Growing Up in Toquerville
By Erwin Spilsbury
Son of George Moroni & Roselia Jocosia Haight
Compiled December 1988
(The following is taken from a talk given by Erwin Spilsbury at the Franklin S. Harris Family Reunion at Rockville, Utah, August, 1977, supplemented by material from a taped interview with his daughter Gail)
Memories of Childhood in Toquerville
I was born at the turn of the century when President Teddy Roosevelt was President of the United States of America and in a rustic, rural area down in Toquerville, Utah, named after a big Indian Chief, almost as big as that town. His name was Toquer. Things were rustic, as I say: we had no electricity; we had no plumbing—it was outdoors and on a bright moonlight night it was easy to find; we had no automobiles; we had no appliances to speak of. The washing was done in a tub and you scrubbed most of the time; there was no wringer. We used the water in a big brass kettle over the fire; we heated it up to boil the clothes, and to soak them we used homemade soap—Tide wasn’t known at that time.
There was only one telephone in the town where we lived. The one who owned the telephone had to run all over the town to find the party to call back the party who had made the call in the first place. We were seventy miles from the railroad where we got most of our freight and goods. It took two days to go in the wagon and two days to come back over rough and narrow roads. So you see, in those days life was rather rural; but we survived, thank goodness, and here am I.
Now, how did I spend my time? At the age of about four, they started me by milking cows. They first tempted me by giving me the strippings. This is the richest part of the milk if you have done any milking at all. It tastes very good. Then they said, “Now to earn this, you will have to start milking cows.” So at four to five years old, I began and later was milking three or four cows in the morning and the evening. I had to feed them and take them out to pasture on the hills and bring them back in the evening. I learned to work climbing up the mountain and back twice a day. When the cows were in the corral, I let them out to drink out of the ditch and take them back.
Other chores included chopping wood for the stove and fireplace because we had no coal and we had no gas or electricity. Then I had to take out the ashes. I collected lots of water from the ditches—the open ditches—every morning and evening. I dipped the water out of the ditch with a big brass bucket. We had it for drinking and cooking; we had it for washing, both for ourselves and for the dishes and the clothes. The water came from a spring a couple of miles from where we lived. Our first “running water” was from a tap built outside the kitchen on the porch the first year I came back from Logan. The second time I came home there was a bathroom in the house that Ray had paid for. Then we hoed tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and beans and so on. We had luxurious growth in Toquerville. We grew delicious fruits and vegetables. If my memory serves me right, I never found anything that tastes as good as the peaches and figs and the grapes that came from Toquerville out of this volcanic ash formation; for some reason it had a special flavor and I have tasted fruits from a great many countries including one of the best that I was ever in, Spain.
We owned several ranches: twenty-eight miles up north and west and twelve miles out of Cedar City was Quichapah; another down by Hurricane was for the alfalfa fields; the summer range was up on Kolob where we ran stock in the summertime; we had grazing land out of Hurricane Valley going into the Kaibab Forest; the farms in Toquerville included a vineyard, fruit orchards (peaches, pears, pomegranates), hay and wheat fields, and a garden with fruit trees on the lot. We lived on two acres. This lot was retained but the old house of my grandfather was pulled down.
My various responsibilities on the farm included herding sheep, marking calves, plowing with two span of horses; we farmed on the land out by Hurricane as part of the Homestead Act; we built fences, chopped aspens to make the poles, dug ditches, cleared the land, and burned the sagebrush. I did everything from A-Z: learned to cook, work the thresher; and threshing time I would get off early to fix the dinner; we had a shack with a wooden stove; I learned to cook on a little wooden stove in the sheep wagon.
We herded sheep out of Hurricane Valley and Bench Lake where we owned the area for open grazing. In the summer we would trail the sheep up to Kolob and worked them up there. It took one week to get them up to Kolob; we would ride horses or walk. When I took the cows out to pasture I rode bareback. The field was one mile from home; it was good pasture land and fenced in. As I would take the cows out to the pasture either over the mountains or over the sand hill, I would carry a 22 rifle with me and often brought back some cottontails or some quail from the hunting party. Later when I was older, I got a shotgun.
I rode a horse for as long as I can remember. My father had some pacing ponies which he got from Dr. Leonard who paid my father back this way for the money my father loaned him to set himself up in business. We had a little mare with an English saddle who was very sensitive to the cinch. One day riding her, I pulled too tight and she bucked me off.
