History of Robert Marshall Brough
by R. Clayton Brough and John M. Brough in 2012.
Robert Marshall Brough was born on 7 June 1914 in Lyman, Wyoming. His parents were Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall. Marshall's father was a successful rancher and blacksmith in Lyman, but died at the age of 33 during the flu epidemic of 1918. Following her husband's death, Marshall's mother moved her five children to Evanston, Wyoming, and then in 1930 to Ogden, Utah. Marshall graduated from Ogden High School in 1932. During the Great Depression years of 1933-1934, Marshall worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as a "Jack Hammer" and "Dynamiter" building a road through Blacksmith Fork Canyon east of Hyrum, Utah.
In 1934, Marshall moved to Los Angeles, California, taking a job with Sears Roebuck and Company in 1935. Marshall met his future wife, Utahna Clayton Peterson, at the LDS Wilshire Ward church in Los Angeles. On 11 June 1937, Marshall married Utahna Clayton Peterson in the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. Marshall and Utahna were the parents of five children, and raised their family in southern California. Marshall stood over six feet, six inches tall, and had a talented and powerful deep "basso profundo" voice. Between 1935 and 1954, he sang with the Los Angeles Grand Opera Company, which periodically performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the Philharmonic and Shrine Auditoriums.
For over 43 years, Marshall worked for Sears Roebuck and Company, retiring as manager of the Inglewood Sears Store in 1978. In the world of business Marshall was well known for his integrity and managerial skills. He served as President of the Inglewood Chamber of Commerce, Inglewood Rotary Club and Inglewood Merchants Association, and was Council Commissioner of the Los Angeles Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
Marshall was a very generous man and expressed his love to others through his service to them--both within his family and to others he associated with. Marshall and Utahna loved and enjoyed their children and extended family, and took many family trips throughout California and the western United States. They were active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and contributed considerable time and resources towards documenting their ancestries and conducting genealogical research.
In May 1979, Marshall and Utahna moved from Los Angeles, California, to Orem, Utah. On 8 September 1979, Marshall died of a heart attack in Orem, Utah, and was buried on 12 September 1979 in Aultorest Cemetery in Ogden, Utah.
History of Utahna Clayton Peterson
Written by R. Clayton Brough and John M. Brough in 2012.
Utahna Clayton Peterson was born on 25 August 1912 in Preston, Idaho. Her parents were Baltzar Peterson and Marinda Clayton. Utahna's father was a successful farmer, businessman and and proprietor in Preston. Utahna's parents had eight children.
Utahna was an excellent dancer and seamstress. After graduating from Preston High School, she attended Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah, for three years. In 1933, she moved to Los Angeles, California, to attend Woodbury College of Fashion Design, and graduated with a degree in Costume Designing on April 4, 1936. She then worked as a dress and costume-period designer for MGM Studios.
Utahna met her future husband, Robert Marshall Brough, at the LDS Wilshire Ward church in Los Angeles, California. They were married on 11 June 1937 in the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. Marshall and Utahna were the parents of five children, and raised their family in southern California.
From 1937 to 1979, Marshall and Utahna lived in southern California, where Marshall was a successful businessman with Sears Roebuck and Company, and Utahna served in many volunteer organizations within her church and community. Utahna was a wonderful wife and mother. She always gave of herself unselfishly to her husband, children and others. Throughout her life she studied, applied and taught good health habits and diet to all she came in contact with.
Marshall and Utahna loved and enjoyed their children and extended family, and took many family trips throughout California and the western United States. They were active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and contributed considerable time and resources towards documenting their ancestries and conducting genealogical research.
In May 1979, Marshall and Utahna moved from Los Angeles, California, to Orem, Utah. On 27 May 1985, Utahna died from congestive heart failure, and was buried on 30 May 1985 in Aultorest Cemetery in Ogden, Utah.
Ernest Leroy Brough was first buried in Lyman, Wyoming on 19 October 1918. His body was later moved (in 1931) to "Mt. Ogden Memorial Park"--which was renamed to "Aultorest Cemetery" in Ogden, Utah.
History of Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestors & Descendants". Originally written by Ida Berenice Brough in 1980. Edited by R. Clayton Brough in August 2007.HISTORY:
Ernest LeRoy Brough was born on December 13, 1885 in Porterville, Utah, to Samuel Richard Brough and Phoebe Adeline Cherry. Roy was the third son to Samuel Richard Brough, and as he grew up he was a great joy and comfort to his father.
Roy was a good natured boy and loved everyone. He particularly loved all of the Lord's creations, including any kind of animal, and tried to live by the teachings of the Gospel throughout his life.
As a youth, Roy was a fine young man with large blue eyes, brown curly hair, an honest face and a kind eye, and had a straight, strong and well-built body. He loved the outdoors and spent a great deal of time with his father and his two older brothers, Thomas and Jessie, taking care of the chores of a farm. In his dealings with his fellowman, he was always found to be more than fair. He believed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and he taught this principal to all his children.
Roy was a happy person and loved to dance. With his limber body and small feet he became well known for his dancing abilities. It was at one of these dances that he met the girl that was to become his wife: Mima Marshall, daughter of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. She was a pretty young lady and Roy really took to her. The only disappointment he found was that she was beginning to go out with his brother, Tom, and Roy knew that if he was ever going to get to know Mima, he had to learn to "beat Tom's time." So one night in 1909, Roy went to a church "box lunch dinner and dance," where the women fixed a lunch for two and placed it in a beautifully decorated lunch box to be raffled off later in the dance. Roy then spied which lunch box Mima had brought and bid top dollar for it. Of course, the price he paid for Mima's lunch box didn't bother him, since it gave him a chance to be with her. This began their courtship and they were finally married in the Salt Lake City L.D.S. Temple on July 28, 1909.
After Roy married Mima, he purchased a 960 acre ranch of his own on the Black Smith Fork River (which is about five miles out of Lyman, Wyoming) and did quite well. He and Mima fixed up the ranch house that was on the land, which had two rooms--a long room with a kitchen at one end and a small bedroom. Then Roy built a meat house just outside the kitchen door where Mima later hung and stored the meat that he slaughtered for the winter months. In addition, Roy and Mima owned a house in Lyman, Wyoming.
On August 30, 1910, Mima gave birth to Roy's first child and son, Louis LeRoy. As mentioned before, Roy and Mima really enjoyed dancing together and they often went to church dances, where they and other couples would bring their babies and put them to sleep along the wall of the dance floor on coats. However, one evening when Louis was still a baby, they decided to leave him at home, and when they returned from the dance they couldn't find him. They were frantic and feared that perhaps someone had kidnapped Louis. Finally after searching for some time, they heard a faint cry between the bed and the wall where Louis had been sleeping. Sure enough, there was Louis, caught in a blanket which was hanging between the wall and the bed. This event so scared Roy and Mima that they never left Louis alone in the house again until he was older. At the age of four, Louis became Roy's constant companion, with Roy often taking Louis out into the fields on horseback to care for the cattle.
On July 19, 1912, Mima gave birth to their second child, Ida Berenice, who quickly became the apple of her father's eye, as Roy never went on a trip but what he would bring something home for Berenice. She would have probably been spoiled if her father had lived longer. During the next few years, Roy saw two more of his children born: Robert Marshall, born on June 7, 1914; and Veda Mima, born on October 26, 1916.
Roy loved his children and took time to let them know he loved them and never punished them harshly or unwisely. After more children began to come, the ranch house became too small, so Mima and the children would spend the winter months in Roy's house in Lyman. Roy owned a blacksmith's shop in Lyman, and during the cold snowy months, when planting could not be done down on the ranch, he would work in his blacksmith shop. Every spring, Roy planted a large vegetable garden and instructed Louis and Berenice how to take care of it, this way teaching his children the value of work.
Roy was a very hard worker and had one of the largest cattle ranches in the region. The only bad habit he had was that he chewed tobacco whenever he did his slaughtering, and he was not a regular church goer. However, he never failed to see that his wife and family got to church and he was always at church to bless and name his children. In addition, Roy paid a full tithing every month for as long as he lived.
Roy lived to be only 33 years of age, but he lived those 33 years very fully and richly. In the middle of October, 1918, he made a trip by wagon to Carter, Wyoming, to bring back a load of coal for his family for the winter. However, on his way home he ran into a terrible blizzard, and by the time he reached his home he was very wet and cold. Mima had him get into some dry clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a hot toddy and stuck his feet in the oven. However, it was too late, for he had already gotten the flu and was running a very high fever. The flu was at an epidemic stage at this time and many families were dying from it. His father, mother, Mima's mother and oldest sister, Metta Heder, were all at Roy's house at the time, because Mima and the children had also come down with the flu. The epidemic was so bad that doctors would not even make house calls, and every family had to take care of themselves and their own dead. Roy died from the flu on October 16, 1918 and was buried by his father, Samuel R. Brough, his brother Thomas and brother-in-law, Clyde Bradshaw, on October 19, 1918 in Lyman. (His body was later moved to Ogden, Utah). A few hours following Roy's burial, Mima gave birth to their last child, a girl: Helen Metta, who just like her father, had large blue eyes and brown curly hair.
With the loss of her husband and the birth of their last child within two days of each other, Mima went through a very trying time. However, she knew what she had to do for her young family, and so she rolled up her sleeves and went ahead with life. Louis grew up over night and throughout his 21 years of life was a tremendous help to his mother.
Mima continued to live in Lyman a year after Roy's death. Then she decided that Lyman did not hold much future for her children, so in the latter part of 1919 she sold her husband's ranch, cattle livestock, their home and other major assets, and moved to Evanston, Wyoming where her mother, Ida Marshall Dotson, was living with her sister Metta Heder, who owned the Smith Hotel in Evanston. Mima stayed with her sister at the Smith Hotel until she was able to find a house to rent, thereby giving Louis and Berenice a chance to get started in their new school.
Mima finally moved her family into a small two-story house and remained there for a few years. This gave her and her children a chance to make new friends and for Mima to be able to find a house to buy. She then bought a large two-story house with a basement that belonged to a Mr. Bird, located at 341 Main Street in Evanston, and it was in this house where most of her children's memories began.
Mima took in roomers and boarders, and sewed, ironed and washed in order to be near her children and at the same time provide them with the necessities of life. She also gave piano lessons and saw to it that all her children learned to play a musical instrument. Louis learned to play the saxophone, Berenice the piano, Marshall the trombone, Veda the violin, and Helen sang. Many nights she and her children would gather in the parlor of their home for a musical evening, and since some of the boarders and roomers also played a musical instrument, they really had some exciting and beautiful evenings together. In these early years in Evanston, Mima set one night out of the week for her family to be together and called it a "family night." She did this in her own home long before the L.D.S. Church set it down as a practice, which all families should engage in today.
Mima was an industrious woman and made all her children's clothing from "hand-me-downs. She would take sugar and salt sacks and make the girls' underwear from them. She would also add lace and embroidery to her other remodeled clothing to make it more attractive. Berenice never had a store-bought dress or coat until she was in the eleventh grade in school, yet Mima's children were considered the best-dressed children in Evanston. Many nights Mima would sew all night in order to complete an article for a friend or neighbor, and then cook, wash, iron or whatever else had to be done for her children and boarders during the next day.
As busy as she was, Mima always had time to be close to her Church and her Father in Heaven, and saw to it that her children always got to their church meetings. Louis was very active in scouting and was called to be the Assistant Scout Master. He was a leader and was loved by all who knew him. He later became an Eagle Scout. He went on many of the scout outings and was given an honor for saving a boy's life while on a trip to Jackson Hole Lake in Wyoming.
The large house that Mima and her family lived in gave them many advantages because of the space inside and the large yard that surrounded it. During the time her children lived in the home, it was the largest house in their neighborhood and therefore its size encouraged neighborhood children to often gather for an evening of fun, sports and games. Mima always encouraged her children to bring their friends home. She was a good mother and always took time from her busy schedule to be with her children. She never went to sleep at night until she knew that all of her children were tucked snugly in their beds. Indeed, as Louis and Berenice began to date, they were encouraged by their mother to come into her bedroom and sit on their father's trunk beside the bed and relate their activities to her. She never discouraged any of her children in feeling free to talk with her.
The winters in Evanston were quite severe, but Mima taught her children to work hard, to be responsible for their deeds and actions, and to do whatever they did very well and completely. As they were growing up, Louis and Marshall regularly delivered papers on their bicycles, and when the weather really turned bad, such as during the winter, they delivered these papers in a small wagon, walking the whole route through town. These two boys never missed a single delivery to a customer all the time they had the paper route in Evanston. While living in Evanston, Mima cooked on a large coal stove and did her washing by hand with a hand wringer. Sometimes Louis and Berenice had to stay home from school on wash day to help her. She was finally able to purchase a copper-tub electric washing- machine, and that made things very much easier for her. Louis, Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen all remembered very well the tin bath tub that they had to use. It was so cold that hot water had to first be put in the tub just to warm up the tin. Also, their home first had a pot-bellied stove in the dining room that used coal and wood and that was where the children would gather around in the mornings to dress. Finally when the Utah Gas line was brought into Evanston, Mima was able to get gas into her home and she had her stove and furnace changed over to gas. The gas line brought more boarders into Mima's home and Louis got a job with the gas company as a laborer. One young man, Milton Kendall Maynard, was one of Mima's roomers and Louis really liked him. Milton later became one of Mima's sons-in-law, through the hard efforts of Louis.
After Louis graduated from Evanston High School, he got a job working for the Evanston Bank, while Marshall got a part-time job working in a mortuary.
In 1930, Mima moved her family to Ogden, Utah where they could have more advantages. She sold cosmetics and other things to help sustain her family, while Louis worked in a service station, and Berenice worked part time at the J & J Newberry Store in Ogden. A year after they had moved to Ogden, Louis, then 21 years of age, died from a ruptured appendix on June 10, 1931. This was hard on Mima, because she had first lost her husband, and now her oldest son was gone as well. However, she again held to her family and faith in the Gospel and carried on.
After Louis died, Veda went to Los Angeles, California to live with a cousin and to complete her high school education. When Marshall graduated from Ogden High School, he and a boy friend bought an old Model T-Ford car, fixed it up and headed for California. They got just outside of Los Angeles when the car broke down, and for a while they were forced to hike and sleep behind billboards. Fortunately, Marshall had an uncle living in the Los Angeles area, Uncle Fay Marshall, who took care of them for awhile. Eventually Marshall got a job working for Sears Roebuck and Company, after which he worked for Sears for over forty years and became manager of the large Sears store in Inglewood, California.
In the meantime, Mima got a job working in a home in Ogden taking care of a fine old gentleman and it gave her and Helen a place to live and an income besides. Milton and Berenice got married on February 14, 1934, in the Salt Lake Temple and made their home in Ogden, Utah. Berenice then gave birth to two children. While in Ogden, Mima continually worried about Veda and Marshall being in California, so in 1939 she went to California, leaving Helen to stay with Milt and Berenice so Helen could complete her high school education in Ogden.
While in California, Marshall met a fine young lady, Utahna Peterson from Preston, Idaho, and they were married on June 11, 1937 in the Salt Lake Temple. Five children were born into this family.
Veda met a returned missionary, Walter Otto Dorny, and they were married on April 28, 1938 in the Salt Lake Temple. Four children came from this marriage.
When Helen graduated from Ogden High School, she went to Los Angeles to live with her mother. Mima found a position in a home taking care of a man and his son, so she and Helen went there to live. The man was Rudolph Rode and his son was Robert Rode. Mima later married Rudolph, and Helen later married his son, Robert. Rudolph Rode was a fine man and loved Mima and her family very much. He truly became a father to Mima's children, who had missed having a father for so many years.
Helen worked for Sears for awhile in California and then got a fine job working for KHJ Radio Station. After she and Bob were married on August 5, 1942, Bob was called into the Navy during the Second World War and was shipped out on a torpedo boat into the Pacific Ocean. Helen then took a job at North American Defense Plant and did what she could for the war effort. Bob and Helen had three fine children. One of her children was killed in a car accident, which was a real shock to Helen and quite a trial for her, but she kept in mind the example that Mima had set for her and carried on as her mother had. Bob and Helen eventually divorced.
As Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen raised their families, they stayed close to their mother, and Mima was blessed with fourteen wonderful grandchildren. All eight of Mima's grandsons served missions for the L.D.S. Church, and all fourteen of her grandchildren were married in the House of the Lord to their companions. In addition, Berenice and Marshall spent considerable time and money throughout their lives doing genealogical research and temple work for their ancestors, with their two younger sisters, Helen and Veda, occasionally assisting them in these endeavors.
Mima lived to be 78 years old and saw many of the fruits of her labors come to pass. She died on July 13, 1965, of a heart attack at Knotts Berry Farm in California, while eating one of their wonderful chicken dinners. She was buried in Ogden, Utah in the Altorest Mortuary between her husband, Roy, and her oldest son, Louis. Since her death another daughter, Helen Metta, has died (on May 30, 1979), as has her second and last son, Robert Marshall (who died on September 8, 1979).
The birth date and place of Mima Marshall is listed as "27 May 1887" in "Minersville" Utah in her marriage sealing record of 2 February 1910 in the LDS Salt Lake Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 1239565, page 133, item 2386).
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and Richard C. McDonald is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=1509526.
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and James S. Owens is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=688366. Also, this marriage is mentioned (without date or place) in the 1993 book by Kathaleen Kennington Hamblin: "Bridger Valley: A Guide To The Past", page 266.
History of Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestors & Descendants". Originally written by Ida Berenice Brough in 1980. Edited by R. Clayton Brough in August 2007.
Ernest LeRoy Brough was born on December 13, 1885 in Porterville, Utah, to Samuel Richard Brough and Phoebe Adeline Cherry. Roy was the third son to Samuel Richard Brough, and as he grew up he was a great joy and comfort to his father.
Roy was a good natured boy and loved everyone. He particularly loved all of the Lord's creations, including any kind of animal, and tried to live by the teachings of the Gospel throughout his life.
As a youth, Roy was a fine young man with large blue eyes, brown curly hair, an honest face and a kind eye, and had a straight, strong and well-built body. He loved the outdoors and spent a great deal of time with his father and his two older brothers, Thomas and Jessie, taking care of the chores of a farm. In his dealings with his fellowman, he was always found to be more than fair. He believed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and he taught this principal to all his children.
Roy was a happy person and loved to dance. With his limber body and small feet he became well known for his dancing abilities. It was at one of these dances that he met the girl that was to become his wife: Mima Marshall, daughter of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. She was a pretty young lady and Roy really took to her. The only disappointment he found was that she was beginning to go out with his brother, Tom, and Roy knew that if he was ever going to get to know Mima, he had to learn to "beat Tom's time." So one night in 1909, Roy went to a church "box lunch dinner and dance," where the women fixed a lunch for two and placed it in a beautifully decorated lunch box to be raffled off later in the dance. Roy then spied which lunch box Mima had brought and bid top dollar for it. Of course, the price he paid for Mima's lunch box didn't bother him, since it gave him a chance to be with her. This began their courtship and they were finally married in the Salt Lake City L.D.S. Temple on July 28, 1909.
After Roy married Mima, he purchased a 960 acre ranch of his own on the Black Smith Fork River (which is about five miles out of Lyman, Wyoming) and did quite well. He and Mima fixed up the ranch house that was on the land, which had two rooms--a long room with a kitchen at one end and a small bedroom. Then Roy built a meat house just outside the kitchen door where Mima later hung and stored the meat that he slaughtered for the winter months. In addition, Roy and Mima owned a house in Lyman, Wyoming.
On August 30, 1910, Mima gave birth to Roy's first child and son, Louis LeRoy. As mentioned before, Roy and Mima really enjoyed dancing together and they often went to church dances, where they and other couples would bring their babies and put them to sleep along the wall of the dance floor on coats. However, one evening when Louis was still a baby, they decided to leave him at home, and when they returned from the dance they couldn't find him. They were frantic and feared that perhaps someone had kidnapped Louis. Finally after searching for some time, they heard a faint cry between the bed and the wall where Louis had been sleeping. Sure enough, there was Louis, caught in a blanket which was hanging between the wall and the bed. This event so scared Roy and Mima that they never left Louis alone in the house again until he was older. At the age of four, Louis became Roy's constant companion, with Roy often taking Louis out into the fields on horseback to care for the cattle.
On July 19, 1912, Mima gave birth to their second child, Ida Berenice, who quickly became the apple of her father's eye, as Roy never went on a trip but what he would bring something home for Berenice. She would have probably been spoiled if her father had lived longer. During the next few years, Roy saw two more of his children born: Robert Marshall, born on June 7, 1914; and Veda Mima, born on October 26, 1916.
Roy loved his children and took time to let them know he loved them and never punished them harshly or unwisely. After more children began to come, the ranch house became too small, so Mima and the children would spend the winter months in Roy's house in Lyman. Roy owned a blacksmith's shop in Lyman, and during the cold snowy months, when planting could not be done down on the ranch, he would work in his blacksmith shop. Every spring, Roy planted a large vegetable garden and instructed Louis and Berenice how to take care of it, this way teaching his children the value of work.
Roy was a very hard worker and had one of the largest cattle ranches in the region. The only bad habit he had was that he chewed tobacco whenever he did his slaughtering, and he was not a regular church goer. However, he never failed to see that his wife and family got to church and he was always at church to bless and name his children. In addition, Roy paid a full tithing every month for as long as he lived.
Roy lived to be only 33 years of age, but he lived those 33 years very fully and richly. In the middle of October, 1918, he made a trip by wagon to Carter, Wyoming, to bring back a load of coal for his family for the winter. However, on his way home he ran into a terrible blizzard, and by the time he reached his home he was very wet and cold. Mima had him get into some dry clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a hot toddy and stuck his feet in the oven. However, it was too late, for he had already gotten the flu and was running a very high fever. The flu was at an epidemic stage at this time and many families were dying from it. His father, mother, Mima's mother and oldest sister, Metta Heder, were all at Roy's house at the time, because Mima and the children had also come down with the flu. The epidemic was so bad that doctors would not even make house calls, and every family had to take care of themselves and their own dead. Roy died from the flu on October 16, 1918 and was buried by his father, Samuel R. Brough, his brother Thomas and brother-in-law, Clyde Bradshaw, on October 19, 1918 in Lyman. (His body was later moved to Ogden, Utah). A few hours following Roy's burial, Mima gave birth to their last child, a girl: Helen Metta, who just like her father, had large blue eyes and brown curly hair.
