HISTORY OF MARY ELLEN WRIGHT SMITH
written during her last illness
written during her last illness
Mary Ellen Wright Smith was born at Old Paradise now called Avon on January 4, 1865. We lived here but a few years when the folds advised us to move farther down, as it was so close to the mountains and the Indians were quite troublesome. I just remember a few things, the row of log houses. I was at the neighbors' playing with Louise Bishop and proposed making yeast for sale so we got some eggs from under her setting hen, stirred them together and put in ashes to thicken them when Brother Bishop caught me, and wasn't I frightened! I scampered through the five pole fence without going to the gate. My father and mother were married in February. Some months after my father dreamed that he was to be careful of my mother on the 11th of August. He was so impressed with the dream that he got up and wrote down the date. One day they were invited to grandmother's for dinner. She had a large box with pork salted down in. They had hung up the hams and shoulders so it was nearly empty. It had a loose board across the top and father and mother sat on it to eat their dinner. Father left the table first and mother moved around. The end slipped up letting her down into the box backward. Father went to her telling her to keep right still and he carefully drew her up and put her on the bed. He told her to rest awhile and he looked at his book and it was the 11th of August. That afternoon she felt life for the fist time. From that time on my birth was an important event to my father. We were always very near to each other. Years afterwards, when I was away on the underground, his letters to me were always so tender and full of sympathy. My friends used to say those letters sound like a mother's, so full of feeling.
After we moved from Old Paradise, my two grandmothers lived within two blocks from us. I was named after each of them being the eldest in the family. I had a very happy life going from one to the other. How different they were always, yet how wonderful in each of their lives. I have written a biography of each from a child's standpoint as I viewed them. I wished I had known more about them after my mind was matured.
They used to parch field corn and make molasses. I hate heartily of it and one night, oh, how sick I was! I think I was unconscious for awhile and father went for grandmother Gibbs who was a midwife. I remember coming to and she was rubbing me with camphorated oil. I was soon better.
my life was smooth and uneventful till I was eleven years old. My mother kept a good girl. The same one lived with us for seven years. My sister Martha and I were required to do our share of the work. The girl would have gladly done it herself, but mother saw to it that we did our share, principally dishes. We both had the measles, my sister and I. How impatiently we waited for the girl to black the stove, scour the chairs, table, and floor with sand, rub the brass kettles with vinegar and salt, and shine the row of tin cans on the shelf with ashes till you could see your face in them. She then went to the sheep grounds to gather and made some tea to bring the measles out good. It must have helped as we got along fine with no bad effects. Then we had the chicken pox on the Fourth-of-July. We lived across the street from the public square and could see all that went on in the browery, races, etc. This was quite a trial. Brother Thomas came in and brought us some candy after the parade. I never forgot his kindness.
My mother was president of the Relief Society. She used to take me to meeting with her. I think the other children were easier to manage without me. I was useful to the sisters at first to wipe their eye glasses on my cotton apron. They wore the home made linsey dresses. My grandmothers each bought me one as their name sake, calico was fifty cents a yard then. I soon got so I could find the page in the hymn book for those hard of hearing. They moved the benches in a circle so as to be close together, much to the annoyance on the deacon, an elderly man, so I used to stay and shift them back in place. There was only mail once a week in those days. Sister Davis was sent as a representative from Salt Lake to visit the small towns in the south end of Cache Valley. A letter was sent announcing her coming and a special meeting was to be arranged. The mailman also carried passengers and Sister Davis came to the house first and the letter was delivered later. I did not want to miss a good meeting and this had promise of being unusual, so I offered to notify the Sisters. I ran from door to door while Sister Davis and the family ate dinner. I remember how diplomatic I was trying to arouse the sister' curiosity to get a goodly number out. I found some washing, one making home-made soap, boiling it in a big kettle with three sticks propped up. I told them Sister Davis was there in haste with a special message. Then I ran home and got myself ready and over to the meeting house to see what results I got. As each of those very busy ones came in I sat shaking hands with myself and feeling my importance to the work.
In the very early days there was but one wash tub in the town, a large wooden one which was passed around. The people were very accomodating. At the age of Eleven I began running the sewing machine, hemming diapers and all straight seams. I soon got quite expert at it. There were few machines in those days and mother was a good seamstress. Her father was a tailor and she learned to sew in the old country. She made beautiful plaid velvet vests for my father's father from pieces of material she brought with her. I have a very old picture of him wearing one of them. The neighbors brought in stitching for me to do for them while they did my dishes.
At the age of twelve our maid got married,. Mother was confined that winter with her seventh child. She was very sick and never left her bed room for five months. We had a good woman come to do the washing. Grandmother lived a half a block away and took care of mother and the baby. She also supervised us. At first I was very happy to try my hand at many new things, but the bread mixing grew to be very irksome. It was that winter I met and became acquainted with my future husband. They were getting our rock from the mountains to build a new meeting house. Father had a yoke of oxen and Orson Smith came every morning while I was doing my dishes and cupboard to get the oxen to put on his sleigh to go for rock. He was a Logan boy called to be Bishop. He and his wife had not been married long.
The next year father moved the log granery down in the field one and one-half miles from Paradise where he had a good farm. The day we moved he took the cupboard, table, and dishes first load, then the family. Mother walked into her new home and a little blue racer snake ran across the floor and under the cupboard. Father killed it and mother sat down and cried. She thought she must go back. We were leaving a good sized comfortable home. It was made of logs with weatherboarding and plastered. There were shade trees, grass, and a good orchard with no incumbrances, but it took so much time going to and from the farm. We had quite a herd of stock and father wanted to be where he could do a lot of things before breakfast. We had a loft upstairs and the boys had a wagon box with a cover on where they slept. Grandfather and grandmother Wright had moved to Draper a couple of years before and they invited me to come. I went and stayed a year. The schools were much better there and mother was anxious for me to get good schooling.
When my father was a boy, and his parents first came to Utah from England, they built a home and settled in Draper, later moving to Cache Valley, so I met many of father's old friends who were friendly and nice to me. Father built a large frame home on the farm. Mother kept a girl who did the spinning and from her I learned to spin and card wool until I became quite proficient at it. We had an indigo tub where we dyed the wool and yarn, wringing it out every morning and hanging it in the air so it dyed evenly throughout. I also learned to knit stockings and mittens. I remember one day the sun was clouded like it would rain, then a whissing, roaring noise, and next thing a cloud of grasshoppers settled on a wheat field just heading out. By night the leaves and tops were gone, just one stubby straight stock standing stripped of everything. I also remember the crickets and how they fought the big black things. I saw the different improvements in machinery from the days of the old cradle and the days of gleaning. The shortage of food I never understood much about as we had our gardens and plenty of milk, but were taught to waste nothing.
I remember the night my brother Fred was born, in October. Father brought home a forty gallon barrel of molasses. We had no bread or flour in the house, so we borrowed a pan full and next day father sold a young heifer for wheat and had it ground into flour which lasted until February, when father got this threshing done.
I graduated from the district schools and received a scholarship to the University of Utah. Father did not want me to go so I went to Logan for higher education. I attended the B.Y.C. They met in the basement of the tabernacle and later at the college. It was there I studied theology under J.Z. Stewart. He especially emphasized the marriage covenant with plural marriage as the most desirable. The first wife was as a good foundation while if you stopped there the main structure was never completed. This and many more he used as illustrations for that principle. I was converted. In reflecting back now there was a goodly number of that class impressed and went into it, boys and girls.
