Route #6 Nampa, Idaho
(as told to his son, Leonard LaMar Hartley, Sr.)
My father’s parents were Charles Henry Hartley and Eliza Horne, who came to America from England with their own families in about 1855. Among those in his family was my father, Charles Richard Hartley, age eight.
My mother, Sariah Cooper, came in the same manner with her parents at the age of three years. The two did not meet until they had crossed the plains to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The motivating force that brought these families with others to America was the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They joined the Church and in spite of hardships, desired to come to Zion in the tops of the mountains with the other Saints.
On arriving in Salt Lake Valley after crossing the plains, my grandfather continued his profession as a stone mason, cutting stone for the Salt Lake Temple. He worked hard for about 11 years on the temple and died early in age as a result of continually breathing the rock dust as he cut the stone. He was a choir leader in one of the Salt Lake Wards. The stone cutting tools which he used were given to my brother, Clarence Hartley of Ogden, Utah.
My mother’s father, William Cooper, taught school in Salt Lake City after their arrival to the valley.
From Salt Lake City, my father, Charles Richard Hartley, came with his family, three milk cows and a team and wagon to what was called Landing, Idaho. They set the wagon box off the running gears onto the ground and lived in it while they constructed their home by a creek in one of the valleys.
Three more of my father’s brothers, John, James, and Brigham followed the migration of my father at periodic dates to this same valley.
It was here in this area that I, Richard Hartley, was born on 25 November 1885, about 12 miles south of Rockland, Idaho, in a small dirt-floored cabin.
At the time of my birth, my father went by bobsled after the midwife, Mrs. Brown, who lived 10 miles away. It was extremely cold with snow on the ground. My brother, Charles, age eight, at the request of his mother, put his little arms around his mother’s limbs and held her knees together to retard any further progress until his father came with help.
Shortly after my birth, my parents moved back to Utah to live. When I was five years old, according to my earliest recollection, we moved back to Idaho to live. The home was a log house with a dirt floor and roof. When it rained the roof leaked. We would have to catch the water in pans and buckets. My first chores were to get the cows from the pasture and feed them, then bring buckets for my mother to milk. I was so small I would hook my arms through the pails and drag the buckets along the ground to my mother.
My mother was my joy. She was short and heavily built, with facial veins showing close to the surface of her lovely face. She was kindly in appearance and devout to regularly attend her meetings in Rockland for spiritual food. Father was often perturbed at her for spending so much time reading the scriptures and the Church Liahona that she neglected the kitchen dishes.
In my Primary days, we answered roll call, not by saying “Here,” but rather by saying some good thing such as “I help my mother,” “I love my Mother,” “I carry wood for my Mother,” or “I weed the garden.”
Although father was quiet and didn’t pray much in public, Mother encouraged prayer in the home.
As a very small boy, I would hook up the team and buggy and drive my devout Mother to church. Being hardly able to manage the team, one time I was bringing Mother and family home when I couldn’t stop the team and they ran all the way home, not stopping until they had reached the very top of a huge manure pile–much to the amusement of my Mother.
The Improvement Era along with the cannons of Scripture were our source of spiritual food and for building our characters. The “Idaho Farmer” kept us up to date on the latest methods of farming.
We children were well fed and well cared for. Father never gave gifts, only the necessities of life. Christmas came with Father coming home with a huge bag of nuts and candy and a beautiful bushel of delicious apples, some of which he placed in a large bowl in the center of the table. We children were so delighted. On occasions he would fasten a sack of goodies to the ceiling in the center of the room far above the reach of our little hands. This kept us in suspense until Father would hit it with a stick and as the candy and nuts came showering down, we children would scramble with utmost glee to pick them up.
At the age of eight, on my birthday, the 25th of November, I was baptized in a creek lined with ice. Tall, slim Brother R. W. Howard officiated in the icy waters. I was confirmed a member of the Church the next day by Lawrence Robinson at the Rockland chapel. Having been raised in an LDS community, my only companions were of the same faith.
As a Deacon, I passed the Sacrament, progressing up through the offices of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood, maintaining myself ready and deserving of a Temple recommend. I looked to visiting church authorities with respect. Some Stake authorities, Brothers Brown and Hoskins would come as far as fifty miles by team and buggy from Malad to Rockland to conduct Stake Conference.
