By Elizabeth Thorpe Josephson
I was the first child of a family of twelve children born to Joseph Thorpe and Mary Mason at Samaria, Oneida, Idaho, on 12 May 1881 in a little two-room log cabin with my grandmother Thorpe assisting as mid-wife since there were few doctors available in such sparsely settled towns in the Malad Valley.
My father, Joseph Thorpe, was the ninth child of a family of 13 children born to William Thorpe who was born 19 August 1814 at Stannington, Yorkshire, England, and Elizabeth Symns who was born 8 January 1816 at Heage, Derbyshire, England. Joseph Thorpe was born 12 February 1852 at Manchester, Lancastershire, England. When he was ten years of age, he came to America with his parents and seven brothers and sisters. The family had been taught the gospel by the missionaries. Joseph Fielding Smith, who later became President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of the missionaries who converted this family. The two older children, Martha and John Thorpe, were the first of the family to come to America and they went to Montana to settle. Two years later the remainder of the family came to America. The family was working in the cutlery business in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. My father was a good penman and often did “copy” work for some of the business firms.
The family arrived in Utah in the fall of 1862 and settled at Brigham City, Box Elder, Utah. During the winter and spring the father, William Thorpe, obtained work taking care of the charcoal pits in the canyons east of Brigham City, Utah, near Mantua. During the night of 8 May 1863, he was attacked by some Indians and brutally killed. The next year a brave little mother set out with her seven children and traveled north into Idaho. They settled in the Malad Valley at Samaria, Oneida, Idaho. My father lived there with his mother until he married in 1880.
My mother, Mary Mason, was born on the 19 April 1862 at Tredegan, Cardigan, Wales. She was the youngest child of eight children of Thomas Mason of the Parish of Llanfihengel, Cardigan, Wales. He was born on 26 August 1819. Her mother, Elizabeth Mason of Llanfihengel, Flowers, Cardigan, South Wales, was born 20 November 1816. My mother was four years old when her mother left her native Wales and journeyed to America with her two small daughters, Jane who was seven, and Mary who was four.
They left Wales 27 April 1866, on the John Bright sailing vessel. After sailing for six weeks and two days, they docked at New York Harbor. At once they set out on the long trek across the plains to Utah. They were with the J.D. Holiday Company of emigrants. They arrived in Utah in the fall of 1866 and were taken into the home of Brother and Sister Simons, some Welsh friends who had come over to Utah earlier. They lived in Bountiful, Utah. My Great Grandmother and her two daughters lived with this family for two years until they were joined by Great Grandfather Mason and his son Dan. They had had to stay in Wales and work hard in the coal mines for two years before they had saved enough money for them to come to America and join their loved ones. One year later the Mason family decided to move on to find some land where they could homestead. They moved north into Idaho and settled in the Malad Valley at Samaria, Oneida, Idaho, in the midst of many Welsh friends they had known in Wales.
My mother received her schooling in Samaria and grew to womanhood there. She met and grew up with and later married Joseph Thorpe at Samaria, Oneida, Idaho, on his birthday anniversary, 12 February 1880. They were married by a Mr. Charles Crabtree, Justice of the Peace.
On November 25, 1880, when they were expecting their first child they journeyed by wagon and a team of horses to Salt Lake City, Utah, and were married in the Endowment House. They received their endowments and were sealed to each other for time and eternity.
At last on 12 May 1881 their first child, a daughter, was born and on 2 July 1881 she was blessed and given the name of Elizabeth by Patriarch John Smith. In December 1881, Patriarch John Smith was again visiting Samaria and giving blessings to the church members there. At this time my father and mother and myself were given our Patriarchal Blessings. I received the blessing on 6 December 1881.
The following is a copy of my Patriarchal Blessing. The original is hand-written by my father, Joseph Thorpe, as the blessing was being pronounced by the Patriarch John Smith.
