Oral History Program Edwina Whitesides Knowlton Interviewed by Janice Dawson 15 September 1976 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Edwina Whitesides Knowlton Interviewed by Janice Dawson 15 September 1976 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Knowlton, Edwina Whitesides, an oral history by Janice Dawson, 15 September 1976, 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 Edwina Whitesides Knowlton. The interview was conducted on September 15, 1976, by Janice Dawson, in Mrs. Knowlton’s home in Layton, Utah. Mrs. Knowlton discusses her experience with teaching in early Utah as well as other personal experiences throughout her life. JD: This is an interview with Edwina Whitesides Knowlton and this is held in her home in Layton, Utah and the interviewer is Janice Dawson. Well, Mrs. Knowlton, first of all I'd like to talk a little bit about the old Dawson Hollow schoolhouse. Now you were, taught there one year, is that right? EK: Yes, one year. JD: Do you remember what year that was? EK: In 1913. JD: 1913. And can you tell us a little bit about how many students you had and what it was like? EK: I think there was about 35 to 40 off and on. They'd stay home if they decided to you know and not very much compulsion about them coming, but there was seven grades. I had just gotten my teacher's certificate, so I was looking to start out to teach and get some experience and they asked me if I'd go. There was several of us at that time that had our certificates and they took the little school houses down lower, and I was on this one up nearer the mountains because it had the most grades and it was the most inaccessible. So I got ten dollars a month more than they did. Then, at the end of 1 the year they'd always give them a raise, about $2.50 raise and I got my $2.50 raise and they got their $2.50 raise, so I was that much ahead for the next year that I taught. JD: Now how long did you teach at this school? EK: I taught just one year at the Dawson Hollow School and I—it was a lonely place and it was 3 ½ miles from where I lived, or maybe a little more. But I used to walk on all the good days or any days that it wasn't storming, coming down from the sky. I'd walk, but when it was very stormy I'd ride a horse and carry a little hay on the back of my saddle to feed the horse and it would last all day and then I could ride home. While I was going up—the way I went up there, I went up through the fields, cut across, they used to say, to get there quicker. And I'd climb through barb wire fences, jump ditches, and cross hollows, and cross over the dam up at Adams' Pond and climb the hill and run over there and go over another long stretch up to where I could see the Dawson Hollow, and it was a deep hollow, very deep, and I didn't go up as far as the road because that would have taken too much time. I would go down that steep hill on a trail that was down there and there was a bridge, just a little old bridge, not very wide bridge where you went across. And I'd go there and make a little less time, and I quite enjoyed the long walk in mornings and night and I knew the children's parents, most of them, before I taught up there. They used to call it— Dawson's came from Scotland, and they used to call that part of the country Little Scotland. And so I, the old Dawson home, the old pioneer Dawson home, was up the hollow east, toward the mountains from there, oh, I imagine about a quarter of a mile maybe, and there was no other homes right in that hollow at that time. JD: Do you know who built the school in the first place? Who was responsible for it or— 2 EK: I think it—that was—I don’t know, unless it was the school district. JD: Did they have a county school system at that time? EK: Yes, at the time I taught, but there had been other teachers there before that I remember of. Now there might have been more farther back for all I know because this was built in 1875. So you see that's a long time back from when I started to teach there in 1913. And I can remember some of the names of the school teachers. There was a Miss Knowlton from—can’t remember her first name now, I used to know—from Farmington. She sometimes came on Mondays, she came up on the Bamberger train and walked up there. But she boarded all week in the winter at Dawson’s, Alex Dawson’s, and then she'd go home weekends, or sometimes she'd stay over when it was deep winter. And seeing her walk made me have courage to walk up there when I got to be the school teacher there. And then there was Maggie Green, she was a daughter of George Green that lived up in that vicinity. And he came from South Africa and there was other Green families up around there and down in Kaysville, so we always called them the African Greens. Then there was Pearl Singleton, she taught there several years that I remember of just before I did—quite a little while there before I did. And Sarah Jane Adams taught there too. Now I'm sure there was other teachers farther back, but I'm not familiar with their names. I haven't thought to bother about them and now I can’t find them. And then this Maggie Green, she married a boy from up in that country, Nalder, or I mean this Pearl Nalder. And that's where she met him up while she was living up in there to teach school. JD: Well, I didn't know she taught there. Well, that's interesting. Now did they have a school board or anybody over—who did you report directly to as a teacher? 3 EK: They had trustees and the superintendent. The school was—they had trustees that lived up in there. One was Nalder and I don’t know the name of the other one, but oh they visited me one during the year, once or more to see how I was doing. And Hubert Burton from Kaysville was the county superintendent. JD: At the time you were a teacher. EK: At the time that I was teaching and he visited too a time or two. Other than that I was there all alone it felt like. some of the boys were as tall as I was that I was teaching there and I remember one time they'd ask to go out, which they had to do sometimes, but often they'd stay out longer and I was going to have to put a stop to that because I had to be. I knew I had to have control of them all so I went out to bring him in, I could see him playing out, through the window I could see him. And so I went out to get him and he clung to a sage brush and I couldn't pull him out to drag him in, so I had to leave him there the rest of the day. JD: How old was this boy? EK: Well, he was one of the older boys. He was in the seventh grade. He was the oldest boy of Wiggills. He was as tough as the sage brush so I couldn't get him in. But he was alright the day after and all the time after he was good. He knew I meant business so from then on he gave me no more trouble. He knew at least I'd be after him. And he started with the beginner's grade, and they had double seats that weren't bound so they were screeching around on the floor—not a real hardwood floor or anything, just a plain floor—and one big pot-bellied stove in the middle. JD: That was in the middle of the whole room. 4 EK: That was in the middle of the room, uh huh. And a black board up the front and the windows on the side. JD: Now were these regular school desks or were they tables and chairs? EK: School desks, old-fashioned school desks—two in each seat and then I'd try—if there was two seats of any one grade, why, they'd be close together, but getting seven grades in there because they started with the beginners and I taught up to the seventh grade and the eighth grade went down closer to town to graduate at that time. JD: Can you tell us a little bit about how you managed to teach seven grades at one time. What did you do during the day? EK: Well, I was teaching all the time. JD: I mean how did you manage it? Did you just talk to a few at a time and then to another group and— EK: Oh, yes, I had a class for every grade on every subject, but there was only a few in the class so I could get their participation and the knowledge what they were gaining and all kinds of things because there was so few and I taught them and got their—I got