My story begins under the frosty skies of Sweden and Denmark. My father Jens (Jens is James in Sweden) Jacobson was born October 17, 1834 in Brunslov, Ostraly County, State of Malmohn, Sweden. Here he spent his young manhood receiving the education afforded the middle class and serving his apprenticeship as a horticulturist. Here, [he also] heard and embraced the gospel at the hands of Erastus Snow.
He later accepted a call to fill a mission to Denmark, and lived eight years at Copenhagen. During his mission, he converted and baptized a Miss Anne Rasmussen, born February 1, 1837 at Bjargsoc, Holbeck, Denmark. She was the dark-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a hardworking wheelwright. Her father was one of the few men of the district who owned his own home.
Anne had a high school education and served three years as apprentice to a dairyman at Schleswig Und Holstein. The young people were in love but mission rules forbade any love making (dating), so Father waited until he got home and then wrote to his companion, Elder Anton Nelson, asking him to tell Anne of his love and his wish to marry her. She accepted and they planned to marry in the Endowment House in Utah. However, plans were changed and they were married the first day at sea by the captain of their ship, the B.S. Kimball.
They arrived at Fort Laramie on September 5, 1865 and then at Great Salt Lake City in November of that year in Captain Miner G. Atwood’s handcart company.
To leave the old country, [Jens and Anne) borrowed money from Joe Hansen. This they repaid after reaching Utah. Neither Father or Mother spoke English, but Father set about teaching himself to speak English, as well as to read and write it, and succeeded very well. Mother spoke English very brokenly, and until we children began speaking English, Danish was spoken entirely in the home.
"Childhood is the seed from which springs our loveliest blossoms of memory."
I was born January 19, 1872 at Bear River City, Utah, which is not a city at all, but a small farming town ten miles west of Brigham City, and north of Ogden. We moved there from Session’s Settlement in 1869 when Rass, the eldest, was three years old. Session’s Settlement is now Bountiful, Utah, a great orchard community. Father planted the first orchard there.
Our house was situated on a little rise between the Bear and Malad Rivers, close to where the Malad empties into the Bear River. The water in the Malad was brackish and we used it only for household purposes. Drinking water was carried one-quarter mile from Bear River, up a dugway and set in wooden buckets settle. At first we lived in a dugout close to Bear River and Mother had a hard time keeping the little boys away from the river, especially Jimmy, the baby. So Father built a little willow fence around the yard.
Later, on a lot further from the river, Father built one large frame room of weatherboard lined with adobe. A lumber shanty was used as a summer kitchen. Joining this was a slant-roofed cellar where we stored milk, butter, meat, and fruit. A little north of the house we had a grain cellar where my brothers Rass and Jim slept. When the cellar was full of grain they slept in a wagon box.
The furniture was very meager, consisting of a number seven Charter Oak stove, one of the first in town, a homemade table and cupboard of shelves, three or four chairs and a bench. A homemade chest held all of our clothes. This chest Mother later carried into Old Mexico.
Mother once had a green and white checked gingham dress, which she wore for sixteen years. It was then remodeled for Eliza, at which time it didn’t have a break in it. Mother made our little petticoats as neatly as she did our dresses, and trimmed them with lace crocheted from ravelings, or used points made from small squares of cloth doubled into a triangle and stitched to the material on the long edge.
In the winter, wooden clogs were worn by nearly all of the townspeople. Each fall a clog maker came to the house, measured our feet and sent the finished shoes. A pair was expected to last all winter, but sometimes I stole away to skate on the ice and cracked a shoe, which Father had to mend—a hard task indeed. We learned very young to cord and spin yarn for stockings. I did most of the cording, and Eliza did the spinning. Gray yarn was made by mixing white and black wool as we corded. Each girl had the responsibility of knitting and mending stockings for herself and one of the other children.
Though I was so bashful I could hardly meet people, I hired out to a sick lady the summer I was eleven. This was particularly painful for me since the couple was very quarrelsome, and on one occasion while the wife was still bedfast, her husband threw a slab of bacon at her. I became so upset I frequently cried all the way home. This made me appreciate my own loving home all the more.
Being so very religious, Father sometimes held very lengthy family prayer. Rass complained many times that his knees ached and I always tried to get comfortable before we began. One morning just before prayer, however, I found and chewed a leaf of tobacco that Father had dropped while doctoring a sick animal. I thought I would surely die, but we had been taught to make no disturbance during prayer, so I kept silent until prayer was ended. Mother saw I was pale and became alarmed so I had to tell the story. If tobacco makes everyone as sick as I was, I don’t see how there could be any hankering after it.
While Father was yet a young man, he was thrown from a horse and hurt internally. He was bedfast for months, and never did entirely recover. Because of this accident and the fact that we had the largest family in town, we were rather poor. I wore clogs longer than the other girls, and grew to feel ashamed of the fact. I planned to arrive early at school and remain in at recess so the other children wouldn’t notice them so much.
Our education was very meager. I didn’t begin school until I was eight years old, then attended two sessions of three months each. I also had two winter sessions at a one-teacher school, studying the three R’s and spelling. I have so missed an education that I always made every effort to give it to my children.
The alkali began rising around Bear River, killing our crops and orchards, and the church released the people whom they had called to settle there. Father had read of Arizona’s tropical fruit-raising land around Phoenix, and being a horticulturist, decided to move there. We were two months making preparations for the trip.
