SIDDIE SMITH (BUNN)

Siddie's Home (see scrapbook) On a sunny day on June the 30th, 1890 a baby girl was born to Larkin and Annie Bunn, the name they gave her was Siddie Margret Bunn. She was the third child out of a family of nine. She grew up on a little farm just outside the town of Glenmary, Tennessee. On the 27th day of October in the year of 1912, she married Andrew Jackson Smith. They lived in a little log house until the spring of 1914, when she left her home to join her husband Andrew in Sheridan, Wyoming, where he had gone to get a job. This was the start of a long line of moves to various parts of the west. She had a 9 month old son, Kenneth, when she left Glenmary, Tennessee. She lived in and around Sheridan in various 2-3 room shacks for the next 6 years, where Larkin and Lela and Patricia were born. Lark was born in 1915, Lela in 1917 and Patricia in 1919. Hard time kept on her trail until in 1921 she went to McGath, Wyoming to join her husband who has gone farther west to look for a job. Things picked up for her while there, then her brother-in-lay McKenly came to stay with them. He had been gassed in the war (World War 1), he died in her home in the spring of 1922. He died just after her third daughter Vivian was born. Trouble started at the mines, it went on a strike. So her husband, Andrew loaded up her and the kids in a Model T Ford touring car and started for Utah. They made the Utah Basin just ahead of a snowstorm. Just out of Duchesne, the storm caught up with them. For about one week or 10 days, because the car was stuck, they lived in an 8 ft. by 10 ft. tent in 2 feet of snow. But with the U. S. mail trucks with one truck in front and one behind, they were pulled and pushed over the divide into Price, Utah. They rented a farm in the town of Wellington, Utah. The summer of 1922 didn’t go so good, the next 3 years the only good thing that happened was a son was born Carl in 1923, and the family was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints in the summer of 1922. In June of 1922 they were married in the temple at Salt Lake City. In the fall of 1924 they loaded what they had into two wagons and started for Greenriver, Utah, that was like old pioneers with their two cows. They went to Greenriver, they didn’t get there until just before Thanksgiving time. They didn’t have much money so Siddie’s husband and oldest son loaded the wagons with apples and went back to the mines around Price to sell them so they could get enough money to last the winter and until they could raise a crop. The crop didn’t do so go so they moved into town. They lived on the bank of a dry wash out side of town and a neighbor was looking after the 3 youngest children when it started to rain, a flood came down the was 8 ft high or 10 ft. They were told it would be the next day before the water would go down. So Siddie walked the irrigation flume that was suspended across the wash. She knew her baby needed her, the flume went out just after she passed over. They finally went back to the mines at Columbia Steel, where all seven children came down with the measles at the same time. The mines were not safe at the time so the family went to Clawson where Andrew tried farming again, while living there they met the Asay family. They then moved back to the mines again, at Sunnyside. There things went better for a while. Then the traveling bug bit Andrew again so in the spring of 1927 they had a 1924 Studebaker touring car and a Model T Ford truck with which they started to make their fortune in sunny California. They passed through St. George, Utah when the roses were in bloom it was sure pretty then. They passed through Las Vegas, Nevada. It was just a small town, then it had about 1500 population. (May have missed a few cats or dogs and a horse or two.) They passed through the Los Angeles valley to a little town of Wasco, not far from Bakersfield where they were introduced to the art of picking cotton. (My back still aches when I think of it.) IN the Town of Caruthers, they raised their first crop of cotton in 1929. Also their fourth daughter, Dora Ellen was born. She was here for only a short visit then she went back home to her Father in Heaven on the 4th of July 1929. They kept trying to raise cotton, the fifth daughter Bertha Katrina was born in 1930. The next three years were pretty rough, things weren’t so good, but they didn’t go hungry. It was so bad they finally gave it up on California as a bad job and went back to Utah. They settled in St. George just after the first of the year in 1934. There they bough a lot and built a house on it at 400 South and Main St. The first real home that Siddie ever had in over 20 years. Things went along some good and some bad until the war years of 1942 when the service started taking the children, the first to go was the oldest Kenneth then Carl went in the service. Then Vivian and Earl joined the service. By the end of 1943 she had 3 sons and 1 daughter in the various branches of the services. In the next two years they covered all four battle fronts; Kenneth was in North Africa and Italy; the next was Carl in England and was in the Battle of the Bulge, he went through France, Germany and Belgium; Earl was in the South Seas and the Philippines Islands; Larkin worked on the ship yard in Artesia California, Vivian was on the home front. She was sure happy when the War ended in 1945 and they all came home alive and safe. Soon all the children were married and moved away from St. George. Four children moved to Henderson, Nevada and that area. So Siddie sold her home in St. George and moved to East Las Vegas where she now has a home, the second real home she had had. She now has 55 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren. This was written in Siddie’s own handwriting, and found after her death. It has been copied just as she wrote it, as Siddie was never one to express her feelings or dwell on the bad things in detail, I as her daughter with the help of other children would like to ad a postscript to show her how much courage. Siddie had and how much we loved her and thank her. Vivian Eleen Smith Broadway The neighbors next door were the Asays. Larkin married the girl next door. Ella Genevieve Asay. Her parents were Jerome Asay and Mary Louise Jensen Asay. When Siddie and Louise lost their husbands they grew old together. They even moved in-together. They were best of friends all the rest of their lives. They were called the Grandmas Twins. I loved going across the field from one grandma to the next. Granny Smith made the best pancakes, and Grandma Asay made the best Taffy Honey Candy. comment by Annalee Smith Addition to the Saga of Siddie Smith There were many things that happened in Mama’s life that she didn’t write in her “Saga of Siddie Smith”. When she was young she stayed with her grandmother at night, her father and mother lived on Grandma Webb’s farm. They had bough part of the old family farm and built a house close to Grandma Webb. There are many stories that Mama could tell about Grandma Webb and her life with her. These two were found written by Mother: “I can remember when Grandmother made her own soap out of lye, hickory wood ashes.” I can remember when Mama made her own soap. “I can remember when the sun eclipsed at 11 o’clock in the day time and it was so dark that the chickens went to roost, and us six children were so afraid we had to hold on to grandmother all the time it was eclipsed.” Grandma Webb went to church as long as she was able to walk. After Mama and Daddy had been in Wyoming for about two years Sam and Annie came out and lived with them born about a year. While they were out there Alice, Mama’s sister died in March of 1917. Sam had always Had asthma and heart trouble, he got sick and wanted to go home so Mama and Daddy borrowed enough money to get them home to Tennessee where he lived for about three months then he died in June 10, 1917. Mama was not able to go home at that time because she was expecting Larkin. After Lela was born she went home for a little while to see her folks. Then in 1920 her mother died but again she could not go home for they were having it so hard. While Mama and Daddy were living around Sheridan in 1921, Mama’s brother, Virgal and his family came out to work in the mines. Her brother-in-law Rusau came with them. Virgal was working in the mines with Rusau. Rusau was the experienced miner, he drilled out a section of the roof and placed his charge in the holes. Then he sent Virgal to go check them, Virgal was not experienced enough and the charge went off crushing him underneath. He was dead when they got the coal off of him. Mother always blamed Ruasu even believed he did it on purpose. But he was responsible in as much as it was his job to make sure everyone was clear before he set the charge off. But it was a very sad thing for Mama for she also blamed him for the death of Alice. The story was that Alice was down at her mothers one day and Ruasu came to pick her up he was drunk. They started out in an old wagon, he was whipping the horses making them run, one of the neighbors shouted at him to stop but that made him go faster. Alice was about six months along, she fell out and the wagon ran over her. He took her on home and she had the baby, he would not call the doctor for her. She stayed in bed for a couple of days then her mother-in-law put her to doing the washing, using the old scrub board, she became so sick that she picked up the other little girl and walked down the mountain side to the railroad track and got a ride on the train that went past Grandma’s house. When she got home she was so sick that