I, Nancy Idelia Tims, was born 15 September 1892, at Portage, Utah. I was born at my grandmother Howells’ home, in a little log house. My father was Thomas Marshall Tims, my mother was Sarah Jane Howell. I was blessed on 25 December 1892 by David Hall at Portage, Utah. I was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, June 1901, by Enoch Harris. I was baptized in the Malad River at Portage. The water was very cold. It almost took my breath away. A neighbor boy was baptized the same day. He was Lorenzo Mansfield.
I had to travel about one mile when I first started school. Our school house was a one room log building. I believe my first teacher was Ada Mason. When our little school burned down we had to attend school in a little shanty, about 14 by 14 ft. This was a building at Grandpa Spencer’s home. (Grandpa Spencer was my half brother and sister’s grandfather.) My teacher here was J. Edward Gibbs. He lived in Portage. A few years later a new school house was built. It was about 20 or 30 ft long and 15 ft wide. In this building we had a little hallway or cloakroom to hang our coats in. We had to travel about two and a half miles to attend this school. We walked in good weather, rode horses sometimes when it was cold. When there was snow on the ground we had a little sleigh we rode in.
We had some good times along with the bad. I had some very good girlfriends at school, Jane and Pearl Allen, and Clara Kemp. At noons and recesses we played ball. A game we called rounders. We had to play with boys because we didn’t have enough girls. We also played cat or gummy. Cat was a piece of hardwood sharpened on both ends. This was about 4 inches long. We used a long stick to hit the end of the cat and bat it. We had a lot of fun playing this game and others. One of my teachers here at this school was Leona Zundell. She was a good teacher. I loved her very much. I only had the privilege of attending school until I graduated from the Eighth Grade.
I had to work in the summer months doing work wherever I could. I worked for a lady in Fielding, Utah one summer. Her name was Nancy Garnes. I also worked for Edith Burnett. She was Beth Facer’s mother, also for my half sister Charlotte Tims Briggs when her son Edwin was small. I worked for a threshing crew helping cook at first then having someone help me. The first fall Cora Archibald helped me. The next fall a very dear friend helped. She was *ella Nish. We would travel right along with the threshing crew, moving when they did. There was a team of horses that pulled the cook wagon from place to place. We cooked for fourteen men, three meals a day. Our stove was a little camp stove with four lids and a small oven. This job lasted for about two months each fall. We received about 75 cents a day for cooking.
As I grew up I had some very good girlfriends. Cora Archibald, Ethel Nish, Gina Potter, and Ida Stokes. We had some very good times together. Cora, Ethel, and Ida were also my cousins. The MIA would have parties, sometimes a candy pull. This was a special treat as sugar was scarce in those days. So was money. Sometimes we had a basket dance, which was a lot of fun. The girls would make a pretty basket, put a nice lunch in it, then the men would bid on the baskets. The one that brought your basket had the privilege of eating with you. We also had masquerade dances. These were a lot of fun.
When I was fifteen years old I met Orsen Watson. He was my boyfriend for eight months. My girlfriend was keeping company with Albert Archibald. I stopped going with Orsen, she stopped going with Albert. Then I started keeping company with Albert and she started going with Orsen, later she married him. Albert and I kept company for two years and were married in the Logan Temple on 26 October 1910.
In those days we had no cars to travel in. We used the horse and buggy. Sometimes we would go to Fielding to a show, or to Garland to a ball game.
When we were first married, we lived in a one room log house. We stayed here for a little over a year. This room was used for a kitchen, and a bedroom. It was a large room. We had our bedroom furniture all in one half of the room. The other half was used for the kitchen. We didn’t have much furniture. In the bedroom part, we had a bed, a large trunk, a rocking chair with a cheap carpet on the floor. We also had a cot. In the kitchen, just the bare necessities, a coal stove, a cupboard, table and six chairs. A wooden box, fixed up with a curtain around it for our wash stand. We had to pump water from a well nearby and carry all the water into the house and out. We bought what furniture we had at Logan, paying half of it then and the other half the next fall. There wasn’t much work for the men in the winter time in those days.
