• • • MARTHA PASCOE RICHARDS My mother's name was Martha Pascoe Richards, she was born June 8, 1817, at Creemlyn, South Wales; she was the daughter of William Pascoe and Elizabeth Reece, the grand-daughter of William Pascoe and Martha Newman, who migrated from Ayeshire and settled in South Wales in the 1 ih century. Through some misunderstanding her parents separated, her father returned to his father's home taking my mother with him. Thomas, John and Ann were left with her mother. Her father and grandparents were very strict religious people, and very wealthy, keeping all kinds of servants, and uncles, nine in number. They would not allow my mother to write, nor see her mother, but when she was twelve years old she told them she was going to her mother and she chose mother love to wealth and education. She said she would soon be able to earn her living. Her mother was very successful as a first class dress maker and tailor, so she was capable of taking care of the family. As she developed into womanhood, she earned her living by working as a maid and sometimes as cook. She and her mother joined the church about 1844, these being the only two of my mother's family that joined the church. While attending the services of the L.D.S. church she met my father who was a member, and they were both desirous of emigrating to Utah . They were married April 27, 1850, leaving Wales the same year. They located for a time at St. Lewis where two children were born, John and Elizabeth Mary. After the bi.rth of the second child the weather was extremely hot and mother was very ill. They had made preparations to start for Utah, when the baby was three weeks old she was carried from her bed to the covered wagon and they started on their journey, accepting the advice of the attending physician that she might live if they left St. Louis. They traveled in President Crosby's Company. My mother was very ill all the way across the plains, unable to care for her two babies. She felt nervous in crossing streams and every stream that was wadable. My mother was carried in my father's arms across the streams of water. He first carried two chairs, then mother and then the children, returning the third time for his cattle and wagon. Every night my father had cooking to do over the camp fire, and took his turn standing guard. They arrived in Salt Lake City, September 1853. My father said he arrived in the valley with an old wagon, two faithful oxen, a sick loving wife, two sick children three biscuits and a penny. But very thankful that they had been spared to enter the valley alive and not left along on the plains for the wolves, perhaps to devour. The first morning after their arrival the baby died and three days later the boy passed away, and mother was sick for fifteen months after their arrival. She was taken care ofby a faithful sister Penelope Goodridge. They moved to Ogden City in 1855, while there my sister Sarah Ann Bertoch was born in 1858. They were living in Riverdale in a • • • dugout, while living there my brother Alma Pasco was born, who lost his life while preaching for the gospel in the Southern States. While living there bread was very scarce, but pig weeds were plentiful and were cooked three times daily. Some of the people were without flour, but mother was a believer in economy and would cook six small cakes for each meal and prolonged her flour until better times. Many a time my mother has walked from Riverdale into Ogden, sometimes carrying both of the children and wash all day for Loren Farr' s family, getting her dinner and sometimes a loaf of bread or piece of meat to take home with her. They moved to Morgan in the spring of 1860 and for a time farmed on shares for Col. J.C. Little, while living there one more little girl was born to them .. My father took up a farm in Littleton and afterwards purchased it from the Union Pacific Railroad Company. He built a log house with a dirt roof, and when the storms came it ran down the walls and caked nearly all over. My mother did her own sewing, knitting, spinning, made all her soap and candles, would gather hops and sell or trade for something, raised lots of geese, ducks and chickens. My father cut the hay with a sythe and mother raked it. The grain was cut with the cradle and mother raked it into bundles and assisted in binding it, She worked shoulder to shoulder with my father in the field, helped milk the cows; all the fruit she had for her family was dried wild currants and service berries . During the summer months there was no sale for butter. My mother made cheese and when cured it was cut into pieces and pounded into a jar and sold readily during the construction of the U.P. Railroad. This was called potted cheese. My father kept a bunch of sheep, the wool was washed and picked by hand and done mostly by my mother's hand. Such was pioneer life in Morgan. Many a time she had traveled to Salt Lake City in a lumber wagon with a board for a seat and drawn by an oxen team, taking their wool and dried hops or what ever they had to trade for something else. In the course of years they discarded the log house and built a comfortable home where for a few years she enjoyed herself. She was a sociable person and loved to visit among her friends and receive them in return. At the age of sixty her health failed and she was an invalid for ten years, and had to be assisted from the bed to a chair; she was a devoted wife, and loving mother, and a faithful Latter-day Saint. She died June 1896 . ... .... .. ....... .. ... .... .... .. .. ... ......... by ..... MarthaP. R. Mecham ................ ..... .... .. .