Written by Rosalie Ann Cole Talbot (Daughter)

I never met my mother as she died when I was six days old, but I am putting down what little I knew of her as told me by my Aunt Mary Ann who raised me and who was Mother’s sister and what I heard from some of the other members of her family.

Rosalie Jane Deschamps was born in Willard, Utah, 17 February 1868.  She was the oldest child of Louis Deschamps and Ann Stephens Deschamps.  Her father was a Frenchman who was born and raised in Canada and her mother had come from Wales.

After the second child in the family was born, also a girl, named Mary Ann, her parents moved to Malad, Idaho where they lived for three years.  They then moved to St. John, Idaho a farming community just outside Malad.  Here Rosalie was raised.  Her family had nine other children born after they moved to Malad and St. John.

I don’t know too much about her childhood and growing up years.  I was told she was very close to her Mother and was a quiet thoughtful girl, taking after her father in many ways who was also a quiet man.

After her schooling, she moved to Portage, Utah to teach school.  She lived with some people named Wells on the main road and had to go about two or three miles in horse and buggy every day to teach school. 

She met George Cole who was teaching school in Malad on one of her visits home.  They were married on 12 June 1890 in the Logan, Utah Temple.

For a while they lived in Malad on a hill called “Hungry Hill”  Here two children were born to them, Louis and James.  In 1894 they moved to St. John to help Rosalie’s parents run their store.  Here a daughter was born to them whom they named Elizabeth. 

Not long after this George, my father who had attended Brigham Young University was called by the church to be the president of Ricks Academy at Rexburg, Idaho, now Ricks College.  He and Rosalie moved there with their young family.  In those days this was a long way from Malad and with the long winters, it was almost impossible to get back and forth a lot of the year.

In 1897, on Feb. 8, I, their fourth child was born.  My mother developed childbirth fever and as I mentioned earlier, died when I was six days old on 14 Feb. 1897.  She was just three days from being 29 years old. 

They had intended to name the new baby girl Ann, after her grandmother Stephens, but named her instead Rosalie Ann, also after her mother.

Before mother died, her sister Mary Ann and her brother David had come to Rexburg.  After her death they had the hard journey back to Malad in the wintertime as they wanted to take her body back for burial.  They had to go by sleigh to what is now Idaho Falls, then by train to Downey, Idaho, then they had to go by sleigh over the Malad Divide, which was a high snowy pass in the wintertime.  It was also hard traveling with a small baby and trying to find milk for it.  I guess the journey was very hard for all of them, especially father who had lost his loving wife with four small children to raise.

Rosalie was buried in St. John Cemetary on a family plot of her parents.  Aunt Mary Ann took care of me for a while to help father out.  Then father went on a mission and when he came back I continued to live with my Aunt even though I know father grieved for me and wanted me.  But I had grown older and was accustomed to my home and them to me and he knew I had a good home.