Susan Cox Wilson
Susan Cox Autobiographycompiled in 1959 and revised in 1962 Wedding bells
Benjamin Wilson from Mexico, visiting his folks at Hillsdale, the town where he was born, was helping his Uncle Bert Lumbrough sell dress goods. They were stopping at Alfred Meek’s home. Mr. Wilson said he might have one that would fit me better in his other pack. I said I would stop on the way back as I had to go to the post office. He knew some of my relatives and friends so we sort of got acquainted. He offered to milk one of the cows and then walk with me to the post office and show me the dress on the way back.
I liked the dress whether it fit me or not and paid for it—dearly, for I’ve been working for Benjamin Wilson ever since. Ha! Ha!
Grandmother was not feeling so well that night and did not want me to leave her room, so Benjamin offered to stay for a little while. She went to sleep for an hour and then seemed to feel better. I think it was because she thought I had found a beau. She said: “He comes from good stock. The Wilsons are a good family.”
I had recently heard a sermon at conference in Glendale, Kane Co., in Kanab Stake on marriage into good stock. The stock I picked has stayed with me for 50 years. (This is July 21, 1962. We just celebrated our Golden Wedding April 3rd.)
We corresponded through the winter. In March he visited me. We went to a dance and to conference meetings together. Cousin Chiastic Lessee and her boyfriend, Will Bowers were with us.
Ben had been thinking of going back to Mexico, where his home had been for 15 years, but since he has married a Utah girl he has never been back. His earnestness and interest in some of the things I was interested in appealed to me. Both his and my parents had come from Pioneer stock and were advocates of freedom. He especially has given me a fair chance to make my own choices and decisions.
My brother Leonard offered him a job in Idaho, so we thought of going to Salt Lake for April Conference, get married, and go on to Idaho. Aunt Zina Allred was prepared to take care of grandmother. Mother was still in poor health.
We were married in the Salt Lake Temple on 3 April, 1912. Soon, changes were made in Leonard’s plans and we decided to come back south as far as Panguich.
He worked with his cousin Seth and brother Iddo on the Pipe line through the summer and we boarded at his Aunt Ladie Norton’s house until his Aunt Vina Allen went to the ranch, then we rented their home. In the fall he worked on the road under Gournsey Spencer and we lived at my mother’s home in Orderville that winter. Then they sold their home and moved to Hinkley.
Raising the familyIsrael Hoyt bought the house but we lived there for nearly two years in part of it. Ben’s father died in Hillsdale while he was with his plural family after moving out of Mexico. Aunt Adelia’s little son, George, came to live with us at six years old. Our oldest child, George Carlyle was born 28 July, 1913 in Orderville. A month later my grandmother Brown died and mother stayed with us after the funeral. In May 1915 my husband bought a piece of ground in Hurricane fields in Utah Dixie, from Jim Stansworth and planted crops there.
Benjamin Vere, our second son was born 13 Jun 1915 in Orderville. Bishop Chamberlain came to our home and named him. In two weeks we started moving to Hurricane. We camped out over night. We were bringing a milk cow and a heifer with us. Claresa Hinton, my cousin had been working for us and came with us. It showered on us coming down the Hurricane Hill on the 4th of July.
We put up a tent in an orchard he had bought while Ben got a carpenter, Joe Campbell, to help put up a room for shelter with some lumber, $50.00 worth, which was traded for the heifer. Our food was gone! No money! The store would not trust us because we were strangers. Jim Stansworth brought us a big bread-pan full of grapes. They lasted us for three days. We found that there was a great deal of food value in them.
Mother came to see us a few days and visited her cousin, Jane Petty. When Jane’s son, Charl, found out we were relations, he said: “Come and get anything you need out of the store. Brother Wilson can pay when he gets back to work.”
In a month we were living in a new one room house. The flies were so bad and the weather so hot that I started making a screened hammock so the baby could sleep out of doors. The second summer we had a little shade from the poplar tree in front of the house. Later I made a screen to stand 5 inches high by folding corners and sewing cloth around the bottom on the sewing machine, and would tuck in the cloth to keep the flies out. This screen cover fit over the baby buggy. I made some of these screens and sold them to other families who were having a hard time keeping the flies away from their infants.
As Ben was home for a month the next year, we got a vineyard started and had some good peaches on the lot we had bought across the street from where the house was built. We lived in the one lumber room with one screen door and one screen window for seven years, but in the summer we went to the mountains where it was cooler, where my husband was herding sheep to pay for the land. Ed Young, my brother-in-law, took us. One summer Vere got burned quite badly on the face from hot water, and the next summer Carlyle fell from a horse in rough country.
Ruth was born 13 Jan 1918, the year of the first World War. We went to the mountains in the summer and home in the middle of August over the trail through Zion Park. We met the mail driver in the park and went on to Hurricane with him. The peaches were on so I started bottling the fruit and selling fresh fruit to peddlers. There was so much to do and with hot weather, contaminated water, and other poor health conditions, I got typhoid fever. I had two runs of it. My husband decided he’d better quit herding sheep. Besides his wages, he had quite a few head of sheep but had to sell them to pay the Doctor bill. I was at death’s door for some time, but through keeping the word of wisdom, faith of my mother, Bishop, and other lovely friends, along with the Elders’ administrations, I was healed. Iva Wood told me afterwards that she went to her bedroom five times in one day to pray for me.
Another time I was relieved from suffering with a locked jaw and stiffened arm when struck with lightening. Our little Vere, 3 years old at the time, dropped to his knees and called: “Heavenly Father, bless Mama”.
As soon as we were financially able, we subscribed to the “Children’s Friend”, which I liked for the lessons and stories as well as the activities. I had studied Beehive work for M.I.A. so we filled cells in beehive drawings to use for home evening activities once a week when we learned poems and songs. The children liked “Smiling Little River,” “Beautiful Snowflakes” and others. We tried to have lessons that developed our personal “selves” one week, “Home Improvement” the next, then “Duty to Church”. The last week in the month was “Duty to Humanity." Sometimes we made stars and called good deeds “sunbeams”. After that we cut out flowers or painted some, filling the petals with pinholes for good things done which, when held to the light looked like dancing sunbeams. The one who had the most sunbeams got the prize.
The next year Rose was born on the 25th of November, 1920, Thanksgiving night. Electric lights had been put in and spring water piped into the house in a couple of years and even two more rooms added. Three months before David was born I told my husband if he did not pitch in and get another room I was going to Mother’s in Manti. Right soon his property was sold in Mexico and he got a hundred dollars which he used to start on building. My father received a pension from service in the Indian Walker War which he divided among his children. My portion was $20.00, enough to buy cement. Two more nice little rooms and a little porch were added in the back. David was born May 12, 1922.
When Carlyle and Vere became scouts, I studied the scout book along with them which has aided me greatly in the work I have since attempted. When we first moved to Hurricane, we put up at a room at Jim and Susie Stansworth’s for the first month before we moved in a tent in the orchard while a house was being built for us.