Interview with Roy Wilhelm, December 24, 1992

'''Roy''': I don't know whether they moved back to [[Orderville, Utah|Orderville]], or where they was when they got the call to go . . .  I think they went back to [[Orderville, Utah|Orderville]] . . . the call to move to [[Arizona]] and so they struck out . . .  Yeah, that's right!  [[Bateman Haight Wilhelm|Grandpa]] was the first guy that put his stock into the Order, and when the Order began to break up, that's when he got called to pull his stuff out and leave . . .  They were all farmin' around there, the Gibbonses, the Naegles and all of 'em, they were never satisfied.  I don't know why.  But those Orderville people were satisfied.  [[Zemira George Wilhelm|Pa]] didn't know too much about the workings of the Order; he thought it was a big failure and a lot of other stuff. But it wasn't. I read a little thing about it, and then I got a hold of a copy of the Kane County History and it told about the Order, and it was very much a good thing.

Well, on the way to Arizona, another family  . . . was on a wagon train, comin' through and the Wilhelms signed on that same wagon train to come to Arizona. It was the Maxwell family. There was an Andrew Maxwell; he was nine years old, like Pa . . .  they were best friends on that trip . . . travelled together, and when they was off helpin' drive cattle along the side, they teamed up and did it together and they was chums all the way.  It took six weeks to make the trip, and when they came to the place where the road forked, and the Wilhelms was to take the Concho road, and the Maxwells was called to go to Round Valley, they stopped and cooked dinner and had a little friendly ceremony. Pa and Andrew Maxwell vowed that they would never lose track of each other; they'd stay in touch. So he lived up there and was raised there, Pa's folks went up to Vernon, and it was sixty-two years, or something like that, before they met again. Andrew Maxwell got to be cattle inspector and he had some deal in connection with his job to go to Show Low so he took the trouble of comin' by the ranch. That's the funniest thing you ever seen, two old guys puzzlin' . . .  over each other!  They was still friends. Took a long time to get back together.

'''Roy''': When the Wilhelms got here, why they settled in Concho and then the old man was a rustlin' around, he'd driven quite a lot of cattle with him, he took part of his stuff in cash and part of it in cattle and drove the cattle alongside.  So they was pretty well fixed when they come . . . and he was knocking around and discovered the wonderful grazing up on the mountains, just right for cattle so he took Goodman  . . . Goodman's old millstead now  . . .  

'''Roy''':  Yeah, course he pulled the deal with old what's his name.  Him and Flake bought the land, it was squatters right all around Concho.  The Mexicans had no idea those guys could make a go of it.  They just couldn't envision that they was going to move a lot of people in there and make a town, see.  They was just goin' to get what they could off of 'em and never see 'em again.  They didn't believe they could do anything.  So Grandpa was in on that.  Grandpa had used his homestead right up in Utah but he discovered this little cove up there, oh whats his name you been there  . . . and it appealed to 'em and they wanted it, so Grandma.  I'm adding a lot here, details to make it clear.  I don't have any Wilhelm stuff to back that up, I do have a letter from two of the Apostles when the trouble come along, the polygamy.  Wrote (the Apostles) to Grandpa and both of 'em signed it and  advised him to take the younger woman and go down on the border and get away from here so they couldn't pin polygamy on him.  And let Lydia stay there and prove up on her homestead and that's where I get this, otherwise he would, made himself a homestead, well he  . . .  

Roy, Well, no.   

