Saturday, December 29, 2012

New Year's Day

Another great postcard from my great-grandmother's (Katie Hoskins - aka Catherine Ann Hoskins) album.  The postmark date is not clear, but the card was mailed to "Mr. J.W. Hoskins, Kiona, Wash." and the text reads, "Hello Wilse how are you we are well  Calvin and Edith are here  will write you soon  Katie"
 
Mr J.W.Hoskins (Wilse) was James Wilson Hoskins and the postcard was written prior to Katie and Wilse's marriage in 1911.  Edith was Katie's youngest sister.  She and her husband Calvin Williams had one child together that they named "Katie Mae" in tribute to Edith's oldest sister.  Grandma Hoskins (Katie the eldest) cared for Edith and Katie Mae as Edith's health failed.  Edith died in 1922 and her illness involved some kind of mental struggle - perhaps alzheimers or something to that effect.  Edith is buried in an unmarked grave in the Hoskins plot in Montpelier, Idaho.

Monday, December 24, 2012

To Wish You a Merry Christmas

 
To Wish you a merry Christmas
 
To my grandfather, George Hoskins, from his cousin Anna in Samaria, Idaho

Best Christmas Wishes!

 
 
My best Christmas wishes to all of you!!

This is a postcard from my great- grandmother's album.  Catherine Anna Martin Hoskins saved all of the postcards that she received.  (Thank you, Grandma Hoskins!)


The sentiment has been written by Mae Hoskins Ott and mailed December 24, 1910, from Spokane, Washington.  Katie had been a widow just a few days short of 2 years at this point.  Mae was a sister of Katie's late husband William Hoskins.  These were kind wishes for a Merry Christmas.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Alexander Nephi Stephens


Grandma Anderson and children

 
Standing in front: George Anders Anderson, Mary Wilson Anderson,
Ingrid Anderson Neilson, Ross Wilson Anderson 
 
Standing in back: Russell Wilson Anderson, Heber Homer Anderson,
Wallace Owen Anderson, Donald N Anderson


Snapshot from Ireland

John (Jack) Todd, Chris (Chrissie-age 2)Todd, Christina (Tennie) Barry Todd
and standing in the back Jackie Barry (nephew of Christina Barry Todd)
 
This snapshot was taken in Ireland prior to 1927.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Dirty little rascals

This is one of the cutest photos ever!!!  My grandfather and some of his pals had smeared mud on their faces - who knows what they were playing?!?  Kids just haven't changed, have they?  If you look at the street at the far left of the photo - it looks like it could have been a real mud bog.  Someone snapped a photo to preserve the kid's little prank.  I wonder what their mothers said when they got home!!!!!!  My grandfather, George Hoskins, is on the front row, far right, in the sweater.  Photo taken in Montpelier, Idaho, around 1908.

John Todd and Chrissie

John Todd and Chrissie
 
This photo is in pretty rough shape and looks like it lived in a wallet for several years.  Kim & I were speculating that it probably came to America with his grandfather, John Todd, and was most likely a link to the daughter he left behind in Ireland.  The pair were apart for two years while John worked to have enough money to bring Chrissie and her mother to America. 

Saturday, December 15, 2012

A letter rec'd by William Wallace Stephens


Kim's great grandfather William Wallace Stephens actively tried to promote Idaho potatoes!!!  Mr. Gray was the president of the Union Pacific Railroad (see the top of the letterhead).

Christina Barry Todd naturalization


Naomi Mae Thompson Stephens


George Speirs

Here's a link to an excellent history of George Speirs:

http://www.eng.utah.edu/~kmonson/FamHist/Farnes/GS.html


Sarah Bonson Matthewman

 
Sarah Bonson Matthewman
 
Sarah is the mother of Elizabeth Matthewman Elliott and is Kim's 3rd great grandmother.  She was born in February of 1814 in a small town in Yorkshire, England.  She married James Matthewman and was the mother of 3 children.  She and her husband never left the same small town in Yorkshire. She died there in November of 1884.

