A sketch of My Life - Don

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The following verses express the great hope, privilege and desire of my life.

The world is as you take it
And life is what you make it.

Freedom

Know this that every soul is free
To choose his life and what he'll be
For this eternal truth is given
That God will force no man to Heaven


He'll call persuade direct aright
Bless us with wisdom love and light
In nameless ways be good and kind
But never force the human mind.

Wisdom and reason make us men
Take these away, what are we then
Mere animals and just as well
The beasts may think of heaven or hell.

Don L. Bigelow was born May 22, 1866, at Heber City, Wasatch County, Utah in a little old log house with a dirt roof. In the early spring of 1866 there was an Indian scare. People were advised to move to the county seat, where they could be better protected in case of Indian raids. Indians had been killing people in different parts of the country. One incident which caused much alarm was two boys went up American Fork canyon for wood, the Indians killed them both.

Another incident about that time a company of men and boys went up Springville hobblecreek to get wood. They went in bunches on account of the hostile Indians. Two boys brothers got delayed, and went after the crowd did. The boys were only ten and twelve years old. When they went in the canyon to follow the crowd they got on the wrong road. They tried to get a load of wood and night came on. So they tied the oxen up to the wagon so they wouldn't stray off and went to bed. About nine or ten o'clock they were awakened by two buck Indians. They were told to get up, put their shoes on, and untie the cattle from the wagon and unyoke them. Then they took the cattle and the boys follow them toward Strawberry valley. After they had drove them high to the high point of the night, the other boy began to cry. Then the Indians told him if he didn't stop crying they would kill him and leave him so he stoped crying. they went on till long toward morning. Then the Indians desided to stop and rest. They rolled up in their blankets and tied the largest boy to one of their feet. After the Indians went to sleep the oldest boy had taken an old razor blade in his pocket. He cut the rope with that, then woke his brother and they took their gun and six shooter, the Indians had taken their powder horn and ammunition, but the two guns were loaded. Then they started the oxen back on the trail. The boys got tired of walking and one of the oxen was used to bing rode. They both got on him, the little boy got sleepy and would nearly fall off but the older boy sensed the danger and kept him awake. When daylight and the sun came up about nine or ten they kept a watch on the trail behind them. They saw those two Indians coming behind them so they got off the ox and got behind some big rocks that were there close by, and waited till the Indians came close. The oldest boy took the rifle and the other on the six shooter, the older boy said "I will count to three and we will both shoot at once." They hit one Indian in the hip and crippled him for life. The Indians shot arrows at the boys and tried to kill them but the rocks protected them. In a little while they heard the white men coming. The Indians hid in the brush and sneeked off. The white men took the boys unharmed but frightened. Also they got the cattle went back on the trail and went home. Later the two Indians came to Springville and one of them limped from the bullet wound. They saw the boys and recognized, them and said "Them heap brave boys."

After the Indian scare was over part of the people went back to Wallsburg. But my parents with others went to Provo to live for some time. While my parents were, moving back to Wallsburg up Provo canyon they tipped their wagon over in the river. Lost part of their belongings, and some chickens they were taking crated in a box went floping down the river and were lost. I said "What luck now we havnt got any home." I was just big enough to talk a little.

When the people came back to Wallsburg they built a fort in a square. All the houses facing the center, for a protection from the Indians. The first lesson my Mother gave me in honesty was in that fort. My sister Emily and I were in Ann Wheelers dooryard and we found a button and a straight pin. We went home thinking what we found belonged to us. My Mothers words has stayed with me all my life. She said "Dont you know they belong to someone else? When you find things you must always try to find the owner. Now you found them in Ann Wheelers door yard, you must take them back and tell her you found them there and give them to her. You must tell her you are sorry and ask her forgiveness." In those days pins and buttons were scarce and hard to get.

I remember living in the fort when I was about three or four years old the saying of Brigham Young was "It is better to feed the Indians than to fight them." So the men of the fort decided to buy a large steer that belonged to one of the men and each man was to pay an equal share and give the steer to the Indians. The buck Indians killed the steer just out south of the fort. A group of squaws came in and dressed the beef. The little Indians stood by and watched and so did I. After they got it dressed they gave Father or Grandfather a piece of liver. It was cooked at Grandmothers and I will always remember how good that liver was. Later I was told that Indians would not eat the liver that may have been the reason we got the liver.

On July 28, 1872 I had a Patriarchel blessing given me by John Smith has been a guide to me through life. The power, of the Lord rested down on him so much it made him so weak he had to go lie down and rest after he was through giving it. Here is a copy of it.

Wallsburg, Wasatch Co, Utah, Territory, July 28, 1872. A blessing by John Smith Patriarch upon the head of Daniel Don Louis Bigelow Son of Daniel and Permelia Bigelow. Born in Heber City, Wasatch Co, Utah Territory, May 22, 1866.

Daniel Don Louis Bigelow in the name of Jesus Christ I lay my hands upon thy head and bless thee with a Fathers blessing which is also Patriarchel. Thou art numbered with the sons of zion of whom much is expected. Thou hast many years to live if thou wilt fill up the measure of thy creation. For the Lord has a work for thee to do in which thou shalt see his arm made bare in behalf of Isreal.

Thou art of the lienage of Ephraim and an heir to the blessings of the new and everlasting covenant with the gifts of the Priesthood and I say unto thee honor and obey thy parents and as you grow in years grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth and thou shalt become a mighty man, in Isreal and thy name shall go forth among the nations of the Earth and thou shalt have great faith and be mighty in healing the sick by the laying on of hands many shall seek thee for council and wonder at thy wisdom and if necessary thou shalt command the elements and the waves of the sea shall obey thy voice and thou shalt gather of this worlds goods around thee, all that shall be necessary in life.

Thy name shall be handed down, in honorable rememberance and written in the Lambs book of life. This blessing I seal upon thy head and I thee up unto Eternal life to come forth in the morning of the ressurection, Even so Amen.

When I was between seven and eight years old Father and two of his brothers and their familys were called to help settle southern Utah. They didnt all go together. Father had a herd of cattle. He hired a man to go help drive the cattle down. We didnt get started till late in the fall. We got snow bound in what they called wild cat canyon after the storm cleared up we rounded up the cattle and drove to Kanosh. From there to a place that was called the Black Rocks. There we wintered the cattle on what they called white sage and what little grass they could find. While there we lived in a covered wagon and a tent all winter and long toward spring President Brigham Young came that way on a mission tour and at Kanosh he held a meeting. Father told him how he had left his valuable land and a homestead he hadn't proved up on. President Young advised him to take his family and go back to Wallsburg and prove up on the ground. When the weather got good in the spring we moved back to Wallsburg.

There were no pastures to keep the milk cows in so all of the town cows were taken by the young boys over a, hill called the little devide there they would graze over the big devide, then go down to the lower end of the valley on a green spot. So we boys had to take our dinners down on the green spot to heard the cows so they wouldnt get on the ground the men mowed for hay. A family lived down there by the name of Owens. Mrs Owens came down there one day with a six shooter and shot in the air to frighten us. She said we'd killed her geese and if we killed any more she would kill us. I hadn't killed any of her geese and didnt know about any being killed and the rest of the boys said they hadnt killed them. We were sure all of us badly frightened though, and promised not to harm her geese. The farmers lived along the main road and when we were driving the cows home one night going up the road Jim Lamb had two bad dogs that would bite. After we passed his house the boys were all larger than I and was ahead of me running close to the cows. Both of the dogs came out and run a head of me. One of them bit Cal Duke in the thigh and the blood run down off his leg and dripped off his heel. We were all bare footed at that time.

I was baptised July 11, 1875 by Daniel Bigelow confirmed a member of the church by Wm. Nuttal about that time we moved from town out on a ranch where Father had built a homestead house. There we enjoyed life for a while. Then Father bought a saw mill in the north fork on Provo canyon. Although very young I had to help tend or round up the oxen that were turned out on the mountain to feed. Early in the morning before the work started Father told me to hunt the oxen I climbed up a steep hill through the brush. Went over in a quaking asp flat a half mile up the mountain around a hole and was coming down a trail that the oxen had made. I had an old big black dog with me. Coming down the trail the cattle had made I came into an opening about three rods square I sensed danger and my hair began to raise. I came to a thicket of willows and stopped. When I stoped just below the brush began to crack and break. I was scared stiff and couldnt move the old dog put his tail between his hind legs and howeled right behind me. The brush kept cracking and I desided it was a bear that had went on the trail and sure enough there was a bear track about eight or nine inches long. The bear had been coming up the trail and all we lacked meeting face to face was that willow bunch. The old dog was just as scared as I was.

Another time when I went to get the horses, I found them and they were running away. I tried to head them and one of the horses whirled and kicked me in the head. It dented a place im my skull and left a gash in my forhead about two or three inches long. When Father got back that day from logging there was no Dr. this side of Provo and we had to have that gash sewed up and all they had was a round sewing needle so Father started to sew it up. When he pushed the needle toward the wound I could stand that but when the needle struck the opposite side the pain was almost inbearable. I wasn't crying but the tears would roll out of my eyes. When Father got it sewed up I certainly was glad to get it over with.

When I was about sixteen years old the girls and I run the saw mill when Father went away to work. One day we all desided to go to Wallsburg the folks started out ahead of me in a wagon and they had a wild colt in the team. I was coming horse back behind them. They had just got to the top of a high dugway when the colt began to rearing and pushed the other horse off the dugway. Father called for them all to get out They all jumped out of the wagon except my sister Polly, before the wagon went off the dugway. The team and wagon with Polly in it rolled down the mountain together about thirty or forty yards. Mother was standing on the bank wringing her hands crying suposing Polly would be dead. Soon as the cloud of dust began to raise Polly came running up the side of the hill unhurt and didn't have as much as a scratch on her. But it smashed the wagon and bows up and broke the tounge out and the horses were tangled up and couldn't get away but they were unhurt.

We stayed most of the summer in the North Fork. In the fall Aunt Lucy B. Young talked Father in the notion of going to St. George for the winter to work in the temple. That spring I was sixteen I had my endowments and worked in the temple and done some endowment work for the dead. There was where I was ordained an Elder by A. P. Windor on February eight, eighteen eighty two. We lived with Aunt Lucy that winter. Some time that winter Father came back to Wallsburg. We drove the team as far north as Minnersville, I came to drive the team back. From Minnersville I drove to Beaver there I loaded up some tithing potatoes. It was cold weather, the snow was eight or ten inches deep and I put my bedding over the potatoes to keep them from freezing. I drove all night and, when I got to St. George there was only a few of the potatoes that froze but tho most of them were all right. But I suffered severely with the cold to save the potatoes.

While Father was gone Mother wanted to go to Tokerville to visit her sister Emma Hill. We stayed there with her three weeks then Father came there and we went back to St. George. We soon left there and started back home to Provo. The next spring we moved back to the saw mill. When the snow was three or four feet deep we went up the right hand fork and climbed the Timpinogas mountain almost half way to the top in the deep snow. There was a nice grove of white pine timber. A man by the name of Phillips' owned a sawmill about a mile below us in the canyon and to our surprise three of their men came in and went to cutting timber in the same grove we were. We cut logs all day then walked three miles back to the mill every night we were wet to our waists from wallowing in the snow. At day light we were up and going again. I helped haul the logs with oxen to the sawmill then hauled lumber to Provo with a horse team. The road through Provo canyon at that time was narrow and a one way road it was hard to pass a team. I run into a mans wagon one time the hind wheels locked together. The man got mad and swore, he said I could have driven farther around him.

One spring before we moved in the canyon Father and I went up in the hills and came across the left hand fork of the North fork. When we got there we saw an old black bear and two brown cubs. Father took his gun and shot the old black bear. Of all the roaring and hollering that bear done it. It was under some big ledges and the scream and roars of the old bear went up that big high mountain of ledges and every time the sound would go from one shelf to another the sound would re-echo and it sounded terrible The little bears run down twenty or thirty yards to some big quakenasp trees and up the tree they climbed thirty five or forty feet high. Father shot them out of the trees with a shot gun. We skinned the old bear and cut steaks out of the hind quarter and roasted it on the coals. It was the corsest grained meat I ever ate, but it tasted like meat just the same for we were hungry. We had been all day without our dinner.

When we were working all these summers we would come down to Provo and go to school three or four months each winter. I remember well going to the Brigham Young Acadamy down where the Farmers and Merchants Bank now stands or on third west and center street, and Carl G. Measer was the Principle. One spring that building burned down and the next winter they held school in the ware house over the ZCMI down just above the rail road track where I went to school the last time.

