Rebecca Ann Angell Rees - My Wife

Rebecca Ann Angell Rees (My Wife)

            In 1900, the summer time, I had just graduated from the University of Utah Normal School in June.  In our class (who graduated), there were fifty-seven boys and forty-three girls.  I was 20, some of the rest were older, some were younger, but most of them were near my own age.  I had missed two years so was delayed two years.  At first I graduated from the 8th grade as I just turned 14 years (a month earlier), but two years out made me 16 when I started school at the University.  School conditions were very different from what they are now.

            I struck out on a new bicycle to hunt for a job teaching, and finally landed one in the little town of Leeds -- what was left of the old Silver Reef Mining Camp.  I have related the foregoing as that was a very important bicycle ride - important in my life and in the lives of many others down through the years.  Maybe somewhere else and under different connections I shall write what I remember of the details of that trip itself.

            The pay I received at this school was $50 a month for five months, the grand total of $250 for the term.  Board cost me $12 a month or $60.  My wheel cost me $40 about, and R.R. fare both ways, and still I saved about $60.  How did I do it?  You tell me.  Times were different then.  Money was worth more and went further.  It was just after the depression years of the 90's.  So the only worthwhile things I got out of that year's experience were my wife and my friendships and associations.  It is about my wife I wish to write what things I can remember in the following pages, and I am asking the members of her family to write down what they can remember of their sister and, in the case of my children, their mother.  There will be no attempt in this first draft to write a connected story, nor to make it a bit of well written English.  Nor shall I give details, nor many dates, etc.  I am writing freely from memory and in general terms.  I hope to supplement and probably re-write on the bases of the many letters I have kept, and I have saved them all, and they were many.  I also hope to use, perhaps later, letters written by others, certificates, diplomas, and many other things, and in cooperation with the many incidents I hope to get from others, so we together may compile some of the incidents that made up the life story of one of the most wonderful women.

            Of all the women I have known, I know of none who have accomplished more by real hard work under circumstances and conditions as exacting and difficult as did this little woman who was my wife for nearly forty years.  I have known women who got renown, and place among their fellows and had much less to do it with or to back up what face they made.  They had tact and self confidence galore, or perhaps were scheming and sometimes unscrupulous, or they had pull or circumstances that did much or even almost all of it for them.  They were probably wives of prominent or influential men, or maybe sisters or other relatives of those who could pave the way for them and make their way easy.  Perhaps wealth had something much or little to do with it.  Very clearly it was "whom they knew" rather than "what they knew" that did the trick.  With Bess, as almost everyone called my wife, it was all earned the hard way against the most determined opposition in later years especially at about every stage in the race.  She won by superior talent and ability overcoming all of this opposition.

            Bess was born of parents who were very poor.  They were pioneers settling the small town of Taylorsville in Arizona.  Her mother lost the first baby, a boy but just a baby; I don't know how old, but it can be ascertained.  After a few years of hardship in Arizona they moved back to Utah and were settled in the small town of Leeds amidst the ruins and remnants of the Silver Reef Mining Camp.  Most people in Utah's Dixie were not very well off financially.  They worked hard for little.  Life was not easy nor its rewards plentiful.  A few were more fortunate and able to get more than their neighbors.  They were often sheep and cattle men or perhaps a few of the best farmers who had come of the few best farms.  The land was limited and the holdings small.  Water was scarce and insufficient to put in use the little land that could be cultivated.  Dixie is rugged, steep cliffs and gorges, carved out mountains by erosion, wonderful scenery, but quite useless for the serious business of making a living.  Many small towns along the Virgin River were supported by less than land enough to make one good farm, and Leeds was one of these.  Many single farms in Utah have more useable land than the whole town of Leeds, and Utah is a state of small farms.  Some ranches in the state have many times the area of the whole of Leeds, and Utah is not a land of large ranches as are many of the states.  Probably three or four hundred people were trying to make a living on this one moderate sized farm, and a few cattle which some of them had.  To help out, some of the men gleaned or chlorided in the old mines, and many of them went away to work elsewhere much of the year.

            Most families raised a few vegetables, and had a cow or two to milk.  The main crops were alfalfa hay and fruit.  Of the fruits, peaches and grapes were most important.  These they sold by hauling them to the settlements to the north in the higher and colder valleys; quite a lot of molasses (or sorghum) was likewise harvested.  This was before the days of automobiles and trucks.  The R.R. was far away -- upwards of 100 miles even in 1900 when I went down there to teach.