With the loss of her husband and the birth of their last child within two days of each other, Mima went through a very trying time. However, she knew what she had to do for her young family, and so she rolled up her sleeves and went ahead with life. Louis grew up over night and throughout his 21 years of life was a tremendous help to his mother.
Mima continued to live in Lyman a year after Roy's death. Then she decided that Lyman did not hold much future for her children, so in the latter part of 1919 she sold her husband's ranch, cattle livestock, their home and other major assets, and moved to Evanston, Wyoming where her mother, Ida Marshall Dotson, was living with her sister Metta Heder, who owned the Smith Hotel in Evanston. Mima stayed with her sister at the Smith Hotel until she was able to find a house to rent, thereby giving Louis and Berenice a chance to get started in their new school.
Mima finally moved her family into a small two-story house and remained there for a few years. This gave her and her children a chance to make new friends and for Mima to be able to find a house to buy. She then bought a large two-story house with a basement that belonged to a Mr. Bird, located at 341 Main Street in Evanston, and it was in this house where most of her children's memories began.
Mima took in roomers and boarders, and sewed, ironed and washed in order to be near her children and at the same time provide them with the necessities of life. She also gave piano lessons and saw to it that all her children learned to play a musical instrument. Louis learned to play the saxophone, Berenice the piano, Marshall the trombone, Veda the violin, and Helen sang. Many nights she and her children would gather in the parlor of their home for a musical evening, and since some of the boarders and roomers also played a musical instrument, they really had some exciting and beautiful evenings together. In these early years in Evanston, Mima set one night out of the week for her family to be together and called it a "family night." She did this in her own home long before the L.D.S. Church set it down as a practice, which all families should engage in today.
Mima was an industrious woman and made all her children's clothing from "hand-me-downs. She would take sugar and salt sacks and make the girls' underwear from them. She would also add lace and embroidery to her other remodeled clothing to make it more attractive. Berenice never had a store-bought dress or coat until she was in the eleventh grade in school, yet Mima's children were considered the best-dressed children in Evanston. Many nights Mima would sew all night in order to complete an article for a friend or neighbor, and then cook, wash, iron or whatever else had to be done for her children and boarders during the next day.
As busy as she was, Mima always had time to be close to her Church and her Father in Heaven, and saw to it that her children always got to their church meetings. Louis was very active in scouting and was called to be the Assistant Scout Master. He was a leader and was loved by all who knew him. He later became an Eagle Scout. He went on many of the scout outings and was given an honor for saving a boy's life while on a trip to Jackson Hole Lake in Wyoming.
The large house that Mima and her family lived in gave them many advantages because of the space inside and the large yard that surrounded it. During the time her children lived in the home, it was the largest house in their neighborhood and therefore its size encouraged neighborhood children to often gather for an evening of fun, sports and games. Mima always encouraged her children to bring their friends home. She was a good mother and always took time from her busy schedule to be with her children. She never went to sleep at night until she knew that all of her children were tucked snugly in their beds. Indeed, as Louis and Berenice began to date, they were encouraged by their mother to come into her bedroom and sit on their father's trunk beside the bed and relate their activities to her. She never discouraged any of her children in feeling free to talk with her.
The winters in Evanston were quite severe, but Mima taught her children to work hard, to be responsible for their deeds and actions, and to do whatever they did very well and completely. As they were growing up, Louis and Marshall regularly delivered papers on their bicycles, and when the weather really turned bad, such as during the winter, they delivered these papers in a small wagon, walking the whole route through town. These two boys never missed a single delivery to a customer all the time they had the paper route in Evanston. While living in Evanston, Mima cooked on a large coal stove and did her washing by hand with a hand wringer. Sometimes Louis and Berenice had to stay home from school on wash day to help her. She was finally able to purchase a copper-tub electric washing- machine, and that made things very much easier for her. Louis, Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen all remembered very well the tin bath tub that they had to use. It was so cold that hot water had to first be put in the tub just to warm up the tin. Also, their home first had a pot-bellied stove in the dining room that used coal and wood and that was where the children would gather around in the mornings to dress. Finally when the Utah Gas line was brought into Evanston, Mima was able to get gas into her home and she had her stove and furnace changed over to gas. The gas line brought more boarders into Mima's home and Louis got a job with the gas company as a laborer. One young man, Milton Kendall Maynard, was one of Mima's roomers and Louis really liked him. Milton later became one of Mima's sons-in-law, through the hard efforts of Louis.
After Louis graduated from Evanston High School, he got a job working for the Evanston Bank, while Marshall got a part-time job working in a mortuary.
In 1930, Mima moved her family to Ogden, Utah where they could have more advantages. She sold cosmetics and other things to help sustain her family, while Louis worked in a service station, and Berenice worked part time at the J & J Newberry Store in Ogden. A year after they had moved to Ogden, Louis, then 21 years of age, died from a ruptured appendix on June 10, 1931. This was hard on Mima, because she had first lost her husband, and now her oldest son was gone as well. However, she again held to her family and faith in the Gospel and carried on.
After Louis died, Veda went to Los Angeles, California to live with a cousin and to complete her high school education. When Marshall graduated from Ogden High School, he and a boy friend bought an old Model T-Ford car, fixed it up and headed for California. They got just outside of Los Angeles when the car broke down, and for a while they were forced to hike and sleep behind billboards. Fortunately, Marshall had an uncle living in the Los Angeles area, Uncle Fay Marshall, who took care of them for awhile. Eventually Marshall got a job working for Sears Roebuck and Company, after which he worked for Sears for over forty years and became manager of the large Sears store in Inglewood, California.
In the meantime, Mima got a job working in a home in Ogden taking care of a fine old gentleman and it gave her and Helen a place to live and an income besides. Milton and Berenice got married on February 14, 1934, in the Salt Lake Temple and made their home in Ogden, Utah. Berenice then gave birth to two children. While in Ogden, Mima continually worried about Veda and Marshall being in California, so in 1939 she went to California, leaving Helen to stay with Milt and Berenice so Helen could complete her high school education in Ogden.
While in California, Marshall met a fine young lady, Utahna Peterson from Preston, Idaho, and they were married on June 11, 1937 in the Salt Lake Temple. Five children were born into this family.
Veda met a returned missionary, Walter Otto Dorny, and they were married on April 28, 1938 in the Salt Lake Temple. Four children came from this marriage.
When Helen graduated from Ogden High School, she went to Los Angeles to live with her mother. Mima found a position in a home taking care of a man and his son, so she and Helen went there to live. The man was Rudolph Rode and his son was Robert Rode. Mima later married Rudolph, and Helen later married his son, Robert. Rudolph Rode was a fine man and loved Mima and her family very much. He truly became a father to Mima's children, who had missed having a father for so many years.
Helen worked for Sears for awhile in California and then got a fine job working for KHJ Radio Station. After she and Bob were married on August 5, 1942, Bob was called into the Navy during the Second World War and was shipped out on a torpedo boat into the Pacific Ocean. Helen then took a job at North American Defense Plant and did what she could for the war effort. Bob and Helen had three fine children. One of her children was killed in a car accident, which was a real shock to Helen and quite a trial for her, but she kept in mind the example that Mima had set for her and carried on as her mother had. Bob and Helen eventually divorced.
As Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen raised their families, they stayed close to their mother, and Mima was blessed with fourteen wonderful grandchildren. All eight of Mima's grandsons served missions for the L.D.S. Church, and all fourteen of her grandchildren were married in the House of the Lord to their companions. In addition, Berenice and Marshall spent considerable time and money throughout their lives doing genealogical research and temple work for their ancestors, with their two younger sisters, Helen and Veda, occasionally assisting them in these endeavors.
Mima lived to be 78 years old and saw many of the fruits of her labors come to pass. She died on July 13, 1965, of a heart attack at Knotts Berry Farm in California, while eating one of their wonderful chicken dinners. She was buried in Ogden, Utah in the Altorest Mortuary between her husband, Roy, and her oldest son, Louis. Since her death another daughter, Helen Metta, has died (on May 30, 1979), as has her second and last son, Robert Marshall (who died on September 8,
Marriage Notes for Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall-4
"Ernest LeRoy Brough" and "Mima Marshall" were sealed in the LDS Salt Lake Temple on 2 February 1910 (FHL Special Collections Film # 1239565, page 133, item 2386).
According to John M. Brough: "When Louis died he was working as a bookkeeper for the Ogden Gas & Save Company. He died of appendicitis which he had for seven days. At the time of his death he was living at: "763-24th Street in Ogden, Utah."
"Baltzar Petersen" is listed in the "Huntsville Record of [LDS] Members: 1887-1908" (FHL U.S. Film # 25997) as having been "received [on] September 25, 1890 from Franklin Idaho [Ward]".
The following information comes from the LDS Living Endowment Record of the Logan Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 178053): Baltzar Petersen Jun., was born on 29 May 1867 in Richville, Morgan, Utah; he was baptized [apparently the second time] on 15 July 1899; his parents were Baltzar Petersen and Mette M. Julesen; and that he was endowed on 19 July 1899 in the Logan Temple.
The following information comes from the LDS Living Sealings of Spouses that took place in the Logan Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 178135): Baltzar Petersen Jr., was born on 29 May 1867 in Richville, Morgan, Utah, and was sealed to his wife, Marinda Clayton, on 19 July 1899 in the Logan Temple.
History of Baltzar Peterson Jr.
by Carma Marie Moore Brown, granddaughter, July 2004
Baltzar Peterson Jr.,* was born to Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson and Mette Margrete Juulsdatter in Richville, Morgan, Utah, May 29 1867, the 6th of 11 children. He grew up and married Amanda Caroline Smith of Littleton, Morgan, Utah, when they were about 22 and 21 years of age respectively. In 1890 they had a little girl named Dassie Cadelia Peterson, who lived less than a year. The couple soon divorced. Five years later Baltzar married our grandmother, Marinda Clayton, daughter of Joseph and Margaret Olsen Clayton. They had 8 children, 5 of whom had posterity. Baltzar died of Leukemia on 21 Dec 1944.**
Four of Baltzar's older siblings had been born in Denmark, near Aarhus, before his parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and emigrated to the U.S. in 1863. The 5th child, his next older brother, Joseph Joel, was born in Richville in 1865, but crawled out the back door and died from drowning in an irrigation canal in 1866, before Baltzar's birth the next year. His next younger sibling, brother, Charles, b. 15 Jul 1869, was his best friend and "fiddle-playing" partner. They were like twins—inseparable, and they knew how to have fun.
Charles was known as "white Charley" because of his very white hair. His "early" and unexpected death in Preston, Idaho, where the two families lived, in December of 1909, devastated Baltzar. Florence, Baltzar's oldest daughter, who was only five at the time of uncle Charley's death, remembers her father screaming and screaming for days afterward.*** It was a blow from which he never quite recovered. Up to that time the two of them, coming from a enthusiastically musical family, had played their violins in perfect harmony for hundreds and hundreds of dances and other occasions all over the Cache Valley area, especially during the 1890s and until Charley's untimely death at age 40.****
Nevertheless, Baltzar was known as "the" man to invite to a dance. He not only played for the dances, but he also taught many others to dance, including the Mormon prophet, Ezra Taft Benson, who grew up in the community of Whitney, Idaho, which adjoined Preston. Although Baltzar farmed and was a blacksmith, as so many were in those days, his first love was music, so he eventually capitalized on his talents by opening the Parisiana Dance on the main street in Preston. The Citizen newspaper is housed in that building presently. There many people, young and old, tapped their feet to Baltzar's fiddle from 1928 until just before his death in 1944. Even today (2003) as Carma interviewed the older generation of people who knew Baltzar, the two outstanding memories people have of him is fiddle playing and dancing. People say, "Oh, he taught me (or my family) to dance," or, "He played for all the dances."
Florence, tells about her father and the dancing in a little more detail. She says:
"My father was always a beautiful dancer and taught many people how to dance. His brother, Frederick, was about the same age as Ezra Taft Benson, and my father taught them both to dance. My uncle Frederick was a tall handsome man. He and President Benson eventually both taught High School in Park City, Utah. When I was young my father played at all the county dances. He fiddled away all night while someone corded with him on the organ. He would play two steps and fox trots. I always went with him because my mother was scared that he might fall asleep and be injured on the drive home. In the winter we would travel in a sled-type cutter, snuggled under big lap robes or horse or cow hides. We would warm our feet on heated bricks. At the dances I was always asked to dance by the clodhoppers. None of the girls liked them so they would insist on dancing with me, a twelve-year old girl."
"While the depression was still going on, my brother Jesse ("Doc") and another man, a builder, wanted to put in a dance hall in Preston. My father, who had worked hard all his life was willing to loan Doc the money for a dance hall. My dad was a hard worker who helped everyone. He owned and renovated Grandpas Clayton's brother's old home into a tiny blacksmith shop, where he shoed horses all day long, then would go to play the fiddle for dances at night. He was also a wheelwright and could reset the iron on a tire so that it traveled smoothly over the ground. By working two jobs he was able to build a large barn on the property where he kept horses and farm equipment. In the early spring he would travel to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to shear sheep on the big farms. He would ride the rails, hanging on under the freight cars because he didn't have the money to pay the fare. Even though money was scare, he was still able to put my uncle Frederick through school. And now he helped Doc with the dance hall."
"They built a beautiful place in the middle of Preston. It was a gorgeous brick building with a hardwood floor. They had to obey all the city laws because it was a public dance hall. This was during prohibition, so there was no drinking allowed. You could not even buy a ticket if you smelled of alcohol. They held all the Gold and Green Balls there and a big dance every Friday night. Doc's wife, Virginia, worked in the ticket office and checked coats. People came dressed up lovely, like you would for church. You never saw anyone that wasn't dressed in his or her Sunday best. Men had to wear a jacket. It did a lot for the culture of little Preston. We became quite the cultural center for all the surrounding towns, such as Dayton, Clifton, Glendale, Smithfield, Franklin, and Whitney, Logan being the closest large town."
Florence also remembered that her father was the shortest of the boys at about 5'9", while Uncle Nels was, "extremely tall," (probably about 6'3") and most of the other brothers were over 6 feet tall. Anyway, she says that while her father would play his fiddle, the other brothers would step dance and then throw one leg over the other's shoulder and they would all hop around on one leg while everybody laughed and clapped.
Baltzar and all the Peterson "clan" were also mimics. They could do anybody's accents and the physical gestures to a "T". Perhaps this was the impetus for Florence to be a drama major at BYU. There is a story which lives in my memory, and which mother may now rue the day that she told me because I am writing it down for posterity! Florence told how her father would come home from fast and testimony meeting held in the LDS church on the 1st Sunday of each month and, in a light hearted way, mimic those who spoke. His patter would run something like this: (spoken with a heavy Scandinavian accent)
"Bruders unt Seesters, I vas so happy (sob, sob) to be
a member of (sob) dis church! Before I vas coming here
my family (sob) disowned me (catch a breath). But here
I haf da more frents (sob, sob) dan before, ant you
vere all my family. Da gospel ist true!"
He would hold forth this performance at the Sunday dinner table and the family, especially the boys, would laugh so hard they couldn't eat. Others of the children might chime in with their renditions, and then grandma, Marinda, would chide him - which is apparently what he wanted.
From these mildly mocking recitations the children learned that crying, for boys especially, was not manly. Thus, Uncle Virlow, for instance, was always ashamed of his tender heart. Carma remembers that when Virlow was a bishop in Idaho Falls, he would sometimes get teary-eyed over something and would apologize at the pulpit, saying: "I don't know why I am such a 'woman'." No one ever really thought the less of him, however. Others family members such as Florence, Margaret, and Evan, learned to mimic and do "crazy" voices as a result of Baltzar's example. Florence even became a dramatist, partly because of her father's example of playfulness and innovative vocal dramatizations. Encouraged by Baltzar, the whole family also memorized and recited poetry at home as well as in school. Florence tells more about this in detail in her biography. These recitations had gone on in his home growing up.
Baltzar Peterson was a capable and busy man, who only spent most of his time outside of his home stopping in from time to time to, "Stir things up" as his oldest son, Jesse, later known to everyone as "Doc" because he was a doctor of chiropractry, reported. Again, "Doc" gave these details: "Once everybody was in turmoil he seemed to think that his mission was complete and he would leave, always assigning everyone chores and often taking the boys to work with him in the field or the barn. Dad always kept us busy. We had few idle moments. He had none."
Thus it was that all the Peterson children grew up with a profound work ethic. Every single one was busy and occupied all of their lives. Doc, for instance, continued giving chiropractic treatments well into his 88th year. Virlow worked day and night at his cleaning business in Idaho Falls and painted his children's houses and replaced their windows even when he was sick and elderly. The three girls Florence, Utahna, and Margaret were as energetic and peppy as anyone you have ever known, as was Evan. Baltzar, himself played for dances until three months before he died. He even took John, Utahna's oldest son, out to the farm for a horsey ride in the summer of 1944, when he was already not feeling well. John remembers many pony rides courtesy of grandpa Baltzar, as does Gloria Lee Moore Spencer, Florence's "step" daughter. Gloria says that Baltzar always treated her kindly, taking her for horse rides and teasing her good-naturedly and not as a "step" anything.
In addition to all his, "fiddling around", as Virginia, Doc's wife, phrased it, Baltzar ran a large farm, visited often with his extended family and aided them with their farming and other projects. He was active in civic functions in the community and in his church, did his own and his neighbor's blacksmithing, and ran quite a few heads of horses. The Clydesdale, a variety of heavy draft horse developed in Scotland was his favorite breed. We have discovered that he bought his favorite Clydesdale from Samuel Richard Brough, of Porterville, Morgan county, Utah, 20 miles east of Ogden. His grandson, Marshall, b 1914, later married one of Baltzar's younger daughters, Utahna, b. 1912.
Actually, Baltzar built up such a reputation as a fine blacksmith that people would come from all around and take up a lot of Baltzar's time. Ezra Taft Benson's father, George, would often send Ezra over with a large number of horse at once. As George was quite a tight wad, poor Ezra was always sent without any lunch but with so many horses that it would take all morning and into the afternoon to get them shod. "Starving" young Ezra would be invited to have some of Marinda's home cooked "dinner", which was eaten at noon, and which he loved, Marinda being a fine cook who made eight loaves of bread every day. He would go home full and happy, but with a scolding from Baltzar each time to only bring four horses the next go around!*****
The road between the "village center" of Preston and the Peterson farm in "Little Egypt", three and a half miles east of town "in the wilderness" traversed up and down two steep, broad gullies which were often muddy or flooded by the marshes at the bottom that the that made the going difficult. It also meant that going from the farm to school truly was uphill both ways! In 1922 when Florence was in high school and the two older boys had moved away, so there was no one to drive her in to school, Baltzar moved his family into town and off of the farm. Three and a half miles was a lot father in those days! Baltzar hired a man to live on his farm, and in 1928 centered his musical energies in the Parisiana dance hall on the main street in Preston.
Part of the original farm house in which the children were born still stands on the property today although the creamery room and large back porch was detached in the 1950s and the farm was sold after uncle Evan stopped working it in the 1960s. Baltzar was a far thinking man who did not discriminate between his children. He gave each of them, boy or girl, who wanted it a 40 acre portion of his farm as well as other holdings at the time of his death. He actually gave his youngest daughter, Margaret and her 1st husband, Bill Walker 40 acres when they married. They then built a house on the South West corner of the property. When Margaret and Bill moved to California, Evan lived in that house and "ran" the other acreage for the girls. Eventually everyone sold their portion of the farm. Florence always retained the property that her father left her in Treasureton, however, and Carma, Florence's daughter, owns that property today. Plus, we are all reminded of our Grandfather and Grandmother and their families when we go to the Preston cemetery, the land for which was donated by the Peterson brothers, Baltzar and Sern, and by Joseph Clayton, Marinda's father.
As one of Baltzar's oldest grand daughters, Carma, only has two memories of him. The solemn one is that of walking through his bedroom and saying goodbye to him shortly before his death from Leukemia on 21 December, 1944, in Preston, Idaho. The happy one was dancing for him just a few month before, at the age of two (in the summer of 1944) as he sat down on his haunches in his living room in Preston, Idaho, and played, "Turkey in the Straw". Even now, Carma can remember the look of love and delight on his face. He loved to play and to see everyone dancing, laughing and enjoying themselves. This is how the whole Peterson family was. Everyone was musical. They all could sing and dance. Whenever you went to visit in the Peterson house, they would roll back the rugs and improvise a dance. According to Mardeen, White Charley's granddaughter, this would especially go on at Uncle Soren's (Pronounced: "Sern's") house.
We love and honor our grandfather for his industry and energy, his foresight, kindness, and fairness; for using his God-given talents to bring joy, humor, laughter and warmth to his world; for leaving us a legacy of perseverance and of honoring God, our wonderful country, and each other; and most of all for marrying and staying faithful to our wonderful grandmother, Marinda Clayton.
Footnotes:
* The Danish spelling of this surname is, "Petersen", but when Great Grandpa Baltzar came into the country, his name was written down as, "Peterson" on all the official records. Virlow, Baltzar Jr.'s 2nd son, changed the spelling of his name to conform with the correct Danish spelling, but most of the rest of the family have left the spelling as "Peterson". Virlow's oldest son, Dale Larsen Petersen, was a radio announcer who, at the suggestion of the cowboy star, Gene Autry, choose for himself the "stage" name of, "Peter Viking". His son, who was christened Robert Dale Petersen, has changed his name to the old, old-world spelling, vis. Peder Pedersen. Despite all these changes and spelling differences, we are all still related!
** Baltzar first married Amanda Caroline SMITH. About 1890 they had one child, Dassie, who lived less than a year. They divorced, and five years later he married Marinda Clayton (1879-1950), who had never been married before. They were childless for over 4 years, and then starting in 1900 they had a baby every 2 or 3 years until 1918, for a total of eight children. The first two babies, Jessie, and Virlow, were exceedingly large babies, especially for a person under 5' tall, at 13 and 11 pounds respectively. Florence and the rest were not so taxing except for some virulent childhood diseases including diphtheria and rheumatic fever. Two of their girls, Gladys (1908-1922) and Carma,(1910-1933), died before marrying. Evan (1918-1967), the youngest, was the next child to pass away due to the affects of alcoholism. Margaret (1916-1974) followed, then Virlow (1903-1984), Utahna (1912-1985), Doc (1900-1989), and last, Florence (1905-1994). All of them died vowing that their father was a good man, who sparked up people's lives, and that their mother, "Was an angel on earth."
