way she was able to get one of the nicests (nicest) layettes for me than she had been able to get for any of her other babies.

When my father was on his way back home from Colorado, he passed through the country known as Castle Valley. (Later called Spring Glen, Utah). It was in May of 1881 when everything was out pretty and green and he fell in love with place especially one spot where cotton wood trees grew along the river bank. 

When I was 4 months old I was blessed by Zebee Coltrin, a close friend and associate of the Prophet Joseph Smith. My mother said that the blessing that he gave me was more like a Patriarchal blessing than a babies blessing. He as getting along in years and had been made a Patriarch in the LDS church. All mother could remember of the blessing was that I would sing in the choir and that Sagan would try to destroy me. To my way of looking  at it both of these things have been fulfilled. 

My father had built a two roomed adoby (adobe) house in Spanish Fork, with a door and window in frunt (front) of the house. There was a trundel (trundle) bed in the  frunt (front) room and it stood near the fire place. My folks had to carry water from the mill race in the Spanish Fork river for use in our home. About 6 months after I was born my mother left me on the trundel (trundle) bed while she went to the river to get some water. My sister Mary was playing  with me when she looked out of the window and seen (saw) a little bird that appeared to be hurt. She became excited and ran outside leaving me in the bed near the fire place. I fell off the bed into the fire, then my brother Benjamin about 3 years old ran to the door and screamed. “Galley, Lydia is in the fire” (My sister Mary was called Galley by brother Benjamin) Mary screamed and ran into the house. MOther heard her scream and dropped the buckets of water and ran to the house. She got there just as my sister Mary and brother Benjamin was pulling me out of the fire place. Big red coals were still sticking to my head. Mother didn’t know what to do in this emergency and when a neighbor told  to put baking soda on my head , she did it. She told me later that the soda made the burn sizzel (sizzle) and made my head worse. A Mrs. Jones was called to doctor me and she made a salve and put it on my head and she said that she wouldn’t doctor another burn that had had soda on it.

My folks had to carry me on a pillow and walk the floor with me night and day because of the pain. I took convulsions and mother said my first teeth came in a dark color. Because of that burn I had to go through life with scars on my head and my hair didn’t grow very good so I have a hard time covering up the scars. 

When I was about a year old my father deceided (decided) to move his family to Castle Valley to the place he fell in love with when he was returning from Colorado. We moved in the spring of 1882 and my cousin William Babcock and a girl by the name of Mary Jane Marall went with us. Soon after we moved there the narrow gage railroad was built through Spring Glen and my mother did the washing for the men that was doing construction work. 

When we first arrived in the valley we stayed at the home of James Gay. He had a homestead on the west side of the Price River and our homestead was on the east side of the river. We stayed with James Gay until we were able to build a log house size 16x20.

Our log house faced the east and a door was made out of rough lumber and door lock was made with a string and latch. At two sash window was in the west side of the house just the opposite the door. A large rock fire place was in the center of the north wall. This fireplace was very warm and comfortable because it threw the heat out into the room in the winter time. It also furnished light in the room and the only other light we had was from a coal oil lamp. 

Father homesteaded 160 acres of very fine farming land. The east side of our homestead ran length wise along the center of the only street that Spring GLen had at that time. When we had out ground surveyed we found that our log cabin was right on the line about four feet on James Gay’s land. Later on we tore this log house down. 

Mother had to do all her washing on a scrubbing board and the water had to be carried from the Price river which was about a quarter of a mile away. When the clothes were ironed we had to heat the irons on the stove or over the fireplace. Our furniture was all home made, and the cupboard was home made. A home made bench accommodated y three brothers and they always sat next to the wall. We had a four poster bed with ropes used as springs. When they began to sagg mother always tightened them up. My sister and I slept on this bed all through our childhood days. 

About two miles to the north of us joining James Gay’s homestead was a the farm of Francis Marion Exwll. He and his wife Fanny had a large family of 4 boys and 3 girls. They had a large two story frame house with a large bedroom upstairs. A fireplace was in one end of the bed room and a stairway was in back of the fireplace leading to the ground. The parents bedroom was on the ground floor and it was large enough to hold Sunday School and dances in it because it had no partitions in it. Many a party and dance was held there and it never seemed to be crowded. 

When my mind goes back to that two story house, I remember that Sarah, the daughter of Francis Marion Ewell, was my Sunday School teacher. We had no class outlines to study from in those days. Each teacher taught from the scriptures as they thought best. Sarah tried to teach me the ABC’s. She would say, “What does your mother drink?” When she came to the letter T it seemed to me that T was all I would ever learn because I could always remember that my mother drank tea. 

When we went to church I remember my parents holding me in their arms when we stood up while the choir sang. When they sang i sang too and I  must have been singing at the top of my voice one day, when the choir stopped and I was the only one singing and I sure was embarrassed. I can still feel to this day my embarrassment but after that happened I was more careful not to make the same mistake. 

A man by the name of Robert Wright moved his family into James Gay’s home. They had a son that was about two years older than I was and I became a good friend with Roy and we played together. Everyone liked the Wright family and all the neighbors called Mr. Wright uncle Bob. 

In years gone by the Price river must have been a larger river because it had wide banks back from the stream where we had plenty of room to run in. In front of our house the bank was about 5 feet hight and Roy Wright and I sat under this bank and dug the rocks out. Our parents warned us that the bank would cave on us if we didn’t stop digging in it. One day a section of the bank about 1 foot thick and four feet long caved on us. We were siting so close to the bank that we weren’t hurt but we were trapped inside. Roy began to shout for help but I didn’t think we were in any danger and figured out parents would come looking for us so I didn’t yell. Soon our parents heard Roy and they soon got us out. They rushed me into the house and took off my clothes to see if I was hurt and I was very much embarrassed because of everyone around me. We didn’t do anymore digging in the banks but we still played in the river bed. 

The Christmas I was 4 years old I was on the program. Oh how thrilled I Was and could hardly wait to give the poem I had to give. I had practiced if very faithfully and at last the night came and I went out on the stage and gave the following poem:

Cold and raw the north wind blows, 

bleak in the morning early

All the hills are covered with snow

and winters now com fairly. 

It was soon over but it was a great thrill. Along this time my mother made me a red Pollenna (Pollyanna?) dress that fluffed out over the hips. 

Whenever anything hurt my sister Mary’s feelings she would burst out crying and when she did that it would cause her to hold her breath. One day this happened and when it was over Mary went to sleep in between the tent flap and the wood wall and my folks couldn’t find her. THey became very worried and mother, thinking that Mary may have came to some harm, jumped on a horse to go looking for her. Mother was expecting a baby and when she got on the horse it mad her lose the baby. The baby was a stillborn boy born about September 1883 in Spring Glen and father named it John. 

On the morning of 21 January 1885 mother didn’t seem well  and I tried to comfort her. She didn’t seem to care for that and soon after I found myself on a wagon with my father and sister Mary headed down the road. Father left us at the Darling home and drove onto Price. Mary kept watch and soon saw him pass by with a woman in the wagon. Some time later he came by with the woman headed for Price and he told Mary that we had a new baby sister. Mary was so excited that she threw me in Tiny Darling’s coaster wagon and bot of them took me down the railroad track on the run. Soon the wagon tipped over and I fell out. Mary slapped my face and put me back into the wagon and we soon got home. When I walked into the room where the baby was I knew I had lost my place I had held for about four years. so I wanted to slap the baby but mother wouldn’t let me. 

Lire went on as usual and soon the new baby didn’t seem to bother me anymore. Mother had been in bed for some time with milk leg and on a Sunday morning in October 1886 tragedy. I had just finished my bath and was getting dressed. Brother Benjamin had gone to the river for water and we soon heard him calling. Mary ran to the door and seen Brother Benjamin running. He would run a way and then fall down and he was trying to tell us something. We finally found out that the hay yard was on fire. Mother, Mary, Benjamin and I was (were) the only ones  at home and the river was to far away to be of much help so the hay all burned up. The smoke soon come (came) to the attention of our men fold who had gone to the neighbors place. They came on their horses as fast as they could. All our winter feed, a sow pig and everything burned. Our folks figured some matches had fallen out of the boys clothes by the hay stack where they had been sleeping and that set the hay on fire. 

After the fire father took mother to Spanish Fork for the winter so she could be near the doctor. They took the baby and I with them. The doctor told father to use hot turpentine packs on mother’s legs. One day as father was squeezing out the turpentine rags, on the hot stove, some of the liquid spilt on the stove and caught on fire and burned his hands badly. He was unable to do anything for himself so he had to be dressed and wited on. With mother in bed with milk leg all the responsibility fell on my sister Mary who was only 9 years old. My uncle Albern Babcock came over every morning and cut enough wood to last us all day. He never enquired how we were or waid anything. Word was sent to my brother William about our troubles and he brought my mother’s brother Andrew J. Simmons and they came to our rescue. They had walked from Spring SGlen to Spanish Fork to our help and they stayed with us that winter. Mother and father soon got to feeling better then they walked back to Spring Glen. 

On the 22 or 23 of December 1886 I was 5 years 8 months old I was with my sister Mary and brother Benjamin down on the Price river playing on the ice. We had a large tree stump pushing it along the ice. We came to a place in the ice that was rough and the tree stump wouldn’t move. I gave an extra hard push and my feet slipped out from under me and I went down on my knees. I immediately felt a pain in my left leg just below the knee. It hurt so badly that I went over to the river bank and sat down. When the others were through playing we went home. I told mother what had happened but she didn’t think it was anything serious. I went around as usual excepting that my leg hurt me. 

The Darling family moved on the Price River close to Wellington, Utah south or Price. Mother took us to visit them during Christmas and while we were there my leg got very bad. When we returned home my leg was all swollen and my uncle Andrew said that it looked like I was going to have what he called, “white swelling,” a condition caused from having a broken bone and infection. My uncle Andrew became crippled from the same thing that caused me to be crippled all my life. 

The winter dragged along and I was full of misery and pain all the time. My folks put a poltice made from cattail bushes. on my leg. They tried quite a number of different things, some of them pretty messy. They used fresh cow manure, flax seed meal, flag roots poltice, and angel worms. The worms were really rotten and when a jar full broke they stunk so bad my folks didn’t use anymore of them. My leg pained me so much that I couldn’t sleep at night and I kept my folks awake a lot of the time. I lost my appetite and all I got so I cared for was bread, bacon grease, and sugar on it. That must have been my diet for about a year. A family by the name of Thompson had moved into our community before this accident happened tome They had a son about 18 years of age who always brought his sisters old valentines to me. He would amuse me by telling me stories. I was in bed all winter and I didn’t get up until warm weather came. 

In March 1887 just before I was 6 years old my parents decided to take me to the doctor in Spanish Fork. They sent a telegram to my uncle John Babcock, whom was living in Spanish Fork, telling him that we were coming on the train on 20 March and asking him to meet us at the station. My mother, sister Mary and Lucy and I went and when we arrived at the station on Mapleton Bench, there was no one there to meet us. It was a long drive from the railroad station to see uncle John Babcock’s home. It just so happened that uncle John Babcock had sent his son John to get a load of coal and when we seen (saw) him coming we thought he was coming after us. He told us that they hadn’t received our telegram so they didn’t know that we were coming We were certainly glad that he happened to come after coal that day. He didn’t get any coal but put us in the wagon and drove very carefully   home so as not to hurt my let. Because he didn’t get coal that day we didn’t have anything to burn for heat except willows and all the time we were there that’s all they had so the house wasn’t very warm. Every time mother gave mea  sponge bath I would chill because of the cold room. The doctor examined my leg and told mother that he could cut the flesh open and scrape the bone clean of decay and infection and my leg would heal and be all right. I had been getting thinner because of the brea, grease, and sugar diet that I had been eating and because of the pain and suffering that I was going through, mother was afraid to let the doctor operate on my leg for fear that I would dieAs the result of this mother asked me if I wanted to be operated on and I being only 6 years old said no not realizing what I was doing.  A momentous decision left up to a child, having no idea of what it would mean going through life as a cripple. (Now at the time of the writing of this history at age 67 I sometimes wish very much that I had said yes and took what may)

After that decision was made the doctor still called at our home to see my leg and if my leg was the least bit bent the doctor would tell me that he would open it up and scrape the bone if I didn’t keep my leg straight. THen I would sure work hard to get it straightened out again. 

While we were staying at uncle John Babcock’s place my aunt Hanner Babcock came there and brought me two apples. I sure enjoyed them and I have always been grateful to my aunt for the kindness she showed unto me. SHe was the wife of my uncle Albern Babcock. 

We were at the home of my uncle John Babcock for a month then my uncle Ben Simmons came and took us to his home in Lake Sure in Utah county, Utah. The jolting of the light spring wagon caused my leg to hurt very much and I complained about he pain then my uncle’s half brother, Ammon Simmons made a remark that I was just putting on about my leg. I was put to bed at uncle Benjamin Simmons’ home in a large kitchen where I was always warm and comfortable. 

My uncle Benjamin had two sons younger than I. They had two small dogs that ran and played in the room. The dogs would get under the bed and make my leg hurt so I would complain and they drove the dogs from under the bed. They didn’t watch the dogs very close so mother gave me a pillow to hit the dogs with when they went under the bed. 

As I laid in bed with nothing to do and nothing to occupy my time I used to watch my aunt Ann Simmons peal potatoes. It seemed to me that she spent half of her time pealing potatoes because of the deep potato eyes. WHile watching the potatoes being peeled my mind went to how nice it would be to have a doll and the company it would give me while I was lying in bed. My uncle Benjamin got the doll for me. Today I wonder if any little girl was ever comforted as I by having a doll given to her. The doll only cost one dollar but to me that was a lot of money. Although I was very young I sensed the financial struggle my parents were having in trying t help me. My uncle also bought some peanuts for me and I considered it a great treat. During those weeks of trial I was some times very cross and impatient. When I had to be moved around mother always got my uncle Benjamin to lift me. Some times he would be reading the paper and wouldn’t come right away. I would get very impatient with him. One day I became very angry at him and I called him an old Devil. After words I told him I was very sorry for calling him that and all through the years I have had a guilty feeling when I think of the incident, because he was very kind and did everything he could to make our stay pleasant. 

