"The first memory that I have was in Raymond, Alberta, Canada when we were out in the barn; Mother was standing, she had a dark green coat on, she was bending over the manger gathering eggs, because the chickens laid eggs in the manger. And I was standing there with Elden and he had something red on. I went to his shoulders. I hadn’t turned two yet. I was a year and nine months when Elden got drowned, and Elden hadn’t turned four yet. This memory in the manger was my first memory in life.

We were at the BAR K-2 then, it was 50,000 acres of prairie. We stayed there the first five years of my life. My father was foreman of the BAR K-2 for five years. He was over men. There were cattle and horses there. It was here where my mother cooked for men. It was there where my first memories are, the first five years of my life. During that five years mother went down to Raymond and had Melba. And I remember playing out on the sidewalk in front of the Card home where Melba was born, Oct 5, 1916. I played with the two Card children, one my age and one older. I remember I was so proud and happy because I had a baby sister and I was kind of boasting about it. I was three years old when Melba was born. Then we went back to the BAR K-2 again.

That’s all I remember of Elden, just that one occasion, but other things were told to me about him. That day he got drowned, it w was a Sunday morning, it was June 27, 1915 and mother was bathing us both in the tub, and I kept slapping him on the back, and he called me “Magee”, he said “NO, no, Magee!” The hired girl that was there commented that “when they grow up, that little boy’s sure going to be good to his sister.” I guess he was an extra valiant spirit, Joseph Smith said the valiant spirits die before they’re eight years old, they don’t have to go through this life of hardship. So my mother put him out to play. It had rained a lot and Elden had rubber boots on. She didn’t put me out ‘cause I was the one that liked to stay around the house and be quiet quite a bit, but Elden was a little roust about. She put him out to play..my father had gone that morning to Winnipeg, he had shipped some cattle from Cardston to there, to sell for the company. That morning when my dad left, he wondered if the hired men had closed the gate to the dipping vat. If he had gone back to check it he would have been late for the train. Mother went out to find him and couldn’t find him. They looked for him for an hour. One of the hired men helped and found his hat floating on top of the dipping vat. August, the 5th, he would have turned four. They sent my father a telegram in Winnipeg, Manitoba, two provinces over from Alberta. Somebody caught up to him from the telegraph office and gave him the telegram. He was on his way to buy Elden a little suit. He thought the world of Elden, ‘cause Elden liked to rough-house and horse-play and be thrown over his shoulder, where I didn’t. So he took to Elden quite a bit. They were kindred spirits. Mother said when my father came on the train, and they met him, he was just shaking like a leaf, he was so broken up over it. They buried him in Raymond and he’s in the Raymond cemetery now, I remember growing up we used to visit it. After he was gone I guess I missed him ‘cause Mother said I would stand out on the porch (I called him Eddie) and say “Eddie...”. As I got older they told me he died and he went up to Heaven, and I would look up to the clouds; I thought he was up behind the clouds there.

I remember Melba as a little toddler there under the close line while Mother was hanging clothes. She fell down, and got up herself. She was just barely able to walk. I remember I always loved her so much, and was so protective of her, my baby sister Melba. We were very close through the years, we played together as children. I never remember hitting her. I remember there was another baby there that I slapped when I was little, but I never would slap Melba.

When I was five years old we moved down to a rented ranch three miles south of Raymond, we were there two years. I was five and Melba was two. We were playing together one time and I saw Melba kind of chewing, and I looked over and she had chewed up a cricket. I thought nothing of it, I didn’t even take it out of her mouth, I remember just looking at it and watching.

I remember my mother used to throw out cans without turning the lids down. I think I learned to close them down, because of that, because Melba fell down on a can where the lid was open and she cut herself right by the eye, it just missed the eye. I think she always had that scar.

As Melba got a little older, she told her mother that the happiest time of her life was her childhood days and I believe they are mine too. We got so much pleasure out of playing and pretending.

The winter Margaret was born in Feb 1919, we went to Raymond and rented a place. I remember ‘cause Melba, and Dad slept in the same bed and I knew my mother was going to have a baby in the next room, she was having Margaret. The flu epidemic was on at that time, Mother had the flu while she was giving birth. I heard the cry (we had wanted a boy because Elden had died and we already had two girls), and I said to my Dad, “it cries like a boy”, and he told us to go back to sleep and we did. That winter so many babies died with the flu and mothers also. Dr Greenaway was the doctor. Melba nearly died with the flu and Margaret as a baby caught it also. I remember going in and seeing her with a little pneumonia jacket to keep her warm (made out of gauze). Margaret and Mother pulled through, but Melba took it so hard. They had several doctors come from Lethbridge, that’s 20 miles away, and they said “We’ve done all we can”. Melba was in a coma, just two year old. I remember Mother in bed, she stayed in bed about two weeks after having Margaret. She crawled down to the foot of her bed, and said, “I wanted to get a glimpse of her.” And there’s that little dark curley-haired girl, that lay so still for so many days and the doctor said, ‘There’s no hope for her, we’ve give up on her.” So they called the Elders to come in, Mother wanted the Elders to come in, and they came in and they administered to Melba. And Mother said they promised the Lord they if Melba would be spared, they would always keep the commandments of the Lord. They made a promise, Dad made the same promise. I don’t know how long it was after that (I took a mild dose of the flew), a few days, one morning we hear Melba saying “cocoa”, and Mother said that that was music to her ears, she heard that little voice saying “cocoa”, and they knew that she was getting better.

