Oral History Program Richard T. Fry Interviewed by Jeanine Carter 03 July 1976 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Richard T. Fry Interviewed by Jeanine Carter 03 July 1976 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. 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: Fry, Richard, an oral history by Jeanine Carter, 03 July 1976, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Richard T. Fry. The interview was conducted on July 3, 1976, by Jeanine Carter, in Morgan City, Utah. Fry discusses public schools in Morgan County, Francis Peak, irrigation and the building of the East Canyon Dam, the lime and cement mines and industries, Como Springs, the LDS Church, experiences with Indians, mail service, medical care, the coming of the telephone, and his experiences as court bailiff. JC: Mr. Fry, would you tell me about yourself? Who your parents were and about your early life in Morgan, Utah? RF: Well, I am the eldest in a family of 10. My mother’s name was Emiline Toomer Fry. My father’s name was Richard Rawle Fry. I was born in Morgan, February 25, 1888. That makes me past 88 years at the present moment. Go ahead. JC: Will you tell me about your school years? RF: Well, schools, I am sorry to say, weren’t too good. I am also sorry to say that a bunch of us kids spent more time taking advantage of the teacher than we did trying to learn something. I never knew this until I got older in life and seen what I had missed. Then I began to think seriously about what should have been back in the grades, but I did manage to graduate from the 8th grade. And I think that was in 1894. I spent one winter in Salt Lake at the LDS Business College; the next year I went to Logan to the Brigham Young College, later called Brigham Young University. I laid out one year because I didn’t have any money, and I worked on the railroad. I think I learned more the winter I put in on the railroad on construction work than I did during my whole career up to that 1 date in the grade school because I got to chance to see what I was missing and that made me more eager to learn. I rubbed shoulders with some pretty rough characters – and some characters that were better than I am – and I learned a lot from them. Most of them, though, were quite a ways along the booze route, which nettled me quite a lot because I never liked anything like that but went along with it if I was able to do it. When they had a party in some of the old outfit cars, in some of the out-of-the-way places, I was the bar tender. I was glad to take that position to keep me from doing what they were doing. They spent their time playing cards and fighting and drinking. I didn’t... Well, I won’t tell you that foolishness. Now where do we go? JC: When you were going to elementary school, how did you get to school? Did you walk? RF: No. I only lived two blocks-and-a-half from the schoolhouse during my grade school days, and I was usually late. Clara Gibby Whittier walked from Round Valley most of the time, and she was always early. JC: How did Morgan get its name? RF: Morgan was called up until, well, even ‘til the time of the railroad, was called Weber City. The railroad got in here before some of the canyons was passable or decent passage with a wagon. An old gentleman, a fine old fellow, he died quite young – I read his autobiography several times – by the name of Jedediah Morgan Grant, was a wellto-do man in Salt Lake and he thought it was a pity. He was related to Thomas Jefferson Thurston. He says, “Tom, I’m going to send some teams up there so you can get a better road up Weber Canyon so’s I can come and see you.” He says, “All right, I’ll work on this end, and you start on the other end. We’ll see what we can get.” And he did 2 just what he said he would do. He worked on the other end, and they got a pretty good road up through Weber Canyon. There were several crossings at the river. It was on the opposite side to what it is now through Peterson and Mountain Green. It was on the, what I’d call east side of the river, instead of the north. Northwest side of the river. Out of the gratitude of their hearts, the powers that had control of those things up here then thought instead of calling it Weber City – this was after the railroad came through, I’m quite sure– they, out of the gratitude of the hearts for what Jedediah Morgan Grant did for them, they decided to get his name into this valley. So when the county was organized as a county, they called it Morgan County. And then they thought, well, we can’t name the city Jedediah. Let’s call the city Morgan; which they did. That’s where Morgan City gets its name. It’s a name well earned and well placed, I think. JC: That’s real interesting. How did they do the surveying here? RF: Oh, the government surveyors came in here soon after the railroad. The railroad came in here in 1869, and the government got in here about 1874, if I remember properly or correctly. When the government surveyors went into a locality to survey, they always set up a target. Lots of people don’t know this, but believe it or not, the target they set up is on a high peak between Davis County and Morgan County. It’s almost on a straight line between Morgan City and Kaysville. I have got pictures of it. I visited the place several times before the beacon was established there by the government, but pretty near everybody knows Francis Peak. Very few people know why it was called Francis Peak. I took history with one of the members of the Francis family and got myself into trouble. He says, “Oh, I know why it was done. It was done in honor of the Francis family.” I says, “Oh no, it wasn’t!” And he doesn’t like me to this day because I wouldn’t admit it 3 was in honor of the Francis family. It was in honor of his grandmother. He wouldn’t believe it, but his grandmother was Esther Francis, wife of Samuel Francis, the old pioneer. This lady was remarkable. She had what has been called, for lack of a better name I guess, she had a calculus mind. She could work problems in her mind, or in her head, we’d say, that’s a crude way to put it, before I could even write them down. And she and I became very fast friends. I used to carry water from her well to our house. That was my job, being the oldest member of the house, was to fill the water jugs and set them by the back door in our home. Many times she’d invite me back and spend an evening. She told me a lot of her back history. She was highly educated. She was only a little woman. But oh, did she have a keen mind. I’m not too sure but that those government men came to her with some of their problems. No question in my mind, when they got tangled up, she would straighten them out. I give her credit for laying out the farms and the roadways in this valley. And this is the reason I did it. When people were first sent up here to colonize Morgan County, a great many of them snatched up a place of land, and everything was what some people call hodgepodge. They just let it; there was no system about it. And she saw the condition and took the issue of a lot of them and tried to persuade them to lay the county out, to lay the valley out. Now, for instance, put your roadways along the foothills. Have your farms run from the foothills to the stream, and from stream to stream, as there happen to be two in Morgan valley, one on the east and one on the west – Weber River on the east and Canyon Creek on the west. And then you have your farms laid out in orderly fashion, from foothill to stream, from stream to the other stream, from that stream across that stream, up to the other foothills. Keep your roadways on high ground. This proved to be a very sensible thing to 4 do, especially after they had been flooded out two or three times, and at one time they moved their town. Literally moved the town Morgan over to what has been known as Monday Town Hollow. But that’s another story. We won’t go too far into it. But I can’t never, as long as I live, forget the story of Monday Town Hollow because that’s where my father was born. And every time we passed there, he’d make me drive off the road and stand there and point to the place where he was born. He never seemed to tire. He always seemed to take pride pointing over to a certain spot to where his father’s house had been moved to. That story of moving the town is another story. I made a tape on that somewhere. Somewhere, I don’t know where, but it’s made. It’s quite interesting when you stop to think. In the middle of a flood, they were able to pick their log houses up, and the women marked the logs as the men pulled the houses to pieces. They moved over to Monday Town and set up a new town on high ground. It was donated by T. R. G. Welch, who owned it. It was part of his father’s rights. Now we won’t spend any more time on Monday Town because I made a tape on that. JC: Okay, I’ll get the information on that. How did Francis Peak get its name? RF: Well, I have got no absolute proof, but I know that those government surveyors come to her with many of their problems. Whenever government surveyors went into a locality, their chief engineer sent them to the highest point to set up a target; which they did. Now from Morgan City, looking at Francis Peak it doesn’t look like that is the highest point in the valley, but it is because I have been up there and know it is lots higher than any other peak that is visible in this valley. Like up in Summit County they have got Lewis Peak, farther up they’ve got Wanship Peak. Down in Weber County, they’ve got Ben Lomond Peak. When they set their surveying instruments up, they had to have a 5 mark to know where they were. Like, for instance, a starting point. Now I’m going into something I don’t know anything about, but that’s what surveyors always do. Whenever they survey to locate