Oral History Program William B. Farnsworth Interviewed by Mike Cushman 17 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah William B. Farnsworth Interviewed by Mike Cushman 17 August 1971 Copyright © 2014 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: Farnsworth, William B., an oral history by Mike Cushman, 17 August 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 William B. Farnsworth. The interview was conducted on August 17, 1971, by Mike Cushman, at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Farnsworth discusses growing up in the Mormon colonies in Mexico. He also talks about the Exodus as well as his family. MC: What if you start by telling us where you were born and the date? WF: I was born in Colonia Juarez, the 21st of April, correction the 10th of April, 1921. We were in my grandmother’s home. MC: Can you tell us some of the first things you remember about the colonies? WF: I suppose it was from the Colonia Garcia. I don’t know just exactly when we moved to Garcia, but uh, we moved there when I was quite young. And, uh, the recollections I have the most, of course, are cattle ranching, milking cows. We lived across the street from a dairy where they made cheese, and uh, the branding of cattle and killing of hogs for meat, killing of calves for meat, but uh, primarily milking cows in the summer and, uh let them go in the winter, and then school. I remember school. In a little brick house, brick building, church house. Church was held in one end and core classes and grade school were in the other end. Two grades in each room. It was there that I saw my first airplane. It was a small cub-type piper airplane. I was in the valley, right in the meadow, about a block and a half from the school and, uh, school didn’t have a chance, all the kids left school and went down to see the airplane. As little as I realized then that airplane would make, play a major part in my life because I’ve flown airplanes now for the last twenty-eight years. There was a sawmill in the valley, it was run by a couple of 1 my uncles, Uncle Bob and Uncle Art. But, in general, in was a very small meadow with the farming and ranching. MC: What was Colonia Garcia like as far as the land? How was the town laid out and where did you live in relationship to the town? WF: There was one main street, and I guess it was probably, the town was probably three blocks wide, as far as the houses were concerned and maybe twelve-fourteen blocks long. The main street was where there was one store, there was a racetrack on this street where, whenever we participated in a fair or celebrated some holiday, we always had horses run on this racetrack. There were only two tracks, so generally only two horses would run at a time. It was right down Main Street. Of course there were no cement sidewalks or asphalt streets, it was all, it was dirt, and there were ditches that ran down the sides of the streets. These were for irrigation purposes. So, mot of the families had gardens. There were maybe two, not more than three houses to the block and the houses generally went halfway through the block from the front to the back, and there were corrals and milking facilities, and then back in the garden, so generally a house went clear through the block. So there, the main street had houses on each side and on the streets that were on the opposite sides of Main Street, the houses generally faced the corrals of the families that lived on Main Street. The farms that the individuals worked were on the West side of town, and it was a very pretty meadow type valley. I’d say the valley was probably ten miles wide, and when I say wide, I’m talking about ninety degrees from the directions Main Street ran. And so all the farms were the west side of town, and so then the house were on the East side of the meadow. And there was a creek that ran down the valley on the east side of the town, and this is where, we 2 as kids, went down and caught fish by reaching under rocks and we’d see fish hide under a rock and we’d go in bare-footed and catch them bare-handed. Of course I was baptized in that creek on my birthday by my Uncle Steve. Water was cold as I’ll get out, mountain stream in April. So, I’ll always remember that baptism. I remember not long after that baptism, I was walking down the trail from the town going down to the creek and I ran into a rattlesnake, happened to be a mother rattlesnake. And just as we ran into her, she opened her mouth and swallowed about six baby young, went right down her throat. So, these are the little things I remember. My dad had a, uh, my dad was primarily in the hunting business. He would bring individuals from the United States down into Mexico and they would hunt for bear and lion. And so he had about a hundred head of cow, and one day he turned me loose, I guess I must have been all of seven or eight years old, on one of the horses to drive the herd of horses down to the pasture which was in the North end of town, and when we left the house, the gate that held the horses in, instead of pulling the bars all the way back and getting them out of the way of the horses, he left them, he just dropped them. So the horses had to jump over the bars as they went out the front of the yard. In doing so, they jumped and then started running, and when my horse jumped the bar, I let him have the reigns to jump the bar and