Other Cox Family Histories

Maggie Vaughn Cox - Life Story

Daughter of Jonathan Hiram Daniel Cox and Louisa Isabella Price.
Wife of Paul Emil Gottfried Schwartz.
[Vaughn spells her father's name as Johnathan.]

Life Story of
Maggie Vaughn Schwartz

Written And Recorded In Her Own Words
As She Spoke Them

I’m old and wrinkled and full of fleas. If I reach May 9, 1981, I’ll be eighty years old. You all know what I look like. I’m a sight for sore eyes! I’ll soon be a bald headed eagle, but there’s still snow on the mountain, so there’s still fire in the furnace. Sometime the embers will dim and I will leave this earth and return to my heavenly home. You will not see much of me then, but I’ll be on my way to living a wonderful eternal life. You won’t forget me. How could you? This story will refresh your memory.

My mother had a dozen children at home. I was the seventh child, and my dad delivered me. They didn’t have any fandangled medicine to ease the labor pains like they do now. Times change, and things are made easier for people than when I was young. Babies can be born now without feeling any pain at all. Mothers then had to stay in bed ‘til the ninth day. They could get up and sit in the rocker for a while on the ninth day, and on the tenth day they could get up and stay up. About all we did was change diapers and bathe our babies in bed. Most mothers nowadays go home from the hospital the day after their babies are born, and they don’t stay in bed much. Things were different when I was born. Mama thought I weighed about eight pounds, and I imagine Papa had a scale to weigh me. I had lots of black hair and brown eyes like my dad’s. I was a good, healthy baby, but two of my brothers, Roland and Eldrid, died about two weeks after they were born. There were five girls and seven boys in my family. Papa and Mama loved children plenty.

Now I’ll tell you some important dates and names and places taken from my dad’s old family Bible. Johnathan Hiram Daniel Cox wrote these things in his own handwriting, and I have this Bible. It is old and torn, and many pages are yellow. A while before Mama died, she gave this Bible to me. She said that she and Dad would like me to have it. It is a very treasured gift to me. My dad used an ink dip pen to write with. The dates and events that happened after Papa died, I recorded myself.

My Father:
Johnathan Hiram Daniel Cox
born in Lauderdale County in Killen, Alabama
on January 3, 1866
son of Martin VanBuren Cox and Mary Elizabeth Harrison
married Louisa Isabella Price on October 30, 1888
in Lauderdale County, Alabama

Death: October 10, 1945 at Parma, Canyon, Idaho
Burial: October 13, 1945 at Parma, Canyon, Idaho
Baptized: November 7, 1898
Endowed: March 3, 1949

Papa called Mama “Lutie Bell,” and she called him “Dad” most of the time. My sister Jessie’s daughter, Ova Johnson, gave me a genealogy sheet with all this written on it too. My dad used to read from this Bible every day after supper and on Sunday morning. We all sat down and listened to him read. He told us to live up to its teachings. He and my mother always set the right example before us.

My Mother:
Louisa Isabella Price
born in Lauderdale County, St. Florence, Alabama
on December 16, 1870
daughter of John Henry Price and Mary Elizabeth Allington

Death: June 18, 1948 at Parma at Caldwell, Canyon, Idaho
Burial: June 21, 1948 at Parma, Canyon, Idaho
Baptized: November 7, 1898

Papa and Mama lived happily together. They never fought or disagreed. My dad always knew how things should go, and Mama always listened to him. Papa’s eyes were dark brown. His eyes spoke! All he had to do is look at you and you always knew what he was saying. You knew if he agreed or disagreed. He was always kind and good to us, and he never whipped us unless he had to, which wasn’t very much. He most always talked to us and got us to understand right from wrong that way. We knew what to do, depending on how his eyes looked. His eyes were mostly soft and gentle. Papa’s hair was black. Maybe he was about fifty years old when he started graying. He had a big frame and was six feet tall. Two of my brothers, Weldon and Evan, both were that tall. Papa weighed 190 pounds most his life. I never remember my dad being fat, but he always had a mustache.

Papa built a house in Kelsey, Texas with a front porch clear across the whole house. There were porches on the east and west sides too. The porch on the back was smaller than the front one. They used to build houses with porches on all sides back then in the South. The foundation was up off the ground, so chickens would go under there to keep cool in the hottest part of the day. I found my old pet speckled hen dead under the house one day. I was five years old and that old buff-colored hen was my favorite pet. This was a hot summer day. It might get 110 degrees some days. I was looking for my old hen and I missed her. I couldn’t see her anywhere, so I crawled under the house and found her stiff in a far corner, dead. I lovingly brought her out, crying because she was stiff. I found a baby blanket, wrapped her up, put her in a shoe box, dug a hole to put the box in, sang two funeral songs, and buried her. I did it all by myself. I felt sad because I loved her so much. Her grave was in the corner of the back yard.

This new house had two fireplaces. One in the living room and one in my dad’s and Mother’s bedroom. This fireplace was really just one fireplace with a front and back side, which made a fireplace in two rooms. Papa grew zinnias and roses, bridle wreath and baby breath, and Cannes in Kelsy, (sic) Texas. He had a small garden and peach orchard. K-E-L-S-E-Y is the correct spelling.

Mama’s eyes were violet blue. They were the prettiest color eyes I have ever seen. She never spanked us because she would rather talk to us to get us to mind. Her hair was black and she was very fair complected. I never did see her put any make-up on. She was pretty enough without it. She was five feet two inches tall. I was the only girl as short as her. The other girls were taller. She wore a size three shoe when she was younger, but later she wore a size four. She was small boned. She weighed 135 pounds. She sang around home quite a bit, and sang in the choir at church. Both Papa and Mama were baptized November 7, 1898, and both their mothers’ names were Mary Elizabeth. Not many couples have mothers with the same names. Both Papa and Mama prayed a lot and taught all their children to pray. They took us to church with them, and I have good memories of my childhood. They took care of us right.