After the harvesting of the hay and the fruit, we played some games for our recreation. I remember one of my favorite games on a moonlit night: we played pomp pomp pull away on the main street and it was a thrilling experience—the trees on either side and the ditches of course and it was hard to catch the runners and hard to be caught. That was one of the games we liked a great deal. We went swimming in Ash Creek. The water at that time had some pretty good pools in it and some slippery rocks that we would slide down but we went there au natural, that is, in the nude. We went barefoot first thing in the summer, wearing overalls and a shirt. It was no problem to shed the clothes to go swimming, but for a boy that was supposed to be hoeing the weeds, the telltale sign was always the wet hair.
We also went fishing underneath the rocks; we would get on each side of a big rock that was in the stream and catch the fish that was underneath. We didn’t have any fishing rods or reels or flies in order to do that.
We rode horses almost from the time we could walk. We rode them bareback and we had some horse races. We also rode the Rocky Mountain Canaries. These were the wild jackasses that lived up on the hills. We would bring them into the corral, push them against the fence where the fellows would line up and jump on their back, ride on their rump and lock their feet in their flanks. The donkeys would bray and away they’d go and you would try to stick on. There were also the cattle. We used to help the cowboys with the branding of the calves in the spring and the fall. Because it was essentially a cattle country along with the farming, this was one of the fun times we would have—wrestling with the calves and holding them down while the boys with the branding irons would brand them and cut marks in their ears in order to distinguish ownership of the animals.
We had strawberry and watermelon busts and some of the watermelon busts were not scheduled ahead of time and the farmer didn’t know that he was going to donate the watermelon.
One of our entertainments was having house parties and birthday parties. When the family would have one, everyone would assemble and, of course, there was a big feast. We had matinee dances and at this the Relief Society furnished ice cream and homemade cake; they charged a little to make expenses so you could take your girl to the dance and buy her a dish of ice cream. The ice cream was frozen with snow packed ice, that they brought in on packs from the Pine Valley Mountains about twenty miles distance; they would go up with pack animals and carry the ice down in Al Fogey bags, covered with blankets; I remember churning the ice cream down in the cellar where it was cool.
One of the things we had fun with was to have water fights with buckets out of the ditches. You see the water ran on both sides of the street. One was the culinary or drinking water and the other was for irrigation and sometimes people got mixed up. We used to hold the baptisms for the eight year olds by placing in the headgate and backing up the water in the ditch. If there was an overgrown kid sometimes someone had to sit on him to get him down under. It worked out all right. I, myself, was baptized in Ash Creek. Bishop Walter Flack baptized me when the creek was at flood stage, big, swift, and high. Although it was second nature to country kids to cuss and swear, I felt so clean after my baptism, I vowed never to swear again (but I didn’t remember it long).
We had hayrick rides occasionally, which were a lot of fun. My Uncle early on Christmas morning drove a hayrick covered with hay and blankets up and down the town’s two streets picking up the children who would make noises with their new toys, but mainly we sang Christmas carols and had a joy ride behind a team of fancy horses. It was great fun. It wasn’t very cold and it very seldom, if every, snowed. We didn’t have Christmas trees in the houses. We had big trees in the church which were decorated with burning candles. We put strings of candy on the trees and some paper homemade decorations. We always had a program for the whole ward. I sat up front on the floor. At home we had a big fireplace and we hung up stockings (without holes of course, usually they would put money in the toe) and I got a lot of the things I wanted—a baseball, mitt, and bat, gloves, stocking cap, books and games. In our stockings we would find nuts, candy, money, popcorn balls, or maybe a harmonica; oranges and bananas were rare and had to be shipped from California.
Halloween was a wild time. The older boys would turn over bridges, disconnect gates from fences, tip over outdoor toilets. One thing I thought was rather interesting, two boys would wax a long thread, put a nail on the window sill with the thread around it and pull it against the window; it made a terrible screech; we called it tic tacking. Or we would put a spool on a notched stick and roll it on a windowpane and it made an awful noise. It was quite a night for howling.
We held celebrations of special days outside the general store. We pitched horseshoes and had foot races in our bare feet and people would bet nickels and dimes on them. When it would rain, there was no work and everybody came to the center of town for horse races, foot races, standing broad jump, Indian wrestling, and side wrestling. I was very good at this type of wrestling, probably the best one of the boys my age. We would take hold of the back of the opponent’s trousers, hold their hand, then try to throw them over and land on top of them and pin them. One of the things would be to use your leg and trip them up.