the full idea of what I needed to do about each grade. JD: While you were talking to the seventh grade— EK: While I was talking to the seventh grade sometimes the boys behind would pull the hair of the little red-headed girl in front of him. I'd have to stop once in a while and lay a few tears and things and—and of course, but, on the whole I prided myself in being able to control both years that I could teach. Some of them thought that I was a little too firm, but I thought that I had better with all those big boys. 5 JD: Now while you were teaching one group the other group was supposed to be studying. EK: Supposed to be studying. I had an assignment on the next class and I just go round and round. They didn't have too many different kinds of classes in those days. Once in a while you'd get a little hygiene you know, but it wasn't the regular— JD: Tell us about what they taught in the hygiene class then. Do you remember? EK: Well, just the general things about the names of the parts of their body and the functions of the body. Later years I taught that same type of hygiene in a class in Tonga sixty years later. JD: In just about the same way, maybe. EK: In about the same way. JD: Was there any kind of sex education in those days at all? EK: Not at all. It wasn't to be mentioned, never! That was never discussed in any way. JD: Would you discuss the difference between the bodies of the boys and girls at all? EK: No, they knew enough to know. JD: Just be very casual about the whole thing. EK: Yes, they were always—just never had any trouble with them being obscene or anything. Their language was good too. Some of them swore a little out on the campus, or not on the campus, but the prairie, not much. And they were very kindly and cooperative to me. And Tom Wall was the janitor, he swept the floor out every night and made the fire in the morning. He was there ahead of me, always on time. JD: Now, what other subjects did you teach? 6 EK: Well, of course there was always reading and writing and arithmetic and spelling andthe older ones got history and a few things like that, but the younger ones didn't go into quite that many subjects. They'd get a little of it and of course they'd listen in on what I was teaching the others sometimes and I know they learned a little that way cause I can remember learning that way. JD: Did they ever have any art classes? EK: Oh yes, they loved to draw and a lot of them were good drawers. They liked to draw and they liked to tell stories about the place up there and tell me all the news about all the people, their folks at home and all. JD: Kind of like show and tell now days. EK: They were just like one big family. They knew everybody in the little vicinity that they come from to school. And they were very friendly to me and the parents were too. And of course they were (I don’t know whether you want me to tell that or not), but they like to come when they'd have kind of a show thing you know. And the kids liked to dress and the parents were cooperative to get them some kind of a costume. JD: Kind of like a play you'd put on. EK: Yes like a play. And they'd put a wire across and hang up a sheet or two and draw the curtain. They liked to have the curtain drawn like real shows. And they liked to celebrate, like Christmas, and of course some of the boys drug in a big Christmas tree and they trimmed it with some things they made and some things they'd bring themselves that they wanted to. Then here come after their—soon after we'd started in the morning- course we had a program, a Christmas program, but here came all the 7 parents in bob sleighs and cutters and walking over the snow down to the Christmas program. And Mrs. Forbes, she was Hay— JD: Ray's mother? EK: Yes, Ray Forbe's mother anyway, she came from South Weber where they had quite a lot of music in them. And so they—there was a little organ in the sleigh and got it out and she was going to play for the dances. I didn't know they were going to have any dances, but she'd come—oh yes, they always danced up there so when the program of the school was out, they had brought-all parents had brought a big lunch for us too, and the kids had to lift all the seats out for the dance and set them outside. There was no other place to set them. And she'd play the organ. And there was Jimmy Green, he played the violin and her brother from over to South Weber would come over and play with her and they were real good players. They did a lot of that going around to different places to play for dances up in that eastern part of the mountains over there. This lunch—I remember one mother brought a great big bread pan that was kind of up on a base and one that she used—that she made the ten loaves a day bread in for the family. But it was filled with sandwiches—chicken sandwiches and homemade bread, and great big slices of homemade bread an inch and a half thick. And there would be a whole leg of chicken bone all in your sandwich. It was good, it was good meat and everything. And we got plenty of meat. I don’t know how many chickens she put in those but every sandwich was right full, plenty of meat and they had their cakes and pies and popcorn and everything that a person could eat they brought down there. Nothing hot, but it was good, cause it was too cold coming there. But they did love to dance and the children danced and they said could they have a dance at night for everybody in the 8 town, or in the place up there, that district. And I said you'll have to ask the trustees, I can’t tell you whether you can have it here because I didn't want to be responsible for what happened and if they had a town dance because I wasn't asked to give a dance up there and I wasn't wanting to have the responsibility of it because I knew that there was some—there was quite a bit of trouble that some of those dances got into once in a while, they went and asked the trustees and they said yes, they could have a dance so they had it and I went home. I didn't stay to see the dance but they said they had a real good time, they, all the people about that lived there and all their children were down there dancing. And they straightened it around after and got things back. JD: Did you have any other celebrations during the year besides Christmas? EK: Oh, we always had the regular ones. It was going on at that time, it was Halloween time and cause they always liked to draw and make the cats and hats and things for Halloween and sometimes I'd bring some other paper than was furnished me you know to help out, but they always had plenty of things. All the holidays were talked of and they'd talk about it and draw and dress for them. JD: Did you ever have the parents come for any party besides Christmas time? EK: No, just at Christmas time. JD: That's nice. EK: I remember that time when I first went up there, it was my first time I'd ever had school to teach and I was a little bit backward and there I was all alone out there knowing that these children were coming. They were out on the playgrounds, but I had to go out and take a little hand bell in my hand and ring the bell and line them up and march in. 9 That's the way I'd been taught and they didn't teach me any different when I was learning how to be a school teacher, so it was still done and we lined them up in a row and get them in orderly so they'd sit down and be alright. But I felt so peculiar up there, that little bell rang over the hills and over the hollows, I thought "What am I doing up here?" But I enjoyed it, and now I meet those people that I taught there and I find them in good positions, they're well trusted. Can’t speak of the church can I? JD: Yes, fine. EK: In the church they're very good workers. I meet them in the temple all the time, a few of them. JD: Can you remember a few of them? Would you like to tell me who was in your class? EK: Well there was the Wiggills family and their oldest daughter, Lillian and this boy that I caught hold of the sage brush and they were on down. The whole family would come down through the grades you see. And then there was Mattie Green and her sisters Leone