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Wilma Fillerup (Mrs. Frederick Andre Turley) (1900-1982)

Interviewed by Rochelle Fairbourn
27 April 1982, Mesa, Arizona
Charles Redd Center for Western Studies
Brigham Young University
LDS Polygamy Oral History Project
HBLL Special Collections, MSS OH 546

(Excerpts taken from the 21 page transcript.)

Early Childhood

I was born in Colonia Diaz, Chihuahua, Mexico on March 8, 1900.  I grew up surrounded by my mother’s family, many aunts and uncles.  I was the oldest child born to my father and mother and also the oldest grandchild. 

My mother [Moneta Johnson] was a very cultured woman.  She was married at sixteen.  To me she was always very young and beautiful. 

My father [Charles Richard Fillerup] was very stately.  He was an educator.  He was superintendent of the school at Colonia Diaz.  He was sent there from Provo, Utah.  He was a very special man.  He was a great scholar and really has had the greatest influence in my life.  I always wanted his approval and my mother’s approval. 

I lived near my grandfather and grandmother Johnson with their many children and wives.  I had aunts and uncles.  I had little aunts my own age that I grew up with and went to school with.  They were my playmates.  I had a very happy childhood.

 I was brought up in a cultured home.  We always had books to read.  We were well taught to read early.  My father taught us how to respect books and other people’s property.  I was twelve years old when we left Mexico, and there were just eight children in the family so we came along very fast.  We lived in just a small house compared to what we have now.  But each o fus had our own little box for own little properties, our own things.  No one else was to tough our boxes.  We were taught to respect each other’s possessions and we never forgot that.  I think that is a very important thing for everyone to know. 

 Living conditions in Mexico

They were pioneer really because remember this was back in the early 1900's.  We were fifty years or a hundred years behind Utah when it came to living in Mexico.  We had to go to El Paso if we wanted store bought shoes, white sugar and white flour.  In Mexico all we had was brown sugar, “dulce.”  We had flour milled at the mill that was just whole wheat grounded.  We had shorts.  It was always exciting to go to the mill to get the grist.  We had our own tannery.  We made our own shoes and our own brooms.  We sustained ourselves.  If we didn’t make it, we didn’t have it.  We had a lot of fruit.  We had wonderful gardens.  I thought we lived well.  We had cereals for breakfast, eggs, and some meat.  It was a typical early day Mormon community where we each took care of ourselves.

 Describe the home you lived it

My home was a brick building.  It was two-room with a lean-to on for the kitchen when we got more children.  There was another bedroom put on for the children.  It was plastered.  Over the door was a transom, the old-fashioned transom that could be opened for ventilation.  It is a good thing.  Our buildings would be better off today with something like that.

 Describe your father

My father was a handsome man.  He wore a moustache.  He was dignified.  He was a great scholar.  He had gray eyes.  He was about six feet one inch.  He was not extra tall but broad; very strong.  He was a great speaker.  He was soft spoken but a good disciplinarian.  People just respected him.

His parents were from Denmark.  They were married on the boat Manhattan coming over from Denmark.  My grandmother was sent out to her home when she joined the Church.  Her father and mother would not let her come back into her home again because she joined the Church, so she was really on her own.  She came to America.  She knew my grandfather in Denmark.  They were from the same area.  They decided to be married on the boat before it landed in the United States.  They settled on the banks of Utah Lake at the little town of Lakeview where the Geneva Steel Mill now is.  It was farming.

But they were a scholarly family.  Their sons and daughters went to the Brigham Young Academy at that time.  My father graduated from the Brigham Young Academy in the year 1895.  He was a brilliant chemist under Dr. Karl Maeser who admired him very much.  Also his brother, Erastus, Uncle E. K. as we called him, graduated at the same time.

My father was called to go on a mission to Canada.  He was ready to go, but before he got away the call was revoked and he was called to go to Colonia Diaz, Chihuahua, Mexico to establish the Juarez Stake Academy.  That was back in 1896, just after he graduated.  He and his brother Erastus were sent to Mexico at that time.  My father once said to me, “I was disappointed not to go to Canada.  I have always wanted to go to Canada.  But when I was feeling so badly that my call had been revoked, Dr. Maeser said, ‘Don’t feel bad, brother Fillerup.  You will go to Mexico and you will find a beautiful wife down there and raise a good family.’” And that is what he did.

My mother was one of his students in the academy.  She was sixteen years old when they were married.  She was just fourteen when they met.  But girls then were so mature.  They had to learn to sew and cook and all those things to take care of the family early.  She was the oldest child too so she learned to do many of these things.  She was a good student.  He fell in love with this sixteen year old student and married her.

Describe your mother

My mother was brown eyed, with beautiful long hair that came down below her waist.  She was a very genteel lady.  She was a good musician.  She was really the outstanding organist of that time of the little community.  She was the organist for the ward choir and a good accompanist to all those who sang.  She loved children and babies.  My father loved children and babies.  She was soft spoken too.

Both my father and mother used beautiful English.  If I don’t speak properly, it is not because I wasn’t taught and had the example.  Mama used to say, “Wilma, you can say anything you hear me say.”  I said, “Oh, Mama.  I wouldn’t get to say anything bad then.”

There was no gossiping in our home.  They didn’t like gossiping.  They wouldn’t allow us to quarrel.  If we started quarreling, Mama would get the broom and she would say, “Well, girls, I will just sweep you out like the old lady did the little cats when they started quarreling.  I will sweep you out the door.”