But I didn’t spend all my time just having fun. I remember the first day of school as being a long day and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back the next day. The school was just across the street. In the winter months I remember Mother lighting the lamp because it was dark when we got up. The teacher was the wife of the principal and they were good people. The school held three classrooms which held grades 1-3, 4-5, and 6-8. I was good in arithmetic but didn’t like to draw very much although my cousin who was in the same class was a good drawer. We were very close but she died of diphtheria when I was in the sixth grade. It was a very sad occasion.
Several people in my life were outstanding: first of all was my grandfather, George Spilsbury. He was converted in England at age seventeen. He brought his wife, Fanny, over who was also a convert. He converted and baptized her at the age of eighteen and she was disowned by her parents for joining the Church. She was the only daughter of a country squire—she had to give up everything to come; they came on a sailing vessel to New Orleans, up the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, and across the plains. They lost four children in their infancy. The fifth child was born after they left St. Louis to come west. As they traveled west with their baby in the wagon train of Saints, the oxen had become gaunt and tired from lack of water. When they came to the Platte River, the oxen broke into a run and headed down the bank of the river to drink. The wagon kept going and toppled into the river. The mother and child in the wagon were covered with water. People came running to help and at last Fanny was brought out of the water, but she was without her baby. As the men searched frantically in the wagon and in the water, Bishop Hunter called that he had found the baby. Running up and down, searching along the bank of the river, he spotted the child lodged against a stump. The baby seemed lifeless, but Bishop Hunter detected a heart beat and quickly administered to him and at the same time blessed him the name of Alma Platte Spilsbury—Alma for the Book of Mormon prophet and Platte for the river in which he nearly drowned; Alma was the oldest living son of the family; he later went to Mexico and became the father of some twenty-eight children. So that was the saving of a lot of souls. (An interesting account of “The Birth of Alma Platte Spilsbury” by Nelle S. Hatch is recorded in Viva Skousen’s book The Life and Posterity of Alma Platte Spilsbury.)
I will tell you about my grandfather as I knew him; he was in his eighties and he was a patriarch. He was a stake Sunday School worker for some fifty years. He used to travel this area, right here where we are, three or four times a year up to Springdell and Rockville, Virgin, Leeds, Hurricane, Enterprise, LaVerkin, Toquerville, and New Harmony. He kept that up for that long time and he was finally released on his 90th birthday. So you see, Brother Bradley (Mildred Harris’ husband), don’t let anyone complain that they’re overburdened when they have been in the job for a year and a half or two years, that they need a change of pace. Here’s one that was released on his 90th birthday. He was still very active at his release. For fifty years he kept the Word of Wisdom, I tell you, as well as anyone I know. (Prior to that they pressed grapes and made wine.) He had very little meat except veal, chicken, and fish. Fruit and vegetables he ate abundantly. One of the things that he liked very much was fresh buttermilk; three of his children were living in Toquerville and they would each churn on a different day so he had fresh buttermilk all week and believe me it seemed to help. I never knew him to be ill one day in the eighteen years that I knew him except once in a while he would have a sneezing spell and he would sneeze and the rocker would rock and the porch would bounce. He would sneeze for around five to six minutes—Wham! And away he’d go. This seemed to clear the atmosphere and everything else around.
My grandfather ate dinner with the family. He always dressed with a white shirt and white linen tie; he kept himself very neat; he always took a sponge bath in the morning even when it was very cold. He ate breakfast at Aunt Vilate’s, lunch at Uncle David’s, and dinner at our place. He had a general store in Toquerville at one time. He and my grandmother entertained the Prophet and Hyrum, who gave him a patriarchal blessing; Grandmother was very sociable and a good cook; she died about the time I was born. Grandfather had a little cottage on the place where we lived and I used to take him over and take him to bed. I had to take a lantern and then I’d light the kerosene lamp that he had in his house and had to wait for him to get ready for bed and say his prayers. This happened many, many times. He was in excellent health when a rather freakish thing happened. His door was locked but he got up in the night and walked in his sleep, crawled out of the window, went across the street to his daughter’s place, which was situated on the bank of the Ash Creek Stream, and fell over a very high, rocky cliff and that was what caused his death (otherwise, he would probably still be with us).
