Autobiography of Clarissa Isabell Wilhelm

I was born in [[Rockville, Utah|Rockville]], [[Washington County, Utah|Washington Co.]], [[Utah]] on [[March 27]], [[1870]]. My parents were [[Bateman Haight Wilhelm]] and [[Lydia Hannah Draper|Lydia Hannah Draper Wilhelm]]. I had six brothers and sisters, three brothers and three sisters, seven of us in all. I also had one half-brother and five half-sisters, as my father was a polygamist. My mother and father was married five years before he took his second wife, [[Grace Tippett Jose|Grace Tibbits (Tippets) Jose]]. My father and Mother were very happy until this woman came into their lives. I was the first child born to mother after my father took the second wife. I had one [[Bateman Haight Wilhelm, Jr.|brother]] and one [[Lydia Isora Wilhelm|sister]] older than myself. My mother's parents names were Zemira Draper and Amy Terry Draper. We lived in Rockville until I was 3 years old and then we moved to a little town called Mount Carmel. My father’s [[Clarissa Harden|mother]] and his oldest sister, Aunt [[Susan Clarissa Williams|Susan]], moved there also. We lived there until I was 4 years old. Then the church started the United Order and they called father to help head the Order at [[Orderville, Utah|Orderville]], where we moved about two miles from Mount Carmel. A little while after we moved to this place, I had a little sister born. She was named Amy Elnora. She lived until she was 21 months old and then she died of indigestion. Mother was unable to get proper food for her. She was a sweet, little golden-curly headed doll like kid. At this age of 4 I started to school, I will always remember the book I was supposed to read part of it was the Doctrine and Covenants. I can think of trying to read with horror. I forgot to state that father was put in as first councilor to the president of the stake. I will try to tell as near as I can how the Order was carried on.

Oh, yes I had a half-sister born while we living in the Order, too. It was my birthday and mother fixed us children a picnic and we walked down to Mount Carmel and when we came back, we had a little sister. They named her Lucy Luesa (Louisa). I was six years old then. While we were living there we got a pair of magpies. One of them got killed but we had the other one for a long time. One day, a little pup was out in the yard gnawing a bone and the magpie saw him and it went over to the pup and looked at it gnawing the bone. Then it walked around and got a hold of the pup’s tail and pulled at it. Then it would walk back and see if it had the pup pulled away from the bone and it would still be nibbling at it. It made ever so many trips that way before it gave it up. We thought it sure was a cute trick. It would steal thimbles and little things it could find. And it would also pick the horses sore shoulders and backs and we had to have it killed and it sure made us feel bad.

My folks began to he quite dissatisfied and Apostle Erastus Snow was calling men to move to Arizona to build homes. He called father, so he went with Bro. Snow’s company to look for a place to build us a new home. There were 8 men, I think I heard them say. Edward Noble (Aunt Nancy’s father) was one of the company, Bro. John Nail ( or Naegle), Wm. (Bill) Maxwell were others. So they all decided to move to Arizona. As Mother was in delicate health, he decided to take her down to her mother’s in Rockville, and leave her there for a year and take the other family to Arizona. So he drew his property out of the Order. Each one that joined the Order kept a list of the property that he had turned in and they had one in the Order. As I remember, father drew out 3 work teams, 2 farm wagons and one saddle pony and he and his mother drew 50 head of dairy cows besides some dishes and other things. They bought a nice lot of provisions, fresh pork, cheese, butter and other groceries. I thought I never saw anything look so good. Then father started with us down to Grandmother Draper’s. I remember the first night we camped, Mother fried some of the fresh pork and when we were eating supper my brother [[Zemira George Wilhelm|George]] ate piece after piece of pork, and the grease fairly ran out of each side of his mouth. We were under-nourished and half-starved. The folks were watching him eat and mother was afraid that it would make him sick, but Grandmother said it wouldn’t hurt him, so they just let him eat all he wanted. He would eat a piece and say, "Please pass the poke!" Grandmother asked him if he wouldn’t like a little butter spread on it and he said he would, but they didn’t put any on it for him. I know that the folks didn’t know just how us children had suffered for something to eat, that is, food that would nourish our bodies, until we had left the Order and they had started to feed us at home.

