LIFE SKETCH OF EMRON YANCEY

 

 

I was born at Chesterfield, Idaho, July the 25th, 1886.  My father, Adam, and my mother, Alice Tolman Yancey were born in Bountiful, Utah.  They were married October 2, 1879 in the old endowment house in Salt Lake City, Utah.  They lived in Bountiful a year or two.  Where their first son, Adam Adonirum was born August 9, 1880.

About 1881, they moved to Bancroft, Idaho.  After staying here one year they moved to Chesterfield, Idaho.  About 1882, with some other people whom were mothers brothers. Also Nels Hogan, Fred Bergenson, Dan Jensen, Nels Sorenson, Truman Barlow, Heber Loveland, and David Balfour.

Father took up a homestead at Chesterfield.  It was mostly dry farming and cattle country.  The Portneuf River heads north of Chesterfield.  It ran through one of father's lower fields.  Most of the ground had to be cleared of sage brush.  Except along the river where it was meadow.  Father accumulated some horses and cattle.  We used to milk lots of cows.  Mother would set the milk in pans, skim the cream off, and make butter, which she shipped to Woods Cross, Utah, and got 8 cents per pound.  Father would sell a fat cow or steer for 10 or 12 dollars.  There were lots of sage hens, ducks, and geese.  I have seen bunches of Sage Hens which had thousands in them, with father and Nels.

Nogan used to hitch a team on the wagon and drive down through the fields and shoot them from the wagon.  Mother would clean them and put them in jars and put salt water on them to keep them till needed.  It was also good fishing on the Portneuf River.  There were also lots of deer at that time.

One time father killed 3 in one shot with his 45-70 Rifle.  The coyotes ran in bunches of 10 or 12 to the bunch.  There was lots of snow in the winter.  Sometimes it would be over the top of the fences.  Nels Hogan used to dress hogs, take them to Pocatello, and get 2 or 3 cents a pound for them.  Father used to take a load of wheat to McCammon to the mill to get our flour.  It would take 3 days to make the trip. 

My oldest brother, Adam Adanirum, was killed by a fall off a horse.  Then about 12 years ago, one sister Elizabeth died when as a baby, with whooping cough.  These two are buried at Chesterfield.

After we had lived in Chesterfield for about 20 years--in the fall of 1901, father went to Blackfoot to buy hay for his cattle.  Instead of buying hay, he bought a 300 acre farm.  At what was later called Groveland, which is 3 miles north west of Blackfoot.  Here father built a large 2-story brick home.  He also set out 10 acres of orchard (in apples, pears, prunes, and cherries).  A few years later he cut part of his farm up and laid out the Groveland Town Site.  He sold lots to anyone that wanted to buy one.  A few of the early settlers of Groveland at this time were: A.C. Jensen, John Bowker, Tom, Garfield, and John Bond, J.H. and Ernest Hale, Jonathan, Frank, Arthur, Alvin, and Eugene Hale.  Bill Horton, William Lindsay, Fred Bergenson, Nels Sorenson, P.J. Williams, J.H. Hammond, Fred Hammond, Dan Jensen, Eliga Bingham, Joseph Merrell.  Others were: the Tregoes, Taylors, Peterson, Hansen, Rupps, Beasley, Johnson, Bailey, and the Manwaring Families.

When we first came to Groveland, we went to Moreland to church.  A few years later a branch was organized at Groveland.  Father was presiding elder, later being put in as bishop. (a position he held for about fifteen years.)

The farmers are hollering about low prices.  This is February 1956.  They don't know what low prices are.  After World War I, cattle that were selling for as high as 20 cents a pound went down to 1 or 2 cents.  Thoroughbred sheep that the owner paid 40 dollars a head for sold for 1 dollar each.  Any kind of hog, up to 5 or 6 hundred pounds could be bought for 1 dollar. Hay and grain was almost worthless.  Wheat went down to 25 cents a hundred pounds.

When my brother James was about 15 or 16 years old he stuck a writing pen in his thumb.  He got blood poisoning in his arm.  It was swelled up to his shoulder, 2 or 3 times its natural size.  We had an old doctor taking care of him.  He had us keeping it packed in mud.  There was a Doctor Givans living out past our place, who worked at the Asylum.  He drove past our place night and morning.  I went out one morning and stopped him and had him come in and look at James.  He told us he didn't have time to do anything for him.  For us to go to town and get Doctor Mitchell.  That is what we did.  Dr. Mitchell wrapped his arm in cotton batten.  Poured some stuff on it, came back the next morning cut 16 holes in it and put 8 rubber tubes through it.  Drained out half of a water bucket full of puss from it.  Dr. Mitchell had no hopes of saving his arm and doubted very much if he could save his life.  After Dr. Mitchell was through operating on him, I remember of father administering to him.  He got well and his arm was as good as ever.  This was my introduction to Dr. Mitchell.  He waited on Mamma for a lot of our children.  And also took care of us when we had the flu.  Which was so bad after World War I, many people we knew died with it around Blackfoot.

