Clarence LeRoy Gardiner Interview 1969

Clarence LeRoy Gardiner Interview with his son, (points for further research in bold)

Alan J. Gardiner

August 1969 at a cabin in Brighton, Utah

This is Alan Gardiner and this tape was made in August of 1969 on our vacation to Salt Lake. As far as I know, it’s the only tape of Grandpa Gardiner that anyone has. He died later this year in 1969 and the tape is a testimony to his faith and his great mental capacity even in his old age and a sense of humor.

Alan: It’s a beautiful sunny day up here on Sunday so here he is…

Clarence: I don’t know what to say. It’s high up in the mountains here in Brighton. It’s cool and nice for us. It’s 97o down in Salt Lake City. The boys are having a lot of fun. This is a wonderful cabin up in the mountains thermostat on the wall and a furnace in the basement and everything is just fine.

Children interruption

Alan: We’ve got a new genealogy library down in Tucson now. They built a new stake center down there and they put a genealogical library in.

Clarence: A stake center, huh?

Alan: Yeah. Clarence: How much is that going to cost?

Alan: Oh, I don’t what it cost. It cost about over a half a million dollars I guess. I better get busy on my genealogy, I guess. Is anybody working on our lines around here?

Clarence: No.

Alan: Nobody.

Clarence: Our cousin might. I wrote to you about that lives in Florida. She was… she didn’t belong to the church. Her grandmother was my father’s sister. She didn’t know why she was studying genealogy, but someone got her interested in it a number of years ago and we’ve been corresponding. I’ve been saving all the letters up there. I was going to bring them down and let you take it. About three years ago she got my name and address from Ed Gunn, another cousin up in Oregon and we’ve been corresponding every day ever since. About three years ago I wrote quite a letter and told her of the Gardiner genealogy as much as I knew of it. Father, mother and grandfather. She published that letter in the quarterly publication of a genealogical society she belongs to.

Alan: Which one is it? Is it one down in Florida?

Clarence: Yeah. She was going to devote her time to it entirely. They’ve retired from a big 15 acre flower they’ve been running. They sold it to a son-in-law and they are going up into Maine and New England there. So I recall the last letter I sent to her I recalled something my Dad had said. Years ago some Gardiner over in Scotland had immigrated to Canada and he had written a history of the Gardiner’s. I told her if she was ever up in Canada to get in touch with the libraries up there and see if she could find out if this man had written a book and if it was in the library there. So that’s what she is going to do.

Alan: Do you remember what his name was?

Clarence: I don’t know his name or anything about him. I was just a youngster when Dad told us and Eva remembered it and I kind of remembered it. That was all I know about it. There’s not much in the library here. Hope, I think, put in $75 to have them make a search of all the records in Salt Lake library there, which she did and they made a report of it and there wasn’t a thing in there that we didn’t already have. That’s the way it is.

Alan: For the last couple of years they got a bunch more English records in there.

Clarence: Oh, they’ve got a lot more records all the time but I don’t know whether Hope has been in there and done some research recently or not. She hasn’t written to me and I don’t know. I can’t do anything. I got thinking of you, that you’re the only one that showed any interest in it and sooner or later we’ll have to depend on you, I guess. I can’t read a word now.

Alan: Well, I’ll get started on it and see what I can find out.

Clarence: Well, about… I sent you a copy about ten years ago. I wrote to all the members of the family. The living decendents of Robert Gardiner and Margaret Stewart and I make quite a record of it. All the children that were living.

Alan: Yeah, I’ve got a record of that.

Clarence: I’m sure quite a number were born since then as the families have grown larger. I got a wedding invitation the other day for Douglas Moore. That’s Jane Coulams husband, her boy is getting married.

Alan: Where does she live?

Clarence: They live up in East Mill Creek District somewhere. Quite a ways south of 25 south. I think he’s in the bishopric up there. A wedding in (inaudible) probably. I don’t know that anyone’s working… Oh, Edna, May’s daughter has been working on the Coulam line for a good many years. I talk to her every week or two and get a little information from her but I can’t remember now.

Alan: I don’t even have any group sheets on Mother’s side.

Clarence: Mother’s side?