            A very large portion of the grape crop was made into wine, some of which was sold elsewhere, and altogether too much of it was drunk in the towns, and it didn't do the people any good - the men because they drank it and the women who paid in suffering, as a result.  In church affairs most everything was left to the women.  A comparatively few men took active part, many of them criticized continually and threw obstacles in the way of effective influence of good.  The school was not too flourishing either, two rooms, one in the combined meeting house and school house, and one in some house elsewhere in town.  It was here I landed for my first experience in teaching.  I found the people good-hearted and generous, sociable and neighborly, and they treated me very well indeed.  Of course there were the usual little frictions, ambitions, jealousies and what-not found wherever human beings are grouped together.  All those things help to make up life.  Here the women had the battle against wine and its effect on the people, especially children, of the community.  Also because of it there was an attitude of indifference rather accentuated.

            In the community many of the children were bright and intelligent in school, perhaps above the average of people generally.  Some were quite talented, and perhaps the most talented from the ability to set about for herself tasks and then accomplish them was "Bess Angell."  She was so recognized generally, but one other family with children bright and talented were a bit jealous of her.

            In 1900, when I went to Leeds to teach, Bess was 14 years of age, she should have finished the eighth grade the year before, but there wasn't the kind of organization in the school or county to make it uniform and recognized.  Besides she had no hope of going away to school at that time.  She came back in school the year I taught.

            She had already become famous locally and in the county by her writing to a number of papers that had children's and young people's departments.  One of these was a Canada paper "The Family Herald and Weekly Star" I believe, the name can be ascertained.  Through this and other papers she had made quite a number of friends (personal) with whom she corresponded more or less regularly.  Some of them lived in the eastern U.S. or Canada.  These correspondents and their exchange letters became quite a valuable asset in her life, and very broadening in her experiences.  I hope some of those letters can be located, also some of the many bits she had published in the papers--poems, essays, stories, etc.  One of these brought her a real prize and considerable renown.  It was a paper on the Life of Queen Victoria.  The Janeville Instructor published some of her work, also some local papers in St. George and Cedar City.

            Probably within the year before I went to Leeds, Bess had become quite renowned in Washington County by spelling down everybody including some teachers at the county fair at St. George.  She also won a prize in a contest on some kind of writing, probably sponsored by the fair or the county schools.  The judges wouldn't believe a girl her age could have written it.  Her aunt "Beckie Orton" showed them a number of her letters and other papers which convinced them.

            She had a sense of humor, keen and sharp, and wrote and someone published a poem about one of her teachers that was cleverly done, but probably went too far.  She always led in her classes, and thus I found her when I went to teach.  I was warned by a relative about her in that she might be or become conceited and that I should be careful.

            She was the eldest living child in a large family and shouldered a tremendous responsibility.  She worried a lot about things that bother only older people in the bringing up of her brothers and sisters and other young people.  In these respects she carried the whole world on her shoulders even at a tender age and never got over it as long as she lived.

            She began working in Primary and Sunday School at a very early age and carried the responsibility of teaching other children when but a child herself.  Regularly conducted classes were under her leadership when she was eleven, twelve, and up to fourteen when I first knew her.  And all her life was filled with teaching children in church and community--not counting her regular school work.  Being a great lover of stories, that she read or wrote, she could always hold their interest and by the use of these taught many valuable lessons.  Being indefatigable in work, original and independent in her planning and working out her plans and being a wonderful and interesting storyteller, as well as a real capable teacher, enabled her to achieve great success in all this wonderful work during these years.

            It was her self-imposed job to see that her own brothers and sisters were in attendance, and got the benefit of her efforts teaching and her influence for good and away from mischief.  There were always those promised bedtime stories and many others.  She was a great baby tender which helped her mother so very much, but her time was never wasted--always a book at hand to read or some other profitable way to use her time.

            She liked to go barefooted, climb trees with a book and stay up there for hours at a time reading.  One of her favorite pastimes, if she had any "times to pass," was to climb the cliffs surrounding Leeds and walk into the hills, sometimes alone, at other times with younger children under her charge.  She liked to play, but usually liked to plan the play to some purpose.  The other children called her "Boss" at times because of her planning and directing their games, etc.  Her chum, Etta McMillin, was similar in some of these respects.  She seldom went out with the crowd of young people -- probably wasn't old enough to dance and party at night.  She didn't do it later when she became old enough unless it was some school function or connected with church or other organized activity.  It was because of these things and others that she never learned to dance, and I have always liked the dance as a recreation.  We could have had more fun if she had liked it too.  She did like dramatics, both to attend and to direct their production, also other entertainments either to take part herself or to direct either of the "legitimate" or movie varieties, and we enjoyed together many of them and in our school work put on a large number sometimes together, often separately.  In church activities this was also true, for we have both put on many entertainments either variety or drama.

