This story was told to her daughter Annie on 12 April 1953. It was copied by Clara B Garner and originally typed (uncorrected) by Gene Garner Julia's grandson. I, Jana Loveland Noall, will type it here (uncorrected) for all to see. Here is the original text:
.... I want to tell you a little of my life's story as I can remember it the past 85 years. I was born in Hooper, Davis County, Utah on the first day of February in 1868.
We had to live in a little covered wagon while father built us a house with a dirt roof. I was born in that house and I was the first white child born in Hooper.
There was no toys in those days cause they couldn't be bought. The first toy I remember having was a doll my uncle bought me. I was about 3 years old, I guess, and I thought that was something fine. I enjoyed it very much to think that I got a doll, as I was the only one who had one. We didn't have candy, cause candy couldn't be bought and we made molasses candy. We'd have a molasses candy pulling and get the kids together.
I can well remember my father getting the ox team to plow with. We had an old wooden beam plow. It was a very poor plow and wasn't like the plows we have these days. He used to plow the ground with a yoke of oxen and a little later on he got him a pair of horses. I can remember well him bringing them home. A pair of yellow buckskin horses. We thought we were sure going fast when we had this pair of buckskin horses. It wasn't like traveling in an automobile or anything like that.
Grandma had to get the tub and the old wash board out to was clothes. All our wash was done on a wash board. We didn't have any was machines or anything like that. The water had to be heated by wood, biscuit roots or anything we could gather up cause we didn't have any coal.
Mother done all of our sewing by hand. Wee had about 4 or 5 children and then the sewing machine came in. Father bought us a hand turned sewing machine. They clamped them on the table like the old apple peeler used to be. We don't have them nowadays either. We'd been doing the sewing by hand and we thought that was really something after we got the sewing machine.
We didn't have any lights except a tallow candle. We didn't have any kind of grease to make a candle, didn't even have coal oil then. Mother used to spin and cord all of our own cloth. Mother washed, spinned, carded and then knitted our own socks and underwear and stuff like that. You couldn't buy any. You couldn't buy a shirt even if you had all the money in the world. There just wasn't any to be bought. Everything had to be made by hand.
To get the wood, grandfather used to take a team, a heavy wagon and go up the canyon and fetch about four loads of maple wood, straight, and then he would cut plenty. Then he would chop it and bring it in for mother and us kids to burn.
When harvest time came on father had to cradle the wheat for a few years. I don't remember just how long. It was a few years before we had the mowing machine or the header. So until then father used to cradle it. Later on old Sarah Grover, to my experience, took a straw bed tick and tied it on the old cow and then she went out around the grain patch where the header had left it and gathered the wheat to feed her chickens and animals at home. They didn't have any grain and they had to take the old cow and the straw tick and gather the grain to feed their stock. Father used to cradle grain by the acre or sometimes by the day. About a $1.50 a day was good wages for those days. There was very little money you could get to handle. Everything was growed on the farm, they'd exchange with one another to have things to eat. They had very little money to spend.
We'd get short of feed for the cattle and then go out on the prairie not far from home and burn prickly pears, bring them in and take the thorns off, and then the cows would eat them. It made them strong and the cows enjoyed them after we had burned the thorns off.
We didn't have but a very little schooling. We had only three months in the winter time. When we go a school, I was quite a little bit older. We went to school in an adobe school house. We only had one room. All the grades were taught by one teacher. From the primer, or the first grade, to about the 6th grade was as high as we had. It was as high as the teacher went about that age. We didn't have copy books, we had black slates. We'd write on them and then rub it off and use them over and over. We had to buy all our books and slates and everything we used, and pay tuition. Our parents had to pay our tuition for us to have any schooling. It wasn't like it is now when everything is free. We had to pay for it all.
To get to school when it was bad weather, father would take us with the team and wagon, or sleigh or any way we had to go. When it was good weather we had to walk. it was about a mile or a mile and a half.
