Charles Stephen Cherry:
- Born 9 May 1864 Richmond, Cache, Utah
- Died 2 Oct 1937 St. Anthony, Fremont, Idaho
- Parents: Ebenezer Griffin Cherry and Mary Amanda Shumway
- Wife: Nancy Jane Bennett (md. 24 Dec 1891 Franklin, Franklin, Idaho--later divorced)
- Children: Matilda Jane Cherry, Solomon Isiah Cherry, Mary Amanda Cherry, Anna Amelia Cherry, Charles Wesley Cherry, George Rusher Cherry, Thomas Leonard Cherry, Cora Bell Cherry, Florence Leona Cherry, Oscar Leland Cherry, Ossian Loyd Cherry, Velma Lucile Cherry, Ada Cherry
Nancy Jane Bennett:
ANNA CHERRY BENSON’S RECOLLECTIONS
OF HER FAMILY AND ANCESTORS
"The first I remember Grandpa Bennett was the summer I was sixteen. Dad left us in the fall before and he came up and spent a month with us. He was there for Christmas, we never had much Christmas, we were poor and never had any way to get anything, so for Christmas Grandpa bought a can of molasses and brought it home and we made molasses candy. Then on Christmas Eve he sat and sang songs to us. I don’t remember many of the words, but the one he favored was called “Two Little Girls in Blue”. He is telling the story of his nephew and all I can remember is:
His nephew stood by and asked him why
The picture had caused him tears.
“Come listen”, he said, “And I’ll tell to you
a story that is strange but true,
Of two little girls in blue, Lad,
Two little girls in blue.”
“Two little girls in blue, lad,
Two little girls in blue,
They were sisters and we were brothers
And learned to love the two.
One little girl in blue, lad,
Won your father’s heart;
Became your mother — I married the other
But we have drifted apart.”
"That is all I can remember of it, but he used to sing it to us lots of times when we would sit there in the evening by the firelight. We used to sit up, oh, real late when Grandpa Bennett was at our place. Mother would have the babies to bed before the coal oil lamp was lit (we had only one lamp in the house). The stove had an open grate and we’d open the grate so the firelight could shine out. Grandpa would sit there in the firelight and sing that song to us. That is where I first heard “The Bird in the Guilded Cage”, too.
"He stayed with us a month and we got to know him pretty well. I just loved to hear him talk and I loved to read his letters. He was real “Old English” and he talked and wrote that way. In the letters he wrote to Mother always if he wanted to say “is”, he would say “his”, and said the same when he spoke. It tickled me so, I just loved to listen to him.
"Once after I was married, after Edward was born, he came up in the fall and spent one day with me at Drummond and then Mother went back with him and spent that winter in Preston. That was the last I ever saw Grandfather. I don’t know if he had a good singing voice or not, but it was new to us because we had never had a home where there was much singing. Once in a great while Mother would sing a little lullaby to one of the babies and that is the only singing I ever remember in our home at all.
 |
| Nancy Jane with son Isaiah Solomon, ca 1893 |
"I was down on my knees scrubbing the floor one day when Grandpa was there. I was scrubbing in a corner at the end of the stove and he had his chair there in the corner and he moved it out of the way and was sitting there waiting for me to get out of the way so he could move it back, Suddenly he swatted me across the p with something (I say it was the coal shovel but I know we didn’t have one) while I was all bent over there and it almost drove my head into the door frame. He just laughed and laughed while I was about to cry, not because it hurt me, but that it just scared me.
"That winter while he was there Saulie, Mary, and I went to a dance out at Newhope with the Webbs on New Year’s Eve. They came up late in the afternoon and said they were going and would we like to go with them. Johnny and Dave Jenkins came after we were there. Mary went home with Johnny, but I went back with Saulie and the Webbs. We used to dance until five o’clock in the morning. We would have a lunch at midnight. and then dance on until morning. When we got home Saulie and I had a little way to walk from Roy Webb’s house so I got about an hour of sleep and didn’t want to get up when Mother got up and woke me. I said, “Oh, I can’t get up yet, I've got to sleep a little longer.” Grandpa just reached over and took me by the shoulder and lifted me up (I was sleeping on the floor between the bed where he was sleeping and the one where Mother slept). He pulled me up off the pillow and said, “If you’re going to dance, you’re going to have to pay the piper.” “Get up and go to work!”
"Aunt Zeffie wanted a mail-order dress when she graduated from the eighth grade but Grandpa didn’t want to pay the price so he went down town and bought some material and made her a dress himself. Everyone said it was the prettiest dress at the party. He laughed and laughed at the way he had surprised everybody. Zeffie gave him quite a time before she get married. Even after she married he had to see that she and her husband had food in the house for some time. He didn’t have a job so Grandpa went up to Downey and bought a cafe and took Zeffie and her husband in to help him run it until they could get on their feet. When her husband got another job he sold it.
"I never saw either of my Grandmothers. Grandma Bennett died young, I think from pneumonia. Baby Mary died too. Grandpa married a second time to a widow woman by the name of Long. He said that was the meanest woman that ever lived. They separated. The rest of the time he lived alone and raised the kids by himself. After Zeffie got married he was getting too old to work and Emma and Frank Merrill made a home for him and he moved in there with them and sold his place. The last year he had his house Mother went down and spent a year with him. Mother had a lot of kids and it was just too much for him. He came to California to live with Aunt Ada after she and Uncle Osh separated. She lived somewhere near San Diego. Tillie and her family used to go see her.
"When Mother and Dad separated we were living on the old homestead. Dad had already used eighty acres of his homestead right and you were only allowed one hundred sixty acres. He had taken an eighty acre homestead at Mapleton, just out on the edge of Preston, so when we moved north he could only take eighty acres. He always wanted to buy the eighty acres joining our place on the south but Roy Webb homesteaded it before Dad could get enough money to make the deal for it. I don’t know that he could have bought it, anyway that is why we only had eighty acres. Dad built a two room log cabin on it with a dirt roof and a rough board floor. The winter before I was sixteen Dad left us. He left in November and Ada wasn’t born until January. He told Mother he was leaving but not us kids, anyway, I didn’t know it. He left because it was just one of those things that just happen. Dad was discouraged because he had such a big family and he couldn’t feed us. We lived as poor as church mice. Months at a time we wouldn’t have anything but bread to eat, he just got so discouraged with babies still coming, I think that was the whole thing back of it.
"Mother had known for a month or so that he was going as soon as he got the harvest off. We had one team of horses and he was having a hard time getting the threshing done that year. He got the grain cut and Wesley and I did the shocking. Saulie was away working. He and Dad couldn’t get along so he left. Saulie first got a job as a choreboy and then went right on working for Roseburroughs and was there when Dad left.
"Dad took the only team of horses we had and sold them for money to go to Canada. He never even got the thresher to come in to harvest the grain.
