Son of Chauncey Harvey Cook Sr. and Clarissa Curtis
Husband to Lydia Jane Babcock Cook
Father 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 Ray Curtis Cook
By himself
(as told to Berl B. Cook in 1962 son on the date of Sunday 21 Jan 1962)
I, Ray Curtis Cook, son of Chauncey Harvey Cook Sr. and Clarissa Curtis, Was born in the town of Springville, Utah County, Utah on the 27 August 1878.
My parents were both pioneers: my father having been Born in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois and not quite five years of age, came west with his Step-father John Solomon Fullmer and his mother Olive Amanda Smith. My father’s father was Milton Cook, but through missunderstandings and troubles they seperated. My father came with his step-father and his mother in the Willard Richards Company and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on the 19 October 1848.
My mother was born in Springville, Utah in 1851: the daughter of Enos Curtis and Tamma Durfee. My grandparents came west with the Mormon pioneers and met and married in Utah.
When I was a baby my parents moved to Gunnison, Utah and while they were living there my older sister Emma died of Dyptheria. I was too young to remember but I was told that my sister thought very much of me and before she died she said to mother, “Take care of little Ray.” She was burried in the Gunnison Cemetary at the age of 7 years and 9 months old.
According to the Gunnison Ward records my father and mother were rebaptized in the Cunnison Ward on the 1 June 1880 and they had my brother Chauncey Harvey Jr. and Leroy and I blessed there. The Ward record also shows that we moved from Gunnison and went to Aurora, Sevier County, Utah on the 15 March 1883. My father went to work in Aurors as a contractor, making grade for the railroad. While we were living there my brother Leroy was born on the 24 August 1881.
When I was five years old my father prepared to move to Cainsville, Wayne County, Utah. I remember how everything look as we were preparing to move. As we moved on our journey we had to pass through a dry wash to get to the Dirty Devil River. The wash was about fifteen miles long, about three hundred feet high and about two hundred feet wide. The country was known for clowd bursts and floods, so we traveled as fast as we could so we wouldn’t get caught in the wash if a flood came.
We arrived in Cainsville, Wayne County, Utah in 1883. About 10 families lived there at that time. My father helped build the canal used for irrigation. We raised sugar cane and had fun running it through the mill to make sargum. My brother Marion was born there on the 14 March 1884. I was baptized in Cainsville in the Sevier river near the junction of the American Wash, by my father Chauncey. Two girls were also baptized during that time. Also my brother Harvey was baptized in Cainsville.
About the fall of 1885 my parents deceided to go visit friends that lived about 15 miles up the Dirty Devil River. They left my brother Chauncey Harvey at home to do the chores on the farm. We started up the river in the early morning and stopped to gather the bull berries that grew along the river. After we had gathered the berries we sat down to eat them. While were eating it began to rain before we were through with our lunch. We got under cover and waited and in about 30 minutes the storm was over. Then my father said to mother, “Which way shall we go, up or down the river?” Then my parents deceided to go up river as fast as they could. Now the valley, through which the Dirty Devil River flowed, was about one and a half miles wide and narrowed down as we went up the ricer. We had five crossings to cross on our way up stream. As we crossed the first and second crossings we could see that the water was raising faster all the time. When we went to cross the third crossing the water was very high and a big bunch of logs came down and one caught in the frunt wheel. The logs caused the wheels to turn to the side and the team had a hard time pulling the wagon. They finally pulled the wagon to where the river bank was sloping about 10 feet high up the rivers edge then they couldn’t pull any more. Father jumped out into the water, which was up to his chest, and grabbed Marion and by getting hold of the horses harnass, was able to pull himself to the river bank, where he threw Marion on dry ground. Then he took mother out of the wagon and set her in the water to hold the team. Then I crowded in next and father took me and threw me up on the bank. Then he went to get Leroy, but by that time the water was so high that it turned the wagon over, twisting the double trees so the team was turned loose from the wagon. When that happened mother led the team up in the bank to safety. I grabbed Marion and ran down the river looking for father and Leroy. I seen farther coming near the river bank and when he got to the bank he shoved Leroy up through the bushes. I took my brother and pulled him out then I helped my father up the bank. I have always felt that it was a good thing that I crowded in frunt of my brother Leroy so I was on the bank to help father and Leroy out of the river and to hold Marion.
We walked up the river untill we came to the friends place where my folks were going. We took the team of horses with us. At the Joe BaHanan’s place we took all our wet clothes off to dry. When we looked for the wagon we found the wheels and parts of the chasis scattered down the river but we never found the wagon bed. One of the horses caught cold and died. I was only seven years old at that time and today I feel that the Lord spared our lives and blessed us.