I never got the reigns back, and so the faster he ran to catch the horses, the faster the horses ran to get to the pasture and we had to turn two corners to get there and the first corner the horse turned and I didn’t. I kept going. So, uh, there are these types of experiences. But it was strictly horseback, cattleranching country, with a little farming and gardening. MC: You mentioned your uncles, how many uncles did you have? 3 WF: There were about, I recall, about twenty families that lived in the valley, and all of us were related, except the Clarks and I’m not too sure if we were related or not. But my grandfather had four wives and thirty-five children, I believe, thirty-five or thirty-seven, I think it was thirty-five. So most of our relatives lived either in Garcia, or Colonia Pacheco, or Dublán. One of the wives, when my grandfather died, took her family and came back to Salt Lake. So her descendants are in this area here. But most of, the first wife only had four children and she didn’t stay with her husband, and I’m not even sure what the problem is. But the last three stayed with him until he died and the first one moved to Salt Lake, the other two in the colony. And so most of these were descendants of those two women. But of the twenty families, I think we’re related to all but one. MC: Were your parents both born in the colonies? WF: No, my dad was born in Colonia Pacheco, which is about ten miles north of Garcia. But my mother was born in Oklahoma. She left there when she was three years old and moved to the Texas area and she met my dad in El Paso, Texas. MC: Did your dad ever mention some of the things that have happened to him, or that he remembered in the colonies? WF: Yes, he was always telling us stories, I suppose the only one I really remember is, well we were living in Garcia, some of the cattle were rustled by some Mexicans, and four of the men who had cattle involved trailed these Mexicans and they found them in a small canyon, I guess it was a narrow canyon, mountains on both sides were quite high, and the cattle were corralled into a large corral down in the canyon. But when they showed up at the canyon, or the corral, they didn’t find any people. So they started to open the 4 gate to let the cattle out to drive them off, and when they did, they heard a voice from the side of the mountain there tell them to leave those cattle alone, that they belonged to them. It turned out when they looked up they saw several rifles staring them right in the eye. They were staring the rifles right down the barrel. The men, when they went to open the corral, kept their horses nearby, by the reigns, so then immediately put their horses into position, to where, if anyone fired, the horses would probably be hit first. They blocked each other there for about three or four or five hours. To continue, they were blocking each other and they spent most of the day facing each other, both of them having, both sides having rifles. Cause the men had taken their rifles out of their holsters on their saddle. Each one had a saddle with a rifle on it. One of the men, as I recall it, my dad talked to the leader of the group out in the open, so that they could more directly discuss the situation, and the minute they did, the minute he showed himself, then my dad told him he’s not to move, because the minute he moves, he’s a dead man. Then he told, my dad was the leader of the group, because most of the cattle were his. So he told the other three men to open the corral and let the cattle out, and he held a beat on the leader of the group, and they drove the cattle out of there and they weren’t followed. No one got hurt and they got their cattle back. I remember that story, my dad told it to me, he was involved, that’s about all I can remember. MC: Who was your dad like? WF: Well, of course, being prejudice he was pretty much a hero to us. Because when he came to Mexico he was gone quite frequently in Chicago, New York soliciting or selling his hunting party arrangement, and he definitely brought high ranking military officers or bankers or people who were incident on getting a lion or a bear. He guaranteed them a 5 lion and a bear, and they generally were down there for twenty days’ trip. So whenever he came home, he was always loaded with groceries and goodies, what he had for the hunting party, and of course, we all participated in the niceties of life. He was a very positive individual in that you could always depend on what he said, and what he said, he meant. That’s what I mean by positive. There was no question what he wanted. Of course he was always in chaps and spurs, with a revolver on his side while we were in Mexico while he was there, and he was an expert shot. In fact, when we moved to the United States, he participated in many a pistol match and he always walked away with first place, many, many, many times. So, and he always taught us kids how to, and did teach all of us, how to shoot a pistol and a rifle. He was very incident, hardly unable to handle a gun, but we worshipped our dad a great deal. I guess the fact that he was away a lot made us realize how much we did like him, how much we loved him. I remember one time when he and my uncle Dewey, his full brother, came off the range with a cow and she turned out to be a cow with a, with very wide horns, more of a range cow. I guess her horns must