Anna Hughes Sorensen
My grandfather, Henry Hughes was born December 25, 1825 at Mold, Flintshire, Wales. My grandmother, Ann Howell Hughes was born in January (10), 1823 at Paisley Shropshhire, England of Welch parents. Then a young man, he went to England and met her. He was a coal miner and she a maid in a wealthy home. They were married and had one son, Henry, when they joined the Church and started for Utah, arriving in October 1853. He soon got work at a sawmill at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon and here four more sons were born, Charles, John, Thomas and Edward.
Grandfather James Gray Willie was born November 1, 1814 near Taunton, England. His parents were well off and he was educated in a boarding school. He had one brother who was lost at sea and four sisters came to America, when quite a young man, worked for awhile here then returned to England, but he wasn’t satisfied there and came back to New York where he met grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Pettie. She was born in New Rochelle December 3, 1818. Her father was a cabinetmaker and her mother was Mary Odell. She had one sister, Emeline, for whom my mother was named. After these grandparents joined the church and were married they went to Nauvoo and from there on to Utah with the second company of 1847 pioneers, landing in Salt Lake Cit in September. They lived here until all of their children were born, William, Mary, John, Nephi and Emma Elizabeth.
Then with the Henry Hughes family they were called to help settle Cache County. After spending their first winter in Wellsville they located in Mendon where their children all grew up together and attended the same schools and went to the same parties and dances.
My father, John Hughes was born April 13, 1857 at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon and my mother, Emma Elizabeth Willie, was born April 29 1859 in Salt Lake City on Fifth South between West Temple and First West Streets. They were married sometime in 1880 (20 January 1881) in the old endowment house in Salt Lake City. They built themselves a home on North Main Street in Mendon and started their lives together. After two years, on January 3, 1882 a baby girl came. She had blue eyes and light curly hair. It was hand to find a name nice enough for this baby girl. After much deliberation they decided Claudia Elizabeth was the name, Elizabeth for grandma Willie.
They lived here about a year, and then father’s work of the railroad took them to Calvin, Idaho about four miles south of Downey. They lived in a four-room section house. Mother boarded the section men and fed all the tramps who went up and down the tracks. Sometimes they would giver her a dish or something else they had along to pay for the meal. That is where the toothpick dishes with the red band came from. They belonged to a set of butter dish, sugar, cream and spoon dish.
It didn’t matter to her, she fed them all whether they paid or not. Her blessing said the Three Nephites would eat at her table and it is quite possible they did because she always set the table and served a meal.
After three years she was expecting another baby so she went down to Mendon to her mothers and another daughter was born, March 20, 1885. By this time the novelty of babies had worn away and any old name would do so they gave her all the family names, Ann Amelia. Amelia for grandfather Willie’s favorite sister and Ann for grandmother Hughes and Willie and always called her Babe. Evidently they were not very proud of the names they picked. This baby had dark hair and gray green eyes. This was my start in life. I had a pout and sucked my finger. Father was much disappointed at me being a girl so he kept my hair cut like a boys and tried to make a boy out of me.
Life went on here uneventfully for four more years. As Claudia and I got older we amused ourselves walking on the rails and following father over the hills when he went hunting sage hens and prairie chickens. In the spring the hills glowed with color from the prickly pears. Father sued to pick the blossoms and put sticks in for stems so they wouldn’t prick our fingers.
Bands of Indians often came through on their way to Blackfoot and other reservations and they always stopped for water or anything they could get. They were on ponies and dressed in brightly colored blankets and feathers. I was very much interested in them and not afraid so they call ed me Wiao (Good) and Claudia Kawino (Not Good) because she was afraid and would hide behind mother.
Mother used to go to dances up the road to the schoolhouse. There were ranches all around so there were quite a few people when they all got together. Father didn’t like to dance so he stayed with us and made a ball for us out of old kid gloves over balls of rags or string. The price I had for staying home was to be dressed up in my new shoes and red velvet dress.
We used to go with mother and father and some neighbors, the Joe Boiuetons fishing on the Portneuf River. Claudia and I fished with pin hooks for crawfish. We thought that was fun.