Mother and my sister Mary was sleeping in a bed on the floor next to my bed. I had become terribly thin so mother was very much concerned about me and either mother or Mary would get up at night and check to see how i was. One night I thought I would play a trick on them so I held my breath. I guess I still had enough mischief in me to play tricks on some one so one day I stuck the end of the pillow in my mother’s hair and whirled the pillow around so it would bother mother. I guess I wasn’t so near to being dead or dying as mother thought. 

We finally left my uncle Benjamin Simmons’s home in Lake Shore and boarded the passenger train to go to Spring Glen. WHen we got there the conductor carried me off the train and he let my leg bend at the knee and when we got home I told mother but she said we wouldn’t bother about it that night. The next day they tried to straighten my knee but they didn’t  get it quite straight and it never did straighten out. 

After we had been back home a short time the splinters of rotten bone began to work out through the flesh. When the bone protruded out of the flesh about two inches mother wanted me to let her pull it out. I was afraid to let her and it kept working out until one morning mother got  me to let her look at it and before I knew what was happening she quickly pulled it out. The bone was in the flesh about one half in and it bled and hurt for a while but it soon got better. That piece of bone must have been about 3 1/2 inches long and had decayed until the bone was full of holes just like a honey comb. After this a few more bone splinters worked out and the largest was about one inch long. 

Early in the year of 1887 in May my father decided to go away form home. Father seemed to have become discouraged because of the many misfortunes that had befell him and his family so his reaction was to leave home. Mother pleaded with him not to go. Father still persisted and then mother said to him, “Hen, if you go now I will never make up with you.” Father left any way and mother never did make up with him. 

On the 3 August 1887 just about 3 months after father left home my brother Vardis Andrew was born. My brother William took my sister Mary and I and we went with him in the wagon while he hauled big rocks for a dam in the Price river so we would have irrigation water for our farm. When we finally went home we found mother in bed with a baby. Father was there sitting on the bed trying to make up with mother but they never made up. 

In the spring of 1888 when I was 7 years old my aunt Agness Bellows Simmons helped me learn to walk on crutches. In the early summer of 1888 our family consisting of mother, brothers William, Albern, Benjamin, and Vardi and my sisters Mary, Lucy and I decided to go up Spring Canyon and stay through the summer while our men folks cut railroad ties and cedar posts. We went with the Booth and Nephi Perkins families. Like our pioneer forefathers, we loaded our supplies on a wagon and took our cows with us. When we arrived at our destination, after making our own road most of the way, we found a nice cool stream of water for our use and plenty of tall grass for the cows to eat. Mother made a lot of butter and we sold it to people there during out stay there. 

While we were camped in Spring canyon we climbed the hills. It was hard for me to climb with the use of my crutches so I could leave them behind and go up the hill on my hands and feet. One day my brother Albern went up the hill with us. I left my crutches behind at the foot of the hill. When we got back down i found one of my crutches broken from the rocks that we had rolled down the hill. I had to learn to walk with one crutch after that happened although my folks would have preferred to have me learn to walk without any crutches. 

In the summer when I was ten years old I was playing in the cottonwood grove of trees with Purmitt Ewell, my brother Ben and some other children. We were playing on the whirlie gig and I watched others give it a push and walk out of its way. It looked easy to me so I gave it a push but I didn’t get out of the way in time and it hit me on my left arm. That was the arm I used with my crutch and I couldn’t use it for a while. My father wanted me to not use the crutch and he promised me a new coat if I would walk without it, so when that happened I soon learned to walk with out the crutch and by the time my arm was better I didn’t need my crutch any longer. 

During the summer of 1890 the Chauncy Harvey Cook family moved into Spring Glen. They had 4 sons named C. Harvey, Ray C. who was later to become my husband, Leroy A. and Marion. Three daughters named Bertha, Dora, and Larua. 

During the years I spent as a young girl on our 160 acres of land where the cottonwood grove of trees grew, I spent many hours of carefree fun. I gathered beautiful flowers which grew in the shade of the squaw bushes where the snow drifts lay the longest in the Spring time. There was a patch of beautiful blue bells farther up in the grove and some lovely yellow flowers with blossoms shaped like sweet peas. That part of the country was noted for quick thunder storms in the mountains. The water would quickly come roaring down the deep washes bringing brush and mud with it. Whenever we heard a flood coming we always ran to the wash to see it. It was some sight to see a large crest of water come rolling down and it always run over and left mud on the ground. After the ground dried out we always gathered the clay and made play dishes, and many other things. We let them dry hard and played house with them. There was also a lovely vine called the wild deer vine that had leaves the shape of grape leaves and flowers grew on it grew in large clusters, having a faint creamy white color and a lovely perfume. We always gathered them and made lovely wreaths to wear on our heads. That grove had large swings in the tall cottonwood trees and a merry go round and a teeter toter. In later years this grove became the place where celebrations for the fourth and twenty fourth of July was held. 

There wasn’t any school in Spring Glen for a number of years after we moved there so my mother would fix up some food supplies and send the boys to Price to attend school. They stayed at the home of Nephi Perkins during school then return home during the weekends then back to school on Monday morning. Father didn’t want the boys to go to school at Price and mother had quite a time sending them because of the opposition. When I was nine years old J. Nathan Miller came and told us that there would be free school that fall and it was to be held on the new log meeting house in Spring Glen. 

Hyrum Southworth taught school for a number of years. He was a great teacher for elocution and always held a class for the older girls and boys. I longed to be old enough to be in that class and when I was finally old enough I remember reciting, “The rising of 1776, Oleah for Castile, Abu Ben Abbot,” And other such verses. Every morning Elliot Miller and other young men would sing with the teacher the songs called, “No, they in their graves are sleeping till the resurrection day.” Later our teachers brought other songs to school such as, “Little fairy light and airy, I’ll hie me down to younder brock, freedoms sons come join in the chorus,” and others.

About 1889 the people in Spring Glen decided to build a large canal to bring water up to the higher farm ground. They had to either build around or tunnel through the mountain so they hired a man by the name of Jack Kendel some times called tunnel Jack, to drive the funnel through the mountain. It seemed to me that they worked on it for three years but they finally got it through and they held a celebration upon its completion in the new log meeting house. 

The summer I was nine years old we lived in Castle Gate for a while and my brother Will worked on the surface at the coal mine, for about three months. During that time they had an explosion in the mine and it killed two miners. We were living in a tend during this time. Father was with us for a short time when we moved there. 

At the time we were camped in Spring Canyon getting railroad ties and cedar posts, we had a part Bowery and tent home that we lived in that summer of 1888. THe Perkins and Booth families lived in tents. The boys hauled the railroad ties and cedar posts to Price, Utah and sold them. Late in the fall we heard that bears had been seen in the mountains near us so we became anxious to leave there and return to our home in Spring Glen. The other families had already returned home and we were alone. The last night we spent in the mountains my brothers were away from camp. OUr dog had barked several nights and we thought some wild animal may have been lurking around in the mountain brush. This last night the dog began to bark in the willows near the creek and continued to bark all night long. We were frightened and didn’t dare sleep. Mother got an ax, the only weapon we had and sat in the Bowery kitchen all night, on guard, with the ax lying acrosst her lap. We were sure glad when the boys returned and we soon loaded the wagons and started off to Spring Glen ad we arrived there at dark. 

When I was 8 years old just a few days before Christmas I was standing beside my sister Mary in front of the fireplace. I was singing an old army song that goes like this; Come all that’s able and go to the stable. Water your horses and geed them some corn ---- Mary looked at me and said, “Oh, poo, you can’t sing,P then she gave me a poke with her elbow and I was knocked backwards int the fire. As I fell I threw my hands out to try and catch my self and my hand and arm went into the kettle of boiling water in the fireplace. When mother took off my dress the skin on my arm come off with the dress. Mother put potatoes yeast on a cloth and bandaged my hand and arm. It stopped the pain and took the fire out. 

I went to a Christmas party at Francis Ewell’s home and Hyrum Southworth (who was later to become our school teacher) set me up where I could see and hear all that went on at the party. He gave me a nice box full of tin dishes and 50 cents. I felt that I was rich when I got that although my Christmas was almost spoiled when I was burned. 

One day in the summer while mother was in Price shopping my sister Mary decided to move the kitchen cupboard. It was a home made cupboard and had stood in the same place as long as I could remember. Mary and Benjamin went to move it but the cupboard was to tall. They sawed some of the bottom off and got it crocked and the cupboard wouldn’t stand straight. I was very worried about what mother would do and say when she got home so I decided to pray to my Heavenly Father for help. I went out side in the tall sage brush and knelt down and asked my Heavenly Father to send some one to help fix the cupboard. When I got up off my knees I looked towards the railroad track and saw Hyrum Bellows coming down the road. I felt that my prayers had been answered when I seen him. I got Mr. Bellows to come in and fix the cupboard. 

One day while mother was in Price Mary said she could quilt on a quilt that mother was doing. Mary marked the fans the wrong way so we didn’t get much quilting done because we would have to quilt left handed the way the fans were made. 

During the year of 1887 when my leg was bothering me very much Bishop Heber J. Stowell and other bearers of the Holy Priesthood came to our house and administered to me. I told them to put their hands on my leg because that was where the pain was. A few years later Bishop Stowell told me that when they administered to me that the pain from my leg would go up their arms. Some times the pain was so sevier that they could hardly stand it. 

During those early years of my life in Spring Glen I remember a number of families lived in with the James Gay family. One of those families was the George Perkins family. Mr. Perkins was a good hunter and he went hunting every fall of the year and often brought back a deer. He dried some of the meat and he always gave some of his neighbors and the meat he gave us always tasted very good. 

During the years when we were growing up our parents made many trips to Spanish Fork, Utah, in the fall of the year. There wasn’t any fruit so we always picked the bull berries that grew along the river bank, also the currents were picked. Mother would bring back peaches, apples, and wild ground cherries. We always dried the peaches, apples and put the ground cherries, currents up as preserves and bottled all the fruit we could. On one of those trips to Spanish Fork my folks stayed just a little to long and it snowed before they could make it over the dugway. The dugway was a little slick and father had a hard time keeping the wagon from slipping over the edge. He decided to drive along the railroad tracks and we worried all the time and kept watching for the train that we were expecting behind us. Soon we seen the lights of teh train shining through the opening of the wagon cover. Their was great excitement and fear whether we would make it in time to get off the tracks. Dad whipped up the team and we went bouncing over the railroad ties until dad found a place to turn off. We just got off the tracks i time then the train went by and the engineer shook his fist at my father and not to be out done, father shook his fist right back at the engineer. 

At one time the road was built down Spanish Fork Canyon to Soldiers Summet, then out through Soldiers canyon. When Johnson’s army left Utah in 1858 they went that way and crossed Green River on their way south. That was the road we traveled for a number of years. When we went through soldiers canyon we would turn towards Price and go home that way to Spring Glen. The dugway along the side of the mountain was very narrow and wagons could not pass one another but their wasn’t much travel in the canyon so we didn’t ever meet any one on the dugway. 

In later years a road was built up through Garden Creek and over Beaver mountain, then down Beaver canyon. The road crossed and recrossed Beaver creek many times. At the time this road was built, a little dog we called tiny had two little pups. Mother asked Emily Perkins to stay at our home and look after the dog while we made the trip to Spanish Fork, but we were very anxious about the dog so we decided to take her with us. When Tiny was given to us mother said she was so tiny that she was brought in a quart cup. There had been a flood so some of the bridges were washed out on Garden creek and we got stuck at one crossing. We had to unload the wagon to get out and before we started again the boys went up on a hill and the dog followed them. She went into the brush and a mountain Lion grabbed her. The boys ran to the wagon and told dad and he grabbed an ax and tried to save the dog but the lion just trotted off into the brush with the dog in his mouth. We were a very unhappy bunch and when we arrived in Spanish Fork we tried to feed the pups with a spoon but we couldn’t save them and they died. Then we wished we had left the dog and her pups at home where they would be safe. 

After that we made another trip to Spanish Fork and father wasn’t with us this time. We left Hyrum Bellows to look after our home because they were living with us. We traveled along the side of the railroad as the road had been changed over soldier summet and wasn’t as steep as it had been. As we approached the summet the thimble on the front axel of the wagon broke. We had to stay on soldier summet for about 6 days  while waiting for a new thimble to arrive from Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Just before we had left home to go to Spanish Fork, Hyrum Belllow’s daughter Pheobe was sick with a sore throat. My uncle Andrew Simmons and his wife had become very worried about her sore throat and they decided that she must have deptheria so they sent a telegram to my mother’s brother so word would read us there when we arrived but we didn’t arrive until after. When we got there they sent us to stay in a cabin down by the lake so we wouldn’t expose others if we came down with deptheria. Mother got busy putting up fruit and in ten days when we didn’t come down with deptheria we went to Payson to visit one of mother’s old friends. 

After I got so I could walk with out my crutch I went with my sister Mary when it wasn’t too far to walk. One Sunday the crowd was going to Jim Hanson’s place about two miles away. I wanted to go with the crowd and Mary never objected so I went. When we got about 3/4 of the way home I fell exhausted in the middle of the road. After resting for a wile I was able to continue on home with the help of my sister Mary. I should never have gone because the round trip was too much for my lame leg.

My brother William was herding sheep when a man came to his camp and sat on William’s bed and William caught the body lice from him. Mother told him to boil his clothes but that didn’t seem to kill them so mother sent him some oil of cedar and he put it on his body instead of his clothes. WHen he was home for a few days I went with him across the river and we eat Buffalo berries. We sat in the shade of the trees and throughly enjoyed ourselves. My brother Will was such a kind man and loving brother to me and like a father to us children. I loved him dearly. When he was nineteen years old he had a sever attack of pneumonia and mother called an armenian doctor by the name of Assadorian who was the company doctor, at Castle Gate. The doctor examined brother Will then asked mother if Will used tobacco. Mother told him that Will didn’t then the doctor remarked that if he didn’t smoke he could pull him through but if he did smoke the doctor wouldn’t give two cents for hies life. In a few weeks he was well and he went to Castle Gate and went to work for a man named Wade loading co?? (unable to read)

During the summer of 1891 when I was 10 years old the narrow gage railroad was replaced with the wide gage and instead of the track being laid on the old grade it was put through our land and through a cut so as to advoid a steep grade. The tracks was about a mile from our house and we had to cross it to get to town and school, church and all of our social activities. 

