I, Elmer Warren Taylor, was born September 29, 1887, in Harrisville, Weber. Utah. I was born at home in the fall of the year. My father was in Idaho where he was working on his land in Lewisville, getting the sagebrush off and leveling it. He bought 160 acres on the east edge of Lewisville.
I was the first child of three sons born to Warren Chancey Taylor and Sarah Hegsted. My parents’ other two sons were Horace Wilbert Taylor, born June 28, 1889, and George Alvin Taylor, born October 17, 1891. Both were born in Lewisville in a humble home on my parents’ land.
When I was one year old, my parents moved from Harrisville to Lewisville. My father farmed only the northeast part of the 160 acres as the rest was still covered with sagebrush. Several years passed before we got it all cleared. We lived in a two-room log house that Father built. He was a true, hard-working man.
In the fall of the year of 1892, my father and two other men, Will Gerard and Dave Gould, took a wagon and a team with horse’s names Tom and Night on a trip to the south fork of the Snake River. They were getting a load of logs to use for building and fence posts. They took supplies and were gone four or five days. When the logs were all loaded, they began their long journey home. On the way home, they had to go down a steep hill. The logs were tied in the middle of the wagon with a large rope. As the wagon moved along, Father could see that the load wasn’t going to hold, so he grabbed the rope and pulled on it, but it rubbed on the front of the hind wheel. The stake that the rope was tied to would not hold and it broke. The other two men were walking and hollered for Father to jump out of danger, but he stayed the load of logs down the hill. As they came to a turn in the road, with the speed of the wagon because the brake would not hold, the logs were thrown off with Father underneath them. The tongue of the wagon broke and ran into the ground. The horses ran on and were not hurt badly. Father was killed instantly with a broken neck. I was about five years old at this time. The loss of our father was felt deeply by my two brothers, Horace and George, and my mother.
In due time, Mother was married to Welby Holmes Walker, whose wife had passed away and left three daughters, Lyle, Veda, and Theo, and one son, Roy. This made a busy family of seven children to care for. To this union was born seven more children: Violet, Fay, and Verna were the daughters, and Oral, Mayor, DeCarl and Eugene were the sons. A frequent and humorous joke which has been told is, “Come quick, Mother, you kids and my kids are beating up our kids.” Of course, it wasn’t really true.
DeCarl was killed at a young age in a farm accident. Eugene, who was the youngest and born to Mother in her later years, was drowned in the Snake River by Menan at the age of eighteen. These were two very sad events in Mother’s life, as well as the tragedy of her young husband being killed years before.
In addition to the total of fourteen children in this home, they also had Mother’s brother for a few years. Jake Hegsted had been badly crippled by polio and was also deaf and dumb. It was always interesting to see him talk in sign language with his hands, especially when he said the blessing on the food for Sunday dinner. He loved to have the children come to visit and he would always try to say “fine girl” or “fine boy” when each would come and see him as he sat in his special rocking chair by the front window.
I went to school in a one-room brick school house which was located near the Alfred DaBell (Ball?) home. School was not a steady thing for me or most anyone then, as we worked in the fields in the fall until the frost froze the ground too hard. Then we would attend school. In the spring, as soon as conditions would permit we would leave school and go back to the farm work. Each family had 160 acres. The schoolhouse was heated with a coal heater. I remember one teacher, Paddy Miles. While he never did chasten me in a bad way, he made me smell of the strap once or twice. He had a boy and a girl, John and Agila Miles. We had regular blackboards and chalk and we had to get up and demonstrate to the class on what we were doing.
As a result of the sketchy school attendance, I was nineteen years of age and just out of the seventh grade when I decided to quit school and go to work. I secured a job at the sugar factory in Sugar City where I dug ditches and planted trees for 20 cents an hour. I stayed at the home of Aunt Annie Simonson while working there.
I had a bicycle, and when we wanted to go out with the girls, we would go over to Rexburg in the afternoon and stay until 11 or 12 o’clock and then go home. But the road between the towns was full of ruts and holes, and so we would ride on the railroad tracks on the right of way.
I was a fairly well-behaved boy, but I had my share of excitement, too. During the summer to keep cool, we slept out on the barn roof on a stack of straw. We slid off more than once-it was a seven or eight foot fall and you got hurt a bit. We would take wagons on Halloween and take them all to pieces. Then, with a rope, we would pull them up on the roof of the barn and put them back together again.