there wasn’t anything they could do for her. So within a period of nine years, five of Mama’s family died; with her mother dying on February 18, 1920 and her father going on June 1926. Her mother died during the flu season when there were so many deaths, she not only took care of her family but the neighbors, too. When she got it she was too tired. Grandpa Larkin died from appendicitis. Then in 1922 McKinley came to live with them, he had lived with them off and on from the time they were married, but this time he came back from the war, where he had been gassed. His duty while in the service was driving the ambulance that went out to pick up the dead and the wounded after a battle. I guess the things he seen and had to do was enough hell for him to live through so the Lord took him to a much better place. He was in love with a young girl named Vivian but he was in such a condition that he wouldn’t see her and broke off with her. Mama’s third daughter was born while McKinley lived with them so he named her Vivian after his girlfriend. He died in March 1922. It was a sad time for Mama also for she was very close to him. These were the days when the working man came into being, these were the days of John L. Lewis and his miners union. These were the days when a strike meant a strike, there were lots of scabs and lots of head beating. When they went on a strike it was not a very secure place for a father of five children to be. So that was the reason they left in the middle of winter to try to cross the mountains to get to Price. When she was in Wasco, California she not only picked cotton when she was about six months along. When that was done, she moved into town and took in washing to make ends meet. She didn’t get very much for her washing, about 50 cents a day. But it fed her children but I know that there were times when she went to bed without anything to eat. When her baby was born, she was too tiny and just wasn’t strong enough to live. What was really wrong with her was not known or they never told Mama. At the time the people in the middle class believed that there were too many children in the lower class and that they were better off dead so they didn’t try very hard to help her. When the baby died Mama spent ten dollars to have the baby put in a nice cemetery. The county official, a woman, called her all kinds of names and told her what a fool she was to spend that money on a dead child when she had other children. Then later after Katrina was born, Aunt Lydia and Uncle Isaac came out to live in California there was trouble between Kenneth and Jim and Earnest. Daddy would help them with their crops instead of helping Kenneth. Kenneth would haul his hay and put it in the barn and they would come down and take his hay out of the barn because they were too lazy to go to the fields to get it. Kenneth would try to stop them but they were too much bigger than he was. And Daddy didn’t care where they got the hay, he wouldn’t stand up for Kenneth. Kenneth ran away from home, he was gone for over a year and half of that Mama never knew where he was. It was during the time when there were so many men out of work and they were hoboing all over the country. On the trains they hired men called “Bulls” to keep the other men off the train. After waiting for so long she gave him up as dead. She wrote to her brothers and sisters in Tennessee and told them about it and how she thought Kenneth had been killed. All of the time he was down there living with them and not one of them even mentioned him in their letters. They wrote to her often but made it a point not to mention Kenneth. I do not know why to this day, how they could do that to her. While the boys were in the service, Earl was wounded by shrapnel, it went through his neck cutting his windpipe and it lodged at the back of his neck against the spinal cord. It was so close and against the cord from the inside that the doctors were afraid to operate on him for fear they would do more damage. He couldn’t talk for a long time, the doctors said that he never would but it takes more than that to stop a Smith from talking. He was in San Francisco, California. Mama wanted to go see him but with gas rationing you couldn’t drive a car. So Mama went through a very rough time for a few weeks. She finally got to go see him. It was hard with the travel on the buses during the war. You were put off at every station to let the VIP’s and G.I.’s on first, you did more sitting in the stations than traveling. Mama was very active and independent, even when Daddy had his stroke she stayed by herself, and came over and helped me with him, she took care of him with the help of the other girls in the family during the daytime. But when he died something happened, she wouldn’t stay by herself even to be in a room by herself with you in the next room. She became very depended, and over the years she had several small strokes. She lived five years after Daddy died; she was 85 years old and would have been 86 in June. She was still very determined though. She would take her medicine at anytime and all the time. When I took them away from her she looked continually for them. She would go through all the cupboards and even in the dresses. One day I caught her taking some aspirins, I called to her to wait so I could see how many she was taking. She quickly put them into her mouth and swallowed them and then tipped her head to one side and we na-na-na-na-na in a singsong voice. In other words now what can you do about that? She was like a dripping faucet she pick on you, just one little remark after another such things as, “I know everyone would be glad if I died. I’m going to stay with so and so, you don’t want me.” until you would be climbing the walls. All the time she had that look in her eye and you knew she was baiting you, and enjoying it. Her eyes were always sharp and she knew what she was doing. It might not have been what I thought was right but she knew what and why she did the thing. If you watched her eyes you could tell her moods and how she was going to act. She was a very courageous lady, and though she had her faults, most of them were because of the severeness of her life, and her constant struggle for food and a home for her children. It left her with a serious nature with very little tolerance for wasting time. She could not tolerate or understand anyone sitting around reading. Even up to the last years, if she saw anyone reading, she would start in “Why don't you wash windows? Why dont you do this. She was great to think up something for you to do. She loved to grow things and always had flowers growing somewhere. She was loved deeply by her children, we all thank her very much for keeping us alive in times that were very hard. 2 NOTE Siddie's Home (see scrapbook) The home of Siddie Bunn/Smith was called the "Old Webb Goat Farm" It now about 1000 feet from the Highway, in Granny's time there was no road through the farm it is now. When they went to school or to Glenmary they walked up the railroad tracks.About 350-400 feet from the house down through the fields was the wash through which the rail road runs. My sister Lela and I was visiting there in the 1980's, we had to watch out for snakes as we walked down to the edge of the wash. The railroad is in the bottom of the wash,which is about 15 or 20 feet dropped down from the edge of the field. It is straight down and then a steep hill on the other side. It is about 50-75 feet wide. I can remember Daddy telling the story of when he first saw Mama, she was in this wash beside the railroad track trying to get a goat out of the wash. She was trying to get the goat to go to the narrow path at the side of the wash. and of course the goat wanted to go the other way. The train going by with the railroad workers on a flat bed didn't help any.The train was going slow because of the narrow wash and the twist and turns it had to make along the bed of the wash. Daddy and one of his cousins was on the flat car, Daddy said to his cousin"that spirited woman is for me". I don't know how he managed to meet Mama, probably in Church as that was about all the social life they had and Glenmary was a small place, a post office, store and Church. The home of Siddie Bunn/Smith was called the "Old Webb Goat Farm" It now about 1000 feet from the Highway, in Granny's time there was no road through the farm it is now. When they went to school or to Glenmary they walked up the railroad tracks.About 350-400 feet from the house down through the fields was the wash through which the rail road runs. My sister Lela and I was visiting there in the 1980's, we had to watch out for snakes as we walked down to the edge of the wash. The railroad is in the bottom of the wash,which is about 15 or 20 feet dropped down from the edge of the field. It is straight down and then a steep hill on the other side. It is about 50-75 feet wide. I can remember Daddy telling the story of when he first saw Mama, she was in this wash beside the railroad track trying to get a goat out of the wash. She was trying to get the goat to go to the narrow path at the side of the wash. and of course the goat wanted to go the other way. The train going by with the railroad workers on a flat bed didn't help any.The train was going slow because of the narrow wash and the twist and turns it had to make along the bed of the wash. Daddy and one of his cousins was on the flat car, Daddy said to his cousin"that spirited woman is for me". I don't know how he managed to meet Mama, probably in Church as that was about all the social life they had and Glenmary was a small place, a post office, store and Church.

