ANN ADAMS (1877-1943)
A SKETCH OF THRILLING EVENTS IN THE LIFE
OF
ANN (PAGE) ADAMS ROSE WATTS
Written in Aurora, Utah 1937 by herself
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Ann Adams |
Ann P. Adams was born 19 March 1877 at Pahreah, Kane County,
Utah. She is the daughter of John S. (Page) Adams and Mary E. Adair (frontier
pioneers.)
The first I can remember was my getting angry at Barbery
Cook and throwing the scissors at her. They stuck in her bare foot and the
blood squirted and I was scared. I was three then. (Didn't I catch it!)
In the spring of 1883 our family was called to help settle
Apache County, Arizona from Harrisburg, Washington County, Utah.
We crossed Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River on my sixth birthday
19 March 1883. I well remember the sand and Navajo Indians and Ralph Keets
getting his foot ran over with a wagon. How he nearly died with blood poison.
They put fat bacon on the foot to draw the swelling out of his body. His
foot busted in the instep, but he got well. There were ten families each
had one or two wagons. At Holbrook I saw my first train and first drunk man.
He came to our camp. We children thought he was crazy. After 25 days travel
we got to Snowflake, the LDS stake headquarters. There we found the Apache
Indians were causing trouble sixteen miles up the Showlow creek from there.
At Shumway's Ranch on the creek the Indians had killed and tortured a family
and burned the house. The house was still smoking when we went by it three
or four days later. When we got to Adairville, where grandpa Adair lived
we found all the people around there had gone to a fort on Edson Whipple's
ranch for a few days. This fort was a large log hall. Large enough to dance
eight sets, a quadrille, with a stage or part kept for to store wood in.
And in one corner was a well with good water in. There were eight government
stoves in it and when the beds were made down they almost touched each other.
There were no windows, only in the roof. just holes in sides to see through.
I danced in the fort after I was 16 years old. People stayed there a week.
Then the ranchers stayed in town a while for the Indians to quiet down. This
was in old Chief Geronimo's days. (I remember him and his black horse.)
Father built a two-roomed log house on the point
of a hill. When the road started up a canyon. One day the cattle men from
the Flying U V Ranch had 3000 head of cattle moving from summer range to
winter range. They started them through the main street of the little village
of Adairville, Arizona. Grandfather Adair had just killed a beef and hung
the hide on the corral fence next to the street. The lead cattle smelled
this and bellowed, they commenced milling. There were children on house tops
and other safe places to watch the cattle go by. I and some sisters and cousins
were in an old log house, one room used for a chicken coop, the other a corn
crib. We were in the chicken coop part. A wild cow burst the window and came
through inside. My, wasn't there a scramble to get through the window in
the upper part of the middle door into the corn crib. This was in 1885. The
cow was as scared as we were for she went through the window on the other
side of the room. When the men got them stopped by turning the back cattle
another way over the hill. There were over 100 head of calves and cows stamped
to death in the street but no people hurt bad.
In 1886 the family moved to Snowflake so the children
could go to school That winter we all had Typhoid fever and a hard struggle
all winter. I got over the typhoid first but was real weak so they let me
stay with a neighbor and go to a kindergarten school as the main school was
a mile or more off. Here I contracted Scarlet Fever but was not very sick.
They thought it was hives. I went on to school and of course exposed the
whole neighborhood. We moved back home as soon as the rest was able to go
and I gave scarlet fever to the rest of the family and others. Several people
died of it. My sister, Lillie, was left deaf [partially]. J. Flake, a school
boy, never heard again and was sick so long he couldn't either talk or hear
when he got well. I have always felt terrible over my part in this.
Soon after, father got the Bognell Hollow Ranch three-fourths of a mile from
Adairville, over a hill. Father freighted to Fort Apache most of the time.
Father was gone one night when the weather was warm and the doors were open.
We thought we heard the neighbor's hog out and go past the house. I got up
and shut the front door. The back door should of had four steps to the door
but none were there so I didn't shut it. The next morning we saw bear tracks
no more than eight feet from the back door. A grizzly bear had gone down
the field to get green corn. Next night men watched for and killed him.
When I was about 12 or in 1889 a Sunday School class went to the ranch of
our teacher Willard Whipple to a molasses mill to make candy. There were
twenty of us. We had three lanterns. The road was under and through thick
timber (tall Pines). As we came back to town and were going under some thick
trees it was really dark. We were all in a bunch close to the lights and
a panther cried over our heads. We went for the clearing as soon as we could
and all stayed together close to the lanterns. No one was hurt. (Some scared
bunch). A few days later the town men killed the panther.
