Anna Meith

Facts and Memories

by Anna Cragin Meith - 1948

         In an old trunk that used to be stored away in a little Illinois town, there was a copy of a paper called “The Boston Pilot”. This paper had an article about “Cragins”, and it stated (no  sarcastic remarks) that Cragins were descendants of Irish Kings. Quoting “The Sunday Visitor”- “Nothing’s too good for the Irish and there are a large number of historic Irish families. Kings were quite common in early Ireland. There were thirty-five Kings to Ulster before the British were heard of and twenty-four High Kings to Ireland, also one Queen. Without the least desire to conquer the world, the irish, one of the smallest among great nations have gone into every land and often risen to the highest pinnacle of power.”

         After this commendatory introduction, I will try to give you some of the history of our big family, also some of my own pleasant memories. I have been told I could write a book about the Cragins and perhaps someone in the family better fitted for the job could, but I prefer to tell just what I can remember up until the time the family moved to Las Vegas in 1911 and I remained in Los Angeles. 

         Daniel Cragin, of County Limerick, and Ellen Redden were married in Ireland and moved to America in the 1850’s. They settled in Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, not far from the Atlantic Coast. Ten children were born to them - Michael, James, Kate (Mrs. McDonald). Mary (Mrs. Barrett), Johanna (Mrs. Sullivan), Thomas, Nora, Patrick, Daniel and Bridget, or Bee (Mrs. Hannan). There are still living - Mrs. Sullivan of Sheffield, Ill., Nora, Pat, Dan and Bee, all of Tiskilwa. Mrs. Barrett died during 1944 in Fremont, Neb.

         I do not know the birthplaces of the other nine, but our dad was 

born in Salmon Falls, June 9th, 1859. When he was quite young the family moved to Providence, Illinois and later to Tiskilwa, Illinois. They were very poor, in fact, so poor that our grandfather lost himself to all of his own family rather than let them know how hard up he was. The older ones went to work when they were mere children, the girls helping with housework and the boys working on neighboring farms. I have often heard Dad tell how he got up at four in the morning to start work and when evening came, after finishing all of the chores, would run all the way home and back just to see his mother for a few minutes. His dad didn’t care much for work and was considered lazy.

         Dad always worked at the heaviest kind of farm work and Mother told me that she thought this was the cause of his heart trouble. He had very little schooling and studied nights at home after he was married. He used to tell us about the little country school he attended. They had a man teacher and a whip was always handy. He even learned to play the violin himself and played lots when we were small. Mother used to threaten to run him out of the house for playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” so often. We children thought he was the most accomplished person in the world.

         He loved the beautiful Illinois country and the few times he accompanied us for visits to his old home, he would take us to the woods and show us the trees he loved best. Once he took us to visit his sister Johanna, married to a prosperous farmer in Sheffield. This was a distance of fifteen miles from Tiskilwa and was considered a long trip by horse and buggy. It took lots of planning as to which horses could stand the trip. It was a treat to visit Sullivans, for they spent days preparing for company and there was never such food anywhere and so much of it. I have visited them since many times, the last visit being in 1939.

         Grandpa Cragin was never known to ride behind a horse, having been frightened in a runaway at one time. He always walked to town and back. He was a small man with a goatee and Grandma Cragin was a small woman. The oldest boy, Michael, died when a young man of lung fever, now known as pneumonia.

         As far as I know, the family was still living in Providence when Dad and Mother were married. They afterwards lived on two different farms near Tiskilwa. Children in our day weren’t told much about their parent’s romances, but Mother was living with her eldest sister on a farm near Lombardville, Ill. I think this place is now known as Lombard. The Cragin family didn’t approve of this marriage. Mother was too full of pep and fun to settle down as a farmer’s hardworking wife, they thought.