Wallace Owen Anderson

Vivian Darrington Anderson and Wallace Owen Anderson
 
Wallace Owen Anderson
I was born December 17, 1917 near Blackfoot, Idaho.  Neils Anderson, my father, was the son of Swedish immigrants and my mother, Mary Wilson, descendant of a grandmother who traveled with the ill-fated Willie Handcart Company.  Raised a farm boy, I always wanted to go to Sweden on a mission.  My call came in November 1937, and I arrived in Sweden on my 20th birthday, December 17, 1937 with four companions: Corwin Larson, Lynn Norris, Vance Ravsten, and Woodrow Nelson.  Elder Clifton Flint met us and saw to our needs.
I always will remember that first Christmas.  The other missionaries were invited out and we were left to fend for ourselves.  All stores were closed and we had no food.  We spent the few ore we had for chocolate bars from a vending machine.  Then Elder Flint arrived and seeing our distress notified Sister Larson, who prepared a Christmas feast for us.
We attended school for a month to help with our Swedish.  I must have impressed our instructor because several months later when Lavon Elison was in the class the teacher asked if he were from Blackfoot, Idaho.  Elder Elison said that he was and the instructor told him that he was just like a young man from Blackfoot who had been in an earlier class.  
                                                                                                                                                  
I was assigned to Jonkoping.  My companion, Dwain Johnson, was great.  We read the Book of Mormon for an hour or more every day, helping me greatly with my Swedish.  My next companion was Wayne K. Johnson, followed by Lynn Toolson and then John D. Anderson.  We got along well but none of us like our co-tenants, the bed bugs.  In Eskilstuna, my next assignment, my companions were Rigby Lindquist, followed by Martin Johnson.  This was a low point of my mission because Elder Johnson was made my senior companion even though he had arrived in Sweden two months after I came.  Despite early problems he became one of my best companions.
I was transferred to Karlstad, with Fred Ahlander as my companion.  Edward Johnson became my last companion before the war broke out and we all came back to America.  I spent my final two months in the Central States Mission, but it was not as good as Sweden.  After the war my brother, Homer, went to Sweden and lived in the same room we had in Karlstad.  He told me that the tracts and small books we had left were still there.
Probably my most memorable experiences were preparing two sisters for burial.  The first was a sister in Eskilstuna who weighed over 350 lbs. and the second, a sister near there who had been dead for two days.  I never had the opportunity to convert any Swedish people, but I will always be grateful that I found out how much time I had wasted on things of the world and converted myself to what I should be doing.  My testimony has grown through the years.
After arriving at home I taught Sunday School and served as scoutmaster.  Less than a year later I met an attractive young lady, Vivian Darrington of Declo.  We were married on March 21, 1941, in the Salt Lake Temple.  Of our nine children, six were boys and three girls.  One daughter was hit by an automobile and was unconscious for several weeks but recovered fully.  One son, autistic and unable to talk, was taken home to his Heavenly Father when he was eleven.  Another son had heart trouble and died at age 20.  Our oldest son was killed when his plane crashed into Mount Timpanogos near Prove.  We have 23 grandchildren and one great grandson.  We have enjoyed many memorable experiences with our children and family.
We have always been active in the church assignments and community affairs.  I farmed, owned school buses, and did land leveling and commercial ditch cleaning.  I also worked at American Potato, a processing plant, and for Exxon.  I now am retired.  I helped to organize child development centers in Idaho and served on the school board for many years.  I also fulfilled numerous church callings: Sunday School Superintendent, Elders Quorum president, High Priests Group leader, and Idaho Falls Temple worker.
My life has been great despite real sorrows and problems.  I have been blessed with a choice helpmate, who taught school to enable four of our sons to serve on missions.  Most of all, I am glad for my testimony, which got its real start in Sweden and has kept me going all my life.
--written by Wallace in 1989 for 50 year missionary reunion.  Wallace passed away Feb. 21, 1994.
 

Mary Ingrid Anderson Neilson

Mary Ingrid Anderson Neilson
 
Mary Ingrid Anderson was born November 11, 1915 in Thomas, Idaho.  She didn’t feel like they suffered much during the depression, because they lived on a farm and had milk, eggs and butter.
When Ingrid’s father was on the school board, he would periodically drop into the Wilson School House to check and see how the teachers were doing and how the kids were learning.  On one of his visits, he found Ingrid sitting in school with her coat on.  He got after her and told her to take her coat off.  She couldn’t take the coat off because she had forgotten to put her dress on.  She had to go home at noon and put her dress on.  Ingrid was always running around the house in her slip.  She would get home from school and take off her dress and wear her slip around the house.  In the morning, the same thing—she would wear her slip and only put on her dress before she left. She wore dresses all the time, because her father said he had enough boys in the family he didn’t want to see her wearing pants.
She went to school in a four room school house, from first to eighth grade.  She graduated from High School and went on to Utah State University to get a degree in Education.  At Utah State University she met Lee Vannoy Neilson.  They were married in the Salt Lake Temple June 2, 1941.
Ingrid and Lee moved around the first part of their marriage.  Kelvin was born in Lordsburg, New Mexico; Norman was born in Tucson, Arizona, DeLoy, Mary Karen, Lyle and Hal were all born in Richfield, Utah. They lived in Colorado for a time and also in Salt Lake City before moving to Ogden. Ingrid had a pretty hard life.  She taught school most of her married life.  Lee was away from the home for much of the time selling.
Ingrid worked hard.  She was a good homemaker.  She learned to crochet, quilt, sew and cook from her mother Mary Wilson Anderson.
Ingrid took care of the family very well.  She saw her children go through many hard things, but she was always cheerful and ready to take on the challenge.
Ingrid died July 8, 1993, in Ogden, Utah, at the age of 78.  She was buried in Thomas, Idaho, July 10, 1993
 