After we moved back to the sawmill in the summer I took the gun and went up over the hills back of the sawmill and two big buck deer jumped up and started up the hill. One of them stopped and I shot him under the lower part of his neck. The deer reared over backwards and fell head first down the hill and when I got to him the bullet had cut off his jugler vain. He had bleed to death so that was the first deer I ever killed.

Another time after we left the north fork and was moved back to Wallsburg our cows strayed off and I desided to go hunt for them. I was impressed to take my gun with me. So I went up back of the poles and around across the lane and up the valley above town around the point and as I was going up the road up on the bench where those springs are. Along about two or three o'clock in the afternoon I saw two big buck deer coming down the road. I got behind an oak bunch and the deer came down to the big spring and got a drink, then they went over through the oaks then I went up around above the oak brush and tied my horse there. I came carefully down through the brush and saw one of the deer standing by an oak bunch rubbing the velvet off his horns then I shot him, and in just a few minutes here came Parley Ford riding a horse on the run and asked me what I shot at. Supposing he had seen the deer I told him a deer and ask him if he had seen them and he said no. He and I started to hunt through the sage and oak brush for the deer. I had shot it I knew but we had no success and finely he said I have got to go. He had not been gone five minutes till I saw the deer laying down in the hollow behind me. That was a testimony to me that he should of had no part in it.

Again I used to sleep outdoors in a grainery up in the stackyard one night as usual I went to bed and it was a dark night. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was like some one told me to get up and go up hobble creek to an old fish trap that had been put in the spring before. I got up and dressed and went and as I went and crawled under the willow bunch on my hands and knees I felt a big trout about seventeen or eighteen inches long lying there on that old dry willow trap. I scratched my hand along under his belly and up to his gills and stuck my fingers under his throat and got a good hold on him. Then crawled back out and came back and wraped him in a blanket so a cat wouldnt get him and went back to sleep. Next morning the folks asked me where I got that fish and when I told them they were just as surprised as I was the night before.

That summer I logged in Daniels creek canyon for Fathers and McGuirs mill. The next summer I wouldnt go back to the mill and I stayed in Wallsburg and run the farm. I raised a good crop, that year we had twelve hundred bushels of grain and a large crop of hay. We built a sawmill there at Wallsburg, just below the town. One winter we cut two hundred thousand feet of lumber, hauled most of it to Provo and sold it to a man by the name of Ward that run a lumber yard for sixteen dollars a thousand. He said that was the most perfect sawed lumber he ever had come into his yard.

Bishop Fraughton meet me on the street in Wallsburg and asked me how I would like to go on a mission. I told him I thought it would be better to get someone with more experience so I didnt go. I have always been sorry I missed that opportunity. I worked more or less for myself untill I was married, then I went on my own.

One summer when I was about twenty three years old the Bishop had set me apart as a ward teacher and Aurther C. Whiting was living over on the ranch and Will Whiting his son was living there with his father and I was appointed to visit them. When I went over where they lived Will was there smoking so that was a good chance to talk to him on the word of wisdom so I began, but when I was about sixteen down in the north fork in Provo canyon my cousin Will Bigelow was there helping the mill and he was older then I was and he used tobacco. He used to give me a smoke and we smoked together. When Father found out I was smoking he talked to me and told me it was a bad filthy habit and it was also expensive and he wanted me to go to school the next winter down in Provo the Academy. He said if I would not use tobacco till after I was twenty one he did not think I would ever use it. So I quit and sure enough I have never used the weed from that day to this. Will Whiting was just young and I gave him about the same kind of a talk Father gave me and I told him if he would wait till he was grown or twenty one I doubted if ever he would. Well after that he quit and I think he went to the temple and was married and he never did use tobacco any more
The first time Annie and I went together I took her to a charactor ball, I wore a pair of red pants that came to the knee, trimmed with white lace. We had the time of our lives. The first winter we went together long toward spring we were going home one night after a dance. I asked her how she would like to marry and be my wife. She said she was to young so I just had one thing to do and that was to wait and hope so the second winter as spring time aproached I told her I knew a little poem that was sacred to me. She asked what it was. I said, "Will you say yes if I tell it to you?" She said "I dont know tell it to me then I will answer." Then I said:

"If you to me your heart resign
Then in return I'll give you mine."

Then she said "I will say yes to that." As spring came on and the flowers began to bloom I asked her to set the wedding day. We agreed that it should be on the twenty nineth of April so we could have our reception and dance on the first of May. We wanted to be married in the temple and the nearest one was in Manti, so we went as far as Provo in a wagon then went on the train to Manti and there we were sealed for time and all eternity. Anthony H. Lund sealed us. We were the last couple married in the temple that day and after he married us he gave us a most wonderful blessing. We have only been glad once and that was from that day to this. We always expected to be faithful and true to the covenants we made that day.

One of the grand events in our lives was when our first child was born May sixth eighteen ninety two. On July thirty first eighteen hundred ninety two I was ordained a seventy. About that time I decided I had three objects in life. First was raise an honerable and noble family. Second was to do missionary work, and the third was to do temple work. About that time I was put in as secretary in the Sunday School. I was ward teacher for forty years and worked in the mutual and was class leader in the priesthood corum. I was called out many times to administer to the sick and went any time night or day.

We moved to Vernal July eighteen ninety four and our third daughter was born there January thirtieth , eighteen ninety five. We stayed there for two years built a log house and stable correl and granery and cleared forty acres of land. We had the hardest time in our lives trying to get the necessities of life there.

Money was hard to get for example:

I took my team and hauled wood for six days and at the end of the six days I got a check for six dollars. I helped bail hay but I didnt get any money out of it only trade, and horse feed. The fall we left there we had a good crop of wheat corn squash potatoes and different vegitables but couldnt sell anything. Couldnt sell the wheat for thirty cents a bushel. We left the whole thing there but we brought a thirty gallon barrel of honey with us when we moved back that I had worked for.

One time when we were out in Ashley Mark Batty, Frank Allred, Martin Allred, Al Kerby and Zora Glenn and Annie and I and all of their familys desided to go down on Green river where Levi Holdaway lived for an outing. While there we all desided to go in swiming. We men desided to wade across Green river but when we got out there the current was so swift we gave it up so we stoped on a little island. While we were there here came the women folks trying to cross the river and they were holding hands and none of them could swim so if they had broke holts they might of all got drowned. Then we all came back together and Holdaway said to Zora Glenn get on my back and I will swim across that big hole or eddie in the river. Zora did not want to do it so I said get on his back and go and Annie will get on my back and I will swim across with her. So Zora got on his back and when they were about across I told Annie to get on mine and just keep her head out so she could breathe good and I would take her across the pond. Well when we were about half way across Annie must of got scared and she jumped right up on my shoulders and shoved my head down under water. I knew I had to make it to shore without any more breath, which I did not know whether I could do or not but I swam us out. I was out of breath when I got her and I out and I desided to never take no such chances again.

When we got back to Wallsburg I run Fathers sawmill and we got along better having a steady job all winter. Ervin our first son was born the February after we got back from Ashley. The next summer I helped Father farm and I pitched one hundred tons of hay. Then we traded the place we had in Vernal for a farm around the hill above Wallsburg. We had to start and plow up sage brush and break up another farm. I run a self binder every fall for many years. Then Father and I bought a store from Lucina Boren and had the postoffice and store combined and lived in her home till we lost four of our children in a week from dighteria and measles. Then we bought a place from Elijah Davis and moved two buildings and put them together and fixed it for the store and post office. We had to freight our goods with horse team most of our goods we got in Provo from whole sale houses. It was two days work to go get a load of goods.

'One time after we had lost our' children and I was humbled right to the Earth and it was a question in my mind whether life was worth the struggle I was going to Provo and John McAffee lived down to the lower end of the valley. He came out and stopped me and said his little girl Nadine was in the house screaming with apencicitis and he wanted to know if I would come in and administer to her. I was broken hearted and it brought my trouble all back fresh again. I said If I could do anything I would. He said come on in then I asked him if' he held the Melchesideck Priesthood and he said no then I asked if there was anyone there that did and he said Whiting is working here. I said to go ask him about it and if he will help me. He went and got Will and came in, he was scared and said he held the Priesthood but had never done anything like that. But I encouraged him and told him he could anoint her and I would help him, and tell him what to say, and how to proced. We were both humble as two children. The child was growning and moaning every breath. Dr. Wherritt from Heber had been there in the morning and had went back to prepare for an operation and had pronounced it a bad case of apendicitis and was coming back as soon as, possible and get the girl to operate on her. John said to Will and I Dont wait so they gave Will the oil and I told him what to say. He anointed her and I sealed the anointing and in the prayer we commanded the pain to cease and everything of an evil influence to leave her body that she might, be well and sound in body and by that time she had stopped crying and when we took our hands off her head she was free from pain and it worked off and out of her system in a natural way and left her free. When the Dr. came back she was at ease and he was surprised and asked what they had done then John McAffee asked the Dr. about the operation and he said there is no use of an ope ration. The girl has never been bothered with apendicitis from that day to this that I have ever heard of.

I was called on a mission a few months after we lost our children in nineteen-two, and this blessing was given to me before I left. Patriarchal blessing recorded in Book A page 216 No. 10.

Patriarchal blessing given at Heber City July 28, 1902 by John M. Murdock Patriarch on the head of Daniel Don Louis Bigelow son of Daniel and Permelia Bigelow born in Heber City May 22, 1866.

Brother Daniel Don Louis Bigelow by your desire I place my hands upon your head to pernounce upon you a Fathers blessing even a Patriarchal blessing that shall rest upon you from this time hensforth and forever, to be a comfort and a guide unto you through the journey of life an I pray God my heavenly Father that he will let a portion of Holy spirit rest upon me his humble servant and that it may be inspired thereby that the words I may speak may be the words of the Lord unto you in very deed.

Thou art a true Iseralite through the leinage of Ephraim, the son of Joseph that was sold into Egypt, and as he become a savior unto his fathers house so shall you become a savior unto your Fathers house and to many of your kindred many of whom are unknown unto you at the present time, but shall be made known unto you by the revelation of the spirit that will come unto you in the due time of the Lord. A great work lies before you for the living and dead. Therefore seek unto the Lord for wisdom that you may be thourally prepared for the great work that lays before you. You are ordained in the spirit world to come to this Earth and become a preacher of rightousness long before the foundations of the Earth were laid, when the morning stars sang together and all of the sons of God shouted for joy your tongue shall become loosed as the pen of a ready writer you shall have power to convince the honest in heart, the rightous shall rejoice at the sound of your voice but the wicked will be enraged against you but in as much as you will be faithful and put your trust in the Lord no evil shall befall you, not a hair of your head shall fall by your enemies without the notice of your Father in Heaven, therefore dear brother be of good cheer the way will be opened up before you, the angel of your presencece shall stand by you to preserve and support you in every emergency. I seal upon you the blessing of health and prosperity. You have seen much sorrow and trouble in your earlier days but you have been strengthened of the Lord to bear up and stand fast to the truth and you will still continue and your mind will become brighter and brighter untill the perfect day.

You shall have the desire of your heart in all things that shall be for your good while you shall live here upon the Earth. I seal you up unto eternal life by Authority of the Holy Partiarchal order that has been sealed upon me and say that you shall come forth in the morning of the first resurection and be crowned with honor, glory and with many of your kindred upon conditions of your faithfulness in keeping the comandments of the Lord untill the end of your days. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen. Isabella C. Murdock, Clerk.

While I was on my first mission Elder Peterson and I went to a little town and inquired for a meeting house to hold a meeting in. We were refured to a preacher that had a church which he had built or the most of it and when we ask him if we could get the use of the house that night he said no. He said I would not let Mormons preach in that house. We elders inquired around among the neighbors and found where we could hold a meeting in a private home and while I was talking in meeting that night I thought about the preacher turning us down, and then I was prompted to say if that man did not repent and humble himself and be kind to the elders and let them have the use of that house the destroying elements such as heavy winds, a tornado or something of the kind would take the house down that it would be destroyed and left in ruin. Well in a little while after that I was called home and I had let the prophesy or what ever you might call it pass out of my mind. In about three months after I got a letter from Elder Peterson and he said that a cyclone had struck through that part of the country and torn that church house down and destroyed it completely. Then he ask me if I remembered what I had said about it. I never will forget what I had said and how I felt about the way the man turned us down. Now I am reminded what the patriarch said to me in my first blessing that the elements should obey my voice. Such things as this is a testimony to the believer.

