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ADA BOLETTA CHRISTENSEN ALMOND Compiled by Bernice Almond Thomas |
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 Karen Jensen Christensen |
ADA'S MEMORIES AS A YOUNG GIRL
The following is what Grandma Almond (Ada Christensen) wife of Moroni Almond said of her life:
The earliest I remember was living on the homestead and seeing my father walk out into the grain field with the grain as tall as he was. I remember after the harvest was over, the Indians would come to glean the grain. They would camp down by the stacks and glean every head of wheat that the binder or the thresher left. They were always friendly. Father and mother treated them kindly.
Then I remember the fields of flowers. The field below the house would be golden yellow with buttercups and tulips and some parts blue with bluebells and larkspurs, and red with Indian paint brush. I remember how Ann, Dave and I would love to gather the beautiful flowers and fill every possible container. It was spring and flowers were blooming and we would each have our favorite stick to dig the segos and take them home to have creamy milk on them. We thought they were delicious.
I remember the marshals coming for my father on account of the plural marriage being practiced by the Latter-Day Saints and how frightened we children were. I said to my mother, "I was a good girl--and I didn't cry."
We had sheep, and I remember Ann and I were supposed to keep the sheep off of the blue grass that was an acre or so north of the house. I remember the spring rocked up in the shape of a horseshoe. The water ran in a stream out of the open end of the horseshoe.
I remember the well just above the spring. It had a long stick with a hook on it to let a bucket down to bring water up for household use. I also remember the garden with all kinds of garden vegetables, and small fruits and eggplant, which we enjoyed in the spring. A high willow fence surrounded the garden. We were always looking out for rattlesnakes and coyotes. A gun was always near for the boys to shoot them or at them--because they killed quite a few of the sheep.
Aunty, Father's other wife (Mary Regastine--called Aunt Stina) had all boys and she liked to have one of us girls stay with her. Father passed away when I was eight years old and Dave was only six. I stayed with Aunty, and as I grew up she cried and said "What will I do without you? You are growing up."
When I was 16 years old, Aunty passed away. She and my mother were always so close, and there were never any problems with their family relationship that we children ever heard of. They no doubt had them, but they did not air them when we were present. After father died it made them very close and they clung to each other saying, "Together we will raise all of our children--this is all that we have, except our faith in our Heavenly Father.
ADA's MEMORIES OF FAMILY
After Father, Jens, passed on, Mother had all the responsibility of raising six children. Sister Zina was married a year before father passed on, but sisters Liz and Ann, Will, Dave and I were quite a responsibility.
Will was terribly hurt going to the canyon for wood--the load tipped over on him pinning him under it. Another boy was behind him with another load, and he got Will out, tied the horses, and rode one of them to town for help. Cache Junction had the only phone. Brother Joe rode his bike to Cache Junction to call the doctor in Logan. Doctor Ormsby came in a buggy and went on to Clarkston Canyon where friends, with Mother, were doing what they could for Will. His back was broken, and a tree branch had passed through his foot. He was so skinned and bruised. They had brought a white-top buggy with a mattress in it to take him home. During it all, he did not lose consciousness. The doctors did what they could for him--the old doctor wanted to operate, but the younger doctor said his only chance was not to operate.
Brother Joe was never (or didn't seem to be) religious, but when these things came, he knew what source to go to for help: He said, "Come all of you and let's pray. " We knelt and he prayed, and our prayers were answered as brother Will lived to spend a useful, good life, and had a wonderful wife and a family of six children. Will was bedfast a year, then got around on crutches and a year from then he was able to get around with two canes. Through faith and prayers and persistent effort he was able to lead a normal life. Through all of this, my dear mother carried on.
All my brothers and sisters had college training. I did not. Liz and Dave went to the A.C. (Agricultural College) in Logan. Ann and Will went first to the B.Y. in Logan, then to the A.C. in Logan. Afterwards Ann taught school for 12 years. Will went into forestry, Dave in the Indian service in Oregon. He also taught school a couple of years in a country school.
