Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapters 10 & 11

I decided to post these two chapters together because of the length and content.  It was fun to read about my grandparents' courtship, their changed marriage plans due to the flu epidemic, and their marriage being performed by Grandma's Uncle, Bishop Morris Wilson (my great-grandfather & great-uncle).  I never new my sweet grandma famous for her "stirrin' arm" could also handle a 22 rifle!

CHAPTER TEN 

AMELIA AND I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED. •.WITH RESULTS

As we entered Hurricane from the north I well remember the three foot sign painted yellow on which the speed limit was posted in black letters reading: Speed limit 15 miles per hour. Hurricane was about the end of the line at that time. About the only way to get out was the way you got in. There was a rough wagon road east to Short Creek Arizona and on around to Kanab. There was a poor and seldom traveled road or trail west of Hurricane that sometimes was used to go to St. George when the river was low and a road from LaVerkin to Springdale where that ended.

As I have stated Amelia was working for an aunt, Mrs. George Campbell when I met her. She had to do all the chores washing and house work and was paid two dollars and fifty cents for a seven day week’s work. For the two weeks she worked there she came after milk each evening to her grandmother’s where I was staying and I was delighted to carry these two quarts of milk home for her. She did not show too much interest in me which gave me a determination to sell her on what a wonderful guy I was as I attempted to woo her affections.

At this time there was a sheep shearing corral at Goulds wash, some six miles out the Short Creek road where many thousand sheep were sheared each spring. This corral runs for six weeks or so each spring and the wool was hauled to the rail road at Lund by teams. There was two cook or boarding houses there and Amelia got a job as a waitress in one that was run by one of her aunts. I hired Leon Peterson the brick-building boss to take me out on a couple Sunday afternoons to see her in his model-T Ford. One Sunday afternoon I rented or borrowed a roan mustang horse from Howard Wilson to ride out to Goulds to see Amelia. I helped her do the dishes after supper and we went over to the wash and sat on a large rock and looked at the moon where I continued to pour out sweet nothings into her ear. She had to be in at nine o’clock so after bidding her good night I mounted this horse which was a wild mustang Howard had caught out on the open plains and partly broken. He took the bit in his teeth and took off like a modern rocket. I could not jerk the bit free from his teeth and soon found out that all I could do was hang on and hope. That was the wildest ride I ever had in my life and I still wonder how that horse kept his feet as it came down around those sharp curves or switch backs off Hurricane Hill at a dead run. It leaned so close to the ground as it ran those curves that I could have grabbed a handful of gravel if I could of had a hand not too busy to grab it. That horse never stopped running the entire six miles and I did not at any time dare to jump. As we came into town the horse made a direct line for its home corral jumped a four foot gate into the corral where it stopped ringing wet with lather. I was not long in getting off that horse and unsaddling it. I might add that I never asked to ride that bronk again.

After the shearing season was over Amelia came back to her home in LaVerkin where I called upon her a few times before I left Dixie.

Early in June my mother wrote me that a former Manti man by the name of Warren Snow had purchased a ranch in Bountiful in the mouth of Mill Creek canyon. She was going up there to cook for the men hired on the ranch and Mr. Snow would like me to come up and work for him. I decided to quit my brick making and go to Bountiful where mother was to work. I took a mail truck from Hurricane to Cedar and from there to Lund where I caught a train to Salt Lake. There were no busses running in those days. I arrived in Salt Lake the next morning and went to Mr. Snow’s and he took me to the ranch.

CHAPTER ELEVEN KINNEY CREEK RANCH

This ranch was 640 acres in a very run down condition. Three other men were hired there beside myself that summer. My wage was forty dollars a month and board. After a couple months they got three milk cows and I was assigned to milk them before and after working hours and given a raise to forty-five dollars a month. We built a new barn, machine shed, grainery and corral that summer. I did most of the farming. Cut and put up about twenty tons of alfalfa hay grown dry land. There was a three acre orchard of peaches that had a good crop on that summer and I got my first experience in picking and packing peaches. When fall came, the other men were laid off and Mr. Snow gave me the job of so called foreman and raised my wage to fifty dollars a month and twenty-five dollars a month stock in the ranch.