We didn't have too much clothing. We generally had a dress for Sunday and on or tow for school or everyday dresses. Then Mother would was(h) out school dresses out when they got soiled. She'd was(h) them after we had come home from school and then she'd iron them so we could wear them back to school the next day.
I was told by my parents that when I was a baby, my husband's folks lived in part of our house while they built them a house. While the men were working, his mother and my mother had to herd the cattle and do the chores. When one would go to get the cows, the other would nurse the babies. They would exchange.
My father gathered selratis (salt) from the lake shore and sacked it in sacks and took it to Salt Lake to sell to make him a little money. Mother and us children would go out with him and we would play in the shade of the wagon while Father and Mother gathered the selratis. When they got enough gathered to make a load they would take it to Salt Lake. They did any kind of work they could pick up to make a few dollars to make a livelihood.
When I was a kid, we were out gathering the cattle. We rode on an old horse out on the prairie to get the cattle and there was a tribe of Indians going along the Oregon Short Line railroad track. When they seen us girls, there was two of us on an old horse, the Indians started after us. I got off to run because I thought the other girl could ride around the cows faster that I could. She was used to the horse. I hurried as fast as I could, so did she, to gather the cattle. When the Indians got up pretty close to us they just whooped and hollered and were joyous because they had scared us so. They made a terrible lot of fun out of it for us being so scared of them. We were all kind of scared of Indians in those days anyway.
I remember one time me and my sister, Ella, went out to kill a chicken to cook for supper by the time the men got in from work. I told her I would tie a string on its head and she could hold its head stretched out across the block and I'd chop its head off. When I cut its head off, I didn't quite cut it clear off. A small piece of skin held the body and head together. When I throwed the chicken away from me, Ella didn't let go of the string and it swung right around toward her and she ran for the house hard as ever she could go, with the string and the chicken came bouncing along behind her. She was scared because she thought the chicken was chasing her.
When we changed places from Hooper to Roy, the Basin it was called then, now its Roy, we had to drive the cows while father fetched a load of furniture and we moved up here. He homesteaded the ground and we couldn't be off of it six months out of each year for five years till it was proved up. When we got up here to Roy we had no well water and then we dug a deep well. It was 50 feet to the top of the water. We had to draw up water with a windlass. We used two buckets, one would go down when the other came up full of water. The grain was mostly dry land grain as we had no irrigation water. It was years before we got a canal for water to come out on the ground.
The home up in the Basin (Roy) was a good two room house, shingles and all that. There was no way of watering the land until they'd built a big long canal from way up in the canyon. It came way around the hillside and came down to water the land. The first canal in the whole country was the Hooper canal. The Hooper canal was made by hard labor. My husband's grandfather surveyed the Hooper canal with his naked eye. There were no surveying instruments then. They have surveyed that years since with good instruments and left it right where grandfather surveyed it. Quite a number of years later they built the canal that waters this place at Roy. When the Hooper canal was built, they had a difficult job to build it. It was very hard work and they didn't have much to eat. They just mostly had bread and buttermilk and a few potatoes now and then. Mr. Hammond had quite a lot of cows and he'd take the buttermilk up on the canal for the men who was working there to have with their bread while they were digging the Hooper canal.
When me and your father first met, we used to go to school together. He was two years older than me. We were schoolmates and it went along till finally we decided we'd get married and have a home of our own. We used to go to dances, of course, with the rest of the young folks. We would go in the wagon, on the sleigh, perhaps on a horse or any way we had to ride. Dancing was about the only amusement we had to enjoy ourselves.
When I was home before we were married I used to help father outside to dig potatoes, milk the cows, shuck corn for the pigs and my older sister, Dine, helped mother in the house. We worked together that way for a good many years before I was married.