When I was about four years old and Claudia seven, father was transferred to Cache Junction. We were all glad to move because there were more people and it was near Mendon. There were three section houses and three foreman, Alf Wilmore, Jim Reed and father. Alf Wilmore had a terrible temper. When he got angry he would throw his gun and bedding down the well, then fish them out when he got over it. He had four boys and one girl. Reeds had two children. I used to take them milk and Mrs. Reed gave me a china plate, which I had for a long time after I was married.
We used to go up the track with father on a velocipede (hand pumped), sometimes to Mendon and others to Big Pete Peterson’s for butter. I’ll never forget that butter. It came in long round two-pound rolls and was very good, cost about twenty cents a pound.
John Barker also lived in Cache Junction. They had a store. We used to play with their children Vern and Henry. We all romped over the hills in the summer and picked wild flowers and hunted birds on it. I was always suntanned as a little Indian as I had dark skin. Claudia’s skin was very fair and her nose freckled so we didn’t look much alike.
When I was about six, father decided to build a house in Mendon, so mother could move in and start us to school, as there was no school at Cache Junction. We moved to Mendon and I started to school for the first time. Our house was the beginning of the one Verland and Vera Shelton now have. It was four rooms and a pantry and was considered very nice. Mormon Bird built it at the cost of about eight hundred dollars. Grandfather Hughes gave father the lot just south of his. It was a grove of trees and they had to cut enough down in the middle to build the house. Father made us a swing back of the house in the trees. He loved children and was always doing something to make us happy.
My first schoolteacher was A. G. White. He was a good teacher but I thought he was awful mean. He made me write organ one hundred times for talking. I cried all day and tried to get out of it, but he made me do it. Guess I wasn’t in the habit of minding to well. That was the only time he had to punish me.
Father bought us an organ and we took lessons also from A. G. White. We went to school here one winter than moved back to Cache Junction. Mother still boarded section men but she always had a hired girl to help her. While we were here she had Ann Longstroth. She got married while she was with us. Claudia and I thought Pete was so wonderful and were always peeking around when he came to see her. She was a good worker and very clean and would spank us good if we walked on her clean floor when it was wet. Claudia had to sleep with her and Ann got up in the night and spanked her for kicking. I refused to sleep with her. After she was married we had Sadie Baker and may Cooley. They were quite different and we liked them very much. We also had Nell Hancock and Lois Willie (Smith). She was our cousin and was very good-natured and we liked her. She stayed with us until she was married and we of course were very much interested in her courtship and were always peeking around.
We visited back and forth with grandfather and grandmother Willie all the time and I have many pleasant memories of her home, (the house is now owned by Nan Whitney and is not changed very much) in Mendon. I sued to sit on grandfather’s lap on the front porch (he called it a stoop). He shelled peanuts for me and I thought what strong fingers he has to break them with his fingers.
Grandma used to make fried cakes, (twisters) and pickled beets for us. She also made wine out of red currants. Sometimes she had some around which was quite aged and it was really good. One Christmas she gave Claudia and me pewter wine sets with some wine in them.
She used to set the table in the big kitchen when she had company and used the pink-banded china. There are still a few pieces in the family. Uncle William brought the set to her when he came from England from his mission. One thing that impresses me was grandfather putting canned raspberries on his rice. He used to pick big ripe strawberries and raspberries out under the trees in the cool back lot. They were so good. We slept upstairs on an old-fashioned slat bed with a fat straw tick. I remember grandmother going upstairs to be in her short factory nightgown and cap tied under her chin, carrying the brass candlestick and candle. She had a beautiful Persian lilacs and beds of violets… After living out on the railroad we enjoyed the flowers and the trees and the fruit when we go in town.
The next year we had a school at Cache Junction. Our teacher was Mary Baker Hyrum. We had a long narrow schoolhouse with windows all along both sides. Mary had been struck by lightening so when we had a thunderstorm she herded us all into the middle of the room away room the windows.
One of the biggest of the boys was Hyrum Sneider. He liked Claudia and we all teased her about him. She was very bashful and would blush. Hyrum became educated and is now teaching at the University of Utah. He had a big black Newfoundland dog. He took us to school every morning then went back home and woe be it to anyone who molested us.