have been, the tips of them, the tips of them I remember were three or four feet apart, and she had a calf that was about a year old. They brought this cow and calf into the corral. My two brothers and I, the oldest brothers and myself-I was the oldest in the family-were behind the barn, and when we saw dad and Uncle Dewey drive into the front and put the cow in the corral, I made a beeline right through the corral to, that was the shortest distance between the two points, and of course my two brothers followed. I got clear through the corral when just about the time I went over the fence I heard the cow give out a beller. I looked back and she had her own like the third boy down on the ground and she couldn’t get to him because of the 6 horns. She had one horn on each side of him and her back part of her was jumping over him, trying to get those horns further down in. The only thing that happened was her front hoof stepped on one of his arms. But I remember my dad coming in the opposite direction I was going, and he jumped that fence, with pistol in hand, and he didn’t dare shoot, for he’d hit the boy as well, or the cow, but by the time he got there, the cow decided she’d had enough and left. But the interesting part is that the calf was brought in for beef, and when we, that night they put the calf in the barn, had a lantern in there, and we all shot the calf before we butchered it. He shot the calf, and when he did, the lantern went out because, I suppose the shockwave from the gun blew the lantern out, but anyway, it went out and the cow bellered, and when that cow bellered, people were running all directions. Pretty distinct experience. In that same barn, I used to milk one or two cows all during the winter for our milk, and range cattle, you have to let the calf start the milk and then you milk the cow and leave the stripping’s for the calf. When you’re through you take the calf away from the cow and put in it in the cabinet for the next milking. I proceeded to do this on a cow they just brought off the range. Just about the time I tried on this particular cow, we had to tie her up, while I’d milk her. I made the mistake of untying her and when the, I tried to get the calf away from the cow, she let out a beller and she picked me up. I still have the scar right in my groin. She picked me up and threw me clear over her back, and I remember that very clearly. She threw me clear over her back and I remember hollering to Jack who was holding the barn door closed so they couldn’t get out while I was trying something. I was hollering at Jack to open the door and I landed on my feet, and if I remember I was running when I hit and out that barn, of course that’s the way I remember it, but it probably didn’t happen. I 7 probably bounced three times on the ground before I got up, but I remember flying over her back. Another time, they were bringing all the cattle in for milking during the summer. We milked big herds during the summer, four or five hundred head. I went out to meet my dad and the cowboys bringing the cattle in, and there was a big, bally faced bull that was always at the end of the herd. My dad put me on him and I rode him into town behind the herd of cattle. Once they were corralled, I got off the bull and started towards the fence, and when I did, I heard a beller, and I looked around, that cow had me bore sighted and I just beat her to the fence. These are the things I remember. Strictly a small farming community with a lot of cattle. MC: What was your father’s name? WF: It was William Jefferson, William J. MC: How about your grandfather’s name? WF: Steven Albert. MC: Was your father in Mexico the time of the Exodus? WF: I don’t think so. That was about 1912, wasn’t it? Something like that. I don’t know whether he was part of the Exodus or not. I never heard him, I know my grandmother used to tell us stories about Pancho Villa-Matter of fact, I don’t think my grandmother and family left Mexico when Pancho Villa came down because I remember my grandmother telling stories of having to feed and shelter some of Pancho Villa’s soldiers. So I don’t think, see some of them stayed, all of them didn’t go. I think my grandmother and her family stayed in Mexico, because I never heard them talk about the Exodus. MC: Which colony did they stay in? 8 WF: They were in Dublán at the time, and my grandmother remembers, I mean I remember her telling me that she entertained, and I use the word entertained loosely, some of the soldiers. MC: Did she tell you anything of what it was like then, or what it was like after the people left. WF: No, if she did I don’t remember it. The only thing I remember about Pancho Villa was that in Dublán, considerably larger town than Garcia, maybe three or four times larger, there was a store, if I remember, it was owned by Romney and Bowmen Partnership. I used to play in the ashes of that store. Pancho Villa and his people burned it down. There was a big safe there that we used to play on, which was essentially the ruins of the old store. It was right across the street from the flourmill. But the flourmill they left alone. They did burn the one store down. That’s about all I remember about Pancho Villa. MC: Did you spend some time in Colonia Dublán? WF: Well, I lived for four years in Colonia Dublán, three or four, we moved there, we moved from Colonia Garcia about 1930-31, and