As personally told to their son, Jack B. Taylor
by William and Florence Maud Winch Taylor
My father, Jedediah Taylor and my mother, Catherine Clarissa Woolsey, settled in Loa, Wayne County, Utah about the year 1883. I believe that they met at New Harmony, Utah. Father worked as a freighter hauling freight from Marysville, Utah to Loa, Utah. Marysville was the end of the railroad from Salt Lake City. He was known as one of the best freighters in the country.
He was known for the loud crack of his bullwhip, which he used with deadly accuracy. It was said that he could be heard several miles out of town, cracking his whip that sounded like a shotgun. He learned the freighting business from his father, Bishop Allen Taylor.
William Robert Taylor
I was the seventh child, born at Loa, Utah on September 3, 1891. I was born in the family cabin near the northwest corner of town, on a one-acre lot.1 We had two log cabins, one with a lean-to kitchen and one large room. The other cabin had just one large room. The kitchen had a cook stove and a fireplace. Our beds were handmade with wooden boards to lie on. A large straw-filled tick was the mattress. We made our beds on the tick. The older boys slept in one cabin and father, mother and the girls and small children slept in the other. Many is the time I can remember waking up on the bare floor, feeling nearly frozen. I’d cry because I couldn’t find the bed or covers, until my brothers would find me in the dark (the dark scared me worse than the cold) and would cover me up. All of our furniture was handmade. We had glass windows but we had homemade doors.
In 1890, when my parents had five children, the oldest being eight years of age and the youngest only one year, my mother sent the oldest girl, Julia, to the Hyrum Bryan house to borrow some sugar. Because the family had diphtheria, mother told Julia not to go into the house but to leave the sugar bowl by the front gate and call to the family. Instead, she went in and got the disease, which she carried home. As a result, Julia Lovisa, Sarah Melissa, Mary Louisa and Thomas Riley, the baby, all died within twelve days. Mother also caught the disease as well as six-year-old Allen Jedediah. They both lived because a doctor arrived in town in time. The 5-year old girl, Mary Louisa told my father and mother that she and the baby, Thomas Riley, would die but that Sarah Melissa would get well. She promised father she would look after the other children. Mary Louisa died early one morning and at nine o’clock that morning Thomas Riley appeared to be well and was playing on the floor. He took sick and died by noon. They buried Thomas in Mary Louisa’s arms. Within a day or so, Sarah Melissa had a convulsion and appeared to be dead. The practice was to bury the dead immediately to contain the disease. The neighbors came in and said she was gone, although her body was still warm. Father insisted she was not dead but, although he wanted to wait awhile, she was buried anyway. My father never got over it and all his life he felt that his child had been tragically buried alive. He strongly believed what Mary Louisa had said was true, that Sarah Melissa would have lived. Julia Lovisa died within the twelve day period but Allen Jedediah was saved by the doctor.
My brother, Edgar, was born after the other children had died. Mother was in bed sick when Edgar was born and, because mother had diphtheria, Edgar was born with the disease but survived. My father never got diphtheria. My home chores began at an early age, carrying wood, building and keeping the home fires burning, milking cows and breaking yearling colts. Our family was poor. Many snowy mornings we got up, wrapped our feet with gunny sack material to keep the snow from coming through the holes in our shoes and freezing our feet and then went to milk the neighbor’s milk cows. We also herded cattle for people around town during the summers. We would take the cows out before sunup and return them by sundown. We walked and followed the cows all day, up to four or five miles from town. The owners paid a few cents per day per cow or maybe sixty cents a month. Dad collected all the money. We wore clothing made out of dad’s old trousers or clothes that people gave to us.
Dad lost his freight outfit a few years before we left Loa. He tried to find work but the best he could get as a laborer was $15 to $20 per month and board. Dad was a fine vegetable grower, harvesting his own seed and storing vegetables to help us get through the winters. He would get wheat, have it ground into flour and store it in seamly sacks for the winter. The millers would put the bran “shorts” and “middlins” in separate sacks . That roughage was used as cattle feed. Father would take us to Fish Lake to get big trout to salt down in barrels for the winter. Two streams called Twin Creeks came into Fish Lake. At spawning time the fish were so thick in the streams you could walk in the streams and, using clubs, kill 75 to 100 pounds of fish in a few minutes. It was said that you couldn’t drive a wagon across the stream without killing fish.
One day, when I was six years old, Jed, Edgar and I went out to get wood out in the pine forest. We kids went along with Jed to get pine gum to chew. We were almost there when I fell off the wagon and the wheel ran over and broke my left arm. Jed and Edgar didn’t know I had fallen. John and Dan Ramage, our neighbors, were coming behind in their wagon and didn’t see me in the road. However, their old horse on the wheel side saw me, pushed the other horse over and the wheels missed me. They saw me when the horse shied. They decided to get the wood before they took me home. They splinted my broken arm and then wrapped me in their coats and built a fire. It was cold and snowy and, because Edgar let the fire go out, they came back and found us nearly frozen. Edgar had crawled under the coats with me to try to keep warm. By the time we got home I had a bad fever and was bedridden for several weeks. They gave me quinine and I pulled through.
