I, John Haigh Glenn, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the Fourth Ward, in a new two-story brick house on Sixth South between First and Second West Streets, on my father’s 39th birthday, October 24, 1875, the son of Alexander Glenn and Lavinia Haigh Glenn. My father was married before he married my mother to Sarah Bond who died in 1874, leaving seven young children. The baby was taken to Henefer, Utah and reared by her aunt. The other six, four girls and two boys, remained and were received by my mother and cared for till manhood and womanhood.

Mother and Father were married in the old Endowment House on the Temple Block on January 11, 1875, and there was born to them fourteen children, six boys and eight girls. Two of the girls and one boy died in infancy, the other eleven are still living and all are married but one girl.

Father was born on October 24, 1836 at Kirk Liston, Linlithgow, Scotland, a son of James Glenn and Agnes Marshall. The family was of a hardy Scotch race, the men were hard working quarry men and the women plain home folk. The family of healthy, hearty youngsters were required to do their full share towards keeping up the family income. Father’s first job, away from home, was as errand and water boy for his father and older brothers at the rock quarry, where they had contracts to get out building stone.

The family belonged to the Orthodox Church and were regular attendants at Sunday meetings, where my grandmother, who had a beautiful singing voice, sang in the choir. They were of the common people, honest, industrious, frugal, and well thought of in their community. Grandmother died rather young, leaving the younger members of the family, together with the household affairs, to be looked after by the older girls, while grandfather and the older boys were at work away from home.

Sometime, about 1851 or 1852, the Mormon Elders came to the home of Grandfather Glenn, where they were received kindly and were successful in converting two of the girls and three of the boys, my father being one of them. Grandfather, while friendly and kind to the missionaries, was not so easily converted. He was an active officer in the “Old Church” and all the time he was being urged by the Minister and members of his church to keep the Mormons out of his home.

The spirit of gathering came over those who had embraced the Gospel, and while they were preparing to leave for America and gather to Zion, Grandfather came to be at home for a few days before their leaving and to bid them goodbye, never expecting to see them again in his life. While waiting at home, attending his church duties as usual, something came over him, something that occurred in the night time of which he could not or would not speak. He sent at once for the Elders, was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ, and sailed with the others to America. He left one daughter, Maggie, who did not join the Church and remained in the old country to live and die there. One son had previously gone to Australia and was never heard of afterwards.

I would like to relate here an incident that happened in the family sometime before their leaving for America. I have heard my father relate it many times. As stated above, Grandfather and the boys were quarry men. An accident came to one of the boys, a large rock falling on him and crushing him so badly that he was crippled and made bed-fast. When he realized that he would not be able to move about again, he did not grow morose or melancholy. He read a good deal, and having a good voice, sang hymns and joyful songs. One day, after his father had been at home for a few days and was about to return to his work, the boy called him to his bedside and asked him to come home again at a certain time, earlier than usual. Grandfather asked why. The father to humor the boy, agreed to come but not taking his statement of death too seriously. One the day designated, grandfather and the boys came home. They found the sick lad about as usual. As the hour approached, he called the family together, told them that he was about to leave them, spoke comforting words, sang a beautiful hymn, and then quietly and peacefully crossed over to the other side.

Grandfather and his family were fairly independent. They had always worked for themselves and had gathered means enough to pay their passage to New York City and to purchase equipment and supplies to carry them to Utah, where they arrived in 1854 and located in the Fifth Ward in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Grandfather died soon after coming to Zion and was laid away in the City Cemetery. He passed away rejoicing in the fact that he had been permitted to join with the Saints and be buried among them in the “Land of Promise.” He admonished his children to be true and faithful to the covenants they had made with the Lord in His Church, and he bore to them a strong testimony of the Gospel.

Shortly after, father’s two brothers, Walter and John, and his two sisters, Robena, who was married to James Stewart, and Agnes, who married Daniel Stewart (brothers), moved into Cache County, Utah, and were among the first settlers and founders of Wellsville. These long ago have passed away, but have left large and honorable families to honor and bless their names.

Father was the youngest of the family and remained in Salt Lake City and, as stated above, married twice, not in poligamy, but always honoring that principle. He became the father of twenty one children – two boys and five girls by his first wife and six boys and eight girls by my mother. There still lives sixteen of us, eleven of which are my mother’s.

Father had very little schooling, perhaps not a whole year in all, and because of his realized the need of education and did all he could to give his big family what education he could and that they would take.

In the early days father freighted from Salt Lake City to the settlements along the Weber River, taking to the people there such provisions and supplies as were needed in those communities, and bringing back to the City the products of the farm and ranch and the trapper and hunter, for which he found ready market in the stores and markets of the City and through the small Ward Store that he and mother built up and called “The Fourth Ward Store,” as such institutions were called in those early days.

