Grandma's leters, December 1916-February 1917

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks, I know, but I’m back on track (again), and we’ll finish Grandma’s letters today. Then it’ll be on to something else from the Henderson Reunion Web site. (If you have any suggestions for topics of discussion, please let me know.)

The Dec. 4, 1916, letter, she mentions a little business I don’t recall her ever referring to before: People like her being paid to play music at the dances. I suppose it stands to reason she would have been paid; I just never thought about it. Indeed, if she was paid each time she played at a dance over the years, it must have provided some extra money for her.

She mentions, too, all the imbibing going on at the post-Thanksgiving dance, and names names.

In her Dec. 8 letter, she makes a statement that was still hitting home to me in the early 1970s when I was a boy going to school in Big Horn County: “I wish you were going to be here for the basket ball game tonight. I expect Cody will beat the boys pretty badly.” In Basin, we were a class B-sized school, and Cody was either class A or AA, and we’d play them every year in the role of sacrificial lambs. The worst beating was a football game; we showed up one cold, cold Saturday morning to find about 12-14 inches of powdery snow on the football field, and the officials took snow shovels to clear the five-yard lines up and down the field. It was a cold day, made miserable by the snow and having our opponents double our score. There’s nothing quite like playing sports for such a tiny, rural school.

She also mentions she doesn’t like teaching school much.

In her Dec. 10 letter, there’s a bit of a surprise – arguably her most blunt expression of love for Grandpa that I recall seeing in any of these letters:

“Dave, if you just knew how much I really do love you, you’d never doubt me again. I know that no one could love you more than I do, sweetheart. You are dearer to me than anyone else in the world. If I could just please you always, dear, I’d be perfectly happy.” But then she expresses regret: “But I disappoint you so many times, dear, and I try so hard to please you. I’d give most anything if I could see you tonight.”

And that’s the last letter of any consequence that she wrote to him – that we have in our possession, anyway. There’s a letter from Feb. 13, 1917, but it just details travel plans. They were married April 11, 1917, and their first child, Uncle Rip (David Ira), was born a year later, April 30, 1918.

It’s been really interesting to read through these letters. I’ve learned a lot about my grandparents that I would not otherwise have known. If you want to do more reading about them, Rip makes mention of them in his entertaining, detail-rich memoir, as does Mark in his. (I’ll post an edited version of my own mother’s memories soon.)

Grandma's November 1916 letters

Can it really be that I haven’t posted anything since August? Well, sorry about that, although I didn’t get many messages asking where I was or begging for more. That ought to tell me something, I guess.

Still, I’m determined to finish off this letters project, and then maybe move on to other items that a couple of people besides me might be interested in.

So, let’s pick up where we left off, in November 1916.

In her Nov. 1 letter, Mary reveals that she won’t go to visit a married friend because her husband is “too precise. I’m always afraid of doing something he wouldn’t consider proper.”

Then she writes of the fun she had at the Democratic Party rally, and talks about dancing with “Judge Metz.” If I’m not mistaken, that would be the judge who lived in Basin, where I grew up. I was acquainted with his widow, and I think Neil Lamont’s late father-in-law, Metz Smith (a really good man), was named after Judge Metz. I hope someone will set me straight if I have that all mixed up.

Here next letter isn’t until Nov. 13. She notes that it was 18 below zero (Fahrenheit, no doubt) in mid-November. That’s one of those details that makes me not miss Wyoming so much.

She also notes that she’s been stiffed so far on payment from the Democratic Party for music she provided – apparently for money – at the rally mentioned in the Nov. 1 letter.

As I’ve mentioned before, some of Grandma’s letters are maddeningly cryptic, and this one’s no different. In the Nov. 1 letter, she says she’ll need to tell him something in person the next time she sees him. Apparently she did, because in this letter she writes,

“I need you, ’cause when I’m with you, I never think of doing some of the foolish things I do when you are gone. I don’t want to disappoint you anymore, sweetheart. I’d much rather have you disappoint me. It wouldn’t hurt me as badly as it does when I’m the cause of it, and I don’t enjoy disappointments, either. I’m afraid I’m a failure in some respects, and I try so hard to be good, too. You’ll have to help me, dear, to be stronger. I can’t do without you; I love you too much to think of it.”

So, any guesses? It does make the mind race, doesn’t it?

Next up is Nov. 18, and it starts right off with a continuation of the previous letter. She has received a letter from him since her last letter to him:

“You haven’t anything, dear, to be forgiven for. I didn’t blame you one bit for being disappointed. I did do something bad, and it makes me furious to think I’m so foolish at times. I think that must be the trait that you dislike, and I dislike it, too. I couldn’t help telling you about it. I was afraid someone else might before I had the chance. I could never even try to keep you from knowing things like that, Dave. I want you to know my faults, dear, and help me to be better.”

This letter also marks, I think, the first time she actually mentions marriage.

“Carol is busy planning things for me when I get married. I believe she is almost as interested in it as I am.”

Then she writes about things that are certainly familiar to members of our church. It’s kind of interesting to hear it from her perspective, though:

“After the dance last night, Mother and I had a long talk, and she advises me to do just what I told you I was going to do. She would rather have me married in the Temple, of course, but I can’t give you up, dear, because of that. I could never be happy without you, sweetheart. I love you too well. I don’t think you want to get along without me, either. I don’t want you to, anyway.”

If I’m understanding this correctly, her mother wants her to be married in the temple, but since Grandpa wasn’t yet ready for that step, her mother is OK with a civil marriage. The temple sealing, of course, would come years later, just before Grandma passed away – although nobody even knew she might be ill at the time.

In the Nov. 26 letter, Grandma writes of being thoroughly disagreeable – with everyone, all the time. She claims to have a real problem with her bad moods. I wonder: Was she?