 

George Anders Anderson

George Anders Anderson
 

George was born at the home of his parents, Neils and Mary Anderson, on Thomas Road on August 16, 1913.  At that time the home consisted of only two rooms.  There were two children born before George. The first child was a little girl named Emma Jane.  She was born December 20, 1909.  She died just six months later on June 4, 1910.  She was fine during the day and that night she had a convulsion and died..  Next came Donald Neils.  He was born July 15, 1911.  After George, Mary Ingrid was born November 11, 1915, then Wallace Owen on December 17, 1917, and Robert Denton on August 3, 1920.  Denton died serving his country during World War II.  The plane he was fighting in was shot down over Keil Germany in 1944.  Records sent to the family from the War Department show that the B17 on which he was belly gunner was carrying out the fifteenth mission when it was hit by anti-aircraft fire and exploded in mid air.  No parachutes were seen coming from the plane.   After Denton,  Ross Wilson was born on December 26, 1922 followed by Russell Wilson born on April 16, 1926 and then Heber Homer was born August 26, 1928. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                          
George was the smallest baby born This was a blessing because it was a hard birth. George was born breach.   Mary was in labor two days and a night.  The Doctor came out of the bedroom and told Neils that he could only save one or the other, not both.  Neils told the Doctor in no uncertain terms to get in there and do his job and save both of them.  The poor Doctor did his best and he was finally able to deliver the baby and they both survived.  Neils always teased George telling him that he came into this world backward and he had been backward ever since.
                                                                                                                                                                                                
George went to grade school on the corner of Wilson and Thomas road at the Wilson School House.  This is now the school district offices.  They had to walk to school.  In the winter when he was small, if it was a blizzardy day, Neils would come with a blanket and carry him home

 His older brother Donald would follow behind and step in his fathers footsteps.  George graduated from the 8th grade from this school.

Mary told how George used to go to the Peterson store with his dad.  He would see something he wanted and he would throw a terrible tantrum if he couldn’t have it.  His father told him he couldn’t go anymore if he had tantrums, but he had them anyway.  George would lay on the floor and kick and scream.  His father would go on with his business and then he would pick George up and take him home swearing he would never take him again.  One time his father told him he could not go so he hid in the car and went anyway.  His mother thought this was great fun and when she would tell us about it she would laugh so hard the tears would roll down her cheeks.  George had a lot of tantrums when he was a child and got his way quite often.  This is so hard to imagine because most of us knew him as such a quiet man. Very, very stubborn, but quiet.  His father always said that if George ever fell in a ditch, be sure to look for him upstreem because he would be too stubborn to be downstream.

When George started school, he was so puny the school nurse decided he needed Cod Liver Oil.  His mother bought large bottles of it and George had to take a big dose of it every morning before he ate his breakfast.  Mary added a little sugar to it to help the taste, George said it sure didn’t help the taste much.  His mom kept this up until he had his tonsils out at age 11 or 12.  It is no wonder that George was so small, that stuff would stunt anyone’s growth!

When George had his tonsils out, the doctor came to the house and removed George’s first and then a cousin’s, Phillis.  Sister Ingrid and brother Wallace were next.  They kept the children in the bedroom and brought them out one at a time, doing the surgery on the dining room table.

When George was a young boy, he and his older brother Donald went up the ditch to the head gates with their dad.  Their dad told Donald to watch George while he went up the ditch to check some other head gates.  He was the ditch rider for that canal.  While he was gone the first thing George did was to try to cross the canal on a plank and fall in.  This was right at the head gates and the water really swirled around and bubbled there.  There was no way that Donald could possibly save George without drowning himself.  George was able to grab a cattail growing by the bank and hang on for dear life.  Donald ran down the canal bank to get his dad.  Neils said that if George hadn’t been so small the cattail could have never held him without breaking.