Then father took the other family and grandmother and went out in to Arizona. He settled in a little town called Concho. I guess it ran him pretty short of money moving into a new country with such a large family to support. I forgot to state that he took my oldest brother Haight with him.

We ran out of provisions at grandmother’s and one of mother’s sisters came to live at grandmothers also. During this time, I had a sister born, on the 14th of April, and mother named after her two sisters: Fanny Marilla. Mother finally concluded to see if she could get a place of her own and move into it. Grandmother told her she couldn’t make it, but mother felt like she was imposing upon her mother, so she went on trying to find a place to move into. She could not find a house, but she heard about a dugout on a man’s place (Frank Langston). She asked him if she could move into it and he said she could, but that it was full of gopher holes and the first time he irrigated his orchard, it was liable to fill with water. She said she would risk it, so she had it fixed up and we moved into it. I remember how it seemed so fresh, clean and cool. Us children were so happy, as children always are. They always enjoy moving. But with Mother it was different. It came time for supper one night, and she said all we had to eat was bread with a little butter. My brother George spoke up and said he had some dried plums that he had traded marbles for, and sure enough, he had some green-gage plums. Mother stewed them and there were enough for supper and breakfast. All we had was enough flour to make one batch of salt-rising bread, so mother put some to rise. But she didn't have any salt to put in it. I thought it was sure funny, salt-rising bread without any salt!

We found the folks all well. Aunt Grace had had another baby girl, born on the 4th of July, so they named her Independence Grace. Father had had a hard time of it. There were about 15 families living in this place and there was a scarcity of flour. Father sold some horses and bought barley and had it ground and they lived on barley for six months. He furnished the people barley to live on also. So while mother was having it so hard, father was not having it very easy. We lived here for a short time.

Here it was that I first met my brother-in-law, Joseph Rogers. He was living with a man by the name of Jessie Brady, a very nice old gentleman. But it was five or six years later that my sister Isora married him.

A little time later, father moved the rest of us to the other ranch and the winter that we lived there, it stormed so much that the roads were impassable and we ran out of flour and had to grind wheat in a coffee mill. It sure was a job. As fast as one would set the mill down, another would have to pick it up if we got enough ground. It sure gave us an appetite so that we could grind more wheat to get more appetite. We were milking 50 head of cows, five of us. We milked 10 cows each. We lived in tents, and the dairy house was built tent fashion, out of timbers. We had a big cheese vat and Grandmother sure did know how to make good cheese. Most of them weighed 50 pounds. Our corral was built on a little slope and there was a swale ran thru it. It was a very rainy season and it rained most every day. The manure was more than a foot deep, yes, it could have been two feet deep, and wet so by the rain that the cows kept it stirred into a loblolly mess. We would have to take off our shoes and stockings and pin up our dresses (we wore dresses those days) and wade in the muck to do the milking. I think the water from our spring was the coldest I’ve ever saw. It made your teeth ache to drink it. Father made a pond right below it where we could wash our feet every night and morning, but the cold water didn’t seem to hurt us at all.