Mother, having been apprenticed as a dairymaid in her girlhood, used the knowledge she gained at that time to can milk, make cheese and pack butter in brine. We girls helped in this as well as in baking quantities of bread, cookies, and in other food preparation. Also, we made soap enough to last throughout our trip.
We left Bear River City the first part of October 1884. I thought it was the saddest day of my life, leaving all the scenes of my childhood. I stood in my wagon and looked back as long as I could see a glimpse of anything, then sat down and cried. For years I longed to go back.
At Johnson, Utah we met and traveled with Brother John Reidhead from Woodruff, Arizona, who had been over the road several times and knew the watering places. This was our salvation, as Father was unfamiliar with the country. It also resulted in our going to northern Arizona instead of the Phoenix area.
While ferrying over the Colorado River, Father unhitched the team after the wagons were on the flatboat. Eliza and I went over with the first wagon and she enjoyed it so much that she went back to make the second trip, but I was too frightened to attempt it again. After crossing, we immediately began climbing Lee’s Backbone—that most rocky of all roads. Even by hitching both teams to one wagon we sometimes had to remove part of the load. One wheel broke and we camped while Father ferried back across the River to get another wheel at Johnson.
We reached the Arizona desert of sand. The children who were old enough walked much of the way to lighten the load. The water barrels were fastened onto the side of the wagon above the brake blocks. One day I attempted to climb up on the barrel to steal a ride and my foot slipped under the wheel and broke my toe. How it pained! But I had to suffer in silence because the mishap was brought on through disobedience. It was a long, weary trek over that desert with the same scenery day after day and not nearly enough water for ourselves or the animals. We sometimes dipped rainwater out of small basins in the rocks. I remember it all so well, even the smell of the bushes.
Our weary company traveled through the desert for maybe two weeks longer, then reached the old fort called Brigham City, Arizona, where some of the first settlers had lived during the United Order. Little did I dream that my future husband and his first wife had been among them.
When we attended Sunday School or a dance at Snowflake camp later on, I felt very shabbily dressed. I had only the maroon dress, which I had worn in Bear River City, and it was now much too short. Mother lengthened it with a black calico ruffle, but it still was not long enough to cover my badly worn black pernell shoes. Every time I wore those shoes I had to re-sew and black them.
In 1887, when I was fifteen years old, we moved to Heber—a town of seven families, about forty miles west of Snowflake. On the way we picked up Eliza who had been working at Snowflake for some time. We attended conference at Wilford, seven miles above Heber, and that was where I first saw the man I afterward married—Charles Edmund Richardson. He had just returned from Mexico where he had been on a trip as an interpreter for Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., who was arranging for Mormon colonization there. He wore a large Mexican hat, which made him conspicuous and attracted my attention, but I little dreamed at that time that he would ever be my husband.
However, I was to become better acquainted when he hired me the following summer to help his wife, Sadie. I was so bashful I tried to avoid his presence, and if he was in the house when I carried water from the spring I took a round-about way so he couldn’t see me from the door. He said afterward that was what first aroused his interest in me! My wage consisted of one dollar a week, which I saved to buy clothes. Aunt Sade made my stay profitable in other ways: she taught me to crochet five-stitch lace, and to use the sewing machine.
She seemed to grow to love me and eventually asked her husband to take me as his third wife. Accordingly, Edmund proposed marriage one day while I was down by the creek, but I refused him, saying that I did not care to tie myself to him, since he would be leaving again for a mission. I almost immediately began to regret this answer.
Edmund left his second wife, Aunt Sarah, with her people in Snowflake until he could get things prepared, and took Aunt Sade into Mexico to make a home. There he stayed six weeks to build corrals and a three-room adobe house where Sadie could run a little butter and cheese factory to help care for herself while he filled another mission to the Indians.
Before long the town of Wilford was evacuated, and as a result, Father was discontented in the little town of Heber, so he decided to follow the others into Old Mexico. Upon arrival at the international boundary on January 11, 1887, we were issued papers with instructions to report at La Ascencion, where the officials pronounced the papers incorrect, confiscated our outfits and fined us $400. What a hardship this was! We were penniless in a strange country, without a home, and a large fine hanging over our heads. Some of the brethren helped us raise the fine to recover our outfits and Edmund let us pitch our tents on his land where we lived from January to July.
Soon Father got hold of a city lot through the church grant, and fenced it with Moses rod (ocotillo) and planted some rose bushes for Mother in the yard of the home they planned to build. She had brought these plants all the way from Utah. Then he rented a piece of land south of town, somewhere near Holden’s place, and planted corn. When the corn was growing well, Father took two teams and went freighting at Via Mada (about one hundred miles away) in order to pay off the debt caused by the fine.
Mother was left to watch the crops. One day in the terrible summer heat, she chased cattle out of the field of corn and suffered a sunstroke. She became so ill she couldn’t stand the heat of our hot tent, so Aunt Verona Whiting took her into her house and helped us nurse her. When Father came home Mother was too weak to talk much, and was suffering a great deal. Father was grief-stricken and the first day of July he called a family prayer circle around her bed. Oldest by oldest, each took a turn leading in prayer, and Father dedicated her to the Lord, praying that His will be done. At the close of the prayer, she opened he eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed at us and breathed her last. She had been sick ten days, and was only 51 years of age. For years afterward, I longed to have her cook something for me. I even prayed that she might return to me sometime.
