CHARLES REDD CENTER FOR WESTERN STUDIES

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

LDS POLYGAMY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

INTERVIEWEE: ORSON R. CLARK

INTERVIEWER: Leonard R. Grover

DATE: August 20, 1980

PLACE: Farmington, Utah

SUBJECT: Life in a LDS polygamous family

G: This is an interview for the Charles Redd Center at Brigham Young University LDS Polygamy Oral History Project. It is being conducted with Orson R. Clark at his home in Farmington, Utah. Today is August 20, 1980, and it is approximately 2:00 p.m. The interviewer is Leonard Grover.

Brother Clark, tell me the earliest recollections that you have of your childhood.

C: Soon after my mother, Wealthy Richards Clark, was married, she took sick and was sick for practically ten years. On one occasion at the end of this ten years, a returned missionary by the name of Brother Palmer came visiting to the house and found Mother sick and in bed. He gave her a blessing, and she was immediately healed. She was able to get up from her bed and greet her husband as he returned to the room. After this sickness, she commenced to have a family as she had gone ten years without a child. She had seven children.

Mother lost twin boys just fourteen months to the day before I was born. They only lived for a day and then they died. So Mother was very despondent and very anxious that my life be saved. When I was born, so they tell me, I was a very delicate, puny little fellow. Mother's sister, Pheobe Peart, was staying with her at the time when I was born. Phoebe took me and went into the other room where Father was. They looked me over, and father said, "Shall I go and tell his mother that he has died?" She said, "No." She paused for a moment, and in that moment of silence she offered a silent prayer telling the Lord that if he would spare this child she would spent the rest of her life in doing temple work. She did, and she lived to the age of ninety years.