Oral History Program Ella Elizabeth Stokes-Chugg Interviewed by Jane Renstrom 08 August 1980 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ella Elizabeth Stokes-Chugg Interviewed by Jane Renstrom 08 August 1980 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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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Chugg, Ella, an oral history by Jane Renstrom, 08 August 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 Ella Elizabeth Stokes Chugg. The interviews were conducted on August 8, 1980 and in July, 1980, by Jane Renstrom. Ella Chugg tells her life story. She also talks about her mother, Sarah Summer Stokes’ life. EC: I was born in Bothwell, Utah. I was born on a real cold night. The snow was drifting and mother stated that it was hard for Dr. Whitlock to get down to Salt Creek. Now Salt Creek is just a great big deep, sort of like a, you go down a hill and it goes clear to the bottom and then you have to get up to the next hill. It's just real deep. And the creek runs through there and it's salty, and that's why they call it Salt Creek, and he could hardly get through there. When we had a real bad storm, you could hardly ever get through. I have six brothers and two sisters, a lot of them being married when I was born. I was, my brother Tommy was born first. I don't really remember all the ages of them right now, I don't. And then Mary, and then Joey, and then Leslie, and LaVon, and Leo, and Ethel, or Olien came first, then Ethel, and then me. And they were mostly all married when I was born. My mother was 44 years of age when she had me. My nieces and nephews, I was in the same grade as some of them, and them some of them were 10 years older than myself. A lot of my nephews have passed away. Father did not live long after I was born. I was three years of age and I only remember him being taken to the cemetery with the horses and white wagon. I remember going in a white-top buggy and wondered why my mother was crying so hard. Mother had quite a time. She had LaVon, Leo, Olien, Ethel and myself and she had a farm to run and many times hard times to get the boys to farm it. Olien didn't like to milk the cows until after dark and she just could not get him out. One night she tried to get Leo to frighten him. So Leo put on 1 a sheet and went out to the barn and he went around the barn and he went, "Woo, Woo". And Olien had a bucket full of milk and so he threw it all over Leo. So Olien came running in and he was just as white as chalk and he said, "Where's that Leo. I know it was him." And mother said, "No it wasn't." I don't remember how the outcome of that story but it was really funny. Bothwell was quite a nice valley. I was born in the muddy spring. It was muddy in the spring and dusty in the summer and the winter snows would pile by the fence post. Mother was real fussy and tried to make, and mud made it real bad for her. She could not keep things clean the way she wanted to. Lois, that is my brother, Joey and Roxy's girl, was my best pal. Roxy and mother were together quite a bit. Roxy and I were near the same age and we were real pals. We done a lot of things together and I loved her like a sister. I had lots of nieces and nephews—Jack Newman, Darrell Stokes and a lot my age that I dearly loved. Lois always called me Etta and I always called her Pody and we just really liked each other. Now my sister, Ethel, was real sweet to me but she was really quite a tease. After father died, it was real hard for my mother. We didn't have quite a great deal to live on and she was always worried about the boys not getting home at night. It was frightening about the lightning and thunder because she was afraid of it. She would put us in the closet until it was over. Ethel always told me that I was adopted because I had red hair. She told me that I was from the Petersons, a family in the ward that I didn't care for very much and she always told me I was a Peterson, and she really teased me. She'd always tell me that there was somebody down the road that liked my eyes and I'd say "who?" and she'd say, "somebody blind." My brothers and sisters were really quite close. I remember getting in a car with my brothers and going to town with them and they all had very beautiful 2 voices and they'd all sing just beautifully. They'd harmonize and those were the things I loved so much. I remember that my mother told me that my brothers got knocked off the header and really got hurt up in the Blind Spring Ranch where they had lots of thunder and lightning up there and they did a lot of heading and that was, they took care of the grain. Lou Sorensen got killed when my brothers got knocked off. Some of my brothers had to go to the hospital. I think maybe this was why my mother was really afraid of the thunder and lightning. JR: What is a header? EC: A header was a machine that they harvested the grain with. On one side it had sort of a wheel that went around and then on the other side it would run into a bag and my brothers would have to sew it and then they would leave it underground and then they would come and pick it up with a wagon. Mother really made a baby out of me because she didn't have much else to do. It was just hard on me. It was really hard on me. When I was small, I had a lot of diseases like chicken pox and scarlet fever and it seemed like I was always sick. Then I got Rheumatic fever. I was really sick and they didn't know what was the matter with me. I was right down in bed with swollen legs and I guess that's what saved my life because I was so deathly sick. I know about Rheumatic fever because now I had a child with it and so I knew that I was just like that and so I knew that was what was the matter. It's funny, if it hadn't been that my legs were swollen, I probably would have died because that's the only thing that you can do for Rheumatic fever and I never even went to a doctor. But I remember that we had Biffel horses and sleighs with bells on. My mother used to go Relief Society teaching with Sister Anderson, and they'd go down the road. Mother had a beautiful black cutter, or black 3 buggy with red cutters on and they had a whip with all colors and then a lack rope that was really sticky and hurt my legs. If I was a good girl, she'd let me hit the horse. So I went with them Relief Society teaching, sitting in the middle of her and Sister Anderson. They were really good friends. We had a large canal that ran right by Sister Andersons, that was just about a couple blocks from our place. And Sister Anderson and mother and I would get in this big canal and float down the canal. It was quite swift and would take us down and it was really a good swim. It really was quite fun. JR: Your mother would do that with you? EC: A Sister Anderson, as we all called her, Sathia Anderson that lived up the road from her and mother and her were really good friends all the time and we, mother and her were together a lot. JR: Is that Aunt Mabel's mother? EC: No, it was, I don't know what relation she was to my Sister- in-law, Mabel, but she was some relation. But they were very good friends. Now the water that we drank was out of a ditch and sometimes we sifted it into a sifter. But we didn't do that very often. I don't know why we didn't. But we drank that ditch water and it's a wonder we didn't have Typhoid fever. Father set my boys up on a farm and helped them get started. Our place was the meeting place for most people that came through the valley. Dad always helped them and also my mother fed them. Father was Bishop of Bothwell for 19 years but I didn't remember. We had Christmas parties at our house and really had a good time. In that time of my life, I had fun time popping popcorn. That was one of the greatest things that we did, make popcorn balls. We also had ice cream a lot. We'd have a cow so we'd make ice cream and in the wintertime, my brothers would go and thaw the ice out of the 4 river and then they would take and put it in saw dust and straw and we could keep it all summer and we'd be able to make ice cream all summer. No it doesn't seem like we had plenty of sugar at all times. Jane asked me if it was hard to get sugar but no, it seemed like we had plenty of sugar. Now my mother was quite a horse woman. She could hook up a team of horses and drive the school children around the block to get the children to school and I was the only redhead out of nine children and Ethel used to say that I was adopted. Oh, I told you about that. Now we had some chickens and beef and pork and a garden and, of course, the cow, and a grist in the mill. The grist in the mill was where we would take our grain over to a mill and we would leave it there. And then as we needed flour during the winter time, we would go and get it as we needed it and it would be there for us. We would pay them so much to have this grist. Start school was a real bad day in my life because mother stood at the door crying because I was going to go to school. All I thought of was my mother. I wanted to go and stay home with her. It was a real bad experience. When I was about in second grade, mother married Jacob Jenson from Brigham City and Maggie Priest, that is father's sister, introduced them. That was a sorry day because it was real bad news. He was very stingy and always at my mother. I didn't get anything; we didn't get anything to live on. We had chickens that we had brought from Bothwell and sometimes my mother would give me two eggs so I could go to the candy store and buy me some candy. It was called the Chrishull store across the street. But I couldn't tell my step-father or he would be very angry. He and mother did not get along. They left each other about four times and I would have to go to another school. I didn't get very much education. I was moved quite