John Zera Alger, Jr.

{{https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60351/john-zera-alger

Maintained by: Daniel Originally Created by: Utah State Historical Society Added: 1 Feb 2000 Find a Grave Memorial 60351

Family Members Parents

John Zera Alger 1852–1933

Anna Mary Barnhurst Alger 1858–1945

Spouse

Mary Malinda Hall Alger 1884–1964 (m. 1900)

Siblings

Sarah Ann Alger Hunt 1885–1961

Ada Alger Holt 1888–1919

James Grant Alger 1891–1892

Addie Olivia Alger Truman 1894–1986

Netina Priscilla Alger Laub 1898–1934

Eva P Alger Paxman 1901–1987

Children

Roco Alger Romero 1906–1989

Orlas Alger 1908–1979

Orpha Alger Robinson 1908–1981

Doras Alger 1914–1914

Thella Alger O'Conner 1915–1980

Wesley Alger 1917–1917

Ray Alger 1918–1919

Faye Alger Gleason 1918–1996

Audrey Alger Gleason 1920–1990

Mae Alger 1923–1923

Paul Alger 1924–1991

Joe Alger 1926–1926

Marion Alger 1927–1927

John William Alger 1929–1929

John Zera Alger Jr. was born in St. George, Utah the 30th of August, 1860. He was the second child of John Zera Alger Sr. and Anna Mary Barnhurst. When John Jr. was about one year old they went to a place in Arizona called Beaver Dam but the climate there made the family sick and they had to leave. They were sent to Hunting , Emery Co., Utah to help build up that part of the country. Soon after this they moved to Cleveland, a few miles away. They were the first settlers in the place and endured many hardships. They did some farming of which John Jr. and his mother did most of the work. Their farm was about three miles from the Price road.

When John Jr. was about seven years old he had what was known as the town herder, which consisted of milk cows of the town people. He would take them to the range to feed, herd them all day and bring them home at night. John was usually the errand boy for the town.

There was coal in the hills above Cleveland, and while out herding cows John would fill his pockets with coal and bring it home to burn. That may have been the start of his prospecting which has taken up most of his life in later years. When he was 12 years old he went to work on the Huntington reservoir with a team of horses and a scraper. When he was 13 he had to go to Grouce Creek, about a hundred miles away to get some horses which his father had traded cattle for. There was one little horse which they called "Little Brown Jug which was not very well broken but John road him and drove the other horses that long 100 miles back to Cleveland. This was just before they moved back to St. George.

They lived in St. George one winter then went to Diamond Valley where they built a rock house. John hauled the rock and he said it sure took a lot of rocks. About this time his older sister, Mary Ellen married and moved to Calf Springs, a ranch about 6 miles south of Enterprise. John went to live with them and worked on the canal which was being built to carry water from the reservoir to Enterprise . His father and mother moved to Hebron about a year later. It was at Enterprise that John met Mary Malinda Hall who later became his wife. There were others that could see Mary Hall also. One especially by the name of Lou Winsor who came around quite regularly. It finally got to a point where the two had to have a show down so they went to Mary's home to see which one she would go with. It surprised both boys when she took John by the arm and went with him. Mary's folks lived in the Meadows during part of the courtship so he had quite a way to go to see her. One day John took the wagon and a ring he had bought from the Jay Lynn catalog for 75£. Millie Adair was going with Mary's brother at the time so she went along for the ride. On the way John showed her the ring and of course she wanted to try it on and in the process she dropped the ring and they were unable to find it. But this did not stop him. He had a ring that he had traded his sister Minnie out of, one that one of her boy friends had given her. So this was the ring that he slipped on Mary's finger that night.

They were married the 26th of December 1900 by George A. Holt, who was the bishop. They were married in her fathers home. Her mother cooked a wedding dinner for the whole valley. There was a baseball game that afternoon. That was the main sport in those days. John was left handed and the pitcher for the town team. In the evening they all enjoyed a dance in the little red brick chruch. They did not go to the temple until the 11th of March 1903, when Ed Hall and Millie Adair went to the temple at St. George to be married. They were sealed then. At the time they had a baby girl Cecel. She was born the 22nd of February , 1902. They were living in a little brick house where Alwin Jones house is now (1958).