The boys used to have rock fights in the pasture and I got to be one of the better players. We also used to play baseball, ride horses, and shoot rabbits on the knolls southwest of Lewisville. There were some caves there in the lava rocks and we would explore them. I remember going to Sunday School. The one large meeting room would be divided into many smaller ones by pulling curtains that were hung on wire so that we could have classrooms. I was baptized by my stepfather, Welby H. Walker, when I was eight years of age. He also baptized my stepbrother, Roy Walker, in the dry bed which ran north of town. Dave Kinghorn was a member of the bishopric and was present when I was confirmed.
Birthdays were always special in our home and Mother would make a cake or do something nice for the one being honored. For Christmas, we would go out and chop a cedar tree and trim it with strings of popcorn, threaded cranberries, various ornaments, and wax candles. It was a very happy time.
One time at Christmastime, we went up to Salem, where Mother’s people were. We left just before Christmas and didn’t get back until Christmas. When we got back, Aunt Lawisa Walker had left notice for us to come down to her place and get our presents. I don’t recall just what they were.
I was ordained a deacon at the age of twelve and came up through the ranks of the priesthood though teacher, priest, elder, and currently hold the office of High Priest.
When I was a boy, I was kind of the leader of the boys. I could throw rocks farther than any of the rest of them. Consequently, they looked to me to do the leading out for them when we were out for the other fellows. If there was a division in our party, it would usually end up in a rock fight. We would throw rocks at one another and get spread out so we could watch where the rocks were coming. And it usually ended up at the end of the day in a pasture. My brothers were usually with me.
Mr. Walker bought a twenty-two rifle, single shotgun, and then he bought a shotgun when we were over at Market Lake (now Roberts) hauling hay. I was around nine years old then and did not ever use the guns then. I used to have to go out from camp every morning and hunt the horses. The guns were always kept in camp. When we got through hauling hay, Mr. Walker took the shotgun and went out by the big pond and shot at some ducks. He didn’t happen to kill any of them. I was too young to take part in that. From there on, when I got to use the gun, it was on the knolls to hunt rabbits.
Among the things that stand out in my childhood is a near tragedy that happened to my younger brother, George Alvin. The event happened one time when my mother and stepfather were away visiting for about three days with our people in Rexburg and Sugar City. A group of us boys got together and decided to go after a load of wood down on Old Beams Flat, which was straight west of Lewisville.
We got in the wagon and went out there with the axes and everything that we needed to load the wood. There was one place where the river was just a little bit high, where it hits the obisidian that comes out on the west side of the river which had ice on it as it was along in February. As we came along there, we noticed a lot of driftwood had piled up on the bank. By picking up a willow here and a log there and by traveling and pulling around with the sleigh, we secured a pretty nice load of wood. I had a shotgun, being about 14 then, and had killed some rabbits on the way down. I had a big coat on with big pockets and I put the shotgun shells in my pockets on both sides. While I was working, I took my coat off. George, who was about eight or nine years old, was walking around and he was cold, so I put my coat on him. He was so short that it almost touched the snow. I was not paying any particular attention and George began walking around on the ice and was soon out about a hundred yards. None of us were paying attention because we were all busy getting wood. All at once, I heard him call, and I looked up to see him sitting on the ice. I could see what had happened. He had slipped through the ice with his feet up to his knees in cold water and he was sitting on the ice as if it was a seat. The ice was very, very thin and was very near breaking and letting him on through. I hollered “Don’t you move! Don’t you move! Don’t try to get up! Stay right there ‘till I get there.” And so he stayed right there and never tried to move. I slipped up behind him and grabbed hold of the coat and pulled him out backwards with those heavy shotgun shells in the pockets. If the ice had broken, he would have been carried away by the cold water under the ice. We made a fire and changed his clothes and did what we could. .
As a young man, I was very much interested in the sport of boxing. In 18902, when I was five years old, the renowned prizefighter, James J. Corbett began his reign as world heavyweight champion. Corbett’s name rang in the ears of young men in those days in the same way as do the great boxers of today. Also, I remember the Englishman, Bob Fitzsimmons, who knocked Corbett out in Carson City, Nevada, on March 17, 1897, and took the title. I remember those names and dates well even though I did not aspire to the level of the sport that these men did, I liked the sport of boxing and once every week or two, and we would have a boxing party. Fifteen to twenty fellows would hitch up the horses and head out to some secluded spot in the Upper Snake River Valley. There we would don gloves and spend the day knocking one another’s head off and otherwise enjoying ourselves. They were friendly matches, or that is, they were friendly to start with. I could lick most anyone my size, at least with gloves. Of course, the girls wouldn’t come along for these boxing parties. There were other times for the girls, and then the boxing gloves would go back in the closet.
