Voices from the Past

Clementsville, Idaho Settlement

Interviewees: William Ard, Myrtle Westover Ard and Elsie Ard Peterson

April 23, 1977

Tape #39

Oral Interview conducted by Harold Forbush

Transcribed by: Alyona Veselova

Edited by: Natalie Groen October 2008

Brigham Young University- Idaho

Harold Forbush: It’s a real privilege for me this twenty third day of April 1977 to have

come here to my study area. A brother and a sister, specifically Elsie Ard Peterson and

William- What’s your middle?

William T. Ard: T.

HF: William T. Ard and also a sister in-law to these people, Mrs. Myrtle Westover Ard.

She married a brother to these people, Joseph Ard whom I remember so well, he was a

sheriff up in Teton County years, years ago. But we want to talk this morning about the

life in Clementsville. Starting with you, Mrs. Peterson, being the oldest, state your name

and when you were born, and where, and the names of your parents.

Elsie Ard Peterson: Do you want my parents first, or me?

HF: Well, no, you.

EP: I was born in Elsmore, Kansas, October 9, 1899.

HF: And your parents’ names?

EP: And my father was George Napoleon Ard, and he was born in Elsmore, Kansas.

HF: And your mother’s maiden name?

EP: My mother’s maiden name was Margaret Angeline Anderson, and she was born in

Gentry County, Missouri.

HF: Okay, now Bill, you, of course were one of the children of this family.

WA: Yeah, I was the youngest one.

HF: You are the youngest boy?

WA: That’s right.

HF: Youngest, youngest of the whole family.

WA: Yes.

HF: I see. When were you born?

WA: I was born on the sixth of November 1903.

HF: Where?

WA: In Elsmore, Kansas.

HF: I see, and now, Bill, when did your parents bring the family from Kansas out here?

WA: Well I thought it was in March of 1907.

HF: And where did they move to the Upper Snake River Valley?

WA: St. Anthony. We came in to St. Anthony and rented a place there, a house, and Mr.

Rule used to be a harness man there and dad went to work on a railroad for some time

and worked at that for awhile on the homestead. Then they ran around and went up. I

believe they went to Ashton, then to sign up for the homestead, and in June we moved up

to the dry farm.

HF: Now, that would have been in?

WA: 1907

HF: In 1907, and that would be in, was it known then as the Clementsville area?

WA: No, there was—I don’t think Clementsville was there then. I can’t remember.

HF: Do it have any particular name?

EP: No.

HF: No.

HF: Just what’s on the dry farm.

WA: Canyon Creek…

EP: District.

WA: District, or whatever you call it, community, I guess.

HF: I see. And in 1907 it would’ve been, it would have been in Freemont County.

WA: Yes, that’s right.

HF: Wouldn’t it?

WA: That’s right.

HF: Okay, now incidentally, now I’ve got a question I want to ask, but first of all I want

to have Myrtle Westover state her full name and when she was born and the names of her

parents.

Myrtle Westover Ard: My name is Myrtle Elizabeth Westover Ard.

HF: And you were born?

MWA: I was born on nineteenth of December 1899 in Rexburg, Idaho.

HF: 1899, and who were your parents?

MWA: My parents was, William Luthen Westover was my father, and he was born in

Menton, Utah. And my mother was born in that’s a Cache County down there, [inaudible]

county, Utah. 4:36

HF: And what was?

MWA: My mother’s name was Ruth Elthia Rowe.

HF: R-O-W-E?

MWA: Yes, and they were both born in Utah.

HF: I see. Okay, now, just going back a moment. You say, Bill, that you arrived, that the

family arrived in St. Anthony in 1903.

WA: 1907

HF: In St. Anthony? But you said...

WA: I was born in 1903.

HF: Oh, but they arrived…

WA: In St. Anthony in 1907.

HF: In 1907. Okay, Now, Elsie, how did they come out here, on the train, maybe?

EP: We left Elsmore, Kansas, and came on the train to Scott City, Kansas. And there my

father worked on the rail road there for awhile, and then he got a job with a big rancher

that owned a great big ranch out from Scott City, Kansas, in Scott County. And we went

out there a stayed a year. And then we didn’t, my brother come along, and he’d been

already ahead of us, a little south to Idaho. And then just loaded it and come out here

because they could take state land or homestead land.

HF: How did they come out?

EP: We came out on the train.

HF: To St. Anthony?

EP: To St. Anthony, Idaho.

HF: Now, at the time how many were there in the family? Give the names starting with

the oldest boy or girl.

EP: Lisa Ard, Joseph Ard, and me, Elsie Ard, Irene Ard, and William Ard, and my

parents came together on the train.

HF: Now, is that all of the family names?

EP: Oh no, there was my oldest brother; his name is George Ard, George…

HF: And he’d already come out here?