*** This story is reported by Mardeen Peterson Steinmetz as told to her many time by her cousin, Florence.
**** Charles Coulson Peterson, b. 15 July 1869, d. 5 Dec 1909 probably of a kind of congenital heart failure.
***** Story as repeated many times by Ezra Taft Benson, himself, to John Brough. The language, as refers George Benson, came from Ezra himself.
The following information comes from the LDS Living Endowment Record of the Logan Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 178053): Marinda Clayton was born on 21 August 1878 in Preston, Oneida, Idaho; she was baptized on 21 August 1886; her parents were Joseph Clayton and Margaret Olsen; and she was endowed on 19 July 1899 in the Logan Temple.
The following information comes from the LDS Living Sealings of Spouses that took place in the Logan Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 178135): Marinda Clayton was born on 21 August 1878 in Preston, Oneida, Idaho, and was sealed to her husband, Baltzar Petersen Jr., on 19 July 1899 in the Logan Temple.
Research Note: The online "FindAGrave" website (via Memorial #: 13421217, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=13421217&PIpi=31279859) shows the gravestone of Marinda Clayton which, unfortunately, lists her birth as being 31 August 1879.
History of Marinda Clayton Peterson
Originally compiled by Alison Utahna Brough Allred from a history written shortly after Marinda’s death. Additional information was provided by Florence Peterson Moore and Carma Moore Brown.
History completed in August 2004
Marinda Clayton Peterson was born on August 31, 1879 in Preston, Idaho. She was the fifth child of 10 children, 7 daughters and 3 sons (Anne Marie, George, Joseph, Martha Jane, Myron, then Marinda, Francis, Mahala, Nessie, Arvilla and Lila), born to Joseph Clayton, an Englishman from Cheshire, England, with roots in Fairfield, near Buxton, Derbyshire, and Margaret Olsen Clayton, an immigrant from Norway, and a, "Truly great and remarkable woman." (Marinda)
Marinda's parents were among the first settlers in the area of Preston, having first lived in Franklin, named for the Mormon apostle, Franklin D. Richards, after their marriage in the Endowment House in 1870. In 1871 Joseph, along with Charles John Spongberg, William Head, and David Jensen, made a survey of Franklin and of the area north of Franklin. Charles and Joseph decided to locate east of Preston, "next door" to each other, in an area which became known as, "Little Egypt" or "Egypt." Each was prominent in the development of the Preston community. Charles, who was a blacksmith by profession, built a blacksmith shop there. Joseph was more of a farmer, rancher, and orchardist. Marinda told Florence, "Papa Joseph came from England where they knew how to grow beautiful orchards. He had a large orchard, probably about 5 acres of fruit trees, which he cultivated at great sacrifice, having to haul the water a long way. He grew pound apples and sheep nose apples. He grew winter pomades, snowflakes with pure white fruit." According to Marinda, "There wasn't a plum or a prune or an apple that papa didn't grow. They grew things then that you never hear of anymore, like currants." Florence says that her mother, Marinda, "Made the best currant jelly - out of this world.” Her peach marmalade, made at the end of the fruit season with the last of the peaches and pears and orange pulp, was unrivaled.
Joseph Clayton died on his birthday, October 5, 1904 at age fifty-six. His wife, Margaret, had died 21 April 1899 at the age of only forty-five about 6 months after the birth of their youngest, daughter, Lila, who was then given to another family to be raised. He had been married to his second wife, Martha Jane Wheeler, "Aunt Mat", born in the state of Virginia, and then of Glendale, Idaho, for only 3 years at the time. His youngest daughter at home (not counting Lila) was only 14. Joseph left a legacy of love, kindness, devotion, prosperity, and generosity; a rich heritage to his children and posterity. "Aunt Mat," as the children called her, continued to raise the younger Claytons and to be involved with the family.
As a young girl Marinda was schooled in, "The learning and traditions of her fathers," which included not only the restored gospel, but also the customs and folklore of the time. Among the traditions were what we might consider some silly, playful superstitions, such as not walking under a ladder, nor letting a black cat cross your path; not putting live flowers next to a picture, because the person might die; not opening an umbrella in the house, and so forth. There were also always certain ways to do things, like sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, canning, etc. and the Claytons (and later the Petersons) were the only ones who could do them right, as their posterity can attest. Marinda also learned many practical family duties, among which was caring for the cows. Before Marinda (1879-1950) was old enough to herd, Joseph hired Louise (1865-1924), one of Charles Spongberg's daughters, to herd the cows. She used to walk down the little dirt road east and north of the Peterson everyday and care for the cattle in the waving grass. Later Louise married Soren Peterson, one of Baltzar's older brothers, so she and Marinda became sisters-in-law.
Marinda's job consisted of taking the cows to and from the pastures in the hills east of the home, milking the cows and making dairy products from the milk to sell. After all, her mother, Margaret, was born in the mountains of Norway. Margaret's grandfather grew up near Jaarlsburg, one of the renowned cheese producing centers of the world. They knew about cheese and yogurt, and Marinda made homemade yogurt until her death.
She also learned the art of making cloth and earned a good reputation as a cloth maker and seamstress as had her mother who was a beautiful seamstress and remarkable cook. Margaret had grown up knowing how to use all the available resources. At that time there were a lot of free roaming sheep in the Franklin - Preston area. They were very destructive to the vegetation, but Margaret would get wool from them. She would card, spin and dye the thread and then weave it into worsted suits. She completed the entire process herself. Many of the professional men in town wore her wool suits. In between delivering many babies in the community, as well as delivering ten children of her own, she taught her older daughters this art. Marinda made myriad quilts, 2 of which are in the possession of her granddaughter, Carma. Margaret's oldest daughter, Anne Marie, called Marie or "Rye", graduated from the Woodbury School of Design in Los Angeles. Florence, who never knew her grandmother, Margaret, tells how Rye, like her mother, could sew anything and used to make dresses for her (Florence). "So that I was the best-dressed girl in all of Preston," She states. Marinda's daughters, Margaret and Utahna, carried on the interest in textiles and design, also attending the Woodbury school of design.
In those early days, in addition to all the sheep roaming around "Preston", there were also non-hostile, but threatening, Indians roaming all over the area. "They would come out from Benita," Marinda told Florence, "And when they smelled Mama's fresh baked bread, they would come begging. Papa (Joseph) made a hole in the floor and Mama would wrap most of the bread and hide it in the floor so that the Indians didn't steal it." So, again it was because of Margaret, and before that because of her mother, Laura Anne Olsen, that Marinda learned to cook and bake and earned a reputation as an excellent bread maker.
Marinda married Baltzar Peterson December 24, 1896 in Preston, Idaho. They were sealed in the Logan Temple on July 19, 1899 and had eight children: Jesse, Virlow, Florence, Gladys, Carma, Utahna, Francis, Margaret, and Evan. Florence says, "When my father married my mother, she was such a pretty thing in her taffeta gown. She was almost 10 years younger than my father. She was only about 4' 11" tall and had a sweet, heart-shaped face like her little granddaughter, Madeline. She was very well proportioned and did not appear short because my father was not very tall, himself, only about 5' 9". My sister, Utahna, was about the same height as mother, but she married a man nearly 2 feet taller and therefore looked diminutive." Doc and Virlow were above average height, however, and had long, "horsey" faces (Doc's words), like Baltzar and Baltzar's mother's family, the Baltzarsen's. Florence was 5' 9" - tall for a woman.
Baltzar and Marinda established a home on a forty acre lot in the "Little Egypt" area east of Preston, to which they added little by little until they owned one of the most prominent farms east of Preston. Marinda also inherited land from her mother and father, according to Florence. Under the Homestead Act they proved up on 160 acres in the Poverty Flat area. Much of the time Baltzar worked away from home to help with the finances doing horse shoeing and sheep shearing. While he did this, Marinda assumed the responsibilities of caring for the home and outside chores about the place. In addition she became the financial manager for the family. It was in Egypt that Marinda reared her family. She always saw that her children had a means of getting to church and school which were quite a few miles away.
As an example of her dedication to her children, Florence tells that when she was born on December 12th, 1905, her mother had not been able to buy the younger boy's (Jesse's and Virlow's) Christmas presents, or to get anything in special for their Christmas celebration. Baltzar was being somewhat of a, "Bah-Humbug" about the whole issue of buying Christmas presents or going into town in the awful weather, so in the end, only a week after giving birth, Marinda walked into town and back through the snowdrifts in order that her children would have a few nice Christmas presents. When it came to the welfare of her children, nothing was too hard for her, it seemed. (At least Florence had been a "normal" sized baby, while the first 2 boys were 11 and 13 pounds, respectively!) She was also interested in the cultural development of her children particularly in music and drama, and provided opportunities for them to get whatever education they wished, again "goading" Baltzar to good works and to laying out his money in behalf of his children's education. Eventually it was decided that the best way for the children to get a real education was to move from the farm home to a home in town. This they did in 1928.
Before this move, Baltzar had become a prominent blacksmith and horse shoer. Since many patrons might be waiting for their turn when mealtime came, Marinda always had food ready for any number which might appear for meals. Florence tells of Marinda's industry and thrift, and of cooking both these "everyday" meals, Sunday dinners with lemon mystery pudding for dessert, and of "Cooking for the Threshers." This yearly communal event was quite an ordeal, reportedly. As most of the crops, especially grain and Lucerne, ripened about the same time, men of the community or from surrounding areas would travel from farm to farm and work like beavers from before dawn until dusk harvesting crops. When they were harvesting "your" crops, it was the homemaker's responsibility to feed the men huge amounts of food 3 times a day, including breakfast, dinner, and supper. Everyone in the family who was not working in the fields was drafted to kill and fry up chickens and huge bowls of gravy; prepare vegetables, including huge mounds of potatoes, runner beans, beet greens; and make extra bread -- at least 12 loaves instead of the usual 8, sometimes baking twice in one day. All of this would be devoured as though laid before locusts along with quaffs of apple juice and gallons of milk, Florence said. Supper was often bread, butter, milk, scrambled eggs, cheese, homemade bread and butter pickles, and fruit. This exhausting endeavor would go on for 2 to 5 days, depending on the size of the farm and crop. Both Marinda and Florence got so used to cooking huge amounts of food that they were often accused of continuing to "Cook for the thresher”--always serving up mounds of delicious food at the drop of a hat and admonishing everyone to “Clean up your plate!”
In fact, with Marinda and the girls nothing could ever be done half way. Every meal was voluminous; and every canning “adventure” went on for days and days, and became more of an “ordeal.” The mantra, “I shall overcome!” shinning in their eyes, they tackled mountains of cucumbers or tomatoes, peaches, pears, or apples every day. Neither was content with canning a measly 7, 14, or 21 quarts and doing some more the next day, oh, no! The minimum expectation was 2-4 bushels of fruit on any given day until 10 or 12 bushles had been squirreled away and maximum storage capacity reached. The excess was given away to the neighbors, all in gleaming, jeweled bottles, or someone was sent to the store for more bottles, lids or paraffin. (Jams and Jellies were sealed with paraffin, which, as it dried over the year, pulled away from the sides of the bottle and sometimes allowed entry to ants, should it last so long!) Marinda would often say, “Waste not, want not,” or “If you don’t eat it, we’ll have to give it to the Indians.” Now, that saying takes on a new meaning doesn’t it? It must have come, ultimately, from Grandmother Margaret.
Carma remembers that about 1948 Marinda had Evan plant two acres of peas. About 5:00 AM one summer morning the available family gathered to assist their “aging mother,” who could work them all into the ground to harvest and “preserve” the peas. Evan and Cap brought bushel after bushel after bushel to the inside back porch where everyone, including Marinda, Florence, Carma, Margaret and Steven shelled them all morning. Then, in the afternoon the peas were heaved along in baskets and tubs and transported down to the welfare cannery, which was available for private canning for a small fee. This went on for two or three days—the expectation being an acre a day harvested, shelled, washing and canned. In the end Marinda had enough peas to feed the whole town of Preston for the winter! (She was living alone at the time.) Of course, it was shared with everyone, in fact, half being given back for welfare. This is just another example of Marinda’s extraordinary industry, stamina and “grit,” as Florence called it. She said that whenever a person had a problem her mother would say, “They need more grit.” This had a double meaning because grit is also what you feed the chickens when they are peckish or squabbling. It would not be amiss to say that all of the Peterson children and many of their children have this grit, this passion to achieve, to do well, this determination to a cause, thanks to Marinda’s great example.
Partly because of her wifely duties, and partly because of her caring for sick children through bouts of diphtheria, typhoid and rheumatic fever, whooping cough, measles, mumps, etc., Marinda became interested in nutrition, nutritional supplements, health and "health foods". She, Margaret, and Doc, particularly, read about, studied, and practiced healthful eating, and taking vitamin and herbal supplements, while Utahna and Florence listened to their counsel and followed suit, without doing the reading so much. This part of the family was considered, "health-minded". Caring and sensitive, especially to those who were ill or less fortunate, in the latter part of her life Marinda associated with a group of her friends going into the homes of the sick or unfortunate spreading cheer wherever they went with flowers, or food, or a friendly visit. This was in fulfillment of a blessing that Marinda received in 1922 in which she was promised, "It shall be they privilege to assist in clothing the naked and those . . . [in] turmoil. Thy counsels and encouragement shall be sought after, for thou shall be a great teacher . . . and shall cause many to see the light of Eternal Truth."
Marinda had a peachy smile (one that made each check look like the smooth half of a peach). She had a quick, soft laugh, and twinkling eyes, like her father. Her son, Evan was like her with a charming smile and bright blue, heavenly eyes., At the same time, Marinda was careful, serious minded, studious, conscientious, and industrious. After working in the Primary and the MIA and acting as a Relief Society teacher in each ward where she made her home, and always working hard to get a 100% in her Relief Society visiting teaching, Marinda considered it her greatest honor to serve as president of the Relief Society two years, beginning in April of 1926. She was liberal in her donations to the organization, and she initiated a plan whereby books and supplies were purchased with Sunday eggs. She also donated money, which was scarce at the time, to the building of the welfare granary in Ogden. An active member of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, she contributed money to the memorial building on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake, in memory of her Clayton and Olsen immigrant ancestors. During her lifetime she and her husband helped to build four church houses.
Carma remembers that after her grandmother's 70th birthday party, in August of 1949, in the back yard of her Preston home, she told Florence and Margaret that she discovered a lump in her right breast. A renowned cancer specialist, Dr. Cowan, in Salt Lake was consulted, and a radical mastectomy performed, but the cancer had metastasized. Following the surgery, Marinda came to live with Florence in Idaho Falls to, hopefully, recover. Her appetite was poor and her pain continued, however. In the late spring Margaret came up from California with her son, Steven, to care for Marinda in her own home in Preston. There, despite all the gentle nursing and nutritious health food, this loving and beloved woman passed away after great suffering on July 20, 1950, less than one year after discovering the lump.
Florence could not believe it and kept saying for years, "But she was so young. She was so young!" As Florence wrote in the obituary, "Marinda Clayton Peterson was an inspiration to all who knew her and a woman who will always be remembered with the highest regard and with the deepest love." As her patriarchal blessing predicted, Marinda had shown herself as a woman, "Of great faith and courage . . . steadfast as a rock . . . honored and respected among all good and righteous men and women" and "Greatly loved of the Lord."
As her posterity may we effectuate the further blessing Marinda was promised. The Lord covenanted with her that in as much as she remained faithful, which she certainly did, that she would, ". . . take great pleasure in [her] posterity, and they [would] remain true to the Gospel and spread the light of salvation among the children of men, both in the world and in the stakes of Zion, for they shall convince many of the error of their ways and many shall join with us in praise unto Christ because of them." May we continue in living and teaching the revealed truth and in fulfilling our promised birthright.
P.S. A part of our heritage that we can still enjoy today are Marinda's original recipies, which can be obtained from Carma. These include her scalloped potatoes, lemon mystery pudding, bread and butter pickles, chili sauce and other delicious fare.
Thomas Brough states in his journal that Samuel Richard Brough was born at "1 A.M. on the 20th of August 1857 at Rocky Branch near Bethalto, Madison County, Illinois."
Material for most of this Family Group Record of Samuel Richard Brough and Ann Eliza Carter comes from the 1980 RBFO book: "The Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947, His History, Ancestors and Descendents."
History of Samuel Richard Brough
Quoted and edited from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestry & Descendants".
On August 20, 1857 Samuel Richard Brough, the third son and fourth child of Thomas Brough and Jane Patterson, was born in Bethalto, Madison County, Illinois. His father was engaged in farming, and it was on this farm that Samuel and his three younger sisters were born. In June 1864 Samuel's father and mother prepared for their long-awaited crossing of the "Great American Plains" to Utah. This was to be the final leg of the journey that began back in England in 1856 when this young family left to join the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in far-away Utah.
With a yoke of oxen to pull their wagon and one milk cow to provide milk for their family, this young family of eight started out with other families to spend the next three and one-half months crossing the plains to Utah. During all of this time they were exposed to Indians, buffalo and other hazards common to the wilds of America in those early days. They finally arrived in Porterville, Morgan County, Utah on September 18, 1864. About half-way across the plains one of the oxen died so the milk cow, together with one of their neighbor's cows, was yoked up in place of the oxen and the one remaining ox was placed in lead of the cows, and the journey was completed successfully in this manner.
It was so late in the year that there wasn't enough time for them to build a cabin, so a room was dug in the side of a hill (12 feet by 14 feet) and covered with brush and dirt. It was in this room where Samuel, his father and mother, four sisters and one brother spent their first winter in Utah. It was extremely cold, with snow sometimes reaching a depth of four feet.
The following spring, Samuel's father, who had been a brick mason in England, made the brick and built a two-room brick home for his family and then started to farm some of the land that he was able to obtain. For the next seven years Samuel spent his time working on the farm and helping in his father's brickyard. He enjoyed trapping and was able to catch many red fox, mink and other fur-bearing animals during the winter months.
For two years, after Samuel turned 14, he spent working on the freight road using oxen to move his loads. When he turned 16 he went to Wyoming to work on a flume, twenty-eight miles long, which brought timber from the mountains down into the valley to make lumber, railroad ties and charcoal. He spent his 18th year working as a carpenter for the Utah and Northern Railroad in Idaho.
Young Samuel Richard Brough returned to Porterville that next year and worked in a lumber mill hauling timber from the mountains for the Union Pacific Railroad. During his 21st year he worked for his father in his brickyard getting half of the brick that he made for his own use. He used this brick to build a home for himself. Late in October of his 22nd year, he went to Colorado and New Mexico to help build the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.
In the spring of 1881 he returned home to Porterville, and on June 2, 1881, he married Phoebe Adeline Cherry in the endowment house in Salt Lake City, Utah. They then returned to Porterville to the home that Samuel had built to start their married life together. Here Samuel was able to buy some farm land and also one-half interest in a lumber and shingle mill. By hiring some help he was successful in operating his farm and mill. During the winter season he hauled timber out of the mountains to his saw mill.
During the next four and one-half years he continued in this line of work and started to raise a family. Three sons were born during this period of time. Thomas James Brough was born on February 19, 1882, Jesse Samuel Brough was born on February 12, 1884, and Ernest LeRoy Brough was born on December 12, 1885.
The year 1886 was to be a memorable year in the life of Samuel Richard Brough, for on October 1, 1886 he received a call from President John Taylor to leave for a mission to Great Britain. He was to leave on October 26, 1886. Just five days before he boarded the steamship Alaska for England, he took Ann Eliza Carter to the Logan Temple and married her for time and all eternity to live in plural marriage with his first wife, Phoebe Adeline Cherry. In order to cover his mission expenses, he had to sell half of his farm and some cattle, leaving his mill property to be rented or sold. Ann Eliza Carter returned to her family to await his return from his mission.
Elder Samuel Richard Brough left for Great Britain on October 26, 1886, going by way of New York and on the Steamship Alaska, arriving in Liverpool, England on November 10, 1886. He was sent immediately to South Wales where he served as a traveling elder for almost one and one-half years. Many were the faith-promoting experiences that he had with the Welsh people.
After serving as a traveling elder he was called to preside over the Welsh Mission. After serving in this capacity for almost one year he was called to preside over the Irish Mission until June 17, 1890, and then he was called to preside over the Scottish Mission. Each call was for a particular purpose and he witnessed the hand of the Lord in and during each call. On September 29, 1890, he received an honorable release. However, before returning to the United States, Samuel traveled to Longton, Staffordshire, and stayed for seventeen days (November 8-24, 1890) with his aunt, Mary Ann Brough and her husband Robert Evans, in their home at "58 Lord Street, Woodhouse N Longton". While staying in Longton, Samuel collected genealogical and historical information on his Brough ancestry. He also visited the Parish Churches in Longton, Trentham, Dresdon and Stoke-on-Trent, and gathered many family names (of deceased relatives) for eventual LDS temple work. He returned to Utah in December 1890. The following hand-written account is taken from Samuel's missionary journal and details what he did during the days he stayed with Mary Ann Brough and Robert Evans in Longton, England:
Saturday, November 8, 1890: Today I started to Longton [Staffordshire, England] at 12 Noon. Arrived ok about 3 PM. I met some of my relatives. I was kindly received by all. I went to Aunt Mary Ann [Mary Ann Brough Evans], my father's sister and abode with her and [her] family. I spent a pleasant evening.
Sunday, November 9, 1890: B[roke] fast this morning and go [went] to chapel with Uncle Robert Evans and from there to Aunt Martha's [Martha Lowe Paterson] residence (she being the widow of Uncle Robert [Watson] Paterson my mother's brother). She was delighted to see me. I ate dinner with her and had a chat for several hours during which time she informed me it was just 39 years to-day since she and Robert [Watson Paterson] were married and narrated the incident quiet fully which was interesting to me. At 6:30 she and I went to chapel and spent quite an interesting evening. I returned to Aunt Mary Ann [Brough Evans].
