Oral History Program Mary Virginia Deming Griffith Ellen Pace June 12, June 20 & June 21, 1983 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mary Virginia Deming Griffith Interviewed by Ellen Pace June 12, June 20 & June 21, 1983 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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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: Griffith, Mary, an oral history by Ellen Pace, June 12, June 20 & June 21, 1983, 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 Mary Virginia Deming Griffith. The interview was conducted on June 12, 1983, June 20, 1983, and June 21, 1983. The interview was conducted by Ellen Pace, in Pace’s home in Ogden, Utah. Griffith discusses her childhood and experiences she had as a young girl. Griffith goes by the nickname Ginger. EP: Aunt Virginia, where were you born and what date? MG: I was born October 1, 1919, in Liberty, Arizona. It was at the home of my Aunt Ruby Biddlecome, my mother's sister. EP: And what was your position in the family? MG: I should correct that: that was Aunt Ruby Biddlecome Roberts. And I was the fifth child of my mother and father, George Norman Deming and Julia Marie Biddlecome. They were married in 1909, ten years before I was born. EP: They were living in the town of Liberty when you were born? MG: No, they were living in the town of Arlington. Arlington was this little round valley where we lived, but apparently my Mother had a good deal of difficulty before my birth and the doctor was in Buckeye, which was a nearby community near Palo Verde, so he wanted, for the last few weeks of her pregnancy, he wanted her near where he could come very quickly. EP: What is your first memory? 1 MG: My very first memory was...let's see, my younger sister Margie was three years younger than I, and it was before her birth, my earliest memory. I remember getting up in the middle of the night and I was very cold and I went in to my mother's and dad's bedroom, and I told them I was cold so they invited me to get in bed with them, and I was between and it was so nice and warm and comfortable. I was warming up and I remember turning to my mother and I said: "I wish I had a little sister." And she said: "Well, we will soon have a little sister for you to play with." And this was before my sister's birth and I must have been two—something—a little past two. EP: What was your reaction to that news? MG: I remember being very pleased when Mother said she was going to get me a little sister. I don't even remember when my sister was born, but I do remember that one little nice memory before her birth. EP: Did you and your mother return then to Arlington after your birth? MG: Yes, I was there (in Liberty) for a while, because after my birth, I was a "blue baby," my sister Letha told me and so I had to have pretty much constant care. My sister Letha was nearly ten years older than I so she kind of took over watching me very closely when I was small, and I had to be put down in a certain way or else I turned blue. There was a valve in my heart that wasn't functioning properly, I think was the problem. EP: Did it correct itself? MG: Yes, I remember as a very young child being very, very tired and so I think it took a few years before it did completely repair itself, but I have always had a perfectly good, sound heart and had no trouble with it at all. In fact, I was really surprised when I 2 learned about my younger years because it was never mentioned in my family until after I grew up and then I was told about it. But I do remember when my cousin Roland used to come over to play--he was just a ball of fire—he was just full of it. I would get so tired: I wanted to play but I was so tired I just couldn't run around like he did and he would say: "Auntie, make Ginnie come play with me." And I would really want to, but I was just too tired. A family joke was "Ginnie was born tired and never got over it." That is what they always used to say when I was a little kid. EP: But you did get over it. MG: I did definitely get over it. I am sixty-three now, and I'm going like a ball of fire, huckletee-buck all the time. EP: What do you remember about your home life? MG: I remember my family as very musical. We had a family orchestra. Dad had a beautiful tenor voice and Mother sang the soprano, and they sang together at, oh, things they would have in the valley. They had, more or less, a kind of a close community there, and they used to have all their functions of the town were held in the schoolhouse. And they used to have kind of like an amateur night, or it was sort of like that, anyway, and so they would meet there and people would perform and Mother and Dad were always asked to sing. And they had three favorite songs that practically everyone asked them to sing: one was "In the Garden," one was "Sweet Bird," and the third was "Whispering Hope." Those three were the favorites. But I remember Mother played the piano, and Dad played the violin, and I played the guitar, and my brother Jack could play anything-he could play the violin, the guitar, he could play anything he could get his hands on— and the banjo. And my brother Gordon learned to play the banjo, and my sister Letha 3 played the piano. We all of us sang, the whole family sang. Margie played the drums, quote; she didn't really play the drums, but she had little tin plates and she had a spoon, and she had very good rhythm and she would be the drums for the orchestra. A lot of times we would tune up and play these songs that I get a feeling of nostalgia when I hear certain songs that Dad used to play a lot. He loved to be accompanied on the violin. He didn't like to play it just alone; he always liked to have a guitar accompaniment. Everyone else was usually busy or off doing something, so he taught me to play the guitar. I should correct that and say that my brother Jack taught me to play the guitar, but Dad taught me in a way as he would, when I was just first learning to play, I was just a little kid, and it was hard for me to reach all these strings that my brother told me that I should put down, so Dad would hold on to this one note on the violin until I would get the correct chord. I couldn't stand that discord and I couldn't stand him hanging onto that one note. I would hurry quick and find the right chord, and that is how I learned to play the guitar really fast. None of us had any music lessons. I guess Mother did when she was little, and I think Letha did have a few, but none of us had music lessons. We were all quite musical, and that is one thing that I remember about our family when we were growing up. EP: I can remember you and Mother singing duets. MG: Yes. When you were a baby, Ellen, I remember riding into Kingman and back. I would be holding you and Letha would be driving and we would sing "Rock-a-bye Baby in the Treetop" and we would sing in harmony. The minute we would stop, you would start fussing: "Sing 'Rock-a-bye Baby in the Treetop’ again." And one time one of us didn't chime in with the harmony and you made us stop: "Sing it pretty." 4 EP: Margie says she does not sing, and has no inclination to sing, either. Do you know why? MG: Yes. I was born between Dorothy and Margie, and I was kind of a homely little kid with a bald head and ears that stuck out and Dorothy was a really beauty when she was a little kid and so was Margie, and I was in-between. And at a very early age I felt terribly homely. You know, for years I felt like I was the ugliest person in the world. People would rave about the beauty of Dorothy, and then about the beauty of Margie, and then they would say, "Well, Virginia sure is smart." I used to think to myself: I would a lot rather be pretty than smart. But, anyway, I think my family kind of wanted me to have something that I would feel very confident about, or very good about, so they always bragged about my singing. And Margie, when she was a little kid—it was so cute--she had this teacher, her name was Alice Sidell, and she used to sing in a very high soprano voice and she had a lot of vibrato in her voice. Margie just idealized her and thought that that was the way to sing. Well, she used to get this guitar—she had this little pony, really cute—and she would get on this pony and strum the guitar, and start to sing "Paint's a good pony, he paces when he can. Goodbye, old Paint, I'm leaving Cheyenne." Well, anyway, she knew this song and she would go along singing that to the top of her voice, but she would pitch it so high, and she was trying to mimic this teacher. She was trying to make her voice quaver, and sometimes her voice would become very piercing, you know, and my mother would say: "Oh, Margie, please be quiet." And from that, you know, I think she got the notion that she did not sing as well. EP: She remembers an experience when they asked you to sing and Margie began to sing with you and your mother just cringed and took her aside and said: "Margie, please don't sing." That convinced her once and for all that she could not sing. 5 MG: She could sing fine, but the thing was she just got that notion, I think, from the family trying to build me up. Letha told me that when I was one-year-old, and my mother also told me this, that on my first birthday that I sang and rehearsed twenty-one nursery rhymes at my birthday party. So anyway, I did learn to sing at a very early age, and Mother said that I could really carry a tune even when I was one year old. You know these simple little nursery rhymes. I remember when I was eight years old, everywhere I would go they would ask me to sing. And I wasn't a bit shy when young until I got in third grade and then I had a teacher who really made me lose all my self-confidence. I think until that time kind of a show-off. In fact, when I started to school I was five, in first grade, and Mrs. Newkirk kept urging my mother to start me to school because she had put me in—she taught the first, second and third grade—and she had put me in several school plays before I started to school. I had a kind of photographic memory--the same kind that you have--and so I could hear a part once or maybe twice and I would know everybody’s part. I was the prompter at the plays. So anyway, I did love to be in these plays when I was a little kid. But then I got in third grade. When I got in first grade, this teacher, Mrs. Newkirk, she loved me, but she didn't do me much of a favor socially, because she was teaching all three grades. I can't remember ever learning how to read: I knew how, period. I think the reason was Dorothy was a kind of a stubborn kid and had an awful time learning to read. I think she didn't want to, and anything she didn't want to do, she just didn't want to do it. So my mother had a terrific time trying to teach her to read and I think just being around when she was trying to teach Dorothy I learned how. I remember one time when she was teaching Dorothy to spell her name, I was so tired of 6 hearing it over and over, so finally I said: “It’s D-O-R-O-T-H-Y.” When she found out that I could spell it, then she got busy and learned how to spell her name. EP: Now, how old was Dorothy? MG: She was three years older than I. She had this little stubborn streak in her- My first experience at school was when Mrs. Newkirk would get me up in front of the other children, and me just a little five-year-old first grader, she would have me, if somebody in the third grade couldn't read or they would stumble over their words, she would hand me the third grade book and say: "Virginia, come up here and show them how to read." I would stand up in front of the whole class and read it and that did not make me very popular with the other children. It earned me the name of "teacher's pet" on the playground. I couldn't understand why they thought I was teacher's pet. EP: Did you like school? MG: I loved it. I remember looking up on the wall and wondering why they had my dad's picture up there. My dad was a very tall man, six feet-two inches tall, and thin, and he was a carbon copy of Abraham Lincoln, in my eyes, anyway. He had the same high forehead, the same shaped face; he even had that mole on the face. I looked up there and thought: I wonder what my daddy's picture is doing on the wall. Then later I discovered it was Abraham Lincoln. He did look a great deal like him. EP: Tell me about your dad. What was he like? MG: My dad was very stern person, well, in a way. He was very strict, I should say, and he expected complete obedience and he got it. All he had to do was look at us and we'd wither, you know. But he was a very loving person also. He was about the most honest 7 person I have ever known. His word was his bond. I remember one time during the Depression, it was very, very rough times and I grew up during these Depression years. We had moved to Phoenix because my mother had become ill. EP: What year was this? MG: This was in, I think 1930…what would that be? The year we went to Phoenix, I was out of high school for a couple of years because of ill health, so while I was still out of high school... let's see, I quit high school for a while at my dad's urging because we had so far to go—we went to Buckeye, you know, which was quite a ways from Arlington, and we were the first to be picked up and the last off the bus. It was a real long day, and at the time I was twelve years old, and very skinny--I was pretty much undernourished, I think. But Dad urged me to quit high school, and then we moved to Phoenix because my mother became ill, and that must have been 1934, 1935? Something like that. Anyway, it was still during the Depression and Dad just could not find a job, they just were not to be had, period, but we had to leave Arlington because Mother had become so ill, in fact, she was in a coma before we realized what was the matter. EP: Was she diabetic? MG: Yes, she was judged diabetic and it took them a while to really discover what was the matter. Then, of course, when she got out of the hospital she had to have certain things to eat and so forth, and we finally got down to our last dollar. It was very, very tough. We didn't know where we were going to get our next dollar. People were starving, really, during those years. We went down to this corner grocery store and very carefully selected out of this dollar what we had to have, and it was going to be just enough-there were just going to be a few cents change left. I was looking at something else, and 8 then Dad started to pay for the groceries and I stepped up behind me. He actually thought I was in another part of the store, he didn't realize that I was there. He handed the man the dollar bill and the man, somehow, thought I was a ten-dollar bill and started giving him change for ten dollars. I was kind of elated: I thought, oh, please take it because we actually need it more than he does, you know. This was going through my mind. I think the same thought went through Dad's mind because he didn't know where his next nickel was coming from, but he handed back the man all the money except for the few cents change he had coming. He said, "I gave you a one-dollar bill instead of a ten." The man was so surprised. I guess he had been having his troubles too, you know, to make ends meet, and he was really surprised that anyone would be that honest. It paid off, really, because he said: "anytime you need credit just let us know." So we were able to get groceries on credit until Dad could find work. But that is one of the things that I think about when I think of Dad. Was how honest he was. And if he ever gave his word that was it, that was all it took. He stood by his word. Then, also, he really loved his family. He always called me his pet and I think it was because I was willing to go on these prospecting jaunts he went on. He loved to go prospecting and everybody else was always busy or something and I always went with him. And I remember a lot of times when we had a lot of fun going out on the desert prospecting. EP: Was his prospecting ever successful? MG: A little bit. Boy, I wish I had it now. He had finally gathered up about a quart jar of gold dust and gold nuggets. Of course, gold in those days wasn't anywhere near what it's worth now, they hadn't gone on gold standard yet, but it was worth a lot. When Mother became ill and we had to take her to Phoenix, somebody went into our house and took 9 that gold. After all those years of gathering it up, it just went for nothing, I guess. Have you ever heard the story of why he was so interested in gold? Well, when he was about fifteen years old, I guess, he was riding a horse down there near Arlington, and he came to this place and he thought it looked pretty interesting. He got off his horse and looked at some of these rocks that were there, and he thought: boy, that looks like gold. The whole place was just covered with these rocks. He put a few in his pockets thinking he would have them checked when he got home to see if they really were gold, fool’s gold, or what. Then on the way back, there was a gopher came out of a gopher hole and scared the horse. The horse shied and bucked him into a cactus. He had cactus thorns all over his body, just everywhere, so of course, he forgot all about the rocks. He finally made it home, and after he had recovered from getting all those thorns pulled out of him, he did have those assayed and they were absolutely lousy with gold. So, he went back to find the place, and he spent the rest of his life trying to find it. But I think what had happened, and I used to go with him, too, you know, to try and find this place, that what had happened was that when the wind blows down there sometimes it just covers an area and completely changes the looks of a place. I think the sand just covered it up. He was never able to find it. He would have been a rich man if he had been able to find that place. He said that when they assayed it that it was very, very rich with gold. He had just taken a few of the rocks and all of them were like that. I imagine someday that will become uncovered and someone will find a really rich gold mine. EP: This is down in the Arlington area? MG: Yes, I think it was somewhere southwest of there on the desert. EP: What was your mother like? 10 MG: My mother was a very sweet, gentle person. She was loved by everybody that knew her. She was called "Auntie" by all the children in the valley. She was everybody's Auntie. She was an excellent cook: she could make a meal out of nothing. Sometimes when you didn't think you had a speck of food in the house she would go in and make a lovely meal out of whatever it was you had. I remember my cousin Ivy coming over one time and she ate and ate, stuffed herself, till she was so full she couldn't hold another bite and then she put her fork down and she says: "Auntie, you are the best cook I ever ate." But she was an excellent cook and very sweet. I don't know of anyone in her whole life that didn't like her, or anyone that had anything against her. She was very kindhearted -and giving. Dad and Mother both were when it came to giving. There were some people who took advantage of their kindness and goodness. I remember one time my aunt getting very disgusted with her because she came down--this was also during the Depression when people—they had all that trouble in the dust bowl and people were trying to make their way to California, and they would break down in Arlington and not have a dime or a nickel to go on, and they were destitute and there wasn't really any way to make a living there--so Dad and Mother had a cow and a little bit of food. You know, we would grow wheat and things. And these people were literally starving. They made a dugout to protect themselves from the elements and it was cold. It gets, sometimes, a little cold down there in the winter. So my mother had some flannel she was going to make us nightgowns with, so she was staying up all night to make flannel nighties for these little kids. Then we shared our milk with them, too. My aunt came over and she was having a hissy, and she said: "Your kids need that worse than they do." And she went on and on, and my mother said, "No, my kids will be fine. These children 11 are cold and they need it." And she "spent the whole night doing that. Those are the things I remember about Mother, too. And Dad was always willing to share anything he had with anybody. EP: Do you have any memory of resenting it? MG: Of resenting it? No. No, I never did resent it. I thought it was just fine because I could see that those children really needed it. I did resent Santa Claus when I was little. EP: Santa Claus? MG: Yes! I was told that Santa Claus brought toys to nice little boys and girls and I was trying to be, oh, so good all year because I was looking forward to Christmas and all these toys Santa Claus was going to bring me. Each good thing I'd do I'd think ah-ha, I'm going to get paid back for that. My cousins, Rawlin and this girlfriend, Barbara Humphries, they were the meanest little squirts. They would do all these mean little things and I would think to myself: you just wait until Christmastime. You just wait. Well, Christmas came and they were absolutely showered with gifts from Santa Claus and Santa Claus brought me a little homemade looking doll that I was quite sure my mother had made, and nothing else. And I thought that is just so unfair. It just isn't fair. I was born under the sign of the scales — injustice rankles in my soul, and that was very unjust in my opinion. When I found out that my mother and dad were Santa Claus I was very much relieved. Then I could understand why he hadn't brought more. Anyway, I can remember how badly I felt toward Santa Claus for a while. I didn't think he was a bit fair. EP: What were your parents like together? 