 [Polygamy, Homes, Schooling, Church activities, Religious practices in the home, Exodus out of Mexico in 1911, Travel from Mexico, Life in Camps, Schooling, Tucson, Indians and Mexicans]

 Tell me about your life

We came to Snowflake.  My father selected Snowflake.  He said, “I have got to get my family among the Mormons again.”  All of this time we had been out of the Church.  There were none.  In Tucson there was a little Binghampton branch where a few from Morelos and Oaxaca had come out.  It was just a little branch.  At Cochise we were the only Mormons.  My father said, “We will go to Snowflake because there is where I want you girls to meet Mormons.  You are getting marriageable age and I want you to be around the Mormons.”

But all this time we had our own religious activities.  We had our family prayers.  We always prayed for the bishop of the ward and we didn’t have a ward.  We were always Mormons.

When we came to Snowflake, I and my sister Kathe went to the Snowflake Academy.  I missed a couple of years of school because my mother was ill.  While my mother was ill have having more babies, to take care of such a large family, I had to miss a lot of school.  So I didn’t get a few years of school until I got to Snowflake and was in the Snowflake Academy.  That was in 1916.  We graduated from the Snowflake Academy in May o f 1919 right after the war.  Only fourteen of us that time graduated.

[After graduating from the Academy] I met this handsome missionary when he came home from his mission.  He lived in Snowflake.  He was Fred A. Turley.  He had just finihsed a mission to the Eastern States Mission.  I fell in love with Fred.  He had to go to war before we could be married.  I was twenty when we were married.

I had a lot of fun; I had a lot of friends I used to go with my father a lot in doing 4-H Club work in Apache and Navajo Counties.  He was establishing 4-H tanning clubs and sewing clubs  I was helping him along.  I had a lot of experience with making friends in those two counties which was very nice.

Courtship and Marriage

It was on horse back.  I loved horses.  I said I could never marry a man without a horse. 

The first time I went with him it wasn’t a date really.  I had taught myself to write on the typewriter so I used to do my father’s work in his office.  This was late November.  I had been working in the office all day typing for my father.  I was rather tired so I was going to take a walk down to the canyon about a mile and a half out of town just to relax and rest.  I liked to hike and walk.  I started down the canyon when Fred Turley came along on a big sorrel horse named Old Flag.  I had just met him the previous Sunday.  He said, “Well, how do ya do, Miss Fillerup?”  I said “How do you do, Mr. Turley?  My goodness, that is a beautiful horse, a bald faced sorrel.”  He said, “Yes.”  I said, “I sure loved horses.”  Before I knew it, I was in the saddle and Fred was behind.  We had hit for the canyon to see the canyon.  That was really our first ride.

We were riding out and the moon came up.  The coyotes barked.  All at once Fred was on the ground throwing his hat in the air and yelling.  He said, “That is the first time I have heard the coyotes bark since I got home from my mission.”  He had been back to Rochester, New York.  So he was so thrilled with the whole thing.

Our courtship just seemed to start off in a very natural way.  Not too long after that we had been out to a show or tow another ride and hike down to the old bridge across Silver Creek.  I was an outdoor girl, and he was a rancher.  He said, “I think I have found what I want.  I am going to stop looking.”  I was only seventeen, and Fred was twenty-two.  He said, “I always did pick them young.  I would like you to keep me in your mind.  I have to go away and win the war, but I would like you for the mother of my children someday.”  I said, “I can’t think of anybody than you.  You have filled an honorable mission. You are strong, unspoiled.”  He thought the same of me.  I was unspoiled.  I knew how to cook and sew.  I always knew where I was going and what I wanted.  I knew I wanted horses, ranch, outdoor living.  He wanted ranching.  Clothes never meant anything to me; money didn’t mean anything to me.  I just wanted to be free and live an open free life.  He said, “When you get ready to marry me, you will tell me the date.”

It was soon after this in March 1918 he went into the service.  We were in World War I at that time.  It was a great experience for him.  It was a very stressing experience for all of us, of course, in the United States.  He had the opportunity of going to the officers’ training corps in September 1918 and he took it.  They took all these old cowpunchers from Arizona and New Mexico and put them in the medical corps.  Most of them got out as soon as they could.  Fred went to the officers’ training.  He had only had three years high school, but he had a great mind, a great memory.  This was what he wanted was some competition.  He made great strides in this.  He got a captain’s rating.  He was second best in his company.  He got his commission and discharge the same day, November 28, 1918.  The armistice was signed November 11, 1918.

These officers in training at that time, cadets as they were called, could go ahead and finish which was only a couple of weeks and get their commission or they could go home immediately.  More than half of them went home immediately.  Only a few stayed to get their commission, but he was one that did.  He was in the reserve for ten years.  The army had had a great influence in his life.

His mission, of course, had a great great influence in his life.  He slept many nights in the room at the Joseph Smith home at Palymra where the Angel Moroni appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith.  He saw the Hill Cumorah.  He was so familiar with all that around there because he was at Rochester, New York most of his time.

 Married life

We were married June 1, 1920.  Then we went to the ranch to establish our home at the ranch twenty-three miles southeast of Snowflake.

We have five wonderful children.  They were all born on the ranch but Stan.  Stan was born in Snowflake.

I loved the ranch with a passion from the very first.  I had a horse to ride.  We had cattle.  We lost most of them after the crash after the war.  We little by little made it through lots of work.  We have had a great life.

When they took our cattle in 1922, we decided along with getting back in the cattle business to establish a boys’ ranch.  We did.  Our first boy was Larry Foster from Ridgewood, New Jersey.  He was there for the summer.  But about three days before he was to go home in August he was dragged to death.  It was a very sad experience for us.  But he loved the ranch and loved the summer there.  His father and mother took it very well.  I thought then that would be the last of our camp trying to get in contact.  But Larry’s father said, “Don’t let it be.  You must go on and give this same wonderful experience to other boys.”