HYRUM DON CARLOS CLARK

By: Elwin Clark

My Dear Relations and Friends:

It is my privilege today to make a few remarks about my father, to whom we are paying honor on this occasion.

I have gathered this information largely from accounts by my brother Hyrum T., my sisters Edna Erickson and Herma Smith, and from my own memory.

Hyrum Don Carlos Clark was born at Farmington, February 13, 1856, being the fifth son and sixth child of Ezra T. Clark and Mary Stevenson. He spent his childhood and youth largely in Farmington as part of his father's very large and prosperous family, suffering the privations and relishing the freedoms and joys of pioneer life. He was also occupied, at times, on his father's ranch at Georgetown, Idaho, as also at his holdings at Morgan Utah. From what I have been able to learn, he was a good active, friendly, obedient son. In other words, he was a good scout. On numerous occasions while I was growing up, either to chide or encourage me, he would say, and I quote, "When I was a boy" or "When I was your age," and then he would discourse at some length about some fine or extraordinary achievement--so I would assume he was a normal boy.

Father's temporary sojourns in Morgan were only five miles from Porterville where my mother, Eliza Porter, was growing up. They were married November 11, 1880 in the old endowment house.

The Ezra T. Clark family was a very patriarchal family. The children settled close around the parents in what was practically communal life, which lasted until just a few years before grandfather's death.

32

- - - - - - - - - - - - - END OF PAGE 1 - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Father and Mother felt that they wanted to be away on their own; maybe they believed that "a man should leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife." So early in 1882, for better or for worse--sometimes it seemed for worse--they left the commune and moved to Goose Creek in Idaho. Lots of sage brush, little water, lots of rocks and little soil: they nearly starved until 1887 when they abandoned their place with all its improvements, and with a little herd of stock and four children and two wagons, they moved to Star Valley in Wyoming.

Star Valley

I wish I could give you a good picture of Star Valley. Last winter, a man said, "The reason the weather man doesn't give you the temperature in Star Valley: no one would believe him. They can give you the temperature in Evanston or Randolph or Big Piney or Butte or Calgary or in Anchorage--it's probably colder in Star Valley."

Star Valley, in the early days, was a hard life. The only road in or out was fifty miles through mountains and canyons and meadows to Montpelier, Idaho. In the wet season it seemed that there was no bottom to the road, just mud. Every manufactured thing had to be freighted in with wagons or sleighs. The professional freighters with good equipment would take four or more days for the round trip. There were all sorts of heartaches, breakdowns, stuck in the mud, etc. along the way. When cattle were marketed, they would be driven three days or more to Montpelier, then shipped to Omaha or Denver. People did not go outside of the valley unless there was a great need. I remember when I was a youngster, there were several people who never saw a train until they went to the Logan

33