Oral History Program Ellen P. Moffet Done Interviewed by Mike Cushman 04 September 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ellen P. Moffett Done Interviewed by Mike Cushman 04 September 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Done, Ellen Moffet P., an oral history by Mike Cushman, 04 September 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ellen P. (Nellie) Moffett Done. The interview was conducted on September 4, 1971, by Mike Cushman, in Ogden, Utah. Done discusses her life in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico. Done’s brother Norman Moffett is also present and adds information. MC: You were in the colonies when you were very young. Tell me what you remember about the colonies. ED: When I was about three years old, we went up into the mountains to colonize the mountains in Old Mexico. We built a little house on a little creek they called Moffett Creek. My father was very careful to get water and wood for his family when we lived there. There was a little stream of water and down between were two kitchens. My mother's kitchen was over here, and my Aunt Mariah's was over there. That little stream came right between the kitchen doors and made it handy to get the water fresh from the creek. If the youngsters played in the water above where we put our bucket, they got spanked. We would go out into the forest and help gather wood, but Father saw to it that we had wood and water handy. Mother always, if possible, had a little garden of vegetables. She often had a little flower garden. When I see all these tiny flowers around here, they bring me back home. Mother was a nurse and consequently away from home a great deal taking care of people. She studied obstetrics and nursing in Salt Lake when her third baby was little. I do not remember what Father was doing. They were there in Salt Lake for quite a while. I seldom came home from school and found Mother there, and the other children had the same experience. She was just called out so much. She took care of obstetric cases. She was even was called out sometimes to 1 give people a little advice on how to treat their sick cows. Father was a good hand in helping people with their sick animals. I just remember so many times wishing I could come home and find Mother home. Once or twice as I came in at the gate, I smelled fresh bread. People who have not been through that do not know what a joy that would be to a child. I knew that she was home. I worked with her along in the garden and helped her what I could. She had nine children, and three of us lived. I would hear children talk about Grandma gave me this; my Aunt Mary gave that. I wondered why I did not have a grandma or an Aunt Mary or some relative. We were out there alone practically. Some of the families are off by themselves. After we had had a party when my youngest son was little, he was crying in the corner of the room. I found out what was the matter. He said, "I just never can be born anywhere where I'll have any relatives." He was lonesome. A lot of folks had their cousins or aunts or their uncles. Our people did not rally around us like they did. A lot of people asked how in the world it was Sister Moffett could always have garden stuff and flowers. You know why; she worked. She would carry seed. We moved a great deal, but she would always have a bag of vegetables and flower seeds to take with her when we moved. We could not run into the store and get those things in those days. It was a real joy to go down that little hillside to the garden and get us an artichoke, a turnip, a radish or something. Our school was not so good there. We had to walk. I do not remember how far it was to Primary or anywhere else, but it was quite a walk. Sometimes it seemed like it was three miles, but I do not hardly think it was that far. I can't really remember just how far it was. We used to like to go. It was a pleasant walk generally. I loved to look at the big pine trees. I really enjoyed the forest and the plant life and the squirrels and the little 2 animals. When we would get to Primary or somewhere else, our teachers and friends were there. They were real nice. Often a party travelling through or a family would stop at our place overnight and for a meal or two. That was quite a novelty, quite a break. No matter what time of the night they arrived or what time of day, Mother always was anxious to make them comfortable and welcome, although it was quite a hardship on her. We moved down from the mountains to Colonia Juarez. I was baptized in the river there. If I can remember that, I can remember a little bit about how old I was then. We moved out so as to have the schools. MC: You were born on May 14, 1883. ED: Yes. MC: At St. Johns, Arizona. ED: Yes. MC: How close was your aunt's, your father's other wife's house? ED: There was a street between. MC: What were your father and your mother's names? ED: Father was Joseph Ammon Moffett. Mother was Olive Catherine Emmett. MC: What was your aunt's name? ED: Annie Mariah Johnson. MC: What were these houses like that you first lived in? ED: It was a little two-room lumber shack. They were never very well- finished. We had a little fireplace in one and the kitchen in the other. They were very crude, very unfinished. 