ANN ELIZA PORTER
From a 48 page “Life Sketch” by Heber D. Clark completed in 1953
Excerpted by Richard O. Clark, Heber’s nephew, in 2017
Beside the bank of Canyon Creek in Porterville, Utah, Alma Porter built a small log cabin. Here, on the 22nd of October, 1862, Ann Eliza was born to him and his wife, Minerva Adeline Deuel. She was named for her two aunts: Ann and Eliza Deuel, and her grandmother Eliza Avery Whiting. Her mother Minerva died on the 10th of February, 1873 when Eliza was 10. Of this event, her sad father Alma Porter wrote: “This left me with six small children to care for. With all my losses and misfortunes, this was the hardest to bear. I was now alone; no one to be with me. I must paddle the canoe of life alone. The labor and trials of life were mine alone to bear.”
Going back 5 years to 1868, when Eliza was 5 or 6, Heber writes: A clapping of childish hands followed by a shout, “O here they come!” was Eliza at the window. She sees a long line of loaded bobsleighs coming down the canyon road, filled with timbers made into big green railroad ties. The contractor, Uncle Lyman Porter is filling a large order for the great Trans Continental Railroad now coming across southern Wyoming. Eliza is dressed completely in “home-spun” and has just returned with Mary from school.
Early the next morning there is a knock at the door and a large man walks in. He is Chauncy Warriner Porter, Alma’s father and Eliza’s grandfather. His eyes are large and very dark brown. His hair is heavy and black. “One of the most handsome men I ever set eyes on,” was the way mother would describe him. Warriner takes Eliza on his knee and sings her a little song. Alma comes in from choring and was greeted about as follows, “Good morning Al-me. I have good news. Sit down. That axe I lost yesterday was brought back early this morning. Well, here is how it all came about. Last night I felt a great loss in that axe. A good axe is hard to get these days. As I prayed, I asked the Lord to help me get that axe back by causing a terrible pain in the hand that had taken it. This morning when that man came with my axe, he said he had had a terrible pain in his hand all night; couldn’t sleep a wink. Of course, I forgave him and so will not tell his name.” Not long after this, Warriner suddenly died. Alma felt a keen loss, as his mother, Amy Sumner Porter died in 1847 at Winter Quarters when he was a small boy and now he was left without either parent. Chauncy Warriner Porter left two or three families with many children.
Minerva Adeline Deuel, Eliza’a mother, was not long to enjoy a new brick home. With the coming of her 9th child Vilate, she unwisely got out of bed a few days later, ambitious to be looking after her family. A violent set-back brought death twelve days after the baby’s birth.
Mother, Eliza, was expert at milking, berry picking and knitting. She was prompt and dependable with her chores. She took great interest in everything that was going on around her and she carried a great load of responsibility with her mother’s passing.
There was no electricity nor modern conveniences. Soap was hand-made. Honey and molasses took the place of sugar. Wool and the old spinning wheel were in great use. Carpets were home woven. Straw ticks were used on the beds. Tithing script was used for exchange in place of coins. Shoes and saddles, harnesses and some farm equipment were made locally. Shoes and overalls were made at the ZCMI factory in Salt Lake City. Buckskin was in common use for pants, shirts and gloves. The Indians made buckskin articles for trade, and also much jewelry. Slates were used in the schools in place of paper. Wooden pegs were used in buildings instead of bolts and nails. Roots and herbs were widely used as medicine. Mothers cared for the sick. All socials were opened and closed with prayer as were the school days. Fast and testimony meetings were held on a Thursday. Farm products were used in payment for dance and theater admission. The musicians were also paid in produce and teachers received their pay likewise. Bishops acted as justices of the peace. Mother Eliza, even lived in the United Order where all were expected to share alike. But her childish feelings were hurt when she lost her lively pony in the “Order.”
A permanent injury came to mother as a child. She fell out of a swing at a great height and her back was bent and remained so throughout the remainder of her life. It became more noticeable as life advanced.
Grandfather Ezra T. Clark’s interest in Aunt Nancy Porter kept him in touch with the Porters in Porterville. His grist mill in nearby Morgan was the only such mill in the valley. Calling at the home of his friend “Uncle Al-me” (Eliza’s father Alma Porter, with whom he crossed the plains in 1848), grandfather Ezra T. Clark took mother, Eliza, now a promising girl, upon his knee and said, “I have a lot of fine boys in my family and in a few years, I may send one of them this way”. . . There may have been others, but they all faded into nothingness when Hyrum, the tall, good-looking son of Uncle Ezra put in an appearance.
