Emma Emmaline Durfey Bassett ~ Index

"After Mother's funeral, father took Victor, Laura, and I to Mendon, Utah, to live with his parents. But, father didn't stay at Grandma's with us. He left us there and went herding sheep. He was always working or doing something. He sent money to Grandma. He didn't come home very often. Well, I don't remember seeing him. I don't even remember my mother. We lived with Grandma and Grandpa Bassett in Beaver Dam and also in Mendon, Utah. I know that I had a lot of cousins around there and we used to play and fight like cousins usually do.

The boys and men liked to go fishing a lot and the boys used to dig worms for the fishing trips. The boys wanted the little kids and especially the girls to hold the worms. I wouldn't, I just wouldn't hold them in my hands. I'd just drop them on the ground. I had one cousin and he really got irritated with me and he gave me a handful of worm while they held my hands out. I threw them out again and he picked up those worms and put them down my neck. I just went into hysterics because of those nasty worms.

Grandma would get kinda out of patience when I would break her rest and she'd try to quiet me by scolding me. Uncle Richard, I remember, was awfully patient and kind to me. He would come to the door and say, Don't scold her mother, let me take her. And he'd take me to bed with him and I'd quiet down and then he'd take me back to my own bed and I'd be alright for the rest of the night. This went on for quite a while, but finally, I did get over it.

We lived in a big two-story brick house. Living upstairs in their two-story home in Beaver Dam, was Loren and Emma's son, Alma Bassett and his young wife, Sarah Jane Bassett who helped with the children. (Sarah Jane was the daughter of Henry Martin Harmon, Loren's half-brother.) We called them Uncle Al and Aunt Janie. Their first baby was born while they lived there and his name was Alberto (The baby was actually named Alma Alvero) I remember I wanted to go up and see this baby and I guess Aunt Janie didn't want us kids up there bothering around too much. I liked to go up there and one day I fell down the steps and got a bloody nose.

My brother, LeRoy and baby sister, Senora Electa, lived with my mother's sister, Matilda Mathie (Elizabeth Matilda Rowe was four years older than her sister, Senora Rowe– Ona's mother. Matilda married James Baird Mathie.) The baby and LeRoy never went to Grandma Bassett's after the funeral to live. Senora Electa only lived fourteen months and then she died on 22 March 1904. I don't know how long LeRoy stayed with her as I never did see him again. He died in 1912– (when I was twelve years old– he would have been about eighteen.) Forty-nine days after my baby sister, Senora died, my brother Victor, who was eleven, drowned in a fishing accident.

This tragic boating accident took place on 9 May 1904 when Loren E., Jr. took his youngest son, Richard, who was twenty-three, and his grandson, Victor, then eleven, fishing on the Bear River. Their boat passed under a bridge that had a fence under it. Due to high-water conditions the fence was hidden under murky flood waters. The fence caught on or snagged the bottom of the boat and it tipped over. Both Victor and Richard were drowned. It was a month before their bodies were found– about five miles from Beaver Dam over at Fielding, Utah.

This accident caused great sorrow for the family and Emma D. Bassett couldn't seem to shake the depression and sorrow. Death had dealt a heavy blow to their family beginning in January 1902 when they lost a granddaughter; then again in November 1902 a grandson– children of Milo and Camilla. In January 1903, a daughter-in-law died leaving five motherless children– three of whom Emma and Loren took in; in March 1904, the youngest of those five died at the age of fourteen months; and also a granddaughter Silvia, daughter of Miriam and Frank Hansen died about the same time. To top this off in May 1904, her youngest son and eldest grandson were drowned and not found for a month!!! What a difficult time for any mother and grandmother to go through! Seven deaths in twenty-eight months!

Loren E., Jr. decided he would take Emma away from that part of the country and so they moved up into Idaho near their daughter Meriam and her husband Frank Hansen in the Bannock Valley which had just newly opened up and where they took up a homestead. Their son, Will (William Albert Bassett), and their daughter, Candias (called Fanny by the family) and her husband Andrew Izatt also took up one-hundred and sixty acre homesteads in 1905 or 1906 in the Bannock Valley of Idaho. For the first time, Loren E., Jr. and Emma's family no longer lived near one another. Milo and Alma moved their families to Wyoming while Harlow stayed in Cache Valley.

The Idaho families all raised grain except Will. He just built a cabin and fenced his land– clearing some of it– but not always staying around to farm."

Ona E. Bassett Dickerson

"Grandma was an old lady (about age sixty). She had chickens and a garden. My father brought them a cow. We really had a pleasant life on this farm. She was a real good housekeeper. Grandma would make her own lye soap. She would make it out of the wood ashes and rendered-out grease that she had saved. It was good soap and would lather, too. She used to keep her floors so clean the boards were almost white. She taught Laura and I how to scrub floors, too. She put a bucket of water between us with some of her homemade soap, and we each had a scrubbing brush. We would see how much lather we could make on the floor while she sang a little ditty to us. Lather and shave, lather and shave. We could work up a pretty good lather while she was singing and finally get the water all wiped up. The floor looked pretty good. Laura and I used to have to wash the dishes, too. She taught us how to work with a pleasant attitude. (The girls were about six and eight when they moved to Idaho.)