We had two social playmates who lived up the tracks across from the depot and by the schoolhouse, Jennie and Amy Ballard. Their mother kept a hotel and served meals. Most of the trainmen ate there. They were half sisters to Apostle Melvin J. Ballard. He came often to their place. They had a large dining room and we had dances and parties there, as there were so few people in Cache Junction everyone went including children. It was a great occasion when Lydia, an older sister and Willie Griffin got married. We were invited and they had a big wedding with all the trimmings and a dance. The bride wore a white satin wedding gown and veil. Amy and I were the babies of the two families and we were spoiled by everyone including trainmen. She had some big brothers who did their bit to spoil us. Amy was very blond dainty little girl and she and I were pals as long as we lived in Cache junction. She died while she was still young. We played run sheep run, fox and geese with the other children and mud pies back of Ballard’s house to ourselves. One of the train conductors used to tease us all the time. One day he came around there and we had just mixed up a nice new batch of mud. He started as usual; we threw the mud all over him. He was ruined completely and he didn’t tease us again when we were playing mud pies.
In the fall when her brothers, Frank and Daris cut the wheat we would hide in the header boxes and we had fun keeping on top of the wheat. No doubt we were a big help but they put u with us. There were other children near, mostly boys, William and Crookstone. They teased me about Arthur Wilmore. He was nicknamed Cook; he had black eyes and hair. I was quite embarrassed if he looked at me.
Our second schoolteacher was a young girl from Smithfield, Polly Reed. She had dark eyes and hair and we thought she was very pretty. She stayed at our house and we liked her very much. She played the organ and sang and gave us some lessons. We had a lot of fun with her.
You would naturally think there wasn’t much to do in these out of the way railroad places but we had a happy childhood. Everything was made easy for us and we had no troubles.
When I was about nine father developed sciatica rheumatism and the road master thought bathing at Ogden Hot Springs would help him so he was transferred there. I remember the day we moved. Our furniture was loaded in a boxcar and mother, Claudia and I rode in the caboose. The conductor let us go up in the cupola. We thought that was a long trip. It took us about all day on that freight train. When I was about ten and Claudia was thirteen she was quite grown up, Marie Lewis made her a Basque with darts and bones and a shirt and she had her first corset. I thought it would be grand when I was big enough for one but that time never came. They went out of style before that point was reached by me. She was the young lady of the house and I was the baby and had to wear the hand me downs. Quite often I would have a burst of temper which sent father on a trip to Logan to buy the best material with ribbons and buttons and everything that goes with it and then have the dressmaker make it. A dress all my own. The one I remember best was a dark red with a bow and streamers of ribbon in front. I had my picture taken in it when I was about ten.
Well let’s see we were on our way to Hot Springs. Father had gone on ahead. The house was full of bed bugs so he had town off the paper and white washed the whole place with lime and when mother got here with her sure pop can we didn’t have bed bugs long. The house was three rooms, parlor, kitchen and bedroom. The bedroom was large and divided with a curtain. We had a dirt cellar at the back and there would usually be a blow snake hanging over our heads when we went down for something. We grabbed what we wanted and ran. There was s spring at the back door but the water wasn’t very good. The trainmen threw us off a block of ice every day and we had an Icebox. We didn’t like it very well here. There was only one little girl to play with Clara Daughter, she live up on the hill where the mink farm now stands.
There was a flat piece of ground across the tracks west and father brought a croquet set and made a croquet ground there. We all used it, section men and all and had lots of fun here. It was awful hot here in the summer and we didn’t have any trees. Mother had a few chickens and Claudia liked to take care of them. She was welcome to the job as far as I was concerned. Chickens weren’t one of my loves.
One of the men, Ed Lewis, played the accordion and he taught us to dance (our first dancing lessons). I don’t know the name of it but it consisted of three steps and a hop. Mother taught us to waltz. We liked those dancing lessons. We also enjoyed bathing in the Hot Springs pool.
