Elmer Taylor (he only used the name Elmer all his life) was born July 24, 1896 in New Harmony, Washington County, Utah. He was the fourth child born to his parents, Joseph Allen Taylor and Margaret Angeline Pace. The first child, Cecil, was born September 28, 1890. The next child, Maudie, born September 7, 1892, died at the age of one month. Laverna was born May 24, 1894, and Alex (William Alexander) was born July 17, 1898. The sixth child, Preston Pace, born October 17, 1900, lived only two weeks.
When Elmer was not yet five years old, his mother passed away leaving the four children, two girls and two boys. His father had to leave town to seek employment so their grandparents, Harvey A. Pace and Susan E. Pace took the children to their home and kept them. They knew no other home until they were married and had homes of their own. These grandparents were good sturdy pioneers with a deep love for the gospel. Grandfather Pace walked across the plains in 1848, and drove a few head of sheep to Utah, when he was a small boy. He was a very intelligent man and held many important and prominent positions in the church. He was a good, kind man but strict with the children. He had a nice home and a good farm where he raised sheep and cattle. The children always had good clothes, good food, and a nice comfortable home to live in. Grandmother Pace was a wonderful woman, she was president of the Primary for over twenty years, so she always took the children along with her to Primary. They also attended church on Sundays. These good people were very religious and tried to live it to the letter.
Elmer and Alex were very ambitious little boys and good hard workers. Grandfather taught them how to run the farm and look after the live stock. They had to do most of the work as he was getting old. He was sixty six years old when their mother died.
Elmer was a very smart boy and loved his school work. His sister, Laverna said, “I can see him now, a little boy with a big armful of books, almost more than he could carry. Elmer and I both studied too much. When he took the 8th grade examination Charles Petty told me that Elmer passed the highest in the county. He finished four years of High School work in three years and had the highest average in his class. He was on the debating team for the school and had to go to other High Schools around the state to debate with their teams. He was usually on the winning team. He was chosen from his class to give the Valedictory Address at their graduation. He had practically all “A” grades through High School”. He was elected vice-president of the school in his senior year.
He attended the Branch Normal School in Cedar City, Utah, his first year of High school 1914-15. The next year he went to St. George to the Dixie Academy 1915-16. It was my second year High School also. We met soon after our arrival in St. George and it was “love at first sight” for both of us. We went steady from then until we were married in 1918.
The next fall after he graduated in St. George he went to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah. He planned to go into medicine and took this one year of pre-med. This was during World War 1, and that summer things were getting pretty hot and all the boys were being called into the service. He was called in for his physical and because of a foot injury he was placed in Limited Service. They advised him to go to work for the War Department. He took the Civil Service test, passed it and was sent to Washington, D.C., to work in the War Offices there.
We had talked of marriage but had decided to wait until he finished his education. When he had to give up his schooling and go into the service, we decided to get married and both go to Washington D.C. to work. We didn’t have much time, so in a few days we were on our way to St. George to be married. We were married on the 29th of July 1918, and in only a few more days we took the train at Lund, Utah, for Salt Lake City and then on to Washington, D.C. This was the thrill of a life-time for me as I had never even been to Salt Lake City before.
After three days and nights on the train we arrived in Washington, D.C., very tired and glad our journey was at an end. We located a nice boarding house and lived there for several weeks. There were a number of other young people living there who were also working for the War Department. The landlady cooked our meals so we enjoyed nice home-cooked meals every day. But after awhile, she became ill and the work was too much for her, so we had to move. We found a nice room where we could stay but we had to take our meals out. This was fun.
Washington D.C. is a most beautiful city. So many interesting and beautiful places and things to see. We tried to visit some special place each Sunday. This was our “honeymoon” and the best one anyone could ever have. We were there nearly five months. We went to the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, we visited the Senate while it was in session and one Sunday we went out to Mt. Vernon on the train and spent the day there. It is a beautiful place, the house is kept up in its original state as when George Washington lived there. Another Sunday we had the privilege of attending our L.D.S. church meeting, held in Apostle Reed Smoot’s home. He was our Senator there at the time. There were no L.D.S. churches there then, so Apostle Smoot would hold a sacrament meeting in his home for the few members who happened to be working or visiting in the city.
We had many wonderful experiences that we could never forget, and one that was not so wonderful; one morning as we left for work, we didn’t have enough change for both of us to buy our lunches that day. Elmer took what change we had and I took a ten dollar bill in my purse to buy my lunch and get it changed. This was all the money we had to buy our meals until pay day, at the end of the week. As I was hurrying out to lunch at noon, with some friends, I was putting on my coat as I went along and dropped my purse. I didn’t miss it until I sat down to eat. I felt terrible about losing the money because it was all we had. I felt worse to have to tell my husband, when I met him after work. He could see I was frightened so was very kind and understanding, he didn’t even get angry but we had to go home without any dinner that night. The next morning when I arrived at my office building, there was a notice on the bulletin board saying some one had picked up a purse the day before. I immediately called the lady and identified the purse but she had left it home. That night we traveled miles and miles on the street car to get to her house. She gave me the purse and not one thing had been taken out of it. We were so thrilled and surprised to think we could ever find a lost purse in that big city.