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: She’s of a line of Stewarts and there has been a great deal of research on the Stewart line in the library at Salt Lake. One of the earliest records that they got possession of is a large book of about 18 X 14 inches of the Stewart genealogy written about 1795, I guess. I’ve been through that. There was a Stewart up in Logan, A.Z. Stewart. I suppose he died long ago now, but he did a great deal of research on the Stewart line, but I don’t know whether they connected into Mother’s line at all. Her father was Robert Stewart and he married a Stewart of another line so there were two lines that came together. Mother’s parents. I don’t’ know much about them. I remember as a boy, living out on the farm that Robert Stewart came out there to visit us and he was Mother’s younger brother, I think. He worked in the mines, I don’t just where. Maybe up in Montana and he got leaded in the mine. He didn’t live to be very old. That’s about all I know about her line.

Alan: I’ve been getting every year… About every year I get a notice of the Andrew reunion and I guess it’s (inaudible name) down here is doing a lot of work on that line.

Clarence: You see the Stewarts came over from Normandy with William the Conquerer about 1066 AD, I think. The steward was the man next to the king and had charge of his household and accounts and all those things and these stewards are the ancestors of the Stewarts, as I understand it. Mary, Queen of Scots, was a Stewart. It think she was the daughter of King James the first of England. She was a staunch catholic. Her religion was everything to her. She had been raised in France and knew all their culture and she never married… oh, yes she did marry too. She had a very sad life, but finally Queen Elizabeth was a staunch protestant. She was the Queen of England and she took Mary, Queen of Scots, a prisoner and kept her in the prison for about 18 years and finally beheaded her so that the kingdom wouldn’t revert to the catholic faith. It’s quite a sad story. That’s about all I know about the family.

Alan: I guess all those group sheets of the Jackson’s down in the genealogical society. I don’t even have any of those, I don’t think.

Clarence: They’ve got a lot of the information but the Stewarts are one of the largest families in the world, I guess. Ireland, Scotland, England and many of them came to America. Many of them spell their name S-T-U-A-R-T. Alan: Yeah, I’ve seen that.

Clarence: That comes from the French. I don’t think they had a W in their alphabet and Mary, Queen of Scots, they say, had a W in it and it was spelled since then as S-T-E-W-A-R-T.

Alan: Do you ever see any of Uncle Fred’s boys?

Clarence: Oh, I think Golden was down to the funeral of Eva, but he stayed in the car. I didn’t see him. They’re pretty well scattered now all over the country. Margaret the Golden girl lives up in Richland, Washington, I think. There was one named Mary, married to a man named James. His last name was James, from … I forgot the name of the little valley. It’s in the western end of Box Elder county. She’s back in Iowa… One of the girls married him, they’re back in Iowa. He’s a teacher back in one of the schools. A lady in the home there that lived in Montpelier. She knew Morris Low and Beatrice Low and all their four children. Mearle (?) was at the funeral of Eva.

Alan: Yeah. I’ve lost track of all the Low’s family.

Clarence: and what became of them?

Alan: Yeah. The only one ever remember was up in Paris when we went up there one time, and he was the principal of the school or something.

Clarence. Morris Low was the principal of the schools up there and when Beatrice died, my youngest sister, he married again. A girl he’d known ever since childhood. Her name was Myrtle Hump (?). She took the family and raised them after Beatrice died. A very fine woman and she lives with Meyrl up on 12th East just south of 2nd south. There was a Gardiner and a Stewart and I’ve forgotten the other ones name. One of them was a band leader, I believe, up in Pocatello or somewhere up there in one of the high school bands. Quite a musician. He was the youngest boy, I think.

Alan: I can still remember that trip up Logan canyon in that old car.

Clarence: That old Oldsmobile?

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: and we burned out a main bearing?

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: We traveled about 10 miles per hour for hours to Salt Lake.

Alan: I forgot whether we tried to fix that bearing or what happened.

Clarence: I don’t believe we did. Jim Neave sold the old car for $15.

Alan: How did he get a hold of it?

Clarence: It was a fine looking car, I’d just been saving it. I bought it and thought that ought to go good and it never did run right. I couldn’t go up 2nd East on it. I think when I was working at the Mack Truck Company as Office Manager there, we had put new rings in it. We thought that would do the trick and I guess the old motor was warped. It had canvas window shades with (?) glass in them.

Alan: I think we went up there in that old Vele?? Too once, didn’t we?