My eleven-year-old sister Serepta, felt Mother’s loss very keenly. She took sick the day Mother died and kept pining away. She continued to fade and waste away and couldn’t eat, although she was hungry all the time. It was pitiful to hear her as she lay in bed. My poor father watched over the little girls like a mother, never resting day or night. We had no lamp or candles, but lighted torches of pine faggots to minister drinks and care during the night. After a while Aunt Fan Merrill brought over two candles. Father lost so much rest and grieved until he, too, became bedfast. As he watched Serepta he often shook his head and said, “She looks just like her mother.” About that time Rass came home sick with quinsy so there were four patients for Eliza and me to care for. Serepta lingered on until November, then she went to join Mother.
Until the time Mother died, Edmund had been on his second mission to the Indians where he had gone right after proposing marriage to me in Heber, Arizona. I had answered that I did not care to tie myself to him, but had since repented of this answer. Some way Aunt Sade had detected my true feelings and had written him that she thought I had changed my mind.
When he came home most of our courting was done right in Aunt Sade’s home. We never were together later than nine o’clock, but Aunt Sade often pleaded that she was tired and went to bed early in order to give us a few minutes alone. We were married in Juarez on my seventeenth birthday, January 19, 1889 by President A.F. McDonald. Aunt Sade helped make my trousseau, and let me wear her dress and hat for the ceremony. As we left, she sweetly kissed me goodbye. I was the happiest woman in the world to be sealed to Edmund for time and eternity. He was so handsome, such a fine fellow, and I learned that he could be relied upon no matter what came in the way. I fairly worshipped him then, but grew to love him more and more until the day of his death.
When I returned from being married, I found Aunt Sade had fixed my room so nicely. She had made a shuck tick for the bedstead and had given me the lovely quilt she pieced when she was seven years old. It was lined with white. She also lent me a chest that Grandfather Richardson had made.
Edmund was teaching school in Diaz the year we were married, and I lived for the time he spent at home. Each day was begun with prayer. We all three knelt together with his arm around each of us, and he kissed us both at the close of the prayer. We played together and tried to keep him home as long as we could, until sometimes he was forced to run all the way to get to school on time. We girls often played pranks on him, but even though we worked together, he usually got the better of us in a playful bout.
One morning after Sadie had called me into their room she and I decided we would not get up. As often as Edmund pulled one of us out of bed, the other climbed back in. Finally he gathered one of us under each arm and kicking the front screen door open, he pushed first one and then the other out into the yard and closed the door.
We were laughing and enjoying the scuffle until we looked up and saw Salt-River Wilson standing there looking astonished. In mortification, Sadie and I scooted around to the back door, leaving Edmund to do the explaining.
I thought as much of Aunt Sade as any sister I had and my own mother couldn’t have been better to me. When I was sick she cooked extra dainties for me and always helped me with my sewing.
My first child, Annie, and Sade’s fourth child, Walter, were born just six weeks apart— Walter being the eldest. We made our layettes together. When Annie was born, I was very ill for twenty-four hours. About eight o’clock Arthusa Elmer and John Hoopes came to our house for breakfast. They were on their way to Juarez to be married. Aunt Sade hurriedly prepared a meal for them, meanwhile doing what she could for me. Annie was born about an hour after they left. Because she was a seven months baby, she was very small and as a child, was always dainty. Walter was a great fat boy, and so Aunt Sade always made up any ribbon or lace into something lovely for Annie. Walter died when he was sixteen months old, and Aunt Sade nursed Annie and loved her like her own.
Mannon, my second child, was such a beautiful boy, and so well-built, with large hands, arms and shoulders. His hair looked so dark against his bluish-white forehead. His back was so broad and he weighed about ten or eleven pounds. But, because he was a “blue” baby, he lived only a few hours. He seemed to pass away once before he was named, but Edmund revived him and named him Mannon. Poor little fellow! My baby’s every breath was a groan. In view of his suffering, I couldn’t feel like holding him, and resigned myself to his passing. I buried him in the clothes I had made to bless him in. He looked so sweet.
Not long after Mannon’s death, Edmund built me a house on the northwest corner of the block, just through the orchard from Aunt Sade’s. Here, Estella (November 30, 1892), Edna (May 5, 1894) and Lenore (October 6, 1895) were born. I had thoroughly enjoyed living with Aunt Sade, but it was nice now to begin fixing up a little home of my own. We hadn’t much elaborate furniture, but with hammer and saw, bits of newspapers and calico, boxes could be transformed into useful and attractive things. Here I raised such lovely gardens. At one time my brother Jimmy picked a melon which he could scarcely lift. For several years I carried house water from Aunt Sade’s, but then Edmund drove a pump for me.
How I enjoyed the church meetings, dances and ward parties, though I was naturally shy and dreaded going anyplace alone.
When Edna was the baby I moved up to Edmund’s gristmill, about three miles west of town. This was my home intermittently for several years and we lived upstairs.
About this time Edmund received a call from the church authorities to go to Mexico City to study law in order to protect the civil rights of the Mormon colonists in northern Chihuahua." He moved me back to Diaz before he left and hired William Black to run the mill. Edmund took Aunt Sade and her two daughters, Hazel and Alta, with him to Mexico City. He learned the law so rapidly that in six month’s time they gave him cases to handle in the city courts.