12 MG: My parents were always very loving towards each other. They stayed very much in love until the day my dad died. They were very demonstrative. Dad didn't ever mind giving Mommy a pat on the bottom as he passed by. They were just always affectionate. If they had arguments or any disagreements of any sort I never knew it. I don't think the rest of the family did. They never, ever argued in front of us. I doubt if they had very many disagreements, but if they did it was always in private, we didn't even know about it, which is a very good thing, I think, in raising children because if both parents are—my mother was very gentle and she was not very much on giving punishment; Dad was very stern and his word was law—but my mother always supported him in his corrections of us. They were always together. I think, in raising children, that as long as both parents are together, they are both strict or both lenient, as long as they are together, it doesn't matter that much. Where one's one way and the other's the other way, is where the kids get torn up, confused, and of course, they will use that, one against the other, too. EP: Did you ever feel that your father was unfair? MG: A few times I did. But I always knew that in his own mind that he was being fair. EP: Your mother still supported him. MG: Very much so. I remember one time--I received very few spankings in my life—but I remember this one time that I got spanked along with everybody else and it was a good one. My dad had had a disagreement with our neighbor who was across the way, his name was Mr. Archer. We even had company: my cousin Rawlin was there and my cousin Ivy and Margie and me and I don't know who else, she might remember. But we were playing and swimming in the ditch. We were having a lot of fun. And we went 13 under this fence. But my dad had warned us very sternly not to go on Archer's property. We were simply not to go on his property. I really didn't know where his property was, but apparently this fence we climbed under must have been onto his property. I don't think that any of us knew that we were on his property swimming in the ditch there. EP: Margie said she knew. MG: She did know? EP: She said you didn't know. MG: I didn't realize that we were on his property. I kept my head in the clouds a lot of times. If I had had my ears open I might have known. But anyway, all of us had gotten a good spanking, and we were switched with a mesquite. It really stung my legs, I remember that. I didn't feel it was just at all, but Dad in his own mind, he thought that we had deliberately disobeyed his order and I could realize that later, but right at the time I thought it was really unfair --but he whipped the whole bunch of us, including company— cousins and all. EP: Did their parents object? MG: No, I don't think so. We didn't hear anything about it. I don't even know if they told on him. They were always so happy to come to visit us I don't think they even mentioned it. Another time I thought my aunt was very unfair. She gave us a spanking because about the same thing happened. We were down visiting Aunt Ada and we were all swimming in the canal, and paddling and having more fun. We didn't realize all this time we were being swept downstream. When we got out were about a mile and a-half or two miles away. I imagine Aunt Ada had missed us, and I know how frightened she must have 14 been. Well, anyway, when she came along in the car, I was ten months older than her son Rawlin and I was the one who got the spanking because I was the oldest. I thought that was pretty unfair. My Aunt Ada treated me pretty nice but she gave me a spanking because I was the oldest and I should have known better. EP: Margie says Aunt Ada overworked you always. MG: Oh yes, she did, but I didn't mind doing it because she bragged on me. Anybody who would brag on me I'd break my neck for. She really knew how to get the work out of me. EP: Now go back. You were talking about school, and you graduated and went into high school when you were twelve. MG: Yes, I was in high school when I was twelve. We had the Buckeye Union High School and that took care of Buckeye, Palo Verde, Liberty, Arlington—those four schools all went to Buckeye Union High School—so the bus would pick us up about four o'clock in the morning, I know the stars were still shining, then we would go out on the desert and gather up all these kids and we would finally get to school. After school we would take everybody home and we were the last ones off the bus, so it was a big, long day. EP: Dawn to dark. MG: Yes, very much so. EP: How many in your family were going to high school? MG: Dorothy was going and I was going but Margie wasn't in high school yet. EP: And Mother was already out? 15 MG: Yes. She was already out. She was going to college. She wasn't home then; she was going to college at Tempe. EP: What was your financial situation when you were in Arlington? MG: It was very poor. We always had enough to eat, but not always the things we wanted to eat. I can remember going home from school on the bus, this was in grade school, I had this friend named Sylvia Harris and her folks had a charge account at Arlington school, so this bus would stop there before we headed home and the kids would get out to get their treats and things. My dad and mother did not have the money for treats and I can remember how good those candy bars looked. She'd pick up a Milky Way or something every night of the world, never offer anybody a bite, though. Once in a while Dad would go to the store when he had a little bit of change, and Dad loved candy, and he would always buy a sack of these cheap chocolates. Do you remember those old chocolates? I always hated those: they were too sweet for me, but he loved them and he thought it was a real treat for the family when he would bring those home. And he loved horehound and I hated that, too. But Mother would make candy like we would have taffy-pulls at home and Mother made fudge that would absolutely melt in your mouth. You have heard of Hershey bars and hers was every bit as good as any Hershey bar. I don't know how she did it, but she always made excellent fudge. And she would make divinity and stuff like that. I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. I would much rather have a lemon with salt. EP: That runs in the family, doesn’t it? MG: I think it does. Going back to the third grade, I got a real inferiority complex in third grade. Up to then, I had gotten perfect grades in everything. I could count into the 16 thousands before I even entered school, so math should not have been any problem for me, but they introduced math in the third grade. This teacher I got that year, Mrs. Newkirk had left the valley and so they hired this woman called Mrs. Cramer. I don’t know why in the world she had it in for me, but she did. She would call me up in front of the class, write a long line of numbers, pull out her watch and just look, give me the meanest look you ever saw, and say: “now you add that up, and you do it correctly, or I will slap your face. Now do it correctly in one minute." She would look at her watch, you know. EP: My goodness! MG: I was absolutely petrified. If she had said "what's one and one?" I could not have told her. My mind would completely blank out and I would just puddle up and just about cry. I would bite my lip trying not to cry. And she would never slap me, but she would always say: "Oh, go to your seat. You are stupid when it comes to math. You'll never learn it." And, of course, it got set in my mind that I couldn't do math and that I would never learn it. EP: Did you tell your parents? MG: No, my mother and dad always supported the teacher. I know if I had told them that, they certainly wouldn't have supported her in that, but I had it in my own mind that the teacher was always right. If she told me I was stupid in math I must be. When I got to high school, I changed my course so I wouldn't have to take math, and then I had absolutely no preparation for it and I ended up as a bookkeeper for a way of making my living. So I really wasn't stupid in it. In fact, when I went to Tempe I think the next year, this woman finally passed me in math on condition, but she had to give me good grades in everything else because I was good in it, but she told my mother I was just stupid in 17 math and didn't learn it. So Mother took me into Mrs. Empey, this teacher that I was going to have the next year, and she said "Virginia seems to have some problem with math." Mrs. Empey was a kindly, sweet lady—just the opposite of Mrs. Cramer Peterson--and she took me in and had me do some problems and then when she came out she said: "Well, I don't know what the problem is. She does fine. She has no problem with math." But the thing was, it was already stuck in my mind, and what she said didn't make enough impression, but what the other teacher did... Children are strange that way. I think adults can do so much harm with children without knowing it. Well, I think- she did that deliberately, but sometimes I think people without meaning to cause children to have problems. EP: Tell me some more about your family's music. I have heard before that they played for the community’s dances. MG: Yes, mother and dad always played for the dances. We had a place up on the top of the hill-strange, too, I just made a trip to Arizona, and when I was a child that seemed like such a mountain to me that we went up on the hilltop for these dances. When I went down…that was just a little hill. We were clear up to the top of the hill before I knew it. At the time, when we were kids, Jack had this old car, it was a Model T, and he used to have to run it backwards and take it backwards to get to the top. But mom and dad used to play for those dances, and they took us when we were just little tiny kids, so we grew up dancing. We used to dance around the edges. So dancing and singing were a very important part of our growing up. We had a cow one time I remember, did Margie tell you about Bossy? EP: No. 18 MG: We had this cow that dad bought, half Guernsey, quarter Jersey, and a quarter something. Anyway, she gave ten gallons of really rich milk every day. She was a super cow and part of the family, just a real pet. She loved music and every time our orchestra would start playing, she would come sailing over the fence and plaster her face against the window or door to listen to this music. In the summertime we would open the door and just let her stick her head in. She liked it. Every time she would hear us play she would come running. She was quite a cow. EP: Listening to you and Mother and Margie, I have decided that animals were a very important part of your lives. MG: They were. Animals were a part of our family. And being treated like a part of the family, they didn’t know they were animals. They remind me of my son Jay’s cat, Charlie, which he has now. He probably doesn’t know that he is a cat. And that is the way our cats were and our dogs, chickens, everything else. Oh, yours were the same way. I remember the chickens, those little chickens of yours that used to get up on the piano bench. EP: Did you always have pets? MG: Always. We always had dogs and cats. The dog was always an outdoor pet, so it never came in the house. When we lived in Mineral Park, Arizona, we moved into this great big house that was made out of adobe. All of these rooms opened on a veranda the full length of the house. It had about ten or eleven rooms in that house, and most of the rooms had a fireplace. Anyway, it was so large that our dog Wimpey had his own room; it was a little room that was right off the dining room. So Wimpey was allowed to have his own room but he could not come in the other part of the house. When we would be 19 sitting there eating dinner, Wimpey would start edging himself out of his room, and look around and as long as his tail was in his own room he figured he wasn't breaking the rules. So he would look around and wag that tail, and as long as it was sticking in his own room he was OK. But he would never come any further. One time we had company and he asked: "Why do you keep that dog chained in there?" We said "He is not on a chain," but he couldn't believe it. That dog would come out that far and stop. That dog was well-trained. EP: Were dogs for your father? MG: Our family just loved dogs. We just loved pets. When we were smaller I remember one dog we had was Spot. When my brother Hal was small, Spot watched over him like a mother hen, and several times saved his life from rattlesnakes, or when he'd fall in the canal or something, he'd fish him out. He always watched him like a hawk; he was a neat dog. And, of course, I have told you stories about Tickle- toes, the cat. Hal got him when we went to visit the Empire Ranch. A little kid down there, his cat had some kittens and they wanted to give Hal this cat. Well, we already had a cat and Dad said "absolutely no more animals." We got about halfway home and we heard this little "meow" and Dad turned around and said "what's that?" Hal had the cat under his coat. He started meowing, pretending it was he who had meowed. Of course, Dad knew what was going on but he turned around and when we got home, well, of course there wasn't much you could do about the cat except keep it. It turned out to be the smartest and cutest and best cat we ever had. Oh, she was a jewel. Just like a person, really. She trained her little kittens; it was so cute the way she did that. EP: Tell me about it. 20 MG: Well, one day Letha went to the window and looked out and she started laughing and said "come here and look." We went to look and Tinkle-toes had these little kittens lined up around a gopher hole: she was teaching them how to watch and be patient. And all of them were sitting there at attention except this one, and it seems like in any family there is always one rebellious soul, and this one little kitten was very rebellious. He didn't want to be bothered and his attention would wander and she would box him on the ears and make him shape up. That is what caught Letha's attention. The cat would smack him and he would look there for a while and pretty soon he absolutely got defiant, turned his little tail up and started walking off. She pounced on him, held his head down with one paw and took her other paw and gave him a good spanking with it. I had never seen a cat do that before in my life but you could see she was just getting so mad at that kitten. Boy, he shaped up: he went over there and he was as good as the rest of them. I don't know whether she did that from seeing someone get spanked or what in the world, but that is the way she corrected that little cat. EP: I wouldn't believe that story if I hadn't heard it from several of you. MG: Yes, the whole family saw it happen. Amazing. And another thing, people say that animals can't understand what is said to them except through tone of voice. I don't believe that. I am sure that some animals can understand your words, because Tinkletoes could. She was in the kitchen one day and my mother was wondering what in the world we would have for dinner. Tinkle-toes was sitting there on the floor, and all of a sudden she shot out the door, and we wondered what had struck her all of a sudden, and then kind of forgot it. In about five minutes or so she came back and she had this cottontail rabbit. She had run it down, killed it, brought it in the house and she went over 21 to my mother, dropped it right at her feet, then looked at her and said "meow," there is your dinner. It was so cute. I know she understood because she never would have acted like that, you know. She just took off, caught this cotton-tail and came back and dropped it right at my mother's feet. She was really an outstanding kitty. EP: What kind of a home did you have? You have talked about what an outstanding cook your mother was. What was her home like? MG: My mother was quite casual. You know, she loved to read. Well, in fact, she was selfeducated. She taught herself to read. But she was very well-educated. EP: You mean she never went to school? MG: I think she had had a little bit of schooling, but she had mostly taught herself most of the things she learned. Well, in fact, she became a schoolteacher, so she had to go... Letha told me that she went to; I think one year the valley teacher had gone off and so they needed a teacher and they talked my mother into teaching until they could find a certified teacher. They liked the job she did so well they wanted her to get certified. Well, she had never even gone to high school, but they decided she could get certified she went to--what do they call it? EP: Normal school? MG: Yes, she went up to Tempe to the school there. She was going to take these courses, to see if she could pass them— well, not actually take the classes, but test for them. And later when Letha went to college, this man called her in and said "I want to show you something," and so he showed her my mother's test scores. She had passed with, what, 90 or 97%? Letha would remember exactly: I don't quite. Anyway, it was very, very high. 22 I know she was accredited and she taught until she had another baby. She was very intelligent. She loved to read: I can remember seeing her with her nose in a book a lot. She also would read to the family--she was a very good reader. Dad loved to be read to, in fact, he used to have me read those Zane Grey novels to him all of the time. EP: Was your father as well educated as she? MG: No, I don't think he was. He didn't care for reading, mainly because when he was a young boy he had a problem with being farsighted and in those days they didn't realize the problems children- had with vision. And so, when he learned to read, he had to look over his book: he made a deal with the kid in front of him, had him hold his book up so that he could read off his book, because when he told the teacher he couldn't see-you see, he could see everything that was on the blackboard from his seat, but when he would tell the teacher he couldn't see his book, she told him he was lying. So he made a deal with the kid in front of him so he could learn to read off of this other kid's book. One time he was hit over the head, you know they would have these pointers. My dad showed me a dent in his skull where the teacher had hit him with this pointer really hard and accused him of lying because he said he couldn't see. EP: There was a lot of child abuse in the schools at that time, wasn't there? MG: Really. There was a lot of child abuse, I think from misunderstanding. Anyway, my grandfather, Dad's dad, was a very religious man, a preacher. My dad would simply not set his foot inside a church, the reason being when he went to Sunday School, I'm not sure what Sunday school class that was, but anyway, my dad was in this Sunday school class and, of course, he was having difficulty reading because of this eye problem he had, and this teacher, the way he would teach Sunday school class was to pass the 23 Bible around—and you know how small some of the print is in some of those Bibles are-and then have the kids read out of the Bible. When it would come Dad's turn he would just stumble over the reading and the other kids made fun of him and the teacher also made fun of him. So my dad was such a proud person that he absolutely could not take that. That was the end of his church, period. He was a very religious person, but he would not put his foot inside a church from then on. EP: Margie was telling me that shortly before his death he was converted to Mormonism. MG: He was. We had a couple of missionaries who came out to kind of activate inactive members, and also to, we were members at that time—Mother wasn't, but Jack was and Margie and I were all members--and my dad got very friendly with Brother and Sister Neff. He really loved them. Well, he thought a lot of Paul, too. EP: Now, Paul was Margie's fiancé? He was on a mission in Arlington? MG: He was on a mission in Kingman, or in that area. EP: This was in later years? MG: Yes, this was in later years. We were living in Oregon at the time Brother and Sister Neff came out to visit the family. So they would, just in a friendly way, get Dad into Gospel discussions. He didn't realize at the time, I don’t think, that he was being taught. Finally, he became converted. He had picked up the habit of smoking as a kid about nineteen, he was a cowboy at the time, and cowboys have always smoked, you know, and a few times because of expense and so forth, he had tried to quit. But he would get so cranky my mother would go down and buy him some cigarettes--she couldn't stand him trying to quit. Anyway, he told Brother Neff that as soon as he could quit smoking he would be baptized. But he didn't tell any of the family, including my mother. She 24 didn't know until after his death when Brother Neff told us that he had told him as soon as he could quit smoking he would be baptized. He had just about quit when he had pneumonia. Right after that he had this blood clot that caused his death. But he had become converted before then. He was very religious in our younger lives. I remember when he would have a vision ...I remember one time he had gone to Nevada to mine, and he had this vision. He was kind of halfway up a hill and he sat down to rest and he saw, just as plain as day, my mother in a bed, lying there, so he knew that she needed him, so he just got up and went back home. She had become very ill and was very much in need of his help. So, he came home that time. EP: Now, you were talking... over the years I have heard that he had a gift for healing. MG: Oh, he definitely did. He would have made a marvelous doctor. Brother Gordon fell out of a tree and broke his arm, and they took him to Buckeye to the doctor. The doctor put a left-handed splint on a right arm and it grew back as crooked as a dog's hind leg. So Dad was always so disgusted about the doctor doing that to his arm. A few years later, he fell out of a tree and broke the same arm, so Dad refused to take him to the doctor and set it himself, and he had a nice, straight, strong arm. Also, he had this gift; like if a person had a very bad headache, my dad could put his hands on your head and cure it. Of course, I was never bothered with headaches and he never did that to me, but we did have a friend in Phoenix, I remember, when we were living there, our neighbor, and she used to have these migraine headaches. She was in absolute misery for days, was sick to her stomach and everything else with these terrible headaches she could not get rid of. I kept saying: "Why don't you let my dad come over, and he will put his hand on your head and it will go away." She said, "Oh, he couldn't cure this one. Nobody could." 25 But finally she got desperate and said: "please have your dad come over." So Dad came over. And he could also, by putting his hand on your head, could know how bad a headache it was and where it was hurting. And he said "oh, you have an absolutely horrible headache," but in a little while he had it cured. In the short- while he had his hands on her head, he had it cured. EP: Did he use massage? MG: Yes, but he could just put his hands on your head. It was amazing. He also had the gift of well-witching, did Marge tell you that? EP: No, she didn't talk about him very much yet. MG: Oh, didn't she? Well, anyway, he used to go out and witch wells, you know, he could tell them where to dig and he could tell them how deep the well was going to have to be. He also did this with minerals. He had a thing he called a "dew dodger." He had a wire, for example, if he were looking for gold, he would put a nugget on the end of this wire and it would go in the right direction. I used to not really believe in that--I was very skeptical--, until one time we were living in Liberty and my mother lost her gold wedding ring. She was absolutely in tears, she looked that ranch over, she had all us kids scouring the whole place, we looked the house over, we looked the yard over, none of us could find that ring, and she was heartsick. When Dad came home, she was crying and he wanted to know what she was crying about, and she said she had lost her wedding ring. He said, "Oh, don't worry: I'll find it." So he went in, got his dew-dodger, put a little gold nugget on the end of it. He went all through the house, was getting no clues there, so he went out into the yard, walking around. Finally, it began bobbing in a certain direction, he followed that direction, and then, eventually, he got right over a cow pile. It started 26 making a circle, and he said "It is right under that," and believe it or not, it was. Apparently, she had lost it off her finger; this cow had come along and covered it up. EP: Who believed in him enough to get it? MG: I don't remember who dug that out of there. I didn't, I can tell you that. But it was found there, and so after that I became a believer, because how could he possibly have known it was there? He couldn't have. My Aunt Jean, who was his sister, had the same thing. She could do the same- thing with this dew-dodger, she called it. And she had this same thing he did about mining. He loved mining and so did Aunt Jean. EP: What did he do other than mining, farming and ranching Lumber? MG: Yes, mainly when he got to Oregon, lumber, hops, too. When we were kids he got a job on the Gillespie Dam He helped build that dam—it is just below Arlington on the Gila River. It is amazing, it has water going over that now; for a few years it kind of dried up, the. Gila River did. It is really still a beautiful, sturdy dam. He helped build that. EP: Now, he always was a laborer. And he always worked hard? MG: Very hard. EP: Was he ever financially comfortable? MG: Not from the time I was a little kid. He had been before. When he was fifteen, my grandfather and he had moved to Arizona and were about the first people in that valley. They cleared the sagebrush off this land and made this ranch—still called the Deming Ranch in Arlington. They were clearing it off by having a triangle of logs, Dad was on there for weight, and Grandpa would drive the horses, and one time he looked around when my Dad was standing on there and said: "Normie, don't move." Dad looked down, 27 and there was a rattlesnake around his right leg, one around his left leg, and one in between. So they kept on going and the rattlesnakes were dragged off and they stopped and killed them. One day they killed either thirty-two or thirty-six rattlesnakes, I can't remember exactly, but it was in the thirties, snakes they killed that day. The snakes lived in the sagebrush. It was a wonder they didn't get bitten. EP: Was he ever bitten? MG: No. Of course, you remember your mother was, when she was in her teens. But anyway, we were talking about their finances. They established this ranch and my dad's mother had died when he was a young kid and Grandpa remarried, and so he had another child by this other marriage named Ralph. The new wife wanted Ralph to get everything. Dad was promised, you know, he worked all those years, all while he was growing up, and he was the one who cleared that Deming ranch—he did practically all the work. Grandpa had palsy and he couldn't work all that hard. My dad was strong and young and a very hard worker, and anyway, and he established it and he was supposed to get half the ranch. When I was born, we were on the Deming ranch, we were still there. About that time this stepmother decided she wanted Ralph to get the ranch, all of it. There was a ....I don't know how...Dad finally left, anyway. He left everything to Ralph. He was a very proud person, he would never, he would just say "you can have it," So that is what he did. All those years just went down the drain. There was never any bitterness. You know, most people would have been mad and bitter about it. There was never any bitterness. I never in my life heard that when I grew up. Letha knew about it because she was older, but Dad never—Mother either—neither of them ever 28 had anything against that family. But from that time he was, you know, just mainly working, laboring. EP: Did you own your home? MG: Well, let's see. I know we didn't pay rent on that one place we had. It wasn't really that great a place. I don't think we owned, it, though. EP: Did you go straight there from the ranch? MG: No, we went several places before we went to this last one that I remember. EP: You always stayed in that Arlington area? MG: Yes. Once we moved up to Yarnell. It was my Uncle Barney Hance (that was Aunt Ethel's husband), wanted to start this service station at the foot of Yarnell Hill, and so he talked Dad into putting up half the money for it and so forth. So they went into partnership and we went up there for a while. That was a big mistake, too. That was another deal where he lost his shirt and the other person gets it all. That happened several times in his life, but he never had any bitterness toward anyone over anything. EP: He left school very young? MG: Yes, Mother was a very good reader and she read to all of us. I can remember one of my earliest memories, too, was the whole family settling down and we didn't have electricity in this little valley where we lived. Kerosene lamps and so forth. And she used to read to us and I loved hearing her read, the whole family did. I remember one time when I was about ten or eleven or twelve, we used to subscribe to the Collier's magazine and they had a continued story in it. I couldn't wait to get down there when the Colliers would come, so I could hear the next installment of this story, it 29 was such a neat story. I even still remember the name of it: "Cold Trail." And, of course, it had these stories in it, too. I loved it. What were we talking about? I keep getting sidetracked. EP: And I am too interested to direct you! We were talking about Grandpa and his educational background. How many years of schooling did he have? I am interested because I remember being shocked (I was about ten) I remember my mother showing me a letter of his. I was just shocked because the grammar was very poor, the spelling was atrocious, and I could tell that he was just barely literate. MG: Yes. EP: I was shocked, because she had told me so many things that he knew. MG: He was a very smart man. He had a very good mind, but he did not have very much education. Well, he had to work and take care of the farm that was the main thing. Actually, actually, your mother getting a letter from him was an absolute miracle because he didn't write letters. He wrote me a letter once and I was thrilled and I kept that letter and it got lost with all my treasures once when we moved from Goldroads. But this letter he wrote to me was fabulous. Even though there were misspelled words and he wrote it in pencil, the whole thing, he was telling me news of the family and so forth, and the whole thing was written in rhyme-the entire letter. It was the cutest thing. I just loved it. I guess we come by this rhyming sort of naturally. He did write this letter, it all rhymed. Mother had that ability to write rhymes, too. Your mother did, I do, and I suppose you do, too. EP: Tell me a little about your brothers and sisters. 