EP: Oh, no, he wasn’t, he’s back in Independence, Kansas, he and Arnold.

HF: Oh, but, but he didn’t come then?

EP: He didn’t come at that time. He came later.

HF: I see. He came later.

EP: Yes.

HF: So…

EP: Yes, there was George Ard and Arnold Ard.

HF: They both came later?

EP: They both came later.

WA: Art come earlier.

EP: Art came earlier, but he went back. And then, or he went back to his work, he was

out here working with the sheep. And he didn’t come with us on the train because he had

to come ahead, him and another fellow came ahead and went back to their work.

They were working for Snorton Webster Sheep Company.

HF: I see. Okay, now Mrs. Ard, speaking to you, Myrtle, did your folks, your people

move to the Clementsville area?

Myrtle Westover Ard: No, they came to Rexburg, my parents. And they settled there in

Rexburg, and they went to the Temple in 1883. They were married in the Salt Lake

Temple. My father had died on the twenty-ninth of October 1903 at Rexburg, and my

mother died on April the seventeenth 1914. But they homesteaded here in Rexburg about

some of the earliest settlers here.

HF: Okay, so they didn’t, they didn’t go up to the Canyon Creek area, the…

MWA: Well, I had two brothers that went up there later and homesteaded not far from

where Elsie and Dale’s folks were, about five mile, three or four…

Elsie and William: Well, the land joined.

MWA: Yeah, that’s right the land joined, and they homesteaded up there.

HF: But not your specific people?

MWA: No, not my parents.

HF: I see.

MWA: Just two of my brothers.

HF: Okay, well now, that’s very interesting. Now, it was kind of referred to then as the

Canyon Creek District.

MWA: Until the Clements moved up there.

HF: Now, by whom and after whom was Clementsville named?

MWA: After Clements’.

William Ard: After Eugene Clements.

HF: And he established a little community up there? Store, maybe?

WA: Well, he had his own homestead and then he had two sons with a homestead right

there and they just built sort of a little place and in later years the road was built right

through.

Elsie Peterson: Well the stage road went up there, you know first, they built on the stage

road and some of their land joined ours.

HF: And that’s where the highway is today?

MWA: Yes.

EP: That’s where it is today.

WA: That’s right where it is.

EP: Where the old stage road went through.

MWA: There was three of the Clementsville boys, Will, and Gene and Matthew

WA: Yeah, I know they wasn’t right in the Clementsville area.

MWA: Yeah.

WA: They was up East

HF: I see. Now, when you people, you Ards moved up there, in 1907, were there other

families that had there to for moved up there?

EP: I can answer that.

HF: All right.

EP: There was, down at Canyon Creek there was Tom Terry and Mrs. Terry and then up

at Clementsville, all of what’s up there was George Harriman and they had…We had got

our mail there in a sack on a post out at George Harriman’s place. It’s come up from

Teton on the stage and was hung on this post and George Harriman went out and took

care of it. He was kind of the mail; he wasn’t a specified post office.

HF: Was he a farmer?

EP: Yes, he was a farmer. He had a homestead, and he already had his cabin there.

HF: Now, where was it located with reference to…

EP: To where we lived?

HF: To where you homesteaded?

EP: It was about…

WA: It’s right on the county line just west of county line where the highway is now and

there was crik up there.

EP: About a mile and a half from our place.

HF: I see. Well, now, when you first moved there then, there was this Mr. and Mrs.

Terry, and this George…

Everyone: Allen.

HF: And Harriman?

William Ard: George Harriman, yeah, he was the postman.

HF: And he was, and those were the only ones up there as you recall?

EP: Well, that fellow had the store, you know, that Bill mentioned, George…

WA: Allen.

EP: Allen—had the store down at Canyon Creek.

HF: In the bottom of the canyon?

EP: In the bottom of the canyon right down by the creek. And there’s an old bridge there

and right where.

HF: What did he have, the earliest recollection. What is your earliest recollection of what

was there, in the Canyon?

EP: You mean, in supplies?

HF: Yes, in the supplies.

EP: He just had a store there. That’s all he had, and he sold all kinds of merchandise

such as bacon, and bread and bacon, and candles.

Myrtle Westover Ard: Coffee

EP: Coffee, and just general merchandise to start out with.

HF: Now, would the stage stop there over night, rest the horses up and so on?

WA: They’d stop there and noon their horses quite often, I think about every time. They

go through twice a week, didn’t they?

EP: The stage came out every day from St. Anthony and his name was—the stage driver

was Bill something. I don’t know if that will make any difference. And he stopped at

Teton and rested his—changed teams in Teton City, and then he took a fresh team and

drove to Canyon Creek. Sometimes if he was loaded he would change teams at Canyon

Creek, and then he would drive on to the Teton River up the side of Tetonia and to the

O’Hara place and meet the other stage driver that came over from Jackson Hole. And

then he would drive back to Canyon Creek, change his horses and drive back to Teton,

and change his horses, and drive the next ones back to St. Anthony. That’s how he

started out.