My Brothers and Sisters

Now I’ll tell my brothers’ and sisters’ names and important things:

1. Jessie Marguerite Cox was born September 10, 1889 at St. Florence, Lauderdale, Alabama. She was baptized August 27, 1899, and was endowed February 25, 1947. She married Willis Lemuel Edgar, August 7, 1907.

Jessie had brown eyes and black hair with olive tone skin. She was one inch taller than me. I used to visit her house quite a bit when I was a little girl. She had eight children and I helped her care for them a lot. There were twin girls and twin boys and four other children. Her husband, Lem as she called him, entertained me by telling stories about Trot Lip. He’d say “Trot Lip will get you if you don’t watch out!” I never was afraid. I just liked to hear him say that. He was very entertaining to talk to. Jessie got sugar diabetes and had to give herself insulin shots every day ‘til she died. Lem is still living, and he is being cared for by one of his twin daughters, Ova, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. Jessie was a clean, nice person and took extra good care of her family.

2. Evan Hubert Cox was born May 11, 1891 at Bailey Springs, Lauderdale, Alabama. He was baptized August 27, 1899. He married Annie Bell Dixon February 1909. He drank too much and got a liver disease and died August 14, 1953.

Evan had a lot of friends and had seven children. I never was around Annie and him that much.

3. Mary Estelle Cox was born April 19, 1893 at Lane, Hunt, Texas. She was baptized May 5, 1901. She married Troy Angus Gooing January, 1910. She was endowed January 5, 1916 and sealed to parents September 1, 1949. Estelle died of a ruptured appendix May 18, 1912.

Estelle was a good sister and a religious person. She was in Texas when she died. She was married two years before her death, and had one daughter, Ruby. I named my Ruby after Estelle’s girl.

4. Roland Maxon Cox was born August 9, 1895 at Hickory Planes, Prairie, Arkansas. He died August 23, 1895, and was sealed to parents September 1, 1949.

My dad and my mother will sure have him in the next life. Babies sure do go to Heaven, because they don’t commit any sins or wrong doing. They are innocent. I never did see Roland, but I know I will. I was born six years later.

5. Vivian Leigh Cox was born November 26, 1896 at Killen, Lauderdale, Alabama. She was baptized January 15, 1907, and endowed January 17, 1960. She married Jedediah Gooing July 18, 1913. She died April 22, 1977. Jedediah and Troy Gooing were brothers.

Vivian had blue eyes and brown hair. She was fair and more like Mama than any of us girls. I think she was about five feet five inches tall. I imagine she was the tallest girl. Vivian was always careful about her appearance and enjoyed new dresses. She liked to travel some when we were growing up together and I remember she liked to fish. Mama liked to fish too. I think Vivian was like Mama in lots of ways. Vivian had a large family and was a good mother. Yes, she was like Mama.

6. Joseph Lorenzo Cox was born May 9, 1899 at Dulaney, Hunt, Texas. He was baptized April 3, 1909, endowed May 19, 1944, and sealed to parents September 1, 1949. He died June 27, 1911.

Joseph was two years older than me, and we used to walk to Primary. I remember it was quarter-a-mile and a dirt road. We never heard of freeways or overpasses then. We’d take hold of hands and walk home together too. Joseph liked to play baseball. I think he had blue eyes. We seemed like twins because we were born on the same day, and we were together quite a bit. We had birthday parties together. I remember the night he died. I was there. Papa and Mama were with him. He died in his bed during the night. I’ve forgotten what it was he died of. He was twelve years old and I was ten. It was a very sad time for me. I loved him a lot.

7. Maggie Vaughn Cox was born May 9, 1901 at Chocau Indian Nation, Indian Territory (taken from a family group sheet by Ova Johnson), and the family Bible records state she was born in Massey, Oklahoma. She was baptized May 23, 1909. She married Paul Emil Gottfried Schwartz June 29, 1917.

My Grandchildren sing a song I like but I can’t sing worth anything now. I used to sing all right, so I’ll just put down the words:

The world turns ‘round like a merry-go-round.
It lets some off and it takes some on.
Some horses are high, some horses are low.
Some turns are short and some turns are long.

It’s my turn! It’s my turn! It’s my turn on Earth!

The world turns ‘round like a Ferris wheel.
Sometimes you’re low and sometimes you’re high.
But even way down, you can never forget
The thrill you feel when you’re touching the sky!

It’s my turn! It’s my turn! It’s my turn on Earth!
It ends with death. It begins with birth.
And it’s my turn on Earth!

Never mind just how long you stay,
The size or shape of the horse you’ve got.
Just see all the sights and hear all the sounds,
And feel the sun, and you’ll learn a lot!

It’s my turn! It’s my turn! It’s my turn on Earth!

I was probably two years old when I first started singing. I really like music and singing. I guess I was like my mother that way. Fishing was my favorite pastime. I’ve caught hundreds of catfish and some of those crazy old carp. I’ve skinned about every one I’ve caught with pliers and a sharp knife. I fried most all of them in butter. That’s the only way Paul would eat them. Good and crisp and brown. He liked those old bullheads. He’d eat half a dozen at one time. He liked to take a teaspoon of sugar, tap it with his knife, and sprinkle it over ripe, red tomatoes. And he liked pickled, spiced herring and pig’s feet.