Siddie's Home (see scrapbook) The home of Siddie Bunn/Smith was called the "Old Webb Goat Farm" It now about 1000 feet from the Highway, in Granny's time there was no road through the farm it is now. When they went to school or to Glenmary they walked up the railroad tracks. About 350-400 feet from the house down through the fields was the wash through which the railroad runs. My sister Lela and I was visiting there in the 1980's, we had to watch out for snakes as we walked down to the edge of the wash. The railroad is in the bottom of the wash, which is about 15 or 20 feet dropped down from the edge of the field. It is straight down and then a steep hill on the other side. It is about 50-75 feet wide. I can remember Daddy telling the story of when he first saw Mama, she was in this wash beside the railroad track trying to get a goat out of the wash. She was trying to get the goat to go up the narrow path at the side of the wash. Of course the goat wanted to go the other way. With the train going by, with railroad workers on a flat bed, did'nt help any. The train was going slow because of the narrow wash and the twist and turns it had to make along the bed of the wash. Daddy and one of his cousins was on the flat car, Daddy said to his cousin, " that spirited woman is for me". I don't know how he managed to meet Mama, probably in Church as that was about all the social life they had and Glenmary was a small place, a post office, store and Church. The Saga of Siddie Margret Bunn Smith By Siddie in 1960-1965 On a sunny day on June the 30th, 1890 a baby girl was born to Larkin and Annie Bunn, the name they gave her was Siddie Margret Bunn. She was the third child out of a family of nine. She grew up on a little farm just outside the town of Glenmary, Tennessee. On the 27th day of October in the year of 1912, she married Andrew Jackson Smith. They lived in a little log house until the spring of 1914, when she left her home to join her husband Andrew in Sheridan, Wyoming, where he had gone to get a job. This was the start of a long line of moves to various parts of the west. She had a 9 month old son, Kenneth, when she left Glenmary, Tennessee. She lived in and around Sheridan in various 2-3 room shacks for the next 6 years, where Larkin and Lela and Patricia were born. Lark was born in 1915, Lela in 1917 and Patricia in 1919. Hard time kept on her trail until in 1921 she went to McGath, Wyoming to join her husband who has gone farther west to look for a job. Things picked up for her while there, then her brother-in-lay McKinly came to stay with them. He had been gassed in the war (World War 1), he died in her home in the spring of 1922. He died just after her third daughter Vivian was born. Trouble started at the mines, it went on a strike. So her husband, Andrew loaded up her and the kids in a Model T Ford touring car and started for Utah. They made the Utah Basin just ahead of a snowstorm. Just out of Duchesne, the storm caught up with them. For about one week or 10 days, because the car was stuck, they lived in an 8 ft. by 10 ft. tent in 2 feet of snow. But with the U. S. mail trucks with one truck in front and one behind, they were pulled and pushed over the divide into Price, Utah. They rented a farm in the town of Wellington, Utah. The summer of 1922 didn’t go so good, the next 3 years the only good thing that happened was a son was born Carl in 1923, and the family was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints in the summer of 1922. In June of 1922 they were married in the temple at Salt Lake City. In the fall of 1924 they loaded what they had into two wagons and started for Greenriver, Utah, that was like old pioneers with their two cows. They went to Greenriver, they didn’t get there until just before Thanksgiving time. They didn’t have much money so Siddie’s husband and oldest son loaded the wagons with apples and went back to the mines around Price to sell them so they could get enough money to last the winter and until they could raise a crop. The crop didn’t do so go so they moved into town. They lived on the bank of a dry wash out side of town and a neighbor was looking after the 3 youngest children when it started to rain, a flood came down the was 8 ft high or 10 ft. They were told it would be the next day before the water would go down. So Siddie walked the irrigation flume that was suspended across the wash. She knew her baby needed her, the flume went out just after she passed over. They finally went back to the mines at Columbia Steel, where all seven children came down with the measles at the same time. The mines were not safe at the time so the family went to Clawson where Andrew tried farming again, while living there they met the Asay family. They then moved back to the mines again, at Sunnyside. There things went better for a while. Then the traveling bug hit Andrew again so in the spring of 1927 they had a 1924 Studebaker touring car and a Model T Ford truck with which they started to make their fortune in sunny California. They passed through St. George, Utah when the roses were in bloom it was sure pretty then. They passed through Las Vegas, Nevada. It was just a small town, then it had about 1500 population. (May have missed a few cats or dogs and a horse or two.) They passed through the Los Angeles valley to a little town of Wasco, not far from Bakersfield where they were introduced to the art of picking cotton. (My back still aches when I think of it.) IN the Town of Caruthers, they raised their first crop of cotton in 1929. Also their fourth daughter, Dora Ellen was born. She was here for only a short visit then she went back home to her Father in Heaven on the 4th of July 1929. They kept trying to raise cotton, the fifth daughter Bertha Katrina was born in 1930. The next three years were pretty rough, things weren’t so good, but they didn’t go hungry. It was so bad they finally gave it up on California as a bad job and went back to Utah. They settled in St. George just after the first of the year in 1934. There they bough a lot and built a house on it at 400 South and Main St. The first real home that Siddie ever had in over 20 years. Things went along some good and some bad until the war years of 1942 when the service started taking the children, the first to go was the oldest Kenneth then Carl went in the service. Then Vivian and Earl joined the service. By the end of 1943 she had 3 sons and 1 daughter in the various branches of the services. In the next two years they covered all four battle fronts; Kenneth was in North Africa and Italy; the next was Carl in England and was in the Battle of the Bulge, he went through France, Germany and Belgium; Earl was in the South Seas and the Philippines Islands; Larkin worked on the ship yard in Artesia California, Vivian was on the home front. She was sure happy when the War ended in 1945 and they all came home alive and safe. Soon all the children were married and moved away from St. George. Four children moved to Henderson, Nevada and that area. So Siddie sold her home in St. George and moved to East Las Vegas where she now has a home, the second real home she had had. She now has 55 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren. This was written in Siddie’s own handwriting, and found after her death. It has been copied just as she wrote it, as Siddie was never one to express her feelings or dwell on the bad things in detail, I as her daughter with the help of other children would like to ad a postscript to show her how much courage. Siddie had and how much we loved her and thank her. Vivian Eleen Smith Broadway The neighbors next door were the Asays. Larkin married the girl next door. Ella Genevieve Asay. Her parents were Jerome Asay and Mary Louise Jensen Asay. When Siddie and Louise lost their husbands they grew old together. They even moved in-together. They were best of friends all the rest of their lives. They were called the Grandmas Twins. I loved going across the field from one grandma to the next. Granny Smith made the best pancakes, and Grandma Asay made the best Taffy Honey Candy. comment by Annalee Smith Addition to the Saga of Siddie Smith There were many things that happened in Mama’s life that she didn’t write in her “Saga of Siddie Smith”. When she was young she stayed with her grandmother at night, her father and mother lived on Grandma Webb’s farm. They had bough part of the old family farm and built a house close to Grandma Webb. There are many stories that Mama could tell about Grandma Webb and her life with her. These two were found written by Mother: “I can remember when Grandmother made her own soap out of lye, hickory wood ashes.” I can remember when Mama made her own soap. “I can remember when the sun eclipsed at 11 o’clock in the day time and it was so dark that the chickens went to roost, and us six children were so afraid we had to hold on to grandmother all the time it was eclipsed.” Grandma