I had little opportunity to go to school. Mother was sickly most of the time with headaches. I volunteered to help at home, baking bread and working around the cabin. I never went to school steadily because I hired out as a worker as soon as I was old enough. Later, in Idaho, I was in and out of the fourth and fifth grades at Blackfoot and Moreland so many times that I became discouraged and quit, which ended my formal education.
In early May, 1902, when I was ten, my parents sold their Loa home and land to Francis G. Taylor for $140 1. Dad sold his brand, the large band of horses still on the range, the teams, wagons and their harnesses to his cousin, Lewellyn Taylor, for about $250. Then we loaded all our belongings into two covered wagons, one pulled by two horses and the other by four horses. We set out for Blackfoot, Idaho with eight children, (Jed, Edgar, William, Joseph, Isaac, Margaret, George Albert and Lilly), a band of my father’s horses and what belongings, food and tools we could carry.
We went only four miles the first day and camped on Road Creek at the farm of Uncle William Taylor, father’s oldest brother. We stopped at the homes of a lot of relatives along the way. We went up the valley through Provo, stopping at Carterville, across the river from Provo. There we visited Gip and Nancy Carter, mother’s sister. We drove through Salt Lake City with our horses and wagons with the streetcars going by. (Here I will insert a joke my dad would tell about the deep mud in the streets of Salt Lake City when they went through. As they drove their horses and wagons through the muddy streets, Dad saw a nice Stetson hat lying in the mud. He reached down to retrieve it and was surprised to see a man under it, up to his neck in the mud. He asked him “Can I help you up out of there, to which the man replied “No need to young man, I have a wagon loaded with hay under me.”) We went up through Kaysville, stopping to visit my father’s Aunt (Levi Taylor’s wife). We then went on to Hooper and stopped at the home of my father’s nephew. From there we went over past Ogden, where we stopped at Uncle Pleasant Green Taylor’s at Harrisville. Dad stopped the wagons and Uncle Green came out. Father asked if we could stop and camp. Uncle Green apologized and said “No, I’ve lost two barns to careless travelers who smoked.” Father said “Well, I’m going to camp anyway!” Uncle Green said “Looka here, young man, who do you think you are?” Dad answered “I’m your nephew, Jedediah Taylor!” Uncle Green, a man almost seven feet tall that people called “the giant with long white whiskers”, picked my two-hundred pound father up by his arms and shook him until his legs flopped. Then he put him down and said “Looka here, young man. If you ever fool me like that again I’ll thrash you!” Uncle Green Taylor was a wonderful old man.
From Pleasant Green Taylor’s place we went through Brigham City and on to Downey, Idaho. We stopped at Johnny Criddle’s ranch. Then we went on to Pocatello, further to Ross Fork and then to Blackfoot. At Blackfoot we stopped at the Blackfoot River on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation2 for a week while father rode on to Moreland to look for land. While we were there mother saved and Indian child from pneumonia. When father returned, we went on to Moreland where we rented a small house. The trip from Loa took about two months.
We moved several times within the Town of Moreland. I went up to Shelley, Idaho to work in the sugarbeets. Then I got a job with Fred Wordsworth 5 miles east of Shelley as a farm hand. He paid me about $20 a month but my father always came up once a month to collect my pay and would then go back to Moreland. I only had enough money to buy work clothes. Finally, Mr. Wordsworth took me to town and got me my first outfit of clothes. For $14 he got me shoes, suit, hat, stockings and when father came up to get my pay you never saw such a ruckus. Fred told my father to take me and go home and that he was the “cheapest man he had ever met.” Father apologized to him and I stayed. At 14 or 15 years of age I traveled around Southern Idaho on freight cars, begging and doing anything I could do to make money. When we couldn’t find work I would “grab me a handful of boxcars” and go to Pocatello, Shoshone, Twin Falls, Minidoka or some other place where I would work as a bellboy, dishwasher and general handyman. All of the money I made except what I needed to live on I sent home to help support the family. In about 1905 we moved to Riverside, Idaho and lived there for only about six months to a year, then moved to Blackfoot in 1908. We lived in the southeast corner of town near the old Downey residence. We moved within the Town of Blackfoot several times. We were in Blackfoot when, in 1908, my 11-year-old brother, George Albert Taylor, got a bad cold, developed the croup and died within two days.
