HISTORY OF HULDA CORDELIA THURSTON SMITH, PIONEER Arrived in Salt Lake City, October 6, 1847 In the Second Company to enter the Valley. Written by her Daughter ALBERTA SMITH PORTER 30 A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF HULDA CORDELIA THURSTON SMITH SRITTEN BY HER DAUGHTER, ALBERTA SMITH PORTER Julda Cordelia Thurston Smith was born In Van Buren County, Iowa, June 1st, 1846, in a covered wagon as the family was travel¬ing from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters. She was the ninth child of Thomas Jefferson Thurston and Rosetta Bull Thurston. The saints were being driven from the homes they had made in Nauvoo and many were poorly equipped for the long journey somewhere to the West where they hoped to escape persecution. The leaders of this wagon train thought it necessary to travel as fast as possible, so a halt of only one half day was made when the baby daughter came to the Thurston family. All these travelers spent the winter in log and willow cabins with dirt floors and roofs that leaked. It was impossible to keep food or clothes and bedding dry, and much sickness developed. Many died and were buried in Winter Quarters, but the Thurston family all survived and made the journey to Utah the next year, 1847. They were in the second emigrating company and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 6th. My mother and eight of her brothers and sisters thus were among the original pioneers of Utah. The family lived at first in the old fort, built with houses closely joined around a court or yard. All the doors opened into this court which was used in common. Grandfather Thurston and his sons soon began making adobes and they built one of the first houses in Salt Lake City. In 1849 grandfather took up a farm in what is now Centerville and he moved his family there in 1851. The home he built is still 31 standing on the Chase property. In 1923, sixty-five years after leaving the old place, mother visited with Kate Chase, and spent a night in her old cabin-home, which is now a relic hall. Grandfather sold the Centerville home in 1859 for he wanted to settle in Weber Valley, a place he had sighted some years earlier from the tops of the mountains. In 1856, after a road, of a sort, had been made through Weber Canyon, grandfather planted a few acres of grain in the new area. It did not mature because of lack of water. Frost ruined the next year's crop. Then, in 1858, the family joined the exodus known as The Move South, when Johnson's army was approach¬ing. Several months later, with the restoration of good feelings and understanding between the church and the government, people returned to their homes, and In October of that year, mother went with her father and his wife Elizabeth to settle permanently in Weber Valley, later named Morgan in honor of Judidiah Morgan Grant. She thus became one of the earliest residents of Morgan County. Her own mother and the younger members of the family moved there a year later. Pioneers in any region have to depend largely upon their own efforts to supply their needs. My mother often told of the hardships they endured and the heavy tasks they performed. The women and girls in the family washed the wool after it had been sheared from the sheep, carded it, spun it into yarn or thread, dyed it with concotions brewed from various plants, wove it into cloth, and then made it into clothes for themselves and for the men folks. The sewing was done by hand as there were no sewing machines. Food was scarce; hills and fields were scoured for additions of the meager diet. Sego lilly bulbs were cooked or eaten raw. Thistles, nettles, dandelions, wild mustard, pig weed and turnip tops were gathered and cooked as greens. 32 Often a bacon rind would be boiled for a short time with the vegetables, then be removed carefully dried, and saved to be used again. Potatoes and beans that were raised in the first years were kept for seed. Mother said she was a big girl before she tasted a cooked potato. On special occasions, the well-saved bacon rind or ham bone would be boiled with a few potatoes or a cup of beans and a thin soup would be made for the family dinner. Bread was very poor for there was no screening of the wheat or removal of the bran. Seeds of sunflowers and other weeds were ground with the wheat and the result was dark, course flour that made bitter tasting bread. Grandfather Thurston and Charles Peterson with Mr. Peterson's two sons and a son-in-law made the road through Weber Canyon, and established the first homes in the Valley - Mr. Peterson in the area which still bears his name, and grandfather on the land between Deep Creek and Line Creek. Line Creek was so named because it was the boundary between these holdings. The trip to Weber Valley, now Morgan County, was made in an open wagon on October 8th, 1859. It was a long days journey over a road that was not much but a trail, and the weather was very cold. The next morning the family found eighteen inches of snow on the ground. Snow