(Picture of Margaret Price Evans)
This is Grandma Evans. Her children called her “Ma”. I love this picture because this is the way I remember her, a tiny little grandma with snow white hair and long dark dresses. I never heard her speak a cross word. While I was on a bus coming home from California, Grandma Evans died. It was May 10, 1945. It was spring, almost summer. I wish I had visited with her more when I had the opportunity so I could write her story, her thoughts and ways, better. All I have are memories, bits and pieces of stories of events that happened so long ago. Can my mind think as hers did? Or can my body feel as she felt? No, of course not, but I can try.
Maggie lay at the bottom of the ravine, her body holding the dog down and her hand clamped around his mouth to keep him from barking. Her little brother Tom was scared enough to lay flat and still against the other side of the dog, his face buried in the dog’s hair. The horse was coming closer to them, and Maggie felt the muscles of the faithful old dog tighten and quiver in his desire to spring out and chase away this intruder who had ruined their pleasant afternoon. But Maggie held on tight and resisted the impulse to jump up and run away. Now she could hear the drunken Indian on the horse swearing and talking to himself as he passed by and went on down the hill into the little town of Malad. Then Maggie, Tom, and the dog ran for home.
That night Maggie sat cuddled in her father’s arms and told him once again about how frightened she had been, and how sorry she was that she hadn’t brought the cows home instead of leaving them up on the hill for him to bring home. But Father John reassured her that the Indian would not have hurt them, and that she was very brave to protect her brother and very wise to have kept the dog still. The next day it was learned that the Indian had stopped at several homes and frightened the women too.
The next morning after the cows were milked, Maggie, Tom, and the watchdog once again drove the cows to the hills to pasture for the day. Maggie was a little worried, but her love of the hills in the spring was too strong to keep her home. Everywhere the wildflowers were blooming, and the sun felt so good after the long winter. The old dog scouted ahead and laid down to rest, so they knew it was a safe place for them to rest too. He always warned them of snakes, and Indians too.. After their lunch, Tom fell asleep, and Maggie looked over the peaceful valley and was glad it was their home. She was really lucky. She had three Mothers, even though her own mother was dead.
Maggie tried hard to remember what her mother was like, but after all, she was only five when baby Catherine had been born, and her mother died the same day, on February 1, 1866. That was when they still lived in Willard, Utah. That December her father had married two more wives in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.
It was Susanna who was most like a mother to Maggie. She had been her father’s wife when Maggie was born. Now Maggie was glad that finally after thirteen years Susanna was going to have a baby of her own. She thought of Susanna’s crippled feet, and how she had walked all the way across the plains. Of how she had fed baby Catherine with a quill from a chicken feather, wrapped in strips of muslin as a nipple, and of how good she had been to little Tom and herself.
Now her father had five living children and three wives, but there was still lots to do. This was her favorite job, tending Tom and the cows. Sitting there on the east hills of the valley, she could see where their home was. (At the present time this land was the northeast corner of 5 North 3rd West in Malad.)
Tom woke up and Maggie gave him a hug. She loved little children and this brother was especially dear to her. “Tell me about when you were born, Maggie, “Tom coaxed. “Well, Tom, it was on January 4, 1861, in Ogden, Utah, and our parents lived in a small log house with a thatched willow roof. It was winter and the snow piled deeper and deeper on the roof. When I was two days old, the corner of the roof caved in and my mother and I were taken to the home of a neighbor until Father could fix the roof. When I was two years old we moved to Willard, Utah and then when I was seven, we moved to Malad. I remember how bad the crickets were, Tom. They were everywhere. They ate all the garden we planted. I stayed awake last night and listened to father talking, and if the crickets don’t go away, he may have to go to Montana and work in the mines, wherever that is. But he doesn’t want to leave us. The women were talking about something called Polygamists. They are being put in jail and lots of men are running away and hiding. But Father says he will not leave us, that Heavenly Father will take care of us and so will he.” Tom wasn’t listening. With his head in Maggie’s lap, and the warm afternoon sun shining down on them he had gone to sleep again.