While in Blackfoot, I worked at the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company factory all winter. My brothers Joseph and Edgar worked there too. We worked for 20 cents an hour and twelve hours a day in the beet end and stacking sugar in the warehouse. I was an assistant foreman of the washing room and later was foreman of the beet end, where the beets are ground up. The spring after George Albert died we moved to the Weeks Ranch, four miles east of Blackfoot. In late 1909, after the factory closed, I went to Pocatello and got a job as a news agent for Gray News Company. I posted a $25 bond and they sent me to Idaho Falls to sell newspapers, magazines and candy at a street-side newsstand. In February, 1910, I met B. F. McPherson while I was traveling by train from Rexburg to Idaho Falls. He owned a business selling dry-fiber brushes. He convinced me to quit my job and go to work selling brushes. I worked in Oakley for about two or three months and then in Salt Lake City until June, 1910. I tired of selling brushes so Mr. McPherson got me a job as a streetcar conductor in Salt Lake City, working on the “extra” list during the summer. I stayed on until August then I went on the trail with my brother Jed, traveling horseback to Nephi and Manti, Utah. Then we returned to Blackfoot where I worked with my brother, Edgar, topping sugar beets. I worked that winter in the UI sugar factory and lived at my parents’ home.
In the spring of 1911 I hired out as an irrigator for 2000 acres of land at Little Lost River, Idaho near Howe. I lived in a bunkhouse and worked until the fall hay was in. I worked first as an irrigator for a month and then as foreman from then on. I got $75 per month and we put up 5500 tons of hay.3 That fall and winter I sold pianos with a Mr. A.O. Belleville out of Blackfoot. We traveled around and sold the pianos at farms in eastern Idaho.
In the spring of 1912, a Mr. Jackson hired me to teach him to farm his land out east of Blackfoot. He wanted me to stay and work for him but I only worked until that summer. A friend of mine, Warren McDonald, had talked me into going to Boise with him. That was the year I met 15-year-old Edna Norton who, six years later, would become my first wife. Warren McDonald and I met her and her sister in the White City Park. I got a job in Boise at the Boise Gas Works helping build a 90-foot high steel gas tank. The Northwest Steel Company of Chicago, Illinois, was the contractor. I hired on as a helper. A week later the foreman put me on as a boilermaker riveter making $3.50 a day. At the end of the job, the superintendent, Mike Lynch, wanted me to go to Seattle with him. Instead, I contracted to paint the steel tank we had just finished for $150 labor. I did it in six days with the help of Warren McDonald and one other man.
I left Boise then and went to Twin Falls to work in the harvest. I rented an apartment and sent for my parents. Then I went to Pocatello and worked as a painter on railroad engines, tenders and coal cars. Warren McDonald worked with me. I moved my parents there, worked until spring and then got a job as a flagman on the rear of a passenger train from Pocatello, Idaho to Butte, Montana. We traveled one day each way. In June I was selected as best-dressed brakeman to ride as head brakeman on the Bamberger Special to Yellowstone Park. Later I hired on as a fruit wholesaler for the Hubbard and Morgan Fruit Company of Pocatello, selling fruit to dealers. That same year I shipped a carload of peaches to Rexburg, Idaho to sell to merchants. It was two days late getting there and all the ice had melted, causing steam, and all the vents were closed. Three hundred of the five hundred bushels of peaches spoiled. The two hundred I saved I hauled to Saint Anthony and sold them to Skelton’s store. I left the fruit business that fall and went to Salt Lake City, working odd jobs until the spring of 1914. I traveled to Preston, Idaho and worked in the hay fields all summer with my brother, Joe. I worked for the Keller Brothers sheep ranch in the hills east of Preston. After hay season I went back to Pocatello where I stayed with Jed and my sister, Margaret while I worked odd jobs. That year, my brother, Edgar, moved with my parents to Nampa, Idaho.
I stayed in Pocatello until winter and then rode horseback to Nampa, starting in early December and arriving in Nampa on Christmas Eve. During the summer and fall of 1915 I worked as a roof painter. In 1916 I took up homesteading on 160 acres 11 miles south of Nampa. I built a homesteader’s cabin and my folks came to live with me. I worked around the neighboring farms to earn money. I had 16 irrigated acres, but never raised any crops except for my garden. That was where we were living when my father died of pleurisy in 1917.
When my father died, I left my homestead and had to relinquish it to the government. A man paid me $1000 for the right to file on my homestead. I went back to Boise and ran into Edna Norton again and met her parents. After I was there a month, we decided to get married. She was now 21 years old and I was 26. Her folks refused to let us see one another but Edna still wanted to marry me. We got married in Boise in January of 1918, without saying anything to her parents. I went to work as a chauffeur driving a Cadillac automobile for Jim Clinton of the Crane Creek Sheep Company near Emmett, Idaho. Edna stayed with her folks. Jim took me with him to San Francisco, California to pick up a brand new Stanley Steamer car. I then drove it all the way back from San Francisco to Emmett, Idaho, with Jim riding beside me. On a lonely, straight stretch of dirt road near Marsing, Idaho, Jim told me to “Open her up and see what she can do!” That was the first time I ever drove a car ninety miles an hour, just so Jim could see what it would be like, and it was also my last. It nearly scared me to death. Then I went to Portland and Edna went with me. I first went to work for the Rasmussen Paint Factory. Then I worked in a bakery shop. Soon I left the bakery to work for Northwest Steel Company. I drove two-and-a-half ton trucks, hauling steel to all the shipyards in Portland. At one time I hauled a 60-foot long, ten-ton spreader bar beam. It had to be backed into a building to be unloaded by a crane. I backed it in on the rails of a railroad track going into the building in an “S” shape. I got an immediate offer there from the superintendent to operate a large crane. I refused the job and continued to work for Northwest Steel, staying until after the World War I Armistice in 1919. In the fall of 1919 I went to work for a Mr. Hal Dodge, who taught me how to take pictures of business establishments in several western states, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Montana, and California. Later, I went to Los Angeles and started my commercial photography business.4 I hired Bill Altmuller, a young barber, to work as a salesman and to delivery my photos. Later on, I hired Frank Parkinson, son of Bishop Parkinson, who I had known for years in Blackfoot, Idaho. Frank had learned photography while on his mission to Germany. The three of us worked very well as partners, splitting the earnings three ways.