            Coming back again to a few more things about my wife's childhood and young girlhood years, I can see her as plain as if it were yesterday, walking up or down the street with a baby in her arms, sometimes with a book in one hand or possibly some bundle in the other as she went on an errand.  She was a wonderful help to her mother in tending so many babies.  They had a large family of children younger than she.  She helped to direct the younger children in their chores, too, and planned worthwhile play and other entertainment to give them better things to keep busy.  There were always the stories and especially at bedtime.  Many of these were original and many more she gathered from every available source.  Not only her own family brothers and sisters, but neighbor children looked forward to these entertaining story hours.  With younger children she used stories all her life and very largely in her teaching not only school, but church also.

            As a little tot, Bess liked to "run away" and be with other children.  I remember a number of interesting incidents she was wont to tell about herself.  Sometimes she was afraid to go home after staying too late.  Once some older young folks made her walk home with a boy.  It was getting dark, and how she disliked that and the girls who made her do it.  These things happened when she was very young, for she early assumed responsibility and planned to use her time profitable and well.

            Many humerous incidents that occurred in the town didn't lose any of their vividness by her telling.  She saw the humor within and enjoyed it ever so much and depicted it without any loss of effect.  She told her children so many of these incidents in her life, I hope they will remember many of them and write them down.  The old bachelors, and "burns" who congregated about the wine cellars or other places where men loafed didn't escape being the butt of her vivid descriptions.  Not only their walk and talk physical characteristics, but all other phases of their characters, she enjoyed telling the humorously funny part as she saw it, and she depicted the other sides too, not so funny.  If I could tell in her way about all these people we could enjoy them as real living persons walking, talking, acting, and moving about as they lived.  Her brothers and sisters could tell their impressions of people as they heard her describe, or portray them.

            There was Tolly Beams whose "legs" wouldn't operate just right especially when he imbibed too much.  He was a southerner, and his brogue added to the characterization.  Then there was Billie Huntley, an old miner, who married an Indian squaw.  He had a daughter, Daisy, who was a very fine girl--well some others of his offspring married with Leeds people.  The characterized "Pappy" Stirling, a respected and capable citizen, but he just couldn't resist wine even when he tried very hard to leave it alone.  He had a large family of good children.  One of the best of them let wine get the upper hand and break up a happy home with a very fine woman and children.  He died early of tuberculosis.  So we could go over the town and as she characterized them in humor, in tragedy, in joy or sorrow, the impression of their personalities became vivid and stuck.

            It might not be out of place to write a little something of a hundred or more of these people as my wife's acquaintance with them helped me to remember them.  Maybe no one else will write anything in black and white about them, and as living persons they will linger along in the memories of those who knew them until they too are called away one by one, after those many years ago.  They will eventually become just names with a few dates attached, then names only finally to be lost, for no living soul will remember them even by tradition.

            My wife did chores outside and in.  She mowed hay with the scythe for cows, which she milked until her brothers became old enough.  She also rustled feed for the pigs and gathered garden produce and fruit which she helped to dry or perhaps bottle.  She played with the children, especially when her own brothers and sisters were in the groups, and she could put over some lessons with them or direct their activity in more worthwhile channels.  The responsibility she assumed towards them kept her planning to better direct and control them.  When I became acquainted with her at 14 as one of my school girls, she was too young to go with the older crowds and too busy of her own planning to spend too much time with those of her own age.  Even then she was planning and laying out projects, courses of study, and dreams of future accomplishments which she seriously set about to consumate.

            Of course I had to go out with the older young people in their dances and parties, in their serenading and other good times, mostly as informal and spontaneous as could be, and as enjoyable, yet I found occasion to visit at the home of my wife-to-be after various pretenses were found to make a plausible reason.  Often after school there was time to chat and tease a little.  She had a hearty laugh and a way of saying "oh shucks" I still remember.  Perhaps this development of caring for each other never happens but once in a lifetime.  There are different ways with different people, but there is no duplicating the ways with those you love more than anyone else in the world.  I didn't find many occasions to go out with her, nor would it have been wise.  She was so young and I was young too, though about (nearly) six years her senior, it wouldn't have done for either of us.

            When school was out, the last day, we, the school, walked up the creek quite some distance and had a pleasant time.  It was here when most of the children had gone home that we had our first opportunity to even begin a bit of love making, and it really was here when I told her I loved her and she reciprocated by letting me know she cared.  Here we started the long years of correspondence from "so far away" and both stood true to each other through it all.  We both went out a little, always told each other about it, and always with the approval of each other.  It was a long happy courtship, probably not without some ruffles.  Our letters may reveal some for we have saved them all I believe.