8. Marion Johnathan Cox was born September 3, 1904 at Kelsey, Upshur, Texas. He was baptized in 1914, and married Opal Irene Vickers February 7, 1927. He is still living and resides at Parma, Idaho.

Marion had a radio shop in Parma. He has blue eyes and black hair. Opal and Marion have three children. He liked to fish and tinker with things and take them apart and put them back together again. I have grandchildren who do that too. He was a level-headed boy and I liked him a lot. As far as I know, all of the children in our family went as far as the eighth grade. That’s not the right way to spell eighth. I know that much anyway! Most everyone just went to the eighth grade then, and on the homestead in Montana, the school house just had one big room where everyone, all the grades from the first to the eighth, was just taught by one teacher. But in Billings, Montana, they had separate rooms for each grade. We had an outdoor toilet with spiders under the wooden seats.

9. Willis Orlan Cox was born April 24, 1906 at Gilmer, Upshur, Texas. He married Winsome Reynolds April 24, 1934, and was baptized 1914. He is now living in California.

Orlan could play the violin when he was nine years old. He made some homemade violins. They were the best in the world. Orlan and Winnie used to play together and sing around home. Winnie was a beautiful person and I can hear her and Orlan singing “Silver Dew on the Blue Grass.” They were good singers. We all had extra good times together up on the homestead. Oh yes, I was baptized in a creek in the spring at Kelsey.

10. Weldon Bailey Cox was born April 29, 1908 at Kelsey, Upshur, Texas. He was baptized August 14, 1924, and married Frances L. Talley February 14, 1929. He is still living.

Weldon liked music too. He caught plenty of fish too. They had two children, both girls. I don’t remember where he went to school, but I went to school in Kelsey, Texas. There was that town then, even if they can’t find it on the map now. I was there, and I know it was there. I also went to Lovell, Wyoming, and then to Billings, Montana, and finished the eighth grade. Then we moved to the homestead in the Bull Mountains in Montana. My favorite school subjects were spelling, art and English. Ones I liked less were arithmetic and history.

11. Eldrid Price Cox was born September 15, 1910 at Kelsey, Upshur, Texas. He died October 7, 1910. He lived about three weeks.

I remember seeing Eldrid when he was born. He was a pretty baby with black hair. Roland and Eldrid both died in infancy. That must have been hard on Mama and Papa. I know they will have this baby too.

12. Edith Montana Cox was born July 15, 1913 at Billings, Yellowstone, Montana. She was baptized August 14, 1924, the same as Weldon. She married Howard George Dice July 9, 1932. She died July 8, 1939.

Edith was my favorite sister. I took care of her more than Mama did because Mama’s health was so bad, so Edith seemed like my own child. I was twelve when Edith was born, and she was one of the prettiest babies I ever saw. She had black hair and brown eyes like Papa. She could sing and play the violin. She could dance the Charleston and was a beautiful girl. Edith and Orlan would sing together and play violins. She had two children, girls, when she died. She was married seven years and died just one day before her wedding anniversary from a tick bite that gave her spotted fever. She was a religious, good girl, and if anybody will go to Heaven, she will! I missed her plenty. I’ll be really happy to see her again. That will be the best family reunion I’ve ever had!

That finishes telling about my brothers and sisters. They were good people.

Family Life

Our whole family went to church together, and Papa held a church office. I think he was Branch President at Kelsey, Texas. As new families moved in, Papa kept them in our home ‘til a place was found for them to live. One family had head lice, and one woman was retarded and sat and rocked her baby all the time. Papa was real good to everybody. He always helped anyone who needed help.

The Cox family was in a cyclone at Kelsey, Texas about 1907. That’s the reason Papa had to build the new house with the porches. The cyclone lifted the old house ten feet off its foundation and set it down again aright. No one was hurt. We were all in the house and Mama put all the kids under the bed and knelt and prayed during the cyclone. Kelsey was a Mormon settlement and the worst thing that happened was a brick hit a man on the head. He got a goose egg from that. Papa said he was going to build a new house anyway. The cyclone threw the front porch pillar into the living room, just missing my sister Estelle. She was fifteen then. That’s when Mama put us under the bed. There were plenty of us people praying then. That’s why no one was killed. But the cyclone lifted a baby out of its mothers arms and blew it through a window into the yard. After the cyclone was lulled down enough, they went out to see if they could see anything of their baby, and there it was, in a low place with the window over the top of it. The glass pane wasn’t even broken, and the baby wasn’t hurt at all! Prayers are heard and they are answered. I really know that.

Mama was a good, extra good cook. Some of the Southern foods she cooked were corn bread and molasses, buttermilk and turnip greens, black-eyed peas and ham. Oh, I remember now what Joseph died of, it was stomach trouble. Papa ran a general store, a sawmill, did blacksmith work, and doctored us when we were sick. He figured on being a doctor and for five years he studied for it. But Mama thought it would shorten his life, and he wouldn’t get enough rest to live to be very old, because Papa would keep going day and night if people were sick, so he didn’t go on with the plans. He knew enough to be a real doctor and saved people’s lives and helped sick people a lot anyway.

When Papa had the blacksmith shop, I got up on the bellows. I liked to be around him. I fell off backwards on a sharp piece of iron. My head struck the iron and it stuck into my head almost to my brain. That’s what Papa said. He said it almost killed me. I bled like a stuck hog. My dad tore off his shirt in strips and packed the hole in my head. He had to do that in a hurry to save my life. I was five then. Papa didn’t have a doctor’s degree, but he saved lots of people.

