Oral History Program Ina Terburggen Interviewed by Jim Hodgson 8 February 1973 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ina Terburggen Interviewed by Jim Hodgson 8 February 1973 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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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 Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Terburggen, Ina, an oral history by Jim Hodgson, 8 February 1973, 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 Ina Terburggen. The interview was conducted on February 8, 1973, by Jim Hodgson, in Roy, Utah. Terburggen discusses Roy, Utah in the early 20th century and late 1880’s and 90’s. She also talks a bit about farming in Roy. JH: Mrs. Terburggen, could you tell us a little about yourself, who your parents were, and about your life here in Roy? IT: Well, I was born on the tenth of June 1904 in Roy, Utah, in fact, I was born in the home I am now living in. My parents were Henry Fields and Susana Jones Fields, and my grandparents were some of the first settlers of Roy. JH: How did your parents or your grandparents get ahold of this land you are now living on? IT: My grandparents came from England and lived in Hooper and they came to Roy in 1873. They took eighty acres of land which they had to live on for six months before they could receive a title on it. They cleaned their land of sage brush and planted grain. There was no water here at that time, so they had to take the cattle to Hooper for water. Later they dug wells and at that time they had to go down about fifty— five feet in order to reach water, then they would have to pull water up by buckets. JH: Did they just use a windlass? IT: Yes, and I remember another story that my mother told me. The children would go out with their buckets and fill the troughs up where the cattle would drink. She said at one time they got them all filled up when the Indians came through. They used to come in single file and about ten or twelve came through this one particular day. My grandmother went out to the well when these Indians came and said that she was very afraid that the Indians might 1 harm her. The Indian on the head horse would just let the horse's head go down into the water and drink all that it wanted. Grandmother told them to get down off their horses and wind it from the well. My mother said that grandmother just wanted them to hurry and drink and be on their way, before the children would want to come out of the house and wind the water from the well. JH: When you got water out of the well, did you irrigate any crops with it? IT: No, they didn't do much irrigating until the canal came through. They had to work hard to get the water down from the canal and I remember my mother telling about my grandparents and the women folk. The women would take their heavy aprons that they made out of heavy sacks, and put the heavy rocks in their aprons while the men got the ditch ready for the canal. Each settler had to do their share of work on the canal in order to get pay for their share of the water. JH: How did they dig the canal and where was the canal they dug? IT: It came from the mouth of the Weber canyon then down through Uintah and out to Roy. JH: After they got the water down from the mouth of the canyon, could they irrigate? IT: Yes, and they started to grow strawberries and potatoes and all of that kind. Then they would use the water to irrigate them. JH: Was your entire eighty acres all in crops? IT: It mostly all was and parts were used to build homes on. My grandfather had about twenty acres of land which was on the north of him. My grandfather's brother-in-law, who came from Hooper, used the land and then my grandfather used the rest of his land for crops. JH: How did they go about growing crops? 2 IT: They had to take a hand plow, because they had no potato planters at that time, but they would take the hand plow and then make a furrow and cut the eyes of the potato which was called a "potato set". They would drop these eyes into the furrows and cover them over. The strawberry plants were planted much the same way. To plant the strawberries, they would take a shovel of dirt and put the strawberry plant down into the furrow and then press it down with their foot and then cover the plant with dirt. That was the way we used to plant the tomato plants too. We used to go and make the rows of ditches and then we would take the shovel and go along and put the shovel down into the earth and pull it back and drop the tomato plant in and pull the shovel out. This was the way they did most of the plants at that time. The grain had to be sown by hand and broadcast, as it was called, and they would have harrows which they would go over and harrow it in to cover it, JH: At this time did they have fences up to protect your ground? IT: Yes, by that time they were getting fences in, because I remember my Dad telling about when the fences were there. My father could run the cattle better then when they had no fences. People just had the