All this summer I had been writing letters often to the girl in Dixie and I got ten days off in October and took the train to Lund and the mail from there to Hurricane where I stayed with the Wilsons. Each night I would walk over to LaVerkin to see Amelia. Then we would go for a walk around town and I had to have her home and in at nine o'clock each night. Then I would walk back to Hurricane. They were making molasses during that time. I ate my first pomegranate and grapes were sticky sweet.

I returned to the ranch and took up the farming again. That fall I planted several acres of wheat and rye dry land. It came up good and was covered by four feet of snow that winter. Mr. Snow's brother-in-law Melvin Stringham came onto the farm. He was married and had three children. but feared the draft into the army, so came on the farm as a farmer as many farmers were deferred. They got about one hundred and fifty sheep and we fed them through that winter. Snow got so heavy that we had to shovel it off the roofs of the buildings as the rafters were cracking. The only way we could get off the farm was to walk, I churned and mounded about fifteen pounds of butter a week and carried it to the car line where Mr. Snow met me and took it into Salt Lake. I got a reputation of a good butter maker. The first batch I had I called Central at the phone office and asked for information and when given it I asked, "How much salt do you put in butter?" Information sure got a charge out of the question, but as the girl had been reared in a farm, she was able to give me directions.

All this winter I had written often to the girl in Dixie and when spring came I got another vacation for a week or so and took off for Dixie. I stayed in Hurricane again and walked back and forth to LaVerkin. There was no bridge across the ledges then, so had to walk down the canyon across the old bridge and up the other side.

One evening as we were taking a walk about town we sat down on the top of the cement water settling cistern a block east of her home on the bank of the canal to rest. While there I got up enough courage to ask "wilt thou?'' and after a couple days she consented and we made plans to be married in the fall.

Amelia Sanders & Loren D. Squire

After returning to the ranch, I went with Mr. Snow and his family in the dairy area of Cache county where he purchased the best cows he could find from the top dairies. He paid from three hundred and fifty to four hundred fifty dollars a piece for five of them. I came back on the train with the cows and was met at the stock yards south of Bountiful by another man and a couple horses to drive them to the ranch. This gave the ranch a start of a small dairy.

The wheat and rye I had planted the fall before did real well. Grew nearly shoulder high and I cut it with a binder and when it was thrashed it turned out forty-five bushel per acre.

The summer of 1918 was uneventful in my life there on the farm. World War I was going on and I was nearing the army age of twenty-one. They then dropped the age to twenty and I did some thinking of joining. My mother pleaded with me not to volunteer; but wait for the draft. I don't remember of having any fear of going into the army. I told Mr. Snow that I was going to get married that fall and he said he would like me to stay on the ranch and they would build a home for us. So a new home was built near the new corral and other buildings.

Amelia had set Oct. 22nd as our wedding date so plans were made accordingly. As I was only twenty years old I had to have my mother go to the courthouse in Manti and swear out an affidavit giving her consent to my marriage. A few days before the wedding I arrived in Dixie. On the night of the twenty-first there was a bustle about the Sanders home preparing temple clothes for the occasion. When all was in readiness about eleven o'clock that night word came that due to the first and much feared epidemic of flu hitting the country the temple in St. George was closed and would not be reopened until the epidemic was over or under control.

This dash of cold water cast a gloom over us all. The next morning at the suggestion of Amelia's parents I called the president of the temple and he suggested we go ahead with our marriage and have the Bishop perform the ceremony and later when the temples opened go and have a temple marriage. I well remember the walk and conversation between Amelia's father and I as we went out to the molasses mill where Bishop Wilson was boiling molasses and asked him if he would marry us that evening. After getting his consent we had to go to St. George and get our marriage license. I hired Harry Price who had a model T to take us. The road was full of ruts dry and dusty and it took most of the day to go and come back. Amelia's mother went with us and when we got to St. George we were stopped in front of the courthouse by the Sheriff. They were not permitting anyone to stop and stay in St. George. After finding out we were from LaVerkin which was yet free from the flu epidemic, they permitted us to go into the courthouse and purchase our license and then headed us back out of town.

That evening about nine p.m. Bishop Wilson came with his wife who was to act as a witness and Amelia's Aunt Clara Wilson Jones a close neighbor came as the other witness. We stood on the south side of the room against the wall where Bishop Wilson performed the ceremony. Our bridal suite was the grainery.