1718 Frank kept the books but later quit to develop 1000 acres of land into a township and build a new town. He promised me a good deal if I would go with him and sell new homes and apartment buildings. He also promised me a new home, free, with the deal. The Cornell Realty Co. Inc. from Santa Ana, California, owned the land and financed the deal. I decided I wasn’t ready to settle down yet so I went back with Hal Dodge for a time before returning to Portland. Edna and I didn’t have any children. In the fall of 1919 Edna went back to Boise with her mother and had a kidney operation. Her mother insisted on her getting a divorce, so she did. I saw her occasionally in the next few years. Edna married a fellow named Mitchell and later left him. Edna died in 1926, soon after her mother died. I went back to Portland in 1921 and opened a photo studio. The business failed so I bought another photo business in another part of the city. I did well for a few months then I closed the business and got a job carpentering in Riderwood, Washington in the fall of 1922. That winter, Joe, Loren and I lived at my mother’s place and couldn’t find work. I eventually took a job operating a steam roller and rolled asphalt. The machine broke down and I went back to Portland to wait until it was repaired, but I lost that job. I went with Loren selling magazines and we ended up in Hood River, Oregon. There the Washington Power and Light Company hired me to sell Premier Vacuum Cleaners, made by General Electric, in Hood River. I sold them wholesale to local dealers. I went back with Loren selling magazines until we got to Spokane, Washington where I got started selling Eureka Vacuum Cleaners retail. Loren left me and I stayed in Spokane.
At 19, I met 20-year-old Florence Maud Winch at a 24th of July, 1924 Church picnic in Spokane, Washington. She held my feet in a “wheelbarrow race”. Our first date was in the following December and we fell in love. We were married on the 21st of February, 1925 at the Justice of the Peace office in Cheney, Washington. My brother Loren attended our wedding. I carried my new wife over the threshold at our rented house in Chewelah, Washington. We lived in hotels and apartment houses and were living in Chewelah when Loren came to live with us for awhile. I was a traveling salesman for R.B. Carter of the Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company.
Shortly after Loren returned to Portland he wired me that my mother was deathly ill so I sold my belongings and let our car go back to R. 20B. Carter. Then we took a train to Portland. When we arrived we found that it was not true, that my mother was not really sick. The family just wanted to meet Florence. I was very upset that they had pulled that mean trick on us, causing me to lose my job. However, I was able to get a job with Poole Electric.
When their business tapered off, I called R.B. to ask if I could go back to work for him. He wired us $35 for gas and sent us to Bend, Oregon. That was where Florence and I started our vacuum cleaner sales business, selling Eureka Vacuum Cleaners through the Carlson and Lyons Company. We did well there and used the car we had bought while working for Poole Electric. We stayed in Bend for three months before transferring up to The Dalles, Oregon. We did well and never really wanted for anything we needed. I soon became 21 district manager for R.B. Carter and moved to La Grande, Oregon where our first son, William Robert Taylor, Jr., was born August 26, 1926. Grandma Ada Higbee Winch came from Salt Lake City to help Florence and, when Billy Jr. was 11 days old, we moved to Boise, Idaho.
The drive took two days on dusty, rutted roads. We first stayed in the Bristol Hotel and then got an apartment in Doctor Donaldson’s home. It was a terrible place to live so we moved to an apartment in George Dawson’s place. I had my office in the Noble Building and sold appliances there. Florence would walk Billy Jr. down to the office in his baby carriage and do the bookwork. I had quite a few salesmen working for me. We officed there in the Noble Building while we lived on East State Street and then, in June, 1927, we moved to a home we bought at 1935 North 18th Street in Boise.
Floyd Roger Taylor was born there September 24, 1927. We lived there almost twelve years. I sold vacuum 22 cleaners all the time except during the stock market crash, when I had to look for other work. I took little Billy with me and went to Spokane, Washington to see if R. B. Carter had work I could do. I out that R. B. had died, “accidentally” cutting his throat with a straight razor “shaving” on a train trip from Spokane to Boise. He had never shaved himself with a straight razor until he asked me to teach him how to use one. It was discovered that R.B owed the Eureka Vacuum.