often. Then finally we decided to move to Bothwell and we went back to our old 5 hometown and house. I was glad that we did. I loved it. My mother left Jacob Jensen. We didn't have inside plumbing or running water and the flies were bad and also mosquitoes. Olien and Fern were going to buy the place but it sort of fell through. They lived in part of the house and we lived in the other. Then they left for Burley, Idaho. So then Leo decided to take the place and we moved down to Leo1s two room house and he took over ours. They were really good to my mother but she got really sick. She had a bad heart and many times she would have a bad spell with her heart and I would be alone with her. I would forget to get my coal and wood in for the night and she would tell me that she'd have to have hot water and I would go out in the middle of the night and get coal and wood to heat the water so I could put my mother's feet into some hot water. It started circulation in her legs. She was awfully sick and so we decided to move into town with Ethel so that I would not be alone with my mother. Ethel worked at the telephone office. So one Christmas Eve she died with a heart attack. LaVon was in the room and said that father had come for her. He said he saw father leaning over her. So mother had told Leo that she wanted him to take me and I was about 15 years old so I went to live with Leo and Mabel. I tried my hardest to make them like me. I think I had done everything that they asked me to do. It was quite a change. Mabel was really fussy and we used to scrub floors, about four of them, about twice a week. We had to get on our hands and knees to scrub them. Olien, Thane and Dolores became very close to me. Dolores and I used to thin beats together and we would go swimming in the canal. JR: Who were Dolores and Thane? EC: Dolores and Thane were Leo and Mabel's children. They didn't have any girls. We were really like brothers and sisters. I turned the cement mixer and we didn't have any 6 electricity in those days and we hoed beats, brought hay in from the fields and worked very hard. I went to high school but was not encouraged very much to stay in it at that time and didn't believe in real education. So I went the second year of high school and I would stay with Ethel a lot. I also stayed with Olien in Idaho. I came from there and went to business school down in Ogden. I met John on a blind date. I didn't know anyone in Ogden. Willy and Thomas introduced me to him. I liked him very much with his curly dark hair. He was very nice and we got along real well. We went horseback riding and boat riding. We had good times together. Then finally one day about three months after we knew each other, he asked me to marry him. He worked at the Royal Baking Company and he worked on the ovens. I hadn't been in Bothwell for about three years and I called up my Bishop and told him that I wanted a recommend and he said, "It's waiting for you." He didn't even ask me any questions. I was a real good girl. He didn't even ask me a thing. He says ‘It’s waiting for you Ella. I know you've been away a long time but he said I know you're a good girl and we love you a lot." And so I had Mr. Smith, Stake President Smith signed it and we were married in the Logan Temple. Mabel, Leo and Herbert went with us. That really was funny. We forgot to get our license and we were going to get married the next day and we didn't have a license. So Jack's father had told us that we had to have a license to go through the temple. So he come up at 12 o'clock at night up to Leo's and got me and we went back to Brigham and got the people out of bed and went and got a license. JR: Didn't you have to have any blood tests in those days? EC: In those days we didn't have any blood tests or anything. We just got married, you know, we just had to have a license and we didn't even know about that. We forgot we 7 had to get one. So that night we went clear back to Brigham City and got it. We only got about two hours of sleep before the wedding. Well we got married and we had a small part of the house at John's fathers. My sister, Mary, also gave me a shower and also my sister, Ethel. JR: When I was talking to day about his life history, he said that first your folks didn't want you to marry my dad. Can you remember that or tell us anything about that? EC: Well, they was afraid he wasn't good enough for me. They thought the name of Chugg sounded kind of bad too. I don't know why they thought that Chugg sounded bad, but they'd never heard the name. And so they said to me, "What are you marrying, anyway?" So I told them, "Well his dad was the Bishop out there as long as my father and he's a good man." And they said, "Well we don't know much about him." And they were quite upset about it. But when they finally knew my husband, they loved him very dearly. JR: Yes, I remember dad said he really, really enjoyed your family and got along great with them and really learned to love them, so they must have found out he was an o.k. guy. EC: I remember my brother, Leo, saying to my husband, "If I die, I want you to speak at my funeral. Will you please?" My husband died first and my brother's still living. My folks, when they finally got to know my husband, John, decided that I was the culprit at all times. He couldn't do anything wrong in their eyes. They loved him very, very much. I guess we were kind of foolish in those days about getting our license. We didn't know we had to have it so I guess we were quite foolish. We got married and we had a small house party, like I said and we moved down to Farr West and lived in two rooms of Grandpa Chugg's house. We had outside facilities also and we packed our water in and 8 I washed around the house. We lived there until Dale was born. Ethel came down and stayed with me and I went home with her for about two weeks. I stayed in bed with Dale for about two weeks in the hospital. In those days, this is what they did. They didn't get you up and you were very weak. You couldn't do your work. Then I came back shortly after we moved down into a two room house down where Merrill Peterson lives. There was an old house down there. It's gone now. John worked in the Royal Baking Company and then 1932 came along and a terrible depression. We could not hardly pay our light bill. John lost his job and he worked on PWA with his team of horses. JR: What's the P.W.A? EC: I really don't know what the P.W.A. is. It was a work group during the depression that had people; well they made different roads and things up toward the canyon. Things like that that needed to be done. JR: Is that where Roosevelt’s... EC: Yes. That was. And so he worked on there and I think he made about $2.50 a day or something. But you could buy bread for a nickel and you could buy a soup bone for a dime and we got along. We had a cow and I'd set the milk around. We didn't have a refrigerator but I'd set the milk around. JR: What do you mean by "set the milk around"? EC: I would put it in large pans so that I could skim.it off and then before it got sour or anything then I would skim it off and then churn it and make butter. Then with the other, I'd make cottage cheese. I'd let it get clabber and then I'd make cottage cheese on the back of a stove and you know, wash it out good and then put salt and pepper in it and it 9 was really quite good. He would help his Dad on the farm and he would come up and do his work a lot. JR: Who are you talking about now? EC: John. JR: Oh, he helped his father. EC: Yeah, on the farm and he'd just do it for free. He'd just come up and help him and he had a lot of peas and things to get in and he'd just get in and help him. We had coal stoves and the morning would slowly be covered with frost. I would frost my feet and Dale was a baby and we'd put him in bed with us to keep him warm. One night when he was just a tiny baby and was in bed with us and I could hear him crying but I couldn't find him. He was clear under the bed so I knelt down and got him out from under the bed. I don't know how he got there. We didn't take the car much because we didn't have much gas to go anywhere with. But one day I had to go somewhere and as I was rounding the corner, the door flew open and Dale fell out and he was about a year old and I thought he was dead. One of my neighbors got him. Bruce McFarland got him out of the ditch and handed him to me. His face was all skinned but he was alive, which I was very thankful for. We had a brand new car we got when we got married but we couldn't afford a license for it, so we'd borrow the neighbor's license so we could go up to Tremonton and visit our folks once a month or something. We'd ask them if we couldn't. It was Es Taylor that we borrowed it from and so they were real good to us. So then Jack decided that he wanted to farm that ground down there so he told them he'd give them so much and we had beets in there. He also bought a herd of sheep and I watched them. I'd have to sit out and watch them and there's a big canal that goes to 10 the bottom of that farm and one of the sheep went in the canal so I jumped in after it and pulled sheep out. John then purchased a farm in Thatcher. Right next to my sister, Mary Newman's, house. The coyotes would come up every night and howl. They would try to get our baby pigs. We had a lot of pheasant and they would roost on the house. We lived in two rooms. We had other rooms in the house but we couldn't afford to furnish them and we had a coal stove, but we didn't have any water in the house. I had to go out and get water from a flowing well that did just about drip. It did for a long time. We didn't have any washer or dryer or anything so sometimes I would wash out and hang them on the line. Then one day, Jack's calves were all loose and they ate up all my underwear. So we lived