All of the story I have told so far was in 1977. I told these things to my daughter, Nola, at Jerome, Idaho, and she wrote down what I said. I was seventy-six years old then and was active in Relief Society and was in several plays too. It’s now November 17, 1980, Monday afternoon. Every month, I call visiting teachers to ask if their teaching is done. I don’t mind doing this at all. I like to help around the place and do all I can.

This next part was told October 9, 1980. Johnathan Cox wanted us to do right about everything. He was honest, loving, ambitious and forgiving. When Papa had the grocery store, he let several people have groceries on credit. Many died owing him money. He was so tender-hearted and liked people so much that he didn’t hold a grudge against them.

I remember there were big cakes of cheese, wooden barrels full of dill pickles, cracker barrels, tubs of mixed candies, and papa ate candy all day while clerking. He’d bring candy home for the whole family to eat, and put a sack of it under his pillow at night to eat himself.

When the elders came to visit, he threw his pipe and tobacco in to the fireplace and watched them burn. He never smoked after that. Papa and Mama joined the church when they had three children.

Papa was a good carpenter and blacksmith. Mama canned fruits and vegetables and she always baked bread. When our family happened to be there we played cards, pitch and such mainly, and usually ate candy and nuts, but Mama didn’t. She’d rather have a piece of cold boiled potato. Papa helped with all the housework, and he’d read the Bible to us at night after supper time.

We had two cows and chickens and Papa would make our cream and butter. He raised pigs on the homestead for meat. The homestead was ninety miles northwest of Billings, Montana with a few pine trees, but mostly dry country. Mama was a very clean person about everything, the house, herself, and kept the children clean. Mama and Papa were always teaching us to do right. My dad spanked me once, and then it was because my brother blamed me. Up at the sawmill, he fell and said I pushed him. But I didn’t. He got hurt, and I got spanked.

Oh, my black hair started graying early at age twenty-five. That was because of the head accident I had when I fell on the sharp iron at the blacksmith shop. I also fell off my horse once when I was seven years old and sprained my arm. I was afraid of bulls, but I liked raising chickens, gardens and canning. I remember my first grade teacher, Mrs. Yarbrough, who was single and a good person.

We had kerosene lamps on the table and wood stoves to cook from. Of course we had the outdoor toilets close to the house. We had a well for cooking, drinking, taking baths in galvanized tubs, and for washing clothes. We washed clothes on the rub board. I washed on it quite a little, and after I was married too. We rubbed the clothes with bar soap. Some people made it, but we bought it in stores. We did more than push a button to wash clothes. We scrubbed and scrubbed some more, and we’d boil the white clothes, and then rinse them in two or three different clean waters in the wash tubs. Naturally too, we’d rinse them out by hand each time and hang them on the clothes line. With our size family, it took a big share of the day. We heated the wash water on the wood stove. We carried the tubs of water outside and emptied them. I didn’t mind doing it.

We had a pantry in the kitchen for our canned food. We made our own quilts an pillows and feather or straw mattresses. Papa shot ducks for meat, feather pillows and feather beds. Yes, there were mice and we set mouse traps and had cats. I never allowed cats in my house to stink up the rugs. I don’t believe in having animals in the house.

We had an organ and the boys all played musical instruments, violins mainly, and my mother played the organ. We sang as a family together quite a bit. Mom sang “Missouri Waltz,” “Barbara Allen,” “Lilac Trees Are Blooming,” and others. Our shoes were high top, lace or button. We wore cotton dresses. Oh, we ironed all the time! We used heavy, flat irons. Some had wooden handles. We heated them on the wood stove. We had to use a rag to hold the hot handles. They stayed hot enough to iron good for five to ten minutes. Then we’d heat them again. We had four to five irons heating all the time. We never had electric dryers or fridges, and we never heard tell of a water bed! I don’t care for them myself. We never had electric lights.

I played the organ and piano by ear. I never learned by note. I play “Wedding Bells,” and I don’t know the names of the other song. Mama and I would play “Sweet Bunch of Daisies.” Mama made most all of our clothes. I sewed a lot after I was married for my children. I made my first nine patch quilt when I was nine years old. It had nine small squares for each block. I bet that was a mess!

When I was ten, we moved from Texas to Wyoming, then to Montana. I baked bread when I was twelve years old and cooked for a thrashing crew after I was married in Montana. Edith, my baby sister, was born in Montana on the Yellowstone River, almost a mile and a half from Billings. I took care of her more than Mama did. We liked to be around each other. One day on the river, Edith went out on the limb of an old tree that had fallen partly down into the water. She didn’t know how to swim. She was twelve then and I was twenty-four. My Uncle Frank, Mama’s brother, saved her from drowning. She said it looked as pretty as a rainbow under the water, and she went under a second time. She didn’t think drowning was a terrible thing.

I liked music, being in plays, and horseback riding. The horse my dad gave me was “Hal.” I was taking Edith home with me after I was married. Hal was a tame horse, but he must have heard a rattler, because he started running. I had Edith in front of me. I held her with one hand and the reins with the other. Hal didn’t pitch us off. He got to the big wooden gate in front of our place and stopped. We didn’t get thrown off!

When I was nine in Kelsey, Texas, I saw my first car. It was the only car in town. I think it was a Ford. It seemed like a miracle in a way because I’d never seen one before. When I was twenty years old, Paul, my husband, and his brother, Will, and two daughters, Pauline and Mildred, were eating dinner. The girls went outside to get in to Uncle Will’s Ford car, and Pauline started it up. I heard it going. Will and Paul jumped up and ran outside. The car was almost to the road. Will ran after it and caught them as they got started down the road. Will asked Pauline where she was going and she said she was taking her baby sister “to townie to get some canny.” It frightened us all! Two little kids in a car all alone, going to town, driving it!