'''Roy''':  The Indians run them out they never went back.  When they moved up there for the summer, this was summer and winter in Concho, why Uncle Haight, he was a big boy three years older than Pa.  Pa'd be at least ten by then if it took them a year to get settled in Concho, see.  Uncle Haight be about thirteen or fourteen, so he'd go punching cows with the old man, I know that because I left home when I was thirteen and I went punching cows with the old man.  So they went out one day gathering in the strays, they was keeping them from straying, they was cattle and they wanted to go back to Utah and they'd go anywhere to get away from where they were.  They had to locate 'em, they called it.  Just bringing 'em back all the time.  This Indian bunch come along and it was Grandma with all the little kids there about a 100 yards from the spring.  The Indians they kept a jabberin' and making motions over at the house and everything and finally they put their warpaint on, that's what they always did when they exterminated a bunch of ranchers, they'd get their warpaint on.  I don't know what part that had, it made it alright, I guess.  Well, Grandma knew they were in for a bad time but it was time for the kids to eat and they needed some water to drink and there wasn't any.  She knew if she went out there and the Indians grabbed her, which they most likely would, the kids wouldn't have any water and they wouldn't have any mother either.  So she had a long tom rifle (like an old Kentucky muzzle loader) there and she had it positioned there where she could put it out through the window or port hole.  She told Pa and Aunt Fan,  the sister just younger than him, to take the bucket and go to the spring.  The Indians was all around the spring, had possession of it, and get a bucket of water and no matter what they did stand right up to them, look them in the eye and tell them what they thought.  The Indians didn't know English but they'd understand anyhow if they told 'em.  So Pa was brave and he went and the Indians start messing with him and he just got all over 'em and they thought it was funny but they respected him see.  But Grandma was laying back there and what the Chief to that Indian bunch didn't know, she had a dead sight on him all the time. If they'd ever laid a hand on those kids, why she'd kill the chief first and according to Indian tradition if you killed the chief in a war party the rest of 'em'd run.  Without leadership they just didn't  know what to do.  Well, the kids they played it tough, filled their bucket.  And the Indians, they turned if off to kind of a jovial thing and bowed and scraped to 'em and let 'em go and bring the water on back.  They kept lookin' at the cabin and jabberin' and finally they decided it was bad medicine and they got on their horses and headed on.  Well it wasn't very long after that until a rider, perhaps the next day, the rider came by to tell them to get off the mountains that they . . . that the Indians had declared war on all white men.  And they was going to kill the best one first, that 'd be old man Cooley.  He'd married three or four Indian girls.

'''Roy''': The Indians got worse and finally the war was on for good and here come a runner and told them, "Come along in the evening and don't wait till morning.  The order is to tell every rancher, everybody, to go to St. Johns.  No matter what religion you are or what color you are.  Go to St. Johns and bunch up there for safety."  I guess Snowflake was another strong point. But that's where they had to go so Pa said they got them in the wagon and after that Indian experience up there, he was pretty Indian wise and scared and he was telling about when they'd drive them as fast as they could in the dark and he was lookin' out the covered wagon, they had to cover up bout that way so they could see out. Said he'd get to imagin' he could see Indians ridin' along with their bows and arrows, keepin' up with him on both sides and then he'd shake his head and it ud' come to him that it wasn't.  It was just his imagination.  He'd get fearin' to see if he could see 'em and he always told us guys if you peer hard enough you'll see what you're lookin' for.  So they moved in here ''(St. Johns)'' and they had an election.  They organized and there was all these different factions there.  There was the Jewish merchants, the Mexicans, there was the outlaws that was outlaws and their counterparts, the guys that had been sent by the government as officials for the county, everything was appointed, see.  There was them and anyhow, they were all at each other's throats, they didn't trust each other, see.  But here comes [[Bateman Haight Wilhelm|B.H. Wilhelm]] and they all liked him, he was kind of like Andy, he was a good mixer and a good drinker and they liked him and so they trust him and they all centered on him as the captain of the guard.  And they put him on the payroll and he was the captain of the guard.  And so he, I don't know how long he was here, 2 years anyway I guess, as captain of the guard. ''(Ed. Note: This was The United Forces of St. Johns, formed September 5, 1881)  ''  

'''Roy''': They undoubtedly went to the place in Concho and worked some and done something and then moved over there after it quieted down, how long he was on that salary I don't know, but while he was here he did a good deal of gambling with the guys, knew all the, he was friend to everybody and he was the big man in the militia.  