"When Saulie found out that Dad had left he came home. After he took over he went to Mac McQuisten who lived out at Newhope, about six miles west of us, and who ran a threshing machine. Of course he had finished his season’s run and pulled the machine in and stacked it up for the winter, but he said “If we can get a cold, clear spell and you get out and shake the snow off the shocks, I’ll pull in and thresh it for you. I’m sure we can still thresh it.” When it cleared off we all got out and shook the snow off the shocks so it wouldn’t melt down into them and he came with his threshing machine and threshed it. That was all we had to face the winter with. I don’t know if he charged anything for doing it, but even if he did it was really good of him to get the machine out, fix it up, and pull it over there to thresh for us. It was quite an ordeal. It took us three days to get the thresher ready to run again. Saulie took a load of wheat to mill and had it ground so we did have flour for the winter.
"In the spring Saulie rented the Core place and we moved out there and things began to get much better. Mother pulled out of a bad depression she had been in and felt better about it. Mrs. Core gave Wesley a start of chickens and a good cow and then asked Saulie and Wesley if they would take two other cows she had and milk them. I know they had them at least two years. It gave us cows to milk and chickens to raise, and they always raised pigs. We got along better after that.
"Cores had taken Wesley when he was about nine years old. They wanted to adopt him. He was the nicest looking one of our family. His hair was kind of curly and thick and he combed it real pretty. He had the nicest personality too. (Later he lost it, mainly through his way of life, I think.) They lived at Ora and we had been back and forth visiting with them a lot. They had been very friendly to us. Mr. Core was a great gardener and used to bring us vegetables when they had more than they wanted to use as their family was all gone. Their youngest girl got married when I was about fourteen. The older girl, May Hill, was a school teacher. When the Cores came and begged to take Wesley so they could have a kid around the house Wesley wanted to go. He had been there quite a lot and felt like he knew them and they were good to him and living was much better at their house. Wesley wanted to go and so Mother finally gave in and let him go. He stayed a year or better and then they came and wanted to adopt him. Dad said they could have him, but mother wouldn't give in, she hung onto him.
"Wesley lived with the Cores until after Mr. Core died. He was fifteen by then. After Mr. Core died, Mrs. Core decided to leave the farm. I suppose she sold it, anyway, she went into Ashton to live with her daughter, May Hill. The other daughter kept pushing her to spend some time with her, but Mrs. Core couldn’t stand to live there because the husband drank a lot and was mean to her daughter. She finally bought a little house of her own.
"When Mrs. Core broke up the farm she gave Wesley a team of horses and a good cow and let him take the other two cows because she didn’t want to sell them. She owned the place that Mother moved onto. She couldn’t stand the old homestead after Dad left, it had too many memories and too many hard feelings about it.
"Saulie became the head of the house after he quit his job and came home. He was the only father that Velma and Ada ever knew. The place they moved onto was known as Core’s Desert Place. They had taken it under the Desert Act. It was not a bad place for that country, but it wouldn’t be called much in a place that was known for good land. It was productive and not too bad. It had a three room house, a granary, and a chicken coop.
"I wasn’t home when they moved, I was working in Ashton. Tillie, Mary, and I used to go out and do housework for wages. Anyway, one Sunday I got homesick and wanted to go home. There was a man living in Ashton named Kenneth Courtelieu who had a horse he was keeping for someone. The horse was just standing in his stable so I asked him if I could borrow it to ride home on. At first he was afraid I couldn’t ride it but he saddled it up and watched me until he was sure I could ride and then he let me take it. I had ridden after cattle many times while I was working for the McMinns. When I got home there was no one there and I found out they had moved to the Core place. I rode over there, but there had been a big rainstorm and the creek was so swollen that I couldn’t get across when I got near the Core place. Saulie saw me down there trying to cross and came and took me down the creek to where I was able to cross over and get to the house.
"Mother and I walked across the fields to the old house and found a terrible mess. We had a well that Mr. Core had witched to find. It was 155 feet deep and only eight inches across, drilled through solid rock. There was a special bucket that had been built six feet deep and six inches across that was let down and raised with a winch. It had a valve in the bottom that opened when it hit the water to let the water in and then closed as it was raised up again. We pulled it up with a windlass. People used to come from miles around just to get a bucket of water from our well to drink. We hadn’t been off the place very long when Saulie discovered that someone had turned the windlass handle loose and let the bucket, rope, and all go down the well. It did that once before and we had an awful time getting it out. Finally a man rigged up a long spear and put great big fish hooks on the end, let it down, twirled it around and around until it caught the rope and it could be pulled up again. Saulie tried that again, but whoever did it also threw a lot of rocks down on top of it so he was not able to do it again. If finally got completely filled up with rocks so you can’t tell where it was.
"I have been back to see the old place a few times, but there is nothing left of the house or anything, just nothing. Mother always thought Roy Webb had done it because he wanted the place and she wouldn’t sell it to him because she knew he could never pay for it. He turned his pigs into the house even before we could get all our things out. A box of my books were sitting on the floor and they were all destroyed by the pigs. Some of Mother’s things were ruined to that she still had there in boxes. He had just pried the door off and let his pigs use it to sleep in.
"We lived at Vernon, just outside of Ashton, for the first years after we came north in 1901. I would have been five that September so I didn’t go to school and I didn’t go the next year. The second summer we were there Dad built the cabin on our place and we moved into it. There used to be a schoolhouse and a little post office at Vernon, but after Ashton was built it just went to pot. Dad’s brother Sam, who wasn’t married, had a farm and a house there. I can’t remember much about the house, but I remember we lived there with Uncle Sam.
"The folks rented a house at Ora for a year just before they moved onto the homestead at Sarilda. We had only two beds at the Kent house, as it was called, and when Dad was gone Mother decided one night to get rid of a rat that kept bothering her at night. She moved the two smaller children who were sleeping with her to the other bed. Then she loaded an old muzzle loader shot gun that Dad had and waited for the mouse. When she could see his eyes shining in the dark she aimed and fired. She ruined a bed and mattress and made a hole in the wall, but she got the rat.
"After we moved to Sarilda the only places we went were where we could walk. We had a team of horses, sometimes, but they were only used for farming or going to town. I didn’t go to school as soon as I was six because it was too far away. Saulie and Tillie walked to Ora to school.
"The year Wesley was six they decided to hold school in an extra room that the McMinns had. There weren’t enough kids to form a district as they wouldn’t let you form a district unless you had nine kids and we had only seven, so the Moons, and Bowmans each took a Dachous kid from Ashton to live with them and attend our school. There were a lot of Dachous kids and their parents were glad to put two of them out for the term.
"The McMinns were a little more than a half mile from us. They had built a room for the school teacher to stay there. They never did have any family, although they later adopted two girls and raised them. Sometimes they took the school teacher to board and room, so they built this room west of their house with a catwalk running to the main house. Most of our houses were just two rooms, that is all we had, so they built this extra room thinking it would be a good place for the school teacher. They put a stove in it and she could come across the catwalk to the main house for her meals and that way she would have a quiet place to do her studying.