         Mother’s father and mother were also married in Ireland, their names being Michael Dempsey and Ann McCormick. Some of their children were born in Ireland, but Mother’s birthplace was near Peoria, Ill. There were five children in her family - Michael, who settled in Imogene, Iowa; Bridget (Mrs. Walter Mowbray), Lombard, Ill; Mary (Mrs. Richard Mowbray), Chilicothe, Ill; Ann Dempsey, for many years housekeeper for the priest in Bradford, Ill; and was she sharp tongued. Ellen (Mrs. Pat Barrett) settled in Oneill, Nebr. Father and Mother’s sisters were married to brothers. Next was Charles Dempsey who settled in Crete, Nebr. Les looks like him in his younger days and has the same good disposition. Our mother was the youngest. Her mother died when she was three years old and her father married again. Her sister “Biddy” had twelve of her own and raised several others, but took Mother to raise also and this was her home until she married.She worked on neighboring farms doing housework. I do not know much about her young life except she was about the age of several of the Mowbray girls and they had good times together. Her sisters often have told me she was a very beautiful girl and had lots of admirers. She led Dad a merry chase before he finally won her.

         Dad and Mother were married February 1st, 1883, when she was twenty-one,her birth date being March 14, 1862. They settled on a farm near Bradford, Ill., living with and Dad working on a farm for people named Radke, a German couple.

          Frank was born there April 5th, 1884. When he was still a baby, they moved to Holt County, Neb., near Oneill and took up a homestead. I do not know their means of transportation, but believe they drove. How I wish I had asked more questions now that I haven’t anyone to ask. Mother’s sister lived near Oneill on a farm and later Dad’s sister came to visit them and married and settled there.

          I was born in a sod-covered shanty on this homestead Sept. 4th,1886. Dad built a barn also as he had a number of horses. They grew hay mostly and used hay for heat, burning it in a boiler. When I was still a baby, the barn and all the horses burned up. I remember hearing the folks tell how Dad tried desperately to lead the horses out of the barn and they would run right back in. The shack was still there the last time I visited Oneill in 1927. The same priest that baptized me was also there.

         With nothing left, they moved to Ord, Nebr. where Dad started railroading, getting a job as a car checker. Ellie was born in Ord, August 14th,1888. Before Emmett was born, September 2nd, 1890, we had moved to Grand Island, Nebr., where Dad started his long career in the Store Department. I can remember the day Emmett was born. We were sent across the street to stay with people named Hannan.  We lived on the outskirts of town and during the day I watched long lines of covered wagons crossing the prairie in the distance.

         We moved again into town before Edna entered the world and our neighbors were named Bauman on one side and Burke on the other. Burke’s place was rather a small farm. Minnie and Ed Burke, also        Emmett Burke of Hastings, Nebr., whom you have all heard so much about, were members of this family. Edna was born July 2nd,1893. She had dark curly hair and Emmett had blonde curly hair. Ellie’s was curly in a dark red shade, afterwards auburn.

         Frank and I started to Sister School in Grand Island. Five was the starting age in those days. We used to be praised from the altar for attending Mass every morning. On our way to and from school, we had to pass a public school and were always called names and ridiculed. Those were the days when the A.P.A.’s were strong and we always dreaded this walk. I have a clear recollection of attending a Christmas tree at church while living there and Ellie and I both received dolls dressed in blue velvet.

         While Edna was still a baby, Dad was promoted to Storekeeper at Evanston, Wyoming and we moved again. We weren’t there long when all of us except Dad came down with what the Doctor called Roseola or Scarlet Fever. The Doctor didn’t quarantine us because Dad had to keep working. We were all desperately ill, Mother included, and that is when we first made Mrs. Foley’s acquaintance. Although she had small children of her own, she came to help take care of us and we managed to get a woman to do the work. This woman used to whistle all day long and this with the sound of water dripping that in our delirium we kept hearing will never be forgotten.

         We moved again before we finally rented a Company (Union Pacific) house across from the shops on Main Street. Memories of the second house we lived in are of Chinese peddlers of vegetables with their baskets suspended on a pole across their shoulders, the first we had seen, and the young men dressed in the then approved style going from house to house of their friends on New Years day and playing and singing. I always wished they would come to ours.

