Oral History Program Ethel Stokes Miller Interviewed by Jane Renstrom 16 July 1980 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ethel Stokes Miller Interviewed by Jane Renstrom 16 July 1980 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. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. 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. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Miller, Ethel Stokes, an oral history by Jane Renstrom, 16 July 1980, 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 Ethel Stokes Miller. The interview was conducted on July 16, 1980, by Jane Renstrom. Mrs. Miller discusses her life experiences growing up in Utah, as well as some of her personal family history. EM: Hi. My name is Ethel Stokes Miller, and I am going to tell just a few things about my mother that I can remember. I hope that I can do it up to Jane's expectations. This is July 16, 1980. The time is sure running by for us. I would like to say just a few words about Father and Mother and their courtship. Father and Mother and Uncle Will and Aunt Hannah Childs were double dating and Father was going with Aunt Hannah and Will was going with Mama. And they were having a real good time. Dancing and having just a jolly time. And they decided to switch partners and Father took Mother and Uncle Will took Aunt Hannah. And from then on that's who they loved and they were married that way. As they were doing this Father was shining up to Mother and he felt like she was the one that he would sooner have. So he said, "Well let’s change partners", and Aunt Hannah said, "Oh no lets don't." But Father was quite insistent and they went ahead and changed partners. Uncle Will had Aunt Hannah then and Mother went with Father, which I am really happy about. Mother was a very gracious lady. She always kept herself so clean and that was one thing that she needed, to bathe often and you know that was really hard in those days when the water was so scarce. But she would plan on having her bath the way she should have to keep herself nice. Her hair was her crowning glory it was just really so beautiful and she would comb it every morning and that was the first thing that she would do and I remember when I talked to the doctor about Mother and he said she was one of the cleanest women that I know. Mother was 1 very much afraid of the lightning and thunder. She was so frightened of it she would see a cloud coming and she would gather all of us together and we would go in this dark closet and I had a horror of this closet because it was so black in there. But we would stay in there and she would peek out and see if that lightening had gone before we could come out. Mother had this terrible horror of lightning and thunder and Father was just the opposite. He would sit in the doorway and enjoy every flash that would come. He would enjoy it so much and I don't know why mother would feel that way when he was just the opposite. One of the things that I remember about having mother in the night, I'd call for her to help me with my legs. I would have such terrible leg aches and I would ask her to please bring the linphant bottle. I couldn't say liniment. And she would come and bring that and rub my legs and knees for hours, it seemed like. I remember one time when Leslie had appendicitis and he was so deathly sick and they were living in Bear River City at this time. And of course they were miles away from the doctor, and he was just doubled up with pain and they didn't realize it was appendicitis and so they of course waited awhile before they got the doctor and his appendix’s had bursted and he was a very, very sick man. And they had to work with him for a long time to get him over that. He was in bed for a long time. Mother and Mary (oldest daughter) were very close, Mary was the oldest daughter and they loved one another very much and they did a lot of things together. With the horse and buggy and they would go clear over to Aunt Margaret’s to visit with her which was a whole days drive but they would enjoy the association that they had with one another. And one time I remember that Mother— Mary being the oldest and then having six boys—five boys-it would be in-between because there was one boy—the oldest Tommy. And then there was the five, boys and 2 then I came along. I remember Uncle Joe when I was born. I don't remember this but I remember being told about it--that Uncle Joe was so tickled that he jumped around on the chairs and was so happy that a little girl had come to the family which was a long time that they hadn't—eighteen, twenty years before they got me. And everybody was very happy about this, I guess. Mother was a beautiful woman. Her hair was, like I say, a crowning glory, and everyone admired that because she had such beautiful bob right on top and she had so much hair. I know a lot of our family now, have got mother's trait. I for one, Ella, and in my family now my children-grandchildren have such this beautiful hair that has come from my dear sweet mother. I know Diana, has it, Kathy has it, that beautiful long hair and it’s so thick and beautiful it’s always in place and it is a lovely crowning glory for all of us. Mother was five foot eight. And with her she didn't like to show how tall she was and she did stoop a little bit. But a when you get that height it makes a little difference, in that respect. Her biggest challenge was trying to keep her husband well. You know Father had sugar diabetes for so many, many years and she would try to do the best in her knowledge of keeping him well. I remember many, many