Monday, November 10, 1890: Today I attended to some correspondence and then visited Aunt Rose [Rosannah Myatt Brough] (Widow), Uncle Richard Brough's wife, and ate dinner and was very kindly received. I then started in search of records from which to obtain the genealogy of my Father's house. I first went to the Registrar of Longton District but his records only dated back to 1837 which date was too recent. I then went to the minister of St. John's church and arranged with him to search his records from 1764 (the oldest he had) to 1837 for ten shillings. I then went back in town and purchased some note books and prepared for genealogical search in the morrow. I returned to Aunt Mary Ann [Brough Evans, at] 58 Lord Street Woodhouse North Longton and brought up [to date] my journal and wrote a letter to my mother.
Tuesday, November 11, 1890: Today I searched the baptismal records from 1764 to 1837 inclusive and secured over 60 names of Brough. In the evening I recorded some in my family register and wrote two letters to America.
Wednesday, November 12, 1890: Today I went to Stoke to try and arrange with the parish registrar to search the records of the parish. I found it would cost me about four shillings [?] for each name and concluded to search through the church records as they are much cheaper. I went to [the] Trentham church minister and arranged to search the records of that church next Friday 14th inst[ant]. I returned to Longton and in the evening visited some of my relatives in company with Cousin Thomas Evans [the son of Robert Evans and Mary Ann Brough].
Thursday, November 13, 1990: Today I attended to considerable correspondence and in the evening went to the landmark where my Grandfather (Richard Brough) and some of his uncles made brick about 60 years ago. I gathered a few leaves to place in my scrap book as a Token of Remembrance of the noted place. I then went to Rev. W. B. Smith and arranged with him to search the baptismal records of St. John's church from 1837 up to the present. I expect to commence my search next Monday, November 17th 1890.
Friday, November 14, 1890: today I walked to Trentham 3½ miles to search the records of the Trentham church and on my arrival learned the minister was called away on business. I then walked back to Longton and searched the records in St. John's church from 1839 to 1890 and obtained some names. The minister of this church then kindly gave me a very favorable recommend to the minister of St. James church in this city. I went to 58, attended to some correspondence and retired.
Saturday, November 15, 1890: Today I went to St. James church and presented my recommend to the minister and at once got the privilege to search the records from 1834 to date--all they had. I obtained a good few names without the least charge and on my departure I thanked the minister most kindly and gave him two shillings and six pence and also presented him with a copy of the Voice of Warning of which he accepted with thanks and I left him feeling first class. I returned to 58 and replied to some correspondence and had a chat with Aunt [Mary Ann Brough Evans] and retired.
Sunday, November 16, 1890: B[roke] fast this morning and met in chapel with some of the followers of Smeedenbury. I observed their manner of worship... I spent some time with Aunt Rose [Rosannah Myatt Brough] and her folks in the afternoon and in the evening met with some who termed themselves a Christian Society....
Monday, November 17, 1890: Today I called on Aunt Rose [Rosannah Myatt Brough] and took dinner with her and then visited cousin Lucy [Lucy Smith-the daughter of Joseph Hinton Smith and Adry Brough] and had a nice chat with her and family. Then to Thomas Bott (Aunt Besse's brother) [and the brother of Elizabeth Bott--who married Samuel Brough, and the son of Benjamin Bott and Elizabeth Abbotts] and gave him some tracts and sold him a Voice of Warning. I had a lengthy chat on the Gospel.
Tuesday, November 18, 1890: Today I presented Uncle Robert [Evans] and Aunt Mary Ann [Brough] Evans with a most beautiful album written on the fly leaf Compliments of nephew Samuel Richard Brough and then attended to considerable correspondence and in the evening spent a little time in town [and] went to Dresden in search of genealogies. I met with some encouragement. I was accompanied by John Kelsal [John Kelsall--the husband of Ann Myatt (Brough)].
Wednesday, November 19, 1990: Today I sought after genealogy and in the evening presented Cousin Ann Kelsal [Ann Myatt (Brough) Kelsall, who was] (married) with a beautiful album written in the fly leaf Compliments of cousin Samuel Richard Brough to cousin Ann Kelsal Nov 19th 1890. I then went to Aunt Martha Paterson [Martha Lowe Paterson and] I made a similar present with the same inscription on the fly leaf except the name. Both were accepted with heartfelt thanks. I spent some time with Aunt Martha [Lowe Paterson] and returned to 58.
Thursday, November 20, 1890: I rise [arose] in good time and walked to Trentham four miles and searched the records of the same back to 1525 being ably assisted by Rev. E. B. Pigott who I found exceeding kind and would not charge me anything whatever for his service. I thanked him very kindly and on leaving presented him one copy each of the Book of Mormon and Voice of Warning. He accepted them with thanks and spoke especially of the Book of Mormon and said he would place it in his library and take good care of it. I gathered 101 names and left rejoicing and considerably satisfied.
Friday, November 21, 1890: Today I spent a good portion of the time in arranging and recording the genealogy gathered in this part, and in the evening went to the theatre with four of my second cousins (ladies) and we had a splendid time [and] the play was titled The Still Alarm. I called on Aunt Rose [Rosannah Myatt Brough] and gave her one shilling worth of ale. She accepted it with many thanks. She is over three score years old and receives much comfort from her pipe.
Saturday, November 22, 1890: Today I finished my labors in recording and arranging the genealogy I have gathered on my Father's house and have labored faithful and traveled a great deal from place to place and person to person. I have gathered near 200 names and feel quite pleased with my labors. My mind is now at rest and I feel willing to return home. In the evening I visited some of the Bott's, Aunt Besse's [Elizabeth Brough-who married Samuel Brough] relatives. Also called on a photographer and purchased a portrait of Longton Park and St. Johns Church where my Grandmother Brough was buried and sold him [the photographer] a Book of Mormon and gave him some tracts and left him feeling quiet satisfied with the purchase and our conversation. I returned to 58 and Uncle Robert Evans made me a present of a nice pair of winter gloves.
Sunday, November 23, 1890: B[roke] fast this morning and met with Aunt Rose [Rosannah Myatt Brough] and relatives at her respective residence and too dinner and had a good chat about matters generally. Cousin Ann [Ann Myatt (Brough) Kelsall] gave me a nice China Mustache Cup and Saucer and 6 China Tea Cups and Saucers. Also sent a rare beautiful cup and saucer to my mother and her daughter gave me a very pretty China Cup and Saucer for my wife. I accepted all with kindness and many thanks. I bid them farewell and left them in profound friendship. I called on Cousin Lucy [Lucy Smith-the daughter of Joseph Hinton Smith and Adry Brough] and family [and] had a pleasant visit and bid them adieu. Then called on Aunt Martha Paterson and had a friendly chat and she gave me a pair of winter gloves for each of my little boys and a pair for my mother. Also sent a present and token of respect to my wife and sisters Emily and Alice. A young man who was lodging with Aunt [Mary Ann Brough Evans] gave me a most beautiful China Mustache Cup and saucer elaborately decorated with gold and flowers and written on it in gold letters (A present to Samuel Richard Brough by John Lester). I gave him a Book of Mormon and Voice of Warning and accepted all with grateful heart and bid them farewell. I went to the place the Latter-day Saints met for worship 55 years ago when my Father and Mother were here. I returned to 58 [and] had a chat with Uncle [Robert Evans] and Aunt [Mary Ann Brough Evans] about the folks and affairs at home and retired.
Monday, November 24, 1890: I received a pair of socks for myself and a nice apron for my wife as a present from Aunt Mary Ann [Brough Evans] and packed up some of my presents and sent to Liverpool by R.R [railroad] and bid the folks farewell and many thanks for all kindness. I started for Nottingham by Rail Road and arrived about 2 PM and went to the Nottingham Cemetery and visited Jesse Yelton Cherry's grave (my wife's uncle) [who was born in 1840 in Illinois and died in 1865 in Nottingham]. He died while here on a mission preaching the Gospel in May 20th 1865 aged 25 years. I spent a pleasant evening with the Brethren here and had a chat about the folks and affairs at home.
Tuesday, November 25, 1890: Today I wrote a letter to James J. Cherry my Father-in-law and Brother to the above deceased. I took [a] train for Swansea, South Wales, at 11:50….
On December 6, 1890, Samuel Richard Brough left England and arrived in Porterville, Utah on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1890, having been away from home and his family just over four years and two months.
In the spring of 1891 he hired out to Henry Florence and Sons Company and ran their sawmill at Hilliard, Wyoming. During the winter of that year he made railroad ties in Hardscrabble Canyon and sold them to the Union Pacific Railroad Company.
In the spring of 1892, he took his wife Ann Eliza Carter and went to Fort Bridger Valley to use his homestead rights and he settled on 160 acres in what is now known as Lyman, Wyoming. During the summer he chopped cedar posts and hewed house logs in the mountains and sold them to settlers in the valley. During the fall he built a log house 16' by 24' on his homestead. He then took his wife back to Salt Lake City where his first plural child, Horace, was born on November 16, 1892.
In the spring of 1893 he took his wife Ann Eliza Carter and son Horace and returned to his homestead in Wyoming. At that time he was set apart by President Cluff of the Summet Stake as Presiding Elder of the scattered saints in that area. He was able to clear some eight acres with a grubbing hoe and in the fall, seeded them into winter wheat thus starting his first crop on his homestead. In November he located his wife and son in Fort Bridger for the winter and returned to his family in Porterville and worked in the timber during the winter.
In the spring of 1894 he returned to his homestead with a team and farm seeds for the season and found his wife and son in good health. He proceeded to clear more land and seeded for a larger crop on his homestead. In June his second son of his plural marriage, Franklin Reed, was born. He raised a crop of wheat, oats, rye and potatoes. In the fall he again placed his wife Ann Eliza Carter and two sons in a good home in Fort Bridger for the winter and returned to his family in Porterville, Utah. On November 18, 1894, his first daughter, Laura Adeline, was born to his first wife Phoebe Adeline Cherry. During the winter he worked in the timber in Hardscrabble Canyon.
For the next two years he followed this plan, returning to his homestead in the spring and clearing more land and planting and harvesting more crops and helping the saints in that area, and then returning to Porterville during the winter, working in the timber and spending some time in the temple working on the names that he had gathered while on his mission.
In the spring of 1898 he built a house on his homestead for his first wife and family, and for the first time he had all of his family together. On June 8, 1898, he was ordained the bishop of the Owen Ward (now renamed the Lyman Ward) by Apostle John Henry Smith, and he served in this position until released on February 22, 1916. During all of this time he held many positions of leadership in that community, even serving on the Stake Board of Education for the Woodruff Stake while he was still bishop. By the early 1900's, Samuel had acquired 560 acres of land in and around Lyman, Wyoming. Also, during his stay in Wyoming, Samuel gave some of his properties to the town of Lyman, Wyoming, with the restriction that "liquors" were never to be made, sold or distributed from such properties.
Between 1917 and 1920, his properties in Wyoming were sold and those who were still living at home moved to Bountiful, Utah where they engaged in truck farming. This also enabled Samuel Richard Brough and his wife to do more work in the temple for their kindred dead. On April 18, 1921 he was called to be a temple worker in the Salt Lake Temple which was to last for many years, even until 1946. Also, from 1918 to 1938, Samuel served as the first president of the Brough Family Organization--which today is one of the oldest and largest ancestral family organization and surname associations in the world.
Samuel Richard Brough was really a remarkable man. One of the outstanding characteristics of this great pioneer was that throughout the many years that he served as a temple worker, even up to the last few years of his life, he always managed to spend the summers working and saving so that he could continue to spend the majority of his time during the remainder of the year working in the temple and fulfilling his calling as a temple worker.
Samuel Richard Brough raised an exceptional family. Many of his sons became LDS bishops, high councilmen and stake presidents in their own areas. One son was ordained a patriarch. His girls were also very active and served the Lord as they had been taught by their mothers. On May 8, 1947, he passed away, having spent some 89 years, 8 months and 18 days on this earth. He raised 15 of his children to manhood and womanhood, having lost two sons in their infancy. He sent five of his children on full-time missions besides serving more than four years of his life on a mission in England. He left one of the greatest heritages for his posterity, and his two wonderful companions added their greatness to his. How blessed we are to be able to call them our ancestors, for they left us a heritage that cannot be equaled today.
The LDS baptism of "Phebe A. Cherry" is listed in the Centerville Ward Records, Centerville, Utah (FHL Film # 25855, page 18), which states that she was baptized and confirmed on November 10, 1868.
History of Phoebe Adeline Cherry
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestory & Descendants". Originally written by Laura Adeline Brough Bradshaw.HISTORY:
Phebe Adeline Cherry was born September 7, 1860, at Centerville, Utah to her father, John James Cherry and her mother, Laura Bratten Cherry who were 1847 pioneers. Most of her childhood and teenage years were spent in Centerville and Porterville. She was a beautiful young lady with natural curly auburn hair, slim and trim, a special sweet person in every way. While living with her parents in Porterville, Utah she met a fine young man named Samuel Richard Brough, the son of Thomas Richard Brough and Jane Patterson. After a few years' courtship, they were married June 2, 1881 in the L.D.S. Endowment House on Temple Square by Apostle Daniel H. Wells and moved into a lovely new brick home father had built during their courtship years. He and his father had made the bricks at their brickyard, and the house is still being lived in in 1979.
Father was owner and manager of a sawmill located in Hardscrabbel Canyon not far from Porterville and was quite well financially for a young man those days. It was a very happy marriage. Father was a handsome young man, well built six foot three with lots of curly black hair. They were very happy in their new honeymoon home. It was built just across the street from his mother and father's home.
As time passed on, their first son Thomas James was born, February 19, 1882; their second son Jesse Samuel was born February 12, 1884; and on December 12, 1885 another little son with black curly hair, Ernest LeRoy, came to bless them in their happy home. By this time father had about 25 head of cattle and a good little farm and was doing very well. He was a good carpenter and had made some very nice furniture for their home. They were both very active and faithful in their church duties, and before the Manifesto the President of the Church had asked the men to take a second wife and practice polygamy. They talked it over and decided, as it was part of the church teachings, they would try and do it. After much thought and sincere prayers they decided on a good L.D.S. girl, Ann Eliza Carter. So mother (bless her heart, what a wonderful woman) went with father to ask another young girl to be his wife.
Soon after their marriage father was called to go to Great Britain on a mission where he labored for four years as mission president. Soon after his return home, he felt like he needed more land and a larger place for his two families. Aunt Eliza, as we always called his second wife, had still lived with her family while father was on his mission. Mother worked very hard to pay for his mission expenses and take care of herself and three little boys. She took in boarders, did lots of sewing for others and anything else she could do to make a little money. They had a very good friend, Moses Critchlow, who had worked with father at the sawmill who took care of the cattle for her and helped her with other things when needed, but before father got home she had sold all the cattle for expenses for his mission. Aunt Eliza helped all she could.
Father heard that the government was opening land for homesteaders about five miles east of the Old Fort Bridger, so he and Aunt Eliza went out there and took up the land, 160 acres, and built a two-room log house. The next summer mother went up and homesteaded on her land and lived there as the law required and then in the winter went back to her home in Porterville, Utah. Their fourth son, Wallace Calvin, was born September 27, 1891, another fine little blonde boy.
Mother would live at Wyoming in the summer and then return to Porterville for the older boys to go to school. On November 18, 1893, their first little baby girl was born. They were very happy to have a lovely little daughter. They named her Laura Adeline. Laura after my Grandmother Cherry and Adeline after my mother. I was about three years old when father sold the home and farm in Porterville and moved to Wyoming to stay, but I can remember Grandmother Brough and her home across the street. I remember after her death of a little jacket with four box pleats across the back that looked like a little bustle which was given to mother. When I was big enough I wore it to school.
In Wyoming father had built another good-sized log building that mother and our family lived in, and at harvest time father had to partition to make rooms to store the different kinds of grain and we children had to sleep on top of the grain. He left a room about 15 feet square in the center for mother to cook, wash, iron and everything else needed for the family, with a homemade bed in one corner for her and father. We always had a big, lovely garden with everything in it but tomatoes and corn, (the frost came too early to raise them) and plenty of eggs and chickens. As father was the bishop we had lots of cooking to do for our big family and lots of company. She was an excellent cook and everything always tasted so good. She would make carrot pies that tasted like squash and the best ones out of dried peaches with rich cream or ice cream on top. I can almost taste them now, and the best bread and cinnamon rolls.
Father and the boys worked very hard clearing more ground of sagebrush and greasewood, as preparation to plant more grain. It would be all raked up into a big pile, and after supper he would make a big bonfire and all the family would go to see it. On October 11, 1897 another little baby girl was born, Nettie May, with big blue eyes and red hair. I was so happy to have a baby sister, but mother was very sick. When the baby was about three weeks old she caught cold in her breast. It caked and was so hard and feverish. She was very, very sick. A dear, good friend, Kate McDonald, who was staying with us and taking care of mother said if she had some Procter and Gamble soap she would make a poultice and use it on mother's breast. It was a cold and stormy afternoon, but Tom got on his saddle pony and rode to Fort Bridger, five miles away, where there was a little grocery store, and got the bar of soap. The poultice was made and kept on mother's breast all night, and the next day it was much better. Soon all was well.
After the harvest and fall work was over, father and the older boys would go to the timbers and cut and haul logs for building. We had lived in the granary about two years by then. Father had a nice five-room log house built about five blocks west of Aunt Eliza's home. Mother soon had a lovely home with new rag carpets to cover the floors. The furniture had been stored in Porterville and it was hauled out by team and wagon. We were all so glad to get into our big new log house. It is still being lived in at Lyman, Wyoming in 1979. Soon after the move another fine baby boy, Byron, was born. He was a dear little baby. I remember him so well, but he was only eight months old when he died from spinal meningitis. He was the first dead person I had ever seen. They put nickels on his little eyes to keep them closed. We were all heartbroken to lose our dear baby.
Mother was very good in helping with the sick and went to help wherever she could, and I have heard her tell of many times where there was a death. How they would have to wrap the bodies in sheets wet with salt peter and keep them wet so they would not turn dark, until a casket could be made and funeral arrangements planned. There were no morticians out there in those days, but everyone was ready to help one another and share their joys and sorrows. Mother was a very beautiful and lovely woman, and being a bishop's wife and with a large family, was a very, very busy lady, but she was very efficient and particular in everything she did. She was always loving, patient and kind to her husband and all of her children. We were a happy and healthy family. We went through the hardships of a pioneer life but they didn't seem hardships to us. She would give us younger children a flour sack and send us out to gather all the wool off the sagebrush and wire fences or anywhere. When we got it gathered she would put it in tubs of warm water and homemade soap and let us get in with our bare feet and tromp it to get it clean. We thought it was so much fun. Then she would rinse it in another tub of warm water and put it out to dry. When thoroughly dry it would be brought in and the boys and all would pull it apart in little pieces and picked out all the sticks and grass, then piled in the corner ready for mother to card into batts about four inches wide and eight inches long. It would take mother many, many hours to card enough batts to make a big quilt. All the backs of the legs of worn-out coveralls and the best pieces of coats or any heavy pieces were saved and sewn together to make heavy camp quilts, tied with carpet warp. All the lighter materials from making dresses and shirts were sewn into pretty patterns for our bed quilts.
Then a quilting day was planned and neighbors invited to help quilt them. They were fun days, big dinners and a good visit for all. I still have mother's batt carders. The same was planned for when they had carpet rag bees, and all the neighbors would help each other. But, oh, what fun when mother would get enough big balls of rags woven into strips of carpet of about 36 inches wide, then sew each strip together with carpet warp to fit the room. When all was ready Father and the boys would bring in enough clean straw to cover the floor about six inches deep and then tack the carpet to the edge of the walls. Then how we younger children would have fun rolling over it and hear the straw crackle, but mother never liked house-cleaning time when the tacks all had to be pulled out and the carpet put on the clothes line and beat with brooms to get the dust and dirt out and the old straw that would be worn to a pulp and dust, but the new straw made it nice and warm again.
Mother always made all the homemade soap that was needed for a year in the summer. The lye was made by emptying wood ashes in a barrel with a tub underneath, then water poured over the ashes. What leaked into the tub was pure lye and very dangerous, if anyone got it on them. She would save every scrap of grease and trimming from the meat and all the cracklings after rendering out the lard. Then five-gallon cans would be set over fires out in the yard. The lye and grease boiled together until it was thick as honey then poured into tubs to get cool. Then it was cut into bars about four by four inches and laid out on boards to dry. It was really a hard day's work for mother and one of the boys father would leave to help her. My job was to tend the baby and small children and keep them away from where they were making the soap.
Another beautiful baby boy was born February 6, 1902, Parley Pratt. He was her last lovely baby.
Mother was president of the Primary and the baby was loved by all the children. Mother sent to Sears and Roebuck and got a baby buggy for Parley that looked like a little Ford automobile, and it was so cute. She usually had to stay awhile, so I would take the baby and Nettie home, and so many times Clyde would push the buggy home for me.
Mother and father were always very faithful and active in all of their church duties and callings. Father was Branch president then Bishop for 18 years in all. Mother worked with the Primary for many years, then she was set apart to be the ward Relief Society President. To do their Relief Society teaching they would have to take a team and buggy and be gone all day. The homes they had to visit were so far apart.
She made many trips to Salt Lake City with father for conferences and special bishopric meetings. She would buy her such pretty hats and beautiful dresses, when she would get home I thought she was the most beautiful mother in the world. Nettie and I would always get some pretty little gift, a cute little doll or little china cup, sometimes a ring or beads, but never without something to make us happy. She was also Relief Society Stake President for many years. When they had to travel with team and white-top buggy from Woodruff, Utah to Green River, Wyoming it would always be a three to four day trip. About six ladies would go each trip, driving their own team and taking care of them.
If ever a man was blessed for living polygamy, as it was suggested by our church leaders, Father should have a crown in heaven for he never did anything or bought for one wife until he could do the same for both wives and families. I remember when he started planning to build two lovely big frame homes, it was really quite a big project as most everything had to be hauled or shipped in by train, then hauled in ten miles from Carter to Lyman. Both Mother and Eliza decided on the floor plan they would like, then father built according to their plans and both houses were being built at the same time. Aunt Eliza moved into her lovely big new home in November because she was expecting a baby. Mother moved into our lovely big home just before Christmas. We were all so happy and had such a wonderful Christmas, with a Christmas tree that touched the nine-foot ceiling. It was just two blocks from the center of town. Father put a picket fence around the yard and soon we had a nice lawn, trees and flowers that would grow in that climate. I think Parley got some of his landscaping experience while helping mother. He was her helper in the gardening, watering, weeding and mowing to keep the lawns nice.