The one thing that I remember about him spiritually (I helped drive him on some of his visits—he had a one-horse buggy) was his testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He of course was in Nauvoo and was a contemporary of he Prophet and he bore a strong testimony of his divine calling and the restoration of the Gospel. He was one of the members of the Prophet’s bodyguard. He went to Mexico and visited his son; he went to California and visited his children; everywhere he went, he was called on to give this testimony about the Prophet Joseph Smith which was very impressive. It was one of the things that instilled faith and a desire in my own mind and heart that I wanted to do something about preaching the Gospel myself.
Some of the other pioneers that lived in that town were acquainted with the Prophet and bore very, very dramatic testimonies of their experiences with the Prophet and the things that happened with them on their trip out west. One of the polygamists that was out there—a lot of them were—came with the handcart company and his wives. This was just a little puzzlement to me because he married a widow and her two twin daughters. Their name was Savage. So that made quite an impression and also a very big question mark in my mind how this could all happen—how he could marry a woman and her twin daughters. They had some very nice children, a very fine family. But it was one of the odd circumstances that I remember of the life in Toquerville.
Another one that I remember real well was my father. He only finished about the fifth grade as I remember. He grew up down in Southern Utah, Dixieland and became a farmer. His father gave him a small heifer on his birthday and from that heifer he built the biggest cattle herd in that area over a period of years. His friend also had his father give him one but the friend dissipated it—almost like the Prodigal Son in a way. My father was a stockman; he was a breeder of fine horses. He imported them from Kansas City, Omaha, St. Louis, and other areas and purchased cattle and purebred and thoroughbred horses, fine animals for breeding purposes. We always had beautiful horses, aside from the regular work horses and cow ponies. You would notice their spirit when on the 4th or 24th of July, one of the traditions was to set off dynamite at 4:00 in the morning and these horses would just bound out and run through the streets. We just couldn’t contain them. No matter what, they would get over the gate or the fence. It was a real interesting sight that took place at that time.
Aside from the other qualities my father had, he was an out-of-pocket banker. He had stacks of $20 gold pieces, silver pieces, greenbacks, and gold backs that he kept because the bank nearest us was twenty-five miles away at St. George. It was about a four or five hour trip by horseback and so when a deal came up and someone needed money, they could get it but they had to pay something in return. He accumulated land and cattle, and this way he built a financial dynasty in this little town. Thus, I was known among the kids as a rich man’s son. That wasn’t very complimentary at that time. They used to accent it with mud pies.
He was a musician; he liked to sing and dance and he played the snare drums and the bass drum. They used to have a fife and drum corps for the town celebrations and they would get on a wagon and go riding up and down the town playing patriotic numbers and wake people up early in the morning and also put a little concert on in front of the ward house. He sang when we went off to gather wood. He was always singing a tune “O Swing That Girl,” “Do What is Right,” “I’ll Give To You Three Rolls of Pins” (cause this is how our love begins). He and my mother were good dancers. At the adult dances they would dance to music supplied by a fiddle, piano, guitar, or banjo and they liked to square dance and shoddish.
His sense of humor was well known around the area, some of it a little stinging, a little sharp. One man came in town—we were living on the north end of town. He stopped and my father was out on the street putting in a headgate. The man asked my father, “What is the population of Toquerville?” He says, “Hell, I’m it!”
My mother was the Relief Society president when I was born and twenty-one years later when I was on my mission in Belgium she died, and she was still the Relief Society president. From the reports that I have had, it was the biggest funeral ever held in Toquerville. She was the mother of twelve children and, of course, I am the twelfth, and it discouraged her, and so she stopped. This all took place without the benefit of a doctor or a physician, or hospital. They would have midwives and that was quite a flourishing business at that time.
Mother was a very hard-working woman. She was up early in the morning to take care of the household. She was Relief Society president and I can remember as a young boy being sent over to the church to ring the bell to announce Relief Society meeting which was held at 2:00 in the afternoon. I helped her carry over the hymn books.
She had a very good voice. One of the interesting things that took place in our testimony meetings—we had two hour meetings rather than an hour and a half or an hour meeting—but they were two hours no matter what. But when those bearing their testimonies took a little while to stand up, the congregation would just spontaneously break out and sing a hymn and she usually led forth on the hymn as they would sing in this special testimony meeting. It relieved the tension and I think we all enjoyed it.
She kept a big jar of yeast and the neighbor children were sent with a bowl of sugar to ask Aunt Zillie if they could “borrow” some yeast. She would mix in the sugar and give them a portion of yeast to take home.