I stayed on that mission about nine months and was released to come home to take care of my wife. She had developed heart disease so I came to take care of her and our business. Dr. Cliff went to the Stake President and told them if they didn't release me I would not have any wife and they sent a telegram to have me released at once. We traveled without purse or script practically all the time. We kept the postoffice and store for ten years.

On the thirty first day of December nineteen hundred and ten our darling girl Winona was born. Annie and the baby done fine at first, but on the ninth day Annie began to have pain in her leg and it was swollen. On the tenth day it was worse so I phoned Dr. Wherritt at Heber to come and we would see what he could do. When he came he said it was milkleg so he gave her some medicine and went. On the eleventh day her leg was worse and the twelfth day I phoned him to come again and he prescribed some black looking stuff that looked like wagon dope. It was in a little bottle about as big as a hens egg if the egg was turned up on its end. It cost two dollars a bottle and the bottle held just enough for one application. That done no good so the thirteenth day passed and the leg was getting worse and very painful, we kept that black medicine covered all over her leg and it was growing worse and more painful all the time. Annie said it hurt just like the tooth ache only just as much worse as the leg was biger than a tooth and it was by that time getting almost unbearable. On the fourteenth day we sent for the Dr. again and he came just about sun down and looked at her and she was suffering something terrible. Right here I might say that there was an epidemic going through the county that fall of women haveing milk leg and Dr. Wherritt had lost two or three cases just before then. When he did not change anything but said he could do nothing more and went out of the door. I followed him out and I asked him what encouragement or hope he could give me about her and he shook his head and said I can do no more than I am doing and by that time my heart was breaking over her condition. I went and finished up my chores and by that time it was getting dark and I went into the house to see her and asked how she was. She looked up in my face and said, "Don this is almost imbareable, I cant stand this pain like this much longer." Her lips were quivering and so was mine. By that time my heart was melted in my breast and we were both sheding tears. I turned and went out of the house into the back yard and it was a dark night then I knelt down out there alone and in the humility of my soul I implored my God If there was anything that could be done for her or anything I could do that he would make it known to me. Then all at once in a flash the inspiration or revelation call it what you will, came to me to go into the house and put the wash boiler on the stove and put a bucket of water in it then get a quart of wheat bran and put in it then a half pint of salt and stir it all up till it was almost to a boil then take a blanket and put in the boiler and get it filled with the water and bran then ring it out and wrap her leg from her body to her ankle, just as hot as she could ring it out or as hot as she could stand it. Then change the pack as often as it got cool. I had not only put about the second one on till she stopped moaning and crying. That saved her life. I did not send for the Dr. any more and in about three days he came back to see what had happened. We took him in and when he saw Annie practically out of pain and getting better he said what did you do for her. Then I told him about the hot packs I had put on and how they had helped right at once. He sure was surprised and went away baffled. But we heard after that he put hot packs on womens legs in all such cases. This is the fall of nineteen hundred and forty six, the Drs. that massage and rubbing Drs. use the hot packs on people and have different ways of steaming people.

Then I was called on the second mission in nineteen-eleven. I was released from the school board to go on that mission and from all offices in the ward. We desided to sell the store and get rid of the postoffice, to leave my wife with less work and business worries. When I started on my second mission we went direct to the Southern States head mission office in Chattenooga, Tennessee to President Charles A Call's office and he asked me how I would like to go back to Kentucky where I was before. I told him all right, so he said for me to deposit my money there with his secretary and they would give us four Elders our dinners there and he would arrange for getting my grip and things necessary to go with us to Covengton KY. That afternoon and they did not give me the elders address there in Covengton. As soon as I was gone on the train I began to worry and pray about it because I would not get there till after dark so all I could do was to Pray to be directed to the right place. Sure enough it was after dark and a dark night it was, and in a strange town and place. I got off the train with my grip onto the platform and looked up and down the Ohio river. Then I desided to go west right straight toward the Ohio river and I could see the city of Concinatti across the river all lit up for miles away. I walked direct west about two blocks, then turned south and walked about a block and a half and looked up a stairs that was on a raise in the ground eight or ten lumber steps , I went up and knocked at the door. As it happened Elder Jensen came to the door and opened it, in surprise he said, are you Eder Bigelow I said I was and he said how did you get here. I said I was just directed by the spirit which way to come. He said come in we are glad to see you, and I said you are no glader than I am as they had forgotten at Chattenooga to give me any address. That night when I had my prayer I humbly thanked the Lord for directing me to the elders home.

One night in the summer Elder Marrion Tanner and I was out in the country where it was very thinely settled and we had walked all the afternoon and had came to no house and it was way after dark. We were in the timber and we sat down and wondered how far it was to where anyone lived it was a warm night so we desided to lie down and stay there all night. So that was one night out.

Another time we two elders took turns asking for a place to stay over night that afternoon it had been raining and we was turned down time after time. Then we ask for a place to stay at a womans house it was my turn to ask so I knocked at the door, it was raining quite hard, a woman came and asked what I wanted, I told her a place to stay. She said we cannot keep you here. I said it is raining and a bad night and if she would let us stay we would do without any supper and she said no you cant stay. I said wont you let us stay out here on this poarch we will be at least dry and out of the rain. She said no you had better go. We do not want you here at all. So we went on, it was way after dark and we came into a big grove of timber, we found some big trees and got under them with our umberellas spred out and I was leaning up against a big tree and in the night I felt a stream of water runing down the tree behind me so I just moved out from the tree and waited for daylight to come. When day came it was a happy dawn.

Our baby girl was born while I was away on my mission. Soon after I got back we sold our place in town and in nineteen fifteen we moved into a new brick home of twelve rooms we had just completed. Just down to the lower end of town. We still owned our farm around the hill, we were hauling hay and an electric storm came on. A bolt of lightening came so close to us that it rang in our ears and knocked the horses down on their knees.

One spring as we were clearing the farm around the hill we loaded up a load of sagebrush and small oaks, limbs and all. They were laying crossways of the wagon box and Annie and I climbed on top of the high load and was going to put the brush in a wash and when we got to the place we were going to fill up, the front wheel of the wagon droped into a ditch and threw us both over backwards and as we were going over we would have both lit on our heads but through a forethought I keeled on over and made a complete summersalt and as I lit on my feet I turned and threw out my arms and caught Annie under the neck and shoulders and saved her from falling on her head which might have broken her neck or proved fatal in some way. Annie was impressed while we were loading to leave and go to the house to pray she didnt know why but we have always believed by obeying the prompting of the spirit we were saved for it seemed like it was almost beyond human power for me to get on my feet as I did to save our lives.

A number of years we lived in our home in town in the winter and in the summer went to the farm to take care of our cows and pigs. One year we raised some young chickens. One year feed was so scarce and high in price myself and Alton took the stock to the farm to get what feed they could pick and we fed them corn to help pull them through till the grass began to grow. We were camped in a wagon box in March and there came a cold wind and blizzard and we almost froze. We farmed and raised stock and cattle.

We desided to get some sheep so we went to red creek and got motherless lambs and brought them home in a car we made .a number of trips. All that summer we feed them milk by hand we had quite a nice bunch of sheep they done fine for two or three years. Then one spring they began dying off but were fat and looked fine and they would lay down and die. We found the trouble was in their liver, it was called liver fluke. We would cut their liver open and the fluke would roll out like tea leaves. We found that there was a cure for that trouble and that the cause of the trouble was pasturing them on damp wet marshy ground. That had little black snales and they would craul up on the grass, the sheep eating the grass would go into their stomach, from there into the liver.

When Father died he left his will with A. B. Morgan in Provo. He called all the heirs to Heber to court. Made me manager of the estate and said that he wanted me to help him, he held the title for about two and a half years trying to dispose of the property, and pay of the incumberance that was on it. It was all under a blanket mortgage to the state of Utah. He had no success making a transfer so he desided to let me take it over. After a consideration I wrote to my sister Emily and asked her if she could help me to raise the money to pay off the acrued interest and settle with Morgan and pay off the other heir's which we did. Then the first thing we done was to write to the state of Utah and sent them five hundred dollars and told them that was the last money I intended to pay as interest on that blanket mortgage and that they in order for us to pay it off would have to split the mortgage and let us sell the land to different individuals and have them pay a good cash payment down on the land they got, then we would send the state the cash we got on each piece of land and by that means we settled the mortgage all but about seven thousand dollars and Emily took four thousand on the Wheeler farm and I took three thousand on the farm across the valley. Emily assumed the responcibility of the four thousand dollars on the Wheeler farm. We arranged for a loan from the Federal Land Bank in California to get the three thousand dollars to pay off the mortgage to the state of Utah.
When Alton was called on his misson to Canada I and the family tried to run the two farms and sold milk and butter and raised sheep to keep him on his mission and in that time my health had failed and I got so I couldnt pitch hay. But then by the time Alton came back I couldnt do any heavy work Alton took over the heavy work till Ervin came back then they both went in together for a few years then Ervin moved to Monroe and left Alton to asume the whole responcibility and he took both farms over.

In the winters of nineteen thirty nine and forty Annie and I went to Salt Lake City and began to work in the Temple for our kindred dead. We worked there for three winters. Then we went to St. George and worked in the temple for four winters. While we were working in the two temples Annie and I done endowment work for sixteen hundred and sixty six people besides quite a lot of sealing for husbands and wives and stood proxy for a large number of children being sealed to their parents.

In the fall before we went away, one morning before sunrise I got up before any of the folks and went over across the meadow caught a riding horse with just a rope and jumped on her back. I rode over by the main creek in the meadow and got the cows and started them for home when I got down to the lane part of them went the wrong way across the main creek. I went after them as fast as the horse could go. The farther they went the faster they went with the horse right after them till she was on a swift run, tryinig to head them off. The last one that stopped done it in two jumps and the horse stopped the same way. Having no saddle or anything to hold to I went over the horses head and lit on my head shoulder and side. When I got up I was daised for a few minutes and I looked around to see what had happened. The horse had stopped right there and I took her by the rope led her up to a ditch bank and jumped on her. I rode back after the cows when I got across the creek part of the cows had went back up in the meadow and I went up around them and got them and started home. When I got over to the mill Alton was up there in the mill yard I called to him and told him I had been threw off the horse so he came down and asked me if I was hurt I told him I didnt think so that I was just shaken up. He went to the house with me and helped me off the horse and went with me into the house and got me on the bed. Mother wanted him to send for a Dr. but I would not give up to it. I said I'd be all right in a little while. In the meantime Mother and Alton took it on themselves to get a Dr. but he was out and couldnt come at once. I grew worse from the time I got on the bed till finely I raised up and as soon as I did my strength all left me I wilted and fell down on the bed then I told Mother that something had to be done. They found out the Dr. couldnt come and he said they would have to bring me to the hospital. By this time I was so week I couldnt walk and Dewey Bigelow happened to be there so he and Alton carried me out and put me in the car and drove me to Heber at once. When they got me there I was hardly able to sit up and they stripped me off down to the waist and was going to take an exray picture of me and when the Dr. came in he put his stethoscope over my heart and a half minute and he droped them and grabed the adhesive tape and rapped it all around me and he put on three strips and then said take him and put him to bed. Alton got another man that was there and they carried me up stairs and layed me on the bed and the nurse followed right in and gave me a hipo for a heart stimulent. The Dr. told Winona to tell Mother she just as well prepare for the worst. They nursed me there for four days and I never turned over off my back. The fifth morning Dr. Neilson came in and said how are you. I said I'm still here and he said I think we can take you now and take an exray picture when they took the picture the nurse counted one two, three ribs broke and the Dr. says three four five, along the back and one in front. A cow had bunted me into the barn and broken that one in front a few days before. Winona took care of me while in the hospital and after they took the exray pictures they took me to her home in Midway and she took care of me for nearly three weeks the Dr. gave orders for me to come back and when I got back to the hospital they pulled my shirt off and the Dr. got holt of the bandage and yanked it off and it felt like it skinned my back and both my sides. I was covered with small boils where the bandage had been. He told me I could go home and it was up to me about taking care of myself for me never to get on a horse again. But the first time we went to Altons down at Leamington I rode that same horse again.