Next week: December 1916.

Mary's letters, October 1916

If I’ve ever had a busier summer, I don’t remember it. An unrelenting string of little things, mostly, that have foiled all sorts of plans, from travel to projects like this one, the Henderson Reunion blog. But now I’m back on track, for at least this week. So we’ll pick up where we left off, in October 1916.

In her letter of Oct. 9, she expresses the same sorts of frustrations I think most of us feel when it comes to church service – or any type of service, really. She’s in the Primary presidency, but says the president doesn’t get much support from Mary and the other counselor. “I don’t blame her either,” Mary writes. “I think I’ll resign” because all she does is “neglect” Primary anyway.

As I mention frequently, I love the slang she uses. In this letter, she asks if Dave has caught the cold that’s going around, saying her mother and Uncle Ira have colds, and that “Almost everyone you see is barking.” That’s funny.

With the Oct. 11 letter, we’re reminded, too, of the mundane tasks they had before more modern conveniences like vacuum cleaners became widely available. She speaks of washing and cleaning, and wishes Dave was there to “beat the carpet. That’s fine for exercise. It’s great for building muscles.” And I find myself complaining about having to run the vacuum once in a while.

As you read her Oct. 15 letter, it reminds you of how much time the extended family and friends spent together. She writes of a popular game called “Whist.” And while she’s writing, she says there’s an intense game of it being played by Roah and Gert against Carol and Fon – and, she notes, Carol and Fon are losing.

The same letter also mentions what seems to be the most unromantic of marital proposals. She says a man, Joe Christopherson, has married his housekeeper and that Roah is disappointed because she had been approached by him the year before to move to where he was living, teach school and take care of his children. My guess is Mary’s being ironic, but I can’t be sure.

Also in the letter, she talks of a horrible “infection” plaguing a Mr. Bryant:

“The infection is going down his spine. Wherever it breaks out, the flesh all rots and the nurse says it is going all thru his system.”

Yeesh.

Speaking of irony and sarcasm and that sense of humor she so often displays, there are a couple of fine examples in the Oct. 20 letter. After a litany of piano-playing and singing assignments and rehearsals, she deadpans: “So, this week has been a continual round of pleasure.”

Then, the first sentence of the next paragraph: “I’m compiling (notice the big word) a book of cooking recipes for future use.” Funny.

Next week (I hope), we’ll head into November 1916.

Mary's photo postcards

Dear family,

OK, I've posted the photo postcards on the Henderson Reunion Web site. Click here to go directly to the page. Please let me know if you recognize anyone else in the photos, and I'll add and/or update the captions.

There are many more photos -- I'm sure they include other family members. I'll try to post them in the coming weeks.

Please send along your comments, too.

Don(nie) Porter
Helen's son

No letters this week, but there's other good news

It's been another one of those weeks, and I didn't make time for reading through more of Grandma's letters. Sorry about that.

But here's what I dd do: My brother, Tony, and I have been helping my dad, Don, sort through long-packed items in a storage shed. Lots of these things we haven't sorted through since before we moved to Utah from Wyoming in 1973.

On Saturday, we found a box with a weathered old photo album containing postcards -- page after page of them from about, oh, 1905 to 1920 (roughly). This adds to the number I already have, about 150, that we located in a shoebox last year and that I've begun to feature on this Web page. They're all really great, with lots and lots from Grandma's McIntosh siblings, cousins and friends.

While that's cool enough, among the postcards in the book are a number of photo postcards -- apparently it was popular during that era to take photos, then have them made into postcards you could mail to friends and family. Among these picture postcards are several of Grandma that I'd never seen before. So, as soon as I can get around to it, I'll scan them and post them on the Web site -- I'll announce the postings here.

I sort of skimmed the writing on the backs of the cards as I was removing them from the haggard old book, and was hoping for our version of the Holy Grail: Maybe one from Grandpa to Grandma. I didn't see one, but that doesn't mean one isn't there. I'll look more closely in the weeks and/or months to come.

I'll let you know if we uncover any more treasures as we dig through the storage shed in the weeks to come. This one was completely unexpected.

I should also add that my mother, Helen, let me borrow her copy of "Sagebrush and Roses," the thorough history of Otto and Burlington, Wyo., written by Carla Neves Loveland. I'm about 200 pages into it, and it's a lot of fun to read. There is at least one photo of mother and her siblings that I've never seen before -- I'll post it here sometime soon -- and plenty of Old West intrigue: Like the time Ira McIntosh -- brother of Mary and Roah -- watched a man get shot in the back and killed outside the Garland Hotel over some dispute; our Great-Grandmother Nancy Lena Guhl McIntosh forbade him from testifying after the killer(s) threatened his life.

And this was in 1910!

The September 1916 letters

After weeks of letting everything get in the way, I’m back to Grandma’s letters. Let’s pick up where we left off, In September 1916.

In the Sept. 3 letter, she writes of her sister, Roah, bringing her a gift – a signet ring. But, she notes that while she’s “quite proud of” this ring, “I don’t like it like I do my other one.”

I’m wondering: Is she referring to an engagement ring? Had Dave, by this time, given her a ring? Are they engaged? I ask because none of the previous letters ever mentions it. Do any of you know?

Her Sept. 7 letter is a gentle scolding to Grandpa for not writing letters often enough.

I have to admit I get a special kick out of her Sept. 10 letter, since she might as well be writing about her grandson Don:

“I’m getting disgusted with myself when I go to church. I can’t stay awake any more. I nearly bobbed my head off this morning.”

Later in the letter, she makes reference to someone who may be a rival – or not, maybe she’s not worried, but simply teasing:

“And I’m not much afraid of those Alabama school marms, either. I don’t believe she’ll look as good to you as some other people do. I hope not, anyway.”