3 That was way up in the mountains. They never expected to stay there long. Mother was very rebellious about going there. We had lived in Juarez, and she had worked at the sawmill, cooking for the hands who worked there in order to help get lumber to build homes there in Juarez. Father had bought two lots and was expecting to build homes for each of them. Someone had talked him into taking his cattle and going farther out into the mountains. He did not have very many cattle, but people that get excited about things like that think they look pretty good. That was how we got to go on up into the mountains. We lost every head of cattle. When the Indians and the Mexicans got hungry for beef; that was the way a lot of the cattle went. We were allowed a milk cow. There were other families suffering the same inconvenience. Mother finally got out of there permanently. I used to long to go back to see that cave. Maybe you have heard of the olla caves there. That was quite a wonderful olla cave. I just caught a glimpse of it when I was quite young, and I always wanted to go back again and really see it, but I heard that it was deliberately destroyed. Some party got the idea that there were treasures buried in those rocks. It was built by hand. The glimpse I got of it was really a wonderful thing. Since I heard it was destroyed, I do not have the least desire to ever go back. There is nothing else that I want to see. We lived in Juarez for years. Father built the two homes there and maintained them. Mother kept up our garden and her orchard. Then we went to Dublan. There was land there. Father managed to get a farm. With a bunch of boys, it was kind of nice to have some land to work on. Our farm was right on the burial site for Montezuma. NM: They dug in to there and got some ancient articles. There are a lot of those Montezuma's along in that particular territory. 4 ED: How long did we live there in Dublan? NM: I do not know. I would have to look at a record on it. We came from Colonia Pacheco to Colonia Dublan to Colonia Juarez and then from Colonia Juarez to Colonia Dublan. You stayed there until the revolution broke out and had to get out. ED: It was willingly because we had to. Not very willingly! NM: Most of the people got out on the railroad. MC: This home in the mountains then was Colonia Pacheco. NM: It was Colonia Pacheco and Colonia Garcia. ED: The first place we lived we called Corrales. NM: There was also Colonia Chuichupa. They were all up in the mountains. MC: About how many people were living around up in the mountains where you were? ED: I do not know. MC: Were there many people or just a few? ED: No, there were not many. NM: Do you mean Mormon people? MC: Any people. NM: The Spanish people were not up in there very much. After they put the railroad up in there, then they got up into the timber country. Colonia Dublan and Colonia Dublan were not in the timber country, but Garcia and Pacheco were right in the timber country. MC: Where did you go to school in Colonia Pacheco? 5 ED: We had a little school in Pacheco after we moved to Pacheco. It was when we lived at the other place that we had so far to walk to Primary. NM: You were in Cave Valley for a short time. ED: Yes. NM: That is where I was born. That was north of Colonia Pacheco. MC: Which place were you talking about when you were talking about the two houses? ED: That was in Cave Valley. We lived in Cave Valley. Mother's house was here, and Aunt Mariah's was here. We used to have to take our empty buckets down that hill and bring them back with water. Father brought a little stream that ran down between the two kitchen doors. NM: That was close to Cave Valley. ED: The John Kartchners and his two families lived a little farther down to the south. Tape Interrupted MC: You were telling me a little bit about the garden your mother had. What kind of flowers did they have there? ED: Zinnias, marigolds, four o'clocks, morning glories and all of these common flowers. She always saved seed and seeded the plant when she planted in place. NM: There were a lot of wild flowers that were very pretty. It was not easy to get seed in there from the United States. Some of people took some in with them. They planted them and then raised seed from them down there. ED: Mother always had a package of seed for the garden and the flowers. 