continued to fall until, in a day or two, it was about three feet deep on the level. This made it impossible to move about much. The only other family in the valley, the Petersons, were only six miles away but the two families did not see each other until the next spring. It was a long winter, extremely cold, and with deep snow. There was no communication with the outside world, no letters or news papers. For reading they had a bible and several old volumes of Journal of Discourses. They had no slates, paper or pencils. Around the fireplace, during the long winter evenings, the children learned 33 the multiplication table and became good at mental arithmetic. Also they became expert spellers. The reading gave mother an excellent knowledge of the Bible and a good understanding of early Church history. Mother often described their first house. It consisted of two log rooms, chinked and daubed with mud. Rafters were of logs and over these, willows were laid, then straw or wild grass, and dirt was heaped on the top. A blanket was hung in the opening which was left for a door and unbleached sheeting was stretched across what eventually would be windows - poor protection against winter cold and storms. One room had a hewed-log floor, but the other was of dirt which they wet down and tramped repeatedly to make it as hard as possible. Food was cooked in the large fire¬place which was the source of all the heat and most of the light in the house. Candles were scarce. Heavy rain and melting snow always came through the roof and mud would sometimes be quite deep in the unfloored room. As mother remembered it, it took longer for mud to dry inside the house than outside. In spite of much suffering and inadequate food, the family usually kept well. As time passed, other families settled in the valley, one of the early ones was that of Daniel Bull. Mr. Bull was a musician- a violinist - as was one of his sons, and times became brighter. A branch of the Church was organised with grandfather as bishop. For amusement, the women and girls had quiltings, rag sewing bees, wool picking parties and so on. Usually these parties were all day affairs with the men coming in for supper. Often they moved out tables and beds, and with Mr. Bull to furnish the music, old and young would dance until two or three o'clock in the morning. Grandfather gradually improved a large farm including most of the land between Deep Creek and Line Creek. He raised many 34 sheep and cattle so there was endless labor required of the women in the family who churned hundreds of pounds of butter besides washing, carding spinning, dying and weaving the wool for clothes, stockings, mittens, caps and so on. Sewing was by hand, and knitt¬ing needles were always busy. Housework was done in the hardest way. With no stoves, cooking had to be done over the fireplace. Bread was baked in bake kettles before the fire. Flatiorns for ironing were heated in the coals. Water for washing and boiling clothes was heated outside during warm weather, but the fireplace had to perform this service in the winter. Flax was raised in the Salt Lake Valley and in some other places so material for sheets, towels, table linen and underwear was woven from flax in addition to the work with wool. Summer seasons were so short in the Weber Valley that often the wheat was badly damaged by frost and bread made from the flour would be sticky and poor. Mother remembered several times when the dirt roof of the granary failed to keep out an extra heavy rain and the grain got wet. This wet grain had to be dried by the fire and ground in a hand-turned coffee mill, as the heavy storms also washed out the roads making it impossible to leave the valley. Some men went on foot over the mountains to Kaysville and carried back bags of flour. In 1866 an organization known as the Weber Canyon Road Company was formed for the purpose of building a better road from Henifer to Salt Lake. It was to be a toll road and an agreement was made with the Overland Stage and Mail Line to use this road instead of the one through Parley's Canyon. Stock was sold in the project and a good road was completed. Chauncy West was president of the company, my father, Willard G. Smith, was vice-president and J.C. Little was secretary. Then the Union Pacific Railroad Company 35 came along and wanted the right of way through Weber Canyon. They offered to build a better road with fewer crossings of the river, and their offer was accepted. In Weber Valley (Morgan) as in most other sections of the territory, established settlers took new emigrants into their homes and kept them until they had their own places. One such convert was John Rich, who with his wife and infant child stayed with grandfather Thurston and his family for many months. The fireplace was the center of family life and neighbors and friends gathered around it to relate their experiences. Mother heard many accounts of the mob violence and drivings the saints had undergone in Kirtland and in Illinois. They would tell