Daughter of Enos Curtis and Tamma Dufee
Wife to Chauncey Harvey Cook
Mother to
Joseph Alma Cook
Emma Cook
Chauncey Harvey Cook Jr.
Amelia Cook
Ray Curtis Cook
Leroy Austin Cook
Marion Enos Cook
Betha Cook
Dora Cook
Laura D Cook
Jenius F Cook
History of Clarissa Curtis
By G. son- Berl B. Cook
6 July 1960
Re-typed by Kierston Smith Scott
Clarissa Curtis, the daughter of Enos Curtis and Tamma Durfee, was born in Springville, Utah County, Utah on the 13 October 1851. She was one of four children born to her parents, all four girls names Clarissa, Blinda, Amelia, and Adelia who were twins.
Clarissa was introduced into the pioneer way of life during the early settlement of Utah and her parents were amoung the first settlers o Springville, Utah. They probably lived in a dugout first then built a log home at a later date, because it was a very popular and very necessary custom to have a dugout in those early pioneer days. Many of the early pioneers lived in dugouts in England and they brought the custom with them to this country. It was a means of getting a home when most needed in a short notice.
Her father, Enos Curtis, was first married to Ruth Franklin and they both did their temple work in Nauvoo. Ruth Franklin died about 1848 on the plains near Iowaville City, leaving Enos Curtis with a large family to look after. They had fourteen children. Enos Curtis was a very ambitious and faithful person. He was amoung the first six persons to preach the gospel to Brigham Young. He came west with his family to Utah in 1850.
Her mother, Tamma Durfee, was first married to Albert Miner and they did their temple work in the Nauvoo temple. Albert Miner died on 3 January 1848 at Iowaville., Iowa, leaving Tamma Durfee with a family of six children. They came west to Utah and arrived in the valley on the 1 September 1850.
Clarissa’s mother was in Salt Lake staying at the Wilcox home with her children, when Enos Curtis came and offered her a home. That was what she need because winter was coming on and she had no one to take care of her or her children. Tamma Durfee and Enos Curtis was married on the 20 October 1850. They lived on the Jordan River west of Union Fort on a farm owned by Lorenzo Snow and they lived there the first winter.
During the winter of 1850, they made chairs fora living. Moroni Miner, a step-son of Enos Curtis, speaks very highly of his step-father, telling of the great struggle to make a home, how very congenial the two families were together, and how his step-sons, Mormon and Moroni, very efficiently made the chair bottoms of reed or leather.
The next April 1851 the family moved to Springville, Utah and got a farm and a place to build. Tamma Durfee said they got along first tare, that they had gone into the wilderness trying to build up the Kingdom. Here it was that their first child was born on the 13 October 1851 and they named her Clarissa.
Clarissa grew to be a girl of quite refinement, with a sweet loving nature. She got her schooling in Springville, Utah and was well enough educated for that time to qualify as a school teacher and she became one of Utah’s first school teachers and taught for two years before she married, then for the first five years after she was married.
She met her husband Chauncey Harvey Cook, through her half-brother, Moroni Miner, who was freighting with Chauncey much of the time in their earlier lives. She went in a freight wagon pulled by either horses or mules and was accompanied by her mother, Tamma Durfee and her mother-in-law, Olive Amanda Smith with her sweethearts, Chauncey, driving the team. When they pulled up in frunt of the old Tithing office in Salt Lake, a man came out and asked Chauncey what he was loaded with. Being a man that was full of fun, Chauncey yelled and was that he was loaded with women. They were married in the Endowment House on the 15 February 1869.
They made their home in Springville, Utah, where their first child was born on the 23 August 1871. His name was Joseph Alma and he died the same day he was born. The second child born in Springville was named Emma, born on the 16 August 1872. The records in the Springville ward doesn’t show much of the Cook family only that Emma was blessed in the Springville Ward by Joseph Wheeler on the 1 December 1872 with her parents listed as Chauncey Harvey Cook and Clarissa Curtis. Chauncey H. Cook must have freighted for a few years after he was married and his family was in Springville, Utah, because he freighted in such places as Ophir, Utah, White PIne, and Pioche, Nevada and his life (after they moved to Gunnison in or before 1880) was taken up in farming. Their next child was born in Provo, Utah on the 5 December 1874 and they named him after his father. Then a daughter named Amalia was born in Springville on the 11 May 1877 and she died the same day she was born. Next was a son named Ray Curtis born in Springville, Utah on the 27 August 1878 then they moved the family to Gunnison.