            Never have I had such longings, and such indescribable feelings of attachment and just not to be satisfied yearnings.  Where I went to see her, how wonderful the country looked from Cedar City south to Leeds, especially below the Black Ridge.  When I came away how not to be described the feelings were, as I looked backward over that same country.  What real pure and holy love can do when it so colors the work and all nature concerned with the one you love!  I gave her help and she gave me inspiration.  She started her career in school and pursuing dreams she dreamed, in face of hardships scarcely equaled anywhere anytime.  Clothes, she had almost none, and was not in a position to get any.  Money, she had none, and she worked for her board.  But go to school she did.  Few other girls would have tried it under such circumstances.  But clothes to her were not too important; it was the joy of learning.

            One of the most wonderful students ever to enter a Utah school of any kind, she was brilliant in her mind capacity.  She was attractive in herself in spite of clothes, and few have ever had greater capacity to work, work with a purpose.  She planned and accomplished what she aimed to do.  She had that ability to plan independently a course of study or a purposeful procedure and to make herself stick to it until it was accomplished.  Few people I have known were her equal, if any.  She took part in student activities, because a leader, and wonderfully well liked by teachers and students.

            George W. Decker became her great admirer and one of her staunch best friends.  So did his daughter Myrtle.  Her own relatives, the Wilkinsons, O'Conners, etc. also had great admiration for her, and her cousin, Sadie, did her many a good turn.  She gave her board and room one year for the help she in turn gave.  Sadie was teaching and needed some help.  Her husband, Frank Cammeron, was not so good, was irritable, and later proved a "cad."

            Bess took part in student activities both class and school.  She wrote for the paper, helped with class stunts and rivalries and helped fight the students' battles when the teachers tried to do things for their own conveniences.  One of these was when the teachers wanted one week Christmas Holidays, and the students wanted two weeks.  She led the fight for two weeks, and it so happened that I went down to Cedar and Dixie to spend the holidays with the "Angells" as the University Chronicle put it.  By the way, I was attending the University at the time and was Business Manager or connected with the business end of the Chronicle, and Harold Goff was Editor.  Well, the students and teachers had quite a laugh at Bess's expense.  The strange part of it was that she didn't know I was coming down and was as much surprised as anyone else.

            We rode to Dixie in a "White Top", a large heavy buggy with two seats and a white top.  There were no automobiles then though they had been invented.  There were perhaps only two or three in all the state, and they were in Salt Lake.  I shall never forget those rides from Cedar to Dixie (Leeds) and back to Cedar.  The first night out we camped at a ranch (I have forgotten the name).  It was just above the Black Ridge where the new highway crosses __ Creek now.  In the morning Bess washed in cold water with ice in it, and I shall never forget how a half silly man at the ranch reacted.  He couldn't imagine washing in ice water.  You see, we traveled only a few miles that day, perhaps 15 or 16 as I remember it.  And it took much of the next day to get to Leeds, maybe 20 miles further.  We didn't live so fast in those days, and maybe enjoyed more real living.  Who knows?  Now it is awful to wait 30 minutes or an hour for a bus that will take us forty or fifty miles an hour when we do get started.  Then waiting hours while something was being fixed or for some other reason didn't make us half so irritated.

            We enjoyed the ride to Leeds, I enjoyed my (our) vacation both in Leeds and the few days I was in St. George visiting with my relatives, my Mother's sister's family, Aunt Mary Bentley.

            When I tried to find a way from Cedar to Lund, to the train on the way back to Salt Lake an amusing incident occurred.  I went to a home where the B Normal Students were holding a party the night just before coming back north to the University.  A Miss Simmons answered the door and offered me a chair.  I made a smart remark, "What shall I do with it?"  Well, that very fine young lady would never meet me again.  Wasn't I foolish?  Yet sometimes we do such things.  It was one of the two or three visits I made to Dixie in the five years we corresponded.  It was a joyous time, and parting was one of those very difficult things to do, just more longing and all that goes with it.

            Bess did the three years normal course in two years in spite of the handicaps and came through as one of the two valedictorians.  She represented the girls and Willard Gardner, long since Dr. Willard Gardiner of the UAC, represented the boys.  I helped her in my school take part of a course in U.S. History and Algebra.  Outside of this little help, she did the 3 years work in two and came out at the top of her class and took a generous part in school activities and also Church activities too, besides working for her board one year and batching it the next year.  To try to get herself another dress she ripped an old one to pieces to use as a pattern to cut the new one by.  I have forgotten the details, but believe you me, she had a very very difficult time.