My seventh child, Madge, was born on April 28, 1898 while Edmund was in Mexico City. She was one of the prettiest babies I ever had. Her hair was so long and black. I took such delight in her, and it was hard to leave her, at the age of five months, when Edmund and I went back to the Salt Lake Temple to have my endowments. But I felt that I was leaving her in good hands with Aunt Fan Merrill to care for her.
We left in September, and the weather was so warm that I wore only a little voile dress and took no wraps. At Grand Junction, Colorado, we had a snowstorm, and I was so humiliated without a wrap, and was so cold. At one of the [train] stops Edmund hurried into a shop and bought me a nice cape. I was glad for the cape, but how I worried for fear he would not be back in time. What would I have done if he had been left!
For some time Edmund had considered buying a ranch and now purchased a large tract of land we called “Dusty Dale” three miles northeast of town, on which he built a little two-room lumber house for Aunt Sade. On August 24, 1900, when my sweet, little Flossie was exactly three months old, I also moved to the ranch and lived in the granary.
Lola was born on the ranch at the lumber house on March 11, 1902, but after Aunt Sade moved to Colonia Juarez (about 1902) as Edmund was often away, I felt timid about being alone on the ranch to welcome my next child. Uncle Sullie and Aunt Irene were in Sonora teaching school, so I moved into their home in Diaz. Here, on April 14, 1904, we greeted my tenth child and second son, Ervil. I had been happy for each of my wonderful daughters, but how thrilled I was to now have a son, having lost Mannon the day he was born. My feeling of pride and joy was shared by the entire family. Annie commented that he was in a kingdom of love and worshipped by seven adoring females.
I was back at Dusty Dale living in the big house on July 16, 1907 when a lovely daughter was born. Being the eleventh child, we appropriately named her Elva (Danish for eleven).
Five months later, just seven days after Christmas, my beautiful three and one-half year old son with golden curls was taken in death as a result of blood poisoning from a thorn wound. I was shattered! Edmund, who was away on a law case, said that the morning Ervil died, the song came distinctly to his mind, “Your sweet little rose bud has left you,” so that when he arrived home he was not surprised at what had taken place. He gave a lovely talk at the graveside service.
I had no way of knowing then that in giving up my son during the Christmas season, I would be rewarded the following Christmas by the birth of another son. Vernon was born December 25, 1908. I again had a son and seven adoring sisters had a brother to love.
In the year of 1910, Annie was going to teach school, so we moved into Diaz again. There, on November 21, 1911, Lamar was born.
It had always seemed to me that my children would never grow up and so it was a shock when Annie began going out with Elmer Johnson as a “steady,” then declared she wanted to be married. But since Elmer was one of the nicest young men I had ever known, I could not object. However, I didn’t see how I could ever get a long without my girl, for she had taken the sole responsibility of the family sewing. Sewing for eight girls was, in itself, no small job, as we never bought a single thing ready-made and she also helped with the milking and cheese making on the ranch. She brought so much sunshine into the home with her music and interest in the smaller children. Each morning we sang hymns before breakfast while Annie played the organ. This was such a good beginning for the day and how we did enjoy it. She and Elmer were married in the Salt Lake Temple in April of 1912.
On the 27th of July 1912, Edmund and I drove to the ranch to visit Annie and look after business, taking Elva and Vernon with us. Madge, then 14 years old, was left in charge at the home in town. Next morning, just at daybreak, we were awakened by the sound of a galloping horse whose rider came with an order from the stake authorities that all the Mormon colonists were to flee to the United States for safety. Mexican rebels had surrounded Colonia Dublan and were expected be upon Diaz at any minute. Our concern was not for the property we were leaving, but for the safety of our children and families, part of whom were in the upper colonies, including my daughters Edna and Lenore. Hastily we left the ranch to hurry to our frightened children in town. On the way we met droves of cattle and horses, hogs and chickens wandering off through the mesquite brush to begin to shift for themselves. We also had released all our own livestock.
In town, not a person was to be seen on the street. Everyone was busy packing and getting ready to leave. When we reached home we found Madge had gone right ahead with preparations to leave. She had got sour milk from Lily Sanders and made biscuits to pack in the lunch, and I wish you could have seen the table piled high with them! There was enough to last a regiment of soldiers. While Madge was busy in the kitchen, the little girls had made preparations with the clothes. Dresser drawers, trunks and whatnots were emptied into sheets and tied with the four corners. Much of the packing had to be done over. We took the children into our arms and all went in the bedroom to kneel and ask God for protection and guidance in this crisis and to comfort the part of our family in Juarez. I hurried for my baby, Lamar, to bathe him once more in his own home and look after his comfort as best I could before we left. I held him close to my heart and wondered how we could keep him well and fed in such a crisis.
At nine o’clock the town began the line-up. Some adjustments had to be made in order to provide transportation for those who had none. After repacking, we drove off and left all our best shoes sitting in the back yard. But this was a small item compared to all the rest we left on that fateful 28th of July, 1912. Edmund and a few other men were detailed to stay in the town and care for things as much as possible while awaiting developments. Scouts were patrolling the outskirts of town in order to avoid a surprise attack from the rebels, and also flanked the caravan as we drove away.
Edmund and a few other men were detailed to stay in town and care for things as much as possible while awaiting developments. Scouts were patrolling the outskirts of town in order to avoid a surprise attack from the rebels, and also flanked the caravan as we drove away. Edmund, with his excellent language, was able to stop the rebels from following after the caravan. He warned them that the colonists were prepared to defend themselves if they were approached.