The next morning the health officer came and because we had been out of town put us under quarantine in the grainery for a few days. We could go outside; but was not to get in close contact with anyone. We were all advised by the doctors to wear gauze masks over our mouth and nose such as the doctors wear in the operating room. I saw men way out in the field by themselves wearing these masks, The fear was great as many were dying over the nation from this epidemic.

After a few days we left for Bountiful as I had to get back to work. We packed and got a ride to Lund with George Hinton who was driving his own freight truck. It was a chain drive of about a ton Capacity. It had flapping curtains above the doors. The floor had wide cracks and the cab was very breezy and cold. There was snow on the ground on the black ridge and all the way to Lund. There was only room for two to sit side by side in the seat so I sat upon Amelia's lap' most of the way as she said it kept her warm. I doubt if the truck could go twenty-five miles at a maximum speed. We left LaVerkin just after daylight and stopped at Hamiltons Fort and built a fire in the sagebrush and had noon lunch. Then we took off for Lund where we arrived just as the sun was going down. It was cold in the station, but we did not have to wait too long before the train came. We were glad to get into the warm cars of the train. I don't remember if we wore masks on the trip, but I do remember some on the train wearing them. We arrived in Salt Lake the next morning where Mr. Snow met us and took us to his home for breakfast and then on out to the ranch. I liked to be out on a ranch, but when I think how I took Amelia over three hundred miles from home and put her out on a lonely ranch two miles from any neighbors and her not knowing a soul I wonder how she stood it. Before we were married, Amelia's sister Lucile told of her singing as she went about her work the song, "I'll go where you want me to go, Dear Lord, I'll do what you want me to do", but Lucile who was just a little girl said she heard her and Amelia inserted the name of Loren for Lord, in the song, and sang it, "I'll go where you want me to go dear Loren:" Whether she did or did not she surely has lived up to these words, "I'll go where you want me to go, Dear Loren, I'll do what you want me to do." We took the wagon and went shopping down to Bountiful and purchased us a bed, springs, mattress and a sewing machine and went back to the ranch where we set up an old range that was there and used some old chairs and a table and set up housekeeping in the new house. They had built a fire place in the bedroom; but there was no bath,just a path outside. The only time there was running water in the house was when we used the thunder mug that was kept under the bed at night. 

Grouse

One of the first days there as I came up to the house I saw a ruffed grouse leave the wood pile and walk over to the netting fence where it was trying to crawl through. I called to Amelia and had her come out and told her about them and that they were very good eating. I rushed the bird and as it tried to get through the fence I caught it and as I was showing it to Amelia it flopped out of my hands. A few days later when I came into the house for dinner she sat a plate of grouse on the table. She said she had gone to the wood pile for some chips and saw a flock of grouse there, so she went back in the house and got a twenty-two rifle I had there and came out and started to shoot. She had them flopping all over the place, one flew into a tree and was caught in the limbs and would not fall, so she shot it about three times. Anyway she gathered up a half dozen grouse after she ran out of ammunition and prepared them for our dinner. She was a very good shot with a rifle and could beat most boys shooting at targets. This was just another reason I tried not at any time to anger her. 

Early one morning late in February before daylight we both got on a black horse and started for Bountiful to catch a car into Salt Lake where we had planned to go through the Salt Lake Temple. It was dark as pitch and snowing one of the worst blizzards of the winter. We had gone less than a quarter of a mile when we were lost and could not find the road or see where we were going, so I gave the horse his head and he soon brought us back to the shelter of the stable. The snow had blown up Amelia's dress and she was wet to the waist. We gave it up.

Later that day my brother, Adrien, who was working there at the time took us down to Bountiful in the bob sled and we went into Salt Lake and stayed at a hotel to be there the next morning to go through the Temple. This was February 28, 1919.

