Willard Washington Wasden
- born October 21, 1876 in Scipio, Utah
- died January 12, 1950 in Rexburg, Idaho
- loved horses
- was a crack shot with a pistol
This is the history as near as Harold and I could remember
it. Dad was the eighth of thirteen
children of John Brooks Wasden and Nancy Arvilla Herring. Grandpa had three wives, grandma being the
first, Sophia Penniston being second and Carolina Savage being third. Sophia died when she gave birth to twins. One
twin died also and Grandma Nancy Arvilla Herring, the first wife took the twin
and raised him as her own. That twin was
Uncle James from Cody Wyoming. Four of
the boys left Utah and came north. Isaac and James went on to Cody country and Dad
and Uncle Joe stayed in Idaho.
Dad was born in, I think, Scipio, Utah on October 21,
1876. Dad was a crack shot with a pistol;
He was tempted to shoot a man at one time.
Then decided if he did he would be a murderer so he walked over to the
canyon and threw his gun down over the cliff.
He has never owned one since.
Dad and Uncle Joe would come to Soda Springs, one time to
establish a sawmill. Dad got tangled up
in a bean and nut cup game. Dad lost all
of their money, so that ended his gambling blood for life.
Grandpa, Willard’s dad, worked for the railroad building
fences and building grades for tracks.
He also invented many things, a gate being one of the outstanding
inventions. It was called the “Farmers
Handy Gate.” He had it patented in
Canada but not in the United States.
Ralph Huskinson now has the miniature model of the gate.
Mother’s family came from eastern United States. Harvey Berk Strong was her grandfather. Savannah, Illinois was where part of the
family settled. Somehow grandpa and the
family came to the Midwest Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Mother and her two brothers Earl and George
were all born in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
Mother was born June 10, 1876. George
and Earl, the youngest, June 9, 1879. Their
parents are Henry Boylan and Mary Strong.
Grandma had a millinery shop and hired several women at all
times. She dressed mother in the latest
styles and made her look very beautiful.
Mom also graduated from high school, which was a feat in those
days.
Mother was a pretty girl and had a
lot of admirers.
Mother told me a story about her Aunt Hatie Oberhansly. Now Hattie, her boyfriend and mother traveled
form Payson to Gunnison in a buggy. They
had prepared a lunch to eat on the way.
Hattie and her boyfriend were too bashful to eat, so mother ate all the lunch. Mother and Dad were married not too long
afterward, I think, early in 1898.
Willard Wasden and Myrtle Boylan were married in Payson,
Utah. They lived in Payson, Gunnison and
various localities in Utah. Dad herded
sheep for several people and did other jobs.
In some of the records I’ve uncovered they reveal the fact that a city
lot sold for 50 cents and water rights were about the same price.
Mother was raised in a very particular home and Grandma had
a flair for culture. Therefore, keeping
her own home and doing all of the work a wife was expected to do was a far cry
from the fine arts that mother was used to doing. But she did her best.
After Harold and Fay were born in Utah, a move was made to
Idaho. Harold said all he can remember about
being a little child was playing in a sand pile on Canyon Creek. Dad then started a saw mill and one morning
he saw 9 elk a short distance away. He put
ten shells in his hat and attempted his elk harvest. He shot all nine and had one shell left. The game warden was on his trail and he knew
it. One of his friends loaded all nine elk
in a sleigh and took them to Farnum where Grandma Boylan lived and hurried and
buried them in a snow drift.
Dad and Mother and the two little boys lived with grandma
that winter, then moved to St. Anthony where Leonard was born, November 25,
1902.
Dad then bought the eighty acres in north Salem from Joe
Larsen. Harold was still a little fellow
but he helped Dad and Uncle Joe Clear the Sage brush off the land. The brush was as high as your head. Dad made a tamsite out of a spirit level,
creating a surveying instrument. This feat
was untold of at that time. He used this
to make dikes and ditches which was rather unusual.