I’ve said before that I really like these little tidbits of information about daily life that she drops into her letters. In the Sept. 17 letter, for example, she mentions she doesn’t want to travel to Lovell to a church conference because the car in which she’ll be riding is unreliable – it gets stuck and the headlights don’t always work. (Sounds like some of the automobiles I’ve owned over the years.) Also, and this is probably just because I grew up in Basin, Wyo., I like this paragraph:

“Ira and Uncle are going to Basin in the morning to get some coal and take in part of the fair.”

I like the detail that reminds us they had to use coal for heat – if you haven’t read Rip’s recollection of his youth, you should – and appreciate mention of the county fair, since that was always the high point of our year as children in Basin, with rides, exhibitions, a rodeo, games and many, many more opportunities for mischief.

Grandma also makes another mention of the “school marm” she referred to in the previous letter:

“I’m awfully glad that school marm didn’t come. I was a little bit afraid she’d beat my time but now I can rest easy. I don’t believe anyone is going to take my place, tho. They’d better not, anyway.”

It must have been another woman who was supposed to teach school there, but who never showed up. That’s just a guess, anyway. Still, it was enough to give Grandma the jitters.

The Sept. 21 letter offers quite a few more details about attractions at the fair and life in Basin during the celebration.

I got a bit of a surprise reading the Sept. 25 letter. Grandma writes of seeing a famous political figure:

“Saturday afternoon we left convention [in Lovell, I think] and went down to the
train and listened for five minutes to William Jennings Bryan. He is sure a homely old scout. Bro. Kirkham said what he admired about Bryan was that after every defeat, he came up smiling.”

That’s all for this week. Next week we’ll wade into October, at least, and maybe beyond.

Grandma's 1916 letters, part 3

Another week, another batch of letters.

As we've seen in the weeks leading up to this one, Grandma's letters are becoming more and more romantically overt -- she's expressing love and longing out in the open.

Her Aug. 9 letter is a good example. She writes of going to town -- Burlington, I guess -- to visit the post office and get a letter from Grandpa. Someone named Inez was kidding her about his letters, and wondering if they contained any kisses.

"I said you never sent any, that you always delivered them in person an I wouldn't have them any other way."

I also love her descriptions of lazy afternoons in the age before TV and, I guess, radio. She writes of "Bro. Preator" taking her and a bunch of her friends -- Mandy, Margaret, Susie, May, Sylvia and Gert -- to the river (probably the Greybull River?) for swimming and a picnic.

"May and Sylvia took a freezer of ice cream, Susie a cake and Gert and I some sandwiches. We were sure hungry after our swim. The water was fine, but I nearly froze for half an hour after we got out."

As we've seen in earlier letters, Grandma gets downright melancholy when she can't see her beau as often as she'd like. Her Aug. 13 letter is typical of this. She writes of severe disappointment that he couldn't travel to see her over the previous weekend.

"I wish I could be with you. There's no place I'd rather be than where you are. I believe we could get along alright. We'd try to mighty hard, wouldn't we?"

There are other bits and pieces that might be interesting to some of you, too, besides the lovey-dovey content. In the Aug. 13 letter she talks about politics a little -- specifically, the school superintendent race. She even escorts a candidate she favors around town to do some shoe-leather campaigning.

In her Aug. 17 letter, she mentions that they've begun Sunday closings of the stores and pool hall. I'm sort of surprised that wasn't the norm to begin with. Burlington was a Mormon town, always has been, but views of the Sabbath and commerce have definitely morphed over time. We've become a bit more sanctimonious about its observance in recent decades here in Utah, I know.

Speaking of religion, Grandma makes continuous references to attending church, or not, but I think her Aug. 27 letter may be the first of the whole bunch to note that nobody bothered to go one week. She also refers to a dance at which many of the men were drinking, so much so that one, Chauncey, was "hardly able to mount the stepladder to put out the lights." That also reminds us that they didn't have electricity in that part of the Big Horn Basin then; if memory serves, it wasn't until the 1930s and the Rural Electric Association that power lines were strung through the area -- at least that's what they told us in grade school.

Well, it's been a busier-than-usual week for me, so I'll end there. Didn't review many letters, but maybe I'll get to more next week.

Take care, all.

Grandma's 1916 letters, part 2

I’ll continue with the 1916 letters this week, picking up with the July 20 letter. She’s less and less inclined to hide her devotion to Grandpa. And not the least bit shy about letting him know he should stay away from other women.

“The next time a nice young lady comes to Renner’s, you’d better come straight home, or I’ll be minus a man. Still, if you looked as badly as you said you did, she probably didn’t lose either head or heart. I think you’d be safer at home, though, if any more red-haired girls happen up that way. I know your failing for red hair. Ha! Ha!”

Then she teases him with this anecdote, about trying to get a young man to take her along to somewhere lots of other people are going:

“I smiled hard as I could at Amandus, thinking he might take me, but it didn’t affect him at all. I can’t imagine why, either.”

By July 30, she’s quite lonely and not a bit shy about telling him:

“Every where I go I miss you, so I hate to go anywhere. I’ll be mighty glad when you’re home again. I feel as though I never, never could let you go again, dear. I’m too lonesome without you. It’s not quite so bad during the weekwhen I have to keep so busy but Sundays are fierce.”

Later on, she talks about reading an article in the Era, a church publication, titled the “Measure and Destiny of Woman.”

“It is a dandy piece; telling all that a woman should be in her home. If I could just be as I ought to be, dear, I could make a happy home for you, but I’m afraid I’m lacking in lots of ways. And if I shouldn’t make you happy, sweetheart, I believe it would kill me. I wouldn’t want to live, at least, if you weren’t happy with me.”