When spring came, Amelia was pretty homesick, so I sent her home for a couple weeks visit. Needless to say, I was very happy to have her back on the ranch. That fall my mother came to visit us and early Saturday morning of October the twenty-fifth we were up. Not daylight yet and it was snowing. There was six inches of snow on the ground and we needed a doctor. The storm had broken the phone line so I saddled up a black horse and headed for Bountiful. It was just breaking daylight when I arrived at the home of the Doctor and I can still see him as be came shivering to the door in his undies and said he would be right up. He was very proud of his old dodge car that made it up that canyon road to the ranch in that snow. At 10:50 that morning I became a father for the first time as DeLance let us know he had arrived weighing in at eight and a half pounds. 

Amelia's sister Maggie and her aunt Edna came and visited us a few days and there was a lot of fun. My mother was just as big a cut up as any young girl so we had a joyful time. 

Along the middle of November Mr. Snow came out and told me he had sold the ranch. That the new owner would take over in a month or so. That would leave us without a job or home. Earlier that fall Amelia's father had written us that William Hopkins wanted to sell out in LaVerkin for $2,500.00. There was an old home on a lot and a five-acre field. We sent all our savings, that was two hundred dollars down and had him make a down payment on the place. He arranged a loan of the other $2,300.00 from David Hirschi at ten percent interest. We had planned on staying on the ranch a few years and pay our wages on the place.

Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapter 9

I think it's nice that my grandpa not only wrote on his genealogy, but in this chapter he writes on his wife's line as well.  Very interesting to read about my ancestors, who converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the church was still in its infancy.  I owe so much to my forbears.  I am so grateful for the choices they made, which have placed me where I am today!

CHAPTER NINE 

THE SANDERS-WILSON LINE...MY WIFE'S LINE 

On Renthun Street in Birmingham, England there lived William Isom and his wife Elizabeth Austin, where on May 2. 1814 they had a son born to them and named him Owen. Owen had one older sister, named Sarah and three younger brothers. 

As a young man Owen was working in a factory when he met a young lady working at the same place by the name of Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of William Howard and Tamer Mills. She was born Sept 13 1821 in Birmingham also. They had to sign a contract to work for at least a year to get a job at this factory. Six months before their year was up they were married. Each lived with their parents until the year was up and then moved unto themselves.

Their sixth child was a girl and was given the name of Sarah Elizabeth. She was born June 14 1854. This family was converted to and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In May 1860 they left their home and went to Liverpool, where they boarded the ship William Tapscott and on May 8, 1860 set sail for the United States and Utah where they planned to made their home. Sarah Elizabeth was a month short of being six years old. The two older children William and Mary, had good jobs so stayed in England to work for another year to raise funds on which to travel. Two other children had died in England and their baby died of smallpox just after landing in the US.

Owen and his two elder sons got employment in a harness and Military equipment factory in New York as they did not have enough funds to go on. In the spring of 1861 William and Mary who had remained behind in England arrived in New York. William had married in England before leaving and he with his wife and sister, Mary, had funds to go on to Salt Lake so departed, leaving the rest of the family in New York. It was not until May of 1862 that they felt they had funds enough to travel to Salt Lake, so they left with a company of converts.

They traveled by train to St. Joseph, Missouri. A fire on the train just before reaching their destination burned most of their belongings. They took a boat from St. Joseph to Florence, Nebraska which was as far as boats went at that time. From there they went to Elk Horn River, a meeting place of the saints and where companies were organized to cross the plains. With the exception of the mother and baby the rest walked all the way across the grassy plains of Nebraska and on over the Rocky Mountains. Their oxen had become poor and tired out, so they traded one yoke for a fresh pair at Green River and paid the difference out of their meager funds. Their son, William, knew they were on the way, so he came to meet them and they met on the Weber River where his help speeded their travel on into Salt Lake. 

Steamer "Omaha" Landing
Mormons at Florence, Nebraska

They had expected to stay in Salt Lake to make their home; but the land had mostly been taken up and they had no funds to purchase land. So they decided to go south to Utah's Dixie where they were told they could have the land for the fencing. They stayed in the Salt Lake area for about ten days and worked on their first molasses mill in Centerville. Mary had married, after reaching Salt Lake, a man by the name of Smith Thurston and was expecting in a few months and wanted her mother to stay with her. So it was decided to leave the mother, her son Samuel, daughter Sarah Elizabeth and the baby Frank in Salt Lake while the others went on to find a home. They joined a small company headed south. The group had a small herd of cattle to drive with them. When they got to Ash creek in the northern part of Washington County, William lsom and George Thurston left the rest of the company there and went on into St. George to locate a place to go. On the way they met a man by the name of Sextus Johnson who urged them to go up the Rio Virgin River to the town of Virgin to settle, so they came back and got the rest of the company and started for Virgin, arriving there a few days before Christmas. They had no relatives or friends to go to, so they chose an unoccupied lot in the north-east part of Virgin. The choice lots had been taken up. This one was sandy and had gullies washed through it by the rains. 