When father left his Scottish home, the land of his birth, though only a boy, he was thoroughly converted to the Gospel and was ever willing to live for it and die for it as the case might be. Father was one of the men left with torch in hand to burn Salt Lake when Johnson’s Army came into the Valley to destroy the Mormons and when the body of the Saints moved South. He spent six months, with his team, during the Black Hawk Indian uprisings, in protecting the people of Southern Utah against Indian invasions, and late in his life was given a small pension by the Federal Government for his service. He also served for a time as a guard at the grave of President Brigham Young. He always stood willing and ready to do his full share and to carry his end of the load. As soon as possible, he became an American citizen and was as true to his adopted country as he had been to his “Bonnie Scotland.”

Father was a plain man, quiet, unassuming, and as true to principle as the needle to the pole. He was liberal in his views, and, contrary to all that is said, in fun or derision, of his countrymen, he was lavish in giving of his substance to those who were in need. He was a good husband, a kind and loving father, a true friend, a loyal citizen, and a faithful Latter Day Saint.

I remember once, as a boy, a woman who owed father money was killed in an accident. She had been mean and nasty about the account, but when she died he said to us, “Well, she is gone now, poor soul and I forgive her all.” Not long ago, a friend of mine, a lawyer and at that time President of one of the Church Missions, asked me if I were related in any way to “Sandy” Glenn. When I told him that he was my father, he said: “He was one of my widowed mother’s best friends and we always spoke of him in our house as one of the finest and most honorable men we ever knew.”

Father died on March 31, 1924 in the same Ward and on the same block that he had lived throughout all his married life. His funeral services were held in the Fourth Ward Meeting House, which he had helped to build with his own hands. He had lived a long time and there were few of his old friends left. He had outlived most of them. Bishop Harrison Sperry, a little older than Father, his Bishop for many years and his closest neighbor and friend, and Martin Christopherson and Robert R. Irvine, both younger than Father, two of his oldest, very close friends, were the speakers at his funeral and they, too, are now gone. I shall not forget when Bishop Sperry came into the house just before the body was taken to the Meeting House. The good old Bishop looked long upon the peaceful face of his friend, whom he had known and loved for more than sixty years, now lying so still and silent within those four close walls. The tears came into his old, tired eyes and he stooped and kissed the cheek so cold and still, and then cried out as if his heart were breaking, “O, Aleck! You are gone and I am left behind, but I am coming soon. Tell our loved ones when you meet them on the other side that I’ll not be long.”

We laid him away dressed in the robes of the Holy Priesthood, beside his two beloved wives and his children who had gone before.

My mother, Lavinia Haigh Glenn, was born at Bradford, Yorkshire, England on August 21, 1853. She was the oldest daughter of John Haigh and Sarah Kershaw. The family was of the upper middle class of English folk. Grandfather Haigh was a contractor and builder and rather well-to-do. He owned his own home and ran his own business in the “Old Country.” The Mormon missionaries found these good people some time in the early 1860's, and Grandfather and Grandmother made a home for the Elders in their home, and furnished a special room for them, which they called the Elders’ room.

The entire family, those who were living at the time, joined the Church and emigrated to Utah in 1869. They left Liverpool on July 25 of that year, with 365 other Saints, on the Steamship Colorado. They arrived in New York on August 10 and at Ogden, Utah on August 25, 1869, on one of the first trains carrying passengers on the new Trans-Continental Railroad.

Arriving in Salt Lake City, Grandfather and Grandmother Haigh, with their family of two sons and four daughters, located in the Fourth Ward, where they built a nice two story brick house on the southeast corner of Seventh South and First West Streets. The old house still stands.

Grandmother Haigh died when I was a very small boy, in the house that Grandfather had built for her in the land of their adoption and was buried on the hillside in the City Cemetery with the Saints whom she loved. I remember Grandmother as a beautiful woman, in black dress, with dark hair piled high upon her head. She was a typical English lady and we all loved her.

Grandfather later married again to Grandmother’s good friend, Mrs. Harriet Barraclough, a charming little English lady. We called her “Grandma Haigh.” I have heard it said that Grandmother had told Grandfather that if she died before he did she would like him to marry Mrs. Barraclough. After Grandfather passed away “Grandma Haigh” told me that she was going to live to be seventy-five years old and then she too was going to go. Just before her seventy-fifth birthday she called me into her home and said she wanted to go and be buried at Beaver, Utah, where she had a son and two daughters. She gave me charge of what property she held in Salt Lake City, and Lyle James, my sweetheart, who now is my wife, and I put her on the train, and this splendid, beautiful, little old lady passed out of our lives. We never saw her again, for soon after her seventy-fifth birthday, she quietly passed to her last sleep, as peacefully and sweetly as she had lived.