George’s first school bus was a Model T flatbed truck with staves up and over the bed like a covered wagon.  These were covered with canvas.  It had a window in front so the driver could see them and a door in the back with two or three steps going down.  The bus had a row of benches down each side.  It was really cold in the winter.  The bus was so slow that they could get out and run along side and even pass it while it was traveling down the road.   George rode this bus while in the 9th grade at Moreland High School.  When he was in the 10th grade, they got a new bus.  It was a Dodge Graham truck.  This had 2 foot high sides built out of 2 x 4's, then staves over the top and canvas stretched over that.  This one had a door built in up front right behind the cab.  You could open the door and step into the back.  It had a row of seats on each side and two benches back to back in the middle.  This bus went much faster and they couldn’t outrun this one.

One day George decided he wanted a sandwich.   On this very day his mother had just finished a batch of jam.  It was poured into the bottles and it was cooling.  As soon as it was cooled the wax would be poured over the jam to seal it.  George took a slice of bread and proceeded to put a scoop of jam from several of the jars onto his bread.  Needless to say his mother was a little irate to have all these jars with a hole in the middle of the jam.  She really got after him and he ran outside and hid under an upside down beet dump bed that was used on the truck during beet season to haul beets.  While he was hiding there he fell to sleep.  He was gone a long time.  Neils had the neighbors and his brothers help look for him.  Neils’ brother Phil just happened to lift the side and look under the beet bed and there was George fast asleep.   They had been looking in the ditches and everywhere.  Mary was so relieved when he was found as they were so afraid that he had drowned.

When George was a senior, he borrowed a horse from Roy Goodwin.  George only had school half a day, so he rode a horse so he could go home and help farm when he was finished.  At this time, their father was on a mission and Donald and George, being  the oldest boys, had a lot of work to do on the farm.  George liked working with horses.  His older brother, Donald, did not.  George would do most of the work requiring the team of horses and Donald would irrigate and do most of the hand work.  That way they were both happy.

Their mother, Mary, raised chickens and sold the eggs every week to help buy her groceries.  Every Saturday the boys had to shovel out the dirty old straw and then cover the floor with clean straw.  Not a fun chore.  When they finished cleaning their chicken coop, they had to go over to Alta Stander’s place and do her coop because she was a widow. 
 
After harvest, George made enough money from his spuds to buy his first car.  It was a 1929 Chevy Coop.  He took off the trunk lid and put in a rumble seat.  It was dark blue.  It had a cut-out on the tail pipe so it was really noisy.  Everyone could hear him coming and going for miles around.  The car had a little piece of chain that came up through the floorboards that he could pull to make the cut out work so he could control the noise.  Of course, most of the time he had it as noisy as he could get it.  He still had this car when he started dating Virginia.

George’s cousin, Ray Anderson, set up a blind date with Virginia Hampton and George.  Ray was dating Bernice Wheeler who was a best friend of Virginia’s.  Bernice lived down the lane at the old Poole place and Virginia just lived around the corner on Clark road.  They went to a baseball game.  This is the first time they had met.  When they were dating Virginia’s dad would always comment when he could hear that noisy car coming after her, “here comes shorty high pockets”.

After they had dated for a short time, George asked Virginia to go steady.  He decided he was going to get married.  He told his dad and they went to town and got some lumber and started fixing up a little house that was down the field behind Wallaces’ house.  You went down the lane beside the potato cellar.  There was two large potato cellars and the house was behind and off to the west of the cellars.  The house was later lived in by Wallace and Vivian while they built their basement.  Then it was sold and moved on to Thomas Road.  George hadn’t asked Virginia to marry him yet.  She was working for Lowell Smith who was the mechanic at the Riverside Garage owned by Ollie Fackrell.  His wife was bed ridden and she had a small child.  Virginia worked taking care of her and the child.  The home was right beside the Garage.  While she was there working, George and his dad stopped at the Garage and filled the truck with gas on the way back from the lumber yard.  Lowell come over to the house and told Virginia that he had just seen her boyfriend and his dad at the Garage and they had a load of lumber to fix up a house for her and George.  This is the first time she had heard of this.  Before long George bought a ring and gave it to her.  She didn’t dare tell her folks for awhile and wore the ring around her neck on a chain for about a week.  While George and Virginia were living in this home they were farming with horses. George had a nice team.  During the night while the horses were in the corral behind the house, someone came in and took the horses.  They cut the fence on the corner across from All American Store and loaded them up.  For weeks everyone searched for those horses.  Once they heard that they might be in Arco.  George and his dad drove there to see but no luck.  They were never found.  This was a terrible financial loss.
 
They met in June of 1934 and were married on September 13th, 1934 in the Logan Temple.  Virginia had just turned 17 on July 23, 1934 so, because she was underage, she had to have her mother’s sister go with them with a letter from Virginia’s mother giving permission.  They were going to get married on the 12th but when they got to Logan, Virginia’s aunt, Anna Christine Hobbs had gone to the fair, so they stayed the night and got married on the 13th.  George was 21 and Virginia was 17.  They went to Ogden and stayed the night at Virginia’s uncle, Hyrum Bolander’s home, then hurried home the next day to put up hay.  Also they had a wedding shower for Virginia that day at Mary Anderson’s house.

