My father, Joseph James Clark, was born 30 Jan. 1870, in Santaquin, Utah.  His father, Edward Watkins Clark and his  mother, Louisa Mellor were living in the house my grandfather built.  My grandfather’s first wife, Lucy Ashby, was also living in the same house.  My grandfather married Lucy before they emigrated from England with three children in 1851, on the ship Ellen.  They arrived at New Orleans 13 March 1851 being nine weeks on the way.

My grandfather’s sister, Mary Ann Mellor, married William Moroni Palmer and they lived in Fayette, Utah.  They had a young girl living with them, working and helping take care of their large family, paying her the sum of one dollar a week, which was very good wages for a girl in those days.

My father, naturally, liked to visit his Aunt Mary Ann and of course met my future mother, Patience Delila Russell (Huntsman) or Pasha, as she was called. (Patience’s father was surnamed Russell, but her parents separated before her birth.  She grew up with her mother and stepfather who was surnamed Huntsman.)  After courting her two or three years, they were married in the Manti Temple, 23 April 1890.  Patience was born 16 May 1871 to David Dudley Russell, who was born 23 July 1833 at LaSalle Co. Ohio, and Susan Delila Hutchings, who was born 17 Sept. 1853 at Salt Lake City, Utah.

I was born 14 January 1891, at Springlake, a branch of the Payson Ward, Utah Co. Utah, and was named 2 April 1891 by Germany Ellsworth.  I was named Myrtle Emma after my father’s oldest sister, Emma Clark Warfield.  I was born in a small house that I afterwards attended school in, in the second grade but which has long since been torn down and destroyed.

My Uncle John Calvin Warfield, Aunt Emma’s husband, said it was the coldest day and the worst blizzard raging he ever saw.  He had to go after Dr. Oberhancy, one of the first registered midwives in Utah.

My oldest brother, Joseph Lloyd Clark, was born in the same house, 25 April 1893.  Later my parents built a brick home, two large rooms and after while a frame building, that they used for a granary and store room in wither, and under this building a cellar, where they stored their vegetables, fruit, etc.  It was a place of punishment for we children to be placed in for one to three hours according to the crime we committed.

There was two acres of ground and father planted nearly an acre of assorted fruit trees and berries.  The remainder was divided by a ditch carrying irrigation water, and below this ditch they planted gardens.  The other acre was the building lot and it was below or north of the ditch.  Above the ditch was a large playground at the back of the lot. ____, a shed and a creel (corral?) that we could put the cow in when they milked her and for the night.  Mother did the milking and caring for the garden as father, Papa, as the children used to call their father, was away working most of the time.  We had a large swing where we spent many hours and sometimes a horse in the creel that we loved to ride when we were older.

Mother, (Mama), used to make her own butter and cottage cheese and of course we had all the cream we needed.  She also made her soap, canned all the fruit, made our own bread and made all our clothes.  Naturally she was a busy woman.

The Spring Lake meeting house was just through the fence on the west.  There were three large mulberry trees that was loaded with berries every year.  Spring Lake Ward was a branch of Payson for a while, then later a ward with William Taylor as our bishop.  His wife’s name was Eliza Taylor.  I can well remember of Bro. Joseph L. Townsend coming to the meetings and how we loved to sing the songs he had written.  He must have been a stake chorister.  I don’t know for sure.  I used to know his son who was named J. Capstone, because he was born the day the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was laid and his mother was there.  Don’t ask me where he was born for I don’t know, but it was in Salt Lake City somewhere or so the story goes.

My sister Lauretta was born in this home in Spring Lake 14 July 1895.  A widow lady, we always called her Aunt Lizzie Openshaw, took care of us children, did all the work and took care of mother.  She charged $2.50 a week, and she had six children to support on what she earned.  Don’t ask me how she did it, I don’t know but we all loved her and she seemed glad to get the work.  she brought the two youngest, Vernon and Myron, with her.  Vernon was about my age and we got along very well together.  Dr. Oberhancey, the midwife and she, came every day to care for mother, delivered the baby, and charged $5.00.  She drove a one horse and buggy.