My brother James went to Logan to school one winter.  I wanted to go and take lessons on the violin.  Father did not want me to go, but I went anyways.  I did not have any money.  I talked a strange banker out of enough to pay my board and room.  Then I worked for Charles Harris to pay for my music lessons.  I stayed about 3 months.  After I came home, I and my sister Bertha, Will, and Fred Hammond played for the dances at Groveland for several years.  Bertha played the piano, Will Hammond the Cornet, and Fred the Trombone.  John Dean's mother and father moved to McDonaldville, north of Groveland.  In 1905, I went with mamma about 2 years before we were married, I was working for Jim Johnston helping put up hay.  He had an old wore out one horse buggy sitting in the shed where the chickens roosted on it.  It was clear full of chicken manure.  I got it out cleaned it out, and put an old quilt on the seat.  This was the buggy which I used to take Mamma out.

When Mamma father moved here from Woodruff, Utah, Mamma drove a team on a load of furniture.  It snowed or rained on them everyday, on the way.  She didn't have either gloves or overshoes.  I bought her the first pair of overshoes she ever had after we were married.

We were married on June 5, 1907 in the Salt Lake City Temple.  Mamma taught school in Groveland.  The year before we were married, she got 45 dollars a month, all of which she had given her father, except the last check which we kept to get a few things to get married with.

At first we lived in Porterville where I had bought a piece of land.  In a one room house is where our first 2 or 3 children were born.  We raised hay, grain, potatoes, and sugar beets.  For the first wheat I raised, I got 60 cents a hundred pounds for it.  In June the next year, 3 and 4 dollars a ton for hay, and 4 dollars a ton for sugar beets.  After we had the beets pulled and topped, it took us all day to load a load and take them to the factory.  Sam Chapman and I sold our potatoes to James Johnston one year for 25 cents a hundred.  We hauled them out in the field and scattered them for the sheep.  I done all my plowing with 3 horses on a hand plow.  I hired a man to help me.  I paid him 5 dollars a day, for him,and his three horses.  He lived in a tent, boarded himself and furnished his own hay and grain to feed his horses.

While living in porterville or Rose as it was later called, we built 3 or 4 more rooms on to our home.  After living there 6 or 7 years, we moved to Groveland where we built a new six room home.  On the place, where Horace Hale lives now, we raised hay, grain, potatoes, and sugar beets, and milked a bunch of cows.  I was put in as Second Counselor to Bishop John Bowker in the Groveland Ward.  Also World War I was on at this time.  During this time I went in to the cattle feeding business.  When the war stopped, the price of cattle went down to almost nothing.  As a result--we lost all we had.  Sold our place, and rented the sugar company farm in Riverside.  We lived there for 3 or 4 years, while we were thrashing in the fall.  Mamma used to milk 24 head of milk cows by hand alone.  We left the Sugar Co. Farm at Riverside and moved to Groveland on the place where Bud Cox Now lives.  While living here I rented the DeKay Farm at Tyhee.  Mamma was sick with the flu at this time.  Me and the kids lived on the DeKay Farm.  Mamma and some of the smaller ones stayed in Groveland.  I ran this farm 2 or 3 years raising 100 acres of sugar beets.  Then we sold our place at Groveland and moved to town, where I went in the trucking business--hauling Idaho/Portland Cement from the plant at Inkom to lumber years.(At Blackfoot, Pocatello, Firth, Shelley, Idaho Falls, Ucon, Rigby, Rexburg, St. Anthony, Ashton on the north, Arco, Challis, and Mackey, on the west of Downey, Malad, Arimo, McCammon, Bancroft, Soda Springs, Montpelier, American Falls, Burley, Rupert, Oakley, and Twin Falls.)

At one time I had five trucks: Clarence Walters, Ted Barney, Wyora's husband, Thomas Jorgerson, and Richard drove truck for me.  About all we made out of the trucking was enough to pay for the trucks and their up keep.

Thomas Jorgerson lived and worked with us for 10 or 12 years.  When his father died I paid the funeral expenses, and he paid me back out of his wages.  When he left our place he went into the chicken hatching business.  With one 200 egg incubator.  Today his little place, and his chicken hatchery are worth $100,000.00.  He also has a fine new home.  Margurett Williams, Marion Greaves, and Lorenzo Porter, all lived with us for some time.  After they had trouble at home.  It is February 27, 1956, it has either rained or snowed all winter long.  Most of our cold weather has been in February this year.  I still have a small farm, and drive a school bus for recreation.