Grandma used to teach Laura and I how to sew. We didn't have much money and she didn't have thread for us to waste, so we'd pull ravelings out of an old piece of cloth and thread that in our needle. We learned how to sew and when we wanted to sew just for fun, we would use these ravelings. She did let us sew on buttons with store-bought thread from a spool. Grandma used to knit all our stockings and make all our clothes and mend them when they needed it. She didn't have a sewing machine, she just sewed by hand. She was real good at it.

Grandma would not let anyone talk back to her. She couldn't stand a sassy child; she wouldn't tolerate it; she just wouldn't. If you sassed Grandma, you'd get a back-hand in the mouth so fast you wouldn't know what hit you.

Mostly Grandma was full of goodness. One day one of my cousins fell down while playing in the yard and cut the end of her nose right off with a piece of glass. Grandma grabbed her and put her nose back where it belonged. She put some salve she had made on it and tied a rag around her head and left it that way for three or four days. When they took it off, the nose was healing back together. It was still sore, but it was healing up. All my cousin had when it healed, was a little half-moon scar on her nose. I don't believe you can see it now she's a grown woman.

I guess it was the second spring we were there, I was going on seven years old and Grandpa decided to rent a sawmill up in Bow Canyon. It was just a one-man sawmill and Grandpa ran the sawmill alone. It seems like there were mountains of sawdust that Laura and I played in and had fun.

In the evening, Grandpa would get out his violin. He was a good musician. He could play the violin, banjo, accordion and the mandolin. He was really talented. He used to play for dances all the time when we lived in Mendon, Utah. In the evening, he would play his violin or accordion or whatever he felt like. In the nearby bushes a little hummingbird must have had a nest, because every time Grandpa started to play, this little hummingbird would come and hover about four or five inches from his head, right over his shoulder. It seemed to just listen and flutter there as long as he was playing. Then, just as soon as he would quit, it would fly back into the bushes. Almost every summer evening that year of 1907 at the sawmill, this was our entertainment.

I can't remember Grandma ever telling us many stories, but I do remember in the winter evenings being entertained by Grandpa. He would sit and play a musical instrument and sing songs to us. Grandpa made a little wooden puppet that moved at the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists of the hands. He put a little three-corner file on the back of this little puppet that held it out as it was attached to the end of the saw. Grandpa played music on the saw and while he played, the little puppet would just dance like crazy. We kids loved to sit and listen to Grandpa sing and play his instruments.

Grandpa was a talented carpenter and tanner. I remember one time he had a horse that died. He skinned the horse and tanned the hide. He made a little rocking chair with a leather seat from this tanned horse hide for one of my cousins. Oh, it was such a cute little rocking chair. He made lots of things, Grandfather was always whittling something and was never idle. He kept his hands busy or he was entertaining us with songs or music of some kind.

In August of 1907, Grandma got sick. She was pretty sick. She just got down and got so sick that Uncle Andrew Izatt came up to the sawmill one day and moved her back down to the ranch. She just couldn't get out of bed, she was so sick. I don't know what was the matter with her. Anyway, while she was so sick, it was hot August weather, and I used to fan her. We kids used to take turns and it seemed to me that I used to fan her more than anyone else because I liked to. I would sit there and fan her until she went to sleep. Then I would go out and play. Later, I would go back in and see if she was alright and fan her again. The other kids did too, we all fanned her.

Then one day, all the family came home and that night Grandma died. Oh, such a terrible blow to us. We just loved her so much. She was so good to everybody and so kind as long as you were good to her and didn't sass her. We all loved her. She died 27 August 1907 at Arbon, Power County, Idaho.

She was buried right on the farm just about a block back from the house in Beaver Dam, Box Elder County, Utah. Laura and I used to go out and pick wild larkspurs and put on her grave because she loved those wild larkspurs better than any other kind of flower. Grandma's name was Emma E. Durfey before she married.

I had a cousin, Emma Hansen and I thought her father was the most unkind man in the world. He was really cruel when he got drunk or mad. Emma, Grandma's namesake, got Grandmother's beautiful gold thimble. Her dad knew it and he wanted it, he was going to sell it. She came over to Uncle Andrew Izatt's and was telling Laura and I about it. We all decided to bury it by Grandma's grave so he couldn't find it. She had the thimble in a little box. She dug a little hole right down by Grandma's grave stone and buried it.

After Grandma was buried and we were left alone without her, Grandpa couldn't stand it. He just couldn't stand it at all, so he went back to live with his son, Uncle Harlow. He lived there with them as long as he lived."

Ona E. Bassett Dickerson