Clara Christina Saxton

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A Life History of

Clara Christina Polson Saxton

1893 – 1985

Clara Christina Polson was born December 27, 1893, at Taylor, Idaho. She was the fifth child, and the third girl born to James and Lena Annette Jensen Polson. When she was born, she had so much red hair over her eyes, they couldn’t get her eyes open. When she was seventeen, one of her girlfriends said her hair looked like long strings of molasses. The only spanking she remembered getting, was one day when her mother was trying to braid her hair and she didn’t want it braided the way she was doing it, so she kept shaking her head.

The summer she was eight, she went into the field and caught Ole Spider, the horse, and rode him two and a half miles to be baptized in the Idaho canal. Nettie, Clara’s next older sister, came and wanted the horse, but Clara wouldn’t let her have him. She hung onto the reins and finally Nettie let her have him. She rode him half way home and tied him to a willow bush so Nettie could have him. She was confirmed the next day.

Whenever the circus came around, her father would load his family in the wagon and take them to it. Their mother would stay home and cook sup­per and clean house. She was a good housekeeper. They went to see-Buffalo Bill.

They would go to the Wolverine and stay all night. The Wolverine was a creek and a basin. Clara killed a rattle snake once when she and her sister Mary, and Laura and Maggie Wadsworth were riding home from visiting Ruth Stoddard, who lived on the Wolverine ranch. The girls were on horse­back. She threw rocks at it until she killed it and then took it’s rattles. Her brother, Joe, had a pet magpie, that they taught to talk. She also remembers the Indians going north in the spring, and south in the fall. One big Indian asked for, "Biscuit, biscuit".

Clara went to Primary, Mutual and Sunday School. She went a lot to Sacrament Meeting, but sometimes she stayed home and played.

She learned to mix bread and to knit when she was ten years old. She also started working in the sugar beets and potatoes when still a child. She worked in them in the fall, and went to school in the winter and quit again when the spring work began. She went into the seventh and eighth grades.

The summer she was twelve, her half-brother, Andrew, had a stroke. He was tending his baby, Grace, when it happened. Nettie went and stayed with them and helped Rosie, Andrew’s wife. She got homesick, so Clara went to help out. Then Grandpa Jensen got sick in August, and sent for Clara’s mother. Her mother went to Sandy, Utah, and stayed until he died. Then she stayed on to visit her sister, Hannah, whom she hadn’t seen since the Polson’s moved to Idaho from Heber City, Utah. After Clara’s mother went back home to Idaho, she got sick and died about two weeks after go­ing home. Clara cried so hard, her arms went numb. Tilda, her oldest sister, and one of her friends rubbed her and got her to feeling better. Clara always missed her mother. Life was hard after that. Nettie stayed home from school that winter and then she went out to work the next summer, and Clara had to take over the household duties. She was only thirteen.

Clara’s father was a gentle, loving, religious man, but not much interested in building up their home. The ceilings had muslin on them, which was coming off because it had been white-washed so many times. The chairs didn’t have backs. Clara wondered if maybe her mother had scrubbed them so much that they came unglued. Her father was well liked. People came to him for advice and counsel. Jim’s wife, Irene, said she liked to go to his home because of the loving, peaceful spirit he had.

Clara loved to dance, and went every chance she got. She especially liked the children’s dances in the afternoons. Andrew played his violin at these dances. The school house burned down when she was ten years old. She also loved poetry and enjoyed reciting it.

When she was fifteen, she had typhoid fever. Her father had a Mrs. Thorn take care of her. Before she got her strength back, Dr. Cutler’s son came to take one of the Thorn girls for a ride in their car. One of the other girls and Clara went with them. That was her first car ride.

She met her husband, Elijah Brigham Saxton, when he came from Almy, Wyoming, to visit relatives. She and Ethel Hardy got Lawrence and Parrel Cox to take them to the dance, but they had to find their own way back. The dance was in Goshen. Lige (Elijah Brigham Saxton) took her home. They were married in Blackfoot, Idaho, June 26, 1912. After spending three days with his relatives, they moved in with his mother and five brothers. This was a big change in her life. Her father went to visit her once and said, "No wonder Clara doesn’t like it out there in Almy. You can see the devil in that old women’s eyes".