whole big prairie to run different herds of cattle in. JH: How did they get their seeds to plant the first crops? Were there other people around who already had seeds? IT: I remember my folks telling me that Riverdale had water and it was an older town and my mother told me that they would go over there and pick potatoes up, which was called "shares". This is the way they would get their seeds was from other towns. When I was about fourteen or fifteen years old we raised sugar cane on our farm. Our neighbors had a Sargin mill just west of my home now, and they would take the sugar cane down and put it through the mill. The mill had three vats; the first vat was used to start the cooking 3 process and the skimmings from this vat were used to make molasses candy. They would cook the sugar cane this same way three times until we had regular molasses and could pour it into buckets. I remember my father saying that back in those days that sugar was so scarce that they used molasses all the time. When he was a child there was no Sargin mill here. JH: Did they harvest all the crops by hand? IT: Yes, most of them. To plant our potatoes we would plow along where the potatoes were planted and then make a furrow and put the potatoes on each side of the dirt and bend down to scratch the potatoes out of the dirt and then put them into buckets. The grain was ground by a thrasher, where the horses went around and around in a circle and pulled a plow so that the thrasher would work and then pitch the grain into the thrasher. Later on though, people had the use of a steam engine that had the power to thrash. JH: Did you store any hay in the winter for the cattle? IT: Yes, we would cut the lucern, as it was called, and then it would be raked and piled in piles and pitched onto the wagon. We used to get on the top of the wagon and tromp the hay down so that there could be more hay added on. They would then bring it to the barn and pitch the hay into the barn and the manger for the cattle to eat. We still have an old granary here now and they had a bin that they could dump the grain in. We would come in with the horses and the wagon from the fields and bring it into the granary and we would he in the granary tromping the grain down. At first we did it for the fun of it. JH: Did you sell any of the crops that you harvested IT: We used part of our wheat to feed our chickens, hogs, and cattle; and some of it we would take to Riverdale. At Riverdale they had a mill and we would trade so many sacks of 4 wheat for flour. We used the flour to do all of our own baking of bread. We had no bread in my day, and you couldn't buy it in the stores; so we used a lot of flour to make our bread with. JH: Was your transportation mainly on horseback or wagon? IT: What we had was called the, "white top buggy." It had side curtains like the old Ford cars, but it had two seats. We would hook the team of horses up and we used to go into Ogden that way. I remember going up on to the state highway, (91 as I believe), because my aunt lived up there. When we would finally make it to her place, the sand was so deep that we would lean over the side of the seats in the buggy and watch the wheels go through the sand and pile over the wheels. They used to have to sprinkle the road with a little water later on though. My cousin would run a sprinkler along the state highway ever so often to keep the dust down, because there were no cement roads or anything like that. JH: About how long did it take you to get from Roy to Ogden? IT: Well, it took quite a while; it seemed like an hour or an hour and a half just to get into Ogden. When we got into Ogden they had place right close to where the city and county building is now where you could stop at a feed lot. This is where you could take your team and men would get hay for the horses and line them up to the watering trough. Sometimes we would go to Ogden, but not to very often. We would go to Ogden on circus day. Then a little later on cars came to Ogden. Then of course, we had automobiles to go in about 1923. In 1923, we had a Model T car to go to Ogden in. I remember once driving it to Ogden and from Roy to Ogden, I think we passed about three cars. I don't think you could do that nowadays without passing more cars than that. JH: All the roads down here in Roy were just dirt and gravel weren't they? 5 IT: There were just dirt roads. In the winter we had real bad storms, a lot worse than we have now, because wagons would go through town and make great big deep ruts in the roads. All the ones that had cars, always seemed to get stuck right in front of the Stevens Canning Factory. There was a real bad rut in front of the Stevens Canning Factory where fellows from other towns would come and get stuck. My brother would take a horse and hook a rope to the front of the cars and pull them out. When I was going with my husband he got stuck up in the rut too, and he had to be pulled out a number of times. When we went to church along 2700 W., we didn't have galoshes or things like we now have, we just