My first school days were in a schoolhouse with a dirt roof. We walked two miles. My first teacher’s name was Miss Josephine Keo; second teacher, Audrey Dalton; third teacher was her brother, John Dalton who taught until the Christmas holidays. He returned to Ogden, Utah, where he was sent on his LDS mission. Thomas E McKay came to finish the school term. He was an assistant to the Apostles and a brother of President David O. McKay.
I enjoyed school, excelling in arithmetic. In college at Logan, Utah, we were required in our class to practice buying an office, setting up books and attempting to balance the books. The whole class was failing in the attempt to balance the dummy set of books. At 4 A.M., after a sleepless night of thought, I finally discovered the solution and was first to report to Professor Bexell the solution. I was called to the head of the class to show them the solution.
My father owned an 80 acre ranch at Rockland, Idaho, where we raised lots of hay, cattle and horses. Summers were spent putting up hay and riding the ranges. We would pile up logs and wood in nearby Hartley Canyon for winter use. We had a multitude of chores with calves and hogs to feed; garden planting and care. Tons of carrots were raised and stored in pits to feed the horses and cows.
We picked many kinds of wild berries including serviceberries, chokecherries, hausberries, yellow and black currants for mother to make a variety of jams and jellies.
We always kept a shotgun handy to shoot wild chickens such as prairie chickens and sage hens.
We enjoyed ourselves with the fine school activities, church dances, as well as the ball games at school; Mutual meetings where we walked a mile and a half to attend. As we walked through the fields to MIA early one spring, my sisters, Priscilla, Anna and I wandered off the trail. I stepped in a hole full of ice water. I continued with them to MIA with wet pants and getting colder.
We were thrilled to do sled races with teams racing so close together that we could reach over and kiss a favorite girl in the other sled.
We would rope wild horses right off the range, harness them, snub them to a gentle horse, and use them to pull sleighs in the winter time. This was extremely dangerous, but fun–missing death from wild kicking horses and the destruction they caused.
Our canyon outings were favorite sports for the young in our community, but we often came home late, almost forgetting the chores. Many times we milked cows at midnight, sometimes in rain storms since we had no cow shed yet.
I developed skill in running by taking cows to pasture a distance of half a mile and running at top speed back to the house.
The boys always helped butcher the hogs and beef. It was a sport for us to clean the bladders of such animals and blow them up for balloons. Sometimes these bladders were washed, turned inside out and filled with lard which was an excellent way of preserving. Entrails were used for preserving sausage.
When I was 16 years old I was helping to return some cattle and calves into the hills after they had been branded. The three Sherman boys and I were passing a small dam in a ravine when a rain storm appeared. It was raining so hard that I put my horse in a shed and we ran to a log hut for shelter. Suddenly a cloudburst caused the dam above to break, rushing water against the log house. On leaving the hut for higher ground, the water took us helplessly down the ravine, pushing the log hut over and washing everything down with it including twenty tons of hay and all kinds of machinery. I grabbed an apple tree in an orchard and held on. When the water subsided, I started to look for the three brothers, pulling them out from under mud and silt and saving their lives.
This same year I was sent by my father with a cousin, Joshua Hartley and an uncle, Brigham Hartley, to pick up thirty-five head of fat cattle from the local range near Rockland and drive them a distance of 50-60 miles to a point between Strevell and Snowville, Utah, selling them to a Mr. Billy Hudson who was the owner of a huge herd of some 15, 000 cattle which he was converging prior to moving them on to Ogden, Utah, for sale. Enroute with our cattle near Holbrook, Idaho, it was my Uncle Brigham’s turn to night herd. The next morning at sunrise we noticed my uncle and one cow missing. I found them about six miles away. The cow was roped and tied to the saddle horn of his standing horse and my uncle lay as if dead. Upon rolling him over I found that he was alive, only asleep. He had fought the cow from about 3 A.M. Father had used her as a milk cow at home and she had decided to go back home. I used my Romell whip and with my horse we put her in the direction of the herd in a short time.
In the spring of 1906 I worked for Campbell and Stebbins Merc. Co., for a year. I then was employed by a Power and Light Co., which company was later sold to Idaho Power Co. and was located in American Falls, Idaho.