Father bought a gray horse and a nice single buggy. He kept the horse in a pasture between our place and the Daughters. I thought it was fun to go up and catch him. I would usually walk right up to him. We used to drive around the flat ground below the tracks. We had quite a racetrack made there. We used to drive up to Willard to the store and one time father let mother and me drive up to Mendon. The only road at that time was around by Collinston and over the hill. It took us all day and Bob Smith said father was crazy to let us drive that wild horse that far. We were afraid of the dugway and hoping we wouldn’t meet anyone on it but we dis. The man got out and led our horse by and that wasn’t so bad after all.
There wasn’t any school at Hot Springs so we had to go to Pleasant View to school. There was a dugway railroad from Hot Springs to Ogden so we went on that. Had to start at seven a.m. Sometimes we walked home when the weather was good. There were other children coming that way so we played along the way. When Clara came their hired man took (us) up in father’s buggy and we didn’t have to go so early.
My teacher was Effie Wade. She was a blond and I thought she was pretty She let me teach the little ones their reading and spelling. I think she did it to keep me occupied more than anything else.
There was a little black-eyed boy, Arthur Budge who brought me a red apple every day. I thought he was nice, I only saw him once or twice after we moved to Willard. He came up there to dances but he had not lost his glamour for me.
There were three schools in Pleasant View and we all played baseball together out behind the schoolhouse. Willy Cragun was on of us. He was so fat he could hardly run, I met him about thirty years after and he was Dr. Cragun of Garland.
One thing that saddened us while we lived at Hot Springs was grandfather Willie’s death. He had heart trouble since he was eight one (?) years old. Mother had to be up to Mendon during his illness and Claudia and I had to stay alone during the day while father was at work. We didn’t have any near neighbors. The depot was about half a mile up the track and the agent was a woman, an older woman who had a crippled hand and red hair. Not very good looking but with a heart of gold. She came right down if she saw a tramp in any direction to see that we were all right. The last few weeks mother Ada Willie to stay with us.
It frightens me now when I think of the years we lived along the railroad mother and we two little girls alone all day, but we were never molested in any way. Mother always fed tramps when they weren’t too numerous. Sometimes they paid her if they were able. More often they didn’t. I remember at the time of Cox’s Army there were 250 one night at Cache Junction. More tramps than people. The railroad loaded them all in boxcars and took them out.
When I was about eleven years old father had the chance to take the Willard section and as the hot baths were not doing him any good he decided to take it. It was much better he thought for us girls. There were good schools and we could for the first time go to primary and Sunday school.
We packed up and moved to Willard, quite a city for us girls. There was no section houses there so we rented a nice brick house in the northwest part of town. It belonged to the Box Elder County Sheriff, Dick Davis. It had a lawn in front and some fruit trees in the back and we were delighted with it. It was the nicest home we had ever had and we had neighbors all around. Masons were the nearest. They had older children but also had a girl, Olive about Claudia’s age and a boy, Frank a little older than I.
There was only one family in Willard we had known before, Nephi Brander. He had a section at Swan Lake when we were at Calvin and we visited back and forth with them up there so when we moved to Willard they were very nice to us. Their oldest daughter, Annie was ward organist. They had a girl, Rose who was Claudia’s age and Grace mine. I’ll never forget the day Annie had an attack (of) appendicitis. Roscoe Cole and I were around their place with their children. They sent us with a sack to borrow a bedpan. We had to go all over before we found one. Neither of us knew what it was. We were quite embarrassed when we found out but we had already done our good turn. That was the first operation of appendicitis I ever heard of.
I think father doubted his judgment in making the move to Willard the first few weeks there. Claudia and I were out sleigh riding every night and he had a bad time keeping track of us.
We started school. James Chandler was the principal. I started in the middle room with Grace Bunker. Marion Delton was the teacher. Claudia was in Chandler’s room. He wasn’t a bit nice to her. She was bashful and not acquainted and (he) picked on her and made it quite miserable. After a few weeks I was sent up to Chandler’s tender mercies. I didn’t like him to begin with. I had heard father raving about the way he treated Claudia so I set out to give him a bad time. He was an old man and so cranky he had no business in the schoolroom. The boys used to throw shot on the floor for him to step on and skid. He would get so angry and threatened to do everything. We would get expelled about every day and reinstated the next day. Henry Stauffer was one of the largest boys and used to build fires of paper under their desks. Henry had a bicycle and a horse and buggy and tore around like mad. We called him that wild Hen Stauffer but we all liked him. Claudia’s shyness seemed to draw him to her and they walked home from school one on each side of the street for a long time, then finally they started going on the same side and it wasn’t long until he started taking her out to dances and other places.
