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Hortense McClellan (Mrs. Horace Ralph Fuller) 1900-1997)

(Autobiography)

The Theodore Turley Family Book, pp. 358-359

I am grateful for my heritage which has been the mainstay in helping me set my goals.  I am doubly grateful that my beloved great-grandparents were able to recognize the truth and had the courage to accept it and live its sacred principles which caused much persecution and suffering but proved their dedication and steadfastness to the Gospel of our Lord and Savior.

I was born, the eighth child and sixth daughter of a family of three sons and nine daughters, to David Alvin and Esther Turley McClellan on Sept. 22, 1900 at Colonia Juarez, Mexico.  When I was nine and a half years old, we moved to the state of Sonora and lived in San Jose and/or Morelos until 1912 when wisdom said, "Move out!"  "Uncle Sam" gave us a welcome of "Tent City" at Douglas, Arizona.  Here at "Camp Harry J. Jones" is where the American Ninth Calvary of all colored men was stationed--the first blacks I had ever seen.  Mexicans we were used to, but not "Black Men."  Each Sunday the Army Band gave a free concert in the park or grove of trees just east of where we were camped and I learned to enjoy band music.  My father was in the Juarez Band and as a child I watched the town holiday parades with the band wagon and its team of white horses.

My father had an offer of work clearing land at Jaynes R.R. Station (Southern Pacific main line) ten miles north of Tucson for the Megenheimer Development Co.  He and my brother William left Douglas by team and wagon for Tucson in Oct. 1912, and the work lasted through to early February.  Hazel, our 3-year old sister, was very ill and the doctor and Bishop sent Mother, with her nursing baby Fulvia and an older sister Ivis to babysit her while mother took care of Hazel, to Salt Lake City where she could have proper care."  This left just my sister Beth and I with our eldest and married sister, Estella Bradshaw, to go by train with their family to Tucson--

my first train ride.  One year after entering the United States, we arrived in the Salt River Valley and did various things for a living like raising cotton, dairying, etc.  I had worked in two homes in Douglas and for a friend of my mother's in Chandler in the summer.  With living and working conditions as they were, schooling for me was scant and erratic, but I did graduate from the eighth grade and had almost one year of high school, as I married young.

As to Church positions, I was asked to teach the 8-year olds-in Sunday School when I was 13 years of age.  I also was MIA secretary, a Relief Society visiting teacher at 19 years, ward Relief Society secretary, head visiting teacher, and did genealogy visiting and youth genealogy instructor two different times.

In April 1917 I was married to Horace Ralph Fuller of Chandler by our Bishop.  Then in June we journeyed to Salt Lake City for our temple sealing on June 7.  To this union was born nine children: five sons and four daughters.  We lost our eldest son, Horace Alvin at 9 months, but our remaining children are all married and living scattered about the United States.  We have forty grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and 12 married grandchildren.  During our family-raising years, we were faced with various economic climates and some were pretty rugged.  All of the children did well in school, graduating from high school; and all four sons graduated from college and did graduate work.