Soon after, Dave and Will homesteaded by Downey . . . ! I am ahead of my story. After Aunty passed away, we moved to Weston for the boys to run the farm of Aunt Boletta and Uncle Soren. On one of my visits to see my Aunt and cousins, I met the boy, Moroni Sandberg whom I married after two years of off-and-on courtship. I was not yet 18, and he was just past 20. His foster parents encouraged the marriage, but mother would have liked me to wait until I was a bit older. We were insistent, and she consented.
MARRIAGE
We were married at home where we were living in Weston. It was done with all the things that were being done at weddings at that time--a big wedding supper, a beautiful wedding cake, and a beautiful wedding dress of white organdy, all ruffles and ribbons. I also had a brown dress of lovely material. Mother and my sisters had made every effort to make it all the best for me, so we were married with the Bishopric officiating, and we had our marriage solemnized the next spring in the Logan Temple.
After we were married, we lived at Grandpa and Grandma Sandberg's home for a while. We wanted to have our own home so Grandpa Sandberg helped us get a two-room house about two blocks from where they lived. Moroni helped Grandpa Sandberg with the farm work.
They were really good to us, and helped us all they could. We had very little furniture--I sewed carpet rags, and Grandma gave me her loom and she helped me get started. I wove 27 yards of rag carpet and when I had it finished, I put it down on the floor with clean straw under it for padding. I was very proud of it and thought it was beautiful.
The following spring, Moroni took me to Mother's in Newton; we got Mother and went on to Logan to the Temple to have our marriage solemnized. We went one day and stayed at sister Zina's for the night. We went through the Temple the next day, then on home to Mother's, where I stayed as we were expecting our baby. The road was mud to the axles of the buggy and took five or six hours to go each way.
Moroni went on to Weston to help with farm work. When Oscar was born, he and Grandma and Grandpa Sandberg came and were so happy with this new baby. Grandma and Grandpa had been denied the joy of parenthood, and felt they could claim him. We told them they could name him. They named him Oscar Merlin. He was born April 7, 1902 and was blessed on Grandpa Sandberg's birthday, June 1, 1902. In 1903 we moved to Mother's in Newton. She had moved to Logan to keep house for Will and Dave while they were going to school at the A.C. (agriculture college). We were expecting our second child.
Burt was born December 14, 1903. The summer of 1904 we moved to the Chris Peterson ranch near Bear River City to help my brother Nephi with his farm work. We stayed there until the spring of 1905, when we moved back to Newton and started to build a house on a 5-acre tract of land. It was part of Mother's property which she deeded to us from Father's estate.
Moroni got a two-room frame house built there, and we moved into it in July 1905. We were very happy with our new home, and in September Ellen was born on September 23, 1905.
Moroni had gotten a chicken coop built and dug a well. Will, my brother, helped with the well when it got too deep to throw the dirt out. That fall Moroni took the two little boys with him, hunting through the fields, and they drank water out of the town ditch, and in a short time all three had typhoid fever.
Ellen was less than a month old at the time they became ill. Moroni was in bed for seven weeks, Burt was really bad. Oscar got along better than the others. How we made it I can't tell, but we had no help from anyone only our own dear folks. Will brought us milk, and Mother came to see how we were doing, and helped out. Sister Ann came and stayed a day at a time, and brother Charles stayed one night. I had to keep fires night and day. We had already hauled our winter coal, so we had fuel on hand.
The next year, Moroni and Will were both working in Salt Lake, and staying at Grandma Sandberg's. They would come home once in a while on the train.
I think Moroni worked in Salt Lake for two years, and I lived in the north field--it was about one and one half blocks from the Cooley home, our nearest neighbors. Moroni was home the summer of 1907, when we were expecting another baby. James was born July 27, 1907, and Moroni was working in the harvest fields.
In the summer of 1909, as he was hauling gravel for the building of brother Mose's house (he and Oscar and Burt) the gravel pit caved in on them and Burt was badly hurt. He had a bad blow on his head and a double break of the upper leg, just above the knee and below the hip. Moroni and Oscar took him to Mother's and called Aunt Amelia Jensen (she was our doctor).