My mother was sixteen years old when she came to Utah with her family. She was married to my father on January 11, 1875 and assumed the responsibility and duties of his household and six motherless children. The family lived in a new six-room two-story brick house of their own on Sixth South between First and Second West Streets in the Fourth Ward, next door East to the home of Bishop Harrison Sperry.

On October 24, 1875, I was born and proved to be the first of fourteen children to be born to my mother. The earliest recollections of my mother are most tender and I have often wondered why she should have been taken away from us so young, for she died soon after her fourteenth baby was born, when she was only forty four years old, and he went on a little ahead of her.

Father was away from home a good deal and Mother had the responsibility of the big family, and a good deal of the work to do. She received much help from the older members of Father’s family. They were good children and we loved them, but I have always felt that we might have done more to make mother’s household duties lighter, and I regret that we did not do more than we did to lighten the load she carried so willingly and cheerfully.

Mother was a good housekeeper, an excellent cook, and we were all well clothed and well fed when she was with us. She was a real Latter Day Saint, a faithful Church attendant, an ardent Relief Society worker and block teacher, and a fitting example of love and devotion to her large family. Mother was a natural born nurse, at a time when there were no trained or paid nurses, when babies were born in the homes and not in hospitals, when neighbors helped neighbors in cases of accident, sickness, or sorrow. She sat up nights with them and when death came, laid them lovingly and tenderly away.

I have seen my good mother, at nights, after long hours of work at home, many times, in summer heat and winter cold, in rain and in sleet and snow, leave our home to spend the night at the bedside of a neighbor or friend. And because of her helping hand and gentle care, many lived to call her blessed, while others, whose last lingering hours were made easier by her presence, went on ahead to greet her when she crossed the bar.

The big brick house on Sixth South Street was our home for quite a few years, then a store and a new brick house was built on First West between Sixth and Seventh South, on the “old Orchard Corner,” amid the big apple trees. In this home we all grew up and many of the older ones married. From that, now old house, we went to school and church in the old adobe meeting house on the corner. We held day school and Sunday School, church and meetings, parties and dances, and festivals and concerts all in the one roomed adobe building, with a little frame leanto, on West Temple and Seventh South Streets. It is now torn down and a beautiful modern Chapel, with all the modern trimmings and appointments, stands in its place, upon the ground, but not in the hearts of those youngsters – my friends and I – who romped and played around that dear old Church house and danced and were happy within its four rough walls.

Among the friends of those happy by-gone days – and they were happy days – were the Sperrys, Hadleys, Irvines, Christophersons, Jenkins, Rands, Coggles, Thorns, Burtons, Lamberts, Needhams, Elmers, Corlesses, Weilers, Horns, and others – scattered now, and many on the other side. Some of our school teachers were Wilford Smith, Louie Preece, Joshua Stewart, and Belle Salmon. Those were the days when parents and teachers alike believed, with the wise man Solomon, that to “spare the rod was to spoil the child.”

Later I went to the Thirteenth Ward School, then to the Fourteenth Ward Seminary, and then to the LDS College, and finally to graduate without “sheep skin” from the old Salt Lake Business College.

My first job, aside from picking up potatoes for a week on Bishop Sperry’s farm on Third east near Thirteenth South Streets, now in the heart of Salt Lake City, at a bushel of potatoes per day, worth forty-nine cents a bushel, was with the James G. McDonald Candy Company as delivery boy. My wages were four dollars a week, with pay in hand every Saturday night. I drove an old mouse-colored horse, with long ears and he was lazy and deaf. We called him “Dummy” and urged him along with a piece of wire on a long stick. The policeman took the wire whip away from me and threatened to arrest me for cruelty to animals, but it was the only effective whip we ever had. From delivery boy, I went into the Paper Box Factory as cutter and then manager. McDonald sold the box factory to Harry Deardorff and I went along with it, in the bargain.

When I was nineteen years old, I was called on a mission to the Southern States. I weighed one hundred and thirty seven pounds and was as green as the proverbial gourd, but I was ready and willing to go. I had always looked forward to a mission and was proud now to answer the call.

The Ward gave me a wonderful farewell party and I was thrilled with the many friends that came. The meeting house was crowded, and I knew that their faith and prayers would sustain me. It was in the evening of July 27, 1895, on the platform of the old Rio Grande Railway, I stood with parents, brothers and sisters, sweetheart, and friends. They had come to say good bye, and after handshakes and tears and kisses, I boarded the train bound for Chatanooga, Tennessee. Heretofore, I had never been farther from home than Ogden. As the train left the station, I stood on the platform of the last coach, feeling as though I was bound for another world, and watched and waved until the station was out of sight, then wiped my eyes and went into the car.