Virgin, UT 1907

They started to build some kind of a shelter to live in. They hauled some rock and built four walls, then put logs across the walls, limbs on this and on the limbs they placed bagass or the pulp or cain after the juice had been squeezed out, then upon this they shoveled dirt and moved in for the winter. 


They searched for land to farm and finally decided on a place about four miles north of Virgin or what is now known as Mountain Dell. They grubbed the brush, fenced it and dug a ditch to water it from the creek. This was all new to these people who had worked in factories all their lives. It took too much time traveling from Virgin to the farm so they sold their place in Virgin and built them a shelter on the land. That fall Owen's wife and the rest of the family arrived from Salt Lake just in time to help with the cotton and molasses harvest. Sarah Elizabeth was now nine years old and it is she who is to become the mother of my wife's mother. 
For the next five years cotton was one of the main crops along with sorghum, peaches, apricots and grapes. From the grapes, wine was made and sold to the church to be used as sacrament wine. After five years cotton ceased to be a major crop. They dried tons of peaches, apricots and grapes which along with some barrels of molasses made up their loads to peddle in the north towns for flour, clothing, sugar and etc. Much of their clothing of the first years was made by spinning and weaving cloth from their own grown cotton. 

During the next few years as Sarah Elizabeth Isom grew into a young woman another family came into Utah's Dixie by the name of Wilson.

Thomas Wilson was born December 22, 1811 in the state of Louisiana. His father, Thomas Wilson, Sr. was killed in the Battle of New Orleans in the war of 1812 just before Thomas Jr. was born.

Thomas Wilson Jr. married a widow by the name of Nancy Lindsey, a daughter of Morris Lindsey and Nancy Rodgers. In the year 1843 in Lauderdale, Mississippi this couple's second child, a son was born on Nov. 24, 1845 and given the name of Morris Wilson. This family became converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and came to Utah in the fall of 1857. Brigham Young told them as they were from the south he would like them to go to Utah's Dixie and grow cotton. So they started out and when they got to Gunnison, Utah, they thought this must be the place and settled down, planted crops and started to haul logs from the mountains to build them a home. Some months later when Brigham Young came to Gunnison and saw Thomas Wilson, he said. "Why Brother Wilson, I thought you were in Dixie growing cotton." This family loaded up their belongings, leaving a home in the building and crops nearly ready to harvest and headed south again, arriving in Virgin in the fall of 1863 where they lived for the next three years. In 1866 they cleared land of brush and moved onto it and built a home five miles north of Virgin and it became known as the Mill or Millville. This made them close neighbors to the Isom Family at Mountain Dell just a mile down the creek. A romance sprang up between Morris Wilson and Sarah Elizabeth Isom which after three years resulted in their marriage. 

For the next eleven years they lived in a one room house with a lean-to kitchen at the Mill where five of their children were born. Here on October 25 1876, their third child a daughter was born and given the name of Sarah Amelia. They moved from the Mill to Mountain Dell where they lived for thirty years before moving to Hurricane. These were the people I boarded with when I first came to Dixie.

The Sanders Line: David Sanders and his wife Mary Allred living in Franklin County, Georgia had a son born to them on August 17, 1803 and named him Moses Martin Sanders, who married Amanda Armstrong Faucett. They became converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were with the saints in Far West Missouri, where on Christmas Day, December 1836, they had a son born to them and gave him the name of Joseph Moroni Sanders. He married Huldah Charlotte Zabriskie Age 69 on August 20, 1860. She was born Jan. 30, 1844 in Ambrozia County, Iowa. Just when they arrived in Utah I do not know. This family was living in Washington Town, Washington County, Utah where on August 16, 1869 they had a son born unto them and gave him the name of William. Shortly after, this family moved to the Mill north of Virgin and was living there when Sarah Amelia Wilson was born, William Sanders being seven years old at the time. These young people grew up there and when William was twenty-eight years old and Sarah Amelia was twenty they were married and made their home at the Mill in the same house Sarah Amelia was born. Here three of their children were born. Their first child was a son, Clarence and the second a daughter, born Oct. 3, 1899 and given the name of Amelia. Their next child also a daughter, Maggie, was born before they moved to LaVerkin to make their home in 1903. William had worked several winters on the Hurricane Canal and then sold the land he had earned and purchased land in LaVerkin. 