Then we went to Charlie Kinsey’s ranch. We stayed there for two years till I was seven. Margaret was a baby. That was a bad winter, it got 55 below zero. Cattle were dropping dead all over. My dad had lost the rented crop both years with drought. So my dad asked Ray Knight (He’s the one who owned so much land up there, who my dad worked for at the BAR K2) if he could skin all those dead cattle and sell the skins for a living, ‘cause we had no money. So my dad went and took his horse and was gone a long time...six weeks. And he said he found lots of cattle dead, and he would skin them and get their hides. Mother was left alone with us three children on the ranch. All we had to eat was cereal, milk, beans, and bread. We had one cow then, which would kick and Mother had to go out and milk it. And one night it kicked the pail over and Margaret cried all night long because there was no milk for her.

We were happy then. Margaret, Melba and I. Melba and I used to take all the spice cans and pretend they were people and we would play by the hour with them. Anyway, while Dad was gone, during that bad winter, we had a mean stallion that was fenced off, and it got out. We were scared to death of it. My father had warned us never to go into that field. And it kicked and kept kicking all night long. ‘Cause I thought it was going to kick the door in. The next morning my mother got up (my father wasn’t home) and it was dead outside the door. It was froze to death. Mother said it had kicked to get in the house where it was warm.

That Christmas my mother said Santa Claus was going to come and bring us something. Mother just took the chance that my Dad would come home at Christmas and bring us something. I remember I just couldn’t wait. We hung up our stockings, I explained to Melba that when we got up in the morning after the fire got going, we’d see our stockings full. My father came on horseback with a gunny-sack of toys and some oranges, candies, and things and a doll. He had come clear from Cardston, 45 miles away. I had been that far skinning cattle. That was the winter of 1919.

I remember there at Charlie Kinsey’s ranch, mother gave us all a piece of apple, and Margaret was a little baby sitting on the floor and she started to choke and turn black, and Mother said “Oh, Lord!” She finally got it down okay and started breathing.

While we were there Melba and I took two washboards (Maybe a lot of people don’t know what washboards are in this generation), one was a wooden one and we pretended that was a boy and one was a metal one that we pretended was a girl. And we dressed I up in Melba’s little clothes. Melba named them Millie and Pitch. And we played with them so hard and so much that they wore out and came apart. I remember Charlie Kinsey came there one time to call on us and Melba ran out there, just a little two-year old or more, and said “Pitch is dead”! He didn’t’ know what she was taking about. That was such a big thing in her life.

We were playing paper dolls then also. I learned to cut out paper dolls in the catalogue. Mother I called her Ma-ma then) would let us cut out of the old catalogue when we’d get a new one. Margaret was starting to walk then and she would come in and tear off the heads so we had to shut her out and close the door. We would cut out the men in their underwear and put mentholatum all over them and pretend they were sick. When they were dead or got too worn out, Melba would put them on a high shelf, she said “they’re up in heaven now.” And Mother came and started to clear them out and Melba said “Don’t take them, they’re up in heaven now.” Melba took quite an interest in them, she’d stroke them and take care of them, and after while they’d tear and that’s when she’d put them up on that shelf.

We didn’t have much to eat, we used to get awfully hungry sometimes. Mother would cook up a batch of beans and have them for dinner. The nearest store was about three miles away but she could never get to town, we didn’t have a car. Once she needed something and walked two miles through the snow to a Jap’s place to get something. So we had beans for dinner, and bread and milk for supper and just some mush for breakfast or germade. During WW-I we couldn’t get germade, that was my favorite.

The thing that I was most scared of all was of the coyotes. In the nights we would hear the chickens just a cackling. The coyotes had gotten in and so Mother went and got the chickens and so she put them all in a gunny sack and saved them, but the ones on the bottom got their necks broken and died. So Mother had to go quite a ways away from the house to get the cow (Molley), so she would be scared of the coyotes. This Molley, did she ever kick, Mother used to tie her legs to stop her from kicking, and she kicked till Mother had bruises all over her legs.

