Lovernia Elizabeth Hinckley Johnson

THE LIFE STORY OF LOVERNIA ELIZABETH HINCKLEY JOHNSON

As told by herself

On a cold winter day on February 17, 1893, my father, Ira Nathaniel Hinckley, went with a team and sleigh six miles to Rexburg, Idaho, to get a midwife by the name of Waltz; but, she was not home, he got another one by the name of Sprunger. When they reached the little one-room log house, my mother, Elizabeth Rock Hinckley, was very ill. And, this midwife brought to her a little black-haired baby girl which was afterwards called Lovernia Elizabeth Hinckley. I was blessed in the Salem Ward.

When I was about one and one-half years old, my brother, Jared Grant, 2 yrs. 1 mo. 5 days older than I, died with pneumonia, which brought great sorrow to my parents. As I remember my mother’s telling, I was a very cross baby, especially at this particular time.

 With the good care and teachings of my mother and father I matured on in life. When I was about 4 years old I learned to ride a horse by the name of Fly. When any of us fell off her back, she would stop and wait for us to get on her again. There could be as high as 6 little tots ride her at once. So all our playmates would go riding with us and we would have lots of fun. We girls would help father and our brothers pile sagebrush in big piles to get the land cleared; then, father would let us take the horse to carry torches from one pile to another. And, my sister Hazel and I would herd cattle and hogs on horses too. I did more work out in the field than I did in the house. I learned to run all kinds of machinery and handle all kinds of horses. I would help my father hitch up the colts when he was breaking them.

We used to have large planks for footbridges to cross the large canals and ditches. So, one Sunday my sister Leannah and I were all dressed up nice and we were crossing one of these planks. The ditch was real full of water and Leannah fell in. I had to run about 50 rods to tell mother, and when we got her out she was nearly drowned.

I spent all my school days in the North Hibbard School. Julia Lavery and I were the first to graduate from the eighth grade in that District. My average was 98%.

When I was a young girl I was teacher in the Sunday School and Mutual for a number of years. I went with my sister Hazel to Morgan, Utah, when I was 15 years old. We visited friends and went sightseeing. During the 3 weeks we were there I stayed at Conway Morris’ while Hazel went on to Salt Lake and did her temple work. We went through Shupe & Williams Candy Factory at Ogden. The first time I was ever on a motor trolley car I went with a boy friend from Morgan depot up to Peterson. It took us nearly one day to make the trip. We just got through a tunnel when the signal came that a train was near; then, we had to sidetrack the trolley car till the train passed.

We used to go to dances in all the neighboring Wards. The only way we had to go was with team and buggy or sleigh. One night six of us sent with team and sleigh to Chester to a dance. An Idaho blizzard came up and we had to stay to some friends’ for 2 days and nights.

When I was about 7 years old my father built us a nice large brick house which we were very proud of. Mother had a rag bee party a while before we moved in our new house so as to get a new carpet woven. After the party Pearl, Hazel and I took the team and sleighs with just the bolsters and planks laid on them to take the girls home. Pearl did the driving, and when she went to turn around at Hammon’s, I got my foot caught between the bolsters. Hazel told her to turn Fox, but she turned Johnie, That squeezed my foot until it mashed my ankle. I was crippled up for a few weeks.

I was baptized when I was 8 years old by Bishop George Hibbard in a slough over at his place where we used to go boat riding and have many good times.

While topping beets in Plano in 1912 Fred Saurey brought us word that our brother Harvey had died in Salt Lake. Father was down there with him and mother was alone. They took her word first; Hazel and I got home as quickly as possible. On arriving there we found mother out in front of the house helpless with sorrow. I picked her up in my arms and carried her to the house. She was a woman that would weigh about 145 lbs.; but I carried her so easily in my excitement that she didn’t seem more than 50 lbs.

Mother let me go and help the sick lots. Some places were hard places to work and others were good.

In February of 1913 Roy Johnson became my sweetheart. In the spring he was operated on for appendicitis. His mother asked me to go with to Sugar City and watch the operation, which I did.

On the 23rd of September 1913 we were married in St. Anthony by the Justice of the Peace.

We lived with my husband’s folks for some time.

On the 5th of May, 1914, Dr. Shupe brought us our first baby, a son we named Harvey Roy Johnson. Then we were surely some happy parents!

