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Show Dlie Springvitie MercM Paiji ZJriLute . . . jpicveered Arizona . . . he was successful in eral contracts for u gfUif! , was one of the woS-Arizona woS-Arizona Temple at o; , Mr. Coplan died t, leaving a famU July y 3 girls and 2 boyS V e i," 1 25 and anothe T Sr? died with the flu enw ars ofV Lela , who was" 0? 1?, 0 the time the girs l n K was called home To hP?,S H family finances. elP ith '. After her hushnn' Coplan so!d her X '"V. with her children and t hve in Springviii" bec; i cool summers. cause0f.. She has experienced all travel. In early life k ""We- later with horse and 7 X gon, train, automob ' ' i"1 She prefers the p! fe. , cause it "gets you tL 0 k time." She has L r(l traveling the pas i ' Throughout her life, 1 Featuring Histories and Pictures I Of the City's' Older Residents fS This in another in a series of articles and pictures of Springvillc's 9j older residents, who are being saluted each week in the Herald. Anyone 8j over 75 years of age is being so honored. Only a call to the office, phone 57 and a listing of the name and age of the resident, is all that is neccs- $ sary; we arrange for the rest without charge. All those who are able are asked to go to Snelson's Studio and M have a picture taken. There will be no charge. The Herald will take S care of that. " , Each person whose picture appears in the paper in this particular K feature, will receive a bouquet of flowers as compliments of the Spring- jj ville Floral, announces Dean Stewart, manager. I . "! I I ' " i ' j I -1 nun ii rnfiMinMtii I Mrs. Emma J. Coplan a warmer climate. Mesa, Ariz, was suggested so he went there first and scon sent for his wife and children. .It was hard to get started start-ed with a family of six children, so Emma took in washings and ironings from the hotel and for private families. The older children soon became able to help with the family finances and Mr. Coplan received re-ceived a. contract for building what is now the Horse Mesa dam, about 20 miles east of Mesa; The family moved there and lived in tents with dirt floors. There were many flies, scarpins and snakes, as well as hila-monsters and lizards and big spiders. Mrs. Coplan recalls how the children enjoyed riding the burows on the desert and they also caught all kinds of insects and placed them in cans and bottles. When the dam was finished the family moved back to Mesa and j Mr. Coplan built two homes. Later ) V Mrs. Emma Charlotte Jensen Jj Coplan was born at Mt. Pleasant, 0 April 7, 1870, and while she has x traveled around considerably both 6 with her parents and with her hus- 0 band, she has returned to her na-j na-j tive state to spend her later years, u For some time, she has made her jj home with a daughter, Mrs. J. M. jj (Lela.) Sumsion here in Spring-3 Spring-3 ville. jj Mrs. Copla.n has known the j hardships of pioneering new and 1 unsettled country. Her parents, j Peter Jens and Christina Charlotte J Oman Jensen, came from Denmark I and Sweden as converts to the I LDS church. When President I Brigham Young called for volun-! volun-! I teers to settle Mt. Pleasant, Mrs. ' Coplan's father went to that part ' of the state. He had nmrried Mrs. I Coplan's mother, as his third j wife. She had come from the old I country as a young girl and had worked for the family of her hus-j hus-j band. I When he left Mt. Pleasant to go : to Arizona, it was Mrs. Coplan's mother he chose to accompany him and Mrs. Coplan, then Emma Jensen, Jen-sen, was about six years old. Their first stop was at Moan. Copie, where they put in crops for food to take when they continued on their journey. Emma's mother was the first white woman at the place and she did the washing and ironing iron-ing for the missionaries who were laboring wit;h the Indians in that vicinity. Mrs. Coplan recalls an amusing incident while they were at this place. She said a Mrs. Taylor arrived ar-rived there with a baby and it became be-came her lot to tend the child. She disliked the job and so took the baby away quite a distance in a whelbarrow and then called it names. For this her mother washed her mouth thoroughly with soap. She remembers also the Indians taking her little sister Maggie away and when they brought her back her light curly hair was covered co-vered