6 MC: What kinds of vegetables did she raise in the vegetable garden? ED: Potatoes, turnips, beets, radishes and carrots, just the common vegetables. MC: This was what you lived on then? ED: Yes. That was a big help. When we lived in the mountains, Father had to go down to Juarez and that vicinity to work to earn his bread and haul it up into the mountains for his family to eat for years. Finally he got tired of it. Mother got tired of it. Mother sent my older sister and my older brother down to Juarez to go to school because the school up there was not very good. She got them settled in school. Then pretty soon they sent word to her that my sister Delia was very sick and for her to come and take care of her. She just got ready in a hurry to go. She had typhoid fever. Mother said that she made up her mind when she was making that preparation to go that she would never come back to Pacheco to live. She was just so tired of that going out to earn the living and up to the mountains to eat it. I remember one time Father was expecting to go down and do a job in Juarez. He was delayed, and the next morning when he was about ready to go, we ate our last scratch of flour in our biscuits for breakfast. There wasn't any place to go for tomorrow. We just had to make it up the best we could. He was gone two weeks. During that two weeks, we did not have a bite of bread. That is when Mother's garden came through. I did not miss the bread. I do not ever remember being hungry for bread, but I remember distinctly that it was two weeks. When he came back, he brought flour. He decided that would be the last trip he would make that way. Some of the other families must have been in the same condition because one little boy ran out to meet his father and mother as they were coming home. He said, "Did you bring any flour?" They had been out of flour, too. She said, "Yes, and we brought some bread." She 7 could cook some hotcakes while they camped to let the horses rest at noon. That was such a wonderful thing in those days. That is where Mother's garden came in. Some of the neighbors could not see how it was that Sister Moffett always had garden stock. I know why. We sure helped her make it. Norman loved to help in the garden. Mother brought him a little hoe, and he prized that more than a kid prizes a bicycles nowadays. He just loved it. MC: What was life like in Juarez after you moved down into the larger colony? ED: It was much more civilized. We went to school then. We did not have to go very far to Sunday School, Primary or anywhere. There were more people, so it was more like civilization. Mother was still away a great deal on account of being a trained nurse and being called for. What kind of house did we first have in Juarez? NM: You had a little lumber shack. He added some more rooms onto it. There was just a bunch of rooms all in a row. MC: How many children were there in Juarez in your family? NM: I think the entire family. We did not have any born at all in Dublan, did we? ED: Lula was born in Dublan, rather. Those places ran so close together, I cannot remember. NM: I thought the entire family was born in the mountains and in Colonia Juarez. MC: Were some of Aunt Mariah's children born in Dublan? ED: I believe so. 8 NM: I think there was one or two born in Mariah's family. Two of them, I think, were born in Colonia Juarez. ED: Athelia was the youngest. She was Father's nineteenth child. MC: What was the school like in Colonia Juarez? ED: They had pretty good schools. NM: They had the district schools first. Then they had the academy. I went to the academy when Guy C. Wilson was the principal of it. ED: Some of the kids said, "They shipped us a good teacher." MC: What do you remember about school in Juarez? ED: I just went to school. I cannot remember anything special. The school was graded. I liked my teacher and got along. NM: Who was your teacher? ED: I do not remember that. I do not remember any of the teachers there only Guy C. Wilson was the one shipped in. I remember Miss Larson came. NM: Miss Larson was one of my teachers. ED: You had both of those teachers. I felt disappointed because I did not have either one of them. MC: Were you always glad to see summer come? ED: I cannot remember anything special about it. I did not dread the different seasons that I remember. We liked to go wandering in the forest among the trees when we lived where 9 they were. There were Cottonwood trees along the streams. There was no forest on the hills. MC: What did you do in the summertime? ED: I helped Mother with the garden and orchard what I could. She was quite good at having something for the youngsters to do. We had a nice peach orchard. We had a row of June peaches. The next row was July. We had about the nicest orchard there, I guess. NM: It was the nicest orchard for its size. ED: It was surely wonderful. We had a nice row of apple trees. We did not stay there long enough for the apples to bear. I visited there later when the apples were on and tested them. They