I was married in the Logan Temple on the Fourth-of-July, 1884. No one outside of my family knew of my marriage the first year. I stayed at home with father and mother. I stayed on the farm. Grandfather and grandmother Wright moved back to Cache Valley and father built a small home for them just a few yards from ours. My first baby, a girl, was born on the 27th of April, 1885. The persecutions were on then. When the baby was three weeks old, at five o'clock one afternoon C.C.Goodwin, an apostate of the Mormon Church, and Wetstone, a U.S. Deputy Marshall of Ogden, drove to our home with papers prepared to search the house for me. Rumors having got our of my marriage. There was just a few minutes to whisper when they were at the door. Father knew Goodwin very will, so he opened the door and treated him as though he was making a friendly call. They had Mr. Blanchard's team from the hotel in Logan, friends of my parents, and where they always stayed. They had driven twelve miles so while I was hiding upstairs, father asked them without hesitating if he could take their team to the barn and feed them. They wanted to go with him which he hoped they would, of course. There was only one place in Paradise where they could get a lodging. Mr. Goldsberry, and apostate Mormon. Father stayed with them showing them around as long as he could, trusting mother to do the rest. Her head worked fast as she took babe and me over to grandfather's, a couple of rods away, put every vestige of baby clothes under lock and key, and made up warm fires. The men had come in a sleigh although it was the middle of May. She started the girls on a good supper, Opened up all the upstarts doors, threw open the double doors in the front part on the hose, put on a pretty light dress, then began to set the dining room table, and in they came. There was a small potato cellar under the kitchen floor in front of the sink that had a trap door we lifted up. Down on the floor was an armful of straw and a linsey quilt, and the bottom of and old chair to step down on. All winter the lid had been raised last thing at night, and it was understood that if a knock came on the door, Father was to go quickly to open it. I was to go just as quickly to the cellar, while mother was to close the lid, draw that rug over it, and on top of that put the tin tub as though someone had bathed the night before. We could not use it now because the baby was here and I could not go there in the dark with her. Grandfather was very angry with father for taking such trash into his home and feeding them. He swore under his teeth I stayed close to the window watching to see if Goodwin should step over to shake hands with Grandfather. In that event I was to get under the bed that had the old fashioned valence around it, with my baby. They ate supper and while eating Goodwin said, "Where is your daughter; I see the piano; can't we have some music?" Father said "I'm sorry, but there is no one here that plays; my daughter went south three days ago." At that time some were going to Mexico, so they just concluded that that was what happened. Goodwin and Wetstone exchanged glances, Mother got a deck of cards and proposed a game of five up, to which the men consented. During the shuffle and deal mother said, "I was cleaning out an old trunk not long since and among the things I burned was a letter of yours, Goodwin, to my sister Emma Bullen who is now dead. Emma Gibbs she was then. You were proposing a marriage to her to be your plural wife. Wetstone looked at Goodwin whom he had not known very long. They had picked him up because he knew the people and was a Mormon hater. At ten-thirty they left for Logan. I went home and went to bed. It was not easy for me to stay in such close hiding now with a baby, and to arrest me meant five years in the penitentiary for my husband. We never repeated to anyone our joke on them. People felt too good to keep making it hard for some later. Twenty years later when I had seven children, I lived only two blocks from Goodwin and neighbor to a very young and beautiful Eastern woman who visited frequently at Goodwin's where they carried on spiritual siances. I told her one day of the trick we played and she went down the next day to twit him of it.
A few weeks after the Goodwin visit I went to Ogden where I stayed three months. My husband had to leave the state, so he and Frank Allen took a contract at Helena, Montana. He sent for me. The work proved to be all rock so they were stationed and we had a large camp. they were watching the mails, and we were afraid of our whereabouts being known, so we took a covered wagon with springs, a bed, a sheet iron stove, and grub boxes, and dishes. Under that we got out through the end gate of the wagon. We could very quickly put up our small tent and get a meal. Thus we traveled down to Great Falls. Going over the ferry on the Missouri was a new and exciting experience for me. I had always been afraid of water. We had just fifteen cents when we landed at Great Falls. My husband bought a box of Shinola, cleaned his shoes, bought a newspaper, and saw where bids were advertised for the excavation of a big bank. We needed money badly, and had to stay in seclusion, so we could afford to bid low, but there was this to consider; It was in the heart of town with big buildings near. It proved to be rock excavation of a solid nature, we were responsible for damage to windows, etc. The explosives were expensive also, so it was a great venture. He put in a bid and got the contract. He sent to town for a boy, team, and scrapers, and went to work. It proved to be soil with some rock, but it seams, so they had to use crowbars, picks, etc. my husband hired some single men who had no families and wanted board. We were camped on the Missouri River under the trees. A meat and milk wagon passed by, so with my two hole sheet iron stove, I cooked and boarded them. We fixed up three sticks on which we hung a kettle and boiled meat and suet puddings which were a cheap desert. I made lots of dumplings with the meat from the suet. When we settled up and paid the men I found I had cleared $200. We also had something like six or eight hundred from the job. It was quite a lot for those days, more than a man could earn on a good sized farm, and this in two or three weeks.
I was terrorized with thunder and lightening. I never had experienced anything like it, and I was alone some distance outside of town. The water snakes were also hard on me. I was naturally afraid. Scared of Indians, tramps, and everything. Going out of a large family where boys were with us made me frightened. We went back to Helena to camp where work continued until Christmas. They had Gumbo clay to work in, and only cleared expenses on a whole with their summer's work. The men of course drew wages and were glad for the work. Many were from home towns.
My little girl Nellie was two years old in the spring, and I was to be a mother again the next March. While I was cooking over the campfire I was deathly sick many times. One Sunday morning I was forced to ask my husband to lift the three loaves of bread out of the oven. I couldn't make the effort; I was so weak. Monday morning after the men went back to work, I felt better, and was not so bad again. They went into town Saturday nights to drink up their week's wages, no one else to spend it on. After the work was finished the men and outfit were sent back to Helena. We then visited the Falls, going up Ft. Benton. We there saw the larger boats that came up from the Missippi River bringing lumber, etc., taking out wool, pelts, and many other things. Going back to Helena most of the men left for home. We drove our wagons under the large cook tent. Father Smith was with us. I did the cooking for those left. We stayed there until Christmas, then came down on the train heavily visited to Smithfield. I talked to the mail carrier, Went up town where a rig met me and took me to Paradise. I stayed with some people I had never seen. I took the name of Mrs. Wilson. I had always told my little girl her name was Nellie Post. One day she came crying as some children has called her Nellie Slab and she said, "My name is Post, eh, Mamma?" They knew it was some kind of wood and got mixed on the kind. I intended to stay there until the last of March and go home to be confined, but I stayed a week too long and was taken sick there. All my mail came through Will G. Raymond, readdresseed to me. He brought it to me and I mailed out a note to mother for my trunk with my little clothes in. My brother Fred and sister Martha brought it to me, staying but a short time then going back home. The place where I stayed was the home of a man who carried the mail and walked up from the depot with me in the fall. He asked me one day if I had come from Canada when I came from the North. I asked him how he knew I came from the North. He never saw my face. He said he heard my voice and would know it again in Europe. my baby was another little girl. I got along very well, and was up on the tenth day. The next day the deputies were very active in the north and he advised me to move quarters. That morning he and his wife put my things and tiny baby in a clothes basket and put some soiled aprons and dresses like they might be taking a Wash, and walked four blocks to a sister of his. I put on an old shawl and sun bonnet and crept along behind far enough to have no connection with them yet keeping them in sight. I was weak and loooked seventy years old going along. That afternoon my baby was cross. I was tired and worried and my milk upset her. I was among perfect strangers and she cried so. I walked the floor for hours with her. An old gentleman, their grandfather, asked me how old she was. He said in England where he came from her little pink nose would not be out of blankets yet. At ten that night a rig came for me with all my things and drove me home. Some more strangers, a young man and his girl. They made me a bed in the back of a heavy buggy out of quilts, and I raised on my elbow often, instructing them where to go. We reached mother's at two in the morning, then started right back and I went to bed. When the rig stopped my baby who had been good from the jolt of the wagon, woke up and cried out. Father was startled out of a sound sleep, hearing that tiny cry and it was cold night; he rushed down stairs in his night clothes three steps at a time to open the door. The roads in Cache Valley in those days were terrible. The mud was up to the hub, and it froze so hard; it was terribly rough.