George Harding and Elihu Call were two more of her boy friends. Father used to tease he because Elihu insisted on butting on her rubbers for her. He said it was the silliest thing he ever saw. Elihu was a good singer and afterwards became a music teacher is Salt Lake City.
John Zundel was my first beau in Willard. I used to go sleigh ridding with him and he tagged me home every time I went out. He played the harmonica and wore a striped stocking cap. He was chubby and blacked eyed and cute. So we were sleigh ridding with him and a crowd in a bob sleigh one afternoon. Roy Lowe came up behind us in a fancy cutter so Vilate Barker and I got out the back of the bob sleigh and got in the cutter with Roy. That ended my romance with Jack. He wouldn’t speak to me for months. The first boy I ever went to a dance with was Vosco Call. Henry was taking Claudia so I make Vosco stay close to them. He was a few years older than I and not so shy. Nothing bothered Vosco.
Bicycles were quite the rage at this time so father bought one for us. It cost forty dollars and was painted olive green. We learned to ride after getting some bumps and losing some skin from our knees and shins. Vosco had a bicycle and we used to go riding with him. The year he started to the Brigham Young University at Provo he came for me to go buggy riding. I wasn’t home so he told father he wanted a farewell buggy ride with me. That gave father something else to tease me about and I never heard the last of that farewell buggy ride. I went around with Vosco occasionally all the time I was in Willard. He always danced with me and we have been good friends all our lives, Roscoe Cole was also a good friend. He and I were born on the same day. He always said he was a few minutes older than I. I don’t know. I didn’t meet him until I was about twelve years old and started school in Willard. You could always find him giggling around with a crowd of girls. He was awfully ticklish so we could make hi do most everything. He was very bright, always had his lessons and time to play. Chandler had a high recitation bench along the front. Roscoe would crawl down the isle and sit on the floor and talk to Liz Harding and I began a big geography book, Roscoe graduated from the University of Utah and was in the army in World Wars one and two. He called on me once after about forty years in Salt Lake City. He looked older but was the same careless Roscoe. I didn’t know him until he called me Babe and grinned. I was very glad to see him again. When we first started to school the boys would snatch my scarf, fascinator we called them, and run. Claudia didn’t think it was any joke and would tear after them. My fascinator always looked like a rag. “The little brats,” she would say. About this time my hair was long enough to tie back with a ribbon. Then I had trouble keeping my hair ribbons. The little brats had a yen for them too. Father had finally given up trying to make a boy out of me. Claudia’s hair was always curly. Mine didn’t have much curl.
The girl friends Claudia liked the most were Isabella Walton, Clarice Harding and Pauline Morgan. They were all full of fun and had many good times together. Liz Harding and I liked to go with them. They had more fun than our crowd. They could always think up something funny to do. One summer we all got together and organized an Etiquette Club. We studied etiquette and Parliamentary Rules besides having parties and dinners and lots of fun. There were thirteen of us.
One summer an artist came along and started an art class. She was supposed to be a woman but looked more like a man. We never were quite sure which. Father was always for us learning everything we could so as Claudia had quite a lot of talent for drawing he let her take the courses. She painted one picture of Promontory Point that we thought was quite good. Mother framed it and it hung in the front room for a long time. Claudia studied art for a year later at the A. C. Collage. The summer Claudia took her art class I took a course in Embroidery and drawn work.
Father bought me a mandolin and Claudia a guitar. A woman from Ogden came up once a week and gave us lessons. Her name was Cepitola Viola Hunter and she weighed three hundred pounds and had a mustache. Isabelle and Robert Dalton and Lee Nebeker also took lessons from her and we had a club. She soon had us so we could play together and we were on all the programs and were invited to all the parties. Mrs. Hunter was a good teacher and full of fun and we had a good time. We played in Ogden at one of her recitals.