When Lauretta was one year old, my father went to Mammoth, Utah, to work in the mines and before long we all moved there.  Mother and all of us went to visit him and I suppose to find a house for us to live in when we moved.  Anyway, Papa was batching.  The house was built in a kind of canyon on the side of the hill.  Mammoth, being a mining town was built on the side of the hill.  Mama went to town and had cautioned us not to get into things or by any means bother the gun that was on the clock shelf.  There were so many rough people in Mammoth at that time that nearly everyone had a revolver to protect themselves.

Curiosity got the best of us, however, and I tried to reach the gun but pulled the gun down, shelf and all.  We all ran from the house thinking the gun would go off any minute and didn’t dare go back in until Mother came home.

When we finally did move up there, we lived in the central part of Mammoth.  The houses were so close together we played hide and seek between them.

My father’s brother, Uncle Brigham, and his wife, Lizzie (Sorenson) Clark, lived next to us on the north and Uncle John and his wife Minnie (Holiday) Clark, lived next to them on the north.  They had one child, Lillian, and the ran a grocery story.  I used to take care of Lillian for Aunt Min while she clerked, but she was nearly as large as I was, she was such a fat baby.

Uncle Brig and Aunt Lizzie had two children, a boy and a girl, but they died when they were small babies.

I started school at Mammoth 1897-1898.  My first teacher was Miss Lillian Miner.  I loved her very much.  I had earache a lot and I nearly always too a bag of salt to school and she would hold it close to a big bellied stove and get it as hot as I can stand it and would hold me to her breast with the salt between and it would ease the pain.  I think sometimes I rather enjoyed having earache.  I found after we moved to Logan and she died here, from her obituary, she was Fred H. Thompson’s mother.  How I would have loved to see and talk to her again.

It was at this time that another brother, Lindon Moroni Clark, was born, 23 September 1897.  We lived there about three years.  My brother Lloyd also went to school in Mammoth.  Miss Phelps was our teacher then.  We moved back to Spring Lake and Mother raised a garden to help support the family.  Father still worked in the mines.  I then attended school there in the same house I was born in.  My brother also went to school in the same house.  He was also born there.

The next year the house was discarded as a school because we had a new brick school house when well all three, my sister Lauretta was old enough to go to school.  The first grade teacher, Lauretta’s was Miss May Page.  I believe mine was Albert Hirsh.  I also had John Taylor, from Payson as a teacher.

I was baptized in the Spring Lake 27 May 1899 by Bishop John W. Taylor and confirmed the same day by Elder L.M. Hirsh.  The ward was named for this lake.  It was raining and I got chilled through before I got to our home, a block away.  I had many friends and fond memories of my childhood days spent at Spring Lake and one that wasn’t so nice.  A bunch of us girls went swimming in the lake and I got in an undercurrent and if it hadn’t been for my long hair and a dear friend, Geneva Moore, who grabbed my braids floating on the water and pulled me to safety.  She always said afterwards that was what made my hair so long, she stretched it.  It hung below my waist and I wore it in two long braids.

Also I went to my first Sunday School and Primary, also Religion Class.  Mother was one of the teachers in this ward.

My sister, Vera we called her...but she was blessed Olive Vera Clark by my father’s brother, Franklin Clark, 5 Nov. 1899.  She was born 23 Oct. 1899.

It wasn’t long until my mother decided to move back to the mines, Knightville, Utah, this time, where Father worked.  They were very devoted to each other and I can never remember them quarreling or speaking cross words to each other.

Father worked in one of Jesse Knight’s mines, the Uncle Same, I think, and no one worked on Sunday in his mines and he had several.  We children, Lloyd and I went to school one winter there.

After school was out we moved back to Spring Lake for the summer which was the procedure each year as long as we were in Utah, thus Mother could raise a garden and can fruit for winter use.

The next winter we moved to Eureka about three miles from Knightsville, and had a nice home there.  Each winter after that we moved to Eureka.  We went to school there each winter until I finished the seventh grade.  It was a nice school built on the south side of a large mountain and we enjoyed going on hikes, gathering flowers, etc. with teacher and the class.  It was the first school I attended that had a room for each class.

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The summer of 1902, 24th of August, my brother Elmo Ruel Clark was born in Spring Lake.  The next time we moved to Eureka, Juab Co. we didn’t get as nice a house to rent, just three rooms but we were altogether and were happy there.

