Thomas Grover My father's name is Thomas Grover; he was born in the town of White Hall Washington, New York, July 21, 1807, Edmond Grover, the immigrant, came to America on the ship named 'Truelove' in the year 1630 from England. The Grovers' are scotch and came from Scotland. My mother's name was Hannah Tupper; she was born in Nashua, New Hampshire. Her father's name was Silas Tupper, and her mother's name was Hannah Ladd. The Tuppers' came to America on the 'Mayflower' in 1620 under an assumed name. so you see I am nearly an American. I, Thomas Grover III, was born November 17, 1845, in Navoo Hancock County, Illinois. My mother was a plural wife and I am one of the first boys born in polygamy, if not the first. we crossed the Mississippi river in February 1846 enroute to the west. I was eleven weeks old at that time, and we came on to Winter Quarters that winter. In the spring of '47 father left the family in care of General Charles C. Rich and went with President Young and Company to find a new home in the west, and the family came along with General Charles C. Rich. We arrived in Salt Lake Valley, October 3, 1847. I don't think we wintered at the Fort but in our wagons, Very early in the spring we went north to where Centerville is now located, and there we put in garden and crops, therefore, I knew nothing of Salt Lake City until some years later. I remember of seeing the Indian ponies watering along the side of our corn patch. One day that spring our neighbor's daughter came to our camp with a big piece of bread and butter. I said, "Mary Ann, please give me a bite of your bread and butter." She said, "No, I won't!" I turned to mother and said, "Ma, our corn will soon be ripe and I can have some corn bread then." The cricketts didn't reach as far north as we were so we raised a good crop and did not suffer for something to eat. We were out of provisions before we went north, but the Indians brought us wild fowl, wild fowl eggs, segoes, thistles and any¬thing they couldn't eat they brought to us. The Indians were always a friend to my father and his family because he always fed them and treated them right during the summer of '48. Father and William Duell had a quarrel, and Father moved nearly to North Cottonwood Creek where Farmington now is, there he built a log house and moved the family into it and then he was sent to California by the President of the Church to settle some business pertaining to the Sam Brannan Co. that went around Cape Horn and up the coast to California. The ship on which they sailed was named Brooklyn. Jhen they arrived there Father settled the business. In the meantime gold had been discovered and everybody was excited over ot. Father went to a merchant and told him that he, Thomas Grover, wanted one thousand dollars credit for thirty days. The man looded at father for a minate and said,"you can have it". They got their outfit and went to digging gold. Father stayed in the mines until he had all the told he wanted then he went to Sacramento and got two yoke of Spanish oxen and a wagon and what he thought the family needed, and then came home. There was another bunch of men started to follow father's bunch for a day or two with the intentions of robbing, but one evening they camped a little distance apart and our party told the other party they would give them fifteen minutes to get out of sight on the back trail, and they left at once. father arrived home allright in the fall of '49, and in the spring of 1850 we went East. This time father went to buy cattle, and mother went to New Hampshire to get her mother. In the spring of '50 we started east by going down the big mountain on the east side. I remember of seeing big dry pine trees in the snow on the sough side and up the canyon. Up until this time I didn't remember anything about SaIt Lake City, but from now on I will tell things that I saw and did when we got onto the sweetwater. A big gray wolf followed up for a day or two, I can just see him now as he would come into our campe ground and pick up the scraps. At the three crossings of the sweetwater father stopped and got behind a ledge of rock and when Mr. Wolf came up he shot him. When we got down on the Platte River the colera broke out among the immigrants and you could see them burying their dead at all times. Daniel Davis, who was with us, died and was buried on the plains. We arrived at Council Bluffs allright. father went to Missouri and bought some cattle and Mother went to New Hampshire and got her mother, and brought her to Iowa. In the spring of '53 we left Iowa with one hundred and fifty cows, some young cattle, ten yoke of oxen on two wagons and the family. father hired a man to drive one team and there was also a boy about sisteen years old with us; he and my sister, Carline, and myself drove the cattle. we traveled alone all the way across the plains. Travelers ask father if he was not afraid of the Indians; he said, "No, they are my friends, and I am safer with them than with you." There were lots of buffalo on the plains and sometimes we had to stop for half a day for them to pass; going