Mother was a wonderful cook and father being bishop, all the church authorities stayed at our home, also the drummers and traveling salesmen, ranchers that would come into town for business and supplies. It really was quite a "hotel" as there was no other place in town for visitors. One salesman gave her a silver thimble with a gold band around the top. I still have that thimble. She also took school teachers to board and room with us. Mary Wanlass stayed with us two or three years. She was a lovely, beautiful young lady and was the music teacher at the school. Mother took the money she paid and bought a nice second-hand organ, and Mary gave me music lessons. I soon got so I could play for Primary and Sunday School by practicing the songs for my music lessons, and I could play quite well.
Mother and father both loved to come to Salt Lake City to do temple ordinance work, and for many years soon after Christmas they would come and rent a small apartment as close to the temple as possible and stay for January, February and March, then be home in time for spring work.
In 1920 they decided to sell the big ranch, all the livestock, machinery and everything including the two lovely homes, which were the very nicest homes in the Bridger Valley, and move to Utah. Father bought two big rock homes in Bountiful, both on the same street and about two blocks apart, and as I remember, about 20 acres of good truck-gardening ground. Mother's home was bought from a Mr. Holbrook. Father and Parley did well with truck gardening for quite a number of years. After Parley got married and moved back to Wyoming, the work was too hard for father alone, so they decided to sell and move into Salt Lake City to be close to the temple. So Clyde and I bought their place and lived there two years, then sold it to Mr. Yeager, a builder. He soon divided the acreage into building lots and built nice homes on them. Mother's home was remodeled, a street cut clear to the top of the field, and now it is a very beautiful little part of Bountiful. Father and mother bought a nice little four- room home at 850 Windson Street and were very happy there. They did a great deal of temple work. Father was soon made an ordinance worker and worked in the Salt Lake Temple for many years.
Mother always had a nice garden and lots of lovely flowers. She always kept about ten little banty chickens so she could have fresh eggs. She was so good to help Nettie and me with our big families. She would come with her little canvas valise, overnight bag and stay a night or two and darn socks, mend underwear, and patch the knees of several pair of overalls for the boys. Our children all loved her so much. Each year she would go with us when we went to Little Cottonwood Canyon for a week's vacation. She would make dolls from root beer bottles and dress them in the socks that were too worn out to mend, then she would make little boats from the bark of trees for the boys to sail down the small streams. They were all fun-filled days, cooking over the campfire and sleeping on the ground. We would go swimming in a side stream that didn't run back into the river.
Mother and father would always spend Christmas Eve with us and our family. She had a good sense of humor, and we spent many happy hours and days together. I would always try and stop to see her for a few minutes if I was going to town, and she would want me to stop and have a piece of spice and raisin cake and a cup of peppermint tea with her. I often think of it, as I still like to drink peppermint tea. Mother was always such a good sport and liked to go places and do things. She would say, " I keep my coat hanging on the back of the door, and if anyone says come and go with us, I am always ready."
We had been to a baby shower for my cousin Wanda and had such a good time, we took her home and left her feeling good. At day-light the next morning father called us from a neighbor's home (they didn't have a telephone) and said she had been very sick all night and would we come over. We got in the car and went right over. When we saw how sick she was, Clyde called the doctor. He came and said it was a gall bladder attack. He gave her a shot to ease the pain and left, and in about twenty minutes mother passed away. I have always felt the medication the doctor gave her was too strong for her heart condition. It was such a sad and sorrowful shock to all her family, relatives and many, many friends, for everyone who knew mother loved and respected her. She died 5 May 935 at her little home on Windson Street. Funeral services were arranged for and a very lovely service was held at the Bountiful tabernacle with many, many friends coming from Lyman and the Bridger Valley for the service. She was laid to rest at the Bountiful Memorial Cemetery on Oak Street. Father and Aunt Eliza, all three are laid side by side.
Wallace Calvin Brough never married.
History of Wallace Calvin Brough (1891-1946)
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book: Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestors & Descendants
Originally written by Laura Adeline Brough Bradshaw in 1979HISTORY:
Wallace Calvin Brough, the fourth son of Samuel Richard Brough and Phoebe Adeline Cherry, was born September 27, 1891, at Porterville, Morgan County, Utah. He was blessed by William Deardon on November 22, 1891. He spent his early childhood days as most little boys do, playing, doing chores, carrying water from the canal.
He moved to Lyman, Wyoming with our family when he was about seven years old. He worked with his father and brothers clearing sagebrush and wood off the homestead, pond, then at night all the family would go out and have a big bonfire. He started school at the old log Woolsey school house. We had to walk about two miles. He was excellent in arithmetic and his other subjects but language and grammar, as we called it, and I was poor in arithmetic and hated doing it, so he would do my arithmetic for me, and as I liked language, I would do all the diagramming of sentences for him. He had a very happy, pleasant personality and got along fine with all of his friends. He learned to play the guitar very well and played in a string band with other friends for programs and parades, and often played in a string band with other musicians with violin, piano and his guitar for the dances at Lyman, Wyoming.
When he was about 15 years old, he started working with William Phillips in a blacksmith shop and did so well he was soon a partner in the business, but he took time each winter to go to the BYU college at Logan, Utah. He loved horses and had a beautiful riding pony that was a pretty good race horse. He also had a team of mules named Sal and Jane that were used for much of the hard work on the farm. I remember he had the mules on the sleigh the night he took mother and Clyde and I to the train station at Carter, Wyoming, to come to Salt Lake to be married in the temple.
He also carried the U.S. Mail from the train station at Carter, Wyoming to Lyman on horseback for several years. He was active in church and social work until he enlisted in the U. S. Army, on June 1, 1918. I have a certificate of an honorable discharge from the United States Army that gives me all of this information. Wallace Calvin Brough enlisted at Laramie, Wyoming June 1, 1918 and was sent to Camp Knox, Kentucky and assigned to duty as a horse show specialist and in the cavalry. His release states: Given for faithful and honest service and is hereby honorably released from the United States Army April 2, 1919. His health is very good and of excellent character.
After returning home, the girl who was his sweetheart and had promised to wait for him had married another boy. So he didn't stay home very long. He went to Casper, Wyoming and was foreman of a big ranch there for several years. Then he acquired a small ranch and some cattle for himself at Alcoa, Wyoming not far from Casper and lived there alone, his nearest neighbor being about three miles away. He was a friend to everyone who knew him.
Each year before Christmas he would get his horse and go to the mountains and cut a beautiful Christmas tree and take it to a friend. He also learned to be a taxidermist and was very good. He tanned many hides and many deer heads and other animal heads were beautifully mounted by him. He was found dead in his lonely cabin by his closest neighbor, of a heart attack. The neighbor called me and told us of his death December 16, 1966. We met his brother Jesse at Lyman and drove all night to Alcoa, made arrangements at Casper to have his body shipped to Salt Lake City, Utah where a beautiful funeral was held in the garden room of the Desert Mortuary. It was like being in Paradise, with ferns, flowers and little singing canaries that sang along with the music. He was buried in the beautiful cemetery on our lot at Bountiful. The family all helped to put a lovely headstone at his grave.
All the years he was away he would come home once a year for a visit with the family and loved ones, usually at Thanksgiving, and we were happy to see him and had so much fun. My children were small and they remember him taking them to the store and buying them candy, gum and anything else they wanted. Eleene says she still has a little Indian doll he gave her.
The birth date and place of Mima Marshall is listed as "27 May 1887" in "Minersville" Utah in her marriage sealing record of 2 February 1910 in the LDS Salt Lake Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 1239565, page 133, item 2386).
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and Richard C. McDonald is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=1509526.
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and James S. Owens is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=688366. Also, this marriage is mentioned (without date or place) in the 1993 book by Kathaleen Kennington Hamblin: "Bridger Valley: A Guide To The Past", page 266.
History of Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestors & Descendants". Originally written by Ida Berenice Brough in 1980. Edited by R. Clayton Brough in August 2007.
Ernest LeRoy Brough was born on December 13, 1885 in Porterville, Utah, to Samuel Richard Brough and Phoebe Adeline Cherry. Roy was the third son to Samuel Richard Brough, and as he grew up he was a great joy and comfort to his father.
Roy was a good natured boy and loved everyone. He particularly loved all of the Lord's creations, including any kind of animal, and tried to live by the teachings of the Gospel throughout his life.
As a youth, Roy was a fine young man with large blue eyes, brown curly hair, an honest face and a kind eye, and had a straight, strong and well-built body. He loved the outdoors and spent a great deal of time with his father and his two older brothers, Thomas and Jessie, taking care of the chores of a farm. In his dealings with his fellowman, he was always found to be more than fair. He believed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and he taught this principal to all his children.
Roy was a happy person and loved to dance. With his limber body and small feet he became well known for his dancing abilities. It was at one of these dances that he met the girl that was to become his wife: Mima Marshall, daughter of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. She was a pretty young lady and Roy really took to her. The only disappointment he found was that she was beginning to go out with his brother, Tom, and Roy knew that if he was ever going to get to know Mima, he had to learn to "beat Tom's time." So one night in 1909, Roy went to a church "box lunch dinner and dance," where the women fixed a lunch for two and placed it in a beautifully decorated lunch box to be raffled off later in the dance. Roy then spied which lunch box Mima had brought and bid top dollar for it. Of course, the price he paid for Mima's lunch box didn't bother him, since it gave him a chance to be with her. This began their courtship and they were finally married in the Salt Lake City L.D.S. Temple on July 28, 1909.
After Roy married Mima, he purchased a 960 acre ranch of his own on the Black Smith Fork River (which is about five miles out of Lyman, Wyoming) and did quite well. He and Mima fixed up the ranch house that was on the land, which had two rooms--a long room with a kitchen at one end and a small bedroom. Then Roy built a meat house just outside the kitchen door where Mima later hung and stored the meat that he slaughtered for the winter months. In addition, Roy and Mima owned a house in Lyman, Wyoming.
On August 30, 1910, Mima gave birth to Roy's first child and son, Louis LeRoy. As mentioned before, Roy and Mima really enjoyed dancing together and they often went to church dances, where they and other couples would bring their babies and put them to sleep along the wall of the dance floor on coats. However, one evening when Louis was still a baby, they decided to leave him at home, and when they returned from the dance they couldn't find him. They were frantic and feared that perhaps someone had kidnapped Louis. Finally after searching for some time, they heard a faint cry between the bed and the wall where Louis had been sleeping. Sure enough, there was Louis, caught in a blanket which was hanging between the wall and the bed. This event so scared Roy and Mima that they never left Louis alone in the house again until he was older. At the age of four, Louis became Roy's constant companion, with Roy often taking Louis out into the fields on horseback to care for the cattle.
On July 19, 1912, Mima gave birth to their second child, Ida Berenice, who quickly became the apple of her father's eye, as Roy never went on a trip but what he would bring something home for Berenice. She would have probably been spoiled if her father had lived longer. During the next few years, Roy saw two more of his children born: Robert Marshall, born on June 7, 1914; and Veda Mima, born on October 26, 1916.
Roy loved his children and took time to let them know he loved them and never punished them harshly or unwisely. After more children began to come, the ranch house became too small, so Mima and the children would spend the winter months in Roy's house in Lyman. Roy owned a blacksmith's shop in Lyman, and during the cold snowy months, when planting could not be done down on the ranch, he would work in his blacksmith shop. Every spring, Roy planted a large vegetable garden and instructed Louis and Berenice how to take care of it, this way teaching his children the value of work.
Roy was a very hard worker and had one of the largest cattle ranches in the region. The only bad habit he had was that he chewed tobacco whenever he did his slaughtering, and he was not a regular church goer. However, he never failed to see that his wife and family got to church and he was always at church to bless and name his children. In addition, Roy paid a full tithing every month for as long as he lived.
Roy lived to be only 33 years of age, but he lived those 33 years very fully and richly. In the middle of October, 1918, he made a trip by wagon to Carter, Wyoming, to bring back a load of coal for his family for the winter. However, on his way home he ran into a terrible blizzard, and by the time he reached his home he was very wet and cold. Mima had him get into some dry clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a hot toddy and stuck his feet in the oven. However, it was too late, for he had already gotten the flu and was running a very high fever. The flu was at an epidemic stage at this time and many families were dying from it. His father, mother, Mima's mother and oldest sister, Metta Heder, were all at Roy's house at the time, because Mima and the children had also come down with the flu. The epidemic was so bad that doctors would not even make house calls, and every family had to take care of themselves and their own dead. Roy died from the flu on October 16, 1918 and was buried by his father, Samuel R. Brough, his brother Thomas and brother-in-law, Clyde Bradshaw, on October 19, 1918 in Lyman. (His body was later moved to Ogden, Utah). A few hours following Roy's burial, Mima gave birth to their last child, a girl: Helen Metta, who just like her father, had large blue eyes and brown curly hair.
With the loss of her husband and the birth of their last child within two days of each other, Mima went through a very trying time. However, she knew what she had to do for her young family, and so she rolled up her sleeves and went ahead with life. Louis grew up over night and throughout his 21 years of life was a tremendous help to his mother.
Mima continued to live in Lyman a year after Roy's death. Then she decided that Lyman did not hold much future for her children, so in the latter part of 1919 she sold her husband's ranch, cattle livestock, their home and other major assets, and moved to Evanston, Wyoming where her mother, Ida Marshall Dotson, was living with her sister Metta Heder, who owned the Smith Hotel in Evanston. Mima stayed with her sister at the Smith Hotel until she was able to find a house to rent, thereby giving Louis and Berenice a chance to get started in their new school.
Mima finally moved her family into a small two-story house and remained there for a few years. This gave her and her children a chance to make new friends and for Mima to be able to find a house to buy. She then bought a large two-story house with a basement that belonged to a Mr. Bird, located at 341 Main Street in Evanston, and it was in this house where most of her children's memories began.
Mima took in roomers and boarders, and sewed, ironed and washed in order to be near her children and at the same time provide them with the necessities of life. She also gave piano lessons and saw to it that all her children learned to play a musical instrument. Louis learned to play the saxophone, Berenice the piano, Marshall the trombone, Veda the violin, and Helen sang. Many nights she and her children would gather in the parlor of their home for a musical evening, and since some of the boarders and roomers also played a musical instrument, they really had some exciting and beautiful evenings together. In these early years in Evanston, Mima set one night out of the week for her family to be together and called it a "family night." She did this in her own home long before the L.D.S. Church set it down as a practice, which all families should engage in today.
Mima was an industrious woman and made all her children's clothing from "hand-me-downs. She would take sugar and salt sacks and make the girls' underwear from them. She would also add lace and embroidery to her other remodeled clothing to make it more attractive. Berenice never had a store-bought dress or coat until she was in the eleventh grade in school, yet Mima's children were considered the best-dressed children in Evanston. Many nights Mima would sew all night in order to complete an article for a friend or neighbor, and then cook, wash, iron or whatever else had to be done for her children and boarders during the next day.
As busy as she was, Mima always had time to be close to her Church and her Father in Heaven, and saw to it that her children always got to their church meetings. Louis was very active in scouting and was called to be the Assistant Scout Master. He was a leader and was loved by all who knew him. He later became an Eagle Scout. He went on many of the scout outings and was given an honor for saving a boy's life while on a trip to Jackson Hole Lake in Wyoming.
The large house that Mima and her family lived in gave them many advantages because of the space inside and the large yard that surrounded it. During the time her children lived in the home, it was the largest house in their neighborhood and therefore its size encouraged neighborhood children to often gather for an evening of fun, sports and games. Mima always encouraged her children to bring their friends home. She was a good mother and always took time from her busy schedule to be with her children. She never went to sleep at night until she knew that all of her children were tucked snugly in their beds. Indeed, as Louis and Berenice began to date, they were encouraged by their mother to come into her bedroom and sit on their father's trunk beside the bed and relate their activities to her. She never discouraged any of her children in feeling free to talk with her.
The winters in Evanston were quite severe, but Mima taught her children to work hard, to be responsible for their deeds and actions, and to do whatever they did very well and completely. As they were growing up, Louis and Marshall regularly delivered papers on their bicycles, and when the weather really turned bad, such as during the winter, they delivered these papers in a small wagon, walking the whole route through town. These two boys never missed a single delivery to a customer all the time they had the paper route in Evanston. While living in Evanston, Mima cooked on a large coal stove and did her washing by hand with a hand wringer. Sometimes Louis and Berenice had to stay home from school on wash day to help her. She was finally able to purchase a copper-tub electric washing- machine, and that made things very much easier for her. Louis, Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen all remembered very well the tin bath tub that they had to use. It was so cold that hot water had to first be put in the tub just to warm up the tin. Also, their home first had a pot-bellied stove in the dining room that used coal and wood and that was where the children would gather around in the mornings to dress. Finally when the Utah Gas line was brought into Evanston, Mima was able to get gas into her home and she had her stove and furnace changed over to gas. The gas line brought more boarders into Mima's home and Louis got a job with the gas company as a laborer. One young man, Milton Kendall Maynard, was one of Mima's roomers and Louis really liked him. Milton later became one of Mima's sons-in-law, through the hard efforts of Louis.
After Louis graduated from Evanston High School, he got a job working for the Evanston Bank, while Marshall got a part-time job working in a mortuary.
In 1930, Mima moved her family to Ogden, Utah where they could have more advantages. She sold cosmetics and other things to help sustain her family, while Louis worked in a service station, and Berenice worked part time at the J & J Newberry Store in Ogden. A year after they had moved to Ogden, Louis, then 21 years of age, died from a ruptured appendix on June 10, 1931. This was hard on Mima, because she had first lost her husband, and now her oldest son was gone as well. However, she again held to her family and faith in the Gospel and carried on.
After Louis died, Veda went to Los Angeles, California to live with a cousin and to complete her high school education. When Marshall graduated from Ogden High School, he and a boy friend bought an old Model T-Ford car, fixed it up and headed for California. They got just outside of Los Angeles when the car broke down, and for a while they were forced to hike and sleep behind billboards. Fortunately, Marshall had an uncle living in the Los Angeles area, Uncle Fay Marshall, who took care of them for awhile. Eventually Marshall got a job working for Sears Roebuck and Company, after which he worked for Sears for over forty years and became manager of the large Sears store in Inglewood, California.
In the meantime, Mima got a job working in a home in Ogden taking care of a fine old gentleman and it gave her and Helen a place to live and an income besides. Milton and Berenice got married on February 14, 1934, in the Salt Lake Temple and made their home in Ogden, Utah. Berenice then gave birth to two children. While in Ogden, Mima continually worried about Veda and Marshall being in California, so in 1939 she went to California, leaving Helen to stay with Milt and Berenice so Helen could complete her high school education in Ogden.
While in California, Marshall met a fine young lady, Utahna Peterson from Preston, Idaho, and they were married on June 11, 1937 in the Salt Lake Temple. Five children were born into this family.
Veda met a returned missionary, Walter Otto Dorny, and they were married on April 28, 1938 in the Salt Lake Temple. Four children came from this marriage.
When Helen graduated from Ogden High School, she went to Los Angeles to live with her mother. Mima found a position in a home taking care of a man and his son, so she and Helen went there to live. The man was Rudolph Rode and his son was Robert Rode. Mima later married Rudolph, and Helen later married his son, Robert. Rudolph Rode was a fine man and loved Mima and her family very much. He truly became a father to Mima's children, who had missed having a father for so many years.
Helen worked for Sears for awhile in California and then got a fine job working for KHJ Radio Station. After she and Bob were married on August 5, 1942, Bob was called into the Navy during the Second World War and was shipped out on a torpedo boat into the Pacific Ocean. Helen then took a job at North American Defense Plant and did what she could for the war effort. Bob and Helen had three fine children. One of her children was killed in a car accident, which was a real shock to Helen and quite a trial for her, but she kept in mind the example that Mima had set for her and carried on as her mother had. Bob and Helen eventually divorced.
As Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen raised their families, they stayed close to their mother, and Mima was blessed with fourteen wonderful grandchildren. All eight of Mima's grandsons served missions for the L.D.S. Church, and all fourteen of her grandchildren were married in the House of the Lord to their companions. In addition, Berenice and Marshall spent considerable time and money throughout their lives doing genealogical research and temple work for their ancestors, with their two younger sisters, Helen and Veda, occasionally assisting them in these endeavors.
Mima lived to be 78 years old and saw many of the fruits of her labors come to pass. She died on July 13, 1965, of a heart attack at Knotts Berry Farm in California, while eating one of their wonderful chicken dinners. She was buried in Ogden, Utah in the Altorest Mortuary between her husband, Roy, and her oldest son, Louis. Since her death another daughter, Helen Metta, has died (on May 30, 1979), as has her second and last son, Robert Marshall (who died on September 8,
Marriage Notes for Richard C. McDonald and Mima Marshall-4
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and Richard C. McDonald is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=1509526, and which states that they were married on 30 August 1921 in Evanston, Uinta, Wyoming.
The birth date and place of Mima Marshall is listed as "27 May 1887" in "Minersville" Utah in her marriage sealing record of 2 February 1910 in the LDS Salt Lake Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 1239565, page 133, item 2386).
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and Richard C. McDonald is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=1509526.
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and James S. Owens is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=688366. Also, this marriage is mentioned (without date or place) in the 1993 book by Kathaleen Kennington Hamblin: "Bridger Valley: A Guide To The Past", page 266.
History of Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestors & Descendants". Originally written by Ida Berenice Brough in 1980. Edited by R. Clayton Brough in August 2007.
Ernest LeRoy Brough was born on December 13, 1885 in Porterville, Utah, to Samuel Richard Brough and Phoebe Adeline Cherry. Roy was the third son to Samuel Richard Brough, and as he grew up he was a great joy and comfort to his father.
Roy was a good natured boy and loved everyone. He particularly loved all of the Lord's creations, including any kind of animal, and tried to live by the teachings of the Gospel throughout his life.
As a youth, Roy was a fine young man with large blue eyes, brown curly hair, an honest face and a kind eye, and had a straight, strong and well-built body. He loved the outdoors and spent a great deal of time with his father and his two older brothers, Thomas and Jessie, taking care of the chores of a farm. In his dealings with his fellowman, he was always found to be more than fair. He believed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and he taught this principal to all his children.