'''Roy''': The sheriff had a guy in jail.  Did you ever see that old jail was over there?  Well, it was in that and (they) had a guy in there, he was a crazy guy, a guy named Aaron Adair.  He was a real nut, he was violent and they chained him like a bear.  Chained him up in there and along with all else, why the Wilhelms had the contract of feeding the prisoners when there was prisoners.  So the old man he was off on his daily duties but they appointed, I guess Haight had something else to do and  my Dad, it fell his chore to go and carry the food over there to the prisoners.  They made him a mark, see, for as far as that chain come, so (if) he didn't go inside that, old thing couldn't get im'.  And he said old Aaron Adair'd just plead with him to come over and visit with him.  Pa was too wise.  When he was through eatin' why Adair would come and push the things over the line.  Pa'd get a broom and rake 'em back.  Then another chore, another thing that he had, they had (a) poker game, all night poker game, every night.  The guys didn't trust each other, if one man was a winnin' too much and they couldn't catch him he was slick.  If they'd a caught him there'd a been a shooting.  But if they couldn't catch him why they'd just, some guy when it come his turn to deal, he'd just take the deck they was playing with and take part of the cards out of the deck anyway, ya know and rip 'em in two and just throw 'em out on the floor, order a new deck and they'd start playing with a new deck.  And that happened four or five times a night, that some guy that was a havin' hard luck would tear up part of the deck.  But the cards were all just alike.  They were all bicycle cards except the ones that had been tore up, see, and they're on the floor.  Well, Grandpa got Pa a job a sweepin' out the pool hall, the gamblin' place there, kind of straightenin' things up, so he took an interest in cards and he,  that's one thing, the old man always played cards and believed in that part of it, 'cause it was part of his boyhood, see and he would gather those cards up and pick out the clean ones  that wasn't get messed up, guys spittin' tobacco on 'em or something  and he would make up decks and trade these decks around town.  Make whole decks out of (them), he run quite a little trade there doing that and made himself a little money, and ''(end of tape side one)''

'''Roy''': All the time there, Grandpa's interest in Concho was more and more and this homestead of Lydia's, they had to get on it and stay on it or they'd lose it.  They built one of the best houses in the country.  Grandpa was a carpenter by trade and he was good workman, I guess.  And he built that house that was going to be the old ancestral home and they built a big house.  And Grandma was an exceptional cook, somehow the Wilhelms always was kind of particular about how the way their stuff tasted.  And when the church authorities would come through and they'd come over to Snowflake and then they wanted to come on to St. Johns, they'd always time it so they could stay with the Wilhelms in Concho.  Well, it was quite an honor but it was expensive and worked out both ways, everybody was satisfied.  And grandpa'd planted a big orchard there, several orchards and improved their place and everything, but then come the polygamy stuff.  And these, the Apostles, they had four or five of 'em all the time down here ridin' herd on these people and they had to advise them.  And so the Church members did what they asked 'em to, so they advised Grandpa, in that letter, to get the younger woman and go down, to follow the mountains down into Old Mexico and leave Lydia to prove up on her homestead.   

'''John''':  So grandma had filed homestead on it under her name since he'd already used his homestead rights in Utah.   

'''Roy''': Yeah, that's how come. So, I'm  a kind of a detective, maybe it isn't a good thing to be a detective when you're playin' around with your ancestors but here grandpa had orders to go down there and he had orders to take a family on the road with him and you just can't thumb your way.  You gotta have something to eat and they were already established there in Concho, so it was one of two things they had a little money and he took the money and left two boys there, teenage boys, to make a living for their mother and the family.  And here the detective part comes in.  He come to the country in 1881 ''(Ed. Note: 1878)''.  That's when they first took up that place in Concho and  it was in '84, probably the last part of '84, that he got this letter, it's dated there, to leave.  That's not many years.  He got paid off a hundred to one when he left the Order up there and he was broke when he left to go down over the mountains, would indicate to me he was a damn poor poker player.  But anyhow, be that as it may, you can include that in your writings if you want to but it is, a little gambling, is a long time trait in both families that cropped up from now and then, we got it from the Harris family on the other side too.  All because Uncle David Aldridge got lucky in San Bernardino one time.  He married a Harris, incidentally, Uncle Bill's sister.  He got lucky and won, oh almost a hundred-thousand dollars in a poker game.  Two big bags of gold.  It was all he could do to load 'em on a horse and  course he didn't figure that he'd ever get where he was going with those.  The poker game broke up just after daylight see, between daylight and sunup and those other guys didn't figure he'd get to goin' where he was goin'.  But he had two what they called horse pistols, big long barreled pistols and he had them already on his saddle loaded full blast.  And they didn't know about that and when he went aboard he got out in the middle of the street and he hit a run with the horse, see and he would have really fogged anything up that moved on the side but he made it, made it to where he had backin'.  And anyhow, on account of that game why he was always considered a very smart man by the Harris family and quite a few of 'em done a little poker playin' on account of it.   