Then Roy was stricken ill with rheumatism which nearly took his life. I nursed him for several weeks night and day, and by faith and prayers he got well and built us a two-room log house east of his father’s. We moved to ourselves and lived there a short time when he filed on a dry farm out at Medicine Lodge nineteen miles west of Dubois. My father and Roy’s father helped us move out there the fall of 1915 to a one-room log house that Roy had built. It was a cold winter and we had lots of snow. Roy made himself a pair of skis to go too Small once every two weeks for our mail. He had to go about seventeen miles. Then in the summer we could go on a horse down over a steep, winding cliff and meet the mailman. Many a time I took Harvey on our horse named Maud and got the mail; and, it was all we could do to keep from sliding off the horse. Sometimes Roy would go with and we would fish in Medicine Lodge Creek. We broke up land and cleaned and burned the sage off and planted grain. Each year we tried to get more land cleared, and I helped Roy fence the 320 acres of land. Roy had to go away during haying time to work to get hay for winter. There were lots of sage chickens. They got so tame they would come and eat with our chickens, and there were lots of coyotes and rabies was among them. Our big, black dog got it and we had to kill him. Harvey and I would go with Roy on the running gears of the wagon to Black Mountain about twenty miles west from our home to get big pine logs for fire wood; then Roy and I would saw it up in stove lengths.

(Insert – This was told to Vilda and Neldon at Yellowstone Park Aug 18, 1969 by Lovernia: When Harvey was just a baby and while we lived on the dry farm, Roy and I would take Harvey and go with the team and wagon to Black Mountain after wood. I don’t know how we ever got the big logs loaded, but they would just fit between the running gears of the wagon. When we would get the logs home, I would have to run one end of the two man saw to saw it into stove lengths. I would get so tired, I couldn’t saw any more. Once, I dropped my end of the saw and told Roy I won’t saw any more. He just said if you don’t help me we just won’t have any wood for winter as I can’t do it alone. So, I went back to sawing. Boy, one of those big logs made a lot of wood. But, after that, we got smaller logs.)

The seventh day of August 1916 a sweet little girl weighing a little over 3 lbs. was born. Mother came out to the dry farm and stayed with me a week. Roy’s mother was with me when the baby was born. Dr. Jones came after she was born. Gladys McNeal and Lillian Neville were at my home so Gladys took her boy and Harvey to her home and Lillian stayed to help Mrs. Johnson. Roy brought my mother, his mother, Harvey, me, and the baby in to Hibbard, and we had the baby blessed and named her Artense Lovernia. We stayed a couple weeks then went back to the dry farm.

What grain we cut that fall we used as feed for our horses and cows. We had to go nineteen miles with wagon and team to Dubois to get our groceries, and that would take about a day. We kept struggling along breaking up land planting. Then Roy and his father bought a grain header, and I ran one of the header boxes to catch the heads in as the machine cut the heads off. In 1917 we came in to Hibbard and stayed the winter with my parents and went back in the spring. We didn’t do very well on the dry farm.

In 1919 on December 20th Glen Hinckley came from their dry farm and brought us the very sad news that my father, Ira Nathaniel Hinckley, had died suddenly of a heart attack. I thought I never could get over that. Ira’s (my brother), Pearl’s and our family came home to the funeral. It was a very nice funeral held in the Hibbard Ward the 24th day of December. Then they all went back to their dry farms except Harvey, Artense, and me. We stayed with mother. In January the flu was so bad, and we got it. I was the last to get it, but I must have been very sick. Mother said I passed out and she thought I was gone. When I came out of it, Mother was kneeling by my bed praying for me. While I was out I saw my father come into the bedroom and stand at my bed. He had a roll of paper, and it unrolled when he held it up; and, he said, “Lovernia, some time you will understand.” I loved my father and mother very much and tried to do as they taught me to. My father went by the nickname of Lon a great deal.