When we went to be married we had to go to Salt Lake in a covered wagon and there was another couple went with us, four of us and my mother went with us. We were married in the endowment house and we had a very enjoyable day that day. April 6, 1884. We came back as far as Farmington and stayed there overnight with some of our friends, Mr. & Mrs. Robinson. The next morning it was storming like the dickens and we came as far as Clearfield where we were met by my father with a fresh team of horses. We just unhitched ours and put the fresh team on the wagon. Then we hurried on home. We had a big wedding party and a banquet in our honor. It was a double wedding- Burt Simmons and Sarah Jane Starkey was the other couple. I had a real nice wedding dress. It was as nice as they have now days and was about the same style.
When we were about ready to go to Salt Lake, Burt Simmons rode up on his horse and he said, "Chance, if I can find a woman that will have me can we go with you in your wagon to Salt Lake and be married?" and Chance said "Why sure, we'd be glad to have you go with us." So he got on his horse and went galloping off and in about two hours he was back and he said Sarah Jane would marry him so they would go with us. We went down and we were rebaptized. In those days before you could be married in the endowment house, you had to be rebaptized. A few days after the wedding party we moved up to Roy and we had moved into father's house where we lived for quite a few years. I don't just remember how many years.
We didn't have our home furnished like they do now days. We had a few chairs, a table, some dishes, a stove and a pretty good cupboard. It wasn't much to what we've got these days but it was about as good as anyone had in those days. It's hard for us to realize what little we had to get along with. But we were happy and united together and we thought we had the nicest things on earth and we were up with the average people. Of course, there were a few that were better off than we were, but we were amongst the average that settled up in this country.
About a year after we moved up here, a fine baby girl came to my house and I sure thought she was fine. She still lives near us and she's 68 years old (May Jones). From Roy we moved over to Birch Creek after May was two or three years old. Your father had to go to work for a family by the name of Stevenson. they furnished us a house to live in and he worked a few years hauling rocks to build houses with. Mr. Stevenson was a contractor and he built several homes in Ogden. Then we moved from there back to Riverdale and Chance worked in the flour mill for Frank Watson for a year or more, Two year, I guess. Then had another girl come too our house. She was born in Riverdale. Then we moved to Hooper. A few years later we moved from Hooper to Roy and built our home. We finally made up our minds to settle down and have our own home. We have stayed here about 62 years. In my home there at Roy, I had eleven other children. Just the older two were born out of Roy.
I used to help my husband in the field as much as I could with the children and when they grew up they went out to work and I helped him a good deal in the field. One time when we were going out to the field to get a load of hay with the rack, we were crossing a ditch and I was sitting on the side of the rack on a board, and when we crossed the ditch the board broke right in two and I went down under the wheel and it run right over me but it didn't hurt me much. I got up smiling for the clumsy thing I was to sit on there and then I went on and helped load the hay. When we got back over to the house, your Pa pitched the hay up on the stack to me and I stacked it.
I remember one time when your Pa and Will Robinson, my brother-in-law, was coming home from work. They had been working over on the railroad, and they rode their horses to work. When they were coming home, Will's horse jumped sideways and he clung on just with one hand and one foot over the horses' back till finally he just curled up and fell and he just let a big grunt out of him that nearly tickled Pa to death. He had to get off the horse and laugh cause Will had fell off his horse in such as awkward manner.
When they first organized the Roy Ward, they put in Thomas Holland as bishop, and Pa first counselor and Will Robinson as second counselor. Mrs. Charlott Holland was Relief Society President, Mrs. Jones was first counselor and I was second counselor for several years and we had to go out among the sick, all kinds of sickness. We had to do anything that could be done to help the sick, the poor and the afflicted. The men would go and administer to the sick and we would go and doctor them. They didn't have doctors as they didn't have any way of getting there. If we got a doctor we had to get on a horse and go after him in Ogden. There was no telephones or nothing of that kind, we had to get on a horse and get him or else they had to come with a horse and buggy. That's why we had to do everything we possibly could for them in the old fashioned way. But now they don't think of that- they just think of the doctor. Chance and I used to go out in sickness of all kinds, contagious diseases and everything I guess, purt near, but we were very careful about coming home and changing our clothes before we went in the house to the children. We never brought any disease home. None of my children ever got a disease by me or their father going out into the sickness. We went into everything but smallpox.