Roy was a happy person and loved to dance. With his limber body and small feet he became well known for his dancing abilities. It was at one of these dances that he met the girl that was to become his wife: Mima Marshall, daughter of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. She was a pretty young lady and Roy really took to her. The only disappointment he found was that she was beginning to go out with his brother, Tom, and Roy knew that if he was ever going to get to know Mima, he had to learn to "beat Tom's time." So one night in 1909, Roy went to a church "box lunch dinner and dance," where the women fixed a lunch for two and placed it in a beautifully decorated lunch box to be raffled off later in the dance. Roy then spied which lunch box Mima had brought and bid top dollar for it. Of course, the price he paid for Mima's lunch box didn't bother him, since it gave him a chance to be with her. This began their courtship and they were finally married in the Salt Lake City L.D.S. Temple on July 28, 1909.
After Roy married Mima, he purchased a 960 acre ranch of his own on the Black Smith Fork River (which is about five miles out of Lyman, Wyoming) and did quite well. He and Mima fixed up the ranch house that was on the land, which had two rooms--a long room with a kitchen at one end and a small bedroom. Then Roy built a meat house just outside the kitchen door where Mima later hung and stored the meat that he slaughtered for the winter months. In addition, Roy and Mima owned a house in Lyman, Wyoming.
On August 30, 1910, Mima gave birth to Roy's first child and son, Louis LeRoy. As mentioned before, Roy and Mima really enjoyed dancing together and they often went to church dances, where they and other couples would bring their babies and put them to sleep along the wall of the dance floor on coats. However, one evening when Louis was still a baby, they decided to leave him at home, and when they returned from the dance they couldn't find him. They were frantic and feared that perhaps someone had kidnapped Louis. Finally after searching for some time, they heard a faint cry between the bed and the wall where Louis had been sleeping. Sure enough, there was Louis, caught in a blanket which was hanging between the wall and the bed. This event so scared Roy and Mima that they never left Louis alone in the house again until he was older. At the age of four, Louis became Roy's constant companion, with Roy often taking Louis out into the fields on horseback to care for the cattle.
On July 19, 1912, Mima gave birth to their second child, Ida Berenice, who quickly became the apple of her father's eye, as Roy never went on a trip but what he would bring something home for Berenice. She would have probably been spoiled if her father had lived longer. During the next few years, Roy saw two more of his children born: Robert Marshall, born on June 7, 1914; and Veda Mima, born on October 26, 1916.
Roy loved his children and took time to let them know he loved them and never punished them harshly or unwisely. After more children began to come, the ranch house became too small, so Mima and the children would spend the winter months in Roy's house in Lyman. Roy owned a blacksmith's shop in Lyman, and during the cold snowy months, when planting could not be done down on the ranch, he would work in his blacksmith shop. Every spring, Roy planted a large vegetable garden and instructed Louis and Berenice how to take care of it, this way teaching his children the value of work.
Roy was a very hard worker and had one of the largest cattle ranches in the region. The only bad habit he had was that he chewed tobacco whenever he did his slaughtering, and he was not a regular church goer. However, he never failed to see that his wife and family got to church and he was always at church to bless and name his children. In addition, Roy paid a full tithing every month for as long as he lived.
Roy lived to be only 33 years of age, but he lived those 33 years very fully and richly. In the middle of October, 1918, he made a trip by wagon to Carter, Wyoming, to bring back a load of coal for his family for the winter. However, on his way home he ran into a terrible blizzard, and by the time he reached his home he was very wet and cold. Mima had him get into some dry clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a hot toddy and stuck his feet in the oven. However, it was too late, for he had already gotten the flu and was running a very high fever. The flu was at an epidemic stage at this time and many families were dying from it. His father, mother, Mima's mother and oldest sister, Metta Heder, were all at Roy's house at the time, because Mima and the children had also come down with the flu. The epidemic was so bad that doctors would not even make house calls, and every family had to take care of themselves and their own dead. Roy died from the flu on October 16, 1918 and was buried by his father, Samuel R. Brough, his brother Thomas and brother-in-law, Clyde Bradshaw, on October 19, 1918 in Lyman. (His body was later moved to Ogden, Utah). A few hours following Roy's burial, Mima gave birth to their last child, a girl: Helen Metta, who just like her father, had large blue eyes and brown curly hair.
With the loss of her husband and the birth of their last child within two days of each other, Mima went through a very trying time. However, she knew what she had to do for her young family, and so she rolled up her sleeves and went ahead with life. Louis grew up over night and throughout his 21 years of life was a tremendous help to his mother.
Mima continued to live in Lyman a year after Roy's death. Then she decided that Lyman did not hold much future for her children, so in the latter part of 1919 she sold her husband's ranch, cattle livestock, their home and other major assets, and moved to Evanston, Wyoming where her mother, Ida Marshall Dotson, was living with her sister Metta Heder, who owned the Smith Hotel in Evanston. Mima stayed with her sister at the Smith Hotel until she was able to find a house to rent, thereby giving Louis and Berenice a chance to get started in their new school.
Mima finally moved her family into a small two-story house and remained there for a few years. This gave her and her children a chance to make new friends and for Mima to be able to find a house to buy. She then bought a large two-story house with a basement that belonged to a Mr. Bird, located at 341 Main Street in Evanston, and it was in this house where most of her children's memories began.
Mima took in roomers and boarders, and sewed, ironed and washed in order to be near her children and at the same time provide them with the necessities of life. She also gave piano lessons and saw to it that all her children learned to play a musical instrument. Louis learned to play the saxophone, Berenice the piano, Marshall the trombone, Veda the violin, and Helen sang. Many nights she and her children would gather in the parlor of their home for a musical evening, and since some of the boarders and roomers also played a musical instrument, they really had some exciting and beautiful evenings together. In these early years in Evanston, Mima set one night out of the week for her family to be together and called it a "family night." She did this in her own home long before the L.D.S. Church set it down as a practice, which all families should engage in today.
Mima was an industrious woman and made all her children's clothing from "hand-me-downs. She would take sugar and salt sacks and make the girls' underwear from them. She would also add lace and embroidery to her other remodeled clothing to make it more attractive. Berenice never had a store-bought dress or coat until she was in the eleventh grade in school, yet Mima's children were considered the best-dressed children in Evanston. Many nights Mima would sew all night in order to complete an article for a friend or neighbor, and then cook, wash, iron or whatever else had to be done for her children and boarders during the next day.
As busy as she was, Mima always had time to be close to her Church and her Father in Heaven, and saw to it that her children always got to their church meetings. Louis was very active in scouting and was called to be the Assistant Scout Master. He was a leader and was loved by all who knew him. He later became an Eagle Scout. He went on many of the scout outings and was given an honor for saving a boy's life while on a trip to Jackson Hole Lake in Wyoming.
The large house that Mima and her family lived in gave them many advantages because of the space inside and the large yard that surrounded it. During the time her children lived in the home, it was the largest house in their neighborhood and therefore its size encouraged neighborhood children to often gather for an evening of fun, sports and games. Mima always encouraged her children to bring their friends home. She was a good mother and always took time from her busy schedule to be with her children. She never went to sleep at night until she knew that all of her children were tucked snugly in their beds. Indeed, as Louis and Berenice began to date, they were encouraged by their mother to come into her bedroom and sit on their father's trunk beside the bed and relate their activities to her. She never discouraged any of her children in feeling free to talk with her.
The winters in Evanston were quite severe, but Mima taught her children to work hard, to be responsible for their deeds and actions, and to do whatever they did very well and completely. As they were growing up, Louis and Marshall regularly delivered papers on their bicycles, and when the weather really turned bad, such as during the winter, they delivered these papers in a small wagon, walking the whole route through town. These two boys never missed a single delivery to a customer all the time they had the paper route in Evanston. While living in Evanston, Mima cooked on a large coal stove and did her washing by hand with a hand wringer. Sometimes Louis and Berenice had to stay home from school on wash day to help her. She was finally able to purchase a copper-tub electric washing- machine, and that made things very much easier for her. Louis, Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen all remembered very well the tin bath tub that they had to use. It was so cold that hot water had to first be put in the tub just to warm up the tin. Also, their home first had a pot-bellied stove in the dining room that used coal and wood and that was where the children would gather around in the mornings to dress. Finally when the Utah Gas line was brought into Evanston, Mima was able to get gas into her home and she had her stove and furnace changed over to gas. The gas line brought more boarders into Mima's home and Louis got a job with the gas company as a laborer. One young man, Milton Kendall Maynard, was one of Mima's roomers and Louis really liked him. Milton later became one of Mima's sons-in-law, through the hard efforts of Louis.
After Louis graduated from Evanston High School, he got a job working for the Evanston Bank, while Marshall got a part-time job working in a mortuary.
In 1930, Mima moved her family to Ogden, Utah where they could have more advantages. She sold cosmetics and other things to help sustain her family, while Louis worked in a service station, and Berenice worked part time at the J & J Newberry Store in Ogden. A year after they had moved to Ogden, Louis, then 21 years of age, died from a ruptured appendix on June 10, 1931. This was hard on Mima, because she had first lost her husband, and now her oldest son was gone as well. However, she again held to her family and faith in the Gospel and carried on.
After Louis died, Veda went to Los Angeles, California to live with a cousin and to complete her high school education. When Marshall graduated from Ogden High School, he and a boy friend bought an old Model T-Ford car, fixed it up and headed for California. They got just outside of Los Angeles when the car broke down, and for a while they were forced to hike and sleep behind billboards. Fortunately, Marshall had an uncle living in the Los Angeles area, Uncle Fay Marshall, who took care of them for awhile. Eventually Marshall got a job working for Sears Roebuck and Company, after which he worked for Sears for over forty years and became manager of the large Sears store in Inglewood, California.
In the meantime, Mima got a job working in a home in Ogden taking care of a fine old gentleman and it gave her and Helen a place to live and an income besides. Milton and Berenice got married on February 14, 1934, in the Salt Lake Temple and made their home in Ogden, Utah. Berenice then gave birth to two children. While in Ogden, Mima continually worried about Veda and Marshall being in California, so in 1939 she went to California, leaving Helen to stay with Milt and Berenice so Helen could complete her high school education in Ogden.
While in California, Marshall met a fine young lady, Utahna Peterson from Preston, Idaho, and they were married on June 11, 1937 in the Salt Lake Temple. Five children were born into this family.
Veda met a returned missionary, Walter Otto Dorny, and they were married on April 28, 1938 in the Salt Lake Temple. Four children came from this marriage.
When Helen graduated from Ogden High School, she went to Los Angeles to live with her mother. Mima found a position in a home taking care of a man and his son, so she and Helen went there to live. The man was Rudolph Rode and his son was Robert Rode. Mima later married Rudolph, and Helen later married his son, Robert. Rudolph Rode was a fine man and loved Mima and her family very much. He truly became a father to Mima's children, who had missed having a father for so many years.
Helen worked for Sears for awhile in California and then got a fine job working for KHJ Radio Station. After she and Bob were married on August 5, 1942, Bob was called into the Navy during the Second World War and was shipped out on a torpedo boat into the Pacific Ocean. Helen then took a job at North American Defense Plant and did what she could for the war effort. Bob and Helen had three fine children. One of her children was killed in a car accident, which was a real shock to Helen and quite a trial for her, but she kept in mind the example that Mima had set for her and carried on as her mother had. Bob and Helen eventually divorced.
As Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen raised their families, they stayed close to their mother, and Mima was blessed with fourteen wonderful grandchildren. All eight of Mima's grandsons served missions for the L.D.S. Church, and all fourteen of her grandchildren were married in the House of the Lord to their companions. In addition, Berenice and Marshall spent considerable time and money throughout their lives doing genealogical research and temple work for their ancestors, with their two younger sisters, Helen and Veda, occasionally assisting them in these endeavors.
Mima lived to be 78 years old and saw many of the fruits of her labors come to pass. She died on July 13, 1965, of a heart attack at Knotts Berry Farm in California, while eating one of their wonderful chicken dinners. She was buried in Ogden, Utah in the Altorest Mortuary between her husband, Roy, and her oldest son, Louis. Since her death another daughter, Helen Metta, has died (on May 30, 1979), as has her second and last son, Robert Marshall (who died on September 8,
Marriage Notes for James Silas Owens and Mima Marshall-4
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and James S. Owens is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=688366. Also, this marriage is mentioned (without date or place) in the 1993 book by Kathaleen Kennington Hamblin: "Bridger Valley: A Guide To The Past", page 266.
The birth date and place of Mima Marshall is listed as "27 May 1887" in "Minersville" Utah in her marriage sealing record of 2 February 1910 in the LDS Salt Lake Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 1239565, page 133, item 2386).
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and Richard C. McDonald is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=1509526.
The marriage of Mima Marshall (Brough) and James S. Owens is listed in the online BYU-Idaho Marriage Index that can be found at: http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/westernStatesRecordDetail.cfm?recordID=688366. Also, this marriage is mentioned (without date or place) in the 1993 book by Kathaleen Kennington Hamblin: "Bridger Valley: A Guide To The Past", page 266.
History of Ernest LeRoy Brough and Mima Marshall
Quoted from the 1980 RBFO book "Samuel Richard Brough, 1857-1947: His History, Ancestors & Descendants". Originally written by Ida Berenice Brough in 1980. Edited by R. Clayton Brough in August 2007.
Ernest LeRoy Brough was born on December 13, 1885 in Porterville, Utah, to Samuel Richard Brough and Phoebe Adeline Cherry. Roy was the third son to Samuel Richard Brough, and as he grew up he was a great joy and comfort to his father.
Roy was a good natured boy and loved everyone. He particularly loved all of the Lord's creations, including any kind of animal, and tried to live by the teachings of the Gospel throughout his life.
As a youth, Roy was a fine young man with large blue eyes, brown curly hair, an honest face and a kind eye, and had a straight, strong and well-built body. He loved the outdoors and spent a great deal of time with his father and his two older brothers, Thomas and Jessie, taking care of the chores of a farm. In his dealings with his fellowman, he was always found to be more than fair. He believed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and he taught this principal to all his children.
Roy was a happy person and loved to dance. With his limber body and small feet he became well known for his dancing abilities. It was at one of these dances that he met the girl that was to become his wife: Mima Marshall, daughter of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. She was a pretty young lady and Roy really took to her. The only disappointment he found was that she was beginning to go out with his brother, Tom, and Roy knew that if he was ever going to get to know Mima, he had to learn to "beat Tom's time." So one night in 1909, Roy went to a church "box lunch dinner and dance," where the women fixed a lunch for two and placed it in a beautifully decorated lunch box to be raffled off later in the dance. Roy then spied which lunch box Mima had brought and bid top dollar for it. Of course, the price he paid for Mima's lunch box didn't bother him, since it gave him a chance to be with her. This began their courtship and they were finally married in the Salt Lake City L.D.S. Temple on July 28, 1909.
After Roy married Mima, he purchased a 960 acre ranch of his own on the Black Smith Fork River (which is about five miles out of Lyman, Wyoming) and did quite well. He and Mima fixed up the ranch house that was on the land, which had two rooms--a long room with a kitchen at one end and a small bedroom. Then Roy built a meat house just outside the kitchen door where Mima later hung and stored the meat that he slaughtered for the winter months. In addition, Roy and Mima owned a house in Lyman, Wyoming.
On August 30, 1910, Mima gave birth to Roy's first child and son, Louis LeRoy. As mentioned before, Roy and Mima really enjoyed dancing together and they often went to church dances, where they and other couples would bring their babies and put them to sleep along the wall of the dance floor on coats. However, one evening when Louis was still a baby, they decided to leave him at home, and when they returned from the dance they couldn't find him. They were frantic and feared that perhaps someone had kidnapped Louis. Finally after searching for some time, they heard a faint cry between the bed and the wall where Louis had been sleeping. Sure enough, there was Louis, caught in a blanket which was hanging between the wall and the bed. This event so scared Roy and Mima that they never left Louis alone in the house again until he was older. At the age of four, Louis became Roy's constant companion, with Roy often taking Louis out into the fields on horseback to care for the cattle.
On July 19, 1912, Mima gave birth to their second child, Ida Berenice, who quickly became the apple of her father's eye, as Roy never went on a trip but what he would bring something home for Berenice. She would have probably been spoiled if her father had lived longer. During the next few years, Roy saw two more of his children born: Robert Marshall, born on June 7, 1914; and Veda Mima, born on October 26, 1916.
Roy loved his children and took time to let them know he loved them and never punished them harshly or unwisely. After more children began to come, the ranch house became too small, so Mima and the children would spend the winter months in Roy's house in Lyman. Roy owned a blacksmith's shop in Lyman, and during the cold snowy months, when planting could not be done down on the ranch, he would work in his blacksmith shop. Every spring, Roy planted a large vegetable garden and instructed Louis and Berenice how to take care of it, this way teaching his children the value of work.
Roy was a very hard worker and had one of the largest cattle ranches in the region. The only bad habit he had was that he chewed tobacco whenever he did his slaughtering, and he was not a regular church goer. However, he never failed to see that his wife and family got to church and he was always at church to bless and name his children. In addition, Roy paid a full tithing every month for as long as he lived.
Roy lived to be only 33 years of age, but he lived those 33 years very fully and richly. In the middle of October, 1918, he made a trip by wagon to Carter, Wyoming, to bring back a load of coal for his family for the winter. However, on his way home he ran into a terrible blizzard, and by the time he reached his home he was very wet and cold. Mima had him get into some dry clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a hot toddy and stuck his feet in the oven. However, it was too late, for he had already gotten the flu and was running a very high fever. The flu was at an epidemic stage at this time and many families were dying from it. His father, mother, Mima's mother and oldest sister, Metta Heder, were all at Roy's house at the time, because Mima and the children had also come down with the flu. The epidemic was so bad that doctors would not even make house calls, and every family had to take care of themselves and their own dead. Roy died from the flu on October 16, 1918 and was buried by his father, Samuel R. Brough, his brother Thomas and brother-in-law, Clyde Bradshaw, on October 19, 1918 in Lyman. (His body was later moved to Ogden, Utah). A few hours following Roy's burial, Mima gave birth to their last child, a girl: Helen Metta, who just like her father, had large blue eyes and brown curly hair.
With the loss of her husband and the birth of their last child within two days of each other, Mima went through a very trying time. However, she knew what she had to do for her young family, and so she rolled up her sleeves and went ahead with life. Louis grew up over night and throughout his 21 years of life was a tremendous help to his mother.
Mima continued to live in Lyman a year after Roy's death. Then she decided that Lyman did not hold much future for her children, so in the latter part of 1919 she sold her husband's ranch, cattle livestock, their home and other major assets, and moved to Evanston, Wyoming where her mother, Ida Marshall Dotson, was living with her sister Metta Heder, who owned the Smith Hotel in Evanston. Mima stayed with her sister at the Smith Hotel until she was able to find a house to rent, thereby giving Louis and Berenice a chance to get started in their new school.
Mima finally moved her family into a small two-story house and remained there for a few years. This gave her and her children a chance to make new friends and for Mima to be able to find a house to buy. She then bought a large two-story house with a basement that belonged to a Mr. Bird, located at 341 Main Street in Evanston, and it was in this house where most of her children's memories began.
Mima took in roomers and boarders, and sewed, ironed and washed in order to be near her children and at the same time provide them with the necessities of life. She also gave piano lessons and saw to it that all her children learned to play a musical instrument. Louis learned to play the saxophone, Berenice the piano, Marshall the trombone, Veda the violin, and Helen sang. Many nights she and her children would gather in the parlor of their home for a musical evening, and since some of the boarders and roomers also played a musical instrument, they really had some exciting and beautiful evenings together. In these early years in Evanston, Mima set one night out of the week for her family to be together and called it a "family night." She did this in her own home long before the L.D.S. Church set it down as a practice, which all families should engage in today.
Mima was an industrious woman and made all her children's clothing from "hand-me-downs. She would take sugar and salt sacks and make the girls' underwear from them. She would also add lace and embroidery to her other remodeled clothing to make it more attractive. Berenice never had a store-bought dress or coat until she was in the eleventh grade in school, yet Mima's children were considered the best-dressed children in Evanston. Many nights Mima would sew all night in order to complete an article for a friend or neighbor, and then cook, wash, iron or whatever else had to be done for her children and boarders during the next day.
As busy as she was, Mima always had time to be close to her Church and her Father in Heaven, and saw to it that her children always got to their church meetings. Louis was very active in scouting and was called to be the Assistant Scout Master. He was a leader and was loved by all who knew him. He later became an Eagle Scout. He went on many of the scout outings and was given an honor for saving a boy's life while on a trip to Jackson Hole Lake in Wyoming.
The large house that Mima and her family lived in gave them many advantages because of the space inside and the large yard that surrounded it. During the time her children lived in the home, it was the largest house in their neighborhood and therefore its size encouraged neighborhood children to often gather for an evening of fun, sports and games. Mima always encouraged her children to bring their friends home. She was a good mother and always took time from her busy schedule to be with her children. She never went to sleep at night until she knew that all of her children were tucked snugly in their beds. Indeed, as Louis and Berenice began to date, they were encouraged by their mother to come into her bedroom and sit on their father's trunk beside the bed and relate their activities to her. She never discouraged any of her children in feeling free to talk with her.
The winters in Evanston were quite severe, but Mima taught her children to work hard, to be responsible for their deeds and actions, and to do whatever they did very well and completely. As they were growing up, Louis and Marshall regularly delivered papers on their bicycles, and when the weather really turned bad, such as during the winter, they delivered these papers in a small wagon, walking the whole route through town. These two boys never missed a single delivery to a customer all the time they had the paper route in Evanston. While living in Evanston, Mima cooked on a large coal stove and did her washing by hand with a hand wringer. Sometimes Louis and Berenice had to stay home from school on wash day to help her. She was finally able to purchase a copper-tub electric washing- machine, and that made things very much easier for her. Louis, Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen all remembered very well the tin bath tub that they had to use. It was so cold that hot water had to first be put in the tub just to warm up the tin. Also, their home first had a pot-bellied stove in the dining room that used coal and wood and that was where the children would gather around in the mornings to dress. Finally when the Utah Gas line was brought into Evanston, Mima was able to get gas into her home and she had her stove and furnace changed over to gas. The gas line brought more boarders into Mima's home and Louis got a job with the gas company as a laborer. One young man, Milton Kendall Maynard, was one of Mima's roomers and Louis really liked him. Milton later became one of Mima's sons-in-law, through the hard efforts of Louis.
