ANN ROGERS SNOW

My Grandmother, Ann Rogers, was born December 30, 1835 at East Lake Farm, Amroth Pembrokeshire, South Wales.  She was the daughter of John Rogers and Janette Reese.  She, with her family, lived in a large old farmhouse on a gently sloping upland overlooking the sea.  The house was surrounded with flower beds, large old elm trees, and a hedge fence.  Her father was well to do and always had hired help both in the house and out of it.  Grandmother was the youngest of nine children.  She loved to talk about her home in Wales and tell about going with her brothers and sisters to the orchard to gather fruit and hazelnuts.  She told of gathering blackberries from the vines that grew over the sod fences that surrounded the well-kept farmland.  She played at the seashore with other children.  Here they went in wading and caught fish.  There was a certain kind of shellfish they used to catch as a special treat for her father.  He liked it baked in the oven so that the shell would come open and the meat could be taken out.

When she was two years old, her mother died and her sister Elizabeth cared for her like a mother.  Some years later, her father married again but the children never got along very well with their stepmother.  Her older brother, John, was a schoolteacher and the parish minister.  He taught Grandmother in school.  She would walk to school holding onto his hand until they got close enough so that the other students could see them, then he made her let go so he could look more dignified before his pupils.  On her mother’s side, she descended from Coel Godebog, who was king of all Britain in 738.

When she was twelve, her father let her go to the neighboring town of Tenby to school to take a tailor’s course.  She became very efficient in this work, and later used her skill to help make a living for her family.  The Mormon missionaries came to their home and converted the family.  They all joined the church except her two brothers, John and William and her sister Janette.  A few years later, her father decided to move his family to America.  John tried to get him not to go, and told him he was not strong enough to withstand the severe climate of North America.  However, he wished to come so made preparations to do so.  A number of years before they left for America, Grandmother’s sister, Martha, went to the seashore with some friends to swim and was drowned.  She was just fifteen.

Before Grandmother left Wales, John Thaine asked her to marry him.  As she was only thirteen, she told him she was too young but would wait three years for him in America.  He promised to write to her often and said he would join her later.

All the family came to America except the ones that didn’t join the church.  However, they were always friendly and wrote to each other as long as they lived.  At the time they left Wales, Great-grandfather couldn’t sell his property.  John cared for it and over a period of years sold it and sent the money he received to the ones in America.  January 12, 1849, the family boarded a ship at Liverpool and sailed for New Orleans with a company of 100 saints.  They spent ten weeks at sea, arriving at New Orleans about the 4^th.  The family took passage on the steamship “Osprey” going up the Mississippi bound for Council Bluffs, Iowa.  Her sister, Sarah, married while they were on the ship coming over.  When they reached St. Louis, she and her husband and her brother, Thomas, and his wife decided to stay there and get work then come on later.  Thomas did come on later, but Sarah died that summer.  Janette also died in Wales that same year.

On the way across the ocean, a young man fell in love with Grandmother’s sister, Elizabeth and asked her to marry him but she refused.  One night when they were some miles beyond St. Louis, Aunt Elizabeth saw Grandmother to bed then went out on deck of the steamer in the moonlight.  Here the young man found her and again asked her to marry him.  When she refused, he became angry and strangled her to death.  When the people on board found out about it, the captain said, “If you are with me, we’ll stop and give this girl a decent burial.”  They stopped at one of the lovely old plantations along the riverbank and buried her under the grass and trees in the moonlight.  This was one of the saddest experiences of Grandmother’s life because Elizabeth had always been like a mother to her.

The family came on to Council Bluffs.  They arrived about the time Grandfather Snow was leaving for Utah.  They bought his farm and home because the presiding elder Mr. Hyde advised Great-grandfather to stay there and raise crops for about two years to take to Utah as food was scarce in the Salt Lake Valley at that time.  It was because of this that Grandmother became acquainted with the Snow family.  As her father was not very strong, the conditions they were forced to live under were too much for him and he took chills and fever and died August 1850.  Grandmother also got the same illness but recovered.  She and her brother, Henry, were now the only ones left except the stepmother and a half-sister, Mary, and Thomas back in St. Louis.

