EARLY DANCES IN MORGAN The first dances in Morgan, that we have any account of, were held in a little one room log school house. Later a two room brick school building was used. The musicians at this time were Charles Bull and his daughter Emma Bull (White).They also traveled around the county and carried with them a portable harpsichord and a violin. Later the dances were held in a small upstairs room in the Court House, still later William Simmons built a dance hall in South Morgan. This was quite large, large enough to accommodate most of the dancers of the County. This hall had a stage in it where home dramatics were played. Occasionally outside talent played there also. On dance nights, Mrs. Simmons opened up a little ice-cream parlor in her home next door, where she sold home made ice-cream. The early musicians who played in Simmons hall were George Henry Taggart, violin; Joseph Littlefield, trumpet; James Taggart, banjo; Samuel Francis, bass violin. Henry Johnson was floor manager and caller for many years. He was a fine dancer and nearly always danced while he sang the calls for the quadrilles and reels. During intermission Emily Susan Ellingford entertained with step-dancing. Other early musicians were Lorenzo Eddington and Joseph Giles. Nels Peterson was a violin player who was very much in demand. He went all over the county, often playing every night in the week for seventy-five cents a night. Charles Taggart and Harmon Johnson also traveled around the county and furnished music for the early day dances. DANCING IN RICHVILLE IN EARLY DAYS. By Eliza D. Rich Those unforgetable carefree days when we danced in the Richville school house, to the music of Charley Taggart and Nels Peterson playing on violins, sometimes one and sometimes both of them, with an organ accompaniment played by Annie S. Dickson or Dyan Taggart. We always had a floor manager who did the calling for the square dances, or quadrilles, as they were then called. George Peterson was our floor manager, and during intermission he would step dance. Ed Rose was also a fine step dancer. He would change off with George, one dancing for a few minutes and then the other. They knew many different steps. It was really amusing and fun. We usually had two waltzes during the evening. We danced around the stove that stood in the center of the room. The school building was not large so it was impossible for everyone to dance at once. The men were given numbers and they danced when their number was called. The popular girls of course, got the most dances. Sometimes a couple would "ring on" or dance out of turn. Then if the floor manager noticed them, they were taken off the floor. More waltzes were added as time went on. Sometimes we would attend dances in the nearby towns. The little school houses were often so crowded we could hardly move, but more crowd, more fun. We would go to the dances in the winter in bob-sleighs. A crowd of us would go together, as many as could sit in the bottom of the sleigh. We would have bed quilts and blankets to keep us warm. In extreme cold weather we heated bricks and rocks and placed them in the sleigh. There was a baseball team in each town, They would play each week and at the close of the season the losing teams would furnish supper and a dance for the winners. I remember going to Peterson to the home of John Croft and eating a fine supper and afterwards dancing in the Peterson school house. Richville lost once and the supper was at the home of William H. Dickson and the dance in the Richville school building. We had many different kinds of dances. There were bow dances. The ladies would furnish a ribbon bow that she wore, and one just like it in a sealed envelope for a partner. The men would draw a bow, then look all around to find the matching one. In this way he found his partner for the evening. We also had had basket dances where the ladies would furnish a pretty basket with a nice lunch in it. The men would bid on the baskets. When they knew their best girl's basket, the fellow would bid pretty high to get it. Sometimes the other boys would run him pretty high. Oh! It was fun. We also had weigh dances. The men would pay so much a pound for the partner he drew. The girls names were placed in a hat and the boys would draw a name. Then the girls would be weighed. It usually cost the boys a half a cent a pound.d Then, too, there was the curtain or toe dance. The girls would line up in a row behind a curtain. Each girl would put one foot just far enough under the edge of the curtain so that the toe of her shoe showed. Each boy selected a toe and placed his own foot beside it. Then the curtain was drawn and the boys claimed their partners. To add to the fun the girls would sometimes exchange shoes. At all of these special dances where the boys drew or bid for partners, they were only required to dance with the girl once. But if the arrangement hap¬pened to suit both parties, it continued throughout the evening. The boy might even take the girl home. It was not necessary for a girl to have a date for any of the dances at that time. A girl who did not have a partner would go with her parents or brothers, or a group of girls would go together. No one stayed home because they didn't have a date. The boys chose whoever they wanted to dance with. It was considered in very poor taste to dance with your partner more than three times, during the evening, —the first dance, the last one, and one in between. There was no exchange of dances. When the musicians would start playing "Home Sweet Home", the men would get their partners and dance the "home waltz". Then the party ended with prayer. PIONEER DANCING IN