The Sander's home was on second north and first east and was a one room with a lean to of rough lumber for a kitchen and it was here the rest of the family was born and where they were living when I met their daughter Amelia. The boys slept in the loft of the bam and the girls in the grainery next to the house. They had a fifteen acre farm and the lot they were living on. Mr. Sanders did quite a lot of hauling freight with teams to supplement their farming for a lively-hood.

Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapter 8

My Grandpa can spin a tale!  I hope you enjoy reading of his adventures in making a 16 hour drive from Manti to Hurricane in a Model-T Ford.  At the end of this chapter is the beginning of his love story with my Grandma.

CHAPTER EIGHT 

I GO TO DIXIE 

About the first of March my year was over and the pal who farmed with me wanted me to go with him and two of his brothers to Utah's Dixie to make brick for Hurricane's first school house. So I quit my farm job.

They had hired my uncle Oliver Squire to go too, as he was an expert in molding adobies and brick. We left Manti one morning about eight o'clock and picked my uncle up in Monroe and headed on for Dixie. We went up Clear Creek canyon which was just a dirt road at that time. The road had not dried out near the top of the summit and was quite muddy and steep. The old model-T just could not make it. So we pushed and pulled and finally turned it about and with us pushing, we backed it to the top. This struggle had boiled most of the water, if not all, out of the car and the engine was too hot to run. After talking it over we decided that between the five of us we could produce enough liquid to run down to where we could find water. From the first one who attempted to fill the radiator came forth a scream of anguish. As the liquid hit the hot engine it belched forth a cloud of hot steam that scalded his fixture to the extent that it was necessary to pack it in soft cotton and tissue for several days. However we found a small seep of water in the bottom of the canyon and carried enough water to get us on our way again. We arrived in Beaver at twelve o'clock midnight and got rooms at the hotel there. That was sixteen hours from Manti and is now a three hour drive without speeding. The nights were cool in Beaver yet, so we drained the water from the car. Early the next morning we got a tea kettle full of hot water from the cook and poured some into the radiator, some on the manifold and carburetor and started cranking. After taking turns until we were all warmed up the engine sputtered and started to purr. We left Beaver at about eight a.m. Somewhere along Buck Horn Flat we had a flat tire. In those days you took the tire off the wheel, take the tube out and patch it, then replace it and begin pumping. All got warmed up again before we got on our way. We stopped in Cedar for a late dinner and then on for Dixie. Coming down the Black Ridge it got dark on us. I remember coming to Toquerville, then down and Ford LaVerkin Creek, climb the hill onto La Verkin Bench, down around the dug-away across the Virgin River Bridge, and on to Hurricane. We arrived about nine that night.

We went to the Isom Hotel run by Thomas Isom. It was a large home that has now been torn down and replaced by a service station. Of course it was after supper time but they were kind to us and fixed us a meal. They had opened a bottle of seedless grapes, the first I had ever seen and I asked them to please pass the gooseberries. The next morning after breakfast we asked one of the girls what the bill was and she said it would be five dollars. I was the only one who had any money left and as I went to pay her she said, "Wait, I will run up and ask Mamma." When she came back she said, "It's four-fifty." Leon, one of the Peterson boys said, "Run up again!" The two older Peterson boys had been down the fall before and had made some brick there and had made arrangements for four of us to board and room at the home of Morris Wilson (my 2ggf) Sen., and his wife. Their son, William Wilson, his wife and children also lived there. The elder Wilsons were to take brick to build their home on the board bill. Parley Peterson stayed out to Workmans, the parents of Mrs. Claud Hurschi. The brick yard was on a lot at third north and first west. Some large holes were dug and used up in brick. These holes were refilled mostly from running canal water in and out letting the sand and mud settle in the holes. Homes are built there now. 
We started to make brick. It was a very wet spring with rain mostly every week and the storms broke the canal up in the canyon which caused delays. I worked on the canal to get the water back so we could soak up the mud to make adobes. I turned my ditch work credit on my board bill. There was no water system in Hurricane at that time. Your drinking water was dipped up out of the ditch in the early morning into a drinking barrel placed in the shade Burlap was tacked around the outside and a dipper hung on the edge of the barrel. What water you did not drink from the dipper was poured around on the burlap to help keep the water cool. With so much rain and floods the water was pretty muddy at times and took some time to settle and then was always a milky white never clear. I don' t see how they ever got white washes out of that kind of laundry water. 