Two different summers we went to California to visit Ervins and Winonas folks. One; spring when we went to California after we had been there a little while I used to go across a bridge over the Feather river between Yuba City and Marysville the bridge was about a half mile long and one day while I was fishing there over on the east side I saw three men coming up the river in a motor boat going up in under the bridge. Pretty soon I heard them call and holler for help and I looked up the river and their boat was standing on its end, the men all in the river about twenty five feet from the nearest bank the boat had ran crossways of a floating log coming down the river and it had thrown the men all out of the lower end. One of the men could swim and he started to swim to the bank the other two men was just paddling in the water calling for help and I was across the river about two hundred yards away and could do nothing for them. They floated down the river about two hundred yards screaming for help all the time to where there were some boys in a boat that was locked to the bank and the boys had a roap which they threw out and one of the men caught it and the boys pulled them out but about that time the other man went down under the water and was gone. The officers draged the river with hooks trying to find the drowned man for most of three days and finely gave it up and in about thirty days they found his body down the river thirty miles below where he was drowned.

Another day when Jess and I was out in a boat on the river fishing here came a man down the river skating on top of the water with snow shoes they looked like. He was bung pulled by a motor boat, he was going so fast it looked like he was flying in a few minute here they came back up and the man on the skates came so close to our boat he threw water all over us and Jess said he'd better not try that again or I will hit him with my fish pole and see how he likes that.

Another story they told that happened that spring on Feather river: A little old man went out fishing and they told him in order to catch big fish he had to have a big outfit to fish with. He went and bought the bigest hooks he could find and the bigest line and went down to the river and fished till he got tired and sleepy. To make sure his fish would not get away if he hooked one he tied the line around his waist and layed down on a log that was lying length ways of the river and went to sleep the next thing he knew he was in the river swiming and fighting for his life. A big fish had got hooked on the line and pulled him off into the river and if it had not been for some help he would of drowned but there were two men in a boat close by and they came to his rescue and got him in the boat then to get the fish. And when they took the fish and put him on the scales the fish weighed sixty four pounds and there were a number of men said that was right. When Jess was down there he said he saw the head and it looked like a big hogs head with the mouth open. There was no question but what there were some big striped bass in that river. I caught one that weighed six lbs. and another day one that weighed nine and a half lbs. There were some big salmon that run up that river too.

Another experience I had while on that river I went out in a boat just afternoon alone and the wind began to blow from the north right down the river and the longer I stayed there the harder the wind blew till about night the wind was just howling and Mother and Winona came down there and said they thought the wind was dangerous and me out there in a boat. I was close enough to the bank to be able to talk to them. I desided to take the anchor up and see about getting to the bank and by that time the wind was blowing a teriffic gale and time I got the anchor up and into the boat the boat was turned round and going at a teriffic speed down the river and I had both oers in my hands but could take no effect with the speed of the boat so I just desided to turn the boat and head it for the brush"and timber on the side of the river and that is what I did and run it into the brush, tied the boat up and climbed out. Jess came and got the boat later.

One summer we took a week off and went with Theron and Emily Stoker out on Red creek and to stinking springs on the little strawberry river. One morning as Theron and I was going down the river just below a saw mill we heard a blast in the river and as we went on down a couple of hundred yards we saw five men and one of them stood out on the hill to watch and stand guard but he did not see us till we were out in full sight of them all. So they just stood there and we went down to them. Four had been wadeing in the river after fish but we did not stop there long. We went on down the river and when we came back to camp at night we saw signs of them blasting fish all the way up the river. When we went to camp where Mother and Emily were they said those men had been blasting right in front of the tent, and they got the license number of the car as near as they could tell. We went to the game wardens camp and reported the men blasting fish in the river. The wardens went right after them and run them down for the job and finely caught four of the men and took the case to court and fined them one hundred dollars each, pretty dear fishing for them and they spoiled the fishing there for anyone else.

Another morning Theron had a cold and did not go with me, and after going down the river about three miles I climbed out on the side of the steep mountain to have a look down the canyon. Finely I started back and came over a ridge and saw two men down on the river fishing along the river was lined with a thicket of underbrush eight or ten feet high so men could not get in and out of the river very well at that point. One of the men was out in the middle of the river just above a big beaver dam. That was nearly filled up with soft mud that had washed in from above in the canyon wall. I was about a hundred yards away from him or more on the steep mountain and I saw a big rock about half as big as a stove by me in a bed of dirt, so I thought how funny it would be to roll that rock down the mountain. I got behind it and gave it a heave with both feet so out she came and started rolling down at full speed jumping a half rod at a leap. Well the man that was in the middle of the river heard the noise and looked up and seen the rock coming straight toward him and the brush on both sides of him and he thought he was trapped so down the river he ran. He only got a rod or two till he sank down in the soft mud and water over his boot tops and was about to fall over head first so he threw his pole and stuck both hands out to save falling in head first. There he stood on all fores, hands and feet looking round for the rock to come but low and behold when the rock struck the thicket it never crushed through. If it had it would have stopped when it struck the mud the first time. I knew it could never reach the men before I rolled it down the hill. So both of us shook, he with fear and I with laughter. My motto has been always through life never to wrong no man or living thing and still is.
One summer Alton was going over to Heber so I told him I would ride over on the river below Charleston and fish while he was gone and when I was getting out of the car Uvonne said "Grandpa catch a fish for me." I said all right I will if I can but when they came back I had not got any; fish so when we got over to Wallsburg in the lower end of the valley I asked Alton to let me out and I would walk home up the creek but I did not get home till after dark and Uvonne was in bed. I only caught one fish that night and the next morning after they were up I had cleaned the fish and it was a nice one. It hung off over a big plate on both sides and I took it in to her and she said to her mother. "Oh boy Oh boy he got me a fish." That delighted me more than it would to have eaten a plate full of fish myself.

Some time along about the first week in January nineteen forty six Jess and Winona came to St. George and we had just recieved a letter from Emily telling that she was in a very bad condition and her legs were swollen with dropsy so Annie Jess and Winona desided to go to Provo and see her. They left Ken with me with the understanding that I should take him to a show. Well when night came Ken and I went and when the show was about half our Ken said I have got to go to the toilet. I was sitting there wondering what to do when he jumped up and was gone. The show was over crowded that night and people were standing all along the ile, in the back and outside, so I knew if I got up we would loose our seats. I wondered how he would ever find his way back through that crowd. Well he was gene eight or ten minutes and to my surprise here he came back and found me and I said you found your way did you? (Now remember he was only about THREE AND A HALF years old and could not read nor write a word) but he said, "Yes I found a place where it said, "FOR BOYS OR GIRLS EITHER", So I went in." Well that tickeled me more than anything I had seen in the show so I was well paid for my money.

On the sixteenth of April nineteen forty six we moved back to Provo out in the river bottoms and lived in an apartment that Theron and Emily Stoker fixed for us with them. This summer I have bussied myself tending lambs rabbits and doing odd jobs around the place. In the fall of nineteen forty six on the sixth day of September I had a severe heart attack and came close to deaths door. All the Children were notified that I was very ill. They all came immediately and all of them were soon at my bedside excepting Ervin and he was in California in the mountains and as soon as he received the telegram he called Elva up by phone and asked about my condition and said he would come if it was necessary. As soon my sister Emily Batty heard of my sickness she came form Vernal 'to see me although critically ill I was happy to see loved one's. Just three weeks later I had another Heart attack and was very bad for thirty six hours. But now I am better again and up and going they tell me I will have to be careful. Well I wonder what that means and what careful means. Not to cut a stick of wood or carry it in or even carry a bucket of coal. So here I am, like the banker in California that had donated to the Relief Society and all other societies of relief that had called on him and he said he was just living to see what was coming next, and so am I.

I want to say in conclusion of the sketch of my life I have always been of a religious turn .of mind. But always tried to avoid exteemes in any way, religious or any other. Still in the summer or fall after I was seventeen I began to study and reason on how the first God came into existence and wondered if I did not have just as good a chance to come into existence as the first God did away back there where time first began. But I came down to Provo that fall and heard President Carl G. Maeser bear testimony to the truthes of the Gospel and how he was converted and then my Mother was the greatest influence for good in my life and the testimony she bore to me was as true and faithful as the sun that shines every day. Then I began to reason the other way and that the Earth is here rolling around every twenty four hours and swinging around in its regular course giving winter and summer. Then one thing sure that is I am here and there is just as good, a chance for a God, to be in the heavens ruling and governing this Earth as that I am here and then with all the testimony of the bible and the old prophets then comes the Book of Mormon and the Doctern and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, Then Joseph Smiths testimony then this gospel of Jesus Christ and all the latter day works then last of all but not the least but the greatest the testimony of the Holy spirit and the testimony of the Holy Ghost or the still small voice that whispers to all people, for it is as the old Prophet Joel said in his second chapter and twenty eight Th verse -- I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy etc. So when we find all these reasons that there is a God the creator of Heaven and Earth we should conform our lives to the principles of eternal life, eternal development and eternal glory. If it is as God said to Moses in his first chapter and thirty ninety verse in the Pearl of Great Price: For behold, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immorality and eternal life of man; . Then should we not put forth an effort with all our mind might and strength to save our own souls, for after all the object of us coming here into this world is to get the body we have a tabernacle of flesh and bone for our spirit to dwell in that we might be like the Savior said of himself after his resurrection and that we like him might be made perfect and now this is my testimony and blessing unto all who may read these lines. So fair you well may we all when we meet at the judgement seat of God be satisfied with our works which we have done here on this Earth is my admonition and prayer.

Signed By. Don L. Bigelow /s
Typed by Emily May Bigelow Stoker

The passing of another birthday, another mile stone in my life. I have decided to fill in some more in my lives story. The clipping out of the Provo Herald with my picture it gives a part of my doings on my birthday I want to add a little more to it, to explain our celebration. Elva invited Emily and her family and I down to her place for dinner and we sure enjoyed the dinner she served. Then I got several nice birthday cards, two nice whit handkerchiefs, one pair of sox, a nice tie pin clasp with chain, and two boxes of chocolate candy and one box of candied fruit. After dinner we had a treat on candy and fruit.

But after all I sure missed my darling wife who has gone the ways of the world and left me alone in this lonesome lonely world to roam where I will or may. But I mus not say alone, I have six sweet noble children left here with me out of eleven. Five of them is with their Mother. Then twenty four grand children and seven great grand children which is my heritage and my life long hope that my name will be continued on through this world and the endless ages of eternity to come, or the end of the milieu which is the last stage of this worlds natural existence and my children's love is the greatest support and strength that I have to live for, in fact it is my all and the greatest stay of my life.

May 25, 1947, I walked about three fourths of a mile and went to Sunday School and while there too part in the discussion of the lesson which I enjoyed very much. May 30, 1947, Theron Stoker took Emily and the rest of his family and I up to Wallsburg on decoration day. We took flowers Elva sent some beautiful ones and Theron and Emily took many beautiful ones too. The flowers I bought cost Five Dollars. We had enough to almost cover all the graves. Then Alton and family came up and brought many more beautiful ones, and about that time Okie and family came with another car load, so the graves were a mount of beautiful blossoms. I saw a lot of old friends and had a good talk with them and had a good time as much as I could under such a strain of sorrow. Then we came back down the canyon and stopped and ate our dinner in the canyon among the green trees and beautiful mountain scenery.

On Saturday the thirty first I went down to Provo and bought me a telescope fish pole they sure are expensive. The pole cost me eight dollars it is a good steel pole with a reversible handle. Sunday June 1st Theron tool his family and I in the care and we all went to Sunday School and fast meeting.

Sunday June eighth, Wilford Boren and wife came down home and got me and we stopped at Minas for a while then went on up the canyon and passed Park City and on to the head of Parleys canyons place, to help him set a new saw mill. Stayed there four days. It was raining and snowing nearly all of the time. It snowed right down on the foot hills. The last half day we got the mill running and sawed about eight hundred feet of inch lumber. Friday I got up, had breakfast, and bid them farewell and Wilford took me to Salt Lake City before eight o'clock A.M. I bought a ticket to Milford, Utah it cost $8.35. I stayed right there in the depot waiting til twelve five P. M. Got to Milford over three hours late. Went fishing late the next day and got no fish, but Jess got some and we had fish from then on for a month. This is June Twenty first. Longest day of the year. It rained all night and until eleven o'clock in the day, the rainiest wet spring I ever remember.
June the thirtieth. We left Milford, Jess, Jay and I and went 140 miles to fish lake as dreary a place as I ever saw for fishing. Had Velma and Bob come down and Jess, Winona and all of us went to Beaver canyon and on the third of July caught my limit of trout, the first time in my life and I sure was thrilled that day. We had all the fish we wanted while there then we came back. Bob and Velma brought Elva and family and Emily and her family a lot of trout so they all had all they could eat.