and what was the other one's name? I don’t know. And then there was the other Forbes family, there was Forbes families and Jacques families and the Jacques girl that married the Ray over in South Weber. I see her at the temple all the time. JD: And there was the Walls. EK: The Walls. Tom Wall and his sister Nora and I guess I could think of others if I got down to it, but they came whole families of them. I'd have only three or four in the first grade. They were just beginners you see then. Their brothers and sisters would look out for them getting home. And they walked in the snow, rain, whatever home and they'd see to it that their, but all the houses were quite a good walk from there. But I had to do a lot of 10 applying the lessons because there was so many different subjects to teach. But the next year I got a school where it was handier down in West Bountiful and I just had two grades to teach in a larger school. But I had the fifth and sixth grades. JD: The day you started at the Dawson school did anyone take you there or I tell you what to do or— EK: No. JD: You just went all on your own, just started in. EK: Just went over there myself, but I could remember how I started and so I started them out about the same old way. Seemed to be going that way and I'd known that all the time. Course I had graduated from Ogden High School. When I graduated from Ogden High School there wasn't a high school in all of Davis County from Salt Lake to Ogden. And I had gone to the University and I went up to Logan to school. JD: Oh, you went to the University of Utah and the Utah State—Agricultural College then wasn't it? EK: Yes, AC. And I remember one May day I happened to look out the window and I could see Zipporah Layton. She had taken one of the schools down closer to town. It was a little better school, I mean as far as the building and the location, but it was several miles away, but I could see her coming over the hill with all of her children, school children, following her and they had their lunches. And of course mine had their lunches ready to go May walking. So when she got there course my school was really ready to go May walking and grabbing their lunches and we all walked up the Dawson Hollow way up around the old Dawson place. And they swung on limbs of the trees and jumped 11 and hopped and played ball and everything just as happy as if they had all the equipment in the world. And they just had a great time on that May Day thing and they walked back and the others went back up over the hill. JD: Did they have any playground equipment at all or what did they do when they went out to play? EK: No—throw rocks. And they'd get-once in a while someone would bring some kind of a yarn ball their mother had made you know, and they'd bat that around with some kind of a stick they had—they didn't—with no equipment furnished. JD: They just kind of made up their own thing. EK: I never saw a football then you know, but they made up their own fun like they had been you know. Oh, teased each other, run hard races. Nothing was too formal. I made a little formality of it but I could see they didn't like that. They could go so much faster and have more fun in their own way and it was fun too, and it was healthy for them cause they run uphill and downhill that—you know. JD: You didn't have any formal physical education then. EK: No I didn't. They didn't ask me to do any of that either, even that and the next year too. Guess if I had gone on later in life—after that I started a school of my own at home. JD: Did you really? EK: Well, I mean I just got my own kids you know. I got married after I'd taught in West Bountiful that fall after. I could have taught some more but I was ready I guess to get married. I thought I was old enough. 12 JD: Can you tell us anything about any of the other old schools in Layton? Where they were, a little bit about them? EK: There was a school house before this school. It was on the—it was across the street from Elias Adams home—that home Sarah James lived in later. JD: Oh, up there in East Layton. EK: And it was on that brow of that hill where Dick Graehl built his house cause they dug the old rocks of the foundation up when they was trying to build their basement. JD: Of the school. EK: Uh huh. From the old log school, so they put it on a foundation, but they'd gotten—it had been so long ago. That was in 1860 when they did that, when they started that school. And they had-they had provided the pay for the teacher too at that time. They had a meeting and decided they could pay—they had few enough people, or enough people to pay a teacher. Course the teacher didn't get much pay. JD: Ok, all the people in the neighborhood just hired the teacher. And they put up the building? EK: I think they put up the building the way it sounded, from what I heard. And I knew from my mother telling me that one teacher that taught there. And she had emigrated from England and she lived, or she came and visited, some of the time at the Harvey place. That was then Kaysville because at that time, in 1860—along in 1860's, cause she came in 1860. Layton was all Kaysville then, it belonged to Kaysville there was such a few people. There was only 400 in the main town of Kaysville that had a fort around it. There was only 400 or some odd and they said most of them were children. And so they 13 took in more territory to get to have towns. It was later on Layton town. But at the time I was teaching school there Layton was a town. JD: Now what was the name of this log cabin school? Did it have a name? EK: Well they'd just say up by Elias Adams in the school house up there. I never heard it called anything else in my recollection. I wasn't interested years ago in finding out, but now I can’t ask anybody. JD: Now when they started the Dawson Hollow School then this school was discontinued in the other one then. EK: Yes, it was just one log room and I guess they just built—things were rustic, just built a kind of table or desks for them and benches. From what I've heard of the early schools that's the way they did it—the very early ones. JD: Do you know anyone that taught at that school? EK: I know of this one woman, this woman that came from England. She was a nurse in England and she was—she had what was called an education in England. I don’t know how much it was. But she had married, a photographer over there and she had no children, but they had adopted a little girl. But later years she joined the church and came here and they needed a teacher, someone that had an education, so they asked her to teach. And she used to—she came over and stayed at some of the houses. I think different families boarded her different times so the expense—she was partly paid for her teaching in her board that she got from the school— from the people that were attending children at school. That too was used for entertainment by that little community until they got this other one. It was a little bigger and it was brick. And then 14 that went down and I guess they used it—the logs and other things. That's the way they used things, never wasted anything. JD: Now you say that this home there was built by Elias Dawson. Can you remember any other early settlers and where their homes were there? Are there any still in existence, any early homes? EK: Not that I know of unless down there you know—I don’t think there is any of the houses down—only this Elias Adams house—Sarah Jane's. I think part of that must have been—they often built onto houses, but maybe it wasn't the original one cause they often, sometimes would build a log house and then frame or—on top of it, or another log room or two. JD: Who else lived up in that area, do you recall? EK: Well, there was the Jacques and the Forbes and all those along the Mountain Road. A little higher up there, Walls and all of them, and some of them came from the southern states. And they had a hard time. That was rocky ground up there to make a living because it just didn't lend itself to wheat fields or anything like that. They had fruit trees. Eventually they were the fruit raisers of this country. But not when they came there. They just planted enough for themselves. And they had some cattle and chicken and things that grazed around in the natural grass on the foothills on the mountains—wild chokecherries to eat and game— wild chickens that they could hunt. And they used to get even some fish from the little streams till more people came to live there and then they'd have to go as far over as—which was about five or six miles— over to Weber River to fish. And that's where they'd go to fish. The day that I was living up there. 