         Dad had only to cross the street to work at this place on Main Street and he worked night and day, never seeming to get caught up. He had stomach trouble very bad and would lay across the bed after supper, but always had to keep busy. The only luxury he ever indulged in was to buy a bicycle, which he learned to ride in the yard. Frank went to work with him when he was thirteen and I used to help him in the office all I could. On Sunday’s when Frank worked, he would get the handcar out and take us kids for rides, even going out on the main line. Outfit cars used to be stationed on the side tracks right across the street from us and in the summer the B & B men had their families with them on these cars. We got to know some of them pretty well and our greatest delight was to be playing over there and have the switch engine couple on and take us for a ride, always half afraid they might keep going and take us to Ogden or Green River. The Union Pacific built an eight foot fence around the shops while we were living there, but we could get through anyway.

         Dad made the large salary of $75.00 and on this they bought the house we were living in for $500.00. After we bought it, the folks decided to change the rooms about a little. The dining room was on the West side in front and they made this into the living room and it was shut off from the rest of the house as all parlors were in those days. We had a flowered heavy Brussels carpet in this room and it was tacked right up to the wall and underneath were layers of newspapers. Once a year all the carpets were taken up and put on the line and beaten and beaten. This one was so heavy we couldn’t handle it and always hired a big strong man named Fischer, a German neighbor, to do the work. He used to have a tool called a stretcher that would catch in the carpet and he would pull with his might and main before putting the tacks in. This was also the day of balloons made of electric light globes attached with ribbons hung on the walls and enlarged pictures. Paper flowers and passe-partout pictures made by the ladies adorned the walls in the parlor. One night after we children had gone to bed, we heard company downstairs and a woman who had been living with her son for awhile,a clerk in a Blythe and Fargo’s store, was trying to sell the folks her grand piano as she was returning to her home in Boston. They bought the piano and we all felt pretty proud of our parlor. Of course, the Murray’s who were better off than we were had a piano and Mollie had been taking lessons for quite a while. When I first started taking lessons I went to the teacher’s house to practice. My mother had told me before I started that they couldn’t afford  to let me take lessons, but my dad loved music and I was never to waste a minute. I tried to learn quickly but couldn’t resist playing hooky once in a while. ”Just Tell Them That You Saw Me” and “The Shade Of the Old Apple Tree” were Dad’s favorites and I have played them for him times without number. One time he got Molly Murray and I each a pass to visit Mrs. Foley in Granger, Wyo., if Molly would come over every night and play “Just Tell Me That You Saw Me” for him. Her own dad was a railroad man but wouldn’t ask for passes. This piano was so big it took up about a third of the room.

         The folks cut a door through into the old living room, now the dining room and this necessitated walking over the cellar door (a trap door) to go down for butter or potatoes or apples or fruit, sometimes cabbage stored there and the child hurrying to the dining room would disappear into the cellar, always a surprise. Dad used to buy hogs and cut them and put them in brine in a barrel, also always advocated eating corn meal mush and molasses, which I still hate, but there was always lots of canned pears in the cellar, his favorite fruit. All the fruit and most of the vegetables were shipped in from Utah as we would sometimes have frost in the middle of summer, living over 600 feet above sea level. There was also a bedroom downstairs and a platform for a back porch. Every Saturday all the kitchen chairs would be taken out and scrubbed until they shone, also our kitchen floor was white as snow. One child would start scrubbing at one end and one at the other, the procedure being to first put water on the floor, then scrub with a brush and soap and finally rinse with a cloth wrung out clean. Only a small spot was taken at a time and the boundary line between spots would be a black ring, then it would have to be done over. The same with dishes. We would hurry with the dishes to play “Run Sheep Run” with the Murray’s over on another street and after we were gone if it was discovered the dishes weren’t done right, we would have to go home and do them over. We all had our jobs before school every morning. Frank had to go to town to do the shopping. Ellie and I had to do the dishes and make the beds and Edna had to clean and fill the lamps. There were two big bedrooms upstairs and a clothes closet with a cloth top that almost touched the floor and this was Frank’s exclusively. It was always locked and contained all his treasures , among them hundreds of marbles, which I believe he still has. Frank’s job also was to keep enough wood cut for the stoves and he used to pile it on top of the house so no one could get it. He also kept pigeons on top of the house and one time one of the pigeon houses fell down on me. I still have a funny nail on one finger where it hit me. He also used to make stilts that were so high you would have to get on the shed to get on them and they wouldn’t go under the light wire. Another specialty of his was bicycle pedals attached to a fence in the backyard and we spent lots of time riding this bicycle. He made bob sleds and we all used to go riding with him. One time he took a neighbor’s sister who was visiting from Laramie riding and deposited her in a bank of snow. He never did convince our troublesome neighbor that he didn’t do it in purpose. We always came home for dinner from school at noon and although against orders would come though town and wait at the post office for the mail to be distributed. I still like to put away the knives, forks and spoons, as it was always my desire to toss the letters into the different boxes and general delivery as fat old Mr. Winslow, the postmaster and his buxom daughters Lila and Luan did and in throwing the cutlery into different sections I am halfway fulfilling this desire. On Tuesdays, ironing day we always did a boiled dinner, but always there was a good dinner waiting us. Mother couldn’t find time to do the ironing and we were told we would have to do it after school. Ellie used to run home from school and try to surprise me by having it done when I got there. Although we were allowed a certain time to get home from school. I would always get what was coming to me when I finally got home.

