Voyla Dalton

VOYLA DALTON-SMITH

by Voyla Dalton-Smith and daughters Amy Louise Smith Ebeling, and Audrey Smith Draper

I was born on Wednesday, 14 July 1897 at 10:05 p.m. in my grandfather Edgley's home in Pocatello, Bannock, Idaho. My father, John Luther Dalton was born in Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois on 18 October 1843 and my mother, Amy Edgley, was born in London, England on 19 December 1869. I had two older brothers, John Luther Dalton, Jr. and Joseph Edgley Dalton, and one younger brother, Alvin William Dalton.

Father bought some property and built a house. The first thing I can remember was the building of this house. I can remember mother laying the baby down on the floor up against a wall. I remember standing and watching the trains go by and counting the cars.

Father's first business venture was a dairy or at least we had several cows. We sold the milk and my older brothers would oftentimes have to take milk to our neighbors who lived several blocks away. The boys always seemed to be afraid and wanted me to go with them (I don't ever remember being afraid of the dark) and mother would always tell me to go along and said "You can scare the boogers away".

We had all sorts of contraptions to play with which were all homemade, of course, but it was fun.  We had a merry-go-round made with a buggy wheel on one end of a board and the other end was fastened to a post about 2-1/2 feet high or just as high as the hub of the wheel.  The rider would sit near the wheel.  Another person would push it near the post. What a ride.  We had a high swing about 12 or 13 feet high.  The rope was fastened to a 1-1/2" pipe which fit into notches and was fastened on the top of the posts.  When we tired of the swing my brothers made a ferris wheel of it by taking four long planks and drilling a hole in the center of them and putting the pipe on the top of the swing posts thru them putting two of them against each post making a cross.  On the ends of the planks they put a rod across and a swing seat on each making four seats on the wheel.  By using judgment in seating the passengers and by having one on the ground to give an occasional push it was quite thrilling.

About the time I started school, father went into the butcher business having a butcher shop at the corner of Fremont and Main Streets. He had a two-wheeled cart drawn by a horse that he delivered meat with. This cart was open on the back and the floor was about 8" to a foot from the ground when it was hooked to the horse. One day I had gone home from school for lunch and played around until the last bell rang for school, which was five minutes before the tardy bell. I had about 8 or 9 blocks to go so father said "Jump in the cart and I'll get you there". I had seen father step off the cart before it came to a complete stop and as we neared the school house he slowed down to stop and I stepped off. Poor me, I did it wrong and went flat on my face.

Pocatello is just 12 miles from Fort Hall Indian Reservation. The Indians would come to town and pitch their tepees all around our place. The squaws were always around wanting "bisucut". I was never afraid of the Indians and many times I have taken some bread and went to their tepees and sat with them and watch them do their bead work. They have given me many strings of beads. The Indians have always fascinated me and I have always had a friendly feeling toward them.

I was not yet 6 years old when the new chapel for Pocatello 1st Ward was begun. Until it was finished baptisms were performed in the Portneuf River. Father said if a person was baptized on their birthday when they were 8 years old they would always remember and so he broke the ice in the Portneuf River in November to baptize each of my two older brothers on their birthday. It wouldn't have been so bad for me as I was born in July. The new chapel was finished when my turn came on 14 July 1905 and they filled the font especially for me and I was baptized on my eighth birthday by my father.

When I was about 10 years old my parents moved to Ione and my father went to work in a sugar factory there. Mother worked for Aunt Janie (Uncle Arthur's wife) as a cook. She ran a boarding house for sugar factory employees. I was in 6A grade in school and, as it was a country school, I was the only one in that class so they put me back in the first part of the 6th grade. Before I had finished the year we moved back to Pocatello and I was afraid if I told them there what had happened I would be put back again so I told them I was in the 7th grade and that's where I went. I always liked school and never missed a day sick or well, rain or shine, ice or snow, I went!

Father was not very well; in fact hadn't been able to do hard work and finally went to the hospital in Salt Lake City for an operation. He had a cyst of some kind inside him which they removed which contained about a gallon of fluid. He was in the hospital for some time and was finally sent home as they said they couldn't do more for him and he may as well die at home. Mother nursed him to be on his feet again although he was never well. I used to have to put his shoes and socks on as he couldn't stoop over. It was after this that he worked in the sugar factory. After we came back to Pocatello father worked for Lindquist Mortuary as a night attendant. He used to play games with us kinds and the night he passed away he played checkers with us until 9 o'clock. At 1 o'clock he was dead, having had a heart attack from which he never recovered. He passed away 29 December 1908 and was buried 1 January 1909.

At Christmas time, up until the time Grandmother Edgley died, we all went Grandma's. She always had a large Christmas tree and we, each one, had a gift under that tree. The gifts we received were not many or expensive but we always got something--sometimes just new clothes for the old dolls.