Samaria, Oneida County, Idaho
December 6, 1881
A blessing given by John Smith, Patriarch, upon the head of Elizabeth Thorpe, the daughter of Joseph and Mary Thorpe, born in Samaria, Oneida County, Idaho, May 12, 1881.
Elizabeth Thorpe, thou art in thy youth an heir to the blessings of the New and Everlasting Covenant with all the gifts and privileges promised unto the daughters of Zion among whom thou art numbered. The eye of the Lord has been upon thee from thy birth. He has given thine angel special charge concerning thee, therefore let the faith of thy parents fail not, but listen to the promptings of the spirit and thou shall be warned of danger in their behalf until thou has arrived to the age of understanding and thy guardian angel will ward off the shafts of the adversary which may be hurled at thee.
Thou art of Ephriam and it is thy privilege to live to a good old age, therefore I say unto thee grow up in the grace and knowledge of the truth and as you grow in years listen to the voice of prudence and run not after the elements of the world for the adversary has great power in the earth and will lead astray if possible the very elect; but if thou will be upon thy guard, the angel of thy presence will warn thee of danger.
Strengthen thine understanding and cause thy faith to increase for thou shall see many changes. Thou shall also know of a surety that there is a God in Israel who will hear the prayers of the honest. Thou shall also see His hand made bear in behalf of his people and thou shall comprehend the duties devolving upon the Mothers in Israel among whom thou shalt be numbered and thou shall counsel in righteousness among thy sex and peace shall be in thy circle. Thy name shall be honorable in the land and thy fame shall be known far and near.
This blessing I seal upon thy head in the name of Jesus Christ and I seal thee up unto eternal life to come forth in the morning of the First Resurrection, evenso. Amen
Recorded in Book “J”.
I spent my early childhood in Samaria and started school when I was six years of age. My teacher for the first two years was Samuel D. Davis. I learned to read and write and do a little arithmetic but I was kind of slow. When I was eight years old my father decided to take up a homestead and this land was located north of Samaria in the little settlement of Pleasant View, Oneida, Idaho, which was about four miles from Samaria. I went back to Samaria to school for two more years and stayed with my grandfather and grandmother Mason because there were no schools at Pleasant View as yet. My teacher for those two years was Thomas Williams, and I didn’t like him one bit. He was very strict and sometimes mean to the school children. One time he made me stand in the corner for no reason at all. Another time he cracked me on the hand with his ruler and I hated him for doing it.
While my father was clearing his homestead land and breaking the sod for farming, I had to go with him to help cut and burn the sage brush. One time I became tired and sat down to rest for a little while. All at once I realized my clothes were on fire. My father was close by and saved me from being burned alive. He burned his hands quite badly in doing so. When it came time for us to go back to Samaria for the night, we could not find our horses. They had gone home without us so we had to go up to Uncle John Thorpe’s place to stay all night. His place was about a mile away at the Warm Springs.
Later when my father had his two-room log cabin built, we moved to Pleasant View to live. One of the school teachers I had in Pleasant View was Maggie Clarkston. She was a good teacher and taught me for three years. The school was held in a one room log cabin at the Warm Springs. The next year the new school and church house had been built near the Malad River. I then attended school there. Some teachers who taught me for the rest of my school time were: Elizabeth Ann Hughes, for one year; Johnny Bowen, for two years; Johnny Davis, for one year; Scott Hall, for one year. He was the last school teacher I had and I got out of the seventh grade by the skin of my teeth.
