Oral History Program Isabelle Thatcher Interviewed by Elizabeth Fleming 16 February 1973 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Isabelle Thatcher Interviewed by Elizabeth Fleming 16 February 1973 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 Kelley Evans, 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: Thatcher, Isabelle, an oral history by Elizabeth Fleming, 16 February 1973, 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 Isabelle Thatcher. The interview was conducted on February 16, 1973, by Elizabeth Fleming, at the Utah School for the Deaf. Thatcher discusses her early life and experiences growing up in Morgan County, Utah. EF: Why don't you relate to me your impressions of Morgan County as a girl? IT: My recollections go back around fifty years, EF: Was Morgan much different fifty years ago than it is today? IT: Yes it was. The main business district was then on the north side and today half of the business district has moved over to South Morgan. That's: about a two mile difference. There are no businesses in-between the two centers, they are two separate business areas. EF: Have the old buildings been torn down? IT: No. The business district is still there, but they have new stores, over on the other side. EF: Did you grow up in Morgan County or Morgan City proper? IT: I grew up in Morgan City proper. My home was in South Morgan. There were two wards, the North side ward and the South-side ward. EF: Was the town made up of mostly LDS people? IT: Yes, Most of the people were LDS. I don't recall anyone who didn't belong to the Mormon Church. EF: Do you know of any other churches that were in Morgan at that time? IT: No! No other churches existed in Morgan County at that time. EF: How about polygamists? 1 IT: I don't recall of any polygamists and I don't recall my parents talking of any. If there were any practicing polygamists I wasn't aware of it. EF: I can't believe that there were no other churches or religions in Morgan except the LDS. IT: There might have been non LDS people there, but, they were not people that I associated with. EF: You just didn't know them then. IT: Right, I just didn't know any. EF: What did Morgan look like? Was it big or small? IT: Morgan was a very small town; now, of course there are a lot of new subdivisions that have gone up, especially in the Mountain Green area where there are quite large homes due to quite a bit of wealth moving in. Browning Arras has there plant there. EF: What were the roads like fifty years ago? IT: The roads were crude as I remember as a girl and I recall one time my family came to Ogden to the circus. We were in an old Model T Ford. The highway was on the other side and it was kind of a rough road. It took us five hours to get to Ogden, but that included a flat tire along the way. We didn't come to Ogden very often, that was a real treat. I don't recall ever going to Salt Lake until I was about fifteen. Now that doesn't mean that my parents or older brothers and sisters didn't go, but I was quite old before I ever went. EF: Did you buy all of your clothing? IT: No I didn't have anything that wasn't home made until I was fourteen. I had a coat that I bought and I remember that it had a lot of fur around the bottom and around the cuffs. It was quite similar to the styles of today. We sent to Bears and Roebucks to get it. I earned the money to buy my coat by picking onions. Otherwise, all of my clothes were made from 2 my sister’s hand-me downs. My mother was an excellent seamstress, and I never felt that my clothes were inadequate. I always felt that I looked as well or better than most. I remember that my junior Prom dress was made from an old formal and I was as proud of that dress as if I had had a new one. That was typical of what most everyone else had. EF: Did you really pick onions? How much did you make? IT: Oh, about fifteen cents an hour. We worked for Clark's Produce. That was the job that all of the young people had in the fall. Every child that was able to pick up was over there working. We had a lot of fun doing it. EF: How many onions did you have to pick to save enough money to buy a coat? IT: Oh, quite a while. I think that coat cost about $5.95. EF: Did the road to Ogden follow the Weber River? IT: Yes, It followed the Weber River and we had quite a few loops in it. EF: Was the circus worth riding for five hours? IT: Well, we didn't get home until the early morning and the long trip really wasn't worth it, although I did enjoy the circus. It was a big circus held in a field out in South Ogden. EF: What did your relatives do for employment? IT: My Grandfather on my mother’s side was a medical doctor. Not the first one, there were perhaps two or three ahead of him. He was also a captain in the Mormon Militia. He had quite a bit of money. He also owned a store and quite a bit of mining stock. My Grandfather on my Fathers' side owned a saloon. The story is he was a very sympathetic and marvelous man in many ways. When people would come into the saloon and drink up their pay checks he would go to the home and give the money back to the wife. His name was Littlefield and my other Grandfathers name was Wadsworth. 