30 MG: The oldest in the family was your mother, Letha. And my memory of her was kind of like my other mother. She was always very competent, intelligent, loving person. I have always loved her and I would mind her just as well as I would my mother. She started out, I guess, when I was just a little tiny baby taking care of me, helping mother, and she was always very self-reliant and competent. I felt like she knew everything in the world. Then, next, was Jack. Raymond Smith Deming is his real1 name, but he was always called Jack. I think Letha started calling him that for some reason when he was little. He was tall .and slender like Dad. He was always slow and easygoing and serious. He was a wonderful person, Jack. He was named Smith because my grandpa had a brother named Smith Puffer Deming and he was named for him, and I think also, for my mother's grandmother, Julia Ann Smith. Then next came Gordon. I don't know why Mother always named us two names and then called us by our middle names. She did that. It was always Gordon until he was in the army and then, he became Jim because James was his first name. But I always called him Gordon. Oh, I might as well tell you nicknames, too. Letha's nickname when she was a kid was Sally. And, of course, my brother Jack's was Jack. Gordon was called Bawly by my Uncle Leo and he hated that, he absolutely hated that, but everyone called him Bawly. EP: What did Gordon look like? MG: Gordon was tall, also. He was fairly nice looking until when he was in his teens a cow kicked him in the cheek and then this one side of his face was just a little bit lower. He had the high forehead like Dad—like the whole family does--the high forehead. Gordon and Dorothy were our rebels in the family. Every family has to have a few rebels and those were our two--those were the "fighty" ones. When I went to this reunion this year, 31 my cousin Vernon Anderson was there, and he was laughing and he said "do you remember how Gordon and I used to fight?" They fought like cats and dogs. They loved to. EP: Physically? MG: Yes, physically. They fought one time until they were so white and tired they couldn't get up. And another time, he got in a fight with Gordon, and Gordon got the better of him, and he came home with all these scratches and his clothes in tatters. He told his mother that Spud had gotten away and run into the barbed wire fence. Spud was this little horse. They had this little cart and horse that they would go to school in. So he told his mother Spud ran away and got into this barbed wire fence. Of course, Aunt Jesse believed him. EP: What was your parents' reaction to the fights? MG: I don't think too much reaction. They took it in their stride.' I'll have to tell you this about Gordon. This one entertainment I told you about, the valley's entertainments they had. Well anyway, he was supposed to be on the program, and we got in the car and it was raining cats and dogs, and on the way we had this flat tire. So do you think Gordon would stay in the car? Oh, no. He got out and-got himself all muddy and he had this part on the program. When he walked in, Mother hadn’t realized he had been out and gotten himself all muddy and he looked a mess. He walked on the stage looking a fright and I still remember this piece he had and it went like this: "I wished I was a stone, sitting on a hill, doing nothing all day but just a sitting still. I wouldn’t eat, I wouldn’t sleep, I wouldn’t even wash; I'd just sit there a thousand years and rest myself, by gosh!" That was the piece he said. But the thing was, he was dressed with this mud and stuff all over him, 32 everybody was just howling, it was so funny. When he said "I wouldn’t even wash," everybody just howled, he looked like he never did. EP: How old was he? MG: I think he was about eight or nine or ten, perfect age for it. And then, Dorothy was the next one in the family. And like I said, she was our other rebel, very stubborn. Loved Dorothy, but I was never as close to her as I was to Margie, we got along like Mutt and Jeff, but she and I, we got along ok, but I was never as close to her as I was to Margie. She had a time with her arm when it got broken—she was about four or five years old. I remember I was just a little tiny kid, but that was another memory I had when I was really young. She and I were playing, we were on the Hill Ranch, and we were playing with sticks, where you would run and take a stick and jump with it--make you jump a long ways. So we were doing this and she lost her balance and grabbed the first thing she could and she happened to be by the cream separator when she grabbed and the cream separator took her arm right up into the wheel, and if a man hadn't been right there at that time on the ranch she would have had her arm taken clear off. As it was, he turned her around with it until he could get the thing stopped. It ground her arm up, I think it was broken about fifteen times between the elbow and the wrist, and then her hand was broken so badly the bone was sticking right straight up out of it. I can still remember her scream. I was only about two—but anyway, Dad took her to the hospital and the doctor told him "we are going to have to amputate her arm." Dad said "No, you are not." The doctor said, "It is impossible to fix it. She will get gangrene and die. You have to let me operate and take the arm off." Dad said, "I am not giving my consent to take the arm off. You can fix it. Now fix it." My dad was so determined he could fix it, 33 and the doctor said "You are signing your daughter's death warrant." And he said, "You fix her arm." So they did their best and it was quite a long time healing, but she had a good arm. EP: It was a little shorter and crooked, I remember. MG: Yes, it was shorter and a little bit crooked, but very useful and hardly noticeable unless you knew it, but it certainly would have been more noticeable if she had lost it. But she had quite a bad time. She had lost so much of the bone, I think they had to graft some more bone in. She had quite a time. EP: That must have been a terrible expense. MG: Oh, it was. That was another reason the family was so poor. It seemed like we kept having bad things happen. And like that, that was a terrible expense; they were quite a number of years getting out of debt from that. Then, next in line, I came along, and I have told you some of the circumstances of my birth. And my nickname--of course, Dorothy's nickname was' Dot-—and my nickname was Ginny, Genny, Ginger, Gin, all kinds of nicknames. Then came Margie. Her name was Jesse Margaret and she hated both names and changed it to Margie, so she has always been Margie. Next came my brother Hal; he was Harold Norman and he was the youngest one in the family. There was another child who was stillborn after Hal, so we had four girls and three boys. Hal was one of the cutest kids I've ever seen. There are a lot of stories I could tell you about him, he was so funny. I'll tell you a couple. One of them was, when I was about twelve and he was just a little kid about three or four years old, he had his thumb in his mouth-he sucked his thumb--he had his thumb in his mouth and he was standing on the canal bank watching me swim. We had this canal that ran behind our house and we used to 34 swim all the time in it. So I thought, I wonder what he would do if he thought I was drowning. I looked at him; he was just standing there looking at me with his thumb in his mouth. I went under the water and came up flailing my arms and yelling "Help, I'm drowning." He just kind of stood there looking, and I came up the second time- acting desperate. Finally, the third time I came up, he turned around and walked off toward the house, and I yelled and said "Hal, aren't you going to save me?" He said: "Well, wait until I get my bathing suit on." He was going to -the house to put on his bathing suit to save me. Another time, when he was a little tiny kid, for Christmas Santa Claus brought him this little gun with a cork in the end. Anyway, he was learning to talk fairly good then but he said everything double: I was "Gin-Gin," Margie was "Mar-Mar," Mother was "Mom-Mom," Dad was—I can't remember what he called Dad, but everyone had two names. So he put this gun on his shoulder and started marching toward the door and Dad said "Where are you going?" "I'm going to go outside-side and shoot a bird-bird with my gun-gun." Another time, he and my cousin Vernon and Gordon, they used to run around to bars about those years, they were in their teens and feeling their oats, and so they would take Hal with them because he was so cute, and they would take him up to the bar and give him cigarettes, beer, or whatever. So one day, he came in and he decided he was going to repent of all his sins, Hal. He was about two, and -he went into my mother and he said: "Mom, I'm going to quit cussing and smoking and drinking and sucking my thumb." EP: Did he live up to his commitment? MG: Yes, he did. He quit sucking his thumb, he quit all those things. Another story I remember about Hal—I thought it was quite funny—it was when he was looking forward 35 to joining the church. He was Boy Scout age, and Paul Stoddard had been on a mission to Arizona and then he had returned after his mission and was working in Goldroads as an electrician in the mine there so Hal was going and attending this Scout troop Paul started. Hal was interested in the Church and finally was looking forward to joining the Church. My Dad had moved to Oregon to help my Aunt Jean with some mining and so forth, and so while he was gone we were saying the blessing on the food and so forth, and one day Hal said: "Mom, when we get to Oregon do you think that Dad would let us say the blessing on the food?" Mother said, "Well, I'm sure he will." Hal said: "I'll tell you one thing: he can't knock the Holy Ghost out of me." He was looking forward to his baptism and one day he said: "You know I just can't wait until I get to be a falcon." Mother said: "What on earth do you mean 'Be a falcon'?" Hal said: "You know when I get the priesthood." He meant "be a deacon." EP: You haven't told me much about Jack. Have you a few memories about your oldest brother? MG: Yes. Well, of course, being older than I, I don't remember things about when he was younger. I remember a few things the family told me about him. The main thing I remember about Jack was that he was such a loving person. Very gentle and kind-always kind all of his life, easy-going, just a lovely sort of person and he still is. I was told this story by Jack and by several other members of the family: When I was a little, tiny kid I developed maybe a little differently than a lot of children did because of my health problem with my heart, I suppose. I didn't walk until I was about sixteen months old. Most children, you know, walk when they are a year old. However, I started talking when I was six months old—saying words and putting sentences together a little later. 36 So Jack tells this story about when I was a little kid he used to carry me around all the time. So one day he decided I was old enough to do my own walking: he was just sick and tired of carrying me. So he put me down and said: "I am tired of carrying you around and I'm not going to do it anymore. You are going to walk." So he said I looked up at him and said: "I'll say 'please, Honey Jack, and then you will.'" It must have worked because I didn't walk until I was about sixteen months old. Another thing I remember about Jack was, let's see how old was I? I was about nine or ten, I guess, so Jack and I decided that we would save our candy. Candy was always divided up among the kids fairly, and so we would save our candy and eat it all at once. So we put our candy in a little box and hid it. We got to worrying that maybe the other kids would find it, so we went out and buried it in this box. We drew a map and each of us had a copy of this map. So, anyway, we were going to save it for about a whole year, and so we kept adding candy to this pile that we had. We didn't decide we wanted any until a long time after Christmas, but one day we decided we were candy-hungry and we were going to go out and dig up this candy. When we dug it up we found it had gotten all moldy and mildewed—the water, apparently we had had some rain--it doesn't rain very often in Arizona but when it does it drenches, it is a drenching rain, so our candy had ruined. I learned my lesson about hoarding stuff, or at least about hoarding it in the ground! {Continued Interview June 20, 1983, in the home of Ginger Griffith.} EP: Virginia, would you tell us something about your interest in genealogy? MG: When I was a young child I didn't think much of family history and I wasn't really too interested so I didn't ask very many questions in the family. I later regretted it very much because I became extremely interested and then wished I had asked more from my 37 parents about my family and family traditions and family history, and so forth, so I had to dig a lot of it out the hard way. EP: How did you first become interested in genealogy? MG: I became a member of the LDS Church, and of course they emphasize genealogy in the Church. I can remember going to Church and every time anybody would get up and talk about genealogy I thought it was such a dry subject and so uninteresting that I'd automatically put the stoppers in my ears and wouldn't listen. I'd let my mind wander while they talked about genealogy. But later on in my life, after having been active in all the organizations except this part of it, at that time my mother was working on it and trying to get information from relatives in Arizona. We were living in Oregon at that time. I can remember when I became ill I was unable to do anything else and I felt kind of guilty about not working in the Church, so I thought at least I ought to do the genealogy for my husband. You know he was a convert to the Church and didn't have anyone else in the family to do his research because he was busy teaching school and so forth. So I decided I'd better get busy on his family to see what we could do. So I did. Luckily, his mother had wanted to become a member of the DAR, so she had done a great deal of research trying to find a Revolutionary ancestor. She had to do a lot of struggling and searching before she finally did find one. She kept all her correspondence and all the information she had received on the family, all these different lines of his, so it became very easy research for me because I had a lot of things to start with. Well, I started doing research on his family and I got so interested. It was really fascinating to me, so I eventually switched to doing research on my family. My mother had a great deal or as much as she could through correspondence with relatives and also she had taken a lot 38 of trips to Arizona and was working on it with relatives down there. So I had a pretty good start on her line of the family. Of course, on my Deming side of the family I had absolutely nothing because she was working on her side of the family. So, on the Deming’s I had to start out from scratch. EP: Since a lot of the primary information I have for Dr. Sadler's class is on Biddlecome ancestors, would you mind if we began the tape with some discussion of their family line? MG: No, I found the Biddlecome line very interesting. My mother's maiden name was Biddlecome, you know. The Biddlecome name—John used to tease me about that. He would tickle me under the chin and say "Biddle, Biddle, Biddle," and I thought: "I'll get even with you. I'm going to find a name in your family that I can make fun of." So after I started doing some research of his I uncovered a Dutch line that had some really weird names in it. One of them was Titsoort, so the next time he tickled me under the chin and called me "Biddle, Biddle, Biddle," I started teasing him about his name. So that stopped that. Anyway, the name Biddlecome, the source of that name, I have read two different versions of how that came about. One of them was that in the olden days in England the families of two different surnames sometimes would keep both names if they were prominent families and so the Biddies married the Combs, and the name was originally spelled "Biddlecombe." Another version I read was that a family by the name of Biddle lived in the Valley of the Combe, so I don't know how it originated but it may have been one of these two ways. I think the origin of names is quite interesting. EP: Yes, I do, too. 39 MG: I might mention, too, that the name Deming, I've read a couple of different versions of how that name originated, too. It's French and the original John Deming went to England from Normandy, France. They, of course, a lot of times in the early origin of surnames would say John of a certain place and so there was a place in Normandy named Migne and so when he went to England they called him "John de Migne." "De" meaning "of" or "from." So that is just a little interesting sidelight but I'll just take up the Biddlecome side of the family right now. EP: When did the Biddlecomes first come to America? Do you have a record of that? MG: No, I don't really unless it was from this original Richard Biddlecome. I do have a little record on that. But the earliest ancestor that we can trace directly on the Biddlecome line that I can find is Daniel Biddlecome. He went to Vermont from Rhode Island. I originally thought that the Richard that my mother had traced our line to, Richard Biddlecome, who was in Vermont, he was in the Revolutionary War, he and Daniel both fought in the Revolutionary War, I thought they were brothers and that the father of those two was Thomas Biddlecome who came from England. The reason I thought that was because someone had turned it in from DAR records and I accepted without question these DAR records. So I thought Thomas Biddlecome was the father. EP: You can't always do that. MG: No, you can't. I certainly found that out. As it turned out, I corresponded with a lady who was working, doing a lot of digging in records and she discovered that Richard and Daniel were father and son. That Daniel was the father of Richard. He did have a brother named Daniel, but that Daniel was younger and not in the Revolutionary War but in the War of 1812. So the two who were fighting in the Revolutionary War in 40 Vermont were father and son rather than brothers. I believe that our Daniel who came from Rhode Island is a descendant of the original Richard Biddlecome who came to America from England and settled in Rhode Island. He married Hannah Bassett. But the Rhode Island records are very sketchy and we haven't been able to prove the connection between these two. I think that probably that Richard was his great grandfather. Anyway, this Daniel and Richard fought in the Revolutionary War and then Richard had a son named Cornelius who was born in 1794. He was born in Bennington, Vermont. EP: He was the one who married Mary McBride. MG: Yes, this original Richard Biddlecome married Ruth Hendrix. And then, of course, they were the parents of Cornelius. And Cornelius, as I mentioned, was born in 1794. And Mary McBride, his wife, was the daughter of Thomas White McBride and Catherine John and these two had nine children. They went to Ohio and Cornelius was baptized in the Latter- day Saint's Church but I have been unable to find the date of his baptism or the circumstances or exactly where he was when he was baptized. A lot of the very early records have been lost, I'm sure. I think he was probably converted to the Church in Ohio and he lived in Fairfield County--that's in Ohio—in 1822 and then in 1829 and 1834 he was living in Bowling Green, Pike County, Missouri. In 1842, then, he went to Nauvoo and he was living there until he died in the same year the Prophet died, in 1844. He was a stonemason by trade and family tradition says that he did the scrollwork and the fancy stonework on the Nauvoo Temple. He did work on the Nauvoo Temple while they were building that. He was a very religious man and he published an article 41 on Prayer in the Times and Seasons and the Millennial Star.* *Millennial Star, Vol. 2, March 2nd, 1841. EP: This is the article I have in the addendum to our history. MG: Yes, the one I gave you a copy of. I was really thrilled when I found that. I was unable to uncover very much of his personal history but I was able to track him through census records and through going through records of Nauvoo. EP: I remember you mentioning when you were going through Nauvoo records. MG: I was very thrilled when I worked in the Archives as a volunteer a couple of years ago and people were doing their four-generation research and I was working up on the LDS Department on the fourth floor, and I discovered they had a film of the Nauvoo records. So, in my spare time I would go over there and go through those films and the archive record on Cornelius and Mary McBride Biddlecome gave six children: Rebecca, Nathan, Jane, Asher, Joseph Lehi, and George Rosencrantz Biddlecome. The record I had up until that time, the record my mother left for me just had the two children, Joseph Lehi and George Rosencrantz. Then, when I was going through these records of Nauvoo, I found three more children that had been left off the Archive record and I was thrilled when I found this. They were between Asher and George Rosencrantz Biddlecome. Asher, let's see, Joseph Lehi Biddlecome was born in 1834 and then the next one was Elizabeth Catherine, and then Mary Angeline and Moroni Durfee. These were the three extra children that I found. There had been no record of these children, so I was very thrilled to get their temple work done. I tried very hard to find out what happened to the children and I was unable to uncover any information on them further than that. I believe probably they died of cholera when their mother did, when she was crossing the plains. 