how at night mobs came into their homes, armed with knives and guns, and drove them out, sometimes only partly dressed and often in the light of their burning homes. Emigrants from over sea, such as the Rich family, would tell of the hardships of the sea voyage in addition to the trials of the pioneer trails. Mother was so impressed by these tales that she never forgot them. She had attended shcool in Centerville but was pretty much on her own after the move to Morgan. She always loved books and she was a great reader, As more people came to the valley, books and magazines came also and they were passed from one family to another. When mail delivery eventually became a weekly event, bringing news papers and letters, the settlers felt that they really were living. When mother was seventeen years old, about a dozen Scandinavian families were among the settlers located near, and they were anxious to have their children go to school and to learn the English language. They asked mother to teach their children and she consented. Some others joined the group and mother opened the first school taught in 36 Morgan County, with about twenty-five children. She remembered how rapidly the little foreign children learned to read, write and spell in English. Some of them in turn taught their parents. At first, grandfather Thurston presided over the valley as bishop. Later a division was made and Charles Peterson presided over one half of the valley and grandfather over the other half. Early in 1865 Brigham Young sent Willard Gilbert Smith to preside over the entire valley. He was a guest in the Thurston home and in April of that year, after a brief courtship, he and mother were married. After the marriage ceremony, when they came out of the old Endow¬ment House, they noticed that American flags were hanging at half-mast and the city buildings were draped in mourning. Word had been received that President Lincoln had been shot and killed. The first home my parents had was of logs, with a dirt and willow roof. They white-washed it and moved in, but it was a poor place. It seemed impossible to stop leaks in the roof, and the fireplace smoked because it was improperly built. Two children were born while they lived in this uncomfortable place. Later they had a three-room brick house with a shingle roof, and best of all, a cook stove. Then, mother always said, for almost the first time in her life she could laguh when it rained; she no longer had to wash everything in the house after the storm was over. In the spring of 1880 diphtheria broke out in many parts of Utah, including Morgan. There was no doctor or drug store and no one knew what to do. The disease was virulent in type and of epidemic proportions. Everyone was frightened and no one dared try to help a neighbor. In a few instances, entire families died. 37 At that time mother had seven children and four of them contracted the dread disease. A few months before the epidemic, the two-months old baby in the family had died suddenly with an attack of pneumonia, so naturally my parents were distracted by the new threat. They did all they could but lost two little girls in rapid succession while two others were critically ill. After this terrible experience mother decided she would prepare for such emergencies by studying medicine. A doctor finally located in Morgan and he organized a study class. My oldest sister, Delia, was then about fifteen years old and with the three youngest children gone, she could and did take over the care of the family so mother could attend the classes two days and one night a week. This doctor Kohler was a well trained physician who had come to the arid West to regain his health. His school of medicine, as he called it, continued for several years and mother studied very hard; first two days a week and later three. She got the training he could give in obstetrics, physiology, anatomy, general medicine and pharmacy. After doctor Kohler returned to the East, mother had most of the medical practice of the entire county. She never refused a call no matter how bad the weather or how great the distance. Those were horse and buggy days, and with no road surfacing, travel at times wea almost impossible. The nearest drug store was in Ogden so for the remedies most often used mother had to have her own supply, and one small room in our home became a drug store. It was fitted with shelves and stocked with drugs. We youngsters were fascinated by the rows and rows of bottles, some with brightly cloored contents, but we never were allowed in the room. Bottles and corks were valuable, and to this day, I never dispose of a small bottle without feeling that I should save it in case it might 38 some day be needed. In time, laws were passed requiring examinations of all practicing doctors. Mother went to Salt Lake City and passed the examinations in several subjects and was given a State certificate. She was one of the first women in the State to achieve this distinction. In 1893, mother Moved to Ogden with