HF: Now, do you think this was taking place by 1907?

EP: Yes, it was before that because that stage road was organized when we went up there.

HF: When you went up there?

EP: That was already running. That was, I think it was around 1905 that stage road went

through there. And that was loaded, he had to change horses. I’ve seen him put four head

on there. Because luggage…

HF: He was hauling a lot of freight?

EP: A lot of— he’d haul mail, people’s freight, luggage, and passengers.

HF: And passengers?

EP: And that went into Jackson Hole—the specific way of our transportation from St.

Anthony into Jackson Hole.

HF: And, of course, the railroad existed there in St. Anthony and …

EP: Railroad was at St. Anthony but not beyond.

HF: Not much beyond.

WA: Well, but they reached Ashton when we went there.

HF: It could’ve reached Ashton by that time.

EP: No, it went on to Yellowstone Park.

HF: Right, to West Yellowstone. I think by 1906 they had reached there.

EP: I think so.

HF: But it didn’t go into Teton basin, the branch line until much, much later.

EP: No, no, all freight came up there by great big six and eight horse freight wagons, and

they had huge teams, heavy lead wagons, that freighted into Jackson Hole.

HF: I presume it was quite a problem to get down there into Canyon Creek then haul out

of Canyon Creek.

EP: Well…

HF: Negotiate that gorge, was it not, Bill?

WA: It was quite a, quite a…

HF: How did they maneuver that, how did they do that?

WA: Well, they had a dug way down on the east side that come in down around and

across the creek and then went up the steeper place on the west bank. Sometimes if they

was loaded heavy, they’d have to double the horses up to pull one up there. It was quite a

steep grade there.

HF: Now, between Teton City [Phone rings in the background] and Canyon Creek I

don’t suppose there’s very many settlements along in there.

WA: Very few.

HF: In those days.

EP: Mostly sheep camps all up through there, sheep.

WA: I think Stevenson’s would have been up there.

EP: Joe Stevenson did have their place up there, settled on Canyon Creek and Jensen’s—

Stevenson’s and Jensen’s. It was all that was there besides Mrs. Terry down in Canyon

Creek and George Allen at the store.

HF: So the whole country side was pretty much sagebrush?

EP: Sagebrush?

WA: Sagebrush and grass.

HF: And grass. Was it grains land good sheep country?

WA: Grains land, and cattle land, sheep and cattle.

EP: They had a, just before we went in there, the year before they had a cattle and sheep

war, but the sheep men won all the cattle. So they finally took the cattle out and only run

them on a forest reserve and during the summer. And the sheep had all that territory from

Canyon Creek over to the Teton Basin, clear down to the Teton River on the north. And

they lambed up in there in the early spring.

HF: It wasn’t too cold for them?

EP: There was Arnolds and Ricks, what was the name of that other one?

WA: I never did know.

EP: Well, there was Arnolds and Ricks mostly had that sheep territory. There’s some

other one, but I can’t remember. Smarton Webster had this over on the Moody area up

through that way. They never come up that way.

HF: When, would you estimate, that a lot of homesteaders really started coming in?

EP: In 1908 and 9.

HF: Just about following you? There were quite a few people that came in?

EP: Following my father’s homestead and these other settlers that were all up in there.

HF: Who proved to be some of your neighbors then, Mrs. Peterson?

EP: Oh, there was the Door Chairman family, and…

WA: Joe Nelson.

EP: Joe, Joe Nelson’s came later.

HF: You just add to it also, William, if you want to.

EP: And Joe Humphreys came later and all of the Clements came along from 1908 to 9.

They moved up there then. I think they homesteaded before that, but they moved up and

settled in there in about between 8 and 9.

HF: Now, so by say, 1910-1915 had there, had all the homesteads pretty well been taken

up?

EP: Yes, they had.

HF: You think, Bill, by say, 1915?

WA: Everything was taken up.

EP: By 1910.

WA: Down by Clements by 1910, but there was a lot of state land from the Clements’s

North line on down to the Teton River, that’s down in where Linderman’s and

Anderson’s ranches is there. That was all state land those days.

HF: Had the state commenced to lease that state land to the homesteaders?

WA: Not till about until 1915-16, somewhere around there

HF: I don’t suppose that the home, typical homesteader could take care of more than

what, a hundred and sixty acres at first, because he had, all he had is horse power, isn’t it?

WA: That’s right.

HF: And, with the, with the substitution of tractors and so forth, then they could really

handle a lot more ground.

WA: Well, that didn’t, the tractor didn’t get up in there much until, oh, 1930.

HF: 1930?

William Ard: 35-36, somewhere there, 38.

EP: About 35.

HF: So, so with the horse power they were able to take care of more than a hundred and

sixty acres?

