Oral History Program Norman Moffett Interviewed by Mike Cushman 23 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Norman Moffett Interviewed by Mike Cushman 23 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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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Moffett, Norman, an oral history by Mike Cushman, 23 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 Norman Moffett. It is being conducted on August 23, 1971, but Mike Cushman, at the location of the interviewee’s home. Mr. Moffett describes his knowledge of polygamy, as well as what it was like growing up in the early colonies of Mexico during the Mexican-American War. MC: The following is an interview of Norman D. Moffett by mike Cushman for the Weber State Oral History Program on August 23, 1971, at approximately 2:30 p.m., at Mr. Moffett’s home at 972 23rd St., Ogden, Utah. Mr. Moffett, begin by telling us when you were born and where you were born. NM: I was born in Cave Valley, near Pacheco. I was there until I was about two years old, and then we moved to Colonia Juarez which takes the stake’s name. We were there for seven or eight years. Then we moved to Colonia Dublan, fifteen miles east of Colonia Juarez. I stayed in Dublan until I was around eighteen. Then I decided to come up to Ogden, Utah, to see where my folks came when they came over the plains. After they came over the plains, my grandfather went in to see Brigham Young, and Brigham Young said, “Brother Moffett, go up to Ogden.” So he settled here in Ogden. The Moffetts have been back and forth here in Ogden since then. My Grandfather Moffett cut Moffett Lane through. It is known now as Ogden Avenue. It is just a half block east of Washington and runs north and south between 25th and 26th. He had his blacksmith shop and other shops there. He was a handy man. Later he moved up in Ogden Valley where the bottom of the lake is now at Pineview. My father was raised there. My father went down south in Southern Utah and married my mother there in the St. George Temple. After they were married, they came up to Ogden Valley again. Later he married 1 then a second wife. At that time polygamy was due to the soldiers being taken out of the pioneers as they were coming over here. This left a lot of women and few men. The authorities encouraged them to marry more than one wife. So my father married a woman by the name of Johnson. My mother’s maiden name was Emmett. Then the Manifesto came out, and he took his families and went south, farther south than he really would have had to go, to Mexico in the state of Chihuahua. There he raised two families. Mother’s family had nine children and the other wife had ten children. They went to Colonia Pacheco for a while. I was born in Pacheco. About ten miles away in Cave Valley is where I was born. We left Cave Valley, and we went up to Pacheco and lived there for a time. Then we decided to go down to Colonia Juarez. I remember very well all those places. It was a year and a half or two years when we left Cave Valley and then a year or more when we left Pacheco. We were in Colonia Juarez for several years. The two families were there. My father was a carpenter. He decided to go to the capital of the state. That is Chihuahua in the state of Chihuahua. But things didn’t pan out. He was with the Mexican elements. The whites and the Mexicans didn’t mix very well on anything, carpentry or anything else. So he went back to Colonia Dublan, the railroad town for all the Mexican Colonies. It is 125 miles from El Paso, Texas to the southwest. There was quite a development in that country. Years piled up, and I worked as a carpenter building sawmills. This is timber country south and west of all the colonies. I spent two years there, and then they sent me on a mission to the Central States Mission. The headquarters were in Independence, Missouri, and S.O. Bennion was the president of the mission. Because I was a carpenter, he sent me down to Kelsey, Texas, in the panhandle country of Texas, to build a church school. That was 2 before the state and counties built their schools. The Church had to build its own schools. I was there six months building a school. My boss was a contractor who was on a mission. He was from Salt Lake. The plasterer was from Arizona. After six months, I went back up to Independence, Missouri. I was only there a very short time when President Bennion called me in and told me to come into the office. I went into the office, and he handed me my release. The Mexican Colonies had been expelled from Mexico. I came west. My mother had gone up to Blackfoot, Idaho where I had a sister living. It was about ten years when the Mormon colonists