The tall sage brush all around our house was an ideal place for the Indians to come and set up their camp while they hunted rabbits around in the brush. We never knew they were around until night when the smoke from their fires curled skyward. Knowing that Indians were around gave us a strange scary feeling, especially if I had been left at home with my two younger brothers, Eph and Joe, while our father and mother had gone to Samaria or Malad to visit or trade. I remember one time it was getting near nighttime and two Indians, a buck and a younger one, came to the house. The older Indian had a rope over his shoulder and my brothers and I knew for sure that they were going to tie us up or something worse. The old Buck started to talk and go through a lot of motions, tying the rope around the other Indian and throwing him on his back all the time looking and pointing toward the barn and the haystack. Indians had been around begging for bread and food quite a few times so Joe thought he could understand what the old Buck wanted. He started bringing things from the house but the Indians shook their heads and went through all their motions again and still talking but making no sense to us kids. We were sure some scared kids and just wished we knew what they wanted so we could give it to them and they would go away. About this time our parents came home and Dad knew at once what they wanted, so he gave them a bundle of hay which they tied in the rope and carried it off to their camp.
Being the oldest child in the family, I had to help my father with lots of the farm work. I always had to herd the cows and pigs and help haul the hay from the fields. Sometimes I drove a team of horses to cut the grain with the binder, then had to gather the bundles and put them into shocks. So, I became quite a tom-boy. I learned to milk a cow by squirting milk into the mouths of Eph and Joe. Many times when Grandmother Mason went to milk her cow at night, it was dry and us kids had all the milk. Then we would get a scolding for not leaving her just a little for breakfast.
Many times Eph and Joe and I were left home on Sundays while our parents went to Samaria for church and to visit their parents. We often went over to the Malad River to fish with a willow stick, a piece of string and wire. Sometimes we would catch a minnow. One time a crawfish grabbed Joe’s hand and arm and just wouldn’t let go. We got some sticks and pried at his many legs and somehow caused him to let go. Joe’s arm was not hurt but sure had been squeezed good and hard.
I was baptized in Samaria by my uncle, Thomas Thorpe, on 7 May 1891, and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the same day by David P. Davis. Now I started going to Sunday School and often had to walk to Samaria during the summer months. Later I was a teacher in the Sunday School in the Samaria Ward for about two years. Pleasant View Ward was not yet organized so during the winters I didn’t get to attend Sunday School. I missed my classmates and Sunday School teachers and the wonderful lessons and stories about the Church. My parents often held home evenings where we would listen to Father read from the Bible. This Bible was a large book which had a family record department in the center of the book. This was filled out with the information about Father’s mother and father and their family, and as each new baby arrived in our family, the name was added to the record.
When I was almost 12 years of age my uncle Dan Mason took me to Salt Lake City, Utah. We attended the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple on 6 April 1893.
When the Pleasant View Ward was organized in 1893, I was the first secretary of the Primary organization and I also had the opportunity of being the secretary for the M.I.A. for a number of years. After my marriage I worked in the Relief Society organization as a visiting teacher in Pleasant View for ten years and for 9 years after moving to Malad City, Idaho. I also served as the Work Director of the Pleasant View Ward Relief Society with Sister Jetta Isaacson for two or three years. For two years, 1922 and 1923, I was the teacher for the Seagull class in the Primary organization. Most of the time I rode to Primary on horse-back side-saddle with my daughter on behind. We lived two miles from the church house. During the winter time I used to drive a team of horses hitched to a sleigh and gather all the children along the way to take to Primary.
I was 14 years old when I started to go out and work to earn a little money to help out. Our family had grown and there were several children big enough to help out at home. For twelve or thirteen years I went into other people’s homes to work for the family while the mother was recovering after having a new baby. This work included doing all the housework, looking after the children in the family, and cooking all the meals. Many times this was quite difficult because they often didn’t have very much to prepare a meal with. Doing the family wash often consisted of chopping the wood to heat the water, which I carried from a well out in the yard. When the water was hot enough, I washed all the family’s dirty clothes on a scrubbing board. The pay for a week of this kind of work was $1.50. Later on I received $3.00 a week when the families became more prosperous. Sometimes I just went out doing washings and for this I received 50 cents a day and that was real hard work. Many times I have done three washings in a week.