After a few days the deputies were searching the south end of the valley, Father had bought a piece of farm land adjoining his field on the brow of the west hills with an old house on it. He cut some pine wood that would make little or no smoke to heat water and at night moved me over with just what I needed to get along with. They brought me some cooked food every night and fresh milk. I had neighbors on the south a few rods away, but they never knew I was there. My blinds were never raised. My brother Fred had a couple of quilts for a bed on the floor and stayed with me at nights. I was going to say slept there, but he scarcely slept at all. He took turns with me walking the baby. She had what they called the three months colic. I was worried all the time as strange men in new buggies would drive up through the field, and I never knew just when the children would drop a word and my whereabouts would be known. Worry and a cross baby took all my strength. In May the raid was over and things quieted down for a time, so I went over home. The last of May my sister Evelyn went to Paradise to do some shopping for me. Mother cautioned her if the store keeper should ask about me she was to know nothing. They had not heard for some time and she did not know. She got through the unusual inquiry, did the shopping, and there was some change left. They asked her if she would have candy. "No, she said, "Mary Ellen had told her to get stamps for the balance." The cat was out. She came home and told us what had happened. Oh, dear, Oh, dear. At this point my husband was moving his outfit that wintered at Helena to Spokane, Washington, where he and Frank Allen , a partner, had taken another contract. He sent for me to take the train to Spokane the second of June, which I did. I was very nervous traveling with two children, expecially until I was well out of the state. After being in such seclusion if a stranger looked curiously at us I shivered so that I could not relax and enjoy anything, although the view was very pretty most of the way. We crossed a branch of the Colorado. The water was so blue and different. We crossed on an iron bridge at one hundred and fifty feet elevation. That made it look blue I guess. My husband was never at the train to meet me. Some strange men would approach me by descriptions given and although I would be looking for someone I always got a chill when a stranger approached me. I slept in a wagon box and lived in the tent that summer. The climate was ideal, the vegetation very pretty, and while I never left camp I enjoyed the feeling of security and the rest to my nerves. My baby continued with the colic over the six months. Every day at four she began. I had to get her feet in the oven, make catnip tea, and sometimes resort to a paragoric. I never got her settled down before eight o'clock. A colony of our people was settling in Canada, so we decided to go there and build a home. Frank Allen sent for his wife to meet him in Montana and we started out in November traveling through the Courdelanes. We went over the old Mullen trail, the first road built by the government with Courdelane's bridges. The polls were pinned down with wooden pins but they were loose and the polls were spreading as soon as touched, and the fear of the horses getting their legs through and broken was an awful dread. It was pretty lonesome trip through all that timber. We met a couple of desperadoes hoseback one day who took a new gun from Brother Allen's wagon. We traveled early and late and by the time we got to the Milk Rivers it was very cold with snow behind us. One river we crossed forty-three times in two days on the trip, a branch of the Clark River, I think they called it. The horses had to almost swim at first, but it was just a small creek at the last. On reaching Lee's Creek we stayed with Aunt Zina Card a few days, then moved into a new granery they had just completed where I stayed with the children while my husband went into the mountains and got logs for a log room which he built with a small lean to with no floor which we put our tents and tools in. The shovels, picks, etc., were traded for vegetables for winter use. We put the top bed of the wagon in the corner of the log room with my bed on. We made a trundle bed that fit in the foot of it. I was still frightened of everything, and especially Indians here, and I was located between two big reservations, the Blood Indians on one side, and the Pegans on the other. They were related and did lots of visiting back and forth. I did not dare to think what I would do when I would be left alone those hundreds of miles from home and my people. The time came very quickly when this thing happened. Soon after we moved into our new home Apostle Amasa Lyman called on me. He sat in the only chair we had, and I sat on the stool at his feet, while he told me of his early married experiences and their home made furniture in those pioneer days. As he went over his experiences I fancied he was enjoying as environment and association that lingered with him. I thought at that time I was passing through all I could bear, but years afterward I knew that I did not know what trial was then.
I taught school two terms that first year carrying my baby to Aunt Susan Smith each morning who took care of her and I taught her boy at school. I took my eldest girl with me. We were not able to get good water on the lot where we lived. It was hard, bitter, and sort of brackish. I could not even wash with it. We had to haul water in a barrel from Lee's Creek which froze solid forty gallons of it the first winter and I had to along with bucketsful. When my husband came to visit us two years later we took a new lot one and one-half miles farthur west on the hill, where we built three rooms. We had the first wall papered room. We stretched factory on first, then papered over it. Aunt Zina covered her walls with brown outing flannel. We got the idea from a mutual book. Blizzards and winds were so bad on the north and west we had to put weather board on; the first house with weatherboard on the outside. We had two cows and sold milk along with teaching for a living. I fed and milked them. I came to Salt Lake to the dedication of the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple, and brought the children. Hattie was the baby then. I stayed at Silver Bow, Montana, all one day waiting for train connections and four hours in Pocatello. Aunt Zina and a large company came then.
I didn't teach after Hattie and Owen were born. I adapted myself to the country while I was there, but when I left I didn't look back on it with any longing. I never expected to go back and never did. Sister Zina Card, Mary Ellen Wolf, and Mary Anderson were all very dear, good, and kind to me. I was always invited to everything when the apostles were there. My husband came up once in awhile. He was there when Hattie was born, but left when she was ten days old. I paid a girl $1.50 a week to stay with me for three weeks. I also took Mrs. Kerr to stay with me for a boarder for six months. I took care of her when her baby was born. She took sick and was threatened with a miscarriage and was in bed three days. Hattie fell in a post hole the day Mrs. Kerr's baby was born. She was two years old and followed after Indians, I ran after her. The Indians had her but gave her back. It was while alone with my two babies that the fear of Thunder and Lightening left me. I was frightened to death of Indians in those days although I came from an Indian country.
When Owen was three months old I moved down to Logan to a little old house. I had light yellow blinds so the light came through. I never had the blinds up. No one ever came but the Relief Society teachers the first summer. I put the baby in the back in a tub for a sun bath. McKinley went in as president that fall and was good to our people and defended our cause. The Manifesto came just before Hattie was born.
I went up to Preston in June to Brother Growley's. They were very kind to me. I stayed there until Gladys was two weeks old, came home on the train in a drifting snow. I packed all my things that morning but lost a sack of pretty things off the wagon. I couldn't advertise for anything and they were part of my truseau. Dora came to Preston and stayed after the first week and stayed until I went home.
