OCR Text |
Show J 'LtC By CAROL LEMON J f " i F loyd and Beulah Wood celebrate their 47th Wedding Anniversary. I've always loved history and often wondered how the different generations got jlong. Times sometimes were extremely hard, yet their lives were enjoyed and many happy memories have ben handed down through ttie years. One such fam -iiy was William L. H. Dotson's. His great-granddaughter,, Beulah Wood shares some of their experiences ex-periences with us this week. "It all began after the Civil War had caused such destruction in the South. Great-grandfather and his brothers had had large i plantations with many slaves. Now the land was in ruin, the slaves were gone - the brothers decided de-cided the best thing to do sas to head West. They ' had no particular destina tion just looking for a new beginning. Some settled set-tled along the way, but great-grandfather settled first in Coalville, thenhere in Minersville. He later became a member of the Utah State Legislature." "He built a beautiful home patterned after the old SouthernMansions. The rooms were spacious and large verandas encircled it both upstairs and down. It had milk rooms, food storage rooms, root cellars, cel-lars, every convenience and was always spotless. Outdoors was the large fruitful orchard, slaughterhouses, slaughter-houses, barns and the honeyhouse. It was as big as some homes. How we kids loved tasting that sweet honeycomb when he extract -ed the honey." is where my mother and father first met - as Mother worked there several sev-eral years." "It was fun growing up then. Papa had a store in the oldMlnersville Hotel. He was also Post Master for 40 years. If he made $40.00 a month he thought it was wonderful. I worked in the Post Office Of-fice for 20 years later in my life." "My Grandpa Eyre was called on a mission to New Zealand. He had to leave his wife and five children for 3-12 years. He was a wonderful singer. He'd gather us kids around the fire every week and we'd sing and have stories and treats. Our favorite song was 'The Preacher and the Bear'. We never tired of that one. We have wonderful won-derful memories of that time in our lives." "Mother was a wonderful wonder-ful candymaker. We'd have our friends in and have candy or popcorn and apples. ap-ples. We'd have a party at the drop of a hat. There were nine of us children. Mother made twelve loaves of bread every other day plus all her other work my share of the ironing was at least 15 shirts, Mother never liked anyone looking look-ing wrinkled. But she always al-ways had time and seemed to enjoy having our friends in and helping us to have fun." "As we grew, we loved to dance. We'd sometimes sneak into the school and dance. If the principal came, we'd hide in the air vents and then dance again. Aunt Rachel was a real musician. She'd play for our dances often and say, 'If you'll Charleston, I'll play.' We'd dance all night if we could. She was a descendant of the Maori people. Her mother was a princess among them and she was a princess to us. We really loved her." "She did cause us a fright one night. I guess most everyone had heard the old tale about the old woman who supposedly lived down by the river and would get us if we didn't look out. We never went by there but what we'd hear an owl hoot or some other spooky noise. I can still feel the goosebumps! When Floyd and I were courting we were going along by the river and suddenly there was this terrible noise! I knew it was the old woman, I thought I'd die! But we found it was just Aunt Rachel dumping her bag of tin cans into "I've got a good man," said Beulah. "We have five children, 15 grandchildren grand-children and 3 great-grandchildren, all beautiful, intelligent, in-telligent, lovely and a great joy to us. Thinking back, we brought our first home in from the Moscow mine for $35.00 andhowwe loved it. We thought we did pretty well later on when we sold it for $300.00, but we'U always have fondmemories of that first home." Floyd and Beulah have been active in their church all through their lives both in Ward and Stake callings. Floyd served on the High Council for 15 years. He showed me a poem which began 'To ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth' "that's pretty well my philosophy of life," he said, "and I try to live up to it. We feel truly blessed. bless-ed. We've never been wealthy, weal-thy, but had enough to get by. We enjoy our family, gardening, our many friends, and we're satisfied with our lot in life and this makes us happy." the river. She thought it was quite funny!" "Now Halloween used to be something!" said Floyd. "Outhouse tipping was to be expected. Dismantlingbug-gies Dismantlingbug-gies and then putting them together again on a roof peak was great fun. Tying Ty-ing knots in a cord and then running it up and down a window seemed to scare folks just right!" "I loved riding horses," said Beulah. "One time Dad turned our little mare out on the range to winter and she came home in the spring with the most beauti-ful beauti-ful red colt. She became a real pet. I'd never stop to open gates we'd always al-ways jump them tho there were a few times I flew over the fence alone when she changed her mind about jumping!" "My best girl friends, Nelda Eyre Tanner, Debbie Marshall Carter, Bertha Pryor Dalton, Winnie Le-fevre Le-fevre Young, LaRue Blackburn Black-burn Turner and I had some wonderful times," said Beulah. "And it was always al-ways good clean fun. Minersville Min-ersville seems to get into people's blood. Every holiday, holi-day, hunt or special event brings crowds back home. Folks never used to be clannish and everyone felt welcome and enjoyed everyone every-one else's company." I was pleased to learn that Monday was the Wood's 47th wedding anniversary. "Grandfather Reuben was a sheepman and cattleman. He built the store where Pryors now stands and also had a store in Frisco, plus furnishing horses for several sev-eral stage lines. My grandmother grand-mother Dotson had 13 children child-ren and also ran a boarding board-ing house. She always had a hired girl and many of them met their husband-to-be among the schoolteacher, school-teacher, sheepmen , etc., who boarded there. This |