There were probably ten or a dozen missionaries on the train, and only one of them I had ever seen before. We were soon acquainted, and the trip was interesting and we all enjoyed it. We crossed over the Rocky Mountains, through the Royal Gorge, into Denver, Kansas City, and into St. Louis, where we spent the day sightseeing. We stood on the big draw bridge that spans the Mississippi, looked into the sluggish muddy depths of the “Father of Waters,” and watched the steam boats ply up and down. From St. Louis down across the corner of Kentucky into Memphis, Tennessee, and then East to Chatanooga, the headquarters of the Southern States Mission. Here we received our instructions from President Elias S. Kimball and his aids. I, with Chester V. Call of Idaho, was assigned to South Carolina, the “Old Palmetto State.” Before leaving Chattanooga, we spent a whole day visiting places of interest. We went out to Missionary Ridge, Moccasin Bend of the Tennessee River and the famous Look Out Mountain, all notable battle grounds made famous during the Civil War, and still showing the scars of that awful civil conflict between the North and the South – the blue and the gray.

Leaving Chattanooga in the middle of the night, we passed through the Cumberland and Blue Ridge Mountains into Atlanta, Georgia and on to Columbia, South Carolina. This was a trip long to be remembered. The mountains were gorgeous in the moonlight, not, however, as majestic as our own rugged Rockies. The beautiful river, paralleling the railroad tracks, ran its mad course towards the ocean. Hill upon hill, covered most gorgeously with high, broad, majestic trees, with blooming shrubs and ferns and flowers, not a single spot where nature has not set its hand to beautify. And above the rumbling of the train, we heard the call of the whippoorwill.

South Carolina – you, the first state to secede from the Union to bring about so much sorrow and bloodshed; you, who started that bloody conflict that made the negroe free, and proved the Union of the States; you, the beginning of the awful struggle between the blue and gray. Hotheaded, turbulent, obstreperous child of the Nation, I have come to live with you. In the next three years I shall learn to know you better, and as I know you better, I shall love you more. The majesty of your woods, the turbulence of your streams, the dark creepiness of your swamps, the beauty and sweet perfume of your flowers, the hum of your insects, the music of your birds, the melodious crooning of your negroes, and the friendliness and hospitality of your people – all these I shall see and hear and know and learn to love; God grant that, in it all, I may find character and strength to serve you well.

I stayed only a few days in Columbia with President Frank L. Beatie of Salt Lake City and the families of Brothers William Paschall and Wm. Sloan. These good people had been farmers when the Elders found them, but they had come into the city to work in the cotton mills to earn money enough to go to Utah. They were good people, poor in this world’s goods, but rich in their understanding and in the spirit of the Gospel. Brother and Sister Paschall died here, and I had the privilege of saying a few kind words at their biers. I was honored in being their friend and better because of their friendship.

My first real field of labor was in Fairfield County, north of Coumbia about twenty-five miles. I left the train at Ridgeway, a little jerk-water town with a post office and one store. The Postmistress, Mrs. Harrison, was a member of the Church, and the only real friend we had in the place. She was pleased to see me, but her son said if I left my suit-case there he would cut it to pieces with his knife, and his mother said he would do it. I inquired for Elder Thales H. Haskell who was to have met me there, but he had not come. I was told that he was staying at Bro. William Collins’ about seven miles out through the woods along a crooked, winding trail.

After waiting some time, I left my suit case at the store and walked back along the railroad track to a stream, which in that country is called a “branch,” and where they told me the trail entered the woods to the left of the tracks. It looked pretty dark and creepy in there and so I sat down on the end of a railroad tie to do a little thinking. Was I homesick? Well, just put yourself in my place. I guess I thought of home some, and I am not saying that tears did not come into my eyes. Alone in a country entirely unfamiliar, closed in on all sides by deep, dark woods and brush and brambles, surrounded by hordes of negroes, and by white folks who had not love for a Mormon, and, perhaps, with snakes and wild things. At the beginning of a narrow winding path which led to friends, if I could follow, but Heaven alone knew where if I got off the trail. Was I afraid? Well, perhaps, but at any rate I sat and waited.

Perhaps in an hour, maybe a half hour or only fifteen minutes – who knows or even cares now. To me it seemed a long, long time, but at last a man and a boy came out of the woods at the end of the trail. I knew then that I was safe, for the man had on the derby hat and the long-tailed Prince Albert coat of the Mormon Missionary – like my own. To me, the sun had shone again, and I was happy.

