The Life History of

EDWARD THURMAN GRIFFETH

Written by Alice Albertie Griffeth Griffiths

as told to her by her brother, Edward Griffeth

I was born September 6, 1875, at Hyde Park, Utah. I was the third child of George Andrew Griffeth and Mary Elizabeth Thurman. The house I was born in was made of adobe. It was small but always clean and cheery, a very happy home. Mother always had flowers and a vegetable garden to make it look pretty.

I remember how I used to carry in wood long before I could swing an ax. I remember a neighbor Nellie Hyde, who used to come and get me and take me to the store with her.

Abigail Hyde was the bee women of Hyde Park. She went all over town putting swarms into hives for people and taking out the honey. Sometimes she would need help so she took a picket off the fence between their place and ours so I could get through when she called. I would crawl up into the tree and saw the limb off so the bees would drop into the hive. I used to beat a tin pan to make a noise so the swarming bees could not hear the queen bee. That is how we could get them to settle in a bunch.

Uncle Ted, (Edward Thurman) baptized me in what was called the new ditch. It is the canal just below the Grave yard. I used to go barefoot most of the time when I was a kid.

John Follett lived a block east from of us. He was a fleshy, elderly Dutchman, a freighter and a railroad man. He had a good farm with good horses that he used in freighting and building railroads. When he was home, he used to take his horses down to the watering place, which was a long trough at west end of town. The whole town watered at that place. He used to always let me help him with his horses. I rode one and led the other. His favorite team was a span of purebred percheron mares. That was the first purebred that I have ever seen.

Brother Follett used to come down to our place to play his violin. Father used to play with him and George would play the banjo.

We used to have three cows which I used to take to the pasture out west of town. Brother Follett had a field across the road from the pasture. One morning I noticed that he had started to cut his grain with a binder. The binder was a new thing. Before that time a reaper was used to cut the grain and lay it in bunches and the men would have to bind it by hand. So I was very much interested in the new binder that would tie the bundles with wire. Brother Follett had bought a bale of wire and left it close to the machine.

For a little fun I took some bundles of grain and put them around the bale of wire so it could not be seen. Brother Follett went down with his three horses to finish cutting the grain. When he couldn’t find the wire he had to come back into, town. He accused me right straight and began to make threats. I finally told him I’d just put it out of the sun in the middle of the grain bundles. He lost about a half a day but found the wire and cut the grain. The next time he came down with his violin, he caught me and said, "Now I’ll get even’. He took some pinchers out of his pocket and fastened onto my two front teeth. To his surprise they both came out. He was sorry when he saw that he had pulled a little too hard, but one was already loose.

One time when I went up to get the horses to water them, Brother Follett was lying on a quilt under an apple tree, with his mouth open. I reached up and shook a limb, when the apples began to pepper down, Brother Follett awoke and jumped up saying, ‘Where is that damned kid?’ As soon as I shook the limb, I ran and Sister Follett, who had been watching, opened the door and let me through the house and out onto the sidewalk.

When I was about ten or eleven, we left Hyde Park and went to Fairview, Franklin County, Idaho where father had taken up a quarter section of land for homesteading. The first I remember in Fairview, Father had gone up to Maple Creek Canyon and cut enough wood for the winter, but before he got it all hauled down he became sick with a bad hernia and a lame back. George had gone back to Hyde Park to go to school so I was the man to provide fuel. I was two small to reach to throw the harness on a horse, so I stood on a box. I harnessed the two most gentle horses, then I proceeded to go down to Bear River, a distance of about two miles where I cut willows and hawthorne and made a drag of them for the horses to pull back home. The fist day mother came about half way to meet me, but she soon found that I was man enough to do it alone. For two years I provided the fuel in that way.

I remember when we raised sugar cane and made molasses. A man by the name of Wilham had a mill for extracting the juice and boil it down into molasses. I worked for him for two seasons before he went to Logan, Utah.

Father and Grandfather had about 400 head of sheep and it was my job to herd them out in the spring. I spent the summer up on the Gibson place on Maple Creek where grandfather Perkes was homesteading a piece of land for cousin William Gibson. While I was there I got my first experience in canyon work.

As I grew older I had a great deal of canyon work and worked on headers and threshing machines. My job on the thresher was to run the horse power. Five teams were fastened to polls called sweeps, which pointed out from the center where I sat. The teams walked around in a circle. The movement of the horses caused a large rod, called the tumbling rod, to turn. The rod in turn caused the wheels in the separator move causing the threshing process which separated the kernels of grain from the straw. The straw was put into a pile where it was stacked and the grain came out through a spout where men caught it in half bushel measure and put it into sacks.