Then they took him to Logan to sister Zina's. She and her husband, Uncle Elmer, were always there to help out. So they were there for six weeks, and Burt was in traction. Moroni stayed to care for him. I was again moved to Mother's in Newton with the other three children, as I was again expecting a baby. The baby was Eunice born at Mother's on July 28, 1909. James turned two years old the day before Eunice was born, and they brought Burt home when she was six days old. As soon as I could be about, we went to our own home again. Poor Mother, really did for all of us. Time went on, we got along, and Moroni was now the janitor of the school buildings for two or three years--he worked at whatever there was to do.
In 1911, Will and Dave filed on homesteads--they were dry farms. After looking around, Moroni filed on a homestead for us by Will and Dave, and built a log cabin with one large room and such a big cool cellar. He also built a chicken house and a pig pen.
Bernice was born on November 23, 1912, and I was very ill with what they called child bed-fever. I guess I had uremic poisoning. Anyway, they said it was a bad kidney condition. I was in bed a month. Mother, always standing by, stayed with us to care for me and the family.
Bernice was the last of our children to be born in Newton. We had been spending summers at the homestead (dry farm) and moving to our home in Newton in the fall so the children could go to school.
I had kidney trouble when Bernice was born, and she had eczema. Moroni had a flu condition that he couldn't seem to get over. So after he got the spring work sort of taken care of, we loaded our things into the white-top buggy and went to Lava Hot Springs to try the healing properties of the hot springs.
It was the 3rd of July in 1913, and pouring rain when we left, and we were all day going from the farm to Lava. It was dark, and we had our little kids to take care of. There were no cabins there then, and you had to bring your own bedding in wagon train style. The folks in the next tent from where we had been assigned, asked me to come into their tent with the children while the men helped Moroni get our tent up and get a fire in the stove. Then we got beds fixed and went to bed.
We stayed in Lava three weeks. Moroni worked in the fields wherever work was, and would go in the pool morning and evening. His flu trouble got better in a short time. I would take the baby into the pool three times a day. We took a cup in the pool with us. We stayed just where the water came out of the rocks, and drank and soaked. Bernice's eczema cleared up and never returned, and my kidneys seemed to get well.
DRY FARMING
The spring of 1913 we moved to the dry farm. Oscar was then seven years old. We would move back in the fall to our home in Newton so the kids could go to school, and then back to the dry farm near Downey in the spring.
While we lived on the dry farm we had to haul all the water for the animals and ourselves from the J. F. Hartvigsen farm about 2 miles away. We hauled our drinking water from a spring about 2 miles toward town. We cleared sagebrush off of all the land. I gathered sagebrush to use for fire in the cook stove to bake my bread. Sagebrush makes a very hot fire. Besides, we had no other wood. There were years of struggle on this dry farm. Sometimes we raised some grain and sometimes money was really slim.
In 1915 we bought a 5-acre tract of land west of Downey. We bought an old abandoned school house from an outlying district called "Ragged Louse," and Dad tore that down and moved it to the land just west of Downey. He built a two-bedroom home, a chicken house, and a barn, and dug a well.
We moved into it on the 4th of July 1916. We had lived down to Will and Ag's for some time waiting for all these things to be built.
That spring both Ag, Will's wife, and Mary, Dave's wife, were expecting babies, and I got to take care of them. We lived in a rented house in Downey, until we could get our house built. Will and Ag wanted us to move in with them.
We stayed in two rooms of their house, and they had two, so I could be there to care for them. Carmen, Ag's baby, came first, and then Hugh, Mary's baby, came two weeks later.
ADA'S MEMORIES OF LATER YEARS
On the dry farm it was a constant battle with rabbits, squirrels, and frost. Then came the depression, and we finally turned it over to the Mortgage company. It was a battle, and we lost--or did we? We gained experience.
When we lived in our house west of Downey, where our family grew up it was better. We had to walk quite a distance to church, but we usually made it. The children walked to school--there were no busses. After walking that far to the church, carrying a baby, it was not easy to stand and teach a class, but those were good years when we were struggling to meet the problems as they came.