The stepmother was overbearing and hard to get along with.  Grandmother and Henry longed to get away from her.  Shortly after the father’s death, Henry got a chance to hire out to a man that was going to California.  With a sad heart, Grandmother bade him goodbye.  After he reached California, he wrote to her and Uncle Thomas several times and they answered.  Finally, Grandmother said she got to the place where she didn’t have means to buy a stamp and paper so she stopped writing.  She never heard from him again.  Later, they learned of some freighters in California that had been killed by the Indians and they always thought that likely he was one of them.

The stepmother now decided to go on to Utah.  She and a man, that had a wife but no children, bought a covered wagon, a yoke of oxen, and a cow together and started out for Utah with a company of saints.  They hadn’t gone very far when the stepmother quarreled with the man, and she made him cut the wagon in two so that each had a two wheeled cart and an ox to make the journey with.  Grandmother walked and drove the oxen the rest of the way across the plains.

After weeks of plodding over rough dusty roads exposed to all kinds of weather, they finally neared the Salt Lake Valley.  Grandmother’s wagon was the last in the train.  When they were still miles outside of the valley, a wheel collapsed.  She left the stepmother and sister Mary and in her own words she said, “I walked afoot and alone in a snow storm, after dark into Salt Lake to get help.”  When she got there, she met a man on the street and told him of the plight she was in.  He asked her if she knew anyone in the valley.  She told him she had known the Snows in Council Bluffs.  So he took her to their home and some of the men went out and helped them.  Out of the family of eight that left Wales, she was the first to reach Salt Lake, in fact, was the only one of her own family who ever came except Uncle Thomas who moved out later.

After they were settled in Salt Lake, the stepmother married again.  As Grandmother didn’t like the man or stepmother, she decided to leave home and work if she could.  At this time, Grandfather had two wives.  His wife, Maria, was sick in bed with a new baby so Grandfather asked Grandma to come take care of her.  While there, she told Aunt Maria how unhappy she was and how she disliked living with the stepmother.  Aunt Maria told Grandfather so he asked her to marry him but told her that if she didn’t want to she could live with them as long as she liked.  The man she met, the first day she entered Salt Lake, also asked her to marry him.  She told both of them that she was waiting for her lover across the sea.  After she left Wales, she never once heard from John Thaine.  After the three years were up that she had promised to wait for him, she finally decided to marry Grandfather Snow.  She married him March 12, 1853.

After she had been married to Grandfather for about three months, she received a bundle of letters from John.  He had written to her every month after she had left Wales.  The letters had been delayed somewhere so that she had not received them.  (Some of the family says that the stepmother had got the letters and kept them.)  After she had two or three children, John came to Utah to see her.  He was married then and had two children of his own.  He told her that he had remained single until he heard that she was married.  Although Grandpa was twenty-nine years older than Grandma, she said she was always glad that she had married him.  She said that she cried when she received John’s leers when she thought what a comfort they would have been to her on the long, dreary, lonesome journey across the plains.  Grandpa was a very kindly man and was always very good to her.  She said that she felt that her children were worth all she ever went through.  I think that Grandpa must have been more like a father to her than a husband.  She always spoke of him as Brother Snow or “Your Grandfather” when talking to us children about him.  She never called him William.

Just as they were getting comfortable settled, the church called Grandpa to Fort Supply, Wyoming.  Aunt Maria went with him while the other three wives remained in Salt Lake.  He had married Aunt Roxana the same day he married Grandma.  While he was gone word came that Johnson’s Army was nearing the state and intended to take control of it.  President Young advised the people to leave the valley and move south before the army got there.  People all over the valley were loading wagons ready to move.  Grandma being left alone with her young son, Willard, was very worried.  Early in the fall, Grandfather returned to Salt Lake and moved all of his families to Lehi.

The first year in Lehi they lived in log houses inside of the Old Mud Fort that had been built as protection against the hostile Indians.  A wall of mud and sagebrush surrounded the town of Lehi.  It was six feet wide at the bottom and three feet at the top.  The houses had been hurriedly built so that they let in the wind and storm.  While living here Grandma’s second son, Jeter, was born.  He was born December 21, 1855.  The night he was born, the cold December wind blew across the floor.  The mid-wife, Mrs. Jacobs, warmed blankets to wrap around Grandma and the baby.  When morning came and the wind died down, Mrs. Jacobs swept a tub-full of snow from the floor where it had blown in during the night.

