Early Days in Utah

Brother Miller invited Charles, Eliza and children to stay at his home. This they did for a few days, but Charles and Eliza were independent, so they took a small room in Provo. They had such a very few things to start housekeeping. Their sea chest was used for a table. They had a chair with a rawhide bottom, a baking kettle, tin ware and their bedclothes.

Charles' first work was helping to make molasses, and he got his pay in molasses, potatoes and carrots.

Utah the Story of Her People, p. 196, Deseret News Press. Salt Lake City, Utah, 1946, furnishes us some details of this event. “When the rails were being laid across the plains of Wyoming, Brigham Young took a contract to lay 190 miles of road from Echo Canyon to Promontory. The people of Utah profited by this contract. Many sturdy Utah men and boys flocked with pick and spade, cart and ox team to help construct the road.” Charles was among the twenty-one men working up Echo Canyon, clearing off oak brush and later making a fill. They were paid so much per yard. Later four men of the group (Charles included) took a small contract under John Sharp about one-half mile east of the Long Tunnel. They had to make a cut in the earth, which was-- their dream had become a reality.

From the security of a good position in England, we find Charles trying to do most any menial job to eke out an existence for his family. He, like many other saints, was inexperienced in farming and in other kinds of labor that was required in a frontier settlement. But work he did! One of his first jobs was hauling out dirt in the tithing yard. But people passing by laughed at him because he was so clumsy in the use of a wheelbarrow. He helped Bishop Miller in his field binding wheat. When he asked the Bishop for more work the latter said, “You and your family had better turn out and glean wheat.” Which they did! When it was threshed they found they had over twenty-one bushels of wheat for winter. And as the price of flour went up to twenty dollars per hundred pounds, they had "plenty and to spare."

Annie West Neville in her Biography had this to say about their gleaning experiences. “Father and Mother would take us children into the fields to glean wheat. When Father could see quite a bit of wheat laying around, he would call us like a rooster calling his hens, and we would run and get it. That made a play out of it. We all gathered twenty bushels that fall. We had a nice lot of things for winter; a small barrel of molasses,

a big pig, vegetables, plenty of flour and clothes enough to keep us warm. These were homespun but we were happy.”

In the spring Eliza went to Salt Lake to see her brother Jabez who had been in California, and also some old London friends, David and Ann Leaker, who were living in the Eleventh Ward. While there she obtained some temple clothes for herself and Charles. The latter started out on foot for Salt Lake --a fifty-mile trip. A few days later on March 23, 1864, they went to the Endowment House and were married and sealed together for time and eternity. Charles reported, “We felt fully repaid for our journey and the few trials we had been through.”

While living in Provo, Eliza and Caroline had typhus fever. They were very ill. It was up to Charles to take care of the sick and to be the cook. He generally managed quite well, but one day the bread he had made did not rise. He had forgotten the yeast!

The West family was persuaded by some friends to go to Provo Valley or Heber City, as it is now called. Charles could take up all the land he wanted. But their troubles really began now. Eliza and Charles were not told how cold and hard the winters were, how isolated the little community became when the deep snows made the roads impassable, and of the constant danger of Indians in the vicinity, nor how hard it was to earn a living there. But Charles worked at anything he could find to do. When the family moved into the valley their great desire was to make friends. They went to meetings in a log-meeting house. Because Charles was fond of singing, he joined the choir and made some friends.

In Provo Valley, the family first lived with friends under very crowded conditions. When everyone was at home, the children had to stay in bed because there was no room around the fireplace for all to keep warm. So Charles decided to take up some land and build a home for his family. The land agent helped him select a site. However, he told Charles that a certain man had looked at the lot a year earlier and wanted the land agent to keep it for him but that the gentleman had not paid the necessary fee. So the agent took Charles'

money for recording and entering the claim. When Charles commenced digging out a foundation for a log house, a man came along to claim the land. Grandfather explained to the gentleman what had been done, that he had made an entry and paid for it, which the stranger had not, so he had a perfect right to the land. Rather than have a most unpleasant argument and to save feelings, Charles was counseled to withdraw his claim even though he knew the land was rightfully his.

Thirteen year-old Caroline did not go with her family to Provo Valley at first. Instead she had gone to Coalville in Summit County to live with a family to earn her board and clothes. But after living there a year she earned her board all right but the clothes she received was only a pair of shoes and a made over dress. When she went back to her parents she found them living in a small log house with a dirt floor and a dirt roof. It was there on a cold wintry day, January 9, 1866 that another baby was born to Eliza and Charles, a daughter, Mary Rebecca. While Eliza was in bed with the baby the makeshift wooden pipe caught fire. Charles was away from home, so Thomas ran for help. Through the help of a neighbor, the fire was put out with snow before much damage was done.