"They didn’t use the room after all, for some reason, I don’t know why, the school teacher didn’t live there for several years. I can’t remember for sure, but I think they lived at Sedourus's. The Sedourus family had an upstairs and their family was all married and gone. They had the biggest house in the community. Anyway that is why Wesley was old enough to go to school before I got to go.
"The Sedouruses had two girls, Minnie and Sarilda. Mrs. Sedourus's name was Sarilda. She and John had the largest number of school children outside of our family. They gave the ground for the school to be built on so they named the school district “Sarilda”. The community just naturally took that name too. Now it is called Sandcreek.
"We got enough kids to form a district the year Wesley was six years old. We attended the little room at the McMinns. The most children I ever remember being in our school was eighteen to twenty. The kids were all pretty well the same age, but all had not had the same opportunity to attend school so they were in different grades. We had all grades that there were students for. We held community programs. We didn’t know what a church ward was then. We held Sunday School at Sedourus’s house the first year I went to school. It was warm there in the winter. We had summer school. It was too cold in the. winter and we were too scattered, and had no way to get there in the deep snow. They started school in the spring when the snow was gone and it would run until about October. Most years we had only six months of school. It depended on whether we could get a teacher for any longer, otherwise, it would close when regular schools started so the teacher could have her regular school elsewhere.
"The older kids, Saulie and Tillie, used to walk to Ora to Sunday School which was four miles away. I attended very few times before I was in my teens. When I was seventeen they organized a branch at Sarilda and held it in the schoolhouse. Then we had Sunday School and once in a while Sacrament Meeting, but not very often.
"The community programs were a lot of fun. I remember taking part on a Christmas program before I went to school. We would have a Christmas program, a Thanksgiving program, and a closing of school program. All the parents would turn out and that little room would be just packed.
"We always held our dances at the schoolhouse. Wes High’s dad played on the fiddle. That is the only music we had and he was a real old fiddle player, played by ear. I don’t think he never knew a note of music, but he would get up there and play that old fiddle all night. They called it a fiddle too, not a violin. He played the fiddle and called the square dances at the same time. That was the only dance I knew for years until I finally learned to waltz and two-step.
"We were having a dance one night when I was staying at McMinns helping with the chores. (I worked for them for a dollar and a half a week. He had a lot of cows to feed and milk. We had to separate the milk and feed the pigs besides. He didn’t have any family of his own and he needed help. Mary worked for them too sometimes. They had a relative named Edith Stanley who worked there about two years and then either Mary or I worked there too so they had two of us all the time. Sometimes I was there alone though and I remember Tom and I doing the milking and separating alone. I can't ever remember Mrs. McMinn doing any chores. She fed the chickens and gathered the eggs, but the cows and pigs were our responsibility.) I was staying there that night we had the big square dance they all still talk about.
"We all got paired up to suit us and went on the floor and danced two changes and then we wouldn’t leave the floor. They were dancing two sets as that is all there was room for on the floor at one time. The older people were down near the door and we had the top of the hall. We insisted he had played only one change and we wouldn’t leave the floor. We kept clapping him out to play the other change so finally he played it. We still wouldn’t leave the floor. We had won once and were going to get our way again. We just stood there clapping and yelling “Come on, give us another change.” Pretty soon he said, “All right, I’ll give you another change, I’ll run you off that floor.” He got up there and played and called for an hour and fifteen minutes without a rest. He called them as fast as he could and we danced it. Some of those fellows, I’ll tell you, Fred Barrett was a big man and the sweat just poured off his chin. It was after one o’clock when we got off the floor and then only because Mrs. McMinn went up and grabbed his bow away from him. She said, “If them kids ain’t got any better sense, you ought to have!”
"Cold, it was the coldest night we had had all winter! With the dance closed everybody got ready to go home. Saulie told me afterwards that when he rode home with Fred Barrett, Fred had icicles hanging from his jaws by the time they got to our house.
"When I came off the floor Aunt Mandy (Mrs. McMinn, we called him Uncle Tom too, even though we were no relation, we were there so much it was easier to call them that) stood with my coat and made me put it right on while Uncle Tom went and drove the team right up to the door. We had straw in the bottom of the sleigh box with quilts over it so we could sit down and pull the quilts up over us. When Aunt Mandy and I came out the door Uncle Tom just grabbed me and threw me in that sleigh flat down and tucked the quilts around me. He made me lie there until he got to our house. He stormed all the way home because Mr. High played so long and got us all so hot and sweaty. He said, “You’ll all have pneumonia tomorrow!” I didn’t even take a cold. We got home and he drove right up to the door to let me out. They rushed me bed. It is a wonder nobody got sick over it, but we were a pretty hardy bunch and we came through.
"When we were little Dad had nicknames for all of us; mine was “Dot”, Saulie was called “Banty”, and Tillie was “Toots”. I can’t remember the others.
"Our yard was quite flat, but there was a dip at the edge with rocks in it and tall sagebrush. We had a black, chaggy dog names “Watch” that we brought from Preston with us. He was a good watch dog. He got so old that he had no teeth and one day he just lay down and died.
"One year when Wesley and I were just kids Dad was shearing sheep for Mr. Kerr. His shearing sheds were west of us about three miles and there was no one living bet1ween us then. We had a trail across the country where we could go to the shearing sheds and back. They lambed there and then sheared the sheep before putting them out to summer range. We used to walk out there early in the morning and if there were any bum lambs we would pack them home. We raised nine lambs that year.
"It would have made us a good start for a herd but Dad didn’t keep them. It was a means of getting some money and we always needed money. We always had a grocery bill and were never out of debt. Mother would have to charge groceries, flour, sugar, rice, and sometimes a few canned tomatoes, all year and then when Dad got through work he would pay it off. I have seem times when for three months at a stretch we had nothing to eat but bread. If our cow happened to be dry, which she never was except for one month out of the year just before she calved, I would walk every day to McMinns and they would give me a gallon of separated milk to take home. Mother used it to cook with. She would make gravy for us to put on our bread or potatoes, if we had potatoes.
"This same year that we raised the lambs Dad bought or traded for a buck sheep with huge curled horns. The only drawback was that he was awfully mean. Dad had quite a fight with him to get him into the barn where he kept him for the first few days while he became accustomed to sleeping there. The first morning he was out he attacked mother, bunting her over as she was gathering chips at the chopping block to hurry a fire. It soon became apparent that this sheep had no scruples about who he fought with. Mother kept a ball bat standing by the kitchen door with which she walloped him over the nose. She never left the house without it.
"Old Watch, the dog, also became very proficient in fighting him even though by now he was getting well along in years and his teeth were so badly worn he could not bite hard enough to hurt. He would fight desperately until the chance came to grab the loose skin just under the buck’s jaws and then he could lead that sheep anywhere and would hold on until someone told him to turn loose.
"One morning Saulie went to gather up the calves and put them in a corral for the day, and not seeing the old sheep, he ran up into the field. The sheep was lying down and he jumped up and chased Saulie knocking him down. He caught one horn in Saulie's overall pocket and Saulie grabbed onto his other horn all the while yelling for help. Mother grabbed the ball bat and ran, but old Watch was also on the job and he wasn’t a bit gentle about showing that sheep the way to the barn. Nothing ever seemed to discourage him or make him give up fighting.