42 Because I have been unable to find any record of them since and that sounds likely because only the two children Joseph Lehi and George Rosencrantz came west. EP: Cornelius died in Nauvoo in 1844 and so Mary was left a widow with these children. MG: Yes, she started West with the Saints and she became very ill in Nebraska of cholera and she died there. Family tradition has it that she was buried with Rebecca Winters, either buried with her in the same grave or very near her. They died about the same time and were in the same company. EP: Yes, that little account I have--I believe I got it from you--says she came in and saw her friend very ill and knew she was dying and felt badly and then that evening she became ill and she died. Family tradition says Mary was that friend. MG: Yes, when I was trying to do research on this family I checked in the History Department and so forth and I wanted to track this down and prove one way or the other whether this family tradition was true. So I read everything I could find in the Church History Department. I read a number of accounts about Rebecca Winters but I couldn't find anything about Mary McBride Biddlecome. So this account that I gave to you, where Rebecca Winters went in and saw her friend dying of cholera, I am quite sure in my own mind that this friend must have been Mary McBride. EP: Yes, one granddaughter, the other source I have, is Ruby Beck Biddlecome and that would have been a great granddaughter or a granddaughter of Mary? MG: Yes, Ruby Beck Biddlecome would have been my mother's aunt. 43 EP: Yes, and she--that was the family tradition she had. Now we might for the sake of the tapes say that Rebecca Winters came by her fame because her grave was marked. Now you know that story better than I. Tell me about that. MG: One reason also, aside from this fact that she is quite famous in Church history, is because her—I think it was her great grandson was President Grant. EP: Ah, I didn't know that. MG: Yes. So, anyway, she had been buried there. She died of cholera and this one account I was telling about tells where she had died the next day after she saw this friend die of cholera. And then they buried her right there She had a friend named William Reynolds, I believe was his name, and he had carved her name on a wagon wheel and put it by the grave. Of course, Mary didn't have anyone to carve her name on anything so she was more or less forgotten. And so, anyway, when they were building the railroad and it was coming west, they found this grave on the prairie marked with the wagon wheel. And it really impressed them, apparently, because they even changed the course of the railroad to skirt that grave. EP: Then our ancestor, Cornelius, died in Nauvoo and Mary McBride died of cholera in Nebraska, and then what happened to their sons? MG: Well, they came West with the John Walker Company. The John Walker Company left from Kanesville, on July 5, 1852 and they arrived in Salt Lake October 5th, 1852. There were 250 persons in the company. Some of the relatives they came with were the Dailey and Pope families. They were sisters of James McBride and Mary McBride who had married into the Dailey and Pope Families. James McBride, the brother of Mary, 44 had come west previously, two years earlier with another brother-in-law, Harrison Severe. They were the first settlers in Grantsville, Utah. The only children of Mary McBride and Cornelius Biddlecome who came west were the two we had on our family group sheets, our ancestor Joseph Lehi Biddlecome, and his brother George Rosencrantz Biddlecome. Joseph Lehi Biddlecome was my great grandfather and was born December 20, 1834 in Bowling Green, Pike County, Missouri. He was the son, of course, of Cornelius Biddlecome and Mary McBride. His father died when he was ten years old and his mother, as we just mentioned, started West then with the Saints. She was in the same company with Rebecca Winters and died of cholera in 1852 and as I mentioned family tradition has it that she was buried there in Nebraska with or near Rebecca Winters. When he, Joseph Lehi, came to Utah he was a young man and he married Rebecca Nellie Robinson in the Endowment House in 1860. He was a very religious man and he was always loyal to the Church. He became a Seventy. He was a stonemason like his father and he was sent by Brigham Young to a lot of the communities to help build them up. He finally was sent to Mesa, Arizona. EP: Have you discovered anything more about Mary McBride and the McBride family? MG: Mary was the daughter of Thomas White McBride and Catherine John. Thomas McBride1s father was James McBride and his mother was Mary White. Thomas was born in March, 1776 in Loudoun County, Virginia. He was married about 1794. He became a convert to the Latter-day Saints Church. There is an autobiography, written by James McBride, his son—that's Mary's brother—which gives a great lot of detail of the McBride family and the things they went through. EP: I've transcribed that and that's also in the addendum to the written history. 45 MG: I thought that was so interesting. The day I received that I stayed up all night reading it. He (Thomas McBride) died the 30th of October in 1838 at Haun's Mill, in the Haun's Mill Massacre and there are a lot of accounts written up on his death. He was buried the 31st of October. That was the next day when all those bodies were thrown into a well and covered up. EP: So Thomas McBride was killed at Haun's Mill Massacre. And then his children, his sons and daughters, came on West and ultimately settled in Grantsville, didn't they? MG: Yes, that's correct. EP: I have a copy of a picture of the old Grantsville Fort showing the construction and the wall sections and the buildings and it shows the homes that were there. Now who lived in those homes? The first one was marked Biddlecome, which one would that have been? MG: That would have been my great grandfather, Joseph Lehi Biddlecome. EP: So, when he came west a little later than these he married and built a home there? MG: Yes. EP: Then the next one I think is marked Pope? That would have been William Pope and he married Catherine McBride. MG: Yes, that was also James' and Mary's sister. EP: Then there would be James Dailey and he was married to which one? Isabelle. MG: Yes. Isabelle was another sister in the family. EP: Then was McBride. 46 MG: That would be James McBride. EP: Then the last one was Severe. That was Harrison Severe. MG: Harrison Severe, yes. EP: And his wife was… MG: Dorcas. And that was another of the McBride sisters. EP: And then there is a second building marked "Severe." Would that have been another home, or what do you think? MG: I'm not sure about that. That's separate from these others. These others were all in a row, side by side. And then there was another one marked "Severe" and I don't really know whether that was some other property marked Severe or if there were another Severe there, but I believe it probably is some other property owned by Harrison Severe. EP: A store or something. MG: Yes, maybe some business or something. EP: Did you ever find out much about Catherine John the mother of Mary? MG: Not a great deal. I know she was the daughter of Thomas John and Ruth. And in going through LDS records on the fourth floor of the Archives I did find that a Catherine McBride had been baptized for her mother, Ruth Johnson, so I believe that would be the surname of our Ruth. EP: I see. All of the Biddlecomes stayed in Grantsville? MG: Yes. 47 EP: Have you found out much about them. Do we have any stories about them? MG: When they were in Grantsville? EP: Now, we don't have very much about Joseph Lehi Biddlecome. He was close enough to you in time; do you remember hearing much about him? Did your mother talk about him? MG: Yes, she did a little bit. One story I remember, you know, he was very religious. As I mentioned, he was very loyal to the Church, too. He wore garments; of course, they were married in the Endowment House. One story I remember, he would never take his garments off even when he was having a bath. He would always have one arm in the garment or one leg or something. EP: That is a bit difficult. MG: Yes. He was instructed never to remove them, so he didn't. He took things literally. But Mother described him as a very kind and gentle and wonderful grandfather. She thought he was really neat. Now he was married to Rebecca Nellie Robinson and she had a kind of a different feeling about her. She was a stern, very business-like woman. EP: Now I've done some research on her. Isn't she the one who was related to Hettie Green? MG: Yes. I remember when I was a little kid there were a lot of stories in the newspapers about this Hettie Green. Maybe for future generations who don't know about her, she was a very notorious woman who was at one time the richest woman in the United States. She was called "the witch of Wall Street." The reason being, she made her money on the stock market, but she was so cheap and so tight that she wouldn't even 48 have hot water in her flats. And she would move from one state to another state so she wouldn't have to pay taxes and none of these states could claim her really as a resident and she would live in a real cold place, you know with cold water instead of hot. She did not live in luxury and saved every nickel, I guess, she ever had. So, anyway, I read this account of her in a newspaper one time and I was just horrified that anyone would be that tight. My mother laughed and she said "be careful what you say about her: she is one of your relatives." I couldn't believe it and I said: "How could she be one of my relatives?" Mother said: "Well, she is supposed to be related to my grandmother." EP: I will have to go through my papers and see if I can find that, but it seemed that she was the daughter and was orphaned and given away or something. MG: The story that came down to me, in fact, by my mother. Mother told me these things and I have checked with Letha to see if my memory was correct; of course, I learned this as a very young child and sometimes your memory is a little tricky. EP: Like mine. MG: You forget as you get older. But I checked with Letha to see if I remembered the same stories she did, and she said yes. The story that came down to us was that this Rebecca Nellie Robinson was the daughter of James Robinson and Sarah Elizabeth Bailey and they were of the Robinsons. You know the Barnum and Bailey Circus? She was of that Bailey family. EP: That is the account I remember. MG: The story was told that when she was about eight years old she...her mother and father were performing in this circus and they were apparently trapeze artists and someone 49 tampered with the trapeze and they were both killed and so she was left an orphan at about age eight. So, apparently, according to the family tradition, anyway, the story she told and she must have believed it or she would not have spent so much of my grandfather's (great grandfather's) money trying to prove who she was. Anyway, she thoroughly believed that she was a cousin of this Hettie Green. Hettie Green was actually Hettie Robinson Green and she was the daughter of Edward Robinson and Edward was supposed to be the brother of James Robinson, the father of our ancestor. So then, there was another brother also and these three were supposed to be partners in this circus, in owning the Robinson Brother's Circus. So when James Robinson was killed then she was left an orphan and Edward, who supposedly was her uncle, had her put in an orphanage, EP: Oh dear. MG: And kept the whole bit himself. Stinginess certainly did run in that family. And so I really am not positive about how true this story is but I'm sure she was convinced of it herself. I tried to prove it one way or the other by doing a lot of research and I read stories about circuses and this and that and the other and I really wasn't able to come up with any conclusions either way as proof. But I think her story may be true, I'm not sure. EP: Now, as my mother told me, she evidently thought that there was a fire that destroyed the records. MG: Yes, well, she hired, she told my grandfather that she wanted to prove who she was, of course, and so she told him that half the money was hers, you know, since they were married. She used half his money in hiring detectives and so forth to track this down and prove her ancestry so she would be rich and get her money that she felt she had 50 coming. And so she hired detectives and everything and it seemed like every time they would get ready, well, they went to this orphanage and the orphanage burnt down and destroyed the records there and then they went to the courthouse but before they could get anything searched out there the courthouse burned down. There were a number of fires that sounded pretty suspicious. And so, of course, she felt like the other branch of the family was behind it and didn't want her to prove who she was. EP: In any case, she never found any proof. MG: No and neither did I. I really searched. I searched out the history. It was kind of a famous family so there is a book, a genealogy, and I thought maybe I could find out if Edward had a brother James or not, and if they had a circus or what. In this book it doesn't list any brother James, but it seems likely that he would have a brother James since their father's name was James and usually they would name a son after the father. But if he was of that family they have his name wiped out of the genealogy, or at least he wasn't in there. EP: So our genealogy of her line stops with Rebecca Nellie Robinson. MG: And she did state on her endowment record that her father was James Robinson and her mother was Sarah Elizabeth Bailey. EP: So we have those. MG: We have that but beyond that nothing is really authentic as to her ancestry. I put her ancestry down with a notation that it is only her ancestry if it can be proven. I did find out the ancestry if she is related to Hettie Green, but I don't have any proof of that. 51 EP: OK, going back to Joseph Lehi Biddlecome. Tell me a little more about him. Your mother said he was kind and gentle and very religious and what else? MG: Well, she said he was a really sweet person and would always take time for the children. She always felt loved when she was around him. But when she was around her grandmother she didn't really have that warm feeling. Her grandmother was very businesslike and always writing letters. I suppose she was still trying to track down… EP: She was a little obsessed with her... MG: Yes, she was. EP: What did Joseph Lehi do for a living? MG: I'm not sure what he did when he was in Grantsville. But after he left there he did some mining. He was in a little place called Rush, it wasn't too far from Grantsville, and he did some mining there. But actually, I don't know what else he did in the way of earning a living there. Oh, yes, I do, too. Take it back. When he was in Grantsville, of course, I told you he was a stonemason. EP: Oh, yes. MG: So he did building and things like that. He owned a brick making outfit. I read a little bit about that in this Grantsville history. He took that over after some other fellow had it. I guess that's what he did when he was in Grantsville. Then he went to mining. EP: Now, your grandfather was James Robinson Biddlecome and he was the son of Joseph Lehi Biddlecome and Rebecca Nellie Robinson. What do you remember about him? MG: Well, he died when I was fairly young but we always called him "Grandpa Jim." I don't remember him too well because as I mentioned he died when I was young. But he 52 stayed with our family for a while. He married Mary Agatha Martin and they were the parents of my mother, Julia Marie Biddlecome and Julia Marie Biddlecome married George Norman Deming. Both of my grandmothers died before I was born so I didn't know either of them. My mother told me I was named for both my grandmothers, that was Mary Agatha Martin and then she thought my father's mother's name was Mary, also, but I found out later it wasn't. It was Frances Jane Hartley. But she thought it was Mary Frances Jane. I believe it was because Aunt Jean's name was Mary Frances Jane and being told that Aunt Jean was named for his mother was why Dad thought his mother's first name was Mary. EP: And his mother died when he was so young. MG: Yes. Anyway, Mary Agatha Martin's parents were Zebulon Farrel Martin and Julia Ann Smith. The Smith line is very interesting, too. Do you want to go into that? EP: Yes, let's talk about the Smith line. MG: OK. Julia Ann Smith's father was Samuel Trunkey Smith and her mother was Mariah McFate. My mother's name was actually Julia Mariah and as a child she was called "Rye." She didn't like the name Mariah so she changed it to Marie. It's funny how we don't like our own names, isn't it? EP: Um-hum. MG: Maria McFate was the daughter of James McFate and his first wife, Elizabeth Williams. James McFate was an early member of the Latter-day Saint Church, too. He was born in Pennsylvania—in Mehoning, Musser County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of William McFate and Mariah McClaine. So that name Mariah goes back a long way. 53 MG: I used to wonder why my Uncle Farrel called my mother "Rye." I learned that later. EP: It's kind of cute. MG: I thought it was cute. The McFate line is traced quite a long ways back into Donnegal Ireland and they came over to America and settled in Delaware and then went into Pennsylvania. Elizabeth Williams was the daughter of Thomas Williams and we don't have that line back very far. They were from Virginia, in Fredrick County. Mariah McFate and Samuel Trunkey Smith were also members of the Church but I'd like to go into the history of James McFate. He was really an interesting person. EP: Yes. MG: I was talked into joining the Daughters of Utah Pioneers and when I attended a meeting they wanted someone to give a history of one of their ancestors, so I agreed to give a history of James McFate. I did quite a bit of studying up on him to write this history. EP: Would you like to read what you gave at the meeting? MG: Yes. I'll quote: "My great, great, great grandfather, James McFate, was born in Musser County, Pennsylvania, 9 April 1804. There is a discrepancy on his birthplace because the family group shows Mehoning County in Pennsylvania, but I went through the Church records and so forth and they gave Musser, Musser County, Pennsylvania as his birthplace. He was the son of William McFate and Mariah McClaine. The McFate family has been traced back to Samuel McFate who was born in Scotland.” Samuel's grandson, Joseph and wife Jane Culbertson, were from Drumhaven, County Donnegal, Ireland. EP: Oh, it's Donnegal County. 54 MG: Yes. It's funny when they are talking about Irish history they say the place and then they say county such and such, rather than such and such a county. EP: Oh, that's interesting. MG: They came to America in 1796 and settled in Delaware. James grew up in Pennsylvania, where he married Elizabeth Williams, daughter of Thomas and Mariah Williams. They were from Fredrick County. James owned a ferry across the Shenango River, had a large farm and owned a lot of property there. Their first daughter, Mariah, was born in 1826. She married Samuel Trunkey Smith. They were my great, great grandparents. James and Elizabeth's eighth child, Sarah Ann, was born in 1837 in Mehoning, Pennsylvania. James was an early convert to the Mormon Church. I haven't been able to discover the date or place of his baptism but his daughter Rowena was baptized in 1839 at the age of eight, so they must have joined the Church previous to that. EP: Do you have any records of the baptisms of the other children or just the one? MG: Well, Rowena, that's the earliest one on the record there. EP: How many children were there? MG: There were eight. By 1840, he and his family had joined the Saints in Nauvoo and lived near the Prophet. Elizabeth died the 28th of December 1843 in Nauvoo. In July of that year, 1843, the Prophet wrote this and I am quoting from the Church History: "Monday, July 3, 184 3. I directed the Twelve Apostles to call a special conference to choose Elders to go into the different counties of Illinois to preach the Gospel and disabuse the public mind with regard to my arrest. Elders Brigham Young, Orson Hyde, Parley P. 55 Pratt, John Taylor, George Albert Smith, Wilford Woodruff, and Willard Richards met at the grove with the Elders and it was decided that the following Elders go on a special mission to the following counties:" James McFate was listed among the Elders and his mission was to Montgomery County. It didn't state how long the mission was to last so I don't know if he was at home when Elizabeth died in December that same year. James remarried in 1844. That was four months after Elizabeth died. His new wife was Lucy Thompson Lisk, sixteen years younger than James. Their first son was born the next year in Nauvoo and was named Joseph Smith McFate. Lucy had a very difficult time at the birth of her first child and the Prophet's wife, Emma, took care of her. This occurred about eight months after the Prophet was martyred. James called the Patriarch to give Lucy a blessing and he promised her: "your baby will be born and you will live to enjoy it." The next morning, after the baby was born, the Patriarch gave him a name and a blessing and said that he would become a great man. It is stated by some descendants that the Patriarch did a very unusual thing. He conferred this infant of a few hours old the Melchezadek priesthood and ordained him a High Priest." I might insert here that I don't know whether this story is true or not. I don't know if they ever did such things: ordain an infant a High Priest. But anyway, this is told by some of the descendants of James McFate. He was a blacksmith and wagon-maker, and he also owned a ferry across the Mississippi River. James and Lucy received their Patriarchal blessings on the 3rd of May 1845. On the 22nd of January 1846 he and Lucy received their endowments and were sealed as husband and wife in the Nauvoo Temple. On January 31st, Lucy was proxy as James and Elizabeth were sealed as husband and wife. He had spent as much time as possible working on the Nauvoo Temple. His work was very 56 much in demand as the Saints were being persecuted and were going to have to leave Nauvoo. He was asked by Brigham Young to stay in Nauvoo as long as possible so he could make wagons for the Saints travelling west. When the Saints were driven from Nauvoo, James traded his ferry for a team of oxen. I have two different accounts of this story, but I think I will stick to the one by James Smith McFate, a grandson of his, because his is short and it seems to be correct. I'll quote from him. (He gives the birthplace of James McFate as Mehoning, Musser County, Pennsylvania.) "He was married the 20th of April 1844 to Lucy Thompson Lisk." (He doesn't mention the first wife.) "They were early converts and were living in Nauvoo before the Saints were run out of there. He was a blacksmith and wagon-maker and owned a ferry across the Mississippi River. When the Saints were driven out of Nauvoo, President Brigham Young asked grandfather to stay there and make wagons as long as he could, so he was one of the last to leave there. He traded his ferry for a yoke of oxen when he was leaving the town of Nauvoo. He and his wife were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple before they left. They travelled by ox-team and while at Winter Quarters on the 2 7th of November 184 6, their second child, a daughter, was born and died there. They named her Ardell." EP: Now, in the fictionalized account by Roy McFate it does mention one thing that you and I thought was true. That about the Jackson family being good friends of theirs and meeting them there at the ferry. Tell me about them. MG: Well, the Jacksons were lifelong friends of theirs. In fact, James Jackson Jr. married Martha McFate, daughter of James and Matilda. EP: Matilda was his third wife, the one that he married after Lucy died. 57 MG: Yes, Lucy had already died when he married Matilda. EP: Do you have a record of what happened to Lucy and James next? MG: The next encampment was at Garden Grove about 130 miles from Nauvoo. When they were at Winter Quarters James built a cabin and Lucy was expecting their third child. The daughter, Arella, was born in Nauvoo. Lucy was in very poor health due to the hardships and cold that they had to endure. She didn't have good, nourishing food, either. The baby was a girl. Lucy was unable to furnish milk for the baby and she died after a week. She was buried at Mt. Pisgah. Lucy, herself never did recover her