Nora Jane Cole

Excerpts from Autobiography of Nora Jane Cole Henry  (A complete version “From Wagons to Jet Planes” can be found on familysearch.com)

“I was active in the Woman’s suffrage movement and was one of the first women in Rigby to drive a car and to have my hair cut short”

“My father was born July 3, 1848, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, where the family was camped on their way to Utah. Later when William Edward was about eighteen years of age, he went from Salt Lake to bring supplies from the Missouri River area. His wagon was loaded with telegraph wire. The Coles settled first in American Fork, then moved to Plain City, then to South Willard. My mother was born January 29, 1852, also at Council Bluffs. The Merrell family also was on their way to Utah and was camping at Council Bluffs for the winter. In July of 1852 they started West for the Salt Lake valley. However, after only a few days out on the trail at the Elkhorn River crossing, my grandfather, Charles Merrell, died of cholera. He was wrapped in a quilt and buried in an unmarked grave near Indian Creek. My grandmother, Sarah Finley Merrell, brought the family on West and settled in Bountiful.”

My father’s Aunt Betsy gave Dad a $5.00 gold piece when they went to get married. Dad gave the gold piece at the Endowment House, expecting to get some change. But none was offered, so the newlyweds had no money and had to eat the sandwiches they’d brought, which were now frozen.

To earn some money I worked in the produce garden for Old Man Ayers, picking peas and beans for half a cent a pound or bunching radishes, beets, and onions. When I weeded, I got 35 cents a day. I didn’t like that because my brother Rate got 50 cents a day for doing the same work just because he was a boy.

Some men came to Willard one time pulling teeth for people. The first tooth they would pull for free, then they charged for other teeth to be pulled. I had one of mine pulled too, even though it hadn’t been bothering me at all.

I always liked school and also Primary and Sunday School. Two memories I have from Primary are concerning my teachers. One of the teachers told us girls that she would rather meet a wild beast in the desert than a man. We all wondered why she would say something like that. Another time I gave a poem on one of our programs. One of the lines was “I stared at him and he stared at me.” When I finished, my teacher said that was not a very good poem because it was impolite to stare.

A big bell on the Relief Society building would be rung for about five minutes a half hour before school or meetings. One other use I remember for the bell was for warning some of the men who had been living in polygamy that a United States Marshall was making his rounds. Some of the older boys caught on to this signal and would ring the bell and think it great sport to watch the men scurry from one house to another in the middle of the night.

At the time of Mother’s death, Ed was a student at West Point Military Academy in New York. Estella was married and had three children, and Delta came home from the Brigham Young Academy to stay. Rate was seventeen, I was fourteen, Edna was twelve, Roscoe was ten, Zina was eight, Winn was seven (Mother’s funeral was on his birthday), Ellis was three and the baby, Joseph Marcellus, was five days old. My parents’ first child, Daisy, had died as a baby. Mother died of childbirth complications December 3, 1895 when she was 43 years and 10 months old. Mother knew she was passing on and all the family (except Ed who was at West Point) and Aunt Rachel Morgan were at her bedside.

After Ed graduated from West point, and after the Spanish American War, we built a new brick home during the spring and summer of 1900. Ed sent money to pay for the materials and the labor. We boarded the bricklayer and the carpenter. Rate hauled brick from Harrisville and the lumber from Brigham City. I kept us all busy helping in whatever way we could as well as gathering garden produce and preparing meals. We had to paint the framework of the windows before they were put in

One night I was with several of the women “sitting up” with a dead woman and keeping cold cloths on her face. Everyone thought she was breathing at times and kept looking intently at her, but she wasn’t breathing. We finally realized that as one woman would turn, her skirts would rub against the coffin, making a sound like someone breathing.

When Zina and I cleaned house, we had our own system worked out. We would move everything out of the house. I would calcimine the ceilings and the walls, then go on to the next room while Zina washed the woodwork and windows. Then we’d move the furniture back in.

Zina needed a new dress for the Christmas party one year. Delta was at school in Salt Lake, so I wrote her to have some material sent. The time was going by and the party was getting closer, and still the fabric from Salt Lake had not come. I finally took some faded velvet material and dyed it a dark red and made her a dress. When I saw how pretty she looked with her brown curls against that bright red, I couldn’t help but shed a few tears. She was one of the prettiest girls at the party.