When I was about 9 years old I was herding cows about a mile from home. There was a wash between our home and the cows. A big storm came up so I was unable to get the cows together and get them acrosst the deep wash in time before the wash was full of water. One cow that I called, “Old mother Becklaham” led part of the cows acrosst before the flood came but I had to stay there with the others all night.
My sister Bertha was born on the 9 March 1886 while we were living in Cainsville, Utah. We lived in Cainsville for almost five years then in the fall of 1888 we moved to SanRafel river about ten miles from a ranch run by a woman known as “The cattle Queen.” This place was close to the famous outlaw hideout knows as “Robbers Roost.” We lived in an old log cabin and that winter we had to chop down cottonwood trees so the cows and horses could eat the buds and bark to keep from starving.
In the spring of 1889 we moved to the green river about five miles from the town of Blake. My folks rented an 80 acre farm on the east side of the river and on the farm was two water wheels that furnished water for the farm. That fall we went to an island in the river and cut logs to build a log house and a barn on the west side of the river. We forded the river where the water was low near the island. That winter my sister Laura D was born, in the log cabin we built, on the 11 December 1889. After Laura was born my father took a man to Colorado to a rich Gold Mine.
In the spring of 1890 we sold what property we had for flour and food amounting to about $50.00. We then moved to Wellington with about ten cows, five horses and two wagons.Wellington is on the Price River and on the way we had to ford the Price river when the water was hight. One wagon got stuck and we had to get a mans team to help pull us out. We stayed in Wellington about a month then we moved to Coal Creek and stayed that summer. We cut Ceder posts in the mountains and got a railroad car full and sold them for 8 (cents) a piece. That fall of 1890 we moved to Spring Glen, Utah and went into the mountains and out some trees to build a two roomed log house.
I had lost contact with school and church for about two years, from the time we left Cainsville untill we moved to Spring Glen so that Christmas I went to school. Early the next spring I quit school and started clearing ground to farm. WE cut posts in the hills and took them to Price traiding post and traded them for groceries while we were trying to farm.
In the fall of 1892, I was kicked by a horse and in knocked out three teeth and made a bad cut on my jaw which left a scar. I was fourteen years old at this time. When I turned fifteen we hauled cord wood for a living and I got very little schooling. It amounted to about two months each time I attended school.
At this time in my young life during the summer I turned 19 and the year of 1897 many events was taking place.. The gold rush to the Klokdike in Alaska, began. Also Cuba and Spain were having trouble and the U.S. battleship Maine was blown up in the 1898 in Havana harbor, with a loss of 260 men. During the summer I was working in the round house at Helper, Utah. I didn’t work there all winter. The next spring I went to work in the water service and planted lawns around the company houses. While I was working on the lawns, I got aquainted with a fellow that was a fireman on the railroad. He sold me his gold watch that had and enjine stamped on the back. I paid him $12.00 and I prized it very much. While working on the water service I was warned that the Supertendant would be coming around and to watch my step, but in the middle of the day I got into a water fight with some girls and the superntendant saw me. One of the girls I was water fighting with was Lydia Jane Babcock who later became my wife. That afternoon I was sent into the round house to work and I got my hand hurt. One fellow said he would fix it up so he took his chew of tobacco from his mouth and plastered it on my hand and wrapped it up. Just before quiting time the boss told me I was laid off for ten days because I was seen water fighting.
During the ten days I was laid off I went to work on our farm and one morning while I was watering the horses I lost my gold watch in the river. I never missed it untill that afternoon while my brothers and I was cleaning ditch. I reached for my watch to see what time it was and found it missing. I was provoked with my brothers over the work and I cussed them. We hunted for the watch but couldn’t find it. When we went to the house my mother asked me what was the matter and I told her about loosing my watch. The next morning before any one was up, I went to where we had been cleaning the ditch and nelt down and prayed to my Heavenly Father. I asked him to forgive me for being impatient with my brothers and I asked to be guided to find my watch. Then I went to the house and got ready for work. I came out with my brother Marion and I had a feeling that my watch was in the river and that I would give him 50 (cents) if he could find it. He jumped into the water and began to shovel. On the second shovel full my prized watch came up and my prayers were answered.
By that time my ten day lay off had passed and I hadn’t returned to work. They were worried because my hand had been bad and a company doctor had refused to dress it at company expense. They were afraid I would sue the railroad company, so they came to get me to go back to work so they wouldn’t have trouble.