The next seven years were busy ones. Susanna bore five children, two of them died within a day or two. Margaret had a son and a daughter. The tiny sister lived only six months. Their lives seemed to revolve around the Mormon Church. Father was a counselor to acting Bishop Daniel Daniels in their Malad Branch, and was always helping with community affairs.
Maggie had learned two things by the time she was fourteen years old. One, she was not going to get much schooling, and two, she had to work, and work hard. Townspeople soon learned that John Price had a good girl who was a hard worker, and she never lacked for jobs. Housework was no simple job. Water and wood had to be carried into the house, and clothes were washed on the washboard then ironed with stove-heated sad irons. There were gardens to hoe and water, children to tend, bread to be mixed and baked, cleaning and scrubbing, and she was such a small girl. She worked many hours a day and her pay was never more than $1.50 a week.
And so Maggie’s teen years were spent much the same way all the other girls her age in or around Malad were spending theirs. She worked, attended church, sang alto in the choir, went to dances, and when she was twenty she met William Richard Evans. He was just six months older than she and led the exciting life of driving a freight wagon from Corinne, Utah to Butte, Montana. ( picture of William Richard Evans)
Billie wondered if he had been wise in his decision to join the freighters. To a teenage boy with adventure on his mind, driving a yoke of oxen and a big freight wagon had sounded very exciting, after two weeks of choking dust, flies, rain storms, mud, the slow plodding of the oxen who had to be prodded every step, the monotonous jolting of the wagon, the hot sun and a dozen other complaints, the job had lost its luster. Oh well, it wasn’t too bad. Yesterday it had rained, so today there was no dust and the air smelled clean and fresh. The job would take them two months and six days to travel from Corinne, Utah to Butte, Montana and back. There were three wagons with seven and eight yoke of oxen on this trip. His boss was John L. Thomas, and the other men were Thomas Parry, Jedd Jones, Jess L. Thomas and Ben Jones. John L. had made the trip several times and assured Billie that it wasn’t all bad, once you got accustomed to it.
Maybe it had been just like this when his parents brought them west from their home in Nebraska City, Nebraska to Logan, Utah. He did not remember any of that, he was only two at the time, but his brother, Dave, was ten and always talked about how exciting it was. In fact Dave had been an expert teamster at that time, and had made the trip with ease. Later he became a freighter. Maybe his stories had encouraged Billie to take this job. He had enjoyed the trip from Logan to Malad, Idaho when he was seven years old. But then he hadn’t had the responsibility of a freighter. Well, he had to do something to make some money. His father Edward Evans was a bricklayer and a plasterer from Wales, and he was not sure he wanted to follow that line of work. The crickets were eating everything they could find in the valley, so he didn’t think he would be a farmer either.
A sharp jolt of the wagon brought him back to the present and Billie decided that for at least the next two months he was a freighter. He had better learn to like it, do a good job, and learn all he could. Before long someone was bound to tell him it was time to get married and settle down. He could not think of any girl he wanted to settle down with, but he had an idea that John L. was thinking pretty hard about his sister, Mary Jane. That was probably why John had taken him on this trip. Well, he would prove his worth and make them all proud of him. Mary Jane was five years older than he and it was time she got married. It would be nice to have John L. as a brother-in-law.
Billie did get used to freighting and made several more trips to Montana. And sure enough, John L. did become his brother-in-law on December 20, 1878. But then he was no fun at all. He quit freighting, bought a farm and raised stock. In 1892 he became the sheriff of Oneida County.
A bad fall from a horse forced Billie to give up freighting too. The fall left him with a bad hip and a mighty stiff back. Now he had to decide on an occupation. He had helped his father lay bricks, but his back was too bad to lift, so he gradually worked into the carpenter trade. There were many homes to be built in the fast growing town of Malad, and he enjoyed working outdoors with his brother Daniel R., who taught him the trade.
Billie sat on the saw horse in the pale winter sun and ate the sandwich his mother had fixed for his lunch. All he could think about was Maggie- Margaret Price- little and cute- fun- a wife. Guess it was time to settle down. He was making good wages, and would be twenty-one on the 26th of July in this year of 1881. Guess he was really in love, at least everyone told him he had found the right woman. He knew of a nice little log house they could live in, and he could fix it up real nice with some scraps of lumber left over from some of his jobs.