Claudia and I both took lessons on the organ from Robert Baird and got so we could play quite well. We were no professionals but father was very proud of us. I was organist for the mutual for a while. We didn’t inherit father’s musical ability, for he was a good singer and neither of us could sing a tune. Claudia used to try. She and Phoebe Harding used to sing in church with the congregation and I would be in a nervous sweat for fear they would get out of tune. I wouldn’t dare try. I wasn’t as bashful as Claudia but she had more confidence in herself than I and would do things that I wouldn’t dare try.
We had a lot of fun with our mandolin and guitar club and kept on playing together all the rest of the time we lived in Willard even after Mrs. Hunter stopped coming.
We lived about like other people in Willard. We didn’t have many luxuries but we had everything we needed. Always had a new dress for Christmas and one for the Forth of July and everything that went with them. Two petticoats, underwear, corsets, corset cover, drawers with wide legs, long cotton or lace hose and high top shoes. Good thing we were slim in those days. We had nineteen-inch waists and I weighed 118 pounds when I had gotten my growth. Claudia was taller than I but about the same size around. We couldn’t wear each other’s clothes. Her skirts and sleeves were too long for me and her shoes were too large.
Mother was a good cook and so she had good food and plenty of it. Father liked to eat. He had to have navy beans and pork at least once a week and mother was a champion pie maker. They used to buy beef by the quarter in the winter, from an old Civil War veteran, Pete Rock. One day mother thought it was too much bone and not much meat. He said, “Well Sister Hughes the animals can’t run over the hills without the bones.” After that she didn’t complain about the bones.
Father was a section foreman and made $60.00 a month. That was considered good wages and one of the best jobs those days. He kept us, both a farm and built a house in Mendon and sent Claudia and me to college on those wages. When Claudia was fifteen he bought her a gold watch and chain. I kept after him until he bought me one when I was thirteen. He was always fair and treated us about alike, Claudia was the eldest and so got a few more favors, but I usually came out even in the end. Grandma stayed with us in the winter after grandfather died. We liked to have her with us. We, like most other girls, had a horror of dishwashing and she liked to do them. After she got acquainted with Willard people she visited and made quilts for everyone. We did some of our own sewing so we had a lot of nice pieces of material she made them all into quilt tops. When I got married I had nine quilts she had pieced. We had a black and white haired dog we called Mike. He followed mother and grandmother everywhere they went but Relief society meeting. He used to go to church and wait outside for them. We liked animals and usually had a cat or two around with ribbons and bells on their necks and most of the time we had a dog of some kind. We used to dress our cats up in doll cloths.
When Davis’ term as sheriff was up he moved back to Willard so we moved up on Main Street on the corner one-half block east of the church. This was an older rock house and it had a lot of room. We had a living room or parlor, as we called it, a kitchen and a shanty and one bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. Claudia and I both slept in the north room for a while until I refused to sleep with her anymore. She was a terrible bedfellow. She put her curley head between my shoulders and knees in my back, I kept moving over until I fell out: then I would get in on the other side and start over again. Finally, mother, to stop the trouble, fixed up the south room for me and we each had our own room. I had a new bed with a straw tick and a new rag carpet with so much straw underneath that it crackled when I walked, I used to hide my love letters under the carpet and one day Claudia found a bunch of them from James Dealton. There wasn’t much in them but I was really angry with her that time. She just laughed and teased me all the more. She was an awful tease. When I was little she had me crying all the time, I used to run to mother and say “Make her quit.”
Soon after this father bought us both a trunk with a lock on to keep our things in. They were tin. Claudia’s was gray and mine was black. They cost ten cents a piece. They came in handy when we went away to school. Our parlor had a rag carpet and mother bought the bookcase (Henry now has it in his basement), end of the sofa and a round center table and cane rocker and another chair or two and of course the organ was in that room. We had a nice round burner lamp on the table along with the family album, which I admired so much. It had a ship on the cover. I looked forward to the time when we could have a Brussels carpet on the floor.
In the kitchen we had the old yellow lounge a big cupboard and a Home Comfort coal range with a big copper reservoir which mother kept shined with salt and vinegar. Of course we had a table and chairs and the sewing machine. It was a pleasant kitchen. There was a window in the south and we could see out on the street. I liked to be where I could see out even then, I never out grew it.
