Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

I WAS BORN, AND ••• 

On January 2. 1898, in Manti, Utah just after the end of the New Year's first day I was born in a red brick house four blocks south, and one west of the Tabernacle. My father was pleased and like all mothers, mine said I was a pretty and a good baby. Two years later on January 5, 1900 my sister, Canny, was born and on June 27, 1900 my brother, Adrien, was born. We were the only children my mother had. 

 As a mere boy I remember my father buying more and more land six miles south-west of Manti and just north west of Sterling. This farm bordered along the shore line of the Gunnison reservoir for about a mile. Then father sold the farm about three miles south of town to John R. Braithwaite for the sum of $5,500.00 which was quite a sum of money in those times. Father had a herd of short horn durham cattle at that time and it was considered one of the best breed herds of the time. Herfords were unknown there in that area.

My summers were spent on this farm from the day school was out until it started again in the fall. We grew and put up from 150 to 200 ton of alfalfa hay; from 1000 to 1500 bushels of grain and an acre or two of potatoes. My earliest memory of farm work was the riding the horse to cultivate potatoes until I had scabs the size of a silver dollar on each cheek of my set down. I tried; but was too small to walk and lead the horse. I learned to use the pitch fork and shovel as soon as I could lift them. Father grew work horses also and usually had from two to four to sell each fall to California buyers. Father's horses were of the best in the area and I do remember of taking first place ribbons at the fair on a number of occasions. I had to care for horses so much as a child when they would drag me around as I attempted to lead them that I got so I never wanted to work with horses. We were so far from the farm that we usually went out and camped in a one room building used in the fall to store grain. We would stay from one night to a full week at a time. My only pleasures were to swim and fish in this reservoir just a few yards from the camp house. There were a lot of carp and succors in the waters there; but no game fish. We did catch and eat many of the fish. In the fall we would try and catch two or three hundred carp weighing from one to three pounds and clean them, dip them in boiling strong salt water a few minutes and then put them in the smoke house for several days, which would also sort of dry them and then store them in a large box in the cellar. We would rush home from school to get a fish, peel off the skin and pick the meat off the bones. They had a taste like the kippered salmon you buy now on the market, and all us kids loved them.

My grandmother Squire told me, on a number of occasions, that my father was the most thoughtful of her sons and cared for her all her days. She said he had the most faith and a strong testimony as a boy and youth. However, in his early married life he had some differences with some of the ward leaders and knowing the way of their life became disturbed and became inactive and remained so all the rest of his life. He never said anything against the church and usually went to the quarterly conference.

I remember well when my sister Leona became a young lady and went to Salt Lake to work. While there she found and fell in love with a railroad fireman, who later became an engineer. He was a tall dark handsome young man by the name of Charles Johnson. I always liked him. They were married and had a daughter, Beatrice, one of the most beautiful girls I ever remember. He was killed one foggy night in a train wreck in Midvale, Utah. Leona later married Parley Prush [Pruhs] and they moved later from Salt Lake to California where they had two daughters and two sons. 

I also remember when Gilbert left the nest to try his wings and get work. He went to California and got a job in the dairy milking many cows, a job he hated on the farm. He later came back to Manti and there met and married Christene Hansen. They had two girls, Helen and Shirley, Helen's husband was the first one to be killed from Utah in World War II. Helen married again later and died shortly after. Shirley married a boy in Payson and lived there for some time, but now is living in Provo near her widowed mother. Gilbert died in Salt Lake April 12, 1927 and is buried there. I remember him as a wonderful fellow and a very good brother. 

My sister Canny married William Thorpe from Ephraim. They lived several places before Bill started, in about 1930, to work for Z.C.M.I. in Salt Lake and have made their home there ever since. They had a son, Sherman, and a daughter, Mary. These you know. Sherman is now a highly rated surgeon and medical doctor in Mesa, Arizona. They have four lovely children. Mary lives in Salt Lake the mother of four of the prettiest girls I ever saw. She married David Robinson who is in the hospital and doctors supply business. 

Canny Mary Squire

Mary Bernice Thorpe

Sherman Thorpe

William Thorpe

My brother Adrien married a girl by the name of Pearl Benson [Benzon] in Salt Lake and later moved to Idaho Falls where they made their home. They had two sons and two daughters. Adrien had taken up the profession of painter paper hanger and interior decorator. He became very skilled in this business. While at work on August 27, 1931 he was papering the ceiling of a room and stepped down from the scaffold clasped his hands to his head and walked out on the lawn where he collapsed and died almost instantly of what the doctors said was a blood clot on the brain. He is buried in Idaho Falls.