I went back to work on the company lawns again and worked untill Christmas then I was laid off along with some other men. Then I went to Castle Gate to work during the winter of 1898-99. then I went back to the railroad in the spring of 1899 when I was 20 years old. I went to work for a boss named Carlos Frank working in the boiler room fireing the stationary boilers. I worked there untill September then I went to the round house to work. I had turned 21 years old on the 27 of August of that year.
After the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine, Congress declaired Cuba independent, on the 19 April 1898 and declared war against Spain on the 21 April 1898. Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the 30 April and the battles of San Juan and El Caney took place on 1, 2 and 3rd of July. Admiral Cervera’s fleet was destroyed in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on the 3 July. Preliminaries for peace with Spain was signed on the 12 August and the treaty of Paris signed on teh 10 December 1899 ended the Spanish-American war.
I married Lydia Jane Babcock, the daughter of William Henry Babcock Sr. and Mary Jane Parsons, on Christmas Eve the 24 December 1899 at Spring Glen, Carbon County, Utah. My father was Justice of the Peace in Spring Glen and he was the one that preformed the marriage.
We made our home in Spring Glen, Utah after we were married and I continued to work in the round house for the Denver Rio Grande Western Railroad.
In March 1900 I moved with my wife to Helper, Utah and in June of the same year I quit the railroad. I then went into pardnership with Bill Boden in a grocery store. We continued in partnership untill september, then I sold my partner and moved to Castle Gate, where I went to work on the coke ovens. We had my brother Chauncey Harvey Jr. board with us for a while then my wife went to stay with her mother in Helper where our first baby was born.
Just a short time before I went to Helper to see my wife, I stopped in at the boiler room where my brother Leroy was working. He told me that one of his boiler makers had swore at him and called him a dirty Mormon so & so. Leroy had the Chills and Fever and didn’t feel well. I went to locate that fellow and when I found him I jumped him about what he said, then I threw him down. When I let that fellow up he took a kick at me then a machinest friend of the boiler maker hit me from behind and knocked me down. My brother Marion was there and tried to get me to not fight because he was afraid that gang would hurt me, but I was determined that that gang wouldn’t get the best of me and I got hold of a piece of iron and when the gang saw that they ran. Then Marion (Bery written in margin) grabbed the piece of iron from me and left me to face the machinest with a club in his hand. I went after the machinest and he hit me several times before I got the club away from him, then I chased the gang half way to the road house. Then I ran into the railroad superntendant and I had to explain why I was chasing the gang. I told him about the trouble, then he told me to keep off the railroad property and he fired the boiler maker and that ended the swearing at the men.
After that happened I went to Helper and was with my wife when our baby was born at 9 A.M. on monday the 15 October 1900. We named him Arthur Ray Cook. After the birth of our son I moved my family to Castle Gate and we stayed at my brother’s place and I worked with my brother loading coke.
In January 1901 I moved my family to my father’s home in Spring Glen and farmed all summer with my father. We built a house on a farm we had bought and in November 1901 I went to Winter Quarters to work on the mine tipple. I asked my wife to pay the taxes on our property when I left. She got on a horse that morning about 11 o’clock and the horse stumbled and threw my wife over her heard. She was knocked unconcious and Mr. Sonberg found her. When she came too she got Mr. Sonberg to go pay the taxes.
In March 1902 I returned to my family in Spring Glen, then went to Helper to work on the D. & R. G.W.R.R. In August of that year I moved my family to Sunny Side, Utah and went to work for the coal company as a Roust About. Then I was given the job of firing boilers. While we were in Sunny Side that winter our second baby was born on the 23 December 1902 in a tent on the hill side. It was cold and hard to keep the tent war. My brother Marion went to get the doctor and when he didn’t get any response from the doctor he kicked the door. When the doctor arrived he was very angry because Marion had kicked the door. The Doctor was A.W. Dowd and the nurse was Kessiah Dimmock and the doctor was paid $20.00 for his services.
In March 1904 I rented a house in Sunny Side and moved my family back from Spring Glen where they had been staying for a while. I was fireing stationary boilers at Sunny Side that was used to opperate the mine machinery and I was receiving good wages.
I heard about the Canadian Government offering good land to people who would homestead it and help settle he country. I liked farming so I deceided to sell all we owned and go to Canada. We went to Spring Glen and got ready for the long trip.