In the summer of 1904 another brother, Eldon Henry was born, 30 June 1904, and he was blessed by my grandfather, Edward Watkins Clark 4th of Sept. 1904 in Provo.  He was born in Spring Lake, Utah.

In the meantime, Father had bought a forty acre farm in Bedford, Wyoming and we were preparing to move there and get away from the mines and worry and danger involved working there.

We children were thrilled with the idea of the trip.  We had been saving and Father bought two teams.  One, old Rock and Barney was a large team for that time, weighed fourteen hundred pounds and the other Pet and Bess we had for a year, weighed about 10-1100 pounds each.  He bought two wagons and so they proceeded to get all our belongings in them.

We had a nice lot of furniture for those days, a bedroom set, a folding bed, a new coal range, chairs, tables, etc. also about 500 quarts of fruit Mother had canned as we knew to star Valley was a cold place and no fruit was raised there, dishes and clothing for a large family but finally got it all in and found enough room for the body part of the baby carriage for our baby brother to rest and sleep in.  We started the first part of September and drove to Provo where my grandfather blessed Eldon our baby and promised him in the name of the Lord that he would have no colds or troubles on the way.  He was just 2 months old then and it was certainly fulfilled.

Father drove the lead team and of course two of the children rode with him and Mother and Lloyd took turns driving the other team and we children took turns riding the seat and practically hung on any place we could, walking and riding.  It was fun though and we all enjoyed it.

We drove the first day to Provo where  my grandparents, Father’s parents, lived and stayed over night, where he blessed our baby brother and named him, Henry Eldon, Sept. 4, 1904.  He blessed with health and strength that he might be able to stand the trip with no ill effects, and he didn’t have a cold or colic on that long 12 day trip.  There was no hotels, so we camped out every night and ate our meals around the campfire and slept on the ground.

Just before we got into the Lower Valley, in what is called the narrows, we met a man who was moving out and Father told him we were moving into the valley to make our home.  He said, “God pity you” but it didn’t discourage us.

Father tried to prepare us for what the house looked like, so we were surprised when we arrived.  It really looked nicer than we thought it would.  There was 2 large rooms of log and a nice frame leanto on the back, four nice shade trees in the front and a nice lawn.  It was wonderful to be able to play and work without getting on somebody else’s lot.  Father soon bought Mother 80 acres and we had taken a bunch of cows on shares from a friend in Utah.  He brought them to the valley and turned them loose with their calves on the range.

Lloyd and Father began to round them up for winter having no way of knowing what they looked like, but the  brand, and we also attended the first roundup we ever saw.  Many new experiences we had, running wild and riding horses and milking cows and the regular farm activities a family on a farm did, but which we had never dreamed of doing.  We walked most of the time to school, held in our Ward meeting house; just one room but was used for both purposes.  All the amusements and social activities were held in this same building and many happy days were spent there.

My first teacher was Carl Cook (or Cork?) and the year was 1904 and 1905 in the Bedford Ward, Star Valley Stake, Wyoming.  Other teachers here were Zella McHatton who married August M____of Bedford as soon as school was out.  Next year a Miss Harris was our teacher and she was a very good teacher and it wasn’t long until the school was overcrowded; although older ones who hadn’t attended because they had advanced as far as they could with the teachers before, so our family living the nearest another school had to go there.  It was called Muddy String School, and was so crowded and room so small we didn’t do anything.  Ray Humphries was the teacher.

That summer I met a young man, Hyrum Grant Stephens, who was staying with a brother, Edmund Stephens, in Etna.  We went to a few places together before he left for St. Anthony for the winter and we corresponded that winter.

That Fall the folks took a trip  back to Utah to our relatives and I remained with my grandparents, my father’s mother and father, who were very old.  My grandfather, Edward Watkins Clark, was 88 years old being born 6 June 1820 in Staffordshire, England and Grandmother Louisa Mellor Clark born 23 May 1840 in Leicester, England, was very glad to have me stay with her and help what I could in caring for Grandfather who was getting very feeble.  Many times when I came from school I would find him on the floor where he had fallen and was too weak to get up.  At one time, he fell down the cellar steps with his head against the bottom door and I had to lift him up.  I don’t know how I did it as I was very small for my age, 16 years at that time, but he was also a small mane, about 125 pounds.  He was so very thin and his hair was as white as snow.  We children always called him my white grandpa as mother’s stepfather, who was Ira Huntsman, was younger and his hair and beard was dark, so we called him our black grandpa.