When Reed, my first child was born, I wanted to protect him from all of the evil of the world. I guess every mother feels this way. Reed was just five months old when my half sister, Charlotte T. Briggs died, leaving five small children. My husband and I went to live with them and her husband Charles Briggs, and I tried to take good care of them. They had a little baby a few months older than Reed. My half brother Jack and his wife took this baby, Sefton, and raised him. We stayed with Charles and his children for about one and a half years. While we were living here my second child was born, a little girl we named Ruby. She was born 3 August 1913. At this time my husband had homesteaded 160 acres in Pocatello Valley. Charles Briggs was homesteading land also. We lived on this land in the summer, then moved back to Plymouth in the winter. Charles had a home in Plymouth. This is where Ruby was born. On March 11, 1915
Our third child was born, a little girl we named Percilla. She was born in our old home in East Portage. My half brother and his wife owned this home now. I stayed with them for about six weeks then went back out to our homestead. We had just a one room house to live in on our homestead. When Percilla was seven months old we built a two room house. This is where the rest of my eight children were born. We were very happy here. We felt as though we were living in a mansion. I was very grateful for our home and little children.
When we first homesteaded in Pocatello Valley, there was no water in the north end. We had to haul water from the south end of the valley, about 12 miles away. The water for drinking in the summer was so very warm. In the winter we melted snow. We had to work very hard on our farm. All the farm work was done with horses until around 1937. The spring after Percilla was born, 1916, we hired a man, a Mr. Winters, to dig a well. They dug 400 ft. before they reached good drinking water. They also hit quicksand which would give us trouble, as it would fill up in the well.
We had some very good neighbors in the valley. We would visit with one another, have birthday parties, and invite each other to dinner. We had to store food in the fall to last till spring. The roads would usually be too bad to travel all winter. We were surely blessed with health and strength as we were all able to stay well and free from accidents most of the time the children were growing up. The winter Wayne was born, there was so much snow and it was very cold. The snow was as deep as the fence posts. We never had to open a gate. We just drove over the fence posts. We attended a Christmas party at the school house this winter. A blizzard came up and we all had to spend the night there. We waited for daylight to find our way home.
We attended church in the valley. It was held in the school house. The name of the organization was the Wheatland Branch.
All of the children, except Tims, our eleventh child, attended school in the valley. They walked to school when the weather was good. It was about two and a half miles to the school house. When the weather was bad they rode in a buggy with all the other children in the north end.
In the first part of October 1919, our eldest son became seriously ill. He was in great pain. We brought him to Malad to the doctor. There was no hospital in Malad at this time. The doctor sent us to Logan. We went as far as Collingston, Utah, by car, a little Ford car. We then went the rest of the way by train. A doctor from the Budge Hospital in Logan met us and took us to the hospital. The doctors thought it was appendicitis. When they operated they found a bad infection on his back bone. He spent seven weeks in the Budge Hospital at Logan.
We were blessed in the next years with four girls and two boys. Jessie, Katie, Elden, Glen, Sarah-who was named after my mother-Ruth, Leona and Boyce Tims.
In 1937, we moved to Pleasant View to send our children to school, as the school in the Valley was discontinued. We lived in Pleasant View for nine years. I taught in the Primary for seven years. I taught the Bee-Hive girls in the MIA, I also was a visiting teacher in the Relief Society. I loved the people in Pleasant View and I hated to leave.
In November 1946, we moved to Malad City, Idaho. We moved into our home just two weeks before Christmas. I have learned to love the people in Malad. I have been a Relief Society teacher in the Malad Third Ward for twenty two years. All together for a total of twenty five years. I worked in the Junior Sunday School for ten years. I have worked under four different Co-ordinators. My son Wayne and Raymond Evans, Pauline Atkinson, Floyd Dorius and Cassie Morgan.