We went to Salt Lake City on our way and went to the Temple and got our endownments and were sealed on the 21 September 1904 and had our two children Arthur and Mary sealed to us. Then we did the work for my wife’s sister Lucy and her brother Benjamin.
After going to the Temple we left for Canada and arrived in Sterling, Alberta, Canada on the 25 September 1904. (part crossed out) My brother Leroy and I worked a few days to get a team and wagon to take us to (not crossed out) Raymond to my cousin Al Carter’s home. Then I moved my family to Henry Smith’s farm on the 1 October where we stayed for 10 days while we work on the farm. We were able to buy us two roomed house and get ready for wimter.
We got a well started on this place and one day while a bad wind storm was blowing my son Arthur walked into it. It was a blessing that he wasn’t hurt. That fall I drove back and forth with my brother Leroy to Lethbridge trying to locate a homestead. My wife was expecting another baby so I did’t want to leave her alone so we had to drive back and forth to Lethbridge about 30 miles one way. We had one horse die because of the hard trips but we finally got the land we were looking for. (written in margin) Summer 1906. Came that got sick and died 3 weeks late
On the 23 January 1905 a fierce blizzard came up and during that night my wife was confined. We got the Elders to come (can’t read) they stayed with us all night and stood around the heating stove with overcoats on to keepwarm. A son was born the morning of the 24 January 1905 and we named him Floyd.
During winter I worked a few days at the Marshieshaw mine. When the mine was dug the shaft crooked so it had to be straightened out so they could put a hoist in it. I was working with some other men in the shaft one day when teh ground began to give way. We got out and soon after some underground water broke loos in the shaft and the old horse pulled hoist sank into the ground and the shaft caved in. If I had been in the shaft I would have been burried under tons of earth.
During hte winter our daughter Mary hadn’t been well and she got worse untill she took a convulsion in February. She grew steadly worse untill she died in a convuslion on saturday morning the 4 March 1905. Leroy got on a horse and rode to Lethbredge to get material to line a coffin and some handles for it. Our daughter was burried on the 6 March in the Taber cemetary.
When spring came Leroy went to herding sheep and my brother Leroy worked the farm. (written in margin) my 2 brothers stayed at home didn’t move farm yet. It was a long tough summer with no money, but Harvey sent $400.00 and very little to eat. That fall my brother and I went to work for wages. I fired boilers at a mine south of Taber and I was fireing on the opposite shift from my brother. When our older brother Chauncey Harvey came to Taber we broke him in fireing then my brother Leroy went back to Utah for a visit. He came back in March 1907 and brought our father with him. I fired boilers with my brother Chauncey Harvey on opposite shifts. then one day an Englishman got after me because I had to shut down the boilers because there was no more coal to run with. I argued with him and during the arguement I threw the shovel over my shoulder and the Englishman thought I was going to hit him. He ran to the office and told them I was going to hit him. Then one night when I run out of coal I had to shut down the furnace and that caused the compressors to stop and they didn’t have air down in the mine to opperate with. I had been trying for some time to get them to get a good grade of coal and enough on hand so I wouldn’t run out but they never did it. So when that happened a Scotchman got after me and I chased him to the office and was going to quit but they talked me into staying and promised me a better job if I would stay untill the owner returned with some new equipment to remodel the mine. When my brother Harvey came on shift I told him what happened and then Harvey caught the Scotchman and told him he better leave me alone. The Scotchman never did bother me again nor did he come around the boiler room.
When the enjine room was remodled I was given the job in the enjine room but it was too boreing with very little to do so I asked for my job back fireing boilers. I fired boilers all through the winter of 1906-07. That winter on the 6 January 1907 our son Laurel Chauncey was born.
In the spring of 1908 I went to work fireing boilers at the Taber bridge crossing over the Belley River. My Job was to run the hoist and keep the boliers going and I had gained a lot of experience with coal and knew how it would burn so I was able to make those boilers really put out steam. The boilers were very hard to fire and it was hard for them to get a good fireman so they really appreciated me. I worked there from the spring of 1908 untill the spring of 1909 then I went to work on the farm that summer.
In August I Went back to the Marchieshaw mine and fired boilers. I got the fires going so wall that flames would shoot out the top of the 100 foot stack. One day the wind blew the stack over and when they seen it was so full of holes they said I had fired so good that I had burned a 100 foot stack down. While running the hoist at the mine one day I hoisted a man and when the hoist came to the serface I didn’t see him get off. Then I seen a pair of overalls hanging over the edge of the skip and I became frightened and ran the skip to the top of the gallows Frame and back before I got control again. Then I looked to see where the man was and thought I had cut his head off, but found out it was only a pair of old overalls. The control on the hoist was opposite to the one I had been running at the Belley River Bridge so When I became excited I pushed the control the control the wrong way.