health and died 17th March 1847. James and his friend Jackson dug a grave near the baby's grave and buried Lucy there. He wrote in his diary: "God's will be done. Blessed be His Holy Name. March 17, 1847." EP: Oh, how sad. MG: In April, the Saints were preparing to move west. James was making preparations to go also but was asked by Brigham Young to stay and aid the other Saints as they travelled through by making wagons and so forth. He wrote in his diary and mentioned being asked by Brigham Young to remain at Winter Quarters. He stated, and I'll quote: "I am convinced upon due reflection that it will be best for us to stay. April 7, 1847." I might say here that I have never seen this diary, and so I quote it only from the accounts of their descendants, James Smith McFate and Roy McFate. After most of the people had left, James and his family moved into a more comfortable home. Levi Bracken was a neighbor and his daughter Matilda was a frequent visitor. She was twenty years younger than James but they began a romance and they were married 7th October 1847, seven months after Lucy's death. So Matilda was his third wife. The Jacksons 58 moved to Atchison County, Missouri. Mr. Jackson was working for Senator Atchison. In July 1848 they took a trip to see the Jacksons. Matilda was very soon to have a baby so Mrs. Jackson urged her to stay there until after her baby was born. She did, and Matilda had her first child, a daughter, 9th July 1848. She named her Lucy after James' second wife who had died at Winter Quarters. That's interesting. It seemed like each wife would name a child after the previous wife. The following year another daughter was born on 2 5 September 184 9. She was named Nancy and was born in Atchison County, Missouri, also. The family may have moved there temporarily or may have been there on another visit. They were living at Kanesville, later called Council Bluffs, when Brigham Young and some of the Apostles returned to Winter Quarters. In April, 1850, the McFates and Jackson families decided to travel west together. I tried to locate them in the 1850 census and was unable to find them, with the exception of Thomas who was staying with the Thomas Jones' family in Atchison County, Missouri. Apparently, they decided to leave him there and he joined them in Utah later. MG: There was a very interesting story I'd like to relate but I'm really not positive how true it is because I got it from this story that was written by Roy McFate and since there is a great deal of fiction in that story I can't vouch for its truthfulness but it was interesting so I think I'll include it. "In April, 1850 the McFate and Jackson family decided to travel west together." Now I used to wonder why I couldn't find them in any companies coming West and apparently that's the reason because it was just the two families travelled together alone. "On the way they met a large group of Indians. James ordered that they show no firearms as they were so outnumbered it would be hopeless to resist. They knelt to pray and after offering prayer for the group, he told them not to be afraid, the 59 Lord would protect them. The Indians indicated they were hungry so he had Matilda prepare some food for them. After eating, the Chief made a motion for Matilda to come near him. She was afraid and hung back but James said, "Mother, you had better do as he says. We are helpless. Go to him and I promise you in God's name he will not harm you. As she approached the chief, he took a bracelet from his wrist and placed it on hers. The other Indians by signs indicated that she was to wear it at all times. From that time on they contacted Indians frequently and were always safe because of the bracelet. Often the Indians would give them buffalo or venison." That is the end of the quote for that story. By 1851 they had settled in Spanish Fork, Utah. Their daughter Matilda was born there, 18 October 1851. July 7, 1853, they had twins, Lucinda and Matilda, but they didn't live long. Lucinda died July 10th and Matilda died July 21. Matilda, the mother, received her Patriarchal blessing the 4th of April 1854, and the next day on the 5th James was ordained a High Priest. James had become prosperous in Spanish Fork. Brigham Young gave him a call to go to Cedar City to be over the ironworks there, so he was on the move again. The Jacksons decided to go, too, and they were going on to California. In 1860 James was living in Toquerville with his fourth wife, Mary, and her two sons and daughter, plus his daughters, namely Nancy, age eleven, and Martha, age eight. There was another child, age seven, named Charles, and I don't know--since I don't have the date of his marriage to Mary—I don't know, but I think that probably Charles was Mary's son. This is his fourth wife and she hadn't even been put on the family records. I found these things out through Church records and census records. On the 12th of September in 1863, James McFate and Mary Bodile Madsen were sealed in the Endowment House. There seems to be some bitterness 60 against this fourth wife by the descendants of James and especially against the stepsons whom they blame for his untimely death. He died in 1865 and is buried in St. George (Utah)." {Continued Interview, June 20, 1983 with Ginger Griffith} EP: Aunt Virginia, when we ended the interview yesterday we were talking about the death of James McFate. Do we have a death date for him? MG: Yes, on a family group sheet I have received it says March or April, 1865. EP: I see. I don't have that. Where did you get that date? MG: Well, when my Great Aunt Sylvan Graham, she was a sister of Mary Agatha Martin, my grandmother, when she died, her daughter had her family records Xeroxed and she sent me the records. Apparently, Aunt Sylvan had been sending these records around to different relatives trying to get information. And this one had an interesting footnote on it. Where it says "other wives, if any" someone has written "four." And then in pencil it was written: "Father repudiates this fourth. She caused his father's untimely death et cetera." and it has AM and I have since learned that AM could only stand for Ammon McFate, who was the son of Joseph Smith McFate and Lucy Thompson Lisk. EP: I see. Now you said you had records, you found his name on a home lot shown on an early map of St. George. Then he did live in St. George but you don't know exactly when? MG: No, that early map was not dated, so I'm not sure I think it was toward the latter part of his life, though, that he lived there. 61 EP: I see, now our record stops before he reached Dixie. Where did he live in the St. George area other than that? Did he live in Toquerville? MG: Yes, I found him in the, I think it is the 1860 census in Toquerville and that was when he was married to this fourth wife, Mary Bodile Madsen. EP: But we don't have any other record of her? MG: No, we didn't have any record at all on our family group sheets and I didn't even know he had been married a fourth time until I found this sheet and somebody had written four on it and then I got digging into the Church records and so forth and I found where this census record, he was married to a wife named Mary. EP: Now, that's all we have on James McFate? Shall we talk about Mariah? MG: Yes. Mariah was their oldest daughter. She was married in 1842 to Samuel Trunkey Smith. Their first child was born in Pennsylvania, then their second on the wagon trip West in Lee County, Iowa. Their third child was Julia Ann and was born at Winter Quarters in 1847. Julia Ann is my ancestor. EP: She was your great grandmother? MG: Yes, as I said she was born in 1847 at Winter Quarters, Iowa. She married, on the 17th of November 1864, Zebulon Farrel Martin and they were the parents of my grandmother, Mary Agatha Martin who married James Robinson Biddlecome. The parents of Julia Ann Smith, Samuel Trunkey Smith and her mother Mariah McFate, were early members of the LDS Church. Samuel Trunkey Smith was baptized 10 March 1841 into the LDS Church. He was the son of Walter Foote Smith and Mary Trunkey. They came from Pennsylvania. They were married in 1842 in Pennsylvania. Walter 62 Foote Smith was born in July. He was born July 12, 1786 in Sandisfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. He died 16 July 1849 in Kegg Creek, Potowatomi County, Iowa. He was the son of Abel Smith and Lucretia Foote. Mary Trunkey was born in Hartford, Connecticut, 12th of February 1788 and she died the 2 6th of March 18 7 5 in Mona, Juab County, Utah. She was the daughter of Charles Trunkey and Mary Ganyard. The name Trunkey is spelled Trunkey in our family records: T-R-U-N-K-E-Y, but it was originally a French name spelled T-R-O-N-Q-U-E-T, I believe. Able Smith was born about 1750 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and he was the son of Samuel Smith and Obiah Chapin. Samuel Smith was born the 4th of August 1715 in Hadley, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. He was the son of Ichabod Smith and Elizabeth Cooke. Obiah Chapin was born 3 September 1731 in Springfield, Hampton County, Massachusetts, and she was the daughter of Abel Chapin and Hannah Hitchcock. As I mentioned, Ichabod Smith was also born in Handley, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, and he is the son of Phillip Smith and Rebecca Foote. There's that Foote line again. And it goes back into the same on that the other one does. Elizabeth Cooke was the daughter of Captain Aaron Cooke and Sarah Westwood. They were from…she was born in Weatherfield, Connecticut, that was in Hartford County. Phillip Smith who married Rebecca Foote was born in 1633 in Ipswitch, Suffolk County, England, and he was the son of Lieutenant Samuel Smith and Elizabeth and there is a question as to what her surname was—it was assumed by some it was Chiliab, because she named a son that, but I have also read that her maiden name was Smyth. EP: And which do you think is correct? 63 MG: I think Smyth is correct and I believe that probably some ancestor of hers was Chileab. That's spelled C-H-I-L-E-A-B. Anyway, Phillip Smith married Rebecca Foote and Rebecca Foote was the daughter of Nathaniel Foote and Elizabeth Deming. Elizabeth Deming was the sister of John Deming who is the man that my Deming line goes back to, so my mother and father both descend from the same Deming line. I think my mother would be really thrilled to know that. I wish I'd found this out before she died. Phillip Smith, as I mentioned was the son of Lieutenant Samuel Smith, and that is as far back as we have the Smith line, but it is quite interesting. Phillip, I have a book on Lieutenant Samuel Smith and there are some interesting things written about them. And especially about their son Phillip Smith was on a jury in Massachusetts during the time of the witch trials. He died in 1685—he was born in 1633. The people around there, the neighbors, couldn't account for his death and they blamed his death on a witch that had been tried when he was on the jury. Many things were told about this lady. In their superstitious way, they would make up stories, too, because there is a story told about when a farmer was going past her house and a bale of hay fell off his wagon and then for no reason it loaded itself back on again. Can you imagine that? So they said the witch was the cause of that, this lady. They really had some weird stories. EP: You know, when we began the interviews the other day you mentioned you'd had some spiritual experiences and some interesting happenings when you were doing genealogy. Would you take time to tell us some of the things you had happen? MG: Yes, I have time to tell you one before I have to go. When we lived in Taylorsville was really when I became immersed in genealogy and I did like to reserve Saturday for my family day, though, and I would spend the week doing genealogy. I had worked quite 64 hard on the Deming side of my family. As I told you, I had to start from scratch and they do have a book on the Deming family by Judson Keith Deming. It's in the Salt Lake City library, so it had traced my family back to this Abel Deming who was our…but it didn't have it any further back but my, let's see, the father of Caleb Deming, my grandfather, was Elias Deming and he was married to Sally Ketcham and so I became interested in trying to get further on this Ketcham line and the only thing the Deming genealogy said was that she was the daughter of Caleb Ketcham, and that's all it said. So with this to start on, I thought I'll try to trace this Ketcham line back. But I worked and worked and worked on that line and I tracked down everything that I could find. I checked out films and everything. Well, I finally located Caleb Ketcham in another county. I kept wondering, you know, how come...they had moved...the Deming family genealogy said Elias and Sally had moved from this county they were in to Broome County and I wondered why in the world they would be going there so I thought that's probably where she came from and she wanted to go back home. So I thought I will check things out in Broome County and so I finally found his death record there. And then I wanted to check it out further, it also said in the Deming genealogy that her mother's name was Abigail Lounsbury, so that's what I had had in my records. Well, I found out from the records there that it was not Abigail; it was Deborah and so I thought I've got to find out where in the world they came from and I checked histories and I checked every record I could find on the Ketchams in Broome County and he was written up in the history but it didn't say where he came from. So I thought one day, well, I'll just see if I can figure it out by maybe where the Ketchams were most congregated. Maybe I can start there. So I took the 1790 census and I took my finger and I was running down all these names. 65 The state of New York was absolutely loaded with Ketchams. I thought, this is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. So I took my finger and I was going down each name, and as I came down to the name Timothy Ketcham, something in me went "boing." I knew for some reason, I knew, that was his father. It was just strange. I had nothing to tell me that except that I just knew it. So then, I set about to prove my theory was correct. So I started searching the records of Westchester County. This was clear across the county where they were. I mean clear across the state from where they were. So I started checking Westchester records and it was very frustrating. They were very skimpy at that period of time. I checked and tried to find out if he had ever left a will or anything and I couldn't find any record of a will, and I couldn't find anything, actually, to connect this to, but I knew that I was right. So I prayed about it and I kept searching. And I found a name on a film that I thought possibly could be his name but it was all smeared. And so this one day I decided to have John take me, it was on a Saturday, and I said: "John, would you please take me to the library?" He said yes and he went and dropped me off and I went in with the idea of working on a different line. This was when the library was located on Main Street down where the Montgomery Ward building used to be and so the microfilms were down on the bottom floor. Well, I thought, while I was there I'd check this out one more time and so I went downstairs thinking I'll look at that with my spyglass, you know, the magnifying glass I have, and maybe I could make it out. So I found the spot on the film, still couldn't make it out and then I reached for my case and discovered I had left it upstairs. So just as that thought came to me, the lady right next to me stood up and she had one of them in her hand. So I said, "Do you mind if I use that spyglass of yours?" And she said: "Oh, fine. Go ahead," so I used it and that 66 name was still smeared. I couldn't make it out. So I said: "Would you look at this name and see if you think it could be Caleb Ketcham?" and she looked through the glass and she said: "no, that name is too smeared. I can't make it out, but are you working on the Ketcham line?" I said: "yes," and she said: "Well, my maiden name is Ketcham and I've been working on it for years." She told me about a lady that she had corresponded with in New York who was not a member of the Church but she had been collecting Ketcham records in New York for years and she had a manuscript which she had sent to this lady. And she said: "Give me your name .and phone number and when I go home I'll see if I can find that name and manuscript." So I gave her the information that I needed. The next morning the phone rang and she said: "I'll be happy to tell you you’re Caleb Ketcham is in this manuscript and he is the son of Timothy Ketcham of Westchester, New York, and he left a will but apparently it was not probated or something. Anyway, a member of the family had it and his will was included in this manuscript and the will said he left his gun and something or other, some money or something, to his son Caleb Ketcham who, I believe, had gone to Broome County, New York. And with this connection I had the Ketcham line all the way- back to the immigrant Edward Ketcham. There were just too many things that happened to be coincidence in my mind. Having spent all that time and having prayed about it and having told the Lord: "I've done all I can and I need help," He sent it. EP: Oh, thank you, Virginia. MG: That’s always been a special experience to me. 67 EP: That is special. Thank you. Ginger, I know you have been patiently working on that Deming line for several years and you finally made a discovery on that. Would you tell us about that? MG: Yes, I have always really been proud of this little dealie. As I mentioned before, there is a book on the Deming family in the library and it traced our family back. It had my dad's name in it, and it traced our line back to Abel Deming who was born in--well, they didn't actually know where he was born—but the year he was born was 1775, and in that account it says he came from Connecticut, they thought. It said he first appeared in Cincinnati’s, Cortland County, New York. It said after diligent research by the compiler of the book they were unable to trace his ancestry. Also, by diligent research by the descendants of Abel Deming it was impossible to connect him to the main Deming line, but it was assumed that he was descended from John Deming, the original settler. I took that as a challenge. I decided, I don't think anything is impossible if you really set your mind to it, if you work hard enough, and if you are guided, if the Lord helps you, some way will open up and you'll find the records. I decided I was going to find his father. I worked for twenty- five years on it and I finally found his father and I found the proof I needed. It was a long, hard process, believe me. I had to do a lot of research. It seemed like no matter what line I was working on, I'd go back to the Deming line and try to find something to help on finding his father. EP: What were some of the things you did, looking? MG: Well, they said he came from Connecticut, so, of course, I spent years searching Connecticut records. That lesson taught me that you can't ever assume that things are right because they are printed in a book. 68 EP: No. MG: Then I thought: I will check census records and find out where he really was born. I was really frustrated in that because in the 1850 census it said he was living with his son and where they have birthplace it had New York for all of them and then when it got down to Abel Deming who was living with them it just had a checkmark. That could either be a ditto or an I don't know or something, or whatever. I thought: maybe that meant that he was born in New York, it might be a ditto. So I spent a lot of years searching New York records. I was getting nowhere fast. But finally I discovered that in 18 0 0 he was living in Otsego County, New York, and boy, was I thrilled to discover that 'cause that was earlier than any record we had on him, this 1800 record. At that time he was living next to a fellow named Roger Deming. I thought: maybe through Roger Deming—he was no doubt related because they were living right next to each other--I would go to the Deming genealogy and find out who this Roger was. So I did and I found that Roger came from Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and they said he was the son of John Deming who was a Shaker. And I thought: Ah! The Shakers didn't believe in recording births. Or, in fact, they didn't believe in getting married and having births in the first place. So they didn't record births of any children. So, I thought: Ah ha! That's probably the reason why I can't find any record of these children, so I will search Berkshire County, Massachusetts. I'm positive that's where he's from. So I did. At first I thought he was probably a son of John Deming who was the Shaker, because all the evidence pointed that way. And I went through all the Berkshire records and I could not find any record of the birth of those children. So, I thought: well, that's probably the reason they weren't recorded was because they were Shakers. 69 EP: Because they were Shakers. MG: But, I don't know, something just nagged at me. I really didn't feel satisfied with that theory even though it all fit. I kept on digging and I just simply wasn't satisfied. I thought: I'll check the 1790 census and see how many children he had at the time and maybe I could fit them in. They said in his household there were thirty people. They apparently put all the people who were on this Shaker farm in his family, you see, with him as the head of the family. Well, that didn't prove one way yay or nay, you know. So then I started digging in and I found another very good candidate to be his father who was Dudley Deming and he married Lydia Leonard. They were also from Berkshire, Massachusetts, in the same place. But the Deming genealogy didn't list that they ever had any children. He seemed a little bit old to maybe be the father of Abel, but I started digging into that line and checking further, and by that time we had moved to Oregon and it was very difficult to do work, so I kind of let this sit for a while. And then when we decided to move back to Salt Lake City, we moved one block from the Genealogical Library and I was in seventh heaven. I thought: I am going to go over there and I'm going to spend all my time working on this one line and I'm going to concentrate and I'm going to come up with something that is actual proof. So I went over there, and I'll never forget it. I had gone through Berkshire County land records I don't know how many times and didn't find anything helpful. I did find that Dudley had land there and all that but I couldn't find any record of his death or anything. The Deming genealogy said his father had died young, which didn't quite fit with John Deming because he lived until he was older. I went into the land records and this one day I went back over and I thought: I'll check those land records again. Maybe I can find him through his brother-in-law who 70 was Barnabus Eddy. I'll look in Eddy land and see if he had any land there or what. So I got the film and I checked Eddy and found out he didn't, but I was backing it up and I thought I'd check Deming again while I was on this. EP: For the tenth time. MG: Yes. And bless my soul. I found on that land record, I found Abel Deming, Roger Deming, Sarah Deming, Miriam Deming! I'll tell you, I almost flipped. It was all I could do; I just about had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming: "I found it! I found it!" So, anyway, I really fast went and got the original records, the deeds, and I found where Abel Deming of Otsego County, New York, had sold his land after he had moved to New York and he sold his land in Berkshire, Massachusetts, the land formerly belonging to Dudley Deming. And this same land, you know, I went into the history of this land, and this same land had also been owned by Roger, certain sections of it, and his two sisters Miriam and Sarah who were spinsters at that time, it said on the record. So this definitely told me where they came from, who his father was. And then I started checking into Lydia Leonard's family line. I found out that Lydia had a sister named Miriam, she had a sister named Sarah, and actually, Roger's name was the only one I couldn't fit in. Oh, and her father, also was named Abel Leonard, and this is where the name Abel Deming came from. Everything fit and was perfect. I still can't figure out why they didn't record those births except I think that he was more of a recluse. He didn't— there was a lot written in the county histories about Solomon, his brother, and his wife, who was the first white woman in that area. EP: Oh? MG: Yes. There is a monument. 