to and from water they looked like a black moving mass is far as you could see. We arrived in tho valley in August with our stock and family, and located in Farmington which has been our home town ever since. There are a number of land marks on the plains that I remember, such as the loop fork river, wood river, elm Creek, Fort Laramy, North Platte, Independant Rock, Big Sandy, and Green River. In the fall of '54 we plowed our ground. Our plows were made at home by Telemacey Rogers. He took a piece of bar iron for the land slide and a piece of steel for a shear, then welded a shin piece to the mold board and another piece of iron and then bolted one end to the shear and took pieces of wagon tire and hammered them thin, then rivited them to pieces he had fastened to the bed piece, and bent them in shape of a mole board. we took native timber and made a beam and handles and bolted them on to the plow. It made a very good plow. In the winter there came a warm spell and the snow went away and father sowed the wheat and I harrowed it in with a yoke of oxen. My legs would ache through carrying mud on my shoes till I could not rest at night. The next spring the grasshoppers came in clouds. Some days we couldn't see the sun for hours at a time. They seemed to know the tender grain and would light on chat first and fill themselves up, then would rise and go into the air, and then more would come and by the time they had eaten all the young and tender grain, our grain was ripe and we thrashed seven hundred bushels of wheat. Now I will tell you how we cut the grain. We cut it with a grain cradle and bound it with our hands. The cradle was home made but the sithe came from the East. The snath was a crooked stick with a hole made in the big end and a post about one inch in diameter, one end put in the hole in the snath, the post being two and a half feet long, with four holes six or seven inches, four fingers the same shape as the sythe with one end in the hole of the post cradle to hold the grain on, then it was thrown back and laid in the swath behind. The thrasher was a cylinder and concave in a frame. This frame was bolted to two bed pieces of timber that was long enough to set on the running gears of a wagon, so when traveling it would set on the wagon and when placed beside a grain stack it could be let down on the ground, behind the cylinder men separated the straw from the wheat, and after the threshing was done three men came with a fanning machine and separated the wheat from the chaff. We had more wheat than all the rest of the salt Lake Valley put together. The power that run the thrasher I will try to describe. There was a frame large enough to hold a pair of oxen yoKed together. The bottom was made of split logs and the ends were bolted to an endless chain. These chains run on pulleys, with one end on the ground and the other about three or four feet high so the team had to climb all the time, and that is the power that run the thrasher. It was called a tread power. The social part of the early days was real good. The dancing would start at one o'clock in the afternoon and we would dance until five o'clock then we would go home and feed the cattle and get our supper, go back to the hall and dance until eleven o'clock. Our dances were opened and closed by prayer. everybody attended the parties, young and old, and they all did their part in making it pleasant. We had singing school Sunday morning and sacrament meeting in the afternoon and Prayer meeting at night. Our fast meeting was held Thursday morning, which would be the first Thursday in each month. Our best dancer was Alden Burdick; our best lady dancer was Mrs. James Stevenson. James Stevenson and Jess Smith were our fiddlers. Hop Pender, Henry Walker and Dock Walker were also our fiddlers at times. We left Salt Lake City when I was so young I didn't know much about it, I was not old enough to do service in the legion. When the army came in I drove a team south. In the fall of 1860 I drove two yoke of oxen on a wagon loaded with grain to old Fort Bridger, then a military post and also camps of soldiers were there. There were fifteen teams when we unloaded the grain, four ox teams ana eleven mule and horse teams. when the grain was unloaded the ox teams went down Black's Fork River about twelve miles to a place called Millersville where a number of big wagons had been left. When the army came in we went after some of them, when we got about half way there it began to snow but we went on down and got six of them and back to where we camped the night before, we stayed there two days and nights, it snowed and blowed from the north all the time. When we left camp the snow was four feet deep, and we were one hundred miles from home and it was the last of November and not a house between Fort Bridger and home, but we got there all right. In the spring of '61 the Bishop sent me and three other men with teams in a company of fifty wagons to the Missouri River to get the P. S. Lund co. Joseph Horn was our captain. Richard Horn and I were the two kids of the company, we had a jolly time