then we moved out, to El Paso, Texas in 1935, May of 1935. MC: What was Colonia Dublán like? WF: Colonia Dublán was built in an area that the mountains were, oh I’d say, fifteen miles both east and west of the town. It was a great big flat area, and in fact, the Juarez people used to call us buzzard flat, and we used to call the Juarez the post hole. They were built down in a canyon and we were built down in a flat. In fact, there was another town in the same, well there’s three or four towns in the same area that were in the same large valley. It was Nuevas Casas Grandes, which is two miles south of Colonia 9 Dublán. And then there was Old Town, which, it was Casas Grandes, it was about sixseven miles, oh, southeast of Dublán, and they were all in the same valley type of, and within this mountain ranges that you could see in the town. And of course, Dublán was the same type of place where the town’s people all lived relatively close together. I’d say Dublán probably consists of maybe eight of nine streets wide, wide meaning east to west, and maybe twenty blocks long, north to south. There was a railroad that went through Dublán, and there was a train that came down once a day, oh actually every other day, I think it was. It came down one day and went back the next day to Juarez, which it right across the street, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. And that was, we were around 170 km south of El Paso, Texas and it took the train all day to make the trip. So the town, the business part of town, was really on both sides of the railroad tracks. The, most of the white people, the LDS people, lived west of the tracks and there were a few LDS families living east of the track, but most of the Mexicans lived on the east side of the track. There were two grocery stores, as I recall. Of course, these grocery stores had everything from leather goods up to edibles, and my Uncle, Oren Romney, owned a tannery as well which was behind his store, and believe me, tannery smelled. There was a flourmill, actually two flourmills in Dublán, one of them owned by President Bowman, who was president of the stake, and, of course a lot of families had some interest in the mill, President Bowman ran it, but a lot of families had money in it. So it was kind of a corporation. The Gonzales’s owned the mill across the tracks, there again, it was Mexicans on one side and LDS families on the other. When it was a, the only movie we had was Nuevo Casa Grandes, we used to walk two miles down the track to see silent movies in Nuevo Casa Grandes. The irrigation was done by 10 water that was collected in two lakes, about seven miles southeast of town... Irrigation system… My cousin and I, since my Uncle Jess, in Dublán, I guess about five or six of the families in Dublán were related on my side of the family. But most of the families in Dublán were not related, but Uncle Jess married my dad’s sister. He was the man controlling the water, irrigation. So, several times, my cousin and I, Jamar, he’s a couple years older than I am, took a team of horses and a harrow and proceeded clear up the canal from the lakes to town, by pulling out all of the, using the harrow to get out all the weeds and all the moss, so the water would run through. He was the water master, there again, same type of arrangement, each family had part of their lot in the gardens, irrigation type of things and behind the row of houses that were the furthest west in town were all the farms. The Galeana River ran through Dublán and down. My cousin and I used to go fishing and swimming a lot, when there were floods. Otherwise it was generally empty. In Dublán is where I joined the scout program. My Uncle Jess, again, was the scout master. I remember laying out that field behind our house, actually we didn’t own the farm. We lived on a house that was owned by the Whipples. Someone else farmed the land behind there, but I remember laying out the farm. I spent a lot of time on that farm, pacing it off and laying it down on paper to pass first class scout tests. A lot of memories on that area. I lived next door to a family named Jones. This was my only real exposure to polygamy, I guess. They had married in polygamy after the Manifesto, and so both the women and the man were excommunicated, but the children all went to church with us and we all went to church together and the family insisted on the children going to church, just that the women and the man were excommunicated. That was my only real exposure to polygamy. His name was Jones. 11 MC: What was this family like, this polygamy family that you lived next door to? WF: Well, I not sure I know what you mean by like, but I know the two women got along beautifully. They worked together and they tended the children, considered both of them are mothers, regardless of which one’s the actual mother, the children were tended by both women, the got along beautifully, there was a great old happiness in the home. They both lived in different houses. They were both on the same lot. Of course, his main income was from milking cows. He didn’t have a farm, his was primarily in the dairy business, so he milked the dairy. There was a dairy and a cheese factory in Dublán as well. In fact, a recall, right here on this campus is the one that ran the cheese factory. He’s a professor here on campus. There are several people here