They moved around a lot in Almy. All their children were born there.

Flora and Cora were born May 2, 1913

Marvin was born July 7, 1915

Harold was born January 6, 1918

Warren on October 28, 1920

Sylvia on May 26, 1923

Pearl on February 20, 1926

Richard on September 20, 1928

Rozella on October 10, 1930

Zona on June 19, 1933

Ted on June 25, 1936.

Flora had poliomyelitis when she was eleven years old. They were living in Roy, Utah that summer. Clara got so tired, she would go into a dream, walking across the floor. They had some pretty hard times. Lige worked in the coal mines in Almy during the winters and for Harold Heward on his ranch during the summers until the fall of 1929. That fall they moved back onto the ranch. Several times, different members of the family bad pneumonia. They almost lost Harold once with it. That was his second bout with it. Lige had it once. Clara said that was one of the most awful nights she had ever had.

On November 8, 1931, Marvin was killed in a deer-bunting accident. Clara had never gotten over that. He was such a special person. She almost died when he was born and again when Ted was born. Joe and Clara Polson was with her when Marvin was born. Since then she has nearly lost more of her children. In November 1972 we nearly lost Clara, but she came through all right and had a gallbladder operation and has felt better since.

They all worked hard on the ranch. They built up the milk business until they had a small milk route. The car never had brakes on it and one day when Clara was delivering the milk, it ran away from her. There was no harm done. Lige kept buying a few sheep at a time, and raising all the pet lambs he could until he had a herd.

Cora married Milton Robinson in Coalville, Utah, April 24, 1934. Then Flora married William Jones of Henefer, Utah, September 4, 1934. There was no more marriages until Pearl married William Marshall on February 21, 1947. That started the ball rolling. Sylvia married George Robinson on September 23, 1947; Harold married Edna Rollins May 24, 1948; Dick married Charlotte Mudd September 22, 1948 and Rozella married Harold Hutchinson October 16, 1946. The next to be married was Ted. He married Claudine Renfroe on July 6, 1959; Dick (Richard) and Charlotte broke up in 1957. He married Kay Ann Jensen on June 18, 1962. Then on November 28, 1964, Zona married Kenneth Hansen. So far, all but Ted has been to the temple—most were married there.

In April 1943, Lige had a heart-attach. He worried about everything all the time. Warren went into the Army in July of 1942 and was on the Italian war front when his father passed away February 23, 1944. He returned home safe and well in October,1945. Life had been a hard, uphill struggle. The five oldest ones dropped out of school before they were far enough to graduate. Dick is the only one who has gone on to college. The oldest ones always had such poor clothes.

They organized the Relief Society in Almy in about 1952. The president asked Clara to teach a class (I think it was the Spiritual Living class). She loved that class. She taught and was a visiting teacher for sixteen years. From 1953 to 1955, she also served on a stake mission. She and Zona were companions. Then from 1959 to 1961 Zona served a mission to Norway.

During the summer of 1958, Clara found that she had diabetes. Her heart become enlarged in 1948. At the present time she is living alone in a large trailer-house, parked out to the north of the old ranch-house, in the yard. Harold and Edna have taken over the place. Clara is looking as though she will soon need more care than she is getting. She has lost most of the sight in one eye and is a little hard of hearing.

Clara has a large posterity. She has ten living children; forty-­seven grandchildren, with two expected within a month or so; and twenty-one great grandchildren. One of her grandsons has served on a mission and one will start his August 4, 1973. She said one day, that she doesn’t know how she was brave enough to have a large family. She will be eighty years young on her next birthday, December 27, 1973.

One thing that has always been a testimony to her, is when Harold was in the lower grades in grade-school, his teacher lost her ring. She bad put her ring (she being Clara), a diamond engagement ring, in the trunk because the set was loose. Harold got it out and lost the set in the coal-room, in the slack and frost. All the light that they had to look for it with was the moonlight and a kerosene lamp. Marvin went into the bedroom and prayed. When he came out, he walked into the coal-room and picked up that tiny diamond.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Sep 14 2016, 15:41:29 UTC