Meeting father, (Hyrum), at the mouth of Weber Canyon while riding with her Pa, Alma Porter, was a thrilling experience for Eliza. The two outfits paused for greetings. Father threw the long whip lash of his four-horse team gently toward mother. The long rawhide wrapped itself around her waist. It sent thrills through her whole being that aroused the deepest emotions. Eliza was growing into an attractive young lady. Father worked at the grist mill in Morgan and somehow met this young lady. Aunt Nancy Porter Clark, then living at the Clark home in Farmington, had very strongly recommended this charming girl Eliza, to her future husband, Hyrum D. Clark. . .
The sun had sunk behind the Great Salt Lake and the western hills as the two young sweethearts drew into “Clark Lane” and up to the old rock house of Ezra T. Clark in Farmington. Aunt Nancy Porter Clark suspected something. She called mother to one side and asked, “Eliza, is it possible that you and Hyrum are getting married?” After being assured that it was true, Aunt Nancy was surprised and delighted. She said, “I know that his father Ezra T. doesn’t know a thing about it.” Mother thought this very strange. The Porters were free with their plans and prospects.
Early morning, November 11, 1880, saw Joseph Smith Clark, Hyrum’s brother, with a fresh team of ponies ready to go. He drove the wild horse flesh to near full capacity. “We must not spoil these horses for saddle ponies,” he kept shouting as they fairly flew over the ground. Aunt Maria, Joseph’s wife and Eliza each held on to their mate as the jolly four swung into Salt Lake City and over to the Old Endowment House, which was located in the northwest corner of the temple block. President Daniel H. Wells, counselor to President Brigham Young, performed the sacred ceremony that united this lovely couple, Hyrum D. Clark and Ann Eliza Porter “For time and all eternity.” They also received their patriarchal blessings in which they were promised that their greatest joys would be in their children. Many times she said, “My greatest prayers have been for the Lord to bless me with strong healthy children.”
Joseph ran the horses a good part of the 16 miles back to Farmington. This was November 11, 1880. Aunt Nancy and my grandma, Mary Stevenson Clark, had not been idle. They had a lovely wedding banquet ready when the newlyweds arrived from “the city.” Young Wilford Woodruff Clark, Hyrum’s brother, had a large cowbell. His joy bubbled over with enthusiasm as he was announcing to all within a quarter of a mile, the great news of the newlyweds.
Headed for Bear Lake by wagon, about the next day, November 12th, the newlyweds traveled along roads that were little better than cow-trails. The skies were filled with heavy clouds and it looked now like a mad adventure. . . the drizzling rain turned into snow as their tired team trudged along the wintry lanes of northern Cache Valley. By the time they were in Clarkston, they were in the midst of a great snow storm. Here, they traded their heavy wagon for a sleigh. The snow blizzard continued with unabated fury. The horses grew weak and weary. The newlyweds camped in heavy snows at the foot of Mink Canyon.
“It looks pretty tough,” says Hyrum. “Yes, but I have good cheer to tell you,” said Eliza. “Last night I saw in my dream, nine big teams all headed for Bear Lake, breaking a good road for us.” The hopeful honeymooners were ready to resume their journey when the nine great teams drove into sight. Following this train of vigorous Bear Lake pioneers, the happy pair followed a well-beaten trail to Paris, Idaho where Aunt Mary Rich made them welcome.
Georgetown, Idaho (north of Montpelier), had been settled in about 1866. It had been ten years since grandfather Ezra T. and his son Joseph had hauled the first load of logs for building a ranch camp house with good acreage. Soon, Hyrum and Eliza were at this log cabin home in Georgetown. . . Hyrum worked in the “Clark firm” (as grandfather Ezra T. Clark’s enterprises were called} . . . Mother was not satisfied with their prospects in Georgetown. She said, “We were working for nothing and boarding ourselves”. . . And so, in the spring of 1882, Hyrum “took leave of his father Ezra T. Clark and struck off once and for all for himself. . . with horses and probably 30 head of young cattle and with Eliza and baby Avery, made the long and tedious journey to Oakley, Idaho. They located on a sagebrush homestead on Birch Creek. Hyrum and Eliza lived in a tent and wagon box while Hyrum built a log cabin. Sage brush was heavy and jack rabbits were numerous. Water for irrigation was very scarce and had already been appropriated by earlier settlers. Mary, Hyrum T. and Heber were born there.