I was sleeping out side in the grove of trees and one morning I woke up with a tooth ache. I had to cross the cut that was being made for the railroad to get to the man who pulled teeth and did dentist work. When I reached the cut they were going to set off a charge of dynamite so I had to waite. While  I was waiting my tooth ache quit so I went back home. After that my bro William dabbed me with the name of grandma and it stayed with me untill I was a grown woman. Because of that I always hated the name of grandma. 

While we were still living on my father’s homestead in the house below the tracks, my sister Lucy and I had to heard the cows during the summer. One day we were herding the cows in the flat at the foot of the mountain just east of the town site of Spring Glen. At noon time we took them home while we had dinner then we took them out again and we came to the cut about 1 o’clock that afternoon. I listened for the one O’clock passanger train which was due but I didn’t hear it so we started the cows through the cut. When I got on the tracks I could hear the singing of the rail and I knew a train was coming. I tried to make the cows hurry but we had a cow named Emmer that was mean and bossy and she hooked a cow named Janett and caused her to run down the track in a dead heap. We took the rest of the cows back home and told mother what had happened and she was so glad that Lucy didn’t get killed that she didn’t scold us for what happened. 

When I was about 11 years old mother bought 30 acres of land from the school and she hired Chauncy Harvey Cook to build a log house on the place. This land joined the land we had sold for the Spring Glen town site and it also joined some land that my father had on the north of us. The log house was built of pine logs which the boys got out of the canyon and had sawed at the saw mill. We moved into it in the spring before the doors and windows was put in it. We had a door that we had to prop up with a two by four to keep it in place and we hung quilts over the windows. It was in March and the wind seemed to blow very hard and it was at this time that the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated. That fall we had a man named Ode Cassin stay at out place and he being a carpenter put the doors and windows in our log house. He made all the doors and windows and it took him a long time because he had had a broken arm that was still weak. The Salt Lake Temple was dedicated during April conference. 

Now that we only lived one block from school and town I was able to get into more activities so I was soon put in as secretary in the primary at age 10. I also started ti M.I.A. My aunt Aggie Simmons was president of the primary and I was secretary until I started going to M.I.A.

After we moved into our new log house mother began to sell milk to people in Helper. Amoung the people we sold to was a lady named Carrie (Cad) Thomas who ran a restaurant. My sister Lucy and I carried a two gallon can of milk to Helper every morning and night and ever day in the week except during the winter months. Lucy was a very ambitious girl and she always did her share and many times more. She would go down on the river bottom and get the cows. Because my leg was lame I could only stand two trips to Helper a total of about five miles for the two trips. Sometimes one of us would get a ride to Helper with the Haycock boys i their cart and deliver the milk. 

One dark and stormy night we were coming home walking along the road playing as we walked so we were late getting home. We heard some one riding along on a horse and as the horse came near we discovered it was our neighbor Thomas H. Jones. He lifted us both on his horse and took us home. That was another kindness that I’ll never forget. 

The next winter on 21 January 1894 when Lucy was 9 years old mother gave her a birthday party. She invited Ethel and William Savage and some others. I took the honor upon myself of passing the refreshments when I should have let Lucy because it was her party. It mad Lucy cry and I guess is spoiled the party for her. I know it spoiled the party for me and that is some thing I have always been sorry for because Lucy never lived to have another party. 

That summer of 1894 Lucy caught a cold and it turned to membranious croup and after a week of illness she died on the 12 June 1894. I became very lonesome and how I did miss that little sister. One thing I was thankful for was that I had made up my mind some months before her death that I would never try to be bossy with her but would try to treat her just as a girl friend. I’m glad to say I kept that resolution. The sorrow of Lucy’s death almost broke mothers heart, and afterwards mother said that Lucy had always been such a thoughtful child, so considerate and always willing to do her share and mother had became deeply attached to her. 

Before Lucy died we used to go over to Pratt’s pond and ride on the raft. The boys would always tip us off the raft and mother told us she would whip us if we didn’t stay away because we always came home wet and my red striped petticoat would fade on my underware and make them pink. We stayed away from the pond for about three weeks then one day while we were playing Lucy said, “Lets go over to Pratts pond.” I was willing to go because I knew if anything went wrong she would be the one to get punished because she was the one who suggested that we go. We went and we found Maroni Pratt at the pond. He told us to come and take a ride with him and he wouldn’t tip us over. As soon as we got into the center of the pond he tiped the raft over. When we went home wet mother asked whose idea it was that we go and I said it was Lucy’s and she go a whipping for something that was partly my fault. That stopped us from going to the pond anymore. I have always felt ashamed for putting all the blame on Lucy. 

After Lucy’s death my brother Vardis (age 8 years) had to help me with the milk but he was so small that it was hard for him to carry with me. One day mother was going to Castle Gate she saw an old abondand two wheel cart by the side of the road. She bought the cart and I began to haul milk in the cart with a horse. Some times I carried the milk and road the horse to deliver it to Helper. 

The next fall when I was 14 years old Carrie Thomas gave me a little black male dog with tan spots on it. She gave me this pup because she said I was lonesome and needed company since my sister had died. The primary always celebrated Brigham Young’s birthday and in as much as I was called on the finance committee I was chosen with Maggie Keefer to go to homes in the south end of town and visit Robert Powell and James Garley families, to ask for donations. Garley’s lived across the Price river and it was the time of they ear when the water was high. We had to borrow William Haycock’s horse Dexter because our horse was running loose in the hills. I took my dog Topsy and Maggie and I got on and when we came to the river we thought some one had crossed because we seen wagon tracks so we thought it safe and we crossed. When we arrived at Garley’s they asked us if we had crossed the river. We told them we had and they said that on (no) one had dared to cross the river for the past week. We crossed back over the river safely and I put my little dog down just as we crossed the canel bridge. The dog didn’t follow us acrost but ran along the canel bank whining to get acrost. I turned the horse to go back buth the horse didn’t want to go so he bucked us off and ran away. He stopped to nibble grass and Maggie put some grass and flowers in her hat 

 and got the horse to eat while we got on again. This time we let the dog get over the best he could.

On the 4 July 1894 just a few weeks after my sister Lucy died mother let me go to a farming community called nine mile with my cousin John Babcock to visit his wife and family. They had a daughter my age and some other children younger than I. I visited with them until after the 24 of July. When I returned home again cousin John Babcock’s daughter came with me. While I was gone my brother Will came home and he looked for me. When mother told him I was gone to nine mile he broke down and said, “Monk Lucy) is gone and goose (Lydia) is gone.”

When I was 14 years old mother let me go with William and Lilliam Ewell to Spanish FOrk where I was to visit some of my relatives. I stayed there and visited with my aunt Harriet Babcock and her two married daughters named Polly and Percy. While visiting, my cousin Polly showed me how to comb my hair so the scars on my head would be covered up. I have always been very greatful for my cousin Polly for her help. I also visited with my grandmother Lydia Rebecca Fisher Parsons who was keeping house for my uncle Vardis Simmons. 

While I was there I got word that my sister Mary’s baby was sick and I became very anxious to return home because I loved that baby. I went home the evening of 10 August 1895 and the baby died that night at 10 o’clock. 

Soon after I returned home I went to work in Helper, Utah taking care of Mrs. Beaty’s baby and I worked there until school started, but I didn’t get to go to school because my leg began to ache and pain and I wasn’t able to walk on it until in January of 1896, then I had to use a crutch for a few months. In the mean time mother had made a trip to Spanish Fork and got Alice Thompson to help with the house work and take care of me. Alice was very kind to me and she later married my brother William. 

As time passed my brothers began to get married and my brother William married Alice Thompson on the 1 March 1897 and brother Albern had already got married to Annie Haycock just two months before on the 31 December 1896 so that left mother to take in washings to support the family because she didn’t have the help of the older boys any longer. Brother Will had been the main support of the family since my parents seperated. 

On the 16 November 1897 my brother Albern and wife had their first baby and I went to work for them. When I was home I always went on a horse and brought the laundry to mother and delivered it back to the people. My work was arranged so it wouldn’t interfere with my schooling. 

I was called to serve as secretary in the Young Ladies M.I.A. in 1898 and in the spring of 1899 I went to Castle gate to work for my sister-i-l Alice Thompson for about 3 months. I took my little dog Topsy with me and my brother Will didn’t like the dog so he gave it poison. When Topsy turned up missing I inquired about him but could never find him until my sister in law Alice told my sister in law Annie how my brother had poisoned the dog, then I found out about it. That dog had ment a lot to me and had been with me when we went to swipe fruit at the Ewell farm. Also with me in play, at sunday school and he never bothered any one or made a noise no matter what I was doing. I had named him Topsy after the girl Topsy in the story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, because the dog was so black. 

In my youth the mode of travel was mostly in wagons and horse back. Some people were more fortunate and had white topped buggies, After I was married my mother bought a two seated buggy. 

I had first met the man I was later to marry when his folks first moved to Spring Glen in 1890 and we went to school together for about 2 years. I went with him to dance at Price. I went riding on horses with him on several occasions. On the night I went with him to the dance in Price, I was riding on our horse named Queen and she was a little hard to handle because she had been running loose in the hills. As we came near a place where some men had been camping on a seep grade my horse suddnly ran off the grade and I thought she was going right through their camp fire before I could stop her. 

One day my future husband and I went to Helper and we had some pictures taken that we called stump pictures. The photographer had trouble with his camra so we were unable to get large pictures. 

I had taken part on many of the programs in or ward before I was married. In fact I can’t remember any program that I didn’t take part in. I always enjoyed taking part on the programs. 

I became engaged to marry Ray Curtis Cook about two months before we were married. We had known each other for almost 9 years in the community of Spring Glen, Utah. We were married on the 24 December 1899 in Spring Glen, Utah by my father in law who was Justice of the peace. We were married in the evening after wards we went to the L.D.S. Ward house for the Christmas program decorations which was to be held the next day. Sunday morning or Christmas day we went to sunday school and we took part on the program. Word had gotten around that I was married but they didn’t know for sure. But some of the people smiled and winked at what they thought was a secret that they shared with us. 

On monday night the 26 December we held our wedding dance. Sam Eldredge and Veretta Fullmer had been married that evening so we held the wedding dance together in the Spring Glen Ward House. 

My mother moved from her home in Spring Glen and my husband and I lived there until March 1900, then we moved to Helper where my mother was living and we lived in the building that was once the post office. When the owner’s son WIlliam Ewell wanted to live there, we moved from there to a house down by the Price river. Before we moved from the old post office building my husband had been engaged in delivering milk to Castle Gate, Utah for a man named Bowden. 

The house was moved into by the river was owned by Charles Johnson an we stayed there until my husband quit the milk delivery in July 1900 then we moved to Castle Gate, where my husband went to work at the Coke Ovens. 

About two months before we were expecting our first baby I stepped of the porch and turned my ankle and fell on my hip. I almost killed my baby and I was unable to do my house work so we had a girl named Olive Fullmer come to do the work. She worked for a month then Coke Ovens cut down my husband didn’t have full work so we had to let her go. I then went to live with my mother until the my baby was born. 

My baby was born on the 15 October 1900 in Helper, Utah. The baby was a boy and we named him Arthur Ray Cook. My husband talked to the doctor later at his office and the doctor told him that he could pull me through but he didn’t know about the baby but we both improved and were soon well. 

When our baby was three weeks old we moved back to Castle Gate into the place called Willow Creek canyon. There we moved into a one room of my husband’s brother’s house. His brother was Chauncey Harvey Cook named after their farther. My husband went to work at the Coke ovens again. 

When our baby was one month old my brother-in-law C. Harvey Cook married Hannah Elsie Hansen Sonberg on the 13 November 1900 and they wanted to use the room we were renting so we moved into a house that was for rent by the Italian people. These homes were located on the main rood (road) of Castle Gate near the business distrect. We were living in that house when small Poxs broke out in Castle Gate. My husband and I was vacinated on the 15 December and although Castle Gate was quartentened we went to visit my husbands folks in Spring Glen and spent Christmas with them. Most ever one figured that the quarenten was used as an excuse to keep peddlers out of Castle Gate more than a safe guard of health so it didn’t keep us at home. 

For Christmas my husband was given a large turkey as a gift from the Coke company and it came in very timely because he was laid off right after Christmas. 

Early in January 1901 we moved back to Spring Glen and lived with my father-in-law until they moved (to) a log house by the river, to one of their farms, and rebuilt it so we could live init. We lived in it until the fall of 1901. By then we were able to buy an acre of ground west of Thompson place and build a one roomed house of Rail Road Ties. This place was warm and comfortable but the loft wasn’t closed in when the winter came. My husband then went to work in Scofield on the morning of 28 November so I went to live with my mother. 

On the 28 November 1901 I had to go to Price to pay our Taxes so I borrowed a horse from mother and left for Price at 11 o’clock in the morning. The horse was a strange one and didn’t want to go and as I went to cross a ditch the horse stumbled and threw me over her head. I never remembered falling and I was  knocked unconcious for over three ours, so I was unable to pay the taxes. My head and eyes ached and pained for about a week afterwards. When I recovered conciousness I got Mr. Sonburg to go pay the taxes for me. 

In January 1902 I took my son Arthur and went with my mother to Castle Dale in Emery County to visit my sister Mary. She came back home with us on our return. About the tenth of January I took my baby and caught the train to Winter Quarters, Utah to spend the winter with my husband. Winter Quarters is about two miles from Scofield and the mines are located in Winter Quarters. My brother Benjamin was also working in Winter Quarters. 

I stayed at Ed Taylor’s home with my husband and about one month after I got there MRs. Taylor took down sick and had to live in Provo near a doctor. That ment that we couldn’t board with the Taylors any more so we rented a room from them and began house keeping. 

Our baby wasn’t feeling very well so when my mother came to visit I let her take my baby with her and keep him until we came back in March. 

That spring of 1902 my husband helped his father put in the crops then he went to work for Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad on the 19 May and worked until the 29 August then he went to Sunny Side to work at the Coke Ovens. 

My brother Benjamin was still working at Winter Quarters for the Pleasant Valley Coal Company. He planned on quiting his job in May and returning home. The day he planned to quit he was sevierly injured and died on the 16 May in the hospital in Salt Lake City. 