         When Ernie was born,April 17th, 1895 someone talked Mother out of having the Doctor that had taken care of us when we had scarlet fever, a Dr. Brewster and she had Dr. Hocker. She contracted blood poisoning as so many women did in those days and was near death for a long time. Dad said whenever he heard a step on the store platform. he thought it was someone telling him she was dead. We usually had a hired girl on these occasions, paying her $5.00 a week and whenever one showed up, we knew something was going to happen. At this time we children were farmed out to different people and after a long time she was well again, but not until Dad begged Dr. Brewster to come see her. Ern was named for a priest in Grand Island, Father Wunibald Wolfe. He had colic for months and so much paragoric was poured down him, his blood must still be half paragoric. He was rather an ornery little guy, maybe he had to be to hold his own. While the folks were in church one Sunday he had a fight with one of the family and went to church and inside to tell on the other party. He was very fond of cake and always wanted one all to himself. Just to try him out, Mother made one on his birthday and he ate all himself. He was always ambitious as he still is and had a job when still quite young working in the M&J Bakery. This only one of many jobs. Dad always took up the collection and the priest started Mass when he got there.

         Our hired girl at the time was named Ellen Stone and as Mother was sick so long, she lived with us quite awhile. She was keeping company with a man named Jim Downs. She was married from our house and made her wedding clothes there. I was awed by the beautiful white taffeta wedding dress and a blue taffeta going-away dress, both made with with leg-o-mutton sleeves and many gored skirt. Ed Burke from Grand Island also stayed with us for awhile and Ern was a special pet of his. There is a picture of them taken together still around somewhere. 

         In about twenty-three months another hired girl appeared on the scene and we kids knew again something was going to happen. This girl’s name was Bertha Parkinson who lived in the Bottoms. Les was born March 5th, 1897. Mother said he was the most beautiful baby in the family. He was an easy going little baby and didn’t want to make much trouble for anyone.

          Hal was born December 29th, 1898 and this time a cousin from Imogene, Iowa came to stay with us and do the heavy work. Her name was Julia Dempsey and she was a tall sweet looking girl. Minnie Burke also stayed with us about this time and she and Julia had many boy friends. One man wanted to marry Julia, but she was very shy and gave him no encouragement. After going home, she married a man named Ryan and raised a large family. She lived in Council Bluffs and Mother and I visited her there at one time. Last I heard of her she was living with a daughter in Southgate. Hal started out in the world by having spasms, turning black and scaring all of us to death. We children would huddle together and cry and pray for him, but it wasn’t long before he was well and one of the most pestiferous kids going. He and Les leagued up to see the world and ran away continually. We had a high picket fence and kept the gate tied, but they would climb over and go away. There was an alley back of the place and a steep hill started there and then more hills. There were houses on the first hill and then only sage brush as far as the eye could see. The older boys used to make caves up in the hills and play there and Les and Hal would start out that way and just keep going. There was always a search for them. One day Hal dressed in a little pinafore and a sailor hat on the back of his head was missing and no one could find him. Someone went over to the store to tell Dad as it was getting to be pretty serious. Dad started on through the shop yards and there was Hal at the round house with a bunch of officials making a decision about an engine or the turntable. He didn’t tell us which it was. He had his hands behind his back and was displaying as much interest as he does today in a legal case. Les and Hal were regular Katzenjammer kids. They would play with water and get all wet and then would have to put on girl’s clothes as punishment. The punishment was effective as long as they had on these clothes. They didn’t attempt to run away then.