had a common rubber. It didn't come up very far on your shoes, and when we got to the church house there would be mud clear up past our ankles. We had no sidewalks and the roads were real bad. JH: When there was no work to do at home, did you go to a lot of church parties, activities, or dances? IT: Yes, they used to have different parties at the church house. We would send a missionary out and have a farewell for him and a welcome home when he got back home. In World War I some of the soldiers came in on furloughs. I remember my cousin came in on a furlough and they had sort of a program in his honor. I don't remember if they done much dancing, but they had the family sing and had a regular program. My friends and I used to go into the homes and have different parties. They-would have different kinds of celebrations and they would sing, play the piano, and have great fun. I remember a couple who lived west of here and she would play the organ and he would sing. We were very small and sometimes we would get to stay out until 1:00 a.m., but our parents were with us of course. Our parents used to take us kids up to what is now called, Hill Air Force 6 Base, and we would go up there and down into South Weber. We would hook the team onto the wagon and take a bunch of grownups with us and take lunches. We would go where the canal is running through and pick flowers and roll Easter eggs. We all used to run down the hills and have great fun that way too. For other amusement we would go into Lynnwood Park, it is now called Larnfar Park, and they had a roller rink there and one at Lagoon. I was very fond of going roller skating. They had dances in Ogden, of course we had cars then, and go to different planes where there were dances. JH: What kind of schooling did you have? How did you get to school and when did you go? IT: I had to walk because I never road a school bus. I went to school up to the ninth grade. There was no Weber County High School so everyone went from the first grade to the eighth grade in the same school. We started when we reached the age of 6- I started school at 5 years old, from 1911-1912. At the time I started there were just the two room schools. When I was in second grade they built about four more rooms; two on the lower floor and two upstairs. When I first started I remember drinking water out of a bucket. The teachers would carry water from neighbor houses and I remember all of the children drinking out of the same dipper. Also when I was in second grade they built a fountain outside, but it was very uncomfortable during the winter. The ice would form up around the fountain and at times they had to chip the ice down from it so that we could get over to drink the water. We never had any room on our school grounds, we had just a small space where the boys could throw the ball to one another on the west side, and the younger children playing marbles on the east side; there wasn't much room for anything else to carry on. There were no ball games when I was in school but right after I quit they had a 7 ball team started. They bought more ground and built a ball diamond in the back of the school. It wasn't like ball diamonds are now a days. JH: The railroad tracks just run up here about a block away, did you have anything to do with the train? Did you get coal or did the train ever stop to leave anything? IT: My grandfather had a coal yard right up by the tracks and he would have it brought in by car loads from Castle Gate and would sell it to Kanesville, Hooper and all these towns around here. He furnished the schools with coal years ago when I was just real small. But I remember having the scales out here on the street, where they would lay the coal and my father used to unload the car loads of coal into the coal shed. They had a bin of small coal, of slag coal, and lump coal. The teams and wagons would come up and load the coal and weigh it. I have walked along the tracks a lot of times, just about a mile to the north of us. Many times I walked along the side of the tracks on the way to school but was careful for trains, or I would go down to the west along the road. There was no sidewalk to walk on and no school bus to take us. JH: Did you ever go down to the lake and go swimming or anything like that? IT: Yes, I went once and that was plenty. Our family went down when I was quite small and took a twenty gallon milk can with us for fresh water. I remember we had no bathing suits to take but we just used one of our old dresses. I put an old dress on and got into the lake. Everyone said you could float if you got on your back. We all had a lot of fun until the salt got into the pours of the skin and started smarting. I remember crying and my mother throwing fresh water over me and helping me get into my other clothes. I remember saying that I never wanted to go back to the lake again. I've never been back down to 8 swim, but I have been down there to see the bird refuge where you could see all the different species of birds. JH: You mentioned the Canning Factory just