PORTERVILLE, MORGAN COUNTY By Bessie P. Brought How well I remember dancing in the little old Porterville school houses. There were two of them, one in East Porterville, and one over on the Bench in West Poryville. But before I can write anything about the dancing I will have to tell you something about those tiny buildings, I believe that in all the communities in the early days, there was only one public building, the one room school house. It was there that church was held. Every meeting, every funeral, every dance or celebration was held in this very small, but important, building. It was the social center of every community. As I first remember the school houses in Porterville, they were little bare rooms with pot-bellied stoves in the center. Drop leaves, about eighteen or twenty inches wide, were attached to the walls with hinges along both sides of the room. These leaves could be raised or lowered to suit the occasion. Then long wooden benches, long enough to seat six people, ran the length of the room and supplied the seating facilities. For school the leaves up and the benches turned toward them, far dancing the leaves down, the benches turned the opposite way, their backs against the wall making seats for the spectators who were always present. Later desks took the place of the drop leaves, but they were left free so they could be moved for dances. The teacher was the janitor. He made his own fires, and kept the room swept up, but at Christmas time he got a break, The room must be cleaned from top to bottom for the holiday festivities. As soon as school was dismissed for vacation, the young men came in with brushes and buckets of slacked lime and the ceiling and walls were all white-washed, Then the girls followed up with soap and water. The woodwork was scrubbed, the stove polished and the windows shined. Everything was made spotless. Some of the boys took a team and went to the Canyon and brought in a load of evergreen boughs. Next day the boys and girls were back on the job. The lovely green boughs were tied together in long strings of beautiful evergreen. These were festooned along the walls, between windows and doors all around the room Above the doors and windows were tacked sprays of green. Then the girls brought in big baskets of paper flowers with long wire stems. For a week before the holiday season came, the girls had been getting together in groups in the evenings, making these gay decorations. When the evergreens were all hung to suit the most artistic taste, the flowers were fastened on to the boughs. It mattered, not at all, that poppies and roses were growing on the same stem. The general effect was lovely, and Oh the sweet smell of clean scrubbed floors, fresh lime, and pine. You just had to have the Christmas Spirit then, Every boy and girl who had worked so hard on the project, was there bright and early Sunday morning to hear the Oh's and Ah's of the older people as they came into church. Sometimes banners with scripture quotations or mottoes were hung in every available space on the wall. Some of them read, "Honor thy Father and thy Mother", The glory of God is Intelligence", "Onward and Upward", and "Seek Wisdom out of the Best Books",. We hated to discard the old banners and sometimes clung to them for years. The Christmas dance was the big event of the season, especially for the girls, for they nearly always had a new dress for the occasion, and new dresses were very rare in those days, There were seldom more than two a year, one for Christmas and one for the Fourth of July. The room was so small for dancing. The extra benches were piled high along one end of the roan, and on top of this pile sat the musicians in high seats of honor. The music usually consisted of one or two violins, and sometimes a banjo Later an organ was added by someone who chorded. Only a few couples could dance at a timebut that was taken care of. When the young people reached the hall they separated, the boys all going on one side of the room, the girls on the other. This segregation was kept up all evening, the boys crossing over just long enough to get their partners and return them. The girls almost never went on to the men's side of the room. The dance was always opened with prayer. After the prayer, the boys were all lined up on their side of the house, and the floor manager walked down the line and gave each boy a number. When all was in readiness the floor manager called "from one to eight take partners for a plain quadrille", and eight couples took their places on the floor. When the reels were called a few more couples could dance at a time. This was all fine for the popular girls who seemed to dance continuously while the less popular ones stood or sat around and locked on longingly. Something had to be done to even things up. So every once in a while a ladies choice dance was called and the girls who had been dancing were asked to stay off the floor. This helped a little, but it was not very satisfactory for obvious reasons. All evening, as the dance went on, some one kept piling arms full of wood into the stove, at least far the first hour or two, until the room and the dancers were thoroughly warmed up. Then if the night was not too cold or stormy a short recess was called. Some of the boys took down the long stove pipe and carried it out of the house. Others followed with the stove, Then two or three brooms were brought out of the corner of the room and the floor was carefully swept. After this, with a little mare crowding another quadrille set could be added. There was a time in the early days in Utah, I think in the 1890's, when the church put the stamp of disapproval