George farmed for most of his life.  He also had milk and beef cattle, pigs and chickens.  He worked for Twin Butte’s Construction driving Caterpillar making roads in the mountains by McCall,  Idaho.  He worked at Boyle Hardware and furniture store making deliveries and laying flooring with Tom Hemming.  Trained with the Railroad to be a Switchman.  After he finished his training, the call came for him to go to Glens Ferry to work.  At that time about the only thing there was the railroad switch station.  There were a couple of little stores and a few people who worked for the railroad.  George and Virginia decided that they did not want to live out there in the middle of nowhere, so they turned down the job and went back to farming.  George  bought and ran Riverside Garage for a couple of years, drove milk truck for Blaine Randall, worked at Mike’s paint and glass doing glass work, and worked at the AEC site doing custodial work.  While farming he would supplement his income working at the potato warehouses in the winter.

George never got farming out of his blood.  He began farming with horses and then his father bought a 1935 Farmall tractor.  The tractor was used to run the Case Thresher and do some custom plowing.  The Tractor ran the thresher, but the grain was still cut and hauled to the thresher with the teams of horses.  As the grain, peas, beans or clover seed was threshed, the seed went into bags.  No one wanted the job as bagger.  First of all it was really dirty.  There was so much dust from the thresher. The bags were filled clear full then sewn shut with a large needle and twine.  When these sacks were full they were heavy.  Everywhere the thresher went, there went George as the bagger for many years. The Anderson brothers all had farms and they always helped each other get their crops in.  They shared their equipment with each other.  When their harvest was done they always made sure that if anyone needed help with their harvest the Anderson boys were there to help. The Anderson brothers were known for their hard work and for their honesty.

They lived on Thomas road next to Neils and Mary’s home when the Teton Dam broke in 1976.  George was at Alice’s home to help her get ready for the flood.  He was trying to protect the well from getting flood water in it.  When he got home his house was flooded.  The water had missed Alice and hit him instead.  The additions in the front and the back were full of water up to the floor level of the main house.  The main floor escaped the water damage but everything in the lower levels were ruined.  The water was between two to three feet deep. They were lucky because they did not have a basement.

George loved his brothers and his sister.  He so enjoyed living by Homer and Russell.  He spent a lot of time working with Homer irrigating and taking care of cattle..
 
George was a kind and a loving father.  He enjoyed his children and his grandchildren.  After he retired, he really enjoyed being able to go on trips with his children.  He was a great sport to go on most of the rides at Disneyland except for Space Mountain.  He just didn’t like the roller coaster rides too well.  He was game to walk down into Carlsbad Caverns.  For those who have not done this, it is a long steep walk.  When we took him to the Natural Bridge caverns in San Antonia, Texas he went down in them once, but the second time we went there he sat out in a waiting room and had a nice cold Pepsi.  He said that he didn’t like the look of those great big slabs of rock on the ceiling.  Part of these slabs had come crashing down to the bottom of the cave many years ago but the guides made sure to try and scare you by saying that they could come down any second and Dad did not like the looks of that for one minute.    We went to Washington, Canada, California, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Minnesota (drove there and back so saw a lot on the way), Montana, Texas, New Mexico and Mexico.  We went on a lot of trips and saw a lot of fun things besides traveling all around Idaho.

Homer and Barbara took George and Virginia with them to Indiana.  The stopped in the Black Hills and saw Mount Rushmore.  They went to Nauvoo.  Came home through Yellowstone and went through Cody, Wyoming and went through the museum.

George and Virginia were married 65 years.  During that time they had lean years and good years.  They worked hard together and provided for their family.  George was a little man with a great loving heart.

George and Virginia had a 50th wedding anniversary celebration at the Riverside church.  When they had their 65th anniversary, they had a celebration in their yard.  They had over four hundred guests come and share the fun.
George and Virginia had four children;

Clair Hampton Anderson born August 8, 1936 Died November 2, 1965

Mary Joyce Anderson born December 18, 1937

Sadie Sharlene Anderson born August 28, 1943

Leon George Anderson born September 1, 1956
 

George fell and broke his hip April 14, 2000.  He was in the Bingham memorial Hospital seven days and died on April 21, 2000.  His funeral was at the Blackfoot West Stake Center on April 24, 2000.  He was buried at the Riverside-Thomas Cemetery.