down there quite a while and I really just hated to live there, I just hated it down there. I visited Ethel a lot. She was awfully good to me. JR: Where did Ethel live at that time? EC: Ethel lived at Tremonton. She lived in a little house just; she just lives in Tremonton in a small house. Later they built a larger house. She was really good to me. I don't know what I'd done if it hadn't been for her. JR: Wasn't it nice to live next to your sister, Mary? EC: Well, yes, but she was having hard times too and yes, it was quite nice. We had quite a good thing going. We really did, but she was having hard times too. It seemed like we all were at that time. But we had quite a nice farm there if we could have held on to it but it just didn't seem like we were able to do much. We tried to buy it. We'd started buying it and then Jack's father said that he was going to lose the place in Farr West if we didn't come and take over. So he wanted us to come down here and take this place over. But I have to go back a little ways too. John's father had a place out in 11 Promontory. He was going to lose that also. He told John that if he wanted to pay the taxes on it, that he would let him have it. And so John had to go out there and leave me there alone and go out and fence this place and it took him to do it. He finally got it fenced and then after he got it all fenced, why a man out of Hansel valley offered my husband about, I think he said I'll give you a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars maybe it was for it if you'll let me have it. John never had any equipment to take over the dry land farming and so he figured he couldn't do anything with it so he sold it. So then his father started telling him that he needed him to come down here and pay the taxes on this place in order to keep it in the family because he was going to sell it. Now this is the place in Farr West, the old home of John Chugg. It’s been in the Chugg family for years. I guess the Indians and us have been the only ones that have owned it. John had a real quite interest in this place anyway. When he was younger, before we were married, he'd gone and worked on the pod vine and also on the signal gang in Nevada. He had saved his money, also sending money home to his mother and father. He was very good to them. He'd send money home to them for them to live on. I have lots of letters that tell me where John sent money home and how his father thanked him for the money that he had sent. So he put so much in the bank because he wanted a mission. He always wanted a mission so he put a lot of money away in the bank and decided to go on a mission. So then when he came home, his father said to him, "John, if you let me have that money to build chicken coops, I'll fill it full of chickens and then I will send you on a mission." And so John thought it was a pretty good idea so he built two great big couple coops out here and filled them full of chickens with John's money. The 12 chickens got sick and a lot of them died and my husband wasn't able to go on a mission. JR: Now that you've told us kind of the basics of your life, or at least the beginning part of your life, can we backtrack a little and I'd like to ask you a few questions, like for example, what was the thing that attracted you to my father? EC: Well, he was a real clean looking man. I mean he just looked like somebody who'd be really sweet and kind and loving and he had curly black hair and well I just looked at him and his skin was so white and pretty and, well I don't know, I just liked him. I just liked his looks. I hadn't ever liked anybody else like that so I think that's the reason. JR: You mentioned something about one time you thought you were going with his brother? Your first date? EC: Yes, I, just being new down here in Farr West or Ogden, I didn't know anyone, so I had to rely on my girlfriend to go out. So she'd get the fellows and we'd go out with them. So one night I was out with Wessley Thomason and Melburn Chugg was with us, that's John's brother. And so the next night, Lily said to me, that's my girlfriend, Lillian Thomason, she said, "Ella, how would you like to go with this John Chugg?" And I thought she'd meant Melburn Chugg and I'd been with them the night before on another date and I said, "Well, I'd like to go." And she said, "Well, alright I'll get John for you." And so he had to work quite late so we went to the Royal Baking Company to get him. So when he come out of the Royal Baking Company I said, "Well that isn't the one!" And she said, "Well that's John Chugg", and I said, "Well who was that we were with last night?" And she said, "It was Melburn, his brother." 13 JR: But you never did date Melburn? EC: No, he was going steady with Niaoma Tusher and he'd been going with her ever since he was 14 years of age and he was a very fine fellow. I really liked him. He was really nice. JR: So you were happy to go with John? EC: Well, at first I didn't know because I didn't know what he was like so when he came walking out there I thought he was another stranger. But it was fine. After we got going together, I really liked him and he really treated me nice. JR: Describe the house in Farr West. I'll give you a little bit of background on this. My great grandfather, John Chugg, came and settled this area and Brigham Young dedicated this farm. And the common thing to do in those days was to dedicate a farm and a house like they now dedicate churches. So this was dedicated in the Chugg name and no one has ever lived here or had any of the land except the Chuggs except when the Industrial Park came in behind they took some of the back ground. But all that ground was very hard clay and it wasn't good ground anyway to farm and Dad was glad to sell that part. Well, he wasn't glad to sell it, but it wouldn't hurt him like it would to sell some of the better part of the land. It was pretty much a swamp when they first came here and every year they would drain a little bit more of it and put it under cultivation until Dad had it in very good shape when he was farming it. Now my brother, Kent, is buying it. Describe the house though when you came to live in it, mother. EC: Well, John's father had just got married again to Louie Port and so they were living in these rooms around here. 14 JR: How many rooms? EC: Let’s see, there was about four rooms around the house here and so we had to come and live in the two rooms that they had built for Grandpa's sister, Lillie, when she lived there and we lived in those two rooms and we had two children. And so we lived there quite a while until, Aunt Louie had a home in Ogden and the children started getting married and she said that she wanted to move into Ogden and she was working and she wanted Grandpa Chugg to go. He didn't want to go very badly but he knew that he had to sooner or later because we had quite a family and we needed to have the house for us. So we a, I imagine though we lived there for about two years before we moved around in the house and we were really proud of that. But then they moved to Ogden and we moved into all the rest of the house. Of course, it needed remodeling. It was not in very good condition but we got along as good as we could. JR: The house was originally built sometime around 1873. That's the earliest date we have any records on it. It's adobe with stucco on the outside and eventually it was painted white, later on. Pibbledash. And the walls are about a foot and a half thick and it was truly an old, old house at the time when my mother came to live here in Farr West and has since been remodeled many times and is a very nice home and Kent now is buying it. Now I'd like to go back up to when Dale was born and I want you to describe Dale and tell me all the things about Dale that you would like recorded. EC: Well I hope, do you mean until the time he is now Bishop? JR: Yes. 15 EC: Well, Dale has been a wonderful, wonderful boy and he was a real good worker. The time my husband thought the world and all of him. He was so glad he was a boy. Oh course, Dale was born to us and my husband was really thrilled because he was such a wonderful fellow. He was a cute little fellow and he had blonde hair and blue eyes and deep big dimples and was really a cute little fat boy. Any my husband was so thrilled over him and he took him everywhere he went. I didn't want him to and I'd really worry about him because he'd take him out with him when he done the things in the field and I'd just really worried about him. We had a horse, a mare called Mae. Dale used to love that little mare. Jack would be on the mare and my son would come up by the side of him and he'd put his two fingers down and he'd pull him up and get him on the back of him and they'd go for a big long rides together and it got so my son could go back the horse, the mare, and everything. It was really nice of him. He just didn't even kick him or anything. Where Jack used to pull up Dale on the side of his horse, it was worn off there; the saddle was worn right off so you can tell how much he went with him. He was a great help to his dad. He was always out in the barn helping him and helping him milk the cows and he was always right behind his dad, everywhere he went. When he was just a little tiny fellow, why he rode the horse around Farr West and everybody would say they didn't know why we'd let such a small child ride a horse and they were really upset with us. This is just the way he learned to ride and he loved it very much. John was sick a real lot and so Dale helped him out in the barnyard a lot and done the work and he'd even do it when my husband couldn't help him. One time my husband had a broken back and he had to lay in the hospital three months and our son, Dale did all the work while he was there. He'd put up peas and was able to figure out the milk check. 