themselves and know that they are all right, they have a target. The target in Morgan was Francis Peak. It wasn’t called Francis Peak then, but out of the gratitude of their hearts for the information this kind old lady had been able to give them, I’m not too sure that she didn’t work some of their problems. I feel like she did because of conversations I had with her. I’m just about to say I’m positive that out of the gratitude of their hearts, they named it after her. JC: You mentioned going over to Mrs. Francis’s for water from her well. Will you tell me about how you got your drinking water in Morgan County in the early days? RF: After they had laid the city out, everybody had a ditch running front of his house. And people drank ditch water, which they never should have done. And every fall, everybody got typhoid fevers. Some had it mild, and some had it terrible. Lots of them passed away drinking ditch water. Some drank slew slough? water. But they took another step. They started to dig wells. Now you could dig a well right here in Morgan City. You could strike water if you dug your well in May, June, or July. You could strike water 10 feet under the ground. Now that’s not safe water. That’s called surface water. And some of them got by on it. I drank surface water many times from other wells as I grew up in the town, but they were never free from typhoid fever. And finally we were advised by people who had studied the situation that ditch water was dangerous. There is no question about it. Not only typhoid, but continual sickness from drinking ditch water, so finally ditch water was condemned. Then they went to well water and every once in a while after a heavy fall of snow, when the ground water rose, that old typhoid fever 6 would come back again because water would rise up in the wells. I remember a friend of mine calling me up one day. He lived in the lower part of town. He says, “Guess what?” and I said, “Guess what, what.” And he says, “The well that Joe Rasmussen dug this summer, you could lay down and drink out of it.” I didn’t believe him, so a number of us boys went down there, and sure enough, the water was within two feet of the surface. Now that was dangerous. He knew it. He had sense enough to know. He said, “I spent all that money making that well, now what have I got? I have got surface water.” He never used the water out of that well, but it was many years after that before they came in with the pipeline. The pipeline came in about 1906. It came in gradually in different places, but it got over here to South Morgan, I think about 1906. Then most people turned their wells that ranged in depth from 15 feet to as much as 65 feet, in different parts of the valley, turned them into cesspools. Well, after that, anybody that drank well water was very foolish because everybody’s well had been turned into cesspool. Now where do we go? JC: Now that we’re talking about water, how did they irrigate, and where did they get the water to irrigate? RF: Well, the first ditches that were taken out were, I guess, over in North Morgan, the big North Morgan canal. It was taken out by the Heiners and Dan Williams. We called it North Morgan – it’s on the northeast side of the valley – they took out the first ditch. On this side of the valley, there was a ditch that was a sawmill right where the high school stands now, owned by Nels Harvey and Epidiah Wadsworth. They sawed a lot of lumber. They got their logs out of Weber Canyon and out of Lost Creek, floating them down the river into the mill pond. After all the logs, the logging set up was completed; 7 these two men sold their rights to their mills. Their water rights that run the sawmill went to the South Morgan Water Ditch Company. My grandfather and Daniel Bull, and one other man that I can’t recall right now, bought those rights from these two men and they moved the sawmill down into Weber County or some other place. But this particular ditch has its head on the opposite side of the river, way up very close to Como Springs. So they had that much of their ditch completed on high ground. The rest of the ditch was completed by pick and shovel. They dug it down to where they had made the other ditch the year before, in which it was never completely successful although they did raise a crop or two on it. And that has been known as the Morgan City ditch. The ditch on the east side of the river that was taken out and completed by the Heiners and Dan Williams, was called the North Morgan Canal Company. They were later incorporated. And the same thing happened on both sides of the valley up in East Canyon, what we call East Canyon, Porterville and Richville on one side – or on both sides, I guess, there is a crossroad now. There wasn’t in the beginning – oh, they cross but there was no road. The road came in later on. I happened to be the county clerk when the last bridge was put in there. Every bridge they built on the crossroads at Richville had a bad habit of washing out in high water. It wasn’t until about 1910 that they ever got a permanent bridge in there. I know about that and that’s another story, and I won’t spend a lot of time on that. I was county clerk at the time and worked hard to get that bridge and get it high enough so that the water would go through and not wash out like it had a habit of doing. And it never has. It has been a long while since 1910, and those old steel beams that are in there are still carrying the heavy machinery that has to cross it. Some pretty big loads. I’ve shivered many times and wondered if we had calculated right on the size 8 of those beams. It seems that we have. It’s still there. I have never heard of the Richville Bridge going out any more. Now where do we go? JC: I pass over that bridge many times in a day, and that makes it much more interesting. Can you tell me a little bit about East Canyon Dam? When did they decide to build a dam? RF: The first dam was built by the Davis, Weber County Canal people. They were prosperous because they had fruit orchards, and there were some very prosperous farmers there. They decided to see if they couldn’t...well here’s what happened. They had a flume that came out just above the Devil’s Gate – what we call the Devil’s Gate. It’s the narrowest part of the canyon. There was a mile of flume, wooden flume that supplied the water out of the Weber River into the Davis-Weber County Canal. That Davis-Weber County Canal goes way down around the point of the sand ridge and up the east side, as far as what is commonly called - now nobody will probably know what I am talking about – Haight Bench. The reason why I know about it is, I used to go down there and help my father-in-law put up his hay on Haight Bench. That’s the termination of the Davis-Weber County Canal. It has been a blessing to the people in Davis County. They couldn’t have done anything better. The wooden flume, as it disintegrated, rotted away, and fell to pieces; they spent a lot of money and borrowed a lot of money. They bonded their system to dig a canal through solid rock, which they did, and now they have one the largest canals in the western country. I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t try to tell you how much water passes through it, but it is a blessing to Davis and Weber County. I believe they have changed it around now. I hear it is called sometimes the Weber-Davis Canal. They even use some of the water to run a fire plant now in what’s 9 called Riverdale. They did the last time I passed there several years ago. I guess they still do. Now what? JC: What about some of the industries in Morgan? I understand you used to operate a flour mill. RF: Yes. At a very early date a man in Farmington, by the name of Ezra Clark, had a large family, and he came up here and bought the rights of another sawmill that was on the other side of the river. They were pulling out about the same time Nels Harvey and Ebidiah Wadsworth pulled out and went elsewhere. He bought the rights and established a flour mill. That wasn’t the first. There was a flour mill ahead of that. After the railroad, the sawmill at the mouth of what is known as Richville Hollow, where they framed so much of ties and trestle work for the railroad, after that was completed they turned that mill site. It stood that way ‘til just a few years ago. There is a beautiful mill site there, but it was awful long canal because it comes from way up in mid-Porterville on the west side of the river or creek, Canyon Creek, and they turned that into a flour mill. Two men by the name of George Washington Taggert, and the other was named Henman. I remember his last name but can’t recall his first name. But I knew about him. I will never forget him. They supplied the valley for a long while with flour. But it was an old stone mill. They run it day and night. They never let it stop and, for a number of years, it turned out a pretty good grade of flour and cornmeal and wheat meal cereals, breakfast cereals. Did quite a job. That mill never stopped as long as they could keep it open. They kept it running. On this side of the river, they bought a mill site where the Morgan Mill and Elevator Company were established. Ezra Clark came up and bought that out. Sent one of his sons up here by the name of Charles Clark to operate it. 10 Charles Clark was not a miller; he was a schoolteacher. I say that because he was a very good schoolteacher. I happened to be fortunate enough to go over to his school. He had a way about him to teach school, but he didn’t know much about operating a flour mill. They used to say that he would absent-mindedly go away and leave the mill running, which wasn’t a very good thing to do. That was the beginning of the Morgan Mill and Elevator Company. Later on, an enterprising man from Davis County by the