            She was a leader in all things that pertained to the students and a favorite with the teachers.  The students respected and admired her and long remembered (throughout their lives) the things that made her such an outstanding student.  They were wonderful years to her, the two she spent at the B.B.W.S. (Branch)

            She took teacher's examinations to teach school twice before she was old enough to teach legally and passed with the best of grades given.  The first year she couldn't teach, but the second year County Superintendent George W. Decker gave her a school in Enoch, a small place out NW of Cedar City.  She lacked four or five months of being 18 years old but undertook the job determined to make good.  It was a mixed school, all grades, and that is always difficult.  I taught one year in such a school.  The people of Enoch treated her very well.  She served them well, and the students always remembered her as one of their best teachers if not the very best.  For a short time I had as a missionary companion one of her former students.  He was then a married man, for that was quite a number of years later than when she taught him.  He was quite a favorite student and she was a favorite teacher.  It has been about 23 or 24 years ago since we were in the missionary field together.  He told me of some things that happened in school and how he regarded her as his teacher.  In her letters will be found many details of what occurred during those two years.  There were humorous incidents and more serious.  She told of school days, school parties, places where she boarded and the attitude of the people.  Many more, she used to tell than were written in the letters.

            The second year she took her sister, Jennie, with her.  Jennie became very sick and had to go to the hospital in Cedar City.  She never recovered, but for quite some time was in the hospital.  Dr. Middleton was good to both Bess and her sister.  It was hard to teach school with her sister sick, and it was a great sorrow to lose her and carry on.  Also a great expense to her, for she paid for it all out of her meagre salary.  Her letters will tell many of the details, and many more she told me at the time and afterward, including what they found the cause of her illness to be, and how they attemped to do for her all that could be done.  Jennie was a very beautiful girl, but had troubles that were serious.

            During one of the summers following the school years at Enoch, Bess came to Salt Lake to attend summer school at the University.  I don't believe I was at the U. that summer, but the few weeks she was here were very pleasant ones.  I saw her often, and we had opportunity for each other's company, a rare thing during our five or more years of courtship, mostly by mail.  I remember distinctly quite a number of incidents, some walks we took, a trip or two to Saltaire, and other places, staying up as late as street car service would permit my getting home, etc., and yet I must not interfere too much with her studies.  It was a very pleasant summertime, and the six weeks ended too soon.  She boarded at Slothonski's, and so did "Lizzie McMullen," a Leeds girl who taught school with me, having the lower grades.  I remember the many times I went to see her and some of them quite distinctly even now.  On one occasion, I took her some raspberries and other fruit which she appreciated very much.  Though we went to a show or two, there were no movies then, and to a few other places including a couple of trips to Saltaire.  We went in bathing, to her a new experience, but what we liked most were the little walks to nearby places not far from the street car lines.  It was quite different from just writing and receiving letters, and we appreciated it.  The summer term ended too soon, and we had to write letters again.  Many details of our lives can be lived again by reading those letters.  In fact for five years they will cover quite minutely the events that made up our lives.  I hope to read them again and perhaps then add some of these things, but now I am writing only a general outline of what I remember off hand.

            My wife's school life in Cedar in the B.W.S., her teaching experience in Enoch, and the summers in Leeds are told in her letters, and perhaps in those I wrote to her.  In the meantime I taught one year here at home and returned to school for 3 years and some summer work to get my degree.  I then went to teach in Castle Gate, and she started school at the University but did not wish to continue--about the only time I ever remember her not wanting to go to school.  She insisted on our getting married so when I came home for Christmas vacation, we made arrangements and were married Jan. 3, 1906, forty years ago last January.  We had a big wedding party and supper and received a lot of fine presents especially dishes from our friends mostly mine as she was so far away from home.  Her cousin "Sadie" Wilkinson, and our mutual friend, Lon Harris, and a few others she knew.  Quite a number of my relatives and friends from the old Mill Creek Ward in which I lived at the time, and still do, as far as territory is concerned, even though many wards have been made out of Mill Creek now.

            We were married in the Salt Lake Temple, and it took a whole day to go through then.  I had to leave for Castle Gate almost immediately and couldn't take her with me as there was no place to live.  It was the time of year when the mines were most active and every available house was taken.  While I was looking for a place to live, my two younger sisters took down with the smallpox, and Bess shut herself up with them and took care of them.  When she was released the people in Castle Gate were afraid she might bring the smallpox with her, and it caused some stir for a time.  We secured part of a small house in the upper end of the town and succeeded in buying some furniture from a Mr. Lewis, clerk of the schoolboard, who was moving away to Price.

