Morgan Pioneer History Binds Us Together Mary Ann Edgeworth Ovard My parents, Joseph Edgeworth and Prudence Jones Edgeworth, came to this country in 1866 on a sailing vessel, and going wherever the wind would take them. Mother told me they were on the water for six weeks. She said father became so seasick he asked the captain to throw him overboard and let the sharks eat him. Upon reaching this country, father secured a span of mules and crossed the plans, arriving in Salt Lake City in the fall of 1866. Mother crossed the plains with her brother, Robert Jones, and his three motherless children. When her brother married Marian Richins, mother went to work for Bishop Charles Richins, where she met father, who was also employed there. They were married and lived in a one room log house, with a dirt roof and floor. Three of their children were born in that house which stood where the Henefer meeting house is now. I remember mother telling of how she would go out and milk cows "on shares" in order to obtain food for her children. Father chopped ties for the railroad up Echo Canyon and later got a job watching bridges across the river. 1 can remember helping clean the sage brush of father's farm, the same farm on which I now live. Indians used to camp all around the river banks in the fall of each year. The squaws and papooses would come to our house for food. On numerous occasions, my mother gave them the last biscuit flour she had. She told us children to go into the garden and eat a raw turnip or carrot. We were taught to be good to the Indians. My sisters, Jane and Martha, and I would visit the Indians and watch them make gloves and moccasins. One old Indian squaw gave me a strand of beads, but I was afraid to wear them, because I thought the Indians would steal me. There was only one boy in my father's family and, as I was the youngest girl, I had to milk the cows and take them into the hills to pasture. I would take them up the main canyon to the place they call Jack Beard's Spring, on the old Mormon Trail before school and then walk over the hills after them after school. I married Thomas Ovard, and we had four sons and one lovely daughter. My brother, Will, was called on a mission and my parents were hard pressed to raise the $45 a month necessary for his keep. I helped all I could by taking my two little children, Joseph and George, into the fields with me while I helped harvest hay and grain. For two summers, I loaded and stacked every load of hay and grain that was hauled in. My husband used to get a few days work here and there. He had worked for two days digging post holes for $1.50 per day. The day he came home and handed me the money, I had received a letter from my brother stating that he needed money. I told my husband, "Will needs money and our two children need shoes. What shall we do?" Tom said, "Send it to your brother. We will get shoes for our children somehow." That night I had a dream, a vision or some wonderful thing. I dreamed that my husband and I went down in the narrows in Morgan County, along the railroad tracks to pick up coal. We had to go by Croydon then, because there was no road through the narrows. It was told in my dream that we would find plenty of coal and shoes for our children, if we would go to a certain little sage brush, by the side of the tracks. So the next morning I got up and told my dream to my husband. We hitched our old black horse to our wagon and went to see what we could find. I walked down the track to the spot I had seen in my dream. There was a shoelace sticking out of the cinders. I started to dig the dirt and cinders with my hands. There in the dirt, were thirteen pairs of shoes, all in men's and boys' sizes. I called to my husband who was loading coal and he helped me gather them and take them to the wagon. We also got so much coat we could not carry it. When we got home, we checked with the local stores from Coalville to Morgan to see if any shoes had been stolen. None had, so we sold five pairs and my husband had enough shoes to last for years. 1 learned through that vision, or whatever it may have been, that by doing good to others and not being selfish, the Lord blesses us. ■©9- US