name of Thomas Spackman come up here and organized the Morgan Mill and Elevator Company, which furnished flour and meal and ground cereals for livestock for many, many years. My father and I were working there together. We finally tried to buy it, something we never should have done. It was a foolish move because when we got right in the middle of it, things got tough. World War I came on, and they was after the Kaiser, and it changed the complexion of everything. We got behind in our payments. There was one thing we didn’t get behind in, and that was plenty of work because the government put restrictions down on us. We had to account for every bushel of grain we took in and every bushel of grain we turned out, and it put an extra burden because food stuff got so scarce. But during that time, as I recall, we shipped many carloads direct to France. It was billed right from Morgan. I billed it out myself, and I know what I’m talking about, to distributing centers in France. They never let it be known just where it was located. We made a lot, or manufactured a lot of flour, shipped it out in burlap sacks. We had nothing better. Cloth was too scarce, but this seemed to be able to get plenty of burlap from India, so they sent us burlap sacks. We loaded, I would say, as many as well more than 25 carloads billed to Galveston, Texas, to points in France, but those points in France was always kept secret for fear that the Germans could bomb the 11 ports they were coming from. We had identification bands we put on them, and that’s the only band that went on those sacks. But all we ever heard was “send us more flour, send us more flour.” We kept the soldiers from starving and that’s not bragging. In fact, a lot of people here went hungry to do that, believe it or not. I am out of breath. JC: Mr. Fry, could you tell us a little bit about the lime kilns that used to be here in Morgan? RF: Well, it was long before I was born, but I’ve heard the story many times. Some of the pioneers, when they came here, had their first homes over there on what is known as the North Morgan hills, those cedar hills on the east side of the valley. And one man in particular noticed that they used to do their cooking outside sometimes, especially in the summer, by setting up some stone or rock that they picked out of the hill, and lo and behold, he said, “Why this is lime rock. Why doesn’t somebody start a lime kiln here?” That was Daniel Williams, the old pioneer. And he did just that. He made a small lime kiln, and I have heard it said, and I believe it, that some of the lime that he burned went into the Salt Lake Temple even after the railroad was here. It was shipped down on the train, loaded into railroad cars, shipped to Salt Lake. About that time another man who was familiar with lime, by the name of Charles Turner, established the lime kiln over there. You go over on those hills; you will see the marks, the ruins, or the wreckage of what’s left of two lime kiln set-ups. Each one had two kilns. One would be working while they were filling the other. The lime rock that they were using there was not successful. I have kind of got ahead of myself on lime kilns. The first lime kiln in this valley was operated by my grandfather on the opposite side of the river. There is a difference between the rock on the east side and the west side of the river. The west side, where he was, was a better grade of lime rock than there was on the east side. And for a while 12 it wasn’t known just which side of the river the railroad was going to come down on. Grandfather figured that if it came down on his side, he would have a wonderful chance to sell his lime and to load it and to ship it. But it came down on the opposite side of the river to where he was located. Now his lime rock doesn’t have any flint in it. It burns up and there is no residue; there is no unburnt portion like there is on the other side. These two lime kilns, one operated by Charles Turner and Dan Williams, were later abandoned because they couldn’t compete. There would be as high as 20-25 percent waste – 2025 percent flint that didn’t burn that had to be thrown away, and more efficient lime rock or more lime rock that burned up took the trade away from these two lime kilns. In fact, long after Grandfather abandoned his, some of the people, on their own, went back on his side of the river. They got his permission. He said, “Yes, go ahead. Go back there and use those old kilns if you want to.” Which they did. There are only just a few remnants there. In fact, the last time I passed, you could hardly see where the old kiln stood. The old Morgan Stake Tabernacle was built from his quarry and foundations for many a home in Morgan County, or Morgan Valley, was quarried out of his quarry. It never paid very much, but later on he and Samuel Francis and T. S. Wadsworth, who was a doctor came up from Ogden, organized the Como Springs Resort Company. We have the first bathing resort that was ever established in Morgan County. But that’s another story. We won’t go into that right now. JC: What were some of the things they used lime for? RF: Lime, long before cement – cement is relatively modern. Ninety percent of the homes in Morgan County don’t have any cement in them at all, in the foundations, in the walls, or anything. But later on, you see cement came into general use in about 1908; we began 13 to hear about it. In 1909 you could get it, and in 1910, they started to build cement foundations right here in Morgan... It was known as Portland cement. It was a new thing. The first house that I remember about it that I was working on, was the house of Albert Welch. Albert Welch lives in it now. I told him one day, I said, “You ought to be proud of this house. It was the first one to have a cement foundation. I’m proud of it because I helped your grandfather; he and I built the forms, mixed the mortar, mixed the concrete, and built it.” He says, “Well, it’s mighty good. I have tried to make some holes in it, and you can’t hardly do it.” I said, “Well, the old gentleman was very particular about mixing it.” We mixed everything by hand by turning it over with a shovel on a board. That’s the way they mixed the first cement. In fact, I believe I can safely say that the first house in Morgan County that was ever used... was brought in from Ogden and hauled up on a wagon to his little home where he lives now. That’s Albert Welch. That was way back in 1910. JC: Can you tell me of the construction of the cement plant? RF: Well, I worked at the cement plant. I was going to grade school then. A bunch of us fellows caught a ride on the freight train and went up there to look for a job. We talked to some of the fellows, but they seemed to be too busy digging test holes along the hillside even to talk to us. They said, “Yes, if you kids will come up here and get established, I’ll hire you, and we’ll do some digging. We’ll do some testing.” And I happened to be up there. They dug all around, just test holes to start with, to find out how extensive a lot of hill that’s laid bare, no rocks sticking out, was covered with a mantle of waste, we call it, that had sloughed down from the top. Mostly dirt. Those test piles that we dug along there, we had to dig eight or 10 feet before we would strike any rock, digging the dirt. 14 That’s all they wanted to know was how extensive was the lime shale, they called it. A man would come along and say, “Now remember, you aren’t digging for anything but lime shale. When you strike it, call me and I’ll take a test.” They dug them all the way around the hill about, oh, maybe 75 to 80 yards up. It’s on the same level that they are going back into the hill on now. Now, I think that was in, oh, maybe 1896. Maybe before that. There was almost a year of testing up there. Another claim out on the point, where it wasn’t lime shale – it was pretty good lime rock – they built a lime kiln. They were awful fussy about that lime kiln. What they were trying to do was to hold the rights they filed on as a lime kiln site, not the cement plant site. They were more fussy about that, for fear that somebody else would jump in and put a lime kiln where their cement set-up was going to be, so they seemed to be more fussy about that. Some of the bigwigs coming along there every day would tell us a few things: “Keep this thing going, we don’t want this thing to lag, we want it to go, and keep quiet about what you’re doing.” We later found out all they were trying to do was to hold that as a claim to keep some other outfit from coming and jumping in on them. That would be way back in 1896-7 when they did their first testing up there. They had bought out some of the ranches so as not to step on the ranchers’ toes. They bought the Beasley’s and they bought a family who lived there by the name of Isaiah Stork. They started to roll rocks down into where his house was. He got pretty disturbed about it. I don’t blame him. Finally he sold out on the northeast side of the river along through there. But the first year a man by the name of Moroni Heiner – he was one of the Heiners, one of the representatives from the company. Now the construction of the cement plant is another big story because they had to move Lost Creek. They had to move the wagon road. It isn’t anywhere near 15 where it is now. That’s another story. I don’t think we ought to bother about it now. It would make a good story later on. A fellow by the name of Ed Preece knew a lot about horses and had some good horses. He took the contract to move Lost Creek and to move the road. And it looked like, to start with, he was going to make a lot of money, but before he got the thing completed, he went out of here broke. He went out of here broken-hearted. I know that. JC: Well, let’s turn to the farming because I