WA: Oh, yes. There’s a lot of them had several thousand acres. Fargesons down there

had lots of land down in there before they got tractors, Joe Fargeson.

HF: Now, where was his land? West of Canyon Creek?

WA: It was east of Canyon Creek, down north of Clementsville.

HF: I see. Down near the river.

WA: Towards the river, yeah.

HF: Towards the river. Now, was that area down through there homesteaded maybe

more quickly than on up south of the, south of the road, south of the highway?

WA: South of the road was homesteaded, in fact all of it before that was ever state leased

down there.

HF: Oh, I see.

WA: They never did homestead down in there, it was all state leased.

EP: And bought in.

HF: I see. Now, back towards the south, though, you had, you met timberline, didn’t you,

Bill, wasn’t the timberline?

WA: Yeah, it was only about two miles to the mountain up there

HF: Was a lot of that timber cleared off and farmed?

WA: No, no, it never was; it’s too steep.

HF: Is it?

WA: You go right up to the foot of the mountain and it’s mountain from there up.

HF: I see. Well now, as the settlers moved in, what did they do about getting a home?

What kind of a home did they build, Bill?

WA: Practically all log homes. Folks would go in the mountains and get them logs, and

haul them out, and build log cabins.

HF: Pine?

WA: Pine logs, yes.

HF: And out of the south hills?

EP: Yes

HF: Now, was there quaking, also quaking asp up in there?

EP: Plenty of it.

WA: There was quite a few in, on the, where the hill would go over and slope to the east

and in all of them swales and canyons had quaking aspen in them, practically all of them.

HF: Did they use, did they use that kind of wood for anything?

WA: Lots of people use it for wood.

EP: We did

WA: They had quaking asp, they could get out, and it’s easy got. And lots of people used

it for wood.

HF: Burn it up, sawed it up?

WA: Cut it up with an ax.

Myrtle Westover Ard: Chopped it with an ax.

HF: For the fire place, for the fire stove?

WA: Kitchen stove. That’s about all we had.

HF: Kitchen stove.

WA: Some people had heaters, wood heaters, sort of pot-belly stoves.

HF: But they seemed to like that better than the pine, I guess?

WA: Well, I couldn’t say they liked it better, but it was easier to get.

MWA: You get what you can get. [laughs]

WA: Nowadays, why you only had a horse, if you didn’t have to haul it very far, why

you could pile up a lot more, and you could haul a long ways.

HF: They would go in and get the dry, and stack it up, and put in on the wagon, would

they, and then bring it down to the house?

WA: That’s right.

HF: Now, typical home, what would a typical home up there have, Myrtle, as you, as

you got to understand it when you moved up there? When did you go up there about

nineteen fourteen-fifteen along in there?

MWA: Fifteen.

HF: What did a typical log home have in it?

MWA: It had about—I went up and lived with my brother and his wife, Floyd. See, my

mother died in April of 1914, and my brother just older than me got married. So I didn’t

have any place to live, so I went up to Dry Farm and lived with Floyd and his wife. And

we just lived about what, three mile. Well, our places joined, our farm was joined. We

had…

EP: It was only about a mile and a half.

MWA: We had two rooms in Floyd’s house.

HF: Two rooms?

MWA: The kitchen, and the other room was a little larger than the bedroom. They had

six children, and I went to live with them.

HF: And all, all of the persons who dwelled in that household slept in the bedroom?

MWA: On the floor, any place we could find. We had two, three beds, I think, in the

bedroom, then if we had company we’d have them scattered all over the floor everywhere.

HF: Okay, now did the typical home at that time have a wood floor?

MWA: Yes. We did. I think Elsie said or Joe said you had dirt floor?

Elsie Peterson: Well, when we first moved up there we had an awful old log cabin. Well

it wasn’t old, they built it new, but until December we lived on the dirt floor from June

till December.

HF: In a cabin that had already been built?

EP: A one-room cabin that my dad and two other fellows built that. They hauled the logs

out of pine timber up there, they had to go back about two miles to get the logs and they

built that while we sat in a tent and waited for them to finish it. And, we moved up there.

HF: Dirt floor?

EP: And it leaked, oh, it leaked a stream. They went up to the saw mill and got—there

was a saw mill up in the mountain. They went up and got oh twelve-foot, or twelve,

twelve-inch lumber, and made a roof on it. And it was green lumber, and it shrunk up,

and it had cracks in the roof about an inch wide when it got through shrinking. So it just

come a raining and just poured down on us, and we all got wet bedding and everything.

So Dad went up to the saw mill and got strips and stripped the cracks. Where they the

strips are, where they, they saw out the logs, you know, and they’re getting bark on them,

what do you call it?

MWA: Yep, heads.

HF: Slabs.

EP: Heads, heads, slabs, slabs, slabs and put on there. And then he got dirt to put on top

of that, and then we had a good roof when we got dirt on top of it. That was a good roof.