on the trip and we arrived home all right in the fall. In the spring of '62 I was sent with five yoke of oxen from Farmington to Big Cottonwood Canyon to haul rock for the temple. we hauled one rock that weighted eleven thousand pounds. In June '62 a posse was called by acting Governor to go to South Weber and arrest Morris and Banks for firing at an officer. I was in the bunch that went to make the arrest. In the fall of the same year I drove a team for J. L. Stod¬dard hauling grain east for the stage line, we hauled the first grain that was taken to the point of Rock on Bitter Creek after the stage line had been changed from Emmigrant Trail to Bitter Creek Train. The State Station consisted of hulk and a dozen cedar stakes set in the ground. It rained on us two weeks all that time we didn't have a dry thread on us. We had to wade the creeks and ford the streams of water with our wagons. The water would sometimes come up to my neck. when we got to the point of rock we had to cut the sacks open as the grain had sprouted and was growing through. The second trip that fall was to Church Butts on Blacks Fork. There were sixteen wagons of us, four with oxen the others were mules and horses. The ox teams had to pull the mule and horse teams out of every ditch or muddy place on the road. Going up echo Canyon we had to pull them out of every creek crossing and when we got nearly to the head of the canyon one of our wagons tipped over in the creek. The water was was waist deep and had ice on the edfces. Three of us got in the water up to our waist to get the grain out. The other teams passed us there and went on over to Cash Cave where there was another deep creek and when we reached this there were three wagons in nearly all over. I drove up to the creek between two of the wagons on which mules were hitched. They said,"what are you going to do?" I said, "I am going to cross." He said, "You cannot make it across. Throw me your whip", but I wouldn't. I drove in and then jumped onto the tongue of the wagon and from there to the ground on the other side of the creek and from there began to play the braid, but I did not hit a steer. I made an awful noise with my whip and scared then a bit, and I got through all right. Then two of the other ox teams followed and they got through all right, but the fourth couldn't make it. I took two yoke of my team and two yoke of one of the other teams and put on the big wagon which already had five teams on it, or rather five yoke of oxen. we pulled him through all right, then we put four yoke of oxen on each of the mule team wagons and pulled them through. when we got our teams unlocked it was nine o'clock and three of us fellows hunted all over the place and couldn't find a stick of wood any where or anything that would burn. we even went a mile from camp, so we came back and went to bed in our wet clothes and had no supper. well, these are some of the things we had to pass through in those days. In the fall of '63 I drove teams for Thomas Roads of Roads Valley to Pipe Springs, where kanab is now. There were seven of us boys in the bunch moving the family south. On the way there before we knew what was the matter with us we were alive with gray backs. I had never seen any before and I didn't know what to do; I didn't get rid of them until I got home. Since then I have learned what to do. When I would go away I would take a cake of camphor gum in my pocket and when I would go to bed I would rub it in my bed clothes and under my pillow, and the gray backs would leave at once of there happened to be any there. When I got home I went to school, which was the first schooling I ever had to amount to anything. We kept a hotel and that fall there was a bunch of men came from Boice, Idaho to winter in Salt Lake City, and they could board with us cheaper than in Salt Lake City, so they came to us. They had twenty head of horses to feed. I would get up at four o'clock and go to the farm half mile away and feed two hundred sheep, fifty head of cattle and twenty head of horses and get back before day light and eat breakfast, then I would chop wood until school time. We burned four fires all winter and two of them night and day. At noon I would go home and chop wood until school time again. at night I would chop wood until dark, then I would to to the farm and feed the stock and would get home about eight o'clock at night, we had no coal; the wood was big pine logs one and two feet through. I went to school three months in that winter. That was all the schooling I ever had and you see I didn't know much about books. In the spring of '64 father told me if I would stay home and work the farm that summer ho would give me one thousand dollars to buy a farm with, so I stayed and worked like a beaver. In the fall our crop was worth five thousand dollars. We sold our flour for $27.00 per one hundred pounds and our hay $100.00 per ton in the barn. After we got the farm products taken care of and the crops all harvested, I was hired to some rancher to go to the promontory west of Brigham City to herd cattle. I stayed with them until