The windows were deep in the front room and mother kept them full of flowers. They seemed to grow and bloom for her. She had geraniums of all colors and begonias and cacti. We used the pedals from the red germaniums to paint our lips when we wanted to be extra special. We didn’t have lipstick in those days. Our powder was liquid camiline. It looked (like) white wash but we thought it was the thing.
Every Saturday the big reservoir was filled and the boiler was put on and we all had a bath in the big tin tub in the kitchen, weather we needed it or not.
Our favorite place to fix our hair and faces was by the bookcase mirror. It was in the front room in a light corner where we could see and do a good job. Hair in those days was a job. I used to roll mine all the way around a rat (?) and it was a work of art when I got it done.
When we moved up on Main Street Claudia was going steady with Henry and I went with James Dalton most of the time. We four had a good time together. Of course they considered us babies and got away from us a lot. They liked to get out in the kitchen and sample father’s whiskey. Father didn’t drink much, but he always kept a bottle of whiskey and of alcohol in the cupboard on the top shelf. I was a little more fussy and kept my beau in the parlor. Father kept us in a stew. He never knew what he was going to do, setting the alarm clock to go off at midnight, etc.
In the summer Claudia and Henry did their courting on the lawn in the city square. James and I used to sit on the church steps and gaze at the moon and stars. We admired especially the big star, Jupiter. I have been a stargazer all my life and now at the age of 66 I still think they are beautiful and worth going out to see.
After a while Henry decided he needed some more education so he hied himself up to Logan and started to the B. Y. Collage. There he met a glamour girl, Kate Cranny and his romance with Claudia was delayed for sometime. Finally he was called on a mission and they gave him a dance. We were all there, including Kate. She was down from Logan for the last few days. Well that takes care of Henry for a couple of years. He always teased Claudia about one letter she wrote him. She said she was tired and spelled it tird.
Soon after this she started school at U. S. A. C. at Logan. She and Pauline Morgan and Pauline’s brother, Joe, got room in the old fifth ward store building and kept house for the first part of the year then she went to live with Orpha Hunsaker the rest of the year.
The next year I started to the college and we got a room at Thomas Smith’s. We had to get up pretty early to get our breakfast and walk about seven or eight bocks to school. We didn’t get much breakfast. Claudia wouldn’t make coffee so about all we had was hot bread and milk. I didn’t like it too much but she was the boss and mother wasn’t around to appeal to. Smiths had a girl, Jean, about my age and we had a lot of fun together. Mrs. Smith was a little Welch woman. We had a quarrel occasionally but I liked her very much. We used to go to town window shopping together and got along with each other most of the time unless something (came) up to rile our Welch tempers.
George Lowe started to the A. C. the year I did and he used to come and take me to all the shows in the Thatcher Opera House, Shakespeare Plays seemed to be the rage then and we saw most of them. George didn’t dance so he didn’t take me to any dances but we used to talk walks and study together on the Temple ground lawns.
We went home for Christmas and the ice was frozen all along the edge of the lake so James and a Hicks fellow bought Isabelle, Claudia and I skates and we went skating every afternoon and danced almost every night that week. We got so stiff we could hardly get upstairs to bed and we had to sit down and slide down but we had fun and hated to go back to the grind of school.
We went over to Mendon to Grandma Willie’s some weekends but we only got home twice in the school year. We had to travel on the train then and it wasn’t so easy to get around then as it is now in the days of automobiles. When school was out in the spring we went home for a lazy summer and good times. Claudia worked a few weeks in the cannery. I was quite ashamed of her.
This summer Henry had come home from his mission in Switzerland. He soon began hanging around our place again and I think he was the reason Claudia didn’t want to go to school that year. Olive Hughes wanted to go with me so we got a room at Smith’s and started to school. In the winter Henry went up to Butte, Montana to work in the mines to make a wedding stake I guess. Anyhow Claudia was wearing a diamond ring. She used to let me wear it occasionally to my great joy. She came up to Logan that winter and took a course of dressmaking from Maggie Smith and stayed with us.
That winter George Hughes and Jane were married. They came over in a bob sleigh. The snow was deep. Olive and I went back with them to the wedding. We stayed u all night and Fred Poulson and Am Sorensen took us to the depot to catch the seven a. m. train back to Logan.