were drifted back into the Colonies. SO I went back down to Colonia Dublan. I had a family of four then. I didn’t stay very long. I moved out to El Paso, took a job there for a short time and then went out to Miami, Arizona, a mining town. I got a very good job. A fellow there, Jim Huff, was acquainted with me because we had known each other as kids. He was there over a carpenter job in Miami. I had gone to Miami to look him up. “Jim,” I said, “I need a job.” He knew me as a carpenter. So he said, “I need a man in the shop.” I went right in the shop and stayed in the shop until I got my wife and family out of Mexico. But it was no what I wanted for my family. I had a family of five then. So I saved all the money I could. My wife’s folks were from Afton, Wyoming. I drifted up that way during the time and got her. We decided after drifted into Mexico and then in Miami, Arizona to come up here to Ogden where my folks were from. That was all we had to do with Mexico. That was more than I needed. MC: Why didn’t you stay in Colonia Dublan when you went down there with your family. 3 NM: There wasn’t enough there to stay for. I was a contractor, and there were a lot of other fellows there that were carpenters too. So as soon as I could shape things around, I came out to Miami, Arizona and left the family down there. MC: How had Colonia Dublan changed when you went back the second time? NM: It hadn’t changed much. It is a big, open valley. There were still brick and adobe houses. MC: Were there more houses? NM: Not too many. I built several houses while I was there. It hadn’t changed too much. Of course, the Mexicans had taken over. Later the Mormons had to move out, but they eventually went back. MC: When were you in Dublan the first time? NM: I am eighty-three now. I was born in 1887. I went to school three or four years in Juarez, and then we moved to Dublan. The school age was seven there I think. MC: So it was around 1896 to 1898. What was Dublan like then? NM: Dublan was big, open, flat. The railroad came in there from Ciudad Juarez. Corralites, a big American-owned ranch, was north of us. The Don Louis Terrasas ranch was south. Colonia Dublan was open country, farming land. Colonia Juarez was hilly country, orchard country. Pacheco and Garcia up in the mountains were lumber country. A lot of Mormons bought land south of Colonia Dublan, south of Casa Grandes and Guadalupe, and they had a nice colony there. That was only eight or ten miles from Dublan. Colonia Diaz, another Mormon colony, was thirty-five miles north of Colonia Dublan. But that 4 was faded out a long time before I left Dublan. Rebels went in there, and the Mormons all got out of there. MC: What were the people like in Dublan when you first moved there? NM: They were Mormons. About two miles south was Casa Grandes Nuevo. It was a railroad station. Colonia Dublan just had a place to stop the train and then it went on. The railroad didn’t have any buildings there. MC: What types of buildings were they in Colonia Dublan when you were the first there? NM: Just homes, some brick homes and some frame homes. MC: What was your first house like? NM: Ours was an adobe house. I was raised in an adobe house. MC: Was it very large? NM: Yes it was eight rooms. MC: Did both families live there? NM: The two families lived in Colonia Juarez after we moved out of Pacheco. Then both families moved to Colonia Dublan. MC: Did your family and the other wife’s family live in the house in Colonia Dublan? NM: No, they lived in two different homes. MC: Were they close together? NM: About three or four blocks. 5 MC: Did your father live primarily at your home or did he spend an equal amount of time at both homes? NM: He divided his time with his two families just about equally. MC: You said when your father moved to Mexico he went a little farther than necessary. Did you mean that he didn’t need to go into Mexico? NM: No, he would not have had to go into Mexico at that time but he thought that the two states, New Mexico and Arizona, had the same idea on polygamy as they had in Utah, but they didn’t. They could have stayed in Arizona and New Mexico and never been bothered. Some of polygamists did. But he thought he probably had to cross the line to get away from the United States. He could have gone to Wyoming. They never bothered them there at all. I have some relatives and friends who were polygamists in Afton, Wyoming. When I went back, I took a trip up there. I had an uncle up there in Star Valley, and I went up there to see his brother. That is pretty nice country. A lot of the polygamists just went up there in Wyoming. No one ever bothered them. They stayed there and raised their families with no trouble whatever. MC: Then