Person:Eliza Lewis (9)

THE LIFE HISTORY OF ELIZA LEWIS GARDNER Recorded by George Gardner, May 1966 in Lakeside, Arizona

I was born in Taylor, Arizona 5 August 1882. My father was Joseph Albert Lewis; my mother was Martha Emma Pell. Although my grandmother was a mid-wife it was Margaret Hancock who delivered me into the world. I was the next oldest child, my brother Joseph being the oldest. My mother had seven children all together and raised six of them. I was about seven or eight years old when we moved to Nutrioso, New Mexico. We lived there for two years then moved back to Taylor. My mother and father had lived in Taylor before moving to Nutrioso; it was here in Nutrioso that my sister Ida died. Right after this we moved back to Taylor where I lived until I was married. I was married in Taylor. Some of my school teachers that I remember in Taylor were, Joseph W. Smith, Allen Frost, Cliff frost's grandfather and Louis Cardon. We didn't have grades like we do now, we had books. We went from the first to second book and on like that. I did finish school after a fashion. My mother was sick a lot of the time and some of the neighbors would get sick so they would have me stay out of school to help them. I never went to school a full week in my life. We didn't do like you do today, nothing interferes with school today but then my mother never did a washing by herself, she wasn't a very well woman, and then they didn't think about it like they do today. So I guess I done pretty well so's I could get where I could read and write. Our school was an old log school building. We had two rooms; we used this building for a Church as well as a school. They also had a theater with a stage where they had the primary school, then down below was where we had the other. We had two teachers; Joseph W. Smith, the head teacher, and Brother Frost. I can't remember who my first teacher was. I didn't have any high school I just went up through the eighth grade or the eighth book. One of the things that we did have similar to the seminary today was what we called religion class. We had it early in the morning at 8: 0'clock. The only school I ever went to was in this old log school house, right where the Taylor church is now. Manual Cardon baptized me when I was eight years old; he was the Bishop then. I was baptized in the river just below the Taylor Bridge, there were four of us that day. I didn't have too many childhood experiences except just to go to the neighbors and help them. I went to all my Sunday Schools and Primaries however. My mother came from England when she was eight years old. The trains crossed the desert in about 1861, I believe, and she came from England in 1861 on the train to Salt Lake. My Grandmother and my mother came from England leaving Aunt Jane, Uncle William and Uncle George in England. My grandmother joined the church in England but her husband didn't join and he was so opposed to her joining that she divorced him and just she and my mother came to the United States. In those days they had what they called the immigration fund. The church would pay their way to Salt Lake and then when they got here they could pay it back into the fund so they could help others come over. This is my Grandmother Campbell I'm speaking about. She was a Ruff, and then she married Campbell after she came to America. She had been married twice before she left England, one man had died and the other she divorced. After she got to America she saved enough money to bring my mothers two brothers and sister here. Grandmother worked real hard, she worked at just about everything. They all did in them days. She was sealed to John Campbell because these other men didn't join the church. When they were building the Temple in St. George, this Campbell that Grandmother married went down there to work and Mother and Grandmother went down there also. They spent a long time in St. George; they lived there quite awhile. My mother used to go out among the sick. She used to tell me a lot how she used to take care of Wilford Woodruff, when he was in St. George and got sick. She went through the Temple thirty times before she was married. It was here in St. George that Mother met my father, Joseph Albert Lewis. He worked on the Temple there for seven years. They gave him a course in plastering and he became a real fine plasterer. They made their own plaster in those days; they didn't have the ready-made kind like they do today. My mother and father were married here in St. George, and then they moved to Kanab, you see he was from Kanab. Then they were called to settle in Arizona to help build it up. They had a real hard time, my mother never did get where she could eat corn meal bread with any relish because they just lived on corn meal bread. It was this Indian corn. They would grind it in the coffee mill. They didn't even have any flour to put in it. They had a real hard time getting started. They sent my father here to Arizona from Utah because he was a plasterer, and this was a new country just getting started, they knew he could be a big help. But the people had nothing to pay