About September 1887, Hyrum rode a saddle horse from Oakley to Georgetown, Idaho. He was looking for a new and better location. He found his brothers prospering there and thought he could not bear to live beside them in poverty. He rode on, into Star Valley, another 50 miles. He bought the “squatters right” homestead of Mr. Bainbridge there with a $400 down payment. The place was mostly natural meadow. There was a large open spring on it and the combined school and Church house were near. He was later to see all three of these advantages vanish.
In March, 1888, the Hyrum D. Clark family, with four children, left for Star Valley. The homestead at Oakley had proven worthless and they abandoned it. Mother drove the four- horse team with the old carriage attached behind the new wagon. Father was on horse-back, driving the loose horses and cattle.
In the fall of 1889, Eliza’s brother, Charles W. Porter, wife and one baby boy came from the Teton Basin. Father shared his hay, the winter being the Hard Winter, one of the worst ever experienced in Star Valley. Nearly all of the cattle and horses died of starvation. On November 19, 1889, a year later, a new baby girl, Edna, came to our house. Rain leaked through the old dirt roof; pans had to be put on the bed and in several places on the floor to catch the water.
The next two winters (1890-1892), we spent at Farmington. Father (Hyrum) contracted beef cattle from his father Ezra T. Clark, and peddled beef in Salt Lake City. He did well. Grandpa Ezra T. bought father and me some new boots. Mine had red tops and I stood in the snow and froze my feet in them. We had many tramps come for food. Mother fed them all and tried to give them chores such as chopping wood and turning the washer. On January 8, 1892, father came upstairs and announced a new baby brother. It was our 12 pound Alma Porter. How wrinkled, homely, and starved he was.
Mother was naturally an early riser and got things going in general, about daylight. She made a fire in the stove; kindling with plenty of shavings, a pan of chips and some wood...She was the fastest worker I ever knew and very accurate as well...she worked with a certain animation and with zest. There was a contagious enthusiasm about every look, movement, word or strain of song, for she sang by the hour as she worked. A sense of humor seasoned every day of life. She enjoyed a good joke, but always, it must be “in place,” and never vulgar. . . As each child came into the kitchen from a night’s sleep, she would put an arm around our neck and kiss us on the cheek and tell us of her great love for us. This would start us off for a fine day.
Although mother loved regularity, promptness, punctuality and preparedness, she was not able to always have meals on time, as father was late in the night, often with his work, and was naturally unsystematic. He would stay with a job to complete it and let the meal go for an hour or two. He always had more than he could do. “Hyrum, why in the world don’t you learn to do things in the time and the season thereof?” asked mother.
In 1892 we moved back to Star Valley. Mother had to be her own doctor and nurse and knew the old Dr. Gunn book from A to Z. She could tell the symptoms and remedies for nearly all kinds of ailments. Mother made all our suits except father’s until about 1899. All the LDS garments she made of heavy factory. Father had a good shoe repair outfit and half-soled shoes as needed. He had a complete dental set and pulled or filled ours and the neighbors’ teeth. We had an old candle stick maker which we used until about 1892, then gradually used coal oil. Saturday was for bathing, washing, scrubbing floors, and baking for Sunday.
Mother prayed rapidly and not too long. She asked directly for the things needed and never repeated. Father’s prayers were much longer, slower, filled with expressions that overlapped. The children each had a turn, down to about 10 years old. Mother trained us in secret prayer. At evening we learned to pray as we knelt at her knee. We were taught that the Father in heaven created the earth and all therein; that Jesus was and is His well-beloved Son and that Joseph Smith is his prophet, with Moses, Elijah and Elisha and some others coming in for “honorable mention.” But Joseph Smith was by far the most talked of.
For a ranch home, we had a good library. The Book of Mormon came in for many home evening readings with father and all of us children eagerly listening with frequent questions. The Spirit of the Lord would be so abundant that I, as a child, had to often rub my neck to help relieve the pain in my throat. There, we gained sure testimonies of the truth of the restored gospel; the reality of God and the hereafter. Our Church directed all of our social activity and this was the dominant topic and influence in our home life. During mother’s twenty years in Star Valley, very few meetings or programs were given in Auburn Ward in which one or two or more of our family did not take part.
Mother loved flowers. Her patch and rows of pansies were beautiful. . .