Donald N Anderson

Life History of Donald N. Anderson
 
On November 18, 1995, Donald N. Anderson was sitting in his favorite brown recliner in front of the television.  The sun was shining through the window.  He shared some memories about his life with his oldest daughter Arvella Anderson Jenkins that are recorded below.
 I was born in Thomas, Idaho, July 15, 1911.  I was born a quarter mile east of where the District 12 Schoolhouse is.  I was born at home.  Aunt Annie Coleman came to help my mother when I was born.  The doctor, Dr. Patrie, also came out from town.  There was only one telephone in the community at the time and you had to call and let him know that he needed to come.
My mother, Mary Wilson Anderson, was a small woman.  When she got right heavy she weighed about 115 pounds.  She was born in Southern Utah.  Her Aunt Annie Coleman and Uncle Alexander lived in the area and she came to work in the store at Thomas.  The country store had mostly groceries but like most of the country stores of the day they probably had a few other things.  My dad went a courting with her and they were married in 1908 in the Manti Temple.
 My father, Neils Anderson, came to Idaho in 1906 with his Father.  I think there were about 10 in the family.  He was a large man.  He weighed around 180 pounds.  He was 5 feet 11 inches tall.  He was somewhat of a good singer.  Right after they first came here, he put on the board that he was a good music leader and from then on he had a job in the community leading the singing.  Father also liked drama.  In his early life, he helped put on community plays.  He was also on the school board for a number of years.  He helped out in the community in different activities.
When the Andersons first came to Idaho, they bought 160 acres.  The first year they had quite a time because there wasn’t much hay in the country.  They had to pay about forty dollars a ton.  It was when a dollar was a dollar.  What little hay they had, they put netting around it.  They would open a hole to use it.  The jackrabbits were so thick that they would get in the wire enclosure and the next morning they would kill the rabbits.  They killed about 50 every day.  They had to work on the jackrabbits.
 My grandfather’s name was Anders Anderson.  That is a Swedish name.  He came to Utah around 1875.  He came over to America and worked to get enough money to send for grandmother.  Her name was Ingrid Nilsson.  She came 2 or 3 years later.  They of course talked Swedish.  Father’s oldest brother went to school and he didn’t know how to speak English.  He had quite a time in school and so my grandparents said they wouldn’t speak Swedish all the time like they did before.  They set out to learn and speak the English language.  About they time I came along they’d pretty well mastered it buy they didn’t ever forget their Swedish.
 Grandfather was a big man.  He was 6 foot or better.  He worked hard in Utah.  In Utah they used a cradle to cut the grain and hay.  Grandfather was pretty good.  He could cut about an acre and a half a day.  When they got to Idaho, they used a binder to cut the grain.  Grandmother did all of the milking and sold butter.  She made about as good a butter as you would ever taste.  It took a lot of work to churn the butter and make it into pounds.  That was one way they had of making a living.  She was quite a small woman.  She probably weighed about 130 pounds.  She really knew how to keep everything up in tiptop shape.  When she had her children, she had the child, and the next day she’d be out milking the cows again.  She was really a strong lady.
The missionaries in Sweden left a tract at Grandfather’s and Grandmother’s homes.  Grandfather read it and he was later baptized.  Grandmother was baptized at the same time.
I didn’t go to my grandparent’s house too often but just once in awhile.  If you stayed there too long, Grandmother sent you back home.  She had everything immaculate and I guess she thought our mothers should take care of us not her.  Grandfather used to walk around and see his grandchildren.  He generally had some peppermint candy to give us.  I remember that very well.  When we went to see grandma, she always had a little cube of sugar and some soda crackers with cheese to give you so that was pretty good.
When I was a young boy, mother had a five-pound lard bucket and we had a well 200 feet from the house.  We had a reservoir on the stove and I had to go out and pump the water up.  It took several strokes before the water would come out of the hand pump.  I had to keep the reservoir full.  We had a trough to water the cattle.  I had to pump water for that too.  They kept me busy because I was the oldest living child.  We had a little wagon and I had to take my little brother, George, and my sister, Ingrid, and pull them around and entertain them.  I wasn’t in trouble very often.  I had something to do all the time.
We only had 5 or 6 cows at first.  As soon as I got big enough that I could get some milk out of them, I started milking those cows.  Dad did the milking most of the time, but he had a job as sexton of the Riverside Thomas Cemetery District.  Sometimes he would have to go dig a grave.  He was also a water master.  Sometimes when he wouldn’t get home, mother would go out and help us milk the cows.