My brother Benjamin and William Haycock were rooming together in the hotel and they were both planning to quit the same day. On the afternoon of 14 May 1902, the day they were going to quit after work, Benjamin asked William Haycock if he was going to go to work and William Haycock told him no. Then William Haycock told Benjamin about a dream that he had had that night. How he dreamed that he was run over in the mine by a string of ore cars. Benjamin said he didn’t believe in dreams so he went to work on afternoon shift. He ran the water pumps and are compressor down in the mine. It was about 4 o’clock that afternoon when he deceided to go from the pumps to the compresser. The men were supose to use the walk way instead of the tracks to travel on but Benjamin used the tracks because the walk way was full of litter. Because of the noise of the compressor he didn’t hear the ore cars running wild down the incline into the mine and he was struck down and the second car stopped on top of him. He began to call for help and some men near by heard him and got the car from off him. They carried him to the hotel room where he was staying and William Haycock stayed with him all night putting cold clothes on his abdoman to keep down inflamation and swelling down. My mother received a telegram about the accident and she came to meet the train at Pleasant Valley junction the next morning. She said that their wasn’t anything she could do for her son because he was so badly cut into by the ore cars. The train didn’t leave Scoefield until 10 o’clock the morning of the 15 and didn’t arrive in Salt Lake until the morning of the 16 of May and Benjamin died at about 10 o’clock that morning. 

The accident was caused by some 12 year old boys employed by the company. They were working on day shift and were suposed to be gone home but they stayed and played with the cars by letting the cars run down a 45 o/o grade into the mine and sprage them to stop the cars. One boy let his cars get away and they ran into the other cars and the four cars ran down the grade into the mine. 

Because the boys were under age the Pleasant Valley Coal Company set a lawyer to my mother and got her to sign papers to release the company from blame and that she wouldn’t sue them. THis was done while she was in her grief over the loss of her son and didn’t have time to think it out. Her son Benjamin had asked her before he died, that she sue the company for his death because they were responsible. 

At the hospital the doctor told mother that because Benjamin had been delayed too long before they go him to the hospital, they were too late to do anything for him to save his life. Benjamin had lain in the Hotel in Winter Quarters and waited for the train for about 20 hours and that was too long. 

My brother Benjamin was prepared for burial and taken to the Church House in Spring Glen on 17 May and next day he was buried in the Spring Glen Cemetary. He was burried in the Babcock lot which was one time a part of the homestead of his father.

While my husband was working at the Coke Ovens in Sunny Side a man named George Eldredge let us live in a tent that we put up just acrost the Valley from the coke ovens. Our tent site was on a hill side and the tent was a 12 x16 foot size which we partitioned off into a kitchen and bedroom. THe sides was built up with lumber and it also had a lumber floor, and one window. 

My father-in-law was building his tent house next to our so he ate at our place and his daughter Dora helped me. We had to do all the washing on a scrubbing board and carry the water up the mountain side for out use in the tent and wash. One day my husband asked the delivery man to bring us some water and the man figured to be by by bringing us water from the mine which was hard water. I didn’t know it was hard water and instead of getting the dirt out it made the dirt stay fast and it was about three washings before we got all the dirt out again. My sister0in-law was only 14 years old and I was expecting another baby and it made us very tired. 

On the night of the 22 December 1902 my brother-in-law Marion went to get the doctor because my baby was to be born. Marion knocked on the hospital door and didn’t get any answer from the doctor so he kicked the door. When the doctor finally arrived at the tent he was very put out because Marion had kicked his door. He did a lot of complaining about the fact that we had built our tent home up on the hill side and he asked if we were trying to build it on top of the world. His was A.W. Dowd and I felt that he didn’t do much to help me only sit by the bed and smoke his cigars. 

A baby girl was born about 2:20 pm on the 23 December 1902 and my brother-in-law Marion told my mother that I had the prettiest baby girl that he had ever seen. 

It was a long ways to church in the upper part of Sunny Side because it was in a canyon so we didn’t get to bless our baby until summer when we went to Spring Glen to spend the 4th of July and named her Mary. 

We attended the 4th of July dance at the home of Heber J. Stowell. Every one always took their babies and put them on the bed  and their was about 7 babies on that bed. Two women named Kate Smith and Emma Wiseman went into the bed room and when Kate saw my baby she told me that my baby was the prettiest one there. 

In February 1904 we sold all of our furniture and tent home to Jim Boil and his wife Olive Fullmer. Then I went to Spring Glen to live with my mother and father-in-law while my husband boarded with Jim Boil and that way Jim boil payed my husband for the tent and furniture. 

I March 1904 my husband rented a room from a woman and we got some more furniture and moved in. While we were there Jane Eldredge, who was president of the Primary and who had asked me to be her councler, took sick and died. About two weeks after she was burried, her husband George stopped at out place and told me he had just returned from the Spring Glen Cemetery. He said that he had had a dream and his wife came in the dream and told him that they had forgotten to mark her garments. She said that she couldn’t go until they were marked. He said that he didn’t pay any attention until the dream was repeated then he deceided he had better investigate so he went to the Bishop of Spring Glen. They took the RElief Society President and opened the grave and found that her garments were not marked so they marked them and closed the grave again. The Eldredges were wonderful sincere people and that has always been a testimony to me. 

The place where Sunny Side was built was in a canyon and it places where there was room the Coal Company built houses. One part was called “Old Town” one New Town and one Rag Town and the river ran along at the foot of the town and we were living in new town at the time of Jane Eldredge’s death. 

My son Arthur was a boy that always liked to go away and play. I was always kept busy looking for him and he always seemed to need some one to play with and would never stay at home and play alone. This characteristic stayed with him all through his younger days. 

One day I let my daughter Mary play with the little doll that had been given to me when I was in bed with a broken leg when I was little. I had taken good care of it through the years and I prized it very much. It had a bisk covering something like buckskin and was filled with sawdust. One day it turned up missing and I found out who had taken it and got it back. I let Mary play with it and it turned up missing again and I never did find it again. 

While living in Spring Glen we had Arthur’s and Mary’s pictures taken at ages 2 years and 8 months and 6 months and we only had that one picture of (them?) taken. We had pictures taken of my husband and I at the same time. About this time of the picture taking Arthur turned up missing and I happened to look up the road and seen a little boy coming. I watched for a few seconds then told my husband that it looked like Arthur coming. We went to meet hi and asked him where he had been. Arthur said he had gone up to catch the Sunny Side to go to grandma’s place. 

In recalling another incident of my childhood days I recall the day that Lorenzo Ewell and his wife Mary had a strange experience with Satan. They lived in a log house close by the railroad tracks in Spring Glen. One day while Mary was home alone her uncle-in-law stopped by to see her. He didn’t like the LDS CHurch and he said some mean things about it. That night when she and her husband had retired to bed, her husband began to complain about his big toe itching. It got so troublesome that they both got out of bed. In the cabin they had chinks of wood to fill the cracks and they removed them in the summer time so as to get air, so as Lorenzo Ewell was getting out of bed he happened to glance out of one of the holes and seen a ball of fire coming. It came through the chink hole and there appeared Satan or his evil spirits in the room. The evil spirits took possession of them and caused them to jump and dance about the room untill one of them finally suggested that they pray. They kneeled down and asked the Lord to help them then the evil spirits left them and they decided they better to go Frank Ewell’s place before the evil spirits took possession again. They began to dance and called for Frank to come out and join them. Frank got them in the house and they joined in prayer and the evil spirits left. Mary Ewell told them that she hadn’t defended the church but had joined with her uncle and she had learned a lesson. 

In July 1904 my brother-in-law Leroy Cook went on an excursion to Canada and he was so well pleased with the looks of the country that he soon had my husband in the notion of taking up land there. The Eldredge family had already gone to Canada so we left Sunny Side for the second time selling everything except our sewing machine and cupboard, and packed our trunck, which was a wedding gift. I wasn’t happy to be leaving my friends, mother and family and going to a strange land amoung strangers into a new adventure. We stayed with my husband’s parents in Spring Glen while we were getting ready to go I made some new dresses for my daughter Mary and baby clothes for an expected baby. Our sewing machine was to be left with my husband’s folks. 

One day before we left I went with my mother to visit Nellie Stowell to bid her good-by. As we went up the walk to her house she told me that Mary was too sweet for me to keep. I thought of her remark several months after my daughter died. My mother had told me that a bridk dust that had settled in my daughter Mary’s urin was dangerous and I had talked to Doctor A.W. Dowd  about it but he didn’t pay any attention to it. 

We left Hepper, Utah on the 20 September 1904 on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Passenger train and arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah during the night. We went to a hotel in a horse drawn taxie and while there we only saw one automobile. 

The next day on 21 September 1904 we went to the Salt Lake Temple and got our endownments and had our son Arthur and daughter Mary sealed to us. We were also baptized for our health then on the 22 September 1904 my husband went through the Salt Lake Temple and did the endowments for my brother Benjamin. I did the endownments for my sister Lucy at the same time. My husband’s brother Leroy took care of our children while we went to the temple both days. 

After we got out of the temple we caught the passenger train for Canada that evening and arrived in Sterling Canada about 5 o’clock A.M. on the 25 September 1904. We went to a hotel and had breakfast. While we were having breakfast the lady serving us said she knew we were from Utah because we knew what gravy was. She said a party of people had stopped for breakfast a few days back and they ate the gravy just like it was dessert thinking it was Blanch-lamong. 

My husband hired a man to drive us over to Raymond, Canada to the home of his cousin Albert Carter. I stayed with the Carter family while my husband and his brother Leroy went to work on the Henry Smith farm about two miles north of Taber, Canada, so it would pay for the use of a team and wagon to move us to Taber. The Smith family were some of the people who moved from Spring Glen, Utah and Mrs. Smith was the one who said my baby was the prettiest baby lying on the bed. 

The team and wagon arrived on the 30 September and we left for Taber early the next morning. We passed through Taber during the night and on the way my hat blew off, but some one found it in a prarie dog hole and it was returned to me later. The girl who returned it wanted to buy it from me. 

We went to the Henry Smith home and stayed with them for a few days while my husband and his brother helped the Smiths on their farm some more. In the mean time we heard about a house that was for sale in Taber so we went to see it. We looked at that house which was a two roomed with lento covered with tarpaper and shiplap. We bought it and moved into it and a little later we lined it with adoby bricks. 

Thos were teh days in Canada when stoves, furniture, medicine and doctors were scarse in that part and we had to do like the pioneers. We finally bought a cook stove but we couldn’t find any heating stove. The neighbours located a heating stove for us and with that we were ready to face the cold Canadian weather or winter. 

On the 24 January 1905 our third child was born at 8 o’clock in the morning. He was a fine baby boy weighing 12 pounds. We had to send to Lethbridge, Canada to get a doctor but the doctor didn’t arrive untill after the the baby was born so we had to get a lady who had a little knowledge from books and she acted as mid-wife. Another woman by name of Lee had practical knowledge and between the twn they delivered the baby. During the nigh a blizzard came up and they had to hang a quilt over the out side door to try to stop some of the breeze but the quilt moved gently back and forth from the breeze. The Relief Society president Minnie Van Orman got Samual J. Layton, a Mr. Wig and Bishop Rance A. Van Orman to administer to me then I asked them to stay at our place so they stood by the heater with their overcoats on untill morning came. Both the woman and all the others there were all good members of the L.D.S. Church. 

Because of the Brick Dust, my daughter Mary’s health began to fail in January 1905. On a night the 2 February while my husband was asleep on the floor with Mary, she suddenly sat up and said, “Patty Cake, patty cake.” I called to her and asked her what she was doing and where her father was. Mary said he was gone then I called to my husband and told him that she would catch cold sitting up in bed. He put her down in bed but she began to squirm so he lit the lamp. I thought Mary was dying so my husband got Maggie Layton who was helping me to get Mrs. Van Orman and when she came she said that Mary was having a convulsion so they put her in some real hot water and she came out of it. But as days passed she got worse and the nearest doctor was at Lethbridge about 30 miles away and he charted $35.00 a trip. My husband had but very little work so we were unable to afford doctors or medicine  and we did the best we could to doctor her under the cricumstance. She grew steadly worse so we called the Elders and they administered to her. We also held prayer circles and at one of the prayer circled brother William Haycock was mouth. I was kneeling at the side of Mary’s bed near the food and wile the prayer was being said I felt the bed shake and a man’s voice that sounded displeased said to me, “No matter what you do she is going to go anyway.” Upon hearing those words I felt so heart sick and discouraged that I couldn’t hold back my feelings and I began to weep. I didn’t tell any one what i had heard untill after our little girl had died. A few days later she started in convulsions again and had one and she would hardly get over one untill another one came. They continued through the week untill Saturday morning 4 March 1905 and she died that morning while in a convulsion. 

My husband’s brother Leroy saddled a horse and rode to Lethbridge to buy clothes and the trimmings and handles for the casket. S.J. Layton made the casket and trimmed it and Sarah Lindsay and some other ladies made the burial clothes for Mary. A Mrs. Hall gave us some silk to make a dress for our daughter and Mrs. Lindsay made some beautiful moccasin, Orpha Haycock fixed Mary’s hair in ringlets and she was very beautiful but the marks of suffering was still on her face. The funeral was held in the Taber school house on monday 6 March and Bishop Van Orman was in charge and Mary was buried in the Taber Cemetary down near the Bellie River. 

We had some really bad winds in Taber, Canada and one day Arthur was running around in the wind in the back of the house with a cloth over his head to keep the wind out. He couldn’t see where he was going and he fell into a 14 foot well that we were digging but hadn’t struck water yet. We got him out and he didn’t seem to be hurt from the 14 foot fall. 

When our son Floyd was about 3 weeks old, we had him in the rocking chair. Our daughter Mary went to him and looked into his eyes and said, “See the babys pretty eyes.” I had an Almonac book that Mary used to play with and on it was a picture of a vase with some pansy baby faced flowers in it. One had fallen out of teh vase and was crying. She said, “See the baby fell out.”

During the winter of 1904-1905 my husband and his two brothers, Harvey and Leroy kept trying to find homesteads to work and make their homes. During that winter when they found a good prospective piece of ground, they would travel all the way to the town of Lethbridge 35 miles away to make up the papers. 

My husband had bought a team of horses from Bryant McMullin. The horses names were Kit and Bess. The feed for the horses was poor consitsing only of wild hay which was about like straw, and a little grass that they had been able to eat before the snow came. Because of their weakened condition, the trip to Lethbridge was too hard on the team and Bess became sick and dies soon after they returned home. My husband bought another horse from McMullin named Babe. 