Grandmother lived in the Fort for six years.  While living there, she had two more children, Celestia and Charles.  As the settlers became more numerous and the Indians more friendly, Grandfather decided to build a new home outside of the fort for his families.  He built a long log house with a roof of poles covered with willows, straw, and dirt.  It held its own with the wind and sun but was not a match for the rain and snow.  Inside each wife had one large and one small room.  In the large one was an open fireplace where the family meals were cooked, and where a cheerful fire blazed to warm the house in cold weather.  A frying pan and a bake kettle were the chief cooking utensils.  The latter had a wide lid that could be covered with coals and fit snugly over the kettle to make an oven.  It was while they were living here that Frank, my father, was born.  He was born October 12, 1863.  While living here, Grandfather took turns living with each family.

While living in Lehi, Leonard Wines, a stepson of Grandfathers, came to visit his mother Aunt Maria.  He was a wagon master for one of the wagon trains that made regular trips across the plains.  He had a dozen wagon covers that needed mending.  He knew that Grandma was a god seamstress so told her that she could have three of the covers if she would mend the rest.  They were made of Indian Head Muslin or “factory” as it was called in that day.  Grandmother was glad to do this because here family was sorely in need of new clothing.  She got 45 yards of cloth out of them.  Some she washed and bleached to make sheets and pillowcases and underclothing.  The rest she washed and dyed with Indigo to make shirts and dresses.

About 1864, President Young sent word to Grandfather to get ready to move to Southern Utah to help build up the Dixie Mission.  So the family began to make preparations.  Uncles Willard and Jeter husked corn for the neighbors, on shares and got enough to fatten the family pig so that Grandfather could save his corn to take along to feed the animals and use for seed in the South.  Grandma also began to make ready for the long trip.  About this time, she received $300 from her brother John in Wales.  He had sold some of the family property there.  This was like a Godsend to the family who was going to the southern tip of the state and would be hundreds of miles from the source of many important supplies.  Grandma took the money and went to Salt Lake to buy the things that she felt she most needed for the long trip and to use when she got to her new home.  She bought a cookstove, that lasted her the rest of her life, a clothes chest, clothes for all the family, a complete sewing outfit as she made all the clothes for her family and for many of the neighbors as well.  She got a cane-bottomed chair that was a real luxury in that day, but the first night out on the trip, one of the horses ate the bottom out of it.  She bought a lovely new shawl for herself.  It took much planning and preparation for such a long journey.  They had to move across a wild unsettled state over which roved bands of Indians, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile but never to be depended upon.

A big jar of butter was put down, and a pig was killed, cured, and salted away.  These things with other provisions as corn for the animals, and seed for planting were placed in the wagon of Jode Coxx, an about to be son-in-law, who was helping move the family south.  The household things and Grandmother’s personal things were placed in another wagon.  Aunt Sally’s things were arranged in a third.  One fine November morning they left Lehi headed for the south.  Grandfather, with Aunt Sally and her family, headed the train.  Uncle Willard, who was just twelve, followed with Grandmother and her family in another wagon drawn by an ox team.  Jode Cox, with his load, brought up the rear.  Uncle Jeter, a lad of ten, rode a horse and drove the cattle.  Aunt Maria and Roxania remained in Lehi to be moved later when they had things ready for them in the south.

The weather was fine, and had they gone straight through, they might have had a good trip.  Cyrus Reynolds, who wanted to go with them wasn’t quite ready.  He asked they to wait for his so he wouldn’t have to travel alone as there was much danger from Indians.  They waited ten days for him in Sanpete.  As a result, they were caught in a snowstorm on the latter end of the journey.  They stopped at a few settlements along the way to wash a few clothes and bake bread to last them for several days.