            I remember the time we had getting milk that was fit to drink as the cows ate some weeds that made it taste so strong we couldn't use it.  We joined in all the ward doings and the church organizations, and on Saturdays we often went climbing the cliffs, for Castle Gate was built in a deep canyon with cliffs hemming us in.  Often the school boys and girls went with us.  We climbed all over the cliffs on both sides of the canyon to the plateaus above and frequently found great difficulty finding a way down into the canyon again.  There are many memories of these climbs and incidents that occurred.

            School ended; the people gave us a party, and we came back to Salt Lake for the summer.  That year we rented Reuben Stutz's house, and I put up a little stand opposite the gate to Wandamere pleasure park.  It was Calder's Park, purchased by the Church, and renamed Wandamere.  I called my stand Spend-emere.  Well, I had competition, and quite a few memories cling round that experience.  It was at a time when Father and we boys got enthusiastic about raising trout.  It was quite popular just then, and we had a large fine spring on the place and began to work into it, so we were busy but had to go slowly.

            I attended summer school and got acquainted with Ben Cameron, and through that acquaintance, we went to Panguitch to teach school.  I was Principal; my brother, Will, went down there to teach with me.  We had 407 students and nine teachers.  Most of the rooms were overcrowded; three weren't so large.  I had 58 in 7th and 8th grades.  Many of the boys were larger than I, some 17, 18, and perhaps 19, and came in for a few weeks in the middle of the year.  The girls ranged from 13 to 19.  Three of the rooms for the smaller grades had over 60 children in them.  As we didn't have enough teachers my wife taught about two months.  But as she was expecting our first baby she couldn't teach longer.

            It was a hard school, the hardest I ever had, though I substituted in one in Granite District with a worse attitude many years later.  It was truly an old time school where the teachers had to fight students and parents.  Two of the trustees didn't know any other kind of school.  The other one did and was with me in trying to make improvements looking toward a more modern type of school.

            During the winter, I put on a play with these youngsters that was counted a real success.  They did very well indeed, and I voluntarily gave the 8th grade two extra weeks school after school was out to prepare them for the state examinations.  They later paid me something for it.  Most of the students were successful.  I was so worn out that I could scarcely stagger home when it was over.  The doctor had several times tried to get me to take it easy, take time out to go hunting, etc.  He could see I was about all in.  I weighed only 135 lbs. when school let out about ten pounds less than when it started.

            It was here Ellis, our first born, came to live with us.  My wife wouldn't have a doctor but had a midwife.  That wasn't good policy as Dr. Clarke's wife was our schoolboard member.  I don't forget the birth of any of our children, as Bess wanted to have things her way, always unorthodox.  She even wanted to get along without any help, and honestly it caused me some worry.

            We lived at Mr. McCunes, and he was a great hand to joke and had come when our boy was born.  Ellis contracted whooping cough when he was only two weeks old and it gave my wife a lot of worry all the rest of the year.  He was seriously ill, and we had to be careful with him even when we left Panguitch in the spring.  During the winter, Will and I had some new experience for us.  We went out after wood, and not knowing the country, didn't do as well as the natives who did.  We had only wood to burn and had a lot of chopping to do.  That summer we worked at the fish business building it up making ponds, a hatchery, driving wells, etc. and the very difficult job of making dams in the creek to divide it into several ponds.

            The next year Bess went home to Leeds to teach as we didn't have a home, and I went to Brigham City, to teach in the little two room high school.  There were only four teachers of us then in what was the beginning of Box Elder High School as we know it today with 1200 to 1500 students.  It was the first or second year after state consolidation of schools and the large county districts were learning to function.  My wife's school let out a month or so earlier than mine, and she came to Brigham City until school was out.

             That summer I started to build our home by digging out the foundation and the basement, mostly by hand, and it is a large deep basement.  Well, I finally got the cement in by the armstrong method.  There were few cement mixers at that time.  There old walls are twice as thick, nearly, as they make for one-story brick houses now-a-days.  They are 16 inches thick with 30 inch footings.  Father built the rock foundation on the cement which came only to the surface of the ground and I got the joists and sub-floor on.  There it stood over winter while we went to Montpelier to teach.  I hadn't been teaching for two years or more but stayedhome and tended the fish business and built the house up to the floor.

            While in Montpelier Fern was born.  (Merle born in Salt Lake)  It was a cold winter.  Georgiana, my wife's sister, came to live with us and go to school.  She had had infantile paralysis when but a small girl, and it left one leg so it never did develop normally, and this leg gave her a lot of trouble in this cold winter climate.  It also made her self conscious and timid.  I shall not here tell of my experiences in Montpelier except to relate the incident of our school play which I put on.  We had it ready and booked for a near-by town north of Montpelier.  The girl who took a certain part couldn't go, as her aunt wouldn't let her.  Just no reason in it except she was not a Mormon and was suspicious of the Mormons and wouldn't let the girl go.  It was getting toward spring, the snow was melting and the mud was deep.  It was a hard pull to get through.  In order that we shouldn't disappoint the people, I had to get someone else to take that part on a few hours notice.  There was no one available but my wife.  She came through with it even though she had three small children, and the baby wasn't over two months old.  She did the part well, too.  Much more detail could be written about our experiences in Montpelier, the hard time Georgiana had, and my wife had, too.  The milk we bought some of the time wasn't clean enough to use, and the cold weather was hard to take.  There was a lot of trouble with the cook stove that didn't help matters at all.

