Mattie Jane Lewis

• Residence: Yavapai, Arizona - 1930
• Residence: Prescott, Yavapai, Arizona - 1935
• Residence: Supervisorial District 1, Yavapai, Arizona - 1940

Biographical Summary:

Mattie Jane Lewis was born April 13, 1897 on her parent’s farm east of Mesa, Arizona. Her parents were WALTER BEERS LEWIS and FANNIE BALL HAWLEY. The family later moved to Colonia Juarez, Mexico, about one hundred and fifty miles south of El Paso, Texas.

The town was divided by a river and located in a narrow valley. Anthony W. Ivins was president of the Juarez Stake, and Joseph E. Bentley was Bishop of the Ward. Located on the west side of town was the Juarez Stake Academy, run by the Church. Beside school, socials and dances were held in the building. The elementary school building was on the side. All church meetings were held in the school building.

Mattie was about eleven years old when the family moved to Colonia Dublan, a few miles east of Colonia Juarez. Then they moved back to the "states", living in El Paso, Texas a short time before going to La union, New Mexico. The youngest child, Walta, was born there, and lived only eight days. Her death was due to whooping cough.

Soon the family moved back to the Lewis farm east of Mesa to "fun" Uncle George's farm while he served a two year mission for the Church.

There was only one Ward in mesa at that time, with Church meetings being held in a building on South Macdonald Street, called the Opera House. The streets were unpaved and travel was by horse and buggy or wagon.

Mattie and her sister Ione had many friends, and among them were: Bernice Allen, Bessie Fuller, Roxie and Ione Brimhall, Maud and Kate Brundage, Blanche Allen, Manilla Morris, Zola and Hazel Pomeroy, and others as well as their cousins Clarice, Alen, Anna, and Alta Lewis, and Jessie Blair.

While still living with her parents in Mesa, she and her sister had a. frightening experience. They had gone to bring in the cows late one afternoon and found the indians eating one of the family 's milk cows along the irrigation canal bank where they usually walked in bringing them home.

After Mattie and lone graduated from the eighth grade in Mesa, the family moved to Thatcher, Arizona, where Mattie and lone attended the Thatcher Academy. The St. Joseph Stake President was Andrew Kimball, father of Spencer W. Kimball, who later became the Mt. Graham Stake President in Safford. He was called to be one of the Twelve Apostles, and then was sustained President of the Church.

Near the end of the school year, the family prepared to move to El Paso, Texas, where the father, Walter, was in contracting business. On the last day of school, while the rest of the family was attending school programs, Mattie and her boyfriend, Orson Louis (Lou) Echols were married in Solomonville. Mattie was only 17 years old. The day the rest of the family left on the train, everyone was sad because they didn't want to leave Mattie. Several months later Mattie and Lou moved to El Paso also.

There was a church branch there, with President Hurst as its first leader and Orwall Pierce succeeding him in that position. The first meetings were held in the Hurst home but later they rented the Odd Fellows Hall.

The oldest sister, lone, met Canute Breinholt and they were married in the Salt Lake Temple in 1914.

Mattie and Lou's oldest child, Mary Mildred, was born January 27, 1916, near Oro Grande, New Mexico, while they were living with Mattie 's parents. Both families moved back to El Paso to a new home that Walter bought near Fort Bliss.

The summer of 1917, Mattie's parents and two younger sisters went to Arizona to live. Mattie and Lou and baby later moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Another daughter, Anna Bernice was born in Chino Valley and a son, Walter, was born i n Phoenix.

In 1919, Mattie, Lou and family lived on the Lewis farm with her parents, later moving to a farm of their own east of Mesa. Here Mattie served as Mesa 2nd Ward Primary President. Fannie Armenta was born there.

The Orson Louis Echols family moved from Mesa, Arizona to Chino Valley in January of 1930. It must have been a severe winter because in June 1930 we took pictures of a big snow storm. Mom's maiden name was Mattie Jane Lewis.

She had been to Chino many times before as her mother and father, Walter Beers Lewis and Fannie Ball Hawley Lewis had lived there some years before. The family consisted of Walter Louis who had been born Dec. 14, 1918; Anna Bernice (Bobbie) born Nov. 23, 1917, Mary Mildred, born Jan. 27, 1915 and I was four years old having been born Oct. 2, 1925.

