Autobiography of Martha Timothy Gardner Rudy, Part 3

We arrived [in Vernal] on July 24^th, and on September 12, a baby girl, Mabel, was born. We were unable to locate a midwife when I took sick, and I was so sure that my time wasn’t up that I just would not give up. At the time, we were living in Dick Blakey’s house, for they had gone to work in the temple. The next day, I had made up my mind to send for a midwife, when Brother Blakey returned to occupy the house. The old lady, Mack the Grandmother, was so tired that she remarked how good it was to sit in a chair. The neighbors were so glad to see them, they all came to welcome them home. Alma hitched the team to the wagon and took me to my mother’s, a mile away. She had a bed ready for my sister-in-law, so she said she could not take me. I cannot tell how badly I felt. When we started back, a dear old lady named Carroll asked to ride, and she stood up behind the spring seat. I was shedding bitter tears, and she wished to know why. After telling her, she laid her hands on my head and prayed for me and offered to come and help me. I felt much better. Brother Blakey met us returning, and he insisted on our coming and staying as long as we wished, and went for a midwife (Sister Adelia French). I got along better than ever before.

When the baby was fourteen days old, we moved to a one-room house with two families (Bell Shirts and Mrs. Rawlings), there being ten children. My husband chopped and hauled logs from the canyon and built a house for us, which we moved into on Christmas Eve at twelve o’clock. We had just daubed the house and had rough boards on the floor, which caused dampness and the house to fill with steam. We slept on straw mattresses on the floor, and the Lord no doubt blessed us, for not one of us took cold, and we lived on very little food that winter. I had a seamless grain sack full of dried squash, which I dried while at Brother Blakey’s. I stewed it, and it just seemed to save our lives. We did not seem to tire of it, and we enjoyed it a great deal. That summer, we lived on dry bread, salt-risen bread, and always seemed to manage to obtain bread and tea.

May 5, 1888, my baby girl, Janette, was born. I was awfully weak, and I washed on the board and would have to stop three or four times to have tea in order to continue on.

An old man came to the door, and I thought he was a trapper, for he drove a burro on a cart with his camping equipment tied on. He asked for breakfast, and I told him I would like to give him some but did not have any bread or soda. He took some clean ashes out of the stove and poured hot water on them in a tea cup, and used them with sour milk, which made very good biscuits. After that, I made biscuits this way many times, for we tired of salt-risen bread.

Later, another old man came along. He was a quite pleasant-looking person, with hair hung on his shoulders. He wanted breakfast, and I told him I had a very sick baby suffering from “summer complaint.” She was so thin and weak that I had to carry her on a pillow. He offered to give her some laudanum, which he had with him, assuring me it would cure her. It took some time to persuade me, and then I gave her ten drops. She went to sleep and appeared dead, and he said he would stay until she woke up, and I was just weak with fright; however, she did appear better. He told me to give her four drops when she went to bed, and I gave her three. She recovered rapidly.

November 30, 1889, my seventh child, Cora Belle, was born.

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