3 EF: Were they settlers of Morgan County? IT: No. They weren't settlers of Morgan County. They came in later. EF: Was this the only saloon in town? IT: I never heard of any other saloons. When the railroad went through the government prohibited saloons and he had to go out of business. EF: There are saloons in Morgan now aren't there? IT: Yes, there are pool halls and beer saloons. EF: Then your Grandfather sold hard liquor. IT: Yes, he ran a regular saloon. EF: You mean the railroad stopped the saloon? IT: Yes, the railroad and the government. Well, the government stopped it at the time they were building the railroad. EF: What year was that? IT: That was around 1900. EF: Was Morgan a railroad center fifty years ago? IT: No. Morgan had a dispatcher and a railroad agent. You could buy tickets there to Ogden and the train stopped in Morgan. EF: What company was that? IT: Union Pacific was the only train that came through. Later on the train stopped making it's stop in Morgan. EF: Tell me about the schools when you were a child. IT: Back then there were two schools. The North side School and the South side School. When I was in the sixth grade they consolidated the two schools and put in South Morgan 4 where I lived. We started in the first grade, there were no kindergartens. That didn't come until quite a bit later. I was never in a combined class and there were perhaps twenty five to thirty students in my class every year. EF: Do you see any of those people now? IT: Well there is nothing much to keep people in Morgan. Of course when Hill Field was established and DDO people moved to Morgan and started living there. There was no industry there except the Union Portland Cement Company in Devils Slide that hired quite a few people. The young people had to get out and leave Morgan to find jobs. EF: What did most people do for a livelihood? IT: Most people farmed. There were a few business men, cattle men and ranchers. EF: Do you remember any types of theatres? IT: We had one theatre and it was in a building that used to be the old opera house. Here they had movies once a week. They were silent movies until the Broadway Melody which was the first talking movie. The Opera house was the center of the community for many years. They had an opera company comprised of local people. They put on so many operas during the year. They also had companies come in from time to time and put on operas. They were mostly operettas and operas. I don't remember seeing any of them however but, they were quite the thing. My mother, my uncle and another aunt were always in the plays. EF: Where was the Opera House located? Has it been torn down? IT: No, the Opera House is still there in South Morgan. It's an ugly old building. A man from Henefer bought it. The movies are shown there today. Its name now is still the Opera House. Well, I’m not sure that it has a name. 5 EF: What about the social life in Morgan? IT: Our social life revolved mainly around the church activities. When we had dates it was to walk home from church or to go to a church dance. I didn't come to Ogden on a date until I was a junior in high school, then it was to only a few. EF: Is your husband from Morgan? IT: No. EF: Is your family quite wealthy? IT: No. My father inherited a big farm from his father. He had a lot of land but we had a large family. My mother worked most of my life. My father became disabled, he was ill for about ten years before he died. He was a farmer. My mother was the county clerk and recorder for Morgan County, and she was the city recorder for a number of years. Well from 1910 on anyway. Her name was Kate Littlefield. EF: Where is the farm now? Did your brothers start working the farm? IT: No, my brothers hated the farm; when they went away to college that was the end of them and that was the reason my father sold the farm. He also became ill and couldn't farm it. None of the brothers wanted to come and take the farm over. They weren't interested at all. EF: How big was your farm and what did you raise? IT: I can't tell you how big it was now. We had cattle, and raised peas and potatoes and hay. EF: Do you remember milking a cow? IT: I never milked a cow. I never wanted to and I never tried it. We did have cows and my father did all the milking. We didn't have enough cows to have electric milkers. My father 6 could handle what we had. He mainly had enough milk just for the family. He raised cattle to sell down here at the livestock stockyards, EF: Do you remember working hard as a girl? IT: I didn't do anything on the farm. We had a big family, I had four sisters and none of us ever did farm work. I have three brothers, and they didn't do to much farm work either. My father didn't hire people he did the work mostly himself. In the summers when my brothers came home they helped. EF: Is growing up on a farm a good way to grow up? IT: Wonderful way. I recommend it. We had a lot of fun on the farm. We always had a horse to ride. One of our summer recreation courses was to go down on the island as we called it and ride in this buggy over the ditches. It was like going on a roller coaster. We did this all summer. We would take along other friends to go. The buggy would be full. The only thing that stopped us was that we would bring the horse home so wet that my father found out what we had been doing and he put a stop to it. There would be about ten people in the buggy, we'd be just packed in there, and all standing up going over these ditches. You can imagine and whipping the horse to get it to