71 EP: And this is Dudley's? MG: Dudley's sister-in-law, Sarah. Solomon married Sarah and there's a monument in Pittsfield dedicated to Sarah Deming who was the first white woman in that area. Pittsfield was called Pontusak when it was first settled. EP: What does that mean? MG: It's an Indian name. It's a very interesting history there of that area. There is quite a bit written up on Solomon but you hardly ever hear Dudley mentioned. EP: No. MG: I think that he just stayed on his land, he didn't seem to be a member of the church there, so, therefore, he didn't get his children recorded in the church records. EP: So they were not actually Shakers? MG: No, I checked Shaker records and I could not find any record at all that Dudley had ever joined. They lived in Pittsfield, and then the adjoining township was Hancock, and they moved right over to Hancock where John Deming lived. He originally lived in Pittsfield and went to Hancock, so they were right there together but they were not related. EP: So what exactly have you proved on the line? You've proved that Dudley was the father of Abel Deming. MG: Yes. EP: And then do you know where it goes back from Dudley? MG: Yes. Then the Deming genealogy takes it all the way back. EP: Oh, so they have the record of Dudley, as soon as you found he was the father. 72 MG: Yes, you see, Dudley is listed in the Deming genealogy and I had picked him out as maybe a candidate for being the father but he seemed a little bit old to me to be his father. EP: You know, when I was working on that line and collected everything I could find, I have two or three things that talk about that group that we didn't…with a big question mark is this our line or not? MG: Right. We tried to fit him in before but when I found that land record that proved my ancestry. I was really thrilled. EP: It took pure perseverance. MG: That's what it took was perseverance on this line. And I've always been quite proud of that, to find his father. EP: That's so much work. MG: It was a lot but it was worth it. And through that we found the line all the way back to the original John Deming whom I was certain that he descended from, although I had looked into the descendants of Thomas Deming who was John's brother and had gone down to Moses and tried to find where he could maybe have come through that line and I was never able to connect anything there. I was quite sure he had come through John. It took a lot of hunting before I found the proof I needed. It was neat. EP: Now, I have information from Abel on down, of course, and I know you don't have your records with you or anything but do you know…the written history I'm doing I began with Abel Deming and then I have original John de Migne that you told me about. But do you have anything? 73 MG: In between? EP: Information, stories or anything in between there? MG: Yes, there was, oh boy, I really wish I had brought my Deming file with me. EP: Well, maybe we can talk about that one later if you'd rather. MG: I think that would be better because I'd rather be accurate. Sometimes my recollections aren't exactly right. EP: Well, I don't remember all of this that you've told me. It's amazing. Even with the written notes we've had. MG: It goes into the Seymour line, and it goes into the Buck line, and it goes into the, and of course, the Leonard line, it goes into that one twice, and the Leonard line goes back into royalty. It's very interesting. EP: Yes, it is an interesting line to study. Shall we talk then a little about some of the other experiences you've had or, in doing genealogy? MG: Those are the two main ones that stand out in my memory as being really outstanding. I've had a lot of really neat experiences helping other people and hearing their stories. Every time I go over to the library, I think I must look like I know what I'm doing, because people come up and ask me questions, and then I get sidetracked helping them. But I have helped a lot of people while I have been over there, get going on theirs. EP: You know I would like for our posterity to know the uncanny knack you have had for genealogy. Now I have done a lot of genealogy and if I am working on a line exclusively, I can keep the names and some of the facts and dates intact and in order and 74 remember them. But I have been amazed over the years that you can be working on five or six lines and pick out a name and know which line it was. MG: I think I have a natural mind for genealogy. EP: You really do. MG: My husband said to me one day: "I don't understand you," and I said: "Why?" He said: "You can't remember what you did yesterday and yet you remember all these thousands of names on your family lines." I had a friend in Oregon I worked with a lot, her name was Louise and she and I while we were in Grants Pass were working on genealogy and we used to borrow books from other libraries and they would send them to the Justin County Library and if any of us had any books there we would call up the other one and say we have such and such a book over at the library, and we'd go over there, and then we couldn't take it out but we could stay there and read it. So this one friend called me and said: "I have a series of books over there on the Bosworth line. Do you have any Bosworths?" and I said no. And later, I had gone to sleep and out of a sound sleep I sat bolt upright and I said: "Dorcas Bosworth!" My husband, it woke him up, and he said: "I'm going to make you quit doing that genealogy if you're going to be shouting out names in the middle of the night." But I called this friend the next day and said: "Yes, I have a Bosworth line but it came to me after I went to sleep." EP: You are the perfect genealogist because you are patient, you remember all of those and keep them straight, and you are so concerned with accuracy. MG: I definitely am concerned with accuracy. EP: I have never seen you care one way or the other so long as it's true. 75 MG: Well, that's the main thing. You don't want to claim an ancestor that isn't really yours, or at least I don't. And I don't care if they turn out to be horse thieves or whatever. EP: Pirates? Vikings? MG: Whatever they are. I have really good lines so if I find a few rascals, why worry about it? EP: Some real reprobates? MG: And I haven't found any rascals yet, so why worry about it? I expect to someday. EP: In doing history they say you always have a bias and I think your only bias is toward truth. MG: I do, I really want it to be true. I had a friend also in Oregon, this same friend Louise, and she was on the phone with me one day and she mentioned something or other and I said: "That's on your line," and she said: "No, it isn't," and I said: "Yes, it is," and we had this argument and I said: "Go get your pedigree chart and take a look." She came back and said: "That's amazing. How could you remember my line?" EP: Yes, I don't know how you do that. MG: But I did remember whose line it was on. EP: I started doing research for other people and stopped because I'm selfish and I had those new names in my head and they'd pop in. I was concentrating on my own and I didn't want that there. MG: Well, that does make you a little confused if you get other people's lines mixed in with yours. 76 EP: I've been impressed, too, by the number of times our line goes back to the same—now I don't know if it was on this tape even or another tape--but we were talking about both your mother and father go back to Deming, they go back to Foote. I know that if I study long enough I'm going to find that my husband's line goes back to our line as well. MG: Sure, it will. I was just really thrilled when my, the first ancestor I found in common with my own husband. Our lines intertwine so many times now that it's really funny. We go into the…but when you stop to think about genealogy it's actually shaped like a diamond. You see, you start down here with you, but it branches out as you go back, but then it comes to a certain point and then it starts narrowing in again back to Adam. EP: Ginger, there is something else that interests me. You and I are both converts to the Church and yet as we go back a short ways into our history, a lot of the line, particularly my grandmothers--your mothers—were LDS. Do you know why they left the Church? MG: Yes. I was really surprised after I joined the Church to find that I had Mormon ancestry—and also thrilled. You know, it's really neat when you're a convert to find you really are—you have pioneer ancestry—it's really thrilling. Joseph Lehi Biddlecome, you know, whom we talked about before, married Rebecca Nellie Robinson and as I mentioned also, he was a stonemason and therefore very much in demand as they were colonizing all these areas. And they would just get settled somewhere and Brigham Young would send them somewhere else to build up the place and they moved time after time after time and she really got sick of it, all this moving. And I don't think her testimony maybe was as strong as his. Anyway, as I mentioned before, he was always very faithful to the Church and he always did as he was asked to do, especially by the Prophet. And so they settled somewhere, I'm not exactly sure where that was, 77 but she decided that was going to be their last move. He built her this fine brick home. She didn't want to ever pull up stakes again. Well, she was pregnant, expecting a child, and they already had a huge family and he was called to go to another place and she put down her foot and said: "I won't go," and he insisted because he had been called. They moved and she lost the baby and she became very bitter about it. Then he received a call to go to Mesa, Arizona and she absolutely refused to go and so he went anyway. While he was in Mesa, Arizona, she moved into Salt Lake City and lived there with the children. They were inactive in the Church, I'm sure, and so my grandfather grew up more or less out of the Church. He had gone some when he was small but as he got older they were just inactive in Salt Lake City. She eventually did go down and join him in Mesa, Arizona, but I don't believe the children ever got active in the Church. So my grandpa, my Grandpa Jim, that was James Robinson Biddlecome, moved from Mesa to Arlington, Arizona, and there was no church down there anyway at all. What's kind of funny, my father was a little bit, not bitter about the Mormons, but he thought they were really kind of not up to par. My father was very honest, you know. The only Mormon he knew was this man in Arlington who was a Mormon and he used to—I think he had a job on the Stake High Council or something or other—anyway, he was a member of the Church and pretty well thought of, I assume. But he used to rustle the neighbor's cattle and put their brands on his cows. EP: His brand on their cows. MG: Right. And then, of course, they became his cows. And so my Dad was just, thought that was pretty terrible. And actually he was the only Mormon Dad had to judge by so I guess he kind of thought Mormons were like that. 78 EP: Now, I know that your mother was really…when my mother started to join the Church in her teens; your mother was very anti. Was that because of her father? MG: Yes, I think so. I think the reason Grandpa Jim got a little bit bitter against the Church, or at least. . . I don't think he ever really became bitter against the Church but for a while he thought it wasn't true. I believe the reason was in Mesa, Arizona, and of course, there was some fellow there in Mesa, Arizona, this was a story I heard, I believe, from your mother, Letha, and there was some fellow there who had a, he saw her and thought she was quite beautiful and he wanted to have her for his wife and he was pretty well thought of there I think, too, and owned a lot of property, too. Quite a wealthy man. He went to my grandfather and wanted my mother to marry him. Grandfather said nothing doing and so he said: "Well, you'd better let her marry me or I will ruin you financially," and set out about doing that. So Grandpa sold out what little property- he had left and went to Arlington. EP: The man made good his threat. MG: Yes, he apparently did. EP: Now, he was a Mormon? MG: Yes. EP: And was she going to be a polygamous wife? MG: I am not certain on that point. I think maybe that might have been it but I am not sure. It seems to me that by that time polygamy was out, by the time my mother was old enough to be of marriageable age, so I don't quite know that story too accurately, I don't believe. But that's what I heard. 79 EP: Now, there was none of the Deming line in the Church, were there? MG: No. My grandfather Caleb Gordon Deming was a preacher in the Church of God of Abraham it was called, and my mother became converted to that faith. EP: Oh, dear. MG: My dad, his family came from, he always said he came from Missouri. He was born in Kansas but it was right on the border in Linn County and I think for a while they did live across the border in Missouri. But he always said: "I am from Missouri and you have to show me," I remember him saying that. And I was kind of surprised to find he was born in Kansas. Anyway, there was a feeling, you know, back in there against Mormons in that area where he grew up. EP: Ginger, we have nearly completed this tape and I wanted to tell you before we finished how appreciative I am of the time you have spent with me doing this this past week. Is there anything we should put, perhaps your testimony, at the end of our tape? MG: I think that would be a really good thing to do. And first I would like to say how grateful I am to you to have done this. I have been trying for years to write a personal history and I am always busy doing things and it kind of gets shoved aside and I had all these notes and everything but I didn't really have anything shaped up. So you have given me the inspiration to get some of this stuff on tape. I have a thing at home that my husband and I bought and it is called "Our Roots," and it has a group of tapes, you know, which you are supposed to record your roots on, and there is not one blessed thing on them yet. So you have really inspired me to get at this and I really appreciate it. But before I would close, I would like to bear my testimony to the truth of the Gospel. I know definitely it is 80 true. And I'm grateful for that testimony and I'm grateful, also, that I was finally converted to genealogy because I know it is very important. Families are important. As the Church says, "Families are forever," so it is important, I think, to get to your roots and learn about your forbearers who have given so much. I think of our pioneer ancestors who came across the plains and all the privations that they suffered. And even if I didn't come through those lines I would be grateful to those pioneers and thankful that they had the courage and the testimony that it took to come west and to endure all the hardships that they did so that we could have things as they are now. And I am really grateful to them. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to do this work. My husband has been so cooperative to try to make it possible for me to do the genealogy that I've done and I'm really grateful to him for that opportunity, also. And I say all this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. {Continued Interview, June 21, 1983, in the home of Ginger Griffith.} EP: Aunt Virginia, when we stopped the other day we were talking about stories of your brothers and sisters and I wondered if you would tell me a little more about your parents. You were talking about entertainments you had. Did the adults ever participate in the Valley entertainments? MG: Oh, yes, they always did. I remember one time in particular that my dad told me about. Dad and Mother always got a big kick out of this--well, I was there too: I remember when this happened. There was a certain man there in Arlington who, every time they would call on the people to entertain, he would get up and he would say this same poem. Every blessed time, and he had done this for a number of years. So, my dad was 81 pretty good at imitating people, and one night they called on my dad first. He had this imitation down pat. If you didn't have your eyes open watching him, you would think it was this other man. He imitated his voice and his manner (and he had a peculiar manner of speaking anyway). Dad said this poem that the man always said every time. I know people in Arlington were getting a little annoyed at having to hear the same thing over and over, so Dad got up and imitated this man and sounded exactly like he did. There was a man in the audience named Jim Stovall who smoked a corncob pipe and he laughed so hard that his pipe sailing down the aisle. Another guy, his false teeth fell out. Everyone just absolutely roared. Of course, when they called on the man he didn't have a thing to say, which was a dirty trick, but everyone got a big kick out of it and I think that cured the man of saying that poem, the same poem every time. EP: How large a group was it that participated in these entertainments? MG: Well, it was just about everybody in Arlington. Of course, it was a small community and it was just little farms around and ranches and so there weren't...oh, I would say, with the children probably one hundred people or so. I remember the school was three rooms. It was divided in half. It had one of those doors that rise up into the ceiling and when they opened that door the schoolhouse became one big room and that was filled when they had these entertainments. I can't remember how often they had them, I think about once a month or so, but everyone really enjoyed it. Of course, we didn't have TV's or a radio in those days—hardly any radios because there wasn't any electricity—so that was our main form of entertainment. EP: So you had no electricity in your homes? You still had kerosene lamps? Did you have running water? 82 MG: No, we didn't have running water. We had to haul our water from a ways away; I don't remember exactly where Dad did get the water. The water down in Arlington was very poor. That's the reason. . .it had too much fluoride in it and one reason I was selfconscious of my looks all my life was that it had so much fluoride that it kind of pitted the enamel. Some of the children who lived in Arlington had to have their teeth pulled out and have false teeth. It was very bad, because some of them were just terribly unsightly, even worse than mine. EP: It made their teeth brown and mottled? MG: Yes. That's from the fluoride. Every time I would go to a dance they would say "where did you grow up? In Texas?" and I would say "No, in Arizona." But there are certain places where the water is like that. EP: Heavily fluoride? MG: Uh-huh, right. And it will pit the enamel on the teeth. EP: Now, were all of the homes the same? Did they all have to haul their water? MG: Some of the homes had well on their place but the water was very inferior. Most of them, though, didn't have running water in their houses. We, of course later on when electricity came to the valley and so forth, they did. They improved things. It was fairly primitive when we were children. I remember bathing in a tub, a galvanized tub, every Saturday night we had to have this bath in this galvanized tub, I remember that. EP: The whole family took turns? MG: Yes, we took turns. EP: So they had an outhouse? 83 MG: Yes, we had an outhouse. I remember one time when my dad was fifty years old; we had a birthday party for him. Somebody came too early, I think it was my Uncle George Moody, and he went into the living room and said: "Where's Normie?" My dad was in the other room and he yelled out: "I'm in here having my fiftieth bath." Of course, that was a big joke. EP: He hadn't had that many opportunities? MG: He hadn't gotten through with his bath yet, so he just yelled that out. He was quite full of fun and quite a joker. My dad was very limber. I remember he would get on... I think this was when he was fifty years old, but he would sit on the floor and he could put both knees behind his neck. I couldn't even do that when I was a child. He was so limber he could put his knee behind his head. EP: Was he strong and healthy until his last illness? MG: Yes, very. Yes, he was always healthy and strong. The only time he had a really serious illness, he had gone to Oregon, he almost died. EP: How old was he then? MG: Let's see, how old was I then? I was just a little kid. Gee...you should have asked me these questions when I was younger. I don't remember. EP: He was still a young man? MG: Fairly. He was-I think I was about nine or ten then, so he was not too old. At the time, of course, I was very young and I thought of him as old but now I'm the age I am he was younger than I am. But anyway, he had gone to Oregon to mine or something and he got a boil on the back of his neck. Of course, I guess it started out as a pimple and 84 turned into a boil and he got somebody to squeeze it or he squeezed it himself, and anyway, it turned into a carbunckle. That carbunckle got worse and bigger, and worse and bigger, until, finally, it went clear all the way across his neck and he became so deathly ill they put him in the hospital. They didn't know if they were going to be able to save him or not. It was just terrible. He almost died. He always had a terrible scar across the back of his neck from that carbunckle. EP: Did they lance it? MG: I really don't know. I… EP: They put him on antibiotics? MG: Well, they didn't have any antibiotics. That is why they almost lost him was he...it was very difficult to treat it by the time he got to the hospital and he almost died. He finally recovered from that, but when he came home he was just practically a skeleton, he was so thin. He wasn't very fleshy, anyway. EP: He was always quite lean, wasn't he? MG: Yes. He never did put on flesh. I guess the rest of us took after my mother's side of the family. EP: You didn't talk much about what your mother looked like or what she was like. What did she look like? MG: My mother was a, I always thought she was a very lovely looking lady. She had a high forehead--of course, my dad had a high forehead and that's why all of us do. She had blue eyes and when she was small she had blond, curly hair. After she grew up it turned darker. She was very slender when she and Dad were married. Her waist was size 85 nineteen. She was very beautiful, but when she got a little older she became ill and I think her glands went haywire or something. She put on a lot of weight. It was mostly around her middle. She always had slender legs and tiny ankles and she still did when she died. But she put most of her weight on above her waist and around her tummy and so she became heavy, but now as I look at pictures of her she wasn't really as heavy as I remembered. EP: That is because you were so tiny. MG: Right. And then, of course, when I got heavy myself and so...you look at things differently, age or weight, or anything else as you get older. EP: I remember she had beautiful skin. MG: Yes, she always had clear, beautiful skin. That is one way I didn't take after her. She had lovely skin. She always had a clear complexion and my Dad thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Dad and Mom were always very affectionate with each other. Mother was a person everyone loved. I have never in my whole life heard a person say a bad thing about her. When I went on this trip just recently down to Arlington, people would remark, "Oh, you had the most wonderful mother." Everyone talked about how wonderful my mother was. She was very well loved. All the children in Arlington used to call her "Auntie." All of her nieces and nephews called her Auntie, and their friends called her Auntie, just everyone did. She was an excellent cook. She loved to feed everyone. But even a simple meal tasted great at her house. She could cook beans and baked bread and so forth and it just tasted great. 86 EP: I can remember eating her cooking. She could make a stew out of practically nothing and it was delicious. MG: Yes, she just had a knack about her cooking. EP: I am afraid she was an evil influence, though. I have a hard time making myself follow a recipe. MG: Well, I have the same problem. I don't know when I ever followed a recipe. My mother taught me how to cook. I remember when I was first married, my husband, I used to brag about my biscuits because my dad, when Mother was ill, Dad had to get up real early and he couldn't go to work without his biscuits for breakfast. And so my mother had me make his biscuits, I was about nine then. Letha must have been somewhere else because I was the oldest girl at home. Well, Dorothy was home, but Dorothy wasn't about to mix biscuits. Anyway, I used to—Dad to leave home about 4:00 o'clock in the morning--and I used to—Mother showed me how to make the biscuits and I got where I could really make good ones. They were as good as Mother's and Dad used to brag on me about how good they were. Well, I'd get everything ready the night before, and get everything mixed up and make a little hole in the center where I would pour the milk in. Everything was all ready and so I would get up and make them when my eyes were shut, I think. So I was bragging to my husband about how I could make these yummy biscuits. So one day he said: "I wish you would make me some biscuits, those you keep telling me you make," so I went in and started throwing things together like I did when I was a kid and baked them. Well, they were terrible! Flat and hard, I had forgotten something. EP: Do you remember any stories that you were told about her when she was young? 