One day while I was greasing, with the horse power in motion, my overall leg caught on the tumbling rod and I was soon pinned down with my overall leg twisted around the rod. As my overalls were new and they didn’t give at all, they had to cut me loose with a pocket knife. If Father hadn’t been there to stop the teams I probably would have been killed.

I did a great deal of canyon work. When I was sixteen I hauled lumber out of the Basin above Franklin, Idaho, down Maple Creek Canyon to the planing mill in Franklin and hauled hay and grain up for the horses at the camp.

I well remember when Bishop Moroni W. Pratt ordained a bunch of boys Deacons. Charles Gilbert was president of the quorum and I was the secretary. When I was real young the word came to our Sunday School that each class should have one teacher holding the Priesthood, so I was called to be a teacher with Colista Strickland in the primary class. Since then I have taught the intermediate class in Sunday School, been a ward teacher both in Fairview and in Dayton. I was president of the ward Genealogical Association for two years. Then I was called into the Genealogical Stake Board where I served for eighteen years as aid, second counselor, then first counselor. During that time my wife and I did a great deal of temple work.

Now, as how I came to meet Lillie Fordham. While hauling wood from the canyon, I had to pass by the store in Franklin. One day he stopped me and asked about the wood. He said that he had moved his family to Fairview and they needed wood. I sold him the load and he measured it. I intended to deliver it the next morning but George said he wanted to take it up as there was some pretty girls up there. He hitched on to the load but instead of going west he left our field. He turned south and took the wood to Hyde Park to Grandpa Griffeth. I was a mad boy but I got another load of wood and delivered it myself. I didn’t get to see Lillie that time but I met her mother and sister Allie.

The first time I remember seeing Lillie she and Allie came down to ride to Sunday School with us. She was a slender girl with large blue eyes and she moved real fast. I continued to haul wood until they had their winter supply. That winter’ I worked in the canyon and Lillie had a bad sick spell. The next summer we became acquainted by being in the same crowd a great deal.

When fall came the boys and the girls of the north end of town started to school at the Oneida Stake Academy at Preston. They rode horses. I didn’t start until after holidays. The girls rode side saddle. They would have a blanket over the horses back then fasten a wide band called a surcingle around the horse top hold the blanket in place and for the rider to hold onto when afraid of falling off. Lillie was not a very good rider, so her father used to cinch her foot right under the surcingle so as to hold her more securely.

One night the crowd got to acting smart and Lillie’s horse got excited and began to run. Lillie’s books began to fall and she became unbalanced. I saw the danger and rushed up and caught her horse by the bit. Just then Lillie fell off. I told her she shouldn’t have her foot tied in the surcingle, but she did not like my advice. She was angry because she thought I was to blame for her falling off. I guess that was when I started falling in love with her, as she looked so darned sweet when she was mad. Although she was angry with me when she turned of f to go home, I turned off too. I rode right up her father and said, “Do you think anything of that girl?’ Then I told him what had happened and how easily she could have been dragged to death. She was so angry that she wouldn’t speak to me for a long time. She went to school on the upper road instead of with the other students.

Well after a while she started going out with some of the other boys and I took Allie out a few times. One night Delos Hyde said, "Lets take the Fordham girls to the dance," I was willing. When we got there he backed out, but I rode up to her father and asked if he was willing for me to take his daughter to the dance. I went and asked Lillie right before her mother. Lillie blushed and hesitated, but finally said that she would be glad to go with me. From then on she was the only girl for me.

We were married on November 17, 1897 in the Logan Temple. My young bride lived with mother that winter, while I went on a home mission with James Garner. Our special work was to introduce the Improvement Era and try to get it into every home. When the mission was finished I fed sheep for Edward Bodily, and Dan Gilbert the rest of the winter.

When spring came we moved to Dayton, Idaho. We lived there until after our daughter, Lillian, was born April 13, 1900. Our other three children, Thurman, Arden and Douglas, were all born in Fairview.

When I was a boy I enjoyed all kinds of sports especially wrestling, at which I was pretty good. I enjoyed dancing, too. When my father was playing for dances, I played the bass fiddle a little.

I have enjoyed temple work, and now in my older years I take great pride in weeding and caring for a garden.

A few years ago I had a very serious sick spell. All my people thought that I had cancer and could not live long. Doctor Robert E. Skabelund insisted on an operation and it proved to be an ulcer at the opening of my stomach. He made a new opening and put a patch over the ulcer to smother it.

I’m now 84 years old. (1959) I can eat, sleep, walk and also weed the garden and milk cows. I expect to live many more years. I’m strong enough it seems, but to tell the truth, I’d just as soon go.

This added by Albertie G. Griffiths——1970.

Edward had a firm testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He was a devoted husband and father. He lived as he believed, a true Latter-Day Saint. He passed away November 30, 1962, at Dayton, Idaho in the home of his son, Thurman. He was buried in the Fairview Cemetery, Idaho.