That winter was a hard one indeed for the family. Although Charles didn't give too many details of the extreme poverty the family suffered, Caroline gave the following details in her history.  “My parents continued to live in Heber City for a year or two. (Perhaps sixteen months) Father worked in the limekiln. --They were very poor, some of the time eating bran bread. They had frozen potatoes. (No one had mentioned to

Charles that he should put them in a pit to keep them from freezing). He sold his watch to buy a “step” stove. (He had parted with his cow, the camp kettle and the value of a few dollars besides to get it). Mother had sold some of her best baby clothes to buy a table, and when the kilns froze up, they boiled wheat to eat."

Some of their troubles no doubt were due to grandfather's high standards of honesty. Other dishonest men in the community often took advantage of him. Finally Eliza in desperation told Charles that if he did not find a better place in which to live and more food for the hungry children to eat she would go find a job herself.

Consequently Charles left his family for a while and went to Salt Lake City and it was several months before he returned for them. Meanwhile Eliza and the children were having their difficulties. How resourceful this pioneer wife and mother had to be now. The Indians became very troublesome and orders were given for everyone to move to the fort for safety. Before Eliza found a way to go, the people who owned the home where Eliza and family were living, came in while they were away, took possession of the house and put Eliza's belongings out in the rain. Fortunately, a friend by the name of James Cole came by with a team and hayrack and took the family and the West's meager possessions to his home as a temporary refuge.

During this time Eliza did sewing or anything else she could find to do. When the Indian scare was over Eliza moved to a two-room house and taught school until her husband came back. This work helped them to get something to eat. Meanwhile Charles, in Salt Lake City, was having difficulty trying to find work. He

finally found employment with Jesse C. Little, running a farm near the Jordan River on shares. So he borrowed a wagon and two yoke of oxen and went to Provo Valley for his family. They greeted him joyously and had so much to tell him. Charles thanked Brother Cole and his wife for being so good to his family. Now Charles and Eliza eagerly loaded the wagon, tied a heifer on behind, and happily left the isolated valley for a new adventure.

The house on the farm near the Jordan River was warm and comfortable and they were soon settled. There was plenty to do on the farm and it was a challenging experience. Thomas was a help to his father in the fields, and young Jabez could perform many chores. Caroline was usually away from home working, but Annie was her mother's helper. Eliza as a farmer's wife was busier than she had ever been. She learned to churn butter for her own family and for the Little family also. That fall Charles harvested a good crop of wheat and after threshing he got a good share.

In the winter and spring Charles borrowed his brother-in-law Jabez's team and hauled wood from Lambs Canyon (which is reached by the way of Parleys Canyon, just Southeast of Salt Lake City). Some of the wood he sold to Fort Douglas in order to buy food and clothing for his family. Clothing was an urgent necessity now, for the clothes they had brought from England had to be replaced. Eliza washed wool for the J. C. Little's, which in those days, with their limited washing equipment was no easy task, and in return took her pay in cloth.

The first year on the farm was a satisfying experience for the family until the floods came. Early in the spring the Jordan River and the Millcreek overflowed their banks. The farm being near the streams was practically inundated. Almost every time the family left the house they had to wade through water. “From our house,” Charles reported, “my wife had several times waded through water to go to the city to take their share of butter to Jesse C. Little.” Again he said, “after returning from my trip to the canyon, I left my wagon near the bridge. When I returned it seemed that from the bridge to my house was one sheet of water.”

Charles was now very much aware that it would be impossible to plant crops on the farm that year, so he was compelled once more to seek other ways of earning a living. That fall, he and Eliza became schoolteachers. It was a profession that suited their cultural background better than that of farming. Since their teen-age romance began they had had no formal schooling that we know of but they had been good students and had absorbed a great deal of knowledge even though much of it was of a practical nature.

They had always taught their children. Charles taught them to sing and to love music. Eliza taught them the elementary skills of reading and writing.

The school trustees came to Eliza and Charles and asked them to teach in the Sixth Ward, meeting house. All the children from both Fifth and Sixth wards and some from the Fifteenth Ward were their students. Charles taught the boys, Eliza the girls. The West family lived in a small house at the rear of the meetinghouse. They would have done well if they had received payment from all the parents, but it was a year of hard times for most all people in the Salt Lake Valley. Charles and Eliza often took food and other things in payment for tuition. Annie West Neville in her biography, writes of this time. “We stayed in the Sixth Ward about one year. I went to school that winter and learned to read and spell and got in the fourth reader, but was too poor to buy a slate and pencil so could not get along in the other studies. My parents were afraid the people would kick if we used their children's books or spent much time on us as they could not get enough

money from the students to buy things with.”