Father always had a pretty big garden.  We had all kinds of vegetables and then he had quite a large orchard and then he had raspberries.  That kept us busy when we didn’t have anything else to do.  He had about 6 rows of raspberries and they had to be picked about every other day.  There were always those weeds that came in the garden.  We tried to keep them down.  In the early spring, we had to spray the apple trees.  He had all kinds and varieties.  In the fall, when the apples got ripe, we had to pick them and put them in the room in the basement.  There was a bin that must have held about a hundred-bushel.  We sold apples to the community for about 50 cents a bushel.  That was how we got a few extra dollars.  There was a man in the community who sold out.  Father bought a cider press from him.  When there was a surplus of apples, we got to grind the apples up.  One year we made two of those 60 gallon barrels full of cider.  Father and mother put what they called “mother” in that cider and it turned to vinegar.  It was really strong stuff.  That was another thing we had on our farm.
My father did not believe in wasting anything.  We got a few tin cans around so we had to beat them up flat and then put them between the rows of raspberries.  That was to give the raspberries the iron they needed.  We didn’t waste anything.
When I first went to school, we didn’t have any electricity.  We had the good ole coal oil lamp.  Father would have to trim the wick and keep kerosene on hand to fill up the lamp.  You’d take a newspaper to put in the glass to clean it.  Along about 1920, father paid about $600 to get the electricity from the corner to our home.  He worked part of that out by cutting the trees off so the trees wouldn’t get onto the electric line.  At first all that we had was  one of those drop switches from the ceiling.  It seemed really good to have light.
Mother used to boil the clothes and then she would use the old scrubbing board to get the dirt out.  Later, we got one of those washing machines that had a stick you pulled back and forth to keep the agitator moving.  In those days you didn’t have a dress for everyday.  You wore your clothes about all week or maybe longer.  My job was to fill the boiler, a big container they put on the stove to heat the water, with water.  Mother made her own soap.  She saved all the fat from the meat and put lye with it and made the soap.  She cut it into bars and used her own soap to wash with.  Sometimes, I would help boil the clothes and then mother would rub them out on the washboard.  When we got the washing machine, I had to run the handle back and forth.  I got a good work out on that.  Mother would generally run the clothes through cold water and then run them through bluing.  We had the outdoor clotheslines so we had to go outside and hang the clothes up.  Wash day was a big day.  When there were small children, we must have had to wash at least twice a week so we would have enough diapers.
When you wanted to take baths, you got the good old tin tub and heated the water on the stove and put it in there.  If you were too big you sat on a chair and bathed yourself off.
I went to District 12 to school.  I started when I was six years old.  They had just built on to the building before I went there.  It was just a quarter of a mile from where I lived.  In those days, I don’t know if there weren’t enough clocks in the community or not. But there was a bell on the school building that rang at 8:30 am.  You were supposed to get there by 9:00 am.
Mother made bread.  During World War I, we had to take substitutes.  You could only get so much flour and then for the rest of it we would get corn meal.  Mother wasn’t very good at making that up.  Then we had salt pork.  Father would kill the hogs and then he made very delicious ground up pork.  He would take the hams and shoulders and soak them in salt for six weeks.  We would then take them out of the salt and hang them up and smoke them for two or three days.  We had meat all of the time but it was pretty salty meat.  During the depression, generally we had all we could eat.  We always had plenty of milk.  We had beans and what we could grow in the garden.  We had raspberries and apples.  Maybe if you happened to go to the store you could have a banana or an orange at Christmas time.  The other times you ate just what you had.
Father went on a short term mission in the fall of 1930.  At that time, we didn’t have very much.  The ward helped to finance part of his mission and then we milked the cows and that helped some.  We had 800 or 900 sacks of potatoes and we sorted part of them up and sold them.  We were pretty lucky that year; we sold all of the crops.
Then in 1935, they called me to go on a mission to Tonga.  I had quite a time to find out where that was.  I was 24 when I went on my mission.  Everything about Tonga was pretty nice.  You had all the fruit you could eat and plenty of fish.  The people were very friendly.  Tonga is called the Friendly Islands.  The Tongan language was hard for me to learn.  I got so I could take care of myself.  I didn’t convert too many people to the gospel, I don’t know as I converted anybody.  I converted myself.  I learned a lot.  I liked bananas to eat while we were in Tonga.  I still like them.  It wasn’t too big a job for my family to support me while I was in Tonga.  Mother wrote a letter to me every week and she put $5.00 in the letter.  When I came home, I had about $200 to bring back with me.  That’s the cheapest mission in the world.  The members took care of us and we lived off the land.
When I got home from my mission, I went into farming again.  I helped my dad some and then he bought a place for me.  It took a lot of work to get that farm going.  The first year, we made it so we could farm the land down below the hill.  The next year father and my brothers plowed up the sagebrush on the top part and we stacked it up and burned it.  I was pretty lucky because the weather was about right and I raised some pretty good crops. 
