Autobiography of Alice Etta Daniels

Autobiography of Alice Etta Daniels

AUTOBIOGRAPY OF ALICE ETTA DANIELS

I was born north Ogden, Weber Co. Utah on Feb. 16, 1896. My mother was alone at the time so de-

livered me by herself and took care of me and herself. She had a midwife engaged but at the time she was busy delivering Earl Randall and of course I was anxious to get here, Ha , ha.

I was the sixth child in the family of two sisters and three brothers older than me, then five brothers younger than me, so that totaled eleven altogether. One brother John; Henry the eldest child died

with Spinal Meningitis when he was just nine months old and one sister Sicily died at the age of sixteen months with Scarlet Fever. Both of them died before I was born.

My father was Henry (Harry) Daniels who came over here from Tillshead, Wiltshire England. And my mother was Elizabeth Ann Richards. She came from Hales, with her parents in 1880, And she and Henry were married 12 May 1884 in Plain City, Weber Co, Utah. We lived in the house where I was born for four years where I can remember going out with my mother and going down the row ahead of her picking raspberries, and of playing house with a neighbor girl by the name of Lettie Shupe and a pair of twin girls, Vera and Verna Pickford.

One day I wanted to pick up a baby chick to pet it but the old hen had different ideas so by the time mother rescued me I was pretty well pecked and beat up. On my fourth birthday we moved up to Fred Barkers farm.

When I was five years old I had Typhoid Fever and was sick with it when the threshers came the latter part of Aug. to thresh our wheat, mother let me lie on the couch in the dining room and that day when dad and all the men that were working on the threshing crew were getting washed for dinner, an elderly man came up to dad and asked if he could eat with them (this was not an unusual

occurrence in these days for a stranger to ask for a meal). Dad told him he could and he would not drink tea or coffee or eat ham. When he got through eating he told dad that I would get well and that none of dads family would ever be without something to eat, and I can testify that it has been true with me, although we have been pretty short at times. Then he (the old man) left and went back down to the road the way he came in through the pole bars as we used to call them. Dad sent my older brother to see which way he went. The road was straight both ways, one went north the other

west but my brother said he couldn't see him on either road, he was a tall well built man with snow white hair and a long white beard, and yet he didn't look aged. President David O. McKay (1955) would look like him if he wore a long white beard. '

While we lived on this place I can remember out in the south field, I think it was a hay field, there used to be a big deep hole about twelve feet in diameter and six feet deep except in the south west corner it didn't seem to have any bottom as we used to throw big rocks and sticks in it but we couldn't hear them hit the bottom. I can remember hearing dad say he put the horse old Mary in there because she chased him out of the corral one night. And as she jumped the bars to get him, she fell and broke her neck, I can remember her doing that. She was a beautiful mare but she was a mean one too.

On the same farm we had a dog named Tip. He was a shepherd and collie mix. He was lying on the porch one night and we were in the house when we heard the horses out in the barn making an awful fuss they were kicking and squealing like everything so dad and my oldest brother, Joe went out to quiet them and see what was wrong. However when they couldn't see or find anything they came back to the house and had just got in and unloaded the gun when Tip started to snarl and growl, well they went out on the porch and down to the south end of it and saw Tip on the back of something as big as he was. The next morning when father and the boys went out to the barn to do the chores the stock yard fence was broken down in places and big lots of brown fur on the fence, and when Alma Roylance came up to see dad he said it was a grizzly bear that had been there. So we kids thought we had the best and bravest dog that ever was. The next night or two father heard and awful rumpus

down in the road by our gate, down where a hollow or big wash went across the road. so he walked down there to see what the trouble was and a lady that used to live up on the mountain road was a single buggy trying to get her horse to go across the road there in this hollow but the horse was rearing and backing until it almost had the buggy tipped over. We made room for her to stay at our

house that night and the next day father found bear tracks down there and then knew why the horse wouldn't pass thru.