Have you wondered how this family spent Christmas under such poor circumstances? Again Annie West Neville tells of a Christmas while they were in the Sixth Ward and while her parents were teaching school. “Mother told us not to hang up our stockings as they had no money to give Santa Claus and he could not come to poor folks. In fact, there was no Santa Claus. We all felt very badly as the children in school told us what they were going to have him bring them. I prayed that there was a Santa Claus and hoped he would bring us something. My folks felt very badly about it. At about eleven o'clock that Christmas Eve, there was a rap on the door and in walked a man. He had his arms loaded with sacks of things for his children. He said, ‘Where are the children's stockings?’ My mother told him they had nothing to put in them. He was feeling good. He had had a little liquor. So he said, ‘Fetch the stockings here and I will put something in them.’ He opened his bags. He put oranges and candies and nuts in them; and gave my parents a little good cheer and left. He was a good neighbor. When we got up and saw our filled stockings, we were delighted. I thought surely that the Lord had heard my prayers and that there was a Santa Claus.”

After Christmas the family moved again to a house near the old Pioneer Fort. It was in this home in February 22,1868, that another baby was born to them. It was a son and he was named Charles Jesse. In April of 1868, the family moved to the Eleventh Ward. They were tired of the cramped uncomfortable home they had rented so Charles planned to build his own home. He bought a very fine building lot from Bishop McCrea and worked at many odd jobs such as helping a mason and plasterer and digging wells to earn a living for the family and make payments on the lot.

About the time the Union Pacific Railroad was being built, twenty-one men out of the ward took a small sub-contract to work some distance up Echo Canyon. Milton R. Hunter in his book,

about twenty-two feet high, and haul out the dirt with wheelbarrows. Not having heard from his family for a considerable time, Charles felt uneasy; so he made up his mind to walk home. He stopped overnight at a Brother Gleason's home in Farmington. When Charles was asked by one of the family how many children he had, he answered one short of the number. As he thought it over, he smiled about how foolish he was. Next day he walked on until he reached the Hot Springs, when he met Brother William Brighton. The latter told him of the death of Mary Rebecca, his little daughter, on December 8, 1868. She was almost three and had died of diphtheria. What a shock it was to Charles: He arrived home finding it only too true. But this time the West family had friends to comfort them in their grief.

Charles, following the death of Mary Rebecca, worked out at Promontory Point under Brother Brighton for a short time. Thomas following later, was to work on the same piece of construction. Their job was wheeling up coarse gravel in wheelbarrows to make a fill. The work was extremely hard on the boy Thomas, so he was given the job of driving mules on a dump cart.

For over a year Caroline West had been working in the home of Thomas H. Wright of the Eleventh Ward, where she was treated very kindly and was well provided for with food and clothing. Mr. Wright thought so much of the eighteen-year old girl that he asked her to be his second wife, and so they were married on February 8, 1869.

Charles worked for Brigham Young doing all manner of chores, sometimes in the garden, the orchard and the harvest fields for two dollars a day. When a street railway was started, he left President Young's employment so that he could earn more money. Charles worked with pick and shovel on Main Street making grade for ties. He also worked on South Temple Street from the Deseret News Building west to the

railroad station. Quoting this interesting bit of news directly from his journal, Charles says, “I rode in the

first street car that left the Deseret News Office, all down grade. President Young was there in his carriage. He jumped aboard the car, and ran a race with his carriage, no horse on the car, being down grade. All that had to be done was to watch the brakes. We beat the horses on the carriage.”

The work that Charles was doing was very hard but he had dreams of a home of his very own and he needed adobes and other material for its construction. Charles started work on the new home by digging out a foundation for a two-room house. Then he with the help of his son, Thomas, dug out the rock needed for the foundation at the foot of the Tenth Ward bench. It was dug out laboriously with Charles' own tools, a

shovel, a pick and an old ax. He had the rocks hauled to the lot. In the meantime Charles had bought an old log house for fifty dollars and had it removed to his lot. The mud roof leaked very badly. He put on a better roof and raised the house two logs higher. Charles didn't say in his journal how long, or if the family lived in this log house, but it can be assumed that perhaps they did until the new house was finished.

Grandfather purchased eleven thousand adobe from a Mr. Bulto, an adobe maker, for his two-roomed house. A man by the name of Brother Swain, a rock layer and mason, put up the house. But he was in such a hurry to get the job done that when he had the building six feet high, the back part was one inch out of plumb. When Charles complained, the builder got angry and took his tools away. Grandfather Charles finally got another man to finish the house and he made a good job of it. Meanwhile Charles had found the clay and

sand he needed for the inside work by digging a hole on his property. After removing the topsoil he found clay, then sand, and still deeper (thirty feet) a spring of water. When Charles needed lumber for the house, Thomas, who by this time was working for a lumber company, charged a bill of goods on his son's pay. A man by the name of Brother Jabez Taylor who lived in the Eleventh Ward did the carpentry work on the house. During the building of the house, Charles had spent his spare time setting out fruit trees and bushes. He was not only thinking of the future food supply for the family but also to make the surroundings more beautiful. Finally the house was finished and the family moved in.. How they appreciated their own

home