Clarence: The Vele was a pretty good car. I remember when the depression came, I was out of work. I lost my job there at Stephen’s and Lewis and got on the public works administration as a time keeper and went out about six or eight groups of men where put to work out in the county. We went down as far down as Union and Little Cottonwood Creek there, they were rip rafting an irrigation ditch there… a drainage ditch from 9th East down to State Street and there was shopping… right now it was Stewart’s on 13th East and 45th South. There was a bank up at the south, west side and a row of old poplars there. They cut them off about that far from the ground. So this gang just dug a trench along the feathery roots and dumped the stumps in there and covered them up. I had quite a time in that Vele out there and when it went over 100,000 miles, I guess and Melvin took it over and ran it around a while longer. Then I had a Chevrolet Coup with a rumble seat in it.

Alan: I remember going to California in that thing.

Clarence: Yeah. Alice and you and I went down. Mom was down there and it was a dandy little car. Then over at Ashton Autos in Sugarhouse, they have an old Buick there that had been in a wreck. They fixed it up so I traded it in on that Buick.

Alan: An old ’39, I think, wasn’t it?

Clarence: Yeah. That was a pretty good old car. It ran very easy. It had a long wheel base and I burned the bearing out of that one too. I don’t know where in the world I was. I can only get about 10 miles an hour. It seems like I was up to Willard or somewhere up there. This last car I had was a pretty good one. It was a Plymouth. I believe it was a ’53 Plymouth.

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: I paid $700 for it and I gave it a… run it until my eyes gave out and I had to give up my license. I couldn’t renew it so I gave it to Donald and he ran it around for a long time and they called him on a mission. He went to South Africa and then Ricky took it over and ran it a while and he was called on a mission. And when Stewart… I think when Stewart bought this new yellow car he wanted to trade that old one in and they allowed him $36 for it and it’s still in his port. They never came and hauled it away.

Alan: It’s gone now. I don’t know where it went.

Clarence: I think they took it out to the junk heap.

Alan: I had an old ’41. I bought it back in Skinectidy (spelled?). I rode that thing for about 75,000 miles, I guess. It was worn out when I got it. I had to put a new engine in it.

Clarence: When I was telling a fellow that came up to the home yesterday, he sat down… he lives there near the church. He sat down to rest and I chatted with him about an hour and there was a fellow that lives just on the corner right where you parked. Down n the corner, a big two story red brick house. That’s John Henry Smith’s old home and there’s only one of the boys living in that. Glen. He’s very active in the church there and in the high priest group now. When Melvin was about 14, I guess, there was a bunch of boys in the ward there and they ran away from home. They got a hold an old Model T Ford and a bunch of bailing wire to hold it together and they went down to California.

Alan: Was Melvin with them?

Clarence: Melvin was with them. I don’t know who got the car. I believe one of the Kimball boys (inaudible) they went down and I don’t know how they got along. I didn’t hear from them. I thought they’d run away for good and about two o’clock one morning the telephone rang. It was Glen Smith. He had lived on Ramona Avenue for a while and he said, “Do you remember me?”, It was from Elko Nevada. “Yes, I remember you. You live right down here on Ramona.” He says, “I’m the deputy sheriff down here in Elko. There’s a bunch of boys here with an old Ford that’s broken down and they’re broke and haven’t got anything to eat, haven’t got any gas in the tank. What do I do with them, throw them in the jail?” “No, fill the gas tank, give them some sandwiches and send them home and send me the bill.” I was telling him about it the other day and he laughed. He had a good laugh over it.

Alan: I remember old Mel leaving home and going to California. I remember, I didn’t know how he got there.

Clarence: That’s how it happened, that’s how it turned out any way. I don’t know what they did down there. I never asked him.

Alan: He was always a wild one, I guess.

Clarence: Yeah, the kids get bored of us at that age.

Alan: Do you remember a gal by the name of Gwen… I don’t know what her name was then. You confirmed her. Her name was Gwen. Her name is Trainer now. She’s down in Tucson. I was looking on her records and I found your name on it. You confirmed her down in Lincoln Ward.

Clarence: I don’t remember her.

Alan: What was Gwen’s maiden name? She’s related to the Jensen’s, I guess. There’s an old lady living down there, she’s about 88, I guess. Her name is Sarah Marie Jensen. Who was her father? Soren Jensen? Yeah.

Clarence: I’ve forgotten all about those people. Alan: She’s a sister of Nephi’s.