After Louis graduated from Evanston High School, he got a job working for the Evanston Bank, while Marshall got a part-time job working in a mortuary.
In 1930, Mima moved her family to Ogden, Utah where they could have more advantages. She sold cosmetics and other things to help sustain her family, while Louis worked in a service station, and Berenice worked part time at the J & J Newberry Store in Ogden. A year after they had moved to Ogden, Louis, then 21 years of age, died from a ruptured appendix on June 10, 1931. This was hard on Mima, because she had first lost her husband, and now her oldest son was gone as well. However, she again held to her family and faith in the Gospel and carried on.
After Louis died, Veda went to Los Angeles, California to live with a cousin and to complete her high school education. When Marshall graduated from Ogden High School, he and a boy friend bought an old Model T-Ford car, fixed it up and headed for California. They got just outside of Los Angeles when the car broke down, and for a while they were forced to hike and sleep behind billboards. Fortunately, Marshall had an uncle living in the Los Angeles area, Uncle Fay Marshall, who took care of them for awhile. Eventually Marshall got a job working for Sears Roebuck and Company, after which he worked for Sears for over forty years and became manager of the large Sears store in Inglewood, California.
In the meantime, Mima got a job working in a home in Ogden taking care of a fine old gentleman and it gave her and Helen a place to live and an income besides. Milton and Berenice got married on February 14, 1934, in the Salt Lake Temple and made their home in Ogden, Utah. Berenice then gave birth to two children. While in Ogden, Mima continually worried about Veda and Marshall being in California, so in 1939 she went to California, leaving Helen to stay with Milt and Berenice so Helen could complete her high school education in Ogden.
While in California, Marshall met a fine young lady, Utahna Peterson from Preston, Idaho, and they were married on June 11, 1937 in the Salt Lake Temple. Five children were born into this family.
Veda met a returned missionary, Walter Otto Dorny, and they were married on April 28, 1938 in the Salt Lake Temple. Four children came from this marriage.
When Helen graduated from Ogden High School, she went to Los Angeles to live with her mother. Mima found a position in a home taking care of a man and his son, so she and Helen went there to live. The man was Rudolph Rode and his son was Robert Rode. Mima later married Rudolph, and Helen later married his son, Robert. Rudolph Rode was a fine man and loved Mima and her family very much. He truly became a father to Mima's children, who had missed having a father for so many years.
Helen worked for Sears for awhile in California and then got a fine job working for KHJ Radio Station. After she and Bob were married on August 5, 1942, Bob was called into the Navy during the Second World War and was shipped out on a torpedo boat into the Pacific Ocean. Helen then took a job at North American Defense Plant and did what she could for the war effort. Bob and Helen had three fine children. One of her children was killed in a car accident, which was a real shock to Helen and quite a trial for her, but she kept in mind the example that Mima had set for her and carried on as her mother had. Bob and Helen eventually divorced.
As Berenice, Marshall, Veda and Helen raised their families, they stayed close to their mother, and Mima was blessed with fourteen wonderful grandchildren. All eight of Mima's grandsons served missions for the L.D.S. Church, and all fourteen of her grandchildren were married in the House of the Lord to their companions. In addition, Berenice and Marshall spent considerable time and money throughout their lives doing genealogical research and temple work for their ancestors, with their two younger sisters, Helen and Veda, occasionally assisting them in these endeavors.
Mima lived to be 78 years old and saw many of the fruits of her labors come to pass. She died on July 13, 1965, of a heart attack at Knotts Berry Farm in California, while eating one of their wonderful chicken dinners. She was buried in Ogden, Utah in the Altorest Mortuary between her husband, Roy, and her oldest son, Louis. Since her death another daughter, Helen Metta, has died (on May 30, 1979), as has her second and last son, Robert Marshall (who died on September 8,
Elizabeth Walmsley had all of her children by three husbands sealed to James Corbridge on 19 December 1878. Also, Ephraim Marshall was sealed to James Corbridge and Elizabeth Walmsley in the Bountiful Temple on 4 October 2002.
Ephraim Marshall was buried on 26 Nov 1902 in Lyman, Uinta, Wyoming. His body was later moved to Aultorest Cemetery--also known as Aultorest Memorial Park--in Ogden, Weber, Utah on 5 August 1933.
History of Ephraim Marshall
History of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. Quoted from the book "Progressive Men of Wyoming", 1903, pages 872-873.
Even in this land of Democracy, the American republic, the universal law holds good that “blood will tell,” and inherited ancestral traits will appear in descendants of the strong and gifted, giving to them an added advantage in the strenuous struggle for existence. We are led to these reflections in considering the popular ranchman of Black’s Fork, near Lyman, Wyoming, whose name heads this review, for in the veins of his children commingle the blood of two of American’s grandest orators and statesmen, the distinguished Patrick Henry and the no less famous John C. Calhoun.
Mr. Marshall was born in Tooele County, Utah, on June 5, 1857, being the son of George and Elizabeth (Walmsley) Marshall, the father a native of Scotland and a brother of the Marshall who first discovered gold in California, and the mother of England, but of Scotch descent. The father carried on stockraising in Utah, but this was subsidiary to his connection with the Church of the Latter Day Saints, in which he was very active and held in high esteem. He died, however, at the early age of forty-five years, when his son, Ephraim, was a small lad, the Mother, who could trace her lineage through her mother to John C. Calhoun, surviving him and later marrying William Corbridge, and living until 1896, attaining the venerable age of eighty-one years, and her remains now rest in the cemetery in Minersville, Beaver County, Utah.
Ephraim Marshall, one of the six children of his mother, was carefully educated in the Utah schools and thereafter engaged in farming, continuing this vocation and stockraising quite successfully in Utah until 1897, when commenced his connection with Wyoming. In that year he homesteaded a tract of 160 acres of government land on Black Fork River, about two miles north of the town of Lyman, and here he has since made his home, developing a model stock ranch, giving especial attention to the raising of a fine strain of graded Shorthorn cattle, showing marked success in his results and maintaining a high standing among the stockmen of the country.
He is a prominent and active worker in the ranks of his political party, while, in the domain of his church, his abilities have caused his selection for important trusts, which have been faithfully and capably held. He was sent to England as a Mormon missionary and his services were there given for a period of twenty-eight months with great acceptability. He also filled the position of assistant superintendent of the Sunday-School of the church at his Utah home for a long term of years, and he has now the distinction of being the first counselor to Bishop Brough of the Lyman Ward.
Mr. Marshall married at St. George, Washington County, Utah, Miss Ida Dotson, a lady of culture and attainments, a daughter of W.L.H. and Henrietta (Landrum) Dotson, natives of Alabama, who emigrated from Mississippi to Utah in 1864. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 22, 1861. Her father was a strong man, conspicuous in the active work of the Mormon church, who also exercised great weight as a leader in politics, serving to terms in the legislative assembly of Utah, for several years holding the important office of county commissioner, being also a delegate from Utah to the convention of the National Stock Commission held in Texas, and also to the Irrigation Congress, held in Salt Lake City. He was a son of Reuben and Nancy (Henry) Dotson, his mother being a lineal descendant of Patrick Henry. He lived happily on his fine plantation in Mississippi, where the labor was performed by his numerous slaves, until the Civil War ruined him and gave them freedom, and he then turned his face westward.
Mr. and Mrs. Marshall have the following children: Metta J., wife of Albert G. Heder, of Smith’s Fork Wyo.; Fayette; William D.; Mima; Daniel G.; Flossie; Bernice; John H.; Leslie H.
History of Ida Dotson
History of Ephraim Marshall and Ida Dotson. Quoted from the book "Progressive Men of Wyoming", 1903, pages 872-873.
Even in this land of Democracy, the American republic, the universal law holds good that “blood will tell,” and inherited ancestral traits will appear in descendants of the strong and gifted, giving to them an added advantage in the strenuous struggle for existence. We are led to these reflections in considering the popular ranchman of Black’s Fork, near Lyman, Wyoming, whose name heads this review, for in the veins of his children commingle the blood of two of American’s grandest orators and statesmen, the distinguished Patrick Henry and the no less famous John C. Calhoun.
Mr. Marshall was born in Tooele County, Utah, on June 5, 1857, being the son of George and Elizabeth (Walmsley) Marshall, the father a native of Scotland and a brother of the Marshall who first discovered gold in California, and the mother of England, but of Scotch descent. The father carried on stockraising in Utah, but this was subsidiary to his connection with the Church of the Latter Day Saints, in which he was very active and held in high esteem. He died, however, at the early age of forty-five years, when his son, Ephraim, was a small lad, the Mother, who could trace her lineage through her mother to John C. Calhoun, surviving him and later marrying William Corbridge, and living until 1896, attaining the venerable age of eighty-one years, and her remains now rest in the cemetery in Minersville, Beaver County, Utah.
Ephraim Marshall, one of the six children of his mother, was carefully educated in the Utah schools and thereafter engaged in farming, continuing this vocation and stockraising quite successfully in Utah until 1897, when commenced his connection with Wyoming. In that year he homesteaded a tract of 160 acres of government land on Black Fork River, about two miles north of the town of Lyman, and here he has since made his home, developing a model stock ranch, giving especial attention to the raising of a fine strain of graded Shorthorn cattle, showing marked success in his results and maintaining a high standing among the stockmen of the country.
He is a prominent and active worker in the ranks of his political party, while, in the domain of his church, his abilities have caused his selection for important trusts, which have been faithfully and capably held. He was sent to England as a Mormon missionary and his services were there given for a period of twenty-eight months with great acceptability. He also filled the position of assistant superintendent of the Sunday-School of the church at his Utah home for a long term of years, and he has now the distinction of being the first counselor to Bishop Brough of the Lyman Ward.
Mr. Marshall married at St. George, Washington County, Utah, Miss Ida Dotson, a lady of culture and attainments, a daughter of W.L.H. and Henrietta (Landrum) Dotson, natives of Alabama, who emigrated from Mississippi to Utah in 1864. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 22, 1861. Her father was a strong man, conspicuous in the active work of the Mormon church, who also exercised great weight as a leader in politics, serving to terms in the legislative assembly of Utah, for several years holding the important office of county commissioner, being also a delegate from Utah to the convention of the National Stock Commission held in Texas, and also to the Irrigation Congress, held in Salt Lake City. He was a son of Reuben and Nancy (Henry) Dotson, his mother being a lineal descendant of Patrick Henry. He lived happily on his fine plantation in Mississippi, where the labor was performed by his numerous slaves, until the Civil War ruined him and gave them freedom, and he then turned his face westward.
Mr. and Mrs. Marshall have the following children: Metta J., wife of Albert G. Heder, of Smith’s Fork Wyo.; Fayette; William D.; Mima; Daniel G.; Flossie; Bernice; John H.; Leslie H.
"Baltzar Petersen" is listed in the "Huntsville Record of [LDS] Members: 1887-1908" (FHL U.S. Film # 25997) as having been "received [on] September 25, 1890 from Franklin Idaho [Ward]".
The following information comes from the LDS Living Endowment Record of the Logan Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 178053): Baltzar Petersen Jun., was born on 29 May 1867 in Richville, Morgan, Utah; he was baptized [apparently the second time] on 15 July 1899; his parents were Baltzar Petersen and Mette M. Julesen; and that he was endowed on 19 July 1899 in the Logan Temple.
The following information comes from the LDS Living Sealings of Spouses that took place in the Logan Temple (FHL Special Collections Film # 178135): Baltzar Petersen Jr., was born on 29 May 1867 in Richville, Morgan, Utah, and was sealed to his wife, Marinda Clayton, on 19 July 1899 in the Logan Temple.
History of Baltzar Peterson Jr.
by Carma Marie Moore Brown, granddaughter, July 2004
Baltzar Peterson Jr.,* was born to Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson and Mette Margrete Juulsdatter in Richville, Morgan, Utah, May 29 1867, the 6th of 11 children. He grew up and married Amanda Caroline Smith of Littleton, Morgan, Utah, when they were about 22 and 21 years of age respectively. In 1890 they had a little girl named Dassie Cadelia Peterson, who lived less than a year. The couple soon divorced. Five years later Baltzar married our grandmother, Marinda Clayton, daughter of Joseph and Margaret Olsen Clayton. They had 8 children, 5 of whom had posterity. Baltzar died of Leukemia on 21 Dec 1944.**
Four of Baltzar's older siblings had been born in Denmark, near Aarhus, before his parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and emigrated to the U.S. in 1863. The 5th child, his next older brother, Joseph Joel, was born in Richville in 1865, but crawled out the back door and died from drowning in an irrigation canal in 1866, before Baltzar's birth the next year. His next younger sibling, brother, Charles, b. 15 Jul 1869, was his best friend and "fiddle-playing" partner. They were like twins—inseparable, and they knew how to have fun.
Charles was known as "white Charley" because of his very white hair. His "early" and unexpected death in Preston, Idaho, where the two families lived, in December of 1909, devastated Baltzar. Florence, Baltzar's oldest daughter, who was only five at the time of uncle Charley's death, remembers her father screaming and screaming for days afterward.*** It was a blow from which he never quite recovered. Up to that time the two of them, coming from a enthusiastically musical family, had played their violins in perfect harmony for hundreds and hundreds of dances and other occasions all over the Cache Valley area, especially during the 1890s and until Charley's untimely death at age 40.****
Nevertheless, Baltzar was known as "the" man to invite to a dance. He not only played for the dances, but he also taught many others to dance, including the Mormon prophet, Ezra Taft Benson, who grew up in the community of Whitney, Idaho, which adjoined Preston. Although Baltzar farmed and was a blacksmith, as so many were in those days, his first love was music, so he eventually capitalized on his talents by opening the Parisiana Dance on the main street in Preston. The Citizen newspaper is housed in that building presently. There many people, young and old, tapped their feet to Baltzar's fiddle from 1928 until just before his death in 1944. Even today (2003) as Carma interviewed the older generation of people who knew Baltzar, the two outstanding memories people have of him is fiddle playing and dancing. People say, "Oh, he taught me (or my family) to dance," or, "He played for all the dances."
Florence, tells about her father and the dancing in a little more detail. She says:
"My father was always a beautiful dancer and taught many people how to dance. His brother, Frederick, was about the same age as Ezra Taft Benson, and my father taught them both to dance. My uncle Frederick was a tall handsome man. He and President Benson eventually both taught High School in Park City, Utah. When I was young my father played at all the county dances. He fiddled away all night while someone corded with him on the organ. He would play two steps and fox trots. I always went with him because my mother was scared that he might fall asleep and be injured on the drive home. In the winter we would travel in a sled-type cutter, snuggled under big lap robes or horse or cow hides. We would warm our feet on heated bricks. At the dances I was always asked to dance by the clodhoppers. None of the girls liked them so they would insist on dancing with me, a twelve-year old girl."
"While the depression was still going on, my brother Jesse ("Doc") and another man, a builder, wanted to put in a dance hall in Preston. My father, who had worked hard all his life was willing to loan Doc the money for a dance hall. My dad was a hard worker who helped everyone. He owned and renovated Grandpas Clayton's brother's old home into a tiny blacksmith shop, where he shoed horses all day long, then would go to play the fiddle for dances at night. He was also a wheelwright and could reset the iron on a tire so that it traveled smoothly over the ground. By working two jobs he was able to build a large barn on the property where he kept horses and farm equipment. In the early spring he would travel to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to shear sheep on the big farms. He would ride the rails, hanging on under the freight cars because he didn't have the money to pay the fare. Even though money was scare, he was still able to put my uncle Frederick through school. And now he helped Doc with the dance hall."
"They built a beautiful place in the middle of Preston. It was a gorgeous brick building with a hardwood floor. They had to obey all the city laws because it was a public dance hall. This was during prohibition, so there was no drinking allowed. You could not even buy a ticket if you smelled of alcohol. They held all the Gold and Green Balls there and a big dance every Friday night. Doc's wife, Virginia, worked in the ticket office and checked coats. People came dressed up lovely, like you would for church. You never saw anyone that wasn't dressed in his or her Sunday best. Men had to wear a jacket. It did a lot for the culture of little Preston. We became quite the cultural center for all the surrounding towns, such as Dayton, Clifton, Glendale, Smithfield, Franklin, and Whitney, Logan being the closest large town."
Florence also remembered that her father was the shortest of the boys at about 5'9", while Uncle Nels was, "extremely tall," (probably about 6'3") and most of the other brothers were over 6 feet tall. Anyway, she says that while her father would play his fiddle, the other brothers would step dance and then throw one leg over the other's shoulder and they would all hop around on one leg while everybody laughed and clapped.
Baltzar and all the Peterson "clan" were also mimics. They could do anybody's accents and the physical gestures to a "T". Perhaps this was the impetus for Florence to be a drama major at BYU. There is a story which lives in my memory, and which mother may now rue the day that she told me because I am writing it down for posterity! Florence told how her father would come home from fast and testimony meeting held in the LDS church on the 1st Sunday of each month and, in a light hearted way, mimic those who spoke. His patter would run something like this: (spoken with a heavy Scandinavian accent)
"Bruders unt Seesters, I vas so happy (sob, sob) to be
a member of (sob) dis church! Before I vas coming here
my family (sob) disowned me (catch a breath). But here
I haf da more frents (sob, sob) dan before, ant you
vere all my family. Da gospel ist true!"
He would hold forth this performance at the Sunday dinner table and the family, especially the boys, would laugh so hard they couldn't eat. Others of the children might chime in with their renditions, and then grandma, Marinda, would chide him - which is apparently what he wanted.
From these mildly mocking recitations the children learned that crying, for boys especially, was not manly. Thus, Uncle Virlow, for instance, was always ashamed of his tender heart. Carma remembers that when Virlow was a bishop in Idaho Falls, he would sometimes get teary-eyed over something and would apologize at the pulpit, saying: "I don't know why I am such a 'woman'." No one ever really thought the less of him, however. Others family members such as Florence, Margaret, and Evan, learned to mimic and do "crazy" voices as a result of Baltzar's example. Florence even became a dramatist, partly because of her father's example of playfulness and innovative vocal dramatizations. Encouraged by Baltzar, the whole family also memorized and recited poetry at home as well as in school. Florence tells more about this in detail in her biography. These recitations had gone on in his home growing up.
Baltzar Peterson was a capable and busy man, who only spent most of his time outside of his home stopping in from time to time to, "Stir things up" as his oldest son, Jesse, later known to everyone as "Doc" because he was a doctor of chiropractry, reported. Again, "Doc" gave these details: "Once everybody was in turmoil he seemed to think that his mission was complete and he would leave, always assigning everyone chores and often taking the boys to work with him in the field or the barn. Dad always kept us busy. We had few idle moments. He had none."
Thus it was that all the Peterson children grew up with a profound work ethic. Every single one was busy and occupied all of their lives. Doc, for instance, continued giving chiropractic treatments well into his 88th year. Virlow worked day and night at his cleaning business in Idaho Falls and painted his children's houses and replaced their windows even when he was sick and elderly. The three girls Florence, Utahna, and Margaret were as energetic and peppy as anyone you have ever known, as was Evan. Baltzar, himself played for dances until three months before he died. He even took John, Utahna's oldest son, out to the farm for a horsey ride in the summer of 1944, when he was already not feeling well. John remembers many pony rides courtesy of grandpa Baltzar, as does Gloria Lee Moore Spencer, Florence's "step" daughter. Gloria says that Baltzar always treated her kindly, taking her for horse rides and teasing her good-naturedly and not as a "step" anything.
In addition to all his, "fiddling around", as Virginia, Doc's wife, phrased it, Baltzar ran a large farm, visited often with his extended family and aided them with their farming and other projects. He was active in civic functions in the community and in his church, did his own and his neighbor's blacksmithing, and ran quite a few heads of horses. The Clydesdale, a variety of heavy draft horse developed in Scotland was his favorite breed. We have discovered that he bought his favorite Clydesdale from Samuel Richard Brough, of Porterville, Morgan county, Utah, 20 miles east of Ogden. His grandson, Marshall, b 1914, later married one of Baltzar's younger daughters, Utahna, b. 1912.
Actually, Baltzar built up such a reputation as a fine blacksmith that people would come from all around and take up a lot of Baltzar's time. Ezra Taft Benson's father, George, would often send Ezra over with a large number of horse at once. As George was quite a tight wad, poor Ezra was always sent without any lunch but with so many horses that it would take all morning and into the afternoon to get them shod. "Starving" young Ezra would be invited to have some of Marinda's home cooked "dinner", which was eaten at noon, and which he loved, Marinda being a fine cook who made eight loaves of bread every day. He would go home full and happy, but with a scolding from Baltzar each time to only bring four horses the next go around!*****
The road between the "village center" of Preston and the Peterson farm in "Little Egypt", three and a half miles east of town "in the wilderness" traversed up and down two steep, broad gullies which were often muddy or flooded by the marshes at the bottom that the that made the going difficult. It also meant that going from the farm to school truly was uphill both ways! In 1922 when Florence was in high school and the two older boys had moved away, so there was no one to drive her in to school, Baltzar moved his family into town and off of the farm. Three and a half miles was a lot father in those days! Baltzar hired a man to live on his farm, and in 1928 centered his musical energies in the Parisiana dance hall on the main street in Preston.
Part of the original farm house in which the children were born still stands on the property today although the creamery room and large back porch was detached in the 1950s and the farm was sold after uncle Evan stopped working it in the 1960s. Baltzar was a far thinking man who did not discriminate between his children. He gave each of them, boy or girl, who wanted it a 40 acre portion of his farm as well as other holdings at the time of his death. He actually gave his youngest daughter, Margaret and her 1st husband, Bill Walker 40 acres when they married. They then built a house on the South West corner of the property. When Margaret and Bill moved to California, Evan lived in that house and "ran" the other acreage for the girls. Eventually everyone sold their portion of the farm. Florence always retained the property that her father left her in Treasureton, however, and Carma, Florence's daughter, owns that property today. Plus, we are all reminded of our Grandfather and Grandmother and their families when we go to the Preston cemetery, the land for which was donated by the Peterson brothers, Baltzar and Sern, and by Joseph Clayton, Marinda's father.