When Cecel was two months old John and Mary moved to Hatch Town to help Mary's Grandmother Hunt run her farm as her husband had passed away. They were directed the wrong way up the mountain. There was still about four feet of snow in the mountains and a road had been made on top of the snow. The wagon would sink through the snow most of the time which made a terribly hard , cold trip. They finally made it to the top where the wagon got in the snow so deep they had to camp there that night. It was a miserable cold night, especially for a little baby. The next morning John walked to a ranch and got a team to help pull them out. They said that was the worst trip they ever had. They spent the next two summers in Hatch Town and the winters in Enterprise. On the 25th of September 1901; another girl was born, they named her Orpha. She was born in what is now the old Jay Holt Home.

In the spring of 1905 they moved to Stateline, Utah, where John took the mail contract from there to Pioche , Nevada. Many times while they were there they would go to different places to play for dances at $5.00 a night. The orchestra consisted of John playing the guitar and harmonica while his wife stood behind him and held the harmonica in his mouth. When he got tired of that he would play the guitar and they would sing. He would sing tenor and she would sing alto. In later years on their ranch their family enjoyed many evenings listening to them sing. They moved back to Enterprise after about a year where John hauled freight to different places from the railroad.

On May the 5th another baby girl , Roca, was born in Mary's mother's front room. It was across the street north of where the George Truman home is. John had purchased 20 acres of ground from his wife's brother, Job. Mary's father had-given her 10 acres when she was married, making a 30 acre farm where George Truman's place is now and on west. They had a small adobe house in the place and it was here that the stork left them a pair of twins. This time it was a boy and a girl. They were named Orlas and Orpha. They were born March the 17, 190 , John did pretty well on this farm so was able to build a new limber house of which they were very much in need. It was in this new house that another girl was born, Jane Olivia, on the 25th of May, 1910.

The family was growing so rapidly that John decided he had batter get a larger farm in order to support them. So in the summer of 1910 he traded his 30 acres and house for the Aaron Huntsman homestead. He got with the ranch cattle, a team and wagon, a saddle horse, and a few pieces of machinery. Here he took up a homestead of his own, making him a ranch of 320 acres. Having only one boy, the girls all had to help with the farm work, this ranch was located about three miles west of Enterprise, the family would move into town for the winter so the children could attend school.

It was the second winter after the purchase of the ranch, 22 of December, 1911, that another girl came to them, Madge, During the years that John owned the ranch there were five more babies born to them. The 16th of January , ???. , a girl Doras, She lived only about a month then died of pneumonia, Thella, another girl was born the ??? of February , 1915. The 17th of June 1917 a boy, Wesley was born dead. This was a sad event for they wanted another boy so badly. A year later, on Mary's mothers birthday,, the 16th of June 1918, another pair of twins was born, a boy and a girl. They named them Ray and Fay. It seemed they were destined to raise all girls for when the twins were nine months old, the old Flu hit Enterprise and many lives were lost, one of which was little Ray.