July 16, 1947, came from Milford to Leamington on the train, it cost me two dollars and thirty one cents. Went fishing with Alton little children in the Severe river for three or four days and got three messes of carp, still they tasted like fish.

July 24, 1947, Late in the morning Alton took his family and I and went north to Provo, and went to a public park and Fern had a nice lunch fixed and we ate then continued on to Salt Lake City and we saw the sentential Perade. It lasted about two hours. The most interesting thing I saw on one of the big floats there was two big baskets with two little girls on in each basket hanging out one on each side of the float about twenty feet apart. Hanging out there like they were weighing human life in the balance. It made me think that people should so conduct their lives that they could be weighed in the balance all the timer get on an extreme either way at any time in their lives.

On Saturday night, July 26th I went with Alton and Fern to Delta to Hawian traveling trupe musical programe which excelled anything I ever saw or heard in their line of entertainment. There were about twenty five or thirty people in the troupe and at the last there were about six women came out one at a time dressed in long trailing skirts all of different collors and shades representing the different islands of their home country. And those people looked whiter than most hawian people I ever saw. They were dressed up in bright collors and they went through all kinds of motions showing by their actions the expressions they wanted to convey instead of by words. This extraordinary entertainment I never will forget.

Saturday, August 2, 1947. We came up to Midway to the Boren reunion got there late but saw a lot of the family and some of the older ones. Then went in swiming with Elvas family and swam the full lenght of that long bathing resort, pretty good for on at eight-one years.

October 8, .1947, I went to Salt Lake City and went through the Temple twice while there then on the thirteenth I went to Vernal on the buss the fair was $4.84. I arrived in Vernal about eight fifty tow o'clock P. M. A dark night, after nine o'clock was directed to go one and a half blocks west across the street and one block south and across the street on the corner so I went up to the house on the corner, no lights but I went up on the east poach, knocked on a locked door and no answer. Knocked again and Sister Emily said who is it? I was standing there trying to think what to say to fool her when she said in a loader tone, "Who is there?" Then I had to answer so I said D L. Bigelow My wits came too late, after I thought I should have said "Honerable Patches". When I told Emily, she said, "If you had of said that to me I would of told you to take your patches and go on." "Honerable Patches" what Lewarence Knight said in "When a man is a man".

Well we had a good laugh anyway, and Emily and her children just treated my royal. I had on of the best times in my life in that three weeks I was there and went down with Dan on his farm and saw a nice doe deer and Dan tried to lariatte some fish but had now luck. Told Emily when I came back and she said "Huh, how could he of lariatted fish?" I said, "Take a piece of bailing wire and fasten a piece of fine copper wire on it about a foot and a half long then make a loop about three or four inches round in the copper wire, then tell the fish to hold still till you get the loop down where he is and then pass the loop back behind the fishes head and ears, and when the fish winks and gets his eyes shut give the wire a jerk and if you are quicker than the fish you have him lariatted. Then all you get to do is to pull him out and get him in your hands and you have a fish. Then keep on that way till you get enough for a mess. Oh then you got a mess of lariatted fish. Ha! Ha! The boys and girls and in-laws all showed me a good time with big dinners and feasts.
While in Vernal I went to Jensen Emily Batty and Berda Bascom and held a meeting Sunday night and talked and told the people that ever person should have and object or aim in life, that I had four. The first is to save ones own soul. The next was to have an honerable family. My wife had eleven children, six of them grew t maturity. We tried to instill in them the truthes of the eternal life. The next was to do some missionarry work. I went on two missons and Alton went on to Canada. Last of all I wanted to acomplish some Temple work for the dead. Annie and I done the endowment work for over sixteen hundred men and women in two temples. Then the night before I left Vernal Emily invited all of her children and their companion to a social party in the evening and we sure had a royal good time that night.

On the sixth of November I came back to Salt Lake City with one of Woody B's truck drivers and went through the temple again, and hunted a place where I thout I could come back to in February and get a room to house up for the winter or hibernate for a few months.

One time when we were out in Ashley valley we had a trunk in the house that was rounding on both sides and sloped towards each end, so it was rounding every way. Our little girl the second on was about two and a half years old, just old enough to talk plain. There was a chair at the end of the trunk so Ida climbed upon the chair then on top of the trunk and played there. Then she layed down on her back length ways of the trunk, when she discovered she was falling off now matter which way she turned so in her fright she called to her mother and said, "Mama It's a killing I." Then her mother came to her rescue, and when Annie told me about it we had a good laugh.

In our courtship when Annie and I were young, I had some rivals, and among them was George Batty. One winter Annie and I had been going to dances and entertainments all the time when there was and for pass time. So Geo. Batty got up a house party or dance at Susan Gardners home and he did not invite me, so I felt like a lost sheep. Then Batty got in with Clint and told Clint what he was doing not inviting me and then he went with Clint to Annies home and told her all about the party and told her that I would not be there. Then he asked her to go with him, but she stood pat for me, and told him no. Then he tried to get her to go with Clint again Annie said no. So bless her she told me all about it the dance an all. She said she wished I had of come over and spent the evening with her. Which I sure, sure would have done, if I had of know her feelings and how she was staying home on my account. Right after that I asked her to keep company with me steady not long after that I had taken her to the dance hall to a party and when Geo. Batty was dancing with Annie he asked her to go home with him again she said no. But she did not tell me about this untill after we were married.

So bless her darling soul no wonder she said in one of her poems "I started married life with the faith of a trusting child." God bless her should, till I can come to here. She has always been just as true to me as the sun that shines every twenty four hours. She told me one time, "Don I'll go anywhere with you." She went one t Ashley valley and twice to California. Now I will have to go where she is when the time comes for us to met again no more to part forever.

Christmas morning 1947 I was here at home with Theron and Emily and all three of their little children and did they get a lot of presents? Yes from their loved ones, friends and neighbor's so we all had a wonderful Christmas. Then I went down and had Christmas dinner Elva and family so another good time we had.

On new years day Theron, Emily, their children and I all went down to Elvas and had another good chicken dinner. Now then we have another Year nineteen forty eight ahead of us. Bringing that little spark of hope which we all look forward to which keeps us going on to the end of time looking for the mellenium or some other great day in the future.

January the second 1948, at the time of this writing it is just about a year since my wife Annie took sick. She and I spent Christmas a year ago here with Theron, Emily and family and a good time we enjoyed, then Clyde and Elva came out here and got Annie and I and we went and had New Years dinner with them at Elva's home and as all good feasts, we appreciated it, and then Annie took sick. And got worse all the time till she passed on into the great beyond, where people come back no more. Elva and I was there with Annie and she was suffering something terrible, then she said, "Cant we all pray, that I can get ease and rest." So we all took it in turns and prayed that she might get rest. But she just got worse and her strength work out and she passed away in about three days after she took so bad, but as her patriarchal blessing told her to live faithful to the last she did. So "We have a more sure word of Prophesy where unto you do well if you take heed." The in the Doctrin and Covnants Sec. 131 verse 5 it was revealed to Joseph Smith, "The more sure word of Prophesy means a man's (or womens) knowing that he (or she) is sealed up unto eternal life, by revelation and the spirit of prophesy through the power of the holy Priesthood." now this blessing was sealed upon Annie's hand by John M. Murdock Patriarch. He says -- "I seal you up unto eternal life to come forth in the morning of the first resurection --. You will have a fullness of joy, and crowned with honor and glory in the presence of God, and the Holy angels. -- Read her Patriarchal blessing and get the full benifit of the wording in it. Then you will see that she has the testimony of three men all Prophets, Peter, Joseph Smith, and John M. Murdock, all testifying that as Peter says, second Epistle chapter 1 verse 10, Make your calling and election sure. I say, "Make your calling certain and your election sure, and Annie has complied with all the requirements of the church first, faith, second repentance, third baptism by imersion for the remission of sins, fourth laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost. Then she has went through the Temple and got the marks of the Holy Priesthood and was layed away in Temple clothes in robes of white with the marks of the Holy Priesthood on her garments and it was the most perfect funeral I ever saw anyone have. Now she is ready and waiting for the resurrection and the final judgement or statement, "Well done thou good and faithful Sister enter into my Glory and my joy and receive thy blessings acording to thy patriarchal blessing in the presence of God and Holy angels.

I once heard of a man that was put in jail, and one of his friends came to visit him to cheer him up. So the visitor asked the jail bird what he had done to be put in jail. Well he said I saw some beautiful flowers over the fence and a pretty girl sitting there and I stayed to long looking at them and the officers caught me and put me in here. The consouling man said, why they could not put you in jail for that. They go me here just the same, said the jail bird whether they can or cant.

Another one: A man lived here in Salt Lake and owned a good home and had had six wives and they every one died. He also had a big heard of sheep and a herd of cattle and two men came from the east to by him out every thing he owned. So he ordered his herders to bring in the cattle and sheep and load them on the cars. One of the buyers said let us go down in town and have dinner so the rancher went with the one and the other buyer stayed and ordered the trains to pull out for the eastern market to Chicago and the two buyers had not paid him for the property or stock.. The owner could not get the money so he go a lawyer and went east to stop the stock sale and it was too late. The stock were all sold and paid for, when he got there. The owner could not prove anything so they beat him out of all of it. Then the tramp or once well to do man came to a womans place and applied for a job. The woman had married a man in the Temple when they were young and had a family of children and her man died, then these business man went to work and in a few months the man and woman got married for time or this world, now the man's name that tells this is Albert Lindsey, eighty one years old, he was a witness to this marriage. After the woman had lived with this man a while she desided she would rather have him for eternity than her dead man, so she went and told President Grant she wanted a divorce from the dead man and wanted to marry this man that was alive no mater how many wives he had for eternity. So President Heber J. Grant said he had never had any revelation to make a woman stay with any man she did not want. He gave her a divorce and the woman went to the Temple and was sealed to this man for eternity. A man sitting on the other side of me said, You cannot rob the dead. Then Lindsey said, He was a wittness to both marriages, so it looks like the dead can be robbed as well as the living.

Salt Lake, May 20, 1948. Went through the Temple this afternoon then packed up my house keeping dishes and clothes and went to stay with Bob and Velma all night. On the 21st went to bus station and down to Provo to my children and on the 22nd Elva and Clyde got up a party for me in the evening and ask a lot of the old Wallsburg people that live in Provo to the party and we sure had a good time. Tonight Monday the 24th Theron and Emily are having a party, chickery, up in the pasture, Elva and family, Winona and family and myself, so we expect another good time. Then Jess and Winona and boys and myself are going to start for California in the middle of the night. We are going in their car so to get across the desert in the cool of the night. We left for California about 9/30 P. M and went into California about a hundred miles and stoped on a stream and fished but caught nothing. Then went on to Ervins and got there in Central Valley about ten oclock making a little over twenty four hours in coming nearly a thousand miles, very good for a steady run. New morning we went fishing, went for three days in different places and different rivers. I only caught one fish 11 inches long. They say the water is too high.

There has been floods in Oregon and Washington. We had planned to go up thru there and go to the Yellow Stone Park but on account of the flood conditions desided not to go. May 31, we went down below Redding seven or eight miles on the Sacramento river. I caught three trout that was more than any of the rest of the crowd got. Ervin boys went and all tegether we got enough for breakfast the next morning. On the trip we saw a beautiful hedge of red roses a half or three quarters of a mile long on a mans farm. The night we started back I ate something that made me sick all night and I began to wonder how long it was going to last, or how long I was. I began to think it did not matter much which one let up first. But I wanted to come straight home and got here all right.

June 11th I went to Salt Lake then on to Milford. The ticket from Salt Lake to Milford cost $6.07. The train leaves at 1:10 A. M. Stayed at Velma all night and Bob took me to the Union Pacific depot a little after 8 AM arrived in Milford at 3 P. Jess and the boys were waiting for me at the depot. The next morning Richard Bigelow jay and I all went over to Minersville creek with Darrel Perkins before daylight Then Jess came in the afternoon and he caught two fish and all together we got a good mess then we all went the next day. Sunday Jess got the most of the fish and we had all the fish we wanted for two or three days. Then on Wednesday I caught the bigest fish caught that day.

Thursday got a box of chocolate candy from Altons and Ferns family for Fathers day Friday got a greeting card letter with two dollars in it from Clyde and Elva and family. Sunday got a card and a dollar bill from Jess and Winona and a dollar from their two boys. Saturday Jess took his car and Richard and Jay and Ken and I went up Beaver Canyon and we had a lot of fishing but the fish were only about seven and eight inches long, it was fishing, all of which goes to make life.

