(The Idaho Journal Pocatello) 

Being willing for adventure has made a rich 95 years of living for the oldest male resident in this county. 

William Peter Camp, known as “Uncle Peter” to his friends, will be 96 on April 19. For the last few months he’s been staying in the Daniels Rest home, 1910 McKinley, because he’s “getting on a bit” and needs nursing care. 

As a young man he freighted food and lumber from his home in Malad valley to the gold mining camps around Butte, returning with wagons of gold dust for delivery at the railroad junction in Corrine, Utah. 

It was handy on that kind of a trip to be familiar with a Colt .45, cooking over a campfire and managing a six-span of horses. 

As a child, Camp grew tall and strong eating mushrooms, watercress and venison. His parents felt pretty lucky to find such food while they railed the sagebrush off their land. 

“We knew the land was rich because the sagebrush grew higher than the dirt-roofed log hut in Samaria,” Camp recalls. 

When he and a pretty neighbor, Ann Morse, decided to marry, they drove to Salt Lake City in a covered wagon for the ceremony in the LDS church endowment house. 

The couple became the parents of 14 children. 

Three of them died in infancy. The other youngsters were reared in a frontier mansion their father built by himself. It had four rooms and a big pantry. 

There were straw ticks to make the beds soft. One mammoth size straw tick on a folding bed that came out of the living room wall would sleep up to six small fry when company came to visit. 

It was a test of Camp’s faith in the new “Mormon” religion his parents had adopted before they left Wales when Brigham Young called him on a mission to preach in the southern state. It meant leaving his wife with their first three children to support. But in those days neighbors were so few and far between, stood by each other in times of stress. Ann Camp returned kindnesses by the skill of her needle and thimble. 

For the young missionary it meant traveling without what Camp called “purse or script.” 

“If I ate and found shelter each night it was by the grace of the Lord and kindness of strangers,” he remembers. 

After two years Camp returned and he and Ann homesteaded 160 acres of new land in what’s now known as Pleasantview. 

Wild horses roamed the hills and plains. Camp became an expert at cornering a herd of them in a draw, cutting out a beauty and then “breaking” the animal. 

Open House Will Honor Oldest Resident Monday 

Open house honoring Williams Peter Camp Sr. on his 95th birthday is scheduled 7:30 p., Monday, April 19th, at the Pleasant View ward recreation hall. 

Oneida county’s oldest resident was born April 19, 1859 in Salt Lake City, a son of Williams Washington Camp and Amelia Evans Camp. Spending his early boyhood days in Salt Lake City, Mr. Camp moved with his mother’s family to Samaria when he was 17 years old. He engaged in farming and freighting to Montana. He was married to Anne Morse in the Salt Lake City Endowment House on March 6, 1879. 

Active in the LDS Church and civic work, Mr. Camp served an LDS mission to the southern states; as a member of the first bishopric of the Pleasant View Ward; as the first postmaster at Pleasant View and as the first Justice of the peace there. He also filled a short term mission for the MIA to Emery stake in eastern Utah; served many years as a home missionary in the Malad stake; was secretary of the Sunday school stake board and for some time was also secretary of the YMMIA board. 

“Uncle Peter”, as he is affectionately known throughout this area, is still active and took an airplane flight at the Soil Conservation Day activities here last month. 

(headshot photo of older gentleman. Caption above the picture says: Oneida’s Oldest Resident. Below the photo caption says: Wm. P. Camp Sr.)