Whenever Grandmother saw the sun, shining on the snow, as it was about to disappear over the horizon, she always said it reminded her of the night they drove into Cove Fort on their journey down.  They had come through snow and cold without a sign of a settlement in sight.  When they came over the rise where Cove Fort loomed into sight, the snow was sparking in the sunlight, as it was about to slip behind a mountain.  She told how thankful she was to find shelter for her family that night.  When they got close to the southern part of the state they met Uncle Erastus on his way to Salt Lake.  He was head of the Dixie Mission and directed the saints where to settle.  As he had a house in Pine Valley, he told Grandpa to take his family there.

When they go about three miles outside of Pine Valley, they found that there was no road broken and the snow was so deep they couldn’t get through.  They were forced to send someone into town for help. Jode Cox took one of the horses and rode toward town.  On the way he met Uncle William Gardner and Bennet Bracken out hunting.  They got three yoke of oxen and helped the weary teams through the deep snowdrifts.  When they got into town there was three feet of snow on the level.  They arrived on Christmas Eve.  They were taken to the home of Eli Whipple whose wife had a good hot supper ready for them.  They greatly appreciated this after so many days eating over a campfire in the cold.  After supper, Grandfather secured some pitch pine knots and went to the new home Uncle Erastus had sent him to.  There he built a roaring fire in the fireplace to warm the room for his family to move into.  Grandmother said that was the most beautiful sight she ever saw when she took her shivering little family into that warm cozy room out of the cold bitter night and saw the bright flames leaping up the chimney back.  The house had four rooms so each wife had two for her family.

The next day Grandpa took the boys and hauled wood from the nearby canyon.  Then he went to one of the sawmills and got a load of lumber and set to work making furniture.  He cleaned the snow away from the sunny side of the house and set up a workbench.  He made a table, cupboard, stand, wash bench and two bedsteads for each wife.  The bedsteads were morticed together and fastened with ropes to hold the bed together and serve as springs as well.  When a straw tick was placed over this, it made a warm comfortable bed.  He next went to the nearby mountain and got out logs.  The following summer he rented a sawmill and sawed lumber to build a house.  He built the third house in the valley where the town now stands.  People had been living in the Upper Town along and near Spring Branch until now.  Many began to move to the valley below and farm.  Grandfather built a six-roomed house and fastened it together with wooden pegs that he cut by had because he couldn’t get nails.  Both families moved into this house and each had three rooms.  Latter he plastered the house and made it more comfortable. Some years later he moved Aunt Sally to the log house, on Back Street, that Jim Jacobson eventually owned.  Later he bought what was known as the Pink house, from William Cowley, and moved Aunt Sally there.  Grandmother lived in the first house he built for the rest of her life.  Two years later Grandpa returned to Lehi and moved Aunt Maria and Roxana down.  Aunt Maria’s sons, Ira, Norman, and Leonard Wines, by a former marriage, bought a house across the street from Grandmother’s.  As Grandfather was made Bishop of Pine Valley Ward, his business often took him to St. George that was the center of the stake, so he bought a house there for Aunt Roxana.

The first year after their arrival, Grandmother sent her boys to school in the little log school house that had been built in the valley, but she taught Aunt Lestia at home because she had no shoes.  Grandmother had had quite a good education before coming to America.  She loved books and read a lot during the latter part of her life when she had more time to spare.

As there was no store in Pine Valley when the family moved there, and Sears and Montgomery were still in embryo, many things had to be made at home.  Each man in town had a few sheep.  The wool had to be sheared, washed, carded, spun and woven into cloth and knit into stockings and socks.  A short time after Grandma moved into Pine Valley, some of the men of the town decided to start a tannery and make their own leather.  Grandmother would combine this crude leather with bits of denim, left from the boy’s overalls, and make shoes for her family.  Later a Co-op store was placed in the corner of Grandma’s lot and Grandfather had charge of it.  As the people of the town learned that Grandma was a good seamstress, they would come to her to get her to sew for them.  She would take bolts of cloth out of the store and make into overalls and jumpers for the men and receive store pay for them.