Anyway, I got past him some way and Grandmother pulled on his hands and I pried him up some way.  He always thought he had fallen against the kitchen door.

There were both very good to me.  I will always be grateful for the loving care and good advice grandmother gave me.  I did Prof. Van Buren’s and his brother Clyde’s washing and Grandmother did the ironing and mending and she gave me the money they paid her and it helped me to meet the school expenses and but what few clothes I had to have.  My parents didn’t send me very much money as mother was ill and they had very little money to keep their large family who were home.

I attended the Parker School in Provo and having missed so many years when I could go in the grade I was supposed to most of the time, so I started in the seventh B grade where I was when we moved to Star Valley.  They were taking Algebra and I didn’t remember much about it, but they had quit taking in the grade school then, so I was soon promoted to the “A” class and at Christmas they let me take both the “B” and “A” grade at the same time so I could graduate that year.  At that time they didn’t have high school and I wasn’t sure I would be able to come back the next year for school.  It was surely a job and many a night I sat up until after midnight to prepare the lessons for the next day.  They allowed me to work ahead on arithmetic and spelling and reading, then I had a little time to study in school, otherwise, I would have been in the class that was reciting all the time.  I had 2 wonderful teachers, Shadrack Jones in the seventh grade and Simon Eggretsen in the eighth and I graduated next to the highest in the school  I was very happy about it.  I had many dear friends there who encouraged me to try both classes or I couldn’t have done it.

After graduating I returned to my home in Bedford, Wyoming in Star Valley.  After being away the full school year and not seeing any of my brothers or sisters or my parents since I left there.

I never saw either of my parents after they left me the Fall before and I never saw either of my grandparents again.  Grandfather died 17 October 1909 of old age and was buried at Santaquin.  He died at Provo, Utah Co. Utah.  he was over 89 years old.  Bishop Manwaring, who was bishop of the 5th Ward of Provo, the ward we lived in while I was there, used to tell him if he would live to reach his 90th birthday, they would celebrate his birthday with a big party if they had to carry him up the church steps to get him there.  He always looked forward to it but he never quite reached it.  He would have been 90 on 6 June 1910.

Grandmother moved to Salt Lake City  to be with her oldest daughter, Emma, who married John Calvin Warfield, 6 Dec. 1882 and worked in the Salt Lake Temple the rest of her days and died there 25 December 1915.  She wrote to me several times and I still have some of those letters.  They buried her in Santaquin, Utah, by the side of Grandfather.

Not long after I returned to Star Valley, another brother was born, 23 June 1908.  We were still living in Bedford at that time.  I again met Grant Stephens and we went together (steady we would call it now) and got better acquainted and I found him a very good religious boy, so 5 November 1908 we married in the Logan Temple in Logan, Cache Co. Utah and sealed for time and all eternity and I have never regretted it.

The first winter we lived in Bedford, Wyoming, on my father’s place and cared for some of his cattle and some of our own.  It was the custom then for a newly married couple to give a free dance where everyone was invited, to we had our wedding dance in the Bedford Ward, LDS meeting house.  It was also the schoolhouse where I attended school for a while.  Father, Mother and my 6 brothers and sisters had moved to Etna where my father had taken up a homestead and was where I lived with my sister, Vera and milked the cows, fed pigs, etc. to hold the homestead while the rest of the family were putting the hay on the place at Bedfore.

We were in Bedford until the next spring, but while there being short of needed cash, we sold 2 nice milk cows to get money to start my first baby layette, for $53, not much the way they sell now.  I didn’t have a sewing machine, so most of it was made by hand, taking a long while.  Hence the early start.

