My mother's name was Mary Ann Darrow. She was the daughter of Stephen and Harriett Burbank Darrow of Hebron, New York, where she was born 28^th of February, 1818. She married Edmund Richardson 2 August, 1840.

She was a factory girl during her young womanhood; thus early beginning her trade as a weaver, which was of so great use to her family and to the many of her neighbors to whom she taught the trade after she came to the valleys.

Once when I gave a trivial excuse for not doing some duty, she told me, "I once knew a little girl who habitually soaped her hands so that when her mother asked her to do something she could reply, 'My hands are soapy, I can't'" After looking at her thoughtfully a moment I asked, "Ma, was that little girl you?" A smile was her answer. I have often thought what a queer beginning that was to the wonderfully industrious life she always led in after life.

She was a very determined woman when her mind was once made up. During her young womanhood a man who had become violently insane in the town where she lived, obtained a long sharp knife, and brandishing it, defied a large posse of men to enter the room where he had taken refuge. The neighbors, knowing her capabilities, sent for my mother who came to the door of the maniac's lair and looked at him. For a few seconds he avoided looking at her; but when his gaze finally met hers, she looked steadily into his eyes for a minute, when he dropped his hands, his knife falling to the floor, and still looking into her eyes allowed the men to tie him without further opposition. Also one of my father's brothers, named Dan, occasionally became insane and whenever she came into the room where he was, at a look from her, he always became tractable.

She had a very good education for those times; she was an effective reader and always had a story or anecdote to illustrate her advice which was constantly sought wherever she lived. She had the keenest sense of humor and liked a funny story if it was "clean." Her little stories to her children were endless in number. Here is one:

She said a little girl was eating her supper of porridge from a bowl on the ground between her feet as she sat on the door step. A little pig came along and investigating the savory food in the bowl, put in his snout and commenced to swallow it. The little girl, seeing the liquid lowering began eating as fast as she could from one side of the bowl. When she saw that the pig was likely to get the most of the supper as things were going, she extended the handle of the spoon to the pig and said reproachfully, "Take a 'poon, pig, 'at ain't fair."

One of the ardent desires of her life was that her children should have a good education, but with her first two, the frontier life in Canolton, Indiana, and neighborhood, prevented its attainment which was always a great sorrow to her. But when her last ones came she constantly labored to that end.

She could make any undesirable trait that she saw in us look ridiculous and make us ashamed of it so easily. For instance she said a family of her neighbors were eating breakfast one morning when she heard one of the growing girls scream out as if she were in agony, "Sal's got the most grease!"

As my mother knew nothing of the teachings of the true gospel in regard to the value and necessity of children, they did not intend to have any more than the two children that they brought across the plains. So that my brother Sullie and I owe our very existence on this earth to the teachings of the Gospel after my mother became acquainted with it.

I have often heard my mother tell of their fear of the dreadful Mormons. When the oxen died at the Big Sandy River, and they knew that it would be utterly impossible to continue the journey to Oregon until another spring, they were almost overcome with the dread of having to associate even so little with the people they knew lived in Salt Lake City. But the Indians were still more dreadful so they knew it was their only hope of life.