During my stay in Canada I was first counselor in Aunt Zina in Mutual and took full charge for three months while she was in Utah. Sister Stewart was President but resigned to go to Preston. I was secretary of the Relief Society in the Sixth Ward in Logan in the early spring. I took kindergarten work during the summer at the B.Y.C. It was a six week course. Sister Barber, and Marion Todd also took it; Rose Jones was the teacher. It cost me ten dollars and I washed and ironed to get the money. While Owen was a baby, Brother Molen put me in as stake treasurer of the Relief Society. I was counselor to Lucy Hogan in the Sixth Ward in Mutual. I was put in Relief Society at conference at Wellsville. I also acted as secretary most of the time. I was released on account of poor health. I went away for six months and when I came back they put me on as a board memter for two years in the Stake Relief Society. I then served as a stake secretary untile the stake was divided, and then acted on the Logan Stake Board until Sister Barber was released and I went to Honolulu.
I was county chairman of th Woman's Republican Club for a year. I was asked why a Republican and answered, "I took four little children clinging to my skirts under a foreign flag in my maiden name and voted for a Republican. They legalized the children, and McKinley was the man elected." I was also appointed publicity woman for the Republican Club during the war. Janet Hyde made the appointment and gave me one hundred dollars for the work. I acted for a year or so until after the war. No pay went with war work.
After I came home form Honolulu I was put on the Geneological Board with Brother Scholes and acted until he was released. I was also magazine agent in Relief Society in my ward and class leader for teacher for more than a year. I was also a visiting teacher for a year. I have made five trips to California, nursed forty-eight women with new babies, went to the B.Y. to school for a year after Nellie was born. My mother took care of Nellie. I didn't graduate but they gave me a certificate to teach. I was pregnant with Martha and coun't graduate as I had to go away. While in Cancda I did a great deal of sewing. I always followed the counsel of the Priesthood. My children are all working in the church with is a great comfort to me. They have all been through the temple. I am now the mother of ten.
POSTSCRIPT, written by a daughter, Olena Smith Harris
All of these experiences were shadows and forgotten when she told of the visits of the leaders of the church in her home and what it meant to her. She says she sat spellbound listening to Apostle Amasa Lyman tell of his early married life, experiences in pioneer days and she knew she should cheerfully bear hers. She made several trips down to Utah with other leaders of her community, one was to attend the dedication of the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple. When her fifth child was born her husband's first wife suggested that she name her Gladys to being cheer and gladdness, and such proved to do. When her baby was who weeks old she did all her own packing and took the train for home, her things comeing later by wagon. She lost a sack of her lovely hand work, some had been in her truseau, but she did not dare to advertise for it.
Her keen bright mind was always searching for improvement and even with six children she attended a six weeks' course in kindergarten work at the Brigham Young College with other leading women of Logan. She was a secretary and chairman of the Republican Women's Club, and during World War I was appointed publicity woman. During her whole life she found that the best avenue for expression and use of her talents in working for the church. She was a counselor to Aunt Zina Card in the Y.L.M.I.A. in Cardston and to Auny Lucy in the Logan Sixth Ward. It was in the Relief Society work that she loved the most and she devoted her life to it. She wrote of it: "The Relief Society to me is as a grand encyclopedia. Organized as it is by the prophet of God and working under the divine guidance of the Priesthood. All other societies and clubs outside are counterfeit to this model. It's organizations placed us on an equal with the greatest benefactors of our race and surely the poor of the earth rejoice. n This work means more than is often attached to it. The particular line of work our name at first suggests is for caring for persons who are in need of assistance, which of itself is a most glorious and commendable work. The spirit which attends such charitable acts is in almost all cases ample reward for the effort put forth, but in addition to this there is much implied in our name and which we are expected to teach and practice testifying of the restoration of the gospel to each other and our neighbors, using due diligence to uphold and sustain each other, speaking of every good we know of each other, even to magnifying it to such an extent to make it far greater than weakness, burying each others faults and failings by extoling the virtues. No portion of our lives could be spent to greater profit to ourselves and no greater good could be accomplished in out communities. It would uplift ourselves in the estimation of our children and they in return would learn to look for the good in mankind. So I may safely say the mission of the society is but half done when we have discharged the temporal part. The prophet Joseph Smith realized this when he instructed the sisters at the first organization of it. He said, "I know turn they key for women and from this time forth blessings shall flow down upon you. Improve yourselves, lift one another up in your scale of being, that you may become a light in your homes and a blessing to your race. Our work circumscribes all that we want to study, the field is broad enough for all our abilities. What is there that is good for us to do that we cannot find under this our banner. Think of it, sisters, and see if the thought will not inspire us all to renewed diligence and respect for it."
She filled almost all the positions connected with the organization she loved. She was stake secretary, visiting teacher, teacher supervisor, agent for the Woman's Exponent and Relief Society Magazine, board member, stake treasurer, but perhaps as a stake secretary she found most joy for she had a remarkable gift for conversation herself and of grasping and repeating other's expressions. She was chosen stake secretary 18 May 1901 and had been stake treasurer since 20 July 1893. Luch S. Cardon was president with Luna Y Thatcher and Rebecca Eames as counselors. It was at the time when the whole Cache Valley was in one stake and the same for the Relief Society work. She was released on account of poor health and took a trip to the Hawiian Islands and Californian visiting her children. On her return she was again chosen as a board member and in 1912 she was again stake secretary. When the Logan Stake was organized 5 June 1920, she was chosen Stake Secretary with Ellen Barber as president and Olive Bjorkman and Ida Quinney as counselors. She never grew old and loved the work and did it as efficently as she had done twenty years before. She loved the women she labored with she wrote, "If I should think of compensatin for sacrifices and trials it would be to have to confidence and association of these women I have contacted in Relief Society work."
when other's sone Owen's wife, Estella, died mother took her three children to care for. It wasn't easy at her age. She did the best she could though and what a trial it was when Orson was accidently shot. It seemed that her life had been full enough of hardships. This was an added one. He was just 14 and would have graduated form the 8th grade the next spring. He was such a promising boy.
She was so proud of her baby boy, George. She had lost her second boy, Walter, when he was two years with Pneumonia. George was just a week old and she was weak. Her third boy, Seymour, died when he was 18 with pneumonia and now George had graduated in dentistry. The examining president had called her and told her what an excelled work he had done when he passed the Utah State Board of examiners. She always was one to encourage her children to be and do their very best. She was always cheerful and made life happy for them all in the face of great trials. She could make the best meals out of almost nothing. Her dumplings were delicious and she loved them. Her pies were to tender and full of good fruit or custard. She loved to make yorkshire pudding her grandmother had taught her to make and serve with roast beef and apple jelly. She never pressed her girls to do housework unless they wanted to. She always willingly did it herself so they could improve themselves or enhoy a ballgame or party. She did sacrifice to give them music and the finer things of life. There was always music in the home. She enjoyed playing games wiht them at night. She sewed while they sang they hymns with their father around the piano. They never knew she enjoyed singing until after they had all gone and she joined the Singing Mothers in Relief Society. They sang at her funeral.
When the Bailey boys sang "I go prepare a place for you" at her funeral, her children knew she would do just that. She had been doing that for them all their lives. It will be such a happy reunion when this family does meet again in ther hereafter. They know from her good tachings that there will certainly be a hereafter where they will all enjoy each other again.
When any of her children or sisters gave her anything nice and she went to visit her married children, she usually left the gift with one of them. She loved to see them look nice and she shared. Sacrifice was her life. Her happiness was making others happy. She could see when one needed a lift and tried so hard to give it. She had a wonderful sense of humor and made others happy. Her daughter Mary is so like her in this respect. She was a wonderful mother and wife. she loved father's other wives and said often that she looked forward to an eternity with them. Her testimony was strong and she loved her Maker. She lived the gospel as nearly as any mortal could. She was so kind to everyone and sometimes tried her children with the people she would bring in and feed. They hadn't lived as long as she had.