For soap she used the roots of the oose plant that could be found along the road to St. George, or whe would make her own out of bits of fat and lye made from distilled wood ashes.  She made yeast for salt rising bread by fermenting shorts, water and salt.  Grandma did many things to help make a living for her family.  She made dress suits for the men of the town as well as for her own boys.  After coming to Pine Valley she again received some money from her brother John in Wales.  With this she bought the second sewing machine that ever came into Pine Valley.  The first machine that came into the valley belonged to Aunt Maria.  Her Wines sons bought it for her.  After buying the machine, Grandmother had enough money left to buy a sack of sugar and a bolt of cloth.  After she got the machine, many people came to her to sew for them.  They thought that now her work was easier she should do it for little or nothing.  She once made a suit with two pairs of pants for her neighbor, Old Brother Carr.  When she had finished the suit, she received the generous sum of one pound of butter for her work.  A number of years ago a room was finished in the top of the Pine Valley Church and Grandmother’s sewing machine was placed there.  I hope it stays there forever.

As there was no doctor in Pine Valley, the Relief Society was supposed to care for the sick.  Grandmother helped many midwives.  She assisted in bringing 100 babies into the world.  The June after Grandmother moved into Pine Valley, her youngest daughter, Nellie, was born.  Later she had two more children, Orrin and Little Georgie, as he was always called.  He died when he was about three years old.  He was at the cute age when he was following all the family wherever they went, and they all made a fuss over him.  Grandmother said it was one of the hardest things she ever faced when she lost him.  She had many hardships.  The fall after they came to Pine Valley, the Navajo Indians began to steal horses from the whites, and they killed two men in St. George.  They made a raid on the Pine Valley horse herd.  After that the men and boys of the town took turns watching the stock at night.  Although Uncle Willard was just a boy he had to take his turn.  This was a worry to her lest he might be killed.

When she was 44 years old, Grandfather died leaving her with three children yet unmarried at home to care for.  Father was 15; Aunt Nellie, 12; and Uncle Orrin, 9.  Uncle Charlie was still at home but moved to Rabbit Valley the next spring.  Uncle Jeter was out in Nevada working.  It was hard for boys that age to care for a farm.  Grandfather died leaving some debts still unpaid.  As the oldest boys of the families, still unmarried, were Grandmother’s the burden fell on them.  Aunt Sally’s children were all girls except one, and he was only nine.  Aunt Maria’s oldest boy at home was Uncle Mason a boy of fifteen.  So Uncle Jeter assumed the burden of the debts.  Pa, (Frank) and Uncle Mace with the help of Uncle Orrin and William took over the farm work.  Uncle Jeter paid Old Doctor Ivins for Grandfather’s doctor bill; finished paying William Cowley for Aunt Sally’s house; and paid Peter Jacobson money that he had invested in the Old Co-op store.  With the boys’ help, combined with her wise guidance, Grandmother managed to get along.

One of Grandmother’s most outstanding characteristics was her honesty, which she instilled deeply in her children.  Her son, Willard, once said that none of her children would ever die rich because no one, who living by the standards and example that she and Grandfather set before them, could ever do anything but scratch a poor man’s back for the rest of his life.  Her son, Jeter, paid a 50 per cent tithing all his life for fear he might cheat God.  When he was Bishop of the Pine Valley Ward, he would sell the tithing potatoes and let his own rot in the pit if he didn’t have a sale for both.  No man ever lived who held the respect of his fellowmen more than he did.  When he died, he left his children no worldly wealth, but he left them a Christ-like example to follow such as few men leave their sons; and each a head full of brains and ambition to go with them which is better than any man’s wealth.  Most of her other children were the same kind.  If grandmother borrowed anything, she paid it back with interest even to a needle full of thread.  Alexander Pope said, “The noblest work of God is an honest man.”

Grandmother’s house was just a plain simple little home that was neither grand, elaborate, or very convenient; but it certainly was clean, cozy and homey.  When you entered it you had much the same feeling that one might have upon entering a church, a feeling of reverence and sanctity.  Grandmother hadn’t a child, grandchild or neighbor who would have thought of such a thing as making a loud noise in her home, taking things out of place, making them untidy, or carry in a speck of mud or dirt.  She wasn’t the fussy or cranky kind that shooed people away from her door, but very quiet and gentle.  There was such an air of refinement, quietness, and order that you simply didn’t do those things in her house.