From 1907-1909, I attended the Utah Agriculture College at Logan, Utah. In conjunction with the school work I took military training under the U.S. Army. I trained to march and handle a gun.
In 1909 I was back in Grace and Soda Springs, Idaho, visiting friends when I was invited by Wayne Warner to go to a big Fair and Fall Festival at Soda Springs. During the baseball game at the town square, I was introduced to a beautiful young girl fifteen years old, Edith Lurenna Higley, who four years later became my wife and the mother of our eight children.
My frequent calls to Soda Springs during our courtship were real pleasures. I found my sweetheart working on her father’s ranch , feeding cattle, cleaning the barns, even plowing the soil along with her many household duties.
We were married in the Logan LDS Temple on 25 June 1913. I was not quite twenty seven and my wife was nineteen.
We made a humble beginning on an 80 acre dry farm east of Rockland, Idaho, which I filed for and received on a government land grant. We lived there for two years. We bought a 20 acre irrigated farm near Rockland and lived there two more years raising livestock and milking cows. We sold it because of the swampy soil and poor drainage. While living on this farm our first child was born to us, Harvey Ethan.
Our next move, promoted by desire to improve our lot, brought us to the city of American Falls, Idaho. I owned a nice wagon with a team of mules, and for nearly three years was a Watkins dealer. We hung out a sign and sold from our home and I would load my stock of liniments, spices, ointments and many home supplies in my wagon and head out in alternating routes among the ranches and farms through the different valleys. Many times I would be gone all week and would spend my nights with ranchers, being lodged in a spare room–always with courtesy and without expense except for an occasional exchange of merchandise. Sometimes I would pay a 50 cent fee for a clean bed. On one occasion I was snowed in at a ranch for two weeks because of heavy snow. The farmers in their isolated areas always welcomed me with the bits of news of the community I brought with me.
I enjoyed my work but it necessitated leaving Edith with the duties of managing a home and family alone. It was at American Falls with the Watkins people that our second child, Richard Thairel, was born.
From American Falls we moved to Grace, Idaho, with our small family. World War I was on and previously the Utah and Idaho Sugar Co. had been obtaining their sugar beet seed directly from Germany. But of course this supply was cut off and I was employed by the company to operate a large ranch at Grace for three or four years to raise sugar beets for the purpose of seed.
This was accomplished by digging up beets the first year, putting them in large straw covered and rock lined pits for the winter, watching carefully that they would not heat up and ruin; then planting them again in the spring to produce seed. We always hired a large group of Mexican Nationals to do the strenuous and tedious work of seeding, thinning and harvesting.
We next made our home in Edith’s father’s ranch at Soda Springs where I had courted her a few years previously. The seasons had been dry, the cattle thin and financially things were rough all through the land. Laura Gwendolin, our first daughter, was born while there.
In October 1919, I left Edith at the ranch with the three small children and went to Shelly, Idaho, obtaining a job at the sugar factory as sugar spinner. I had been a sugar spinner at a plant in Garland, Utah, previously. One day while on duty at the machinery, I started to raise the cutter knives out of the cylinder and slipped, causing a rupture in my groin. I was taken to my boarding home owned and operated by a distant cousin to my wife, Ella Sharp Packer. She, being somewhat of a nurse, under the scrutiny of two doctors, nursed me back to health after an operation. The U & I Sugar Co. paid for the operation and my regular $5.00 daily wages during the recuperation. This was a blessing during stressful times.
By this time the winter campaign at the sugar factory was over and I returned to my family at Soda Springs.
(Son’s note:) “Making sugar continued to be a skill for my father. In 1938 while living at Nampa, Idaho, he helped build the Amalgamated Sugar Plant. Just before operations began, his supervisor was verbally complaining of a shortage of sugar spinners and that it was going to be a task of training men in this particular phase. My father stated, “Well, you’re looking at one.” He immediately was asked to recruit and train men.
“During the years his skill developed and became known. A technician from Ogden spent three days at the Nampa plant observing my father’s work. It seems he had the highest ‘purity rating’ in the entire chain of factories. The company wanted to learn his technique. However, after taking notes, the technician was returning to Ogden by place. It iced up and went down near Snowville, Utah, and his life and with others, was lost. The engines are still visible, laying beside the highway in Snowville.”