15 JD: Well what do you know about the school they used to have in the Nalder home? You know the home where Roger Nalder lives. Wasn't it the Maggie Green School they called it? EK: Yes, she went down there after that was built—after, and that was where-- JD: After the Dawson Hollow School. EK: Oh yes, well I think it was built before the Dawson School was taken down, but they made it quite a good size school for just the first part of the grades, and then the rest went down to the main school you see. JD: Layton Elementary. EK: Uh huh, but was—Maggie used to teach up in the Dawson Hollow before they got that school. And then she taught down there and some others and they even taught one or two kids in the eighth grade there. And Byron got it and remodeled it, made him a home out of it, added room to it and made him a {unreadable text} well-built that one was. The old Dawson Hollow School that I taught in, when I, when my husband was going to build us a house and we got a piece of land and course we didn't have any money I used to say, but we always had enough to feed us and that. We were always hoping. And he decided to build the double garage first. We couldn't build a house, we could build a garage, but we couldn't afford a house yet. We were going to live in this double garage and so we put some real fancy brick on this double garage. And it was that dark purplish brick and plastered above you know, to match the house we were going to build by it. I lived there till I had three children, and I was still in this small three-roomed garage, double garage. But the bricks we built it of were out of the bricks the Dawson Hollow 16 School when they tore it down. He got father's wagon and horses and went up and hauled enough bricks to build this house for us and they got them real cheap because they were very old. They'd been made in the brick yard that was along the Mountain Road and he had a reputation for them being good, hard brick. And I would prepare those bricks by knocking the plaster off of them so my husband, when he came home from work, could lay the bricks and that was what my first home there was built of. JD: Is this home still standing? Where was it? EK: No, when they sold—we never built the house there. The house we built was in another spot entirely and we built a larger house then after we'd had more children you see. And I was always interested in that little old house because the bricks came out of the Dawson Hollow School. JD: Now where was this located, your garage that you lived in? EK: Along Whitesides Street where Mabel lives. They bought the garage and it burned down when they were there. And I—we built that home and lived for 25 years where Haven Barlow is now—down the road. And this is the picture of Mrs. Gilbert that taught in that first school house, the log school house. JD: Oh, now this is the lady from England. EK: Yes, she is the lady from England and she taught in that log school house and she—her husband was a photographer and this was the kind of photography—cutout— JD: Oh, silhouettes. And who was this? 17 EK: This was the little girl they adopted but she didn't bring her with her. I think she died and that made her feel like she didn't have to stay with her husband. They had separated because he didn't join the church. JD: Is this her husband? EK: Yes, my mother gave those to me. JD: Oh, that's nice. Dick's mother used to talk about another school that she went to that was further on up over the hill from the Dawson Hollow School where, oh, up past Clyde Adams, up off a little more east of there I guess. Do you remember a school up in that area? EK: I remember that there was a school right there near where the corner of Fairfield and Antelope is now. JD: Ya, that's probably where it would be. EK: It was our farm because we built a rock house and that and dug out the old foundation. JD: Oh, now was this your family's land at the time they built the school or later? EK: No, we bought that off of Nalder’s. Steve Nalder’s, it was Steve Nalder’s original land. I think he took it up out there and paid for it. Buy some land that belonged to the railroads, were given parcels of land and so was the schools given parcels of land in the early days. They bought the land real cheap then because it was still in the rough and wild. But we later bought that farm there that it went up to as far as Loves live. It was about 65 acres, something like that. JD: Do you know anything about this school? Did you ever go there? 18 EK: No. JD: That was before your time? EK: It was taken down. That was the school that this Zipporah brought her students over from. But it was taken down soon after that, because they got to hauling the children in the school wagons and they took them down to the bigger school downtown where they had more room for them in each one. They started out with two grades in a room, or three grades first. And then two, and then they added on. Got enough room there so there was a grade for every room. There was a class— JD: Was there a lot of little schools around then, before they got this central? Do you remember any others? EK: There was one out by Robins’s. JD: Now which Robins? EK: That was up by that Hill Field Road more, it went up Lazy Street. JD: Lazy Street? EK: Sasy Street, want me to call it Lazy, is Lazy Street. And that was up there that was in Layton. And then of course there was this little one down on the corner of Fort Lane. JD: Where would that be, Fort Lane and — EK: Where the telephone building is now. That was the first school house down in this part. It was as early as that little log one up there. And it was brick and that's where I started school. JD: Is that right? 19 EK: There was seven grades in there too. And then they built that then, some of the eighth grades got to go into St. Jude’s church, let ‘em have some eighth grade down in there while they was building this new building. I was in the fourth grade when that new building was opened up down there and it had only three rooms and now it's built onto a big school. It's a big school now, elementary school. JD: You mentioned St. Jude's, is that a Catholic church or— EK: Yes, I guess it was, but just had just a little wooden church house, right in the town, right nearly along Main Street there. JD: Where was it located? EK: It was just north of the Adams store which is that— JD: Half-price now. EK: Yes. No, not that one, it's the one on the corner. JD: Well, that was before my time then. EK: Yes, it was the George Adams. It was the early days when Layton was the switch from Kaysville. They'd switch the trains off here to deliver and gather produce and so they called it out to the switch from there. And so Bishop Layton—they began to think they had enough people now to make a town out of it and so he quickly put a big sign up by the railroad track with his name, Layton. JD: Is that right? EK: Course he did own quite a lot of it. He was a man with—so he owned a lot of the land here, this Layton did, he was the bishop. 