Ed came from Wyoming for us to be married. His bishop sent his recommend to me. We rode on the train from Willard to Salt Lake to be married in the temple. As we left I was crying. Zina asked, “Don’t you want to get married?” I said, “Yes, but I didn’t want to leave home.” They ordained Ed an Elder there in the temple. We were married on the 18th of May 1904.

My brother Ellis died of appendicitis the 1st of March in Willard, but I couldn’t go to the funeral.

My brother Ed wrote saying he could help either Rate or me with the down payment on a place. Rate was renting. He looked around for a place to buy, but couldn’t find what he wanted. So we began looking and found a 40-acre farm a mile north of Rigby, which we purchased. I made sure we paid back every cent of the money my brother had loaned us for a down payment.

 Zina taught school and Sugar City, and often when she came to visit me, Alfred Cordon would come to take her for a ride in his car – one of the first in Rigby. She later married C. Arthur Harris. They lived in Rexburg where he worked at a farm and implement business, later known as C.A. Harris and Sons. I always enjoyed visiting around with my family and friends.

I started in selling butter and garden stuff, just as I had in Wyoming. Later, a law was passed that said butter had to be wrapped and have the person’s name and the butter’s weight printed on the wrapper. I used to order butter wrappers by the hundreds with my name, butter, and 16 oz. Printed on them. I also changed my butter mold to one with a pineapple on top. When we moved to the house south of Rigby I started selling cream to the creamery in town; the company would later pick up the cans of milk out by the front gate.

In March of 1920 Ed became a distributor for the Fletcher Oil Company. For the next sixteen and a half years I kept the books and did the office work along with my gardening, homemaking, church and civic activities. I was active in the Red Cross during both World Wars, doing sewing, knitting, making bandages, distributing yard goods, blankets, and flour. I also took a course of Red Cross nursing.

Around 1938 we had a note on a loan to pay and got the money ready to pay before the due date. The man who owned the note didn’t want to be paid early and lose the interest. So we had this extra money and I wondered what to do with it. I woke up in the middle of the night with the thought “Buy wheat.” I looked into the commodity market and found out how to buy wheat contracts. I watched the market closely, and then sold my contracts back after the price rose. I bought myself a fur coat, a wooden clarinet for Charles, an overcoat for Merrell, and a used bedroom set. I still had the money to pay off the note and the interest when it was due.

I used to like to listen to the boxing and wrestling matches on the radio and to watch the matches when they’d come up to Rigby. Ed and I would go together. The Fletcher Oil Company would be one of the sponsors. I remember watching Jack Dempsey once.

When we were lowering the ceilings in the house, I figured out where we would put all the furniture so we could still get into the dresser drawers and Ruth could still get to the piano to practice. After it was all finished with the plastering and painting, the Harris’s came down from Rexburg to visit. Byron looked around the living room and said, “I didn’t know you were rich.”

We always went to Rexburg to Zina’s for Thanksgiving dinner. After the blessing on the food (which was especially long if Grandpa Harris was asked to say it), Arthur would carve the turkey and pass a portion to each person. We really had some good meals. Afterwards the men would visit and the small children would play, while the women and older children did the dishes, cleaned up, and put the dishes away in the large glass-doored cupboard in the dining room.

(after her husband died)  Charles was able to stay for a few weeks, and between him and the colored boy Mac (his real name was Norman White, but everyone called him Black Mac) that was working for us, they got the irrigating and other things done. After Charles had to go back, Mac kept things running well while I found sale for the livestock, crops, and machinery. As the work slowed down, Mac would take jobs at other places, but he always checked with me to see if I needed anything done. Several people in town wondered how I could have a “filthy Negro” working for me. I told them he was cleaner than many white people. He would always scrub, wash, and dry his boots after he’d been out in the corral before he ever came in the house to eat, and always shaved and kept his hair combed. He was very good to me.

I needed to go to work so I could qualify for Social Security, since the government program hadn’t really been started until after we were out of the gasoline business.