Monday June 21st the longest day of the year, it has been uncommon cold and backward spring for gardens to grow all spring right down to freezing point. Today I got a fathers day greeting card from Ervin and family with a dollar bill in it and also a card from Alton and his family it certainly is a comfort and blessing to have the love of my family of boys girls and grandchildren. Makes life worth while for the struggle. While I was almost worn out last night, after going fishing all day I took a warm bath before going to bed and felt better, an old man eighty two years old tramping up and down creeks and rivers is a hard job.
July the third, left Milford and came to Lyndel and then on to Leamington to Altons ans spent the fourth of July there with his family. Went to Delta and seen the perade and heard the band play that Leda and Verna was in, which was very fine. Then came to Provo with Alton Tuesday morning found all well.
About the 14th of July Emily had said she wanted a trout for dinner. I took my fish pole and caught some grass hoppers and went down the spring run here on the farm and caught one fish eleven and a half inches long and when I got back told her I got the fish for her supper.

About the 16th of July 1948 Emily got poisoned with poison ivey. Her children got it some where and coma and put their arms around her neck and face. Two of them broke out and their's cleared up in a few days. Emily broke out all over the back of her neck and face. He neck and her left arm was raw, the awfulest sores I ever seen. Both of her eyes swelled shut so she couldnt see. To make it worse a bee stung her four times. They had Dr. Smith come out here, then we administered to her, but it spread all over her body and legs. Then she changed Doctors and began getting better, But finally went to the third Doctor. From after effects of the poison Ivey she was afflicted with boils all over her body. Emily is still troubled with her heart.

August the 16th, I went down to Elvas at night stayed there and next morning before Clyde went to work he took Don and I down to the lake and I paid a dollar and a half for a boat and we stayed till three o'clock in the afternoon and each one of us caught a carp. A fine fishing trip. (NOT!)

September 13, I packed one suit case with my temple clothes and one with other clothes, I had to travel with and Clyde and Elva came and took me to their place to stay for the night. The next morning I got up and had breakfast then told Elva I was going down to the lake. She asked me how I was going. I said walk. She said You cannot walk that far. I said, Oh yes I can. At nine o'clock I started out and went to the Post office I had to post a bundle to Winona then went on. Stopped under the shade of the trees and stopped and inquired several times how far it was to the lake still I kept on walking, and finely reached the lake shore, bought a bottle of orange soda water the Woman there said it was just five miles to the post office and I had walked every step of it in three hours, and a half. Eight tow years old. I got a ride back to town and got supper at Elvas and at five twenty started for Manti, finely got here and found a hotel room for one dollar a day. So next morning got up and went to the temple got there late. But went into the meeting and then went thru the temple twice for endowments for the dead.

That night I found a room. Thursday I went thru the temple once and once on Friday. Thursday night I prayed earnestly to the Lord for him to give me a testimony that the work I was doing for the dead was excepted by them and was directed by the Lord. Well Friday after the session was over they called me to go and be a witness for the sealing of a number of husbands and wives and a hundred and thirty two children to their parents, that were all passed and gone to the other world. As soon as they started to do the sealings the spirit of the Lord came to me and rested down upon me so hard and it humbled me so I could not keep the tears from falling down off my face and three different men in different parts of the room noticed me wiping my eyes and I could not help it, or what they thought, and I never will question again whether the people we are doing this work for is excepting it as I know now they are and not only that. But I know the Lord is directing it. I done four names last week and eight this besides getting wood and coal and getting it pilled away for winter.

On Saturday September twenty fifth I packed up my temple clothes and went to Provo. Then on the next Tuesday took my fishing bag and pole and went on the bus as far as I could and then thumbed my way down to the lake caught five carp one was a big on and I broke my pole getting him out, but after they are skinned an all the dark meant taken out of them and salted over night they sure taste like fish just the same.
I washed two suits of temple clothes and ironed them and now am ready to go back to Manti. On Friday the 8th I went through the Manti temple twice, then went through the temple for endowments ten times the next week, besides being a witness for sealings 3 times.

Morning of the nineteenth early Sister Johnson came and read a telegram about Dewey Bigelow's terrible accident, getting shot when he set his gun down so it slipped off a long and discharged and killed him. I got ready and went to Provo to see if I could do anything. They had the funeral on Thursday at 2:30. I came back to Manti Friday afternoon.

This is December 20th have worked here in the Manti temple a big part of the fall, have done on the Mecham - Tuttle and missionary names all together 82. The last few days have been working doing names for the Blanding Ward getting 50 cents each and have done 14 names for them got a check tonight for $7.00 this seven and ten dollars Mother left to have temple work done is the only money I have received in direct pay.

This makes nine winters I have been doing temple work. Three in Salt Lake Temple, Annie was with me then. We both worked four winters together in the St. George temple, then a year ago I worked in the Salt Lake temple and now this winter in the Manti temple. On December 23 the Buss was two hours late getting into Manti. I got tired waiting and went and carried my big suit case seven blocks. But finely it came and we started for Provo. When we got over the summit going down Spanish Fork canyon there was a terrible blizzard blowing the wind shield wiper stoped working the driver could not see so the buss run down of the road about five rods into the bar pit. Felt like the buss was going to tip over on its side but it did not. Still it was hard and tiresome to sit on the seats then were pitched so to one side. They sent to Provo for another buss and we had to wit there three hours and a half but no one was hurt. Finely the other buss came and we and we did not get into Provo till after dark that night.

I went to Elvas and stayed all night, had a good nights sleep, then went to Emily the next day, stayed there Christmas week. I recieved about thirty Xmas cards this year. My friends sure remembered me. I had a splendid time with Elva and family Emily and family, sure is wonderful to have the love of a loving family.
Then came back to Manti on the fifth of January. 1949, and went through the temple twice today. Manti; January. 19, 1949. We sure are having the terriblest hard winter here I ever have experienced, since I was a boy in Wallsburg.

January. 21 1949, I went and measured the snow today out in the field and it measured from 17 to 19 inches so it would average about 18 inches deep on the level, and it has just kept up snowing all winter since it stated in November and the thermomiter has been runing from zero to 17 below and once they reported 22 below zero. So to sum it up one side and down the other it is the hardest winter I have seen since I was grown. Well by the way I have went through the temple twice today and tree times yesterday and three times Monday making twelve times this week and was witness for the sealing of eight-four children to parents.

January 29, it still is winter they said at the Depot this morning the registor was 22 below zero, so winter is still hanging on but thank goodness one month is gone. The next day or two the regestor went to 25 below zero. They say in Provo the snow is three feet deep on the level, and in Wallsburg it is five feet deep and the thermomontor runing in twenty five below zero in Wasatch County. You know its the 18th of February and the cold weather has begin to let up and today is the 21 and the roads are getting bare but the snow is still piled up along the roads, side walks and along the trails out of houses but it is melting every where.

Manti; Mar. 19, 1949. Yesterday in the temple the workers there were telling what a big time the town was going to have for all the old folkes over sixty five on Saturday the 19th so this morning about half past eleven the ex-Bishop came and got five of us in his car and took us to the Stake house where they had eighteen or twenty big long tables set for old people. I ask on man how many old folks there would be and he thought two hundred or more and they had a real old time chicken dinner. Mashed potatoes, gravy chicken and fluffy rolles and butter and more chicken all we wanted but this was my main hold besides a lot of dished I did not even touch. Then they had ice cream and cake. After dinner they had a splendid program and then took us across the street to a good picture show. Whenever I think of Manti I will remember what a wonderful dinner and time I had here this day.

Sunday I got up and fasted and went to high Priests meeting and Sunday school, had a good time. When coming home Sister Johnson called me and I went over and she envited me to dinner. I excepted the invitation went in and she had roasted beef, mashed potatoes brown gravy and other old time farm dinner like we used to have then I stayed about two hours and had a good visit with them.

Now today is Sunday March 27th and the first three sundays in January I fasted 24 hours each Sunday then there has been ten Sundays since then that I have fasted till after one o'clock each Sunday trying to overcome this laying awake nights and droping off in a dead sleep in meetings or sitting still in the temple, which I have fought with all the faith, prayers, and power of my body I could muster still I do not sleep nights very well and still drop off in that dead sleep in the temple.

But while here I have received two most wonderful testimonies. After I had been here about six weeks laid awake till after twelve oclock started to pray and I ask the Lord to make it manifest to me whether the people that we were doing the temple work for was excepting it or not. After I had come down here living alone among strangers and spending all the money I was getting sacrificing my time tallent and my all I wanted to know if the people were excepting our work, and if the Lord was directing it. Well I went to the temple the next day without any answer, and after going through for the dean man they called me for a witness, in President Bent Peterson's room and no sooner than He started to seal those people over the alter than the big tears began running down over my cheeks. The spirit of the Lord came to me so strong that I knew the people were accepting the sealing and the Lord directing it. My prayer was answered and as a testimoney three men on three sides of the house were watching me wipe the tears away.

Then another about ten days ago when going through for endowments I had gon up to the terestereal room ready to go thru the vale and while sitting there waiting right by my right side at the end of the bench I heard a woman's voice say, the Lord has excepted of your labor and sacrifice in this temple work and you have got it complete, and done You have finished your temple work. I looked up to see if I could see who spoke and no one was there, the person did not show themselves to me.

Wednesday morning while in the temple may the 5th I got a phone call from Elva in Provo that Clara O Bigelow Fathers thrived wife died, the day before and would be burried Saturday at two oclock the funeral services held in Wallsburg and would be burried in the Wallsburg burial grounds. So I left Manti Friday morning went to Provo and attended the servicies then came back to Manti Monday at 5:20 p.m. and worked in the temple all the rest of the week. The left Manti Saturday morning and bid fare well to some of the best friends I have ever had in my life. They have written some of the best pieces of rememberence in my autograph album that is written there.

Arived in Provo all OK found Elva and family, Emily and family about as well as usual neither one of the is having very good health, but was up and around. Then on the 22nd of May, my birthday Elva and her family and Winona and her family came from Milford, they all brought picnic and we had a plate dinner and we had a splendid time. I sang two old time songs, first one, "When the curtains of night are pinned back by the stars" and "Young Emily was a servant maid." There was one thing lacking, and that was all of my living children was not present. Still there was love and affection for the ones that was her. Then on the 26th Emily had the anniversary of her birthday. But we did not celebrate it, but gave her some nice presents and we enjoyed or lives together.

Then on decorating day Elva, Alton, Emily and Winona all came and we went up to Wallsburg and had a holiday and decorated our folk's graves so it all goes to make up one grand union of love and labor in life.
Tuesday July 26th I went and got a music lesson on the guitar. Then at night Clyde Carter took Don and I to Salt Lake City to the Union Pacific Depot and we started to Idaho at 11:20 pm. Arrived in Shelley next morning at 7:10. We went to Byrle's and had breakfast and stayed there all day. Next morning went to Dewey Petersons or Vada's place stayed one day then went to Carl Bigelow's, then back to Vada's and stayed about two days in a place and on the 2nd of August at 3:40 P. M. took the train back to Salt Lack City. Met Clyde at 10:30 and he brought us back to Provo in his car and we got in bed abut midnight.
August 6, went to Midway to likes hot pots to attend the Boren reunion and had a chicken dinner, then a program, I sang two songs and went down to swim in the pool 60 ft long and I swam full length of it without stoping. Got the prize for being the oldest man and gave a dollar to help support the Boren reunion.
Sept 14 I came out to Vernal with Bruce Watkins, Ivan and Ella Batty. We arrived at 12 o'clock midnight and I stayed at Ivans place the rest of the night. Had breakfast at Ivans and he took me to my Sister Emily Battys that morning. We are having a splendid wonderful visit. On the 18th Sunday we went to Zina Howard's and she gave us a splendid chicken dinner with dumplings and gravy. I had a good talk with Brother Will Howard. Then on the 21st Sister Emily and I were envited down to Zinas for another big feast. And on the 22nd had another wonderful chicken dinner o Dora Freestone's and I congratulated them on their splendid modern home with its big glass south front windows and also in the west. In the afternoon, Well and Mina took Emily and I up on Diamond Mountain and We saw Mina's oldest boys dry land wheat farm up there on top of the mountain. We saw one grainery about twenty feet long full of dry land wheat and since I came home they tell me he has about eight thousand bushel gathered, and there has come about two feet of snow so they think it is doubtful if he gets the rest thrashed, so it will be a bad loss and it sure is a big climb to get on top of the mountain.