Well, that’s about as explicit an expression of love – maybe even scary, don’t you think? – as we’ve seen in any of these letters.

Then, the very next day, she talks of a letter she got back from Grandpa:

“I’m glad, dear, that I am so dear to you. I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t. I never doubt your love for me, even if you do think sometimes that I do. And you’re dearer to me, Dave, than anyone else could ever be.”

Sweet, isn’t it? And then we segue into this:

“The negroes gave a show tonight. I didn’t want to go very badly, but Jack wanted me to go with him, so I did. The show was pretty good.”

It must have been a traveling band of performers, I’m guessing. Probably not too many people of color in those parts of Wyoming then.

Then, after no mention of race that I can recall in her earlier letters, other than the one just previous, she writes in the Aug. 2 letter:

“I’ve been picking gooseberries and making jelly today. Any time you run out of work, come down and I’ll give you a job. You ought to see my hands. They look like they might belong to a negress.”

I realize she’s just referring to the darkened color of her hands after working with the berries, but still it’s a little jarring.

Finally, in her Aug. 6 letter, we get confirmation that she kept Grandpa’s letters – at least some of them.

“I’ve just been up reading your letters. I keep the ones I’ve got since you’ve been up to Fenton in my handkerchief case in one corner of my dresser drawer. Then when I get real lonesome, I go upstairs and read them and then I want you more than ever. Since Carol left, I’ve been sleeping alone upstairs and usually the last thing I do before I pile into bed is to go through your letters.”

(Fenton, Wyo., is about as far west of Burlington as Otto is east.)

She closes the letter with this:

“I wish I could talk to you instead of writing. If you were here tonight, I’d sit on your knee until you were good and tired. That wouldn’t be all I’d do, either, would it?”

Well, that’s all I have time for this week. I’ll continue with more letters from 1916 next week.

Grandma's 1916 letters, part 1

The first letter we have from Grandma to Grandpa in 1916 is from May 23. It finds her lonely, and grieving for a lamb. Like the previous year, she’s working at a sheep camp.

“I had a little black-faced lamb, the cutest little thing you ever saw. I was going to keep him here until I got ready to go home. But I had to tie him up to keep him from following the men off and I didn’t have any better sense than to tie the string around his neck and he choked himself to death, night before last.”

By June 4, she has another lamb or two, and they’re surviving an unusual diet. She also writes that she’s making baby bonnets again:

“I’m crocheting one for Nellie’s baby, then I have to make one for Lottie’s. Lottie named her baby Lena. It tickled Mama half to death. She didn’t expect a namesake.”

On Independence Day, her letter doesn’t mince words about her love and affection for Grandpa.

“You don’t know how glad I was to get your letter last night. I’ve read it till I almost know it by heart. And I’ve been lonesome, too, dear. I hated to see you go back. I tried to get Caroline to go up town that Monday morning, but after I saw you I was glad she wouldn’t. If we had been somewhere else I would have liked that hug. You would probably have gotten something, too.”

The later, in the same letter:

“… I came home to write to you. I wish I had you here by me. I wouldn’t write much more, I’ll bet.”

In the same letter, she makes reference to geography, and I’m trying to figure out just what she’s talking about. By this time, she’s back in Burlington, having concluded her work at the sheep camp. She writes:

“I don’t want you to cross the river any more when it [sic] so high, sweet-heart. It scares me for you to. I couldn’t get along without you, so, you see, you’d better be careful what you’re doing.”

The she sort of backs into a subtle warning to him about spending time with other women:

“I’m just as glad as you are that Billy did so much interfering. I don’t want you going over to see Nina, either, young man, or I shall come up and investigate.”

Her letter of July 9 offers a funny bit of trivia. The big July 24^th celebration that year – the 24^th was the date in 1847 that the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley after being hounded from the United States – was to be in Otto instead of Burlington, and the Otto residents were so excited they “say they are going to send up all their cars to bring us down to celebrate and they are going to have a pavilion to dance on.”

I guess the attraction and convenience of riding in automobiles would be expected to boost the numbers in attendance.

She also mentions that “Jim Yorgason has a new Hupmobile.” She adds that “Della does the driving. Jim can’t handle the car at all.”

I should also mention that she refers to all sorts of family members and neighbors in al these letters. She lets go with good and bad about everyone, so I hope people aren’t offended; she must be on the other side cuffing Grandpa upside the head for saving all these letters, and apologizing to her friends and family members for some of the unflattering things she wrote about them.

In the July 13 letter, we get a sense of what must have been Grandpa’s mischievousness in his letters to her:

“I’m going to quit making ‘baby clothes,’ especially if it’s going to remind you of Bro. Packard’s sayings. You’re a bad boy and I’m going to try and box your ears nicely when I get hold of you again.”

Then, in her July 16 letter, she writes something that puts me right back onto my childhood in Wyoming:

“There are certainly lots of cars going through to the Park now.”

She’s referring to Yellowstone National Park. And in those days, it must have been unusual to see so many automobiles. In my youth, 50 years later and in a town 30 miles east of Burlington, the cars themselves weren’t at all unusual, of course, but, like her, the warm months were spent seeing tourists from all over the nation heading to and from Yellowstone – or, as everyone in that part of Wyoming still calls it, “the Park.” One of our pastimes was to look for cars that were from as far away as possible: Florida, East Coast states, etc.

Mary Anne McIntosh's 1914 letters, part 2

This is a photo of Mary Anne McIntosh with her students at Otto, Wyo. The date is unknown. Does anyone recognize a face besides Grandma/Mary? Click on the photo to make it larger.

