Geneva's House with Ghosts of the Past

Geneva's House with Ghosts

by 

Judy Vars

Private Collection

The other day something my grandmother Geneva had written turned up, it was written a long time ago in the perfect script of a school teacher using the indelible led pencil and her words were fading fast and the paper it was written on deteriorating. Well admittedly I have frequent contact with the other side through impressions, coincidences, funny happenstances so this I could not ignore. My grandmother was asking me to transcribe this before it's gone. The following is what she wrote long ago.

     My Grandfather Wesley Rose and his wife Maria Gates Rose accepted the gospel in Canada moved to Kirtland where the saints were gathered. They assisted in the building of the Kirtland Temple. They moved with the saints to Nauvoo helped building the city and Temple at Nauvoo. They were in the company of the prophet Joseph Smith on many occasions. Grandmas brother Henry Gates was set apart by the prophet Joseph Smith to teach singing and dancing in church socials. The Gates were great singers as was grandmother and a number of her family. 

    When the saints were driven from Nauvoo they took a few of their belongings and crossed the Missouri River on the ice late in the fall of 1847 on the Iowa side of the river they made a dugout in the bank of the river and spent the winter there. My father Hyrum Rose was born December 26 1847 in the dug out and early in the spring of 1848 they loaded up the things they had left in a handcart and with their two small children started on a thousand mile journey to Salt Lake to join the saints once more, arriving in the late summer of 1848.  They lived in Salt Lake for a few years and South to Cottonwood and later moved to North Ogden. My grandparents and father underwent the hardships of the early settlers of Utah and there were many at this place where my grandparents spent the remainder of their lives.
     My father Hyrum Rose spent his boyhood days in North Ogden at his place a few family had gathered and built a small fort to protect themselves from the indians. The young men would stand on guard the fort watching the Indians when they saw them coming they told the people inside the fort. this was the duty of my father as a young man. When he was about 20 years old he was called to cross the plains with an ox team and bring emigrants to Salt Lake City. It was late in the Fall when he returned. They had to travel in snow from Laramie Wyoming to Salt Lake City.
     My father Hyrum Rose married Martha Ellen Shaw of North Ogden in the Old Endowment House in Salt Lake City with Elder Daniel H Wells officiating. My mother Martha Ellen Shaw was the daughter of Elijah Shaw and Martha Ann Thomas Shaw. She was born in Salt Lake city August 25th 1852 her parents were converts to the church from Tennessee they also underwent the hardships of the early settlers of Utah When Johnsons Army came to Utah mother as a small girl helped drive the sheep and pigs when the saints moved South. After their marriage they lived in North Ogden until the spring of 1880 when they moved to Weston Idaho to start pioneering again.
     They settled on a lot in the northeast part of town across from the public square where Albert Jensen now lives. Here my father planted the first shade trees ever planted in Weston. He engaged in farming cutting his grain with a cradle he went on the hills and prairies south of town and cut grass with the scythe to feed the cattle during the winter months. He helped make the irrigation ditches in the South and East fields where he owned land. later he took up a farm in the Southeast part of town on the hill south of the Weston Mill. This place was covered with heavy sage brush he cleared the brush built a house and went6 thirty six miles to get more trees to plant and also lilac bushes which were planted. Now the oldest row of lilac bushes in the state of Idaho the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers put up a marker in 1941. At this place my mother and father lived until their death. They took part in the religious and civic activities in Weston all their lives. Nine children were born to them five girls and four boys at the time of this writing five are living.
     My father took part in all social events of the town he always called for all the square dances in Weston and surrounding towns. He was a good dancer as he was taught in his early life by his mother.
     Father and mother always raised a good garden. He took vegetables to Pocatello, Idaho to sell going in horse and buggy. He had a fruit orchard in Weston he was a strict tither paying his tenth in hay, grain, and produce. He broke his knee cap working on a threshing machine in Dayton which left him crippled. I remember him using a cane with the head of
Grover Cleveland and when he worked at night he took a lighted lantern. He took an active part in the seventy quorum. I remember.........................................