Cleaner Company over $100,000 dollars and his business had lots of bad accounts. The Company was about to take over his business when he had the “accident” on the train. After R.B’s personal estate was settled, the Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Co. asked me to come to Spokane to settle his business accounts. I went to work with A. E. Carter out of Salt Lake City and then went to repairing vacuum cleaners and washing machines with Florence’s help. The depression didn’t hurt us too much but I had trouble being paid for my work. I went to work for the Sampson Music Company selling new and used vacuums and washing machines on the road for $100 a month but I had to pay my own expenses.
Mary Louise was born on December 13, 1928. In 1929 I won a $400 trip to Detroit, Michigan. Barbara Jean was born on January 12, 1930. Florence had a bad siege of sickness following that. Patricia Ann was born March 14, 1933. In 1934, when Billy Jr. was eight years old, he contracted typhoid fever. He had a cold but the children insisted on taking a hike up into the sand hills north of Boise. He drank some ditch water and also fell off a steep bank while playing “Ching, Ching, Chinaman” with the children.
The next morning he complained to his mother, who was washing clothes, that he didn’t feel well. By afternoon he had a raging fever. He was sick for 13 weeks and almost died, but narrowly survived the typhoid infection. Morris Winch Taylor was born on June 16, 1936. We lived on North 18th Street until just after Jack Bassett was born on April 2, 1938 and then I decided I wanted to get my children out of town so they could live on an acreage. We moved to a small farm at Cloverdale and continued to rent the North 18th Street house. Renting didn’t pan out well so we sold the house and that was where our hard life started. We traded a herd of goats for a three-teated cow. We were at Cloverdale for 2 years and, while there, bought our new, blue, 1939 Ford sedan. We made a trip in it to the San Francisco World’s Fair in August, 1939. The whole family went, including baby Jack. We pulled a small camping trailer behind, with the two older boys inside it. On that trip, near Bend, Oregon, little Morris pulled on the door handle, which opened and threw him out of the fast-moving car to the gravel shoulder. Miraculously he had only cuts and scrapes and the family continued on to the Fair.
After we left the farm we lived in Meridian, Idaho. While there, in 1941, I went to work for Morrison Knudsen Company as a painter. They shipped me out to Midway Island to paint houses and buildings for the U. S. Navy. I left on the ninth of June and arrived in Midway on the 4th of July. There were some warehouses built out over the water. Sometimes I would drop my paint brush and someone would take off his coveralls and dive for it. I was there working when, in December, the Japanese attacked the Island with warplanes, strafing and bombing everything. I ran to the ironwood groves at the end of the island and stayed there until after the attack. I made a souvenir seaplane out of the bullets and shell casings I found after the attack. I also made a commemorative shell box out of the seashells I gathered at the island. Soon thereafter I was put on a ship and returned to Hawaii and then on to San Francisco. The Japanese tried to torpedo our ship but the torpedoes missed. During that time Florence moved the family from Meridian to a small, rented farm at Ustick, Idaho and the family was there when I got back from Midway. Unfortunately, young Morris and Jack built a fire near the barn and the landlord forced our family to move. We moved the family to another small, rented farm near Linder, Idaho, west of the town of Eagle. It was a nice home for the family and we were happy living there even though the war was on and times were hard. Most goods were rationed and hard to get. Bill and Floyd would hunt ducks and pheasants and get fish and frog legs from the Boise River bottoms. It was here that Floyd, while cleaning his shotgun, accidentally discharged it. The blast narrowly missed Mary Louise, who was seated at the sewing machine. The pellets entered a drawer and exiting out the back side, leaving a large hole. We were living there when Thomas Joseph was born on February 21, 1943. The younger children attended the two-room Linder School about a mile west of our home.
In 1944 the landlord asked us to move because of our large family. We decided it was time to settle down in one place so we looked for a home in Boise and found 4 acres with a little white house on it at 15th and Columbus Street (later 2121 Targee Street) on the Boise South Bench. It was all we could afford. The older children contributed all their savings to help us put a down payment on it. For the first time in many years we had a permanent home. With the roofing business we had it paid for in two years.
When I got home from Midway I had started into the roofing business. I developed a coal tar paint way back in 1914 when I was in partnership with Lowell Albright. At that time, we painted with coal tar and fuller’s earth. While at Ustick I developed a new formula for the paint using coal tar with powdered asbestos and graphite. I spent several weeks perfecting it and making sales samples. Not long after moving to Targee Street I got a chance to buy all the waste coal tar from the Boise Gas Plant for a very low price. The older boys and I hauled it with a trailer and 50-gallon oil drums to a large pit we dug at the south side of our property. The pit was roofed over with a wooden cover and waterproofed with roofing material to keep out dirt. We kept the tar covered with water to keep it from drying out. For many years we took our living out of that pit, the younger boys making the paint, me canvassing for jobs and the older boys repairing and painting homes, commercial buildings and churches. We repaired and painted the roofs of the Boise LDS Stake Tabernacle, many residences, flat roofs and a large warehouse in American Falls, Idaho. We would heat the tar to a boil in a 15-gallon oil drum before applying it with long-handled brushes from buckets. We would sometimes use a little coal oil but had to be careful because it could cause the paint to peel. In 1948 I purchased a one-ton Ford truck to use in the business, which provided for our family’s needs. The paint was top quality and lasted a long time. Weathering caused the paint to turn from shiny black to a dark brown over time but that was the only complaint we ever had. The shingles stopped the weathering of old, wood-shingled roofs and they would last for twenty years or more after we painted and repaired them. My brother, Joseph Taylor, worked for me from time to time, helping the boys heat the paint.