Then in the spring we moved to Alpine, Wyoming.  We lived across the line in Idaho.  It was just across the Snake River from Star Valley.  Grant had taken a homestead there before we were married and built a one room cabin of quaking aspen logs that he cut from the place to live in where Joseph Raymond, his brother batched the first summer after he got it.  He also has got logs for a nice little two room house 14 by 24 ft. but that was not completed so we lived in the little one the summer.  Joe stayed with us the first summer so he slept in the attic.  We had a very good place, rich black loamy soil, that never had to be irrigated.  We planted a garden and several acres of grain and hay.  Everything grew and it was wonderful to watch it grow, everything did so well there and we were very happy in our first little home.  We were a long ways from any church and cost $2 every time we crossed the ferry boat so we didn’t go very often.

My husband got a job helping stack hay at Freedom, Wyoming and I went to stay with my folks at Etna, and it was here, that our first little boy was born, 10 August 1909.

What a joy to hold our own little son in our arms.  We thought he was the most beautiful child ever born and our happiness was too great for mere words to tell.  We named him Howard Grant Stephens and he was blessed by my father, Joseph James Clark, in the Etna Wardhouse, September 1909.

Many varying experiences in his life, some amusing and some not so.  At one time he was lost for a long time.  I had sent him to tell Father dinner was ready.  He had to cross a slough or creek and there was lots of dry grass and weeds.  His father left Howard to come to the house while he watered and fed the horses.  Howard was always slow and took time, so we didn’t worry about him not showing up immediately, but when a storm came up and he didn’t show up we worried about him and started hunting and calling him.  We looked all over for him.  We had a patch of grain cut and shocked close to the house and the wind had blown nearly all the shocks down, but finally we got close to one and calling to him, he came crawling out of the shock.   He crawled into it and had gone to sleep and we had been looking for him nearly 2 hours and was frantically worried thinking he had got into the creek or wandered away and got lost.

At the age of 8, he was stricken with appendicitis and before we got him to a doctor, it had ruptured, so on 11 June 1917 he was operated on and doctor found he was in a very serious condition and he didn’t give us much hope.  At that time they didn’t usually do anything about a ruptured appendix, but Dr. Finck was a young doctor just out of medicine school and had saved a similar case that the local doctors had given up, so he made a drain from a rubber glove, a finger.  There wasn’t a hospital in the Valley so my husband and I had to be his nurse.  We were at my husband’s brother Edmund Stephens and wife Mary, and in order to keep everything quiet for him we had to let the two families go to relatives to care for until he was on the road to recovery.  Dr. Finck was very good and it was through his untiring efforts and the blessing of the Lord that his life was spared, also for the help our relatives and friends and the many kindnesses they extended to us, we will always be grateful to them.

On 13 July 1911 our first little girl was born.  She only weighed 4 1/2 lbs with her clothes on.  She couldn’t move an arm, but I was at my dear mother’s home in Etna, Wyoming again and she was a real good old-fashioned nurse and she brought my baby through in fine shape although she has always seemed small and delicate.

Howard and Mother’s children had whooping cough so we had to burn cresoline day and night to keep her from catching it.  She was so weak she wouldn’t have survived it, if she had taken it.  She was a premature baby of 8 months.

She was blessed at the home by my father, 14 July 1911 at Etna, Wyoming.  We named her Myrtle Juanita.  She was blessed on my sister Lauretta’s birthday because she was so little we didn’t think she would live.  I can never thank my dear parents for all they have done for us.  Needless to say we were very happy with our two children, but we had more blessings coming to us for another little girl cam to bless our home, 28 May 1913.  We always had to leave our home for these events as we were over 50 miles from a doctor and this time I was also expecting a little sister or brother.  In fact I followed right  in Mother’s footsteps.  Theo was born 23 June 1908 and Howard was born 10 August 1909 and again, Carlos was born 31 July 1910 and Juanita was born 13 July 1911 and this time I beat Mother to it as Orpha Delores was born 23 May 1913 and the last little sister, Elinor Delila was born 19 June 1913.  My sister Lauretta had also entered the contest and Dora Lauretta was born 15 September 1913, my sister having married my husband’s younger brother, Joseph Raymond Stephens, 2 January 1913.
Joseph’s first wife, Clara Belle Ames Stephens died when their first child, Clara Belle, was born 26 June 1911.  we really had a good time comparing our babies, diapering, feeding, bathing, etc.  But poor mother had to give up after having 10 children, 6 boys and 4 girls.