the first of December, then mother got sick and sent for me to come home, so I went home just before Christmas. Wm. Parker and George Heiner came to farmington from Morgan and asked me to go back to Morgan with then for the holidays, so I went with them, and while there I bought a farm from P.C. Merrell for one thousand dollars. When I got the farm I needed a house Keeper. There was a young lady there on a visit with her parents and family who lived here at Morgan, but she had been living with Bro. D. H. Wells of Salt Lake City. i thought she would suit me so I ask her to marry me. She said she would so we were married in February by Pres. kimble in the Endowment house. my wife's name was Elizabeth heiner. In the spring of 1865 we put a crop on the farm and paid five dollars a bushel for seed grain. We put in thrity acres and harvested twelve hundred bushels. The wheat was worth five dollars per bushel and the oats and barley was worth five dollars per one hundred pounds. I farmed until the summer of '68 and the grasshoppers came and ate all of our crops. The spring of '68 after the grass¬hoppers ate our crops up, I hauled supplies on the railroad until the harvesting was read, in the lower valley, then I went down and helped father do his haying and harvesting in Farmington. After harvesting was over I went on a thrasher and helped during the thrashing season. After the thrashing was over I was hired with my team to go out on the Promontary to work for the railroad. I got six dollars a day and my board and horse feed. I went to Echo for part of the supplies and also to Salt Lake for some and the Engineer who I was wording for went with me. we had to stay there for a few days so I told the Engineer that I would go on out to Farmington and then he could come out on the stage when he got ready. While I was in Farmington Joseph W. Young was selecting men to go to the Muddy and I was one he selected. I got another man to take my place with the Engineer, and I got ready and went to the Muddy. In going down when we got within twenty five miles of St. Thomas the Indians stole our stock or rather our mules and horses; they took eighteen head of them and mine were among those taken. Four of us followed the trail one day but they were so far ahead that we thought we had better turn back, seeing we didn't know the location of the country nor where we could find any water, so we returned to camp. Joseph w. Young went to St. Joseph and notified the people of our condition and they sent teams and wagons back to get us. We located in St. Joseph and took up land and went to making a home. when we got there we couldn't buy anything to eat. we had money but the people didn't have anything to sell, We had some bread along with us, but we went quite slim. The first summer my brother-in-law, Dave Sanders, who went down with us any myself took a field of grain to harvest for two and one half bushels per acre. David Sanders swung the cradle and cut the grain, and I raked and bound it. we cut and shocked two acres a day. I had taken a cow with us and Dave and I divided up with the milk. we had dried peaches which the girls made pie of for our dinner and then Dave and I had bread and water for supper and breakfast. After the harvest was over I got a job on a mollasses press. we were there two summers and three winters. Then the mission was broken up and we had to leave. In the fall of ' 71 my brother Joel was sent to Nephi to preside over Juab County. Pres. Daniel H. Wells told me I had better go to Nephi with Joel and make a home there, so I went down the following spring. That summer I worked at everything that offered until thrashing time and then I went on the thrasher. The next winter I went in with a man on a blacksmith shop, I worked in the shop four years horse shoeing all the time. In the summer of '79 they started to build the Utah southern railroad from York south. I went to work on this, chief Engineer Jessie Fox gave me credit of doing the best piece of work on the Utah Southern line. My wife's folks had been writing to me for some time to come back to Morgan and after the rail¬road had passed through Nephi, I decided to come back, and that fall I went on the thrasher again. When I was thirteen years old the fall of '57 I was ordained a seventy by special request of Pres. Joseph young. In the fall of '83 I was set apart as senior Pres. of the 35th quorum of seventies by Pres William W. Taylor member of the first Council of Seventies, I was senior Pres. of the 55th quorum for 23 years, then I was ordained a high priest. In December '84 I was called as an ordinance worker in the Logan Temple. I worked there one years. Most of the time I spent in the Font and baptized 9,090. I have worked as a ward teacher for 54 years. I have not neglected to visit when called upon in that time. We have been broke up financially six different times. We've been moved out, frozen out, burned out twice, flooded out, and the last time our farm was washed away by the river over flowing it's banks and it left us with nothing and still we are alive and have kept the faith.