(This was the end of the personal narrative by William R. Taylor. I have completed his life story from the letters his wife, Florence, wrote to her friend in England, Nellie Bassett and from personal experience with my father. JBT)
The roofing business provided a good living to the family, helped Morris and Jack to go to college and provided some income for some of the older children as they began married life. Some years we earned as much as $6000, a tidy sum in the 1950’s. Mother was a good manager and put some money away for hard times. The roofing business was closed down when Morris and Jack left for college in 1956 and 1958. Dad was 65 years old then and had a bad knee that caused him to start walking with a cane. Mother began working part time in a dry cleaning shop. She and Dad also started a little business raising and selling registered Pekingese dogs. Over several years they were foster parents for seven children in the social services system. The children ranged in age from infants to age 6 and they enjoyed caring for them. One child, Rosie, lived with them for seven years. They lived on the produce from mother’s garden, their fruit trees and the livestock they kept. William Robert Taylor, Jr. married Charlotte Ilene Adams on June 6, 1948. Mary Louise Taylor married William Dean Steigers on June 19, 1948. Barbara Jean Taylor married J. Delbert Layman on October 22, 1948. Floyd Roger Taylor married Norma Carol Godman on March 26, 1949. Patricia Ann Taylor married Douglas Elgin Braack on June 5, 1954. Morris Winch Taylor married Patricia Kay Johnston on April 6, 1957. Jack Bassett Taylor married Anita Sudweeks on August 7, 1958. Thomas Joseph Taylor married Virginia Joanne Pefley on March 23, 1962 and the baby, Catherine Susan Taylor, married Richard Stewart Cox on June 9, 1967. During all that time of changes, with children marrying and grandchildren coming along, Bill and Florence lived in the same home on Targee Street, raising and selling their dogs, keeping a garden and a milk cow and living a quiet life. Mother had hoped to travel after her husband passed away, he being 13 years older. She had made only one return visit to her beloved England in her lifetime. But it was not to be. In 1977, at the age of 72, mother had a mild heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While there, she had a second, massive heart attack and died on April 19, 1977. She was buried at Cloverdale Cemetery in Boise on April 23, 1977. Her death was a shock to everyone in the family. Dad was very lonely after Florence passed away. He continued to live at his home on Targee Street and was generally watched over by his daughter, Susan, who lived an hour away in Mountain Home, Idaho. He didn’t know how to care for himself. He sold many of his possessions and antiques to stay busy. He was ordained a high priest in his later years by his son, Jack. In late 1977 he sold the family home and went to live with his son, Jack, in Pocatello, Idaho. A comfortable part of Jack’s home was remodeled for him but dad couldn’t get used to living with his children and grandchildren. He was lonely and even made a half-hearted attempt to find an LDS woman to marry for companionship. Restless, he decided to live with his daughter, Patricia Braack, in Aberdeen, Washington in 1978. He went on to live with his daughter, Mary Steigers, at Lewiston, Idaho, in 1979. Then he lived with his son, Thomas, for about a year in 1980 and 1981 and then moved to Carson City, Nevada to live near his oldest son, William Jr. His disabilities due to age caused him to have to move to a nursing home in Carson City in 1982. While there he was sent to the local hospital because he wasn’t taking his medicines. In the hospital, due to an overdose of insulin, he fell into a coma and, after lingering for but a few weeks, passed away in the hospital on May 23, 1982 at the age of 91. He was buried in Cloverdale Cemetery on May 29, 1982, next to the resting place of his wife, Florence.
Dad lived a long, hard and interesting life. He knew how to work hard and taught his children to do the same. Our mother was the driving force for the successes in his life. She taught him how to read and write and to use basic mathematics so he could be a better businessman. She was the manager of the family and its finances and the central figure in keeping the children a close-knit group. The children all grew up as friends and those friendships have continued throughout their lives. Dad and Mother’s nine children and generations of grandchildren are their legacy, tributes to the lives of two amazing and beloved parents.
- From Wayne County, Utah land records P 298 entry No. 862 Warranty Deed: “Jedediah Taylor and Catherine C. Taylor his wife, grantors of Loa, in the County of Wayne, State of Utah, freely convey and warrant to Francis G. Taylor, Grantee of Loa for the sum of One Hundred Forty $140.00 Dollars the following described tract of land in Loa, Wayne County, State of Utah: All of Lot One (1) in Block Nineteen (19) as platted in Plot A, Loa Town Site Survey containing (1.55) One and fifty-five one hundredths acres with all improvements thereon. Witness the hands of said Grantors this 16th day of April AD 1902. Signed in the presence of W. J. Grundy and George Sorenson by Jedediah Taylor and Catherine C. Taylor X her mark. State of Utah, County of Wayne) SS On this 16th day of April, 1902 personally appeared before me Jedediah Taylor and Catherine C. Taylor his wife the signers of the above sustainment who duly acknowledged to me that they executed the same x. W. J. Grundy, County Clerk Recorded May 31st 1902
- National Archives and Records Administration, Still Picture Branch: 75-SEI-26. Pat Tyhee with a woman, possibly his first wife, Mary (b. 1864); Wrensted studio, taken about 1895.