"Once Mother and Father left us kids alone while they went to town. Since our nearest town was fifteen miles away and the only transportation was a team and wagon, it was an all-day trip. It was a hot day and the only water near the house was drawn from the well. In the afternoon the sheep, together with the lambs, got thirsty. They kept coming to the house bleating. Finally I decided to pour the water from the bucket in the house into a pan and let them drink it in hopes they would go back to the shade of the barn and lie down. The barn was a two stall barn big enough for four horses. We also had a granary about ten feet square. Dad built them. He never built a toilet, we always went out behind the barn. After Roy Webb moved into his place we had to change and go around to the other side so he couldn’t see us from his house. Dad would throw straw out there and then haul it away with the manure from the barn.
"Well, as soon as the sheep left the front yard, I grabbed the pan and bucket and ran out but I never got a chance to pour it. They heard me and came running back. I panicked and began backing up towards the door. I was too frightened to even set the bucket down and let those sheep right into the kitchen where I finally set the bucket down on the floor and we all dived for the bedroom. There was no door so they followed us in. We all climbed up on the beds against the wall and pulled the covers back to try to get higher. Old Buck eyed us belligerently and walked up and down by the side of the bed pulling straw from the mattresses. After a while the smell of the water must have gotten through to him for ho left the bedroom and went back to the kitchen to drink from the bucket.
"At last he wandered outside again and quick as a wink we were off the bed and slammed the door shut. We held the door fast shut while Saulie stood at the window and whistled for old Watch. Then the battle was on, the worst he had aver had. That dog fought until he was tired out and sat down or the doorstep to rest. This looked like good pickings for the sheep and he charged but old Watch slipped aside at the last moment and let him hit the door. Wesley and I both sat down inside from the jar but it gave Watch the chance he needed and he wasn’t passing up his advantage, grabbing old Buck under the jaw and giving him a royal shaking he held him until we could get the door closed enough so we could let the sheep out but keep the dog in. Mother and Dad drove into the yard at that time.
"Mother was very indignant at the mess the house was in. A while afterwards we were again alone and plotted to get the first licks in. We sicced old Watch on that sheep and had him hold him while we got a rope on him. Then we snubbed him to the corral fence and all. of us took a turn working him over with a pitchfork. Well, there was no fight left in him when we turned him loose. He just went behind the old strawstack and laid down in the shade and stayed there all day. It was after that incident that Dad decided to get rid of him and took him away. however, it was several years later that I ally learned that Dad figured out what we had done to old Buck that day.
"We also brought a horse named Old Nerve with us from Preston. I remember one afternoon before we left Preston when I was four years old, walking across the fields towards home with two of my Mother’s sisters, Phoebe Bennett Turner, and Zeffie (or Zelpha) Bennett Petersen. We were very thrilled at the stories they could tell. Aunt Phoebe had learned to swim which to me was a miracle, then too, she had recently recovered from smallpox and told us she was keeping all the pox in a match box to remember it by. To a family of small children, how daring!
"A short time later as we traveled by covered wagon to a new home in the Sand Creek country with old Nerve and another horse pulling us, we had a broken wheel near Blackfoot, Idaho. We had to camp out for ten days while repairs were made, cooking on a campfire and sleeping on the ground. That was all in a day’s work for us and we thought nothing of it. Daddy would go into town in the early evening and I know now how very frightened Mother would be. Then he would bring a dime’s worth of licorice back for us to share as it was supposed to prevent colds. Today I even the smell of licorice.
"Sand Creek ran right through our land where we finally settled at Sarilda. We went to Spring Creek, about a half mile to the east over the hill, to get drinking water until our well was drilled. We all had a bucket to suit our size and once a day we walked there to carry back water. After they organized the school district Dad made a “go-devil”, a toboggan with a barrel on it. Old Nerve it. We children took it to the creek in the morning on our way to school, filled it with water, and headed old Nerve home with a slap on her back. She would take it back home by herself.
"Old Nerve got down on the ice one winter when she was seventeen or eighteen years old. Dad couldn't get her up so he came home, got the gun, and shot her. Saulie and Wesley went out behind the house and cried and cried. She was a good old horse and we all loved her.
"We had only one milk cow, she was a red durham and an exceptionally good one. We had plenty of milk, some butter and cottage or “Dutch’ cheese. Our supper was always bread and milk. The first heifer we raised that I can remember was lost when a huge herd came by our place as it was being driven to summer range at Shotgun, in Island Park. We never saw our heifer again and Father felt the loss keenly.
"All Dad's life he had gone to work for someone else in the winter. Usually he fed sheep for Mr. Kerr. The field he fed them in was about two miles south of us, close enough that we could go down there and he used to come home once in a while at night and go back the next morning.
"In the summer, as soon as the crop was in, Dad went to the sawmill and worked until fall for Mr. Fogg. Mostly he drove an ox team hauling logs up at High Point. He worked away from home a good part of the time trying to eke out a living for a growing family. Mother knit all our stockings from black yarn. She would sit with her eyes closed or in the dusk and knit. Often our only light was from the fire through an open door on the stove. A coal oi1 lamp was a real luxury.
"In summer we were always in bed by dark and in winter we often kept that end door on the stove open for the light. Sometimes we burned a wick in a small dish of grease (a grease devil). We couldn’t afford candles.
"When Dad was gone, the two smallest babies slept with Mother. The rest of us slept on the floor. Then Dad made the girls another bed. At night we took the tick (a straw mattress) off the top of the bed for Mary and I to sleep on the floor and Tillie, Cora, and Florence slept on the bed.
"One time Dad had come home at night and was up early to go to the sawmill the next day. Mother had gone to the store the day before and had brought back a little oblong basket full of concord grapes so us kids could see what grapes were. She just doled them out to us a little handful at a time to eat. She didn’t make jelly as we couldn't afford sugar for that. Anyway, Dad got up and I got up and took a little bunch of those grapes out to Dad as he was leaving. Dad held them up and ate them right off the stem and said, “I wish I had a nickel for every bunch of those I’ve picked.” “Joe Brown used to raise lots of these out to Egin”. He told me Joe had a good farm down there and grew lots of food. Those were the first grapes I ever saw.
"The only home grown fruit we ever had was red currants that we picked on shares over at McMinns. They had twelve bushes and Mother always picked them. They bore heavily and we just loved them with cream and sugar even as sour as they were. I helped mother pick there day after day. Sometimes Mother canned them without sugar and then in the winter we would open them up and add a little sugar and we’d eat them on our bread like jam.
"That was the only fruit we had until after we were grown. We did pick wild chokecherries and service berries. After Saulie went to work he brought peaches home. Mother never stopped with getting the juice off the chokecherries for a little batch of jelly occasionally, but always went on to make jam from the pulp. She did the same with haws.