I can remember also there was a big dugout dirt potato cellar under the back summer kitchen and father used to fill it with potatoes, squash, carrots and apples for winter but this one day our grandma Richards was up there and my oldest sister and mother was washing the clothes and sis had to carry the wash water for part of the wash from this open well we had, it was down quite

a hill about a hundred feet behind the house. She went out to hang some clothes on the line and a big rattle snake was coiled up by one of the posts that the lines were fastened to. Well grandma took the garden hoe that was leaning against the house and cut that snake into about twenty pieces it seemed to me. But I can still see it sticking its fangs out at Ethel even after its head was severed from the rest of it. When she (Ethel) would go up or down that hill for water another one would stick its head out from between the rocks in the foundation under the house where this potato hole was and wiggle his tongue at her but it wouldn't come out any farther. Dad put some poisoned grain by the hole and two or three days later took the dead snakes out of the hole under the house. Each, of them were about three or four inches thru and about four feet long, and I still don't like snakes. Then I was maybe six or seven years old, and now I am a grandma nearly sixteen times and I still don’t like snakes.

One day when I was small I got in the jockey box on the front of fathers big wagon and found a nice new doll, with beautiful brown curly hair and brown eyes that went to sleep and it had a kid skin body which seemed to be real, china hands and feet and beautiful black patent leather slippers on, and lace stockings, so I got in the box and went to sleep with that doll in my arms, yes I caused my folks quite a bit of worry until my daddy found me and my dolly. I was always very small for my age when I was young and seldom still only when I slept which was never very much.

I didn't go to school until I was eight years old because it was a mile to the school house and a mile back and father thought that was too far for me to walk in the cold winters but I was always with my grade once I got started.

We lived on the farm six or seven years then we left it and went over to the McGriff place to live. As father went over there to work and we lived in this house across the road north from William Wards, and Alice Warren lived on another corner east of us and Mary Ann Dudman lived west of us. Here I remember we had a nicer house to live in but we still had half a mile farther to walk to school and I was only in the second grade. We used to pass grandma Richards place on the way to and from school and if we had anything special she was always the first one to know, So one morning I was late for school because I stopped to show grandma my piece of embroidery I had done in primary and was to exhibit that night in primary after school. A girl by the name of Mae Warren was with me so when we got to class our teacher, Pearl Swift told us to go home and get an excuse for being late. So we went home and when we got there we had to change clothes clear thru as it had rained all the mile and a half for me and about two and a half for Mae. But about eleven o’clock here

came Mae back for me to go back to school. My mother said she couldn't write an excuse for me. (mother didn't know how to write) and Mae’s mother said I wouldn't need one, well by the time we got back to the school Mae's mother was sure mad. The school house had three rooms in it. The beginners, the first grades were in the east room and the eighth and seventh grades' were in the west end, also a library in one corner and the principals office with a long hall extending across the three rooms with double doors and a platform and about six steps down on three sides. Well Mae’s mother told us to go in and tell Miss Swift she was wanted out in the hall, so she came out and Mrs. Warren gave her a lecture that I bet she hasn't forgotten to this day, and to wind it up she told her she had a notion to make her (the teacher) walk clear up to her place and bac k and then the principal found out what was up he was angry at Miss Swift also. She left at mid year and we never heard of her since.

While we lived there I had one funny happening. We had a roan horse that was blind in one eye and one day when all the boys were away mother asked me to take him down to give him a drink, as I was too small to put the bridle on him I just used the halter rope, well he knew where the water was so he was nice and gentle going down but coming back he ran all the way and instead of going in the gate he jumped a four wire barbed fence and then stopped all at once right in front of the pig pen with a big old mean pig in it, WOW, I never got on old Pat again. He could die of thirst. I was surely protected that day.

When I was about nine years old we moved d own closer to church and school. We had a new two story school that year with eight class rooms four on each floor. I went to this school and graduated in May 1913. I was seventeen when I graduated. I was eight when I started school and we had a full nine months of kindergarten, and having to walk so far and being so smaIl for my age and not well, I look back and think I did pretty well, not to have to stay in any class two years. When I was eleven years old my sister got married, leaving me most of the housework to do. I use to either do the

family wash on Saturday along with the cleaning of the house for Sunday or stay out of school a day because mother had a double navel hernia and couldn't do heavy work and I was the only girl at home so it fell my responsibility to do the washing which I am thankful I did. Most kids disliked dish washing but it was part of my work so I made it fun to get them done and it isn't hard if they are

done immediately after a meal is over. Sometimes things come up that can't be done right away but I always found the longer one puts off doing things the harder it is to do them.