When I was twenty-two years old, I wanted to drive our car, a Ford, but Paul didn’t want me to learn to drive. I got in our car, and my brothers, Weldon and Orlan, were sitting in the back seat hollering around, “Do this!” and “Do that!” with the gears or something, trying to tell me what to do, and of course, they got me all excited. There was a wooden gate not too far from the road, and I drove into the wooden gate and swung it out a little bit and knocked it down. That’s the only accident I ever had with a car, and I wouldn’t have had that if my two brothers hadn’t hollered around. They didn’t know Paul’s brother, Will, had already taught me how to drive. I used to drive from our place, Independence, North Dakota, about seven miles to La Moure, North Dakota, to get groceries. I wouldn’t dare drive it when Paul was around. He thought I’d kill myself and everybody else around.

Oh, about the washing…We had bluing balls about the size of marbles that were dissolved in the rinse water to keep the clothes whiter. Bluing also came in bottles. And sometimes, it was so cold that the clothes would freeze and get stiff when we hung them out on the line. I never got cold. Generally everyone worked up a sweat rubbing the washboard and we liked being outside for a change to cool off. We didn’t seem to catch colds much.

When we lived in Boise, Idaho, Paul had squirrels that were his friends in trees and talking magpies in a cage. He put peanuts in his shirt pocket and sat down on the lawn chair. The squirrels jumped on his shoulder or climbed up on his chest and took the nuts out, cracked the shells, spit out the shell, and ate the nuts. The magpie talked a lot. He’d say “Open the door, Richard!” and repeated words we said. One of our magpies called Nola when she went to school and laughed like her. That magpie was so tame, and a real old pet. We let him in the house and he would blink his old eye and ruffle his wings and run after our feet. His old black beak was thick and sharp so we tried to keep out of his reach. He couldn’t fly because Paul clipped his wings. We used to tell him that he was nothing but a loon, and he’d say “No Sir!” over and over. He could whistle and laugh. A reporter from the newspaper came out once and he got afraid and wouldn’t talk. The reporter waited behind the grape vines until he talked. The reporter said “I’ll put this in the paper, but no one will believe it.” He took pictures of Maggie and left. Paul said those jabbering birds were named after me.

One day I was hanging out clothes at Boise. One of Paul’s squirrels came up behind me, jumped on my leg by my ankle, bit me, and hung on while I was trying to kick him off. I was yelling to Paul to get that squirrel off my leg, and it finally let go and ran. It was really scared, and I was mad! I had been whirling around on one leg with the other leg held out with the squirrel on it and got dizzy. Paul always thought his squirrels were angels, but he locked that one up and called him “Hitler!”

I also stepped off the playhouse step we had in the back yard and sprained my ankle. I had to be laid up for about a week. Nola and I drew pictures together, read books, and made doll clothes. The playhouse was covered with hop vines. Paul built it out of wooden four inch slats.

When I was thirty-four, Pauline, my daughter, wanted me to be in a pageant there in Boise. We were in different scenes together. In one scene we met the first locomotive and waved handkerchiefs at it. A movie was being made of this called the “Gay Nineties.” I was the main lady character and the man was a real show cowboy. I sat by him in an old bunk board in the front seat. He was driving a team of four horses, pretty dappled gray horses. They had that prance. You know, regular show horses. He sang songs to me and I had a big handkerchief I waved from side to side to people watching as we went around the circle. They had a style show. We dressed up in full long skirts and long sleeved blouses of the gay nineties style. We stood and showed them to the crowd. We danced too.

When I was fourteen years old, we were on the homestead in the Bull Mountains, west of Billings, Montana. Papa and Mama lived there two years because the climate was so dry and crops wouldn’t grow. When I was fourteen, I met Paul Emil Gottfried Schwartz, age twenty-two, born February 12, 1892. I weighed 113 pounds and he weighed 165 pounds. He was six feet tall and I was five feet two inches tall. He was born in Lakefield, Minnesota to Wilhelm Schwartz and Augusta Schultz. I was living on the homestead in the Bull Mountains when Paul came over to have some plow shears sharpened by my dad. Then he kept coming over to see me after that. We didn’t go very many places. There on the homestead, there was hardly any place to go. Paul came to see me at the house mostly. We went to a dance once. It was a Halloween party thing, at the community hall. My girlfriend, Mabel Mass and I dressed up as two little girls in blue. Paul couldn’t dance, just was stomping on my feet most of the time.

When Paul would come over, the whole family played games, cards most of the time. Paul would make a platter of chocolate fudge and we’d have nuts sometimes. We had a phonograph and we’d listen to music. Sometimes Papa would read stories to us, sometimes out of the Bible, and sometimes Western stories. Paul lived two miles from us. This was in the Bull Mountains in Montana. We sat and talked quite a bit. There were no movies or eating places way up there. Not many people lived there, you know. So we had our dates at home. No! I never went to his house. No! I didn’t go over and date him!

He lived in a log cabin alone. It was one big room petitioned off with a white cloth for the bedroom and kitchen. He raised potatoes and had a good sized potato cellar. We didn’t have telephones either, or indoor toilets or bathtubs. The nearest town was twenty-eight miles to get groceries and supplies. I was sixteen and Paul was twenty-five when we got married June 29, 1917 at Billings, Montana. When were going together dating, we never went out to eat or to the neighbors to eat. Paul courted me two years and came over about once a week. Papa and Mama didn’t have beds enough for people to stay overnight unless they’d sleep on the floor. I got three other proposals and I don’t know why. I didn’t pay any attention to them. They proposed after Paul did, and I told them I was already asked for, engaged.