We children loved to go there with our mothers.  She would get the little black cloth covered foot stool, with the diagonal strip of red across the top, from behind the bedroom door for us to sit on, or let us sit on the stairsteps that came into the living room.  On the mantel she kept two china vases with red scalloped tops and flowers painted on the sides, a pink scalloped dish that held her glasses and thimble, a clock, and her little lamp, and a big white sea shell with brown spots on it.  We loved to have her get the shell down and let us hold it to our ears because it made a purring sound.  The floor was covered with homemade rag carpets protected with her fine braided mats or rugs.  Her braided rugs were very even and neat and laid flat on the floor instead of puckering up like the shoulder of a man’s coat that has hung on a nail all winter.

Under the stair steps, she had a little closet where Uncle Jete, Pa, or one of the boys put her wood and kindling that they brought in each night in the winter.  Her little old fashioned sewing machine was covered with a snowy white crocheted cover.  The little rawhide bottomed and wicker rockers had crazy patch cushions with the choicest colors and stitching on them.  Behind the front room door, she kept a fall leaf table, covered with a red and gray cloth, and a red plush album, with a white doily over it, rested on it.

In the center of the room was a little hexagon stand with a chenille cover and Book of Mormon on it.  The set of straight-backed chairs was made of brown wood with yellow seats and backs tacked on with brass-headed nails.  They looked as new on the day she died as they did the day she bought them.  Her walls were adored with a big brown-framed mirror, and an enlarged picture of Uncle Orrin and his missionary companions.  Also, a frame with a wreath of painted flowers with Grandfather’s name in the center, a pink silk pincushion, and a paperhanger with a picture of a deep standing by a stream of water on it.  In the hanger she kept the Liahona, a church magazine.

When we children began whispering in our mother’s ears, Grandma always knew what we wanted, and got right up and went to the pantry to get us something to eat.  She kept her bread in a bright copper boiler on the floor just inside of the pantry door.  She would get cold biscuits, that she had made with buttermilk (her biscuits couldn’t be beat) cut them open, and spread then with butter and jelly.  She kept her jelly in broken handled teacups with a clean white cloth spread over the top.  As soon as she gave us our piece, we went outside to eat for fear we might drop crumbs on her clean floor.  To drop crumbs on her floor would have given me the same sensation that I imagine one would have going into heaven with muddy feet.  We could have dropped the whole biscuit jelly and all on her floor and she wouldn’t have said a word.  She would have just cleaned it up.

In the winter she moved her bed into the living room.  It h ad the softest feather tick, the whitest spread, and the cleanest smell.  She always warmed it with a hot flatiron on cold winter nights before we crawled in.  I loved to sleep with Grandma and hear her tell stories of her early life.  I can see her yet as we sat by the open fireplace.  She was very tiny.  She wore a long black skirt and a blouse with a strip of velvet around the neck and cuffs.  The neck was fastened with a little golf pin with an “A: in the center.  There was a row of tiny shiny black buttons down the front of the waist.  Around her shoulders, she wore a three cornered crocheted or knit shawl.  A tie around apron was worn over her skirt.  Her aprons were decorated with cross-stitch across the bottom.  Her gray hair was parted in the middle and combed smoothly back in a little knot or bob behind.  She wore soft flat-heeled shoes and woolen stockings that she knit herself.  Her soft wrinkled hands would tremble as she held them out to the warm blaze in the fireplace or poked the fire with a poker.  She dearly loved to poke a fire.  Uncle Jeter used to tell her that she could take a perfectly good fire and poke it black out.  As she sat by an open fireplace she always said, “I love an open fireplace because it reminds me of the first night we arrived in Pine Valley.  It was Christ Eve and we were caught in a snowstorm.  When we went into the house Uncle Erastus had sent us to, there was a bright cheery fire of pitch pine knots blazing in the fireplace, and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.”