When she was a small girl and her parents moved about one and one-half miles from town, she thought nothing of the walking into town in her egerness for associations, and regularly attended all religious and social gatherings. She tell of attending dances with her father who played the violin, long before she was old enough for her to participate.
In later years she was on the Geneological Board of the Logan Stake. She enthusiastically explained and worked out every phase of the work. She also worked in the temple for our own dead and interested other members in temple work. She encouraged and helped her children to keep their temple clothes in readiness and to take advantage of every opportunity to visit the temple. Every phase of the Gospel she understood, accepted, and supported.
Mary E. Smith had the rare gift of being interested in and freindly to all she came in contact with, and anyone who came to her with their troubles found sympathy and understanding that encouraged them to do better in life if in the wrong. But, in her eyes they were always right unless proved otherwise.
After we moved from Old Paradise, my two grandmothers lived within two blocks from us. I was named after each of them being the eldest in the family. I had a very happy life going from one to the other. How different they were always, yet how wonderful in each of their lives. I have written a biography of each from a child's standpoint as I viewed them. I wished I had known more about them after my mind was matured.
They used to parch field corn and make molasses. I hate heartily of it and one night, oh, how sick I was! I think I was unconscious for awhile and father went for grandmother Gibbs who was a midwife. I remember coming to and she was rubbing me with camphorated oil. I was soon better.
my life was smooth and uneventful till I was eleven years old. My mother kept a good girl. The same one lived with us for seven years. My sister Martha and I were required to do our share of the work. The girl would have gladly done it herself, but mother saw to it that we did our share, principally dishes. We both had the measles, my sister and I. How impatiently we waited for the girl to black the stove, scour the chairs, table, and floor with sand, rub the brass kettles with vinegar and salt, and shine the row of tin cans on the shelf with ashes till you could see your face in them. She then went to the sheep grounds to gather and made some tea to bring the measles out good. It must have helped as we got along fine with no bad effects. Then we had the chicken pox on the Fourth-of-July. We lived across the street from the public square and could see all that went on in the browery, races, etc. This was quite a trial. Brother Thomas came in and brought us some candy after the parade. I never forgot his kindness.
My mother was president of the Relief Society. She used to take me to meeting with her. I think the other children were easier to manage without me. I was useful to the sisters at first to wipe their eye glasses on my cotton apron. They wore the home made linsey dresses. My grandmothers each bought me one as their name sake, calico was fifty cents a yard then. I soon got so I could find the page in the hymn book for those hard of hearing. They moved the benches in a circle so as to be close together, much to the annoyance on the deacon, an elderly man, so I used to stay and shift them back in place. There was only mail once a week in those days. Sister Davis was sent as a representative from Salt Lake to visit the small towns in the south end of Cache Valley. A letter was sent announcing her coming and a special meeting was to be arranged. The mailman also carried passengers and Sister Davis came to the house first and the letter was delivered later. I did not want to miss a good meeting and this had promise of being unusual, so I offered to notify the Sisters. I ran from door to door while Sister Davis and the family ate dinner. I remember how diplomatic I was trying to arouse the sister' curiosity to get a goodly number out. I found some washing, one making home-made soap, boiling it in a big kettle with three sticks propped up. I told them Sister Davis was there in haste with a special message. Then I ran home and got myself ready and over to the meeting house to see what results I got. As each of those very busy ones came in I sat shaking hands with myself and feeling my importance to the work.
In the very early days there was but one wash tub in the town, a large wooden one which was passed around. The people were very accomodating. At the age of Eleven I began running the sewing machine, hemming diapers and all straight seams. I soon got quite expert at it. There were few machines in those days and mother was a good seamstress. Her father was a tailor and she learned to sew in the old country. She made beautiful plaid velvet vests for my father's father from pieces of material she brought with her. I have a very old picture of him wearing one of them. The neighbors brought in stitching for me to do for them while they did my dishes.
At the age of twelve our maid got married,. Mother was confined that winter with her seventh child. She was very sick and never left her bed room for five months. We had a good woman come to do the washing. Grandmother lived a half a block away and took care of mother and the baby. She also supervised us. At first I was very happy to try my hand at many new things, but the bread mixing grew to be very irksome. It was that winter I met and became acquainted with my future husband. They were getting our rock from the mountains to build a new meeting house. Father had a yoke of oxen and Orson Smith came every morning while I was doing my dishes and cupboard to get the oxen to put on his sleigh to go for rock. He was a Logan boy called to be Bishop. He and his wife had not been married long.
The next year father moved the log granery down in the field one and one-half miles from Paradise where he had a good farm. The day we moved he took the cupboard, table, and dishes first load, then the family. Mother walked into her new home and a little blue racer snake ran across the floor and under the cupboard. Father killed it and mother sat down and cried. She thought she must go back. We were leaving a good sized comfortable home. It was made of logs with weatherboarding and plastered. There were shade trees, grass, and a good orchard with no incumbrances, but it took so much time going to and from the farm. We had quite a herd of stock and father wanted to be where he could do a lot of things before breakfast. We had a loft upstairs and the boys had a wagon box with a cover on where they slept. Grandfather and grandmother Wright had moved to Draper a couple of years before and they invited me to come. I went and stayed a year. The schools were much better there and mother was anxious for me to get good schooling.
When my father was a boy, and his parents first came to Utah from England, they built a home and settled in Draper, later moving to Cache Valley, so I met many of father's old friends who were friendly and nice to me. Father built a large frame home on the farm. Mother kept a girl who did the spinning and from her I learned to spin and card wool until I became quite proficient at it. We had an indigo tub where we dyed the wool and yarn, wringing it out every morning and hanging it in the air so it dyed evenly throughout. I also learned to knit stockings and mittens. I remember one day the sun was clouded like it would rain, then a whissing, roaring noise, and next thing a cloud of grasshoppers settled on a wheat field just heading out. By night the leaves and tops were gone, just one stubby straight stock standing stripped of everything. I also remember the crickets and how they fought the big black things. I saw the different improvements in machinery from the days of the old cradle and the days of gleaning. The shortage of food I never understood much about as we had our gardens and plenty of milk, but were taught to waste nothing.
I remember the night my brother Fred was born, in October. Father brought home a forty gallon barrel of molasses. We had no bread or flour in the house, so we borrowed a pan full and next day father sold a young heifer for wheat and had it ground into flour which lasted until February, when father got this threshing done.
I graduated from the district schools and received a scholarship to the University of Utah. Father did not want me to go so I went to Logan for higher education. I attended the B.Y.C. They met in the basement of the tabernacle and later at the college. It was there I studied theology under J.Z. Stewart. He especially emphasized the marriage covenant with plural marriage as the most desirable. The first wife was as a good foundation while if you stopped there the main structure was never completed. This and many more he used as illustrations for that principle. I was converted. In reflecting back now there was a goodly number of that class impressed and went into it, boys and girls.
