About this time some old fanatics were preaching that a young man could not save a girl if he married her. That to be saved she must marry some old codger, tried and true. My parents got the disease with the rest, and when one of the “tried and true” came our way, they said I must marry him. I cried and begged, begged and cried, but to no avail. I was forced to go into his family. I would not speak of this only to show that my first children were legitimate. I loved them, no matter about the rest. Let’s forget it, as it has always been a source of great trouble to suffer through other’s mistakes. I will say that up to the time I speak of, my father has always been good to me. I can now see that it was the pressure of the times that caused him to act as he did.

The Lord saw fit to take my children to Himself, and twice after I was a mother, I was left childless. Two dear little boys sleep in one grave out in Circle Valley and one under the brow of the Manti Temple.

I will here tell of a spiritual manifestation I received after losing my two little boys, on the same day. Many will scoff at the idea, but it was real to me and has been ever since. While lying leaning against their graves one day with my eyes closed, I seemed to realize that Willie was there and I began to commune with him in the spirit. (He was four and a half years old when he died.) I asked him among other things if Dannie was there with him? He said, “Yes, and it makes us feel oh, so bad to see you mourn so.” I asked if Orrin were with them? He said, “No,” but did not tell where Orrin was. Orrin had died over four years before. Willie said, “Now we want you to go home and take care of yourself for the sake of the little brothers and sisters that come hereafter.” I thought, “There will never be any more, for I cannot live through this.” Many more things he said to me, which were a great comfort to me.

I got up and went to my home such as it was, only a big Government wagon box, set on the ground to sleep in. I did my cooking on a camp fire beside the wagon box.

Circleville and Blackhawk War

I lived in Circleville, at the time of the Blackhawk War, when everybody had to go to the center of town to sleep for fear of an outbreak during the night. We used to have some stirring times in those days. I remember a posse of men came out of Sanpete and went hunting the Indians. There were about fifty men. Warren S. Snow was their leader. He was asking questions of Bishop Allred, about climatic conditions down there. Bishop Allred said, among other things, that “You could always tell an old settler by the scars on his face made by the wind blowing small rocks into his face and cutting it.” The wind did blow fierce most of the time.

Shortly after my last two children died ( they died of scarlet fever), I came down to my father’s home in Springerville. A few days after I came over the road, five persons were killed by the Indians, on the very road I had just been killed a few days before. Three men had gone up in the canyon to get a load of wood. The Indians came upon them and killed them, all three. They cut off Ben Black’s hand, and Will White’s ear and cut his tongue out.

I [went] to my father’s home in great sorrow, over the loss of my dear children. William Edmund aged four and a half years, and Daniel Wells, age two years, lacking nine days. Both died in one day.

I worked out most of the time. Worked six months for George McKenzie as his wife’s health was poor, and worked six months for Wood Wilson’s wife in Provo.

The Conovers

In 1866, in the spring, I met John Conover for the first time. I was coming from Salt Lake City, where I had been to nurse a sick lady. John Conover had been driving the “Overland Stage” for a company, between Salt Lake City and Butte, Montana. He was coming to see his sister, Mrs. Ben Armstrong in Provo, and his father, Peter Wilson Conover, who lived in Spanish Fork at that time. I was riding horseback when he overtook us at the point of the mountain. The lady’s husband that I went down with was well acquainted with him, and introduced us. The fall of 1867 we were married in Springerville, Utah. We lived in Springerville. The winter of 1868 we, in company with my husband’s brother Alpheus and wife, Emma (Smith) Conover, and our two little girls, ours named Daisy Dean, and theirs Hannah Eveline, took a trip to Millville, in Cash Valley to see two of their sisters and families, Sarah Elizabeth (Conover) Weaver and Kitty Ann (Conover) Hunt. We had a good time visiting John’s relatives and friends, as he had lived there with his sisters at one time. He also had a sister in Ogden, whom we visited, Eveline (Conover) Brown. In Salt Lake City, we stopped with Christine (Golden) Kimball, mother of J. Golden Kimball and a cousin of John’s mother.