My husband and his brothers each filed on homesteads bout 11 1/2 miles north eats of Taber, Alberta, Canada where they started farming in earnest. 

During the winter of 1904 -1905 one of our neighbors by the name of John Bennett had a son born to him that only lived a month and died one day before my son Floyd was born. Another neighbour by the name of Jessie Sherwood also lost a baby. The following May during Relief Society meeting at the home of Jessie Sherwood sister Russel Spoke in tongues and sister Bennett interperted. A blessing was given to each one according to their needs and I was in the group of women that had lost a child. We were told that our Heavenly Father had seen our sorrows and that He would bless us. I thought that was wonderful to receive such a direct message and blessing from my Father in Heaven. 

During the winter of 1905-6 George Eldredge and his son William boarded with us and we used the money to buy a horse for my husbands brother Harvey who had his family on a homestead next to ours. His brother Leroy left his homestead in their care and went to Utah in the spring and stayed untill the following February of 1907. On his return he brought their father Chauncey with him to look at the homesteads in Canada. 

On the 5 January 1907 we had another baby boy come to bless our home and we named him Laurel Chauncey. All went well and we made it through the bad winter all right. 

We had the agreement with my husband’s brothers that Leroy would get the grain from the homesteads in the year 1907, Harvey in 1908 and my husband in the year 1909. The year we were to get the grain crob a man by the name of Pitt came to Taber and he wanted our homestead so we sold to him and prepared to go back to Utah. The day we were to leave my husband’s sister Dora who had married William Clark Scott a few days before, came to Canada and she was very dissapointed that we were leaving for Utah just when she had arrived. 

While we were in Canada, I was a relief Society teacher and was asked by Sister Louise Duncan to be a councler in teh primary, but I didn’t except the call because I didn’t have such good health. We also took out First citenship papers in Canada but didn’t stay long enough to get our second papers of Citisenship. 

We had one more baby born in Canada before we moved back to Utah. He was born on the 5 December 1909 in Taber, Alberta County, Canada and we named in Albern Austin. We left Canada the following March and arrived in Salt Lake City around the 1 April 1909. Before leaving however we borrowed a team and wagon and took Kate Sonberg Smith with us to visit my daughter Mary’s grave fora  last farewell. 

We left our house in the care of my husband’s brother Harvey and sold him some of the furniture and our grain. Harvey was very displeased because we had sold and was leaving Canada and we never did get the money fro the furniture and grain and he used that as an excuse for not paying us. 

Leroy didn’t leave but stayed in Canada and married Mary Louisa Bennett on the 16 April 1909 and we got him to sell our cow and the furniture that he had of ours. About 6 months after we left a neighbour named William Haycock wanted to buy our house so we signed papers and sold our house which releived us of any more worry about it. 

Upon our arrival in Utah we went to Provo and stayed with my husband’s folks and went to April conferance with them in Salt Lake City. After conferance we went to Helper and got my brother Vardis to drive us to Spring Glen. When we arrived there we found that mother was visiting her mother Lydia Rebecca Fisher Parsons Simmons who was sick in Idaho. My mother arrived home teh next day and she brought her mother with her. My grandmother Lydia Rebecca FIsher was 72 years old at this time and she only lived about a year and died on teh 25 May 1910 at the age of 73 years and 3 months. 

My husband and I went to Price to visit with my sister Mary Davis and her family. While we were there my father-in-law wrote my husband about a farm for sale in Pleasant Grove, Utah. They deceided to buy it and when they got settled my husband sent for us and we got there in May. 

Before we moved onto the farm in Pleasant Grove and I was staying with my mother my son Floyd age 5 was playing in the yard and a sheep kept bunting him down and I thought he was going to be killed before I could rescue him. Floyd thought the sheep was a rabbit and he said to his grandmother, “Grandma, that old rabbit just kept bunting me and bunting me.” Then one day my son Laurel took the screws out of the hand ringer of the washing machine and after we left mother found the in the ashes taken from the cook stove and they were burned so badly that the wringer had to be discarded. 

After we had settled in Pleasant Grove we gave S.J. Layton money for two burial plots in the Pleasant Grove Cemetary. We had planned to buy a whole lot in Canada but when we decided to leave we knew we would have no use for a lot. 

My father and mother-in-law lived in part of the house and I and my family lived in the othe rpart. My husband went to work in the clay beds during the winter of 1910--1911 and in the spirng of 19911 we moved from the house on the farm into a two roomed log house south of the farm on the main highway to Pleasant Grove. In the fall of 1911 my husband went to Toplift to work and he worked there for several months. 

I was expecting another baby on the 14 January 1912 our son Berl was born. His hair was thick and at two years of age it was quite light in color and inclined to be curley. Mother came and stayed with me for 10 days when he was born. During these years my husband held down two jobs trying to run the farm in the summer and in the winter he would work on the railroad section for Joe Dickerson from 1913 to 1914. 

I was expecting another baby in the spring and when the day arrived I was alone so I hurried with my work so I could have it all done at my confinment. I was a little worried at being alone so I sent my son Arthur to get Josepihne Draper who was to be my nurse and I sent my son Floyd  along the railroad tracks towards American Fork to see if he could find the section gang and get his father. Both Mrs. Draper and my husband soon arrived and my husband didn’t know that he was wanted because Floyd didn’t say anything to him. When the section gang came along Joe Dickerson asked my husband if that wasn’t his boy and when my husband said it was, then Mr. Dickerson stoped and picked Floyd up. 

Doctor Gruea arrived  and about a half hour later a baby girl was born around 7 o’clock that evening on the 23 March 1914. My mother-in-law help me and when my baby was born she weighed 7 pounds and had thick dark hair. My older boys were born with real dark hair but as they grew older their hair became lighter. 

We named our baby Helma Van Orman who had helped us in Canada when we had sickness. It happened during the winter of 1908 when measels broke out in Taber and many of the people my age got them. My son Arthur was playing when Herschal Van Orman and got them then Floyd and Laurel got them. I was sick and while I was trying to keep my young son Laurel down in bed, the measels went in on me and I began to have convulsions. Helma Van Orman came to my rescue and she began to sweat me and I sweat so much that I had sinking spells. When I got better we all had to laugh about how my husband and Helma Van Orman tried to sweat me to death. 

My mother-in-law died on 31 March 1915 then we moved back into the two story rock house on the farm and bought my father-in-law share of the farm. My husband was always in on everything with his brothers and father so he found him self in on a deal that one would work the farm and one work for wages then they would trade off ever so often. So my husband worked on the railroad section. 

When the year 1916 rolled around and the 1st world was was going on, we were still working on the same plan so the wages were divided and each got $21.00 a month to live on. It was pretty tough on us to try to provide for a family that was grwoing and increasing all the time. Because of the low wages and the cost of living going up we had to pay close to $15.00 for 100 pounds of flour and the substitutes were forces to buy with the flour left us only $7.00 for clothes, lights, tithing and other expenses. I have often wondered since how we ever got along on what little we had left. The price of sugar went up to $40.00 100 pounds. We bought syrup for canning and I picked raspberries and did what I could to help with the living. 

On the 19 September 1916 my husband’s brother Marion was killed while checking railroad cars in the yards at Helper. He was checking cars about 1 o’clock during the day and he got caught between the cuplings of the cars when they came together. 

When we took over my father-in-laws share of the farm we still had the farm to pay off and it took most of the money from the crops each year to pay off the debt. 

We were expecting another baby and on the 17 June 1916 a girl with big full blue eyes and dark hair was born. As she grew older her hair turned a blond color. We gave her the name of Lucy Jane. 

That year of 1916 my sister-in-law Louisa Cook went to Canada and when she came back her children exposed mine and even my baby Lucy caught it. 

During the winter of 1917-18 my husband worked as fireman on the boilers at the sugar factory in Lehi, Utah. We had a 1916 ford auto that my husband used to drive and he hauled his brother Roy to work with him. On one ocassion when he was working afternoon shift at the sugar factory he took our son Berl (age about 6) with him. They had been pulling cinders from the grate in the fire then was siting down to eat when my husband began to choke. He jumped and leaned against the fire grates and my son Berl became frightened for his father and jumped up off the bench letting his uncle and lunch spill all over the floor. That gave Berl’s father and uncle a big laugh. 

During the year of fall 1918 the Flue got so bad that all public meetings were closed down. So many people died with the flue that every one was afraid to go out with out putting a mask over their face to protect them from catching the flue from others. My son Arthur was very restless because we kept him home at night so he wouldn’t catch the Flue, so he went to Salt Lake City and joined the Navy. 

The sugar factory and railroad section were about the only jobs available around Pleasant Grove, other than farming. Some times my husband and son Floyd would go to the railroad crossings and work as flagman on the crossings to protect the public from being hit with the trains. As time went on my husband and his brother became dissatisfied with farming the place together. Their was feelings over the children because of their fights and my husband  was away on the section working all the time and our children couldn’t seem to satisfy their Uncle Leroy. Our children were never considered for their part in doing the work on the farm and they never got any money no matter how well they did the farm work so they finally dissolved their partnership, and each went into farming for themselves. 

In July 1918 my husband went to Spring Glen, Utah and boarded with his brother Harvey while he worked fireing boilers at Castle Gate. He was gone about six weeks and I had so much trouble from complaints about our children from others that I sent word for him to come back home. I guess that he shouldn’t have gone because there was too much responsibility for me to see that the children weeded the beets, took care of the cows and horses and see that the place was farmed. I wasn’t well because I had had a miscarriage on the 18 March and was expecting another baby in March of next year. I was very thankful when my husband returned home to take over the job. 

The first world war that had been going on with Germany and her Allies and United States of America and her Allies came to an end at this time on the 11 November 1918. Our son Arthur  had joined in the fall and he came home for a short time in the fall of 1919. 

During the summer of 1919 when school was out our son Floyd worked on the railroad section with his farther. Floyd also stood turn as watchman at the crossings to flag the autos and this was on Sundays. Our son Floyd was very dependable and seemed to understand the conditions we were living under and being very young, he was still a great help to us. He saved his money and understood that is help was needed in supporting the family. One day when I went with him to buy a suit of clothes he took a suit out of style because he could get it cheaper. When my teeth needed filling he helped pay the expense. I am ver grateful to him because my teeth were in a very bad condition and they pained me very much every time I went to eat. As a result I was run down and would tire very early and didn’t know what was causing it. I soon lost weight and went down to 128 pounds when I normally had been weighing 145 pounds. 

On the 16 March 1919 we had another son born at Pleasant Grove, Utah and we named him Oliver Curtis. During the year our son was born a good many people died with the Flue. Amoung them was the butcher, dentist, Orpha Halliday, daughter of the station agent on the railroad and one of the doctors and a bank employee, all whose names I can’t remember. 

My mohter sold her farm in Spring Glen, Utah in the fall of 1920 and she took my brother Vardis, the only child left at home, and moved to Spanish Fork, Utah where she bought a home. She lived there untill she died on the 19 January 1921. Mother left me $500.00 and a team of horses from her will. 

About one month later my brother Vardis married Mary Marilda Albertson on the 16 February 1921. My brother worked around Helper much of the time. 

When we moved to the farm in Pleasant Grove, my husband had the electricity put in the two story rock house, after his mother had died. We bought an electric iron and stove which made my work much easier for me. 

My mind goes back to the time when Orpha Halliday sang on a program for a political gathering and the song she sang was just right for the occasion. SHe sand the song which goes as follows: If you don’t like your Uncle Sammie, go back to your home o’er the sea. To the land from whence you came, what ever be it’s name. But don’t be ungreatful to me. If you don’t like the stars in Old Glory, if you don’t like the Red, White and Blue. Don’t be like the curr in the story , don’t bite the hand that feeds you. 

In the spring of 1921 some people wanted to buy our farm and the farm next to ours which belonged to my husband’s brother Leroy. So my husband and his brother Leroy gor on bicycles and peddled all the way to West Jordan in Salt Lake County, to loook at a ranch. Then they rode their bicycles all the way back but it was too much for my husband and he fell by the road side in Lehi; exhausted from the long ride. We had to go in an automobile and get him. We didn’t know untill a few years later that he had a goiter in his neck that was poisoning his heart and system. 

We sold our farm to Bert Adams and moved to West Jordan to the Kirkham’s Ranch which we were going to rent from Francis Kirkham. My husband and the older boys went with the wagons full of furniture. One was driven by Austin and Berl went with him on the wagon. The other was driven by Floyd. I took my son Oliver and my two daughters  Helma and Lucy and we stayed at the neighbours all night. The next day 21 March 1921, I took my children and caught the Orem passanger at the Manila station just north of our farm in Pleasant Grove and when we arrived in West Jordan, Utah, my husband met us. 

There was no electricity on the Kirkham’s Ranch so we sold all of our electrical equipment and bought a hand opperated washing machine and the family had to take turns working a handle to make it run. We also used Coaloil lamps for light and a flat iron for ironing clothes. 

When the farm in Pleasant grove was sold my husband finished paying his father for the share that was still oweing him. At this time my husband’s father re-married and went to live with his wife in Murray, Utah. He married a woman by the name ofDora Haralson and soon after they were married he came to his two sons Ray and Leroy and asked them to give him a job so he could support his wife. My husband and his brother was back together again farming so they gave him a job moweing hay and the team ran away with him and he broke the machine. 

Before we left Pleasant Grove, our son Arthur had married Ruby Ann Turner so the pump house had been converted into a place for them to live. It had been moved from down by the well up on the hill next to the ranch house where we were living. Arthur helped us on the ranch which consisted of 120 acres. 

I was expecting another baby in the spring and on Friday the 13 May 1921 our son Paul Babcock was born in the Ranch house on Kirkham’s Ranch. 

We all got the flue during the summer of 1921 and all the family but Floyd had it lightly and was well in a few days but Floyd was sick for ten days. 

In the fall of 1921 our son Arthur’s wife had a baby boy, but they were having trouble so they seperated in May 1922. I offered to take care of their son so she wouldn’t be burdened with him. That gave me the care of two young children; my son Paul and my grandson Blain. It was just like twins to take care of only Paul could walk and Blain was just active enough to get into all the mischief he could find. 

The washing machine that we had bought new turned out that it wouldn’t wash clothes clean so I had to scrubb clothes on a scrubbing board and that wore me out from wash day to wash day. 