87 MG: Yes, I remember this one when she got lost and her family couldn't find her anywhere. Grandpa had been out digging some postholes. They just searched that place over and couldn't find her. She had this blond, curly hair, and so they were looking and looking, and finally they became really frantic, so she had gone outside and she fell in this posthole, and the only thing that was sticking up was that blond, curly hair and Grandpa—I don't know exactly who found her--but whoever it was said they saw this curly hair sticking out of the ground and there was my mother and she had gone to sleep. She might have cried out or something or other, but she had finally gone to sleep. She was sleeping there in that posthole. EP: Standing up in the posthole. MG: She was in the posthole. She might have cried out for help or something but she had finally gone to sleep in that posthole standing up. EP: How old was she. MG: She was just tiny, just a couple of years old. Another thing I remember was, Mother told me, when they moved back to Utah. She was born in Mesa, Arizona, but the family moved back to Utah for a while. She hadn't seen snow because she had grown up in Mesa. She said she was so excited when she saw the snow and she gathered up a bunch of it and somebody said: "Why don't you make some biscuits with it?" So Mother got this pan and made some biscuits out of the snow and she put them in the oven and, of course, when she figured they were done the oven was dry. She thought someone was stealing her biscuits. That reminds me the first time I ever saw snow. I grew up in Arizona, too, and I all my life looked forward to seeing snow. So one time Mother told me we were on our way to Prescott, Arizona, and there would be snow there. I was so 88 excited I could hardly wait to get up there and see that snow. We got almost to Prescott and here were these beautiful pine trees and everything that I hadn't seen before, but no snow. Finally, they saw a little patch of snow under a tree that hadn't melted and so Mother said "well, there is some snow." We stopped and I was so excited, and I ran over there and gave it a kick and said: "That ain't snow: that's ice." EP: We were going to record some memories you had of your childhood experiences. Tell me about some more of those. MG: Alright. One thing I remember when I was very small was when I was about four years old. My mother, Aunt Ada, and Roland and I and Ivy all went over to visit a friend who lived right at the foot of this mesa. This was in Arlington and they had this home right at the foot of this mesa. I can't remember the people's names now, but my cousin Rowland and I decided we would go out in back and play, so it was getting along towards evening and we started climbing the hill right there behind the house. Somebody had spilled a deck of cards and they were scattered all over the side of the mountain so we decided we were going to get that whole deck of cards and have some to play with. And so we walked along and we kept going higher and higher up this hill gathering up the cards. We had quite a pile of them, and finally it began to get towards—it was after sunset—and was starting to darken. My cousin Roland decided he would go back to the house but he went without telling me. I saw this other card and I started on up the hill there to get it and I turned around to tell him that I thought it was getting dark and maybe we had better go back, and he had already gone. I decided I had better go back, too, and I called him and he didn't answer, so I went in the direction I thought he had gone, and apparently it was the wrong direction so I kept going and going and going 89 and it got darker and darker and I called and nobody answered and finally it was pitch dark and the stars came out and I kept walking and I was right at the rim of this mesa. I remember at one point, I looked up at the sky and saw the stars and I started to take a step and had this strange feeling--kind of a warning feeling. I pulled my foot back and went in the opposite direction. Well, I walked until I was so tired I simply could not walk any further and I called until I was hoarse and no one heard me, so finally I got to a place where it was just very rocky and so many rocks I couldn't even climb over them, I was so tired, I just decided to lie down there and rest a while. I just got settled down among those rocks and very, very faintly I heard this voice calling. It was my mother calling me. I answered and she said "where are you?" and I answered "I am over here in a pile of rocks." She said "You stay right where you are and I will send somebody to get you. You answer when they call." So this man we had gone to visit came to get me and he would call every once in a while and I would say "Here I am." Finally he showed up and carried me to the house. And we crossed three barbed wire fences on the way back, and I hadn't gone through any fences at all. What had happened, I had gone completely around that valley and was heading in the opposite direction. EP: Probably miles. MG: Yes, I had gone miles. I had a new pair of shoes and they were all worn out, the soles were just worn out. My dad started tracking me the next morning and he said he had seen a place where I had walked right to the edge of that cliff and turned back and gone the other way. And that is when I had gotten that warning feeling I am sure. It was quite a scary experience in my life. Then I got lost another time when we went to Phoenix. It was that next year and I was about five. Four, I guess, still, because I hadn't started to 90 school yet. And we had gone to Phoenix, my mother and my Aunt Ada, and my sister Letha and Aunt Ethel. I think I was the only kid in the group. So, anyway, I had never in my life seen a black person. When we got out of the car I saw this black man who was shining shoes. I was so fascinated by the color of his skin I just kept watching him. The two groups of women were deciding where they were going to go shopping and so one headed off in one direction and one went in the other direction and they were going to meet back at the car at a certain time. Each group thought I went with the other group and I was so fascinated by this Negro man, and finally when I looked up nobody was around except me. A bunch of strangers walking up the street. And I looked up the street and I looked down the street and didn't see anybody I knew. Boy was I scared. So I just started walking along slowly and trying to see a familiar face and all I saw was disinterested people just kept walking by me. Finally I came to kind of an open-air market there and sort of stopped and I didn't know what on earth to do, so I puddled up and some tears came to my eyes and the owner of this place came and he said "What's the matter, little girl? Are you lost?" I said "Yes," and he said "What does your mother look like?" I said "She is a great big fat lady with a black and white dress on." Oh dear. She wasn't all that fat but in my mind at that time she was fat. So, anyway, this man said "You come here and sit up on this stool and eat this ice cream cone, and by the time you get through eating it your mother will be here to find you." So I believed him and I sat up on the stool and I never did eat fast—I always ate very slow. By the time I got to the end of that ice cream cone I expected my mother and she wasn't there. So I began to puddle up again and the man brought an apple over and said: "Eat this apple and by the time you get down to the core your mother will be here." So I went munching on that 91 apple, and I don't know how many hours it took me to eat that apple but finally when I got down to the core there was my mother. They had been frantically looking all over for me and, oh, talk about relieved, I was really happy to see them. They didn't miss me until they got together again and each group found out I wasn't with the other group. EP: And so it was several hours? MG: Yes, they had done all of their shopping and everything before they missed me, and so it--I don't know what in the world would have happened to me if that man hadn't been so kind. When I think back on how nice he was to me...it was really great. EP: You talked earlier about taking trips prospecting with your father. Would you tell me a little more about the trips with him? MG: Yes, we would always have a really good time when we would go prospecting. I remember one time in particular when we went to a mountain west of Arlington. It was across the desert; we went out in this old pickup car we had, I guess it was a pickup, and he had a barrel of water in the back of it, and we went to this mountain and we climbed clear to the top of it. We got up to the top of the mountain and boy, I was out of breath by that time and we sat down to rest. And we were sitting there and the nearest town from Arlington that would have had a radio station would have been Phoenix. And, of course, this was a long way west of—see Arlington is about fifty-two miles southwest of Phoenix and this was west of Arlington quite a ways. But, anyway, we sat down to rest and all of a sudden I could hear an orchestra playing, if you can believe that--way out there in the middle of nowhere. The silence was deafening when you first sat down and listened to the silence. And then I could hear this orchestra playing and I thought "this is weird, I wonder what is going on here?" because I knew there wasn't an 92 orchestra within hundreds of miles. I looked at Dad and he got this funny look on his face and he said "Do you hear anything?" "Yes, I hear music," and he replied "I do, too," and we tried and tried to figure out how on earth we could hear music way out there. The only thing I could think of was that some natural phenomenon there picked up a broadcast from Phoenix. That is the only thing I could think of, but we both heard that music way out in the middle of the desert. Then, when we got back to the pickup to go home, by that time we were really thirsty because neither of us had taken up any water with us. We had just left it in the pickup, and oh, I was looking forward to that water when we got back to the car, and when we got there that silly barrel had a leak in it and there was not a drop of water to be had. We were, both of us, terribly thirsty out there in the middle of the desert. I thought, "Oh, wow, I wonder if we can make it back?" I was never so thirsty in my life and it was really hot and there can be nothing hotter than the Arizona sun. So I said to Dad, "I am so thirsty I will never make it back to the valley," and he stopped and went over and picked up a ... little pebble and said, "You put this under your tongue and that will help." So I put the pebble under my tongue, which caused my mouth to water a little bit and moistened it just a little bit, but I was still so thirsty I didn't think I could make it and I kept complaining until finally he stopped and we went over to a barrel cactus and he got some moisture out of that and we made it back to the valley but I was never so glad to see water as when we got back to Arlington. I wanted to stop and take a drink out of the ditch but my dad said, "No, that water is contaminated. You wait until we get to some good water," and so I did, and then he wouldn't let me drink too much all at once. It would make me sick. EP: It is dangerous to be on that desert without water. 93 MG: Yes, there are people who have died just trying to... Not knowing how to manage in the desert. In fact, there was a family who perished on the desert there, if they had had their wits about them there could have made it probably because they had water in the radiator of their car, they had even oranges in the back of the car. Why they didn't eat an orange is beyond me. I guess they panicked, probably --the father panicked when the car broke down--and they just started walking for help and just died crossing the desert. EP: Tell me the process of your Dad's prospecting. What did he do? MG: Well, he always took a little pick with him, a pick and a shovel and he would...he knew about where the minerals, what type of rock to look in, and so forth. A lot of times he would break rocks apart and look or just look at certain rocks, types of rocks and find little gold nuggets, or dust. EP: He would take a pick and shovel up and dig, find the right formation? MG: There were not many streams around there. A lot of people will go panning for gold, we’d do that in Oregon, but in Arizona there are not that many streams. So he would just stick with a pick and look for the right type of formations of rocks and so forth—the right type of rocks. A lot of times I would just think, I'd yell: "Dad, Dad, I've found some gold," and I'd bring him this rock and I'd be so excited because there was this yellow glitter, and it was fool’s gold. He could always tell fool’s gold, and then he showed me the difference between gold and fool’s gold. I got so I could recognize it and he gathered up—I think I mentioned that before. (Reference to gathering up a jar of nuggets and dust.) 94 EP: Tell me about his working. Do you remember when he worked in the mines? MG: Yes, he worked in the mines in Goldroads, but down in the valley, before we moved up there, his type of work was mostly ranching, and let's see, he did work on the Gillespie Dam. EP: This was when you were living in Arlington and in that area? MG: Yes. And then he worked...most of his jobs were... I remember one job he had one summer somebody wanted him to mine for them out at Black Butte. That was the happiest summer I think our family had, ever. We were out there with no one else around, just our family and it was just a lot of fun. Dad worked down in this mine. I remember when all of us went out there, we were singing all the way out and my sister Letha was teaching me how to sing parts and I had a hard time, when just two people were singing I always wanted to sing whatever they were and so she would tell me, "No, you do it this way." So she would sing, like if I was singing soprano, she was singing alto, I'd say I wanted to sing with her and she'd say "No, you stay on that," and she got me where I could sing a part alone. It was a lot of fun. Another thing that happened, there was one of the kids came down with measles, so of course when one got them, everyone else got them, one at a time, and I was really feeling left out because I didn't come down with the measles so I wasn't getting any attention at all. Finally, when everybody else was over them and it was kind of an old thing, I came down with them, and did I get any attention? No. EP: No, not much. Were you very sick? MG: And I was very sick. Served me right for wanting to get them. 95 EP: Now, where is Black Butte? MG: Black Butte is out west of Arlington, out on the desert. And another thing I remember about being out at Black Butte, we used to go out, it was in the hot summer time, and the cactus had fruit on it, and we would get a rib from an old rotted one, you know, and put a hook on the end of the rib and then we would rake the fruit off the top of the cactus, hold an apron down there for them to fall in, then we would have cactus fruits and it is just delicious. I would like to eat some now. EP: Did you eat them like fruit? MG: It is a very strange fruit. You open it up and it is mostly seeds, black seeds and red. But it is very nice and sweet. I love it. EP: Is it covered with spines? MG: Yes, it has little spines on the outside of it. You don't eat that. EP: You cut it open? MG: Yes you cut it open. They are about the size of a fig. Delicious. I don't know if they would taste that good to me now, but they sure did then. Then another memory I have of Black Butte was when Margie got a cactus through her toe. It just went right through her toe and she would not let anyone touch her until Daddy came up out of the mine. The boys had to go and get him up out of the mine and he had to come clear to the house to get a sticker out of Margie's toe. Cactus, some of it, this type cactus has little burrs or something all the way. You can't see them. EP: Hooks. 96 MG: Yes, but you can't see them and so when you pull them out it is really difficult and very painful. So Dad, it was just sticking out the other side of her toe, so Dad pulled it all the way through and it was a lot less painful that way because. EP: Than trying to drag it? MG: Yes, if he had tried to pull it out the way it went in it would have been a lot more painful. Even so, but she wouldn't let anyone touch her except Daddy. EP: Now what kind of a - an open pit mine or a shaft describe it. MG: It was just a hole. It went right straight down. EP: He would go down in on a bucket or? MG: Let's see if I remember that well. I wasn't around the mine very much, in fact, Dad wouldn't let us go down there, I guess he was afraid we'd fall in, but it went straight down, it probably drifted back in after a ways. EP: It seems it would be very dangerous work. MG: It was. Jack stayed in mines all his life. He did a lot of mining. EP: What were they mining for in Black Butte? MG: Gold. EP: And how far away was the house where you stayed? MG: From the mine? EP: Yes. MG: Oh, I'd say about an eighth of a mile or something, not too terribly far. 97 EP: But he would just walk out there and work? MG: He would go out there and work. We just had a ball that time, that summer. EP: He worked alone? MG: Well, I think the boys helped him. EP: Oh, both Gordon and Jack were big enough to work. MG: Yes. And we, let's see, they brought some food out to us every once in a while, from Arlington. EP: Did you have a car out there, the old truck? MG: No, we were just out there. Period. EP: Goodness. MG: And we had a really lovely summer there, though. We enjoyed it just our family there. EP: Were there hills around? MG: Yes, it was rocky, mountainous country. It was that kind of black lava-type rock. EP: Were there any trees at all, or just the MG: Just the cactus. Well, I guess there were some mesquite trees and some Palo Verde trees, a few, but mostly, though, ocotillo and types of cactus. I like the plants that grow in the desert. EP: Was it quite hot? MG: Yes, it was quite hot. It really wasn't as hot as Arlington, though, I don't think. EP: Not as low? 98 MG: Yes. It probably was higher, and it was quite a bit cooler in the desert than it was right down in the valley. One time when we were little kids, there were quite a lot of mosquitoes that summer, and oh, those things would bite you, and so Dad was just sick and tired of those mosquitoes biting everybody, and he said, "Well, we are going to get some sleep and he loaded our beds in the pickup and we went out on the desert to sleep. It was a lot cooler, and we just got settled down and those mosquitoes started buzzing around. So Dad decided we hadn't gone out far enough, so we got back in the pickup again and went out further, but it seemed like everywhere we'd go those mosquitoes were buzzing around. Finally we discovered we were taking them with us. They would get in the cab and go with us. EP: Were you finally able to leave them behind? MG: No, we finally went back to Arlington to sleep. Oh dear, it was terrible. EP: Half the night later. MG: Yes. EP: Now, you had the canal. There were always mosquitoes. MG: Um-huh. They were a pest. I remember a story about Dad. I'll have to tell you about this. EP: OK. MG: Mother was fussing around because we were out in the yard. It got really insufferably hot in the house because we didn't have air conditioning in those days. And, so when the house would shade the front lawn, we would go out there and it was quite a bit cooler. So Mother was sitting there and she started fussing because this horsefly came over there and started biting at her. She hit at it, and swat it, and everything else. She 99 sent us in the house for a flyswatter and that didn't work. It would dodge her and then come back, and so we went in for that Flit, you know that poison stuff, that didn't work either. The poison would kind of disperse in the air and he would go away for a minute and then come back. Mother kept fussing and finally Dad said: "I'll get rid of the blankety-blank thing." He went in the house and got his twenty-two and he came out and shot it. EP: And hit it? MG: He always said he hit it between the eyes. EP: That sounds like Mother's story of Daddy shooting the mouse under the piano. MG Yes. I remember that. EP: Do you want to tell me a little more of what you know of your Dad's younger life? MG: Yes, when he was quite young, his mother died, and he has told me his earliest memory of her and that always stayed with me because I could picture it in my mind. He said his earliest memory of her was they had a big tornado, they lived in Kansas at the time, and they have these tornadoes, anyway they saw this coming, this funnel-shaped cloud, so he was standing by the fence and she had her arm around him, and he saw this coming, and he saw a horse that was tied to this post, and the horse and the post were taken up in the wind. The wind was so strong it took straws and shot them right into wood. It was such a strong wind, but he said seeing that horse being taken up is the earliest memory he has. His mother was with him at that time. Then, of course, before the storm came to them they ran into the cyclone shelter, the cellar, and they would go in there for protection against the storms. Then after his mother died, his father 100 remarried. The lady he married was quite immature. And pretty self-centered. I guess looking at it from her side of it; it was kind of hard to take on a family to rise. Dad was the youngest. He had three older sisters. But, some of the things he told me about his childhood I kind of shudder. Once, when he was eight and his little sister was six, they had gone to school. They had a new teacher who had come out from the East and she didn't really understand the weather there. The kids kept telling her there was going to be this terrible blizzard--they could tell by the signs. She thought they were just trying to get out of school, so she didn't pay any attention to them. Finally, she let school out after the blizzard hit. Dad had a long way--most of the kids had horses and so forth to go back and forth to school but Dad had to walk—and it was quite a long ways. So he and his little six-year-old sister had to trudge through this blizzard trying to find their way home. And in the meantime, their stepmother had gotten frightened when she saw the blizzard coming, so she went over to her mothers and locked the house when she left, not giving the kids a thought. So they tramped, trying to make their way through this blizzard, and Aunt Jean kept getting tired and wanted to sleep, and he wouldn't let her because he knew if he let her sleep any she would freeze to death. Finally, she got too weak and tired to walk, so this little eight-year-old carried that little six-year-old through this blizzard trying to find their way back home. Eventually, he found his way to the fence--he recognized this fence--and he felt his way along the fence until he got to the barn, and made his way to the house, the house was locked so they had to go back out to the barn. Lucky for them, I guess, because there was a horse in there and they cuddled up to the horse to keep warm. But by that time their feet were just about frozen. He kept getting snow and rubbing her feet with it, but he always had chilblains in his feet 101 from that time on. Anytime his feet would get cold they would hurt, really hurt. That experience he had. The reason he told me about this story was one year it was so cold and he said his feet were hurting him and I asked him why and he told me he had these chilblains and he told me about that incident. EP: Now, where was it they were living? MG: In Kansas. That was when he was much younger. Then when he moved out to Arizona. I told you about him and Grandpa clearing the land. EP: This is when they went to Arizona. So they went from Kansas to Arizona. MG: Yes. They came from Kansas out to Arizona, and settled in Arizona. Then Dad helped to clear the ranch, in fact he did practically all of it, all of the work on that ranch, getting it cleared and set up, and so forth. Once