go just as fast as it would go. My father wasn't the kind that got to angry. He just said kindly that that wasn't any way to treat a horse and we couldn't take the buggy any more. We could ride horses but not take the buggy again. EF: What about Como Springs? Was it there when you were a girl? IT: Yes, It wasn't built up. We'd walk to Como Springs every day and go swimming. There were a few bath houses built, but, I don't ever recall using them because we wore our bathing suits under our dresses and walked and put our clothes over our dresses and 7 came home again. It wasn't built up. A lot of people went to Como Springs at that time and had picnics. EF: Was there a pool built at that time? IT: No, there wasn't a pool built at that time. It wasn't what you would call a regular swimming pool. It was a swimming hole, as I remember it. I started going swimming when I was about four years old. That was our summer fun. We would make maybe two trips to the "M". That is we would hike up to the "m" on the mountain. It's a long old hike. We would take lunches and go up there. That’s the same "M" that’s there now. In the spring, the high school would always have what they called "M" day and we would paint the "M" on the mountain. We would make just maybe two trips up a summer. Our Sundays were rather dead. We would maybe take a nickel and walk to town and buy a bar or some penny candy. We would stop in the post office and play in the lobby. In those days there wasn't a policeman to tell you to come in and get out so we would play in the lobby of the post office, especially on a bad day. Then we would walk home and that was our treat for Sunday. We always attended church, Sunday school and night Sacrament meeting. EF: Did most of the town attend church? IT: Mostly, most everyone. Then on Tuesday they would attend Mutual. We had quite a few dances. EF: What about romances? IT: Oh yes! EF: How far is Echo? IT: Echo is about ten miles. We'd take a ride up to Echo once in a while. EF: When you go home to Morgan do you recognize a lot of it? 8 IT: Yes, it hasn't changed that much. There is one industry in Morgan now that wasn't there before. It's a fiber board plant where they make pressed wood. But when I was growing up the only industry was the railroad going through and farming and so it really hasn't changed a lot. EF: Are there more people there now? IT: Yes there are, but, people go to Ogden to do their buying. EF: Are there many more homes? IT: There are a lot more homes and a new city and county building with a new library in the building. The old stake house is the same, they've added onto it but, it's about the same. An interesting thing the children did in the summer time was to hook rides on the wagons that carried peas to the factory. I remember how angry some of the farmers would get. We would Jump up on the stack of peas and hide. Sometimes before the farmer got to the factory half the load would be off into the street. That was some of our summertime fun things. EF: What about hay rides or sleigh rides? IT: We took a lot of hay rides and sleigh rides, in the winter. I remember that we had a sleigh and one of the best times I can think of was when my family would go to Richville in a sleigh which is about three miles east of Morgan. Richville is still there. We could visit some friends of ours. They would always have a big freezer of ice cream and some cake. We would ' visit with them and come home in the sleigh by the light of the moon. I remember that very well. EF: Did you eat in many restaurants? 9 IT: I can't recall ever going to a restaurant, to eat until I was older. I can't even remember if there was a restaurant when I was young. Later on there was one or two restaurants in town. EF: What about the cost of food? IT: I remember running to the store which was about three blocks from my house. I would have to make a trip to the store about three times a week. I’d remember that I would go to get hamburger and it would be about ten cents a pound. I really didn't know that people paid for things until I got a lot older. I would always go to the store and buy these things for my folks and say "charge it". I thought that was the way you did it, and that everybody had charge accounts for food in those days. When my mother would go to pay the bill at the end of the month the owner would always give her a big sack of candy to bring home, a reward for paying the bill. Mother would pass that candy around and maybe we would get two or three pieces each night. We would sit around a big round table and play Rook. There was no TV or radio; we had a graph phone. EF: Did you have indoor plumbing? IT: We always had indoor plumbing and heat, running water, hot and cold. We had an outhouse, but I don't recall using it other than to go out if we wanted to go just for fun. We had a bathroom. EF: Is your family home still standing? IT: Yes, It's still standing. My family bought it from one of the doctors. It was a two story brick house that my family bought from a doctor who moved to Europe to specialize. EF: Is there anything else you can think of about Morgan, your impressions etc. that you would like to relate? 10 IT: Morgan was a peaceful quiet place. It's a place that because it is a small town that people want to go there. I love it. I love to go back to Morgan. It brings back a lot of memories. 11