know that they did a lot of farming here in Morgan. How did they plant their crops and harvest them? RF: Well, the first grain, I believe, that was raised, was raised over in North Morgan. I have heard some of the Heiners – they were early settlers over there, knew how to raise grain. An old gentleman whose name was George Heiner, he was one of the Martin Heiner’s oldest sons, and the grain was planted on land that could raise grain. It was harvested by a cradle. Mr. Heiner used to cut his grain by hand that way with a cradle. The grain was harvested by hand, and it was called cradle-harvested grain. I have heard this from George Heiner. I was very well acquainted with him. He used to tell me how they used to go out and bind it up by hand by picking up part of the straw and twisting it. Twisting the heads together and wrapping them in bundles. First threshing machines that came into the valley had to come up from Davis County. But before that, it was beat out with a flail and windrow out in the afternoon breeze. Many a bushel for many years was harvested just that way. Of course, wheat was their main product. Wheat and potatoes, Morgan Valley was noted for, for many, many years. They tried to raise fruit, but they decided many years later that Morgan Valley would not excel in fruit. However, they were able to raise strawberries and raspberries. Some people can raise 16 apples, plums, and pears and things like that in sheltered spots. There are several people who still do it. They still make money at it. In fact, I have some out here today I was just looking at a few minutes ago. I’ve got more apples than I thought I did. I thought they all froze, but they’ve not froze. I think we are going to have some to ourselves and some to give away. JC: Good. On the farming, did they used to help each other, or did one farmer take care of his own. RF: Oh, no, they had to work together. I know many a farmer. It’s like my dad used to say – one man on a farm isn’t much good. So they would work maybe a week helping one farmer getting his grain and potatoes planted, then they would go over and help the other fellow. They would trade back and forth. One fellow would have to drive while the other would run the plow. The potatoes were planted with a plow. The land was prepared with a horse; in very early days, it was oxen and mules. I can remember mules being used in the fields. I remember one fellow down here had an ox and a mule. That’s all he had. But he raised a good crop for several years that way, with his ox and his mule. They worked good together. Grandad owned the Fry farm, that’s one of the best farms, at one time in Morgan County. I asked my father several times, “Why so many mule shoes around here?” He says, “Oh, if you had grown up through the ages like I have, you wouldn’t ask that question–“Why so many mule shoes out on the farm?” I plowed them up years after they had gone out of use. JC: Where did the farmers used to eat their lunch? RF: There was always a shady spot where the irrigation water passed through. They would 17 go over and sit in the shade and drink ditch water, which they never should have done. They did this many years. I can remember when we herded cows after the crops were gathered up. The cows would be brought in from off the hills. We herded the first cows on the hills. After the hills dried up, we moved the cattle and cows we were raising into the fields. We young fellows always had a place where we kind of established a camp so we could watch the cows away from the potato patches. Morgan came into plowing first as a potato raising district, and the men took quite a pride in their potatoes. Well they might because Greeley, Colorado, the potato-growing district of the West, was beginning to fall because of diseases that were coming in, and Morgan came into prominence as a potato-raising district. I know when they would bring a whole train load of empty cars here and work around the clock, loading them and shipping them east. After Greeley, Colorado, the potato center of the West had failed – they failed after the potatoes in Ireland failed. It seemed for a long while the world of man for what’s known was Irish potatoes. Potatoes that grow on the ground, not sweet potatoes but just common old potatoes that were raised in the dirt. We had Burbanks and Early Ohio’s, Mills prize and a lot of them that I have forgotten. But everybody raised potatoes. And it was hard to keep the cows off the potato patches. They soon found out that by rooting with their noses they could root out the potatoes. Poor, hungry old cows would dig into the potatoes if you weren’t right there to herd them away. Some of the first occupations that I ever had were herding cows out of the potato patches. JC: When did they start planting peas in Morgan? I heard there was a pea factory here or a canning company. RF: James A. Anderson is connection with a man by the name of Pingree, James Pingree in 18 Ogden. He financed Jim for a few years in the potato business. Jim Anderson brought the first money into Morgan; that is the first real money. There was a money scarcity in Morgan right after the 1894 financial panic, and Jim Pingree took advantage of that and sent Jim Anderson, James A. Anderson. His name is very prominent because he established the Morgan Canning Company here and later one in Smithfield. He financed Jim and sent him up here to buy potatoes and the two of them as partners, Jim here on the ground and James Pingree in Ogden taking care of the finances. They could buy the potatoes and pay cash for them. The merchants could only give you credit because that’s all they had; that is, they let you come and buy groceries off the store. It wasn’t long until everybody was selling their potatoes to James A. Anderson because he’d hand out cash. Silver dollars even. That was something for a long while. For instance after 1894, that was when my father’s plant broke. If your father ever goes broke you’ll know what I’m talking about. That was rough for us. We lost everything. He found himself in debt. No mortgage on his home. JC: Well, when did they start to plant the peas? ... Didn’t they have a canning company that was called The Good Peas? RF: Those Good Peas... Oh! Goodness, yes. They had Those Good Peas made. That was Jim Anderson. The first little canning factory was right there where Clark Brothers’ setup is now. Jim Anderson built all that. JC: Now, we’ve talked about work. What did you do for play? How was your recreation in the early days? RF: Well, the recreation, I think I can safely say, was kind of wrapped up in Como Springs, 19 because Como Springs sprang up as a pleasure resort, or a bathing resort, oh, maybe 1894. They began to clear it up, and it was then quite a renowned resort. It got to the point where they began to invite different organizations around the state to come there for a week’s rest and recreation. Like for instance, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir came up for recreation and lived in tents in the groves around Como Springs. The Farmington National Guard, the wife’s grandfather was commander-in-chief of that guard. They came up and spent a week’s encampment there, and the Como Springs really made money. Those fellows who put their money into that thought they were just going places. They did for a while, and then things went into reverse because the national economy began to lag, and it was hard on those kinds of places. Besides that, they had what happens to those kinds of places right to this day – vandalism. Vandals began to tear the place up. It was pitiful. Just a shame to see what they did. They had a dancing pavilion. They had dressing rooms. They had a bathing pond. They had a boat pond. As many as three thousand people could gather there. That’s the same as there are down at Lagoon now. They used to have picnics and excursions partying at Como Springs. Not changing the subject any, Como Springs was named after this lady I’m telling you about, the wife of Samuel Francis. She named it Como Springs because there was a Lake Como in the little village in Italy where she had lived. Mrs. Francis was the daughter of the chief butler of the Pope of Rome. I’ll never forget that because she told it to me many times. She always told her stories around so it came to me from several angles. The Pope of Rome would move up into the Swiss Alps during the summer because it got too hot down in Italy, of course. The chief butler would go there. Mrs. Francis went with him. That’s how she was able to learn fluently three or four 20 languages. She could talk the Italian language, French language, and the German language very fluently. Many people would go to her to have their letter written. People that would migrate or immigrate from German would come over here, and they would get letters in German, which they couldn’t read. They kept her busy there for a long while, not just from Germany, but immigrants from France, she could even read Spanish. They were uneducated in English, and they couldn’t read their native language because they left their native land when they were small kids. JC: I am glad you mentioned that... Now you mentioned dancing at Como. Did you dance in the community a lot? RF: Oh yes, during the summer months. This was an open air pavilion. During the summer months there was a dance there every night. Some families from Salt Lake, one family that I remember very well, the Ed Rich family, in the early days – he used to live here. He never forgot Como Springs, and he always came back here and spent his summers. They always brought two or three of his neighbors. They were people that were well-todo. They brought their own music, and every night they would have a dance and invite some of their friends from town into this open air pavilion. It