16 He'd say, "This man hasn't paid us enough, mother." And we'd go over and he'd check it out with and he'd say, "You haven’t paid us enough." He was 17 years of age then he took on the responsibilities of a man. He's always been a fantastic worker. Then the Korean War came on and everybody was enlisting to go. He wanted to go too but he played football. He graduated from Weber High School and he got his knee mashed while he was playing football. When he'd go down to Fort Douglas they'd say, "We can't take you, your knee is too bad, you can't go." And he felt bad. He said, "I'm a nobody, I'm just a nobody." So about that time they called him on a mission, to the Northwest mission and he became a fantastic missionary, baptizing many people and he was, the last ten months he was out they called him into the mission home and he was the second counselor to the president of the mission for ten months. He was real fantastic and when he left, just when he left, he couldn’t hardly speak in church or anything. And when he came back he was so fantastic. We really think a lot of him. He worked so hard in the mission field. He had the trembles when he came home. Lots of the missionaries come home and they were really plump. He was so thin and we tried to feed him up and he'd been under a Scotchman up there by the name of President McMurran and he had really run the mission with an iron hand and Dale learned a lot of things from him about being economical. In fact, I got the third degree when he came home about being economical. So this taught him a great lesson also. Then he married LaRita Hoiley. She's a very nice lady and they had six children and he's been working. He has five farms in Farr West, milks 100 dairy cattle, and then he works down on 2nd Street as a supervisor over date processing. He's also Bishop of Farr West and he makes a very fine Bishop. We're really, really proud of him. Then the next child we had in the family 17 was Connie. We called her Connie Jean and she was a very sweet little girl. She never gave us any trouble. Not whatsoever. If she cried any or wouldn't go to sleep, I'd just have to kind of tap her and she would cry. She was so tenderhearted and she would go sound asleep if I'd just make her cry a little. She was always a good girl. We didn't have any problems at all with her. She'd help me in the house and case eggs and help us because we were so busy on the farm at that time. Then she went to high school and graduated from high school and started to work at Stuart Drug. She finally said to me one day, "Mother, there's something in life besides working in a drug store. I want to go to college." So her dad and I, we didn't have very much money but we figured that this was a good thing for her to do. There was a place on the campus, it was the Bluebird, they had a candy store there at one time and up above there was some rooms and she and three other girls roomed up there and she'd take milk and eggs and butter and meat and everything from here and the girls would put their money and they'd put it in together and was able to go to college. She majored in physical education and she was really a tremendous teacher. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. She was in FourH Club also. But she won the style dress review and she was really good in sewing and she won the style dress review at Weber. And then I forgot to tell you about Dale's 4-H. He won a trip to Chicago. He was fantastic when it comes to leading a cow. He could get fitting and showman over most anyone that come around. He just was really a good 4-H Club boy. Of course his father taught 4-H club for 27 years here to all of the boys. He also won a trip to Denver with 4-H. He's been real good in 4-H. He never went into scouting but he just completely went into 4-H. And then I'll have to finish telling you about Connie. She taught school for four years at Weber High School and Whalquist. 18 She was a real good teacher and the children all loved her. She was really good to me when I'd run out of dishes and run out of groceries and she helped have my house papered and helped put our carpet down and bought me dishes. She had this in mind all the time. She was really good to us and all this time I don't think she ever sassed me in all her life. I can plainly say that. Then she met Gene Chatlin and he'd been on a mission just here around in the stake and he was a real good fellow and helped his father and mother out a lot because his father was sick a lot. He asked Connie to marry him and so she married him in the Salt Lake temple. They have four children. Gene's a social worker over in Salt Lake City and she keeps books for a firm in Salt Lake also. She does a lot of quilting and makes a lot of clothes for her children. She's a very wonderful girl. And now Shirley came along two years later and from the time she was born, she was kind of sick. She had a bad naval when she was born and had a lot of trouble that way and we got that cured up. And she had the rickets. She was quite a sick baby. She was just awfully tiny when she was born. She had big eyes and she was just really thin and pale. But we talked to the Doctor and did as best we could. We put her on the bottle. I was nursing then but we put her on the bottle and she was able to do pretty good. A little while later when she started to go to school, she got rheumatic fever and we had quite a hard time getting her over that. She was in bed a year and we nursed her through that. I didn't know that she'd ever come out of it or not but we finally got that taken care of. And she went along to school and she seemed to be quite popular. She won Whalquist Queen and FFA Queen, a lot of queens, a lot of dates. She caused me a lot of troubles with a lot of boys around here. They were always here. But she was a very sweet girl and she helped her dad outside on the farm and milked the 19 cows and do different things while her brother was on a mission. She was really a lovely girl also. She didn't, I didn't have any trouble with her at all. Even with all the dates she had and everything, she was quite nice to me and she had a lot going for her too. She finished high school and then she wanted to go up to Logan to school so Jack and I decided that was the thing for her to do and so she went up and she lived in the apartments up there and went to school. She got her degree.in Phys. Ed. and she taught at Davis and also at River High School and she taught for quite a while. She then moved to Salt Lake with some girls and lived down there and she and some more girls took a tour and went to Europe. They rented a little care, there was three other girls, and they went all over Europe. I was really frightened because I thought that wasn't the thing for her to do. She'd saved her money and then she took her money from the time she'd get paid for the year in the summer year and went over there. I think they stayed for almost a month. They toured all the way through Switzerland and all through there and I was quite worried about her. But she done just fine and come back fine. She met her husband while she was over there. She was in Switzerland and she met him there and it was Steven Taylor and she didn't know at the time that she'd go with him because she was going with one of the Apostle's son who was her friend. So when she came back to Salt Lake she got together with Steve and they have five children. She is really a fantastic girl. She has a beautiful home in Salt Lake and Steve's a doctor and they get along just fine. And then about two years later, along come Marilyn. She was red haired. She was cute. She had fair skin and a lot of red hair and we fixed it really pretty in lots of curls and she was just really sweet. She always had a smile for everyone. She was like her Dad. She smiled a lot and this really tickled him because everyone would say, 20 "She's just like John. She smiles all the time." Well, anyway she was a real good student. She was very smart. She went through school really good to play the piano. I think sometimes, though, she got out of dishes and things because she wanted to play the piano. She also helped her Dad out on the farm and we also helped each other. We had a lot of work to do here and she turned out to be a marvelous piano teacher. .My other girls did too. Connie and Shirley took piano too but they didn't like it quite as well as Marilyn. When she got out of high school, she married Loll Larsen and then she helped him to get his degree. She worked at Hill Field and different places to help him get his degree. She was also a real good girl. She never sassed me or anything. I bet the people that read this tape think I just say this, but it's the truth. Anyway, she went to Mexico City when she was in about the third year of high school and she was an exchange student over there and we had a girl come from over there, Rosemary Rodriguez came over and stayed with us. Then she married Loll like I said and she helped him get his education. He went out in Industrial Engineering and they had to move quite often because he had to go to different parts of the country to get his education. They went to Massachusetts once and then she came and stayed with me at Christmas for about a month then he'd get established maybe over in Chicago and they went to Phoenix, Arizona, and then they went to Orem. These times, she'd come back at Christmas and stay with me. He finally got his education and then he settled down in St. George and they're living down there. She teaches piano quite a lot and she's really active in the church and she's a very lovely girl. They have six lovely boys and one is on a mission in South America and already he tells me, he hasn't been over there a month, and he's baptized four people so you can see he's