20 JD: And he was the one that named the town too. EK: It was named after him because he really did own the preponderance of the land in this part. And then of course there was the Thornley’s up in the eastern part and some Nalder’s and that in the northern part. And quite a few others if I could think of them I guess. JD: Now you mentioned a brick yard up east. What can you tell me about that? EK: Well, there was a brick yard along the Mountain Road. It was more over towards Kaysville about between—now it's in Kaysville. It didn't come into Layton. It was good brick yard, they made good bricks. Ward's brick yard was their name. There was Wards and Bears and Walls along that street and— JD: Were there any other brick yards around? EK: Not until way later and then the brick yard down in Kaysville by the Bamberger tracks, after the Bamberger had come through. The Bamberger used to only come as far as Lagoon till I was grown. And before they run it out as far as Layton for a while and then they run on to Ogden in my day. And they scraped and did all the work with horses. And the man that managed it had a big, old stage coach that was slung on leather swings so that it rode nice. And he let us and the Morgan’s take it, or let the Morgan’s take it up to, and I went with them, up into Morgan County where we went for our vacations in the summer, camping we called it. And we got to ride in the real, old stage coach. JD: I'll bet that was fun. EK: And some of the boys slept in it too after up there. There wasn't many of them on the road at that time you see. They'd all folded up. Topanch was his name. He was building 21 the grade and it first had just a little dummy train on it. And then they electrified it and that's what I used to ride to Ogden on to school on. Then we thought we were right in town and right up to date pretty near, because we could go from Salt Lake to Ogden in an hour. They'd say "On the hour and in an hour." And every hour the train would pass by and pick someone up and you could come back the same way. Only took an hour to go from Salt Lake to Ogden. So, we thought that was quite wonderful when that came because we'd been riding in the dummy and in the summer they just had open cars you know, and you could fall out. JD: This was the Bamberger. EK: Yes, to go to Lagoon. Course everybody—that was the fun spot and still is I guess. JD: I guess it is. Tell us a little bit about what it was like when you went to Lagoon. Did you go very often? EK: I wasn't allowed to go too often. I, when I was real young, or you knew, down about the eighth grade, the girls were going down there. They started in roller skating and I thought I ought to go learn to roller skate. But my parents wouldn't let me go without being along with someone that was not with the girls, the girls my age. And of course I was real put out. For recreation one of the main things we looked forward to every year was the Sunday school day at Lagoon. And they had built, ponded up the Farmington Creek, and built a little lagoon there, put a few rowboats on it. And then they had a dance hall, not very big. It later turned into a skating rink years later and they built a bigger one later. Lagoon turned out afterwards to be one of the biggest resorts in Utah and still is one because they keep it up to date. That's where the Daughters of the Pioneers, or all the Pioneer Village is now. It's been moved from Salt Lake to Lagoon. 22 But the recreation was for the children my age, was along there, was to ride on the merry-go-round. And it was just a small merry-go-round with several stationary horses that didn't move only just went around and around with it and the music box in the middle. And one old horse was hitched on the inside next to the drum in the circle to pull the thing around. And they'd play a tune and the tune would go fast. And then the horse would get lazy and then the tune would go down and if you stopped under the flag, it was up on the roof of it, it had a regulation kind of a top, kind of fancy, and if you stopped under the flag you'd get another nickel ride. It was five cents to go. JD: Then this was driven by real horse power. EK: It was horse power. JD: I didn't know that. EK: And of course later on they began to get more modern in every way. I remember the first ice cream cones I ever saw. They made them and rolled them into a cone there and then they dipped ice cream into it. And we had never bought ice cream much because there wasn't any ice cream places to buy ice cream in Layton until I was a young lady. But anyway they called them sayso’s. And they'd shout out "Get your sayso!" But we couldn't buy—it was very rare that we could get a taste of them because they cost ten cents and we only had a quarter for the whole holiday. Five cents to go on the merry-goround, and we wanted to go on that maybe twice, or sometimes we'd get the money together and get a rowboat. And for a quarter we'd get enough to finance it. Till I was quite large I take, well I was quite old before I owned a purse. We'd all tie our money, which started out with a quarter for the day you see, tied in the corner of your handkerchief. And I was given the lecture that anybody that was a good financier and 23 wanted to amount to anything in this world in the financial affairs had better save part of that and bring a nickel back at least. And I often did. But there was plenty, there was beautiful flowers and lawns there that we didn't all have around our homes at that time. They hadn't started because there was no water systems in the town at that early date. But when they got to having a little more and built the big dance hall they had some name brand bands down there, beautiful singers. And they were some of those early day very best bands. And also they got to drawing the crowd from Salt Lake because the Bamberger was running then good, and they'd draw the crowds from other towns there. The automobiles didn't bring them, only one or two people in Davis County had automobiles to begin with there. But they'd come out there and listen to the bands and dance in this dance hall because it was the biggest one around. And these bands, they had them out in the bandstands. You could see or hear that girl singing for miles away. When our folks would go down there to have a picnic you know in the summer, we'd take a big clothes basket. It was an oblong clothes basket, wicker. And a big table cloth, checked table cloth laid in there and course they'd been making cakes and frying chicken and everything else to fix this lunch, there was a bowery made there for them with tables in so you could go in and eat. And everybody brought their lunch and dinner and of course they brought the tastiest things they knew how to gather up at that day and they were all homemade things. They didn’t buy anything readymade, including clothes and sometimes shoes had to be made. And when I was about, well I was about in the eighth grade and I was beginning to feel like I ought to be adventurous a little and my girlfriends were going down to Lagoon to roller skate. It was a new thing and I wanted to go and my parents wouldn't let me go because we had no adult companions 24 to take us—to take us and watch out for us. So they wouldn't let me go, but the other girls went and I felt pretty rocky that whole day. And I was quite obstinate at home, wouldn't help work or anything and my mother was—I was beginning to feel like I was getting run by my folks, like the teenagers to now, but they didn't call them teenagers then. I said to my mother when she was around so I could hear her, or she could hear me, I said "Well what did you have me for if you didn't want to let me have any fun or go anywhere?" Course that wasn't very smart but my mother said back to me, "Now look here, I didn't care whether it was you that came to me, I just wanted a nice little girl and I thought that I was getting a good one. But I didn't matter if it had been somebody else." And I tell you I never accused her of not wanting me anymore. But we did— course go down there to dance when we were old enough to have escorts. And everybody had to have a hat on you know. You were real out—one of the way out ones — if you went down there bare-headed and went with a cap—hat too. Now course I did get to go down and roller skate then later on. The other recreation some of the older ones had was down to parks on the shore of the lake. The lake came up high like it is now. And it was kind of not so salty and it had some beaches that you didn't have to go so far to get and they had—they even run a railroad down there, an old railroad bed. JD: Now where was this? Was