Interview with Roy Wilhelm, Summer 1993

From taped interview with Karen sometime in 1993

Karen:  Did your Dad know his half-brothers and sisters?  Roy: Oh sure.  Karen: Did they play together?  Roy: Oh sure.  They lived close together.  Did they ever communicate with them after they left and went to Mexico?  Roy:  Not as such, they didn't stay in touch.  i think they heard about the other one from people coming and going but they drifted apart.  Karen: Did B.H. write to Lydia while he was gone, did they stay in touch?  Roy:  I don't know that.  They wasn't divorced or anything.  But they (Lydia and family) felt pretty bitter toward him.  He must have sold a little stuff and took a little money with him and they didn't get any of it.  They pretty near starved to death.  For some reason they always felt a little bad toward the old man.  Karen: Also we noticed on the census records they had B.H., Grace and their kids in Concho but I couldn't find Lydia anywhere in Concho.  Did he maybe leave her in Utah when he first came down to Arizona and then her and her family come down later?  Roy:  If anybody come down later it was Grace......  I don't know how they figured the census..just the ones that lived in surveyed Concho.  My folks never lived there.  They lived on the ranch, the ranch that Candeleria has, it was their homestead and it was outside of a surveyed place and if they're doing census they don't go on the ranches around.  So maybe that's how they got missed.  (Later research of census records of Utah in 1880 show Lydia and her kids and B.H. still in Utah in June of 1880.  So apparently they did come down later than Grace's family) Karen: I think I remember you telling about your mom teaching school up at the White School house here.  Would you tell the story about you kids going up there with her.  Roy:  Well, one reason she took that, she had been teaching school all the time and when us kids come along she wanted to go back and teach at the old White School because she thought that was the best way that she could teach us to  talk Spanish.  To take us with her as she taught school, so Andy and I went with her up there, but about all I ever learned was to swear in Spanish and that's about all, and how to throw rocks.  Karen:  How long did you guys go to school up there?  Roy: One year.  Andy was the right age, he picked up quite a bit of Spanish enough so that he could the rest of his life he could talk to Mexicans and get an understanding.  Karen:  What grade were you in?  Roy:  I wasn't in a grade, I just had a little desk by my mother's desk.  Karen:  Oh, so you were pretty young then.  Are there any other stories you can remember about your Mom?  Roy:  I remember that she loved kids, everyone's kids, she just loved kids and she invited them to come to our home, come there to play, we had just scads of kids at our place all the time and they were always welcome, she always get a little lunch for the whole crew and we had a good time on account of it.  It's just a good thing to remember back on,  all the acquaintances we made there right at home where the kids come to play, other people didn't like to tend their own kids so they let them come.    Karen:  Did your Mom ever talk about when she was a little girl?  Was she born in St. Johns?    Roy:  No, she was born in Glendale, Utah.  She didn't talk much about her girlhood days.  Grandma, she talked a lot about her girlhood days in Glendale but she was strictly St. Johns.  Karen:  It looks like she must have been involved in a lot of things when she was a young girl, a teenager?  Roy: Oh, yes she was.  She started the St. Johns mandolin and guitar club and its hung on so long after my mother was dead and become so popular that they have appropriated it to other people.  They say that Aunt Mary Farr did that, now they say that Mrs. E.I. Whiting did that, Aunt Mary's daughter, but when I was a kid it was always understood that my mother was the founder of it and she kept the thing going.  And they had their sessions, anybody that could play a mandolin or guitar rounded up, they used to come to our place and play.....  There was a guy come through here, a guy named Stafford and really a guitar player and My mother got Pa to take her to, he was to give a concert, he charged for it, and there.... and when the concert was over she went home and she tuned up her guitar, it was tuned different the way she did.  She tuned it up and played all the things that Stafford had played.  But before he left town Mother got Pa to agree to pay Stafford to give her a few lessons.  So they went and propositioned him about it and he said O.K., he would, he says I want to see how far along you are with the guitar and we'll know where to start  so he handed her his guitar and she sat there and played all the tunes that she had heard him play.  And when she got through, she had played some of them old classics, "La Paloma" and a few of those old Spanish things that he hadn't played and he says "I can't give you lessons." And that's the way it was every time.  They went to California and stayed all winter took her out there to a Dr. a specialist and they looked for someone that would give her guitar lessons and in every case they would have her play and say I can't give you lessons.  She played so many different ways, too, she tuned it three different ways.  My brother Andy, he inherited this all  from her, he just naturally  .......he had to hire me to do it, we would take turns a washing the dishes up at Vernon and he would wash my dishes if I would play the guitar with him.  Karen:  I also wanted to ask you about, your dad married Alice Crosby after your mom died and they had a little girl?  Do you know what her name was?  Roy:  Yeah, Ruth  Karen:  Do you know where she's buried?  Roy:  She's buried up there, whether there's a marker or not I don't know.  I gonna, next time I'm over to city hall, I'll get them to dig out that map and go over it plot by plot, but she isn't buried by any of the Wilhelms.  There's only one Wilhelm plot up there  and Marion is in a place kind of by himself but it's close to our Wilhelm plot and Andy's a little farther away.  But she isn't around any of them.  Karen:  So you know what she died of?  Roy:  Oh, the poor little girl, she had thyroid trouble, was born with it.  She'd pret-near choke to death ever time she'd try to eat.  And my Dad went broke  hauling her from one big town to another to whoever was supposed to be a specialist, spent everything he had and they didn't do ....Karen:  How long did she live?  Roy:  She was 4 or 5.  Nature isn't very fair sometimes.  (speaking about the knife story).....they just kind of daubled in witchcraft in those days, in fact my dad told me that when he was a little kid one of the first things he could remember was a mob out of the Mormon town took an old lady that they thought was a witch and burned her at the stake.  ...Well they was right out on the front, ignorant people from all over Europe.