That spring Olive and I went over to Mendon for May Day and found father there to take the section and mother and Claudia were in Willard packing. That ended my happy girlhood in Willard and I felt like I was stranded on an island. I went up to grandma Willie’s and had a good cry and got it out of my system. All my friends were inn Willard and I had spent the best part of my life there. Of course Mag, Lou and Rose Hughes were in Mendon and they made up for it.
That summer we had our first long skirts and they were really long, swept the ground. Rose, Mag and Claudia all got married and that left Lou and I. Claudia and I had been wanting to visit mother’s sister Kate Angel in Butte so in July father got us a pass and let us go. We were traveling most of the afternoon and arrived in Butte at 3 a.m. very frightened. Butte looked big to us. We took a cab and wouldn’t get out until we saw Aunt Kate. She was wonderful to us. Her son Willie and I fell in love at first sight and Aunt Kate said if we hadn’t been cousins it would have ended in a wedding. He showed me a wonderful time. Henry soon appeared onto the scene and that took care of Claudia. Henry brought a miner down and I went around some with him. He was an Englishman, Bert Tesgie, and very superstitious. We met a black cat one day and he had to go back around the block. It was bad luck to have a black cat run in front of you Willie lectured me for going around with him.
One day Claudia and I were walking on a hill back of Aunt Kate’s, she told me she was going to get married and stay in Butte. I was very unhappy and didn’t see how I could go home without her or how I could get along alone, but there was nothing I could do about it. I argued but Henry won out so we proceeded with the wedding plans.
They were married at Aunt Kate’s by Bishop Hovey. I was bridesmaid and Willie was best man. Aunt Kate had to have it in style. Claudia and I were dressed alike in long black skirts and white nap silk waists trimmed with insertion. Aunt Kate’s family and a few of Henry’s friends were there, also Bert Teagie. Willie took his sister, Minnie and I in the bedroom and gave us a lecturing for drinking too much beer with Teagie.
We had been there about four weeks so soon after the wedding I went home. Willie took me to the train with a candy and magazines and there sat Teagie with some more candy. Willie was burned up and so he got on the train and went as far as Silverton with me. He said that the Englishmen wasn’t going to put anything over on him. I arrived home all right but it was pretty lonesome for a while. I managed to pass the time until school started. I was working in the Y. W. M. I. A. and I went to Willard a time or two and Isabella and James came up to Mendon. Lou Hughes wanted to go to school that year so we got two rooms in the fifth ward store building and kept house together. A. I. Sorensen and Richards were attending the B. Y. College so they took us to dances and shows. We had a good time that year. There wasn’t much doing in Mendon so I made several trips to Willard and Brigham, Isabella and James came up once in awhile. I went to dances and shows with Fred Peterson. The summer passed uneventfully. I belonged to the mandolin and guitar club, and was the only girl in it with John Gardner, Bert Whitney, Dave Baker and Lester Larsen, also worked in M. I. A. was second counselor for nine years.
Claudia was expecting the stork so she came down in January and Lynn was born February first. He was the first baby we had in the family and we thought he was wonderful. I spent a lot of time embroidering rompers for him. The next summer Claudia and Henry lived on the Stauffer ranch in Willard and I spent a lot of time with them around Willard and Brigham. That fall the Summit County School Board offered the school at Peoa to me. I hadn’t thought of becoming a schoolteacher but decided to try it so I went to Logan and bought a new brown suit and a white beaver hat, packed my trunk and started on my way. Father went as far as Park City with me. He didn’t trust his baby out in the world alone. From Park City I went out to Peoa with the mail. I didn’t look so nice when I got there. My new suit and white hat were all splattered with mud and I was tired and a stranger in a strange land. They had a place for me to stay at Mrs. Lyon’s. I soon got settled and everyone was very nice to me. Mrs. Lyons had two girls at home. Hazel and Gladys.
The next day the trustees and the teachers met and decided to give me the middle room, third, fourth and fifth grades. There were forty pupils in all. Cath Marchant had the primary and Mr. H. H. Jones from Brigham was the principal, as well as the superintendent. I soon got the class tamed down and enjoyed my year of…