this Lake Park? EK: This was Lake Park. JD: They had a railroad going down there? EK: Yes, it was down there below—between kind of Kaysville and Farmington. It was kind of right down you know, by Haights and it came up on the north side of Farmington kind of, but is was—the lane did after. And down there they built some bathing houses and had 25 some things down there and a dance hall. And that's where Bamberger, he bought that off after it didn't prosper so good. It was too hard to get down there and the lake receded and left it high and dry and so then he bought the Lagoon and made the Lagoon. But he bought that, he didn't build it to begin with but he bought it. JD: And had it moved huh? EK: And had some things moved from there and built other things to make this park. And he prided himself on getting such a nice park and it was one of the best that we ever saw. JD: Do you ever remember going to Lake Park yourself? EK: I went down when I was very young. My mother—I can remember seeing it. I remember the pavilion there and the grandstand. They had baseball games down there and things like that. And I knew that they went in swimming but I didn't go and my parents didn't go. They took a lunch and there was a lot of people we knew down there. And they were still using it when I was a child. But I was young enough that I didn't, I didn't participate that way too much. I guess I must have been three or four years old, something like that. But they used to have some groves down there besides, over towards Kaysville, Webster’s Grove where they could get down into the lake and swim around. They had some places west of Farmington that I went. The people would go down there and the lake came close enough that we could go down and float. And where the streams came into the lake below Farmington and all along the front, the Wasatch Front there, the streams came down and emptied into the lake and where the fresh streams emptied into the lake it would freeze because it was fresh before it mixed with the salt. And you could—they say you could skate in winter for nearly twenty miles along the lake, alongside the edge at a certain time when the freezing was just right and the water was 26 fresh enough. There had been enough fresh water empty into the lake that year you know, and so they could take those long skiing trips— or not skiing, skating trips. But I didn't go onto that. That was just, well, it was just finishing up its time of recreation by the time I started to go far away from home. JD: Did you ever go to Saltair or Liberty Park? EK: Oh, yes. We went to Liberty Park and they used to have band concerts there. And there was the tennis courts, but I didn't ever play then. There was no place to play around home, Layton at that time. JD: They didn't have any recreational areas here at all then? EK: Not until that school house got the baseball planned and then we had baseball and that was the big item. Then when the school got some teeter totters and one thing and another around it, they'd have their celebrations down on the school grounds. But they didn't have any courts or anything, any basketball much out at Layton. JD: Did you ever get out to Saltair or was that too far away? EK: Oh, we went out to Saltair after I got in mutual age. We went out there once a year and bathed in the salt water lake you know. Their pavilion, their dancing pavilion was on springs and it was out over the lake and the water under it. Very romantic looking for anybody in the age of romance. And they were open cars and took us out there on the railroad track from Salt Lake. And it was quite famous all over and it burned down in later years, and they've never been able to rally anybody that wanted to invest in it out there because they had such a time building it on piers. They had to pump hot water down in to melt the salt at the bottom of the lake to put their piers down to hold this 27 dance hall up. And spray it down there and it was very expensive to build it out over the lake like that. But of course that made it so it was different. And they had other concessions. But we went out there once a year anyway. And all kind of clubs and everything had their fun day at Saltair all from Salt Lake and all these places, so it ran big and it was quite renown even to anybody. That was the first time I'd heard of people being tourists. Go out to Saltair and even some of the tourists even today wonder why they don’t have Saltair cause they wanted to see that salt dry on you and salty. We had learned to float on the salt. JD: Now what about when you had entertainment come to Layton, like the first movies or dance hall? What was the first big thing you remember coming to Layton as far as entertainment went? EK: The Chautauqua. JD: Chautauqua. EK: It was a traveling troops and lectures, informing lectures and they had it down on the school grounds and put a great big circus tent. And it went, it travelled all through the United States and the, supposedly the intellectuals, the orators and everything. We'd go down there to learn how the rest of the world was living. And see if we couldn't get kind of educated too. They would stay for two or three days. Oh, they would have politics and social and all the new inventions talked of and tell us everything. JD: This was kind of the news then. EK: Yes, but they had choruses and good singers. They were well known and we'd get a ticket for the three days and go to that. Course there was always our baseball games. 28 But they did have a stand for us to sit on down on the school grounds for a while you know to begin with. They liked baseball so well that when they couldn't even afford a mitt, they'd catch barehanded. Will Morgan could catch barehanded. He got such calloused hands working so hard he didn't need a glove and they couldn't afford gloves you know anyway. But they could get a ball and they had some baseball then. But it didn't get into money-making. There was no receipts, gates. But after they got putting on fancy suits and kind of rolling over, rolling the land a little bit hard, why then they had to pay for it. And, but of course the church has always took care of our social life. We had social dinners and social dances and we had our conferences that were really just conferences and like that so we never lacked for recreation. And we'd have our camping trips in winter and in the summer too. We'd go up on the creeks and take our supper for the night and cook our potatoes and onions in the frying pan out of the fire and they tasted so good up there in the evenings. JD: Would you camp out all night? EK: Sometimes we would take some bedding up and lay on the ground and stay all night by some little clear streams coming from the mountains where they fanned out. We thought it was great, it was too. If we were up so high we could see the lake and the sunset on the lake. The sunset was always beautiful and marvelous too, all my life. I guess my mother, living on the hill over in Kaysville, she lived right up on the bench on the Harvey place you know up there. And she, when she came down to the flat part of Layton here she said she felt like a toad in a well because she couldn't see far enough. Cause she could see down to the lake so easy, she felt right close to the sun as it came up over the mountains, there up by the mountains. And she-and this was black dirt down here that 29 tracked into her house and she lived where it was gravel. And I can remember her talking about that. That this black cost her so much work to keep her house clean. When the gravel didn't track in like that. If it did it was kind of easy to sweep out, but this black dirt—I don’t know, I… JD: When was the first movie house in Layton? Do you remember when that came? EK: Yes, I, Dell Adams got one to come and of course it wasn't a talking one. JD: Silent movie. EK: Yes, it was something you know, something, oh they, I tell you it would pretty near make you dizzy to look at them the way they jumped around. Of course they were a lot of them, these slap-happy comedians because they fit in good with the way those pictures jumped and jiggled and weren't even, but they were marvelous to see. And then later on I remember us going to see the ones that were—could speak. But I was quite old when I was about sixteen there wasn't any I know at that time, because I'd go even to Salt Lake to see them down there. They had a little better films down there. And they were just plain movies. They'd have a piano playing, a singer there to sing, but they didn't talk. And it was about ten cents. But my father used to take me to the old Salt Lake Theatre quite a bit. And he'd get his children and take them down there. We went and saw Mrs. Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch and then a lot of children's things. And we saw the Bluebird and I remember I was going up to the University of Utah and Maude Adams came through and so we got some student tickets and there was a, by the old Salt Lake Theatre, she was appearing at the old Salt Lake Theatre, the star you see. And there was a lot of steps that went up to nigger heaven in the theatre from the outside. And of course the student tickets that’s where it took us. And so we stood out there on the 30 sidewalk or the sidewalk by the old Salt Lake Theatre, and by the time it was time for them to open the doors up there and started letting us move up, that was packed. The stairs were packed solid and it was packed solid up the street a ways too, and I was in the middle of the pack. I was kind of short and I, everybody, every woman wore a hat you know. That was when you'd feel nude without a hat. And so mine was quite a widebrimmed one with a big, long hat pin it and I was in the middle, and that hat somehow worked up over the shoulders of these higher ones, and I couldn't stop, I couldn't get my arms up for the crowd to get it down or to do anything and it took my hair up with this hatpin and ride it on their shoulders all the way up to that nigger heaven. When we got in the door to nigger heaven, why, they started through and you had to go through. You could hear your ribs crack, but there was no turning back. The crowd was pushing so much behind and by the time I got from being almost unconsciously crushed and turned, belched loose into this nigger heaven it looked so straight up that I was looking down on the heads of the actors. I never saw, and that's the way I had to see that play of Maude Adams. I could see the tops of their heads and them moving around. And then of course there was such a rush for the front seats so they could look over the balcony and I didn't get down that far. I wasn't quick enough, I didn't—I had never been there before so I didn't know what I had to do to get there to be a front seater you see. And, but I found Maude Adams anyway and she was from Salt Lake and a famous actress. She was quite renowned at that time and, but later on I used to go with some of my friends and that, quite a lot of them. I saw Al Jolsen and all the Walker Whitesides and Bernhardt and all those old, famous actors. Well that's what Salt Lake Theatre brought to the west. At first they brought all the big talent. And I used to go, but I didn't 31 go at nigger heaven. When I got to teaching school I'd go and I'd buy me a seat anyway in the family circle. Some of them were in the boxes and like, so I enjoyed that. And then there was the smaller, and then they got to be Vaudevilles. We'd go down and see them and the Orpheum Theatre and like that. JD: Did they ever have anything like that come out to Layton? Any kind of vaudeville shows? EK: Well, some kind of ones, and just a hall you know. A few sleight of hand and some kind of catchy little songs and dances, but nothing— no they couldn't afford the real stars you know. But after this train got there we were easier to get in. My father used to take us down sometimes when he had to go on the OSL, the big old engines and that big track you know. My mother remembers when the first train came through Weber Canyon to connect up with the train out at Promontory. So they got in the wagon and the horse— and she was five years old. And they took their dog and they went over there in the wagon and all the natives around up Layton clear as far as they could come with the horses got over there to watch that train come through that marvelous tunnel. They'd never seen a tunnel, never seen a train and they were just -- so they went over there and had all that. But she said her dog was so scared of it and was so mad at it that he got out and barked at it that he—it run over him and killed him. That's nothing. The Indians some of them got run over and then they, the Indian tribe got a place to keep ‘em and show ‘em all this mangled up Indian and charged them for it. Up in Weber Canyon, the mouth of Weber Canyon. And that Indian trail run along the foothills of the Wasatch Front just up about a mile from this school house that I taught in, clear along there. My mother said when she was a little girl she had dark hair and her sisters and all 32 were light complexion and they seemed to, the English people seemed to like light hair better than dark hair and she felt kind of bad too because they told her some of those Indians coming along the trail would think she'd left a papoose and come back and get her, and so she was always afraid of them, but they used to come. She's seen the big old chiefs come and that were bare and they begging and everything and just a little breech cloth and they—the head dresses on—and they'd come to their door and ask for the food. They'd give it to them too I'll tell you. Course they hadn't ever seen these bare folks like we do now so they were quite awed and frightened of them. But they had lots of stories about the Indians that came through at that time you know. They used to camp over there by Farmington on the hill above north—just as you went out of Farmington town at the north. When my husband was a little boy he used to get oh so many arrowheads, hundreds of them up there on that hill you know. There had been a big battle there sometime. JD: Was this about where what we call the crossroads now? EK: I guess it was, north there. It was out past the town of Farmington. But we used to could find arrow points in the fields when they were plowing. Sometimes they would plow up a skeleton. And then of course that was an oddity at first but we often picked up their grinding rocks and their pestle and the bowl would be worn smooth with the grinding sunflower seeds that they made food out of, and any grains. Down in Southern Utah in the cliffs they'd find their grains that had come from the way earliest days and they'd still grow. The seeds would still grow. JD: Well, those were the times. I don’t suppose you ever remember any Indians do you? 33 EK: Yes, but they'd gone on reservations and taken them off. But I remember when two Indians came to Layton. Two Indian women and I was about eight years old. And they camped on Kays Creek just below where our old church house was then. And they stuck them up their little wickiup thing and there they were alone. And that night, one night, they'd only been there a day or two, a little baby Indian boy was born. This youngest woman, it was her and her mother, it was Mary and Lucy, Lucy was the young girl. And they named the—I guess I've forgotten his name. Anyway my mother quickly made an outing flannel nightgown and parted with some of her old baby clothes and let me go out to give that baby something to wear. It was getting cold in about this time of year. And it was one of its first things that it had. But then people began to come and they brought them food and helped them out quite a while. And they lived there for quite a long time in that tent all winter. But they'd come and help do housework and earn a little money and everything. And this boy grew up and they had to move on because they wanted them on reservations. And there was some of them that wouldn't stay on reservations and kept coming away. But they got them to go away and stay away. But some have seen this grown man since that—we used to—they stayed here several years and we always went down to watch them cook and boil things on the fires. They had outdoor fires and they cooked inside of this wickiup and so it was smoky. And we'd go in and sit down and have fun, I liked to anyway. But they moved on and that's the only ones that I ever knew lived here. Once in a while my mother saw them travel all the time through their property. JD: Oh, those were the days weren't they? Do you remember when you bought your first radio? Was that kind of an exciting thing? 