I was married in the Logan Temple on the Fourth-of-July, 1884. No one outside of my family knew of my marriage the first year. I stayed at home with father and mother. I stayed on the farm. Grandfather and grandmother Wright moved back to Cache Valley and father built a small home for them just a few yards from ours. My first baby, a girl, was born on the 27th of April, 1885. The persecutions were on then. When the baby was three weeks old, at five o'clock one afternoon C.C.Goodwin, an apostate of the Mormon Church, and Wetstone, a U.S. Deputy Marshall of Ogden, drove to our home with papers prepared to search the house for me. Rumors having got our of my marriage. There was just a few minutes to whisper when they were at the door. Father knew Goodwin very will, so he opened the door and treated him as though he was making a friendly call. They had Mr. Blanchard's team from the hotel in Logan, friends of my parents, and where they always stayed. They had driven twelve miles so while I was hiding upstairs, father asked them without hesitating if he could take their team to the barn and feed them. They wanted to go with him which he hoped they would, of course. There was only one place in Paradise where they could get a lodging. Mr. Goldsberry, and apostate Mormon. Father stayed with them showing them around as long as he could, trusting mother to do the rest. Her head worked fast as she took babe and me over to grandfather's, a couple of rods away, put every vestige of baby clothes under lock and key, and made up warm fires. The men had come in a sleigh although it was the middle of May. She started the girls on a good supper, Opened up all the upstarts doors, threw open the double doors in the front part on the hose, put on a pretty light dress, then began to set the dining room table, and in they came. There was a small potato cellar under the kitchen floor in front of the sink that had a trap door we lifted up. Down on the floor was an armful of straw and a linsey quilt, and the bottom of and old chair to step down on. All winter the lid had been raised last thing at night, and it was understood that if a knock came on the door, Father was to go quickly to open it. I was to go just as quickly to the cellar, while mother was to close the lid, draw that rug over it, and on top of that put the tin tub as though someone had bathed the night before. We could not use it now because the baby was here and I could not go there in the dark with her. Grandfather was very angry with father for taking such trash into his home and feeding them. He swore under his teeth I stayed close to the window watching to see if Goodwin should step over to shake hands with Grandfather. In that event I was to get under the bed that had the old fashioned valence around it, with my baby. They ate supper and while eating Goodwin said, "Where is your daughter; I see the piano; can't we have some music?" Father said "I'm sorry, but there is no one here that plays; my daughter went south three days ago." At that time some were going to Mexico, so they just concluded that that was what happened. Goodwin and Wetstone exchanged glances, Mother got a deck of cards and proposed a game of five up, to which the men consented. During the shuffle and deal mother said, "I was cleaning out an old trunk not long since and among the things I burned was a letter of yours, Goodwin, to my sister Emma Bullen who is now dead. Emma Gibbs she was then. You were proposing a marriage to her to be your plural wife. Wetstone looked at Goodwin whom he had not known very long. They had picked him up because he knew the people and was a Mormon hater. At ten-thirty they left for Logan. I went home and went to bed. It was not easy for me to stay in such close hiding now with a baby, and to arrest me meant five years in the penitentiary for my husband. We never repeated to anyone our joke on them. People felt too good to keep making it hard for some later. Twenty years later when I had seven children, I lived only two blocks from Goodwin and neighbor to a very young and beautiful Eastern woman who visited frequently at Goodwin's where they carried on spiritual siances. I told her one day of the trick we played and she went down the next day to twit him of it.
A few weeks after the Goodwin visit I went to Ogden where I stayed three months. My husband had to leave the state, so he and Frank Allen took a contract at Helena, Montana. He sent for me. The work proved to be all rock so they were stationed and we had a large camp. they were watching the mails, and we were afraid of our whereabouts being known, so we took a covered wagon with springs, a bed, a sheet iron stove, and grub boxes, and dishes. Under that we got out through the end gate of the wagon. We could very quickly put up our small tent and get a meal. Thus we traveled down to Great Falls. Going over the ferry on the Missouri was a new and exciting experience for me. I had always been afraid of water. We had just fifteen cents when we landed at Great Falls. My husband bought a box of Shinola, cleaned his shoes, bought a newspaper, and saw where bids were advertised for the excavation of a big bank. We needed money badly, and had to stay in seclusion, so we could afford to bid low, but there was this to consider; It was in the heart of town with big buildings near. It proved to be rock excavation of a solid nature, we were responsible for damage to windows, etc. The explosives were expensive also, so it was a great venture. He put in a bid and got the contract. He sent to town for a boy, team, and scrapers, and went to work. It proved to be soil with some rock, but it seams, so they had to use crowbars, picks, etc. my husband hired some single men who had no families and wanted board. We were camped on the Missouri River under the trees. A meat and milk wagon passed by, so with my two hole sheet iron stove, I cooked and boarded them. We fixed up three sticks on which we hung a kettle and boiled meat and suet puddings which were a cheap desert. I made lots of dumplings with the meat from the suet. When we settled up and paid the men I found I had cleared $200. We also had something like six or eight hundred from the job. It was quite a lot for those days, more than a man could earn on a good sized farm, and this in two or three weeks.
I was terrorized with thunder and lightening. I never had experienced anything like it, and I was alone some distance outside of town. The water snakes were also hard on me. I was naturally afraid. Scared of Indians, tramps, and everything. Going out of a large family where boys were with us made me frightened. We went back to Helena to camp where work continued until Christmas. They had Gumbo clay to work in, and only cleared expenses on a whole with their summer's work. The men of course drew wages and were glad for the work. Many were from home towns.
My little girl Nellie was two years old in the spring, and I was to be a mother again the next March. While I was cooking over the campfire I was deathly sick many times. One Sunday morning I was forced to ask my husband to lift the three loaves of bread out of the oven. I couldn't make the effort; I was so weak. Monday morning after the men went back to work, I felt better, and was not so bad again. They went into town Saturday nights to drink up their week's wages, no one else to spend it on. After the work was finished the men and outfit were sent back to Helena. We then visited the Falls, going up Ft. Benton. We there saw the larger boats that came up from the Missippi River bringing lumber, etc., taking out wool, pelts, and many other things. Going back to Helena most of the men left for home. We drove our wagons under the large cook tent. Father Smith was with us. I did the cooking for those left. We stayed there until Christmas, then came down on the train heavily visited to Smithfield. I talked to the mail carrier, Went up town where a rig met me and took me to Paradise. I stayed with some people I had never seen. I took the name of Mrs. Wilson. I had always told my little girl her name was Nellie Post. One day she came crying as some children has called her Nellie Slab and she said, "My name is Post, eh, Mamma?" They knew it was some kind of wood and got mixed on the kind. I intended to stay there until the last of March and go home to be confined, but I stayed a week too long and was taken sick there. All my mail came through Will G. Raymond, readdresseed to me. He brought it to me and I mailed out a note to mother for my trunk with my little clothes in. My brother Fred and sister Martha brought it to me, staying but a short time then going back home. The place where I stayed was the home of a man who carried the mail and walked up from the depot with me in the fall. He asked me one day if I had come from Canada when I came from the North. I asked him how he knew I came from the North. He never saw my face. He said he heard my voice and would know it again in Europe. my baby was another little girl. I got along very well, and was up on the tenth day. The next day the deputies were very active in the north and he advised me to move quarters. That morning he and his wife put my things and tiny baby in a clothes basket and put some soiled aprons and dresses like they might be taking a Wash, and walked four blocks to a sister of his. I put on an old shawl and sun bonnet and crept along behind far enough to have no connection with them yet keeping them in sight. I was weak and loooked seventy years old going along. That afternoon my baby was cross. I was tired and worried and my milk upset her. I was among perfect strangers and she cried so. I walked the floor for hours with her. An old gentleman, their grandfather, asked me how old she was. He said in England where he came from her little pink nose would not be out of blankets yet. At ten that night a rig came for me with all my things and drove me home. Some more strangers, a young man and his girl. They made me a bed in the back of a heavy buggy out of quilts, and I raised on my elbow often, instructing them where to go. We reached mother's at two in the morning, then started right back and I went to bed. When the rig stopped my baby who had been good from the jolt of the wagon, woke up and cried out. Father was startled out of a sound sleep, hearing that tiny cry and it was cold night; he rushed down stairs in his night clothes three steps at a time to open the door. The roads in Cache Valley in those days were terrible. The mud was up to the hub, and it froze so hard; it was terribly rough.