he got a job as a cowboy one summer with Johnny McGovern, I remember that. Earning his own money. That seemed great to him. But to his stepmother, he needed to pay for his support and so the family got most of the money but he was secretly saving a little of it to try to buy a violin. He simply loved the violin; he wanted to play very badly. So he saved and saved and saved until he finally got enough to buy this violin. Out in the fields, he taught himself to play it. He never had a music lesson in his life, but he could play just about anything on the violin. The saddest part of the whole thing, that violin was broken when he was discovered playing it. EP: Because it took time away from work. 102 MG: Yes. And disobedience, and getting him off on the wrong foot. I don't know what their reason was. I simply cannot feature it out. I think Grandpa just let her do things her way. Whatever she wanted, that was it. It was too bad. EP: Did the sisters stay around home? MG: No. Aunt Jean married really young to get away from home and Aunt Nell, I don't know how old she was, but anyway she was older and so was Aunt Minnie, and so, anyway, they married. Were gone. Dad was kind of stuck with it. So anyway, I think he had a kind of unhappy early childhood. EP: So then when he married they stayed there on the ranch? MG: Yes. See, the ranch was supposed to be half Dad's because he had done practically all the work. EP: So where did they live? MG: They had two houses there on the ranch, I think. I think Letha can tell you more because, see, I was a baby. We were still on the ranch when I was born, apparently, and Letha tells you more about that part. EP: The stepmother was there, too, all that time. MG: Yes. So, anyway, there was no bitterness in our family about it but they got gypped out of that ranch. So, then by that time my Dad had a growing family and then when Dorothy had her arm injured the doctor bills and the hospital bills just ate up all their capital and then my mother became ill, too, and so they had some pretty rough, hard times. And in spite of all that, they were always helping someone else. There was always some relative living with us, broke and out of work. They ALWAYS came to 103 Mother and Dad. No matter how big their family was or how little room we had, or how little we had to eat or whatever, whoever came they were welcomed and taken care of. EP: Now, which grandfather came and lived with you for several years when you were tiny? MG: I think that was "Grandpa Jim," James Robinson Biddlecome that was my mother's father. I don't remember too much about Grandpa Jim. I was rather young, I think. Then he died. Letha would remember him much better than I. Everyone called him Grandpa Jim. My dad's dad we always called "Grandpa Deming." My grandmothers, I didn't know either one of them, they were both dead when I was born. EP: Why don't we go back and talk a little more about Arlington. Tell me; describe the town, what it looked like. MG: It was a round valley that was surrounded by low hills--to me they were mountains when I was a child, but when we went back there, it is still a very pretty valley, but the hills are very small compared to the ones I've seen since. EP: Does it look much the same as it did, except that the homes are nicer? MG: It has changed in the fact that a lot of the homes that were there are not. They have a road through from the valley road over to where we lived under the hill. We always called that "Our place on the hill." There was a road there where the highway went and then that was on the west side of the valley and there was a canal right down below the hill and the house was just below the canal. At that time, we didn't have a road through there and so to get to the Arlington school or around on that side of the valley road we always had to walk through the fields which was a shortcut way or if we drove we had to drive around on the highway to the valley road. 104 EP: So it was a half-circle. You had to double back? MG: The valley road came from the Arlington store and it went from there down a ways where the Deming ranch was located, and then from there on down it was not too far to the Arlington school, and then you kept on going and there was a sharp corner to turn, which would go west, that is where a lot of our friends and relatives lived—Richardson's and on the corner were the Bassetts, and then Frank Moody's place. Frank Moody was my cousin Roland's grandfather, and then the Richardsons were next to that and then up further, the next place up was the Anderson ranch, that was my cousins, and then the Harris' were on the corner, right across from the Deseret rolls, which was a store. That was on the corner there. Then you were at the highway again. But Arlington was a pretty little town and people were quite close-knit, they were related one way or another either by blood or by marriage. I mentioned before, I believe, the dances we used to have on hilltop and our social life wasn't all that great except for going on picnics, and dances, and these entertainments at the school. We used to go out on the desert sometimes and go arrowhead hunting. Everybody who found an arrowhead or any artifact of the Indians would give to my Uncle George because he was making a collection of the arrowheads and the taps and everything that we could find that the Indians had left there. When I was young, you could find a lot of those in the desert where they had had wars, I guess, and there were remnants of the arrowheads and things that had been there. We used to have a lot of fun going on picnics and everybody in the valley going out and they would hunt these arrowheads and everybody gave theirs to George—he had a marvelous collection--I don't know what ever happened to it but it was a good collection of Indian relics. 105 EP: Now, of course, it was all dirt roads? MG: Yes. And the road from the corner down where the Bassett place was, through past Richardson's and down there, it had cottonwood trees on both sides of the road, and those were absolutely huge--they were so large that they met together on the top. It was just like driving through a tunnel where the trees touched. I remember when we were little, Margie, somebody told us about these snakes, boa constrictors, that hang around in the trees and they jump down on you and squeeze you to death?, anyway, of course, there aren't any of those snakes in Arizona at all, but she half convinced me. Every time we would walk under those trees she would say "I see a boa constrictor and it is going to fall on us and squeeze us to death." She was always thinking up things to be frightened of. I would never even think of being frightened until she started in, then she would have me scared. EP: She said she made a lot of trouble for you. MG: Not really, but she got me scared a few times. I would not have thought of being scared otherwise. EP: It sounds like it was quite an attractive little town. MG: It was. EP: It wasn't just a little flat desert town, with no trees. MG: Oh, no. There were fields—they planted alfalfa--in fact they grew the best alfalfa seed in the country in Arlington, I think. And a lot of the farmers there would grow alfalfa just for seed and they would sell it to the Stephen's Feed Store in Phoenix for other farmers. They grew wheat and watermelon—oh, there were never such good watermelons in the 106 world as we grew in Arlington. We had a whole patch of them one summer and we kids used to go out when the watermelons were ripe, you know, and we wouldn't even bother to pick them: we would just break them open and eat the heart out. Oh, they were good. EP: Did they sell them in Phoenix? MG: No, not a great deal. We just raised them. They had the yellow-fruited watermelons there: they were delicious, too. The watermelons in Arlington were really super. I guess it was the really good, hot sunshine that got them. They were sure good. I remember one time we decided we were going to try to sell some, so we were selling these watermelons for ten cents apiece and they were huge things, but we didn't have any takers. I guess everybody had their own. EP: What was the diet? What did you eat? MG: Well, of course, when we grew up, the years I remember were the Depression years, so it was a fairly good diet, I guess, but we didn't get enough of some of the green vegetables that I think we should have had, probably. But we had a lot of beans and potatoes. My dad loved gravy and biscuits, of course, and we always had those. And our big meal was in the middle of the day and then we would have supper at night. Supper was very simple. We would usually have bread and milk or something like that, a lot of times cornbread and milk. We always had a cow so we always had plenty of milk. EP: Did you have much meat? 107 MG: We had, I wouldn't say an overly abundance of meat, but we ate meat quite often. Quite often it was wild meat like we had an awful lot of doves and white wings and different types of birds like that and cottontails, rabbits, and those were delicious. Mother would fry them up just like fried chicken, I loved those. Of course, we had beef whenever it was...we didn't really have a place to refrigerate meat and Dad would a lot of times make jerky. Our fruit, mainly, was citrus fruit. EP: Did you have your own trees. MG: No, we didn't have citrus trees much in Arlington. I don't know why. I am sure they would grow there, but nobody seemed to grow oranges any citrus fruits down there. We had mostly dates, figs that type of thing. There were two types of dates that we had, one kind was kind of a seed date. They would have a little black skin on them, there was nothing but a seed, the certain kind of palm tree would grow just these black, the seeds would have a skin on them, and you would eat the skin off of them—it was really sweet. EP: The skin itself? MG: Then spit the seed out. Then there were a lot of pomegranates and, let's see, what other kinds of fruits? That was mostly the fruit, I think. Figs, I loved figs, the fresh ones. EP: It was too hot, I suppose, for leafy green vegetables. MG: I don't know if that was the reason or if we just didn't bother. I know that we grew corn. My dad had a cornfield one year that had the best corn in the world, oh it was good. We had a big old party over at the school and he furnished all the corn. We had hot buttered corn, it was delicious. It was homemade butter. Dad made the corn, he would bake it in 108 a pit, you know, with a fire on top of it. You've never tasted real corn until you have tasted that. Barbequed corn. EP: Oh. MG: A lot of times they would have barbeques over at the school, where they would bury the pig or whatever they were barbequing. EP: Sounds as if you had a great social life. MG: Yes. EP: Were they sports-minded? Did they have ballgames? MG: At school, yes. In fact, at this reunion we just went to I saw this lady and she had her name tag on her, and I thought, "Marie Parker, man that sounds familiar." And when she, I started talking to her, she reminded me of our school years in Arlington, and that girl could run like a deer. She could outrun any boy in the valley. When we would have these meets with Palo Verde--there were these four towns, you know--Palo Verde, Buckeye, Arlington and Liberty, so we would have these track meets and things together. When we would have the relay races we would always have Marie be the last one. We could be way behind and boy, we would give her that stick and she won every time. Our team. We had softball and basketball. EP: Were they mixed, boys and girls playing together? MG: No. Usually, the girls played separately. The boys played baseball and we played softball and they had their rules on basketball and we had ours. I remember being on the softball team and I really enjoyed it. We had these track meets and sports meets with these other towns I was telling you about. When Arlington won, we got this silver loving cup I will never forget. But they said you had to win four years straight--I guess 109 they couldn't afford to buy a loving cup for every year—so they said if you won it four years straight you could keep it in your school, so we were bound and determined we were going to win this four years straight. I remember when we won it I was in fifth grade, I think, yes. We won it that year when I was in fifth grade, the year I was in sixth grade, the year I was in seventh grade, and when I was in eighth grade I thought: "We have to win it this year," and we did! We won it, and we had won it a couple of years before and then we lost it, then we won it four years straight and we got to keep it. That was a big deal, keeping that loving cup. EP: Did you dad play ball? MG: Yes, not after I was old enough to remember, but Letha said when she was small that Dad was about the best ball player in the country. He really could hit a ball. EP: What position did he play? MG: I think he could pitch and catch or whatever they wanted him to do. But he was excellent on the hitting. She was telling us on this trip about the time he hit the ball so far it landed in the ditch. My brother Gordon jumped in the ditch and pulled it out, and then when they got over to the ball field Dad was running and he hit this home run. Gordon kept that ball a long time, that ball; it was one of his treasures. EP: Did your brothers play ball? MG: Yes. My Uncle George Moody played ball, too. I was talking to Roland on this trip this last time. He said when he was a little kid Uncle George used to throw that ball to him and he said "I didn't dare miss it or it would kill me if it hit me." That was really a pepper ball. It would just about knock him down when he would catch it. 110 EP: A pepper ball? MG: Yes. Well, hot. He would throw it so fast he would call it a "pepper ball." EP: I hadn't heard that expression before. MG: Anyway, he said I knew I didn't dare miss it or it would kill me. EP: Well, it sounds as if they had a lot of things that they did. MG: Yes, they had a very busy life. And an amazing thing, too, you know, they could come just be absolutely tired out and they would go out to people's houses and have a big dance. They would dance all night long. The kids would get tired and go to sleep. Sometimes when they would come back the dawn, the sun would be coming up. EP: They would have danced, all night after working all day? MG: Yes, after working all day. They had a lot of vim and vigor in those days. EP: Now, when you danced at the top of the hill, was it just on the dirt? MG: Oh, no, it was a service station, actually. It was, they had gas pumps. They had a great big dance hall. It was polished floors and everything, and they had benches all around. They had that stuff they would put on to make the floor slick, slippery while you danced. It was a neat place to dance. That is no longer there, it is gone, the dance hall. The neighbors were usually—well, everyone got along pretty well. Of course, there were people who would gossip about other people, but usually people got along well. My dad got along with everyone except Mr. Archer. And I don't know who could get along with him anyway. EP: Did he live in the town for very many years? 111 MG: Quite a few. EP: There is one in every town. MG: Jamey Archer was, I think we were in second grade when she came in, so she was there all through our growing up hears. EP: Now, these were the years between your birth in 1919 and about 1931 or so when you graduated from high school? Do you remember much about the world and the national situation? Were you aware of the Depression? MG: Yes, definitely aware of the Depression. It was mentioned, of course, by everyone. It was very much on people's minds: they had a hard struggle getting along, financially, and things were pretty tough during those years. I can remember, too, a lot of times Marge and I would sit there listening to the grownups talk, and there was an incident that happened when we were little kids that was very frightening. There was a murder that was very, very famous all over the country. There was this little girl by the name of Marion Parker who was murdered by a deranged person. The newspapers were really full of it, so every time, as soon as we would get home we would just listen to folks talking about it, every incident that was put in the paper about it. Of course, Marge being the little scaredy-cat that she was, she always had me scared to death. We thought this guy named Hickman, of course he was the murderer, they didn't know that a first. He would write notes to the police calling himself "The Fox." What he had done was to murder this little girl and then he wired her eyes open and put her in the car beside him and drove all over the country. He would drop off notes here and there to the police and sign them "The Fox." We were very fascinated by this because this little girl was just our age. So, finally, the news came out that he was somewhere in Arizona. So we were 112 frightened to death. One time we were walking home from school-- we had to walk to school at this time, we didn't live in the valley; we lived on the highway out a ways from Arlington. We had a stretch of road on the highway that we had to walk. We were walking home from school this day, and of course, Mother had always warned us about never accepting rides from strangers. This car slowed down, and Margie said "Oh, it is Hickman." I just knew she was right. Anyway, he offered us a ride and we said "no thank you," and kept walking on. Well, he kept his car going just along with our walk, and kept coaxing us in. He said he wanted to buy us some ice cream, and he wanted to buy us some candy, and he wanted to give us some money and he wanted ...and the more he would say the more frightened we were. We kept walking faster and finally broke into a run, and he stopped the car and started chasing us. I just knew that was Hickman. Marge kept looking over her shoulder, she wasn't running quite as fast as I was because my legs were longer, and she kept saying "He is gaining on us, he is gaining on us." I knew where this shortcut was. There was this little road that was kind of kitty-corner right ahead of us that you couldn't see from the highway. But it was around the bushes and we knew it was there. I thought, "If we can just make it to that road maybe we can get away from him. Marge kept saying he was gaining on us, and so as we got to that, it went back to the Harris' place, and so we got on this little dirt, kitty-corner road and ran into Harris' yard. By the time I got to Harris' yard, I collapsed in the yard, and I looked around and couldn't see him. Marge claimed he was following us even after we got on the little dirt road, but I don't know. Anyway, I looked back and he wasn't there. Mrs. Harris came out and said "Good heavens, girls, what's wrong," 113 because we were both white as sheets, and so we told her, and she put us in her car and drove us home. Both of us were just convinced that that was Hickman. EP: Whoever he was, he was a menace. MG: Right, he was up to no good. But they did find Hickman later up in Washington. They finally got him. EP: He was psychotic? MG: Yeah, just a crazy guy. Those things happen now, of course, and you don't think as much about it, but in those days that was not a very common occurrence, and so for, the in fact, they wrote a song called "Poor Little Marion Parker," and I used to sing that. It was really a sad situation. EP: Were you aware of who was the President of the United States and things like that? MG: Yes. There was quite a bit of talk. Let's see, Hoover was President before the crash. And, of course, when we were growing up we were Democrats because Roosevelt was the one who brought things back to where they should be. He got things going again, anyway. And up to that time it was pretty rough. So, we did hear a lot of politics and talk going on, but most everybody that I knew was for Franklin Roosevelt, in fact, he was elected, what three times, or four? EP: Do you remember the WPA programs? MG: Yes. My dad took part in that and it was hard for him because he was such a proud man. But after my mother became ill, she was in a coma before they knew what was wrong, they took her to the hospital in Phoenix, and so Dad was there with no work and no way of getting work. Letha talked me into going back to school. I had been out of 114 school for two years because of being so young and frail health wise. Dad had kind of insisted I quit school. And then when we got to Phoenix, they wanted me to start school again. By that time I just dreaded going to a big school from being from such a little one. Thank heavens she had the persistence to insist that I go back to school. Dad, in order for me to get into the NYA (National Youth Administration) program, to get enough money to go to school children in school could work and earn the money for school. But to get in that program you had to be in the WPA, and so Dad took a job on the WPA. He really got upset, too, while he was working on that because a lot of them were just goofing off and not working. Whoever was over him kept getting after him because he was doing so much work and he said he didn't was to get paid for nothing. This guy thought he made the other guys look pretty bad. It was very embarrassing for Dad--he didn't like that. EP: What kind of work was it? MG: They put them to work building things. He said that a lot of people spent more time leaning on their shovel than they did shoveling. During the Depression it was pretty bad, too, I thought when maybe it got the country on its feet and so forth, but I thought it was a really bad thing when they would burn things and destroy them rather than letting people eat. EP: Do you remember that happening? MG: I do remember that happening. My Uncle Farrell ended up in jail because his family, he didn't have work, there was no way for him to get work, his family was hungry, and he saw this mound of oranges. It was as big as a, I don't know how many tons of oranges were in that mound, they just went and dumped them. He heard they were going to burn 115 them, so he went out with a box and he was gathering up some oranges for his children who were hungry, and was arrested. It was just, to me, such a terrible thing that they would do that. He didn't really have to spend any time in jail, but they did arrest him for that. EP: I think it was Mother who spoke of seeing a great big mountain of oranges, two or three dump truck loads, and armed guards. MG: Yes. Well, anyway, Uncle Farrell managed to get under the fence and get some of those oranges and I guess the armed guards discovered it. It was just terrible. Then they took gasoline and poured on them, I think, and burned them. Bad. EP: What was the situation with your mother? They took her to Phoenix and put her in the hospital and then they discovered she was diabetic. Was she there very long? MG: Yes, she, we were in Arlington when we first took her up there, we were going to stay with Aunt Ada for a while, but we got in a hassle with her one day. It was just terrible, but she really got onto me for something or other. I had been doing all the work and it was really tough, and at that time, that one day I was really sick, and she got on me for not doing everything and I EP: Oh, this is when you were hungry and you took your cow and... MG: Right. We took our cow over there. So I, Roland was my same age and he was a boy and he should have done some of the work but he wouldn't. Anyway, I resented it and I started to talk back for the first time in my whole life and then it made her mad and she started saying things she didn't mean and then I started saying worse things that I didn't mean and Margie chimed in. Well, she wasn't going to let anybody talk to her sister like 116 that, and so we really got into it, and so Margie and I took our cow and we went home. I never will forget that night. Aunt Ada was screaming at us: "I'll tell your mother on you." I said, "Go ahead, and I will tell what you have been doing to us." So anyway, we went on home, and then I was wishing we hadn't been so hasty. I milked the cow, and of course, Margie didn't like milk and there wasn't much else to eat. I had some milk, and we did have some canned salmon, I remember that. So we had our little supper, and then we went to bed and every car that went down the highway, Margie would think it was somebody coming there to get us. I couldn't sleep because she kept getting me scared. And so then we would say to each other, now you just wait until she gets over here. We are not going to let her talk us into going back. But by the time she did, we had decided we were really anxious to go back. So we went back to Aunt Ada's. She did apologize to us, too, you know. And we apologized to her and everything was hunky-dory again. EP: And then your Dad came home. MG: Then the family just moved away when we went to Phoenix. 117