On the 5 December 1909 our son Albern Austin was born in Taber in the Spring of 1910 I worked as a carpanter for a contractor untill the last of March. A man wanted to buy our homestead so we sold out. We left Taber and arrived in Utah in time for the April General Conference of the L.D.S. Church of which we attended. ( In margin) Sold homestead in Winter of 1909 - and went carpenter 1 month in 1910.
After Conferance I went to work on a building I Price, Utah then on the 1 June 1910 my father got me to look at a farm in Pleasnat Grove, Utah. It was a good looking farm of 34 acres so I went in with my brother Leroy and my father and we bought it. We all farmed together and in 1911 we put in about 13 acres of sugar beets and along with the fruit trees, we harvested a fairly good crop in the fall. There was about 125 tons of sugar beets and the cellar was full of apples which we sold.
My mother died on the 31 March 1915 so I moved my family from the log house in which we were living and we took part of the house that my parents were living in. Before this move however my brother Leroy had been living in with father untill his crick home was built on the south part of the farm. We had had another son born in the log house in which we had moved into the 1911 and he was born on the 14 January 1912 and we named him Berl Babcock.
During the summer of 1912 we raised another good crop, then I went to work at Toplift, Utah during 1913 and drove a team and scraper in a rock qurrey. We had the agreement amoungst our selves that one would work the farm while the others worked for wages an we would trade off. I finally got the rest of the money I had coming from the place in Canada so I went back to the farm in April and paid some money on it. That summer of 1913 we all stayed with the farm.
Next winter of 1913-14 my brother and I went to Toplift to work, then I came home for the birth of our daughter Helma and she was born on the 23 March 1914. After that I went to work on the RailroadSection Gang under Joe Dickerson and I continued to work on the section during the years of 1915-1916. Then on the 17 June 1916 our daughter Lucy Jane was born.
I quit the railroad section crew in the spring of 1918 and went to the clay beds west of Lehi, Utah loading clay. I stayed there untill July then went to Castle Gate and fired boilers for the Castle Gate coal company.
During the winter of 1819-1919 I had the flue and didn’t go to work. On the 16 March 1919 our son Oliver Curtis was born then in April I went to work on the Orem railroad for a boss named Ed Bush. and worked there during 1920.
In the winter of 1920-21 I worked at the sugar factory in Lehi, Utah fireing boilers then in the spring of 1921 We sold our farm to Bert Adams and moved to West Jordan, Utah to the Kerkam’s Ranch on teh 21 March 1921. There a son Paul Babcock was born on the 13 May 1921.
Once again we were farming together and had 240 acres. We farmed together untill my bother moved his house to the lower section in the fall of 1922. That fall we bought some milk cows and milked them all winter then they were tested for T.B. in the spring of 1923 and the government took them all but 5 that were all right.
When we sold the farm in Pleasant Grove, Utah I was able to pay my share of the money oweing my father when we bought him out. He remarried but the marriage didn’t last and he and his second wife separated. He wasn’t feeling to well because of a groth in his throat and he stayed in a little house we fixed up on the Ranch. But he soon went to stay with my sister in Genola, Utah and he died there on the 27 June 1923.
I raised around 100 tons of beets in 1923 that sold for $5.00 a ton and my sons Floyd and Laruel worked at the Midvale Smelter with the little money we made we tried to pay off the debts. About 2 months after they took the cows because of T.B. I bought 12 more. On the 19 August 1924 I went to the hospital and had a goiter removed from my neck. I was in the St. Marks hospital.
On the 6 October I took my wife and went to the fall conferance then just a few days later on the 11 October 1924 our son Rulon Clive was born on Kirkham’s Ranch.
We were renting the Ranch off Kirkham so we bought the Kinkie farm and I moved my family there in March 1925. We farmed the 40 acres and run a dairy farm. My son Floyd run the milk truck to pick up the milk for the West Jordan milk Producers Association. I farmed two other places besides a dry farm and we had our hands full taking care of them. One time a fire got started in the dry farm wheat field near our dry farm and I was worried sick because I was afraid our field of wheat would catch fire and burn up. I was depending a lot on that field of wheat to help pull us through the tough time we were having with debts and the loss of our cows due to T.B. About this time our son Vardis Marion was born on the 22 July 1927.