John had thought it wise to remain on the ranch that winter to escape the flu but there was no escape. The whole family had it except Orpha. Tom Drake had made his home with John and Mary after his return from the war in 1918 and he was there to help out while the family was down with the flue. John was very sick with it. They thought for over a week they were going to loose him. The nurse had been there and left two different kinds of pills for them to give him and they got them mixed up and gave him six pills in two hours when he should have had two in twenty four hours. These took his temperature way down below normal. Some say it went as low as 79 degrees. It was so low that he couldn't feel snow layed on his head. Tom Drake stood most of the night and put snow on Johns head. That was the only way he could get relief from the severe pain in his head. He said he knew he would have died if it had not been for this act. I guess Tom earned a wife at that time for he later married John's oldest girl, Cecel, John's life was spared but he was left with very poor health. Not feeling that he could run the ranch after this, and having only one boy and a house full of girls to help, he decided to sell the ranch. This was a sad day for the family for they had grown to love the ranch in spite of it's sorrows, for there had been many moments of joy. It was home to them and they felt that there could never be another so dear. But John thought it wise to sell, so in the spring of 1920 with sad hearts they packed their belongings and moved to town. (Enterprise) John bought the old cement block house across the street south of the grammar school. There another girl , Audrey, was born the 10th of October, 1920, The family lived there only about a year, then traded it to Walter Bowler for a house and lot just a block north and across the street east from the school grounds. This house had only two big rooms and the family was pretty crowded, so after another baby girl was born dead, named May, the 17th of January 1923, John decided he would have to enlarge the house. So he sold some of the gracing land he had reserved when he sold the ranch, to Walter Bowler for lumber to build, the house. They lived, or camped, in a little two room , brick house while the new one was under construction and when they moved into it with six bedrooms, a living room, dining room and kitchen on Thanksgiving day, 1923 they thought they were in a mansion.

It was in this new house that another boy was born to them, Paul was born the 25th of February, 1923. He and Orlas were the only two boys that were raised to maturity with nine girls. After John left the ranch he ran the old flour mill that was in Enterprise, for a few years, then went out to Big Springs ranch in Nevada and herded sheep for about two years. During this time, three more babies were born, all dead. Joe, born 7 September 1926; Marian, a girl born the 5 of September, 1927 ; and John William, born 17th, of June 1929, making a total of 18 children born to them.

After the birth of the last baby Mary's health was vary bad so John decided to take her out to her sister, Sarah Hackett's place to rest for awhile. John had been working assessments on some mines belonging to Sarah's husband, Everest Hackett and had taken a black Chevrolet trimmed in red for his pay. Before they left he had put in an application for the janitor job at the school. While they were still away word came that John had gotten the job. How happy he was when he came home and found this out for he still had a number of mouths to feed and backs to cover.

He took this job about 1928 or 1929 and kept it for ten years when his health broke and he had to give it up. By this time he had married most of his family off and had a big house so he mortgaged his home and made it into three apartments. They lived in one and rented the other two. This left John free to do something he had always wanted to do, go into the hills and prospect. He had done some of this off and on during his married life but had neither the time nor means to do much. But now he was free to do it, and has many prospects all over the country. Some he has made a little money from and others he still has hopes of striking it rich before he dies.

In 1933 he decided to sell the old home and move to Southern California where five of his children were located. But he soon found that his heart could not take that low climate and the fellow who bought the house decided to give it back so that they must return to the old home. However, the house was still under mortgage and John was unable to pay it, so Clair Hunt, a son-in-law who had married their daughter Madge, took the home over with an agreement that they, John and Mary have a home their as long as they lived.

In December 1950 John and Mary celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary. All their children and a lot of their grandchildren were able to be there except their daughter, Thella. But they had her daughter, Colleen, whom they had raised since a baby to fill the gap. They had a wonderful day and John still likes to talk about it. There was an open house for all the town people in the afternoon. Pictures were taken of the family and of John and Mary with their beautifully decorated cake. Their kids had all put in and bought them suits alike, so they were dressed in these. In the evening there was a program put on by the family, children and grandchildren, to which everyone was invited and I think most everyone came, for there was a houseful. A family program was presented that hasn't been topped before or since. For two hours it went on and the audience still didn't want to leave and the family still didn't want to stop performing. But the family finely wound it up at the church, but the family went down to the old home and there had another session of a couple of hours. There were stories dug up that had been forgotten for years. It was a day that will be remembered by all for years to come.

It is now 1958, John and Mary are still living in the back apartment of the old home, with Madge's family living in the front. They are both working on the hobbies they love so much John's of prospecting and Mary's of making quilts.

GEDCOM Source

@R1501102850@ Ancestry Family Trees Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members. Ancestry Family Tree http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=119870192&pi...