Clarence: He used to be a barber down there in the ward named Salesbury. He moved down to California. I ordained him a high priest, he said. He lost his records and he came back up here and he wanted to find out what… well he wanted it confirmed that I had ordained him. I was in the high counsel, I think, or the bishopric and I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember the transaction, you know. I said, well, there was only one thing I could recommend they do if they insist on that is to ordain you gain. I don’t know what he did. He left the bank quite out of patience with me. There was another fellow over in Emerson Ward in the old stake before they divided. I ordained him a high priest and he called me up and says, “you ordained me a high priest and I’d like to get my priesthood genealogy.” I says, well, that’s easy. I was ordained a high priest on May the 25th, 1924 by Heber J. Grant. Heber J. Grant was ordained an apostle by John Taylor when he was chosen to be the president of the Toole stake of Zion. John Taylor was ordained a high priest by Brigham Young in 1929. Brigham Young was ordained a high priest probably by the prophet himself. And he was one of the original apostles of the church. He says, that’s pretty good. I said, Joseph Smith was ordained by Peter, James, and John. Alan: Do you remember George Q. Morris?

Clarence: George Q., yes.

Alan: He ordained me an elder.

Clarence: Oh, really? I know him very well.

Alan: Back in Albany, New York.

Clarence: I knew him very well, long before he was an apostle. George Q. Morris, I remember his old father. He ran the Elias Morris and Sons. They made these headstones…

Alan: Oh, yeah, I remember that. Clarence: George Q. was a nice fellow. He was the bishop of the old 14th ward for a while, I think. They dissolved that ward about half of them from the old ward is at the new Salt Palace. They bought up all the property that was there from West Temple to 1st West and from South Temple, to I believe, 1st South. A lot of it belongs to the church and all along 1st West to 118th South, 1st West. I went down to Stuarts past that way a week or two ago and all east of there is torn down. I knew every house along there. The old 14th ward is gone now, all the way.

Alan: They’ve been doing the same thing down in Tucson. They’re tearing down all the old business area down town and they are going to rehabilitate it. They’ve moved all the people out of there and just tore everything down.

Clarence: They don’t stop for anything anymore. There’s a big white cloud over there a while ago.

Alan: I guess this land here used to belong to the old Brighton family, didn’t it?

Clarence: What did?

Alan: This land here?

Clarence: Oh, all this land, yes. This particular lot belonged to Ellen Shephard, Ellen Brighton Shephard. Edna, your Mother, used to come up when she was just a girl and stay all summer with them, stayed quite a while, anyway. They was just like that, chums. They had a… maybe you remember, over near Silver Lake just beyond the one of those clouds up there. It was a big two-story rooming house.

Alan: I remember that. It burned down, I guess, didn’t it?

Clarence: I don’t know why they got rid of it, I don’t know. Clear over the road there, over the mountain there, there’s one of the old mines, a big tunnel in there. They kept working in it. I don’t know whether they found anything in it or not.

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: It was a pretty nice place any way. They lived in a log cabin up here for a while. I’ve seen a picture of it, but that’s all.

Alan: Yeah, I can remember coming up here to the old MIA home up here.

Clarence: Oh, yes. That all burned down, too.

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: and a big rooming house up there or hotel or whatever it was, burned down too. What do they call that? The…

Alan: Alpine Rose, I think. Clarence: Alpine Rose, that was it.

Alan: That was a nice place. Well, I guess the pioneers used to come up here in the old days on the 24th of July.