I had bought400 baby chicks in the spring of 1926 and in the fall of 1927 I bought some more milch cows. It turned out that the new cows had Bangs disease and we had to get rid of them.
Through the year of 1928 we did a lot of farming with three places to farm and it was a little too hard for me. My family didn’t fare so well on the fall because we began to take down sick. I first took down with the flue then I got pneumonia. Our so Floyd took down sick in November with the flue. I took down with it while I was working at the West Jordan Sugar factory. Floyd got worse and he got double pneumonia and with a bad heart he did’t stand much chance of getting well. He died on the 1 December 1928 an was burried in the West Jordan cemetary while I was still in bed sick. Most of our children took down sick before the winter was over. Along about the first of January it was discovered that some of the children had typhoid fever. Berl, Helma, and Lucy were taken to the hospital and a few days laterOliver and Paul were taken too. My sister Dora had been helping us and she also caught it and was taken to the hospital. Every one got well and was out of the hospital by march. I got well and went back to the problem of the farm. We had to move because we had to give up the Kienkie farm so I moved my family to the Bennion farm which I was buying.
We were in the begining of a big depression which had started that winter when all the banks began to go broke. We sold all our cows, hay and other property I was able to keep when I lost the Kienkie farm. We moved the chick coop and the chickens to the Bennion farm and tried to farm that place but we began to have a shortage of water because Utah Lake had went down so low they couldn’t pump water for irrigation so we couldn’t raise anything.
Through the depression I was able to pick up a little work. I took some of my children and unloaded grain at the Utah Poultry association in Midvale. We raise some beets on other land I rented and I worked unloading a coal car at the lumber yard in Midvale. In 1931 the fingers of my hand began to draw up so I had an opperation on my hand and a growth was removed and my hand got better. In Februaty 1932 my brother-in-law Albern Babcock sent word for me to come to Hiawatha to help fire boilers at the school house. I worked there untill April then I returned home and would have went to work on the W.P.A but I had to go to bed with rhumatism. Our son Austin was able to go to work in my place and hold the job untill I was well.
The depression years didn’t do us any good and we soon had to give up the Bennion place. We had bought a small piece of ground in Union, Utah and we moved the family into a basement home in October 1938. We built up that place with some chicken coops and bought more chickens and a little more land.
On the 7 December 1942 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. went to war with Japan in Germany. Our son Oliver, Paul, Rulon and Vardis went into the different services. They returned home all right when the war was over and soon after our son Rulon was called to fill a mission. I tried to support him on his mission by milking cows and raising calves on the milk. I also had some laying hens and a little ground to farm. One of the milch cows had fever in her bag and part of the bag went dry but the Lord always blesses a family that is trying to keep one of their member on a mission an He certainly bless us because, when the cow came fresh again her bag was allright and she produced very good and we were able to support our son untill he finished his mission.
In 1944 I got a job with the Union Pacific Railroad company cleaning and servicing their passanger cars. One day I was working on a passanger car and I stepped off the car into the path of an in coming passanger train. It hit me a glancing blow and the Lord certainly blessed me for I wasn’t killed but ended up in the hospital for a number of days. I never did get any compensation out of the Railroad.
I had had an opperation on my urinary passage in 1940 to remove an obstruction and it became necessary to have on again in1956 and my doctor for the last opperation was Meddleton.
Up to the writing of this history on the 11 June 1947 I have had all my children go to the temple except three and they have all married and have families except our son Rulon. My posterity has increased in number and I have tried to teach them to serve the Lord and keep his commandments.
While I was a deacon I served as counsler in the deacon’s quorum. I was counseler to the President of the Y.M.M.I.A. I have served as a Ward Teacher in Canada, Pleasant Grove, West Jordan and Union. I have had the previlage of going to the Temple and doing temple work for the dead. I had the privilage of meeting President Heber J. Grant at a meeting in pleasant Grove and shaking his hand. I beleave every thing that has been taught by the prophets is true: That every President that has served in the Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S. was a prophet of God and placed there by Him and if we will live up to their teachings we will do what is right. I believe that every president was indeed foreordained to come tot eh earth as prophets Seers and Revelators.
Ray C. Cook told the story to H.O.Peery about him witnessing the train robbery.
Ray was about 21 yrs. of age and he & his wife were visiting in Castle Gate. Butch Cassidy & his gang robbed the D&R.G. Railroad payroll of $8800.00. They were witnesses.
According to the news article the train robbery took place in 1897.
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