In 1922 our son Floyd took down with Aircyplus on his face and he was a very sick boy, but the Lord God was good to him and blessed him and he soon got well. He went to Jordan High School for two years and played on the foot ball team and we went to a number of games to see him play. He had a food ball sweater which he wore fora  number of years and he graduated from High School at the age of 20. Between the years of school and farm work he also worked at the smelter in Midvale, Utah. He worked at the smelter several months untill the doctor finally got around to giving him his physical examination that was required for the work there. When he was examined the doctor found that he had a leak in his heart, so they laid him off.

By the spring of 1923 we had bought a number of cows and had a small dairy going. When the U.S.Government examined the herds they found that ours had T.B. It was the state that examined them and they found 11 cows of the old herd and 8 of the ones we had just bought at T.B. That broke up our dairy because we only had five cows left. The government took the cows and butchered them and gave us a small sum of money to pay for them. 

My husband’s father didn’t get along with the woman he had married so they seperated and he came to live with us. They gave him the pump house to live in that our son Arthur had been living in. We moved it on the south side of the house. He complained that he couldn’t keep warm at night so my husband slept with him a few times then we sent our son Berl to sleep with him but he complained that Berl kicked and squirmed to much at night so that ended it. 

Soon after that my father-in-law deceided to go to live with his daughter Bertha Lewis in Genold, Utah. He was there only a short time untill he died on the 27 June 1923. The doctor put on the death certificate that he died of a groth in his throat. While he was staying with us he always had difficalty swollowing his food and water and he must have nearly starved to death because he was unable to eat. 

Upon our return to Utah from Canada, my husband began to have trouble with a gorter in his neck and it kept getting worse untill it hert his heart. The doctor told him that he would have to be opperated on or he wouldn’t live very long. My husband’s sister Bertha died on the 19 August 1924 and just a few days later on the 23 August 1924 he went to the hospital and was opperated on. It was a successful opperation and he was soon well. 

We were again expecting a baby and on the 11 of October 1924 our eighth son and 11 child was born. We gave him the name of Rulon CLive. 

OUr son Floyd was able to go back to work at the smelter in Midvale and we bought a new Chevrolett sedan. Instead of my husband being able to take it easy and fully recover from his opperation, he had to go back to work bailing hay and heading sheep to help pay for the car.

During those years on Kirkham’s Ranch our sons Austin and Berl herded cows up in the flats by the town of Welby, Utah. SOme times the Troaster boys would come and pick on them so one day my son Laurel waited down by the mail box on the poll lire road and when one of the older Troaster boys came along, Laurel chased him and gave him a whipping. They left Austin and Berl alone after that untill a few years later when Austin and Berl grew older. One night as Laurel was walking home from the show in Midvele, some boys waited at the underpass near the smelter, and they started a fight. But Laurel didn’t run, he just kicked one in the stomach, hit one in the face and then the other s started to run and he chased them and that ended the fight. 

During the summer our son Laurel left home in 1923. He had saddled the riding horse and rode her to where he was going then he turned her loose to return home.  It gave us much worry and concern because we didn’t know where he was and we heard about a man and boy drownding in the Jordan River near the Utah Lake. On sunday afternoon right after he left we drove to Lark and Harriman, Utah to inquire of the people about laurel. We finally talked to two young girls and one thought she could find him and said she would send word about him the next day. We went to meeting that night and when we returned home I still felt so worried that I went out side alone and prayed. I had no sooner finished, when I was told that my boy was all right. The answer came in such a comforting spirit that I have always remembered the wonderful feeling that I felt at the answer to my prayer. 

On monday a letter came from the girl telling us that our son was working for a sheep rancher. I wrote to him and he came home in a few days. The next winter of 1923-24 our son Laurel went to work at the Midvale smelter tapping hot slag. 

In the spring of 1925 I received the balance of the money from my mother’s estate and we used it to pay on 40 acres of farm land near the Hogan Dairy on the Bingham Highway. We bought that farm from A. S. Kienkie for $8000.00 and we moved our family to live there in February 1926. 

Rulon had been a very good baby all winter. He had been well, not having any colds or sickness, untill we moved he caught cold but he soon got over it. 

The homeon Kienkie’s farm consisted of two rooms each about 11 by 11 feet and a lean to on the north side. We were very crowded because of our large family. OUr son Laurel was gone most of the time and on one of his trips he aquired the tobacco habit. He rode the freight trains and he told of the dangers and experiences he had. 

When our son Paul was just a few years old he lay down by the water ditch to get drink and he couldn’t get up again. He began to scream and when I heard him I ran as fast as I could to get him before he fell in and drowned. 

I remember while we were on Kirkham’s Ranch how my son Paul and grandson Blain got in the shallow ditch and poored water on one an other untill they gasped for breath. It was very funny to see them water fight. 

When I received the last of my mother’s estate I gave my son Floyd some money to get his teeth fixed because I remembered how good he was to help me with money to get my teeth fixed. 

One day when I was working in the garden on Kienkies my son Rulon turned up missing. We looked every where for him and finally found him on the frunt porch asleep. I was nearly frantic with worry untill I found him. 

We had bought a young Holstein bull to build up our dairy herd and one day Berl turned it out to drink. When he put the bull back into the pen he began to tease the bull just like he had seen his brothers Laurel and Austin do. The bull caught him between the gate and the gate post and hert his legs. He was able to get out of the correl and he fainted just after he got over the correl fence. We were near by and we ran to his help and with some water we revived him. He was layed up for a short time and his legs bothered him for a few more months afterwards. 

At that time when we were trying to run a dairy we had many experiences with mean bulls. ONe day when my husband and my son Floyd were trading bulls with a cattle buyer, the bull got at Floyd and hit him in the back and put him in bed for about two weeks. The way it happened was as they led the bull to the truck to load him. the byer had one tope and Floyd had the other. The byer was afraid of the bull and he let his rope go slack so the bull was able to jump at Floyd. When the bull charged my husband yelled out a warning to Floyd but Floyd had his back to the bull and didn’t know his danger untill too late. The bull hit him and Floyd tried to turn and it threw him against the barn. My husband grabbed a pitch fark and jumped between the bull and Floyd and saved him from being crushed against the wall. 

Just a week or two before my so Vardis was born Rulon got mad at Helma and he ran away. He went down the road towards West Jordan and some people came along and picked him up at the poll line road. They asked Bastions whos little boy Rulon was and Bastins knew him so they told the people he was a Cook. The woman said she had no children and would sure like to keep Rulon, but the Bastion girl brought him home. When she told me what had happened I felt mighty fortunate to get my son back. 

Our 12th child was born about 11:20 the night of the 22 July 1927. We named him Vardis Marion. My son Floyd came by with a girl friend and he came in to see how I was. He was always thoughtful of me and he was teh first to come see me when Rulon and Paul was born. When Paul was born he wrote his name on teh correl gate in big red letters. 

In 1927 we went to Kaysville Utah and bought nine Holstien cows and a bull. Our son Berl rode the horse part way up can all the way back to drive them. The cattle cost us $1,000.00which we borrowed from the bank. We had just finished building a new cow born and with all the expences of the farm and dairying and debts to meet, a large family to provide for, we soon began to get behind on our payments on the place.  We deceided to let our son Floyd take over the farm and get us a smaller place. My husband, and children, Austin, Berl, Helma and I had to milk the cows because we didn’t have an milking machines so Floyd went to the State fair and bought milking Machines and took over the farm in September. 

Our son Floyd was engaged to marry Fern Lindsay and he worked very hard to make some money to get married. He ran the milk truck to pick up milk for the milk Association in West Jordan. He was very impatient when the farmers didn’t have their milk ready in time and because of his disposition he work himself too hard, never resting on sundays and working too hard on week days. He ran the milk truck in the fall of 1928 and some times Laruel, Austin and Berl ran it. 

My husband was working at the sugar factory in West Jordan that fall on 1928. He cauthg the flue in November from the fello he was working with, then Helma, Lucy and Vardis came down with it. MY Husband also caught the pneumonia, then I took down sick for three days. My husband got up too soon and took a back set then Helma got pneumonia. Floyd took the milk truck the morning of the 24 November 1928 an that was the last trip he drove because he took sick and died. He finished the milk run and came home sick. He went to bed and next day on sunday he got out of bed to change his underware. We finally got him into a chair, but he was so sick I was afraid he was going to die before we got him back into bed. When we got him into bed he asked us to send for the Elders, his girl Fern Lindsay and the doctor. Floyd was in a lot of pain and when the doctor came two house later he said Floyd had double pneumonia. For me it was just like being on the battle frunt with a big battle going on because their was so much to do and very little help and so many to take care of. My sister in law Louisa Cook came and took care of my son Vardis during the night. My sister in law Dora Scott came out and helped us. Our son Floyd felt that he would bet getter care if he was moved to his girl’s place so they moved him to Midvale, so he would be away from the farm and the worries, on wednesday afternoon the 28 November. At home there were so many sick that their wasn’t room for the well to sleep even if they got a chance. 

When the doctor came to visit our sick on thursday the 29, he came over where I was standing and said, “Do you know that boy isn’t going to live?” I didn’t answer him because I didn’t believe that. I had placed all my faith on what I thought his Patriarchal Blessing had promised him. It read something like this: You will get your schooling in this life while you are getting it you will be awfully tired and you will go bending many times before teh Lord and ask Him to preserve your life in this existance. I had missed the parts of his blessing whenever I read it and it wasn’t untill years after he had gone untill I noticed that in his blessing. If I had noticed that in his blessing before he died I wouldn’t have had hopes of his living, because each time he was sick he was always worse than any of the others. 

I didn’t get over to see him wednesday night and he told Berl, when Berl went over with milk, the he wanted to see me. I went over thursday night but when I didn’t go over friday Linsays came over and got me. That thought I knew that he wouldn’t live through the night but I didn’t know because I had placed my faith in his blessing and my eyes were blind to his condition. We asked Bishop William J. Leal and Albert Olson to come over and stay with Floyd. I say Floyd’s fight for life but still I was blinded to what was really going on because of that blessing. The next morning I thought he was a little better so I went home to take care of my sick there. When doctor Lindsay came to the house that day he told me he wanted me to be over to Lindsays place at 2 O’clock that afternoon. I told him I would be there, but my feet were lead and my heart was heavy and I didn’t get there untill after doctor Lindsay was gone. When I seen how bad Floyd looked and that the Lindsay family had been crying I told Leroy Cook, who had brought me that I wouldn’t be going back and didn’t know when I would be able to. I don’t think Floyd even realized that I was there all that day because he was so aqful sick. 

When supper was ready some one asked who was going to stay with Floyd because he had been kick the covers off and throwing him self around. I said I would because as yet I didn’t know he was to die because of my faith in his blessing. While supper was being eaten, Floyd began to kick and struggle then he quit then he started again so I went ot the kitchen and asked them what was the matter with him. When he kicked the covers off I was wondered if he was too warm. The nurse said she would go and see so she went into the bed room and Bishop Leak went with her. She went on one side and the Bishop went on the other and they held the covers down. I never realised untill that point that Floyd was dying. When I seen them holding down the covers and I began to realize he was going, I dropped on my knees and said, “Oh God, does he have to go?” I didn’t expect and answer, but being under such terrific emotions I asked any way although it was before my eyes. 

Floyd died about 15 minutes to 7 that evening and when his struggles were over we went into the kitchen. We were all standing in the kitchen when the clock struck seven and the Bishop Leak held my hand while I passed through the valley of deepest sorrow. I was very greatful to him for his kindness and his understanding. 

About 8 O’clock that evening Deseret Mortuary took him away. As they were taking the bed down they handed me his purse. One more thing to remind me that he was really gone. I can’t explain the feelings that came over me upon seeing the purse that had been under his pillow all that time. 

Floyd was such a big part of our lives and the main stay of the family because Arthur and Laurel had been gone away from home most of the time and didn’t seem to take an interest like Floyd did. He like to farm and he took a class in school on farming and we bought Fordson tractor tractor to farm with while we were on Kirkhams. The family did dry farming and we bought a header and one fall they even took Helma with them to help with the work. Austin and Berl always helped with the dry farming and all the work on the farm. We rented other ground to farm and the boys at home always worked together. 

After the death of my son I went back home with my brother in law Leroy Cook and I broke the news to Arthur and the rest of the family and none of us got much sleep that night. 

Around midnight the 2 December my husband began to pass through the crisis. Some one phoned the doctor and doctor Lindsay said, “WHat can I do?” But in about 2 hours he came and did all he could to help my husband. We also got the same nurse that we had for Floyd. Around 10 O’clock monday morning my husband was better so I went with Bishop Leak to make arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Lindsay went with us. 

Bishop Leak asked what relatives I wanted to get word to and I asked him to get work to Laurel in Nevada. Laurel was at a mine about 40 miles from the railroad so the bishop didn’t think it would get to him, but Arthur sent a telegram on sunday and it reached the town just as the truck was ready to go to the mine. The driver took it to Laruel and the mine Superintendent and foreman tog together to figure a way for him to get home the fastest. Laurel left with the driver and when they got to the railroad the train had gone so the driver took him 40 miles to another place where he caught the train. He arrived home the 5 December just 2 hours before the funeral services. Laure, Arthur, Austin, Robert S. Lindsay, Cliff Tame and Mr. Lundquist were the pall bearers. The other members of the family able to attend was Berl, Oliver, Paul. 

The speakers gave more comfort than I thought possable. The song I picked to be sung was , I know my Redaamer lives. The other one didn’t seem to be known too well by those who sang it and they didn’t do a good a job at singing it, but I could hear voices unseen singing it with them. 

After the funeral was over we went home and sister Josephine Bateman and others had a nice supper waiting for us. That was the first real meal I had eaten since my son had went to bed sick and I’ve often thought of how some unseen power had helped and given me strength to keep up through all the sleepless nights and carefilled days. 

When Bishop Leak dedicated Floyd’s grave, he said, “You shall come forth in the morning of the first resurection.” That was the same promise given him in his blessing. Floyd was 12 years old when he received his Patriarchal blessing and the Bishop’s councler named William L. Hays thought it such a remarkable blessing that he asked the Patriarch if he was allowed to give such a blessing. He also asked Floyd to bring his blessing to the Deacons meeting so they could hear it. 

My husband was feeling much better and I never knew when Vardis and Helma went through the crisis. Louisa Cook didn’t come to help after Floyd died. Dora Scott and I was able to look after the sick after that. 