Paris, Idaho, was our next residence. I was manager on a farm of 1400 acres of the Budge Land and Livestock Co. One winter I worked practically around the clock, hauling hay and feeding and caring for 700 head of livestock. Keith Arlo was born to us while at Paris.
As if by a schedule, we moved on to Arimo, Idaho, to clerk for one year in Gitten’s General Store. Dorothy May, our second daughter, was born to us at this time. We had the opportunity to buy the inventory, rent the store and take over the business which we operated for two more years. We did well and prospered until a competitor purchased the building and refused to renew our rental option. We could not possibly have raised the necessary funds to buy the store building so we sold our inventory and went out of business.
From there we moved with our little family to Hagerman, Idaho, to operate the “Marriner Ranch” of about 100 acres near the Snake River. This was a dairy farm and we milked cows. While there another two sons, Leonard LaMar and Kenneth Dale were born. Kenneth was born in Gooding, but we still resided at the ranch.
We moved again to rent an 80 acre farm east of Wendell, Idaho. Here our third daughter and eighth child, Olive Lurenna, was born.
These were hard years during the Depression and we barely managed to keep body and soul together. At this ranch a dirt flume washed out and a wooden flume burned at the crucial growing season of the year and by the time they were repaired, the crops were ruined. Then to add to our problems, Flossie, one of our beautiful draft horses, died instantly during confinement and left us with only one draft horse. A replacement mule was purchased for $36, but it went blind and disappeared for a year right when I needed him.
The Lord blessed us with the necessities of life, however, and we continued to work hard, following every source of employment that came our way. We moved back to Hagerman onto the Barton Ranch; later to Blackhart’s ranch. With our family we tilled the soil and tended the flocks, working so hard to provide for our little ones. Each farm we rented we would tidy up, cut weeds, repair fences, clean ditches and improve it beautifully. In the homes mother would put her loving touch and after a thorough scrubbing, painting and papering, would turn the otherwise shabby farm houses into homes with warmth and comfort.
After so many moves, the Depression, dry years and business losses, we were discouraged many times, but made one final attempt to own a parcel of land of our very own. We negotiated for a farm as far away as Nampa, Idaho. With most of our family still at home, we moved with our livestock and furniture to 40 acres west of Nampa a few miles. Here we received another shock. After unloading our horses and our precious high-grade dairy cows onto the farm, we started to complete negotiations for the purchase of the ranch when word came to us from neighbors that the farm was diseased with “bangs” and there had been no calf raised there for five years. This came as a blow. I went straight to the owner and asked him to deny why he hadn’t told me. He stated, “You didn’t ask me.” This was a serious matter for which the seller could have been charged, but I dropped the issue and we were forced to sell our now contaminated cows at a give-away price as well as our beloved team of horses and what machinery we had in order to bail out of this situation.
With the last meager proceeds from the public auction amounting to about $500, we put it down on a nine acre acreage south-east of Nampa. This sale was negotiated through a Nampa realtor and later a dear personal friend, George Dixon, by answering an ad in the Nampa paper.
Although the house was small it was “home” and was to become ours through a few more years of hard work. From this home we recovered from the depression and prospered. We saw our sons and daughters, each one, grow and take on responsibilities and life assignments of which I will leave for them to tell. At various times during and after World War II, they were scattered around the world and across the nation in their noble assignments.
I love my wife and my children, with their families, and as we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary this year, June 25, 1963, we enjoyed the presence of all eight of our children, all in good health, who brought with them their families.
I reflect back and realize the road was rocky and discouraging, but I rejoice in the many accomplishments my wife and I have made in rearing our family. I am an American of noble, proud English parentage. I am proud my grandparents accepted the restored Gospel through missionaries in England and gave their all to come to this land, choice above all other lands, to be a Zion in the tops of the mountains.
From my humble birth in a log house with a dirt roof, I have seen America grow from ox team to horse and buggy days, on to Model T Fords, to the luxurious jet and atomic ages of this last dispensation.
In my recent plane ride over Boise Valley at seventy-five years of age, my mind raced back through the years and I felt I had accomplished and witnessed many wonders.
My personal prayer remains that those who bear the Hartley name and Higley heritage bear it well and remain true and loyal to the ideals for which I have always tried to maintain.