Dine and me used to go out in sickness. She was kind of a midwife and we worked together to deliver over a hundred babies. We never lost one case or had any bad results, either the baby or the mother. They were all alright. Not one case of blood poison nor one bit of trouble.
For several years I worked on the old folks committee. We used to take them anywhere we was advised to take them We went up Ogden Canyon to the Hermitage; we went to the Lagoon; we went to Salt Lake and many a time over to Lorrin Farr Park. It wasn't quite so far to haul them, but we had many an enjoyable time with the old folks; feeding them, looking after them, taking care of them that was too old to take care of themselves.
I remember the first school house we had here at Roy. It was a frame building with one large room and all the grades were taught in that one room. One teacher taught them all. I also remember the first store we had here, it was Henry White's. Nephi Hardy had store too. Now there is a good many of them.
The first post office, Orson Fields had; later on Will Robinson took it over. They had (it) in one of their rooms in the house. Nephi Hardy had the first canning factory. just a small factory but soon enlarged it to a big one and then there was the Old Star Factory. It was a company that run that factory. I don't know just who did own it. They canned peas, tomatoes, all kinds of vegetables; and fruits of all kinds- cherries, peaches and everything. They sold out to Utah Pack and closed the Old Star Factory.
I've heard this story many times. My husband's grandfather was camped one afternoon near the mouth of Weber Canyon and he called several of the brethren over to the side of the camp and he said, "Some of you men will live to see them build a canal from the mouth of this canyon around those foothills onto the bench down below and water thousands of acres." My husband worked many a day on that canal, plowed and scraped with the horses and built the canal. My own home now in Roy is watered with the water out of that canal- the Davis and Weber County Canal.
When we started having conferences at Salt Lake City, we used to go down in the covered wagons and camp on City Creek or in the old Immigrant House in Salt Lake while we attended the three day conference. We had a real good time and now we can't get close to it at all. I've lived to see that much.
When the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated, I was privileged to go to that dedication. My husband, his grandmother, his mother and I all went through the same day of the dedication of the temple. It was 1893.
When we was raising our family we most always went up in the canyon in the summer time with several of our neighbors in wagons and camped and picked sarvis berries, choke cherries, haws or what was up there, anything that was there to be picked. We also used to snag fish, there was no law against snagging them in those days.
When we was raising our family we had to do anything for work and Pa used to shoot ducks. He'd go early in the morning down on the Great Salt Lake and shoot ducks and perhaps bring home a hundred or two. Then after we'd get the chores done we picked ducks. He'd send them to Salt Lake or some other place. He used to furnish the hotels in Ogden with the ducks he had shot. There was no limit on ducks then, you could shoot as many as you'd a mind to. That way made us quite a bit of money for a livelihood to help along with the family. I loaded shells for him many times. We used to buy powder in big cans and shot in 25 pound sacks and then load our own shells, this way they didn't cost as much money as buying the shells. We used to buy blank shells and reload them every night, perhaps a hundred or two shells, so that he would be ready for the next day so he'd have a better chance of getting ducks.
My father built a road from Hooper to Roy, so's to make it shorter distance for him to travel every day to do his work. He built a bridge over the big slough. Father maintained that road and the public used it, but he kept it up for his road from one farm to the other.
We didn't have no particular amusement hall and they built a bowery and they had all kinds of entertainments and amusement in this bowery. They also laid down a floor that we could dance on. Any kind of entertainment to amuse the young folk to save them going so far. We had such slow ways of travel.
The first Sunday School organized in Roy was organized in the bowery on the piece of ground just above my brother's, Parl Baker, home. We held Sunday School in that bowery all during the summer. Justin Grover was Superintendent of Sunday School.