We went to Rexburg, Idaho, to my brother and sister-in-law’s, Arthur and Martha Stephens and rented a couple of rooms.  They also had a young baby born  7 April 1913, Norma Delone.  They were very good to us.  Art or Arthur had asthma and couldn’t work too hard so they got a job plowing for $2 an acre.  Art used a sulky (a riding plow) and Grant used the walking plow and they did well if they got 2 acres a day plowed.  Aunt Martha had boarders until Norma announced her coming, her mother, Cathrine Johnson took care of the family and nursed Martha while Martha was in bed.  In those days a woman stayed in bed 2 weeks at least and didn’t do very much when she got up for a couple of weeks.

We got Grant’s youngest sister, Orpha Gertrude Stephens, whose mother died when she was born 28 December 1892, to come and help us out for a couple of weeks caring for the children.  Aunt took care of the baby and I.  Orpha was a sweet girl, blonde hair and blue eyes.  She had stayed with Art’s and Martha’s place, going to the Ricks Academy just across the street where they lived.

We stayed about three months.  There was about 6 inches of snow when we left Alpine and we got back in time to plant a little garden.  Uncle Jim and Aunt Lizzie and little Polly went with us.  We camped out one night as of course we went everywhere with a team.

It was nice to get home once more and everything was nice and green.  Grant’s brother, Joe, had put in most of the crop as it was nearly July when we got back.

Life went on as usual only I was a little more busy washing on the board and carrying water from a nearby spring down by the river.

While we were away my little sister, a beautiful little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, (mine were always baldheaded and blackeyed) was born 19 June 1913.  We were very happy with our little family and loved them all and each other.

Two years later another little boy, Joseph LaRele, was added to our family.  He was born in Etna, Wyoming.  We were staying with Ed and Mary Stephens, a brother and sister-in-law.  He was born 20 March 1915.  Mother wasn’t well at the time.  Ed and Mary were very good to us.  they had a large family of their own...five with a baby six months so we got Aunt Mary’s sister Eva to come and help her.  You can imagine the washing and ironing of course on the board by hand.  Aunt Mary was another dear sister-in-law that I love like a dear sister.  A little more busy and I didn’t do much fancy stitches on LaRele’s short clothes.  At that time we made long dresses, two petticoats, one outing flannel and one muslin to match, a pinning blanket a band on the waist fastened to a large diaper and with an extra diaper a ____the feet, baby was warm and cozy.  Everything was changed every day.  (A band around the navel, too..I forgot that) or oftener if necessary.  And diapers every few minutes, so I washed every spare moment so I didn’t get much time to notice all the cute little things LaRele did, but he was so sweet and cuddly and I loved him when I could hold him in my arms at night.  Babies always slept with the mothers those days.  He used to love to find a mud puddle and sit down in the middle and throw the water all over himself or get in a pile of ashes and dust himself like and old hen.  Oh yes we had chickens, pigs and did all the usual things to be done on a farm.
I remember when Dad, it was Papa then, would drill grain.  Mama and three or four children would ride on the drill box and of course Dad drove from the seat behind.

About this time, our little home became crowded, it was a 2-room log building 14 by 24, so we decided to build another room 16 by 18 in front forming a T-shape with a porch on the south side.  Grant of course did the building, getting the logs from the mountains and from the nearby canyons, having some sawed into lumber.  It had a large window on the east that slided back and forth as needed and I believe I had the most beautiful fuchsias, seven different colors, I ever had.  We moved in on LaRele’s birthday, must of been his 4th, and he was afraid he wasn’t going to get his birthday cake but he did.

The floor didn’t have linoleum on it and it was a big job scrubbing that big floor on my hands and knees, but I enjoyed it.  Grant made me a washstand out of a dry goods box, made a drawer I could put dishtowels in and I made curtains for the front and we had a place to put a bucket of water and a wash basin and with a mirror on the wall.  We didn’t enjoy our new room very long.  Juanita and Howard were both of them old enough to go to school.  Howard did go to school in Etna, the year Wilda was born.