Elder Thales H. Haskell and Willie Collins and I went back to town, got the mail, made a purchase or two, and then took the winding trail towards the Collins’ plantation seven miles away. I am sure I never walked that far at one stretch before in all my life, and I had on a new pair of shoes. The path led through the woods, winding in and out among the tall pine trees which looked to me to be a mile high. We crossed streams on pole bridges – a single log spanning the creek or branch – passed little openings cut into the timbers that were plantations, with a rough board house and a field of corn and a patch of cotton. My legs were short and the trail was long. We went on into the evening, and finally, amidst the barking of the “coon hounds” and the cackling of the guinea hens, we came to the end of the journey and the long, long trail.

Out of the woods, into the clearing, through the cotton rows, and into the tall corn, and on towards the house. On the way I beheld a sight which, new to me then, was to become familiar and common-place. Coming towards us slowly up the corn row was a small white ox, muzzled and bridled and bitted, hitched to a small shovel-like plow, and driven like a horse by “Grandpa Collins,” a tall, raw boned, angular old man with long gray whiskers. A few rows further on, we met “Pa Collins,” a later addition of grandpa, and a typical backwoods farmer, driving the old dunn milch cow on another shovel plow.

These two men were grand old men. They were members of the Church, and welcomed the new Elder with genuine Southern hospitality. The house was made of rough boards with no glass windows, but with board shutters to keep out the summer’s rain and winter’s chill. No stoves to cook the food or warm the house, but a big fire-place almost as big as a small room, with pots and pans and iron ovens sitting on the coals of the burning pine back log; home made chairs with raw hide backs and bottoms, and tables of rough hewn or mill-sawed pine boards, bare floors and heavy timbered ceilings. This was home to this fine family, to grandfather, and father and mother, and the six or seven healthy, hearty children.

It was summer time and too warm in the house, so the meals were served under a pine brush arbor in front of the house. As we came forward, all was hustle and bustle. The girls were all dolled up, the mother was in her best kitchen apron, and the kiddies had their bare feet washed and shined to greet the new missionary, and what a greeting – hearty, happy, hospitable, as only a back woods clearing farmer knows.

The supper call was given – the beating of an old plowshare with an iron bar – and how that thing did ring and echo through the woods, calling the plow hands in. And that supper – a veritable feast of the fat things of the land, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, fine home-cured ham, collard greens, ochra, friend chicken as only a southern mother can fry it, hot biscuits with butter, which as snow, and corn pone or hoe cake baked before the hot wood coals. A feast fit for a king, and how a new Elder can eat.

An evening under the bowery – it would have been most interesting had it been possible for me to keep awake. They laughed at me, but said I was no different from the rest, as all new elders usually fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. They said that I would get over it as all the rest had done in time. Some ******* came in to spend the evening, among them a Baptist preacher. They interested me as Southern ******* always did, especially the slave time darkey, and I made many friends among them.

For three years, lacking just a few days, I labored as a missionary in the “Old Palmetto State.” I met many families of the type of the Collins. They were good people these people of the South. If they liked you they were your friends and would fight for you. If they did not like you then look out for they would fight you. They were plain people, generally religious, after the old sectarian school and they were hospitable.

I labored in some of the important cities as well as in the country districts, but we found most of our converts among the farmers and the woodsmen. I made many friends and baptized sixteen people. Tobacco and moonshine liquor had its bad influence in some localities and its effect on some of our converts, but as a rule those who joined the Church were made better and were able to overcome the bad habits of generations long standing.

My mission experiences I am sure were among the grandest of my life and I think among the most pleasant and profitable. There were some features about it that were not so pleasant but on the whole my mission gave me great joy and I learned to love God and my fellowmen.

During the last two or three months in South Carolina I suffered with the Malaria Fever, but I managed to see my mission through with an honorable release and came home on July 25, 1898 just lacking two days of being away three years.

I was pretty well filled up with Malaria and went immediately to bed where I stayed burning up with fever for two and a half weeks. I lost forty-two pounds in that time and came out of it pretty weak and trembly.

Knowing that some of my friends had come home from the South with Malaria Fever and suffered for years with it, I made up my mind to try to do something to get rid of it. In October I went into the sheep business and spent nearly three years in the hills and mountains of Northeastern Utah and on the desert west of the Great Salt Lake with the sheep. I succeeded in overcoming the Malaria and have never suffered with it since. The sheep business was unprofitable at that time and we lost money but I got back my health.