         Before Hal was born I was assigned a job taking orders for books. A book agent was and still is considered a despicable person and had doors slammed in their faces. I was to help add to the family treasury and did very well. One innocent method I had and I was really sincere was to ask the lady who came to the door if her mother was in. This would so please her that she would sometimes order a book. The folks had me go with a friend to Almy, Wyo,- a small town with seven coal mines, each a mile apart, - to take orders. When I was to come home this friend put me in the buggy while she did something around the place and the horse ran away with me. The lines were dragging and the horse was making for a wide canal when two miners ran towards us and managed to stop the horse. I have always been afraid of horses since then.

         After two and a half years, the folks began talking about Mother’s sister Biddy coming to visit as another baby was in the offing. She arrived sometime in July and Ray was born July 26th, 1901. Before she decided to return home, the folks wanted her to see Salt :Lake and she and Dad and I went there. I guess I was the chaperone. We stayed in a hotel on the main street and what a thrill it was to be awakened early in the morning by the traffic sounds, horse’s hoofs on the pavement and newsboys cries. I can still hear them and considered myself pretty important taking such a wonderful trip. Dad got passes for relatives in these days and secured Pullman reservations for Aunt Biddy all the way home, but she didn’t like the sleeper and stayed in the chair car. 

         I can’t remember much about Ray’s younger days, but he was a pretty little boy with yellow, curly hair. As he grew older, he found jobs for himself, one I remember working on a milk wagon. Before 

Ray was two years old Dad had all he could stand of slaving for the Union Pacific and quit. What a tragedy, Mother would cry and cry and thought we all would starve. On the side Dad used to take orders for tailor made suits for some Eastern concern and he thought maybe he could make a living at that but he couldn’t. He went to Los Angeles and secured a position with the Southern Pacific and thought he was going to work for them, but the Union Pacific evidently had something to do with them changing their minds and he came back home jobless. This job was being secured through a friend, Mr. Murray who was a very good friend of an S.P. official. Finally a man in politics named Ed Burke took up with Senator Clarke Montana, who owned the San Pedro and Los Angeles Railroad and Dad was given a job as storekeeper at Salt Lake for them, starting about May,1903.

         We moved July 19th, 1903 to a house quite a ways from town in   Sugar House Ward on 11th South and 13th East. This was a short ways from the penitentiary. Mother had sold the house in Evanston to the Methodist minister, a Mr. Oakes for $650.00. We all dreaded leaving Evanston where we had lived for ten years and had so many friends, and  were so lonesome we thought we couldn’t stand it. Mother used to cry overtime we received a letter from anyone there and we received plenty of them as everyone who ever knew us in Evanston made our house their headquarters. Whenever we had company someone had to wait to eat and the company would be greeted at the carline with the words “Someone else will have to wait.” 

         This house in Salt Lake had seven rooms, three bedrooms upstairs and a living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, pantry and a very large pretty room with a mantel downstairs. We never used this room but had a rug on the floor. I guess there wasn’t enough furniture to fix it up. We didn’t have a bathroom in this house either and still a Chic Sales outhouse. These things were full of snow in the winter  and bees and wasps in the summer. This place cost $2500.00 and there was an acre of ground with fifty-two fruit trees on it and space for a large garden. We had a cow named Lydia and it was Emmett’s job to milk her. We had a large cooking range with a fifteen gallon reservoir on it and all the water had to be drawn from a well with delicious water in it. Dad worked evenings in the garden and we had plenty of vegetables all summer. I imagine the boy put in plenty of time there too. We used to can quarts of tomatoes from it.