As I take up where I left off with Grandma’s 1914 letters, we get evidence right away that she doesn’t much go in for the gooey romantic prose. In her Feb. 26 letter, she refers to the letters her roommate receives from her “beau,” a fellow named Paul:

They beat anything I ever saw. If you wrote one like that to me, I’d have you sent to Evanston [where the state mental hospital is located] by return mail. I never read anything so slushy and to think of getting one every day. It’s more than I could stand.

We – or should that be “I”? – also get an occasional lesson in medical lingo. In her March 24 letter, Grandma says they had dinner at Larsen’s’ because Norma Larsen has “quinzy” and Ruth has been doctoring her. I looked it up: “Quinsy” is “a recognized complication of tonsillitis and consists of a collection of pus beside the tonsils.” Ick!

But that’s not all. Guess what they had for dinner? “Fried rabbit, and it surely tasted good.” OK, if she says so.

I also get a kick out of reading slang in her letters – especially if it’s slang that persists to this day. In her March 31 letter, she writes of not having much good to eat, so “Ruth went down to Sprague’s and bummed something to eat.” Honestly, I didn’t know that use of “bummed” predated the Great Depression.

When she wasn’t teaching – in the spring and summer – Grandma had to find other work. Her May 17 letter talks a little about the job search. She’s been helping with the mail at the post office, and:

I have the offer of another job, too. Jack Pierce wants me to go up to Newcomers for a week or ten days to cook for [sheep] shearers. Don’t know yet whether I’ll go.

In the May 24 letter, she teases Grandpa a little:

Jack told Carol he’d like to beat your time, so next time I see him I’ll bet I make eyes at him. Don’t be surprised if you hear of us eloping.

Then, later in the same letter, she notes that Grandpa has been working as a sheep herder:

I sold Marion [Grandpa’s younger brother] a pound of butter the other day and he said if it killed him they’d have to send for sheep-herder to come home and farm. I told him I didn’t care if it did, then. I’d kind of like to see my sheepherder.

Once in a while, too, her letters contain little oddities like this one, from May 31, 1914:

There is a man and his wife, their dog and donkey in town. They have walked from New York to San Francisco and are on their way back. They give some kind of shows as they go and are going to give one here Tuesday night.

I’m not saying I have – or will take – the time to go looking, but wouldn’t it be fun to see if anyone’s journal or news article mentions those people? I remember when I was a kid growing up in Basin, Wyo., we would meet people traveling through town and think they were so exotic just for living somewhere else, or having traveled across the country.

Grandpa did work to make the relationship last from his end. Of course we see her references to his letters, but also this from her June 21 letter:

I received your letter and the candy O.K. and surely enjoyed them both. I sure wished that you were here to help eat the candy.

In the same letter, she makes reference to an "Iva" who came to help eat the candy. My guess is that would be our Aunt Iva who married Grandpa's brother Marion. (Iva and Marion lived in the home behind us in Basin, Wyoming, when I was growing up, having moved there after retiring from the farm in Burlington.)

Later on in the same letter, she hints at some possible romantic intrigue between Grandpa, a woman named Theresa and herself. But she does so with a cool confidence that Grandpa is hers, and hers alone. She says that Theresa has gone to where he's working the sheep operation, but that she's not worried, then casually mentions that another man, Jim, didn't try very hard to sweep her (Mary) off her feet, and that anyway she thinks he and Theresa are a better match. It's all quite subtle and interesting to read.

Her June 28 letter is sort of a rehash of the June 21 letter, in some respects, since she discovered the earlier letter was forwarded to Burlington, and not where Grandpa was working. But she does tell him she longs for his company:

It is such a dandy night tonight that I wish you were here to take me for a ride. I don't think you had better stay away very long. It's too lonesome.

The same letter offers another window into her personality. It's a little long, but I'll quote this section in its entirety:

The Bishop had Iva and I arrange for a party to be given by the choir. We were to issue special invitations for it, but I didn't have time to write them so I told everyone about it. The Bishop and Jim and Nellie wouldn't come because they had no special invitation. I sure was wrathy. We had a short program, ice cream and cake and then played games until midnight. I wished all day that the Bishop would ask me why we didn't invite him and I would have told him we didn't want him to come. but he never mentioned it.

Now I know where I get it from. She also speaks of a "picture show" to be screened July 3: "One Hundred Years of Mormonism." I wonder if it was a church-made film, or independent? It would have been silent, of course, but I've never seen a reference to it before this, and I've read quite a bit in years past about Mormons in film -- especially during the silent era. I wonder if any copies survived?

The next letter we have is from Nov. 10, so Grandpa must not have been very good at saving them between summer and fall. That's too bad, but there is a difference in this very brief letter from all that have gone before it. She signs off with this:

Lots of love from Mary

I think that's the first letter she ends with the word "love." It's usually "Write soon to Mary" or something like that. Anyway, it's a little thing, but also maybe a big one, too.

And that concludes the review of 1914. Next week I'll begin on the 1915 letters.

Grandma's 1914 letters, part 1

First up, a little housecleaning: I heard back from our McIntosh cousin Sue McIntosh Adams about my May 2 question: "She speaks of a dance she’s been 'advertising' for, and calls it a 'Basket Dance.' Does anyone know what a basket dance was/is? I don’t have a clue."

Sue responds: "I believe it is probably the same as a box dance. What a box dance was is that money needed raised for whatever occassion and they would hold a box dance to raise it. The gals would fix a picnic lunch and go to the dance. Sometime during the dance they would auction off the box, with the gal as company, to the highest male bidder. This would raise money and the guy and gal then shared the food and conversation and a dance. Anyway, that is what a box dance was and as I say, a basket dance was probably similar."

So, there we have it. I'm sure she's correct. Thanks, Sue.