Webb went to church as long as she was able to walk. After Mama and Daddy had been in Wyoming for about two years Sam and Annie came out and lived with them born about a year. While they were out there Alice, Mama’s sister died in March of 1917. Sam had always Had asthma and heart trouble, he got sick and wanted to go home so Mama and Daddy borrowed enough money to get them home to Tennessee where he lived for about three months then he died in June 10, 1917. Mama was not able to go home at that time because she was expecting Larkin. After Lela was born she went home for a little while to see her folks. Then in 1920 her mother died but again she could not go home for they were having it so hard. While Mama and Daddy were living around Sheridan in 1921, Mama’s brother, Virgal and his family came out to work in the mines. Her brother-in-law Rusau came with them. Virgal was working in the mines with Rusau. Rusau was the experienced miner, he drilled out a section of the roof and placed his charge in the holes. Then he sent Virgal to go check them, Virgal was not experienced enough and the charge went off crushing him underneath. He was dead when they got the coal off of him. Mother always blamed Ruasu even believed he did it on purpose. But he was responsible in as much as it was his job to make sure everyone was clear before he set the charge off. But it was a very sad thing for Mama for she also blamed him for the death of Alice. The story was that Alice was down at her mothers one day and Ruasu came to pick her up he was drunk. They started out in an old wagon, he was whipping the horses making them run, one of the neighbors shouted at him to stop but that made him go faster. Alice was about six months along, she fell out and the wagon ran over her. He took her on home and she had the baby, he would not call the doctor for her. She stayed in bed for a couple of days then her mother-in-law put her to doing the washing, using the old scrub board, she became so sick that she picked up the other little girl and walked down the mountain side to the railroad track and got a ride on the train that went past Grandma’s house. When she got home she was so sick that there wasn’t anything they could do for her. So within a period of nine years, five of Mama’s family died; with her mother dying on February 18, 1920 and her father going on June 1926. Her mother died during the flu season when there were so many deaths, she not only took care of her family but the neighbors, too. When she got it she was too tired. Grandpa Larkin died from appendicitis. Then in 1922 McKinley came to live with them, he had lived with them off and on from the time they were married, but this time he came back from the war, where he had been gassed. His duty while in the service was driving the ambulance that went out to pick up the dead and the wounded after a battle. I guess the things he seen and had to do was enough hell for him to live through so the Lord took him to a much better place. He was in love with a young girl named Vivian but he was in such a condition that he wouldn’t see her and broke off with her. Mama’s third daughter was born while McKinley lived with them so he named her Vivian after his girlfriend. He died in March 1922. It was a sad time for Mama also for she was very close to him. These were the days when the working man came into being, these were the days of John L. Lewis and his miners union. These were the days when a strike meant a strike, there were lots of scabs and lots of head beating. When they went on a strike it was not a very secure place for a father of five children to be. So that was the reason they left in the middle of winter to try to cross the mountains to get to Price. When she was in Wasco, California she not only picked cotton when she was about six months along. When that was done, she moved into town and took in washing to make ends meet. She didn’t get very much for her washing, about 50 cents a day. But it fed her children but I know that there were times when she went to bed without anything to eat. When her baby was born, she was too tiny and just wasn’t strong enough to live. What was really wrong with her was not known or they never told Mama. At the time the people in the middle class believed that there were too many children in the lower class and that they were better off dead so they didn’t try very hard to help her. When the baby died Mama spent ten dollars to have the baby put in a nice cemetery. The county official, a woman, called her all kinds of names and told her what a fool she was to spend that money on a dead child when she had other children. Then later after Katrina was born, Aunt Lydia and Uncle Isaac came out to live in California there was trouble between Kenneth and Jim and Earnest. Daddy would help them with their crops instead of helping Kenneth. Kenneth would haul his hay and put it in the barn and they would come down and take his hay out of the barn because they were too lazy to go to the fields to get it. Kenneth would try to stop them but they were too much bigger than he was. And Daddy didn’t care where they got the hay, he wouldn’t stand up for Kenneth. Kenneth ran away from home, he was gone for over a year and half of that Mama never knew where he was. It was during the time when there were so many men out of work and they were hoboing all over the country. On the trains they hired men called “Bulls” to keep the other men off the train. After waiting for so long she gave him up as dead. She wrote to her brothers and sisters in Tennessee and told them about it and how she thought Kenneth had been killed. All of the time he was down there living with them and not one of them even mentioned him in their letters. They wrote to her often but made it a point not to mention Kenneth. I do not know why to this day, how they could do that to her. While the boys were in the service, Earl was wounded by shrapnel, it went through his neck cutting his windpipe and it lodged at the back of his neck against the spinal cord. It was so close and against the cord from the inside that the doctors were afraid to operate on him for fear they would do more damage. He couldn’t talk for a long time, the doctors said that he never would but it takes more than that to stop a Smith from talking. He was in San Francisco, California. Mama wanted to go see him but with gas rationing you couldn’t drive a car. So Mama went through a very rough time for a few weeks. She finally got to go see him. It was hard with the travel on the buses during the war. You were put off at every station to let the VIP’s and G.I.’s on first, you did more sitting in the stations than traveling. Mama was very active and independent, even when Daddy had his stroke she stayed by herself, and came over and helped me with him, she took care of him with the help of the other girls in the family during the daytime. But when he died something happened, she wouldn’t stay by herself even to be in a room by herself with you in the next room. She became very depended, and over the years she had several small strokes. She lived five years after Daddy died; she was 85 years old and would have been 86 in June. She was still very determined though. She would take her medicine at anytime and all the time. When I took them away from her she looked continually for them. She would go through all the cupboards and even in the dresses. One day I caught her taking some aspirins, I called to her to wait so I could see how many she was taking. She quickly put them into her mouth and swallowed them and then tipped her head to one side and we na-na-na-na-na in a singsong voice. In other words now what can you do about that? She was like a dripping faucet she pick on you, just one little remark after another such things as, “I know everyone would be glad if I died. I’m going to stay with so and so, you don’t want me.” until you would be climbing the walls. All the time she had that look in her eye and you knew she was baiting you, and enjoying it. Her eyes were always sharp and she knew what she was doing. It might not have been what I thought was right but she knew what and why she did the thing. If you watched her eyes you could tell her moods and how she was going to act. She was a very courageous lady, and though she had her faults, most of them were because of the severeness of her life, and her constant struggle for food and a home for her children. It left her with a serious nature with very little tolerance for wasting time. She could not tolerate or understand anyone sitting around reading. Even up to the last years, if she saw anyone reading, she would start in “Why don't you wash windows? Why dont you do this. She was great to think up something for you to do. She loved to grow things and always had flowers growing somewhere. She was loved deeply by her children, we all thank her very much for keeping us alive in times that were very hard.

