The larger home was a free wayside inn, always open to travelers; and scarcely a day passed but what a least one person besides the family would be entertained. At General Conference time visitors from Idaho and Southern Utah would flock here, and all would go by carriage and wagon-load, to attend the sessions. The family didn't let distance keep them from the special attractions in the city--a circus, a matinee at the Opera House, a special dance or especially a fair- and off they would dash to be a part of any major celebration or event. How could there be time for repining or loneliness in such a lively household?

I remember her daughter, Mary Elizabeth Robinson Porter, telling me (her daughter-in-law, Mildred B. Porter) that her Mother was very lonely many times. Although there was always a hired girl, usually one, who had been there for years, in the "mansion" home, there was constantly a surplus of work to be done, with no end of dishwashing, which fell to boys as well as girls until work in the fields claimed them.· Cooking, baking, churning, cleaning, ironing, candle-making--there was no place for any drone. One never knew how many would be served at the next meal, but there was always plenty, and to spare. Sleeping on floors and out in haylofts must have been a common occurrence as extra rooms and beds were multiplied to meet unusual stress.

Meanwhile, as the sons grew up and married, the family business expanded. President Brigham Young had requested Ezra T. to get a flour mill started. With the help of his older sons and machinery hauled in by team in 1861, this mill was established in Morgan, operating for years until destroyed by fire in 1932. Farming and ranching activities extended into Idaho, and it was to Georgetown that Mary E. took her three younger children while she served as housekeeper for her brother, Wilford W., a couple of years before he married. This must have been a difficult readjustment from the more "civilized" life of Farmington, and may have been as hard on Mary E. as on her homesick son, Albert, who expressed his satisfaction upon leaving the little hamlet as it receded into the distance by shouting sotto-voce, "Goodbye, Pigtown". Undoubtedly they all had missed the friends and relatives and verdant landscapes of Farmington, and were still nostalgic and eager to return.

Shortly after, Mary E., still young and attractive, but with no further desire for marital life and always interested in nursing, was glad to study with a Relief Society class under Dr. Ellis R. Shipp in Salt Lake City, graduating with her cousin, Paulina ("Pliny") Phelps Lyman, each to go her separate way in a lifelong career, the one down to Parawan, the other to Farmington. Hundreds of babies were brought into the world through the ministrations of "Auntie", as she came to be called. The only patient she lost was one that hit her hard--Uncle Amasa L. Clark's wife, Alice, who died of phlebitis, leaving three small sons. To fill the void as much as possible, Mary E. and her daughter, May, stayed most of the time in that motherless home until competent, wonderful Susan Duncan Clark stepped in to take over. After that Mary E. was always ready to help out in an emergency, like the "angel of mercy" Aunt Susan affectionately described her to be. Naturally, she was ever highly regarded by Uncle "Amasy" and Aunt "Susie".