            I came back home with five hundred dollars plus, and we went on building our house, got the brick work up and the roof on and then finished it room by room as we could while living in it.  It was a hard struggle and hard on my wife with the family of little tots.  I was out of school about four years or more, was trying to work into the real estate business, and went to the University and studied law half a year.  I borrowed $300 from Aunt Mary to help finish enough of the house to move into.  I was selling her land on a contract arrangement and borrowed from what I took in, giving her notes and interest, and paid it back as money came in for the property.  It was the custom to build large homes then, and I built  as many of my friends did, a large house.  I was in real estate, justice of the peace, and studying law when the First World War broke out.  It knocked my business up in the air.  People began losing their jobs, became frightened, gave up their contracts and real estate slumped.  I quit school and expected a better year in 1915, but it didn't come so I started teaching again in October.  The only place open was a little one-room school out at a station on a freight road in Uintah County that went from the end of the narrow gauge RR at Watson into the Uintah Basin to Vernal and Duchesne County.  I left my family alone and received only $80 per month.  Here again our letters will reveal the details of me and my work and of my wife and family at home.

            The next summer I spent at home, and the following winter taught in the Provo High School.  It was only a two-year school at that time.  I could get home more often on weekends from Provo.  I believe the salary was only $80 per month.  Our letters will say more of these details while in Provo, so I shall not tell them here.

             The next year I went to Magna in my own District (Granite) for $90 a month plus something to help defray transportation.  I had been kept out of my own district for 12 years because of politics.  I may say more about this elsewhere at some other time.  While teaching at Magna in 1917-18, the year we entered the war, though some of our boys went into the army the year before while I was in Provo, we had to get up very early.  I had to do the chores and catch the street car about 6 a.m. and spend about 2 hours on the way to Magna by transferring around by work train,  and I wasted more time getting home after school.  This was hard on all of us, but these last 3 or more years my wife kept studying and preparing for tests for certificates, etc.  She had already passed her state examination and became licensed to practice obstetrics.

            The Granite School Board offered the teachers a raise.  I was offered a ten dollar raise up to $100 per month, but Tooele hunted me up and offered me $1200 a year or $133 per month, so I went to Tooele the next year, and my family was left alone again.  However, I could come in weekends mostly.  It was the year the "flu" was so bad, and we were frightened--so many died.  Probably there are letters which give details of our experiences so I shall not do that here.

            The next year my wife and I and family went to Randolph, Rich County.  I went up, and they needed another teacher so sent for my wife to come.  I received $160 per month the first year and $200 the second.  We built a little two-year High School into a four-year and graduated one student at the end of the first year and five or six at the end of the second year.  The school was established.  There are very few letters we wrote during these two years so I shall give more details of our experiences in Randolph.  It is just midnight so I shall close for now.

            The school house was a cement and brick building SW of town.  It is extremely cold at Randolph, and we had trouble all the long cold winter keeping the school building warm enough for the children.  They had to stand or sit all over the radiators to endure the cold at all.  The walls of the rooms froze ice on the blackboards so they couldn't be used.  The main trouble was lack of radiator capacity, in fact, not half enough radiators.  We put in one radiator by a lot of hard work but failed to make proper return to the boiler of the water and had it cover the floor too often.  However, we were on the right track, and later I understand they remedied the situation by more radiators.  In this bleak cold school house we tried to teach school.  We did the best we could at it.  My wife was teaching, and we had all of our six children at the time.  Maevonne was six years old the first year we were there.  That was about 1918 or 19, and Winifred and Matt were younger.