Just before we came to Hurricane the electricity was installed in the homes there. The people delighted to show us how by turning a switch on the cord hanging from the ceiling they could get light. There was no need for outlets or plugins as there were not any electric appliances like we have now. The contractor to build the school came and started the building of the school. I worked for him when the water was out of the ditch and we could not make brick. I dug the first shovel of dirt to start the foundation. Now that school house in which all my children attended school has served its purpose and has been torn down to have a modern one replace it. I received a couple hundred bricks out of it and they are now in the fireplace on our lawn outside. I wanted some of them to remind me of my first work in Hurricane. 

Fireplace outside the Squire La Verkin Home built with the bricks my Grandpa Squire made.
DuWayne Squire - November 2012

We had been working for a couple weeks when one night after we had washed and cleaned up I went into the front room to set down to read. The first thing I noticed was a new picture on the book case of a lovely young girl. I sized it up and took it into the kitchen and asked Grandma Wilson who it was. She told me that her name was Amelia Sanders and that she was one of her granddaughters. I said "Now that’s something! I am going to marry that girl.” Grandma Wilson told that story as long as she lived. As I remember it she told me that she was going to come there that evening for milk as she was working for another daughter of hers who had a young baby. I waited around and finally a young girl came and went into the kitchen. She was in there with her Aunt Edna a daughter of the elder Wilsons who was about the same age. The kitchen was dark as they did not have the light on in there so on a pretense of showing some pictures I got the girls to come into the dining room where there was light. Of course I paid no attention to the pictures only the girl and decided it would never do for me to let a young girl like that carry two big quarts of milk a couple of blocks after working all day...so I asked permission to carry the milk home for her and protect her on her way from the darkness. That is how things started. Each night I would await her coming for the milk so I could carry it back for her never thinking it could be done without her coming for it.

Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapter 7

In past blogs I have stated that my Grandpa never mentioned his parents' divorce.  I stand corrected.  He briefly mentions it in this chapter.  This was a fun chapter to learn of Grandpa's school days.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I GREW TALLER AND HEAVIER .•.BUT DID I GROW UP?

I was three months short of being seven years old when I started to school in the first grade. A middle aged lady that was short and on the chubby side was my teacher. Her name was Mrs. Bradford. She wore white starched ruffled collars and had a three foot rule as a persuader. For some reason, that I don’t remember that ruler came in contact with my head on one occasion and as I remember it lasted through my years at school. I was not in any way a brilliant student and had to stay after school more than the average.

It was the practice of the teachers in those days that if you missed a word in spelling had assignments wrong or was unprepared you had to stay after school and make up what you were short in. Often having to write the word or words you misspelled fifty or hundred times and go up to the teacher and spell the words before you were excused to go home. There were forty to sixty students in my room or grade all the way through school. I was exceptionally poor in spelling (a problem I still have) and in the study of language. I did like and do good in history arithmetic and geography. It was a very rare occasion that my name was not on the board to stay after school to spell if for no other reason. There were no lights in the schools and we went to stand by the window until the last flicker of light faded before the teachers would give up and go home. I did on a number of occasions have samples of my hand writing and maps drawn placed on the black board as examples of good and neat work. I was specially praised for my making dough maps as the teacher pointed out to the students you could pour water on my maps and it would run off down the rivers. We had to be able from memory to draw any continent and draw on and name the important rivers mountains lakes bays straights peninsulas and etc. We had to know all the countries of the world where they were and what they did there. I am so grateful for that schooling as it has helped so much to know the places where world history is being made in these times. I still use maps very much as I was taught in school to search out on the maps to find out just where things are happening in the world. It makes the meaning so much clearer.