Siddie's Home (see scrapbook) On a sunny day on June the 30th, 1890 a baby girl was born to Larkin and Annie Bunn, the name they gave her was Siddie Margret Bunn. She was the third child out of a family of nine. She grew up on a little farm just outside the town of Glenmary, Tennessee. On the 27th day of October in the year of 1912, she married Andrew Jackson Smith. They lived in a little log house until the spring of 1914, when she left her home to join her husband Andrew in Sheridan, Wyoming, where he had gone to get a job. This was the start of a long line of moves to various parts of the west. She had a 9 month old son, Kenneth, when she left Glenmary, Tennessee. She lived in and around Sheridan in various 2-3 room shacks for the next 6 years, where Larkin and Lela and Patricia were born. Lark was born in 1915, Lela in 1917 and Patricia in 1919. Hard time kept on her trail until in 1921 she went to McGath, Wyoming to join her husband who has gone farther west to look for a job. Things picked up for her while there, then her brother-in-lay McKenly came to stay with them. He had been gassed in the war (World War 1), he died in her home in the spring of 1922. He died just after her third daughter Vivian was born. Trouble started at the mines, it went on a strike. So her husband, Andrew loaded up her and the kids in a Model T Ford touring car and started for Utah. They made the Utah Basin just ahead of a snowstorm. Just out of Duchesne, the storm caught up with them. For about one week or 10 days, because the car was stuck, they lived in an 8 ft. by 10 ft. tent in 2 feet of snow. But with the U. S. mail trucks with one truck in front and one behind, they were pulled and pushed over the divide into Price, Utah. They rented a farm in the town of Wellington, Utah. The summer of 1922 didn’t go so good, the next 3 years the only good thing that happened was a son was born Carl in 1923, and the family was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints in the summer of 1922. In June of 1922 they were married in the temple at Salt Lake City. In the fall of 1924 they loaded what they had into two wagons and started for Greenriver, Utah, that was like old pioneers with their two cows. They went to Greenriver, they didn’t get there until just before Thanksgiving time. They didn’t have much money so Siddie’s husband and oldest son loaded the wagons with apples and went back to the mines around Price to sell them so they could get enough money to last the winter and until they could raise a crop. The crop didn’t do so go so they moved into town. They lived on the bank of a dry wash out side of town and a neighbor was looking after the 3 youngest children when it started to rain, a flood came down the was 8 ft high or 10 ft. They were told it would be the next day before the water would go down. So Siddie walked the irrigation flume that was suspended across the wash. She knew her baby needed her, the flume went out just after she passed over. They finally went back to the mines at Columbia Steel, where all seven children came down with the measles at the same time. The mines were not safe at the time so the family went to Clawson where Andrew tried farming again, while living there they met the Asay family. They then moved back to the mines again, at Sunnyside. There things went better for a while. Then the traveling bug bit Andrew again so in the spring of 1927 they had a 1924 Studebaker touring car and a Model T Ford truck with which they started to make their fortune in sunny California. They passed through St. George, Utah when the roses were in bloom it was sure pretty then. They passed through Las Vegas, Nevada. It was just a small town, then it had about 1500 population. (May have missed a few cats or dogs and a horse or two.) They passed through the Los Angeles valley to a little town of Wasco, not far from Bakersfield where they were introduced to the art of picking cotton. (My back still aches when I think of it.) IN the Town of Caruthers, they raised their first crop of cotton in 1929. Also their fourth daughter, Dora Ellen was born. She was here for only a short visit then she went back home to her Father in Heaven on the 4th of July 1929. They kept trying to raise cotton, the fifth daughter Bertha Katrina was born in 1930. The next three years were pretty rough, things weren’t so good, but they didn’t go hungry. It was so bad they finally gave it up on California as a bad job and went back to Utah. They settled in St. George just after the first of the year in 1934. There they bough a lot and built a house on it at 400 South and Main St. The first real home that Siddie ever had in over 20 years. Things went along some good and some bad until the war years of 1942 when the service started taking the children, the first to go was the oldest Kenneth then Carl went in the service. Then Vivian and Earl joined the service. By the end of 1943 she had 3 sons and 1 daughter in the various branches of the services. In the next two years they covered all four battle fronts; Kenneth was in North Africa and Italy; the next was Carl in England and was in the Battle of the Bulge, he went through France, Germany and Belgium; Earl was in the South Seas and the Philippines Islands; Larkin worked on the ship yard in Artesia California, Vivian was on the home front. She was sure happy when the War ended in 1945 and they all came home alive and safe. Soon all the children were married and moved away from St. George. Four children moved to Henderson, Nevada and that area. So Siddie sold her home in St. George and moved to East Las Vegas where she now has a home, the second real home she had had. She now has 55 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren. This was written in Siddie’s own handwriting, and found after her death. It has been copied just as she wrote it, as Siddie was never one to express her feelings or dwell on the bad things in detail, I as her daughter with the help of other children would like to ad a postscript to show her how much courage. Siddie had and how much we loved her and thank her. Vivian Eleen Smith Broadway The neighbors next door were the Asays. Larkin married the girl next door. Ella Genevieve Asay. Her parents were Jerome Asay and Mary Louise Jensen Asay. When Siddie and Louise lost their husbands they grew old together. They even moved in-together. They were best of friends all the rest of their lives. They were called the Grandmas Twins. I loved going across the field from one grandma to the next. Granny Smith made the best pancakes, and Grandma Asay made the best Taffy Honey Candy. comment by Annalee Smith Addition to the Saga of Siddie Smith There were many things that happened in Mama’s life that she didn’t write in her “Saga of Siddie Smith”. When she was young she stayed with her grandmother at night, her father and mother lived on Grandma Webb’s farm. They had bough part of the old family farm and built a house close to Grandma Webb. There are many stories that Mama could tell about Grandma Webb and her life with her. These two were found written by Mother: “I can remember when Grandmother made her own soap out of lye, hickory wood ashes.” I can remember when Mama made her own soap. “I can remember when the sun eclipsed at 11 o’clock in the day time and it was so dark that the chickens went to roost, and us six children were so afraid we had to hold on to grandmother all the time it was eclipsed.” Grandma Webb went to church as long as she was able to walk. After Mama and Daddy had been in Wyoming for about two years Sam and Annie came out and lived with them born about a year. While they were out there Alice, Mama’s sister died in March of 1917. Sam had always Had asthma and heart trouble, he got sick and wanted to go home so Mama and Daddy borrowed enough money to get them home to Tennessee where he lived for about three months then he died in June 10, 1917. Mama was not able to go home at that time because she was expecting Larkin. After Lela was born she went home for a little while to see her folks. Then in 1920 her mother died but again she could not go home for they were having it so hard. While Mama and Daddy were living around Sheridan in 1921, Mama’s brother, Virgal and his family came out to work in the mines. Her brother-in-law Rusau came with them. Virgal was working in the mines with Rusau. Rusau was the experienced miner, he drilled out a section of the roof and placed his charge in the holes. Then he sent Virgal to go check them, Virgal was not experienced enough and the charge went off crushing him underneath. He was dead when they got the coal off of him. Mother always blamed Ruasu even believed he did it on purpose. But he was responsible in as much as it was his job to make sure everyone was clear before he set the charge off. But it was a very sad thing for Mama for she also blamed him for the death of Alice. The story was that Alice was down at her mothers one day and Ruasu came to pick her up he was drunk. They started out in an old wagon, he was whipping the horses making them run, one of the neighbors shouted at him to stop but that made him go faster. Alice was about six months along, she fell out and the wagon ran over her. He took her on home and she had the baby, he would not call the doctor for her. She stayed in bed for a couple of days then her mother-in-law put her to doing the washing, using the old scrub board, she became so sick that she picked up the other little girl and walked down the mountain side to the railroad track and got a ride on the train that went past Grandma’s house. When she got home she was so sick that there wasn’t