In the year of 1935, my husband’s health began to fail. He had stomach ulcers. In 1945, my husband was operated on for ulcers. He was never very well after that. He was operated on in November of 1954 [1945?] and passed away on 20 November 1954. He suffered a great deal before he died. All of my children have been wonderful to me. They all help me a lot. I don’t know what I would do without them. I am very thankful for them and I love them very much. Most of my family are working in the Church. Some are in the Primary, Sunday School, Relief Society. Ruth is President of the YWMIA, Elden is counselor in the Bishopric, others in the Relief Society. For a while after my husband died, I had a hard time to make myself go to the Temple and to Church. Now I love to go to church. I also love to go to the Temple. I try to go every month. I have had the privilege of going to the Logan, Idaho Falls, Los Angeles, Manti, and the Salt Lake Temples.
I haven’t had much illness in my life. I have been very much blessed. I had an operation in 1962. It took me a long time to recover. I was administered to by my sons, Wayne and Elden, and a son-in-law George. They gave me a wonderful blessing which helped me very much. I am so grateful that my sons hold the Priesthood. I am grateful for the power of the Priesthood.
I would like to relate a few experiences I had, as a child and in our early married life. I would like for my grandchildren and great grandchildren to know of the many great changes in our way of life. When I was a child, my parents were very poor. We did our cooking on a wood stove. The men would go to the hills or canyon and get wood to burn in the stove. This is also what we used for heat.
We did not have carpets for the floors then. We scrubbed the wooden floors. Sometimes we had a few strips of homemade carpet. The carpets were made by sewing small strips of material together. We saved our old clothes, tore them into strips, sewed them together by hand. We would wind them all together in balls until we had enough for a small carpet. We would take them to a lady who owned a loom. She would weave them together with carpet warp, using many bright pretty colors. Then we would sew these strips together. This made a nice carpet. We used straw for the padding under the carpet, tacking the carpet down to the floors on the outside edges.
We also used straw for our mattresses. These were made by using a heavy, strong material for the ticks. They were made like a mattress cover, only they were slit in the middle and overlapped. We would fill these with good clean straw three or four times a year. We used oat straw or wild hay that had a broad leaf. This was very good to make our mattresses with. We also used these straw ticks for some time after we were married.
My first washing machine was one we had to take the handle and put it, first on one side, and then the other. This turned the dash on the inside, which washed the clothes. Before that we scrubbed on the board. My next washer was one with a big wheel. We would turn this by hand. I was so happy and thrilled, when in 1926, we bought a Maytag run by a gas engine.
When I was a child and until we moved to Malad in 1946, we did not have a bathroom in our home. We carried all the water in the house and out. We carried the bath water in and heated it on our coal stove, bathed in a tin tub, then carried the water outside again, as we didn’t
have a sink. We heated our water for wash day also. I was very happy to have our home in Malad, where I had hot water, a sink to do my dishes, and a bathroom.
We also made our own wool batting for the quilts we made. We would buy a fleece of wool from the men who owned sheep. I would wash this wool in three or four waters and spread it on a sheet to dry. (I used homemade soap, which I made from leftover grease and lye, and cooked. This is what we used for all our washing.) When the wool was dry, my children and I would pull the wool. This would help to remove the sticks and burrs and June grass. We would then card the wool. My wool cards were about twelve inches long and five inches wide. This would make the wool carded about three inches wide and eight inches long. We would place these little pieces of wool on the lining of the quilt until we had enough to cover it. Then we put a pretty piece on top and quilted it. It made a very pretty and warm quilt.
We have had many changes from my childhood until the present, 1968. I feel I have had a rich life, full of many blessings and trials. The trials made me more appreciative of my blessings. I am very thankful to my Father in Heaven for the companion I had, and for the fine family we were blessed with. We have forty-nine grandchildren. Three have passed away. We have seventy-five great grandchildren. I have seven grandsons who have served missions for the LDS Church. One is now in the British South Mission. Two of my sons have served their country. Elden was in the Navy for two years, 1944-1946. Tims has served in the Air Force since 1954. At present he is living at March Air Force Base in California.
At the time of this writing 1968, I am well and enjoying life. I am living alone and doing my own work. I am living in Malad.