lasted long after the rest of the resorts fell into, what you might call decay, or began to fall down, or suffer from bad effects of vandalism. Finally the Francis people went up there and said, “In order to save this, we better tear it down and haul it out.” They asked Grandfather Fry about it, and he said, “Well, I don’t care anything about it. If you want to go there and tear it up, you can have it, as far as I’m concerned.” Dr. Wadsworth had lost all his interest in it because it got to the point where, well, the whole thing in a nutshell was this – those three men each put a thousand dollars in it to start it, and it prospered; it was money 21 well spent. But later on, I don’t know what happened; of course, the financial panic of 1894 had something to do with it. It probably had all to do with it. They finally lost interest. The resort, as a resort, fell into decay. Us kids later on used to go there to swim, and we used to go up there to boat ride. We used to go up there to catch carp, great big old carp half as long as our legs. They weren’t any good because they had a mud taste. Carp is a vegetarian, and he isn’t a very good-tasting fish. We used to like to catch them. It was fun. We used to go out on rafts and things like that. Where do we go from here? JC: Can you tell me about the opera house in Morgan? RF: The opera house was raised in succession to what was known as Simon’s Hall. I told you the other night. Simon’s Hall established just three houses down. The opera house people were an organization of local people. They wanted it around town in the business district, but the townspeople didn’t feel like that would be a good healthy place to have an opera house. They organized a group and established it on this side of the river to keep it away from, at that particular time; Morgan was the proud possessor – or the disgraceful possessor– you might say, of three big well-stocked saloons. They used to say, “Oh well, the railroad people keep that a goin’.” But that was just a cover-up. I think the townspeople did their share to keep the three saloons a going. A bishop by the name of Lonzo Francis kind of took charge of the opera house organization. Lonzo Francis and Joseph T. Waldron, and I think my father was in it as one of the board of directors, and then some members of the county, F. W. Clark from Richville. Some of the prominent people around the county took blocks of stock, like $50 or $100 shares in it. Like every organization, when it started, it pays for a while, but finally it gets to the 22 point where it doesn’t pay. That’s how the Morgan Opera House was built. For quite a time it made money, paid a little dividend to the stockholders; but later on it got to the point where there were no dividends. Then it began to fall into decay, and it was later sold to its present owner, a fellow by the name of Alva Deardon. JC: How much did it cost to go to the show then? RF: Well, a top ticket, reserved seat, would be 50 cents. Mostly 35 cents. A right good show came through, it would be 50 cents. But they were good shows. Traveling companies used to come in here for a long while, almost weekly. Matinees were held in the afternoon soon after the opera house was established there. JC: Will you tell me again about when you were waiting in line and the price was 10 cents, and then they changed it? RF: Well, I was down here in Simon’s Hall. A bunch of kids would never pay more than 10 cents a ticket to any traveling show that came through, for a kid under 12 years of age. One night we went down to quite a good show – it was highly advertised. It was a good show for that day. And the man came out front, and he saw a lot of kids gathered there. I guess there was about 25 of us. And he says, “Listen, kids, this is a good show. This is a high-class show. Don’t come in here and expect to come in here on your 10 cent propositions, we don’t want them. The price of our ticket is 15 cents.” Well, a lot of us, 10 cents is all we had. We figured we’d have to go home, but there was a fellow there by the name of Morgan. Let’s see if I can remember his name – Henry Morgan. He was a cattle buyer. When the man went back inside, he says, “Oh kids, we’ll fix that.” He went around through the crowd that had gathered and picked up every nickel he could 23 find. Traded them out of it some way. And gave each one of us kids a nickel so we could put it on top of our dime and go into the show. I will never forget that. I was telling one of his relatives here that came to see me last year about that, and he says, “Oh, that’s just like Uncle Henry.” You couldn’t beat him for that. I will never forget him because he saved the night for us kids. We’d all have had to gone home. We only had a dime. JC: Will you tell me a little bit about the construction of the stake house? RF: Well, that’s really before my day. But the walls were put up. There were a bunch of Pennsylvania Dutchmen settled in here, mostly in North Morgan. There was a fellow by the name of Henry Rock, Peter Rock, the old Peter, not these young Peters that I’m telling you about. I’ve forgotten the other fellow’s name. They moved away from here when the construction changed –when they started to build with brick and sandstone and one thing and another because they were rock masons that laid those walls up. There was a family here by the name of Welch, Pennsylvania Dutch. There was Ambrose and Dan Welch. Two brothers. They hauled those rocks up an incline onto the level they were working on. Now that was before my time, but I have seen pictures of it, and my father has told me about it... It finally got way out into the road there in order to get an incline that wouldn’t be too steep. A big old, strong husky Dutchman by the name of Dan Welch, we used to call him. He started out as a very fine fellow. He was a perfect saint, but soon after the stake house was finished he became an alcoholic. But he was always a good-natured old fellow, and we used to like to congregate around him just to hear him talk. He was a convert to the church. He was able to make quite a gospel speech. He used to admonish us kids to be careful as we grew up not to get in 24 bad habits. But he was a good example of one who got off the beaten trail because he finally did become an alcoholic. He and his brother wheeled that rock up to Henry Rock and Peter Rock, who were the masons. There were two other Dutchmen, but I can’t think of their names. But I can think of those two Rock brothers because I can connect them with the rock. JC: You mentioned the bow in the ceiling the other day. RF: Well, they didn’t have architects in those days. They had the fellows that did their best, but the largest piece lumber was a native lumber, a 2 x 8. I have been told it was the largest piece of lumber that was ever put into that roof. Before the stake house was more than maybe 10 or 12 years old, a heavy fall of snow – the snow would lay on the roof and I have been there myself when the roof would crack under the weight of the snow. Especially if there was two feet of snow, or maybe more on the roof, and a little rainstorm come up. The snow would get heavy and the roof would crack. Now I happened to be in a meeting, an afternoon meeting we used to call it, when the bishop got up and says, “I think it’s advisable to dismiss this meeting right now, and all of us go home and get ladders and ropes, and get up on the roof and see if we can’t lift some of the burden on it.” So them men got up there and shoveled off the snow. This was two or three years before the roof burnt off. They say it was burned off. Well, the roof did burn off but everything else burned up, but the walls. I remember that very well because I was in Sunday school. I was quite a kid then. Some people that have written up the story said that the house was packed; it was Sunday school that was there. They dismissed and marched orderly out and nobody was hurt. No mishap resulted but that’s wrong. I’ll never forget it if I live to be one hundred. We were sitting there in the class. 25 Our teacher was James H. Taggart. He had us pretty well interested. He had just come off a mission. He was able to tell us a lot of things. All of a sudden, a fine old fellow, a Danishman that couldn’t talk very good English, rushed in there through both doors and hollered to the top of his voice, “The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire! Run out! Run out!” We all thought something had happened, like a man was crazy. We all jumped up and looked to the back door, which was the front door. It faced the other way. We all looked. I remember our teacher said, “Well, we better get out of here. They say the place is on fire.” Well, I believe I was one of the first to get out, but when I got in the aisle there were six men coming down the aisle with the organ on their shoulders. There wasn’t much order about it, but nobody got hurt. Everybody ran home to get a bucket. Some of them went up to the head of the ditch to turn more water down. They had a bucket brigade, but it was hopeless. They were helpless because it got such a good start. It was one of the March days and the roof was dry, and it started from the chimney. The chimney run up the side of the building. The building caught some sparks that had blown up the chimney. It was a cold, old March day, and the shingles were all burning. JC: Now, will you tell me a little bit about your Indian stories? RF: Well, the first Indian story that I am familiar with - the Indians used to come up here at an early date. It was a regular thing with them, as soon as the snow went off and the weather got warm, they used to winter down on what we used to call Skull Valley in Tooele County – a mild climate – and that is where they spent their winters. They lived in tepees Indian