MY MEMOIRS
RECOLLECTIONS OF PIONEER LIFE
IN BEAR LAKE VALLEY
Written by Walter Edward Clark
Chapter 1
FROM NEW HAVEN PLANTATION TO THE GEORGETOWN FARM
For many years the counsel, “write a book of remembrance,” was considered by me to be a good advice for one gifted at story telling, or one with outstanding experiences –neither of which applied to me. In my late forties, my inner desire was to live until my oldest son could assume the management of our farm. In Clark fashion, I thought it should remain in the possession of the family. In my late fifties a doctor told me if I would ease up on my work I should live until I was seventy. That advice I did not follow, but I decided to write the story of my life. But I failed, at that time, to write anything worth preserving. Owen, the historian of the family, made an attempt to make me talk and him record, but that was no improvement.
In 1970 I tried again. Owen’s comment was, “You improve with each try.” In 1974 I decided to try again. Without Gladys’ encouragement and suggestions that I add here and change there, Owen’s insistence, and the use of Lela’s diaries, this would never have been written. When I requested one of my children to write a paragraph or supply a thought, they would reply, “If we did, it would not be your story.” That I know. No one I know uses as few descriptive terms as I do. The dates, I think, are accurate. I will make no attempt to follow a chronological order and I will try to avoid moralizing.
The Ezra T. Clark family trace their ancestry on five lines to two George Clarks, not yet known to be related, who emigrated from England and settled in Milford, Connecticut, in the newly founded New Haven Plantation, in 1638 or 1639. One of the George Clarks was known as Deacon Clark, the other as Farmer Clark, indicating their attachment to church and land-characteristics exceptionally strong in Ezra T. Clark as his heirs.
The Clarks moved in America pioneer fashion to Connecticut’s Western Reserve in the vicinity of what was to become Cleveland, Ohio; thence down the Ohio River to southern Indiana and Illinois; then to northern Illinois in DuPage County (near Chicago). History of the Church (Joseph Smith) records an Affidavit of Timothy Baldwin Clark, Father of Ezra T., which shows his interest in farming and country life in preference to moving into the city of Nauvoo as he and his family fled the scene of the Missouri persecutions. A tract of land in Salt Lake City has been pointed out to me as having belonged to grandfather, but he elected to move to Farmington in 1850, where he became a large land holder.
Ezra T. married Mary Stevenson. Ezra and Mary lived about a year at Charlston, Lee County, Iowa, seven miles west of Nauvoo, where Ezra James was born March 30, 1846. Early in June they started for Winter Quarters, arriving at the Missouri River July 15, 1846. They received word of the death of Elizabeth’s (Mary’s Sister) husband, so Ezra drove an ox team back to Charlston to settle their affairs and bring the widow to Winter Quarters.
They left Winter Quarters in June, 1848, and arrived in Salt Lake City October 12, 1848, and in a few days they moved to North Creek (Bountiful). April 3, 1850 they moved to Farmington, Utah where they made a permanent home.
At the October Conference, 1870, Ezra Clark, David Hess, Henry Lewis, and Jacob Hess were “called” to settle the Soda Springs area. That fall David Hess, in one wagon, accompanied by James Lloyd, and Ezra Clark, with his son, Joseph, in a second wagon, made the trip to Twin Creeks, later named Georgetown, and remained about two weeks.
They employed Joseph Rich, son of Apostle Charles C. Rich, of Paris, to help survey a town site, designating a ten acre lot as a public square. They hauled some logs from a nearby canyon to be used the next spring to construct houses. Uncle Joseph often related this experience. His father, in his haste to be the first out, threw a chain over the load, hitting his son in the head. In the spring of 1871 the four families moved to Georgetown. The original Clark home later became my mother’s home.
Ezra’s name was one of a list called to Iron County. A request was made for flour which he supplied, but his name was not removed from the list. The next spring he made the trip in the wagon that he had used to cross the plains, but he was told that he had done his part, and he returned to Farmington with Brigham Young.
Ezra was also asked to erect a flour mill in Morgan Valley. Father relates many experiences he had hauling feed grain from Morgan to Farmington.
Grandfather had an exceptionally good span of oxen that made several trips, bringing converts across the plains from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City. In the mission field a lady missionary, Miss Law, told me her father was the seventieth and last person for whom my grandfather had paid the transportation to come from England to Utah. For a period of time the Church had an immigration fund to bring saints to the Rockies. Eastern manufacturers followed the same policy to get cheap labor. Because excess labor was demanded to pay for the transportation, Congress enacted a law prohibiting the practice.
Ezra T. and Mary had 11 children; Ezra T. and Susan Leggott, 10 additional children. My father, Edward B. Clark had 12 children by two wives. My father was active in church and civic affairs. He served 28 years as counselor or President of the Davis Stake High Priests quorum and 22 years in the Davis Stake Presidency. As a Stake Patriarch, as of August 7, 1952, he had given 910 blessing. As a temple worker, few ill equal his record in the number of sealings –considerably over a million.