on campus that I knew as a child. There’s Amy Valentine, who was, her dad was superintendent of the academy in Juarez, which was high school. Our high school education was, all the colonies had to send their children to Colonia Juarez for high school education because there was only one high school that taught in all economy. The great schools, of course, were in the chapel, in the buildings where the chapels were. But Amy Valentine is there, a recall, Tony Bentley. Tony Bentley married my cousin. They all, they’re all youngsters from the colony, and I knew them as children. Ella Morris, I think her name now is, she’s on information desk up there in the Smoot building. She’s my cousin. I knew her when she was a young girl and she knew me. In fact, I spent a lot of time over at her home because I was, her brother and I were running around together an awful lot. But I haven’t talked to them, I’m sure they, those all that I’ve mentioned, are a little older than I am, two or three years, so they probably have better recollection than I. 12 MC: Do you remember your dad telling you what the relationship was between the LDS people, the whites and the Mexican people? WF: No, as a matter of fact, we always had a Mexican lady working for us, and I remember as kids we thoroughly enjoyed her taking care of us. She, we loved her almost like a mother because she was good to us. I remember, still remember her name. Her name was Hana Baler. And she stayed with us, even during times during Depression, we couldn’t even pay her. She stayed with us and of course, ate our beans and flour tortillas along with us and took food home to her children. So, there were times there when money was really tight. Dad wasn’t having too much luck getting hunting parties down into Mexico because things were pretty tight at one time, right during Depression years. I remember when we would kill hogs, we’d always send the head to a Mexican family to have tamales made from the meat off of the head. So there wasn’t a scrap of meat or anything else wasted off of those animals. I don’t think I could eat one today, a tamale that was made from a pig head, but they were sure delicious in those days. In fact, we made sure we got every drip of goody out of the cornhusk that wrapped the tamale. I remember that was very tasty. But as far as relations between the Mexicans and the Americans, they were very good to my knowledge. I knew of no ill feelings whatsoever. Several of the families in Garcia worked for my dad taking hunting parties out, in fact, about half of the town worked for my dad. I remember they brought hunting parties down, half the town, the men would disappear out on hunting parties with my dad. In fact, I had a great deal of personal feelings for those Mexicans, really. MC: Did you ever go out on a hunting party? 13 WF: Yes, I went on two that I remember. One of them was an antelope hunt. There was a large valley on the east side of Dublán, just on the other side of the first range of mountains where there was considerable amount of antelope, and my dad owned a big Buick touring car that had, all it had was the abscesses type of roof on it with the flap type of windows that you could take and snap them on and off. It had the cellophane type of a window. So we’d taken, snapped all the blinders off of this thing, and all you’d have was the roof and the bottom part of the touring car and we’d run into a herd of antelope, and they will stay right along with you, right along the side and the same speed, and then all the sudden they decide, you start shooting at them, they’ll decide they’ve got to go faster and instead of going away, they’ll cut in front of the car. That’s when you stop the car, when they were cutting in front, and generally get two or three antelope. I got some pictures at home showing me holding some antelope, dead antelope by the horns. My brother and I went with my dad and the hunting party, up into the Gavilan area, three rivers, Chihuahua, just up in the Sonora, western Chihuahua and eastern Sonora area. My brother and I were riding ahead of the group one day and two deer, a buck and a doe, saw the group but didn’t’ see us, and, again, instead of going off in the opposite direction, they ran ahead and started to cross in front, I don’t know why deer and antelope have a tendency to do that, but these two deer almost ran into Jack and I, my brother and I. In fact, when they saw us they were so close and running so fast that I remember seeing the buck leap, and he had to leap, not only forward, but sideways to keep from hitting us. He literally leaped right over the head of my horse. The hunting party, of course, didn’t shoot the deer because they knew we were up there. That particular hunt took a lot of wild turkey, there were a lot of wild 14 turkey in that area. I remember my dad, he’s quite a marksman with rifles and pistols, and this one individual, I don’t know what he was, if he was a banker or what he was, but he would take two shots at this lion, and generally you don’t get that many shots at a lion, you only get one. But he had taken two shots and missed, and so my dad behind him, about the time he pulled the trigger, my dad shot at the same time and the guy got it the third shot. Now who hit him, I don’t know, but he was dead the third shot. MC: I think that’ll do for today, thank you very much. WF: Very good. 15