         Dad used to work in a building owned by the Oregon Short Line and Frank and Cliff worked there. I used to help out once in awhile and later went to L.D.S. Business College. I didn’t stay there long, but went to a private school of stenography and took a job in three month’s working in a broker’s office. I afterwards worked in an insurance company, a real estate company and Bradstreet’s, where I received $30.00 a month. The folks needed every cent Frank and I made as there was a mortgage on the place and I used to have to bring money every month to Addison Cain, a long street car ride from home. We used to have to go five miles to church and we all didn’t get to go every Sunday. 

         As near as I can remember Ellie, Emmett, Ern, Les and Hal started to Emerson School, quite a walk from home. Hal didn’t like school, as he was just a beginner and threw something at the Principal and broke her glasses. Ern used to run away from school, but was always protected by Ellie. Frank quit working for the Store Department and went braking on the S.P, S.L. & L.A., running to Caliente. He was home a good deal and was always the bossy big brother. He would take the phone away from us when we were talking to a boyfriend and hang it up. Remember the phone number - Forest 8Y. He would also give each one of the children a pan and a spoon or something that would make a lot of noise when it hit the pan and have them parade through the living room when we girls were entertaining boyfriends and would get all the family to get up and look through the transoms and yell things at us. He wouldn’t even phone from home himself and we never once heard him phone Florence. He brought her to the house one evening for dinner to meet the folks and maybe we didn’t all receive instructions how to act and talk. Florence had such a cold she couldn’t even talk. 

         For some reason we sold Lydia and took milk from a neighbor named Naylor. Their half-wit son delivered the milk and thought Hannie, Hellie and Boday were tops. He was always describing their electric lights which he called  dilly-dallies. We were still using lamps. We played all sorts of tricks on him such as giving him onions for apples and killing ourselves at his feet with a glass revolver which we found on a train on one of our numerous Eastern trips.

         About this time Bernice was due to arrive, which she did on September 12th, 1905. We had a practical nurse named Mrs. Martin And Dr. Stewart from Sugarhouse Ward. Everything went all right and Ellie was chief cook and bottle washer. After Mother was up and around she had a relapse and was still in bed when Aunt Bee from Tiskilwa arrived. This was her second visit to Salt Lake, having accompanied a girl named Blanche Yerrington of Tiskilwa to visit us. Frank had extended the invitation, but didn’t care much for her when she got there. We enjoyed Bee’s visit very much as she was full of fun. One night coming home on the street car from town the car ran off the track and of course everything went black. Ellie and I almost had convulsions laughing when Bee ran from the car shouting “God save us, God save us.” We all have lots of memories and I could tell you many, such as the time when Ellie was coming home on the car and her boyfriend’s mother got on and made her son go home with her. The Shanahan’s were Bernice’s godparents. Mrs. Shanahan and her sisters were all large women and everything was funny to them. They would rather laugh than eat. The sisters lived in Lemomt, Ill and Mrs. Shanahan still lives in Oak Park, Ill. I couldn’t begin to tell you of all the company we had at various times. We should have kept a visitor’s ledger. Ellie and I used to walk to Liberty Park on Sunday afternoons and had to keep chasing Edna home as she always tagged us and spoiled our chances for dates.

         The Salt Lake decided to buld their storehouse at Buena Vista, about five miles from the O.S.L. depot and nine miles from our home. I started to work with Dad and we had a long trek every morning and evening. We had to take two streetcars and the train and then walk about a half mile. We lived two long blocks from the car line and Dad would go first when there was snow and I would follow in his tracks. I always carried the lunches as he wouldn’t be seen with one. When we walked to the depot from town, we would buy strawberries at the public market and I would fix them at noon. They had stoves on the cars in those days and the conductor would spend most of the way to town trying to get the stove started while the motorman danced a jig on the front platform, which was outside and had no protection whatever.