Now, for the 1914 letters. I'm afraid I've been getting a little carried away, and so I'll mae this partial posting, then come back later and get the rest of 1914. Please read on ...

As I’ve mention time and time again here, going through Grandma’s letters to Grandpa – OK, they weren’t yet married, but they would be – I really appreciate her sense of humor. I find myself comparing it to our considerably coarser way of conveying humor and sarcasm nowadays, and I wish I was more like her instead of more like, well, me.

A good example of this is in her first letter of 1914. On Jan. 5, she wrote of being invited to supper at Otto’s hotel (for those of you who know Otto, it makes the mind fairly spin to imagine a day when it could support a hotel, of any size) by her friend Ruth, who was spending time with quasi-boyfriend Wayne:

“They ate supper at the hotel at Mr. Daley’s expense. He is a friend of Ruth’s from Hyattville. I think she wanted me to go over so she wouldn’t have to entertain both of them. I don’t know which one she would have turned over to me.”

She skewers them all pretty well there, but does it all so politely that you almost overlook it.

Her mood could turn from sarcastic to downright depressed, though. In the same letter, she writes of her mother literally worrying herself sick over Ira, Mary’s brother. Her mother suspects he may be going “drinking” after basketball practice, and she gets so worked up she has to be medicated. She doesn’t hold much back when she describes her feelings to Grandpa:

“I surely will be glad when she is well again. I can hardly stand to stay down here when she is sick. It worries me awfully. It is bad enough to have to stay here when everything is all right at home. I get pretty ‘miserable’ at time[s]. Something like I was for a while last summer at Thermopolis.”

Reading that kind of wakes you up, doesn’t it? She must have battled the “blues” or worse while working the summer in Thermopolis (Ther-MOP, as everyone in Wyoming refers to it). It’s the not knowing that makes such lines in these letters to intriguing but frustrating, too.

In the Jan. 20, 1914, letter, she speaks of her culinary talents, or lack thereof:

“If you can’t read this, I’ll interpret it when I come home again. I was frying doughnuts tonight and burned three of my fingers. Consequently, I can’t handle my pen quite as well as usual. I made doughnuts enough to last a week. If you get hungry, I’ll send you a few by parcel post. I’m afraid you wouldn’t want me to send very many, though. They aren’t the ‘kind that mother makes,’ you know, and they might be hard on your digestive apparatus.”

Grandma’s letters also provide frequent peeks into the world of rural education after the turn of the century. Read this, from the Jan. 27, 1914, letter to see if anything seems different than today’s school experience (I’ll not pass judgment one way or the other, since I took a good whacking myself a time or two in Wyoming schools before corporal punishment was outlawed). She explains three of her male students have been misbehaving badly:

“I had the Board come down today and straighten them out. I’m to take them for a week on trial if they ask my forgiveness. It was a pretty serious offense, so if it is repeated, I’m to send them home and not let them come back. Harold Kirkpatrick was one of the boys. His father went out and got a switch and whipped him awfully hard before me and the rest of the Board. Then he made Harold tell me he was sorry and ask my forgiveness. It was more than I could stand. I squalled, of course. Mr. Hartman told me he was surprised to think it would affect me like that to see a youngster whipped. I never could whip one like that, I know.”

Does anyone know whether she stuck by that after she had her own children? I know Grandpa called for the children to “go cut a switch” when they misbehaved, but did Grandma?

In the Jan. 28 letter, she also speaks of being used as a pawn in someone else’s girlfriend-shopping. She speaks of going to a dance with Wayne, but:

“He wouldn’t have taken me only he knows his girl was coming up from Basin with another fellow and he wanted to get even. If I had known I wouldn’t have done it. He treats her shabby enough anyway, without me helping him out. I used to like him [Wayne], but he’s too badly stuck on Wayne now to suit me.”

Like I said, I really enjoy her wit and sarcasm. She doesn’t spare anyone she doesn’t care for, as in her Feb. 3 letter, when she allows that not only does she not care for a young man named Albert Welch, but that:

“I hate the Welch’s [sic] anyway, … and I wouldn’t think of going with such a thing as he is. You try to make me think, sometimes, that you are a bad boy, but if you were like Albert, I’d believe it and I don’t think I’d like you any better than I do him. As it is, I think you are a pretty good boy.”

We have to remember, too, that she’s 22 years old as she’s writing these letters. Dave is, if I have my math correct, about 30. That puts some of her comments into perspective.

In the Feb. 18 letter, as in others, she describes what novels she’s been reading. She likes the writer Gene Stratton Porter, and recommends both the books “The Harvester” and “At the Foot of the Rainbow.” I haven’t Googled those titles or the author, so is anyone out there familiar with those titles or the author? She says “At the Foot of the Rainbow” that the “hero is a Scotchman and he’s all right. I like Scotchmen, anyway.” As well she should with a name like McIntosh and a beau named Henderson.

And now, an answer to an earlier question: Did Mary ever whip the kids? In the Feb. 23 letter, she writes:

“My kids were pretty unruly this afternoon until I whipped two of my boys. Then they straightened up some. I hated to do it but I had to. Ruth thinks it’s foolish to use a switch, but I felt much better after I had used it, so I guess it helped some.”

Finally, some honesty about the whipping! “I felt much better after I had used it.” Wow.

Grandma Mary's 1912 letters to Grandpa Dave

At the same time she was writing her letters, she was keeping a travel journal that’s also on the Web site. In spring 1912, she had taken the train to Utah to visit family she left a dozen years earlier. It’s fun to read the two together.