And then that fall, we daubed it with mud, that big crack, chinked the big old cracks in it

and daubed it with mud and then lived in it on the dirt floor until December. And then he

went up to the saw mill, and there was nobody up there, and he just took enough lumber,

six-inch lumber, to floor that cabin. And then when they’d come up in the spring he went

up there and paid them for his lumber.

HF: Do you know who operated the lumber up there, Bill at that time?

William Ard: I don’t remember.

HF: The saw mill?

EP: Let’s see, I should.

HF: Probably there was only one, wasn’t there, up there?

WA: Well, there was, there’d be quite a crew around there sawing and getting timber mill,

and so I don’t know.

HF: But one saw mill, though?

WA: One saw mill, yes. But who it was, I don’t know, I’ve heard the name, but I can’t

remember it now.

EP: They sawed quite a bit of timber up in there.

HF: Was that in the area of Green Canyon? Or was it east?

EP: No!

WA: It was east of Green Canyon.

HF: Way east of Green Canyon.

EP: Right up above our house only about a mile and a half up in the timber.

Myrtle Westover Ard: [inaudible] Out where?

EP: No, it was over there on the pickup Creek.

WA: Where we used to go in the mountains up there above Dave Davison’s.

EP: Yes.

WA: And LaBelles

EP: When we first went there, there was a saw mill right up on our side, and you went up

towards a…oh, I don’t remember, he lived way up there by the big stream, what was his

name?

WA: Herrington.

EP: Jess Herrington was around the corner, but the saw mill was right up in there where,

this side of Herrington’s.

WA: Oh, I didn’t know that.

EP: And that’s where Dad got his lumber to build, to make our floor.

WA: Up there at the old mill creek place?

EP: Close to it, in there. Right in there somewhere.

WA: There used to be an old sheering corral out there. [inaudible]

HF: Okay, about that sheering corral, that’s Harriman, not Harriman, but Herrington.

EP: Herrington.

WA: That was old Ed Herrington.

HF: Ed Herrington had, I think, owned and operated that sheering ship, didn’t he? Or

had something to do with it?

WA: He owned and operated it, and they used to stop there a lot on the way back and

forth out of the basin and take a shortcut up over the point there, and come out through

there.

HF: Have the sheep rest up for a day of two or a something?

WA: Well, yes they trailed the sheep back around that way quite a lot, but quite a lot of

freight, lighter freight teams went that way too.

HF: Well now, did you have any other buildings? After building the cabin on the typical

homestead, I imagine you had, had to put up some kind of a shelter for the horses.

WA: Yeah.

EP: Dad went up to the timber and got some, during that summer, and got, cut logs, and

built. We had three horses, a team and a colt and built enough for the log barn for the

horses, also covered it with dirt, and daubed it with mud, and it was warm and fed the

horses straw. That’s what they ate that winter and a few oats that we could get.

HF: Had he planted, he had planted some oats, had he?

EP: No, he bought them.

HF: Oh, I see. What did you, did you plant anything that, that summer?

EP: Not the first year, the second.

HF: 1907?

EP: That fall.

WA: He plowed quite a lot of ground that first summer, I think.

EP: He had these three horses and a moldboard plow and plowed up a little patch of

ground out east to the class and planted the next spring. That summer, he broke up that

sod.

WA: He plowed with a…

EP: Moldboard.

WA: Yeah, it was a walking plow.

HF: In other words, that was a type of a plow that he would throw, cut the, cut the sod in

two and lay some on each side?

WA: No.

HF: It would just lay it all to one side.

Myrtle Westover Ard: Laid, laid one way.

WA: Lay it all one way.

HF: To the, to the right?

WA: Yes.

HF: And then later they developed one with two, two shares on it?

WA: Yeah.

EP: If they had the power to pull it.

WA: I believe when the next plow we got after we had that old moldboard was a plow

that was a disc plow, and he finished breaking the farm up with that.

HF: Well now how did he get the heavy sagebrush out? I imagine that sagebrush, some

of it would it be pretty rank.

WA: Well, you go over that with a heavy plow, what you can get or pull, and that

sagebrush would sort of break off at the top of the ground. It wasn’t too hard to get out.

EP: Then we kids had to pick it all up after that.

WA: Yeah, we had to pick it all up and pile it in piles and burn it.

HF: You break it off, then. You wouldn’t dig it up, you’d break it off.

WA: Well, some, some of it didn’t break off would have to be dug up, chopped up with

an ax or something like that.

HF: And then, then you’d plow. And then you would burn it.

E P: Harrow it in.

WA: Dad built an old wooden harrow, bored holes, made teeth, and sticks, logs, built a

harrow to harrow it down with.

EP: Rode on it, and it dug the sod in pretty good.