I worked as a cook along with several other girls at the Dairy Creek sheep shearing camp during the spring for two seasons. This work consisted of cooking the meals and doing the dishes for over one hundred men who were shearing the sheep. The first year I worked for four weeks at $4.00 a week. The next year I received $1.00 a day and worked for three weeks. For the next five years, I worked at another camp on Wright’s Creek and received $1.25 a day. During the last year at the shearing camp I met Joseph H. Josephson who was one of the men who did the shearing. He claimed he was one of the fastest sheep shearers around.
On 25 March 1908, I was married to Joseph Hyde Josephson in the Salt Lake Temple. We went to Bates, Teton, Idaho, to live where my husband was employed with his father and brothers in the sawmill business. The next year on 10 February 1909, my first child was born and we named him Joseph, mostly after his grandfather, Joseph Thorpe. I went back to Bates to live but we decided we were not getting ahead in the business as there were so many to share in the profits. So, we moved back to the Malad Valley. We decided to buy eighty acres of land in Pleasant View, a few miles from my father and mother. We lived with my parents until a house had been built on our land and moved into the house in 1910. We lived in this house for a period of thirty-nine years.
During January 1911 I was expecting my second child so we moved in with my parents for a while so we could be where help was if the need came. A January thaw had been in progress along with much rain. The reservoir dam gave way filling all the streams and rivers to overflowing, washing away all the bridges. It was at this time that my daughter, Elizabeth, chose to be born. The doctor was summoned from Malad and he had to come on horseback with his horse swimming the swollen rivers and streams. Anyway, I was very happy that I was at the home of my parents when the need came.
My second son, Vernal, was born 15 May 1913, and another little girl 15 December 1916. We had Mary Ellen for only six weeks when she was taken from us in death on 21 January 1917. This was a great sorrow to us in having to part with our baby daughter. On Christmas day, 25 December 1917, we were blessed with another baby but he was not alive as we had another sorrow placed upon us.
By 1915 we decided that our farm was not producing enough to take care of the payments and feed and cloth a growing family. So, my husband went out to the Curlew Valley which was 25 miles away to homestead some land. While he was out there, he cleared the land, fenced and built a house in which to live, all of which are requirements for proving up on some land. I used to milk eight or nine cows, work in the hay field helping cut and haul the hay. I always had a garden so that during the summertime we had plenty of vegetables especially potatoes for our winter use. We had planted an orchard of apples, pears, and plum trees. We had lots of apples and plums just about every other year.
During the summer of 1917, we all went out to live on the homestead land. We had to haul our water from a neighbor’s well until that fall when our well was dug and we had put up a windmill to pump the water for us. Of course we had to travel back and forth to take care of our other farm in Pleasant View. Those 25 miles were awful long miles when going with a team of horses and a wagon or a white-top buggy. When we could afford a Model T Ford, the distance didn’t seem so long and soon we had a truck to haul the grain to market. We still had our horses to do the farm work until 1935 when we bought our big tractor.
The children were growing up and were a great help with the farm work. In 1932 we built a new house with three rooms and a basement which made our living conditions much better. For forty years we traveled back and forth in the summer time, taking care of both farms and living in Pleasant View in the winter time where we were close to the schools and church.
In 1935 our daughter, Elizabeth, decided to get married and in 1939 our youngest son, Vernal, got married and moved far away to Montreal, Canada, to further his education. Now the farm work of both farms fell on the shoulders of Joe and my husband and myself.
In 1945 we built a new home in Malad City, Idaho, and on 5 December 1949 we moved to the city to live so we could take life a little easier during the winter months. We still had some cows and horses on the Pleasant View farm and we still had the twice daily chore of going out to take care of them. I was still milking the cows just because I liked to and hated to give them up. In 1957 we decided to sell the farm in Pleasant View because it was just more than we could handle. We were getting along in years and our health was not too good. Joe was crippled with arthritis and this made it difficult for him to get around to do the work he wanted to do.