doing tremendous. She's really a 21 good mother and she teaches her children a lot of music. She won "Mother of the Year in Music" in her ward. Then we got Jane. Her Dad at first wanted a boy but when he saw her he told Wanda Thompson, "If she's a girl, I'll give her to you." And so Wanda came up to the hospital to pick her up. She was going to take her home with her. And he told her, "You might just as well throw that quilt away because you're not going to have her." So he was glad anyway. He really liked girls and she has a real sweet disposition and is very lovely. She is never cross or anything with anyone. She always is good natured and sweet and lovely and she never sassed me either. I never had a time when she sassed me or was mean to me. She was cute. She had a little round face and blonde hair and blue eyes and she's very petite. She only weighs about 100 pounds and she's got six children. She had three from her first husband and he got killed in Vietnam, Surge Simmons. And then she has three from Darrell Renstrom. They're very nice and they have six altogether and they have a beautiful home, a big beautiful home in North Ogden. Jane went through high school with a whiz. She didn't have any trouble at all and right out of high school, she married Surge. She ran away and got married and then come home later and told me and I was really feeling quite bad. She told me at a Thanksgiving Dinner. We were sitting around and we were passing the food around and we were saying what we were thankful for and she said, "Well, I'm thankful for my husband, Surge Simmons." I just looked at her and laughed, and he said, "And I'm thankful for my wife, Jane Simmons." And I just looked at them and laughed and it dawned on me that they were married. Well anyway, she got married and she had Shannie and Wendy and he worked at Hill Field and then he decided he'd like to go into the Marines. He just talked to her about the Marines all the time. He wanted to go. So 22 he wasn't happy the way things were and so he just decided he was going to go into the Marines. And so she told him well to go then and she did everything she could to get him through school and she was pregnant then with Timmy. She went up to Weber College and I just felt so bad for her. I thought I couldn't stand it. I looked at her and her cheeks were sunken in and she was so heavy with Timmy and carrying those big books all over. It just made me want to cry. It was just almost impossible. I forgot to tell you that she worked on the farm and helped us here and she tended the children and helped us case bags and done all the work that we had here to do also. I forgot to say this, but this is true. And we all worked together. We always did. They would all put their arms around each other and love each other. I can't think of any four girls that were raised together that were any sweeter than they were. They were simply darling together. She was darling. Jane had Shirley Temple curls. She had a lot of hair and I put it up and she was just darling. Anyway, I told you about marrying Surge and Darrell and Darrell's an attorney and like I say, they have six children of their own and she's really good to me. She invites up to eat a lot and is really sweet and good to her children too. Then I was going to tell you about her finishing college. She finished college and was an English major. I don't know in the world she could do it and carry a baby, but she did it. She just went right along and taught school and Surge died, of course, in the Army or in the Marines. She finished school in an English major which was very smart and she's done so many things now. She's in so many things in the ward and also in civic in Ogden. She does a lot of things. I don't know how she does as many things as she does and she attends seminars. She's really fantastic. She substitute teached last year and if she doesn't quit it, she's not going to be alive. Then next 23 was Kent. We called him Kent Milburn after Jack's brother that got killed with lightening and he was a good natured boy. I never had any problems with him at all. He was just so sweet and kind and good to his father and me. He was really good natured and did everything his Dad wanted him to and I think his Dad just kind of promised him the farm. He told him, "If you help me here and everything else, you can buy the farm from me." So he stayed here and he worked hard and, my goodness, when they had big poles fall down and the wind storm and trees fall down, he'd go out and chop them all up for our fireplace and he'd help Junior do the work in this house and we were having it remodeled and so he'd help him a lot. But he just helped his dad out and everything. We wanted him to go on a mission but he didn't want to, so he went through high school and he wrestled on the wrestling team and he was really a wonderful fellow. I just loved him around because he just didn't cause any, I didn't know he was even around and he was good to me. Then he met Carol Anderson and married her and they have five children. He's been having, he's had some sort of a health problem and I have been awfully worried about him and I try not to cause him any more burden than I can help. I try to make things easier for him. I hope when he hears this life history that I'm writing, that I love him very, very much and I worry about him an awful lot on the count of this. But he's a real good worker. He's a cement layer and he milks the cows and he did work at the depot for three or four years but he didn't like it. He wanted to run the farm and come home. He's real happy. He's just as happy as can be on the farm and like I say, he takes jobs on the side all the time and he's able to get along real nice. His wife is a good homemaker and they get along just fine. They got married in the Salt Lake temple and they get along very good. They work in the church both really well and they're 24 getting along just fine. I really dearly love him and anything I ask him to do, he does for me. So, he did really well in 4-H and he won a lot of high honors and he won the Swiss Bell and he's been a fantastic boy. I've dearly loved him. He's a counselor in the Elder's Quorum now and I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't put in the Bishopric sometime. He's really gone good. Three years later, we got Joe and he was cute. He was a little round faced guy and plump and cute and had a grand personality. He could just get anybody to do anything for him because he has this kind of personality. He helped on the farm some but he didn't care for farming very much. I guess his eye was on selling cars because he done fantastic on selling cars. He went to high school for a while and I guess he didn't like that very good but he's a fantastic salesman. He can make anybody buy anything and finally when he was 16 years of age he married Lynette Russell and they have two little children. He's had real bad health lately. He's had to have a heart operation, a four-quad by-pass and it's been pretty terrific on him. He hasn't been able to work lately and my heart just really goes out to him because he is ambitious and he wants to work and do things. I imagine if he had good health, he'd make a million dollars. (Part 2, July 1980) JR: Mother, I remember you telling me that your mother had a lot of sayings and a lot of different ways she had of telling the weather and such. Could you tell this on the tape now? EC: My mother had very high ideals and she would always tell us that we shouldn't go with people that weren't high class. She'd always say, "Birds of a feather flock together." If you wanted to be that kind of a person, either you would go with a person that was high 25 up or low and this is what she meant of that. Now she always said, "Red at night, sailors delight. Red in the morning, sailors warning." And that was, she'd look in the sky and she could tell what kind of weather we were going to have. She said that red at night meant it was going to be a good day the next day and red in the morning meant it was going to be bad. Then she would say, "This world and the next and then come the iron works." And I never figured that one out. I just couldn't figure that one out. But she'd always say, "Others help others," and she meant by that, that if we help each other that the work would be light for us and a lot of things could be done. Many hands would help make things lighter for other people. Then she'd say, "There's sun dogs in the sky." And they would be big clouds in the sky that sort of looked like dogs in the west. And she'd say it was going to rain. And sure enough, it would rain. In those days we didn't have any way of telling the weather except the Almanac which we never got to see very often. It seemed like Will Payne used to have the Almanac and he'd say the weather was going to be this way or that way. Now and she'd say, "Well there's a ring around the moon tonight and before long it's going to rain." And she could tell us nearly all the time just about when to cut the crops and things like that. JR: I remember another saying that you've said something like this before, you said, "There's always something to take the joy out of life." Was that one of the sayings that she used to say to you? EC: Yes she did. She said that there's always something to take the joy out of life and if she had some joys it seemed like there would be other things to take them away. When we'd get hungry, I'd say, "Why I'm hungry," and she'd say, "Well go and get bread and put your finger on it." And she'd tease me that way. Lots of times the neighbor boys 26 would come up and she would give them bread and sugar. They liked bread and sugar. We were never allowed to get in the cupboard only when we were to eat a meal time. We weren't allowed to piece so lots of times I'd get