HF: You mean it, that this, he would put the harrow on after he had plowed.

MWA: Plowed.

WA: Yes.

MWA: He put board across the harrow and stand on that and put weights on it to give it

weights.

WA: Level, level the ground back down and build up the low places.

HF: And he could do this with just one team, two horses?

WA: He always used three. That’s all the horses he had was three horses.

HF: I see.

WA: He finally bought another team, and then he had five.

HF: Now, what did you use for transportation, getting back and forth?

WA: A wagon.

HF: A wagon.

EP: A lumber wagon.

HF: Now…

EP: That’s…

WA: That’s the only means of transportation we had until we, till we…

HF: Do you remember, Bill, what they call that type of a wagon, a lumber wagon? Was

it a C. W. & M.?

WA: Well, that was a Bain wagon that we had.

HF: A Bain?

HF: Now what, I don’t know specifically the how you would contrast a Bain one from

say a consolidated one.

WA: Well they went by just like the automobiles today; they go by the different names.

There’s the Bain, the studebaker, wagon, and so on like that.

HF: Maybe that would be, the width of the wagon would be a certain number of feet, and

then another style would be a little less than that or something.

WA: It was all the same width.

HF: Oh, were they?

WA: The wheels are all tracked in the same tracks. But…

MWA: [inaudible]

WA: About the tires now, in the early days, the tires was only about an inch and a half

wide, the way they turned on the ground there the early wagons.

HF: And that would be metal?

WA: That was, it had a metal bound around the wheel.

HF: Well, let’s see moving along, how did you people get your water for the homestead

for your culinary water?

EP: Hauled it.

WA: We hauled it in barrels. We had a barrel and a half, I think we’d haul. We’d go

about two miles up in to Eddy Crooked Creek, there was a spring there. And that’s where

we’d haul our water from in the early days. 32:54

HF: Okay, now you take the wagon, put the barrels in the wagon and go up there and get

your water.

WA: That’s right.

HF: And bring it down to the homestead, then where would you put the water?

WA: Leave it in the barrels. [inaudible]

EP: And leave it up in the wagon or the cattle would come along at night and rub the

barrels over and tip them over, and we wouldn’t have any water anymore.

HF: Well, now, you’d have to go up and get your water every day?

EP: Every other day.

HF: Every other day, but wouldn’t the hot sun in the daytime, of course, heat that water

up?

EP: Not too bad.

WA: Oh, somewhat, but it’d still be drinkable. Not as good water as some days.

HF: Did you ever—any ever drill for water or dig wells?

EP: Not at that time. Dad dug wells all over the place up there.

HF: Trying to find water?

EP: Trying to find water.

HF: But never could get any?

EP: He used to witch water with a stick, and he never could find any till years after he

went over to the canyon and finally found it on our homestead.

HF: And so, it was a case of hauling your water.

EP: We hauled water for what, ten years up there.

MWA: In cisterns.

HF: Well now how about these cisterns, you mentioned cisterns there, Mrs. Ard, Myrtle,

what’s a cistern?

MWA: It’s a great big hole in the ground, and they’d cement them all over on the sides,

and the bottom, and they kind of taper down on the bottom so when they need to wash

‘em out and clean them the water they could scoop it all out. They’d have to wash the

cisterns every so often to keep the water fresh and clean.

HF: Okay, now, how would they get that water in there?

MWA: Haul it in water tanks then.

HF: And just dump it in there?

MWA: It’d have a plug, and then run out in the cistern.

HF: And how would you get the water out of the cistern?

MWA: Draw it with a bucket.

HF: With a bucket, with a pulley and so on?

EP: No, draw it out with rope by hand.

HF: By hand?

MWA: Rope and a bucket.

EP: Hitched onto the bucket.

HF: And how many gallons would be possibly in that cistern, a thousand gallons?

MWA: Three or four big tank fulls.

HF: And so that would last for several weeks then, wouldn’t it?

EP: About a month.

HF: The water?

MWA: About a week or two, according to how much if you had to use for your stock too,

it went pretty fast.

HF: Where would they get the water?

MWA: Up Mill Creek, wasn’t it?

WA: There was a lot of hauled from Mill Creek.

EP: You folks did.

WA: In the early days there, after Joe Humphrey got in there he went up to the Critty

35:39 Creek Canyon and dug a well about four or five feet deep, and after that there was

a dug way, and everybody hauled water from there then. It was a good well and had

running water.

HF: Did you get any out of Canyon Creek?

WA: I hauled a lot of water from Canyon Creek.

HF: In a tank?

WA: In a water tank, yes.

HF: How big are those water tanks?

WA: They was about as big as a wagon box.

HF: And how…

WA: And they were made tight so they would hold water.

HF: Made out of wood?

MWA: Yes.

WA: They were made out of wood.

HF: And they were just mounded on the wagon as it were?