In the summer time there were berries of all kinds, also cherries and apricots to pick early in the morning till noon. Then the house work to do until about four P.M. Then back to the fruit till dark about 8:00 P.M. Then to bed so that we could get up next morning. But we had our games and parties and fun too. Mostly Friday nights after the work was done. The kids from blocks around would come to our place and play, run sheep run, hide & seek and other games outside. On Saturday afternoons ball games, that could be played on small fields such as rounders (an English version of base ball) three old cat, and others. Then of course there were always marbles for the younger boys.

As I mentioned before our fine grandmother Richards lived about two blocks north of us and grandfather Daniels lived a block south and one we s t of us at this time. We always enjoyed having them come to our house. They used to tell us stories of England and Wales and how the people

used to persecute the saints until they (the saints) would come to Zion anyway they could to

get away and would leave nice homes and jobs, Our father and grandfather told us of our grand-

mother Daniels being of Royal birth but because she married grandfather who was the gardener on

her fathers estate her parents disowned her, and buried an empty casket as a sign that she

was dead as far as they were concerned. They discharged grandpa of course, grandmother died

soon after coming to Utah and grandfather died 25 Nov 1912 and was buried on his 80th birthday

It seems like after we moved to this place we ran into so much hard luck.

We lost our grandmother Richards in July of 1910 also our brother Walter in Dec. Then the brother just older than Walter, age nine, the next Feb 1911. We lost both grandfathers the next two years.

While visiting down to my cousins place on 20th and Adams Ave in Ogden in 1912 I met one

of her neighbor boys and he asked me to go to church With him. I went with him. I kept company with him for all that winter. The next Decoration Day he asked me down to his home for dinner and to meet his family. Among them was a young man that liked to tease, he came out to my home the next day, it was a Sunday and I knew then that he was the boy I wanted, but he went home to Paul Idaho. I didn't see nor hear from him again until May 1917 when he was in Ogden to bury his brother and was going to the Orpheum Theater with a girl friend of mine whose sister was keeping company with the fellow I use to go with and who had introduced us. I stopped to tell the girl about going to the show with someone else and this cousin I used to go with said, you know Dave don't you? Up to then I wasn't certain who he was that was walking on the other side of my girl friend. I thought he

was just part of the crowd trying to get past them, but when Dave insisted that I go with them.

I went to the show also. The next day Dave returned to San Francisco and the Navy.

We corresponded for the two-years he was in the Navy then in May 1919 he came home again. He went back to Paul Idaho all summer. His sister Orta was married in Nov. I seen him when she asked me to come see her as she was leaving with her husband for Idaho. Then Dave & I kept company until 22nd Jan 1920 when we went to Logan and were married. On the 7th of May 1919 my father had a stroke which left him helpless for a time. Gradually he recovered the use of his limbs but only to get around with the use of a cane, he died 14 Nov. 1930.

We have been married forty years this year 22 Jan 1960 which we celebrated at our lovely daughters home in Imperial Beach, Calif. with her husband and their eight wonderful children to help. Then we came home to Ogden, Utah to our home in Harrisville and were greeted by our son Dave and his lovely wife Luella and eight more wonderful

grandchildren. It was a lovely anniversary. We were home about three weeks when our Bishop Dean H. Parker asked us to go on a mission, our call from the prophet of the Lord came through the mail

to us. With the help of our Father in Heaven we will go to the mission home June 13th and leave for Gallup, New Mexico and the South West Indian Mission June 20th 1960.

We are home again after having many wonderful experiences while laboring at New Laguna, New Mexico, on the Laguna Indian Reservation, about eighty miles east of Gallup and seventy miles west of Albuquerque. This reservation has about seven or eight villages, Laguna, New Laguna, Mesita, Pequqti, Parahae, and others. The Laguna tribe are agricultural and stock people many of them are well educated, having attended Carlyle University as children and young folks, they have a good school system in the village and are quite progressive, incidentally they have a fine Uranium mine that is operated by the Anaconda Copper Co. on a royalty basis. They are a Pueblo type people and their homes are built of rock and clay that they get close at hand. For the stucco outside and inside they uncover a spot of ground near the house taking off the top soil and then mixing water with the clay adding some straw. At times they use this mixture to cover the rock home. They have some nice homes warm and comfortable. The women in the main are the plasterers, often using their hand without a trowel.