Sundown found us ready to camp at Corner Ranch just over the U.S. border, eighteen miles from home. Just as most of us were preparing supper over the campfires, a sudden rainstorm began. It seemed that the clear sky just opened and poured great sheets of water. We watched our meal, dishes, utensils and even pillows and larger things float away down the hill. The next day, as we stopped at Dog Springs, we encountered an equally severe storm.
When we reached Hachita, New Mexico, the United States government gave us army tents and supplies and organized a camp under military regulation. Commodities were issued according to the size of the family from a large tent called the commissary. At first, I had the only stove in camp (Edmund brought it out of Mexico), so I baked bread for everyone I could. The oven was filled with bread practically 24 hours of the day.
Hachita stored its city water in a large railroad tank sitting high on four pillars. As we were about one-fourth mile from town, it was hard to get water to camp. Madge, Floss and Lola and Susie Jacobson pulled barrels of water to camp in a little cart and sold it for ten cents a barrel. Edna and Lenore worked in Hachita and Annie did dressmaking by the day.
From Hachita we moved to the Corner Ranch in January, 1913, were we helped salvage some cattle from Mexico. Since we planned to remain for at least one winter Edmund hired Elmer Johnson to come and teach our children. Several Diaz families filed on land north of the Corner Ranch, so we had quite a little community besides our school.
Sister Hardy had been Lamar’s wet nurse and when she left Hachita my poor baby began feeling the hardships of pioneering. The weather was hot, the tents were no protection from heat or insects and he became very ill. We called Dr. Thornberry from Hachita and he did all he could but, Lamar grew steadily worse. His eyes swelled up until they were like apples sitting on his cheeks. Edmund had been calling to El Paso after he came out of Mexico, so I was alone with my baby a great deal of the time.
The doctor told us that Lamar couldn’t last another day, but as he lingered, the doctor would say, “Is that baby still alive?! I can’t see how it happens.” Of course we had the baby administered to and were all praying for his recovery. We carried him around on a pillow for months. Edmund came and did all he could, but the poor baby suffered very much. When he recovered enough to sit up, he held his little head on the side, and was so weak he couldn’t sit for long. The doctor said he was suffering from malnutrition and food poisoning.
When we moved into a house at the Corner Ranch, Lamar began to mend rapidly, but has never been well and strong as my other children had been after they were old enough to eat. The Exodus took a greater toll from Lamar than any of the rest of us. I am sure that if we had remained in Mexico Lamar would have been as well as could be. He has never married but has earned a place in our love, and his patience and suffering have been a factor in making for unity in our family.
Soon Edmund began considering high school for our young folks, and decided upon the church academy in the Gila Valley in Arizona. The move to Thatcher was by degrees. I was expecting a new baby, my fourteenth, and so dreaded the trip by train, that Edmund sent me over with Brother Stout in a “white top” wagon.
Eddie, Aunt Sade’s son, took care of the livestock and drove one of the teams and eighteen-year-old Lenore was chosen to drive the other. She accepted this responsibility with considerable fortitude. She had been instructed to keep both animals pulling together, but one had a tendency to shirk his responsibility. No one knows how it tried her nerves to get the team to pull up out of the gullies after having been dragged back by the heavy load. Sometimes the other team had to be brought back to help the discouraged animals out.
During the trip I became blind at night, and in the ordeal Lenore had to be my eyes. I don’t know how we ever pulled through that trip, so many impossible things happened. Two of the young calves were sick and had to be taken into the Wagon with us. Their kicking and odor was almost unbearable. But at last we reached the cabin of Ralph and Geneva Richardson above Safford where we left the children. Eddie drove me on to Eden and Aunt Tressie’s house and we arrived after dark. She took me right into her home and heart. The next day, April 28, 1914, she had to prepare hastily to receive another visitor. This time it was our ten pound baby, Ivan.
I stayed there until Ivan was two weeks old, then moved into Uncle Sullie’s homestead above Safford. In the fall Edmund rented the Gurley place at Thatcher-a large brick house with screen porches and lawns, orchards, and shade trees-the nicest home I ever occupied. We lived there two years. Annie, Edna, Flossie, Lenore and Elmer, Annie’s husband, all attended Gila Academy at this time. (Madge had developed severe eye problems, which prevented her from further school attendance.)
Edmund needed a place to run the cattle brought from the Corner Ranch, so when he discovered a grant of land on the Graham Mountain, I filed on the piece at his proposal and lived there two summers at the time of World War I. The children were charmed with the place: creek, waterfall, Indian ruins, trees and high hillsides. But to me it was a bit intimidating.
Aunt Tressie was visiting on one occasion when we had an alarming experience. During the night we were awakened by the sound of approaching hoofbeats. In terror, as I knelt at the bedside to pray, we heard a man’s voice swearing as he hit the corner of the cabin, then a mounted figure appeared in the moonlit window. Our panic turned to relief, however, when he went on by without harm and the hoofbeats began fading in the distance. We learned later that a man had confessed to being, perhaps, more frightened than we. He had been lost during the night, then he stumbled on to a cabin and passed the window, it appeared that a man was kneeling with a gun poised in his direction.