Mama and Edith went with Paul and me to get married. I was only sixteen, so Paul’s old bachelor friend went with us so Mama and he could witness the wedding. We all went to Billings to get a hotel room to stay in overnight before we went home. The preacher married us in the hotel room. I wore a silver-colored dress with a gold collar. Paul wore a small black and white checked suit, if I remember right. After the wedding, we went out to take pictures in a studio and out to eat at an eating place. Then Mama, Edith, Paul and I went up to the hotel room and waited ‘til it was time to go to bed. Then we all slept in the same room. We went to Paul’s folks in La Moure, North Dakota for our honeymoon for one week. This was the first time I’d ever seen his dad, Wilhelm, or his two brothers, Edward and William, or his two sisters, Lena and Louise. Paul’s mother, Augusta, had been dead about ten years. Paul said she committed suicide. Paul’s dad talked German all the time. A party was given for us by the Allens at one of Paul’s friends places. We played games and ate. We stayed at Will’s place mostly, and at Allen’s. All my family and Paul and I moved eight months later to Missouri.

Edith Pauline, my daughter, was born June 19, 1918 in Longlane, Missouri. Her birth took four hours and she weighed nine pounds. When Pauline was a baby, Paul and I got the flu, but she didn’t get it. That’s when Will came from North Dakota to take care of us. Will was six feet tall. He spoke both English and German.

Oh, I forgot to mention our first place. After Paul and I married, our first house was a log cabin. I have a picture of it with Paul standing in the doorway with a rolling pin in his hand. Paul lived in this log cabin about three years before we were married. He trapped gophers. He had polio in his right arm and was crippled some. This happened when he was eighteen years old. He always wondered if it was caused by all the flies that used to crawl on the food back then.

Our second house was a big two story one. Eight miles out of Lovell, Wyoming, Paul trapped skunks and other hide animals to sell. He raised wheat in North Dakota about three years, but that crop failed due to dry weather, so the droughts we have now are not new to me. Then we moved to Oklahoma where Paul raised a cotton crop. The bank where our money was went broke, so we had to move to Lovell, Wyoming. We had four children then; Pauline, Mildred, Ruby and Norma. We moved out eight miles north of Lovell to Powell, Wyoming and Paul raised sugar beets in 1925 where Jack and Nola were born. All my children were born at home. All my babies had black hair at birth, so there weren’t any bald-headed ones. We had that flu for a week and Will did all the washing, cooking and necessary work. Remember this was when Pauline was born in 1918. She was my first baby.

After that, we moved to La Moure, North Dakota, where Paul farmed wheat and grain. Annie Mildred was born July 18, 1919 there. She weighed eight and a half pounds. The doctor always came out to the house. Mildred’s birth took sixteen hours, and she was an instrument baby. I nursed all my babies and they were all plenty healthy and fat.

Pauline and Mildred were in the same room in the first grade and the teacher asked them what they had to eat at home. Mildred raised her hand and said, “Nothin’ but potato soup and pun’kin pie!” She didn’t like these things. Then Pauline told her what we really had to eat.

Ruby Lucille was born February 8, 1922 at La Moure, North Dakota. She was two months premature and was an instrument baby like Mildred. When Ruby was three months old, I got the flu again. My fingernails turned blue. I weaned Ruby because I thought I was going to die. Oh, Ruby weighed eight pounds and her birth took eight hours. When I went in to labor, my brother, Marion, was staying with us and going to school, and he went to get the doctor.

Then we went to Blocker, Oklahoma, where we stopped for a short time on our way to Massy, Oklahoma. Norma LaVaughn was born in Blocker, September 23, 1923. She weighed nine pounds and it took seven hours of labor. It was a stormy night. My dad and mother and Edith were there. This is where we raised the cotton crop. We lived in Quentin, Oklahoma for a while.

Then we moved to Powell, Wyoming where Jack William, our only son, was born, November 12, 1925. He weighed eight and one half pounds and took eight hours to deliver. Paul thought he had the world by the tail with A BOY!

We moved to the Keggie Place and farmed grain in Powell, Wyoming where Nola Sylvia was born July 5, 1933. She was the smallest baby. She weighed seven and one half pounds. Our doctor was sitting by me and I dug my toes into his ribs and he said it was all right for me to dig harder if I felt like it. In one hour she was delivered. Our dog, Poodle, crawled out from under the bed and looked up at the baby. We didn’t know he was hiding there and the nurse said “Now I’ve seen everything!”

World War II came and Jack went in to the service at age eighteen. I think it was in 1943. He was in Italy and flew forty-one missions over the enemy. I prayed for his safety and was assured that he would return safe and unharmed. He did.

The World War II depression came and we moved to Parma in 1934. My father and mother, Marion, Orlan, Weldon and Edith were in Parma, Idaho. Vivian lived in Apple Valley. I had supervised a sewing room in Powell before we moved to Parma for eighteen dollars a week. We stayed in Parma one winter and then moved to Boise, Idaho in 1935. Paul, Pauline and Mildred built our house in Boise in October, 1936. We camped in a tent, used a square can with oil as a heater to keep warm, and it snowed two inches on Halloween night. This house had seven rooms, an upstairs and a cellar. There were frogs and mice in that cellar.

Paul’s first job was spraying trees and yards. Paul bought a spray truck and equipment and did commercial spraying. He always sprayed the Mormon Church grounds free of charge. He listened to the ward teachers and believed in doing right. He was honest and good. We didn’t have much to eat during depression times. Sometimes we had oatmeal, gravy and dried prunes. We couldn’t get any work for a while, and we had to stand in line to get food like cheese, rice, butter, bread, potatoes and milk at a government commodity place once a week. They allotted people just so much to live on depending on the number of people in the family. Fifty cents a day was good wages then. There were lots of hardships and trials. If it hadn’t been for those commodities, we would have gone hungry because work was scarce. In fact, there weren’t any jobs for many people.

