Journal of Elijah Charles Clapp

HISTORY OF MARY CAROLINE NIELSEN CLAPP

Mary Caroline Nielsen Clapp was born Dec. 28,1865, at Fort Ephraim, Utah. Her father was a polygamist and her mother was the second wife. Her father was considered well off in those days because his women wore silk dresses and that was a real luxury then.

The earliest of her memories was when her sister next to her was blessed. Her mother arose and took the baby up to the front; the baby's dress was so long that it hung way down and dragged on the floor. Mary was afraid to be left at her seat alone so she got up and started with her mother, holding on to her skirts. Then a man close to her said, "I better pick you up or you will get stepped on." So he picked her up and took her out and it made her so angry that she never forgot it. She was only about two years and eight months at the time.

Her schooling was very limited. They had to pay three dollars per child and it was the custom for the older children to be educated first. As the first wife's family was large, she was quite old before she had a chance to go to school. The first school she attended was at Chester, Sanpete Co., Utah. Her teacher was an old lady by the name of Lucy Allred. The children called her Aunt Lucy. They sat on long benches and held their books on their laps. All she learned in this school was the A B Cs and how to spell a few small words. The next teacher was a young girl who was thinking more of marriage than of school and about all she did was sit around and do fancy work. She learned to read a little but didn't get any arithmetic at all, the arithmetic being for the oldest pupils. After about five months her schooling ended.

The most common games played were leap frog and ticky ticky touch. Every Christmas she got a large candy heart, sometimes a pair of shoes and once a doll and always a lot of cookies. But Christmas trees and toys were unknown to her until she was older.

When she was only ten years old, she started going out to work for other people, doing their washing and house work. The money earned she took home to her parents. Her wages were usually one dollar per week but for a while she got $1.50. When she wasn't off working, she helped her father in the fields. All the children had to help clear the brush from the land and bind the grain after the cradle. They didn't have binders then but later her father bought a binder. He was the first man in Sanpete to get one. It was slow hard work to clear the land then, for they had to take the grubbing hoe and grub the brush and burn it. They moved from Ephraim to Chester.

One time her father told her and her half sister Diantha, that if they would clear three acres, he would buy them each a nice dress. They worked very hard and finally the three acres were cleared but the father didn't have the money and the time went by and it seemed like they would be disappointed. Then came the day when Diantha went down the cellar where they were smoking meat. She didn't come back so Mary was sent to see what was the matter. As she came to the cellar steps, she saw Diantha was dead. Mary fainted and they carried her out to fresh air. It must nave been the carbon monoxide gas from the smoke cellar that caused the death. Diantha got her new dress -- she was buried in it.

Mary's grandmother still lived at Ephraim and she used to go and stay with her. One time when she was there she saw a little boy coming along the road. He was about the size of one of her little brothers and dressed almost the same. He reminded her so much of her brother that it made her so homesick that she cried. Her grandmother never let her go home without giving her new knitted stockings, a new dress, and sometimes new shoes. She often sent some for the other children too. They were her only grandchildren and for years she gave them almost all the clothes they had. At one time her grandmother spun the yarn, wove the cloth, and then made her a large shawl. This was the first shawl she ever had and for years she wore it for a coat. She never had a coat while she was little.

The very first dress she ever made was made from some cloth her grandmother had made. She had spun the yarn, dyed it, and woven it into a pattern that was dark red one way and maroon the other. Mary cut out the cloth and made the dress, a bask style, with stays (bones or steel strips) in the back. It was a perfect fit. This was when she was almost 16 years old.

She first remembers her husband to be (Elijah) as follows. When she was about fifteen years old, a crowd of young folks decided to go and have their pictures taken. He was in the crowd. They all went to a nearby town and these snapshots cost them $1.50 per dozen.

The first birthday party she ever had was when she was sixteen. There were so many there that the house wouldn't hold them and so one of the boys (afterwards her husband) suggested going to the hall. (The hall was the upstairs of a nearby house that they had just turned into a public dance hall.) When they danced quadrills the floor would teeter up and down. Elijah's brother Peter played the violin for them. This was the first dance Mary ever attended and the first time she ever went out with Elijah. (The next year, until they were married must have been a happy year. Elijah was religiously inclined. He believed that he and his twin Elisha were the only Clapps in the church. His father who had been one of the general authorities of the Church had died in California.)

One Fourth of July they went with some other young folks to Mt. Pleasant to a celebration. After going with Elijah for about a year, on their return from a dance one night he asked her to marry him. She was very undecide account of being so young and told him so. But he told her he would only give her until he came again to make up her mind. When he came again her mind was made up and just two weeks before she was seventeen they were married. They were married at the Endowment House in Salt Lake, Dec. 14, 1882. They, with two other couples had left Chester two days before in a wagon and during that two day trip they met only one or two buggies. They stayed in Salt Lake three days and then left for home. They stayed at her father's house one night then moved into a house out in her father's field and Elijah helped his father-in-law on the farm for a time. After they were married her grandmother gave her enough cloth for a shirt and she made it up for her husband.