the United States marshals weren’t bothering people outside of Utah, really? NM: No. MC: What was the school like in Juarez when you attended in approximately 1893 and 1894? NM: It was an academy, a church school. The boys were anticipating missions. When they received a call, they went up there for one year or school. They took the missionary course. I took that. 6 MC: What did they teach? NM: That was a theological course of what to use as a missionary. It was a good course. It certainly helped you. Some of the boys had just left their towns. They came in from their jobs from different parts of the country. It was quite different the way they handled the scriptures. We had some very good teachers. I have forgotten their names now. MC: Who had decided to set up this course for the missionaries? Was this something that the General Authorities had set up or was this simply something that the Juarez Stake had set up? NM: This was from headquarters. MC: From the General Authorities? NM: Yes, they sanctioned it. The Juarez Stake Academy was a church school. All the schools in the Colonies always had their Mormon classes. They were very fine too. They taught church history. We had some mighty fine men to teach us. After I had been to the Academy and took the missionary course, I went down to Colonia Chuichupa to get a purse big enough to go on my mission. I spent nearly a year down there helping build a big sawmill before I went on my mission. MC: How did your family get along with the other family in Colonia Dublan? NM: We didn’t know anything else. My mother was a doctor. The other family depended a great deal on her for the money and on Father’s support. It wasn’t always that way in the families. The two families worked together with Father over them on farms or whatnot. Father had a farm in Colonia Dublan {Tape Interrupted} 7 MC: You talked about the rebels driving the Mormons out of Colonia Diaz. Who did you mean when you said the rebels? NM: That was the Mexican people. They were taking over. They took over even a lot of the Mexican ranches. They weren’t as bad as the Mormons thought they were, however, they were more friendly toward them. The Mormon people didn’t know that, neither did the Mexican towns, but they soon learned it. They were friendly with them and would work with them after they got acquainted. MC: Were these people like Pancho Villa’s men or the Red Flaggers? NM: Pancho Villa wasn’t as much of a Red Flagger as he has been pronounced. He was more of a friend to mankind than people realize. MC: Did you ever see Pancho Villa? NM: No, I don’t think I did. I saw some of his men, his soldiers. As I remember it, Pancho Villa didn’t come into the Colonies. It seems to me he was to Colonia Diaz which was north and he went to Casa Grandes, two miles south of Colonia Dublan. He was a very fine fellow, but they didn’t think he was. They thought he was in there taking things away from the white people, but he wasn’t. He was there to help things move along and get a better footing for both the Mexicans and the whites. The Mexican officials clear up to the governor and the president were fine fellows. They believed in living and letting live, and you don’t get that from everybody, do you? MC: No. What were the Mexican people like as far as their treatment of the whites, the Mormon colonies? 8 NM: As far as my personal contact with them, they were good people, fine people. They wanted to live and let live. They were ready to help you live right. There was sometimes a bunch of bandits that would run in overnight or something like that and steal cattle, and so on, and take them off and kill them to eat. We did have that trouble. But that was no the better part. We had those people down to Colonia Diaz. The Mormons had to leave there. Colonia Diaz was fifty miles to the north of Dublan and about the same distance to the United States border. They had to come right overland to it; the railroad went over the other way. The railroad came from Ciudad Juarez across the line from El Paso. It went down into the timber country. Colonia Chuichupa was in the timber country, but away from the railroad. That railroad and capital from the United States did a lot for that country. MC: How did the Mormon colonists feel about educating their children? Did they think only the boys should be educated or did they educate both the girls and the boys? NM: Both the girls and the boys. MC: How many grades did they have at the Juarez Academy? NM: Four years of high school. MC: Did they have grade school too? NM: The grade schools were apart from the Academy. Colonia Dublan was just a grade school, up to the eighth grade. MC: I can’t think of anything else right now. Thank you very much. 9