One of the things I remember very vividly was her helping the elderly and the ones who were bedfast or shut in. She cooked dumplings, chicken, fruit, cake, pies, fresh baked bread with butter, which she would take to the sick and shut-ins. She continued to do this for years. I was the busboy, so to speak, and they were always glad to see me come. I don’t know how many dinners I carried in a bucket with a napkin over it. Some of these people were in their late 80’s and 90’s. They were converts in Nauvoo and crossed the plains in the late 40’s and 50’s. They weren’t in very good circumstances or too healthy so it was a nice gesture she performed and that was done on her own. She did much to instill in us a faith and desire to live the Gospel. Of her children, four of us went on missions—three sons and one daughter. She was an ardent worker in the church as you can guess from the fact that she was a Relief Society president for something like twenty-two years. It was written up in the Relief Society Magazine.
When I was sick with what they termed rheumatism, Mother used to read to me; one of the books she read was a book of Shakespeare plays. I well remember that she was an avid reader and she used to read the classics. She had several in her bookcase—Zachary, Pope, Holms, Dickens, Scott. She was continually trying to improve her mind and knowledge. I inherited her taste for literature to a certain extent. I was still incapacitated when Lon called mother to tell her Jean needed her to take care of her when she had her baby. They were in Cedar City. Mother sent me to stay with Arch and Maud. Jean had a rough time with the birth of Bellevue. We traveled to Cedar City in a two seater, white top buggy. We stopped at Big Creek to water the horses and have lunch. It was a rough, rocky road almost to Parowan and mostly uphill.
When I did things wrong, she would talk to me before we would go to bed. It would be an affectionate session and sometimes we would cry. She was concerned with the moral conduct of people and especially her family. She was very faithful about communicating with the married children who had gone away. Frank and Estelle were in Ithaca, Jean in Chicago, Bell in Salt Lake City, and Ray and Chauncy were in Peru. On special occasions and birthdays she sent something from the farm; sometimes she took dried figs, steamed them, wrapped them around a blanched almond, packaged and sent them.
Mother used to put up lots of fruit. When she baked bread, I would turn the bread mixer which was in a big metal container. She would take it out and kneed it and sometimes let it rise overnight and bake it in the morning so we could have fresh baked bread for breakfast. She would bake maybe six loaves at a time and send one to the neighbors. When Arch lived in Toquerville, he would come home to eat although Maude didn’t like him to.
My mother’s mother, as far back as I can remember, had become senile and couldn’t live alone. Mother took care of her until she died. When mother was busy, she had to tie her with a rope to the porch so she couldn’t get away and she had to lock her in her room at night. This went on for maybe eight or ten years. One day my grandmother got up too close to the fire in the fireplace and her clothes caught on fire; she was burned so badly that it caused her death. Mother’s brother, Isaac Haight, lived in Cedar City and we used to go visit him. He lived in a big home with a large family; our family would sleep on the floor. Mother’s half brother and sisters, born to her father’s first wife, lived in Cedar City and she visited them often. It took a day to go in a wagon or buggy. We would stay a few days and just go around and visit the relatives.
Another of the people there that was very unusual in my life was an Indian boy. My father was outside of town one day and there was an Indian camp. There was a little boy sitting on a rock and he was crying. He was between two and a half to three years old and my father talked to the Indians—he could maneuver and gesticulate so that he could understand and be understood by the Indians to a certain extent. So they told him that the boy’s father and mother had both died and he had no one to take him; they were going to leave him there and see if he survived okay and if he didn’t, he’d just die; that was the Indian position. So my father talked to them and offered them the pony he was seated on if they would let him take this Indian boy home, which he did. He gave his pony and took the boy back to his mother. My grandmother and grandfather had him in the home for a short time and then my grandmother died so my mother and father’s first child they had was an Indian boy who was given to them by my grandmother. His name was Lorum. I have a picture of him. I just wanted to say a little about him. I though it was unusual. It was hard for him to be accepted by the whites and he was somewhat rejected by the Indians themselves. He associated with the whites and he tried to be a good fellow to both sides and that was very difficult to do.
He became the best bronco buster in the area. This came about not because he was rough and tough; he was very kind to animals. Most of the bronco busters that I have known would snub the horse, get on and spur them and hit them over the head with a quirt and they just took all the fight out of them that they could and let them buck till they were exhausted; then the horses lost their spirit. But Lorum wasn’t that way. He took a lot of time; he was kind to them; he put a hackamore on them to begin with, a noose over their nose, and a blanket on the next day before he saddled them. It would be quite a long time before he ever mounted the horse at all. And as far as I know, none of them ever bucked with him and the horses retained their spirit. He was well known for this ability. He was a very good sheepherder; he became sick out with the sheep one time and died shortly after that. He was in his early 50’s.