In the spring of 1913 I graduated from the eighth grade. That was a big day for any student in that time. For many it was the end of school. Commencement exercises were held in Mt. Pleasant Utah for all the eighth grade students of Sanpete County. I well remember my dress. I had on oxford gray suit with knickerbocker pants. I must explain these pants, they had a buckle on the end of the pant leg that buckled the pants around the leg above the knee, then the pants folded down over the knee cap like bloomers. I had long black stockings and a new pair of black four button oxfords. We always wore those knickerbocker pants to school and long black itchy stockings. There are still large callus on the cords of my legs back of and above the knee from tying strings around there tight enough to hold the stockings up. It was not until a year later that I got my first pair of long pants. Mothers used to hate the day their little boys got long pants as it marked the difference from a little boy to a big boy, and to letting go of our mothers' apron strings.

The morning of graduation came and I will never forget the thrill of climbing into the first car I was to ride in and of sitting on the lap of a fellow student by the side of the driver. This car had quite high wooden wheels and a back seat, no top and no windshield. The queer feeling I had as it started out without a horse or anything in front. It was eighteen miles to Mt. Pleasant and we made it in a little over an hour. It was breath taking. At one time the driver estimated we were speeding at twenty five miles per hour.

There was an assembly in the morning where we had a program listened to speeches one of which I still remember. The speaker had turned to the girls and was comparing them with peaches and then said "peaches that everybody handles nobody wants to buy." Our class was the largest in the county and I remember marching up onto the stand to receive my diploma.

In the afternoon there were sports in which the different classes competed for honors. They were high­ jump broad jump pole vault, shot put, hurdles foot races and baseball games. Then home in the car . . . a day never to be forgotten.

That summer I worked with father on the farm. During this time the difference in age as well as other differences between my parents resulted in a divorce.

I was two weeks late starting to the first year of high school that fall as I stayed on the farm until the hay was all up and the grain in the stack. I signed up to take shop or carpenter training, agronomy, book keeping, English, algebra, orchestra, and vocal music. I played a cornet in the high school Orchestra and the Manti City band. After hearing my voice my teacher encouraged me to study other courses. However I stayed with the singing and still can see the look of pity and distress upon my teacher’s face when I attempted to sing. I think I nearly drove her to drink.

My tuition was fifteen dollars for the year plus two-fifty extra for shop. I kept record and my total expense for that year’s school was $32.20 which included any shows I saw.

In the spring of 1914 I came out of school never to go back again. I have regretted many times that I was unable to get more of an education. I again helped father with his farm the following summer. That winter I stayed at our home with mother and spent a lot of time reading books from the library.

In the spring of 1915 I rented father’s farm on a share of half of what I could raise. My close friend Rudolph Peterson came in as a partner with me. It turned out to be a very dry year with water almost drying up and that resulted in poor crops. We had lived at the farm all summer and worked hard ...lived mostly on fried potatoes. We had no money so stayed on the farm for the 4th and 24th of July the only holidays of the summer because we had no money to spend. Each of our families had a milk cow so we furnished hay enough to feed them through the winter and sold what grain was ours after taking some to the mill to get flour for the winter. That winter I again spent at home with mother and did spend a lot of time reading library books. We did a little rabbit hunting as twenty-two shells were only fifteen cents a box.

Early in the spring sometime in February I got a job from John R. Braithwaite on his farm for one dollar a day and board with the agreement that I was to stay a year. He had quite a few cattle and a couple herds of sheep. I spent six weeks out on top of the mountains west of Manti during the lambing season with the sheep. Then back to the farm. He hired from two to four other men on the farm that summer. I had to milk five to seven cows each morning drive them to the pasture a half mile away and get back and have breakfast to be ready to go work at eight with the other hired men. Then after five at night I had to go get the cows and milk them and it was usually dark by then. I was glad when the crops were up for the summer. I used a bob sled for three months that winter to haul one load of hay or straw out from the stack each day and spread it around on the snow for the cattle and then a load into the feed racks for the sheep as we fed about three hundred through that winter of pure blood stuff.

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.