were good. MC: How close was your Aunt Mariah's home in Colonia Juarez? ED: About two blocks. She lived down by the river. NM: It was farther than that. It must have been four blocks. ED: They were small blocks. Mother's house was up towards the hills. NM: It was west of our place. There was a hill that went up on the east side. We were up against the hill. MC: Did you spend much time at your aunt's house? ED: Very often Mother would be called out to stay overnight and maybe for a week with sick folks. We would stay with Aunt Mariah. We were always glad when Mother could be home. It was quite trying for her to be gone so much, but that was the way it had to be. MC: What was your Aunt Mariah like? 10 ED: She was a little short and heavyset. She was a very good woman. Mother was a little taller and not so heavyset. Aunt Mariah had the ten children. Mother had nine. MC: What was it like to be in a large family? ED: We were not the only big family. It was just very common for people to have big double families. That was the trend of the day. They were our brothers and sisters and all together. I remember one man came in with two wives. He did not have any children. I thought, "Of all the things. How could that man be so lazy?" Others had two families, and one had children and the other did not. It was just a common trend. Generally in the double families they each had children. Sometimes there were three wives in the family. All brothers and sisters worked and planned, ate and went hungry together. MC: I'll bet things were a little bit hectic around the breakfast table in the morning or at dinner time. ED: We always had something. Very often we had mush and milk for breakfast. We did not very often have sugar on it. We did have molasses. Father made molasses, and he made good molasses. I wish I could have a five- gallon can of that right now. Later on, my brother and a friend took up the making molasses. Father kept bees when I was older. We had good honey and good molasses. Father caught his first stand of bees on the wild and had a hive made ready for it. I do not know if he had heard that bees got away from them or what. But anyway he had a hive ready for these bees. They skipped out and left it. Later on we were riding out on the prairie. He was taking us in the wagon for a ride. There was a swarm of bees hanging around the fencepost. He said, "I've got to get those bees." He asked my little sister to take off her petticoat so he catch those bees. She would not do it. One of the other girls took off her petticoat. So he put that 11 right over the bees and broke the fencepost out. He took the bees. That was our first swarm that stayed with us. MC: You and the bees rode in the same wagon? ED: Yes. We rode in the same wagon. Having that petticoat over them kept them from getting out and stinging us. He bought some bees from somebody that was moving. He worked them up until he had forty stands. NM: He bought another stand or two from somebody there or else he would have soon been out of it. When the queen dies, you get out of it. If you have one or two stands, then they have a chance by taking the new laid eggs and making queens out of them. The bees will do that. ED: I think he had forty stands of bees at one time. NM: That was in Colonia Dublan. MC: How did you get the bees from Colonia Juarez to Colonia Dublan? ED: After the bees had settled for the night, Father would plug up the entrance and put the hive up in the wagon. I loved to work with the bees. I had twenty stands or more of my own after I was married. I very, very seldom ever got stung. I did not fight them. I knew how to deal with them. I don't think Norman got very many stings. He knew how to manage them. My younger sister, Athelia would get them mad all the time. She would fight them. If you fight a bee, it is going to sting. She finally learned that she must not kick around with them. We had one or two stands like Dart bees. They were really mean. If they were handled right, they were not bad. When it clouded up and got a little bit stormy, bees sure don't want anybody to bother them. Mother and Father both had a 12 knack or feeling with them. They trained the children to know how to deal with them so that we did not get stung much. MC: What was the secret in handling the bees? ED: Quiet. They did not like anything exciting. We would just open the hive carefully and quietly and without the slap, no jolts, no excitement. It was just as quietly as possible. If the weather was unsettled, they let you know that you had better stay away. We very seldom worked with them if the weather was not quite favorable. That was the means I had of giving my children music lessons and different things that we would not have had if I had not been a beekeeper. My honey was good. I kept it nice. I had plenty of sales for it. I reserved all the best and plenty for my