Clarence: Brigham Young decided to have a big celebration up here on the 24th of July, 1857 just the 10th anniversary. They fixed the road up the best they could, they sent out printed invitations to the leading church families to come up here. They came up and were having quite a celebration up here and about noon three men rode up the canyon on horse back, I think Port Rockwell was one of them and they went into the secret session with Brigham and some of the leaders and they reported that Johnson’s Army was on the way from Missouri, Fort Levenworth, I think, coming here to exterminate the Mormons, put down the Mormon Rebellion and it was just 10 years after they came into the Valley. Then they organized the Mormon Legion again and they harassed the army out (inaudible) who built a winter camp out there and they brought their supply wagons down. They didn’t go to kill anybody. T Boggs (inaudible) was in charge, I believe and Rock Smith (inaudible), some of the old pioneers and they harassed the army so they couldn’t come into the army. They went up in Echo canyon and they were up on top of those cliffs and the story was told that they lit a big bonfire up there and the calvary rode past in front of the fire and then they came around again and it looked like there were an army of a thousands. The judges who had been sent here were just men of the world. They had no interest in this country at all. They went back and reported an awful lot of false stories about Brigham and his intermountain man fire. There was a man that came into Nauvoo shortly after the pioneers left. I’ve forgotten his name now. He was a great friend to the Mormons anyway. He came here and he sent Governor Cummings up following winter out here to be governor of the state. Brigham and him got along fine together. They finally settled it. In 1858 they instituted what they called “the Move”. They were going to burn down every home and every barn and farm in the valley and just leave it as desert waste. They moved down towards Provo and Pleasant Grove and it was in July, I think, in 1858 they reached a settlement that if they let Johnson’s Army come into the valley with the proviso that they were not to stay in the valley at all. They had to go right through over the Jordan and out to Cedar Fort and they stayed out there. Sidney Johnson was the general in charge of them. He never came into Salt Lake, they say. He stayed out there and never had anything to do with the Mormons at all. Some of our farmers and gardeners used to go out there and sell produce out of their gardens to them. When they reached a settlement, they came back into their homes in Salt Lake and have been here ever since, I guess.

Alan: Uh, huh. It’s quite a story.

Clarence: That’s quite a story, I’ll tell you. Brother Brigham, he wasn’t going to tolerate them. He wasn’t going to monkey. He’s been pushed around long enough. He was going to burn down the city. John Cohlam, a local boy, wrote down a diary in shorthand that I had scribed. Tom Wheely got a hold of it, he married one of his daughters and he’s written a whole diary for about 10 years from about 1855 til 1865 or there abouts, all in Ben (inaudible) shorthand and they brought it to me and wanted to know if I could read it and I looked at it and I thought what is it? They’d had it to John N. Whitaker and brother Anderson and Otteson, all court reporters and I know they knew a system of short hand, but they couldn’t read it. I transcribed the whole thing and made four copies and gave a copy to Mae and one to Joseph Cohlam, his widow and I don’t know whether I would do that. (?). It was quite interesting and he mentioned “the Move” there that they were active in the militia and going down to Pleasant Grove. In fact, John Cohlam Jr. lives in Pleasant Grove. I remember going down to his place once. I don’t know whether Alice will come up here today or not. She’s going to sleep up here.

Alan: How did Willard Richards get a hold of all that land across where Harpers built? Did he own that property down there in Sugar House?

Clarence: I don’t quite get what you’re….

Alan: Is that Nora’s house down on Hollywood Avenue? Did Willard Richards own all that?

Clarence: Oh, yes. Alan: Does he have a big estate out there or something?

Clarence: Joy’s still living in that old house. Her sister Ann lives over in the big apartments. She won’t live with her sister, I don’t know why. They don’t get along too well. They’re just half-sisters anyway. A funny thing happened down there years ago. I worked a year over at the Granite Furniture. They were installing a new bookkeeping system and there was a bookkeeper there names May Harding and I worked along with her. I was there just a year, I think. Willard and Julia Stockwood, and the bishop were just like hand in glove and they were buying up all the property they could find out there. Then there was another two men that were in the same game that was Andrew Davidson, the blacksmith and Burt Smoot. I think it was Burt Smooth that lived down on McClellan just north of where JC Penney’s store was. They were together like that buying up real estate. And I don’t know if you remember or not, but at 10th East and 21st South, on that corner, there was a little cottage there. A little brick cottage and the creek ran right behind it. An old couple lived there with their son. I think they died and someone in Centerville or Bountiful took the boy out there to live with them. I suppose they had deeded it to him. It was going to be sold for non-payment of taxes and Willard and Stockwood were in the next room to where I was working and I could see him in the huddle there every day scheming how they were going to go down and bid that home in. It came the day to have the auction on the steps of the city and county building. In the mean time, this fellow, Davidson, and his pal Smoot heard of it and they went up and contacted this young fellow. He was a little simple in the head, I think. They made a deal with him and went and redeemed the taxes and the day before. You never saw two more mad men in your life than Willard Richards. They were just moping around. Alan: I remember that old house, that’s right in the back of the creek.

Clarence. Yeah, the creek went by in the back there. Alan: Thompson’s or somebody owned the house next door north of there. I think there was a Thompson or somebody in there. We used to go and play in the creek over there.