After Floyd was gone Laurel was home and it was a great comfort to have him and he helped fill the place that was empt. Vardis had always been a distant little fellow up untill the time he took sick after that he changed and seemed to grow more understanding. Whenever I was greaving over the loss of Floyd he would get up on the table by my side and put his arms around me and hug me untill I had control of my feelings. 

My husband, Helma and Vardis was soon up and around and Dora didn’t feel well so she went home. Soon after that Berl took down sick and I thought he had a relaps from the flue but when Ruth Evans came to help me she said that Berl looked like he had Typhoid Fever. Berl had been sick about 10 days and he didn’t seem to get any better or worse so when doctor Lindsay came we asked him to take a blood test. It was typhoid all right and we found out that Helma, Lucy also had it because they had became sick again. We took them to the County Hospital and a few days later we took Oliver and Paul. Dora Scott also took it and was sent to the Hospital. Berl spent his 17th birthday in the hospital, 14 Jan. 1929. It was a long seige in the hospital for the children but they recovered and was soon able to come home the last of february. Some of them came home the first part of march. The children returned to school about two months before it closed for the summer. Berl and Helma worked so hard to graduate from teh ninethgrade that Princalel Malstrom gave them special praze for their efforts. This was done in a school assembly that was held. 

After Floyd died I was put in as a relief society teacher in the West Jordan Ward and I was an active teacher most of the time we were there untill we moved to Union Ward in the fall of 1938. 

When we seen we were going to loose the Kenckie farm we moved to teh Hardeh Bennion farm that we had bought consisting of 20 acres. We bought this place in 1928 after my husband deceided to get a smaller place, after being sick with the intestininal flue, so he could take it easier. We had put many improvements on the Kienckie place such as driving a well and building a cow barn and a chicken coop. We had to leave all these behind except the chicken coop which we moved to the Bennion place. One day while my husband was working around the place Mr. Kienkie came and told him that he hadn’t better try to move untilll he had made a good settlement with Mr. Kienkie. My husband had planned on making a good and fare settlement with Mr. Kienkie, so in the fall of 1928 he told Mr. Kienkie that he would pay the taxes and water assessments and move off and that was the best he could do because we were do badly in debt for cows and other things. Mr. Kienkie said he would talk to his lawyer so my husband deceided he had better get a lawyer too so he got the Distrect Attorney assistant named Logan Rich. We were able to move Arthur’s house, the chicken coop and hay and sell our cows. The out come of it was that we used the money from the things we sold to play Logan Rich and Kienkie got nothing. Mr. Kienkie had Herbert B. Maw as his lawyer and Maw later became governer of Utah.

Our son Austin had quit Jordan High School to finish building the chicken coop that we were building on the Bennion place. We farmed this place and sold eggs from the 700 laying hens we had. This was the year that the banks began to go broke and the big depression began in 1929. We were unable to get much work and the chickens wen’t replaced each year and we were soon down to a few. It took most of what they  brought in to take care of our family We sold the last of them about 1931. 

Our children, Austin, Berl and Helma entered into JOrdan High SChool in the fall of 1929-30 with out to much to get them in school. Austin was in his junior year and Berl and Helma in their sophmore year. 

On the 5 June 1929 our son Laurel married Dorothy Otillia Hermansen. He was 22 years old and she was 17 years old. They built a two roomed house on the Bennion farm toward the west. 

As the years rolled along the depression that started in 1929 grew steadly worse, and to make things even worse a drout came. The Utah Lake went down so low that they couldn’t pump irrigation water so we were unable to get water for our place which was under that canal and the result was that we couldn’t even raise crops. Even some of the shade trees died for lack of water. We finally had to sell what chickens we had left. One of the chicken coops that was empty blew over and we got Dahls tractor and pulled it right side up by the use of a bit rope.  One of the children was standing out near the coops and it came close to him. Later we had another bad wind storm and a coop on the east end was completely demolished. We used some of the lumber for other purposes around the place. 

The depression continued on through 1930 and our children entered schoool in the fall with very little to start them in school. WOrk was very scarse and the Government didn’t seem to be getting much relief programs started. Herbert Hoover was president of the U.S. at that time. That fall Austin, Berl, Helma and Lucy topped beets, up potatoes and carrots for A. Olsen. 

In 1931 my husband had to have an operation on his hand because his fingers began to drew up so he couldn’t open his hand. On the 5 July 19311 our son Berl left home on a trip into Montana. He returned in August just before school started. Berl put in his application to drive one of the school busses and he began to drive that fall of 1931 during his Senior year. 

While Berl was driving buss, Austin and Berl deceided to take some gass from the buss to go on a date that night of Halloween. As they were drawing the gas a fire started from a match and before Austin could get away from the fire he was sevierly burned about the face, neck and arms. We rushed him to the county hospital and for a few weeks it was a question if he was going to live. During the time he was in the hospital we took our family and topped beets on a piece of land we were renting down near the Jordan river. We were having a hard time of it making ends meet and we did everything we could to raise money to support our family. My husband took the children and unloaded grain at the poultry plant in Midvale and each fall we picked apples to help get food. We gleamed strawberries in Provo and my husband worked at the sugar factory when ever he could. 

Our son Austin was soon well enough to come home from the hospital and he had to return upon a later date so the doctor ALexander could do some grafting of skin. They toook the school buss away from Berl so he didn’t drive any more. 

In February 1932 my brother Albern Babcock sent word for my husband to come to Hiawatha, Utah to help him fire the boilers at the school house. My husband went there to work untill somethime in April 1932. When he returned home he had to go to bed with rhumatism and as soon as he got well he took a job on the W.P.A. Austin also got a job as orderly at the county hospital. While my husband was on the W.P.A. job my life was much easier than it had been, because all I had to do was keep house. Because of the small wages, and unable to grow garden and no chickens to tend and just enough coming in to barely get by, we couldn’t plan for our future and it seemed we just stood still with out any progression. 

Because of the depression the Jordan High SChoool had to close down on the 18 March 1932. The school board had tried to get the distrect to raise fund to fund to continue school untill graduation or the full school term, but the people voted against the bonds. Some people said that the school board closed the school down for spite because the people wouldn’t vote them funds to finish. Our two children, Berl and Helma were unable to graduate from High school because of what happened. When school started up again in the fall Helma went to see if she could go and finish her schooling but the school board said there wasn’t room for those that should have graduated the year before. So Helma sold her books and got a job in Salt Lake doing house work. While she was working she bought me my first spring coat. 

After school closed down our son Berl went to California on the day before Easter on the 27 March 1932. He was gone untill August and upon his return he went to Dahlls dairy and got a few days of work. When the sugar factory started he was able to pick up work every day by russeling each shift. 

During the summer of 1932 my son Arthur took his family to Wyoming where he got work. Our son Laurel went with him to work and while he was gone his wife got homesick for him and because she was expecting a baby she didn’t feel welland didn’t eat and she soon got sick. She was taken to the county hospital where a premature baby boy was born on the 10 July 1932. She developed child bed fever so the doctor told us we should get Laurel there as soon as we could. Our car wasn’t in very good condition so we got Bishop Leak to take my husband and go get Laurel. They left from Pawlins, Wyoming at 2 O’clock in the morning and got back around noon of the same day. My husband said the Bishop traveled very fast all the way, blowing his horn on all the curves and keeping to the center of the road when it was clear. 

When Laurel went to his wife’s bed side she didn’t seem to recognize him. THe night before she died she suddnly grew rational and asked me how her children were doing. I told her they were doing fine, then that strange look came over her eyes again and she didn’t seem to realize anything more. She died in the afternoon of 15 July 1932, after giving a little sigh she passed quietly away. We burried her in our cemetary lot in West Jordan, Utah. We took the two little girls to raise and Laurel’s mother in law took the little baby to take care of and raise. 

After Laurel buried his wife he tried to find work but the depression was on in full. The Government had changed hands and Franklin Delano Rossavelt had got in on the Democrat ticket i the election of November 1932. At the same election the people chose to have Alcohol open to the public to drink so they did away with the 18th Amendment. President Hoover had started the work program for relief and when the Democrat got in Rossavelt introduced what was called the W.P.A. People were soon geting relief from this works project. 

Our son Oliver had started to herd cows for Soren Dahl in 1929. He was getting 50 cents a day to start with but later on when he got to milking cows and helping with the work on the place he began to get $40.00 a month. Because Oliver was earning that amount we had a hard time convincing the government relief agency that we needed help. Oliver was unable to draw any more than %5.00 a month from his months earnings and i due time it built up to $500.00 or $600.00 that the Dahl’s dairy owed him. 

Before my husband got work on the W.P.A. our granddaughter Valerie got sick and all the food we had to feed her was lard and sugar on bread. Ivan Dahl came over to see her and when he seen what she was eating he said the situation looked tough. I said I knew it was but that was all we had to eat. We wouldn’t have had it so hard if Dahls would have paid our son Oliver what he had coming for his work. 

When my husband got his card to go work for the W.P.A.  he was laid up with rhumatis so we asked those in charge if our son Austin could go in his place, so they let Austin work in his father’s place. Before that AUstin and his brother Arthur had gone to work on a sheep ranch in Montana for about three months. 

When the sugar factory in West Jordan closed down in January 1933 our son Berl asked Dahls if he could get a job from them. They promised him a job in March of that year. Berl was engaged to marry Katie Ash and he was trying to make some money to prepare for the coming event. 

Hemla got married to Peter Matsen about November 1932 and she went to Buurley, Idaho to live on a farm where her husband was engeged in farming with his brothers. 

During the summer of 1933 our son Oliver deceided he wanted to see some of the world so he took off for California. He was stopped by the police in California and word was sent to use. We sent money for his return on the buss. 

In the spring of 1934 when our son Berl tried to get his wages from the Dahls dairy he couldn’t get his money so he left Dahls and went to Pioche, Nevada and got a job in the mines. He came home on leave from work and got married in the temple in Salt Lake on the 2 July 1934. 

THrough the year of 1935 the depression continued on and in June 1935 our son Austin went to Pioche, Nevada to try to get work at the mines. Evelyn Rist, the girl he was engaged to marry died and he came back to her funeral. Then we went back to Nevada in August but didn’t get a job so he returned home. Later he married a nurse that he knew at the hospital where he worked, but the divorced. 

Hemla had divorced Peter Matsen and was planning on getting married again so we went to Pioche with Berl and his family upon his return to the mines after the Christmas holidays. Helma married Herman Oliver Perry on the 31 December 1936. 

Our son Berl came to Utah on a visit and bought him a piece of ground in Union, Utah. We seen the ground next to his and like it so we decided to buy some too. It was good judgement for we soon had to give up the Bennion place. In the fall of 1938 the Federal Land Bank of Berkley told us we had to move off because we had lost the place and they had a chance to sell it. We got busy and built us a basement home and moved to Union on the 22 October 1938. They gave us just one month in which to move so my husband got his friends from the W.P.A. to come with their scrapers and help him. 

When our son Berl arrived from Pioche he helped put the finishings on the basement and helped us move. We were putting the tar paper on teh roof at teh same time we were moving our furniture in and some of the tar dripped down inside. Our son Laurel came from where he was working in the mines in Park City, Utah, and worked on the basement for about four months on every saturday and sunday. When the concret was poured there was a poor connection in teh concret between the walls about half way up and when ever it rained or stormed out side teh wall would leak. That was one home I thought we was never going to get finished. In the winter we had to keep teh broom busy sweeping up water and the roof would leak. I never lived in a place that made me so discouraged and I thought I would go mad before my husband got the roof and walls tared so the water wouldn’t run through. 

A few months after we moved into Union I was asked to be a relief Society visiting teacher. I acted in that calling untill July 1948. Then my lame leg caused me so much pain that I asked to be released. 

When we moved to Union we were still feeling the effects of the depression although work was picking up a little, although my husband was still working on the W.P.A. After living in Union for a few months I was asked to sing in the choir and I enjoyed that very much. WHile we were living in West Jordan I had sang with the choir and with the singing mothers. One time the singing mothers from West Jordan sang with some other wards at the tabernacle during Relief Society Conferance. We also sang at funerals and one I especially remember was at the funeral of a very dear friend named Arminta Egbert, a woman whom I loved and respected. 

In the fall of 1943 a mixed chorus was organized in the East Jordan Stake and we sang for the Christmas and Easter programs. I enjoyed my part in this very much. I also served as magazine representative for four years, from 1944 untill 1948. 

Our son Berl deceided to sell his home i Union and move to Hood River, Oragon. He sold and moved in January 1946, just about two weeks before the workers at the Utah Copper Division of K.K. Copper went on strike for six long months. 

When we moved to Union our son Oliver was still working for Dahl’s Dairy. He quit work for Dahls in the spring of 1939 and went to work for the Bagley dairy for six months during 1939. Mr. Bagley spoke very highly of Oliver and his fine work. After he worked for Bagley he told Ivan Dahl that he would forget the large sum of money (about $600 that Dahls owed him for working for them that he had never been able to collect) that they owed him, if Ivan would use his influence in getting Oliver a job at the Utah Copper at Bingham. Ivan Dahl knew the right people at the Copper so he helped Oliver get a job. He went to work on the Copper in March 1940. Oliver worked at the Copper untill the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on the 7 December 1941. He joined the Merchant Marino on the 18 May 1942. 

Paul was going to Jordan High School during the summer he would work at the Saint Marks hospital during 1939 and 1940. He worked for the D. &R. G. W. Railroad for a while when he got laid off then he went to Nevada and worked on the pipe line, then when that job was finished he returned home and received a letter from the railroad asking him to return to work for them. He went back to work checking journal boxes on the cars and one night on his return home after work he got into an awful car accident and was fortunate to come out alive. He worked there untill he was drafted so he joined the Marines on the 2 September 1942; left for training camp in California. 

My husband had an obstruction in his urinary passage so he was opperated on by doctor Meddleton in the spring of 1940 and later on some years later in December 1956. 

My husband got a job with the Union Pacific railroad company and one day while he was helping clean out the passanger car, he steped down off the car into the path of an on coming passenger train. He was hit a glancing blow which knocked him down and the man he was working with jumped down and held my husband still untill the train passed. That happened in the fall of 1944. They took him to Saint Marks hospital and he was very fortunate to not get killed. He never did get anything out of the railroad company and he was beat out of what he should have gotten according to his rights. 