While they were living in Gunnison, Sanpete County, Utah, their daughter Emma took down sick with Dyptheria and died on the 14 May 1880. She was just three months short of being eight years of age at her death, but she was said to be a most brillant and unusal girl. Their son Ray Curtis said that his mother told him that his sister Emma thought a lot of him and at her death she said,”take care of little Ray.” Ray Curtis, her son, said that his mother always acted like everything was OK as long as he was around.
Just two weeks after teh death of their daughter Emma, Chauncey and Clarissa Curtis Cook were both rebaptized in the Gunnison Ward on the 1 June 1880. He was baptized by Jans Hansen and reconfirmed the same day by Jans Hansen. She was baptzied by Jans Hansen and reconfirmed the same day by Jno E. Metealf. They also had their sons, Chauncey Harvey Jr., Ray Curtis and Leroy Austin given a childs blessing in the Gunnison Ward. Chauncey Harvey, Jr. was blessed by Jno E. Metealf. Ray Curtis by C.A.Madsen on the 1 July 1880 and Leroy Austin by Fhos Wasdew on the 15 March 1885.
Clarissa must have told her son Ray Curtis about being rebaptized because he recalls about them being baptized and that he was told that that was a custom they practiced in those days.
According to the Gunnison Ward records they moved to Aurora, Utah just south of Saldna a few miles and they move was made on teh 15 March 1883. When they left Gunnison, their son Ray CUrtis recalls looking back at their home and that it was made of logs with a dirt roof. A son name Leroy Austin was born in Aurora, Utah on the 24 August 1881.
The family was told what a wonderful country Cainsville, Utah, was and the man who painted them such a minds eye picture advised Chauncey and his wife Clarissa to go there. Their son Ray Curtis said that his mother said she was never so heart sick in all her life as the day when she first seen Cainsville, Utah. Cainsville was a community of about ten families in Wayne County near the “Capitol Reef National Park” and is a desolate country.
While the family was living in Cainsville they went up the Dirty Devil River to visit family by the name of Bahanna. While they were in the river bottom a storm came up and before they could get up the river and across the other side a flood of water came down the river and tipped the wagon over. Chauncey got all of his family out but Leroy and the flood carried Chauncey and his son down river a ways before they could get to the bank where their son Ray Curtis helped them out. It was a close call for Clarissa and her family because some of them could have drowned. (Dirty Devil called Fremont).
While living in Cainsville her husband Chauncey helped build the canal for irrigation and they raised sugar cane and made sargum. There in Cainsville a son Marion Enos was born on the 14 March 1884. Then a daughter Bertha on 9 March 1886, then another daughter named Dora on the 26 March 1888.
During these years that the Cook children were growing up and should have been in school, they were living in places where they were unable to got to school so their mother Clarissa, being a school teacher at the time of her marriage, had to teach her children. She also taught her husband how to read and write. She used to sing to her children untill her husband made fun of her dinging then she quit singing. Her son Ray Curtis figured that was the reason that he couldn’t sing because his mother quit singing and didn’t teach her children how to sing. She was such a sober woman and never told jokes, but her husband was a great one for jokes and himself quite a singer.
While they were living in Cainsville her husband would go to Rabbit Valley and there in the mountains he worked very winter logging. He always took Molasses about one or two barrels with him and gave it all away to those he called his friends. Clarissa kicked about him giving it away and said that these people weren’t real friends. One saturday he finished up his job logging and was going to go back to Cainsville. The boss asked him to move his logs closer to the saw mill and when he spoke to the Oxen they wouldn’t pull. The men who was working there was watching and they said Chauncey did that on perpose. THe boss became angry at him but Chauncey told him that he didn’t do what happened and it wasn’t his fault.
In Cainsville they had a large log house with a leen-to in the back. The kitchen was in the leen-to, and an entrance, to an under ground cellar, was located in the leen-to. One day a man got drunk and drove his team of white mules and his buggy over the spot where the cellar, was located and their son Ray Curtis said it was a wonder that the celler didn’t cave in. In the summer time they sued water from the canal near by, which her husband help build, and they used it for the house. In the winter time they hauled water from the river. They held Sunday School in the large frunt room of their log house.
They fed their cattle the tops of the sugar cain ad the part that was left (after they run it through the cain press) that they called Pummy.
One night in Cainsville, their son Chauncey Harvey, Jr. was left to get his younger brothers and sisters to bed. Their son Ray Curtis heard what he thought was hammering and he asked his brother C. Harvey what it was. C. Harvey said it was some one building their house. Later Ray Curtis found out that his brother C. Harvey told him a lie, that the sound he heard was a dance going on in Cainsville, and that c. Harvey had told him that so he would go to sleep so C. Harvey could go to the dance where their parents were.