anything they could do for her. So within a period of nine years, five of Mama’s family died; with her mother dying on February 18, 1920 and her father going on June 1926. Her mother died during the flu season when there were so many deaths, she not only took care of her family but the neighbors, too. When she got it she was too tired. Grandpa Larkin died from appendicitis. Then in 1922 McKinley came to live with them, he had lived with them off and on from the time they were married, but this time he came back from the war, where he had been gassed. His duty while in the service was driving the ambulance that went out to pick up the dead and the wounded after a battle. I guess the things he seen and had to do was enough hell for him to live through so the Lord took him to a much better place. He was in love with a young girl named Vivian but he was in such a condition that he wouldn’t see her and broke off with her. Mama’s third daughter was born while McKinley lived with them so he named her Vivian after his girlfriend. He died in March 1922. It was a sad time for Mama also for she was very close to him. These were the days when the working man came into being, these were the days of John L. Lewis and his miners union. These were the days when a strike meant a strike, there were lots of scabs and lots of head beating. When they went on a strike it was not a very secure place for a father of five children to be. So that was the reason they left in the middle of winter to try to cross the mountains to get to Price. When she was in Wasco, California she not only picked cotton when she was about six months along. When that was done, she moved into town and took in washing to make ends meet. She didn’t get very much for her washing, about 50 cents a day. But it fed her children but I know that there were times when she went to bed without anything to eat. When her baby was born, she was too tiny and just wasn’t strong enough to live. What was really wrong with her was not known or they never told Mama. At the time the people in the middle class believed that there were too many children in the lower class and that they were better off dead so they didn’t try very hard to help her. When the baby died Mama spent ten dollars to have the baby put in a nice cemetery. The county official, a woman, called her all kinds of names and told her what a fool she was to spend that money on a dead child when she had other children. Then later after Katrina was born, Aunt Lydia and Uncle Isaac came out to live in California there was trouble between Kenneth and Jim and Earnest. Daddy would help them with their crops instead of helping Kenneth. Kenneth would haul his hay and put it in the barn and they would come down and take his hay out of the barn because they were too lazy to go to the fields to get it. Kenneth would try to stop them but they were too much bigger than he was. And Daddy didn’t care where they got the hay, he wouldn’t stand up for Kenneth. Kenneth ran away from home, he was gone for over a year and half of that Mama never knew where he was. It was during the time when there were so many men out of work and they were hoboing all over the country. On the trains they hired men called “Bulls” to keep the other men off the train. After waiting for so long she gave him up as dead. She wrote to her brothers and sisters in Tennessee and told them about it and how she thought Kenneth had been killed. All of the time he was down there living with them and not one of them even mentioned him in their letters. They wrote to her often but made it a point not to mention Kenneth. I do not know why to this day, how they could do that to her. While the boys were in the service, Earl was wounded by shrapnel, it went through his neck cutting his windpipe and it lodged at the back of his neck against the spinal cord. It was so close and against the cord from the inside that the doctors were afraid to operate on him for fear they would do more damage. He couldn’t talk for a long time, the doctors said that he never would but it takes more than that to stop a Smith from talking. He was in San Francisco, California. Mama wanted to go see him but with gas rationing you couldn’t drive a car. So Mama went through a very rough time for a few weeks. She finally got to go see him. It was hard with the travel on the buses during the war. You were put off at every station to let the VIP’s and G.I.’s on first, you did more sitting in the stations than traveling. Mama was very active and independent, even when Daddy had his stroke she stayed by herself, and came over and helped me with him, she took care of him with the help of the other girls in the family during the daytime. But when he died something happened, she wouldn’t stay by herself even to be in a room by herself with you in the next room. She became very depended, and over the years she had several small strokes. She lived five years after Daddy died; she was 85 years old and would have been 86 in June. She was still very determined though. She would take her medicine at anytime and all the time. When I took them away from her she looked continually for them. She would go through all the cupboards and even in the dresses. One day I caught her taking some aspirins, I called to her to wait so I could see how many she was taking. She quickly put them into her mouth and swallowed them and then tipped her head to one side and we na-na-na-na-na in a singsong voice. In other words now what can you do about that? She was like a dripping faucet she pick on you, just one little remark after another such things as, “I know everyone would be glad if I died. I’m going to stay with so and so, you don’t want me.” until you would be climbing the walls. All the time she had that look in her eye and you knew she was baiting you, and enjoying it. Her eyes were always sharp and she knew what she was doing. It might not have been what I thought was right but she knew what and why she did the thing. If you watched her eyes you could tell her moods and how she was going to act. She was a very courageous lady, and though she had her faults, most of them were because of the severeness of her life, and her constant struggle for food and a home for her children. It left her with a serious nature with very little tolerance for wasting time. She could not tolerate or understand anyone sitting around reading. Even up to the last years, if she saw anyone reading, she would start in “Why don't you wash windows? Why dont you do this. She was great to think up something for you to do. She loved to grow things and always had flowers growing somewhere. She was loved deeply by her children, we all thank her very much for keeping us alive in times that were very hard. 2 NOTE Siddie's Home (see scrapbook) The home of Siddie Bunn/Smith was called the "Old Webb Goat Farm" It now about 1000 feet from the Highway, in Granny's time there was no road through the farm it is now. When they went to school or to Glenmary they walked up the railroad tracks.About 350-400 feet from the house down through the fields was the wash through which the rail road runs. My sister Lela and I was visiting there in the 1980's, we had to watch out for snakes as we walked down to the edge of the wash. The railroad is in the bottom of the wash,which is about 15 or 20 feet dropped down from the edge of the field. It is straight down and then a steep hill on the other side. It is about 50-75 feet wide. I can remember Daddy telling the story of when he first saw Mama, she was in this wash beside the railroad track trying to get a goat out of the wash. She was trying to get the goat to go to the narrow path at the side of the wash. and of course the goat wanted to go the other way. The train going by with the railroad workers on a flat bed didn't help any.The train was going slow because of the narrow wash and the twist and turns it had to make along the bed of the wash. Daddy and one of his cousins was on the flat car, Daddy said to his cousin"that spirited woman is for me". I don't know how he managed to meet Mama, probably in Church as that was about all the social life they had and Glenmary was a small place, a post office, store and Church. The home of Siddie Bunn/Smith was called the "Old Webb Goat Farm" It now about 1000 feet from the Highway, in Granny's time there was no road through the farm it is now. When they went to school or to Glenmary they walked up the railroad tracks.About 350-400 feet from the house down through the fields was the wash through which the rail road runs. My sister Lela and I was visiting there in the 1980's, we had to watch out for snakes as we walked down to the edge of the wash. The railroad is in the bottom of the wash,which is about 15 or 20 feet dropped down from the edge of the field. It is straight down and then a steep hill on the other side. It is about 50-75 feet wide. I can remember Daddy telling the story of when he first saw Mama, she was in this wash beside the railroad track trying to get a goat out of the wash. She was trying to get the goat to go to the narrow path at the side of the wash. and of course the goat wanted to go the other way. The train going by with the railroad workers on a flat bed didn't help any.The train was going slow because of the narrow wash and the twist and turns it had to make along the bed of the wash. Daddy and one of his cousins was on the flat car, Daddy said to his cousin"that spirited woman is for me". I don't know how he managed to meet Mama, probably in Church as that was about all the social life they had and Glenmary was a small place, a post office, store and Church.