In the fall of 1945 we were in our basement house when we heard an awful crash and when we investigated we found that a car had jumped the irrigation ditch in frunt of our basement and had hit the basement wall. It broke the corner and when I went out to see what had happened I seen a car up against the basement. We got Bishop Thomson to come and help us and he got the police and every thing was taken care of. We had the basement wall fixed and the people paid the damages. 

in 1942 Rulon was in school and when he got out during the summer he got a job on the Utah Copper and when school started that fall he went nights working on the shovels and the dumps and went to school during the day time. On the 10 November 1942 he got changed on to another job so he had to either quit school or his job and we thought it best that he stay in school so he quit his job. Paul and Rulon had been working and trying to pay off what was still oweing on the Pontiac that Oliver had bought also the truck that the boys were buying together. that winter Rulon got a letter from the draft board asking him if he would like to joine the service or finish high school first. He told them he would rather finish school first so he was allowed to finish and graduate. When school was out he joined the army and left for training on the 16 June 1943. He went to Camp Roberts untill November then got a leave for 10 days and came home on the 5 November, then went back on the 14th. He was in New Guinea in August 1944 and did some typing for the army. When he took his training he had gone to clerks school at headquarters. He was promoted to the rank Corporal on the 18 August 1945. 

When Rulon was to come home for his furlow his father and Vardis missed him because they had to go to work at the sugar factory. Rulon came in late because of so much red tape so he stayed at Helmas place that night. The night he left to go back to the service I walked along by his side and bid him good by as he got into the car. When he took his seat some of the family said he wept but I didn’t look because I didn’t want to see him cry. 

When Rulon was released from the service the Railroad gave him back his job. He had not went back to the Copper when school was out because he only had two weeks untill his call to the service. I felt that the railroad company was far more loyal to their country that the Utah Copper Company.

On the same day Rulon left we went to buss to visit Paul at Camp Pendelton. Paul missed us because the buss was late so we went to the camp and spent most of the time with him before he left to go over seas. On the way back to the buss the service men helped Helma and Lucy carry their suit cases. I bid Paul good by and got on the buss thinking that I wouldn’t have to go through that again, then I looked out of the window and there he stood. He raised his hand in good by and it seemed more than I could stand to say good-by. 

Oliver came home from the Merchant Marine in August on the leave and married Merlyn Clark in the Salt Lake Temple on the 2 September 1942 and he stayed untill the 6 October then he had to go to his ship. 

Paul didn’t get a furlow when he finished his basic training and he was sent right to Camp Pendelton where he began his second stage of army life. He was with one of the fellows on Guadacanal driving truck and the fellow told him about some of the others that they had been in training with. One got hit in the head with a cocoanut and it put his eye out. Once during an air attack Paul had to run and get into a ditch near the place where they had their trucks. 

When we returned home from seeing Rulon off I was sure lonely, but I thought; we still have Vardis and he will be a lot of comfort to us but one day Vardis suddenly told us he wanted to join the Merchant Marine. We thought that he wouldn’t have to go because he was so young but he wanted to go so he joined on the 16 June 1944. In sunday school they sang, “God be with you till we meet again, when he was leaving. After his training he left on the S.S. Augustine Daly on the 6 August 1944 and returned on March 1945. Every time he came and went I asked the choir to sing that song. 

Because of the dehydrated foods on board the ship that they had to eat, Vardis became very thin and he needed dental work done on his teeth. He had been down around the Phillipens while the fighting was going on. That was when the United States trupes were on their return to take back the places they had lost and were on their way to Japan. Their ship had had some very narrow escapes. He was at Funefuta Ellis island group on 22 August 1944 and Guadacanal on 27 August 1944  and Fonchaebon, New Guinea on 30 August 1944. 

In July 1945 Rulon belonged to the Military Police Platoon. On the 14 October he wrote us a letter from Osaka, Japan and was made a staff Sargent There. Was also in New Zeland in May 1945 as a PFC and came home and discharged about the 6 January 1946. 

After Rulon and Vardis got out of the service my husband and I deceided to go with them to Hood River, Oregon to visit our son Berl and his family. We went there during the summer of 1946 and liked the country so much that we would have liked to bought a farm but they wanted too much for the farms. We returned home and Rulon and Vardis went back to Hoood River and too our son Oliver’s second wife with them so she could be with her husband. Oliver had been able to come home to be with his first wife at the birth of his child and upon his return home from the Merchant Marines, she wouldn’t get over being angeay at him and she insisted on a divorce so he gave her one. Then he married his second wife Ruth Olga Seibold on the 22 March 1945 in the Salt Lake Temple. 

Our son Laurel had remarried after the death of his first wife. He married Doratha Beardall on the 5 January 1935 and took his children by his first wife and they built a home in Union, Utah. 

Our daughter Lucy married Jero LaVell Reynolds on the 15 February 1935. SHe had been in the hospital having a check up because they figured she was a carrier of Typhoid germs, and she took off from there and got married in Farmington. 

Our son Paul married Maude Louise Proctor on the 27 July 1946. The went into Evanston, Wyoming when they went to get married. They went to the Salt Lake Temple later and were married for time and all Eternity on the 4 June 1947. 

Our son Vardis married Evelyn Afton Nelson in the Salt Lake Temple on the 4 June 1947 and it was at this same time tha tPaul and his wife went to the temple. 

On the 6 February our son went to the Salt Lake Temple and got his endownment in preperation for gong on a mission to preach the gospel. Rulon was called to the Tihatian mission and served there for two years. He married Donna May Walters in the Salt Lake Temple on the 11 January 1952. 

Our son Laurel went to the Salt Lake Temple and had his first wife and children sealed to him on the 8 January 1948. Also his second wife and children were sealed to him at this time. 

Our daughter Helma went to the Salt Lake Temple with her husband Herman Oliver Peery and was sealed tohim on the 26 April 1951 and the children were sealed at this time. Arthur also went with them and got his own endownments. 

On about the 28 March 1951 our son Arthur was making a turn into our place with the Sears truck and he got hit by another truck coming from the south and that tried to pass Arthur. He must have failed to make a signal and when the other truck hit him it turned the Sears truck over. My husband and I was sitting in the frunt room of our house when we heard a crash and he looked out then made and exclamation and ran out side. I followed him as soon as I could get my shoes and came because I knew that it was the Sears truck and that my son would be in it. THey took the driver of the one truck to the doctor in Midvale. Arthur wasn’t hurt bad and he went to Nelsons and called about the wreck. 

I had an attack of Apendixitus and was taken to the Latter Day Saints Hospital in Salt Lake and was opperated on by Doctor Scott M. Smith on the 5 August 1952. 

As I am writing this history my thoughts go back to the time when I was a small child. One fall my father had butchered a pig and the dogs got at it. The next morning he said the dogs shoudl be killed. My sister Mary, brother Benjamin and deceided that they would do just that and I tagged along with them. We had two dogs and one was a small one named Flora and the other a larger dog was named Jeff. We hung the small one first then tried to hand the larger one but we couldn’t get him up high enough and he ran around the tree like he had the Devil in him and it frightened us so we turned him loose. Jeff was spared and he lived a good many years untill a cow kicked him and broke his jaw so he couldn’t eat and he starved to death. We loaded the dog we had hung into the little wagon and as we passed the hosue, father asked us what we were doing and we told him we were killing the dogs just like he said should be done. 

I also remember the time when my son Rulon and Vardis was playing together in the sand pile and they got into a fight. Rulon was age 7 and Vardis was age. Rulon hit Vardis on the chin and knocked him out and it frightened him so he tried to carry him to the house. He ran to the house and cried, “Save him, save him.” Their father ran out and carried Vardis to the ouse and I wiped his face with a wet cloth and he came to. We were all frightened because of what happened. 

At the writing of this history New Years day of 1949 I had the pleasure of serving a nice dinner to some of my children, their husbands and wives after they had spent and enjoyable time sleigh riding. Their was Austin, Helma, Lucy, Vardis, Paul, and all of their husbands, wives and children and 6 children that my husband and I was taking care of for the childrens welfare. I enjoyed very much having my children home for a visit. and dinner. 

December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. was at war again, Germany, Italy and Japan were fighting the U.S. and England. On June 3rd 1943 we saw Rulon off on a bus for FOrt Douglas, another bunch of boys, 18 yrs. old going off to the war. When will it end I ask myself. Three Airway Busses came to tak eht e boys away, he (Rulon) put his arms around me and said, “Good-bye Mother,” words can never express the sorrow of seeing our boys have to go away to war, not knowing if they will ever return. Three gone, Oliver, Paul and now Rulon. Oliver sent a  telegram from San Francisco saying he had arrived safely from the South Sea Islands, he left with the COnvoy early in Feb. 1943. Helma is coming out today to prepare her strawberries to put in cold storage freezer. Helma is a great comfort fo her Dan and I, she is growing into a grand understanding women. 

Sunday June 6, 1943 --- Oliver has returned home once more, he and Merlyn came out home last night and stayed, they went to Sunday School and Fast Meeting with us, and Oliver talked at both of the meetings and told us about some of his experiences while away. At Fast Meeting Rulon helped administer to the Sacrament, and Ray offered the clothing prayer. Next Sunday Rulon will be at Fort Douglas, and after that where? I wonder. How long is it going to last????

Helma and Peery, Austin and Kate, Karen, and Amy Lou came out, Austin and Peery painted on Austins house and we all had dinner. Today is Thursday, June 10th. Rulon left for Fort Douglas again today at about 1:00- O’clock after the program given for the boys at the Midvale City hall Oliver came out home and went with us to the program, and to see Rulon off. We went to West Jordan and I put some fresh flowers on Floyd and Dorothys graves while Ray and Oliver went to the locker to put the strawberries in and get some meat out. The program was goin on for the boys while we were over there so we hurried back to it, and when it was over we said our boodbys, and I wonder if they will ever end. When we got home we found that the electirc iron had been left on, Rulon had been pressing his pants before he left and I had been using hte iron, if Vardis hadn’t come home and turned it off there would have been a good sixed fore in the house by the time we had returned. Oliver got a letter in the mail from Galahnd. He stayed out home until 5:00 O’clock and was company for me, for which I was very thankful. Then I took him to State Street to catch a bus. 

July 4, 1943 --- Ray and Verdis andLaurel and hauling hay. Forty years ago today we were at Spring Glen to church. We had our baby daughter Mary blessed, we had come from Sunny Side to visit with our parents for the fourth of July, it was on Sat. and we went to the dance at Heber J. Stowell’s house, I were a while dress, we had Mary with us and we laid her on the bed along with the other babies. Kate Smith said she was the prettiest baby there. She had on long curly brown hair and blue eyes, and she was a beautiful baby, and her skin was so lovely and white she was lovely. 

Since Rulon left, Helma, Lucy and I went to Sand Diego to see Paul. Helma sent him a telegram, telling him we were coming. We left Salt Lake City, Wednesday evening, June 16th 1943 and 8:45 P.M. on the Pony express Bus, we were crossing the Salt Flats just as the sun went down. Caliente June 17th we had a glass of mild and a piece of apple pie for breakfast, It is a lovely morning and we are enjoying it and the trop also. The people on the Bus are quite friendly and sociable. We had trouble with the gas pump on the Bus and we were 13 hrs late getting into Sand Diego. Paul wasn’t there to meet us, he had waited until midnight Thursday for us to arrive then he had to go back to Camp Elliott.  We rode out to Camp to see him. We went to the Service Center at Camp Pendelton and waited for him, they had some difficulty in finding him, finally about 5:00 o’clock he was located and did he rush to get dressed in Uniforn and come to meet us. Oh but we were glad to see him, he had a nice welcoming smile for us, and we were all excited and glad to see him. He looked so nice and neat in his Uniform, but he had lost some of that graceful swing I admired so much as I watched him wldk to class in Sunday School. 

We all went back to Sand Diego together and Paul took us to the hetel where he had rented a room for us.,the night before. We went to a cafe and had our dinner, then we all went back to the Hotel where we visited until midnight, then Paul caught a Bus back to Camp Pendelton, he said he would be back in the morning and spend the day, we waited for him to come have breakfast with us but he had already had his so we went to the cafe and had breakfast, then we went around town and seen the sights. We were going to the Park but it was after 5:00 o’clock so we went back to the Hotel and Ray and I were rather tired so we went to bed,and Paul took Helma and Lucy to a Dance. They came back from the dance and Paul got a room right next to us and spent the night there, I think Paul and the girls spent most of the night talking. Sunday morning we went and had breakfast, then went to a Studio where Paul had a picture taken for us, Helma took a picture taken of us standing on the steps of the USO. We went out to the Camp with Paul to see a show. It was a war picture, Paul said that was the only kind they had. After the show we took a bus back to Sand Diego, had out lunch and went back to our room and visited with Paul while we packed to go home. He told us some of his experiences while in training. We left the Hotel to catch our Bus just before midnight. Paul was carrying our bags and Helma and Lucy were carring theirs when three Marines walked up and without a word took Helma by one arm and Lucy by the arm, bags and all and started off with them. We said Whoa?? They said it’s alright, and Mariens to the rescue. At the Bus depot came the time to part from Paul, parting from those we love is never a happy time, and we were all heavy hearted at the thought of saying goodby. Paul stood with his arm around me as we waited for the bus, He told me how much our visit had meant to him, and that he would be alright now that we had come to see him. But “Oh that parting.” When we got on the Bus , I thought he would go, and I hoped he would, so I wouldn’t see him standing there as we drove off. But he didn’t go-- he just crossed the street and stood on the corner, so straight and tall in his Uniform, and as the Bus pulled away, he raised his hand in bood-bye. No words can express my sorrow as we drove away. I didn’t want to see him wave goodby as I carried that last sad picture in by heart as we journeyed homeward. We had a good trip home, arrived on June 22. 

Sunday, July 4 - 1943 Ray is having a nap and Vardis is gone as usual. We will soon start picking Raspberries, I’ll continue about Paul, he promised Helma he would call on Wednesday. When I talked to Paul I told him Rulon was at Camp Roberts, but Paul was shipped out before he could see Rulon. Austin, Kate, Vardis, Helma and I al talked to Paul. He said he would call again on June 28, when he called he told Helma he was being shipped out so we wouldn’t hear from him for awhile. More heartache and sorrow. When will it all end??