A sleigh swings into the lane in front of the Clark home and is headed northward; the team keeping up a fast trot. As old Sister Lehmberg gazes out at the outfit, she sees mother holding the reigns and almost buried in quilts and wraps, facing a terrible snow blizzard. “August, there goes Liza Clark, best woman ever lived. No one else would go out in such a storm to hold Primary. She’s too good, and Hyrum Clark better treat her right.” The old couple from Prussia watched the sleigh as it hurried past, noting the outline of many heads under the top quilts. Tuffy Reeves runs out and jumps one foot on the end of a bob runner and is soon under the covers. At the Austin Hyde corner, Rosel, David, Lillian and Amy come out and are soon in the sleigh, then Luzell and Eleanor Leavitt; a full load and everybody is in.
A fire is started and hymn books passed out. “Boys and girls, I just can’t tell you how much I love you...and what good men and women you are going to be,” would often be mother’s greetings at Primary as she got ready to start the meeting. . . .It is doubtful if any boy in Auburn loved his own mother more than he loved her. There is not a whisper. Mother’s first 14 years in Star Valley saw her greatest activity in Primary, Sunday School, and ward choir. She was released to become president of the women’s Relief Society for six years.
Mother loved to visit with her father, Alma Porter, her brothers her sisters and all of her folks, whom she loved to entertain at her home. She did everything she could to make a welcomed visitor feel at home. She was an ideal Mother-in-law. Mother entertained many people just to please father, which seemed to be her chief joy; almost anything to please daddy, Mother once said to me, “The happiest moments of my life have been in the arms of Hyrum Clark.”
Mother must have believed with Napoleon that “an army traveled on its stomach,” for she fed the family with plenty of wholesome food. Upon opening a lunch bag in the canyon or on a freighting road, we men folks could see who had put up the lunch. She cut heavy thick slices of bread, well-filled between with butter and meat. At home, her main stays were: plenty of milk, cream and butter; well made bread, meat and milk gravy; the best ever, with mashed potatoes, a large lump of butter on top; often stewed dried fruit and honey or preserves. About once a week, mother made a large layer cake, occasionally a pudding or a pie.
Singing was one of Mother’s chief means of cheer; always seeming to be spontaneous. Mother had no time for any kind of cards, checkers, picture show or looking on at any athletic contest. It was too much valuable time thrown away. Mother believed in education. She said, “The world today needs humble men who are well trained.”
The Porters had been very active in the redemption of their kindred dead from the opening of the Logan temple... Mother began working in the Salt Lake temple when she moved to Farmington in October 1908, and continued frequently near the end, when her health was too unreliable. Several times the effort had brought serious hemorrhages to her lungs while she was walking to the train from the temple. The indifference of the Clarks to temple work was one of mother’s criticisms. “You’ll have to wait until Timmy, Joseph, your father and Eddie are dead and gone and then maybe the younger generation will wake up and do something,” mother would say. However, Grandfather Ezra T. Clark appeared in the Salt Lake temple and told a worker what he wanted us to do. Uncle Timmy did “clean up and come to the temple,” as grandfather requested, and soon, Uncle Joseph and Uncle Charles became very active in temple work, along with nearly all the Clark family members.
On June 26, 1933, I was irrigating at Bountiful and it suddenly came to me that during the night I had been visited by a young man who said, “I want my temple work done. I can’t go on or make progress, until it is done.” He cried as if his heart would break. We hurried to the temple and in a miraculous way, the name John Cook was handed to me on a sheet. “I am a great grandson of this man. May I have a name off from this list,” I asked the sister at the desk. As I received the ordination of an Elder for and in his behalf, my eyes filled with tears. I was thrilled that I should thus have one of mother’s blood kinsmen come to me in such a manner.
On March 12, 1927 our little June Rose Clark died at Monroe, Utah. We came to Farmington with the body and laid it beside that of her sister Lillian Marjorie Clark, and I put our big boy Don Clark on mother’s lap which gave her joy. Mother was too frail to go to the cemetery with us.
Father was released from his mission and returned home. The girls washed and laid out the frail, worn body and we boys dug the grave. The funeral services were calm and beautiful. As we five boys completed the earth covering, we turned our faces to the east and wept freely. For truly a boy’s best friend is his mother. (Ann Eliza Porter Clark died on the 12th of June, 1927 in Farmington, Utah. She was the mother of thirteen children.)
