By her daughter Estella Daniels Jones 

(Headshot picture of Mary May Bolingbroke Daniels) 

Mary May Bolingbroke Daniels was the daughter of Charles Edward and Margaret Elizabeth Roberts Bolingbroke. She was born December 19, 1876, at Malad City, Idaho. She was the first born of 10 children, 5 girls and 5 boys. She was baptized May 7, 1885 and she married George Daniels Sr. on January 27, 1897, at Malad City, Idaho. She was endowed May 15, 1930. She and George were sealed on July 12, 1965 and all her family were sealed to them the same day, at the Logan Temple except one daughter Ethel, who was unable to go. It was a happy day. She died on August 18, 1921, and was buried August 25, 1921 at Malad City, Idaho. She was the mother of 8 children, two of whom died. One was a stillborn daughter, born August 18, 1921, and the other was her second child, Leon, a son, who was born January 19, 1899, and died May 3, 1899 from Whooping Cough. 

Her children were: Estella, born October 7, 1897; Leon, born January 19, 1899; George B., born August 24, 1900; Ethel, born December 1, 1903; Elizabeth Merle, born January 30, 1906; Lorin B., born December 8, 1908; Margaret Orlean, born May 30, 1911; and a stillborn daughter August 18, 1921. All were born in Malad City, Idaho, Oneida County. 

When the Bolingbrokes were first married they had a farm at Pauline, Idaho, in Arbon Valley, and they lived in a two room log house with a dirt roof that Mother’s father built as he was a very handy carpenter as well as a good farmer. When it was time for a baby to be born they moved to Malad where Grandpa built a 3 room home on the block below the First Ward Chapel. 

When mother was just a young girl, she used to help her grandfather Bolingbroke keep house and learned to cook for him. She told me that he was always kind to her and she had her picture taken with him. He had a long beard, but she said he always kept it clean and trimmed. Mother helped many neighbors when they were in trouble. I remember D. L. Evans and his brother Lorenzo Evans told me one day, “You and your sisters are good looking girls, but none of you are as beautiful as your mother was.” Also President Thomas W. Richards told me how he used to sit in school and admire my mother as he said she was the prettiest girl in the class. He was much younger than my mother. 

Mother loved the Church, and when she went visiting friends, she took all the kids and spent the day. I can remember brother Lorin always hanging on to her long skirt and saying, “Let’s go home.” 

When Mother’s family were living in Pauline, mother got a job teaching school in a one room schoolhouse at what they called the River Bottoms, where the American Falls Dam is now built and my father was feeding cattle for his older brother, Dave Daniels. They met and fell in love and were married. Grandfather helped build them a one room house at the head of West Fork, where father homesteaded along with several of his brothers and other friends. Father was at the head of the creek and at the foot of a large mountain that they called George’s mountain. His brother John, his sister Janet, his brothers Henry and Thomas and Dave all homesteaded in that area. 

Mother’s family did not live too far away but was not up next to the mountain. We were right next to the Indian Reservation. I played with Indian children when they came up the creek to pick chokecherries and wild strawberries. Mother used to feed the Indians many times. One time an old Indian called Pocatello Tom, came riding a stolen horse of Uncle Dave’s and wanted food and told mother not to tell anyone she had seen him. After he left, a posse from Pocatello came looking for him and they finally found him as he had killed a squaw. 

Mother said they used to have a lot of good times in the old school house as they would take food and eat and dance all night and put the kids to sleep on the benches. Father used to call for the plain quadrille, which are called square dances now. Mother and Father used to like to dance. They moved to the River Bottoms in the winter time for a few years, to feed cattle. 

Mother had a sister, Elizabeth, who lived across the Snake River, and there were no bridges to cross when they wanted to visit each other, so he [we] had a team of horses, Kate and Maud, and a white top buggy and the horses would swim the river and pull the buggy. One time they balked right in the middle of the river and Father thought that was the end of us all. I was a little girl and George was a baby, but somehow he got the team across, but scared them so badly that they never tried to cross that way any more. They built a barge and rowed it across. 

There was lots of swampy land and bullrushes. I can remember Mother walking and carrying George and then coming back and carrying me across the swamps when she went to visit a neighbor whose baby had died. Mother washed and dressed the baby and Father built a box to bury the baby in. Mother took clean clothes to bury the baby in also as they were very poor housekeepers and very poor also, I guess. 

Then we would move back to Pauline in the summer months. We had chickens and pigs and it was a common thing to see deer in front of the house often. Father would hunt ducks and wild chickens to eat also. I remember Mother and some cousins telling me that one day while they were picking chokecherries, they left me sitting on a quilt when I was a baby, and when they came to see how I was, a large rattlesnake was curled up on one corner of the quilt. They were frightened, but they had been told that if you do not frighten the snake he will crawl away, and that is what happened. He crawled away in the bushes and then they scrambled away and no one was hurt. Mother said when they gathered eggs they had to be very careful because sometimes a snake would be curled up in the nest and they would eat the eggs. One time a big snake was curled up on a log above their heads in the coop, whey they heard it move, so we had to always watch for snakes. Mother used to ride horseback with me on the back and George in the saddle with her when she went to visit her relatives and friends. 