I went back to the dry farm in March and Roy had got us work on the Lodge working for Jack Faile. I did the cooking for ten to twenty men a day, and Roy did the irrigating. He had to use canvas dams, and he carried them from field to field on a horse. One day in July the saddle cinch broke and scared the horse. It jumped, and Roy, saddle, and dam hit the ground. Roy’s leg was broken between the hip and knee. Some of the men who were working in the field carried him in to the house on the canvas dam. It frightened me very much. There wasn’t any hospital in Dubois so Dr. Jones came out to the ranch fourteen miles from town and set his leg. I had to take care of Roy and cook for all those men three meals a day for the two months that Roy had to stay in bed. Then he began to use crutches. During this time Harvey got up in the loft of the barn and fell through one of the holes they used to put hay down through and broke his collarbone. When I went to get him I was so excited that I moved and worked his arm until it flipped in place. Then I put his arm in a sling and got the doctor to come out and he said it was in perfect position and that I should just keep it in the sling for a few weeks. Then every day Artense would want her arm in a sling!

In October we came in to Hibbard and stayed with my mother. During the winter Roy got very sick with smallpox and rheumatism. But, after being in Hibbard a couple weeks, we went back to the dry farm long enough to haul the grain. Roy took care of Harvey and Artense, and his father and I hauled his grain in wagons to Dubois. We would each take a load to Dubois every day for ten days. We would load our wagons in the evening and leave early in the morning. Johnson would lift the sacks of grain up on the wagon and I would stack them up until we got loaded and our load bound. Roy was on crutches for a year.

In the spring of ’21 Roy traded our dry farm on a wet farm five miles south of Roberts. Still being on crutches, he took Lee Mathews in partnership with him.

On the 12th day of July 1921 a sweet little boy came to us in a little old log house that looked like Abraham Lincoln’s home. He weighed 6 1/4 lbs. and we named him Stant S.

We had the hay men at that time, and my sister Leannah was there helping me. When Stant was five days old, Roland Johnson, who was helping in the hay, took the team hitched to a slip that they hauled hay on and let Harvey, Artense, and Gail go with him. He put on about 1 1/2 ton of hay and started back from the field. Artense slipped off the hay behind the horses and the slip went over her breaking her right arm and left leg and bruising her whole body. Harvey tried to lift her up, saw that her leg was broken, and called for help. Leannah carried her in and laid her on my bed. She got some vinegar hot and dipped towels in it and I would wrap them around Artense’s leg to keep the swelling down. Roy was out in the field about 1/2 mile. Arnold Johnson hitched a team to the buggy and got Roy and took him to the highway to go for a doctor. Roy saw a car coming down the highway, hailed the car, and went to town with him to get the doctor. He was only gone about thirty minutes when he and the doctor were back. So the doctor and Roy took Artense strapped in a leg trough to Idaho Falls to the Spencer Hospital. While they were on their way her arm went limp and the doctor said it was broken also. She was in the Hospital nine weeks, and it took two doctors from 9:00 at night to 4:00 in the morning to get her leg and arm untwisted and set right. I didn’t get to see her until the 7th of August on her fifth birthday, and she was still black and blue.

That fall we moved up to Roberts on the Patry place just south of Roberts City limits. Lee and Roy rented this place. We lived there 1 1/2 years, then moved in the spring of ’23 to a two-room frame house in Roberts owned by Mrs. Jones.

July 29, 1923, another sweet boy weighing 5 1/2 lbs. came to live with us in the little two-room frame house. I loved all of my children. We had him blessed and named him Perry Roberts. At the same time he was born, a pair of twins was born across the street to Sarrares. It kept the doctor busy going back and forth until it was all over.

In the fall of 1923 work was scarce so Roy got a job feeding cattle that winter, and in the spring of 1924 he went to work moving sheep camp for Hunts. In May 1924 David, my brother, and Roland Johnson came to Roberts and moved us to Hibbard. We lived in my brother Ira’s two-room log house on my Mother’s place. I helped Mother and helped David in the field. Mother and I raised a very good garden that year. One day Perry was supposed to stay at the house with Mother while I did some work in the garden, and, instead, he followed me and lay down in a little ditch and went to sleep. When I returned to the house and he wasn’t there, both Mother and I were scared stiff. We ran and called to him. Finally, in about one-half hour he woke up and came toddling to the house. Was I ever glad!

Harvey had started school in the fall of 1921 in Roberts, and Artense started in 1922. One night when we still lived at the Patry place we went to a show (movie) and when we came out we thought Artense was awake, but while we stood talking to some friends, Artense walked away in her sleep. Were we ever scared! We had the cop and everyone looking for her, and finally I found her at the other end of town trying to open the schoolhouse door.