In the fall of 1919, Oscar had an accident while hunting, and injured his left hand so badly that he had to lose part of it, and he was ill for some time with blood-poisoning. He adjusted and did very well after he recovered.
Karen was the first of our children to be born just west of Downey, on December 9, 1917, where we lived the year around. When Phyllis was born on October 1, 1920, she was a twin and the other twin was stillborn. I was in Logan staying with Aunt Zine until my baby came. Aunt Zine had to be away for several hours that day when it happened--my baby was coming. I, of course was frightened, because the only person there with me was my daughter Ellen, who was only 15 years old. Imagine how frightened she was also. All turned out well anyway, although it was sad that the one twin was stillborn, but that would have been so even if Aunt Zine had been there. We just had to have faith. Gayle, our last child, was born at home west of Downey, on July 21, 1926.
Later, we built a new home in Downey to be nearer to church and school. All of the children were married but the last three. We had a lovely yard and flowers around our house, and so many good friends and neighbors.
After my brother Will passed away, they moved Agnes's home up town near us, and we were always so near and dear to each other. We had raised our children together--along with Dave's family too. It was a comfort and a help to have our dear ones near. Will and Agnes had two of their little girls pass away after long illnesses. They both died in my arms, as my dear brother Will did, following a severe heart attack.
Burt had been in business for a number of years with a garage and the Ford agency. Eunice worked for him as his secretary. Then when she went to Pocatello as a secretary in the Court House, Karen worked for Burt for some time, and then she too took a secretarial job in the same Court House in Pocatello. They both did this kind of work through the years.
HARDSHIP
In 1957, when Eunice was working as secretary to the President of the Utah State University in Logan, her daughter, Kaye, became very ill. We went to Logan and stayed in an apartment, to do what we could to help out. Eunice kept working at the University. Kaye's father, Lloyd Sullivan, died at that time also. Later Eunice purchased a small home in Logan close to us where we lived for a time.
After our dear Kaye passed on, we stayed on in Logan for a while. Then in 1958 we sold our home in Downey, and moved to Preston, Idaho. We bought an old home in quite a run down condition, but we repaired, remodeled and improved it so that it was a roomy, comfortable old home. We were so thankful that things worked out as well as they did for us, and we were so humbly grateful to be able to look after ourselves with our wonderful family standing by in case we needed them.
There were some struggles and problems, as most folks have in raising a large family. The joys in their joys and their accomplishments, which we think are many, we are grateful for.
The sorrows we have had when tragedy came, is all a part of life. For instance, when our dear Ellen was taken by death after a short illness, leaving her husband and three little girls--the youngest, less than two months old. There was my battle for life in 1932 after serious surgery, when my life was spared through prayer and the power of the priesthood and the faith of our loved ones.
Tragedy came again on February 2, 1957, when our dear son James was killed in a car accident. The youngest of their children was married about six weeks before his death. Mary, his wife, was so badly hurt in the same accident, that the doctors told her children that she would not live either, but her life was spared to carry on.
In the late 1960s Eunice became ill with cancer but she wouldn't give up. She was still working as personal secretary to the President of the State University at Logan. At the end of each day she would drive clear to Salt Lake City to receive treatment, and then drive all the way back to Logan. She did this and worked all day, every day besides. It was slow and painful, but she was such a "brick" and so determined right up to the end. Cancer is such a dreadful, fearful disease. She had a few months stay in a nursing home and died on December 24, 1977.
Many times I was very ill--many times in the hospital. But through the faith and prayers of loved ones and the power of the priesthood administered in our behalf I was spared. I am thankful for our wonderful family, who kept in touch with us constantly to see that our needs were cared for.
MEMORIES OF GRANDMA ALMOND
Grandma Ada Almond was loved very much by her children and grandchildren. She was always fun to visit. Everyone loved to hear her recite her poetry that she had memorized. It seems she had reams of poetry all memorized--very long standard and classical poems. However, one of them we all liked best, especially after SHE was old was:
After Grandpa Almond died on November 11, 1966, dear Grandma Almond lived alone for several years, in the same house in Preston. Then she was in the Franklin County Nursing Home for a while, where she died May 5, 1979.
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