At seven years old I started school, when we were still on Charlie Kinsey’s ranch. Melba was four and Margaret was two then. I had to stay in Raymond with Uncle Farny’s family, I had to board there because we lived three miles outside of Raymond and there was no school there. I slept with Lafarn and Heber, who is a doctor now. I would get so homesick there, I used to feel like crying. I had a cross teacher too, and I was kind of quiet little kid, I didn’t know how to mix, or talk with them.

They couldn’t keep me there, they’d take me Monday morning on a grain tank, full of wheat. My Dad would take me in, and he’d stay in there till after school sometimes. I would come out from school and I’d be listening for the wagon on the hard ground (there was no pavement) and I would run like a deer and say to him “I want to go home”. He’d then bring me home again and have to take me back the next day.

Finally after the wheat was hauled, I had to stay with Uncle Farny’s family. In the winter dad rented a place in Raymond where Uncle Farny lived too. Then I went to school. In the Spring we’d all move back to Charlie Kinsey’s ranch. We lived on 2 of his ranches in 2 1/2 years. When I was 7, Dad bought land 11 miles south of Raymond and moved to a 2 room shack for us to live in till he could build onto it. It was on the Milk River Ridge a few miles from the Montana USA boarder.

I remember that soon after Margaret had been born, we all began praying to Heavenly Father that He would send us a baby brother. For five years we prayed and waited. Then on May 24th, 1924 our beloved brother Linden, weighing 10 pounds was born. We were living at the time in a rented home where Allen Watson now lives. We lived there for Melba and I to attend school. Melba and I left for school around 1:15 in the afternoon. When we got home there was Mother in bed with a beautiful baby boy lying next to her. Mother was smiling and we all felt so happy to have a brother. Dad wasn’t there but was at our farm 11 miles away at the birth. Mrs. Dearden, a chubby English woman stayed for 2 weeks with us taking care of everything. I remember so many things but will just mention a few. Linden took eczema at 6 weeks old and the itching kept him scratching and crying all night till he was two (when he got better). Mother would stay up till midnight with him, then Dad would stay awake the rest of the night. I still remember Dad singing an Indian song to soothe Linden. When he was 17 months he stood alone and took his first few steps. Mother was out milking the cows and we three girls got so excited. I think the trial of his eczema make Linden start to walk later than is usual. For two years Mother fed and bathed Linded in buttermilk and his skin cleared completely up. After Linden was born we moved permanently to our own farm. Dad had bought for $40 an acre. We didn’t live in rented places after that. After Dad cleared the land of rocks, weeks, wild grass, thistles, and wild rose bushes, he in time plowed and prepared the soil and planted 200 acres of wheat. He also planted oats, barley, and some hay to feed the cattle and horses. Our favorite drink was barley coffee as we called it. We picked wild berries at the sides of the hills and coolees, also service berries, choke cherries and goose berries to eat and for Mother to put up. The land we were living on was rented, we had a lease on it. We stayed there in the winter time, out on Charley McKinley’s Ranch and do chores.

Miss Harker was such a cross teacher and I would come in on the load of grain with my father or sometimes a neighbor would drive it in. She said “You’re late again, go up to the principles’ office”. So I went up there, and the door was locked (I was only in kindergarten), and couldn’t get in so I went back and said “I can’t get in, the door was locked”. She talked so cross to me in front of the class and said “it isn’t locked”, and I said “I tried to open it”. I wasn’t my fault that I was late, cause some one brought me. She thought I was playing on the way probably.

They moved into the Atwood house and rented it there two winters. He rented it so I could to school. I remember it well.

When I was seven, we moved out to our own place, in the Milk River Ridge, eleven miles south of Raymond. We lived there about 15 years, I grew up there. Margaret was 2 years old and she was such a cute smart little kid. She’d go up and bring the Jersey, a gentle cow, into be milked.

The land we had, had no fences for miles and miles and it had to be cleared of rocks and rose bushes. My dad and mother used to go to these all night dances, about five or 7 miles away, we would ride in the democrate or the buggy. Melba and I and Margaret, we had white stockings on and while they were dancing we would fall asleep on the benches. We did that every weekend.

Margaret would go get the milk cow and it wasn’t even milking time yet. There was a creek down by our house and we used to get the small rocks and pretend that they were people. And of course Melba and I still played with paper dolls. We went on doing that till I was about 12. Margaret gradually started playing dolls, abut she was constantly bringing her family of dolls over to our family of paper dolls to visit. Margaret didn’t take to playing paper dolls like me and Melba did. We would play all day long. My dad dug a potato pit one summer so we used to go down there to play cause it was nice and cozy and the wind couldn’t blow them away.