Edmund bought eight acres of land called ‘Haven’ just south of Thatcher and built Aunt Sadie and Daisy each a home. Aunt Sarah had previously gone to live at Snowflake where her father left her a house. He began one for me and was still building the walls when I moved in. We lived there two or three years and Nelma was born on January 25, 1918 in this unfinished house.
During her first summer Nelma took very ill with summer complaint. I didn’t have enough “nurse” to feed her, and the Doctor told me that if I didn’t get her on breast milk she would surely die. She was just a bundle of skin and bones and cried constantly. I knew I must get to someone, but there was no one to whom I could turn. Then I thought of Edna in Hachita, whose son, O.J., had recently arrived June 24th. I took Nelma and Ivan by train. Madge, who had purchased my ticket, went along as far as Lordsburg to help me. It was in the hot summer and I had to change trains and layover there. That was quite a trial for me for us to find a hotel and put up with two babies, one crying all night, among strangers and mosquitoes and bedbugs.
I arrived in Hachita and found my way through town toward where I remembered Aunt Lizzie Mayben lived. I could have stopped some stranger and inquired where Orson and Edna lived, but I have always had a mortal fear of talking with strangers. I was trudging up a street carrying Nelma and a suitcase, with Ivan was running at my heels, when I heard a cry, “Mama!” Looking back I saw Edna in the doorway of a house I had just passed. She was barely getting around after her confinement with O.J., and had heard Nelma crying out in the street. She hadn’t known me at first, but recognized me as I changed arms with my baby and suitcase.
At first Nelma refused the new mother and I was frantic and bitterly disappointed. But my anxiety was short lived. When the breast was forced into her mouth and a drop or two tasted, she clutched Edna like a young lion and refused to leave. We stayed several weeks until Nelma fully recovered. I have always thought Edna (with Madge’s help) saved the life of my baby girl.
The Haven project was abandoned while Nelma was a toddler and Edmund purchased a modest home for me at the south edge of the town of Thatcher, just north of the railroad. It was good to be living closer to the church, school and to neighbors. Later, however, the house (an old adobe) burned down while I was visiting Utah. Edmund replaced it with a tin-roofed lumber house of two rooms, moved from a desert entry in the foothills and we got by. But later he added a sizeable kitchen, pantry and bedroom, which made it quite comfortable. I was even able to furnish living quarters to two of my husband’s grandchildren, Rene and Carmen, who later needed student housing. We were living here during the several years Edmund taught school in the eastern end of the valley at San Jose. (He hitch-hiked back and forth on weekends.) Also, during a dozen or more years in this location, I took in home laundry, which I did by hand, often doing two washings a day.
Edmund then lived with Lola and her husband, Walter Harms, in Globe, where their first baby, Lorene, was born. He worked as a carpenter with the Inspiration Mining Company. How I missed him, but was glad he was so near home. Then Lola wrote that he had gone to California to work. I couldn’t understand why he felt he had to go farther away. He had said he liked his work in Miami and that his job paid well and was permanent.
It was months before I learned the truth. As usual, he was trying to spare me worry. Lola told me later that he came home from work as usual, but paced the floor from one room to the next, finally calling her into the room. “Lola,” he said, “Promise me that you won’t tell your Mother this, she needn’t know and it will save her worry. Today I went to the company doctor in Miami about my old trouble. He says that I must have an operation or I can’t live more than a year, so I am leaving in the morning for California where I will have this done.”
Edmund had the operation for prostitis, which was not a success. Besides, he got out too soon and tried to work and had a relapse and had to return to the clinic. Finally, his Doctor advised him to go to bed and remain for three weeks, letting a catheter drain away the poison from the affected parts. Edmund agreed to do this, but insisted that he go home to his family in Arizona for those three weeks. The doctor objected, but he came home anyway. (Meanwhile, Walter and Lola had purchased a home and moved to Thatcher several blocks from my home.)
Of course I knew nothing of this latest development. I planned to leave on the 23rd of July with Walter and Lola to go to Duncan to spend the 24th with Edna and Orson. The day was hot until mid-afternoon, when a terrible storm arose and, just as they came for me, the rain came in torrents. I’ve seldom seen such a downpour. We were all ready to go, but waited in the house for the rain to let up a bit so we could make a run for the car. As we waited and watched, the passenger train pulled into the depot a short two blocks from our home. Someone who had met the train came by the house and told us Edmund was at the depot and wished someone to come and help him home. By this time the rain had diminished somewhat, and we were just at the point of leaving for Duncan.
I shall always be thankful to the Lord for that rainstorm. Otherwise, I’d have not been there to receive and care for my beloved and ill husband. The Lord had blessed us further in having Walter’s car ready to help. Walter went immediately to bring Edmund home to us.
How happy I was as I hurried around, putting away the things I was to have taken on the trip and getting ready to welcome him home. Then the car drove up and with a great deal of help from Walter, Edmund got out of the car. Oh, my darling!! My glad heart was almost broken at the sight of him. He staggered up the slippery path on Walter’s arm. So thin, pale and weak he was-completely drenched from the rain, and covered with mud. Only his dear eyes seemed the same as they smiled into mine. He was trembling when he took me into his arms and said, “It’s good to come home to my dear little Becky.” Then, “Could you find me some dry clothes and let me lie down?”
As quickly as possible I got dry garments and had him in a warm bed. He told us that when he got off the train he attempted to climb the five or six steps of a platform to get out of the rain, but just as he was almost to the top, he had fallen backward down into the mud. When I asked what made him fall, he smiled weakly, trying to make it seem rather like a big joke. “Imagine a man my age falling down stairs.” Then said, “I suppose I was weak from hunger. You see, I haven’t had anything to eat since I left Los Angeles.”