Dad raised alfalfa, oats, and beets, pigs, milk cows, and
horses on the farm. He and mom planted
two big patches of raspberries. As a kid
I picked raspberries every day and hated every berry. Today I can’t eat a raw raspberry to save
me. When I wasn’t picking berries I was
herding cows on the road. They could
always find a hole in some fence to get into someone else’s field but they
never could find it to get back.
Dad had a horse called Pete and her colt was a male horse,
very strong and wise. Dad named him
Billy, Dad use to haul wood from the mountains to burn. He was going up a grade and had stopped to
wind the horses. When dad said go Pete
slammed Billy back against the double trees.
She did that twice and the third time he was ready and beat Pete to the
collar. She never got the better of him
again. Dad had another horse, a big
black bally face. His name was
Meek. He and Billy were a pulling team
and I used both as a derrick horse.
About this time 1914, he put one four horse team on a wagon
and another one, three horse team, hauling freight from Ashton to Jackson Hole
to build the dam. They hauled mostly
cement. Harold, Fay and Uncle Joe drove
the outfits. Harold said he only drove once then the job was given to Fay and Uncle
Joe. They would go with a caravan and
everyone took care of Fay. His feet
wouldn’t reach the dash board. On one
trip dad’s lead horse died, so he hooked Billy on lead without a line. He knew what his job was and did it. Dad finally put the six horsed together and
pulled two wagons. We younger kids would
know about when the wagons should be coming home and lie awake at night
listening for them to come the last mile home, as they make a rumbling noise
over the dirt toad with the steel wheels.
Whoever was home would go out and tend horses as we knew the drivers
were tired and hungry.
When Aunt Olive was old enough to go to high school, dad and
mother had her come from Utah. Mom and
dad bought a little horse called Midget.
So the folks sent Olive and Joe to Ricks Academy. Midget could make it to school in two
minutes. Olive only came one year to
Idaho. It was too rough. She got a job in Keith O’Brian and never did
go back to school. Uncle Joe was called to Chicago on an LDS mission. Mom and Dad financed that for him. He didn’t pay his debt back very gracefully.
I can remember when dad and Zeke Holman leased 640 acres of
ground three and one half miles south east of Newdale. Dad and the boys went up there to farm. Mother would cook for days then she and I would
take the little kids, Olive, Lowell and John in the buggy and drive fifteen
miles up there with a roast, fresh bread, cakes and everything mom could get
together for the dry farm.
Harold, Fay and Leonard were the big kids. So there were the big kids, little kids, and
I was just me in-between. Dad and Mr.
Holman got Leo Jacobs from Hibbard to go to the dry farm and break up the sage brush,
the yield the first year was good, forty bushels to the acre. The next year it was thirty then 20 then it
got down to five bushels which broke a lot of farmers dad bought a big
Studebaker and a tractor. We really
though were were aristocrats. Dad didn’t
lose anything, but he didn’t make the money he had before and he had to start
living differently that was when he built the new house
The new house was surely
a pleasure to the whole family.
About that time the Rexburg Standard had a contest. The one who sold the most subscriptions won a
Ford car. Second prize was a graphonola. Alma Larsen won the Ford car and dad
won the graphonola. Not long after that
dad developed an enlarged heart and never could work hard again.
The old log house had been moved out in the field and the
Japanese people who worked in the beets lived in it. About this same time dad sold the dry farm to
the boys and the wet farm to fay. Mom
and dad bought a house on Center street in Rexburg and they lived there until
both passed away.
After selling the farm, dad still wanted to do something, so
he kept his horses and mules and brought them to our place. Ken told him he was welcome to do so.
The horses were forever running away and it was a big job
most of the time to get them back home.
Ken also gave dad a piece of ground to use as he wanted to, so he
planted potatoes. He would hook his
pickup on the leveler harrow and cultivate his fields at 25 miles per
hour. The dust at 25 miles per hour
would just fly. The payoff really came
when he hooked the cultivator behind the Ford pickup. At that speed a good
percent of potatoes were dug with each cultivating. Then dad went in the pig business.
He built a pen out by the river on a high spot in the
field. Spring came and the snow melting
caused a flood. The flood covered the whole field. The pigs mostly stayed on the high spot and
in the pen. Some swam down the river and
were lost. Ken and dad decided to get a
boat and give the pigs a boat ride to safety.