tents, we called them, tepees. They’d come up here on the public square. It’s that piece of ground now back of the welfare building here in Morgan, still 26 owned by the church. They pitched their tents and dug holes in the ground to jerk their meat. Word would come up from Salt Lake to get ready, the Indians were on the move. The bishop would take one of the fat steers from the tithing herd, and dress it out, butcher it, and pass it out to the Indians. They would dress it their way – that is they would make what is known as jerky out of it. They first soaked it in salt water and then smoked it. Those old marks were there for many years. I can remember them very well. After the Indians would leave, we would have to go clear the mess up, lots of times, what they had left. They weren’t very tidy. I remember those old holes, and we used to call them squaw holes. Squaws did all that work. The male Indians used to take care of the horses. They spent most of their time bragging and trading horses with some of the people that lived here, some of the natives. So the squaws did the work. The townspeople furnished the bread and cakes and biscuits, and some of them would cook beans to take to the Indians to keep them on the best side. If you didn’t treat the Indians, Brigham Young used to say – “It’s better to feed the Indians than to fight them.” The people in this valley took that to heart. It was a regular thing. That bunch of Indians, they were Utes. They would spend a week to 10 days here, resting, getting ready for their trip over into the head of Lost Creek and out into Wyoming, up into Woodruff and some of those places, and around Bear Lake. They would go from here up and there and make a circle and then come back down to Bear River and back down into Skull Valley for the winter. They did that as a regular thing. Now, I remember very well, the Indians were there, and they had been there about three days. We hadn’t seen them, my sister and I, and we kept teasing Mother, “Take us up to see the Indians. You promised you would.” She says, “I can’t.” My youngest sister – we called her Maudy– 27 she wasn’t feeling well, and Mother had to stay with her. So Earl Butter’s mother, her name was Gwendolyn Butters, she was an immigrant from Denmark, I think, or it could have been Norway – she was a Scandinavian – working for us there, we called her Lenny. She said, “Well, I’ll have Lenny take you up.” So Lenny took Ada and I each by the hand up to watch the Indians. Soon after daylight they decided to leave. We put it off until the last day. We kept way back and didn’t get in their road, but it was quite a sight to see them break camp. We watched them until they got up the canyon. They kicked up a lot of dust, having to go down to the lower bridge to cross, and went right up through town. They would fasten their tent poles on the side of their ponies, and then load the sloping tent poles with their baggage dragging in the dust. You could always tell when the Indians went or where they went. You could stand and watch that cloud of dust up the canyon for two hours after they broke camp over on the square. And then the stragglers used to come along. I remember once there was an Indian family. They were camped up there close to, what’s just above the high school– it’s what we called up to the head of the city ditch. Out on the river there was several families. We used to call them stragglers. They were Indians that kind of went on their own. They were perfect beggars. They would come and beg around for a day or two, and people were advised to hand out, and they did. They were glad to. A good way to keep them peaceable. I remember we were going to a birthday party. We were invited to a birthday party of Morgan White. He was about our age. He was Emma White’s second son. He was having a party at his grandmother’s house. Now that house is still sanding. It’s there by the drive-in. She was a widow lady and she didn’t have much to give the Indians, although she did give them things. While the party was going on, the Indians 28 came in. Of course we swarmed around them. It was a curiosity to us, and we were playing games, one thing and another, a lot of little kids. I imagine I was probably maybe six years old, my sister a little bit younger, and we didn’t notice what happened. There was one real old Indian. He was bent way over and walked with a cane or a stick... That old fellow gathered up my sister in such a way that she didn’t scream. He held her right against his old bare breast. The Indians started to go away. We didn’t notice that she wasn’t there, he did it so sly like. And when they got down to where the opera house now stands, there was an old house being tore down. There was a family in there by the name of Ellenford. They had brought it and used the house for a while and then just used it as a stable. Ellenford bought it and one of his boys was up on the roof tearing off the roof boards with a crowbar. The other one was down on the ground knocking the nails out of the lumber and stacking it up. The fellow on the roof said, “Would you look at that. I wonder what that thieving old Indian has under his blanket. I bet he stole a ham from somebody.” (They used to hang their hams out after they were smoked and cured. They would wrap them up good so the flies couldn’t get in, and hang them out on the porch.) The man on the ground says, “Come on down and we’ll see if we can find out what he’s got.” They walked out there, and one that had the bar had to kind of threaten the old Indian. He didn’t say anything, he just grunted. They told him that he had to put it down. “Put it down,” they said. So he let my sister down, and boy she let everybody know. She screamed at the top of her voice running back to the birthday party. I said, “Well, why didn’t you holler?” She said, “I tried to, but he put his dirty old hand over my mouth.” I said, “Why didn’t you bite his finger?” She said, “I did but he’d pinch my cheek. He held me so tight against his stinkin’ old belly.” We never 29 thought much about it. It was kind of forgotten. I never forgot because it was really my place to look after my sister’s welfare, which I neglected to do, but it taught me a lesson. After that I was always wary of Indians. They were treacherous. They were poor, they were unfortunate people. That’s all they were. But they were treacherous and kind of sneaky like. They didn’t come out in the open a lots of time like they should do. Well, that’s the end of that Indian story. Do you want another one? JC: Yes. RF: Well, this is later on, maybe four or five years later. Down in the lower part of the city, down where the Hardings used to live, Thomas Harding was quite a farmer. He had a large farm down close to where Thurstons are located now. No, it was the Bull farm. His wife– his wife was a Bull. That’s the family name. They were one of the early pioneers in Morgan. He had a very crop of wheat. He had three big stacks, and they had just got through threshing. A friend of mine by the name o Charles Hogge and I were down there kind of waiting because, after the clean-up, we wanted to go and follow the threshing machine when it went from there to the next place. This Charlie Harding, his nickname was Spike. The reason they called him Spike was because he didn’t grow very tall. His father needed him, so we pitched in and helped them clean up after the thrashers threshers went. They took care of every kernel. While they were cleaning up, an old Indian man came there and walked over. Mr. Harding said, “What are you looking for?” And the Indian said, “Indian want wheat.” “All right,” he says, “I’ll give you some wheat, but I haven’t got a sack.” “Indian get sack. Indian get sack,” and he went away. He wasn’t gone long, and he came back with a big seamless sack. We called them 30 seamless sacks. They stood about 4 ½ feet tall. You know what I mean. I know that Mr. Harding felt pretty bad when he figured that darn Indian wanted that sack filled. He didn’t want to spare that much. He thought maybe he’d take that much in it, and tie it up and go away. Every time he quit shoveling wheat in, the Indian would say, “Indian want more. Indian want more.” Mr. Harding said, “You can’t carry that. You don’t want more. You’ll have to come back.” “Indian not come back. Indian want more wheat.” He filled that seamless sack right full. And the Indian says, “White man tie sack. Tie tight.” So Tom tied the sack, then laughed at him and said, “You can’t carry that.” “Indian not carry wheat, Indian go get ‘em squaw.” So he walked out on the street and started down the field road. I know he wasn’t gone more than 10 minutes, and he come by with his squaw. She only looked about four and one-half feet high, but she was heavy and she had a great big strap. He didn’t come with her, he just sent her. She walked over there. I don’t believe she could say any English words. She didn’t. Tom Harding said, “Well, what have you come for? You can’t carry that wheat.” She didn’t say a thing. She stooped down, put that strap on the front of her head over the sack and put it into place. Got up and walked off with that. Now there was a good two bushels of wheat there. Wheat weighs about 65 pounds to the bushel. So you can tell from that what that squaw picked up and walked off with. Well, it was an eye opener to us kids, and it was to Tom Harding. He says, “I never would have believed that, that she could do that.” She walked out of his gate and down the road. He sent us over. He says, “Go out there and settle on the ditch bank and see if she sets that down. See if she keeps a goin’.” She did. She walked right down to the turn in the road. That’s down where that last house is now. When she went around the corner, we came back. He says, “Well, did she set it 31 down.” We