Father’s sister was left with a big family on the ranch and Dad and Mother were very good to them. Many times her boys said how they loved my Father. We would go to Pocatello for supplies and one time Father bought a whole keg of sorghum and none of us liked it. We wanted syrup or molasses. It always seemed that Mother was happy as she always had a happy disposition. I think Ethel and George look more like mother than any of the rest of us. 

Bear tracks were often seen on the water banks and some cousins claim they saw bears near the creek. 

When George and I were old enough to go to school, Father sold his farm in Pauline and he and Mother homesteaded at Daniels or the head of Malad, as it is called. We had another one room house built up there and later they built a four room house and basement, also a two large room house in Malad down Samaria Lane. Later Dad enlarged that home to a three bedroom home with a bathroom and water in the house. 

We lived in town in the winter and on the ranch in the summer. I talked to Arthur Williams and he told me that Mother was his first Sunday School teacher and he thought she sure was a beautiful woman. We had a large orchard and raised all kinds of fruit. Mother used to share the fruit with all her Arbon Valley friends. They would come over in the fall and stay all night, sleep on the floor and Mother would feed them. It was a job for all us kids to pick the apples and pears and plums and if they could pay for them it was 25￠a bushel. 

One time Grandma Bolingbroke came to Malad with a felon on her finger. I remember she was in lots of pain. We had a red velvet settee and Grandma laid on that and Mother took care of her a long time before her finger got better. Mother would always take us girls over and clean Grandma’s house in Malad before they moved over in the winter time. 

Mother was a good cook and Father was a good provider. We always seemed to have plenty to eat and a happy family. Mother used to wash all day it seemed to me and when we got home from school we would hang all the clothes on the lines and fence to get them dry. We had a hand-run washer and washboard, which was no easy way to wash, and would boil all the white clothes in a boiler on the stove to get them nice and white. 

We never had clothes like they have today. We got a new dress for the 4th of July, and for Christmas, and we always had to come home and change our clothes after school, as we wore the same dress all week. I remember in the winter time I wore long black knitted stockings to keep our legs warm. We had wood burning stoves and some coal to keep our homes warm. We had coal oil lamps for a long time, and I remember Father buying a mantel lamp that gave a much better light. It was a long time before we had electric lights. 

We were happy when we had a pump put on the well on the porch. The well was 45 feet deep. It is still in the same place. I remember when Lorin was about two years old, he followed the older kids down in the field where Father was binding oats and he got lost in the tall grain. Father ran into him and cut his leg badly and how scared he was when he came running to the house with his leg bleeding. The Dr. was called and they just laid him on the table and sewed it up. I can remember how his leg quivered at the time. I also remember when the kids were all running to ride on a big derrick that Mr. Mills was dragging up the road with a team of horses, when Ethel fell inside the derrick and it rolled over her and she was badly bruised. Then another time Merle was in the pasture when a bull picked her up on his horns and threw her over the fence which probably saved her life. The Lord sure must love us, and His guardian angels must watch over us and protect us, or many items we would have been killed. I was thrown from a horse once and my head was so sore I hated to have Mother comb my hair but I did not tell her, for fear she would not let me ride the horse again. 

We all loved our little sister Orlean as she was born with clubfoot. Mother felt so badly about it, but she was taken to Salt Lake to a bone specialist when she was only six weeks old. She was operated on so many times and casts put on her feet and legs, and she learned to walk with casts on. When they would wear out, Mother would take one of us kids with her to Salt Lake and have new ones put on. When she was old enough they put her in braces that fastened around her waist. They weighed 25 pounds, but she would run and try to keep up with the other kids. I can still hear her jingle as she came along. She grew up to be a happy child and could dance as good as anyone, but could never wear high heeled shoes like her friends. She used to feel badly about that. 

Mother was a good housekeeper and taught us all how to work and do our share. We kids came down from the ranch when school started and milked a cow, fed chickens and pigs and picked the fruit and Mother and Dad moved down when the snow came. I was the only one married when Mother died. It seems she got pregnant and for some reason or other she hemorrhaged every month for seven months and then lost the baby and her life. I guess if they had a hospital in Malad at that time where they could have given transfusions, she would have lived. But father had a doctor and a special nurse from Salt Lake, but she was just too weak. Her very last words to me were “Have the girls dusted the front room?” and “Is the washing done?” Everything was done that could be done at that time. It was a shock to the city, because mother was only 45 years old. Father lived to be 102 ½. 

I was the only one married at the time and Father had always said that Mother was the manager, and he wanted me to come home and help keep the family together. I had three children at the time. 

(Photo of an older man sitting and a young girl standing by him. The Captions says-Charles Bolingbroke and his daughter Mary Mae.)