One of the things that I did where he was involved happened when he would get money from his work as a cowboy or sheepherder or whatever; he came back and bought a phonograph and it was one of the early phonographs in the town. I had a little red wagon and he had me put this phonograph on the wagon and we’d go to the places of old people and some of his old friends, and he would play these records—they were disc records—and they, of course, would give me some candy or cake or whatever; it was usually molasses or honey candy, and give him maybe a little glass of wine; and that was very rewarding for the effort he put forth. These people enjoyed having him come because they got to hear the phonograph; otherwise, some of them would have died without hearing it, I’m sure. Well, it was just a little gesture that I was involved in.
My parents owned a big Edison recording phonograph. All the children had made some recordings and we played them for entertainment in the parlor where we went in only for special occasions. By the time I came along my parents were older and had diminished quite a lot of their activity. Of my sister and brother who died, I remember a little. I remember Myrtle waiting to become fourteen so she could go to the mutual dances. She was full of vigor. I remember seeing Victor milk the cows. He was a good horseman. Father used him as a jockey, also Ray and Chauncy. I remember going to the graveyard, taking Victor’s coffin for burial. They died between three months of each other from typhoid fever. I was between four and five years old.
I didn’t know Ray as well as Chauncy because Ray was in Peru. He came home from BYU one summer to farm on the ranch at LaVerkin cutting hay. He then attended the U of U and I remember his coming home once. When he graduated, he went to South America and didn’t come back to Toquerville for about thirty years. My first remembrance of Chauncy was when he came back from his mission to Samoa where he spent five years. He helped translate The Book of Mormon into Samoan. I remember him bearing his testimony. He was short—about the same height as Dad and Mother—and had red hair. He was friendly and outgoing; everybody liked him, including me. He traveled to South America as a tutor for the McCune family, a wealthy, prominent Salt Lake family. He met Dolly in South America and baptized her there. He was closer than any of the others to me. I lived with him and Dolly when I finished high school in Mesa and I learned to love them very much. They were very kind and always came to my activities—football games, etc. and Chauncy let me take the car to go on dates. I had a nice room in their house and Dolly was an extra good cook. Chauncy was about 20-22 years older than I.
I went to live with Frank and Estelle after I had graduated from the eighth grade; we had a county graduation and we went to St. George for the graduation. Out of twelve that graduated from the eighth grade, I was the only one who went on to the high school at that time. There wasn’t any high school in Toquerville. You either went to St. George or Cedar City. Well, at that time Estelle and Frank were established in Logan and he was the head of the Experimental Station at USAC. The children then were Arlene, Frank, Jr., and Chauncy. Helen hadn’t come along and so it was just a trio—no quartet. They used to play in the house—they had a nice place to play. Frank would come home from work and tell them to gather up the toys and get ready for dinner and sometimes they wouldn’t act as promptly as he wished and the punishment he meted out, which I well remember, very frequently was to put them in the clothes closet and there I think they made a selection of what they would wear the next day.
Well, the memories I have of Frank and Estelle are very sweet memories. Frank impressed me as a man who was interested in people. He kept in touch with me; he corresponded with me when I was out on the ranch. I stayed out of school during the war when they needed a little help. I stayed out of school about two years and worked, but Frank came out and visited me at Quichapah—that is an Indian name of a ranch about twelve miles out from Cedar City—and other places and I always held him in high regard.
Estelle, of course, was the chief correspondent of the family. She stayed out of school one year when I was born and then she later finished school; but she always was an avid correspondent and she was very determined to keep in touch with all members of the family. It was through her that I knew what was going on even when I was on my mission. When my wife and I were in Bermuda, when my birthday came along the 28th of October, I got a nice letter from her with a check and that is the last I heard from her. But she was a determined woman—determined to do what was right and determined that her children would do what was right. Together they made a beautiful team.
What I want to bring out to those of my family who read this account is that those of us who descended from this pioneer stock, exemplified by the early inhabitants of Toquerville, and are the recipients of a rich and enviable heritage; I pray that we will honor this heritage and be good examples and profitable servants in the kingdom, and I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen
