Confinement and Toothache
Before Ida was born I was thankful for the privilege of becoming a mother again. Yet at the thought of my coming confinement I would almost turn cold. I was frightened almost to death, on account of the dreadful time I had had in my previous confinements. I sought the Lord with all my strength that He would give me courage and bring me safely through.
God was with me, and I rejoiced amid the work and anxiety for I longed to be the mother of a fine family of children.
On the 10th of January, 1885, my Ida Lorena was born in my bedroom in the southeast corner of our home. Mary Swindle, who had been to Salt Lake and studied under Dr. Maggie Ellis Ship, was our midwife. I was very sick for many hours. She compelled me to lie on one side. She would not let me turn in any other position, though baby’s head was in sight for four hours, and she kept telling me the next pain would be the last. Finally she became discouraged, and mother told her to let me change the position, and as I did so, every thing went fine. The next day she put her arms around me and cried, she said, “Your awful suffering was all my fault.”
Ida was another fine intelligent child, another child of prayer. I was so thankful for such bright intelligent children.
Time passed rapidly on with joy, anxiety, happiness, and problems intermingled all along the way.
In 1885, when Ida was about 9 months old, I had never had toothache, but one tooth had a small cavity in it, and my husband urged me to go to Dr. Smith, a traveling dentist, who was working in our town, and have the tooth extracted. On examination the dentist said [Page 57] it should be filled, but my husband said “cold steel is the only remedy for an imperfect tooth.” The dentist said that my teeth were so solid that if I was his wife he would not ask me to sit down to have it out for 25 dollars, but my husband thought he was just wanting to get a job.
When I sat down the dentist buttoned his coat from too to bottom, and told me to grip his coat firmly and hold on. It was a half hour before sundown, and he worked until the twilight. He broke the tooth off twice, tried to pry out the roots, and finally gave it up. He said he had never found such teeth. He said, “Keep your teeth filled, for they will never be any easier to take, until after you are 45.” (I am now 78 and they are still solid.) The doctor was now at Elsinore. He put in 7 fillings for me during the next few days. My broken tooth began to ache, and ached hard for a month. My husband poured out a stream of apologies for being so insistent about having the dentist try to extract that tooth.
The dentist promised to keep my teeth filled for five years without any further cost, as I was one of the first in Sevier County to have my teeth filled, but I never saw him again for 12 years.
In Our New Home at Monroe
About this time Aunt Julla’s fifth child, Clara, was born. She was a fine little girl.
As persecution of those in polygamy was increasing, Pa decided it was no longer safe to have his two wives in the same house. So he bought another home, one block west, and a block south from a Aunt Julia’s home.
The home was bought in the spring of 1886. It was an adobe house with one large room. During that spring time we planted trees, shade trees on the sidewalk and fruit trees in the lot – pairs, apples, peaches, black cherries, and sweet blue damson plums. There were wild plums and currants growing on the place when we bought it. We planted a garden, laid out paths to the coral, and to the front gate, after Pa and Uncle Martin did a lot of leveling and scraping around the house to where the lawn should be, and covered the door yard with sand. After that they dug a cellar on the south side which they covered with a good sized frame kitchen, with a closet and cupboards built in. The house was finished inside with a fine coat of new plaster. And oh! What a delightful place it was. I was wild to move in. We [Page 58] raised a fine garden there that year. Little B. F. went with me day after day and was delighted, and as he tried to use the hoe or pulled a few weeds, he surely felt his manly importance. On one occasion as we walked home after doing some work on our new lot, he said, “Mamma, do you know why my overalls make such a loud noise.” I told him I did not know. He said, “When I walk I rub my knees together and it sounds just like a big man, ‘cause that’s the way men do.”
On another occasion as we walked home he said, “Mamma, I do wish we had a whole herd of boys like Barneys.” I asked him why. He said, “Why they could go in the field and help papa and I could do all this work for you.”
In August and the first of September sweet baby, Ida, was very sick for a few weeks with summer complaint. I carried her in my arms a good part of the time, and felt so sorry for the dear little soul. In those days children and some adults were stricken with that complaint during August and September. Often there was a real epidemic of that disease and many died; choleramarbus they called it.
On September 10, 1886, our dear Lottie was born. Mary Swindle was midwife. Mother came and-nursed me and helped take care of Bent and little sweet sick Ida. When Ida saw a new baby in bed with mamma, and she so sick, and needed me so, it nearly broke her little heart, until she was getting better, then she loved baby dearly.
I had had 7 teeth filled a year before and while I was in bed with Lottie, one filling came out, and I took an awful toothache. My jaw gathered and broke and I had no real sleep for 10 days and nights. Oh! it was awful. No doctor. Bishop Thomas Cooper had a collection of fine doctor books which he studied a lot. He came down often. Pa was away to Salt Lake. Bro. Cooper and Mother did all they could, but to no avail. On that 10th day they sent to Richfield to see if they could get Sister Ramsey or Sister Lund (two doctor ladies who went out among the sick) but they were too busy with other sick people to come. Pa got back as far as Richfield and was going to stay for the night but he heard how very sick I was and came on home.
My face and neck were very badly swollen, and my agony was awful. I lay praying for help, and had been praying all the time for days. As I lay there so very sick I remembered that someone had [Page 59] said that the warm entrails of a chicken would draw out inflammation and I called mother and Aunt Julia and told them. They went to the coop and caught a chicken; the neighbor man cut the head off. They opened it quickly, brought the warm entrails, applied them to my badly swollen jaw and face. They eased me a little, and as they got cold, Mother and Julia got the entrails of another one the same way. I got easier again, and while the entrails of the 3rd one was on the swelling on my jaw it broke. Oh the awful corruption which came, at least a whole quart within 24 hours. The stench was almost unbearable. I, however, was thankfu1 beyond measure for ease from that awful pain. It continued to drain for a month when some small pieces of bone came out through the opening. Two of them were from one half to three quarter inches in length. I had neuralgia along with toothache for about 11 months after that. Then Cyrus Wheelock came gathering donations for the Manti Temple. He administered to me and I never had neuralgia or toothache again for at least one and a half years, and was I thankful.
The New Home
I moved into my lovely little home in the spring of 1887, and was I the happiest girl in the land. Oh how I worked and made lovely ornaments to decorate my little mansion. Lovely tidies on every table and chair back. Lamp mats, beautiful ones, for the kerosene lamps, towers and boxes, covered with shells, and varnished, for the mantle piece. For the kitchen table white oil cloth hand painted with floral designs. Also a splasher at the back of the wash bowel. The little home was a haven of piece and rest. Often James Farmer, SR, on his journeys about town selling books, magazines, and papers, would call in to rest. He always looked around the house, and sometimes heaved a sigh, and said, “Oh what solid comfort a man could take reading the paper in a home like this.”
Some of the town’s people and school teachers have told me it was like going to a fair to come to my house.
I was president of the Y. L. M. I. A. and had presided for nearly ten years. Often some of the young girls and their boy friends would call in the evenings and visit a while. I loved those girls, and felt that they were almost like members of my own family.
From 1881 to 1883 while our husband was on a mission to Norway, we held the M. I. A. weekly meetings at our own home, and [Page 60] some of the girls have told me since their own children were grown, that as they walked home from the meetings held at our home, when our husband was on his mission in the early eighties, that they made a vow they would never marry unless there were two of them, so they could live an ideal, happy life like Aunt Julia and I.
After I moved to my little home Aunt Caroline Washburn told me that she daren’t come with her children visiting because I kept everything so spic and span, but that were merely imaginary. I always had a good supply of blocks and play things and wanted my children to bring their playmates home in sunshine or storms.
Perhaps Ralph and Alma Nielson, two of the neighbors, although they are grandfathers now, will remember the times when they were playing with B. F. on stormy muddy days, how, when they were tired of playing out side would all run to the door-step and wait while I got the mop cloth and cleaned off the shoes of the group, to save the floors from being covered with mud tracks. And perhaps within half an hour the kitchen floor would be filled with toy houses, corrals, and barns, made from the wood blocks, the odds and ends from the carpenter’s bench. And when lunch was announced, they all sat at the table like little men and enjoyed the lunch.
During the period before Lottie was born, I was determined that I would not follow the old custom of housing up any longer. During my former pregnancies I had stayed at home as was the custom, for several months before my children were born, and before one could recover from confinement it seemed ages before we could go to church again. So I bought natural colored linen and made what we called a duster, a summer wrap and went to church gatherings. My husband would have preferred that I remained at home, but I needed the spiritual food which I got at church, and the contact of other good people. There was another woman in town who was going out just as I was, Catherine Erickson, and it so happened that we were chosen on the committee to help arrange the program for the Fourth of July.
I was surely happy that my husband had bought a home for me, and that springtime I took my small 5 year old son B. F. and planted a garden there. He was so happy to help me plant. He would drop the peas in the furrow which I had made, and I covered them.
Whenever I became pregnant I prayed earnestly, day and night that God would give me a bright intelligent child, free from deformity of body or mind, a child that would be a blessing and comfort to me and our home. He heard and answered my prayers in every one of my blessed children. [Page 61]
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