"The Porters always grew a big garden after they moved into the community. Mrs. Porter did most of the gardening because he was too old. I always had to go out and get the cows off the range every evening. After the places got fenced, I had to go around by their place to get the cows home. One day she came out and said, “Nan (she and grandpa Porter both called me that, they were from Australia) would you like to thin these onions out for me?” She had a great long row as long as the garden and they were about the size of my finger. She said, “I am just too tired to do it and these girls are just too lazy, they won’t do it.” “But”, she said, “If you will do it, you can have all you thin out to take home.” So I let the cows go and just watched to be sure they didn’t go back to the range and went in and pulled a big armload of onions and carrots. She showed me how far apart she wanted them left and told me to pull all those in between. Carrie came out and pulled a lot of radishes which she gave me also. Boy! I’ll tell you we had a supper that night! Besides the onions and radishes we had fresh baked bread and milk.
"Dad never had a garden, he never would take the space to raise one. Mother used to go out and put in a row of a few radishes and lettuce along the edge of the potato patch or sometimes a few onions and we would have that. McMinns always planted a big garden and they would let Mother pick peas there, but it was after Dad left home before we ever planted a real garden. Cores brought us garden stuff too, sometimes.
"Once when I was just a little kid, before we came up to Sand Creek, I don’t know if it was the last day or the next to the last day we were in Mapleton, Dad came home and said he would take Mother up to see her Grandmother (we called her Grandma Foster) and Aunt Alice. I was only four and a half years old. Aunt Alice was mother’s aunt. She married a man by the name of Will Pernell, a polygamist wife, the second wife. When the persecution of the Church got so heavy he took his first wife and her family and moved into Canada and left Aunt Alice with a family of about eight children to raise alone. She never saw him again. I don’t know if he sent her any money or not, she was very poor.
"Dad took us in the team and wagon, as that was the only way we had to go, just a lumber wagon. All us kids had to sit in the back and Mother and Dad sat on the spring seat with the baby. It was kinda rough riding on an old cobblestone road. Out of Mapleton a little ways Dad stopped at a place. He didn’t let us get out and Mother didn’t get out either. Dad ran up a hill to a cabin and Mother was muttering to herself all the time about him spending the time to see those two old guys. He was gone maybe ten or fifteen minutes when he came back with a little bucket full of apple cider and a cup and gave us all a drink of apple cider. Then he took the bucket back and came and got into the wagon and drove us to Grandma Foster’s (or Aunt Alice's) place.
"I can’t remember what the house was like, but I remember it looked like a mansion to me. It was a lot bigger house than I had ever been used to and I suppose that was where Pernell lived with his two wives.
"She had a beautiful green yard and a fenced-in pasture in the back. In the pasture was a beautiful cow with big horns. I can still see that cow’s horns because she took good care to tell us, “Now don’t go through that fence because if you do that cow will chase you.” She must have just had a new calf. We were playing around the yard and, well, you just as well put a stick of dynamite under Mary and tell her not to go anywhere, so she went and the cow chased her. The cow bunted her back under the fence and scratched across her ribs with one of those horns. She screamed and screamed. Mother and Aunt Alice came running to see what was the matter and there she was, lying on the grass by the fence. Mother scolded her and sent her in the house.
"I began prowling around to see if there was something could do. 1 went to the kitchen window where Aunt Alice had a hired girl who was making cookies. I was fascinated and wanted to know what she was doing so bad, but she had her back to the door. I stood at the side of the kitchen door and stretched my neck around to see if I could see what she was doing. I don’t know how long I stood there, but the first thing I knew she whirled around and cut loose with a piece of dough and hit the door frame right to the side of my head. I can remember screaming y . They came running to see what in the world was the matter with me and I swore she hit me with something. She hadn't even touched me, they knew she didn’t as they could see where it hit, but they couldn’t convince me. That girl just doubled up laughing at the look on my face when she threw the dough. It wasn’t funny to me and I can still see her even though I can’t remember what she looked like in the face.
"We didn’t leave Aunt Alice's until sundown, but when we got back to the place where Dad had stopped on the way up he insisted on stopping again and going in. He was gone quite a little while again. I learned later what Mother was mumbling about, but then I couldn’t see why she was making such a fuss if Dad wanted to go in and talk to two old bachelors a few minutes, he wasn’t hurting anything. It was quite dark when he came back to the wagon and got in.
"It was a long ways home, must have been about nine o’clock when we drove into our yard. Dad boosted us out of the wagon and asked Mother if she could start a fire and get him some supper while he took care of the team. She went in the house and told Mary and I to set the table as quick as we could while she rushed around and warmed something for Dad to eat. Dad came in. Mary had just carried a great stack of plates to the table and set them right on the corner. Dad went and washed and wiped his face and staggered against the table and knocked the plates off and broke a lot of them. Mary and I laughed and Mother boxed our ears for laughing at Dad when he was sick. He went back out without eating any supper and sat behind the house all night. We could hear him out there long after we went to bed. Mother said he was there all night. When I was older and mentioned it she said he was drunk, that is why she was so mad when he stopped at the cabin to drink cider mixed with brandy.
"Years later after Dad came back from Canada he was telling me he worked for his cousin, Joe Brown, up there. Dad was a good worker but he was no manager. He was telling me a story about somebody up there, some kid they claimed could remember so many years back and he said he didn’t believe it. I said, “I can remember when I wasn’t five years old.” He said, “Yes you can like fund.” I told him the story about going to see Aunt Alice and Grandma. It about floored him. He said, “I didn’t think you could ever remember anything about that. That is the only time I ever got drunk after I got married.’ He told me then that he used to be quite a heavy drinker but mother d it so bad that he gave it up when he got married.
"I knew Dad would take a drink. I remember the day Oscar, our baby, died there at Sandcreek, or rather the day of the funeral. There was a crowd gathered there at the house and there wasn't room inside for everyone so the men were standing around in the yard. I just happened to step to the door in time to see Dad raise a bottle to his mouth and take a swig of it. I remember how shocked and let down I was to think Dad would take a drink. He smoked too.
"Dad had a heavy moustache and we always called it his soup strainer. Once is all I ever saw him with it shaved off. Tillie, Saulie, Mary, Wesley and myself had walked to Sunday School at Ora, four miles away. When we came home and went in the house Dad was sitting there with his moustache missing. Wesley was about nine years old but he didn’t even recognize him. He sidled around him and went over and took ahold of Mother's apron and acted real bashful like Dad was a stranger. Mother was busy getting dinner so she told Wesley to go talk to his Dad for a few minutes. Well, Wesley just set up the worst howl you ever heard. He went and threw himself on the bed and cried and cried about it. Sometimes we would be walking home from Sunday School and would pass Mother and Dad going the other way to Sacrament meeting. Years later I heard Dad telling Mr. McMinn how he had taken a bath that Sunday morning, which he often did because we kids were out of the house then or otherwise we had to wait outside while he bathed, and when he started to shave he ally cut one corner off his moustache so he just decided to cut it all off and let it grow together. He had a large thick upper lip and was really homely with it cut off. We liked him better with it. Dad really was like a stranger to us because he was gone so much and we seldom saw him.