Siddie's Home (see scrapbook) The home of Siddie Bunn/Smith was called the "Old Webb Goat Farm" It now about 1000 feet from the Highway, in Granny's time there was no road through the farm it is now. When they went to school or to Glenmary they walked up the railroad tracks. About 350-400 feet from the house down through the fields was the wash through which the railroad runs. My sister Lela and I was visiting there in the 1980's, we had to watch out for snakes as we walked down to the edge of the wash. The railroad is in the bottom of the wash, which is about 15 or 20 feet dropped down from the edge of the field. It is straight down and then a steep hill on the other side. It is about 50-75 feet wide. I can remember Daddy telling the story of when he first saw Mama, she was in this wash beside the railroad track trying to get a goat out of the wash. She was trying to get the goat to go up the narrow path at the side of the wash. Of course the goat wanted to go the other way. With the train going by, with railroad workers on a flat bed, did'nt help any. The train was going slow because of the narrow wash and the twist and turns it had to make along the bed of the wash. Daddy and one of his cousins was on the flat car, Daddy said to his cousin, " that spirited woman is for me". I don't know how he managed to meet Mama, probably in Church as that was about all the social life they had and Glenmary was a small place, a post office, store and Church. The Saga of Siddie Margret Bunn Smith By Siddie in 1960-1965 On a sunny day on June the 30th, 1890 a baby girl was born to Larkin and Annie Bunn, the name they gave her was Siddie Margret Bunn. She was the third child out of a family of nine. She grew up on a little farm just outside the town of Glenmary, Tennessee. On the 27th day of October in the year of 1912, she married Andrew Jackson Smith. They lived in a little log house until the spring of 1914, when she left her home to join her husband Andrew in Sheridan, Wyoming, where he had gone to get a job. This was the start of a long line of moves to various parts of the west. She had a 9 month old son, Kenneth, when she left Glenmary, Tennessee. She lived in and around Sheridan in various 2-3 room shacks for the next 6 years, where Larkin and Lela and Patricia were born. Lark was born in 1915, Lela in 1917 and Patricia in 1919. Hard time kept on her trail until in 1921 she went to McGath, Wyoming to join her husband who has gone farther west to look for a job. Things picked up for her while there, then her brother-in-lay McKinly came to stay with them. He had been gassed in the war (World War 1), he died in her home in the spring of 1922. He died just after her third daughter Vivian was born. Trouble started at the mines, it went on a strike. So her husband, Andrew loaded up her and the kids in a Model T Ford touring car and started for Utah. They made the Utah Basin just ahead of a snowstorm. Just out of Duchesne, the storm caught up with them. For about one week or 10 days, because the car was stuck, they lived in an 8 ft. by 10 ft. tent in 2 feet of snow. But with the U. S. mail trucks with one truck in front and one behind, they were pulled and pushed over the divide into Price, Utah. They rented a farm in the town of Wellington, Utah. The summer of 1922 didn’t go so good, the next 3 years the only good thing that happened was a son was born Carl in 1923, and the family was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints in the summer of 1922. In June of 1922 they were married in the temple at Salt Lake City. In the fall of 1924 they loaded what they had into two wagons and started for Greenriver, Utah, that was like old pioneers with their two cows. They went to Greenriver, they didn’t get there until just before Thanksgiving time. They didn’t have much money so Siddie’s husband and oldest son loaded the wagons with apples and went back to the mines around Price to sell them so they could get enough money to last the winter and until they could raise a crop. The crop didn’t do so go so they moved into town. They lived on the bank of a dry wash out side of town and a neighbor was looking after the 3 youngest children when it started to rain, a flood came down the was 8 ft high or 10 ft. They were told it would be the next day before the water would go down. So Siddie walked the irrigation flume that was suspended across the wash. She knew her baby needed her, the flume went out just after she passed over. They finally went back to the mines at Columbia Steel, where all seven children came down with the measles at the same time. The mines were not safe at the time so the family went to Clawson where Andrew tried farming again, while living there they met the Asay family. They then moved back to the mines again, at Sunnyside. There things went better for a while. Then the traveling bug hit Andrew again so in the spring of 1927 they had a 1924 Studebaker touring car and a Model T Ford truck with which they started to make their fortune in sunny California. They passed through St. George, Utah when the roses were in bloom it was sure pretty then. They passed through Las Vegas, Nevada. It was just a small town, then it had about 1500 population. (May have missed a few cats or dogs and a horse or two.) They passed through the Los Angeles valley to a little town of Wasco, not far from Bakersfield where they were introduced to the art of picking cotton. (My back still aches when I think of it.) IN the Town of Caruthers, they raised their first crop of cotton in 1929. Also their fourth daughter, Dora Ellen was born. She was here for only a short visit then she went back home to her Father in Heaven on the 4th of July 1929. They kept trying to raise cotton, the fifth daughter Bertha Katrina was born in 1930. The next three years were pretty rough, things weren’t so good, but they didn’t go hungry. It was so bad they finally gave it up on California as a bad job and went back to Utah. They settled in St. George just after the first of the year in 1934. There they bough a lot and built a house on it at 400 South and Main St. The first real home that Siddie ever had in over 20 years. Things went along some good and some bad until the war years of 1942 when the service started taking the children, the first to go was the oldest Kenneth then Carl went in the service. Then Vivian and Earl joined the service. By the end of 1943 she had 3 sons and 1 daughter in the various branches of the services. In the next two years they covered all four battle fronts; Kenneth was in North Africa and Italy; the next was Carl in England and was in the Battle of the Bulge, he went through France, Germany and Belgium; Earl was in the South Seas and the Philippines Islands; Larkin worked on the ship yard in Artesia California, Vivian was on the home front. She was sure happy when the War ended in 1945 and they all came home alive and safe. Soon all the children were married and moved away from St. George. Four children moved to Henderson, Nevada and that area. So Siddie sold her home in St. George and moved to East Las Vegas where she now has a home, the second real home she had had. She now has 55 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren. This was written in Siddie’s own handwriting, and found after her death. It has been copied just as she wrote it, as Siddie was never one to express her feelings or dwell on the bad things in detail, I as her daughter with the help of other children would like to ad a postscript to show her how much courage. Siddie had and how much we loved her and thank her. Vivian Eleen Smith Broadway The neighbors next door were the Asays. Larkin married the girl next door. Ella Genevieve Asay. Her parents were Jerome Asay and Mary Louise Jensen Asay. When Siddie and Louise lost their husbands they grew old together. They even moved in-together. They were best of friends all the rest of their lives. They were called the Grandmas Twins. I loved going across the field from one grandma to the next. Granny Smith made the best pancakes, and Grandma Asay made the best Taffy Honey Candy. comment by Annalee Smith Addition to the Saga of Siddie Smith There were many things that happened in Mama’s life that she didn’t write in her “Saga of Siddie Smith”. When she was young she stayed with her grandmother at night, her father and mother lived on Grandma Webb’s farm. They had bough part of the old family farm and built a house close to Grandma Webb. There are many stories that Mama could tell about Grandma Webb and her life with her. These two were found written by Mother: “I can remember when Grandmother made her own soap out of lye, hickory wood ashes.” I can remember when Mama made her own soap. “I can remember when the sun eclipsed at 11 o’clock in the day time and it was so dark that the chickens went to roost, and us six children were so afraid we had to hold on to grandmother all the time it was eclipsed.” Grandma