WA: Yeah, you could unload ‘em off the wagon, put the wagon box on if you.

HF: How would you get the water into the tank?

WA: Dip it in there.

MWA: Dip it in.

HF: Holy man.

EP: With a bucket and a rope.

WA: With a bucket and a rope.

HF: Boy, that’s a lot of work, wouldn’t it be?

MWA: [inaudible]

HF: Then, once you get it filled, you take it home. Then you’d have to put it in the

cistern quite the same way?

WA: That’s right. You put it back up to the cistern and…

HF: It had a hole in it?

WA: Usually you have a trough built so where the water come out of the tank it had a

hole and a plug in there.

HF: I see.

WA: And you’d pull that plug out and get your trough in there so it would run into the

cistern and that would, you’d get your water in the cistern that way.

HF: Okay, then do we—to water the animals or to take water into the house for culinary

purposes you had the rope and the bucket to draw it out?

WA: You bailed it out from the cistern.

HF: By hand?

WA: By hand, yes.

HF: A lot of work involved, wasn’t there?

MWA: Well, in winter we would cover up snowdrifts and melted snow a lot in the

wintertime for what we needed for household purposes for laundry or cleaning or

anything. We just put a big tub full of snow and fill our reservoirs on the stove and fill

them full of snow and melt snow and used in the wintertime because it would take so

much water.

HF: Now, in the...with the heavy snows, would you put straw and so forth out on that

snow and maybe preserve it in a way of ice into the summer, did you ever do that?

WA: Yes, we did that a lot.

EP: All the time.

HF: I’ve heard of people having their own private little ice place where they could go out

in the summer and dig the straw back and get some ice and make some homemade ice-

cream.

MWA: Ice cream, yes that’s the way it is, yes.

HF: Is that quite a typical thing?

WA: That’s quite typical.

EP: We used to keep our butter in up in the snowdrift like that. We, later on in years we

got some great big five-gallon jars, stone jars and took the butter, put the butter in these

jars, put a cloth over it, and a little bit of sugar on top of it, and took it up there and buried

it in the snowdrift. And, boy, that was the sweetest, nicest butter you ever ate. Put the

straw back on it would just stay beautiful.

MWA: They watered the gardens from the snowdrift, too.

EP: And our pigs had water up there.

WA: In later years, they did yeah. I’ve gotten water near quarter of a mile down to get

some snowdrift, but you had to get the pigs to stay around the snowdrift and water in that

mud surrounding where the water would run off some snow and get the ground in seal, so

you could carry the water out. That’s why you had it sealed in the ground.

HF: Now, Bill, on a typical homestead in the Clementsville area between say 1907 and

say 1920 for maybe a fourteen-fifteen year period, what animals would a farmer, a

homesteader have?

WA: Oh…

HF: Just what would he have?

WA: Usually horses, and one or two cows, not many cows, just…

HF: Just enough for the family use?

WA: That’s right.

HF: Yeah.

EP: Pigs.

WA: And pigs, yes. Some, some of them had a few sheep a few over time and a few

chickens.

HF: And a few chickens. In other words, the thought behind the whole thing is to be as

independent as possible.

WA: That’s right.

HF: And, so you, this would, the cows would provide you with your milk, and cheese,

and butter, and milk, and things of this nature.

WA: Yeah, but we didn’t have cheese them days we just had butter and milk and cream.

EP: Cottage cheese.

WA: Yeah, you’d have cottage cheese.

HF: And then you raised enough wheat, I guess, and grain, to take care of a few chickens?

WA: Oh, yes.

HF: And…

WA: All the grain they say they ever sold was just what we had to have for flour and

groceries, you might say.

HF: And the grain would be used to feed the pigs, or the chickens, or the animals?

WA: That’s right.

HF: And sell enough to take…

WA: It’s usually the oats, the oats was livestock wheat, and wheat was for other things

flour and stuff like that what we had to buy.

EP: There used to be a mill down at the Teton, at city, a good mill, a flour mill. And Dad

would take, that’s the way he took a four-horse load of wheat down there and have it

ground into flour. And oh that was the best flour; it all of that good gluten in it. The bread

was just delicious.

HF: The Briggs?

EP: The bread.

HF: Yeah, but I mean it was the Briggs, the Briggs family, I think operated that.

WA: Yes.

HF: For years, it was powered by…

EP: Water.

HF: Water.

EP: That’s right.

HF: And that was in usage until 1972.

EP: Was it? Yes, White had had it. Mr. White had done.

HF: They had that in there for a long-long time. Well, now, we have covered something

about the typical home. Later, I guess those homes, one or two, or three room cabins,

they ought to be bigger than that and maybe built out of lumber, is that right?

EP: Our, Dad built us a house out of hewed logs. It was a great big two-room, well, it

was big rooms, and he hewed the logs with his ax.

HF: Who did this?

EP: My father.