"Dad’s sister by the name of Fowler lived and died in Pocatello and I never knew it.
"I can remember seeing Grandma Foster but I can’t really remember what she looked like. Her name was Sophronia Allen Rose Foster. She married a man by the name of Rose with whom she came west. He wouldn’t join the church and they finally got a divorce. She married Abraham Foster and they moved to Preston. Their daughter Alice married a man named Earnest Pernell in polygamy. She was the second wife. Later when the persecution started he had to go underground. He and his first wife moved to Canada leaving Aunt Alice to raise her eight or nine children. She also cared for Grandma Foster. She had a home somewhere not too far from us.
"I saw Aunt Alice once years later in Salt Lake. Mother and Aunt Alice were always close to each other. Their children were about the same ages. There was Clarinda, Roy, Annie, Ruth, and Sophronia that I recall. I wrote to Ruth for years until we were grown and married and then lost track of her.
"The only thing I knew about Grandpa Cherry was what Aunt Margaret told me. He died when I was young and I didn’t even know he lived very close to us. His home was at Lewiston, near Franklin, Idaho. Franklin was the county seat of Oneida County. He used to come into Franklin to pay his taxes.
"Another thing I didn’t know was that Wealthy Eddy died at Parker, Idaho. Dad never talked about his family at all. I remember Uncle Sam because we stayed with him and I saw Uncle Tom once. He was quite old when he married.
"Sam married a woman with red hair named Minnie Johnson. They came to our house for Sunday dinner once. I dimly remember Uncle Parl, but not his family.
"After my family was quite large Dad brought a man to our house whom he introduced as his brother Jode (maybe a half brother), He spent one summer around Ora. His daughter and her husband bought Mary Cottrel’s place. They farmed it for two years and then sold it. They came to Mary with a description of her husband Elliott and told her he had come to them and told them to come up there and run his farm and she let them on it. They busted her, never paid her a dime for the place. Jode came to see his daughter and Dad brought him to our place.
"I knew Aunt Margaret quite well. I also knew Mandy and Aunt Clarrissy, my Dad’s sisters. I knew Lee and Maude real well. I never knew either of my grandmothers.
"Wesley was awfully nervous and was afraid to go out alone at night. He was scared to tell Dad that he was afraid, and when Dad would send him out for something at night Mother would tell me to go with him. We all kind of humored Wesley, I guess.
"One winter Dad had raised a bunch of pigs and he was hauling them to market. Dad always got up at 4:30 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. summer or winter. Whether you worked or not Dad believed in getting up, so he got up real early to load those pigs for town. It was blizzarding when he loaded them. Before he left he came in and told Mother that just as soon as it was daylight to send the kids out to nail the pig pen shut because they had been feeding the pigs grain and there was grain enough wasted in there that if the cow got in and ate it, it might kill her.
"As soon as it got light Mother sent Wesley and I out to nail the door shut, he ran ahead of me and got to the barn first. It was blizzarding so hard that he swung the door open to get inside out of the storm. The pig pen was on the outside, but he was going to get his breath before he started work on the pen. He pushed the door open and someone inside shoved it shut again. It scared him something awful. Ho came back to me shaking all over and white as a sheet. We tore back to the house and told Mother there was somebody in the barn. She said, ‘Oh, there isn’t no such thing.” Wesley insisted, “Yes, there is. I opened that door and somebody pushed it shut again.” Mother said, “It was probably just the wind.”. Wesley was sure the wind wouldn’t push it that way and said so. “The wind would push it open, not closed,” he said. “I pushed it open and somebody pushed it shut!” So Mother put a shawl over her head and went out to see. There was Roy Webb and his two brothers-in-law in the barn just laughing their heads off because they had scared Wesley so bad.
"Mother always hated Roy after that, she never got over it. She told them off and kicked them out and made them get right out of there! They said they came to help Dad load the pigs, but missed him so they were just waiting for the storm to let up. Mother always said they just came to snoop.
"Father was sick all one summer, some trouble with his stomach. He never cared for vegetables and would live on meat, potatoes, and gravy. This may have had something to do with his trouble. As I look back now, I believe he had ulcers. He had several operations for hernias — we called them ruptures. He wore a truss a lot, they were supposed to help by holding the ruptured intestine inside the stomach wall.
"The summer Dad was so sick I was about eight years old. I loved to walk and play among the lava rock outcroppings which were everywhere around our place. The soil was very fertile and early in the spring when there was plenty of moisture there were lots of wild flowers or sometimes grass grew right up to the rocks and in among them. Some of the rocks were small and some were huge, but all were solidly planted. Although there were lots of snakes, rattlers and blue racers with beautiful coloring, I was never afraid of them. I had a healthy respect for them and tried not to bother them. The rocks and flowers were interesting and I loved them. I’ve killed a lot of snakes, but Old Watch was usually with me and I knew that with him around there was little danger. He could kill a snake in no time at all by grabbing it behind the head and shaking it till I wondered how it could hold together. Sometimes he would shake their heads off.
"I got up early one morning before the sun was up and went walking along Sand Creek. It was early spring and clambering among the rocks I saw my first weasel. It was still white and beautiful, slim and quick of action. I wanted it badly to carry home and show. I worked desperately to catch it, running until I could run no more, but I couldn’t catch it, of course. I couldn’t understand why Old Watch wouldn’t grab it for me. He’d head it off when it tried to leave and chase it back, but that was all I could get him to do. I finally gave up and went home to find breakfast over and Mother and Dad wondering where to start looking for me. When I told them about the pretty animal I wanted to catch to show them and how hard I had tried to catch it Dad laughed like crazy and said as he went out, “If you had caught it, Dot, you sure would have turned it loose in a hurry.”
"Another time the calves got loose and as I ran across the fields to head them back to the corral I crossed a badger hole with the badger lying on top asleep. As I jumped the hole I kicked the badger and rolled him over thinking he was . When I told Dad he was there he walked over to see but Mr. Badger had picked himself up and went home. Dad told me I had better be more careful or I might lose a toe or finger trying to play with wild animals.
"Red ants, which built a small gravel looking hill or home, were very common there and often these small hills were circled with the most beautiful white lilies. They put out large white flowers each morning, very fragrant, but only lasting a few hours. I often picked them to carry home to Mother who loved them as much as I did. She showed me where to break the stem so I could extract a drop of the most delicious nectar. Around the hills also grew in profusion the tiny red flowers which we called ant flowers. I’ve never seen them grow anywhere else except around those red ant hills. I don’t know today the proper name for them.
"Those big, white sand hills ran right in front of the schoolhouse. They were just across the road and a little bit west. If you went there today they wouldn’t be the same as they move with every wind that blows. At that time the whole face of the hills was lined with wild chokecherry bushes. They had the biggest chokecherries and were the easiest to get of any place in the country. People came from as far away as St. Anthony to pick them.