When Margaret was four years old, she would go get a horse and didn’t have a saddle on it, and pull it up to the wagon and climb on its back and she would ride real fast through the fields. She took to a horse right away. Margaret would ride the horse out to the field where her dad was working and would follow him around while he would be plowing. She did this all day long. Melba and I were in school all day long. Margaret loved it outdoors, she would always be out following dad around. She was like a second Eldon. They were like kindred spirits.

Melba and I always like to stay in the house, opposite from Margaret. But as I got older I’d rather work out in the fields rather than stay in the house and do house work. So Melba did help mother in the house. Melba and I cleaned the chicken coop up one time and I hated that job so bad ‘cause we got lice all over us and so I never would do it again. Dad didn’t make me. He made Margaret clean the pig pen and the barn all the time and they would haul it away. She started doing that about 9 years old. When she was about 11, Dad taught her how to run the tractor, and she would run the tractor while dad would run the plow working the gears. In the winter time she had to go out in the field and break the ice so the cows could drink the water. They didn’t know how to get the water otherwise. Margaret would take the horses and break them. I never remember her falling off a horse. Melba never took to riding horses. I did after I was 14, but I didn’t want them to be too wild. Melba fell off a horse and broke her arm. She was about 13 years old.

When I was in 5th grade, dad stopped moving us into Raymond. They had a school room over to the neighbors place, 2 and 1/2 miles away. Margaret started at 5, and Melba was 7 and I was 10. Just the three Brown boys, and one Jap boy, and us three girls, for that one winter, that’s all that went. Before that, mother got permission to teach Melba and I on the farm so I didn’t’ have to go to Raymond school. This is when I was about 11 and Melba would have been eight. After we went to the Brown’s school we got our school house where we used to have dances there. The farm hands would always ask me to dance. Everybody down there liked to dance. They would always take the kids with them. The dances would last till about 2 in the morning. I grew up that way always going to the dances.

On the 1st of July they’d have Dominion Day and have a big stampede in Raymond. Every summer the neighbors would have a celebration all day long. The men would play softball and the women would sit around. They had lots of food to eat, chicken and stuff. The Japs would have celebrations and invite all the whites. They would have free beer. I never liked beer, the taste of it. My dad liked it though.

We lived about 11 miles away from the nearest town. We had our own milk from the cows and we had our own garden where we got all our vegetables from We had to hoe weeds when we were children. Mother put up fruit, but it was very expensive. It was such a treat, we would go crazy over it. We lied it better than candy. When Dad & Mother would go into town, all three of us would go down and take some fruit and open it up. I loved peaches then the best. We had our trees on our farm. Back then the government was giving away free trees to anyone that wanted them. So my dad got over 5,000 of them and planted them. I helped plant them.

We had a lot of animals on our farm. Pigs, and chickens and horse. He had us milk the sows, for awhile there I was milking five cows. Melba never liked the work outside. Margaret could run a farm, she knew everything about running a farm. Lindy didn’t take to the farm. He was about 11 or 12 when I left the farm.

We used to cut the hay with the horses pulling the cutter and that could cut it and I used to rake it. We had a rake with two horses and once I fell off the rake behind the horses heels and my arm went out of joint. The first time my arm went out of joint was when I went out to get the cows and I put a lot of coats and I fell down and my arm went out. My dad took me to the doctor and he put it in and now I do it myself when it goes out.

It gets awfully hot at our farm up to about 110 degrees in the fields. One time Melba was stooping grain and got a bad nose bleed. She got those nose bleeds a lot. She had them for years. We would get so worried, sometimes it would start bleeding and wouldn’t stop and dad would send me and Margaret through the fields to find an Elder in the middle of the night to pray for Melba so the bleeding would stop. So they were kind of careful with Melba because of these nose bleeds.

When Margaret was 2 years old she had a red coat on. My dad had fixed a fence around the house to keep the cows out of the garden. Margaret used to like to run down to the barn and every time Molly would catch sight of her in that red coat she would start to chase her. She would just barely get under the fence in time. They we had a bull calf that would chase us too, and he had horns too. Margaret would always get under the fence in time Margaret liked to be out in the barn with dad. She didn’t realize the danger. Dad finally fenced it off so it couldn’t get us. It was dangerous. Dad would always say ”well just run and get under the fence”, he believed in roughing it.

Margaret went bare foot all summer, she would go through the thistle and the stubble and it wouldn’t even hurt her feet. She did it from the time she was 2 and up.

My favorite team of horses was “Max and Tex”. I got attached to dogs but they usually got kicked to death by the horses. My favorite dogs name was “Wolfer”. The neighbors were afraid of him, He was big and we had 14 cats, but they were kind of wild. I got some bad scratches holding them. Most of them never came in the house, they stayed out in the barn. Some would come in the house but they would jump up on the table and lick the milk. When we would milk the cows, the cats would come around and we would squirt milk into their mouths."

Maurine Orgill, August 11, 1979, Kearns, Utah

See Program for burial services.