'''John''':  They were committed.     

'''Roy''':  It just adds up.  That's not very long, that's not very many years and he was drawing a salary over there, he was drawing a salary here in St. Johns for being captain of the guard along with the rest, my detective mind just got busy on it and matched all these things up.

'''Roy''': Yea Well I didn't know very much about him after he got down there until I got ahold of a book that his boy wrote, no his grandson wrote, and the old man went plumb off the deep end down there drinkin' and  he got so he'd come home and kind of rough his wife up and Marion didn't like that, he was the same age as Pa, only a half-brother, see.  According to that book that Ben wrote, Benjamin Franklin, his son wrote, the old man come home and started to roughing his mother up and the kid come in and seen him and just reached out the door where they had a single tree leanin' up there, about that long and they were about that big around, made out of hickory.  It was a perfect club and he laid 'er up there across the old man there, I guess he tried to kill him, but he knocked the old man just colder than a wedge and then he knew he was through around there, there was no use both of them trying to live under the same roof, so he shoved off and went down into Old Mexico and  went to work at a mining, for a mining engineer down there.  The mining engineer kind of took over an  tutored him along and made a whole new story of its own.  Well, Grandpa went on over to Silver City following the mines.   

'''John''':  A few years, anyway?  

'''Roy''': Yeah, he'd married the little girl that went with pa out to get water when the Apaches was up there.   

'''John''':  So several years had elapsed?  

'''Roy''':  Yeah, he might have gone to sea. There have been several instances where a coffin has been washed out, see, out of a graveyard and dumped into the sea and it makes a sea voyage.  It's a perfect thing . . . Well, now we come back to Concho.  For awhile Haight was makin' a living for them, for the family.   

'''Roy''':  There was another brother, John.  He was young, he was just a toddler and Aunt Fan was I don't know, yeah Aunt Fan was there with them 'cause she wouldn't have gone with the other woman, see and Zora, she was younger than Fan, (not) she was there and there was those two girls and John, guess that's it.  And pa.   