Clarence: I forgot… I think (inaudible) used to live in the second house there. A fellow names Ballistrom lived along there too. He worked out the soil like (inaudible).

Alan: I can remember that neighborhood. We used to chase rats along the creek there. Then they came along and put a pipe in back of our house and buried the creek.

Clarence: Yeah, and then they built a stake house there that all old Van Richards claimed that. He said he gave that property to the church as a donation, including that twelve feet, I guess, there. Right in back of our house. It belongs to the city, I think. And he always boasted about giving that property to the church. They put him in as bishop of Lincoln ward and he said, “I know why they put me in, they expected to get a big donation from me, and I never gave them a dollar.” Bricken told me he was ward clerk. I think Roy Lee and Ron Fisher and Willard Richards were in the bishopric and none of them paid a full tithing and I don’t’ know why they put any of them in. We had a lot of fun. Joy Richards went up to Alaska to visit some friends. She was gone about two months up there and I took care of her lawn while she was gone. There was a fellow coming along 9th East. He saw me up in front of Joy’s old home there and he came up. He thought it was Willard. He and… I think his name was Sorenson or something Danish name and he was going to talk to Willard. He asked me where Willard was. I says, “Oh, he doesn’t come up this way because he’d have to take care of this property, maybe. I’m doing it just for friendship sake and I think he goes down the way to the furniture store and he says, that old skin flint, he would rob his grandmother. Alan: He was quite an old character.

Clarence: I wonder if we’re going to get rain.

Alan: That cloud is getting blacker and blacker. What was Willard’s father’s name?

Clarence: Willard Brigham. He was born in Winter Quarters in 1845, I think. He was just a little fellow when the pioneers left there. Willard Brigham.

Alan: Did Brigham Young give him a bunch of land out there in Sugar House?

Clarence: I don’t know. I don’t know. It seems to me, in looking over my abstract (inaudible), that Brigham has once sold that property in the early days, but I think Willard Brigham bought it from someone else that lived there. That old home is pretty old. I would guess it’s 80 or 80 years old, I guess.

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: Willard Brigham. There used to be a big black willow tree right in front of that. Alan: I remember that.

Clarence: It was part of the drive way. He got up in there when he was over 90 years old when he was trying to saw some of the branches off and his second wife, she was a Snelgrove, she came out, “come down, Willard, come down.”

Alan: I remember when they cut that old tree down. We burned those logs in our fireplace. Clarence: Yeah, he had a lot of trees around there. He had some big elm trees there. I don’t know which. In the back and they got infested with these worms. They’d crawl right up the trunk and eat the leaves off. They had to have them taken out. Alan: What was that old mill that used to be in back of our house?

Clarence: I think they had a saw mill there. They had some kind of water wheel or something that ran it. Alan: I remember that old place was still there when I was young, I guess.

Clarence: That was part of Brighams… the doctor lived right on the south side of the creek.

Alan: Yeah, that big, big house.

Clarence: Steven L. Alan: That used to be the old haunted house. There were great big pine trees in front. Clarence: They tore that house down to build a stake house.

Alan: I remember when they started that big stake house foundation and you ran over there and made them stop.

Clarence: Yeah. They had a big steam shovel excavating there on Sunday and I called up (inaudible) C. He was in bishopric and I says, “Do we believe in working on Sunday?” “Well, I don’t know.” He didn’t know much about the gospel. I said, I don’t think we ought to build that church on Sunday. We’re supposed to be go off work on the Sabbath day. He called up Snelgrove, I guess. He was the first bishop and they put a stop to it anyway. I had to laugh when they started to excavate that, they had a meeting there on the grounds on the east end. They were going to lay the foundation, I guess and Snelgrove had never done anything in the church, to speak of, he didn’t know anything about collecting money for the building of the building so the big steam shovel came down there and he had a banner painted and it said on it, “Built and prayed for in one year.” Oh boy, you’ve got a lot to learn. He lasted about a year and then was reassigned and gave it up. They put him… then Lorenzo Hatch was put in as president of the stake and wanted him in the high counsel because he’d been a bishop and he only went to one meeting and never went again. Finally they released him from the high counsel. They put Lillywight in. He was going to tear the Wardel ward inside and out and get that paid for. I tell you, he was a high pressure insurance salesman. He lasted a year and then he blew up. He blew down the ward. He didn’t live long after. I do believe they put Kenny Cannon in. He was a big fellow and he worked for one of the big creamery companies here. He used to come in and swagger down the isle and he’d have an idea he was going to do something. Just like an electric bulb that flares up and then goes out. Let’s see, who did they put in… Laird Snelgrove once.