family. The bees got in the honey wherever they could. There were yellow flowers growing along the ditch. That made really good clear honey. It was better than none. One woman came to buy a can of my good honey. She wanted it for such and such a price. I said, "This is my price, and I can't let go to one for one price and one to another." She said, "You could surely let me have it for that." I did not see any reason for that. We generally had plenty of good honey for the family. I had sales for all that I had left over. My husband did not do much with the bees. He was a carpenter and busy otherwise. Bees were my affair. His first wife had hers. She was a good hand at it. It really did help the family because we liked to keep bees. The second wife didn't want anything to do with the bees only eat the honey. She wasn't lazy. She wanted to short-curve it. She just did not like working with the bees. MC: What was Colonia Dublan like when you moved there? ED: It was quite a better place, wasn't it? 13 NM: It was a big open valley about thirty miles long and at least eight to ten miles wide. ED: There were traces of ancient irrigation ditches. When the farmers began to work to take their water from the lakes to their farms, they found where the ancient inhabitants had had ditch work. They had the same canals. NM: That was the reservoir that took off of the river about ten miles up the river. Then the east river was on the west side. They took it way up this end of the valley. The valley went on down clear out to some national lake and stored the water in there. At high water time, they would open it up and fill the reservoir. In the spring when the water would be taken other quarters than from the river there was not enough to divide. They drained the reservoirs and watered the summer crops. Most of that open country there they did not have any water for it. They just raised the one crop. The rainy season starts in latter part of June and July. We would raise beans and some types of corn. I think they managed to get a few alfalfa patches in there that bridged over. We got one crop when the rainy season started in July. MC: What were the seasons like in the colonies? NM: The seasons were not too much different than right here. MC: Was there snow there? NM: There was very little snow. If it would snow, it could possibly be gone the same day or night that it fell. Up in the high hills west of the towns, they had some snow. It lasted until along in May. It filled the ground full of water so that it drained out over the rest of the season on into late summer. MC: What were the falls like? 14 NM: Fall was in the end of the rainy season always. MC: Was the winter cold or dry or warm? NM: It was warmer than it is here, but not too much different. MC: What were the homes like in Colonia Dublan? ED: They were all the way from nice brick homes to little lumber shacks. NM: There were adobe shacks. They made the brick. Some fellows got busy and made the brick and burned them in kilns. They used a lot of them to build the later houses. The later houses were brick homes. Then they made the adobes out of the clay. It was mixed mud. MC: What was your house like in Colonia Dublan? ED: I had a little two-room brick house first and then another nice four-room brick house on a little farm. NM: The town was built in the valley. West of the town down about two miles, a river ran down through it. They took the water out of the river and irrigated that for about two miles and the one mile west of the river. East of the river it was about two miles to the town. Later they built canals. They took the water out of the east side of the river and took it all out on the flat beyond the town that I am speaking of. They took it way up high and took it out into the lakes which were east of the town and a little south. They filled the lakes and did pretty well with that. They took it out on that open country if they did not have water pouring in a lake. During the rainy season from July on into September, sometimes October, they would have more water than they would use. They made the 15 canal and filled those reservoirs out there. Some of it was taken into Dublan. Another part of it was on the open flat farther away. MC: How big a plot of ground was the house on in Dublan? NM: They had a five-acre block. ED: It gave us room for an orchard, a barnyard, home and a garden. Streets were about like these streets. They never got very many of them paved. NM: They followed Brigham Young's way of laying out country. When he came to Utah, he had the five-acre blocks and in some cases, ten-acre blocks here. MC: Did you go to school in Colonia Dublan? ED: Yes. NM: It was an eight-grade school. ED: It was just an ordinary country school. NM: It was just a regular eight-grade school that you wouldn't see any more now. In Juarez the academy went to the twelfth grade. MC: What was your best subject? ED: I did not have any best. We had geography, grammar, reading, writing and arithmetic. NM: Mathematics and drafting were mostly mine. I was always ahead of the class on drafting in the academy at Juarez. ED: I did not go back to Juarez for school. After we lived in Dublan, he did, but I did not. MC: You said you were married in the colonies. Which colony were you married in? 16 ED: I believe it was Dublan. MC: What was your husband's name? ED: Abraham Done. MC: You spoke of his first wife. ED: Her name was Elizabeth Robinson, and she was a good woman. MC: This was a polygamous family, too, then? ED: Yes. His third wife was a widow with five children when he married her. The authorities asked him to take her and take care of her children. He did a good job of it. MC: They still practiced polygamy then after the 1890s? ED: I guess so. I have heard that they are practicing it some places now, but I have not chased them out to tell them not to or to tell them to keep on. MC: Were these two wives still living when you were married to him? ED: They were both living. The three of us were living at the same time, but we each had our own homes. I lived with the first lady for a few years. Then I bought this little farm and built a little brick on it. It was just wonderful. MC: What did you think of polygamy? ED: I just knew it was one of God's commandments, and that that was a thing I was expected to do. I did it the best I could. I never envied the women that did not go into it, and I never felt to criticize them. My home was a polygamous home. All I could remember of my childhood were about Aunt Mariah and Mother. When I married Brother Done, he already had the two families. I just joined in with them the best I could. 17 That was the Lord's way of doing it in those days, and I was supposed to take my part. There were ups and downs, but where is there a family that does not have ups and downs? I do not know of anyone whether it is just one woman or two or three. Life is just that way. NM: In Colonia Dublan, in the colonies, it was very much like the early days of Utah. When they were coming into Utah, you remember the United States grabbed a lot of the men for the Spanish-American War and took them. A lot of them got killed, and that left a lot of women in Utah. Brigham Young then told the men, "Take more than one wife." That is about the way they did things down there. There were more women than there were men. MC: Was this polygamy sanctioned by the Church then? ED: Yes. MC: The Manifesto had come out before some of the polygamy in Colonia Dublan and some of the colonies. Did the Church Authorities then feel that the Manifesto applied to the United States because of the laws but not to Mexico since there were no laws against it? NM: It was not against any law in Mexico to have more than one wife. It was a nation-wide law in the United States, but it was not in Canada and it wasn't in Mexico. ED: That is how we came to go into Mexico. Father had the two wives, so we moved to Mexico. MC: How many children were there in your husband's families? 18 ED: Aunt Lizzie had nine. Aunt Louise had five when she was married to my husband, and she had four afterwards. I had nine children. MC: Twenty-nine altogether. ED: There was quite a bunch of us. MC: Did the families ever get together all at one time? ED: Yes, for holidays or outings. MC: What was it like with those kids running around? ED: It was like a bunch of youngsters. It was just a normal thing. So many groups were like that. There wasn't anything odd about it at least for me. It was just part of life. I was born into a double family and married into a triple family. That was the way of life. MC: The trouble we have just with two or three at sacrament meeting, I can imagine what it would be like with twenty-nine children sitting in sacrament meeting. ED: We did have confusion once in a while. Children broke the rules, but they were pretty good. Sometimes the mother would have to take them out to keep the place quiet. NM: They took it for granted that that was it. The same as they did in the early days of Utah. They made preparations for that. The families joined together sometimes, and sometimes they did not. Sometimes one would sit over there and the other would sit over here. Sometimes they were close together, and other times they were far apart. ED: Yes. We were all human beings. MC: Do you think there are some advantages to having grown up in a polygamous family that a child would miss in a modern-day stand? 