The first generation of church pioneers have left this scene of action. The second generation are also slipping away rapidly. Of this second generation belongs my mother, Sarah Ann Richards Jones. She is the daughter of Thomas W. Richards and Charlotte Thomas Richards and was born in Brigham City, Utah, June 11, 1855, where she lived until she was 11 years old. She had very little opportunity for schooling. Most of her education being gained from experience.  

The first school she attended was conducted by a Sister Box known to everyone as Aunty Box and was attended by students of all ages and used everything that came to hand for text books. When the family moved into Malad Valley in 1866 to make a home for themselves it was the resources provided by nature that made it possible for them to exist. If they needed water for irrigation they must get it by their own efforts. If they would have homes they must build themselves from the material nature provided and in its native state at that. If they would raise crops to provide them sustenance, they must clear the land with a groping ax, plow it with a hand plow and cultivate it with a handmade wooden tooth harrow, and then when the crop had matured and ripened it had to be cut with a cradle, raked and tied into bundles by hand. The threshing process was not one of ease and speed as it is today. It had to be fanned with hand mills. For every necessity a certain amount of work was demanded and every woman and child as well as every man had to perform a certain amount of it. 

Their homes were humble log cabins with dirt floors, later rough boards scrubbed smooth and white with sand. People depended for their living on what they raised themselves. Their own wheat for flour, their own cane for molasses and their own garden vegetables. 

Many was the day my mother spent as a child from early morning until late at night stipping sugar cane. This was accomplished by grasping a heavy stick in both hands and knocking off all the leaves from each successive plant leaving the stocks naked of foliage, ready to be cut down by the men who came along with their sickles. All the cane was then loaded and hauled to the mill where it was made into molasses. 

Being the oldest child in a large family, many household chores as well as caring for the smaller children devolved upon her. Her household duties were more strenuous than those of our girls today. She knit and spun and helped to make candles. She cooked over an open fireplace and sewed by hand. It was not until she was 12 years old that she ever saw a stove. Up to that time all the cooking had been done over the fireplace. Imagine baking bread for a large family in a camp kettle surrounded by coals, one loaf at a time. She made butter, cheese and soap. Many times she helped her mother gather and burn sage brush and use the ash for lye with which to make soap. She milked cows and raised chickens and garden produce. She has known what it is to fight crickets from break of day till late at night in order to save their crops. 

When she was 16 years of age her mother died leaving her the oldest of 10 children, seven boys and three girls, the youngest, a delicate baby a year and a half old. Five years later her father passed away. 

On April 10, 1876 in the old Endowment House in Salt Lake City, Utah, Daniel H. Wells performed the ceremony which united Sarah Ann in marriage to my father, Frederich E. Jones, who came to Utah in 1868. He left his home on June 1 and arrived in New York on July 13. He later arrived at Laramie City on July 23 and from there he walked the entire distance to Salt Lake, arriving August 29. To this union were born 6 children, 3 boys and 3 girls, 5 of whom are still living. She has 12 grandchildren living and 8 great-grandchildren. 

A good part of her reading and study has been from the standard works of the Church and church magazines. She gained a testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel at an early age and all through her life it has been a living flame in her heart and a guide to her feet. Her Relief Society work reaches over a long period of time and untiring devotion. Her father was made recording secretary and she became a member of the Relief Society on the day of its organization in this valley. Later she was made a visiting teacher, which position she held for 56 years, often walking miles over rough and muddy roads to perform the tender acts of mercy. She served as a member of the Relief Society Stake Board with Sister Julia Richards when the Stake extended from Arbon on the north to Riverside on the south. This was before the advent of the automobile when frequently it required several days to make a visit to an outlying Ward by horse and buggy. Later she labored with Sister Facer. When Sister Eliza A. Hall was made president of the Malad Stake Relief Society, she was chosen as Second Counselor. She was President of the Malad Ward YLMIA for 12 years, part of the time before there were any regular lesson outlines and the programs for each meeting had to be planned by the officers of each association. 

She has always been on hand wherever and whenever her services were needed. She has ministered in many homes in times of sickness and death. None can know the labor she has accomplished. 18 babies besides her own have been born in her home. 

In years gone by, she loved to dance and could never resist a good drama. This is the first summer that I can ever remember that she hasn’t spent some time fishing in the nearby streams. She has always loved the soil and even now were you to pass our home in the morning, you would see her out working in the garden. 

That we may follow in the footsteps of our mother, ever remembering: 

My mother, tender, patient, true, 

Would I could voice my love for you. 

Would I could tell in this brief rhyme 

My praise, while yet there still is time. 

Would I could kneel and take your hand 

And somehow, make you understand, 

How wonderful your years have been, 

How fine your soul, how sweet, how clean. 

How tender is the love I feel, 

How deep, abiding and how real. 

How earnest are the words I say, 

And yet how futile to convey. 

All that I feel of love divine 

For you wonderful mother of mine. 

(Photo of Sarah Ann Richards Jones and Frederich E. Jones Family)