'''Roy''': 5 kids.  ''(Ed. Note: 6 also Clarissa Isabell?)'' Well, they had a hell of a time, first the Mexicans, they tried to starve them out, then they got to feelin' sorry for them and gave them a little work, see, but they just damn near starved to death but they had the best damn place in the whole country there.  Some things you can't raise and when your clothes wears out, it's hard to produce them on a farm.  They  had the Greer boys, about the only friends they had but they didn't, they might as well, probably been better off without 'um sometimes and Pa was a tellin' about when Cleveland's time, it was a great depression before the turn of the century, when Grover Cleveland was in and he was elected on a certain thing that he guaranteed to do and everybody told him, says, it'll throw the country into a panic but he didn't think so but he kept his word and for 4 years they had  "Cleveland's time" and there was just no money, it just went out of circulation and that was it.  There was for 2 years there wasn't even a cattle buyer at any price for the steers that was raised in this country and the sheep men could sell a little wool on account of the government used it for uniforms for the soldiers, but the meat they couldn't sell.  Well, they had to shear those sheep and it was a nasty job and somehow they got started off they had to pay for that and they only guys that had any money was the sheepmen and they had to pay for the shearing and everybody wanted to shear sheep for them, even the Greer boys. Pa and Haight, they got a job shearing sheep and so did the Greer boys.  Pa says they was a shearin' away there and the Greer boys was down there really getting with it and oh they hated it.  They were the ones that would hold their nose  when they rode up to the camp to visit with Pa and Haight 'cause they were sheep men, see, hold their nose all the time they visited, they couldn't stand the smell here they are down in the bottom  a shearin' sheep so these two old big fat Mexicans got up there and oh, you never seen a dandy till you've seen those old Mexican sheep men, dressed up you know, they always wore suits, tailor made suits, see and they was on a, put on a new one and here they'd go a chain here with an elks tooth hangin' on it, it fastened on one side and there was a watch pocket over here and they could look at the time, lot of crap like that.  Well they got positioned up there and they each lit a cigar and they pretended that they didn't know the Greer boys was there and one of 'em says "they tell me the Greer boys do not like sheep, I wonder why they don't like sheep?"  the other one said, "That is a false statement my friend, the Greer boys like sheep, look at them.  They are hugging them!  They love them!"  Pa said if those Greers 'd of had a pistol they'd a killed those two Mexicans, he knew damn well.  There was nothing they could do about it, they had to have that money and they put up with that kind of insults. Better not play that tape to the Greers, it won't be too popular.  That ain't part of their script at all. Well, finally there was one old man over there, an old Mexican man, come to Pa and Haight and says, "Why don't you boys go into the sheep business, that's where the money is, if you have stock, why you're all right.  Unless you can cash in on your share of this grass, you just as well give it up.  Well, they couldn't go into the sheep business, they couldn't even pay taxes,  He says,  "I'll tell you what, now these old sheep are doomed to die, maybe she's pregnant, and in the spring she would have just as good a lamb as any other sheep but she won't live.  She won't have teeth; she can't keep up, she'll die.  So every sheep man knows 'em they can go through and they can tell you just which ones won't.  He says,  "I'll let you have all that are in my herd for a dollar apiece, and pay for it when you can, I won't get nothing otherwise.  When you can!  Someday; years!  And I'll spread the word to the others and some of 'em 'll take it up."  And some of um did.  And said,  "You boys have raised all this feed."  They were working son of a guns, but they'd raised this feed cause they had nothing else to do and then nothing to feed it to, see, and that's what they did.  They bought those sheep on time, dollar a head.  They went in the sheep business that way.  After a few years, Pa said it never dawned on him until suddenly, he was a riding along and he had a new saddle and a new fat horse and following two herds of sheep to the mountains, check book in his pocket, he still thought he was poor.   

'''Roy''':  Yeah, They were teenagers when that happened on account of Haight was supposed to get married and eventually Pa.  

==Homesteading at Vernon==

'''Roy''':  Well, that comes along with what is known as the "Concho curse."  The people in Concho, the Mormons that, they put the names in a hat, see, they put the description of land, see, so many acres when they got all their people that wanted to settle there.  They had these plots surveyed and numbered they put 'em in and a man comes up and pays his money and draws out of there it's up to him what he got and over to Concho there was part of that land that was sandy loam where the sand had washed down over this clay and mixed in with it until it wasn't clay soil anymore but it was had enough clay in it that to  hold the moisture and nutrients and it was good.  Good land and bad land.  The bad land, when it rained you couldn't even walk across it cause you got about that much mud on each foot, that old sticky mud.  Well, those guys had a hell of a time getting their seed back, but the guys with the good land, man, Concho was all right.  It was the garden spot of Arizona, they called it.  Well these people that had the bad land, they concocted a scheme.  Why not take the water that they impounded there in the Concho Reservoir and ditch it down the stream course? Down to the Hunt valley, where it was all good land, down where Doc Ellsworth was and then they could all have good land.  But these other guys cited 'em to the fact that the evaporation on that much ditch, the evaporation and sinkage would lower the stream 'til none of them would have anything when it got down there.  Well they hung on that point.  They even got to where they were takin' their guns to church with them.  All belonged to the same church, see.  Then they got to where they wouldn't go to church at all and it was just a bad situation.  So they sent one of the apostles to straighten it out, so he would talk to one faction and the other faction and the other faction trying to get 'em something, a little common ground.  And they couldn't, the longer he was there the worse it got.  Finally he decided that it was a lost cause and there was just nothing could be done about it, cause these people wasn't gonna budge.  Anything was said about it, crystalized it more than ever.  So he advertised that he had the solution to the whole thing and to come and have one big meeting.  And he beat the bushes until they all got out to see what he had to say.  And he told 'em that the situation was beyond human power to resolve it and that he had the authority to release them from their call as colonizers.  And he says,  "I release you from your call.  You're free to go where you want to.  Concho is no more as far as the church is concerned.  I release you with this prophecy:  That Concho will wither and die like a melon on a dead vine."  Which it has.   