Soon after I came home from my mission to the South and just after I had gone into the sheep business, I received a call to go on a three months Mutual Improvement Mission, but I explained my condition and asked for a years time and promised that I would go the following year if they wanted me to do so. The next year each Stake was asked to furnish one M.I.A. missionary for six months. I was then living in Woodruff Stake with the sheep, and was selected for this mission. I accepted the call to fulfill my promise to the General M.I.A. Board of the year before. I was sent down to the Parowan Stake in Iron County. I was delayed on account of the illness of my mother who appeared at the point of death, and I was there only five months. I enjoyed this work and I think did some good. I made a lot of friends who to this day are among my very good friends. While in the Parowan Stake I helped to establish the first graded M.I.A. in the Church. We did it at Cedar City on account of the very large attendance of members from the Branch Normal School (now the Branch Agricultural College), and the various ages in the association. This was the beginning of graded M.I.A. work in the church. From my report of the fine results attained in the Cedar City association, the General Board recommended it as a general thing throughout the church.

We sold our sheep after three years of depression and, father having purchased a farm at Rigby, Idaho, I spent one year up there. Coming back again to Salt Lake in 1903 I took a Civil Service examination, passed with a rating of 96% and went into the Federal Department of the Interior as Store Keeper-Gauger and was attached to the office at Salt Lake City. This was a fee job and did not occupy all of my time. In 1905 I accepted a position as bookkeeper with the Utah State Land Board and held both positions for about two years, when I became Chief Clerk and Cashier of the Land Office and resigned the Civil Service job.

On June 26, 1907, Miss Lyle James and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple by President John R. Winder. Lyle is the daughter of David and Lydia Griffin James. We were married for time and eternity, and, I think, for better or for worse, and now after nearly 33 years together I wonder if Lyle did not get the worst of the bargain. We built our new home at 1027 Emerson Avenue at a time when it was almost, if not quite out in the country. The sidewalks were not paved nor graveled and sometimes we got stuck in the mud in reaching our house from Eleventh East. After all these years we live now almost in the heart of the city. We have watched the city grow in all directions around us.

In 1909 I left the Land Office with the change of administration and entered partnership with Frank Y. And Moses W. Taylor in the Real Estate Business under the firm name of Taylor Bros. Co. Frank Y. And Moses W. Taylor were both Stake Presidents. One of the first deals made after going into this Company was the sale of the old Crisman Farm, owned by the Church, to the Kimball Richards Co. This is now the Highland Park District of Salt Lake City and now comprises three and one-half Church Wards. We sold some larger ranches in Nevada later, one of 36,000 acres to the Ellison Company of Layton, Utah. Through these times we became interested in Ruby Valley, Nevada and later endeavored to establish a colony there.

In the meantime three beautiful girls came to bless our home. Marian was born on April 23, 1908; Eleanor on June 3, 1910; and Geneve on May 14, 1912.

In 1911 I was made Secretary and Sales Manager of the Ruby Valley Land and Irrigation Company. I remained in Salt Lake City where we had offices in the Hotel Utah Building the first year and organized a selling agency. In March, 1913 I went with my family to take charge of the project in Ruby Valley and handle the selling on the ground. We were successful in getting many people to locate in Ruby Valley and at one time had over three-hundred there. But the project failed on account of insufficient surface water for irrigating, and the Company did not have sufficient foresight and interest to test for underground water, which is now proven.

We stayed in Ruby Valley nearly six years then returned to Salt Lake City. Lyle returned with the girls in the early part of September, 1919 and on the eighteenth of that same month our first boy was born to greet me when I came in the early part of October. We name him Harold James. We were proud for now we had both kinds. Again on April 4, 1921 another fine boy came and we named him John James.

In their Mother’s Patriarchal Blessing she is told that her sons shall help to build up the “waste places of the gentiles.” For a long time after our last girl was born it looked to us as if this part of her blessing was not to be fulfilled, but the Lord always remembers his promises and often “works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.” Now we have great hopes of our sons fulfilling the promises of the Lord.

In 1922 I was appointed by Governor Charles R. Mabey, to the position of Utah State Director of Finance and Purchase. This was a responsible position in that it controlled, by law, the finances and all state purchases and the making and controlling of the budget. This I consider the best position and most responsible of any in my life, with the exception of my mission in the Southern States. I had much joy in this position and feel that I made a good job of it. At any rate the Governor always upheld me in whatever I did. I made the first real budget that the State of Utah ever had up to that time and it was approved by the Governor and placed in the hands of every member of the Legislature that they might see more clearly the needs of the State and to more intelligently distribute its finances. I also made the first budget for Governor George Dern.

