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 Mary: ...I was born in Idaho, up in Teton Basin, they used to call it. And when I
was nine years old, the folks moved down to Smithfield. Uncle Jim had been called on a mission, and Grandpa wanted Dad to come down and run the land,
and so they sold their farm in Idaho. Mother didn't like Idaho, and so Dad sold the place and they moved down. And they lived that first winter up on the
hill where the Lower processing plant is. That little log house--is that little log house still there?
Ted: That is still there.
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Mary: They only lived there, we lived there one winter and into the second winter, then we moved down into the Carlson place, we used to call it the Carlson place, because Carlson built that
home, and Almy Nelson had bought it. And he was going to lose it; he couldn't keep the payments up. And Grandpa suggested--I don't know whether Grandpa did or Dad found it, but Dad that what
Almy Nelson had in that home would pay for the home on the hill. And so then Dad finished paying for that home, see, the Carlson home. And we moved down there in January.
Ted: When did you first come to Smithfield?
Mary: We came down in 1909 and let's see, we lived on the hill until Spring in 1911, I guess.
Ted: Did you come down in the Spring too?
Mary: We came down from Teton Basin, it seems like the ninth of June, 1909. It was in June. We came down on the train. Dad put on the train out in St. Anthony, and we came down on the train.
And when we got down to Cache Junction, we got off, at 4:30 in the morning. We watched and watched and watched, and finally when it broke day we could see a white-topped buggy coming
from across the Valley, and we knew that was Uncle John, Mother's brother--her oldest brother. And he picked us up in this white-topped buggy, and he took us over to Smithfield. We got over
there just about the time the sun came up.
Ted: Your mother was with you then?
Mary: There was Mother and the children, all the kids, see there was I and Fay and George and
Blanch and Gwen and Fern and Bessie was a baby. She was only--she was born the 21st of April, see, she wasn't very old. She was just a baby.
Ted: Then you went to your uncle's house?
Mary: Grandpa and Grandma's home. And we stayed there and bathed. And the following week Dad came down from Idaho, and he had a big wagon, you know, like they had in those days, with a
team, and he had a cow that followed it, followed in back of him. I don't remember if he had more than one cow that followed him, and he had all the furniture that they brought--the beds the
cupboards... But anyway he brought all that stuff down in this here big wagon, a wagon box full of stuff. And he came down and got there in the night, I remember that. And the next morning we
got up and Dad was home, down at Grandpa's. And Grandpa then had already bought that place on the hill for us. They had made the deal, and so Dad only paid, I think, $900 for it.
Ted: How much land went along with that house then, do you remember? Was it the whole hill?
Mary: Well, it was the whole hill right down to the road. And Mother and Dad planned to build a
new home where that new home is built, I think. But Dad planted the whole side hill full of apple trees, and things. We might have been up there two summers, I won't say. But there was that big
barn we had nine or ten cows in that barn that we milked night and morning, and George and I used to go out and help Dad milk.
Ted: Were you a good milker?
Mary: Oh, I milked for years! Yeah, I milked cows for years. And when we moved down to the Carlson home, there was a big barn on that place, down where Don first built the home, where you kids were raised.
Ted: That wasn't the barn that was out behind the house Dad built.
Mary: That barn, that was all torn down, and then that barn was built later on out there, that red
barn. Dad moved the barn and corrals and things some years later. And they just had a nice garden all the way through to the--through the block.
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Ted: Did your Grandfather use to come over and eat Sunday dinner with you, or did he pretty much have Hannah cook for him.
M
ary: No, Hannah used to cook for him all the time. I don't remember Grandpa coming over very often. He used to like to get out with Old Buck and the buggy, and that was after Grandma died.