Mother had her home remedies and every spring we got sulphur and molasses and sassafras tea.  If we didn't feel good we got a dose of Jollep in some coffee which made it taste awful.  Hall's cancer medicine was another of her favorites which I hated but it did the job.  Another concoction she mixed up was a conditioner that we took as a prevention against contagious diseases.  One time I was exposed to small pox and then Alvin came down with diphtheria.  As a preventative I was given this medicine so I wouldn't get diphtheria (which I didn't) and I had only about two "pox" break out on me and I was not even sick.  That was after dad died in July.  Because of these awful tasting medicines we had to take--I never complained when I didn't feel good.

Mother went out nursing and we children stayed at home alone. I was 13. In the summer I worked at the laundry on the mangle. I made about $6.00 a week and always paid my tithing out of it first. Aunt Annie had an organ and I took two music lessons practicing on the organ.

In the fall of 1910, Alvin was taken ill. This was the beginning of a long siege of typhoid fever. For days and days I was kept alive with Laudanum. I'm told my life was despaired of. I don't know how long I was so sick but finally through faith, prayers and administrations I regained consciousness. I started to mend. The mother, having become run down through nursing me contacted typhoid and was taken to the hospital. She was there for about three weeks--very, very sick and then she started to get better. The two of us had to learn to walk all over again. While mother was in the hospital I was taken to grandpa Edgley 's home. While convalescing and learning to walk, grandma also taught me to crochet. My first work was a pair of slippers for myself which I needed very much. I was out of school a year and the following year I went back to school to the 8th grade.

Mother sold our home and we moved down on Clark Street. Mother operated a little confectionary store selling a few groceries, such as lunch goods, ice cream, homemade candies and in the winter time chili and tamales. It was here, while waiting on customers, that I met Joseph Frederick (J.) Smith (called "Joe"), my future husband. He, his brother, Sam, and another kid, Ben Jones, came in for some ice cream. His mother had moved into and was operating a room house upstairs next door. Soon after, Joe and Ben Jones went to Ogden to work.

Mother then bought the Wallen House taking in roomers and boarders. This was in the 500 block on North Main Street.  Joe's brother George had moved to Ogden and Sam was planning on marrying Nellie Birmingham in Salt Lake on June 25, 1913.  Joe and I asked mother about going down to the wedding and mother agreed I could go.  We were to go to Ogden, stay there with George and Josie, then on to Sale Lake where I was to stay with my Aunt Annie who lived there.  Mother kissed us good-bye and told Joe to take good care of me.  He did then and ever since.  When we got to Ogden, George said, "Why don't you kids get married"?  George assured us we could and that they would go as witnesses.  Well, under their coaching and encouragement, we went the next morning and got a license and looked up a church--don't even remember the name of the church--found a man sittin at the back smoking a cigar.  We told him we wanted to get married and he said, "Fine, we'll open up the church".  He went and put his robes on or different clothes and we were married on 23 June 1913.  Mother, of course, was very unhappy for which I don't blame her--it was a mean thing to do.  I have realized long since she would have had the marriage annulled had it not been for Grandpa Edgley.

Voyla Dalton-Smith's writings end here with her marriage to Joseph Frederick Smith. Their daughters, Amy Louise Smith-Ebeling and Audrey Smith Draper continue the story with the following:

The railroad was a booming business now and dad stayed with this type of work as much as possible. The family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where dad got a job for the railroad.

World War I broke out in 1917. Father felt he could make good money working in the shipyards corking and riveting boilers on the ships so they moved to Portland, Multnomah, Oregon. Motorcycles were the new "in". Father bought one and would drive to and from work. For a period of time it was the only mode of transportation the family had. Mother would climb on behind dad, put Della on one knee and Louise (Lou) on the other and away they would go!

Tragedy soon came to the family. Bud was three months old when the folks were in the process of moving to a rented a two-room farm house out Sunnyside Road in Southeast Portland. Dad was working and mother decided she would get started moving by taking a wash tub full of dishes to the farm house with other odds and ends that she could load in the car. Della was 5 years, Louise (Lou) 4, Barney 2-1/2. Mother put Barney and Lou in the back seat with the dishes and Della in the front seat to hold Bud on her lap. We were almost to the farm when Bud started sliding off Della's lap. Mother slowed the car and reached over to pull the baby back up before he slid to the floor--caught her arm in the steering wheel turning the car upside down and into the ditch at the side of the road. Barney had been looking out the metal forks of the car's top and the impact broke his neck. Bud was badly cut on the faced near the temple and mother received a broken arm. Lou and Della escaped injury. Barney was taken to the Portland General Hospital in the Sialoid District of Portland, Oregon. In those days there wasn't much that could be done for a broken neck. Mother and dad kept asking Barney if he was going home with us and he would say, "No". He passed away two days later, 19 September 1919.

