by Ellen C. Henderson

Father was born at Winter Quarters, November 21, 1847. He was named for his grandfather, Timothy Baldwin Clark, who built one of the first houses on what was then called Clark Lane, but is now Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois. Father signed his name T. B. Clark, but nearly everybody called him Timmy.

His parents were ready to leave for the West in 147, but Brigham Young asked Grandfather to remain for the winter to see to the harvesting of the 1847 crops and the 1848 spring planting to provide food for the people who were coming from the East. Thus it was that Father was a passenger across the plains in a covered wagon with Grandmother doing all of the things a mother has to do for two small children an infant and two-year old Ezra James, who was named for his father and for Grandmother's brother, James Stevenson.

While Father was growing up, the business of the farm was marketing hay. The hay as cut with a scythe and raked into windrows with pitchforks. Uncle Joseph, who was seven ears younger than Father, told me that Father considered the process too slow; and made a hay rake long before any were available. For heath he fitted strong straight sticks into a horizontal piece of lumber. A horse pulled it along with its teeth sliding underneath the cut hay. It had a perpendicular handle to dump the hay into the windows.

In 1864, Ezra James was preparing to go to Europe on a mission when he was called into the army. Father persuaded his parents to let him take the army job, and at seventeen e became a soldier. More than fifty years lager, we took him in an automobile over the route he had walked while he was in the army. We stopped at all of his old camping grounds. He would place our son on the top of a monument and say, "You can tell him later that he stood in the places that made important history."

One of my earliest memories is of Father's preparations to attend the encampments of his soldier companions. He always took a quantity of white comb honey to distribute to the boys, who walked with him while they were in the army.

The only school Father attended was taught by our maternal grandmother, Lucy V. Witter Rice, in her home, a two-room house, which stood one-half blocks to the east and the south of the rock house, which is on the northeast corner of the county court house block. Before Mother took over the school teacher job, Father had mastered his Three R's. When he was less than twenty one years old and Mother was seventeen, they were married in the Endowment House at Salt Lake City. The lost three of their first five children, Timmy at less than two years of age, and William and Zina of diphtheria during the siege, which caused many deaths in Farmington, and almost took Mamie and the baby, Clara. Of the eight children, who lived to maturity--Eva, Mamie, Clara, Louise, Minerva, Ellen Georde and Lera, only the last named girls are living now (June, 1970).

Instead of working in the hay, Father did other things. Before salt was refined by machinery, he mad salt-water ponds on the lake shore by building low walls to enclose the water for it to evaporate leaving salt crystals. He and Mother put the salt crystals--coarse salt into muslin bags to be sold for household use, one of which was to freeze ice cream. Father stored ice in sawdust in an ice house he built near our barn.

At one time Father had a coal business. A car of coal would be side-tracked and emptied into a coal house, which was beside a track. People would come to buy, but many of them expected it to be "charge." Father did not find it easy to do the collection part of the transaction, and frequently he had to borrow the cash to pay for the new car of coal. One man said, "I told you not to let that family of mine have any more coal, for I'll not pay the bill." Father said, "Even if you are willing to have your family freeze, that's no sign that I have to refuse them coal." You are thinking that Father was not a business man. The time came when the cash and the coal business came to an end.

Father raised and sold honey. The north half of our lot had rows and rows of beehives. Father paid s five cents for every swarm we halted by sending up smoke from cans in which we put burdock leaves to smother the fire. Some of us helped to "take out" the honey. To keep he bees from stinging us, we wore gloves and a mosquito-net veil over a wide-rimmed hat. We had two extractors, a centrifugal arrangement, which whirled the clear honey from the comb, and a glass-covered box, which had a series of wire and muslin strainers. The sun was hot enough on the glass to melt the wax. The wax remained on the cloth layer, and we could draw the honey from the bottom of the box. People paid five cents for a pint of honey and a few cents more for a pound of comb honey. We always had a supply of comb honey to give a "chunk" to our playmates. We could make candy whenever we wanted to. We were very popular for surprise parties; but quite unsure whether our candy was responsible for our invitations.

Father made vinegar from honey-sweetened water. We had two big barrels at the north of our lea-to shanty. One held water that was being "mothered" into vinegar by the stringy substance, which the dictionary says is "mother." All of us helped with the vinegar process by adding sweetened water. From the second barrel of ripe vinegar, we sold it for ten cents a quart.

Father was interested in civic affairs. He served many years as county road supervisor. He supported all movements for civic improvement. He initiated some of them. For example, he continued to write articles for he newspapers until Salt Lake City passed and enforced Laws against spitting on the sidewalks. He continues to call attention to heating and ventilating public building until changes were finally made. He initiated movements for improvement of moral situations in his own and neighboring communities; and was severely criticized and even penalized by some of the offenders; but he later received his tribute: "He was guardian of the morals of the community." He was not afraid to stand up and be counted. When he saw anything that he considered wrong, he did something about it. A resident of Farmington said to me, "See my grandson there. I asked my son to name him Timmy. Your father came into my shop more than once while men and boys were standing in front of lewd pictures, which were tacked on the wall. He went straight up to the lewd pictures, tore them down, and threw them on the fire. It wasn't very funny. But I came to see myself, and I changed my ways. Now, I'm what I am instead of just riff-raff. My family is proud of me, and I am proud of my family."

Others have told us to how he influenced their lives. One man expressed it b outfitting Father and sending him to California for a pleasure trip. (That was Uncle Amason's son, Harold.)

Father had many interests. He kept clipping from newspapers and magazines. After his death we found many articles about great men and great writers. He told me hat Edgar Allen Poe had never in all of his poetry and prosed use any word unless it was better than any other word would be.

If Father had been a grandson instead of the next to oldest in the family, he probably would have been sent to Harvard. He could have been a teacher. He could simplify complex problems. In the days when people could become teachers if they were able to pass the teacher's examination, he gave confidence to Eva and Mamie. When I was six years old and needed at home to watch George and Lera, he taught me the three R's so that at eight the teacher put me with children, who had been in school during the two years. He must have been exacting, for when 1888 became 1889, he insisted that--against my desire--I must print a nine instead of three eights.

He could have been a lawyer. While a tramp, who had cut wood for something to eat, was eating his meal, Father discussed politics or religion with him I heard one of the free-loaders say, "I'll get into your Heaven without your baptism." Father said, "Can you get into a theater without a ticket? Baptism is the ticket."

Father died February 14, 1924 at the age of seventy-seven. He was buried in the Farmington Cemetery by his family there--his three children, who had died so young, and by our mother.