In August 1924 Roy’s Father died, and we all felt very sad. I helped David get his potatoes picked up that fall in October, and the 11th of November, Armistice Day, another sweet little boy was born to us. He was so dark and tiny that Dr. Rich said he was no larger than a brush rabbit, and he asked me if I wanted to keep him. He weighed a little over 5 lbs. and we named him Lenard L. Myrtle Hinckley took care of me and the children and did the housework.

After Roy got laid off work around Christmas, Bill, Myrtle, Mother, Roy and myself used to go to the dances. One night I wrapped Lenard in his shawls and laid him on the bench by Mother. An old friend of Mother’s – and she was a large woman – came up to talk to Mother and flopped down on Lenard before Mother could warn her. We thought he was mashed for a few minutes, but he didn’t get hurt.

Lenard was blessed in Hibbard, and that was a very cold winter and lots of snow.

Roy worked in the sugar factory in the winters and for the farmers in the summer. In February when Lenard was about four months old he and Roy had the mumps. Lenard’s little neck and cheeks were really swelled on both sides, and that winter all the kids had the measles and Stant was really sick.

We had a mean buck sheep with long horns, and we had to keep him chained up all the time because he would get after people. One day he broke loose and the kids and some neighbor kids were playing in the yard. I knew I had to catch him. We had a place built about 5 feet high that we would put pulp in during the winter to feed the cattle. I ran out and the buck took after me. I jumped over that fence, and when he stood up on his hind feet to try to get me I caught his chain and tied him up. But it was harder to get out than it was in. Also, I had a cow that I milked and every time she saw Stant in the yard she would bunt him. So I took Stant by the hand and a club in the other hand and went where she was. Sure enough, she made a dive at him and I hit her across the nose with the club so it brought her down on her knees. But after that she never bothered Stant.

The Relief Society asked me to be a Visiting Teacher, and I have been one ever since (this service being continued at the date of typing this story in February 1968) except for about 4 years when my Sister Hazel was sick. In 1960 at the Relief Society Convention in Sugar City honoring the Visiting Teachers I got a prize for being a Teacher the longest in the Hibbard Ward, which was about 33 years at that time. I also have been a Work Director in Relief Society.

In 1925 my Mother got pneumonia and was sick about 2 weeks and died the 4th of November. It was a sad time for me. I missed her so much for some time that I didn’t see how I could ever live without her, and I still miss my dear Mother and Father. They were so good to me.

My Mother had never been sealed to her parents so in August 1926 Roy and I and our five children and Roy’s Mother and his brother Lewis went to Logan with a temple excursion and did our temple work. We had our children sealed to us, and Roy’s Mother had hers and Johnson’s work done and Roy and Lewis sealed to them. Artense stood proxy for Aunt Pearl Johnson, and she was sealed to her parents. And I did my Mother’s work – had her sealed to her parents Henry and Leannah Rock.

We visited in Logan and then went to Provo to see Roy’s Aunt Lena. We camped out part of the trip and had a good time.

That fall Roy, Harvey and I worked in the spuds and beets, then Roy fed cattle for Hillman’s in Plano in the winter. The next spring he rented a piece of land from Joe Beasley and planted spuds in it. I had a bunch of men to cook for when they were digging them, and Harvey got his foot hurt in the digger. Roy stored the spuds in Beasley’s pit and they all froze so we got nothing for our work. That fall I went up to Beasley’s and cooked for his threshers – about 20 men – for 5 days.

I served on the Genealogy Committee for several years when Brother George Mortimer was Chairman with Roy and Brother Zollinger as his counselors and Alice Mortimer was Secretary. Clarence Park, Sister Mortimer and my sister Hazel were also on the committee.

The fall of 1927 we moved up to William Oldham’s place and took care of his cattle and horses while they were away teaching school.

On January 6th, 1928, a sweet little girl came to us, and we named her Vilda H. The snow was awful deep and Dr. Rich came in a one horse cutter, and Roy went and got my sister Hazel in a sleigh. The next morning when she called Artense and told her that she had a baby sister, she was so glad that she would laugh a while then cry a while. Vilda had spasms of the outlet of the stomach when she was tiny and was very sick for a couple months. Then when she got old enough to eat and until she was 6 or 7 years old, every time she would eat an uncooked apple she would take convulsions.