with nestd' lice. ' When she was a very little girl, she began crocheting. When she was 14, she learned to do netting, an art which she perfected and since has made many beautiful pieces for relatives and friends. She has never been idle in her lifetime. life-time. She was a good dressmaker and learned early to draft her own patterns. When she was 17, she played the organ to accompany a fiddle for the dances. She also sang with her sisters, Sina and Maggie, at many programs and entertainments. entertain-ments. One of her favorites was "Whispering Hope." Sina was the accompanist playing on a guitar which Emma had hauled hay to earn, and which cost $7.50. She decided to leave Arizona and come to Utah when she was 18 to visit a girl friend. She had to work along the way and stopped stop-ped to work for several families in Provo. She .was all ready to go to Salt Lake City to be a cook in one of the . hospitals, when her mother arrived from Arizona and made her accompany her back to Arizona. She often wonders what her life would have been had not her mother taken her back. She had been away from home a year and a half. Soon after she returned to Arizona, Ari-zona, she met Albert Coplan. Four years later on January 27, 1893,, thev were married in the Manti LDS Temple. They traveled by wagon from Arizona to Denver, Colo., and from Denver to Manti by train. After their marriage, they settled in Beaver, where Mr. Coplan had work a's a carpenter. Shortly after the birth of their second child, they moved to Eagar, Ariz., where Mrs. Coplan's' mother was living. Later they moved to Fort Apache, Ariz., to run a sawmill saw-mill for the U. S. government. At the end of one year, they moved to Salt Lake and Mr. Coplan worked in the Bingham mines. While in the mines, he contracted lung troubles and was advised to go to also, she recalls falling in a ditch and was nearly drowned. Among other interesting recollections was the sick spell she had, and to get her to take caster oil, her father's first wife gave her a little blue and brown pitcher which she had brought from Denmark in 1856, and Mrs. Coplan still has the souvenir. sou-venir. 1 The family's next move from Moan Copie was to Brigham City, Ariz, where they stayed about a year and then moved to Cluff. Here Mrs. . Coplan was babtized. At Brigham City, Ariz, the group tried the United Order, but it failed. They traveled on to Sunset, to Round Valley, and then to Springerville, Ariz., near St. Johns, where several families had already settled.' They stopped many places along the way, planted crops and harvested them and dried the vegetables to take in sacks to the next settlement. When they left Sunset, Emma's father had a barrel bar-rel of sourkraut to take along the journev. There was much work attached to moving a family and farmin'g along the way, but the groups always al-ways had good times and made their own fun and held religious meetings. Emma began school at the age of 12 years, her only book at first being the Bible. Later the children had spelling books, and a slate and pencil. She recalls getting up early to read the Bible or the Book of Mormon to her mother, while she" was spinning. Emma learned to embroider when she was only five years of age and was also very young when Herald Pays Tribute ... (Continued from page eight) has been an enthusiastic church worker. One of her main concerns has been to set a good example to her children by observing the "Word of Wisdom." She has served as a counselor in Relief Society So-ciety and was a visiting Relief Society teacher more than 30 years. ' She gets much enjoyment reading church books and listening listen-ing to the radio. She also does some handiwork and gets about the house quite well. She also enjoys en-joys automobile rides, especially to see the flowers in the spring and the canyons in the fall. She has three daughters and two sons living. They are: Mrs. H. J. (Charlotte) MeLennan of Fontana, Calif.; Mrs. R. A. (Nora) Jacobus of Bellflower, Calif.; Albert Cop-Ian, Cop-Ian, Jr. of Los Angeles, Calif.; Leonard Coplan, Denver, Colo., and. Mrs. J. M. (Lela) Sumsion, Springville. There are also seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Her only living sister, in a family fami-ly of six girls, is Mrs. Camelia Reucher of Phoenix, Ariz. |