Oh, and when I had that flu when Ruby was a baby, I could pinch myself and couldn’t feel it. That’s how close I was to death’s door. And when I was telling about Mama liking cold potatoes, I forgot to mention that Papa would eat horehound candy. That was his favorite.

This is a car accident that happened in 1922. Paul and I and three children, Pauline, Mildred and Ruby, who was a baby, were going to LaMoure, North Dakota to get groceries. Paul looked backwards at some soldiers’ tents that were pitched by the road, and the car went off the road and in to a ditch and turned over. Now who was it that said I shouldn’t drive because I’d kill myself and everyone around? Paul had a hot oil heater between the seats because he thought the children should be kept warm constantly. It was a wonder that heater didn’t burn the car up and everyone in it, but it didn’t hurt anyone. Several soldiers came running to help and turned the car upright and we started out again. Paul was very excited and shook all over.

And that log cabin we lived in when we were first married in 1917 had no push-button gadgets or luxuries like we have today. We had a table and chairs, an old iron bed, and had nothing like a washer. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway because there wasn’t any electricity. Today there is plenty of electrical gadgets, but if the electricity went off today, 1980, we still couldn’t cook, we’d get cold, and we’d have no lights, and couldn’t wash clothes or flush the toilet unless we had some of those old-fashioned things to do it with. What we had to do when we got cold was chop down a tree, mainly pine, split the logs and bring in the wood and start a fire in the wood stove. That’s where we cooked and baked cakes and roasts. We burned kerosene lamps when it got dark and took baths in wash tubs. Of course we wouldn’t let anyone see us.

Pauline was about two and a half and ran out to the chicken house. She was throwing eggs everywhere and breaking them and making a big mess! We heard eggs slamming against the hen house walls and Paul got up from the table and ran out and found out what she’d done. He was so tender-hearted and didn’t want her to get a whipping, so he told her to pretend she was trying while he slapped on a board good and hard. She did it.

We played jacks, high water jump rope, and hopscotch at recess time at school when I was a girl. We took fried chicken in a lunch bucket and I ate at my own desk. We raised fryers on the farm and the kids at school wondered how I could have so much chicken in my lunch. I always got 100 percent on spelling, grammar and art, and got good passing grades on the rest. I walked two and a half miles each way to school and back on the homestead, but in Billings town I walked only four blocks. The snow got so deep sometimes that if we walked off the pathway, we’d bog down in the snow hip deep.

In North Dakota, after I was married, we had three days and three nights of a snow blizzard and couldn’t get out of the house. It was so bad it was just like pouring a sack of flour in your face. After it lulled a little, we could go out to feed the chickens, pigs and horses. Paul had a wire he hooked on the corner of the house so he could get out to feed them. He’d put his hand on the wire and follow it to the chicken house and to the place where the stock was. He’d do this when the blizzard was so bad he couldn’t see. The blizzard covered up the neighbor’s chicken house and got so deep they couldn’t see their horses. They didn’t find their horses ‘til the next spring when it thawed. They had fallen through deep snow drifts and one was frozen in a tree. All the horses were frozen.

There were ten to fifteen foot snow drifts in our yard in North Dakota at times. The snow plow came by every day to get the roads open for people to travel. Until I was eight years old, I traveled places by horse and buggy. That’s the way we went places when we didn’t walk. One night there was a blizzard, a big old blizzard of blowing snow and the door was open on the back porch and a great big wagon load of snow blew in through the keyhole in the kitchen during the night. That’s what we got up to in the morning. There was plenty of snow on the porch and it had to be shoveled out so we could get out of the house. Paul did the shoveling.

Papa was Scotch Irish and Mama was English. I think Papa had some Indian by the way his mother looked. She was big framed, tall, black-haired, dark brown eyes, and high cheek boned. Papa’s father was six feet tall, a good sized man.

Paul’s dad was a little shortie, about five feet six inches tall. He was small boned with blue eyes and gray hair. Paul’s mother had black hair, brown eyes and a robust build.

After we moved to Boise, Paul enjoyed going to the Paul Owen’s Auction Sale, fishing at Lake Lowell, and having grandchildren come over. We’d go in the morning to the auction sale, eat there, and stay ‘til it was over. He’d buy boxes full of dishes, books, and things for fifty cents. The auctioneer would ask me to play a piece on the piano so people could hear what it sounded like before he auctioned it. We’d catch bullheads at lake Lowell, sometimes gunny sacks full!

If it rained or lighteninged or the cold wind blew, I’d stand out and fish anyway because fish kept biting just the same. I’d half freeze to death and still catch a bunch of fish. Paul would sit in the car and eat sandwiches and drink pop and couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t come to the car. He thought I’d get sick, but I never did. I just got catching fish. We’d take the fish home, skin them, and Paul liked them fried in butter. He liked soft fried chicken, potatoes, onion-vinegar-gravy that tasted sweet and sour, Kool-Aid, apple pie, donuts, cakes, ice cream and coffee. But he started drinking Postum instead of coffee because he couldn’t sleep nights and stayed awake. The doctor told him he would sleep better if he quit coffee. He did.

When we were fishing by Cougar Mountain Lodge, he got mad because the fish weren’t biting and he threw his new fishing pole and gear in to the river and couldn’t fish any more that day ‘cause he didn’t have anything to fish with.