This was a riot, as a pig wasn’t to cooperative about getting caught,
not to mention holding them in the boat after getting them in it. Needless to say he didn’t have a very big pig
herd when the water went down.
I just can’t forget to take time to talk about how many
times Ken took dad fishing. I think that
was the only time dad really took time out to play. Ken gave dad the best times of his life. We never did go fishing without him. He would always sit on the front of the boat
and never give up. We would fish all day
Saturday and send him home with a gunny sack half full of fish. I told him if the game warden caught him they
would put him in jail for years. He
said, “For this many fish I’d be glad to go to jail.” There was a deep feeling for each other
between Ken and my dad. Dad told Ken, “If
May was my wife I’d soon straighten her it.”
I really was a renegade in his eyes.
On Sunday he always went home for church. Mom really had the high sign on him.
In 1946 ken and I told the folks if they would accept Harold’s
invitation to spend the winter in Huntington Beach we would repaint their
house. They accepted the proposition and
dad spent the winter on the pier fishing and at the spit and chew club spinning
yarns and trading experiences with the rest of the old men. Dad was so smart and insulting to mother that
Harold told him to straighten up and be descent to mom or he would send him
home. The threat had the desired effect
and dad stayed until spring.
He then had a prostrate operation when he got home and was
never well afterward. He also had sugar
diabetes. I had to go down each day and
give him his shots of insulin. Dad died
in January of 1950. Effie Mortenson said
she read an unusual character in his face.
This was true; he was a very different man.
Mother was often called a prissy little old lady, and a lady
she was. Such a lovely cultured
person. She also had heart trouble and a
gallbladder problem and diabetes. I also
gave her shots. She couldn’t take
medicine alone, so I came to town to be with her to take her medicine.
Dad was born a Mormon but mom was a Methodist until after
fay was born. He was a very sick baby
and mother prayed for his life and said if god would let her baby live she
would join the Mormon Church and never drink tea again. She kept her promise.
She was president of the primary, young ladies mutual and
also Salem relief society, and always a visiting teacher.
Dad and Uncle Johnnie Huskinson were made partners in the
fourth ward taking care of all the widows and they really enjoyed this and did
a fine job.
Mom had a heart attack the Sunday after Beverly’s wedding and
we took her to the hospital where she died the next day. It was May 1957. The same day Emma had a malignant breast
removal.
There is yet one name that has to be remembered in this
family. In 1906 a baby by the name of Virgil
was born to the family, but died at birth.
This was the year before I was born in 1907.
Written by,
May Arvilla Wasden Huskinson
Pioneer Valley Resident Dies
Willard Washington Wasden, early pioneer of the Upper Snake
River Valley, died Monday morning at the family home at 124 South Center Street
in Rexburg, after a lingering illness.
Mr. Wasden was born at Scipio, Utah, October 21, 1876. In March, 1886, Mr. Wasden spent the summer
helping build roads in Yellowstone National Park. He returned to Utah in the spring of 1898 and
was united in marriage with Myrtle Boylan.
In the spring of 1900 they moved to Salem, where they
engaged in farming and stock raising which they pursued successfully until they
retired in 1939, moving to Rexburg.
Mr. Wasden was active in the LDS church all his life holding
the office of high priest. He worked as chairman
of the genealogical organization of the Salem ward and later worked on the
welfare committee in the Forth wad of Rexburg.
Surviving are his widow and five sons, Fay, Lowell, John of Rexburg, Leonard
of Idaho Falls, Harold of Huntington Beach California, two daughters, Mrs. Ken
Huskinson, Rexburg, and Mrs. Leslie Bailey, Wellsville, Utah; 23 grandchildren,
6 great grandchildren, twelve brothers and sisters. An infant son preceded him in 1906.
Funeral services will be Thursday at 1:00 p.m. in the Fourth
LDS ward chapel. Burial will be at the
Rexburg cemetery under the direction of the Weiser mortuary of Rexburg.