up the street; could you tell me a little bit about that? IT: It formerly belonged to the Davis County Nursery who came and started their trees in 1907. They got to Roy and finished the business of t trees. I understand that they sold all kinds of fruit trees to the Western States. My Uncle rented it when the World War was on in 1918. He had it rented and he owned a Canning Factory below us on the next street. He would store tomatoes and can them, then ran it for a few years as a Canning Factory. I used to peel tomatoes and work there with the rest of the girls in town. Later on Mr. Varney came and took over and now it is called the Stevens Canning Factory. JH: What sort of wages did they pay you when you worked at the Factory? IT: We were paid by the bucket full, but I just can't remember what we were paid a bucket. As the years went by I worked on the farm picking up potatoes and putting hot caps on the tomato plants early in the Spring, so that we could have tomatoes along in July. I received about twenty to twenty five cents an hour for working on the farm across the street. We would have to get down on our knees and put the hot caps over the tomato plants and scratch dirt over it so that the wind wouldn't blow it off. I think we received twenty five cents an hour for doing that. We also used to weed onions which ran twenty five cents an hour. We would stoop and take a little knife down into the onion row and take weeds out. I picked berries all over the town of Roy; blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. Where the Roy shopping center is now, I picked apricots and cherries. Maybe we didn't work hard enough, but I thought we did. It was real slow picking and we didn't make much. 9 JH: About how long did you work a day? You didn't work just eight hours a day did you? IT: No, it seemed like when the sun was so hot we would get up and go out early in the morning at about five or six o'clock. When I picked strawberries over in Clearfield they used to come for us in a truck along about five o'clock in the morning. In the day it got real hot at about twelve or one o'clock so we would lay over and sometimes come back at night and pick until it was too dark. Some days it would be cook enough to pick until dark. Some days it would be cool enough to work all through the day, but we would only work about eight hours altogether and sometimes not quite that much. JH: Did the Canning Factory buy most of their tomatoes from local farmers? IT: Yes, the farmers from the different towns all around Clinton and Hooper would bring tomatoes to the Canning Factory. They would have quite a season when it would start the twentieth of August and the Canning Factory was supposed to take them until about the twelfth or fifteenth of October. JH: Did they just can tomatoes or other fruit too? IT: When I worked there, they just canned tomatoes, but when Mr. Hardy came they started to can apples. Later on that fall they canned beans and cherries. JH: I heard they used to stand tomatoes. What did that have to do with the growing of the tomatoes? IT: That was the hot beds, as they were called. We would grow them and fix them with a cover of glass or sometimes canvass. I know my father used to raise hot beds and go out every night to cover them with a heavy canvass or with a light cloth so that we could pull them back in the day to sprinkle the plants with water. I used to work at the neighbors where they had about twenty beds. The owner would raise them for farmers, and then 10 myself and some girls would go count them in the thousands. We would put a board across the beds so that we wouldn't roll off into the tomato plants, then we would pull them up by bunches and count and tie them into hundreds. The owner would sell them how the farmers wanted them. When I was a teenager we girls would count the plants for the farmers to plant. JH: Was there a Davis County Farm? IT: Yes, there was a Davis County Nursery and called as such, although most of it was in Weber County. JH: They just grew fruit trees and things like that to plant around the area didn't they? IT: Yes, across the street here from us was all in orchard. Around to the west of us and all back through was orchard. Nearly everywhere you looked was orchard. Our farm and the one above us were the only ones on this street that didn't have an orchard. One of our neighbors Mr. Harness, had all kinds of apples. He used to let we children go over to his orchard and pick apples. He had Roman Beauties and apples that you never see nowadays. JH: How many homes were in the neighborhood when you were young? IT: When I went to school there were about sixty to seventy-five homes, which was all over the town. These homes were in the towns of: Roy to the state highway, to the Davis county line, to Kanesville on the north, and Hooper on the west. JH: Were most of the people farmers? IT: Yes, there were people who worked at the Davis County Nursery, some that worked on the Union Pacific and Denver Rio Grande Railroads, but the majority of them were farmers. 11