For me, the most interesting items are to details about life in 1912. From her first letter, dated May 5, 1912, with a Tooele, Utah, dateline, she acknowledges receiving a letter from Dave. Then she writes,

“… I am going to attend Vie’s [who is Vie?] Graduation Exercises tonight. Tomorrow Lilias [who is Lilias?] and I will go sightseeing. Friday convention [what convention? An education convention?] begins and will close Sunday.”

In the travel journal, she records:

“After supper I pressed my silk dress, then we went up to the Odeon to Vie’s Graduation Exercises. We couldn’t hear the speakers but the music was fine.”

Later in the same letter, she notes, “I went to four dances in St. John. They have such small crowds. Last night and the night before I went to a show. It was vaudeville entirely but it was pretty good. When I get to Salt Lake I’ll see the good shows.”

In a letter dated May 20, 1912, she makes reference to another letter she got from Dave, containing this tidbit:

“Was glad to hear you could almost put your fingers together. You’re improving wonderfully. You’d better be careful, though, with that razor or you won’t have any fingers left.”

Also in these letters, she mentions endless family names. This is where, I’m thinking, we could really use the help of our McIntosh cousins to fill in some blanks. For instance, she speaks of going to the “Dymock ranch” – obviously of the Dymock family our Great-Great-Grandmother Caroline Elizabeth Caldwell McIntosh Dymock married into late in life. Grandma talks of going to the ranch and staying there for a couple of days.

By July, she’s back in Wyoming and writing from Basin (the town where I grew up). It’s obvious she never meant for anyone but Grandpa to read these letters. Using this letter as an example, here’s what I mean:

“Bert Mortensen and Leon Lewis were there visiting. I didn’t hardly know Bert; she is so fat. Fatter than I am, even. We had a good time down there.”

Or, this paragraph, which in my reading of it implies a little smooching? Or, perhaps, a lack thereof?

“I haven’t taken the mumps yet so I think there’s no danger, now, of me having them. Lilias tried to make me believe I’d sure take them from you but I told her she didn’t know quite all about the mumps.”

As you can see, her sense of humor is pretty dry, sometimes, and sharp. In this Aug. 20, 1912 letter, she talks about going to a dance:

“I couldn’t find a beau. I smiled hard as I could at Sqintus but all for nothing. He evidently doesn’t like me as well as he does Caroline. I had a good time anyway.”

As with any dating relationship – and especially one conducted over long distances, relatively speaking – Mary and Dave didn’t always get along. Look at how she opens her Aug. 22, 1912, letter:

“Whatever have you been hearing that made you think I was angry? I just got your letter about two hours ago and was quite surprised. If I had you here for about a minute I believe I’d ‘box your ears.’ Why, I haven’t a thing on earth to be angry about, and I hope you’ve decided by this time that I’m not.”

About a month later, on Sept. 24, she tells him the story of another suitor and how she spent her Sunday afternoon dodging him. Later in the letter, we learn his name is “Willie.” She doesn’t seem too keen on him:

“Sunday after church ‘my bargain’ was right on hand to walk home with me. I thought I would never get rid of him. After we got home he went to help Sister Sprague feed the pigs and Tella and I slipped out and went down to the river. He went up to the store and got a horse and followed us. We started back home and he took the horse back up town and came back to Sprague’s. We saw him coming and went down to the garden and stayed a long time but when we went up to the house he was still there talking to Bro. Sprague. Then we got Lois to take us for a ride. About sundown we came home and Willie was gone, for which we were truly thankful. He’s sure a stayer.”

Willie [Tolman] turns out to be something of a pest. I guess they had stalkers then, too. From Oct. 1, 1912, she writes Dave there is to be a Democratic Party rally and dance, and she wishes she would have known about it earlier so she could invite him to Otto, where she teaches school, to go with her. She worries that Willie may show up:

“If Willie Tolman comes for me to go with him, he may not get out of the house alive He worries me awfully. He was up here again Sunday and I asked him if he wouldn’t go home and stop bothering me but he didn’t. He was back again Monday before I had breakfast.”

We learn, too, that the primary mode of transportation in 1912 in the Big Horn Basin was still by horse or horse-drawn carriage. Grandma is always writing about going one place or another if she can get a “team,” or about waiting for the “stage” to come through town with the mail.

And, as we noticed a little earlier, she mentions political parties from time to time. From Oct. 23, 1912:

“They had a Socialist Rally here last night but I didn’t go to it. Mr. Iliff and Amasa Tanner were down in the car. There are quite a few Socialists here.”

Once in a while in the letters, we get an echo from one of Grandpa’s letters to Grandma. An example in the Nov. 7, 1912, letter:

“I don’t agree with you. I think school teachers aren’t hard customers and that you aren’t simple; so there.”

I take it Grandpa must have been teasing her a bit. More of the same in the Dec. 3, 1912, letter:

“You said you pitied Willie if I went to conference with him. Shame on you! You know he would have enjoyed the trip; so would you or most anyone. Ha! Ha!”

She also swerves into politics again – or at least democracy:

“Who did you vote for? I voted, for the first time. I told them when I got through that I felt like a citizen now.”

I also get a kick out of the way she turns a phrase:

“I felt bluer than indigo Tuesday night at the dance.”

She’s not above being a little mischievous, either. In the Nov. 25, 1912, letter, she’s writing from Basin, where she’s gone for a teachers’ conference. But, she explains:

“The Worland High School Basket[ball] Team is here and are going to play with Basin tonight. I think I’ll go and watch them instead of going to the lecture.”

That’s my grandma, all right. Must be where I got my love of the game … or my aversion to education.

Finally, in the Dec. 16, 1912, letter, she writes of trouble at the dance:

“Some of the ‘wild bunch’ got smart in the Hall and broke up the dance. I guess they acted horrid. Some of them were shooting around last night. [I assume she means gunfire.] They are talking of having them arrested. I hope they, for the way they act is a disgrace.”