At the age of fifteen he was secretary of a cattle association; appointed and later elected county treasurer; president of a commercial club; Justice of the Peace; director of an irrigation company; bank director; and for over 20 years a director of the Federal Land Bank. It was a county commissioner that he received opposition. As chairman he took lead in building the Memorial Court House in Farmington. The north end of the county tried to prevent the construction. He also had a stormy time over horse racing in Farmington. The contention was that the operation was illegal, yet Farmington issued a license.
This incident Father related to me: (I am omitting names.) On the witness stand he testified his father had signed a document which contained limitation. The opposition contended no such document had been issued. Years later the document was found in a bank vault. Father told the judge who had presided at the trial of the discovery. The judge commented, “I never doubted the truthfulness of your statement.” It seemed everybody trusted E. B. Clark’s word and judgment. He was a man among men.
Father as a boy worked on the farm and attended the local school and the University of Utah. He taught school in Farmington two years and one in Centerville, Utah. In Centerville Mother and two of her sisters were his pupils. Father and his boyhood sweetheart, Wealthy Richards, daughter of Franklin D. Richards and Mary Thompson, were married September 25, 1879 in the Salt Lake Temple. They were not immediately blessed with children.
One day Uncle Wilford W. Clark, father’s brother, introduced me to a Stevenson, a relative of Grandmother’s, who asked if I was the “child of promise.” Uncle Wilford replied, “yes.” I wondered what they meant. Later Uncle Wilford told me that Aunt Wealthy, who had very poor health, was promised that if she would allow her husband to marry in polygamy she would be blessed with a family. Father, in his Autobiography, writes: “In early life she was at times a great sufferer…she was administered to many times and was promised that she would become a mother.” In another section he writes: “plural marriage was being taught and practiced during the time of our early married life. When I first mentioned to her (Wealthy) about embracing this law she replied, ‘If I am unable to raise a family I will not deprive you.’” Continuing, he wrote: “She (Wealthy) went to the Logan Temple with us and on April 2, 1885 I was married to Alice Randall,... Persons living in polygamy have to make sacrifices, and sacrifices bring forth blessings. I am thankful for all the blessings I have received from the Lord.”
A rumor, or more likely a statement of fact, was that Aunt Wealthy was impatient that the promise of being a mother was not fulfilled; to which my mother replied, “I think she will now have a child until I do.” I was born May 31, 1889 at Farmington, Utah, shortly after Aunt Wealthy was miraculously healed. Sixteen months later Aunt Wealthy gave birth to her first child Edward F. I think he is the “child of promise.”
My grandfather Clark may have attended some special significance to the events of my birth. Although he had older grandsons, he deposited $10.00 in the Davis County Bank in my name as savings account number one. Today it amounts to $175.00. It was many years later before he repeated the gesture for another grandson, Ezra T. Clark, his namesake, creating savings account number two. This bank is the one he founded to establish Uncle Amasa L. Clark in what became a long and remarkable career.
Shortly after my birth Mother moved to Nephi, Utah to keep house for her uncle, Edwin Harley, then to Farmington, where she stayed with her younger sister, Emily Richards, whose husband, Wilford W. Richards, was on a mission. Again quoting from Father: “I was advised in the Temple by one who had the right to counsel…it would be better to keep my wives in different states.” Uncle Joseph S. Clark, who made the trip to Georgetown, Idaho, in the fall of 1870 with his father, and who had lived in Georgetown for fifteen years, took Mother to Georgetown, Idaho. We arrived April 20, 1893, one month and eleven days before my fourth birthday anniversary.
On May 8, 1893, Uncle W. W. Clark, who was our guardian and the supervisor of the Clark ranch, was ordained a Bishop to preside in the Montpelier Ward. He exchanged his house with a Brother Williams for a house in Montpelier. He spent much time in our home. When he was released as Bishop, in 1922, he returned to Georgetown. Father, as foreman for E. T. Clark and Sons, was in charge of “the drive” as the cattle were driven from Farmington to Georgetown to be summered. It was a ten to twelve day trip. He would return to Farmington to supervise the hay harvest and return in the fall to gather and return the cattle to Farmington to be fed.
Neither Father nor Mother were molested by U.S. Marshals, unlike many others living in polygamy. Polygamous relationships were not publiciaed. In fact, it was not generally known exactly where we fit into the Clark clan. My grandfather Clark spent a period of time in the penitentiary because he had two families and my father paid his father’s fine. My grandfather Alfred Randall was spotted for arrest for the same reason. He had five families. One day a marshal found him at home. Grandfather Randall quickly invited the marshal to view his orchard and pick a box of choice fruit, and handed it to the marshal saying, “Take this home to your family.” The marshal reported, “I could not arrest a man like him.”
I was not advised or coached to give evasive answers about my parentage. A respectable appearing man, a gentle, one day asked me a great detail about my life and I answered in candor. The gentleman then advised me never to tell anyone else what I had told him. I have since wondered if he was not a U.S. Marshal; for some of the marshals were honorable men. An example of an evasive answer often given was: “I have no father,” followed by the question: “How did you get here?” Answer: “I greased my butt and slid down the rainbow.” I, in any event, had landed in Georgetown.