said, “No! She’s still going around the corner.” Well, I know they were camped, oh, maybe three hundred yards below that because that’s where the Indian set-up was. It’s down there where George lives. I honestly believe that she carried that right down there to that camp before she set it down. She was sure equipped to take that. It was a white piece of leather about that wide, put it against her head, stooped down, and walked off with that 125-130 pounds of wheat. Which was quite a sight for us kids in those days. That’s about all the good Indian... oh there’s one more Indian story. Do you want another one? JC: You bet. R.F: I wasn’t here when that happened, but this is what did happen. They used to turn their horses loose. They would come in the night, unannounced, and just turn their horses loose. They’d be tired, and the horses would be tired and hungry, and they didn’t care where the horses went. There was very few fences in those days. Grandfather didn’t have fences. They didn’t have time to fence. It wasn’t so bad ‘til the wheat began to get ripe. When Grandfather would go down in his field and see two or three Indian ponies out there eating the heads off of his grain, he didn’t like that, for the fact that he didn’t like to lose that much wheat, and that was dangerous for a hungry horse to stand in a wheat field and eat the heads off of wheat because they could kill themselves. They could kill themselves, that’s all there is to it. You couldn’t explain that to an Indian. “White man poison Indian pony. White man better look out.” It wasn’t long when Granddad got a fence, with some help of a lot of others. I remember very well the day we finished it. We had a kind of picnic down the field. My uncles, I know how happy they were when they finished that fence. We set down and had supper in the shade of 32 the cottonwoods. But until we got that fence, I have been routed out of bed many a time, well almost before daylight. “Come down here quick. The Indians come in during the night and the field is full of horses.” It was dangerous, especially like I say in the fall of the year when the wheat is in head, to have a bunch of Indian ponies, hungry Indian ponies eating your wheat heads. It would ruin them and spoil them. I have driven them out many a time. I’ll never forget how happy we were when Grandfather says, “Well, you won’t have to get out and chase Indian ponies anymore. We have got the field fenced.” And they didn’t. That put an end to that. They’d turn their horses loose, but they’d go down in the uncultivated land, down through the cottonwoods, down in the swamps. Now this one old Indian – I wasn’t there when this happened, but I heard it many times – he was walking over along Canyon Creek, along the east side. Walking up and down the creek, and kept looking across. My father was there, and I can’t remember the other men that were there cleaning the ditch. And he said, “I wonder what that old fellow is doing there. What is he looking for?” They didn’t take too much notice of it. Finally they said, “What’s the matter, you lost something?” “No! No!” He kept walking along, and finally one of them says, “Well, I believe you’re lost.” “No, Indian not lost. Indian right here. Wikiup lost.” Well, what it was, was his wickiup was down the other side of the river, and somehow he had been hunting his horses, and he had gone down to where the creek and river meet, and he had come up the wrong stream. So father went over there and explained to him, “You’re in the wrong place. Your wickiup is over here.” He couldn’t make him believe it. He changed streams, that’s what he done. He had gone from the river over to Canyon Creek and was on the wrong bank. “Indian not lost. Indian not lost. Wickiup lost.” That’s about all the Indian stories. Oh, there are lots of others, 33 but that’s the only kind that’s interesting. JC: Mr. Fry, would you tell me a little bit about the early communication in Morgan – the mail and telephone? RF: Well, the post office was in Morgan. There was also one in Peterson. At a very early date there was one in Porterville and one in Milton. After the Spanish-American War, when Reinhart Olson, George Criddle, and Daniel Morgan Anderson were the volunteers from this country that got home, they told the people they were way behind the times – that they ought to have a rural free delivery like was being established in rural districts in the State of Utah. It was a hard struggle to get it started, but they did get a rural free delivery. It was quite a departure, quite a new thing when it was first inaugurated. It would start at Morgan, go up the east side to Porterville, down the west side to Milton, and down to Peterson, and that was the end of the route for that day. Reinhart happened to live in Peterson, so he would stay home that night. The next morning he would get out, maybe 8:30 or 9 and start for Morgan, depending on road conditions or how deep the snow was. Sometimes he would have to start before daylight. But he would usually get to Morgan at the Morgan Post Office about, oh, maybe 9:30 or 10:30 and drop the mail he had collected and pick up the mail that was for delivery the next day around the route. That was the way it was done for many, many years. Later on, when he retired, Albert Welch was appointed rural free delivery agent. He did the same thing. But, of course, by then automobiles had come into general use. Reinhart depended on horses and a little cart. He had a little mail cart, and boy did he have it loaded. In fact, so much of a burden for a long while, he had to have a team to pick up the parcels. Just like everything else, when it is first inaugurated, it is 34 usually overdone. But I have seen him go out of there with just about all his little ponies could pull in that four-wheel rig that he had. Sometimes he couldn’t take all the mail so I would take it over to Albert Wiggins’ and locked it on his porch - like Christmastime or like heavy parcel post days. Albert Wiggins had it fixed so that we could lock it in a little place on his porch so nobody could get to it. If the postal authorities ever found that out, they would hang us, I guess. You aren’t supposed to do that. But I have taken over in my car and taken it over there at noon. Parcel post and some letters and some of things, like if the train was late, or if Reinhart had to leave in order to get home before dark. He would have to leave on a fairly decent respected schedule. I would say, “Go, and I will take it over to Wiggins.’” He’d pick it up maybe 2 or 2:30 in the afternoon. He’d have a key. I say if they found out they would have hung us. Believe it or not, we weren’t supposed to do it. But in order to make it go, not let it fall in disrepair, or let it disintegrate so that nobody respected it any more, we had to keep a certain standard of punctuality and efficiency. That’s the way we did it. Broke the law. JC: What about when the telephone first came in? RF: Well, we had a doctor here by the name of Osgood, and it was a miracle that we ever got him, as good a doctor as he was when we got him. I believe he was born and raised in a city in New York State by the name of Osgood. If you look on your map, you will find there is quite a town or city back there in New York State called Osgood, New York. I have seen it many times on the maps. He broke his health down. He got TB, but he had very high marks. He had very good qualifications. After he had graduated and got his degree as a doctor, practicing physician. He was one of the first we ever had that was any good. This man I told you about, S. Wadsworth, he was good for his day, but 35 he was beginning to get old. He had gone like me. He wasn’t quite as old as I am, but he was too old to be a doctor. He was still around, and pulled teeth and one thing and another, trim your corns and things like that, but he didn’t know how to do much. He made his own pills. He rolled them like this. Osgood, he was a high-class and high credentials, high recommendations. Like I say, he contracted TB, and they told him the only chance he would have of living was to get to California or Arizona. So he started for California. His folks were pretty well off, and they gave him the money. When he got to Evanston, Wyoming, they thought he was dying. They put him off the train. They had to do that in those days. They always had a stretcher on the train. I had seen them lots of times. I have seen them carry men off on a stretcher, men, women, and kids. They carried him off the train on a stretcher to one of the hotels and left him there for about a week. He did feel a little bit better, but what had really bothered him was this altitude. Then when he hit the mountains, he got so he couldn’t get his breath. He felt better but he was determined to go to California. So they said, “Well, Osgood, you better just take it slow. Buy you a ticket down to Morgan. They will put you off down there.” I don’t know whether you heard of Mrs. Stewart. She was quite a figure in the early days. She ran a hotel over here. They put him off and took him over to her hotel. She took a liking to him. He was a likable fellow and a very efficient doctor. He had a good reputation. He had skill. He was the first one that ever came in here with what they used to term as manufactured vaccine against smallpox and antitoxin against diphtheria. Until he got here, by golly, every winter we had an epidemic of those things. It would take its toll. Half of that South Morgan Cemetery is the result of contagious diseases, mostly smallpox and diphtheria. He was in such demand, it run him ragged. He was afraid of 36 breaking his health down. Everybody lived in mortal fear that the old epidemics would come back. When antitoxins first came out, it was hard to get, but he had connections in the East. He had these folks in the East pulling for him. I can remember when it used to come in almost daily through the mail an anti-toxin against diphtheria. The same thing against smallpox. Although it was hard to get people vaccinated against smallpox. They said, “Oh, it’s better to have smallpox.” Lots of them would say that. I got it. I got vaccinated when I was a pretty young fellow. I’m glad I did. The way it took, I was the sickest I have ever been in my life. Did you ever get vaccinated? JC: Yes. RF: Did you ever get sick? JC: You bet. RF: Well, he was in great demand. He joined up with the two Riches in Ogden. There was the three of them, and they did surgical work in the hospitals down there. They built up quite a reputation. He drove back and forth from Brigham. He drove his horse and buggy up to the curb. He used to drop a weight down. Have you seen the way they used to do in horse and buggy days? They would have a weight on the end of the tie line, drop it down, and that horse was tied up. You could do that along the street in Ogden. He was just stepping out of his doctor’s buggy, and it was a swell rig, and a crazy fellow walked along the street and shot him. A fellow by the name of – damned if I ever forgot his name. I’m glad I haven’t. Didn’t have any reason for it or anything. It was a mistaken identity. What the devil was his name? I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. It will come to me in the middle of the night, maybe. 