We moved into the big house across the highway from the Bates home (the property now owned by Ken Coopers). This house had been divided into a duplex and the Bronson family lived there too.

Before we moved from Mesa to Chino, the family had been involved in a terrible car accident. It was a Sunday evening in 1928. My folks and I (I was about 3 years old) were taking Mom's uncle, who had spent the day with the family, back to Chandler. My mother had had an uneasy feeling and had left the older children at home. On the trip to Chandler there was a General Motors car traveling toward us pulling another vehicle without the aid of a tow bar. Just as they approached us, the chain broke and the car that was being pulled was set free and hit us head-on. Dad was crushed against the steering wheel and Uncle Frank smashed through the windshield. Mom was thrown up front and on impact the doors flew open throwing the back seat and me skidding down the pavement. As we went out the door, Mom was thrown back onto the tool box causing compounded injuries and a broken back.

I recall lying in the road and seeing the lights of a car coming and hearing my mother crying, "you've killed my baby". A kind lady loaded us into a car and took us to the hospital. I was upstairs in surgery crying for my mother who couldn't come to my aid because of her broken back. My collar bone was broken, my arm was likewise broken in two places and I required extensive repairs on my face.

This accident caused my mother to be an invalid for forty years. Mom had many operations and hospital confinements. The folks were involved in a lawsuit for compensation from General Motors but they sent powerful lawyers from the east to fight the case and after much pressure and harassment a settlement was made for only $1,000. This was several weeks before she had her stroke.

The stroke happened in the house in Chino Valley that they moved to in 1930 and was brought on by the after effects of a Caesarean necessitated by the earlier car accident. This baby lived only a few hours.

Under the best circumstances a stroke is a maddening and depressing burden to carry and here was Mom with a family of small children to raise. What a challenge! She had complete paralysis on the right side and was told she could never walk again. She said, "I can't raise my family from a wheel chair." She had them fit a brace on her right leg and she started shuffling from one piece of furniture to the other. She practiced long hours learning to write with her left hand. The handwork that she always enjoyed was now a thing of the past.

Later she went to Mesa and stayed with her father and stepmother, Walter and Esther Lewis. While there she worked in the temple. President Nash, the Stake Patriarch gave her a blessing and after she worked in the temple a few weeks she was able to take the brace off. After she took the brace off, she always walked with a cane except around the house she usually could manipulate just dragging her leg.

This was the condition she lived with for forty years.

The family only stayed at Chino for one and a half or two years at this time and moved in closer to Prescott as the depression had hit, and everyone was having lean years. Here Mary Mildred and Anna Bernice attended high school.

The family moved back to Chino in 1937-38 to the Newman place south of the old church. Effie Mae and Grandpa Despain sold them one acre south of their own house and we considered them friends, indeed.

In 1939 the folks managed to get the walls up for a home. The walls were made out of mud and straw poured into forms with a cement cap on top. They weren't up very long when an early wet snowstorm came, and they were not dry enough to withstand. The walls fell down and the place looked like Indian ruins. It was quite a disaster to our family.

Mom's spirit never flinched, however. She arranged to borrow $150 from a lady friend of hers that she had grown up with in Mesa.- Dad and Walter went to work out at Fort Whipple where they were tearing down the old hospital. The men took their wages out in used building blocks and old lumber and Mom was able to get the necessary cement and extras. We worked hard the summer of 1939 cleaning the tile of old cement.

We moved into the house in Nov. 1939. It was mighty cold. The floors were being laid as fast as possible but just enough in the bedrooms to set up the beds. Dad hung a heavy canvas to keep the cold out. There were no ceilings, no plastered walls, no plumbing, no electricity, not much floor. What floor there was made from the old rough lumber torn from the hospital and we had to be careful not to get slivers in us from it.

But Mom had the start of a home and she was a very happy person that night. I was fourteen years old and it was very exciting to me, too.

Despite the fact that my mother spent the last forty years of her life with a handicap, she was one of the most remarkable individuals I've ever known.

Mattie Echols passed away in 1970 at the age of 73 years in Glendale, California, and was buried in the Mesa Cemetery.

In addition to the survivors as named in her husband's obituaries she was also survived by a brother, Malin W. Lewis of Phoenix and a sister, Mrs. Kurt Beutel, of Claypool.

'SOURCE John Moss Lewis Family; Malin W. Lewis, President of Family Association; published 1979; Page 8-A-2-1