HF: Uh-hmm.

EP: And then we had…

HF: Now, this would have been your second home?

EP: That was the second home, and we built that down over there by the well where he

struck water down in the Canyon. And that was, it had two large rooms, then he added

on a porch and so forth and so on, and built storage, a storage house back of it. We had

plenty of room then.

HF: We talked just a minute about the shopping area, where would you go to get, do

your shopping in say, between, well before Teton County became a county in 1915,

where did you go?

WA: That’s all the shopping we did, see it then was go down to Canyon Creek and get

about all the groceries we wanted there and if you had have other things that you couldn’t

get there, we’d have to go to St. Anthony. For the team, that was a day down, and a day

back.

HF: From Clementsville?

WA: Uh-hmm.

HF: That would be how many miles, Bill?

WA: Twenty-five, about twenty five.

HF: In other words, it’s all you could expect of a team and wagon is to go about twenty-

five miles a day?

WA: That’s right.

HF: And that would be eight to ten hours, maybe, eight hours probably?

WA: I don’t know. It was, it was usually around eight to ten hours.

HF: You remember the stores, the shopping places you’d get your groceries from St.

Anthony? Any names come to light to mind?

WA: Well, I believe, I know there’s one store there they called a Kusic 43:28 store. It

was a department store in St. Anthony and then there was another one there, but I don’t

remember the name of it now. I wasn’t down there many times when I was little, just

once or twice.

HF: You remember of ever going to St. Anthony shopping, Elsie?

EP: Oh, a few times. When with kids, there is always a load to unload of wheat or

something when we went to town. It wasn’t a one-way trip, pleasure trip. And we, kids,

never went to town too often.

HF: How about to Rexburg?

EP: We never did go to Rexburg with a team

HF: Rexburg would be a few miles on further, but wasn’t Rexburg bigger than St.

Anthony?

EP: Yes, but it wasn’t the county seat, and St. Anthony was closer to haul grain and to do

our shopping. There’s a JC Penny’s store there, it was the called Golden Rule then, dry

goods store, JC Penny. Golden rule in ….

HF: In Rexburg?

EP: In St. Anthony.

MWA: St. Anthony.

HF: In St. Anthony?

EP: No, in St. Anthony I’m talking about because we didn’t come to Rexburg very often.

All went done was went to St. Anthony because that was the closest railroad station at

that time.

HF: Now, going east, you didn’t, there wasn’t a Tetonia, or there wasn’t much of a place

in Driggs, was there?

MWA: Aden

WA: Aden was what they called it then, it was down west of Tetonia as the only…

HF: Did they have a store or two there?

WA: I doubt it, I never was there, I don’t know.

MWA: They had a post office.

WA: They had a post office, I guess, but I don’t think there was a store there.

EP: Well, they had to freight their merchandise in over there by freighter, team wagons,

so that didn’t amount to much over there. It was just a like an emergency more than

anything up at Driggs.

WA: Well, there was no Driggs there then, was there? It was Victor.

MWA: Driggs.

EP: It was Victor and there was…

HF: No, there was a Driggs, too, yeah, there was a start.

MWA: About sixteen and...

EP: Yeah, old Mr. Driggs are…

HF: Don C. Driggs.

EP: Yeah, he’s the one that started that Driggs town in there.

WA: Was Driggs started before the railroad came in?

HF: Oh, yes.

EP: Oh, yes.

HF: Oh, yes. It was there quite a long time before, but it wasn’t very large, you know,

anything like this.

WA: You see after they put the railroad in, why then the built Tetonia. Old Haydn

moved up to Tetonia.

HF: Up to Tetonia, that was 1912.

WA: Twelve or thirteen, somewhere along there.

HF: Followed by twelve. Well, now what did you people, young people, what did you

do for entertainment? What, Bill, going back, referring to, as a young man, let’s see, say,

from when you were about fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years of age, what did you guys do

for entertainment?

MWA: They built the Canyon Creek church house. There was a community…

EP: Well, I can tell you what we done in our house. We had an old organ in our, and we

built a platform to set the organ on when lived on the dirt floor. We had our organ, and

my big sister played the organ, and Dad played the fiddle, and we had a mouth organ, and

we played. We could dance, and they taught us to dance on the dirt floor. And we just

had a ball, kids, family, and kids, mother, and father, and then my brother George came,

and he would play the fiddle. And he was a good fiddler by ear.

MWA: They taught themselves.

EP: We had that organ, and then in later years, here come, oh down to Clementsville,

they’d have parties, have parties. Oh, somebody would a have a birthday, and then they’d

have a, or build on a little audition, they’d have a house warming. And they’d all go

down there and take a lunch and play cards, play if they had an organ, they’d play organ

and sing.

WA: Play games.

EP: And play games.

HF: The interview will be continued on side two of this tape.

EP: Then they would have…

[Side two is missing]