Then we went on farther and seen a modern home that Woody B has build up there for hunters and Mountaineers or travelers to stay in and over the door is rote "The Kings Palace." Then we came down to Jim Freestone's house and stayed there over night, and the next morning I went out to one of the ponds and caught nine trout and Will and Woody B. caught some so we had enough for a good trout dinner. In the afternoon we come over on Taylor mountain where I had got house logs out and hauled down to the valley fifty years ago and I built a house we lived in for two years while Annie and I lived and broke up a forty acre farm and went through and experienced the hardest times in our married lives in President Grover Cleavelands rue over the United States; now back to our trip, we had a trout dinner up on the top of Taylor Mountain and cam home to Emily's and made the hole trip in a less than twenty four hours.

Sept. 27 I started from Vernal with a salesman about seven oclock at night just between sundown and dark a man I had never saw before. We talked gospel and everthing but love. I drove into Heber between 11 and 12 o'clock drove up in front of the Jensen Hotel and then he said we can stay here tonight. I got out of his car and asked him how much I owed him and he said not a thing I thanked him and we in and the proprieter said the room for each of us would cost two dollars a piece I went up stairs to bed, the sales man said I could ride to Provo with him the next day if I would wait till he canvased two stores, it might take till noon. So I desided to wait rather than to go all the way to Salt Lake City and then to Provo. So a little after noon here he came and said he was ready so I got my suit case and climbed in the car got home to Provo or right to the end of the lane. I got out and asked him again how much I owed him. He said not a cent I said her is tow dollars if you will take it, he said no and bid me good by wishing me the blessings of the Lord.
Now when I got my check of Fifty dollar abut the fifth of Sept. I paid five dollars for hous rent, left me 45.00 so then I took $4.50 and gave to Bp. Orval Davis, a full tithing my outing to Vernal and back cost me less than five dollars. If I had paid my buss fair both ways around by S. L. City it would of cost fifteen or sixteen dollars. Did it pay me to pay my tithing? I say yes, Yes, and I saved more than three times the amount of my tithing.

November. 8 Yesterday I got a card from Okie enviting me to come to their place and stay and go to the temple and attend Doris' wedding, I went and Doris was married on the 9th to Robert D. Scott. I was their right hand witness and Apostel John A. Widsoe pernounced the cerimony in the day. We went to a hotel for dinner on the night of the 10th they had a reception party and a dance for all friends. After watching them dance a while I came home to Provo with Elva and Clyde and stayed with them the rest of the night.
December 9 Alton and Fern came in their new car from Springville and took Elva Clyde and I up to Wallsburg to Temp Borens funeral services and burrial. She was just a little over eight months older than I am and they layed her away in the Wallsburg Cemitary. The first winter snow came to stay in Provo this winter on the tenth of December 1949.

This year is about gone the hollidays are here again, and New Year's day had passed, spent the hollidays with Elva and her family and Emily and her family, I truly thank the Lord for my children, grandchildren and great grand children, and I surely do love and appreciate my heritage.

February 2. Left Provo 2;45 P. M. for S. L. City on a trip to California to visit Ervin and family took the grehound buss to arive in S. L. City went to Velmas to stay all night and Winona came that night. The next morning called a cab and went to depot at 6:00 A. M. and soon left for Ogden. Left Ogden at 8:45 A. M. to cross the desert for California. Arrived in Redding 2 P. M. Ervin came and go us and too us to his home in Central Valley the snow was about a foot deep there but that night it started to rain and in two days the snow was all gone. The weather cleared up and looked like spring or summer had come.
Winona got a letter from home stating her boys were left alone so she desided to come back to Utah and we started back on the afternoon of 10th February. Had poor connections and the trains had a lot of lay-overs. Arrived in Ogden 9 P. M. February 13 and in Salt Lake City at 11P. M. Next day went to Free Allreds found sister Polly Allred there came from California the night before same night I did and we desided we would go to Vernal together to see Sister Emily Batty, who had had a light stroke two weeks before. So the next day I came to Provo, stayed one day and that night heard Polly had already gone to Vernal. So that night I got ready went to Elvas, stayed all night, next morning at 6:30 I started for Vernal, found Polly there and Emily up and walking around but very feeble. Stayed there with Will Howard and Zina four days then back to Salt Lake City, with Polly then on back home to Provo. Oh by the way the snow was twelve to fourteen inches deep in Ashley Valley.

August 1, 1950 went over to Provo River in the afternoon and just after sundown caught a big german-brown trout, nineteen and a half inches long and it weighed four lbs and a few days before that I caught on a fly hook that was seventeen inches long out of the river.

August. 5 the Boren Family, (only two left of the original family) all went to Canyon Glenn and had a family reunion. Enjoyed a splendid dinner had a very nice entertainment and program. Mina Merriotti took lead and charge of all the exercises.

October 22 - Went to Sunday School today as usual. My eye-sight has failed looking at things far away. I could not see the figures across the room on the black board. An my hearing is very much impared, I could hear the teacher, Bro. Triplet give the lesson but could not hear the people around me in their discussion. So when I came home gave Emily her book and told her I did not think I would go to Sunday school any more. It has been a long time since I went regular to meetings on that account. So I bid farewell to all kind of meetings and entertainments.

Now I want to say to all lovers of the truth, light, and knowledge Read the book "The Vision" or the degrees of Glory", especially to women more especially to young unmarried women and girls. Read the most wonderful directions counsel and instructions given to young unmarried women and girls given on pages as follow: Marriage out side the Church Pages 91--92. "Instructions recieved on heavenly things" pages "92-93 and Top of 94.
Origin and destiny of women" Pages 145, 146, 147, and top of 148. This is December and another year almost to a close the world is at war in Korea and China, a terrible thing to send our young American boys to face those battles and to be shot in cold blood. Yes Christmas is gone, I spent the day with Emily and her family, and had a good time Yes old year gone and 1951 is here. The fifth of January makes four years since my darling wife passed to the great Beyond. There was no snow this year til after Xmas. But it snowed about two inches at night for two nights before new years day. But the snow would go off each day and on the 4th January, 1951 there was no snow on the ground in front of the house.
January 11, 1951, No snow yet to amount to anything. This has been the most uncommon fall and winter I ever remember in my life here in this part of Utah. The thermomoter has only run down to ten below Zero on night. It is now February the twentieth and no snow on the fields. The sun is shining warm and it feels jut like spring or summer.
The weather was fine until the first day in March. Then in the afternoon it began to snow, and the weather turned cold. For four or five days it was winter, then it began to warm up gradually and in a few days it was spring again. This is April 13th and this morning before sunrise I heard a mourning dove cooing in one of the big walnut trees so Spring is here, the grass is growing, the early flowers are beginning to bloom and I am glad; it is cheering me.

Sunday, April 1, 1951. 1 went to Sunday school in the Edgemont Church house. I had fasted and after Sunday School I attended fast meeting and bore my testimony. The subject I used was faith and works as found in the second chapter of James. seventeenth and eighteenth verses. As he said so I say-- I will prove my faith by my works. Then I told the people went on two missions; spent the big part of three years in the mission field. Then I came home and got children through high school and in a few years started to work in the Salt Lake Temple. I worked there four years, then in the St. George Temple four years, and in the Manti Temple one year. The big part of nine years was spent doing temple work. I did the endowment work for over fifteen hundred men. Then I was witness for a great number of sealings for husbands and wives and thousands of children to parents, making a total of five thousand altogether in which I officiated and took part in. Then to complete my testimony I quoted Reveloation; 20: 12-13. "I saw the dead small and great stand before God. etc." And when I was coming through the crowd after meeting five different people congratulated me on my talk. I thanked them, and added that I felt very humble on my talk, as humble as a little child.

Saturday night, April 21, 1951 I dreamed I was on a highway in a strange place and I met my angel mother and I was Just in the act of embracing her and taking her in my arms and I said to her, "Haven't you got some love and a kiss for me? And I woke up with one of the grandest feelings of love and affection I ever enjoyed in my life.

The night of June 15, 1951, I went over to Springville, Hobblecreek, with Theron and Emily and their family. Next morning at five o'clock we started fishing and I cought ten trout from seven to fourteen inches long. We had a fish dinner and had a wonderful outing in the mountain scenery.

On the seventeenth I got several Fathers cards with the expression of love and gratitude for me which is beyond expression of price. So Love, Love is the greatest of them all. Then I got from the children seven dollars in all which helps to bear the burden of life.

July 10, 1951. Stoker and I had words and dissatisfaction about me having to crawl through a barbed wire gate every time I went for mail or to town. This happened in the morning and at night when he came from work he said he had been thinking of it all day and that house jut was not beg enough for both of us any longer and he wanted me to leave by the first of August. Well, I had six swarms of bees and a bunch of rabbits, about thirty. So I came down to Provo and told Elva and Winona about my trouble which I took to heart as I had tried my best to do everything I could to help him build fence, dig ditches, build gates and finally went down to their new coal yard and helped in a number of ways. Well, I was totally discouraged and as Elva had planned to go see Velma in Spokane, Washington, Elva and Winona set in to have me go with her. I said, "No, No." but finally they prevailed when they found out I had the money for the ticket. Then they wouldn't give it up so I decided to go. We started Friday night, July 13, Clyde took us to Salt Lake City in his car and Elva and I got on the train in the middle of the night and we arrived in Pocatello, Idaho, about five o'clock Saturday morning. They said we could have to lay over five hours, but the train was late and we had to wait nearly three hours more. We got started again about noon and rode all the rest of the day and all night and arrived in Spokane, Washington, between eight and nine Sunday morning. Bob and son and Velma met us at the depot. They took us home to their apartment and we enjoyed their friendship and hospitality. The next night Bob took us for a sight seeing ride up through the northeast part of the town, and out along the north highway along the Spokane River which runs in a deep gorge about thirty five to fifty feet deep. There is a steep bank down to the water which is, Bob Said, no telling how deep. He said one time there was a car which got out of control and it had a baby in it. It ran off the steep side of the hill into the river which runs dead. There is no movement which can be seen. The car which went off was not found for three weeks. Then down in the west part of town they have a cement dam and big cement buildings on both sides of the river. The water runs through big turbines which furnish power to generate electricity for the town. Then the river runs over a big ledge of rock a hundred yards wide and falls a hundred and fifty feet down under a big high bridge. That night Bob drove us down to a big ledge about forty feet high, to look where the river runs off and leaves the town.

Now about getting food poisoning. Monday noon Velma and I ate a half of a meat sandwich which we had taken with us and it had become poison. In the afternoon both of us got sick; yea and sicker. We tried to vomit and you can guess the rest. I was sick like the fellow that said he was so sick he was afraid he couldn't die. The only reason I tried to live was that I did not want to die so far away from home. Seven hundred miles is too far away from home. So we came back from Washington without any special thing happening. Elva and Clyde cleared on of their best rooms and moved my things down to their place. So here I am waiting between life an death and I do not care how soon it comes. But I do not want to be fed on an oxygen tank at the last.

August 24, 1931. Clyde A. Carter, Elva, Don, Carol Jean and I started on a trip to the sunny south in southern Utah. The first thing of note was the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was light colored and slick like chalk. It almost glistened in the sunlight. It had hollows or ravines down the side of it.

Then we went to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was quit. a climb. We drove right into the rangers station or information bureau. The agent told me the altitude was eight thousand feet above sea level, and the canyon was about five miles wide from rim to rim. W left the car there and walked about half or three quarters of a mile. When we reached the rim and looked off down any where from twenty five to a hundred and fifty feet there was hollow hills and high peak ridges and summits and as we followed in a southeast direction around the top the canyon got deeper and finally we were looking off a ledge straight down into a gorge, oh, a hundred and fifty feet deep I would say. There were great towers of rock running straight up, maybe ten feet thick at the bottom and stood straight up like big slabs standing on the ends, some no more than a foot and a half thick towards the top and seventy five feet high. Some of the wonders of the world.

Then we started for Zion National Park. They said the mountain road cost a million dollars and I believed it before we got through. We went up, and over high grades and into a tunnel perported to be a mile long and a double highway all the way through. We went up and up. It goes along the canyon wall and there is three openings in it. The road widens out so as to give room to stop and look out down the mountain -a hundred feet or more. When we got through we were way up on the side of a big high ledge mountain three or four hundred yards so we had to go zig zag turn after turn to get down in the bottom of the canyon. It was getting late, between sundown and dark and as we started up the canyon there stood a big buck deer eating leaves off some brush about five rods from the road and he never paid any attention to our car running along. Well, we made for a camp ground.