We were too far away from school for them to walk and only a one room school house where a Mr. Dawson taught.  He taught only one month and then he was drafted and then there was no school for the rest of the year, so we decided to move again to get the benefits of a larger school, so Grant and his brother Ed went to Burley and bought an 80 acre farm and a house and lot in the View Ward.  It had 5 acres of ground for a garden for both families and the LDS chapel was just across the street.  It had three rooms and a full basement that could be finished up as necessary.  We took the part with the house and 2 1/2 acres of ground for $1500 and Ed too 2 1/2 acres and built a house for his family there.  They raised a family of 9 children.  Ed died in 1935, 30 October and is buried in the View cemetery and Aunt Mary followed him 12 Feb. 1963  and is laid by his side.  They left a large posterity to mourn their loss.

I don’t believe I ever told you that when we came to Logan to be married, some furniture store was selling out and we bought a real estate range..wood and coal or course, a dresser, bed and springs, table, chairs and somehow or other we got hold of another bed.  And later we got a crib so we were all set for furniture, which we sold and didn’t get the money for to a Will Hincks at Alpine.  He was killed right after and then burned down, so we lost it all.  Wilda was born at Etna 30 Oct. 1916.

Kenneth Dean was born at Springdale, a ward near View in a house we rented from Martin Jensen.  His son LeRoy afterward married my sister Vera and it was at this place they got acquainted.  Kenneth Dean was born 9 October 1919.

We lived in View for three years and depression came along 1919-1923 and we lost the farm we had bought, no work men worked for a dollar a day and carried their lunch and we could see we weren’t going to be able to make our payments even on our little home, we had paid every cent we had from our place in Alpine, Idaho.  So we  didn’t [sic] the home to Ed thinking he might  salvage enough to pay for his own which he did and he lived there until he died in 1935.  We did take the garage, to make us a place to live in until we could do better. Our new home was a Roseworth, Idaho, close to Buhl.  Grant built a room on the back of rock just big enough to hold two beds and a heating stove to keep us warm, we burned sage.  There was plenty of that and believe it or not, 8 of us slept in the 2 beds, 4 in each bed.  Good thing they were all short.  However, some good came from our hardships.  We had neither of us done much in the church, being so far away from a church.  They organized the Sunday after I got there.  LaRele and Dad held the farm down until after school was out.  We didn’t go but after the organization, Bro. Andrew Peterson came to see us and he told Grant that he had been put  in 1st Asst. Superintendent to Bro. Andrew Peterson as Superintendent.  I was put in the Primary with Sis.. Ingeborg Peterson and we did enjoy working with them.  Later Grant was put in counselor to Bishop Hurst.  We have found later he was a relative, he comes through the Welborn line and since then we have tried to do everything we could to to further the work of the Lord.  Many wonderful friends and memories are ours from Roseworth, although that is the only place I ever lived I was ashamed of my home.  We had to burn sage brush for fuel and it was so hard to clean the mess as fast as it collected.  We were very happy with the extra room we had.

We had another baby boy to bless our home, Verlin Clark, born 4 August 1923 at Burley, View Ward in my sister, Lauretta’s place.  She was living in our old home at the time.
 

I will have to go back a little while.  We were living in Roseworth.  My husband’s brother, Joseph, who married my sister, Lauretta, came to Roseworth.  They lived in Afton, Wyoming at this time, but they wanted to move.  He bought a little home in Hansen, Idaho, and then went back to Afton to get his family.  He brought them to View and moved in our home and got their children started in school and went back to bring their furniture and sell their home and was killed in Pocatello, Idaho on the train as he was trying to get off there on his way back to Afton, leaving my sister with 6 small children, so the moved into our home there.  Ed hadn’t done anything with our home there.  Lauretta lived there with 7 children, the oldest 11 years old and the youngest, a boy, Joseph, 6 months old.  they lived there for 4 years and Mary and Ed were so good to them.  We were grateful they had a place to live without paying rent.  Later her baby boy died and they moved into Burley so she could get work to help support her family.  There she met Fred Smith and married him.  He was a good father and husband.

We had 2 more children, RaeOla Janice, born 11 April 1931 in Springville, Utah, and  Newel Jack, born 28 Feb. 1935 in Wendell Idaho.

Note:  her story ends here with a note from her daughter..

Jan. 1964 Mother and I were working on her history while she stayed at our house in Sparks, Nevada.  She had a stroke and died there just three months after our father died in Logan, Utah, in October 1963.  They were wonderful parents and left nine children.---Wilda Stephens Cox