Artense had an inflammatory rheumatic condition, possibly rheumatic fever, when Vilda was a baby.

We lived at Oldham’s place until spring then moved back home, and Roy worked for wages for several years. Then in the spring of 1930 on May 28th Dr. Rich brought another sweet little girl. Roy, Harvey, Stant and Perry were down to Priests thinning beets, and Roy had to come home to go for the doctor. We named this little girl Mildred Toots. We always made a lot of fuss over this baby; I guess it was because she was our last baby.

When Toots was about a year old, Roy rented a farm owned by Charles Larsen and farmed it for a couple years. We raised some more hogs, sheep, and chickens and milked our cows. The first fall we were there Artense went to Salt Lake City to go to Henager’s Business College. I sure did miss her a lot; it was her first time to be away from home. Then Harvey went on a trip to Texas and I was afraid he would get work and stay there, so I didn’t want him to go. But, Roy said, “Let him go. He will be back”. He didn’t stay long and he came back.

The spring that Toots was four years old, we moved to the Joseph Keppner house just back of the church house and Roy farmed the Comstock place in the northeast corner of Hibbard. He would go from where we lived over three miles each day to milk the cows and do the farming. The boys would help him.

In 1937 the 18th day of January Roy had a heart attack. We got brother Cecil Clements to come to administer to him and Fred Sommer to take him to the doctor, but he died a few minutes after we got him there. The snow was very deep. A car couldn’t go out on the side roads, so brother Clements and Roy’s brother, Arnold, carried him a big block from the house to the road where Fred’s car was. That was a very sad day for me and my family. I couldn’t see how we could ever live without him. He was buried on the 21st of January. It was awful cold, but we had a very nice funeral for him. If he would of lived it was to be a farewell dance for Harvey that night to go on a mission to Denmark, but it was postponed. The last thing Roy said to me was, “Let Harvey go on his mission no matter what happens to me”. We had everything ready for Harvey to go but I went to the Bishop and asked what I should do and he said to keep him home. That made Harvey feel bad and me too, but Comstock built a two-room frame house on the place and we moved in it in April. He let the boys run the place even though they were small.

We all worked hard, and in the spring of ’39 Harvey was called to go on his mission. He was only in Denmark a short time when the missionaries were called out of there and sent back to the States on account of World War II. Harvey finished his mission in the Mississippi Southern States Mission. Stant, Perry, and Lenard did the farming while he was gone and Vilda, Toots, and I helped. We took care of the cows and pigs, bunched hay, shocked grain, and kept up the pasture fence. We all worked hard.

Harvey came home in the spring of ’41 and Stant left with some other boys to go to work in the Lockheed Airplant in California. Perry went to Ogden to work at Hillfield making parachutes. He was very young, but they put him in as one of the bosses on the sewing machines. Then, Stant was called from Los Angeles to serve in the Army. He took his training and was sent overseas. He was in Greece working and he and some other men stepped in a booby trap. Stant got one of his legs and foot injured badly. They sent me a telegram that he was hurt very bad and they were flying him back to the States to an Army Hospital nearest his home. I got another telegram that they had to stop in Florida for several hours for Stant to rest and have his wounds taken care of. I thought they would bring him to the Army Hospital in Brigham, Utah, but the next telegram I got he was in Palm Springs, California, in a hospital there. He was kept in the hospital for six months, then they let him come home for a couple weeks. He had to go back to the hospital for a couple more months.

Perry took his training the States and then left his wife and little son with her folks in Washington and was sent to Guam for two years. He came home for a while and then went back to Hillfield to work again. He stayed in the Reserve and was called back in the Korean War. So he went from Ogden to serve in that. He and Lola had bought a home in Layton, Utah. They sold that before he went again.

Harvey and Lenard did the farming. We bought my folks’ farm and moved here in the spring of 1942, and I have lived here ever since.