"As I said, we held school in the summer. We would go to school and then at noon we would take our empty lunch buckets and all of us, after we had eaten under the shade of the bushes, would fill them with chokecherries to take home, or we would hang our buckets on a limb so we could find them again and climb the sand hills. The first hollow back of the place there was quite deep with steep sand hills coming into it. We'd climb up the face and slide down the other side. Of course we carried half the sand hills back into the schoolhouse in our clothes and hair, but it was a lot of fun and we played there all the time. We just had board floors with in them. Sometimes the were an inch wide where the boards had shrunk. Sweeping was no problem, just a matter of moving the sand to the nearest and letting it sift through. It was just a little one-room school. The floors in our houses were the same kind. Eventually they did get a tight floor for the schoolhouse and then we used to carry sand in on purpose.
"I always had a lady teacher except once. The teachers always had to do the janitor work. The year Brother Young taught us he tried something new. Like most men, he didn’t like sweeping, so he would pick two of us kids to stay and sweep the schoolhouse after the others went home. Rebecca Porter and I ran around together all the time. We lived fairly close to each other, about a half mile apart, so we were usually picked to stay and clean up at the same time.
"Well, one day we got on a house cleaning streak and we really cleaned the schoolhouse. We washed the windows, woodwork, and all the desks. We just scrubbed like mad to get that schoolroom clean. The teacher was so pleased about it, but instead of complimenting us, he picked us again the same week. We kinda rebelled about that so we stayed under protest. We swept every bit of the sand we packed in that day up under the teachers desk and left it there in a pile. We picked up all the papers so the room looked very neat. The next morning, we waited breathlessly for him to find that pile of sand. It went on until long in the middle of the afternoon before he discovered it there. He and slid his chair back and reached under the desk for sane books he had in a row on a shelf under there and here was this heap of sand about a foot high. He never said a word.
"Leonard’s reading class was sitting there in front of the teacher’s desk on a long bench where he called the classes up one at a time to recite their lessons. I had given up watching him and started to study so I didn’t see him when he got up and pulled his desk back so the sand was out in front of it. Leonard was barefoot, well, nearly all of us were barefoot. Leonard stretched out as far as he could on the bench and reached out with his toe to write in the sand. The first I knew the teacher had found it was when I heard him say, “Never mind, Leonard, we’ll get a team in here after school and scrape that out.” I jerked my head up and Becky was looking at me and we both had to cover our mouths to keep from laughing out loud. When class was over Mr. Young said, “Will Anna Cherry and Becky Porter stay after school? I want to talk to them.” Of course we knew what was coming. I was scared, I don’t know how she felt.
"After school Mr. Young wanted to know why we did a trick like that. We told him it wasn’t our turn to clean the schoolhouse. He said we did such a good job the other night he thought he would have us do it again. Becky told him we were not going to do it again until the other kids had their turn. He admitted he had been unfair and so he let us off. I always felt sneaky about that.
"One woman teacher we had we really gave a bad time and I don’t know why, she was a wonderful girl with the patience of Job. Her older sister had taught us the year before. Vera Kerr was the older and Alta was the one we gave so much trouble. Vera was very strict and everyone liked her even though we thought she was a kind of crab. Alta was very permissive and gentle and tried to lead us along instead of making us do things and we took advantage of it.
"We got to swiping the bell off Alta’s desk with which she called us in at noon and recess. She would go out into the yard and ring the bell by hand. We had the whole green earth to spread out on. We swiped the bell one night and hid it and it was three days before we ally found it. She never knew who took it. I think she blamed the boys for it, but it was Becky and I. Becky could think up more devilment in a minute than most kids could in a week.
"Other than Alta, there was one teacher, Emma Greenwalt, that we heckled a lot. I don’t really know why, only that Bessie, Emily and Becky Porter started it and the rest of us just followed. I went to school up to the eighth grade and almost through it, but I became ill before school was out and never did graduate.
"Saulie hated Bessie Porter like poison. They couldn’t get along for one minute. With them living so close to us, we just naturally ganged together. Our next nearest friends were about two and a half miles away. They were about our same age. Bessie was the same age as Mary. Emily was Tillie's age and Minnie was a little older so Tillie had two friends to play with. Well, Bessie should have been able to get along with anyone as she could get along with Mary and Mary was as cantankerous as anyone.
"Saulie didn’t like Bessie because she smartalecked him when she talked to him. She had a better education than he did and was always proving it to him. He didn’t like that. One year the teacher set her in the desk right in front of Saulie. She would flip her long braids over her shoulders so they would lay on his desk and then just leave them there to tease him. He got so tired of it that he would just open the ink well and dip the ends of her braids into the ink. Everyone wore braids, no one would think of cutting the girl’s hair. I even had two little pigtails. My hair was thin and didn’t grow much but Mother would braid it in two little thin braids in back and tie ribbons on the ends of them.
"One day Wes High was trying to learn to whistle in school. I had learned to whistle in my hands by holding my two together with the other fingers cupped around them. I used to be able to step out into our yard and whistle so loud the Porter girls could hear me a half mile away. We played a kind of a game going out after dark and whistling back and forth. So Wes wanted to learn to whistle like that. He tried and tried, but he just simply could not do it. He got to practicing in school. He was a big, raw-boned kid and he sat right in front of me. Every time he would catch the teacher’s back turned he would turn around and get me to show him just how to hold his hands. He kept trying and trying, but he just couldn’t. My class was on the recitation bench one day when all of a sudden a bellow that almost raised the roof sounded —— Wes had learned to whistle. The teacher whirled around and Wes looked startled and said, “Golly, I’m sorry, I just never could do that before.”
"The willows grew close back of the school house where the creek ran and that is where we got our drinking water. There were great clumps of willow. We went down there one noon and discovered a place where the bases were pretty well separated, but the clumps were so big that they came together at the tops. We gathered all the tops together and tied them to make a room in there. After we got it all finished we took the teacher down there to see it. She liked. it so well that she dismissed school for the afternoon and we all went down there and held school in our room for the rest of the day. Her name was Louise and after she got married it was McMinn. She taught the last year I attended and the next year after that.
"Up the other side of the creek quite a ways was a large clump of quaking aspen. Becky and Nellie Porter, Pearl Moon, and I would cross the creek and go up there. We each picked a tree and learned to climb it. We could look right over the bushes and see the schoolhouse. We were way up high, enough so we could see what went on in the school yard, anyway. Someone conceived the idea of playing hooky from school and spying on the schoolhouse. On the appointed day we all went down there and climbed our tree. We all had our names scratched in the bark up high as we could go so we each had our own tree branded. The boys were playing down the creek a little ways. They knew we went up there all the time, but they didn’t know exactly where we would go. When the bell rang for school to start again they came tearing up the creek yelling for us to come, but they couldn’t find us. We thought that was pretty cute. We could sit up there and watch Mr. Young ring that bell. He would come out and ring and ring until his arm was give out and then he would go back in and as soon as his first class was over he would come out and ring it again. He rang that bell about four times. The boys kept telling him that we had gone up the creek so far we couldn’t hear the bell, but we were sitting up in those trees laughing at his ringing the bell for us. We not only could see him but we could hear the bell too. We stayed up there until about two-thirty and then we got down and came in just so surprised that we had missed school. We did that twice but the second time he sent us home for it.