While I was at the State Capitol, Mother and I went to the National Convention of State Officials held at Ashville, North Carolina. I read a paper on State Finances and Control. The whole article, with my picture was published in the two newspapers. After the convention we went down to South Carolina and over some of the country that I covered when a young man on a mission there. We found things much changed and except in the extreme back woods it had become more like the North and the West. We tried to find some of the old friends and visited some of the places that had been dear to me but all was so different. My old friends were mostly gone out West or had passed into the land over yonder. We found a few who had gone back to their old churches and were more or less unfriendly and cold. It seemed strange and made me sad to find that many of our friends so kind and good to me twenty-five years before had been neglected by the Church and had not been visited by the Elders for many years. Sister Cornelia DuPont and her son Geddis met us at Columbia with an automobile and took us everywhere we wanted to go. Sister DuPont had, many years ago stayed with us at our home, and she and her son and two daughters were very kind to us and kept us at their home in Charleston while we were in South Carolina.

On our way back home we went up to Chicago and then to Elkhart, Indiana, where we visited with Lyle’s sister Kate and family and went with them up to Benton Harbor and the City of David. Kate and Claire Rivers, her husband, and Billie their young son, were very nice to us and we enjoyed our stay of two days with them. We visited at Independence, Missouri on our way back.

For a number of years after leaving the State Capitol I was in the Land Business and did well. During this period we made our first visit to California. We got a new Willis-Knight car and Mother and I with our five children and my sister Ann, spent a month in Los Angeles. We rented an apartment, in fact two joining apartments as one was not sufficient, so as not to burden our relatives or friends and traveled and visited as we liked. My brother Dr. Thomas H. Glenn and his family were kind to us and we enjoyed being with them. Leaving Los Angeles we drove up the ocean road and sometimes a little inland, up to San Francisco and Oakland, through Sacramento and over the Sierra Nevada’s, past Lake Tahoe and through Carson City and Reno, across the State of Nevada and home.

I have always wanted to help build up the “waste places.” Perhaps this is in contemplation of the fulfillment of my good wife’s Patriarchal Blessing that her boys should “help to build up the waste places of the Gentiles.”

For a time after our trip into California I looked around for some land upon which to build a colonization project as I have always felt that sometime in the future that my dreams might come true. I spent a year as Sales Manager of a new firm controlled by David and Samuel Neff, the Deseret Foods Corporation. It was the intention to manufacture Oleo Margarine and other food products, but they failed to do any more than manufacture Oleo Margarine and I saw nothing for the future so left the company and continued in the land sales business.

Just before I went with the Deseret Foods Corporation, our daughter, Marian, was called and went on a mission to the North-Western States. This was a glorious thing in the lives of Mother and me. We were proud to have Marian called to this work and while it was somewhat of a sacrifice we were glad of the opportunity to make the sacrifice and we are proud of the fine record made by our daughter during the twenty-six months away from home. She left home on June 20, 1929 and returned to us in July, 1931. She left us a sweet young girl and returned a charming woman, full of faith in the Lord and the Church and with a strong testimony of the gospel.

Marian continued to teach school after returning from her mission and acted as a guide on the Temple Block on Saturdays. I would like to relate here an incident that came out of her work on the Temple Block that pleased her Mother and I and which proves that “Bread cast upon the waters will return again.”

Mother and I and the boys were in Yellowstone Park. We were about to leave the Park for home when an elderly man and his wife from New York State, who had the cabin opposite ours came out and we chatted with them. They said they liked Salt Lake City and thought it was the most beautiful city they had visited in all their travels. We asked them if they had gone out to the Great Salt Lake. They told us that they had not, that they had gone to hear the Organ Recital at the Tabernacle and afterwards became interested with one of the young lady guides. They told us that they left New York early in the summer and had visited all the National Parks and places of interest on the South Route and into California and were now returning by way of the North Route to do the same there. The husband told us that he had recently retired from business and his children were gone and that they had long planned to take this trip. They told us the thing that most touched their hearts. They said that they had tried to find all the interesting places along the way, had not visited them hurriedly, and had met all kinds of guides but none had been more courteous and kind, none more intelligent and certainly not one more able to put over the message that she bore than the young girl that was their guide on the Temple Grounds in Salt Lake City. They said they were there on Saturday afternoon which interested us more because that was Marian’s day on duty there. Mother asked about the guide and the lady described our own daughter, dress and hat and all. We were proud.

June 15, 1945 - Since setting down the above, some six years have passed, to bring many changes. Late in 1941 I had some trouble with my right eye and after an unsuccessful operation I lost the sight of it. About that time I went to work for my brother, Heber, as Timekeeper and bookkeeper in the business of Excavation and Road Construction work.