We used to raise strawberries and my father had quite a lot. We'd all gather the strawberries and father would take them down to Bountiful where my mother and my husband would take them on to Salt Lake and sell them. Father would fetch the empty cases back in order to have them filled and then he would take them back the next night loaded with strawberries. Father had a great amount of strawberries. The day before Charles was born, I faced 136 cases of strawberries and nailed them up. Father wanted me to face them because I could do it so that he could nail them up so they would not jog around and get bruised.
Chance worked on the railroad that goes from Salt Lake down to Garfield. They camped down there in cars that the railroad company furnished them. They stayed down there for several months. Then he came back home and helped build the branch line that runs from Roy to Hooper.
In 1910, I think it was, my son Charlie went on a mission to Independence, Missouri. Just a few days after he went away my girl Ruth, who was the baby at that time, passed away. She had the measles and pneumonia and all the rest was very sick at home. It was bad news to send him when he had just got to the mission field. Ruth was only 14 months old and was a very sweet little child.
In 1916 my family begin to go away where they could get better opportunities to make a living. We didn't have too much land. Charl and Ray went to Rupert, Idaho. They took what little furniture they had and loaded it on the train and went to Rupert. Since that time the other boys have all moved outin that part of the country. From Rupert and Emmett, Idaho on to Nyssa, Oregon.
In 1917 my husband went into the Western States Mission Headquarters at Denver, Colorado. He labored in Denver, Pueblo, and Trinidad and came home in 1918. Me and the boys run the farm while he was gone.
I can remember well the first time we went out to Rupert to see the boys after they got moved out there. The road was all dust and ruts until you could hardly hold yourself in the car. It took us fully a good day and you got there all tired and dusty. But now there are good oiled roads to Rupert and from there clear on down to Emmett and on to Nyssa, Oregon, where the other boys are now.
For several years Chance's mother came and lived with us in the winter time and when it got nice and warm in the spring time, she'd get some of the children to stay with her and pass the time away and in the winter time she'd come back up and stay with us. Then later on Chance's father came to stay with us and he was here for a little over five years. After he died, Grandma came and stayed with me the rest of her days on earth and she lived to be 107 years old. She stayed with me about 28 years- something like that.
In 1934 my husband was taken very sick and died in the Dee Hospital and since that time I've lived here in my home and now and then some ofmy children stay with me.
My posterity at 85 years old, I have 13 children, 78 grandchildren, 104 great grandchildren and 5 great great grandchildren, that makes 236 descendants and 218 living children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren.
In closing my short memory for such a few years as I have lived, I am very thankful to the Lord for my family. Many times they've been healed in sickness and have been greatly blessed and I feel deeply thankful to the Lord for his blessing and for such a wonderful family as I have. They've all got faults like everybody else's kids but they are all good, we've never had to pay no jail sentences, no police fines, no trouble of any kind to cause me to worry or fret over what they have done.
The End
Then True Garner added a note to the bottom of the life story. She said that her family tried to get Julia to share some of the poems and songs that she had written but Julia wouldn't share them. She said that Julia was very talented. Then True said, and I quote:
I've truly enjoyed this afternoon making this recording with Mother. It's been a pleasure to live with her through these pioneer experiences. It's been great to watch her face and her emotions as we lived over again the days of her childhood up to now. May the lord bless her and protect her and help her to live happy the rest of the days that she is to live here. I hope and pray that he will bless me so I can live worthy to go to her in the hereafter. That's the height of my ambitions.
Grandmother was taken to the hospital the fall of 1953 and was there quite some time very sick. When she returned home the family took turns staying with her. When she was well enough Annie took her to her home in American Fork. She spent the winter there. In the spring she returned home for three months. She then returned to Annie home and spent most of the winter. She visited a while at Rupert, then came to Emmett, Idaho for a short time. She then went to Nyssa, Oregon where she became very ill and died at the home of her son Dewey 16 April 1955. Funeral services were held at Nyssa 18 April 1955 and body went by rail to Ogden where funeral services were again held April 20 and was buried in Roy cemetery by her husband Chancy.
The respect paid her showed she was loved my many. May her memory be a shining light to us her family that we can live a better life by knowing and loving her.