hungry and she'd say, "Well go lay over a chair if your stomach hurts until it's time for dinner." And I wouldn't get any dinner until dinner time came. JR: What year is your mother's birthdate? EC: She was born October 7, 1868 and died December 24, 1927. JR: How old was she then when she died? EC: She was 59 years of age. JR: Was she in good health or tell me a little bit about her health and what happened and why did she die so young? EC: She had high blood pressure and a very bad heart. A lot of times she'd have attacks and I'd be with her. Sometimes I'd be alone with her and her feet would go black and I'd have to get up in the middle of the night and get coal and get it. Of course I forgot to get it. I'd have to go out in the middle of the night and make a fire on the cook stove and put hot water on the stove and put my mother's feet in it and rub her feet because she couldn't breathe. She got mighty sick. The thing I can remember mostly about my father was just going up to the cemetery and he had a big wagon pulling him with white horses and we came along back in a white-top buggy and I remember they were all crying and I couldn't hardly understand why. I remember going home that night after the funeral and mother didn't want to go in the house so we went up to Anderson's and stayed. Mother had a hard time because she was so frightened all the time. She was frightened of the 27 thunder and lightning storms and every time it would thunder and lightning we were put in the closet to stay there until it was over. She was deathly afraid to be alone. She didn't have much education. She couldn't read or write and I guess time must have been heavy on her hands because Dad was dead but she always die cook and clean and our house was always immaculate. She had to bring water from the ditch and put it in a reservoir for us to bathe at night. She'd heat water on the stove to wash with and she'd put lye in the water so she could skim off the top of the water so it would be clean. Lots of people, including the doctor, said that it was really sad that we had to drink the water from the ditch like that. We'd go out and get a bucket of water and there would be skaters on the water, that's bugs, and they'd be skating around. We'd have to dip them off to drink the water and sometimes pigs would come floating down the water, dead pigs. And we drank that water. I don't know why we didn't all die of Typhoid fever. We were living in Bothwell. It was a settlement that my father helped settle and he was one of the first settlers that came out to Bothwell and the dust was really, really thick. I'd say it was about one-half a foot deep in the summer time and in the winter time the mud was that bad too. It was really bad and at that we didn't have cars or anything like that. We just went with buggies and horses and also sleighs. Father died. There was four of us home. There was LaVon and Leo and Olien and Ethel and I. That's five of us. JR: How many were in your family? EC: There was nine in our family altogether but the others were married and I came late in life so most of them, this is the only ones I remember being home. Mother would have a hard time to get the boys to go out and do the chores and get the crops in. She would have a hard time. I remember she used to grab the poker and hit the boys when they'd 28 fight. She was a real mild and wonderful person. I never heard her raise her voice or scold us at all. She was just real quite in everything she done. She was a real sweetheart. Also, the mosquitoes and flies were really bad. In those days they never had anything to control them. They never had a thing and when the boys would go up to turn the water down they said if they opened their mouth, they'd get a whole mouth full of mosquitoes and just buzz around you. I remember she used to make smudge pots outside so we could sit out at night. I really don't remember what she put in the smudge pots but I know it was just smoke that came out of it. It would just smoke and it would keep the mosquitoes away. It was hot in the house and the mosquitoes were so bad we couldn't sit out so we had quite a time. She hated the mud in the winter and she hated the dust in the summer. JR: At the time you lived in Bothwell, was her mother and father still alive? EC: I never remember any of my grandfathers or grandmothers. They must have all been dead because I don't remember any of them. They didn't come to the house. JR: Ok. Tell us a little bit more about how your mother looked, the way she dressed, a few things like that. EC: My mother was a very beautiful woman. She stood about 5 foot 5 inches and she had beautiful long hair. She could sit on her hair and she would lean over to comb it because that's the only way she could. It was wavy in the front with a big cigarette at the back. She had gorgeous hair and she was a very beautiful woman. She was very tall and erect and wasn't heavy built and she was very particular and clean with herself. JR: What were some of the kinds of clothes that she wore that you remember? 29 EC: She wore a lot of clothes. Of course, in those days, they wore long garments clear to their ankles and to their wrists. She had ties down the front and she also wore a corset, a real tight corset, every day. Then she would wear, we called it petticoats at the time, of course they call it slips now and she'd wear a petticoat and on top of that, she'd wear a shimmy to keep her petticoat and things clean. And then on top of that, she'd wear a dress with long sieves so that her garments would be covered so she could wear them properly. JR: I know all those things except for a shimmy. What is a shimmy? What did it look like? EC: Oh, it was a real, real funny looking object that I just could never understand. It was just cut out at the arms and at the neck and it just hung straight over her clothes so that they would kind of keep her clean and I can't imagine why everything couldn't get dirty. She said to my sister when she died, she said, "You be sure that I have my shimmy on in my casket." JR: It's amazing that anybody could live in hot Bothwell, Utah and wear all those clothing. She wore all those in the summertime too? EC: Yes, she wore them all the time and she felt like that her garments were really sacred and she would not roll them only the time mixing bread or something like that, she'd roll them up very carefully and then she would mix bread and then she would put them right back down again. She felt like her garments were a real protection to her body. JR: It sounds like she was quite religious. Did she, I know your father was the Bishop and the Presiding Elder of Bothwell for 20 years. What did she do in the church? 30 EC: I don't recall her doing anything except just cooking for the authorities that came. And she cooked for everyone that came through. We used to have a lot of people come through and stay that were going to different states like Nebraska and she would cook for them and put them to bed when they came through and father would feed their horses and she really, all I could think that she did was cooked, scrubbed and sewed and took care of people. I think that was the big thing that she done that I knew of. JR: Also, at this time that your Dad died when he was quite young, tell us a little bit how he was in poor health and how your mother had to take care of him. EC: He had diabetes really bad and in those days they didn't have any insulin or anything to take care of it so he would go to Mexico City quite often. He would plant banana plantations down there and sometimes he'd leave for two years at a time and go down there. He said he felt better in Mexico than any other place with this diabetes. But they didn't have much to do and I remember he was really sick most of the time. The boys would just have to do the work and I don't remember too much about father. I was only three years old, but I know mother had quite a time. JR: You mentioned to me once that grandmother, or your mother, Sarah, had cancer and had a breast removed. Can you tell us something about that? EC: Well, she had it taken off. I guess it must have been after I was born. My sister said it was. I can't remember. I don't know where she went but she had a sore on her breast and they was afraid it might be cancer so they took it off and she had a sewing from one shoulder clear down past her stomach line. They really took it but she never had any problems from then on. 31 JR: But they never did actually diagnose cancer. They just thought it might be some. EC: No they didn't. In those days they didn't hardly know one thing about cancer. They didn't have a thing to doctor it with and they just decided it better be and so they took the breast off. JR: Another thing about your mother, the part that interests me, is the part that she could not read or write. Could you tell us a little bit about that? EC: Well, the way she told me is she went around in sheep camp from one place to another and they never stayed in any place where she could get any schooling. And evidently, her mother and father were in the same condition. They couldn't read or write either or else they would have taught her. But she never got to go to school and also the waters were polluted and they drank coffee all the time and she drank coffee at that time. Her mother told her she better. JR: I'm sure the word of wisdom wasn't lived then as strictly as it's lived now because of water conditions and this sort of thing. So she drank coffee all of her life? EC: Yes. She tried to quit. She really wanted to. But it seemed like she couldn't. She'd get such a terrible headache when she'd try to quit drinking coffee. I guess maybe from having it from childhood, I guess it was pretty hard but she couldn't quit it. Jane: We've mentioned a little bit about your mother's personality, but would you like to go just into a little bit more detail. EC: Well, she was really a sweet person and she never hurt anyone else's feelings. If she did, then she felt real bad. She would go somewhere and cry and we wouldn't know unless we asked her about it. But she was really a sweet person. 32 JR: After your father died, then did she stay in Bothwell to raise you children? EC: She stayed there for ten years and LaVon got married and then Leo got married. And I remember all these times it happened. And then there was Olien and Ethel and I left. Olien wasn't married at the time or Ethel or I but she stayed for ten years. And then Margaret Priest introduced mother to a man in Brigham City. His name was Jacob Jensen and mother was tired of the flies and the mosquitoes and also tired of the dirt and the dust that she definitely wanted to get out of Bothwell. And I don't think she cared just how she got out because she married him and we went to Brigham City to live. I don't remember at the time who lived at our house. I think it was vacant, I don't think anyone lived there, but Amil Coofer run the farm that we had and we went to Brigham City. This had been Jacob Jensen's third wife. His first wife had died and he married again and she divorced him and mother and me, and Ethel went down to live. Olien stayed with LaVon. He wasn't married then but he stayed with LaVon and it wasn't long until Ethel couldn't stand it any longer and so she went to Tremonton and got her a job at the telephone offices and stay there. I had to stay and battle out my life and Jacob Jensen which I never had any respect for. I called him Brother Jensen and he was so cross and he was old and he didn't want me to climb the trees. He said I'd skin up his trees and I was very active and I wanted to climb trees and I wanted to hang from them and I did everything. I guess I was just too active. JR: The place you lived in Brigham City, was it that big old home on the main street of Brigham City that you used to show us. Describe it a little. EC: Yes. It was 329 South Main Street and a great big, two story home and it had lots and lots of rooms in it and it was a quite nice home. At the back, in those days you could 33 have a cow and two chickens, and we took our cow down and one of our chickens so they could lay eggs and give us our fresh eggs and things. In the back we had a garden. It was a quite nice place to live but I guess I was just not very quiet and I don't think he liked me a bit. So he and mother fought quite a bit and he was a very stingy man. JR: So as time went on, what did she do? EC: Well, she just decided that she couldn't stand it any longer and so she moved away from him. And we just moved up the street in a house and stayed there for a while. But he coaxed her to come back. So we went back and forth about three times and my schooling was really neglected because I'd go from one school to another and then finally we just couldn't stand it any longer. I'd come home from school and I'd be frightened to think that maybe mother would leave while I was gone. So I'd tell the teacher I was sick and I'd go home to see if she was there. It was really quite bad. I just so nervous. Finally why, we just left. One day when I came home from school, mother had left. I guess she went to Aunt Maggie Priest's. She left me with him. And I said, "Where's Mother?" and he said, "I don't know where she is." So I went up the stairs that night and went to sleep and it started thundering and lightening in the middle of the night so I got so frightened I came down and asked him if I could crawl in bed with him. And he said, "Well, I guess so. Get in." And so Mother came back the next day to get me and then after that, why, she got a divorce and we moved back to our old home out in Bothwell. We moved back to Bothwell and I started school back there in the grade schools and there was about four grades in a room and it wasn't very adequate. It was kind of hard on me, all these moves. I just couldn't seem to get interested in school. So Mother felt really bad to think she was back there but we got along a lot better. I liked it 34 a lot better. It seemed like it was really good. Olien decided that he would run the farm and he took it away from Amil Coofer and they lived in a part of the house. Mother and I lived in part of the house and they lived in the other. And they ran the farm for a year, Olien and Fern, my sister- in-law. They had Velva Lee and I just really got a lot of pleasure out of her. I just really played with her a lot and loved her so much. I went to school out there. Lots of times we'd walk to school and to church and then we'd ride in the school wagon going around the block to pick up the people around there and the school children. Mother, a lot of times, would drive the horses around there. She was quite a horse lady and lots of times she'd hook up a horse and we'd go for a buggy ride. When I started school out there I was the only one that was close to mother at that time and when I got in the school wagon to go to school, she acted like she was crying and I remember the whole day thinking of my mother and wishing I was home with her because I thought I should help take care. I don't think she cared if I went to school or not, because every time I'd get the least little cold or anything, she'd take me home. I remember I wore underwear, in the wintertime of course, that came clear down to my ankles and my elbows and when I'd get outside, I'd roll in the mud. It was really difficult. I just hated them. Some of them had wool in, and then I'd break out because my skin was so tender and she thought I had the seven year itch so I got taken to the doctor quite a few times on that account but it was just the wool underwear that she put on me and I'd sit and itch all day long. JR: I remember hearing from Uncle Leo that she was very discontent and I was just wondering, since you lived with her so much when she was older, she was 44 years old 35 when she had you, which is quite old to have a little baby, especially when a husband died so young. Tell me a little bit about that part of her life. EC: Well, I think she'd had a lot of hardship. All the time she seemed to never by happy. She was never happy. She was just saying, "Oh these flies, oh these mosquitoes." I think maybe it was because she was so particular. She wanted everything really nice and she couldn't keep it that way. Well, she kept it that way anyway, but she just about worked her life out trying to keep things nice and she'd just get things all cleaned up and the dust would be so bad, it was just terrible. Like I say, it was about one-half foot of dust. In the wintertime it was just that much mud. It was really bad. They never grated or fixed the roads. We had pigs and we'd cure them. We'd smoke them ourselves. She used to cure some sort of Martins' cure on them and she would do them herself. The boys would cut up the hams and fix the pork chops and then she would get a big crock for sausage and she would put all these different savory and all these different herbs in it to keep it, you know, and then she would put it in a great big crock jar and fill it over with was. She did a lot of preserves this way in a great big crock jar and sealed it with was. And it kept. It's quite surprising to me, you know how they did. In those days we didn't have as much beef. It seemed like it was mostly pork and we had fresh pork for breakfast and she'd put savory salt on that. We always had a good garden and we had plenty of vegetables but we never could can them in those days because we didn't have any ways, but we kept carrots and potatoes and we ate a lot of those. I remember mother making milk gravy a lot out of the drippings from the hams and things like that. She'd make real good gravy. We'd have it even over our bread or things. We had lots of 36 bread and milk in those days, too. We always had a cow and mother made butter. Sometimes she'd sell it JR: Let's back up just a little bit. Why don't you tell me a little bit about your mother and father as far as when they met or obviously what your mother told you later on in your life? EC: Mother was going with Uncle Will Stokes at this time and my dad was going with Aunt Hanna. I don't remember her last name. One night they were out on a date and father liked my mother real well and he said to his brother, Will, he said, "Will, let's change partners t o n i g h t . " A n d so they did and he didn't want to give mother back. And Aunt Hanna still loved my father. And it was quite a thing and so my father kept going with my mother and married her. But Aunt Hanna was really feeling quite bad about it. Then my Aunt Hanna, after my mother and father got married, why she married Uncle Will. I think she must have married him just to be marrying him and trying maybe to get back at my father. I don't know. But she married Uncle Will and they have 14 children and so my Uncle Will then went on a mission to England and over there, I guess he talked about Polygamy. While he was over there on his mission it was very bad and he brought three women home with him on the boat. He came with three other women and so then my Aunt Hanna divorced him. So she had a proxy stand in the Temple for my father after he was dead and she had all 14 children sealed to my father. I don't know how that is. I hear they can do one thing or another in heaven. JR: So if I have this straight, your Aunt Hanna, after she divorced Uncle Will, then married your father in the temple, or was sealed to him in the temple after he died. Is that correct? 37 EC: Yes. That's what happened. And it was both after my father and mother were dead. They asked us if we thought it would be alright and we didn't know what to say so we just told them yes. JR: So all these years you feel like that maybe your Aunt Hanna, my great Aunt Hanna, liked your father a lot still. EC: Yes she did because she used to send him notes with everyone that came and I guess they were love notes and everything. But father just ignored them. I guess maybe she hadn't gotten over father. JR: Do you remember your Uncle Will? Can you tell me about him coming to your house? EC: I was just a little girl when father died, only three. I remember him coming in wagon and horses and I didn't know what it was all about at the time but afterward my brothers told me that Uncle Will came to ask my mother to marry him too. And she said, "Well, Will you've already got all those wives." .And he said, "Well, that's the way I'm going to live." and she says, "I don't want anything to do with you." But I remember him coming that day. He was a very handsome man. He had black hair and black eyes and he was very good looking. JR: So your mother never had anything to do with Uncle. Will even though he proposed to her. He had several wives. EC: No she didn't. And from then on, I never saw him again until I moved down to Ogden. And one day when I got married and was living here in Ogden, he came to my door and I didn't even know him. And he said, "Aren't you even going to ask me in, Ella. I'm your Uncle Will." He came in the house and I treated him really nice and he talked about my 38 grandfather that had stowed away on a ship coming from England to get on to the ship. My grandfather loved to sail and he told me all about that. It was really interesting and then he started talking about polygamy and I told him that my father was a good man and I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps. He said my father was but he didn't know everything. So I said, "Well, that's good enough for me." So I never saw him again until after he had died and I went to his funeral. JR: Since your mother couldn't read or write, who would do all her paperwork for her like money and all this after your dad died? EC: Leo did it when he was around but when we moved to Brigham, I did it. I would write out all our checks and everything at the bank and I would take care of it all. JR: How old were you at this time? EC: I was about 8 years of age and I remember once signing a check and I really, it was the first check I signed and her name was Sarah Eliza Summers Stokes Jensen. So I put the whole thing on and she didn't have it in the bank that way. JR: What did your mother finally die of? Can you tell us a little bit about that? EC: Should I tell you when she died? She died on Christmas Eve and she died with a heart attack. We knew she was going and we got all the family together. Olien wasn't there. He was up in Hansel Valley and we couldn't get him but most of the children were there and she died with a heart attack. JR: There's a little bit in the first of the tape how she was sick for quite a few years and you took care of her. Could you tell us a little bit more about her bad heart condition and what she went through? 39 EC: Well, she'd wake up in the middle of the night and she'd wake me up and it would really be snowing and blowing outside. We did have a telephone in but she'd say, "Ella, you better get somebody here because I'm afraid I might die. I'm so sick." I'd have to go out like I mentioned, I'd forget to get the coal and wood in and I'd go out in the night and get the coal and wood in and have to make a fire and get warm water to put her feet in. Her feet would go black and she couldn’t get her breath. So this one night I called on the telephone but all the lines were down so I couldn't get my sister. Well I had to go out in the middle of the night and I called my sister and I tried to get her and all I could get her and the lines went dead and I said mother was really sick and she went out. At that time we had cars and she tried to crank the car and she cranked and she couldn't get it started and she thought probably mother would die and I would be there with her alone. But it passed over and she thought maybe then that we should move to Tremonton and then live with her. She worked at the telephone office because she didn't think mother was going to live very long and that's where mother died JR: I remember you saying that after your father died something about that your mother would always say hour father was going to come back and talk to her. Can you tell us a little bit about that? EC: She told him, she said, "When you die, Joe," because my father was really sick and he knew he was going to die, he was in bed for a long time, she said, "When you die, will you please come back and tell me what's on the other side." She said, "Will you promise me that you'll come back" And he said, "Yes. If I can Sattie," he called her Sattie, “if I can, I will." And he says, "I'll come back and tell you." So.one night we were laying in the bed and mother woke me up and she was really frightened and she thought dad had 40 visited us but she was afraid to open her eyes. She said that she thought he had come because she said it was a hot night and somebody fanned her for almost an hour and she said she was really frightened. JR: So she thought, was it only one night she thought he came back or was this quite often that she thought he was going to come back and talk to her? EC: Well, there was quite a few. She was quite superstitious and she figured he had been there a few times and that she just didn't dare open her eyes to see and then I remember one time when my sister's husband died that I was out getting my lessons off of the table and she called my sister's name out three times and I went in there and she said something dreadful has happened. And we didn't even know that my sister's husband was sick but he died with an attack of pneumonia. Sure enough she seemed to have premonition for what was going to happen and I've seen that quite a few times with her that she would know what was going to happen before it happened. JR: You were going to tell me earlier about the special holidays or Christmas' that you remember when you were a child. Can you tell me about that? EC: Mother would invite everyone up and we had a great big folding door and she'd put the Christmas tree in the center of the room and she'd shut that folding door and then when we got through eating our Christmas dinner, then we would go into the front room and each child was given candles and different things to put on the Christmas tree and then we decorated it. And then Nanna had a great hand to play the piano so she'd play the piano and we'd all dance and sing different Christmas songs. JR: Who was Nanna? 41 EC: That's LaVon's wife. My brother LaVon's wife, Nanna. She's really quite good on the piano and she'd always play for us to sing and then we'd open gifts. We had a little gift that we would open. It wasn't very much but we did have these things. JR: Can you remember anything else about your mother that you would like to tell us at this time? EC: Well, lots of times we'd have Thanksgiving Dinners also and I remember each one would bring something and I remember going out to get, helping Mary and some things and I had carrots and I started running and I dropped them and fell down and kicked the whole thing over. My mother would give me a spanking. JR: As you look back now on your life, can you tell us anything has particularly influenced you by your mother or the way you are? EC: She was very strict about not swearing and keeping yourself clean and not doing anything that would, loud laughter. She just wouldn't go for this. And she wouldn't allow us to whistle when we were little. She'd say, "A whistling person and a crowing hen is not fit for God and man." And we weren't, the girls, we weren't allowed to whistle because she said it was very, very unladylike. I never remember my mother ever wearing clothes that showed anything. She was very modest and she tried to teach us that way that we should keep our clothing and everything clean and neat and also keep it covered. JR: I'm sure it was very hard to keep clean under those conditions, washing everything by hand at dirty, dusty Bothwell, Utah, the way it was at those times. 42 EC: She would sometimes wash outside. She would have some bricks just around in a circle. Then she would make a fire underneath the bricks and would put a tub there and she would boil her clothes out there. She really felt like she had to boil her clothes and they were just as white as snow. I don't know how in the world she kept everything so clean because she'd take great pride in having her clothes white. JR: Did you feel like that the materials in that time were also harder to work with? EC: There were really, really bad and how we ironed was my mother would make a real hot fire and put irons on there and then we had little clips that went over the irons and we'd iron by hand. We didn't have any electricity in those days and this is what she would do. She would iron and everything had to be just perfect too. She really had some beautiful laundry. JR: Did your mother sew or do handwork? EC: Mother knitted a lot. She crocheted arid knitted a lot. But she didn't have sometimes the facilities to do it. She couldn't afford it. I don't know, it seemed like toward the end of her life we didn't have very much to live on. JR: Well, this has been really interesting hearing about your mother. Once again, is there anything else you would like to add before we finish this interview? EC: I know my father could have never had a better mate than my mother because I don't think my mother could have done any better with the facilities that she had, what she had to work with to keep things clean and all the authorities that came to our home. She fed them. I really think that she got a shining star for these things. JR: Thank you very much. 43