“Why? Why?,” I cried. “No money for food?”
“No”, he answered, “It was that I couldn’t eat what they brought me. Later I asked them to bring me a box of soda crackers, but they were sprinkled with salt, and I can’t eat salt, so I just had to go hungry.”
When Edmund found we’d planned the trip to Duncan, he urged that we go ahead with our plans, as he didn’t want to spoil our fun. He said he could take care of himself until we got back, etc, etc. But nothing on earth could have enticed me away from his side. My only thought was to make him comfortable and nurse him back to health. I could make him comfortable that night, but the next day was so hot that my house soon became like an oven. The fire had killed all the trees so there was no shade to protect the thin board walls and tin roof, and the sun beat down unmercifully. In his weakened condition he suffered terribly, lying there in bed.
Before the first day was over I was frantic to know what to do for him. He fairly panted with the heat and couldn’t move since he was wearing the catheter and must remain flat on his back. My boys made a willow shade outside the window that helped a little. Then I sprinkled the sheet and we fanned him, especially little seven-year-old Nelma who sat with him for hours. It was so hot the sheet dried quickly and must be sprinkled every little while.
I fixed all his food without salt and it was so hard to find anything he could eat because after once or twice, any dish nauseated him, and he had no taste for it again. I jokingly told him he was worse than any woman with morning sickness.
I soon sent for Doctor Platt, who prescribed all the root beer it was possible for Edmund to drink. We had no ice box, but the boys brought ice from the store and I kept his root beer cold with the ice wrapped it blankets in a tub. How he enjoyed that! It was the only thing he didn’t get sick of.
Aunt Sadie was away at the time, so we sent for her. I knew she would wish to be with him the same as I, and her house had a shady screen porch. We sent for Aunt Sarah, who lived in Snowflake and Mark and Mary brought her to see him. They stayed a few days, then Mark had to return and took her back with him.
It was a comfort to have Edmund get a little rest and sleep through the day because of the cool porch, yet our hearts were heavy as we saw him fail a little each day. We three women had many consultations while he was sleeping as to how we might best help him. We tried ideas of our own, but strictly followed the doctor’s instructions as to his treatments. Nothing seemed to help much.
Edmund was a fairly good patient, though sometimes he balked at our suggestions. One day we decided that some whipped eggs whites would be good for him, if mixed with a little milk.
“No, I don’t want it,” he said. We still thought it was a good idea and Aunt Sade fixed it, and brought it to his bed.
“No, I wunt take it,” he declared, shaking his head. (He pronounced the word “won’t” as “wunt”.) We tried again, but all the time he was shaking his head and saying emphatically, “I wunt! I wunt!”
Coaxing was of no avail, and since we were sure he needed the nourishment, we proceeded to force it into his mouth, working one on each side of him. “I wunt, I wunt,” he repeated, trying to fight us off. But in his weakened condition, he soon submitted, opened his mouth, and we poured it is, grateful that he had seen things our way. Then as we leaned lovingly over him, he blew all that frothy egg white right into our faces! Fairly blinded, we jumped back, wiped our eyes and looked down at him. There, for a moment, was our dear husband of old, quietly laughing at us. The same smiling twinkle of mischief in his eyes, which said as plainly as his lips could have done, “No two women need think they can get the best of me!”
We both sat down on his bed and laughed heartily as we wiped the frothy mess from our eyes and faces. How good it seemed! We were reminded of our early married life when we three had lived, played and laughed together. Our hopes for his recovery rose a little, only to fade as the days passed. He left us on August 7, 1925.
With his passing, the light of the world seemed to go out, leaving me in darkness. I don’t know how I would have stood it, but my fifteen and one-half year old son, Vernon, stepped in and took charge of affairs, shielding me from the pain of meeting the business world. He seemed to change from a boy to a man overnight and I grew to depend upon him for counsel in everything.
My dear son, Lamar, had been a help in many ways: getting wood from Haven and chopping it, milking and herding the cows, hoeing weeds, helping with the wash fires and other chores and errands. But he had not been able to assume responsibility. (In early 1938, it was decided by Dr. Platt and other townspeople that he should be cared for by the state in Phoenix. So from that time forth he was never in the home.)
Each of my children have their own special place in my heart—my love for one is no greater than for another—but this dependence I felt upon Vern, at a time when my heart was crushed and broken, built a close tie between us. I was dreading the time when Vern would go away to college, but Ivan (Chad) stepped right in, assuming equally well the responsibility of the family. His cheerfulness and sunny ways taught me how to make a second great adjustment to life.
For years Mother kept the neighborhood in yeast, and so enjoyed it, we children laughingly accused her of having a "yeast hobby." This summer (1937) an accident happened which proved we were right. She spent two weeks visiting at Virden and Lordsburg, New Mexico. Before she left, she took her start of magic yeast to Lola instructing her just how to handle it to keep it fresh and alive.
On returning, she found that after all, the yeast was spoiled. Mother was so at a loss to find another start of yeast, that she sent everywhere she could imagine they might have home-made yeast. Sister Ferrin sent a starting of potato yeast, Lillian Peterson sent a compressed yeast cake and someone else a start of "oly water" as they called it.