They lived in Chester a few years and her first two children were born there. Then in 1884 a man by the name of S.C. Bertlesen talked Elijah into going to Colorado, much against the wishes of her father. He had always said Mary was his favorite child. In 1885 Mary went to Colorado with her two children, the youngest nine months old at the time. (It is doubtful if they would have moved had they known the hardships that were coming to them during their stay in Colorado.)

They first went to Richfield and later moved to Sanford. Here her sister-in-law, wife of Elisha, Elijah's twin, was confined and for some reason they could not get a doctor, so that was how Mary got her first experience as a mid-wife. Shortly after that they moved to Eastdale, living in a tent until they could get out logs for a house. It was one large room with a fireplace in the end and the roof was covered with dirt. Every time it rained they would get wet. But she didn't have to wait long on the fireplace because her husband went to New Mexico and earned enough to buy her a new stove.

They hadn't been in Eastdale long until the people found out that Mary had waited on a confinement case so they started to come for her. The nearest doctor being 25 miles away, she brought about 125 babies into the world. In 1891 she was set apart by Bp. Funk to this special work just as they would set any officer apart in the church. One time she went 25 miles in a buggy to wait on a woman where her husband was working.

During this time she had three babies, the last two, a boy and a girl died shortly after their birth. Then before her next one (twins) were born she intended to move to Sanford where she could get care, but they came six weeks too soon, so she had to send for a woman whom she thought could do it and she had to tell her what and how to do it. One of the twins died. (The other one, Dorothy, only weighed about 31bs.) In two years she had another girl, Molinda.

In 1891 she was also set apart as Second Counselor in the Relief Society and as long as she lived in Eastdale she held that position. When she moved to Sanford, she was put in as a Relief Society Teacher and has been a teacher in every community that she has lived in since. When she first came to Iona, she was religion class teacher for a while.

Two years later another girl was born (Nina, the ninth) at Sanford, 1896. At this time the father and Joseph, the oldest boy, were making brick at Alamosa. They came home every week to see how things were. She had an old deaf lady to wait on her. As soon as she was well again, they moved back to Eastdale and Elijah built a little room on one end of the log room to use as a shop. He was a brick maker and potter and while there he made flower pots, baskets, and other things and burned them in the kiln he made of adobes. The kiln was used afterwards as a cellar for milk and other things. Two more years went by. She was now expecting another baby and it was thirteen years since she had left home in Chester. In all that time she had not seen one of her family, so it was decided that this time she should go home for a visit. While she was there her sixth girl was born (Zelma).

A year after this Amanda, the next oldest girl, took sick with pneumonia and whooping cough. She was sick six months then died. One night while her mother was watching by her bedside, she said, "Mother, I wish you could hear what I can hear." And upon being asked what she could hear she answered, “A brass band is playing and the most beautiful voices are singing ‘Weary not’”. A few days later she died and they sang that song at her funeral. She was thirteen years old when she died.

After a while the shop was fixed up as a bedroom and a year later a boy was born, which made the parents rejoice because it was the first boy after six girls.

This was very dry country. They had to build large reservoirs to store water enough for their gardens. The rattlesnakes were so thick here that they came into the houses and cellars, still it was strange that no one seemed to be bitten by them. It was a long way to where they got supplies and when they went even for hay they had to ford the Rio Grand River. There was only one place where they could cross and if anything happened to carry them down past the fording place they were lost because the banks were straight up and down for miles down stream. There were many loads of hay and provisions that went down the stream in high water.

Along with the hardships and trials they endured they also had many happy times, sometimes going to dances and dancing all night and the many trips they took to pick wild fruit was a diversion from the daily routine.

Another son was born in Colorado and then the family came into Idaho. They took up a homestead on Lost River near Moore, Idaho, and started all over. Many of the houses there were built by Elijah and many of the babies were brought into the world by his wife. In spare time they improved their homestead.

They had to travel seven miles to church and it was seldom that they missed a service though their conveyance was a wagon, they were never late. The hard life, the exposure to severe weather, now began to show in the life of the husband and father. He developed diabetes and was sick for six years, during which time the mother had to be nurse, father, mother, and breadwinner.

The family had a chance to trade the homestead for a dry farm and a city lot in Iona and so Iona came to be the present home of most of the children. Here the father died and the mother took up the task of rearing the family. She never complained or seemed to be sorry of her lot. She had fought a good fight, she had brought 13 children into mortality and had 1ightened her burden by helping others to bear theirs better.

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