- Stacking Hay at Blackfoot, Idaho State Hospital Farm – South.
- The business photos shown were taken by William R Taylor and are part of the photos in the possession of Jack B Taylor. The Newport News article shows a front-page photo taken by William R Taylor and the newspaper is in the possession of Jack B Taylor.
Other Stories from the Life of William Robert Taylor
The following are stories that William Robert Taylor either wrote or told about his family and experiences. He had many, many stories and I (Jack B. Taylor) have tried to remember them. Although I probably don’t have all the facts straight, the basis of each story is close to how dad wrote or told it.
The First Marriage of My Mother, Catherine Clarissa Woolsey “My father, Jedediah Taylor, was married to my mother, Catherine Clarissa Woolsey, in New Harmony, Utah by my grandfather, Bishop Allen Taylor. Then they moved to Loa, Utah before any of the children were born. I believe that they met in New Harmony. Mother told me that she had a half-sister that married Joseph Lee, from Arizona, who I believe was a brother or relative of John Doyle Lee. John D. Lee was, at one time, a bishopric counselor to my grandfather, Allen Taylor. Joseph Lee and his wife convinced my mother, Catherine, who was a single woman, to go with them to Arizona. He took her as his second wife but mother told us that she never lived with him. She said she was only a slave to the first wife and she never liked either one of them. The first chance she got she left them and went back to New Harmony, where she met and married my father. We children were always told that she was not married to Lee. My brother, Edgar, who lived at Ogden, Utah, hired a woman who worked in the temple to look up and get the temple divorce information.”
Jedediah Taylor’s Freighting Business “My father learned the freighting business from his father, Allen Taylor. Grandfather hauled freight from as far away as Salt Lake City, traveling 25 to 40 miles a day. Dad would haul freight with his father to earn money to buy his land in Loa. When he moved to Loa, I don’t think he freighted much, only once in a while to Salina. However, as a young man he and his father would make regular trips to the rail head at Marysville, Utah, where they would load the freight from a box car onto two wagons and haul it to New Harmony and other towns, to mining camps and possibly to St. George. My father never knew Allen Taylor to be in bed when the sun had risen except for one time. They were hauling freight out of Marysville, Utah and arrived there at night. The train was to arrive at two A.M., as usual, and would toot its whistle to wake up the freighters. Their routine was to get up, feed and water the horses, eat some breakfast and then unload the train car onto the wagons. Grandfather liked to be on the road ten to 12 miles by the time the sun came up. That morning, however, the engine sounded its whistle and Jedediah heard it but his father did not awaken. Because he didn’t move, Jedediah kept quiet so he could sleep a little longer. When Jedediah woke again, the sun was quite high up and shining in his father’s face. He thought that Allen Taylor must be dead, but when he shook him, he awoke and said “Goodness gracious, Jeddie, our freight never came in last night!” Dad said “Oh yes it did! I heard it come in but I went back to sleep.”
The Bullwhip “Jedediah Taylor was an expert at handling a bullwhip. I can testify to that! I have felt his whip many times. He told me he could cut a chicken’s head off with every crack of the whip. He said that, one time, he was at a feed camp along the wagon road. The man who ran the camp had a lot of chickens. Dad would put his horses into stalls to feed on oats and hay. The man would turn his chickens out to feed whenever someone was feeding his horses. The chickens would flock to the mangers to get free grain, so many of them that the horses couldn’t get to the oats. Dad got upset, took his whip out and cut the heads off two or three chickens. The rest scattered. He ate the three chickens, figuring he had paid for them with the oats he’d bought and the chickens ate. Dad hauled freight from Richfield to Salina, Utah and twenty miles over the mountains to Loa.”
Allen Jedediah Taylor “My brother, Allen Jedediah Taylor, was born at Fremont, Utah, four miles from Loa, in a log cabin. Dad later moved that log cabin to our Loa property where it was used as a barn. Jeddie used to joke that he was “barn in a barn!” He was known as “Jeddie” until my father died. Then he used the name Jedediah.” (Entry from Jack Taylor: I knew Allen Jedediah well. He lived near us in Boise, Idaho in a ramshackle home near the New York Canal. Uncle Jeddie, as we called him, was a tall, thin man with dark hair. He had a daughter, Jewell, who was about my age. Uncle Jeddie and my dad got along well. He was friendly and kind to us children. I felt sorry for him that he seemed to be so poor.)