on all 'round dancing", such dances as the waltz, the schottische and the polka, The young people didn't like it. They wanted to waltz and learn the new dances. Quadrilles and reels had, had their day. They were out dated, old fashioned. The preachers talked square dancing from the stand and parents talked it at home, but still the discontent grew. Finally the church relented just a little and decided to permit two or three round dances each evening. The young people were delighted for a little while, then they began to clamor for more. I remember being present at a dance one night when the young people staged a strike. We had been dancing an hour or two when we saw the boys gather in a group, with their arms around each other, their heads close together, when the next set of numbers was called, the boys went, in the usual way, selected their partners, then turning and facing the dance floor they stood still. A few hurried words of explanation to their partners and there they stood, eight couples just lined up along the edge of the dance floor. The floor manager asked than to take their places on the floor. Still not a move. He warned the boys that they were loosing their turn to dance. Then he motioned to the musicians to start the music. They played the music through and through about the usual number of times, then stopped. The next set of numbers was called with exactly the same result. Then the exasperated floor manager said, "All right you can have your remaining number of round dances and then you can go home," And that is exactly what they did. I do not remember what followed immediately after this incident, but it was not long until the ban on round dancing was lifted. But on yielding to the popular plea for round dancing, strict regulations were demanded by the church. "There must be no close dancing". There must always be two or three inches between the partners'' or as some said "You must always be able to see day light between the partners. In some of the towns floor walkers walked up and down the dance floor making sure that the rules were strictly followed. And always the parents were there on the side lines backing up the floor walkers. This rule was gladly accepted, and then we danced all the latest dances. The two-step - the Racket - the Rage and the Irish washerwoman. But the two-step was by far the favorite. We had rather an unique way of learning these new dances. Sheet music was out of the question, but we had two very popular and progressive young fellows in our town, Thomas and Lorenzo Phillips,. They had two married sisters living in Davis County and quite often went there to visit with them. While there they attended the dances. As soon as a new dance was introduced in Davis Co., Tom and Lo learned it, and memorized the music. Then they came home and whistled the tune to the home fiddlers until they were able to play it. Then, each would take a partner and start teaching the dance to the crowd. Both the boys were excellent dancers and it was not long until we were all "stepping it off," as lively as anyone. Often, for variety, or to encourage crowds for benefit parties, special dances were planned. We had pie dances, cake dances, basket dances and many others. When we had pie dances, each girl brought a pie. During intermission the pies were auctioned off to the boys. Then the girls claimed their pies and partners, and they sat down and ate the pie together. The cakes and baskets were also auctioned off. Another dance that was fun was the carpet-rag dance. Each girl sewed a ball of carpet-rags. As she wound the ball she tucked in a slip of paper with her name on it. The boys bid on the balls, and then had to unwind them to find out who their partners were. The real fun came in watching the boys wind the balls up again before they could dance with their partners. The poor fellows ran into all kinds of trouble. Some wound them so tight they kept breaking the rags, others so loose that the balls grew to enormous sizes and fantastic shapes. Often the balls slipped out of their hands and went rolling across the floor, leaving the boys hanging onto the string and trying frantically to pull the balls back to them, thus unending more and more rags, until finally they gave up and went dashing across the room after it. Often they got the rags so tangled the girls had to rush to the rescue to save them. When the rags were all wound up they were donated to the church group that sponsored the dance. There was usually a short intermission during the dances and at this time Eli Kilbourn and his wife, Saphrona, often stepped out on to the floor and entertained the group with a step-dance. Occasionally Jane Adams "cut-in" and took the dance away from them, much to the delight of the on-lookers. One of the earliest musicians we have any account of was James Lythgoe. He was a fiddler who played for dances all through the valley, even when they still danced on dirt floors. Other early Porterville musicians were Seth and Asa Rounds, Joseph Taylor, John Smethurst, and later two brothers Ozias (Bans) Kilbourn and William Silbourn Annie Smith (Dickson) played the organ. Floor managers and callers were Thomas Phillips, Henry Florence, Alma Porter, Joseph Carpenter and John R. Porter. These little school house dances seem primitive and poor, but in going back to an earlier date we find the following excerpt from the history of Thomas and Jsne Patterson trough, Pioneers of 1864 - "A wedding dance was held in their little town, and they danced until morning on a dirt floor. Their refreshments were potato pies with bran crusts. They had only one fiddler, but they were happy and enjoyed themselves."