After we had been in Washington D.C. about two months, Elmer received word from his draft board in Utah that he was going to be drafted, or he could enlist back there. He enlisted at Camp Megs, which was near the city. He still worked in the office in town but had to spend weekends out to the camp. About one week before the war ended, his company received orders that they would be shipped over seas, in two weeks. This was very frightening. I began making preparation to return to Utah. But in one week the word came that the Armistice had been signed and the war was over. We were overjoyed, of course, to receive this good news. As soon as this word came, everybody went wild. We all left our offices and joined the crowd outside. There were so many people on the streets you could hardly move, all were yelling, hollering, blowing horns, ringing cow bells and using everything they could get hold of that would make a noise. Every one was so happy they couldn’t do otherwise. A short time later they had the Big Armistice Parade which was a beautiful sight to see. We stood only a few feet from Pres. Woodrow Wilson watching the parade. This all was a great experience for Elmer and me, considering that we had never been outside of our own state before.
The war ended in November and we returned home in time for Christmas. Elmer decided he would teach school for a few years, so after the holidays he went to St. George to take the Teacher’s Training course. After he finished his training and got his Teacher’s Certificate, he was given the school in New Harmony. That’s where he wanted to live. He was an excellent teacher and he loved his work. He taught there for five years.
While teaching school he bought a few head of cattle and some sheep and got started in the livestock business. Later on, when grazing land became scarce he sold the sheep and cattle and bought a herd of goats. We didn’t like them as well as the sheep but there was much more grazing land available for them. He made pretty good money from the mohair until the depression came. Then for a time there was no sale for it. He bought a truck and worked every way he could to make a little money to keep us going. We still had the expense of maintaining the herd, paying the herder, etc., while we couldn’t sell the mohair. It was pretty tough going but we survived. After a few good years he got the herd built up to more than we could have in one herd. So he bargained with a man in Arizona, to sell him one thousand head at $3.00 per head. The man was coming to get them at the end of the week. Three days before he was to come, a big storm came up. It snowed for days. The herd was out on “the Arizona Strip” where they seldom ever see any snow, but this time they got three feet. Elmer had to call the man and tell him not to come. They couldn’t get out to the herd in a car. When the storm was over we had no goats to sell. The storm had killed over a thousand head.
Elmer was the father of nine children; Gordon Elmer, Lolene, Mona, Olga, Bryce Hirschi, Mary, Doyle Harvey, Karl J and Beverly. All of whom are living except one. The first baby only lived one day. It was six years later that Lolene was born. Elmer was a wonderful husband, a good father and loved his family very much. He desired his children to be well educated and also to be trained in the gospel.
Lolene remembers her father as a very kind and loving man. She said, “He loved children, especially his own, and every time a new baby was born to us he was the happiest man in town.” She can remember, on one of her birthdays, him taking her and all her little girl friends to Cedar City to a picture show. Mona says, one time when we were at the table, she spilled something or knocked something off. Daddy asked, “Who did that?” She spoke up quickly, “I didn’t do it.” He gave her a real hard spanking. Then he said to her, “I didn’t spank you because you did it, I spanked you because you said you didn’t do it.” Olga says she remembers how good he was to everybody, how the people of the town were always coming to him for advice and counsel. She liked to stand and listen to them talk. He took her to St. George with him once and bought her a new dress, when Aunt Viola worked in Penny’s, because she had been so good to baby sit. She said, “I was so happy and proud to have a store bought dress.” She usually got hand-me-downs from Lolene and Mona. Bryce, of course, remembers the horses. He says, “I remember how he loved his horses, he took me with him out to the herd once when they were moving camp. He let me ride the horse. We ate pork and beans out of a can for lunch and slept on the ground with our saddles for pillows.” “I also remember him as a very friendly man, he would wave and smile at every one he met and stop and talk to them when he had time.” Mary says, “I can remember Daddy holding me on his lap and calling me, his little girl, and when he was awful sick and had to be taken away to the hospital.” Doyle can just remember how he looked. Karl and Beverly were too little to know him at all. Karl was only two and a half and Beverly not quite a year old when he died.
Elmer was a civic leader as well as a church leader. He was a member of the Washington County School Board for quite a few years. He was one of the members of the Southern Utah “Taylor Grazing Committee”. He was always active in the ward, in one organization or another. He was appointed superintendent of the Harmony Ward Sunday School in 1920 and made bishop of the Harmony Ward in 1926. He was their bishop for thirteen years. He had many worthwhile projects going for the town, and the people, as well as for the ward, while he served as bishop.
He had some very severe illnesses during the time he was bishop. His first siege was with Malta Fever. (It is similar to Typhoid Fever). He was very, very bad and was in the hospital several weeks. Later on, he had the real Typhoid Fever, that’s what the doctor said it was, they kept him in isolation in the hospital in Cedar City for about three weeks. He was critical for one week, we did not know if he would live or not. During the last few years we lived in New Harmony, he had a severe nervous breakdown. He was really sick, he told me this sickness was worse than all the others. It took him two years to recover.
He had a very narrow escape from being killed one time. He was riding his favorite horse through our land, down below town. This horse was very skittish. As he was galloping along, the horse stepped in a hole, fell down and threw him off. His foot was caught in the stirrup and he could not get it loose. The horse became frightened and started to run dragging him along the ground. After he dragged him several rods, in some way his foot became loose and he was able to get it out of the stirrup.
His health was poor after all these illnesses and in 1940 it really began to fail. So he sold his home, land, farm, all the horses and the herd of goats and moved his family to Cedar City. He bought a motel with a home attached. We moved there the first of May 1940. He really loved this work but he only lived there one year when he became so ill with cancer he had to be taken to the Veteran’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. After a few weeks there, they transferred him to the Veteran’s Hospital in West Los Angeles, California, where he died October 16, 1941.
This life story of Elmer Taylor was written by his wife, Susie H. Taylor, at her home in Murray, Utah, in March 1971.