'''John''':  Well, is that about when your Dad and Uncle Haight decided to go homestead at Vernon?   

'''Roy''': Yeah, when this breakup come.  It was all over there for them.  Their friends, the people they were raised with, they were all movin' out.  They were on the range see, and they had learned to, incidentally, grandpa still had a remnant of his cows and when he got out of this here "captain of the guards," he'd lost his squatters right up at Valle Bonito, the old Goodman set, so he made a deal with the Mexicans at Mineral.  Rented a house and moved his cattle up there, that was his headquarters.  Well, while they were there and Haight and Grandpa was still riding herd on this big bunch of cattle, the Mexicans had raised down in the Scott place, that meadow down there, they'd raised a barley patch, a big barley field and they didn't have the way of gatherin' it that we have nowadays and time they got through mowin' and gatherin' up there was about, well, just too much of this crop still down there but it was just goin' to waste so anybody was welcome to go pick it up by hand  and my Dad found out that it was worth five dollars a hundred pounds and that he could thresh it by hand, gather it up by hand and thresh the stuff by hand and eventually git him five dollars, so he did that.  Well that's quite a chore for a little kid to do that, see.  He wanted the money, he'd seen a pair of boots down to St. Johns or Concho in a store and that's what he was aimin' at.  Those boots were five dollars, red boots, red leather boots.  So when he got it done he says to his Dad when he went for supplies, he says, "I saved this up, a hundred pounds here and I want those boots.  Will you sell this barley for me and bring back the boots?"  And Grandpa told him yes, throwed the sack in and never said anymore about it.  Pa never heard of the boots anymore and there was a gap between him and his Dad like there was between me and Pa, see, so they didn't talk things over, see, and Pa held that against his Dad till the day he died.   

'''Roy''':  No, she put up a homestead, see.  Time they got up there, John Wilhelm was old enough that he was married and had a little bunch of cattle and he homesteaded.  ''(Ed. note:  In Gloria Andrus' book she states that John and his wife Luella homesteaded in Vernon in 1907)''  Ya had Haight's homestead and Pa's homestead, side by side.  And John's was on the west of Haight's where the west side of Vernon is on Haight's homestead, just a quarter of a mile strip there was Haight's and John's bordered onto that thing there toward the knoll and Grandma's was over in the flat there west of John's and that's the way it was. ''(Ed. note:  Why, if B.H. could not homestead twice, could his wife?)''   

'''Roy''':  Yeah, that's right.  

'''John''':  Well now, we've talked about John, he married somebody and I read about him and his troubles in a Rothlisberger book, he must have married a Rothlisberger.  (Ed. note: He married Luella Hall June 25, 1906.  After John's death on June 9, 1911, she married a Rothlisberger.)

'''John''':  But what about the two sisters, Zora and Fan, what do you know about their . . . ?   

'''Roy''':  Zora went down to, now wait, there was a girl that married a Rogers fellow and he went up with this homestead drive and he homesteaded "John Dutch's" place, John Rothlisberger's place and then he moved off and turned his equity over to John and John homesteaded.  It happened all the time.  You'd buy a homesteader out; buy his squattin' rights, get him out and you'd file on it, see.  Now what was her name, oh that's Zora.   

'''John''':  Zora was the one that married the Rogers?   

'''Roy''': Yeah,  I guess through, see they were one family and he was corresponding with this other family, Marion's family, down there, that was the attraction.  Went down there to work in the mines or something, he went down there and that's why we've got that Rogers bunch down there now.  We have relatives down there, the Rogers.  However, can't think of his name, the main one of them, he died and he had kids.  