They bake their bread in ovens built like their houses but the outside is in the shape of the old beehive circular cone shape. Some of the ovens will hold sixteen large loaves of bread at one time. The women make a fire of cedar wood inside the oven till it is white hot inside then rake out the coals and with a wet mop on a long stick will swish out all the ashes until it is really clean, then they put a small amount of oat flakes on the floor of the oven and leave them for a few minutes, if the flakes burn it is too hot and they will swish it out again with a cold mop, then they try it again, when the flakes come out a golden brown they put the loaves in and close up the door and the hole in the top, and in about an hour they have the loveliest golden brown bread that is real good to eat. The door of the oven is on the side away from the prevailing wind and is even with the floor of the oven and about two feet high and a foot and a half wide. Dave often said these women were sure smart, to have the oven hot and the bread up ready to go into it at the same time.

On the 7th of Dec 1960 we left New Laguna (our relief Elder, Bro & Sister Adams of St Anthony Idaho had arrived) to go to Yuma Ar1zona on a special assignment for president Turley to visit the Cocapah and Queshon Indians there. We arrived in Yuma on the tenth after a snow storm over the continental divide between New Laguna and Gallup, that made towing our disabled Nash car a real

adventure, due to some help from Dave Jr. who had come down to tow it home we arrived safely in Gallup. There we met President Turley and made our report on the assignment given us, we were given an honorable release and permission to re- turn to San Diego to visit Beth and her family before returning home. We stayed with Beth until Jan 17th and then returned to Ogden and reported our mission to our bishop and state President and another chapter of our lives together was

finished Jan. 17, 1961.

About a year later on Jan 7th 1962 we were in preparation for another mission. entered the mission home 4 Mar. 1962 after selling our home in Harrisville as we felt we would not be able to make the payments on the home and keep ourselves on the mission.

The brother who interviewed us for the General Authorities said that if it was up to him he would not allow us to go but that he would report to the Brethren and they would make the decision, he felt that my health was not good enough for us to go, this left us feeling rather Low but we felt that the Lord

would help the Brethren to make the right decision and we would abide by it. In due time the call came from President McKay and we were assigned to the Northern California Mission.

We felt good about this as the only request we had made was that we be assigned if possible to warm low climate and we had thoughts of working in just such a place in the valleys of California. However our hopes were shattered when we received a letter from our Mission president asking us to go directly to the Owyhee Indian Reservation about one hundred miles north of Elko Nevada.

This place is typical of the land reserved for the Indians by the U.S. Government: high cold and windy, as we talked it over we felt that if that was where the Lord wanted us that was where we would go, Even though I had been advised by our doctor to keep out of high altitudes. However on the Friday before we were' to enter the mission home we received special delivery letters from Pres. McKay telling us and that we were

to go to the Central States mission. We felt that the Lord had given us the same test he had Abraham as told in the 22nd Chapter of Genesis. We traveled to Independence Missouri and President Carlos G. Smith assigned us to the city of Ardmore Oklahoma where we labored for six months being released honorably on the 17th Sep. 1962.

After reporting our mission to-the ward and stake we came to St George where we are trying to get some of our own family history and genealogy put together.

[the remainder was written by her husband Dave Hellewell]

While Etta was writing the above story we were also trying-to get our family history and genealogy put together and to get the temple work for all of our know ancestors either done or checking the records to see that it had been done, we traveled many miles gathering this information and her own personal story had to wait at times because you see, we had it' all planned out that we had many years to finish this work but the Great Planner and Director of our lives had it planned otherwise.