But then he had his stroke, and then he liked Mother and Dad to take him, after they got the old Ford in 1918--I think that's when Dad bought the old Ford car--what kind of a car did they call it? A
Model T, I guess it was. He used to like them to take him to Logan. When they went down shopping they pretty near always used to put him in the car. But he would sit in the car, and he
would watch all the people on the street, and then he would come home so disgusted because he didn't think they dressed right! And Dad got the same way before he died. He thought the young
people were going to the dogs because they didn't dress right!
Ted: I guess that is encouraging to us young people now!
Mary: But he relied a lot on Mother and Dad, and their advice--what to do and what not to do--Grandpa did. Of course, I think they took him out more and done more for him on the whole,
than the rest of the family did, his other sons and daughters.
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[END OF SIDE ONE]
Ted: I guess I had better tell what we are doing. We are talking about your father now. I just asked
you what you remember about his being Justice of the Peace.
Mary: He was known all over the valley, I know that! Different fellows would come in and do ____
things. But Dad was a great hand to put anybody down that had done something. He would give them a darn good talkin' to. I don't think he was severe with anybody, but he used to give fines
every once in a while. I don't know how many people he put in jail or anything like that, but there used to be a little jail house in Smithfield down--it was about where the car barn is. An old car
barn used to be on that street going up to Aunt Gwen's.
Ted: That would be what--Center Street or First South?
Mary: Is Depot Street Center Street?
Ted: Depot Street is--gee, its First North, I think!
Mary: Well, it would be on Center Street, then.
Ted: Center Street's the one the two elementary Schools are on.
Mary: Oh, well that's where it is, then. But there used to be a little square building there, not far from that canal. Of course, they had, I think, some City Offices and things, something in there.
But he used to fine them, and then he'd collect the money, and he would always turn it over to the
City, I guess. But sometimes they brang people up there at night, and he'd have to get out of bed and go hear them!
Ted: Where was the court? Right in your living room?
Mary: That's right. In the house! Yup, mostly in the house. He had that job for years. He used to get lots of letters from people all over, wanting him to collect--bad debts and bad notes from
someone and so on. He was always writing to somebody that way.
And then he was County Assessor. He went around the valley assessing property, I think, for two
winters. I don't know how much territory. I know he covered Smithfield and, I think, Benson, and I don't know how much else. I remember him doing that.
But the kids might remember more the Justice of the Peace, because a lot of that was after I left home. I can remember being home on weekends, and them bringing some kids in. He got after
them--he wasn't hard on them on fines or anything like that, but he might fine them a little bit, to let them know that pockets had been pinched. But I don't think that I mentioned that in my history.
Ted: I had never heard that. I know Dad had always said to me a lot of times, he always said "Well, Dad should have been a lawyer, not a farmer." Dad says that.
Mary: Well, Dad should have been something like that. He was good. Of course, they didn't have the opportunity for an education like they do now.
Ted: As I understand, he did go to the B.Y...
Mary: Well, he went to the A. C. [Agricultural College]. He went up there one winter before they were married. He'd been out in Eureka working in the mines out there, and Grandma was a nurse
out there. That was after Robert Meikle died. And Grandma, she stayed in Smithfield two years, and I don't know what year it was, when they were married, but he worked out in the mines. He
worked in Colorado in the mines, too, in Teluride, Colorado. He went over there and worked in the mines one winter or two winters. He worked in Eureka, because Grandma was down there.
And then he came back and went to the A. C. to school. And then, I guess there was a bunch of Smithfield men--it was Gil Meikle and Alf Meikle, and some of the Hansens from Logan, and quite a
big bunch of these men, decided to go up in Teton Basin, because there was some land up there being let, you know, for homesteading. And that's what took him up to Idaho. They went up there
and homesteaded, and Dad was up there one summer or two summers before they were married, and there was a little log house built when Mom and them went up.
After they were married, I think the year they were married, he worked for old John Bane [?] in Smithfield, on a big farm west of town, and milked cows for $15 a month. They lived, of course,
in Grandma's home, and that home used to be where the old Buck [?] home is.
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