'''John''':  By the main one you're not talking about the one that married your Aunt Zora?  You're talking about somebody later than him?   

'''John''':  When B.H. headed out.   

'''Roy''':  Now you take Ben F. Williams.  He was the mayor, his dad was before him.  And he was the mayor of Douglas and I corresponded  with him, I made him a present of the History and he, what was I going to tell you about him, anyway he's a nice guy.  Oh, he's in, oh what I was going to tell you about him, he's in genealogy, he's not a religious guy but he's got this thing about genealogy and he sent me a whole bundle, we'll get it and dig into it  . . .

'''Roy''':  Oh you mean to go back to grandma Clarrissa, huh?   

'''Roy''':  Well, the furthest I know is tradition about this old man, now it was handed down that his name was Johannas Katronis, but I don't think there was ever such a man.  I think he was trying to be funny, for his grandkids, making up a name for himself see because John A. Wilhelm is the old man that's buried back there.  

'''Roy''':  Yeah and people like that, they don't have this swimmin' the Rhine river.  But the hell of it is, the old man, the tradition come down through our family said that he had a knapsack full of bread, he'd saved it so he'd have stuff to eat when he deserted and  a razor, a big razor.  And I didn't see the razor,  somebody stole it from the ranch up there before I was big enough to know there was a razor.  My dad said the blade on that razor was that long, (indicated about ten inches) just a giant thing, and the old man swam the Rhine river with that.   

'''John''':  Which your Dad had and he got it from his Dad, along with the story.   

'''John''':  Now is there a generation between John A. Wilhelm and B.H.?   

'''Roy''': Yeah, oh yeah John Benjamin  was John A's (son) or whoever that old man's name was.  He probably got two or three names.  In fact look at the Wilhelms now, we don't know whether  we're Wilhems or Williams.  We've kicked it back and forth playin' ping pong with the name.  But he probably did that, being a deserter, he probably had two or three titles that he swung back and forth.  That's what fouls it up.   

'''John''':  John Benjamin's the one that pulled up stakes when they was fighting over the old mans estate?   

'''Roy''':  That's right.  He's the one that pulled out he's the one that died and buried.  Clarrissa, old grandma Clarrissa, got the black eyebrows like I got and like Andy's got, your boy.  And he joined the church.  

'''Roy''':  Well their first move was to the west New York.  I think that's where they joined the church.  But he got tuberculosis, I guess, at the Mississippi river.  He intended to go across the plains but he was too sick to make it.  So she drifted on down to where they had been down in Missouri where the mobs had run them out but she didn't tell them she was Mormon.  You've read her letter haven't you?   

'''John''':  I was going to say, we have an account of hers don't we, for a lot of that history?     

'''Roy''':  Well that's the guy; she buried him there, plus three kids and just had the two boys left.  ''(Ed. Note:  According to genealogy records, James Return, Susan Clarissa, Bateman Haight and Ellen Albinia were alive when they left Missouri)''  And then this Holliday, this wagon master, was lookin' for a good cook.  And she was a good cook and so she signed on to cook for him and his out riders for passage for her and the two boys.   

'''Roy''':  Haight and James.   

'''John''': B.H., the same old B.H. that we were talking about earlier?     

'''Roy''':  Yeah, the one that got hit on the head with the single tree.  James went back for a visit.   

'''Roy''':  Never knew what happened to him.  And that damn singer back there, Andy Williams.  Williams fits right in there, looks enough like, did up to a certain point, like Uncle Haight's kids did when they were young, twenty  year olds.  I don't know, if I knew how to go about it I'd try and see.  I figure that what he did he just told her he was workin' to get a little more grub stake to come on out.  He probably fell for some girl and she was anti-Mormon and he just washed his hands of the whole thing and stayed there.  Went back to, well they were already Williams.  They were Williams when they went there.  They went back to Wilhelm when they come down here to Arizona.  The church told them, on account of genealogical things, to take it back.  Then they told the old man when he went on to Mexico, better swing back.  So it was Williams down there.