When I was twenty-one, I left the area for the first time and got a job taking orders for portraits. You used to go into a home and see these big portraits all around.
They were big photographs, about twenty-four inches square. We would take those old pictures and send them to Chicago and they would send back new ones. The job took me to Colorado and Utah, and it was while I was in Utah I met Eva Williamson of Wellsville, Utah. When I was twenty-three, we were married on May 29, 1907. The marriage was later solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple
We came back to Lewisville and I had done some painting previous to that, so I started to work along that line. I stuck to that business for the rest of my life. It was painting and cleaning houses with the best business coming in the spring. After a time, I had accumulated a building with two stories and a basement. Things were going well. It was easy to find jobs for quite a while. Then, in the twenties and thirties, it got pretty hard. History books record the statistics of the Great Depression. The paint store in Rigby was only one of the many businesses sucked under by those difficult times.
I was twenty-three or twenty-four when I got my first car and it was a used three-year-old machine that I bought from a friend. Now cars were shipped in, six to a boxcar. For the headlights on the car, we had to buy a powder that you paid so much a pound for. We put that in our lights and drove. They weren’t like electric lights. You couldn’t depend on them like you can now.
As I look back, some of my fondest memories are of hunting and fishing trips I went on. At first you were allowed to kill twenty ducks per day and the fishing was mostly unlimited, too. Then they started cutting the numbers down.
I moved to California, thinking there were more people there so there would be more houses to paint. And I was right. After a year, my family was able to join me. Then things got pretty bad and I brought my family back to Rigby where I stayed and took what came. I jobbed back and forth from Rigby to Rexburg and to Idaho Falls – wherever I could find work. At one time I was employed by the City of Rigby as Night Patrolman.
By now, we had four children and they were LaVelle (born February 21, 1910 in Rigby), Deneice (Flagler or Fager)) (born December 29, 1912 in Rigby), Maye (Miller) (born November 13, 1914 in Rigby) and Elmer Williamson, Jr (born January 2, 1926, died June 20, 1985).
One time I remember riding a stagecoach to Challis. We had to change horses about every twenty-five miles. The roads weren’t too bad, but we would consider them quite rough today
Another time I went to Challis to do a paint job. I loaded up my car with ladders and paint. After I had finished the job, I started home for Christmas. I got as far a Mackay and couldn’t go on because of the snow. I put my car in storage at the stagecoach barn for the winter and boarded the train and headed home. It was February when I was able to return and pick them up.
My first wife, Eva, died about 1948. I then married Bertha White and she died about 1971. I then married for the third time to Nellie Ball, who died in 1973.
After I left Rigby, I lived with a son in Las Vegas for several years before moving to the Golden Living Center in Rexburg in 1977.
The above information was compiled by Helen Taylor Anderson, daughter of George Alvin Taylor.
The following information was added by Ethel Ball Cook (daughter of Elmer’s third wife, Nellie Ball) in 1985 at Elmer’s funeral:
In the year of 1947 Elmer’s wife, Eva, died and later Elmer and Bertha White were married. They shared common interests since both were artistically talents, creating unusual and interesting articles and working in the garden. Elmer’s home on East Fremont Street was always nearly painted and the ground nicely kept. He planted the pine trees there which reflect his love of the out of doors.
Another great interest in his life was prospecting for gold and he maintained that desire all of his life. She tells that in 1972 she and her sister Edith, went with him to the Snake River up toward Swan Valley and panned for gold on the river bank. They had a delightful day and she gleaned a small bottle of sand with gold flecks in it as a keepsake.
After Bertha passed away, Elmer renewed friendship with Ethel’s mother, Nellie Ball Haymore. They had known each other as youngsters in Lewisville years before. They were married April 27, 1972 when they were both age 85 and they spent a happy year and a half together until Nellie died in December, 1973.
Elmer decided to sell his home to Clarence Wilde who moved his Rigby Plumbing business there.
Then Elmer went to the Golden Living Center in Rexburg and later to the Lincoln Retirement Center in Idaho Falls where he was among friends.
He passed away peacefully in his sleep at Valley Care in Idaho Falls, Idaho on August 10, 1985. He was survived by his daughter, Maye Taylor Miller of Arcadia California, his other three children, Lavelle Taylor, Deneice Taylor Fager and Elmer Jr. having preceded him in death.
He was also survived by a host of relatives and friends who loved him very much.