         Edna worked at a place in Salt Lake where they made extracts and when I was at Bradstreet we used to meet at lunch time and go to the Tabernacle grounds and eat our lunches. She always had a lot of boyfriends among whom I might mention Art Burroughs and his friend Forest Cassidy. There is a butcher by this name now in Bakersfield, but no relation. Forie was very fond of Bernice as she was then a baby and would hold her and let her pound on the piano. Bernice would reward him by soaking him and this was very embarrassing when calling on lady friends. We used to go to Saltier on the open cars to dance and have to get home before the last cars left town. We also went to the Salt Palace to watch Art race on the saucer track. This was very exciting but Art never did win. 

         About September, 1907 Dad was made General Storekeeper at Los Angeles and October 12th, 1907 we chartered about half a Pullman car and all of us but Frank who was to be married shortly arrived in Los Angeles. Dad had rented a house at 2718 East 2nd St, next door to Meyers on one side and Vallejos on the other side. Mr. Meyer worked for the Salt Lake and Mr. Vallejo was a Southern Pacific brakeman. The four younger boys started to St. Mary’s school and I went to work with dad in the office. The shops were then located at the East end of the Fourth St viaduct on the Los Angeles River. Frank was married Oct 31st, 1907 and he and Florence moved to Los angeles and he went to work in the Store Department again and has been there ever since. Emmett went to the Bridge St school and afterwards went to work for the Southern Pacific and has been with them ever since except during World War I and afterwards for a while at Yucaipa. I can remember Edna working in the ten cent store for a while and for the Pacific Electric.  

         Dad asked his office boy, Frank O’Grady, if wouldn’t help us get acquainted as we were lonesome. He introduced us to his crowd, including his sister, the Armstrongs, Nell Griffith, Carrie Reynolds then and now a reporter for the Herald, Ed Hennessy and others including my own little Albert. We were married three years from the date we landed in Los Angeles. There used to be lots of dances in St Mary’s Hall in those days and we had lots of good times. 

         I was married October 12, 1910 and Ellie and Cliff were married November 24, 1910. We lived upstairs and they lived downstairs in a new four room flat at 1951 East 3rd St. The folks lived at 443 So. State St, not far away. Ellie and I talked to each other through the coolers. The signal to open the cooler doors was a tapping on the faucet. F & F [Frank & Florence?] lived then in the 1900 block on East 4th where they still are but not in the same house. Moyers lived at 4th and State. While we were living in Evanston a man named Sy Johnson opened The Golden Rule Store and we had Penneys for the first time. He had a couple named Penney working for him. Penney was a salesman and his wife did the altering in suits. Penney moved to Kemmerer, Wyo. and and afterward became the head of Penney Stores all over the country. Laura Forbes and I visited them in a beautiful home in Salt Lake at one time.

         If all ten of us added our memories to this it would be a long story.

         I will always remember the time Ellie... [did not copy]...in the kitchen when we spied a can of lye mother had used scrubbing the floor and inadvertently left under the table. We decided to use the lye instead of the soap with terrible burning results.

         In the Fall, Wyoming people always stored apples, potatoes and so on in their cellar. The Murray girls and us were each allowed one apple a day when we went back to school at noon. We Cragins took only one apple but Molly Murray would fill the legs of her long drawers with apples and give them out as we ran out.

         Who of us can forget the payday candy we got once a month when we paid the bill at Blythe and Fargo’s? We used to wait all month for it. Sometimes we couldn’t pay all the bill and I used to pay part of it and explain why we couldn’t pay. A big event in my life was finding five dollars in the Opera House. No one claimed it and I kept it.

         Indians used to ride on the steps of passenger trains in those days and quite a few of them roamed around Evanston. One time when I was alone some of them came to the door and then went to all the windows and looked in. I was hiding in the clothes closet. 

         Remember when Frank and Ellie followed the organ grinder and a monkey around all day and got theirs when they finally got home. I can also remember how Frank used to put pieces of paper in the lamps to burn when the folks left him home with us.

         Bear River was a long walk from our place, but we used to go skating or trying to and almost freeze. We liked to stop in the depot on the way home to get warm by the big stove until old man Dickey would lock the door so we couldn’t get in. It was fun to watch them cut ice in winter for refrigerator cars on the Union Pacific.