Webb went to church as long as she was able to walk. After Mama and Daddy had been in Wyoming for about two years Sam and Annie came out and lived with them born about a year. While they were out there Alice, Mama’s sister died in March of 1917. Sam had always Had asthma and heart trouble, he got sick and wanted to go home so Mama and Daddy borrowed enough money to get them home to Tennessee where he lived for about three months then he died in June 10, 1917. Mama was not able to go home at that time because she was expecting Larkin. After Lela was born she went home for a little while to see her folks. Then in 1920 her mother died but again she could not go home for they were having it so hard. While Mama and Daddy were living around Sheridan in 1921, Mama’s brother, Virgal and his family came out to work in the mines. Her brother-in-law Rusau came with them. Virgal was working in the mines with Rusau. Rusau was the experienced miner, he drilled out a section of the roof and placed his charge in the holes. Then he sent Virgal to go check them, Virgal was not experienced enough and the charge went off crushing him underneath. He was dead when they got the coal off of him. Mother always blamed Ruasu even believed he did it on purpose. But he was responsible in as much as it was his job to make sure everyone was clear before he set the charge off. But it was a very sad thing for Mama for she also blamed him for the death of Alice. The story was that Alice was down at her mothers one day and Ruasu came to pick her up he was drunk. They started out in an old wagon, he was whipping the horses making them run, one of the neighbors shouted at him to stop but that made him go faster. Alice was about six months along, she fell out and the wagon ran over her. He took her on home and she had the baby, he would not call the doctor for her. She stayed in bed for a couple of days then her mother-in-law put her to doing the washing, using the old scrub board, she became so sick that she picked up the other little girl and walked down the mountain side to the railroad track and got a ride on the train that went past Grandma’s house. When she got home she was so sick that there wasn’t anything they could do for her. So within a period of nine years, five of Mama’s family died; with her mother dying on February 18, 1920 and her father going on June 1926. Her mother died during the flu season when there were so many deaths, she not only took care of her family but the neighbors, too. When she got it she was too tired. Grandpa Larkin died from appendicitis. Then in 1922 McKinley came to live with them, he had lived with them off and on from the time they were married, but this time he came back from the war, where he had been gassed. His duty while in the service was driving the ambulance that went out to pick up the dead and the wounded after a battle. I guess the things he seen and had to do was enough hell for him to live through so the Lord took him to a much better place. He was in love with a young girl named Vivian but he was in such a condition that he wouldn’t see her and broke off with her. Mama’s third daughter was born while McKinley lived with them so he named her Vivian after his girlfriend. He died in March 1922. It was a sad time for Mama also for she was very close to him. These were the days when the working man came into being, these were the days of John L. Lewis and his miners union. These were the days when a strike meant a strike, there were lots of scabs and lots of head beating. When they went on a strike it was not a very secure place for a father of five children to be. So that was the reason they left in the middle of winter to try to cross the mountains to get to Price. When she was in Wasco, California she not only picked cotton when she was about six months along. When that was done, she moved into town and took in washing to make ends meet. She didn’t get very much for her washing, about 50 cents a day. But it fed her children but I know that there were times when she went to bed without anything to eat. When her baby was born, she was too tiny and just wasn’t strong enough to live. What was really wrong with her was not known or they never told Mama. At the time the people in the middle class believed that there were too many children in the lower class and that they were better off dead so they didn’t try very hard to help her. When the baby died Mama spent ten dollars to have the baby put in a nice cemetery. The county official, a woman, called her all kinds of names and told her what a fool she was to spend that money on a dead child when she had other children. Then later after Katrina was born, Aunt Lydia and Uncle Isaac came out to live in California there was trouble between Kenneth and Jim and Earnest. Daddy would help them with their crops instead of helping Kenneth. Kenneth would haul his hay and put it in the barn and they would come down and take his hay out of the barn because they were too lazy to go to the fields to get it. Kenneth would try to stop them but they were too much bigger than he was. And Daddy didn’t care where they got the hay, he wouldn’t stand up for Kenneth. Kenneth ran away from home, he was gone for over a year and half of that Mama never knew where he was. It was during the time when there were so many men out of work and they were hoboing all over the country. On the trains they hired men called “Bulls” to keep the other men off the train. After waiting for so long she gave him up as dead. She wrote to her brothers and sisters in Tennessee and told them about it and how she thought Kenneth had been killed. All of the time he was down there living with them and not one of them even mentioned him in their letters. They wrote to her often but made it a point not to mention Kenneth. I do not know why to this day, how they could do that to her. While the boys were in the service, Earl was wounded by shrapnel, it went through his neck cutting his windpipe and it lodged at the back of his neck against the spinal cord. It was so close and against the cord from the inside that the doctors were afraid to operate on him for fear they would do more damage. He couldn’t talk for a long time, the doctors said that he never would but it takes more than that to stop a Smith from talking. He was in San Francisco, California. Mama wanted to go see him but with gas rationing you couldn’t drive a car. So Mama went through a very rough time for a few weeks. She finally got to go see him. It was hard with the travel on the buses during the war. You were put off at every station to let the VIP’s and G.I.’s on first, you did more sitting in the stations than traveling. Mama was very active and independent, even when Daddy had his stroke she stayed by herself, and came over and helped me with him, she took care of him with the help of the other girls in the family during the daytime. But when he died something happened, she wouldn’t stay by herself even to be in a room by herself with you in the next room. She became very depended, and over the years she had several small strokes. She lived five years after Daddy died; she was 85 years old and would have been 86 in June. She was still very determined though. She would take her medicine at anytime and all the time. When I took them away from her she looked continually for them. She would go through all the cupboards and even in the dresses. One day I caught her taking some aspirins, I called to her to wait so I could see how many she was taking. She quickly put them into her mouth and swallowed them and then tipped her head to one side and we na-na-na-na-na in a singsong voice. In other words now what can you do about that? She was like a dripping faucet she pick on you, just one little remark after another such things as, “I know everyone would be glad if I died. I’m going to stay with so and so, you don’t want me.” until you would be climbing the walls. All the time she had that look in her eye and you knew she was baiting you, and enjoying it. Her eyes were always sharp and she knew what she was doing. It might not have been what I thought was right but she knew what and why she did the thing. If you watched her eyes you could tell her moods and how she was going to act. She was a very courageous lady, and though she had her faults, most of them were because of the severeness of her life, and her constant struggle for food and a home for her children. It left her with a serious nature with very little tolerance for wasting time. She could not tolerate or understand anyone sitting around reading. Even up to the last years, if she saw anyone reading, she would start in “Why don't you wash windows? Why dont you do this. She was great to think up something for you to do. She loved to grow things and always had flowers growing somewhere. She was loved deeply by her children, we all thank her very much for keeping us alive in times that were very hard.