There were a lot of seagulls at Lake Lowell outlet and when they flew over me I got nervous. We fished one day in the afternoon and it got very dark. The wind was blowing pretty bad but we kept on fishing anyway. It was a tornado, but we didn’t know it ‘til we got back to Boise and found out all the damage it had done. It tore up campers and trees.

Papa and Mama lived a little ways out of Parma, Idaho. Papa was eighty years old and took care of Mama for years. She was bedridden. Papa raised flowers, a big garden, and I used to eat raw peanuts out of his garden. The peanuts grew in the sandy soil under the ground and we’d pull them up.

My niece’s husband, she is Ova Johnson, the one who gave me the genealogy sheet of Papa’s family, her husband is Talmage Johnson, and he flew over Papa’s house in Parma and lost his glasses out of the window of the plane. He told Papa he guessed he’d never see them again, but Edith’s girl, Joyce, and Nola found them in a straw pile, unbroken. Papa and Mama took care of Joyce and Carol Ann about three years after Edith died.

When Joyce was about four years old, she got some scissors and cut off some of Papa’s mustache. When she was about eight years old, she got up in the middle of the night, about two in the morning, started a big roaring fire in the wood stove, and started mixing up what she called a cake! I don’t know how much sugar she used, but she used entirely too much—and the eggs! About a dozen! And a bottle of food coloring, red it was, and she was just mixing up a whole bunch of lob-lolly stuff together and Papa woke up. He went in to the kitchen fast and asked her what she was doing. He opened the door to let the hot air out of the house and she said she was making a cake to surprise everybody in the morning. Soon as Papa saw the mess, he said “This junk you’ve got mixed up looks like a bunch of bull blood!” And he told her she had wasted so much good food and throwing away money over nothing that didn’t amount to a thing, and she could have burned the house down and everybody in it. He gave her a doggone good spanking and sent her to bed. No one got a surprise but her—and right where it counted. His mustache was cut off by that little dickens when he was asleep.

One night after dark, Papa was getting ready for bed. He turned off the lamp light and he stepped back to where he thought the bed was and sat down on the floor instead, causing internal hemorrhaging. He lived three weeks and went in to a coma. It was about two weeks before he died. Every time I’d leave the room he’d call for me to come back in there with him, even though he was in a coma. He died in October like Paul did. My mother came to live with us soon after Papa died. She liked to eat stewed prunes for her health. Mama lived with us for a year and a half, and lived two years after Papa died. She gave her wedding ring to Nola, but someone stole that ring and my wedding ring from my dresser drawer one day when we were at town getting groceries. I sure would like to have caught the thief. I would have bawled them out and asked them if they had any good sense. Wouldn’t you? Mama died of asthma of the heart, and was buried in Parma, Idaho beside Papa. I have a picture of Mama standing by Papa’s grave. Edith is buried at the foot of Papa and Mama. We all loved Edith so much.

When we lived on the Keggie place in Powell, Wyoming, when Jack was nine, I think, one of Mr. Keggie’s sons brought his dog over to our place and when he got there he said he brought that old good-for-nothing dog over to whip Poodle, our dog. Jack claimed Poodle, and Norma said it was her dog too. Mr. Keggie’s son had a pitch fork over his shoulder. Both dogs were about the same size. The old boy tried to get his dog to fight Poodle, but he couldn’t. His dog was scared of Poodle and wouldn’t go near him. So this old boy pushed his dog over to Poodle, and Poodle took him by the nape of the neck and drug him to an irrigation ditch of water and Poodle put one paw over the top of this old dog’s head and held him down under the water… was drowning him! That old boy told me I’d better make Poodle turn loose of his old dog or he’d stick Poodle with the pitch fork. I told him if he stuck either dog with that pitch fork it had better be his own! And I had to tell Poodle pretty stern three or four times to leave that dog alone before he’d let loose of him. Then that old Keggie boy went home with a different attitude. He found out his old dog couldn’t begin to whip Poodle.

I had Poodle maybe four years and one morning when the school bus stopped to pick our children up for school, the bus ran over him. The kids didn’t know about it ‘til after school. Jack dug a grave and made a cross of two boards and wrote the words “Poodle Dog Schwartz” on it. Jack buried Poodle in our back yard. It was almost like losing a member of our family because Poodle was so human-like. He’d play hide-and-go-seek with both Norma and Jack. He’d hide and they’d hide. They’d hunt each other. He was the best watch dog we ever had. He was the dog that came crawling out from under the bed when Nola was born. He laid under there and heard the whole rig-a-ma-row. We could trust him anytime with leaving the kids any time of the day or night. He wouldn’t let anything happen to the little babies. He’d have to be killed first.

Evan, my oldest brother, came over one night when Paul and I had gone to a show and left all the kids there at the house with Poodle. Poodle was inside the house looking out a window pane in the door, and he growled and gnashed his teeth when Evan came to the door. So Evan got scared and ran back to his car. Evan said that dog would have killed him, he knew, if he had opened that door and that dog could have got at him! I could trust Poodle with any baby. You betcha! Sure could!

Jack, being the only boy, had someone to play with all the time. Norma played with him all the time. They got along real good together. Jack would be the horse and Norma would take hold of the reins and guide him. I never let any of my children go near water. I was scared they’d drown. But they probably got near that dangerous place when I didn’t know about it. My children listened to what I said and minded what I told them, generally.

When we lived in Boise, I liked to wear big flowered hats. I had several different ones. So many people wore them then. Some had pink and white or red or shades of green. One of my grandchildren came over one day and saw me wearing my real wide brimmed black hat with pink and white flowers in a large cluster on the top. She started screaming. In nearly scared her half to death.

Life Story of Maggie Vaughn Schwartz

Life Story of
Maggie Vaughn Schwartz