Father was the architect for the barn.  I just helped put a few boards on it.  I took the equipment from Father’s farm and used it over there.  We had an old M tractor that did most of the plowing.  Russell came over there and put the old rooter in there and brought a lot of lava rocks up.  We spent two or three weeks just hauling lava rock off from it.  There was a place or two where the lava rocks were too close and we couldn’t plow over it so father dynamited those places off.  We had some big rocks they took out with a bull dozer and father and I drilled holes in them and put dynamite in them and blew them to pieces.  Then I had to haul them off.  There was a rock assessment at the time.  You could either pay so much money, or haul so many rocks to the river.  Some of the neighbors around here came and got rocks and hauled them to the river.  They needed the rocks in the river to dam it off so that when the river got low they could get the water out in the canals.  The neighbors were glad I had rocks.
I took Mother down to Logan to see her Aunt Annie.  She was running a boarding place down there.  Leona’s father and mother came along and were trying to find a place to stay.  Aunt Annie had an opening so she let them stay there that night.  Leo was there with Leona.  They had gone down to the Logan Temple.  We went to the show and that was where I first got acquainted with Leona.  I went down to Declo every two weeks and then World War II came along.  I thought maybe I had better get married and so we got married a month after Pearl Harbor.  We drove to Salt Lake.  The weather was terrible.  We were married in the Salt Lake Temple on January 7, 1942. 
I heard that a neighboring 80-acre farm was for sale.  Leona and I had saved up quite a lot of money and we were going to build a house over on the farm that we had.  Instead we decided to buy the farm so we did it.  We paid around $28,000 for it in 1949.  The new farm had longer water runs and so I could sleep at night a little more.  Wallace, my brother, lived across the street.  It made it nicer for the children to go to school.  When they went to school there were quite a lot of children that got on the bus here between our kids and Wallaces’.  My brothers and I did quite a bit to help each other.  It was a lot of work to get all the farm work done.  My brothers would help me for awhile and then I would go back to their place and help them so we got it done.  Then we had cows to milk, morning and night, feed calves, and some pigs to feed.  There wasn’t much time to lay around and to goof off.
I had a roan cow and she was kind of squirmy.  I thought that maybe by hitting her in the side she would stop squirming.  Instead she whammed off and broke both of the bones in my leg.  They had to put a metal plate in it.  I couldn’t be on it 3 or 6 months.  I can’t remember for sure how long it was but that’s what you get for losing your temper with a cow.
In the spring of 1965, I had a two-way plow on an International Super-M tractor.  I was pulling it and I came to a place in the field where I had white soil.  I went to go through the spot.  The tractor wouldn’t go through it so I had to stop.  I revved up the engine and tried to go through it again.  All of a sudden, the tractor rared up like you see pictures of horses when they ride them.  It tipped over backwards.  I do not know where I lit.  The tractor must have got up on the plow or I would have been smashed.  I don’t know how long I was under there.  Mrs. Larson, a neighbor, saw the tractor was stopped and so she got her husband and Vic Cushman.  They used Forrest’s jack and got me out from under the tractor.  I woke up about the time we got to the river bridge.  Dr. Miller set my arm.  I had to stay in the hospital for awhile.  It was about 3 weeks before I got over it.  I always live dangerously. 
One night I was trying to get the cows in the barn.  I was trying to see who the boss was, me or the bull.  He hit me in the middle of my body.  He rolled me over a couple of times until I got back in the barn.  I was bruised and battered but I didn’t go to the doctor.  The bull could have trampled me to death.  I got up and finished milking because the milking had to be done.  I probably didn’t tell Leona because I was afraid she would faint.
I started driving the school bus when I was 52 years old. My son Neils talked me into driving school bus.  I tried it out and I made it through that.  They put me out in the backwoods I guess you could call it.  It was out in the desert.  At first I had quite a time remembering the route.  Winfield wasn’t very old.  I think he was about 3 or 4 so I took him along so he could tell me where I was.  I finally got so I could master my route.  I got to know almost every road in the school district.  I did a lot of driving.  When I was 72, they thought I was too old to drive any more so that finished my bus-driving job.
In 1986, I had another bullfight again as Leona calls it.  I was walking in a manure pile carrying a stick and the bull charged me from behind and knocked me down.  Luckily I was able to roll under a pole fence that we had in the farmyard.  It must have cracked a rib.
I can’t say that I always wanted to be a farmer.  Father was brought up in those circumstances.  He thought it was a good way to raise a family and still be able to do the things he wanted to do.
 
Excerpts from the history written by Arvella Anderson Jenkins.
 
Leona Hurst Anderson and Donald N Anderson