Alan: Isn’t Laird down there at the… isn’t he a mission president now?

Clarence: Oh, he left there a long time ago. He was down in (inaudible). He’s back. His father ran the business while he was gone and when he came back he moved out of the… well, he bought Matt Miller’s home down on Ashton Avenue. He sold that and moved up in the Avenues somewhere. I don’t know just where they live. He was down in the ward two or three days ago. They had a funeral there. Do you remember Lee Monds?

Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: Don Monds? Alan: I went do school with Don.

Clarence: Don, he has polio, I think. He’s still in a wheelchair. He’s quite a business man down in California now. His mother died. She was Isabelle Child and they live in Florida. I knew her before she was married. Oh, she was a beautiful woman. She’s only 73. She died there last Wednesday, I think. Oh, well, he’ll be lost now. Will was quite a nice fellow. He was a principal of the Granite Junior High School. He comes in to see me occasionally. He moved out of the ward but they had the funeral in the Lincoln Ward.

Alan: Well, you had a pretty good bishopric over in Richard’s Ward, I guess. You were in there quite a while.

Clarence: Richards?

Alan: Yeah. Clarence: Yeah, they had Ralph Hood was the first bishop in ours and then they organizes Lincoln Ward and that was over the deadline and he and Billy Brown begged me to take the bishopric of that ward. Nope. I am glad I’m a working man, I’ve got a family of youngsters, I’ve just got to take of them and if you’ll just look at it the way I do, like a missionary in the field, I’ve got word that my release is coming and I’m getting ready to go home. He says, “the people want you for bishop down there.” Nope. That’s the first church job I ever turned down. I’ve turned one or two down since. So we… Frank Burns succeeded me in the Richard’s Ward and, I don’t know, Alder, I think they had about 11 bishops down there.

Alan: We had Bishop Brown down there in Tucson for about seven years now.

Clarence: Down in Tucson? Alan: Yeah.

Clarence: How long have you been in stake clerk?

Alan: I’ve been there about 8 years, I guess.

Clarence: You’re still in, huh?

Alan: Yeah. He asked me to be one of his counselors not too long ago and I turned him down. I said I’d rather work with figures than with people.

Clarence: You’ll get plenty of chances. I’ll tell you.

Alan: They’ve got a good counselor in there. He’s been a good bishop. We went to the temple a few weeks ago and had five couples sealed.

Clarence: Is that so?

Alan: We’ve been working with them for years and finally got them in the temple.

Clarence: (inaudible) I guess.

Alan: There was one high priest there that had been married in the temple twice and got married again There were about 10 children sealed, I guess. We had 80 people there from our ward.

Clarence: That’s fine. I had a lot of people in the old (inaudible) that go to the temple. It opens tomorrow, the Salt Lake Temple. The young fellow, he used to live in our ward. I thing he moved in Rich’s ward shortly after they realigned the Lincoln Ward.

Alan: Well, the mosquitos are all over the place. Did you ever go fishing in the Weber up there?

Clarence: I haven’t been fishing in years.

Alan: You used to go up there, didn’t you? Up on the Smith and Morehouse?

Clarence: Oh yes, we went up on the Smith and Morehouse. Harry Cushing and a bunch of us went up one day, I think it was shortly after Dorothy was born and we stayed up there for a week. We caught a few fish and we promised all our wives that we would write as soon as we got up there. I wrote a postcard and one of… Clive Ashton, I think, took it over to the main road coming to Salt Lake and met a man coming down and asked him if he’d post these letters. There was quite a stack of them and he’d be glad to. He had a big hunting coat and he put them in his pocket and years after… several years after I was working in the Deseret Bank. Ezra Stephenson, he was in the bishopric up in the 18th ward and I mentioned to him we’d been up on the Smith and Morehouse. He’d been up at Holiday Park. He was telling me about that. I told him about this episode of our writing letters and none of our wives got them and in two or three days they came to the .. the post card came through the mail. He put them in his hunting coat and hung up the hunting coat and never wore it again. We got a kick out of that. We used to go up the Spencer’s place. When I was in the high counsel we went up to stay a few days and some of the bank employees went up there too. We had fun up there.