34 EK: Yes, it was a —we didn't—the first wasn't a radio, it was a Victrola. Course I can remember the little music box that some people would have. Mrs. Morgan had a little music box and we'd go hanging around there all day to see if she'd let us listen to that little music box play. She'd brought it from England with her. And then came a time when we'd—that we found the Columbia and Victor. But the Columbia was round cylinders, just a little thing, round cylinders. Billy Jones and songs by Billy Jones and Ada something else—Billy and Ada Jones I guess. Billy Murray and Ada Jones, and they'd sing all the songs and—but before anyone had one, Wares over here, they had a friend or cousin in Ogden that had one and they brought it out for us to hear and we sat on the lawn and they played that out there and all the neighborhood all around, the lawn was right full. It was a marvelous work and a wonder to hear that song and a voice. We'd never heard a voice like that before. It was before they got them in the movies you see—the talking movies—and I can remember we thought it was just the most wonderful thing in the world. I don’t remember what kind of music. It was more the fact that they could sing and we could hear it you know like that. Course we couldn't see it or anything, there wasn't anything to see. But it was marvelous and then people began getting them. And my father, I remember all those Hawaiian songs. Henry Morgan used to come up, he was a young man, and he says "Oh those songs just get me." And he spent too much time up there because his folks were aggravated at him not working so much. He wanted to play all the records we had you know, over and over again. But pretty soon everybody got one. It went quite fast that people got— and of course when I got married, I wanted a big Victrola that looked pretty in the house you know. Big thing, and we bought a few of the expensive records, Caruso's and you know, a lot of those 35 and things to have, besides all the late songs you know and everything. I took that out into a little, old dump of a home I had out in Idaho and the people borrowed it from me. They'd bring a sleigh or a big farm wagon and pile my Victrola in, it was a big, tall one you know, and gather up my things and take them over so they could have a party. And they'd keep it till the next day and get it back. JD: I'll bet you were glad to get it back. EK: Yes, I was glad to get it back, but you couldn't say anything. Everybody had a kind of outlook like that in those days. I guess from necessity they were very liberal to give what they had and take what you got. And they weren't that's mine and I'm not going to let it get ruined and anything. Someone asked you for it, you let them take it. And so I learned to do that. So I guess that came in handy when I went to the islands cause that's the way they did there. JD: I'll say, I know that. EK: I used to say the islanders could easily do that cause they didn't have anything. JD: That's why they didn't though sometimes. EK: Yes, if they had anything you could have it if you asked for it. If I said their lei was beautiful they had it off their head and around my neck before I knew it and I didn't really want it. The perfume in it was sometimes so that it pretty near sent you off it was so subtle. But they were, people of necessity had to, they were more, they knew their neighbors better because there was fewer of them. There was enough that they could know and they knew their wants and they knew their problems so they had more sympathy for each other. When you get so many and so many different places and one 36 thing and another why people are going from one end of the world to another now till you don’t have anybody home. Go Relief Society teaching and catch one home out of ten. And of course there used to be peddlers come around a lot in the early days. Oh, I did love seeing their little box of wares, the needles and the pins and the little bits of lace and stuff and that you could buy off a peddler. And so when I got married I lived out on a farm in Idaho and I thought it was quite lonesome so I just loved the peddler to come and try to sell me a table cloth or anything. But my husband said it didn't pay him to live out like that because I bought the peddler out every time so he would come back the next time to see his wares. JD: That was as good as a shopping trip wasn't it? EK: Yes, it was, it was my shopping trip. We would just trade with eggs over at the store and buy just foods, and we had a catalogue to send for the rest. Sears— JD: Sears catalogue. EK: Sears and Roebuck catalogue, but that give us some mail so I'd have to go out to the main road every few days after I'd sent for something to see if something was coming to town. That was up in Lost River, Idaho, where the river got lost, come out in all those falls. The Lost River ran through our farm. JD: Well, those were good days weren't they? EK: Well, I guess. We complained, and we still do. Have everything we can think up about and still do. And we think it's hard at times and think it's good at other times. We've experienced all kinds of things. But I always had a knack of kind of trying to see what I could like to do and know about the history of a country. And I'd go to their things that 37 they'd invite me and visit them in their homes and everything like that till I liked all people, and I did, I really did. When they called me to those primitive islands we were on some of the primitive ones where there were none of these big concerns you know, some of them had no stores at all. The boat would come in and you'd go down to the boat and get a few little knick knacks when it come in once a month. But I had to live primitive and even to use salt water to wash my clothes cause some of it come up in little -- it was salty and briny. And, but I guess they knew my life, I'd lived in many primitive places all ok. Mrs. Knowlton and her husband were labor missionaries for the LDS Church in Tonga for several years, over these western states when my husband was a contractor of bridges over the big rivers all over. And I lived in the towns and I lived with the Indians and I lived in every kind of a place where they had never seen a Mormon—out in all the rivers and places and different things where they lived. And so it was always interesting to me. JD: That's good that you could make the best of it. Well, how do you feel about the times now and in your younger days? Do you think it was better then, or do you enjoy it more now? EK: Well, I think there's more opportunities for us if we will choose the right. I think there's more also, with this we've got more temptations. JD: More of the good and more of the bad. EK: Well, there's more of us I guess too. But I think this is a great day to live in. Even if the trials come I'd like to see them come cause it would be interesting to see how this is all going to come out. A lot of predictions—I want to hear, see if they come out. I 38 sometimes think I could stand quite a bit of pain in these old bones. I'm getting used to ‘em now, used to the pain. JD: You wouldn't really want to go back to the old days then, huh? EK: No. No, I was happy then. I often think of how they say now these underdeveloped countries didn't get so hostile to us till they—transportation and communication got so good they saw we's living better than they did and they don’t like it. We kind of like to be equal. And those older people lived more alike and had that more of a—nobody was too rich then out in these countries, places anyway. They were all kind of more on the same order—till the land— JD: Well, thanks for your help. 39