19 ED: I remember thinking that certain families were not up to par because there was just the one wife. Children do get their queer ideas. I remember some of them, like he said, seemed so close together, and others kind of flung apart, but we were all humans. I know I considered Aunt Mariah's children my brothers and sisters. We were taught to share alike and be congenial. I tried to impress on my children to keep the rest of the family right and be glad of them. MC: Do you think the children learned? NM: We just learned to do one thing. We learned to live and let live. ED: Yes. We tried to do that. MC: Do you think there were better disciplined children in these large families than the small ones today? ED: Some of the families were well-disciplined, and some were at riot. They were all human. MC: You then moved out of Colonia Dublan in the exodus, which was in August of 1912. What do you remember about the exodus? ED: I lived over on the little farm. Mother and the other families lived on this side. I heard a little rumor about us having to move. The rebels were coming through and going to kill all the white people. NM: They said that Pancho Villa was going to kill all the white people, but that was a misunderstanding. When he made his threat, some of the white people and some of the Mexicans got together, and the Mexicans told them that that was what Pancho Villa was going to do. The Mexicans were afraid of him. They put that story up to try to get the 20 whites to build up an army to take care of them. Pancho Villa turned out to be a very fine fellow and very much of a man who believed to live and let live. ED: There were just a lot of false reports that had stirred up this trouble. NM: He built up some kind of an adopted leader. He adopted a lot of the U.S. habits and took them into his home. MC: You were married, then, at the time of the exodus. ED: Yes. MC: Do you remember approximately what year you were married? ED: I just cannot remember. MC: Did you leave with the colonists who went on the railroad? ED: Yes. MC: Do you remember what it was like when you first heard that you were going to leave on the railroad? ED: We were thankful for the railroad. We did not like the idea of having to leave everything that we worked so hard for so long, but Norman can tell you a whole lot more about than I can. There were very few, I guess, that went any other way except on the railroad when we left there when the exodus really took place. NM: It was a hundred and some odd miles to the border overland, and you know what that will do to a team. Then they were also running into different bands of rebels on that trip. When they came out on the railroad, they did not have that difficulty. The army furnished protection within the train, and they did not have any trouble at all on the 21 railroad. They came out to Ciudad Juarez. That is just across from El Paso. It was not quite as bad as they had anticipated. The revolutionists in Mexico were actually friends to the Americans and not, as they had thought… a bunch of bandits. The Mexican government became very friendly with all the white people, with all the colors. MC: What do you remember when you first went out to get on the train? ED: I had a baby in each arm and my bundles. The other children just got onto the train the best they could. MC: Do you remember anything about the train ride itself? ED: It was the first time I had never been on a train. It was just like walking into a house and sitting down and waiting to get there. The train stopped a time or two, but there was nothing that happened that was out of the way. MC: There was not much water on the train, was there? NM: They had to water along the line when they filled the engine. There were different places that they had water along the railroad line. If they went overland, they would go down to the valley to Colonia Diaz and from Colonia Diaz on down to the line. They had to carry their water. They had to have their barrels on wagons. Certain seasons were that way. During the rainy season, they had no trouble at all. MC: What did you do after you got into El Paso? ED: At first there was a big lumber yard that opened up to let this bunch of people stay there until they could get settled somewhere else. The Pierce man owned that. NM: Was that in Ciudad Juarez and not in El Paso? 22 ED: Yes. Brother Done rented a place over in El Paso for his family. We got settled there before long. We did not stay at the lumber yard except for a night or two. NM: The lumber yard had to go out of business for a while. It was just a place where they could camp when the ones got out there to Ciudad Juarez. That is south of the border. They just made those places until they could arrange the papers with the authorities in the United States for them getting out of Mexico. MC: Where did you go then when you left Mexico? NM: Some of them went up into New Mexico and over in different parts of Arizona. ED: We went into Arizona. NM: You went over to Tucson and then over to Mesa. ED: Yes. NM: Others went over into New Mexico and other quarters in Arizona. MC: Did your mother and the girls go into Idaho? ED: Yes. Mother's children were already up in Idaho. NM: Marion Clark took one of my sisters up in Idaho, and my mother went up there after a while. The family did not. You never went up there. ED: No, but Lula, Zela and Mother went. NM: Those are the two younger sisters. MC: Where did you go from El Paso? 23 ED: We went into El Paso and were there awhile. Then we went. We got a farm somewhere around in there by the river? MC: About how long were you out of Mexico? ED: I did go back there for six years later, but I do not remember how long. MC: Where did you stay when you went back? ED: I did not want to go back to Mexico. I fought it. My husband wanted to go back. He felt like he could take up just about where he left off. When we got there, his tools were gone. There was not anything to pick up. We made the best of it that we could for a while. He kept talking about going back. One morning he was going to town. I said, "Get me a wash board." I had a big washing to do, and the wash board I was using had a hole or two in it. That did not feel good on the fingers or the clothes. He said, "No, I don't want to buy a thing that we can get on without. We're going back to Mexico." I said, "For goodness sakes, start to pack right now. Let's go." I was not going to use that wash board. I went willingly because I had to. We stayed about six years and came out again. MC: What was it like then? ED: Very much like it was before. MC: This was in Colonia Dublan? ED: Yes. NM: Where did you live? You had to wait for the Mexicans to get out of your own home. You camped around somewhere. You were over to Father's, I guess. ED: I guess I stayed with Father and Mother. 24 NM: That was only a block away. ED: The Mexicans had taken possession of my home and property. Somebody had told them that if they just hang on to it, it would be theirs. They were persuaded that they would have to move, and I got back into my own home. NM: Casas Grandes authorities let them know that they had to give it to you. They informed these people that they would have to vacate the homes when the whites came back to their homes. MC: Were the homes in the same condition? ED: They were kind of run down but not too bad. NM: There were some homes that the Mexicans still held onto, and they built some homes there themselves. They had a mixed group. Before that it was all whites. MC: Who were the Mexicans who had moved into these towns? Were they part of the rebels, or were they just Mexicans from the surrounding areas? NM: It was some of the people from other quarters, and some of the people right nearby. The rebels were not very bad people. It is an awful black mark, but Pancho Villa was a very good man. He met and gave justice one to the other. MC: You talked about the Mexicans who lived in some of the homes and the colonies when the colonists were gone. What were your feelings toward the Mexicans as a whole? ED: I had a much kinder feeling toward them than many people did. My mother was very careful to have us respect them as other people and to respect their rights. I did not mingle with them as much as some of the young people did. I did not get the language because I did not hang around as close as some of them did. 25 Tape Interrupted MC: We were talking about the Mexican people. You said your mother had always taught you children to respect the Mexicans, but you did not learn the language. ED: She learned the language very well. He knows it better than a lot of the Mexicans. I did not get it like some of them did. I can talk a little Spanish. MC: You prefer the United States then over the life you had in Mexico? ED: Yes. It was a better grade of civilization, better schools and better ways of managing. We had as many advantages up there in the mountains. Our home was properly kept. Wherever there are more people, there are generally more civilization. MC: Do you think the people today are not as close or closer than they were then? ED: There are groups that are closer, and groups that are farther. Human beings are widespread. I think as a general rule, there are more that are close than there used to be. NM: I would rather be here in Ogden for several reasons. Sometimes down there some big gun would take all you had if he figured he could get it. You have that same thing here, but they have got a law here and they kind of protect you against it. There you did not have much of that. We have the comfort of knowing who you are here. We did not know there. It is different now. It is different there now than it was. MC: You like the freedom and the protection then that the United States offers over what was available in the colonies? NM: That is far beyond. However, in the last two or three years, Mexico is bettering and working with members of the United States who have interests in becoming as brothers together. Before then, it wasn't, but they are getting along now in Mexico. 26 MC: Thank you very much. 27