Their son Ray Curtis tells of one trip his parents took them on when they went to Grass Valley to visit relatives by the name of Durfee who had some Holstein cows and a bull. It was quite a sight to him to see cows with black and white markings. He also told of the time he got into some mischief in their celler in Cainsville and how a half a barrel of Molassas run to waste on the celler floor and how he waited for ten days for his mother to whip him as she said she would, and how the waiting for the whipping was worse than the whippings, which he finally got.
Her husband was hired by a man named Cass Hyde, to take his (Chauncey’s) horses and take Mr. Hyde was selling. They had four of the horses pulling a wagon load of supplies and the other horse was teamed up with one of Mr. Hydes to pull a bugy with the buyers in it. When they returned from Colorado and stopped at Cass Hyde’s farm in Hanksville, Cass Hyde’s brother deceided he was going to try Chauncey H. Cook out to see if he was the stronger. Chauncey told Hyde to stay away but he didn’t heed the warning so, Chauncey, being a strong man, took Hyde over his knee and threw him so hard it hert Hyde. They carried Hyde into the house and his brother, Cass came out to look and see what it was that hert his brother. Chauncey then told him that he (Chauncey) had hert his broter and that he had ment to hert him. Cass Hyde beat Chauncey out of most of the money they were to receive for taking Cass Hyde to Colorado.
In the fall of 1888 the Cook family moved from Cainsville to San Rafell, Utah. When they arrived in Son Rafell they moved into a cabin that had been deserted by sheep men when they were driven out by the Cattle Queen. The cattle queen was a woman that owned a large Cattle Ranch in San Rafell. SHe came to the camp and talked very nicely to Chauncey. Being a stern and big man, no one ever walked over Chauncey. He always talked to people in a stern way and he told the Cattle Queen that he was going to winter there and that he would have six or seven cows running loose with a herder to look after them. Their son Ray Curtis herded them on a little Indain poney and he helped his brother C. Harvey to milk them. That winter they cut down cottonwood trees to feed the cattle. When the grass froze so the cattle wouldn’t eat it. When the cows heard them chopping it they always came on the run and the cows ate the small limbs and the buds while the horses stripped the bark from off the trees. San Rafell was close to where the famous Old Outlaw hideout was located known as “Robbers Roost.” In the spring of 1889 the family moved over past to the town of Blake, Utah (Now called Green River) that was located on the green river.
Blake was a thriving railroad town at that time with a round house and all that was necessary for a railroad junction. It had a hotel and store there . They went up the river about five miles from the city and took up a 80 acre farm. There a daughter Lara “D” was born in a log cabin on the 11 December 1889. The ground was very flat for a good farm.
In the spring of 1890 they sold the farm or their equidy in it for potatoes, flour, bacon and other food amounting to the value of about $50.00. With about ten cows, five horses and two wagons they moved to Wellington, Utah on the Price River. They had to ford the Price River and got stuck. They stayed in WEllington for about a month then moved out on Coal Creek and stayed there untill the fall of 1890 cutting Railroad ties.
That fall of 1890 they moved to Spring Glen, Utah where their last child was born on the 18 July 1893 and they named him Junis F.
Ray Curtis said his mother was a good cook and made good salt rising bread and mince pies. He said that she made very good gravey that he enjoyed very much. In Spring Glen, Utah she was on the school board and served as school trustee, secratary and treasurer. She held no knows church positions and was considered quite beautiful and she was a quite spoken woman. She never raised her voice to her children in correcting them.
One time when they went in the wagon she always told her husband how it hurt her to climb in and out of the wagon. SHe had wore a truse for about 20 years to hold her utris in place and always blamed the getting in and out of the wagon for her trouble. Beside that she had a goirter in her neck but was never opperated on for that.
They finally moved to Pleasant Grove, Utah when all oft heir children were married. While there she didn’t feel well so the doctor Oscar Ernest Grua had her to go to Provo, Utah hospital and opperated on her femal organs to straighten her Utris. They found that she was full of Cancer and she was so bad that they didn’t even sew her up. One night she lie in the hospital bed, after they had given her epsom salts, and tried to get help to go to the bath room. No one came so she got out of bed by her self and fell on the floor. SHe lay there long enough to become exposed to cold before they found her. She took down with pneumonia and the doctor told her family that she had pneumonia and would only live a short time. The family got permission to take her home and doctor Grua took her in his old Ford car while her son Ray Curtis rode in the back seat and held his mother. She was only home about a week when she passed away from this life.
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