Alan: I remember going up there once. With the bank bunch, I guess.

Clarence: Yeah, that’s a nice place. The road was pretty good. Ted Askin and those other boys went up one night and we went over to Sugar House railway station and went up to Park City. One of the men had written to a (inaudible) way up on the Weber to come down and pick us up in a heavy wagon. He was there and we went on us. We went a little further up than Spence’s place was, put up a tent and camped there. We had a nice time.

Alan: We took a ride up there about two years ago, I guess. Up to that river road on Smith and Morehouse.

Clarence: Oh yeah, we went up there one day. I was up in the country in 1899 with my brother Fred. We were with a heard of sheep. I was the camp sender. I’d been over west of Evanston about 12 miles and I think it was (inaudible) sheep and we dipped them and shaved them over there and shaved them the lambs came along and we turned the herd over onto the head of the Bear River up on Hayden’s Fort and it was quite an experience. We were up there for June, July, August and September. Four months. I made $56. I didn’t spend a dollar. We didn’t have a newspaper or a book. I’d given Fred a Book of Mormon for Christmas the Christmas before and he had that and that’s what I read up there on one of the glens up on Porcupine Mountain. We were on the headwaters of the Bear River. We put the camp wagon out on an old knoll where everybody could see it. We had two horses and we put everything on the pack horse, tents and skillets and mutton and the pork and the flour and other things. We went down into the wilderness and stayed up there. One night a bear got in the herd and just mauled about 25 of the sheep. Some of them had the side of the hide just torn off. He’d killed a few and then got in and eaten their livers, I guess. That was quite an experience.

We were camped quite a ways from the herd that night. It was right up by Holiday Park. We had checked the herd over from Chop Creek over the mountain onto the Weber and we got down in the rancher’s private property there and Fred had left and come down and there was a fellow named Manson that came as herder. I took the pack horse up over the mountain and down the other side. It began to rain. Oh, it rained. We put up the tent. It leaked a little. Pretty soon here came this fellow named Laraby. He had a big ranch there. They had a lot of the sheep in there for a long time. He was a cattle man and the vegetation was lush and beautiful and so he came and put us under arrest. He came down to Coalville. He put notes down in Coalville to swear out a complaint about me. On the way down I guess Nelson was a pretty good talker and he agreed to call up Grandpa in Grantsville when we got down to Coalville and see if he could lease the property during the summer. Which he did. The foliage was so lush we just stayed right there for two or three months and the sheep got fat and they shipped the whole herd down to Omaha or Chicago. We got home in October and I got enough money to put me through the business college in the winter.

Alan: How old were you?

Clarence: Oh, that was 1899 or 1900 so I was about 19.

Alan: When did you go on your mission?

Clarence: The 22nd April, 1903. As soon as I got through the business college that winter, that spring I got a job 1901 at Deseret National Bank as messenger boy for $35 dollars a month. I thought I was on top of the moon. I was, too. I studied shorthand and typing and grammer and English and penmanship and (inaudible), he and I went through Fremont School together and he’d been messenger and he got advanced to bookkeeper so he says, would you like to work in the bank? I said I surely would. The next day after I got out of school, I had a job. I worked about two years and then went on a mission.

Alan: Yup. I guess you married Edna when you got back.

Clarence: Huh?

Alan: I guess you married Mom when you came back.

Clarence: I’d been back… I went for … I was gone two years, a little over. In 1905 I got back and we got married in 1907 on the 20th of June. That was the anniversary of my father and mother getting married on board a sailing vessel in Liverpool harbor, the day it sailed. Arelius Miner was over there on a mission in the Liverpool office and they had charge of getting the passage on the sailing vessel and they were married the day it sailed. So we took the same anniversary in 1907.

Alan: Have you still got your old journal from Scotland?

Clarence: Old journal? Oh, I kept a diary, but I wrote a history of my life. About 36 pages of type written matter. I don’t know whether I gave you a copy or not.

Alan: Yeah, I’ve got it somewhere.

Clarence: all I could think of my father and mother’s life and Edna too. Alan: Uh, huh.

Clarence: And I haven’t written any since.

Alan: How would you like to pack up and go on a mission, Roy?

Roy: I wouldn’t like it

Clarence: Ew, it’s getting cold, we better get our overcoats out.

Roy: I’ve got a sweat shirt so it’s not cold for me. I just explored the river… boys talking—

Tape Ends