Written by her Daughter
Ruby Snow Jensen
Edwin Marion Snow and Frances Evaline Perry were married 9 April, 1883 (61 years ago today) by Daniel H. Wells in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Father worked the summer of 1883 in Park City. He owned eight acres of land on the Union Bench, now Mapleton, and in the spring of 1884, Father and Mother moved out on this land and lived in a tent on the north end of the tract of land. They started to build a home. This was the first brick home built in Mapleton. Father worked at the saw mills to get the lumber for the home. He hauled the brick from Provo. This must have been quite a job with oxen for horse power. They lived by a big ditch that had water in it all the year round, but they built the house about 40 rods south on the road. Water for culinary use was always a problem. This house had four large rooms in and was finished by fall. I was born in this new home 29 November, 1884.
This home is now owned by Bessie Thorn and is much the same as when built, except they filled in the two porches and made more rooms. My Brother Eddie was born 23 February 1887 and my sister Ella on 10 September 1900. When she was two years old, she had inflamatory [sic] rheumatism. Her joints were swollen so badly that she was laid on a pillow and when she had to be moved, they moved her on this pillow. My Grandfather Snow was up from Manti and he and Father administered to her and she soon became better. All our family believed in the administration by the Elders.
Mother must have been very happy with all this room in her home, as her Mother and their ten children had lived in two rooms. Aunt Ann, Grandfather's first wife, died in July, 1884, so my grandmother and the children moved back to Springville and lived in the home there which had four rooms in it. The spring of 1884 Mother's brothers Hyrum and George and her sister Luella were all married, so that only left six in the Perry family to move back to Springville. Mother had rag carpets on the floors, a table that father had made, and a good cook stove. She had a very nice walnut bedstead and a bureau. When we children got older, they had another nice bedstead.
Although I was small, I remember riding to Springville in the back of the wagon with Mother and Father, but we did not go often as the horses were always tired from the farm work.
Father had a high pile of lumber in the yard near the house and of course we children played on it, but one day it tipped over and Eddie was pinned under some of the lumber. Of course I was screaming and Mother came out of the house and held some of the lumber up and sent me to get some help over to Uncle Lewis Perry's as Father was away. I ran as fast as I could and the men came and got Eddie out. He wasn't hurt very bad.
There was a ditch across the road that had water in about once a week, so when the water came down, Mother always filled up some barrels. One of the barrels had wood ashes in and by keeping this filled, there was always soft water for laundry. We had to carry our drinking water from Aunt Phene Whitney's home.
In 1900 Father and Mother bought an organ. They always liked young folks around them and the young people came for an evening's entertainment and enjoyed the music. There was always corn to pop and molasses to make candy. I can remember they all had so much fun at these parties. They were all much older than I was, but I remember some of them. Gertie and Erma Perry, Fan and Hattie Jensen, Bessie Bird, Lula Perry and Jessie Whitney, Ardilla Gallup, Mary Curtis, and of course their boy friends, Hite and Les Manwaring, the Robinson boys who were all musicians and had just come from England as converts to the Church, Francis and Lester Ashcraft, and some of Mother's brothers who were all good singers. Father and Mother enjoyed the parties too. Sometimes they sewed carpet rags at these parties.
There was a ward organized in Mapleton and so there was Sunday Schools and meetings held in Mapleton.
On April 6, 1896, Mother had a baby boy, but there was something wrong with him and he only lived a week, dying April 13.
When Uncle Lute Whiting died in February, 1896, they had to reorganize the Bishopric and Uncle Will Tew was made the Bishop and he chose Father for his first counselor and William P. Fullmer as second counselor. This was on April 19, 1896, and Father was set apart for this position by Joseph F. Smithh, the President of the Church at that time. Father bought a black top buggie [sic] so we had a better means of travelling and when they went to conference to Provo, they always took all the people they could load in with them.
By now they had bought a piece of land closer to the church and school house and they began in the spring of 1896 to build a new home on this land. Father was again away part of the time at the saw mills getting lumber for the new house. Of course this left Mother with the chores to see to with what us children could do to help. They hauled the rick for the foundation from the slide in Maple Canyon, got the sand and slacked the lime to make the mortar (it did not come in bags) to lay up the walls, again hauled the brick from Provo and the adobes from Uncle Lew's brick yard. The Whitney brothers and their father did the carpenter work.
Father's brother, Wells, helped him a lot with this building and the home was finished by the fall of 1896, but Mother had been in bed with typhoid fever most of the summer and the doctor did not want her to move into the new home until spring.
Mother had saved and cut and sewed enough carpet rags to make a carpet for three rooms in this new home. There were six rooms and a bath room, although no running water, but there was still a room where we could bath in privacy. They had saved money enough to buy an ingrain carpet for the dining room, a table and six chairs and a bedroom set. The furniture from the old home furnished the two bedrooms and they bought a new maple bedroom set. The kitchen range that they had only had about two years nearly filled the kitchen. I think it was the biggest and blackest range I ever saw. The organ and a nice small table went in the parlor. All their life they only added two good rockers and a couch to this furniture.
Mother was a Relief Society Teacher for many years and was Treasurer in the Relief Society and was first counselor in the Relief Society when Eugenia Roundy was president, in 1808-1814. She was always with Father in any of the Priesthood work he was called to do. When Father was made second counselor in the Kolob Stake Presidency at the organization November, 1924, Mother was by his side to help in any way she could. When the quarterly conferences were held in Mapleton in the summer time, Mother had the presidency and their wives and the visiting authorities at her home for dinner. At one conference Brother John A. Widstoe of the Council of the Twelve and his wife were there and another time Apostle George Albert Smith was there. Mother was very happy that she could entertain these people.
It was a very happy home for all of us. Some of mine and Ella's and Eddie's friends were always there and very welcome and when my husband died, I came back home with my little children and was made very welcome again. By now the children and grandchildren were going home to see Mother and Grandmother, but on December 11, 1928, Father died after an operation in Salt Lake City. This was very hard on Mother, but she still had Eddie at home to help her. We went as often as we could and some of the grandchildren stayed with her much of the time. She was a widow seventeen years, but I don't think she was ever alone at night during that time. Her health was very good until the last three years of her life when she had trouble with her legs and was unable to walk. She died on the 19th of September, 1945. She now has a posterity of four children, 17 grandchildren, 65 great grand children and 47 great great grandchildren.
Mother was a very good seamstress, making all of our clothes. She was a very good cook and homemaker.
Father and Mother were very good pioneers. They built two of the best homes in Mapleton, also helped to build the two churches, and Eddie and Mother helped with the building of our present meeting house. Mother attended the dedication. Mother lived to see the ward grow from a few homes to a large community. She was 81 years old at the time of her death. Mother's birthday is on April 26 and she would have been 100 years old this year. My Grandmother Perry's birthday is April 12.
Mapleton, Utah
April 9, 1964
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