After a few days the deputies were searching the south end of the valley, Father had bought a piece of farm land adjoining his field on the brow of the west hills with an old house on it. He cut some pine wood that would make little or no smoke to heat water and at night moved me over with just what I needed to get along with. They brought me some cooked food every night and fresh milk. I had neighbors on the south a few rods away, but they never knew I was there. My blinds were never raised. My brother Fred had a couple of quilts for a bed on the floor and stayed with me at nights. I was going to say slept there, but he scarcely slept at all. He took turns with me walking the baby. She had what they called the three months colic. I was worried all the time as strange men in new buggies would drive up through the field, and I never knew just when the children would drop a word and my whereabouts would be known. Worry and a cross baby took all my strength. In May the raid was over and things quieted down for a time, so I went over home. The last of May my sister Evelyn went to Paradise to do some shopping for me. Mother cautioned her if the store keeper should ask about me she was to know nothing. They had not heard for some time and she did not know. She got through the unusual inquiry, did the shopping, and there was some change left. They asked her if she would have candy. "No, she said, "Mary Ellen had told her to get stamps for the balance." The cat was out. She came home and told us what had happened. Oh, dear, Oh, dear. At this point my husband was moving his outfit that wintered at Helena to Spokane, Washington, where he and Frank Allen , a partner, had taken another contract. He sent for me to take the train to Spokane the second of June, which I did. I was very nervous traveling with two children, expecially until I was well out of the state. After being in such seclusion if a stranger looked curiously at us I shivered so that I could not relax and enjoy anything, although the view was very pretty most of the way. We crossed a branch of the Colorado. The water was so blue and different. We crossed on an iron bridge at one hundred and fifty feet elevation. That made it look blue I guess. My husband was never at the train to meet me. Some strange men would approach me by descriptions given and although I would be looking for someone I always got a chill when a stranger approached me. I slept in a wagon box and lived in the tent that summer. The climate was ideal, the vegetation very pretty, and while I never left camp I enjoyed the feeling of security and the rest to my nerves. My baby continued with the colic over the six months. Every day at four she began. I had to get her feet in the oven, make catnip tea, and sometimes resort to a paragoric. I never got her settled down before eight o'clock. A colony of our people was settling in Canada, so we decided to go there and build a home. Frank Allen sent for his wife to meet him in Montana and we started out in November traveling through the Courdelanes. We went over the old Mullen trail, the first road built by the government with Courdelane's bridges. The polls were pinned down with wooden pins but they were loose and the polls were spreading as soon as touched, and the fear of the horses getting their legs through and broken was an awful dread. It was pretty lonesome trip through all that timber. We met a couple of desperadoes hoseback one day who took a new gun from Brother Allen's wagon. We traveled early and late and by the time we got to the Milk Rivers it was very cold with snow behind us. One river we crossed forty-three times in two days on the trip, a branch of the Clark River, I think they called it. The horses had to almost swim at first, but it was just a small creek at the last. On reaching Lee's Creek we stayed with Aunt Zina Card a few days, then moved into a new granery they had just completed where I stayed with the children while my husband went into the mountains and got logs for a log room which he built with a small lean to with no floor which we put our tents and tools in. The shovels, picks, etc., were traded for vegetables for winter use. We put the top bed of the wagon in the corner of the log room with my bed on. We made a trundle bed that fit in the foot of it. I was still frightened of everything, and especially Indians here, and I was located between two big reservations, the Blood Indians on one side, and the Pegans on the other. They were related and did lots of visiting back and forth. I did not dare to think what I would do when I would be left alone those hundreds of miles from home and my people. The time came very quickly when this thing happened. Soon after we moved into our new home Apostle Amasa Lyman called on me. He sat in the only chair we had, and I sat on the stool at his feet, while he told me of his early married experiences and their home made furniture in those pioneer days. As he went over his experiences I fancied he was enjoying as environment and association that lingered with him. I thought at that time I was passing through all I could bear, but years afterward I knew that I did not know what trial was then.
I taught school two terms that first year carrying my baby to Aunt Susan Smith each morning who took care of her and I taught her boy at school. I took my eldest girl with me. We were not able to get good water on the lot where we lived. It was hard, bitter, and sort of brackish. I could not even wash with it. We had to haul water in a barrel from Lee's Creek which froze solid forty gallons of it the first winter and I had to along with bucketsful. When my husband came to visit us two years later we took a new lot one and one-half miles farthur west on the hill, where we built three rooms. We had the first wall papered room. We stretched factory on first, then papered over it. Aunt Zina covered her walls with brown outing flannel. We got the idea from a mutual book. Blizzards and winds were so bad on the north and west we had to put weather board on; the first house with weatherboard on the outside. We had two cows and sold milk along with teaching for a living. I fed and milked them. I came to Salt Lake to the dedication of the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple, and brought the children. Hattie was the baby then. I stayed at Silver Bow, Montana, all one day waiting for train connections and four hours in Pocatello. Aunt Zina and a large company came then.
I didn't teach after Hattie and Owen were born. I adapted myself to the country while I was there, but when I left I didn't look back on it with any longing. I never expected to go back and never did. Sister Zina Card, Mary Ellen Wolf, and Mary Anderson were all very dear, good, and kind to me. I was always invited to everything when the apostles were there. My husband came up once in awhile. He was there when Hattie was born, but left when she was ten days old. I paid a girl $1.50 a week to stay with me for three weeks. I also took Mrs. Kerr to stay with me for a boarder for six months. I took care of her when her baby was born. She took sick and was threatened with a miscarriage and was in bed three days. Hattie fell in a post hole the day Mrs. Kerr's baby was born. She was two years old and followed after Indians, I ran after her. The Indians had her but gave her back. It was while alone with my two babies that the fear of Thunder and Lightening left me. I was frightened to death of Indians in those days although I came from an Indian country.
When Owen was three months old I moved down to Logan to a little old house. I had light yellow blinds so the light came through. I never had the blinds up. No one ever came but the Relief Society teachers the first summer. I put the baby in the back in a tub for a sun bath. McKinley went in as president that fall and was good to our people and defended our cause. The Manifesto came just before Hattie was born.
I went up to Preston in June to Brother Growley's. They were very kind to me. I stayed there until Gladys was two weeks old, came home on the train in a drifting snow. I packed all my things that morning but lost a sack of pretty things off the wagon. I couldn't advertise for anything and they were part of my truseau. Dora came to Preston and stayed after the first week and stayed until I went home.
During my stay in Canada I was first counselor in Aunt Zina in Mutual and took full charge for three months while she was in Utah. Sister Stewart was President but resigned to go to Preston. I was secretary of the Relief Society in the Sixth Ward in Logan in the early spring. I took kindergarten work during the summer at the B.Y.C. It was a six week course. Sister Barber, and Marion Todd also took it; Rose Jones was the teacher. It cost me ten dollars and I washed and ironed to get the money. While Owen was a baby, Brother Molen put me in as stake treasurer of the Relief Society. I was counselor to Lucy Hogan in the Sixth Ward in Mutual. I was put in Relief Society at conference at Wellsville. I also acted as secretary most of the time. I was released on account of poor health. I went away for six months and when I came back they put me on as a board memter for two years in the Stake Relief Society. I then served as a stake secretary untile the stake was divided, and then acted on the Logan Stake Board until Sister Barber was released and I went to Honolulu.
I was county chairman of th Woman's Republican Club for a year. I was asked why a Republican and answered, "I took four little children clinging to my skirts under a foreign flag in my maiden name and voted for a Republican. They legalized the children, and McKinley was the man elected." I was also appointed publicity woman for the Republican Club during the war. Janet Hyde made the appointment and gave me one hundred dollars for the work. I acted for a year or so until after the war. No pay went with war work.