times that mother would put the bran in the cheese cloth and then soak it in water and then squeeze all of the starch out of it to make Father bread and it would be Oh very, very tasteless bread. But she would spend many, many hours at doing this just to see that her husband was well. Mother was a very religious person but she didn't have the opportunity to go to church like she should because she had to stay home and prepare the meals for all the high church leaders as they come as Father being the Presiding Elder of this vicinity. I think there was about four—it would be about four wards—that he had to be over see at this time and she would plan all these luncheons 3 and she would have to stay home and prepare the meals and do the dishes and prepare everything and he'd bring so many people from Salt Lake. And I remember this—the very dear friend—who is—I don't remember his first name a very dear friend of Father's. He was a sheep man and he would spend a lot of time at our home and she would prepare all of these meals. Sometimes it was for religious purposes and sometimes it was for business. And then these people would come and spend so much time there with father and Mother but the very most important thing—and it has come down to me—that every night kneel on our knees and thank our heavenly father for the many blessings that we get from day to day. And it pays off too and Mother was very religious and that is where I got the idea that prayer was the most important thing in my life. One thing that I missed by being one of the younger in my family, my family all of them were older and they had all these special days and they had planned baseball games and they would go and do things on their own. But by the time that Ella and I came along all of the boys were older and they had gone there ways with their different families and Father had died and Mother was a widow and we had no way of going to church and no way of going on celebrations so we didn't have the opportunity that our older brothers and sisters did have. And it did make it sad in that respect because we didn't have the association of the family as much as the older kids did. But we did have a lot of fun in some respects. Mother hated the mud at Bothwoll. When it would rain the mud was so sticky and she hated that and she would say if I could just get away from this place I would be the happiest women that I could ever be. And so she took the chance when Jacob Jensen came along and asked her to marry him. She said anything to get out of Both-well's mud. She did go to Brigham and married this Jacob Jenson. 4 They enjoyed one another for a while, I do believe, but you know to have two teenagers living with an old man who was 75 years old. He didn't like us one bit because you know teenagers are teenagers and we did get under his skin. It got to the point that he would threw a pan at mother and she would maybe throw one back at him. Thinking back to my childhood, we were indeed poor. Mother was left a widow, Father dying in 1915 leaving six unmarried children, four boys and two girls. We lived in the old home. It is where the Deloris Stokes home is now and there was a big row of poplar trees growing by the side of the ditch. The ditch was running through the lawn and we girls, Vera Paine, Ella, and I would play house in these beautiful trees. And a getting tired of that we would start to play tag and we would jump the ditch several times. Then the two of us would jump together ending up in the middle of the ditch. Wowy were we ever soaked. I was eight when Father died but I remember a lesson he taught me. I was called to get ready for Sunday School and being at the age when one does not hurry, I played too long. And when I saw Father drive the horse and the buggy to the front gate, I flew out and was just ready to get in the buggy when he started the horses. Father waited until I was just ready trying to get in that buggy, but every time that I thought I had succeeded, he would whip up the horse. I was ready from then on because I didn't want walk all the way to the Bothwell Church. We didn't have indoor plumbing so many of the times when it was dish washing time I was sitting in the privy on one of the two holers reading the Sears and Rowbuck catalog. It really wasn't too bad of toilet paper until we got the harness sheets but they were too slick. Mother married an old man, Jacob Jenson, she wanted to get out of the Bothwoll mud. But with me a teenager and Ella six years my junior, it was so much for such an old man. I left Brigham in my 5 second year of high school at sixteen and went to work in the telephone office for Paul Height. I made forty dollars a month and worked eight hours a day. Sometimes my shift was at night and I didn't like those shifts, especially when there was an electrical storm on, and all the lights would go out and when I would have to ring the numbers by hand. We did all the fun things of this age, like bob sleigh riding. Once down on the corner, where the hamburger stand is now, we cut the corner too short and threw the box off. There were girls and boys and straw thrown all over. We picked straws out of our hair for hours. The horses were so frightened that they ran on down through main street until somebody could catch them. This was in Tremonton, Utah. Before father died he was so sick and he would have such terrible nose bleeds that comes from sugar diabetes. I remember Mother soaking the starch out of bran, making Father bread. Father and Mother homesteaded a section of ground west and north of Rowville in 1896. They cleared the sage and planted the wheat. The water was carried in barrels from Corinne for culinary purposes. They built a two room home. When one has to haul the water so far it becomes necessary to use the water again and again. One day dad Stokes had gone for supplies and mother was left with three small children. Glancing out of the small window, and framed in it there was the face of an Indian. Before she had time to think, he had opened the door and came in. He said, "Want food". Mother knew that a lot of these Indians were bums. Nevertheless, she was frightened as it was getting dark. She grabbed the tea kettle that was boiling on the stove and threw the water and the tea kettle at him. He went yapping through the sage and she was surely glad when she could hear the clip of the horses hoofs and knew her dear husband was close to home. Father was the foreman of a large livestock company buying and selling horses. He 6 made several trips to Mexico for this purpose. Mother's brother, Joe, went with him on one of these occasions. I must keep in my memory some of the things that I did and are the ways of life when I was a child. It was a hard life. We had coal oil lamps. I remember when we had to wash the lamp shades every day as it would be smoky from the previous night. We had the out-door and the privy and many of the times we spent a lot of time out there. It was my chore, as a young girl, to get in the kindling and set the fire for the evening so it would be ready for in the morning, and fill the reservoir so we would have water for the stove. Oh boy, that old tin tub-was used for bathing. With my long legs it was quite a feat, to sit and splash and enjoy once a week bath because of the scarcity of water. My mother knitted me heavy stockings, black stockings. The wool was so itchy and hard. We would start wearing them as soon as it was cold and was expected to wear them until spring. Many a time I would leave home with them tucked down inside of my socks. When I was out of sight, I would roll them up and tuck them into my underwear. I remember a remark that my brother, Joey, made about my mother, “She was the sweetest, kindest person and received very little credit". Where Father being bishop was always in the light and the praise. Mother would be home cooking big meals for the visitors from Salt Lake or friends making our home a stopover for their many journeys. She never complained. Then there was the pump. As we had really sever winters and it was in 1915 and there about. It seemed more so than now, that the severity was there. We drew our water from the pump which always had to be primed with hot water first before the water would come. To stand out priming and pumping was so cold. The winters were indeed cold and the summers were hot. With electrical storms my brothers were working on the thresher and the electric lighting hit so close that it 7 knocked them down. The most severe hurt was brother, LaVon. He had to be in bed for a time. Mother heard the news on the one line phone that everyone listened into. Mother would spend many lonely hours watching for Dad to come home from his many assignments, and mother would sit on the porch listening for the singing of her husband, telling her he was near. Sometimes Dad would bring a treat to mother and she said she would be so disappointed when he would forget to bring a treat. When mother came home from the funeral, when father died, we didn't go right into the house. She became panicky and started to cry. Ella was crying also. So we all went over to Sophia Anderson's home, who was a very close and dear friend. Mother was very much afraid. Mother loved to have her hair fixed, and put a little curl in it with the curling iron. Then when would bend down and her hair would touch the floor, and she would comb it and put it into a bob on the top of her hair. She said to me, "Will you please fix my hair when I die?" Another request she made of me was to "not let them bury me without my shimmy." Now this was a piece of clothing that one wore over the corset and the garments. It wasn't long like a petticoat but it protected the dresses and gave warmth. I did as she requested when the time came. Mother died the day before Christmas and it was a very sad occasion for all of us. We had planned a little Christmas together. I know that I got Mother a pair of shoes that I feel so bad about now because they were too stogy for her and I got Ella a watch, and a, Mother said, "Well these shoes won't do very good. I'll have to exchange those because they don't fit my feet". Well anyway, when I came home from the telephone office, she had a very bad spell. And we called the doctor and he came and he said, "It looks like your mother isn't going to recover from this one." And so we started to try to get the family together. Ella and I did get a hold of 8 brother Joey and Roxy and Oleen was out to White's Valley and the snow was piled up so hard and so high that no one could get through it. So I got a hold of Russell Waldron, a very dear friend of ours, and ask him if there was any way that he could get up to White's Valley to tell Oleen that Mother was so bad. And he did go out there and I wondered if he didn't have to go on snow shoes because, there was no trace or track anywhere. And evidently that’s the way he had to travel to get there. It was quite a few miles out there. We did get the family together and I remember the remark LaVon had said after mother had died in the night. He said, "Well I remember Father coming for her." He said, "I could hear and see Father reaching for Mother". 9