On the 13th of Sep. 1965 -He called Etta home and now I have the task of trying in my weak way of finishing the work, may the Lord give me strength to do it as she would have liked it done. Mother had the flu for about two weeks and had been quite sick during that time but both the doctor and I felt she was improving. She could get up and walk around without help and we had great plans for going up to Ogden for Byrons farewell party, but while the doctor was making a routine examination

of her chest region she apparently had a heart attack and we hurried her to the hospital (she walked out to the car on the arms of the Dr. and I) she was unable to lye down on the hospital bed, she said she could not get her breath and remained sitting up leaning against me. A few minutes after she got on the bed and while the Dr. and the nurses were giving her oxygen and medication she turned her head to me and calmly said "daddy I'm dying," and in a short time she was gone, as usual she was right in what she told me.

Mother was very spiritual and while sick and apparently asleep she talked to her mother and grandmother several times. She told me a few days before that she didn't want to live if she had to continue on in ill health, so the Lord was good to her and granted her desires (her patriarchal blessing says in part, "And you will receive every blessing that your heart- desires in righteousness from your Father in Heaven and be protected, for the destroyer shall have no power over you.") This was fulfilled in very deed. He had tested her long and fully while she was here on the earth and I believe found her not wanting. I truly felt that the Lord had tested her when we were assigned

to the Owyhee would have gone there even though she knew it would be very difficult for her to carry out the work.

Not once during all the years I knew her did she ever flinch away from a job the Lord thru his ervants asked her to do. When she was the agent for the relief society magazine in Harisville she built its circulation far beyond the quota and above anything before done there, she worked on welfare

projects, quilted with the other sisters, helped with ward suppers, taught the youngsters in primary and when scouting was introduced into the primary we carried on that work together, she taught M.I.A. classes, worked in Genealogical committees, and in this work was given help many times from beyond the veil. Surely she was close to the Lord.

In 1917 while riding horse back the horse fell and mothers right leg was broken, the bone failed to grow together properly and it was necessary to put a plate in her leg to hold the bones properly, as the bone healed the muscles grew to the bone and she was left with a leg that could not be bent.

while living in Glenns Ferry she fell and pulled the plate loose from the bone and for months had a running sore where the le had been operated on. After moving to Spokane she fell again and so the Dr. removed the plate and three screws. Although the x-ray showed four he could only locate three and so she suffered the rest of her life from the screw which sometimes moved near the knee joint and caused her much pain.

When Dave Jr. was to be born mother was in hard labor for five days before the doctor decided to take her to the hospital. She had already asked our bishop T.B. Wheelwright to give her a blessing and so he was there when the Dr. informed me that the baby was dead and had been for some hours, but that• he would operate and try to Save the mother. Although the bishop sat near by and heard the Dr tell me this he gave mother her requested blessing. In it he promised her that she would live to complete her mission and that the boy that was to be born would live to go on a mission and would become a father in Zion. All this has been fulfilled as he promised her it would.

When her younger brother James lost his wife by death and the children were referred to the

juvenile court by their mothers mother because she couldn't take care of them we took all five of them into our home until ill health forced her to aIlow others to help out at times, but through her efforts the children were kept together until they were Big enough to know who they were and who their people were.,

While in Oklahoma mother became very close to the Lamanite sisters both old and young, she was taken into their confidences and we were often told that they had never had anyone among the white people who understood them and loved them as did mother nor anyone they felt they could love in return as they did her. Many an Indian heart was made to feel lighter because of a good cry on the shoulder of Sister Hellewell and by the wise and kind counsel given them by her.

After our return from this mission we did quite a bit of temple work and learned to love St George Temple for it’s easy on the old folks floor plan. After awhile it got to be too much of an effort to go there’re and we did much work on the family history both in writing and by travel to see our relatives who might give us more information.

During all this time mother was continuing to work with her tatting shuttle, knitting needles or crochet hook making pretty doilies or other fancy work and making others happy in giving them some of her work or showing them how to do the stitches. She was a good seamstress and made most of her own clothes. She often helped others to complete their sewing or fancy work and was often able to show them how to do the desired piece. She was always busy with her hands, having something to work on when we were traveling and when we stopped for a few minutes she would put in a few more stitches. This was one of the ways she was able to get so much done. During the last few days of her bout with the flu it became too great an effort for her to do any crocheting.