"I can remember a time or two that Dad made a trip to Egin to see Joe Brown. The church called Joe to go into Canada and settle there around Cardston. Dad told me that he had the same call but he wouldn’t do it. He said it had ground on him ever since and he had wanted to go to Canada. That is why he went there when he left home. Joe Brown became a rich man before he died and Dad died in poverty.
"When Dad left Mother was expecting Ada and Dad was working at the sawmill for Mr. Fogg. Dad came home, but instead of coming into the house, he put his bedroll in the granary. Mother went out to see why and he accused her of having other men. He had sent a note to the house and one day when I was dusting I found it on a high shelf. He said that he never believed that Lloyd or Velma belonged to him and he knew this one (unborn Ada) didn’t.
"After he went back to the sawmill he sent Sam Gunther by the house once to see how the family was getting along. Sam didn’t even get off his horse. It was raining and he called to Mother. She went to the door to talk to him. Basil was at the house visiting Tillie and he was sitting where he could be seen through the open door. Tom told Dad there was another man there so he didn’t go in and that is when Dad sent the note.
"When Dad left he went to Canada and we knew he was there. Saulie used to get letters from him and I got a letter once in a while.
 |
| Nancy Jane Bennett Cherry with her children, about 1916. |
"Dad came to visit once when Ada was about four years old. Saulie met him outside and kept him there. One other time Mother was at Wesley’s when Dad happened to drop in. When Wesley opened the door it shielded Mother. Wesley took him right past her and out to see the cattle and he never even saw her. When they came back she was gone.
"Mary went down to Aunt Margaret’s house to see our cousin Mary Higby. Aunt Margaret (Maggie) is Dad’s sister. Mary came home with a big story that Dad had written Aunt Maggie that he was coming back and he was going to take Mother to the Temple. Mary was mad as hops about it. She said if Mother took him back she would leave. Well, that was the worst thing you could do to Mother was threaten that one of the kids was going to leave her. Raising that family was her life and she never had time for anything else. She never went anywhere, she was just pinned at home with all those kids.
"When I came home the last of May to get ready to get married I found Mother all upset about it and worried to . She wanted to go to St. Anthony and apply for a divorce. She said she would never have him back, he had never sent any money home to help with the family, knowing the circumstances he had left us in, and how many mouths Mother had to worry about feeding. In the four years he had been gone he had never written her a word.
"I arranged for her to get a ride to St. Anthony with the McMinns. I can’t recall that she ever saw a lawyer. Her first hearing before the judge was set for the same time I was getting married. Harry objected to her going for a divorce the same day we were to be married so she postponed it. She went after I was gone from home.
"Dad came to visit me at Drummond before Herbert was born. He expected to just stay overnight but a blizzard came up and the train got stopped in the cut above Drummond. Wesley was working for us at that time. About a week after the storm Dad, Wesley and I drove over the top of the snow drifts in a light sleigh with the team. We went to see the place where the rotary snow plough was clearing the tracks. Wesley said we had better turn the team around before the snow plough came so we could get away in a hurry lest the snow they were throwing would cover us over. When they got close Wesley gave the team a lick and yelled. The colts bolted, but not straight, and they went to the right and just flipped the sleigh over with everyone underneath and the horses sank into some soft snow. Dad was scared the rest of the day that I would have a miscarriage but I didn’t. The train was stuck there for fifteen days. All the people on it were boarded out at different homes in Drummond as there were no hotels.
"After the boys left home Mother couldn’t run the Core place by herself, and she didn’t want to go back to the old homestead, so she sold it and bought another place further up the canyon towards Highpoint, above what we used to call the Sadourus’ place. When I was a kid it was the last place up that way and it was at the foot of the canyon. From there you would go up quite steeply and drive right up the bottom of the canyon. As I grew up it was settled there and was called “Spring Creek”. There were several families of Andersons lived up there and others. When Jesse Lyons got married he moved up there but after his wife died he wouldn’t live on it any more and wanted to sell it. Mother bought it with the money she got from the sale of the homestead. They moved up there when Eva was a baby and Mother kept it the rest of her life.
"In 1920 Mother moved up to Drummond and lived on the old man place for a year and then she moved into a little log cabin further up on Conant Creek. The reason she moved was that they lived so far up in the hills that in the winter time the kids couldn't get out to go to school and Mother didn’t like being there alone so far away from anyone. Eventually she moved to St. Anthony from her place on Conant Creek. Velma was ready for high school and Leonard came and lived with her there and looked after her. He never married.
 |
| Nancy Jane, date unknown |
"Not long after Mother moved there Saulie and his wife got a divorce and Mother took his four kids to raise. She kept them until they were old enough to look after themselves and then Saulie moved them to a place out at Egin.
"Mother worked in the seed house in St. Anthony and so did Velma and Ada. They sorted peas.
"Mother became senile and unmanageable before her . Her last days were spent in an institution for mental patients at Blackfoot, Idaho, and that is where she died."
OBITUARY FOR NANCY JANE BENNETT CHERRY
Given by Herbert L. Benson
"Born the 3rd of March 1875 in Gentile, Idaho, Bannock County. Her father’s name was Isaiah Lacy Bennett and her mother’s name was Nancy Jane Rose Foster Bennett.
"She was married to Charles Stephen Cherry at Franklin, Idaho, December 24, 1891. They settled in Mapleton and seven children were born there to this union.
"In 1901-2 they came to Vernon where they lived for one year and then moved to Ora. They then homesteaded 80 acres at Sarilda, an adjoining community. They lived there until 1912. In 1913 she moved to Core’s Desert place. In 1916 she purchased another place of 160 acres. Then in 1919 she moved to Drummond where the family worked and farmed until about 1925. She then moved to St. Anthony where she lived with her son Leonard.
"She died there May 3, 1945, and was 70 years old on March 3, 1945.
"She was always kind and loving and loved by all who knew her. She was ambitious and thrifty. Her mother left a small baby when she died and Nancy Jane cared for her baby sister for about a year before she married.
"She buried two babies and had thirteen children in all. She had thirty-seven grandchildren and at the time this was written she had thirty great grandchildren.
"She went to the temple for her endowments the 9th of May, 1915."
A five generation picture. Counter-clockwise from baby: Walter Amos Siddoway, Agnes Davidson Siddoway, Mary Ann McRae Davidson, John McRae, Eunice Fitzgerald McRae
Left to right: Walter, Donald, Lawrence
Old Mag, with Donald, Walter, and Lawrence
Walt about the time of his marriage.
Walter with daughters Shirley and Shirlene
Front row: Karen Lundquist Siddoway, Velma Lucile Cherry Siddoway, Shirlene Siddoway Davidson, Robert Smith. Back row: Walter Eugene Siddoway, Walter Amos Siddoway, Myrl Wesley Davidson, Shirley Siddoway Smith. 3 June 1989