her four youngest daughters in order to give us the advantages of better schools. Father stayed on the farm with a married daughter and a son-in-law to help him. For several years (until most of the four had finished or were in high school) the summers were spent on the farm and the winters in Ogden. In 1902 my parents sold their property in Morgan County, spent a few months with a daughter in Idaho (Georgia Smith Hatch) and them moved to Logan where they purchased a comfortable home just across the street from the Logan Temple. Father passed away eighteen months later, but this place was mother's home for about twenty years. She furnished meals and lodgings to temple workers and always had some student boarders. Mother had twelve children all of whom grew to maturity except the three who died at the time of the diphtheria epidemic. She worked hard but found time for many civic and church duties. In Morgan she organized and was president of the first Primary Association, and she was stake secretary of the Relief Society for eighteen years. Her last years were spent in Salt Lake City, and with her daughter, Gertrude Smith Rawlins, in Lewiston, Utah. She traveled rather extensively in her later years, visiting with children in Cardston, Canada; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Los Angeles and Berkeley, California; and Elko, Nevada, before the era of automobiles, she went on six-weeks camping trip through 39 Yellow Stone Park, She was the oldest member of the party, but kept up or ahead of the younger ones in climbing mountains and descending to canyon depths. Wherever she went she kept a journal with daily entries. While in Cambridge, she was thrilled with visits to historic spots in that area including Bunker Hill, Lex¬ington, Concord, the homes of famous writers and patriots, museums, art galleries, and the locale of her ancestors who came from England in 1635, and settled at Newbury, just north of Boston. The old Thurston home there is still standing. On her trip East she stopped over at Omaha, Chicago, Niagara, Albany, and New York, seeing the outstanding things everywhere. In New York she ful¬filled a life time abition by walking across the Brooklyn bridge. Mother was an ardent believer in equal rights for women and was president of the Woman's Suffrage Association in Morgan, with Mrs. Samuel Francis, vice-president. She served as a school trustee when such positions were considered suitable for men only. She advocated the establishment of union schools and tried, unsuccess¬fully, to get Littleton and Milton to build one large school to serve the two districts. The last years of mother's life were spent in doing temple work and preparing records for this work. She was credited with having one of the most complete family records in the church. She was an avid reader, interested mostly in religious and pol¬itical subjects, and in history, biography and geography. I do not remember seeing my mother read a novel although I know she did read Uncle TomTs Cabin, Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, some of Dickens' books and probably some others. She had a remarkable memory and one of the quickest minds I ever have known. Her eye-sight, except for distance, remained good and she read and sewed without glasses 40 until she was past ninety. She never lost touch with world affairs and when she could no longer read the news papers she wanted some¬one to tell her of the day's events and to explain what was going on at home and abroad. Mother lived to be one of the last three of the pioneers of 1847. She passed away July 9th, 1939, in Lewiston at the home of her daughter, Gertrude Rawlins, at the age of ninety-three. She was survived by three children, twenty-eight grand children, and thirty-three great-grandchildren. The funeral service was held in the Morgan Tabernacle, a building erected under the direction of her husband, Willard Gilbert Smith, while he was president of the Morgan Stake. President Heber J. Grant, whose father married one of mother's sisters, delivered the sermon. Brief brief remarks were made by bishop Herbert Whittier, who presided, Edward Griddle, an old neighbor, and Willard L. Smith, a grandson, who with two brothers and a sister came from Canada to attend the service. Tributes were paid by many papers in Utah and Idaho. The following is part of an editorial from the Salt Lake Telegram: "Having lived through it all, she knew the price the Mormon Pioneers had paid in sweat and privation to develop a new land for their people and their children - a prosperous and progressive Utah which today's generation all too often accepts so casually." "As the sands of time run out, and those pioneers drop off one by one, it is well that we youngsters who feast at the banquet table they prepared with such heroic industry, pause and pay them tribute." "Let us say: Thanks for all you've done for us. We will keep the heritage you leave us, cherish it and develop it, to pass it on, a still better land, to our children."