She held her left hand between her face and the fire as she poked the coals.  Whenever the fire popped she gave a little start.  As we sat by the fire, she told me stories of her childhood home in Wales far across the sea.  She told of the rambling old farmhouse with its well-furnished rooms.  In the kitchen was an old-fashioned brick oven, where the week’s baking was done; a large open hearth where meats were cooked on cranes and spits.  She told of the rich farmland with its large shade trees, hardy fruit trees, flowers, and vegetable gardens, shrubs and bushes where they could pick berries in summer.  There were hazelnut trees to supply the family with nuts for winter evenings.  Many were the hives of honeybees to make honey for the family and neighbors.  Winding paths that let to all parts of the farm.  Chickens scratching in the barnyard, ducks and geese swam in the nearby pond, while turkeys strutted and gobbled saucy things to them.  There was an old fashioned dairy house where cold spring water-cooled the milk and cream in queer water separators.  Though the family was not considered wealth, they were comfortable fixed.

She told of the long trip across the ocean and of the friends they made on the way, whom they were loath to leave when tey arrived in America.  She related again and again the story of the tragic death of her sister, Elizabeth, who was murdered as they were coming up the Mississippi River.  She told of her father’s sickness and death; and of the loneliness she felt when her brother, Henry, bade her boodby and left her alone in this strange new land with no one to turn to except a disagreeable step-mother and a small half-sister.  She wished she could have died and buried with her father.  She recalled the places she worked in order to get enough money to bring her to Salt Lake.  She described the long hard journey to Utah.   How she walked and drove the oxen; and how the rest of the company, in their haste to enter the valley and get out of the snow storm, left her behind with the step-mother, half-sister and broken wagon wheel, not knowing of the plight she was in.  She told how she walked alone in a snowstorm after dark over a road she had never trod before.

She never tired of telling how grateful she was to Grandfather Snow for taking her in and giving her a home, love and friends in this rough unsettled land.  She described their first difficult years in Salt Lake, Lehi and Pine Valley before and after they moved to southern Utah.  She told of crop failures, Indian raids, cold, hunger, and epidemics where children died like flies because they didn’t know what to do.  She told how her boys used to bring home raspberries from Forsyth Canyon when they went for their milk cows in the summer; and how plentiful wood was when they first come to Pine Valley.  She described the weary hours spent in gleaning grain in the fields for the Relief Society.  She said the men from Dixie used to worry her nearly to death when they came to Pine Valley for lumber because the brought wine up and traded it for lumber.  She said, “many times I have knelt by my bed and prayed to God not to let another grape grow.”

When we had a late spring and it looked like frost she would say, “This reminds me of the night Erasutus Gardner was born on the 10 of June in 1892.  They came for Aunt Mahalie and me to wait on Lucy.  As we went up the street it began to snow and Mahalie said ‘Ann, we’ll never raise a thing this year.’  But we did so I guess we will this year.” (Pine Valley has always used Erastus’ birthday for a weather forecast, never feeling safe until after that date.)  The first thing Grandmother did when she got up in the morning was to go look out the window to see what the weather was going to be like.  She did so love sunshine and good weather.

She was a teacher in the Sunday school for sixteen years; a counselor in the Relief Society for ten, and President of the Relief Society for thirty.  Each Tuesday afternoon one could see her, in her gingham sunbonnet, coming down the sidewalk.  With a broom in one hand and the Lyceum door key, with a bit of red tape fastened to it, in the other so she could sweep and dust the building before the other sisters arrived.  She came softly and quietly like a timid deer venturing forth, never any bluster and noise.

The last years of her life were very lonely.  All the older people her age were dead and gone.  She was the last of her generation, in Pine Valley, to die.  Pa was dead and all of her other children, except Uncle Jeter, had moved away.  She was always glad to have someone come in and talk to her.  When we went up to visit her with her clean laundry or a fresh loaf of bread, she always wanted us to sit down and visit, and was very appreciative of what was done for her.  She was a real lady, the pure essence of refinement and culture.  I don’t think she ever said a crude, boisterous, vulgar thing in her entire life.  Everything about her was immaculate.  She lived alone and cared for herself almost to the day she died.  Her mind was as keen at the close of her life as it was at the beginning.  When she died she was ill only a short time.  She died at Uncle Jeter’s home in St. George, March 11, 1928, at the age of ninety-two.  It seemed that when she died it was like the running down of a clock at the close of a full and well spent life.  It was fitting that at the close of her simple life she should be tucked away in the Pine Valley cemetery close to her husband, children, and old friends; those with whom she had met life’s joys and sorrows, in the shadows of the pine clad mountains where she had dwelt so long.