The Indians killed two men not far from our camp, so we had to move. We went back to the Malpais Ranch. We had some hogs to take so us kids had to take turns driving them in the rain, dripping wet. Oh, those were happy days! In some ways it was happy, but in other not quite so much. Father went into St. Johns to find a place to move to, as mother was in delicate health. While he was in town, he heard that the Apache Indians were strickly out on the warpath, so he hurried back in the middle of the night and brought Brother Joseph McFate with his team, to help move us. Oh my, that was a terrible trip for us. Every black object we saw in the darkness, we were sure was Indians. We had a load of cheese in the wagon that I rode in (Brother McFate’s) and we, my sister Isora and I could not lie down. Just as the sun was coming up we drove into St. Johns, a tired and sleepy bunch. It must have been awfully hard on poor, dear mother, for we hadn’t been in St. Johns a week when my little brother John Benjamin, was born. We left our chickens locked up in their coop with enough feed and water for a while, and some other stuff. Father went back to bring them in, but when he got there, there were nothing but their heads and feet left. They had called some troops out on account of the Indian outbreak and in passing there they found the chickins so handily penned up and as they were colored gentlemen, who never get along with a chicken unless it’s inside of them, they proceeded to do just that. The rest of the things weren’t bothered.

There was one thing that happened while we lived there; Mrs. Hingley asked me to help her clean her house and as my half-sister Francis wanted to help me, I told her all right. The lady wanted to know if I would take some cloth for pay and I told her that I could. But she handed the cloth to Aunt Grace and she measured it and said there was just enough cloth for a dress for Francis and so I never got a thing for my work. I was three years older than my half-sister so I got the work and she got the pay. That was the first thing I ever earned and I will never forget my disappointment, but it was always that way with Aunt Grace. We lived here a while and then we moved to a house that belonged to Thomas Pares (Perez). While we lived here, a horrid thing happened.

It was nearing the Mexican’s big day, St. Johns Day and they wanted the house we were living in for some of their relatives to live in, so we had to move out. We couldn’t find a house, so Brother John Harris (Aunt Ellie’s and Aunt Elizabeth’s father) let us have his tent and Brother Babbit and Holgate (Uncle Will) put it up for us, while we lived St. Johns this time. I remember of hearing Grandpa Gibbous speak in church several times and I little thought at the time that the Gibbons people would ever mean anything to me. I was 12 years old then. We lived in the tent just two days and then father sent Haight and a young man by the name of John Maegle (Naegle) to move us to Concho, to the spring where the other family was living. The next day after we left there, was the big St. Johns celebration day and in which, Father Nathan Tenney and a cowboy by the name of Jim Vaughn was killed and the Greer boys, who were pretty tough cowboys. They came very near being lynched. They had to keep a strong guard around the jail to protect them and the Gibbons men played a very important part in guarding them. We lived at the Spring for a short time and then father moved mother’s family to the Mineral so that Haight could look after the cattle and he moved the other family back to Concho. We lived at the Mineral for a year and then father did the worst thing that he ever did in his life; he sold his cattle and bought a store and a saloon. In a short time, he went broke, for he kept drinking all the time and he let so much out on credit and gave so much away that the store did not last long. Then he went to farming and we moved back to Concho and had to start taking in washing and sewing again.

In 1894 we had a baby boy born to us and we named him Edward Richard. We had a very hard time of it as wool went down to 5 cents a pound and we couldn’t even pay expenses. We had a little girl born to us on June 16th 1896 and we named her Mable Clair. I forgot to mention that when Edward was 10 months old, Grandmother Gibbons died of paralysis, on March 17, 1894 on her mother’s birthday (Grandmother Knight). We had bought the old Gibbons home, but when she died, some of the rest wanted it, so we turned it back and moved to Vernon, where we had a small house built, a place where my folks had lived. We lived here for about two years, then we bought the old Mour place, across from Marinus Christenson and moved back to St. Johns again.