for plastering. My father used to plaster when I was a kid. We lived on a big dry lot, no water, so we couldn't raise a garden or anything. He would plaster for people and take vegetables or anything we could eat. That was the way they had to live. My mother never had the water in her house, never had a nice house, just an old log house. This house burned down a couple of months ago, down in Taylor. No one ever knew how it caught on fire. My brother Joe looked out the window and it was on fire. My mother was a real pleasant woman, she wasn't a complainer. Everything was just fine. My father, well when you see Joseph (my son) you see my father, only my father was six feet tall in his stocking feet. He had lots of hair also, real pretty hair. Joseph's eyes and the way he walks and the way he looks at you is exactly like my father. His mannerisms are a lot like him too. My brother Will was a lot like my father also. They didn't have a very large family; they only had seven children. My Grandmother never did come to Arizona. She married my grandfather Campbell, but, I do remember seeing my Grandmother Lewis. She was a little woman. I remember seeing her sitting in a rocking chair drinking her tea, and I remember thinking "She'll spill that, she'll spill that for sure". She'd sit in that rocking chair after she finished her dinner and she'd rock and drink. It wasn't against the Church rules to drink tea then, everyone drank it. I met my husband down in front of McCleves house, down the hill from where we lived in Taylor. A bunch of us kids were having a party, and a couple of three boys, from Snowflake came up. I just knew him as Fay Gardner, I didn't know anything about him, and he didn't mean anything to me. Then I went to Woodruff, because Dad's sister needed a girl to help out. If someone needed you, you didn't go to school you went to help. His sister was ailing and she needed a girl to help. The woman was going to have a baby; she was having a lot of trouble, so she needed a girl to help out. I stayed out of school two weeks to help her. She was Fay's sister, so I go acquainted with him then. We didn't sit up nights or anything though, he had to work and so did I. Then I went home and thought no more about it. He wrote me a time or two and I wrote back. He came up to see me twice before we were married. In them days they didn't have anything but a team of horses. He was working in Winslow, but that didn't make any difference. I believe I would have married him the next day after I saw him, if he asked me. Never was any worry about that. Willard Hatch married us in Taylor; he was one of the Bishop's councilors then. We were married on Wed. 5th, December 1900, and the next week we were sealed. Joseph F. Smith came from Salt Lake with authority to seal because there wasn't a temple close. I believe there were fifteen couples sealed the same day that we were. We were married in 1900 and we didn't go to the Temple to get our endowments until 1914. We went to the Salt Lake Temple on the train to get our endowments. It took us about a week to come and go. When we were first married we went to this mothers home in Woodruff to live. We left Winslow, he had a job in Winslow and he left this to go to Woodruff because he had a little farm there, a yard and a lot. His mother was alone and needed someone to take care of her. I took care of her from about two months after we were married for seven years. She lived with us all this time then she went to live with her son in Utah. She was there a couple of years and then came back and stayed the rest of her life. About three or four years with us. She died while staying with us in Woodruff. We lived most of our life in Woodruff. We moved to Lakeside when Gilbert was a baby, in 1908, and have been here ever since. Oh, we went to Winslow and Dad worked on the railroad, but to make a home, it was in Lakeside. We also lived in Taylor for about a year. Granddad died in Holbrook while he was working on a highway job. He wasn't on the highway but was under the direction of the highway; He kept the shops. He died the 13th April, 1947. We had twelve children: Joseph, Ralph, Emma, Bessie, Leroy, Ida, Paul, James, Helen, Gilbert, Ruth, and Robert. Not much to tell about the kids, they were just kids.

Grandmother is now living in Lakeside, Arizona. She is eighty-four years old at the time of this writing. She does her own cooking and cleaning and every Christmas she gives all her children and grandchildren gifts that she had made herself. She is very interested in the affairs of the world. She takes the daily newspaper and keeps her self well informed. One thing I can remember her saying very well is; there are two bills that come each month that are a joy to pay and that's the light bill and my water bill. She says, "If we would have had to carry as many buckets of water as she did and had to sit under lamp light, we would all be more grateful for these luxuries.

Helen Teisher has a better and more complete history of Grandmother Gardner if anyone is interested I am sue that Aunt Helen would be glad to share it with you. GG.