The next morning we went up a river about a mile or more and low behold it was the Virgin River that runs down by St. George. Then we turned round and went back down the river to Hurricane about twenty five miles from St. George.

Then we went up highway 91 to Toquerville, Aunt Emma Hills mothers sister and family used to live there. Then we started home but decided to turn and go to Cedar Brakes, and see another sight. It was a terrible climb. The sight was something like Bryce only a lot higher. The altitude is ten thousand five hundred feet and after seeing it we went down the steepest canyon road I ever was an in my life, then we went on home.

This is Sunday morning September twenty third, I got up, had a light breakfast, then walked to the church house. Attended High Priests meeting then to Sunday School. I got up close to the front and heard the most or what was said. I came home had dinner then Clyde said we would go for a ride, up over the loop in American Fork Canyon. Clyde, Elva, Winona, Carol Jean, Ken and I started out. We drove on top of the devide looking over into the north fork there we stoped and Elva had arranged a lovely chicken dinner for, us, and boy, was it good, yes, yes. We went on over into the North Fork and as the leaves on the trees and brush were turning red and yellow for the fall of the year, it was a wonderful sight to see. There I looked over the mountains of my boyhood days, from nine to eighteen years old, I spent my summers there. The winters I spent in Provo, going to the B. Y. Academy. And many was the memorable seans of my life recalled. I noted up on the side of the mountain the very spot where I shot my first, big buck deer and the canyon I saw three bear following one after the other. The first was a big black bear the next tow were cinnamon bear. Father shot at them and did they scatter and run in every direction. They went straight up over the mountain fast as they could climb or run.

We came down North Fork and struck the highway in Provo Canyon and turned up the canyon, went up to the Deer Creek dam, but the sights in Provo canyon did not compare with the sights in the North Fork, up among these cliffs and water falls. Then back to home sweet home.

Thursday 1 November 1951 Clyde Elva, Winona and I started at four P. M to go to Salt Lake Tempe got there a little after five and We all went through the temple. Winona got here endowments. Now it is up to each one of them to comply with a celestial law, in order to go where their Mother and the other five of Our children are.

On the night of the fourteenth of November 1951 I heard some of the most beautiful strains of music It seams now that it was so real that I can almost recall the sounds, and it seames like a different kind of an instrument than I ever heard.

This is 8 January 1952 I just went out in the lot behind the house measured the depth of the snow in a dozen different places and as near as I could get it the snow averages about eighteen inches deep. I went up to center street and then east towards the foot of the mountain to the State hospital and as the snow was so deep the deer were out there in herds I suppose I suppose I saw fifteen or more. One little fellow had one spike horn standing up above his ears. Sure looked odd. They are feeding those deer hay out by the Hospital. The snow has covered those big pine trees and is hanging there. Winona works at the hospital, last night wile coming home she saw about a dozen big bucks in one herd and one had lost or shed one of his horns, the other horn had four points showing. He was a big deer.

In the spring of 1952 Elva had been suffering a severe sick head ache. That day I went in where she was and she had her head wrapped in a wet towel, the pain would affect her stomach and she would have to go to bed. I asked her if she would like to have me administer to her, she said Yes. I took the consecrated oil and anointed her head and prayed for her and I said "You shall receive this blessing acording to your faith. And from that time on she got better, and has never had the head ache since. For this wonderful blessing we unite in thanking the God of Heaven.

In September 1952 Winona and I took some temple sheets, that sister Helen Snow had got out on the Bigelow line, and went to the Manti temple. The sheets contained 163 names of Husbands, wives and children, we had them all sealed in the temple. Since then this winter Clyde, Elva, Winona and I and our family have taken three more bunches of sheets and went to the Salt Lake Temple and had the sealing done on all of those sheets, which would make over five hundred sealings.

The latter part of last summer I got so I wondered what the Lord was holding me here for. It is six years now since my wife passed to the great beyond but now since I have been the cause of getting all this sealing done I have quit wondering I am eighty six years old, and go to the Utahna every Tuesday night and waltz and dance ten or twelve time till midnight. My health, I would say is perfect, with the exception of my eyesight and hearing, are both impared. Other wise I feel fine, I walk from ten to thirty three blocks every day, I thank the Lord for my health, and I say to Him I'll go where you want me to go Dear Lord, I'll say what you want me to say, and I'll be what you want me to be.

So Here am I. I might say a little about the weather, it has been warm and the sun shines just like spring time, it has done all winter, and tomorrow is the 28th or last day of February, 1953.

In the last of January 1953 Winona had an ailment in the palm of her hand. She thought it was a sliver and she tried to pick it out but the more she picked the worse it got till it made a hole in her hand. So she went to a doctor, he examined it, and picked and dug at it and fineally lanced it in the place effected, and every day it got worse. It pained till she could not sleep night or day. Then the Doctor lanced id down to the bone. Still the hand got worse than the toothache and she held her hand straight up all the time. The next day or evening Clyde came to my room and said Winona wanted me to come and administer to her. I washed my hands and went in. Clyde anointed her head, I sealed the annointing and pronounced the blessing. Before we took our hands off her head the pain stoped and in a number of days the sore healed up and got well. She never went back to the doctor again.

One day the first part of February I went in to Elvas kitchen and there sat Winona with her leg bare up to her knee the leg laying on Elvas table. I was surprised and said, "What is the matter." She said My leg pains till I can hardly stand on it. I put my left hand on the ankle it seamed natural, I moved my hand up a little farther and it was hot with fever, I moved my had up towards her knee and it was O. K. Then I layed both hands on the hot place on her leg. I stood right there and in a silent prayer and in the authority of the Holy Priesthood and the power of the Living God I rebuked the pain and commanded it to depart and be gone in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Winona got up the pain gon. She went down to Emily Stokers and went to work worked all day and her leg never bothered her, and has'nt since.

Monday 1 March 1953 we got a phone call from Vernal, that my sister Emily Batty had passed away, or died that morning. Wednesday I got up at 4:30 and went to the buss station and took the bus to Salt Lake City. About nine oclock took another bus to Vernal, arrived about one o'clock. Held the Funeral service at 11:00 A. M. Thursday. They had the most wonderful funeral service I ever attended. It seamed to me there mus of been from three to five hundred people in attendance. It looked like there were a hundred cars there. In the evening I came home with Grand Rasmusson. And on of Don Batty's boys, drove the car and all at once he threw on the brakes. I was half asleep and I just about headed into the back of their seat. A deer jumped in head of the car.

April 24, 1953. I have been for years so I could not sleep nights and then when I would sit down in the day time and be still I would drop off to sleep no matter how hard I tried to keep awake, especially in meetings. I would have the worst time to keep awake, then again the last few months it has been worse on me nights. I have been dreaming bad dreams at night as soon as I went to bed. Then the devil would wake me up with one of those bad dreams. I would be nervous and lay awake, for hours rolling and tossing. Sometimes sitting up till eleven or twelve oclock at night afraid to try to go to sleep, or to bed. On Monday night I went to bed about eleven oclock and shortly after I droped off' to sleep. I dreamed I was in bed or sleeping in under an old big dark shed, and att at once I heard some big horses squeeling and fighting. I thought the horses Was almost as, big as elephants and they were within just a few feet of where I was lying and it was a very dark night. I seemed like I could almost feel, those big animals almost steping on me and I was Just num and could not move. I woke enough to begin to pray-- after praying I could move I began to crawl and got away a little ways then I stood up and I thought those animals was wild and I was in a big walled inclosure with them. Then I did wake up and got up out of bed and down on my knees and told the Lord what a wicked sin it was to have the devil turned loose on a person when they were lying down on their back asleep helpless, and had now way of defence to help themselves. I told the Lord I was like the Apostles of old. They said to the savour "Where shall we go". I told the Lord there was only one place to go and that was to the true and living God.

Again I thought of poor old Job He said in his distress. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away and blessed by the name of the Lord." He did not realize it was the divil turned loose on him that had taken his children his property and every thing but his wife. But it was the evil one, the devil would of taken his life but the Lord forbid Him doing that.

Then again Poor old David lost all he had, His family, wives, concubines and everything and greeved and mourned and wrote a hundred and fifty chapters in the bible called the Psalms of David. In the Doc. & Covenants, the Lord says I took his wives and gave them to another. There are others I could refer to but I do not want to do that in my history. So I will turn to myself and to the True and Living God. Who is the rock of my refuge. The One on whom I will stake my life, both now and forever.

Provo, July 15, 1953 About the fore part of April I started to learn to use the typewriter or learn to type, and now In about three months I can manage to typeriter quite well and write sentences and I intend to try to write my letters on the typewriter from now on.

Today the 24th of July I went to 5th West and 5th North where the Sons and Daughters of the Pioneers had a fine program and a good dinner all free.

May 21 1953 I was hanging out clothes after washing in the afternoon Alton and fern drove up and in a few minutes Omerro and Mina Marriotti and Will Boren came. Then Alton ask me if I did not want to go with them to Manti tomorrow. Leda and Norman E. Johnson were going thru the Temple to be sealed for time and eternity I said I certainly do. The next day the twenty second was the anniversary of my birthday and I was eighty seven year old. So we all went and I was one of the witnesses to their sealing for ever.

Another peculiar incident that had happened, in those two young peoples lives jut a number of days before on the twenty ninth of April the aniversary of mine and Annies weding day sixty years before we were married in the Manti temple--the young couple were married by a bishop in Los Angles California, on the twenty ninth of April nineteen fifty three. So they had a double weding on two historicle events in my life.

On Saturday May 30, Alton Fern and family came and we all went up to Wallsburg on Decoration day. I had a good talk with Polly, Reed, Tressa and her girls, sure did enjoy visiting with Polly my only sister living. Then we came down Provo canyon to Canyon Glenn and had a splendid dinner Fern had fixed and brought.

On Monday the first day of June Clyde took his car ,fifteen minutes to seven and Elva, I, another man and two women--six of u got in the car and went to Manti went thru two sessions. That made endowments for twelve people. Then came back by way of Nephi, got home before sundown I told those folks thot was one perfect day.

July 31 1953 I went up to Wallsburg and stayed at Polly Allreds two days till Saturday evening had the best visit we have ever had since we were young and went to dances together, before we were either one married. Then Saturday evening the Boren family and heirs met in the Wallsburg Church house. Mina and Will are the only two children living out of thirteen. They all had supper and at eight oclock they started a program. Mina took charge of it. I opened by prayer and later I read a poem called "The Queries" and at the last Mina said she wanted to be excused from taking care of the reunion and runing the programs any longer. I said when we were coming home if Mina gave it up I have an idea that will be the last meeting they will ever have.
The night of December. 26 1953 I went up to the Ladies Club House third North. Academy ave. There they had a very good program started at eight P. M? and It run till about half past nine. Then they started to dance I danced once then went down to the Utana and danced till twelve so that was another perfect day.

Then on December 30th Joseph Clegg envited me down to his place at night said the def and blind was going to have a social or party at night, and He ask me to come to it. So while there they played a game, in which we had to give forfits, and to redeem mine I had to sit on a womans lap lay my head on her sholder and cry like a baby. After living alone for seven years batching it that was easy. Well after the game the family furnished a splendid lunch and then home ward bound.
On the thirty first I went down town and bought Winona one of the nicest umberellas I could find and gave it to for a birthday present. She was born on the last day of the year. So farewell for nineteen fifty three.

Provo, January 27, 1954 Last night when I first went to bed I dreamed a most beautiful dream it run like this. I thought I had a most beautiful home and it was up in the air about two feet of the ground and I was inside the house and my folks was all in bed. Annie and all of them and the house inside was finished with silk and saten of the most gordous brilliant colors. More beautiful than words can express or an artist could express or paint. Just the most beautiful that the imagination could think of.

March 28, 1954 Sunday in the middle of the day I layed down and went to sleep I saw a vision of where my patriarchal blessing says until the perfect day--or the perfect day.

Sunday April 11, 1954--I went to quarterly conference this morning and could not keep awake. I have had rhumatism in my knees for two days, and coming home all at once I felt like my lungs was a fire--I kept coming and it got worse, and time I got home the burning was almost imbearable I drank some root beer, then I make some red pepper tea and took than and layed down and felt better. But I think it was my heart.

 

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