Father was gone for about 8 years and then he arid his other family separated and he came back and wanted mother to take him back. He had to talk very pretty before they made up. We were in hope, that he had given up his habit of drinking but we were disappointed. Here in this little log house, we had another little boy born to us on February 22, 1899 and we named him, that is his father named him Wilhelm Smith after both of his grandfathers. We came very near losing him and would have if we hadn’t have had him circumsized. When he was about a year old in 1900 was when Gus Gibbons and Frank LeSueur was killed by some outlaws. It was a terrible thing. Gus was working for us and one evening when he was thru work he came into the house and was playing with baby Wilhelm. He was lying on the floor with his head in the baby’s lap. Next day was my birthday, so I told him to tell Pearl (his wife) to come down to dinner as he was figuering on coming to work again next morning and he said all right. But the next morning, just as it was getting daylight, we heard some one calling outside and we found out who it was, a man the Sheriff had sent to get a posse of 8 men to go after some outlaws that had just killed a beef to eat. They had cut some steaks off from one hind quarter and left the rest go to waste. The Sheriff wanted Dick to come and help for he was going to get the outlaws if it took all summer. The Sheriff’s name was Edward Beeler. We got up to fix for him to go with the other men and just as he was going to milk the cow, Gus Gibbons (his nephew) came along. Dick asked him where he was going and he said he was going to the post office to get his mail, so Dick asked him to get ours also. When he came back, he said that they had got him to be in the Posse and that he would have to find a horse and saddle. He was a little late in getting one and the rest had already left when he came along to find which way the men had gone. He was pale and very much excited. I sat down to the table to give the children their breakfasts and to try and eat a little myself but I already felt full without anything to eat. A rap came at the door and it was Pearl (Gus’ wife). She was crying and so was I. She said that the reason why she came so early was that she was so worried. The boys had only drank a cup of coffee and couldn’t eat any breakfast. We had a large field glass and Pearl and I went out to the end of the house and were scanning the mountains and ridges to see what we could see, when all at once we saw the Sheriff and his posse come riding into town. The wind was blowing a heavy gale, and I was very worried because the rest of the boys were still out on the trail and did not know that the Sheriff and part of the men had came back in to town. Mrs. Mary Heap was with us all day. I never could experienced a worse thing I know. Pearl said, "Clara, I’ve been thinking. If one of the boys should happen to be killed, which one of them would it be best to get it?" I said that I thought it would be better for my husband to be the one, for I had three sweet little children to comfort me and that she was all alone, but she looked at it differently. She said that she would not have as much responsibility while I would have three little ones to care for, but we were both feeling fearful and the wind kept blowing hard all day, adding to our unrest. Pearl finally said she was going up town to see if she could hear anything from the boys and when she came back she said that Beeler and men had gone to bed.

The day before, they had divided up the men in order, they thought, to help Beeler for they thought he was ahead of them, trying to head off the outlaws, so 4 men went one way and 4 went another and they all agreed if they didn’t see certain signs, to come back and meet at a given place, but the four boys were so over anxious to help the Sheriff that part of them didn’t do as they had agreed to do. They wanted to go to the top of the next ridge and see what they could see from there, but the outlaws had hidden behind some rocks and trees on that very ridge, and as the boys were going up it leading their horses, they were shot down. Frank fell to the first shot, which struck him in the throat and he fell on his face with one leg doubled under him. Gus ran and they shot at him as he was running. He ran about 150 yds. and then a bullet struck him and he fell. They then shot Frank between the eyes with his own gun and shot Gus’s head full of bullets. It was 6 miles to where they could get to them with a wagon, so they had to put the two bodies on one horse and lead him six miles out of the Badlands, one man leading the horse and another holding them on. There were four of them together when they found the bodies, Will Gibbons, Will Sherwood, Dick and another. They saw Frank’s body first upon the side of the ridge, that is they saw something blue, but they were afraid to say any thing and tried to make themselves think that it was a quilt or something else that the outlaws had thrown away, but each knew what it was. They were riding along in silence, when one of the horses shied and when they looked for the cause there lay Gus with his face turned up to the sun and head shot to pieces. His clothes were all unfastened. They had rifled his pockets and in order to get into them, they’d unbuttoned his pants. They agreed that two of them should get the bodies out of the Badlands while the other two went back to town after a wagon. So Will Gibbons and my husband stayed and Will Sherwood and the other man went for help.