In August, 1942 it was necessary for me to go to Ogden, Utah to work, as Heber and J.M. Sumscon had a road job there. We rented our home at 1027 Emerson Avenue and moved into a small apartment on 23rd Street in Ogden, where we lived until a few days before Christmas when the road job was finished. Then Mother and I came back to Salt Lake and lived with our daughter, Eleanor and family at 1186 Whitlock Avenue.

In the meantime Harold finished his second year at the University of Utah and was called to go on a mission to the California Mission. He left for San Francisco on                  , 194 , where he labored faithfully for ten months, and was taken sick and came home honorably released.

On January 2, 1943 I went again with my brother Heber and J.M. Sumsion to work on a road job at Dugway, Tooele County, Utah. Mother stayed with Eleanor and family and I lived in a trailer house on the job at Dugway, where I ran the scales for weighing the gravel and did Heber’s bookkeeping. I came in to Salt Lake about every other week-end. This work lasted four months. During this time Mother had quite a bad sick spell, but recovered and in July 1943 we lived in a trailer house office at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon for two months while resurfacing the raod from Provo to the Deer Creek Dam in Provo Canyon. This was a pleasant summer and Mother was greatly improved in her health.

After Harold came back from his mission and his health improved, he took up his work again at the University and on             19     graduated with honors, an “A” student with a Degree of B.A. as a Chemical Engineer. In the meantime Harold married Miss June Wright, the lovely daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Charles G. Wright, former Bishop of the 16th Ward, Salt Lake City, Utah. They were married in March, 1942 in the Salt Lake Temple by Apostle Harold B. Lee. After the marriage Harold continued his school work with the splendid help of June who continued her work as stenographer, in order to help him to graduation. To Hal and June was born on October 31, 1943 a fine baby boy, the only one with red hair, so far in our family. After graduation Harold accepted a position with the Shell Oil Development Company at Emeryville, California, and a few weeks later June and Paul, our dandy red-headed grandson, went to Hal and they took up their residence at Berkeley, California where they are happily living now.

Geneve left the hospital at Winnemucca, Nevada after nearly six years and accepted a position of Supervisor of the Cottonwood Stake Maternity Hospital in Salt Lake County, Utah. Here she worked for two years and then was married in the Salt Lake Temple by President J. Reuben Clark Jr., to Emerson Hand of the Granite Ward. Emerson’s former wife died at the Cottonwood Stake Hospital about a year before and left a beautiful day old baby girl and three other girls ranging to 12 years of age. A fine family and quite a big job for a girl without family experience, but with the help of a fine and considerate husband, Geneve seems to be getting away with it all right.

After two years at the University our baby boy, Jimmie, or John James, was called to go on a Mission and left on June 24, 1942 for the North California Mission, with headquarters at San Francisco. He labored in the mission field for upwards of two years. He might have stayed two more months but Mother was taken very ill and it was thought best to have him come home, as the Doctor gave no hope of her recovery. For five months she was bed-fast and lay between life and death, but she got much better and is now pretty well again.

While Mother was down, Jim was inducted into the Army. After one week at Fort Douglas, Utah, then 14 weeks at Camp Roberts, California, home on a furlough for ten days, back to Ford Ord, California and soon after overseas, and he is now at Okinawa where he has seen war in reality but he says he has not killed a *** yet. We pray the Lord that Jim shall be protected from the horrors of this terrible war and that he may return to us without wounds, either in spirit or body, the same clean and wholesome son that left us less than a year ago. And this we pray for all our soldier boys and girls.

After Mother recovered enough to get around a little we left the home of Eleanor and Floyd and the children. They all had been kind to us as also was Geneve and Emerson and family. We now live in a small apartment at 2153 South 7th East where Mother and I are happy together.

Angus and Marian now have four boys. Philip was born April 15, 1942 and Keith came on July 20, 1943, both healthy big boys - a fine typical Mormon family. Angus is no longer the Bishop of his Ward but now on the High Council of the Franklin Stake. Floyd and Eleanor have two more boys - Glenn Floyd born July 2, 1940 and David Glenn born February 22, 1945. These two are healthy and strong and this too is another typical Mormon family.

Mother and I now have, with Emerson and Geneve’s four, which we love as our own, 13 grandchildren, 8 boys and 5 girls. We are proud of them all and may the Lord bless them and keep them always clean and sweet and good.

The Lord has been good to us and to our children. May we always be worthy of His goodness and blessings. We cherish the love and friendship of our neighbors and we love the Gospel and the Church and our wonderful leaders. We love this country of ours and its constitution and institutions and may peace come to all the world as soon as it is God’s will and may our sons and daughters now fighting on the other side of this world to restore freedom and liberty to all mankind, soon return to us with victory resting upon their brows and may world peace be established that God our Father may be pleased with His people everywhere.