Warren McDonald (Story related by Jack Taylor) My father’s old friend, Warren McDonald, was a genuine, old-time, life-long railroad bum. He and dad “bummed” together for a time as young men, which dad described as “grabbing a handful of boxcars”. I remember him well. All his life he rode the rails from place to place and from time to time would come into Boise on the Union Pacific. Dad would get a phone call from downtown and, over mother’s protests, would go bring Warren to our home to have dinner with us. He never stayed long and never overnight. I loved to sit and listen to his magical stories of the hobo life. His eyes would twinkle as he wove tales of boxcars and engines and hiding from the railroad bulls as he travelled from town to town working at ranches and farms to earn a little pay. To our delight he would sometimes hand us children a silver dollar to share. He never had more than the ragged clothes he wore and a bundle of meager belongings slung over his back. His hair and beard were always unkempt like hobos were and he smelled like wine but he was a funny and delightful man of whom I have fond memories. Sadly, the day came when he didn’t come to see us. We supposed he had died having some great adventure, falling from a train or done in by too much wine. We missed him.
Little Train Robbers: Dad’s early life was about survival. He wasn’t proud of being from a poor family nor of some things he did because they were. His family lived in Blackfoot and Moreland, Idaho and was so poor they didn’t have enough money to buy wood or coal to heat their home during the winter. Dad, with his brothers Edgar and Jeddie, would ride their horses to an uphill railroad grade near Blackfoot and hide them in the trees near the railroad tracks. When a train would come by, two of them would jump board the slow-moving coal cars, on a curve where the brakemen and engineers couldn’t see them. They would quickly throw lumps of coal off the cars and onto the railroad grade. When the train would get near the top of the hill they would jump off before it was going too fast. The third brother would ride up to them, bringing their horses and some empty grain sacks. They would load the coal into gunny sacks and haul it home to use for heating fuel.
Sheep Skins and Ball Lightning: To earn a little money, the brothers would ride their horses out onto the Craters of the Moon lava fields in the early spring, just before the weather warmed up. They would look for dead sheep that had frozen to death in the winter and would “roll them out of their hides” (eeeuuh, smelly!) and take the hides into Blackfoot to sell for wool. On one occasion he and Jed had been gathering hides and were bedded down in an old sheepherder’s hut that had a rough fireplace and chimney. It was only big enough for two men to sleep in; had no windows and an open doorway. They had taken shelter there during a particularly violent thunderstorm. Lying in their bedrolls, one was on each side of the line from the fireplace to the open doorway. Suddenly a ball of lightning about the size of a basketball appeared in the fireplace, sparking, crackling and glowing “like a fiend from hell” and they cowered on each side as the ball slowly rolled and bounced across the floor between them and out through the open doorway. He said it made the hair stand up on their heads but never touched them.
A Golden Dream Dad loved to tell me of his recurring dream about finding a cache of gold along the Boise River. He would often dream that he was walking along the base of the basalt cliffs that frame the sides of the upper Boise River when he would notice a sparkle coming from a small opening just under the cliff. He would lie down on the broken, black rocks and peer into the hole where he could see leather bags, filled with gold dust and coins, hidden about an arm’s reach into the hole. He would reach in to drag them out but would always wake up before he could get hold of them. He told me he was sure the gold was still there, that the dream was showing him where to find a fortune and that, if he ever had time to search, he would recognize the spot because he had seen it so many times. Everyone, especially little boys, loves a hidden treasure story. Perhaps, someday, someone will find his cache, taken and hidden long ago in a robbery of the Idaho City to Boise stagecoach.
- From Wayne County, Utah land records P 298 entry No. 862 Warranty Deed: “Jedediah Taylor and Catherine C. Taylor his wife, grantors of Loa, in the County of Wayne, State of Utah, freely convey and warrant to Francis G. Taylor, Grantee of Loa for the sum of One Hundred Forty $140.00 Dollars the following described tract of land in Loa, Wayne County, State of Utah: All of Lot One (1) in Block Nineteen (19) as platted in Plot A, Loa Town Site Survey containing (1.55) One and fifty-five one hundredths acres with all improvements thereon. Witness the hands of said Grantors this 16th day of April AD 1902. Signed in the presence of W. J. Grundy and George Sorenson by Jedediah Taylor and Catherine C. Taylor X her mark. State of Utah, County of Wayne) SS On this 16th day of April, 1902 personally appeared before me Jedediah Taylor and Catherine C. Taylor his wife the signers of the above sustainment who duly acknowledged to me that they executed the same x. W. J. Grundy, County Clerk Recorded May 31st 1902
- National Archives and Records Administration, Still Picture Branch: 75-SEI-26. Pat Tyhee with a woman, possibly his first wife, Mary (b. 1864); Wrensted studio, taken about 1895.
- Stacking Hay at Blackfoot, Idaho State Hospital Farm – South.
- The business photos shown were taken by William R Taylor and are part of the photos in the possession of Jack B Taylor. The Newport News article shows a front-page photo taken by William R Taylor and the original newspaper is in the possession of Jack B Taylor