After I came home form Honolulu I was put on the Geneological Board with Brother Scholes and acted until he was released. I was also magazine agent in Relief Society in my ward and class leader for teacher for more than a year. I was also a visiting teacher for a year. I have made five trips to California, nursed forty-eight women with new babies, went to the B.Y. to school for a year after Nellie was born. My mother took care of Nellie. I didn't graduate but they gave me a certificate to teach. I was pregnant with Martha and coun't graduate as I had to go away. While in Cancda I did a great deal of sewing. I always followed the counsel of the Priesthood. My children are all working in the church with is a great comfort to me. They have all been through the temple. I am now the mother of ten.
POSTSCRIPT, written by a daughter, Olena Smith Harris
All of these experiences were shadows and forgotten when she told of the visits of the leaders of the church in her home and what it meant to her. She says she sat spellbound listening to Apostle Amasa Lyman tell of his early married life, experiences in pioneer days and she knew she should cheerfully bear hers. She made several trips down to Utah with other leaders of her community, one was to attend the dedication of the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple. When her fifth child was born her husband's first wife suggested that she name her Gladys to being cheer and gladdness, and such proved to do. When her baby was who weeks old she did all her own packing and took the train for home, her things comeing later by wagon. She lost a sack of her lovely hand work, some had been in her truseau, but she did not dare to advertise for it.
Her keen bright mind was always searching for improvement and even with six children she attended a six weeks' course in kindergarten work at the Brigham Young College with other leading women of Logan. She was a secretary and chairman of the Republican Women's Club, and during World War I was appointed publicity woman. During her whole life she found that the best avenue for expression and use of her talents in working for the church. She was a counselor to Aunt Zina Card in the Y.L.M.I.A. in Cardston and to Auny Lucy in the Logan Sixth Ward. It was in the Relief Society work that she loved the most and she devoted her life to it. She wrote of it: "The Relief Society to me is as a grand encyclopedia. Organized as it is by the prophet of God and working under the divine guidance of the Priesthood. All other societies and clubs outside are counterfeit to this model. It's organizations placed us on an equal with the greatest benefactors of our race and surely the poor of the earth rejoice. n This work means more than is often attached to it. The particular line of work our name at first suggests is for caring for persons who are in need of assistance, which of itself is a most glorious and commendable work. The spirit which attends such charitable acts is in almost all cases ample reward for the effort put forth, but in addition to this there is much implied in our name and which we are expected to teach and practice testifying of the restoration of the gospel to each other and our neighbors, using due diligence to uphold and sustain each other, speaking of every good we know of each other, even to magnifying it to such an extent to make it far greater than weakness, burying each others faults and failings by extoling the virtues. No portion of our lives could be spent to greater profit to ourselves and no greater good could be accomplished in out communities. It would uplift ourselves in the estimation of our children and they in return would learn to look for the good in mankind. So I may safely say the mission of the society is but half done when we have discharged the temporal part. The prophet Joseph Smith realized this when he instructed the sisters at the first organization of it. He said, "I know turn they key for women and from this time forth blessings shall flow down upon you. Improve yourselves, lift one another up in your scale of being, that you may become a light in your homes and a blessing to your race. Our work circumscribes all that we want to study, the field is broad enough for all our abilities. What is there that is good for us to do that we cannot find under this our banner. Think of it, sisters, and see if the thought will not inspire us all to renewed diligence and respect for it."
She filled almost all the positions connected with the organization she loved. She was stake secretary, visiting teacher, teacher supervisor, agent for the Woman's Exponent and Relief Society Magazine, board member, stake treasurer, but perhaps as a stake secretary she found most joy for she had a remarkable gift for conversation herself and of grasping and repeating other's expressions. She was chosen stake secretary 18 May 1901 and had been stake treasurer since 20 July 1893. Luch S. Cardon was president with Luna Y Thatcher and Rebecca Eames as counselors. It was at the time when the whole Cache Valley was in one stake and the same for the Relief Society work. She was released on account of poor health and took a trip to the Hawiian Islands and Californian visiting her children. On her return she was again chosen as a board member and in 1912 she was again stake secretary. When the Logan Stake was organized 5 June 1920, she was chosen Stake Secretary with Ellen Barber as president and Olive Bjorkman and Ida Quinney as counselors. She never grew old and loved the work and did it as efficently as she had done twenty years before. She loved the women she labored with she wrote, "If I should think of compensatin for sacrifices and trials it would be to have to confidence and association of these women I have contacted in Relief Society work."
when other's sone Owen's wife, Estella, died mother took her three children to care for. It wasn't easy at her age. She did the best she could though and what a trial it was when Orson was accidently shot. It seemed that her life had been full enough of hardships. This was an added one. He was just 14 and would have graduated form the 8th grade the next spring. He was such a promising boy.
She was so proud of her baby boy, George. She had lost her second boy, Walter, when he was two years with Pneumonia. George was just a week old and she was weak. Her third boy, Seymour, died when he was 18 with pneumonia and now George had graduated in dentistry. The examining president had called her and told her what an excelled work he had done when he passed the Utah State Board of examiners. She always was one to encourage her children to be and do their very best. She was always cheerful and made life happy for them all in the face of great trials. She could make the best meals out of almost nothing. Her dumplings were delicious and she loved them. Her pies were to tender and full of good fruit or custard. She loved to make yorkshire pudding her grandmother had taught her to make and serve with roast beef and apple jelly. She never pressed her girls to do housework unless they wanted to. She always willingly did it herself so they could improve themselves or enhoy a ballgame or party. She did sacrifice to give them music and the finer things of life. There was always music in the home. She enjoyed playing games wiht them at night. She sewed while they sang they hymns with their father around the piano. They never knew she enjoyed singing until after they had all gone and she joined the Singing Mothers in Relief Society. They sang at her funeral.
When the Bailey boys sang "I go prepare a place for you" at her funeral, her children knew she would do just that. She had been doing that for them all their lives. It will be such a happy reunion when this family does meet again in ther hereafter. They know from her good tachings that there will certainly be a hereafter where they will all enjoy each other again.
When any of her children or sisters gave her anything nice and she went to visit her married children, she usually left the gift with one of them. She loved to see them look nice and she shared. Sacrifice was her life. Her happiness was making others happy. She could see when one needed a lift and tried so hard to give it. She had a wonderful sense of humor and made others happy. Her daughter Mary is so like her in this respect. She was a wonderful mother and wife. she loved father's other wives and said often that she looked forward to an eternity with them. Her testimony was strong and she loved her Maker. She lived the gospel as nearly as any mortal could. She was so kind to everyone and sometimes tried her children with the people she would bring in and feed. They hadn't lived as long as she had.
When she was a small girl and her parents moved about one and one-half miles from town, she thought nothing of the walking into town in her egerness for associations, and regularly attended all religious and social gatherings. She tell of attending dances with her father who played the violin, long before she was old enough for her to participate.
In later years she was on the Geneological Board of the Logan Stake. She enthusiastically explained and worked out every phase of the work. She also worked in the temple for our own dead and interested other members in temple work. She encouraged and helped her children to keep their temple clothes in readiness and to take advantage of every opportunity to visit the temple. Every phase of the Gospel she understood, accepted, and supported.
Mary E. Smith had the rare gift of being interested in and freindly to all she came in contact with, and anyone who came to her with their troubles found sympathy and understanding that encouraged them to do better in life if in the wrong. But, in her eyes they were always right unless proved otherwise.
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