            We lived in Duffy's house, a large two-story house with stove heat.  We had my wife's sister, Valla, with us the first part of the year until about holiday time.  Because of some superstition in a remark someone had made in telling her fortune sometime earlier, she wouldn't stay later than holidays, so we had the Nichols girl come over in the day time and do the housework and tend the two little ones.  She lived across the street.  Valla gave my wife some trouble.  She got in with some of our older school girls and was quite rowdy at times.  It was quite a hard job under great difficulties.  One of the difficulties was caused by one of my teachers, a home man of prominent family.  He had been superintendent of county schools and claimed to have a lot of credits but was placed in the grades lower than my wife and did a lot of complaining.  One Friday afternoon after school, my wife found a way to Evanston to the RR and down to Salt Lake.  She went to the University and got all her credits together,  maybe took an examination or two, and came back with a Junior High School certificate which was higher than his.  She had quite an experience at Evanston as she had a long wait for a train.  She couldn't stand an inner room in the hotel so hunted up a private family for a place to stay that night.  She also had quite an experience in Salt Lake hunting up her credits all in one day, Saturday, so she could be back in time for school Monday.  This is typical of how she did things when she set about to do them, especially in the line of school work.

            During the two winters at Randolph, the town bought back their opera house which had been made into a garage with a small opera house upstairs, the upper part of what once was the opera house.  They remodeled it back to what it used to be.  I helped do it and also painted a set of scenery for the stage, especially for a play Mrs. Wray was putting on.  I also put on two full length plays, one each year, with the High School students, and Bess not only helped me, but put on entertainments with the younger students.  Our play we carried over to Lake Town and Garden City on Bear Lake.  That was an interesting trip.  We stayed over night or two nights, and the day between had some fun on the lake and shore.  Somewhere I have kodak pictures of our truck and crowd, also of some of the students out on the lake.  When school was out the second year we hired Mr. Fox, County Agent, to take us up around the lake.  We went as far north as the Idaho line or farther and had kodak pictures by the monument on the state lines.  These snaps and films should be somewhere in my things. 

            While in Randolph we made friends of many of the people of the town, and my wife surely liked Bishop Gray and his wife, also Brother Hatch and his wife, and Brother Wm. Rex, Sr. and others.  We liked Bishop Peart, and the Norrises, and I became friendly with everybody nearly.  My wife became very friendly with Bro. and Sister Walton; he was the banker.  Their son, Wesley, and our son, Ellis, became chums.  Somebody sold cigarettes to the boys and sometimes other things.  Mrs. Rees took it upon herself to stop it, and she did.  She acted as detective and caught them in the act of selling cigarettes to the boys.  We fought the tobacco evil in school (among a few boys), and it bore fruit later on as others carried it on until they had no boys who smoked in school.  I don't know long they kept that record.

            It would be interesting to tell something about these people and especially our students and what they did in later years, but I haven't kept closely in touch with them all.  I have been through there only twice since we taught there, but I have met a few people at Conference time during the years and occasionally at other times and found out some things.  Several of them moved to Salt Lake and Ogden.  Kenneth Muir became a teacher, a High School Principal, and is now or was a Seminary teacher in Afton, Wyoming.  Abby Hatch, our first graduate, taught some I believe and married one of the principals in later years.  Theron went on a mission and became quite a man.  Bishop Gray had trouble due to a blow on the head either in building (he was a carpenter and builder) or by a hay derrick.  This affected his memory.  Someday I may write more about these people.  Mr. McKinnon and I went after wood a few times and nearly froze coming home after sundown.  Once I went (hired a wagon and team) when quite a number opened up a new road on the south end of the last mountain.  It was cold.  The coal mines near Evanston were near enough that we didn't have to depend altogether on wood, thank goodness for that.

            Most of the people had ranches and put up hay for their cattle, and some had sheep.  They usually had plenty of water out of Bear River.  Alfalfa often winter killed due to the frost in the ground, breaking the roots, by swelling the ground.  We bought a lot of meat those two years mostly by quarter of beef, half a pig, at a time.  It kept frozen for months during the long cold winters.  Besides being principal and teaching all the time, I had charge of the lower grades in the building downtown.  Maevonne's first teacher, Miss Hicks, was a very good teacher, but the next year she had a poor teacher and had a lot of time to draw for the other children.  Several times at night we saw the northern lights; it was quite a sight, but awfully cold to stand out and watch them.              

            My wife and I took part in church when asked to and attended quite regularly.  On one occasion I went with Bro. Hatch to Evanston, Wyoming as home missionary.  Sister Hatch and Sister Rees went with us.  It was quite an experience.  In the springtime, Bess and I went hunting water cress or other things.  We liked to walk over the country.  On one occasion we tried to cut through the fields and pastures.  We got into one with three hundred or so range steers.  They were not used to people afoot and began to take too much notice of us even to mill round toward us.  I held the ground for a few minutes and told my wife to hurry back to the fence and crawl through it out of the pasture.  Then I followed as soon as I could and it wasn't too soon.  We were more careful of pastures with wild cattle after that.  To say we were frightened is putting it mildly, for there is a terror in a herd of wild cattle on a stampede or when they begin to "mill" around.