As one of Baltzar's oldest grand daughters, Carma, only has two memories of him. The solemn one is that of walking through his bedroom and saying goodbye to him shortly before his death from Leukemia on 21 December, 1944, in Preston, Idaho. The happy one was dancing for him just a few month before, at the age of two (in the summer of 1944) as he sat down on his haunches in his living room in Preston, Idaho, and played, "Turkey in the Straw". Even now, Carma can remember the look of love and delight on his face. He loved to play and to see everyone dancing, laughing and enjoying themselves. This is how the whole Peterson family was. Everyone was musical. They all could sing and dance. Whenever you went to visit in the Peterson house, they would roll back the rugs and improvise a dance. According to Mardeen, White Charley's granddaughter, this would especially go on at Uncle Soren's (Pronounced: "Sern's") house.
We love and honor our grandfather for his industry and energy, his foresight, kindness, and fairness; for using his God-given talents to bring joy, humor, laughter and warmth to his world; for leaving us a legacy of perseverance and of honoring God, our wonderful country, and each other; and most of all for marrying and staying faithful to our wonderful grandmother, Marinda Clayton.
Footnotes:
* The Danish spelling of this surname is, "Petersen", but when Great Grandpa Baltzar came into the country, his name was written down as, "Peterson" on all the official records. Virlow, Baltzar Jr.'s 2nd son, changed the spelling of his name to conform with the correct Danish spelling, but most of the rest of the family have left the spelling as "Peterson". Virlow's oldest son, Dale Larsen Petersen, was a radio announcer who, at the suggestion of the cowboy star, Gene Autry, choose for himself the "stage" name of, "Peter Viking". His son, who was christened Robert Dale Petersen, has changed his name to the old, old-world spelling, vis. Peder Pedersen. Despite all these changes and spelling differences, we are all still related!
** Baltzar first married Amanda Caroline SMITH. About 1890 they had one child, Dassie, who lived less than a year. They divorced, and five years later he married Marinda Clayton (1879-1950), who had never been married before. They were childless for over 4 years, and then starting in 1900 they had a baby every 2 or 3 years until 1918, for a total of eight children. The first two babies, Jessie, and Virlow, were exceedingly large babies, especially for a person under 5' tall, at 13 and 11 pounds respectively. Florence and the rest were not so taxing except for some virulent childhood diseases including diphtheria and rheumatic fever. Two of their girls, Gladys (1908-1922) and Carma,(1910-1933), died before marrying. Evan (1918-1967), the youngest, was the next child to pass away due to the affects of alcoholism. Margaret (1916-1974) followed, then Virlow (1903-1984), Utahna (1912-1985), Doc (1900-1989), and last, Florence (1905-1994). All of them died vowing that their father was a good man, who sparked up people's lives, and that their mother, "Was an angel on earth."
*** This story is reported by Mardeen Peterson Steinmetz as told to her many time by her cousin, Florence.
**** Charles Coulson Peterson, b. 15 July 1869, d. 5 Dec 1909 probably of a kind of congenital heart failure.
***** Story as repeated many times by Ezra Taft Benson, himself, to John Brough. The language, as refers George Benson, came from Ezra himself.
Marriage Notes for Baltzar Peterson Jr. and Amanda Caroline Smith-133
John M. Brough (of Preston, Idaho) has a copy of the marriage certificate of this couple.
The surname of some of the children in this family was eventually changed from Sorensen to Peterson.
Most of the genealogical research on the ancestors of Baltzar Sorensen and Mette Margrete Juulsdatter was originally done by Inger P. Ludlow, A.G. This research is in the possession of R. Clayton Brough, West Valley, Utah.
History of Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson
History of Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson and Mette Margrete Juulsdatter.
Compiled and edited by Chaundelle Hill Brough from multiple historical sources on July 9, 2004.
Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson was born on December 3, 1834, in Ingerslev, Tiset, Aarhus, Denmark. His parents were Soren Pedersen and Ane Margrethe Baltzarsdatter. He had one brother Peter and four sisters: Karen, Ane Margrethe, Mette Kirstine, and Ane Marie. When Baltzar was six years old he went to school, which was under the direction of the Lutheran Church. The Priest knew his mother was interested in the LDS church and tried to persuade her not to join. When she did he made it unpleasant for the children by ridiculing their religion before the class. To avoid this unpleasantness his mother always made sure he and his siblings were well prepared for their lessons.
Mette Margrete Juulsdatter was born on January 11, 1834, in the Parish of Holme (Skaade) in Aarhus, Jutland, Denmark. She was the seventh of eight children born to Juul Eskildsen and Karen Nielsdatter. Her father was a small lease-hold farmer and weaver. He died on December 24, 1836, when Margrete was just two years old. Great were the responsibilities that were put upon her mother at this time. She had much financial turmoil, but saw to it that all her children were educated in the state school at Holm (which was also under the direction of the Lutheran Church).
Both Baltzar and Margrete’s family records date back as far as the date when Denmark officially began to keep records on its subjects. The record states that they were people respected in their communities. They supported their nation when duty called, were industrious, and took advantage of every opportunity in education, though there were few. They were known for their hospitality and were respected citizens of Denmark.
On May 30, 1857, Baltzar and Margrete were married in Holme. The young couple went to the city of Aarhus, Jutland to make their home. They lived at #539 Fredricksgaade and by 1860 were at #1052 Bestugaade. Baltzar obtained good work as a coach and transfer man hauling freight and passengers to and from the ocean liners that docked at Aarhus. He took pride in the four head matched black horses that he owned and used for his freighting. There were four children born to them while they lived in Aarhus City: Niels Juul (Oct. 13, 1857), Soren Baltzar (Jan. 16, 1860), Laura (Dec. 24, 1861) who died in Aarhus on March 1, 1863, and James Joel (Feb. 23, 1863).
Although Baltzar's mother had joined the LDS Church around 1852 after the first elders arrived in Jutland, he and Margrete did not join until late in 1862. They were baptized on November 20, 1862, by Niels Knudsen, and were confirmed members of the church by G. Garretson and A.W. Winberg. All four of their children were blessed this same day by the same gentlemen mentioned before. Baltzar’s father Soren Pedersen also joined the L.D.S. Church around this time and the two families began hasty preparations to emigrate to Utah and Zion.
On April 30, 1863, the two families boarded a steamer that took on board about 400 emigrating Saints from Jutland. They arrived in Kiel, Germany and then went by railroad to Altona, where they walked to the docks at Hamburg (about a 20 minute walk). Here they boarded the ship “Roland”. There were nearly 600 emigrating Saints in this group. The journey was anything but comfortable with this many people not to mention the 40 steers, and several hundred sheep which were also aboard. They arrived in Grimsby, England, early Sunday morning May 3. The main body of Saints left Grimsby around 5 o’clock in the afternoon and went by railroad to Liverpool, where they arrived during the night.
They sailed from Liverpool on the B.S. Kimball May 9, 1863, under the direction of Hans Peter Lund. There were 644 Scandinavian Saints and 13 English Saints aboard on this trip. The crowded conditions were most inconvenient causing several folks to travel in steerage class. Before the voyage ended the water, food, and sanitation conditions were very bad. Some deaths occurred on board and those people were buried at sea. Two children were born and eleven couples were married. The B.S. Kimball arrived in New York harbor on the 13th of June. However, they were not permitted to go ashore until the 15th because of rigid fumigation and inspection.
In the evening on June 15th the emigrants continued by train to Albany, New York. Their journey by railroad was far from pleasant. They were detoured North near the Canadian border to avoid danger of southern Civil War Battles. They were crowded into freight cars which caused much discomfort; their legs and feet would swell from standing so many hours. This was especially difficult for Margarete because she had to care for a three ½ month old baby. When they reached the Missouri River they were taken to Winter Quarters by riverboat. While on this trip a young boy died when he fell in the water and drowned, his body was never found. Another little boy fell in a vat of hot water and was burned terribly.
After a short time at Winter Quarters the families began the trek across the barren plains to Utah as members of John F. Saunders Ox Team Train. Because of limited wagon space they were obliged to leave much of their good bedding and homespun clothing behind, which they had worked so hard to make and which would have been appreciated later in the winter. It was at this time, near Florence, that Soren Pedersen purchased a cow that provided much needed milk along their journey. The cow made it all the way to Richville and was with the family for many years.
The season during the summer of 1863 was extremely hot and dry, causing the waters of the Platte and Sweetwater Rivers to dry up in places. Some children became ill and died in route. Their experiences were similar to those of thousands of pioneers. At one time while wading across a river, Margrete, who was holding baby James, was swept off her feet while trying to help little Niels and Soren across. A nearby man rescued the baby and helped them to shore. When their company was encamped in the vicinity of the headwaters of East Canyon Creek and East of Big Mountain, Baltzar made his way down East Canyon to the settlement of Richville, in Morgan County. He contacted his sister Karen (then Mrs. Mads Peter Rasmussen) and his brother Peter, both having emigrated previously in 1859 and 1861 respectively, and who were both living in Richville. Arrangements were made for Peter Rasmussen and Peter Peterson to go by way of Weber Canyon to Salt Lake City to meet the family with their ox teams and wagons and help them move to Richville. After the arrangements were made Baltzar made his way back to the company and went on to Salt Lake with them. They arrived in Salt Lake City on September 5, 1863. They were able to obtain some supplies before moving on to Richville. Baltzar was fortunate enough to obtain a sack of seed wheat from Bishop George Nebeker. Baltzar’s younger sister Ane Marie remained in Salt Lake to work.
The first two seasons in Richville were difficult. Baltzar and Margrete’s first home was a dug-out with no windows and a roof that was impossible to keep the rain from leaking through during the rainy season. Margrete’s petticoat hung for a door. It was in this shelter that two more children were born: Joseph Joel (May 5, 1865), and Baltzar Jr. (May 29, 1867). Their food supply during the first winter was adequate, but during the second winter they mostly ate cooked grain, which they ground in a coffee mill, and they even rationed that. Baltzar grew a crop of wheat from the sack of seed he obtained from Bishop Nebeker, and as soon as the harvest was made he carried a full sack of wheat over the mountain to Salt Lake to pay him back. Tragedy struck on September 1, 1866, when their baby Joseph was drowned in the old mill race. His body was found on the screen where the water plunged over the water wheel in the old grist mill at Richville.
A new log house was soon built. This home was where five more children were born: Charles Coulsen (July 15, 1869), George Lorenzo (July 2, 1871), Anna Eliza (Nov. 26, 1873), William (Feb. 29, 1876) who died April 18, 1877, and Frederick Leander (Feb. 12, 1879). In 1886 a new, large, two-story, brick home was completed. It was considered one of the finest in the county for a period. The Peterson home at Richville was a gathering place for the young folks for many years. Many parties occurred at the home. Everyone sang and danced. Baltzar and Charles played their violins and step dancing was a specialty of George and Baltzar. Margrete was the perfect hostess, always pleased to entertain, and making sure there was plenty of food and good things to eat. Baltzar and Magarete enjoyed life most when the young folks came and participated in good home entertainment.
Baltzar improved his land, built buildings, and durable fences. His wisdom and judgment in agriculture was unsurpassed for his time. Within about a 25 year period these Danish emigrants, who started with nothing, gradually became prosperous and developed quite the estate. In fact, Baltzar at one time was considered the most financially independent man in his community. He never lost interest in the welfare of his family. As his boys became grown men he helped them acquire farm land of their own. In 1877 he filed on a large tract of land on the Preston Flat. Niels, Soren, Baltzar, and Charles went there as farmers.
Much of the credit for their success is given to Margrete. She was well educated and had a natural ability to manage. She was resourceful and her judgement sound. She gave advice when it was needed and when it would do the most good. She was quite small (considered tiny in stature) but she was quick and accurate, full of energy, and most immaculate in her dress, person, and behavior. She was an artist with the needle, making all of her own clothes. When she had the means to buy, she always insisted on the finest quality, not only for herself but also for her family. She was anything but extravagant, for nothing was wasted or misused. She insisted everything be cared for properly. She was a beautiful letter writer both in the Danish and English languages. Her letters seemed to carry the same feeling and expression as if she were visiting in person. If she ever had any favorites among her children or grandchildren they never knew it. If she passed a favor to one, she never failed to give to all. Baltzar and Margrete were also generous to family members that remained back in Denmark. They forwarded money and helped in other ways to enable a sister “Maren” and a niece “Caroline Jensen” to emigrate to Utah, as well as others.
In 1909, Anna Eliza and her family moved from Lyman, Wyoming, bought the family home and most of the farm, and moved in to take care of Baltzar and Margrete. Baltzar had suffered a severe stroke and Margrete was not well. Baltzar passed away on November 21, 1910. Margrete lived for eight more years. She eventually became ill with congestive heart failure and had to remain in bed. Her legs became terribly swollen. She passed away on January 18, 1919, at the age of eighty-five. She is buried beside her husband in the Richville Cemetery which was once part of the Peterson farm and was donated by them to the community.
History of Mette Margrete Juulsdatter
History of Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson and Mette Margrete Juulsdatter.
Compiled and edited by Chaundelle Hill Brough from multiple historical sources on July 9, 2004.
Baltzar (Sorensen) Peterson was born on December 3, 1834, in Ingerslev, Tiset, Aarhus, Denmark. His parents were Soren Pedersen and Ane Margrethe Baltzarsdatter. He had one brother Peter and four sisters: Karen, Ane Margrethe, Mette Kirstine, and Ane Marie. When Baltzar was six years old he went to school, which was under the direction of the Lutheran Church. The Priest knew his mother was interested in the LDS church and tried to persuade her not to join. When she did he made it unpleasant for the children by ridiculing their religion before the class. To avoid this unpleasantness his mother always made sure he and his siblings were well prepared for their lessons.
Mette Margrete Juulsdatter was born on January 11, 1834, in the Parish of Holme (Skaade) in Aarhus, Jutland, Denmark. She was the seventh of eight children born to Juul Eskildsen and Karen Nielsdatter. Her father was a small lease-hold farmer and weaver. He died on December 24, 1836, when Margrete was just two years old. Great were the responsibilities that were put upon her mother at this time. She had much financial turmoil, but saw to it that all her children were educated in the state school at Holm (which was also under the direction of the Lutheran Church).
Both Baltzar and Margrete’s family records date back as far as the date when Denmark officially began to keep records on its subjects. The record states that they were people respected in their communities. They supported their nation when duty called, were industrious, and took advantage of every opportunity in education, though there were few. They were known for their hospitality and were respected citizens of Denmark.
On May 30, 1857, Baltzar and Margrete were married in Holme. The young couple went to the city of Aarhus, Jutland to make their home. They lived at #539 Fredricksgaade and by 1860 were at #1052 Bestugaade. Baltzar obtained good work as a coach and transfer man hauling freight and passengers to and from the ocean liners that docked at Aarhus. He took pride in the four head matched black horses that he owned and used for his freighting. There were four children born to them while they lived in Aarhus City: Niels Juul (Oct. 13, 1857), Soren Baltzar (Jan. 16, 1860), Laura (Dec. 24, 1861) who died in Aarhus on March 1, 1863, and James Joel (Feb. 23, 1863).
Although Baltzar's mother had joined the LDS Church around 1852 after the first elders arrived in Jutland, he and Margrete did not join until late in 1862. They were baptized on November 20, 1862, by Niels Knudsen, and were confirmed members of the church by G. Garretson and A.W. Winberg. All four of their children were blessed this same day by the same gentlemen mentioned before. Baltzar’s father Soren Pedersen also joined the L.D.S. Church around this time and the two families began hasty preparations to emigrate to Utah and Zion.
On April 30, 1863, the two families boarded a steamer that took on board about 400 emigrating Saints from Jutland. They arrived in Kiel, Germany and then went by railroad to Altona, where they walked to the docks at Hamburg (about a 20 minute walk). Here they boarded the ship “Roland”. There were nearly 600 emigrating Saints in this group. The journey was anything but comfortable with this many people not to mention the 40 steers, and several hundred sheep which were also aboard. They arrived in Grimsby, England, early Sunday morning May 3. The main body of Saints left Grimsby around 5 o’clock in the afternoon and went by railroad to Liverpool, where they arrived during the night.
They sailed from Liverpool on the B.S. Kimball May 9, 1863, under the direction of Hans Peter Lund. There were 644 Scandinavian Saints and 13 English Saints aboard on this trip. The crowded conditions were most inconvenient causing several folks to travel in steerage class. Before the voyage ended the water, food, and sanitation conditions were very bad. Some deaths occurred on board and those people were buried at sea. Two children were born and eleven couples were married. The B.S. Kimball arrived in New York harbor on the 13th of June. However, they were not permitted to go ashore until the 15th because of rigid fumigation and inspection.
In the evening on June 15th the emigrants continued by train to Albany, New York. Their journey by railroad was far from pleasant. They were detoured North near the Canadian border to avoid danger of southern Civil War Battles. They were crowded into freight cars which caused much discomfort; their legs and feet would swell from standing so many hours. This was especially difficult for Margarete because she had to care for a three ½ month old baby. When they reached the Missouri River they were taken to Winter Quarters by riverboat. While on this trip a young boy died when he fell in the water and drowned, his body was never found. Another little boy fell in a vat of hot water and was burned terribly.
After a short time at Winter Quarters the families began the trek across the barren plains to Utah as members of John F. Saunders Ox Team Train. Because of limited wagon space they were obliged to leave much of their good bedding and homespun clothing behind, which they had worked so hard to make and which would have been appreciated later in the winter. It was at this time, near Florence, that Soren Pedersen purchased a cow that provided much needed milk along their journey. The cow made it all the way to Richville and was with the family for many years.
The season during the summer of 1863 was extremely hot and dry, causing the waters of the Platte and Sweetwater Rivers to dry up in places. Some children became ill and died in route. Their experiences were similar to those of thousands of pioneers. At one time while wading across a river, Margrete, who was holding baby James, was swept off her feet while trying to help little Niels and Soren across. A nearby man rescued the baby and helped them to shore. When their company was encamped in the vicinity of the headwaters of East Canyon Creek and East of Big Mountain, Baltzar made his way down East Canyon to the settlement of Richville, in Morgan County. He contacted his sister Karen (then Mrs. Mads Peter Rasmussen) and his brother Peter, both having emigrated previously in 1859 and 1861 respectively, and who were both living in Richville. Arrangements were made for Peter Rasmussen and Peter Peterson to go by way of Weber Canyon to Salt Lake City to meet the family with their ox teams and wagons and help them move to Richville. After the arrangements were made Baltzar made his way back to the company and went on to Salt Lake with them. They arrived in Salt Lake City on September 5, 1863. They were able to obtain some supplies before moving on to Richville. Baltzar was fortunate enough to obtain a sack of seed wheat from Bishop George Nebeker. Baltzar’s younger sister Ane Marie remained in Salt Lake to work.
The first two seasons in Richville were difficult. Baltzar and Margrete’s first home was a dug-out with no windows and a roof that was impossible to keep the rain from leaking through during the rainy season. Margrete’s petticoat hung for a door. It was in this shelter that two more children were born: Joseph Joel (May 5, 1865), and Baltzar Jr. (May 29, 1867). Their food supply during the first winter was adequate, but during the second winter they mostly ate cooked grain, which they ground in a coffee mill, and they even rationed that. Baltzar grew a crop of wheat from the sack of seed he obtained from Bishop Nebeker, and as soon as the harvest was made he carried a full sack of wheat over the mountain to Salt Lake to pay him back. Tragedy struck on September 1, 1866, when their baby Joseph was drowned in the old mill race. His body was found on the screen where the water plunged over the water wheel in the old grist mill at Richville.
A new log house was soon built. This home was where five more children were born: Charles Coulsen (July 15, 1869), George Lorenzo (July 2, 1871), Anna Eliza (Nov. 26, 1873), William (Feb. 29, 1876) who died April 18, 1877, and Frederick Leander (Feb. 12, 1879). In 1886 a new, large, two-story, brick home was completed. It was considered one of the finest in the county for a period. The Peterson home at Richville was a gathering place for the young folks for many years. Many parties occurred at the home. Everyone sang and danced. Baltzar and Charles played their violins and step dancing was a specialty of George and Baltzar. Margrete was the perfect hostess, always pleased to entertain, and making sure there was plenty of food and good things to eat. Baltzar and Magarete enjoyed life most when the young folks came and participated in good home entertainment.
Baltzar improved his land, built buildings, and durable fences. His wisdom and judgment in agriculture was unsurpassed for his time. Within about a 25 year period these Danish emigrants, who started with nothing, gradually became prosperous and developed quite the estate. In fact, Baltzar at one time was considered the most financially independent man in his community. He never lost interest in the welfare of his family. As his boys became grown men he helped them acquire farm land of their own. In 1877 he filed on a large tract of land on the Preston Flat. Niels, Soren, Baltzar, and Charles went there as farmers.
Much of the credit for their success is given to Margrete. She was well educated and had a natural ability to manage. She was resourceful and her judgement sound. She gave advice when it was needed and when it would do the most good. She was quite small (considered tiny in stature) but she was quick and accurate, full of energy, and most immaculate in her dress, person, and behavior. She was an artist with the needle, making all of her own clothes. When she had the means to buy, she always insisted on the finest quality, not only for herself but also for her family. She was anything but extravagant, for nothing was wasted or misused. She insisted everything be cared for properly. She was a beautiful letter writer both in the Danish and English languages. Her letters seemed to carry the same feeling and expression as if she were visiting in person. If she ever had any favorites among her children or grandchildren they never knew it. If she passed a favor to one, she never failed to give to all. Baltzar and Margrete were also generous to family members that remained back in Denmark. They forwarded money and helped in other ways to enable a sister “Maren” and a niece “Caroline Jensen” to emigrate to Utah, as well as others.
In 1909, Anna Eliza and her family moved from Lyman, Wyoming, bought the family home and most of the farm, and moved in to take care of Baltzar and Margrete. Baltzar had suffered a severe stroke and Margrete was not well. Baltzar passed away on November 21, 1910. Margrete lived for eight more years. She eventually became ill with congestive heart failure and had to remain in bed. Her legs became terribly swollen. She passed away on January 18, 1919, at the age of eighty-five. She is buried beside her husband in the Richville Cemetery which was once part of the Peterson farm and was donated by them to the community.