I didn’t just work hard on the farm, but I worked in the Church and had to walk three or four miles sometimes to get to my R.S. meetings and do my Block Teaching (Visiting Teaching was then called Block Teaching). After I was left a widow, I always went with my children to the meetings on Sunday and other times and helped them so they could serve in the Church whenever they were called to do so. I helped them so they could go to school and get an education. They all graduated from Rexburg High School except Perry. He stayed out the last spring to get the plowing done for spring planting; but, when he went to Ogden to work he finished school at Weber High.

My sister, Hazel, took a stroke and was bedfast for three years. She died in 1951. I took care of her in my home, and Leland (her son) helped me as much as he could and be farming.

Both Vilda and Toots went to Henager’s from High School and got good jobs after they graduated in Salt Lake.

In May of 1941 Artense got married to John Douglas Bybee. Stant went on a mission to Denmark in the spring of 1950 (May 5th). Vilda went on a mission to Denmark June 28, 1950.Toots left for her mission to Argentina, South America, July 3, 1953.

I went on a lot of good trips with different ones of my family. After Toots came home from her mission, she bought a car and worked. Every time she got her vacation she would take me on some very good trips with her. We went to all the Western States where there was lots of things to see of interest and up through Canada, and we went through the temple when we were there.

(Insert here: The following notes were found in a little tablet Mother had in a purse that was given to Vilda after she passed away. I believe these notes were made while on a trip with Toots. – “Left home June 28, 1962. Got To Livingston at noon and ate lunch in a nice park. Then went on to Great Falls and rode around and then went on out to Powers and on out to Dean’s and ate supper with them and stayed all night. Then we had a good visit with them and got up Tuesday morning, ate breakfast and Dean took me in his car and showed me his land. Then we left there about 8:15 and went on to Browning and visited the museum and on to the West Entrance of Glacier Park and went through the Park. Ate lunch in the Park, then came out at St. Mary’s and came to the Canadian part of the Glacier Park. Went through some of it and came back out on up to the Cardston Temple. Got us a motel and had supper. Will go through the temple in the morning. Got up at 6:00, had breakfast, got ready and went to the Temple and went in at 8:30 a.m. and got out at 1:30. Went to a grill and had dinner. Then we came up to Calgary and it really rained and hailed, so we got a motel and have had supper. Thurs. morning went on up to Banff and seen a lot of places of interest, then on up to Lake Louis and looked around and got some cards and mailed them. Then went on to Golden City and had to take a loop through the mountain—193 miles on dirt road. Seen some deer and we seen some deer and one elk before on our trip up from Banff. Now we are back on the oil and got a cabin at Revelstoke—a nice little town. We ate lunch at a roadside place and have come through some pretty mountains and farming country. Now we are at Aldergrove, B.C. , in a cute motel for the night with a swimming pool in front.”)

She took me back to Omaha, Nebraska, to see Russell Hinckley and his family. We visited lots of interesting places and saw many beautiful things. We visited Winter Quarters and the Cemetery there. Leland has taken me on a lot of interesting trips.  I have been to California once or twice a year to see Stant and family since he has lived there and he has taken me on lots of sight-seeing trips and two times to Death Valley to camp. I have been through 5 different temples and been to four other temples when they were closed for cleaning. (The Oakland Temple wasn’t quite finished, but Artense and I went in it to see what they were doing.)

I have thirteen grandchildren up until now (May 1978) that have gone on missions.

I have sat up nights with a lot of sick people and helped in the daytime whenever I could. I brought two babies when the doctor didn’t get there in time (both of George and Laura Parker’s babies and helped with Sarah McClure’s first son, Clarence). One doctor wanted to hire me to go with him to deliver the babies.

When I was a girl I used to thin, hoe and top beets or do any kind of field work for ten cents an hour. We worked ten hours a day one year; we camped in Plano while we were working—ten of us boys and girls. We worked hard and also had a lot of fun.

(Several years before Mother passed away she had fallen several times and broken bones, and also had several strokes. Her son, Perry, and her nephew, Leland Morris, cared for her during theses trying times for her. Perry and Leland were so kind, gentle, patient, and tender with her at all times. The beautiful care they gave her could never have been bought with all the money there is. She had to be taken to a Nursing Home for the last little while of her life to receive the proper care. This greatly saddened those who had cared for her so lovingly, but had to be done. Mother passed away on October 1, 1984 at a Nursing Home in Idaho Falls, Bonneville Co., Idaho—age 91.)