37 JC: Well, did this doctor help to get the telephone in Morgan? RF: Well, it running him so bad and some of the leading men, my grandfather and my dad and Burt Crouch, Tom Harding, and a lot of the leading men said, “Doc, we appreciate what you are trying to do to the community. Let’s see if we can’t do something.” So they organized a little local telephone. Just two wires on a pole. One on the top and one farther down on the other side of the pole. They were put around the whole county. Some of the poles were quaking aspen, only about that big around at the top. They put them all around the county but it rung, one time they had 30 connections, 30 customers you might say, and they had different rings. A short and a long, or a long and a short, or two shorts and two longs, and things like that. But it would ring in everybody’s house. Oh, that was appreciated, if you could get the line. Then they had a central office over there in Hyrum Williams’ Hotel. He had a lever that he could give you the county. He would switch it over. You could ring anybody out in rurals. Give you the city, and he would swing it back into the city. That proved to be quite expensive, and Hyrum didn’t like to sit there all day just doing that. But he put up with that for a long time. Finally got rid of it. It was hard to keep up, especially when the poles began to fall over. They had been in about 15 years, and then the poles began to rot off. A windstorm would come along, and about 3 or 4 poles would go down. Then they would put in a support alongside of it, a peg. It was up to Osgood to kind of do that, and he hired a Jap to go along and do that kind of work. That Jap would go and dig a hole and put a peg in along the side. You’ve seen how they support them. JC: Before you had electricity in your homes, what did you do for lights? 38 RF: Oh, lamps. I’ve got one of them as a curiosity. Coal oil, we called it. Kerosene oil. We had kerosene lamps when I came here in 1910 or 1912, I guess when we bought this place. People had moved out of here and said, “That old place ain’t fit to live in.” By hell it wasn’t. It is a good house now. It’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter. JC: I heard that you were bailiff of Morgan for 22 years, and I think that’s tremendous. RF: Well, it was and it wasn’t. The only reason it came into prominence, there was a lot of condemnation cases. Every month we had them for a week or 10 days. It was quite a job. JC: What did you do? RF: Well, I did what a bailiff should do. JC: What’s that? RF: I kind of had to manufacture myself. I believe in some cases I overdid it a little, especially when we got into the new courthouse. I was bailiff in the old courthouse, and I didn’t take much pride in the work there. When the highways started through here, they condemned a right-of-way through some very good farm land all up through the valley. For instance, Taggarts Camp there. They tore that all to pieces. They darn near killed those kids. Drove old Howard, I think that’s what drove him to drink. I think that’s the trouble with Dewey. He just couldn’t get over it. They worked so hard to establish Taggart’s Camp, and it was doing just fine there, you know where it is established. They didn’t want to sell and they held out. Although Howard did get a good verdict. I remember that very well. Well, the bailiff has to keep his mouth shut. No, he don’t have to keep his mouth shut, only when he should open it. I don’t know whether I overdid it 39 sometimes or not. Every time old Jack Olson would see me on the street, he would want me. He was in there. He was a property owner. “Oh, here he comes, hear ye, hear ye, in the district court in and for the County of Morgan, Second District now in session. All persons having business for this court govern yourselves accordingly.” I tried to cut it down but the judge would say, “Don’t you do it.” But that keeps them quiet. In fact, you make that little speech, you don’t find any of them talking louder than the judge. They pay attention. I said, “Now, if you think I’m overdoing it, you let me know.” “Oh no, you aren’t overdoing it. Keep up the good work.” I got good encouragement from all of them. All three judges. One fellow, I’ll never forget him, I loved that old fellow. He was a Norwegian. I remember the last time he went away from here, he retired soon after that. He says, “Well, King Richard, the man who slew the lion with his bare hands, keep things going for another two or three weeks, and we’ll be back.” And I said, “Oh, Judge, I think you have got your history twisted and confused. I think I’m King Richard, who when he got in a tight place during the crusades in the Middles Ages, he says, ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.’” He went out of there laughing. He was a good fellow, a good judge, straight on the bench, but boy he was jolly.” JC: Where did that originate, that, “Hear ye, hear ye”? RF: Oh, I think originally it was in the Court of St. James over in England. Then it was carried into the colonies, and I don’t know whether I overdid it or not. ..It makes them pay attention. It makes them sit up. So many of them, it would lend a certain amount of dignity, you know, to the rules and regulations governing district courts. I didn’t like it. I said, “I’ll tame it down if you want me to.” “Oh no, no, no, you’re doing fine.” 40 JC: Can you remember any interesting cases you would like to relate? RF: Well, most of the time they were a condemnation proceedings when they were going through on that highway. Right through the farmland. It was terrible. I felt sorry for some of the people. It tore the heart right out of their farm. The condemnations proceedings for that canal that comes out just down here a mile, and a half back, went straight across from Bishop Webster’s home over the river. It comes out down there and goes on the sand ridge clear to Bountiful. Those were condemnation proceedings. Most of them were civil suits. We did have a few criminal suits. Nothing very pitiful. Oh, there were rapes, the usual rape cases. That was terrible. I hated those. I hated to even be around them. We had a few of those. We never had a murder trial. There wasn’t one murder trial during the years that I was bailiff. There were interesting incidents occasionally. Like for instance, one night just a little while before I had to quit... I remember one night I locked the jury up and sat there until 2:30 in the morning. You had to lock the jury up and not let any of them communicate either through the window or the door. It’s quite exacting, and by golly there wasn’t another soul there. I let them go. I said, “Oh my golly, unless you want to see me hung to the tallest tree in Morgan, you get back here in place tomorrow morning at 9.” They were. They were all here. But it is quite a thing to sit there until 2:30, and I honestly believe half of them were sleeping on my own. I could have been held in contempt. Contempt of court. I don’t know what they do for a bailiff now. I have never been back. I think they brought one from Ogden... You are to solemnly swear that you will keep these jurors in a safe place and not let them communicate or anything. You are under oath all the time. Then they used to make us visit the scene of the crime. We’d always go around and inspect the premises and give 41 the jury a chance while the judge was writing up his instructions for the jury. We’d go out to these different places for a look to see what damage was being done. It was interesting. When I started out it was only $4 a day, but that was way back. When I quit, it was $8 a day. I had no way of governing a salary. As they raised the wages for juror and witnesses, the wages for bailiff went up also. I didn’t have any control over that... They seemed to be thoughtful enough that if they were going to raise the wages of the witness to $6... Eight dollars was quite a wage even in those days. I think I have been out of there for around 10 years. JC: Well, you certainly have an interesting life. RF: I have had a colorful life. I don’t like to brag. But I took a lot of hard knocks. I have had a lot of disappointments. I have had a lot of pleasures. I had the best wife that ever drew the breath of life. JC: Thank you, Mr. Fry, for this interview. I appreciate the time we have spent together. 42