Well, that takes care of 1912. Next week I’ll skim through the letters of 1913.

That’s what strikes me in the letters. I’m interested to know what jumps out at you?

Looking back through Mark's eyes

I don't know about you, but I love discovering what a writing coach once described as "little gold coins" sprinkled throughout whatever I'm reading. He described them as little surprises that reward, and maybe even enlighten, the reader.

As you read through Mark Henderson's memories of his youth, which I've excerpted on the the family Web site, you'll find lots of valuable, entertaining and informative items. For example, did you know Grandpa and Grandma moved the family around Burlington a little bit during the first few years of their marriage?

"While I was still very young, we moved to A.E. Schlaef's ranch two miles southwest of Burlington, where we raised some very good crops. At the end of three years we moved back to our own farm."

Or:

"In 1924 we moved to Orson Johnson's home in Burlington so my brother would not have so far to walk to school. We lived there only one year before returning to our own farm, which, at that time, consisted of 80 acres."

Mark also remembers details that soak the narrative with information about life's conveniences -- or lack thereof -- and customs of the time. Like this:

"In the fall of 1925 I started to elementary school. My brother and I had to walk a mile and a half to get to the school wagon every morning and back at night. It was a covered wagon with a pot-bellied stove for keeping us warm in the winter when it got quite cold. My aunt, Roah Dunsworth, was my teacher in the first and second grades ... . The only spanking I ever got in school occurred when I refused to act the part of the pig in the story of the Little Red Hen, in the first grade, when my aunt spanked me with an axe handle which had been fashioned into a paddle."

And here's another one of those gold coins, when Mark talks about the family's looming trip to Salt Lake City in 1928 to go through the LDS Church temple there:

"My older brother and I were old enough at the time to really get excited about such a trip and lay awake many a night planning and talking about that exciting trip."

Maybe it's just me, but that sentence creates a terrific little scene of two boys so excited for a journey they can't sleep. It takes me back to my childhood, and anticipation of various road trips we took as a family.

But this was no ordinary road trip. As Mark recalls, it was crowded and eventful. All the kids -- eight of them -- plus Grandma and Grandpa -- made the trip, via Yellowstone National Park, in a 1927 Chevy. It's a great story.



Also, Mark talks in some detail about farm life, school and religion during his youth. He captures -- as I said, with lots and lots of great, revealing detail -- what it was like to grow up during hard times. When I read his story, and our late Uncle Rip's, which I featured in January, it puts into perspective the current financial situation in our country and the world: troublesome, yes, but we're all watching it unravel on television or while listening to it via podcasts on our iPods.

Anyway, I hope you'll take time to read through Mark's recollections and learn a bit more about a great man in our family.

William Buckminster Lindsay Sr.

In last week’s post, about Soren Peter Guhl, I probably placed too much emphasis on his penchant for peculiarity. But I think the more we know about people, the more individual traits emerge, and the more their personalities become distinct. This is the thing I like best about looking back into our family history; as cousin Kathleen (Henderson) Wheeler once told me, referring to our Grandmother Mary Anne (McIntosh) Henderson: “I can’t wait to meet her” in the hereafter. Indeed.

I feel that way about many of my ancestors, not the least of which is William Buckminster Lindsay, Sr. Most of what I know about him comes via the Web site http://wardell-family.org/wb_lindsay_sr.htm. The original work was written by Rex B. Lindsay, and later “Edited and Expanded By: David J. Wardell (1990).” Some years back, I e-mailed David Wardell, and he gave me permission to copy and paste, with proper credit, the text onto the Henderson Reunion site.

Much of W.B. Lindsay Sr.’s life can be traced according to his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Good record keepers, we Mormons.) But the Wardells flesh out the story plenty from there. WBL was born in Vermont in 1797, one of 10 children in the family of Ephraim Lindsay and Mercy Willey. Interestingly, Ephraim was a Revolutionary War veteran. They moved to Canada while WBL was a child, and he later bought land there – the Wardells even identify the lot.

William Sr. married Sarah Myres, and they had eight children. According to the Wardells’ history:

“One history places the family in Galena, Jo Daviess County, Illinois, in 1839 which is just across the border from Southern Wisconsin. The 1840 territorial census of Wisconsin places the family in Eastern Iowa County, Wisconsin. In this census one member of the family is shown as employed in agriculture and another adult male is shown employed in mining.”

In 1841, WBL was baptized a member of the LDS Church.

In 1845, his son – and our great-greatgrandfather – William Buckminster Lindsay, Jr., married Julia Park – our great-greatgrandmother (she wrote a journal, which I have not read, but a copy may exist at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City). I’ll save these two for a future blog posting.

I’m a little fuzzy on whether WBL Sr. and Sarah Myres Lindsay ever moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the largest body of the LDS Church membership had settled after being run out of Ohio and Missouri. It seems the family may have remained in Wisconsin during this. Eventually, though, by 1848, they made their way to Kanesville, Pottawattomie, Iowa. The Wardels report:

“The family members joined with the Captain John B. Walker Company for the trip across the plains. This company left Kanesville, 5 July 1852 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley 3 October 1852. They traveled a distance of approximately 1,000 miles in three months. There were 250 people in the company. … William Buckminster Lindsay's wife, Sarah, died from cancer on 24 October 1852, within three weeks after the group arrived in the Salt Lake Valley from Iowa. She was ill before the family left Iowa but had urged them on so that she could be with the body of the saints before her death. The next year his daughter, Sarah, died in Kaysville or Centerville.”

The history, of course, continues until his death in December 1873. It’s an interesting story, and I hope you’ll take the time to read it: click here.