After setting yeast with each start, she was still worried, and just believed that she would send and get a Fleischmann's yeast cake too.
At last Sister Marvin brought some "Good old magic yeast" and with a great sigh of relief, Mother stirred up a setting of that. Well, it wasn't long until a dozen dishes were filled with lively yeast that Mother was tasting with great satisfaction. She laughingly remarked that she was "bound to have a lively time." She had found a new start!
My family has never all been together at one time, but today, July 5, 1937, all eight daughters have been together for about four hours. I could hardly believe it could be so. We have been visiting back and forth between the different homes. We spent a week at Virden and Lordsburg and made a trip to Tucson to visit Madge. Annie and Elva are here from Utah and we are having a nice time together. We have pieced fourteen quilts, made two rugs, read some autobiographies, among which was Karl G. Maeser's life, spent a week doing genealogical research, where we have gathered about 700 names. We have also made family group sheets for all the girls. Some of the girls are writing my biography and we are interested in learning of new things of my life and I am enjoying living over my childhood days and early life.
I don't suppose my family will ever be all together. Always one or two are away and can't be with us. This time two boys were gone away. Vernon is in Magna, Utah and Ivan is on a mission in Minnesota. He is district president and it fills my heart with joy to hear the nice things his mission President says of the good work he is doing. His headquarters are in St. Paul.
We took some very interesting Kodak pictures, of the family, but I take such a poor picture now that I am afraid I won't enjoy them so much as far as I am concerned, but I will enjoy being snapped with all my girls. I had one with Lamar that is very nice of us both; and I am so proud to be with him. He is my main-stay now and provides the wood and water, and caring for the cow, etc. It is nice to have him to rely on.
During the four hours we were together at my place, we were busy canning peaches from my orchard. What a jolly time we were having; laughing, talking, and working. The lightman came to turn on the electricity and he remarked, "Well, what's this, a relief society canning project?" "No," I answered, "Just a few of my girls helping me out."
(At that time the ward welfare had several car-loads of fruit to can and had divided it up into town groups to be done.)
During one of her last visits with Mother, Aunt Sade, speaking in a serious vein, confided that she felt she might soon be joining Edmund in "the other world." What message, she asked, would Becky wish her to carry back to him? In concentrated expectancy, Aunt Sade awaited the answer.
A thoughtful little frown was soon effaced by an elfin smile and a characteristic twinkle, as Becky answered simply, "Tell him not to build me a lean-to."
Recounting the incident, Aunt Sade spoke of her disappointment with Mother's answer. She felt that Mother had been evasive or a bit trivial, to say the least. But on reflection, she changed her mind completely. She recalled that one after another of Mother's homes throughout the years had been "lean-to's." She declared she thought Becky could not have made a more clever or appropriate answer.
Mother's interest in temple work began when she was a young child approaching five years of age, living in Logan when the temple was built, the cornerstone being laid in 1877. Temple work and its importance to both living and dead was a much talked of subject. Sister Eliza R. Snow visited the Bear River Primary and began a project among them of sewing carpet rags for the temple floors. She had a child's pride in the large ball of rags she sewed, but Mother's greatest blessing was the testimony, which grew out of the privilege of helping. Then on the trip to Arizona, the Jacobson family camped in Salt Lake City next to the temple being built and witnessed the work. Mother and her sister Eliza walked around the rising wall remarking that the ground seemed holy. She carried a small piece of granite rock into Old Mexico as a souvenir.
Mother's first opportunity of going through the temple was in 1898 when she and Father made the trip to Salt Lake to get her endowments. They had been sealed for time and eternity in Colonia Juarez when they were married by [Stake] President McDonald. Mother was deeply impressed by the sanctity and beauty of the temple ordinances. Her description of the white robed company ascending and descending the spiral staircase then in the Salt Lake Temple impressed me very much. She explained that the sacred ordinances were so profound, that we could never understand them completely and new viewpoints would be opened up each time we went, no matter how many times we had gone to the temple.
Since the distance from Old Mexico to Utah was so great, this was the last time Mother had the privilege of doing temple work until the Arizona Temple was dedicated. She spent winters doing the work for her dead until she learned the male names lagged behind, then she sent money over to sponsor work for the dead. We don't know how many people Mother officiated for, but after her death found around eight hundred slips among her things. She also sent money to Denmark and Sweden for research on her Jacobson lines.
Mother once said, "Isn't it a pity that just when one has learned to live, then he must die." She not only learned how to live, but also how to die. She had everything, even minute details, prepared and ready. Her Christmas packages and cards were all ready to go out. Her burial clothes together, she had even indicated some of the songs and speakers she would like at her services before being taken to the hospital in Safford with pneumonia in November of 1945.
At the October Conference she had visited all the far way children except Vernon, and she refused to die until he reached Thatcher. The sound of an airplane overhead brought her out of a coma, and after one disappointment she remarked, "Oh, how can I wait much longer!"
As her children arrived she had a cheery word for each one, and comforted Ivan when he couldn't hide his concern. Her visit with Vernon was beautiful and then the Doctor asked that we leave the room in order for her to rest. However, the nurse soon came seeking the son she had waited so long to see. Several of us hurried into the room and found her unable to use the oxygen supplied. She asked that we pray, so Vern, Ivan and Melvin administered to her. She seemed not to suffer then, and at the close of the prayer spoke a soft "Amen" and passed through the door into eternity, December 3, 1945.