Life on the farm was short for dad decided to return to Sale Lake City and work again for the railroad. In the meantime, Uncle Joe Dalton married Audrey May Baxter in 1917 and they, also, came to Salt Lake City. Both men went to work for the railroad cleaning boxcars. A fifth child was born here on 18 April 1921, a daughter, Evelyn Irene. Grandma Dalton came from Pocatello to be with mother when Evelyn Irene was born and to help with the children. Evelyn was a beautiful child. When she was six months old, Grandmother Dalton (Amy Edgley Dalton) came by train again to visit the family. Grandmother was so "English", so prim, so neat and proper! She always wore a watch pin on her left breast. This was the last time the family saw Grandma Dalton alive.

In the Spring of 1924, dad and Uncle Joe Dalton decided to buy ten acres of land each in Tyghee, Idaho, a community about seven miles north of Pocatello. Each family built a 3-room house and one barn between them. They had a horse, cow, chickens, pigs and a garden and raised mostly corn, potatoes and alfalfa. We had no electricity and had to haul all of the water in big barrels. Lou and Della were the only children old enough to go to school. Most of the time we walked the mile-plus to the one-room Tyghee School as there were no buses. Sometimes in the deep snow, dad would take us by horse and sleigh.

It was while on the farm, mother gave birth to her seventh child, Audrey. Aunt Audrey delivered the baby and thus Audrey was named after Aunt Audrey Baxter-Dalton. Audrey was a "living doll" with blonde curly hair. Winters were so severe in Idaho and Audrey wasn't strong enough to fight off the colds and flu. Every winter Audrey would get pneumonia. After 1-1/2 years on the farm, father and Uncle Joe sold out and moved to Pocatello again.

There were not many places to go on outings around Pocatello but when the Choke cherries were ripe, the family would pack a picnic lunch and go up Pocatello Creek and pick Choke cherries. Mom would make jelly and dad wine. Audrey added some insight into the "wine" story: "They tired of farming and moved back into town and finally settled in on South 3rd Street. This is where we were told Dad had a "still" going in the bathtub. Dad was noted for his home brew, peach brandy and choke cherry wine!!!"

After work Lou and Della would go swimming in the river paying no attention to the "Condemned No Swimming" sign posted on the banks. Once while swimming, both girls were carried down stream and pulled into a whirlpool--they nearly drowned. Little did they know the terrible consequences to follow. Lou and Della came down with typhoid fever with terrifically high fevers. They were taken to the Oregon City Hospital where they remained for six weeks critically ill. To bring the high fever down, several times a day and night, the doctors would wring blankets out of ice water and wrap Lou and Della in them. Mother and dad brought the Elders of the church to administer to us. They anointed our heads with oil and gave us both a great blessing. From then on we began to gain strength and get well and our fever began to drop. The high fever caused our hair to drop out.

Shortly after the siege in the hospital, mother gave birth to her ninth child, a boy, Donald Keith, on 10 September 1930. He was a blonde "tow-head" born at Uncle Joe Dalton's home and Aunt May assisted with the birth. Shortly thereafter, dad, mom and Aunt May went to Hood River to work in the apples. Another son, Voyla's 10th child, Ralph Dee, was born in November 1934, in Portland, Oregon. Her last child, a little girl was born in September 1936; they named her Janet. Janet was premature and only lived six hours.

Mom and dad (Joe and Voyla) celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in June 1963. At that time they had 9 living children, 31 grandchildren, 54 great grandchildren and 2 great great grandchildren. Some have passed on but even more have been added in the ensuing 35 years. In April 1968, dad (Joe) died and a year later mom (Voyla) endured the terrible ordeal of hearing over the radio that their daughter, Louise, and her husband, Bud Ebeling, granddaughter, Roberta Croall-Hopkins, had been killed by a drunk-driver on the Portland-Scappoose highway as they were returning home from a church outing. Voyla's daughter, Della Croall, was critically injured and great granddaughter, Sherry Hopkins (7 years old) was in a coma. Della and Sherry both recovered after months of medical treatment.

Mom (Voyla) spent many, many hours tirelessly devoted to genealogy, trips to the temples and work in the church--2 years mission to the Umatilla Indian Reservation and 3 more years on a mission in the Portland, Oregon Stake. She worked in Primary as well as being Primary President, Sunday School, Relief Society and Relief Society counselor, Sunday School Gospel Doctrine teacher.

Mom outlived Dad by 10 years, passing from this mortal world on August 9, 1978, in Pendleton, Oregon.