While at Bognel Hollow we children, three of us, were
on our way to Sunday school. There was a big cedar tree by the road and lots
of cattle trails going to water over the hill. There were always lots of
wild cattle on them. This sunday a large black bull chased us up the cedar
tree where we had to stay till in the afternoon when a freighter came by
and drove his wagon under the tree so we could get in it. The old long horned
bull never left the tree or close to it he lay down where he could see us
but he disappeared soon after that. (This was not funny.)
Oh, how afraid we were of Indians and Negro soldiers. (We lived
on the main road.) One time the Negro soldiers were putting a telegraph line
from Holbrook to Fort Apache Arizona along the main highway. There was a
public well outside our fence but the Negroes that were camped there thought
our well water was the best so would come night or day after water. Mother
was so afraid of them that the third day she bandied them to shoot with her
and I. Mother hit the knot in a post three times straight. I hit the knot
twice and the post the third time. After that the Negroes didn't act so smart
and bold when they came after water. We girls learned to shoot young.
In the fall of 1889 I, Ann P. Adams, and my sister, Mary or
Mame, were hunting milk cows about 1 1/2 miles on the opposite side of home
from town. We were in thick cedars. We separated to look in different places.
We sometimes found the cows laying down. I went to a large Cedar tree and
oh, horrors ran over me. For there, hanging to the limbs of the tree, were
three cowboys. Hung by a vigilante committee. The cattle and sheep men were
quarrelling over range or feed rounds. We girls got together and went home
without the cows. We told Father, he went to Adairville, told the sheriff
and other men. They had to tie handkerchiefs over their faces or nose and
mouth. The men had been there so long they were so decayed. The men dug a
large grave, wrapped the men in blankets put all three in one unknown grave.
They were all three strangers to the town men. (Some shock!)
In the winter of 1890 father went to help drive from Arizona to Utah. The
family was left on the ranch to do both man and woman's work. I sure learned
to chop wood that winter. We got without flour so mother had us girls sack
up wheat and corn. She harnessed up old Crook and Bill, a white team, hitched
the wagon, loaded the grain in, and started for the grist mill 16 miles away.
They had to wait for the grain to be ground, so mother had to be gone over
night. That afternoon we saw Indians had made a camp on the hill above our
house. At night we could see by the fire light that they were drinking talepie,
a drink they made out of corn. We girls did the chores as usual. But after
dark we oldest girls each took a quilt and went over the hill to grandmas
at Adairville. We went down a big wash till we were out of sight of the Indians.
We stayed there over night. Next morning an uncle went home with us. The
Indians had come to the house and took the door off the hinges, went in,
found the shot gun under the mattress on the bed, and took every screw out
of the gun, laid them on the table, took everything there was in the house
to eat and left. (Some escape for five girls and a four year old boy.)
I have seen old Geronimo, the Apache chief that was such
a horror to white people. Also seen the Apache Kid, a young Indian that delighted
in scaring white people and killing cattle and burning homes. Even in stealing
young squaws and killing them when the soldiers got after him and laying
it to white people. After old Geronimo was killed his son Alkcho was a good
chief, as long as the whites let them alone they didn't bother the whites
or their cattle.
Our family moved to Pinetop in the spring of 1891 where
the happiest or most pleasurable two years of my life was spent.
In 1892 Father took sick in the fall and winter with rheumatics.
The Dr. advised a warmer climate for him. So the family moved to Utah in
1893, a hard 28 day trip. We stopped at Moenkopi to rest and wash. While
there the Navajo Indians searched our wagons for a man that had whipped an
Indian with a quirt. This was the Indian trouble where Lot Smith a noted
pioneer was killed at Tuba City near Moenkopi, Arizona.
After leaving Moenkopi we went over Lee's Backbone, a
mountain. We had to go over to get to the upper crossing of Lee's Ferry on
the Colorado River. The river was so high and so much timber and large trees
coming down. We had to wait three days for the timber to stop coming down.
So father took us to see the mouth of Grand Canyon or the narrows as they
were called them where the large trees were sucked under water out of sight.
(It was a grand view.)
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Ann with her husband, Hyrum Rose |
We always found time for pleasures such as dancing, picnicking,
sleigh riding, mixed with our buggerboo and nerve-racking times.
There was some grand scenery on our trip from Arizona
to Utah. We moved to Harrisburg, Washington County, Utah for two summers.
I went to Washington to work in the cotton and woolen mills in the spring
of the second summer. The family moving in the fall to Washington, Washington
County, Utah. I worked at weaving for three years then married Hyrum Henry
Rose of Mill Creek, Salt Lake County, Utah on the 20 of Aug 1896.
We soon went to White Hills, Arizona, a mining camp, where three children
were born to us, all dying young. (Our oldest girl Annie was born there on
May 27, 1897. She only lived 5 days and was buried at White Hills June 3,
1897. That fall my people moved to Kingman. Next fall we went to Chloride
for a while. Here our daughter, Blanch was born June 5, 1898. She lived 8
months and died of Diabetes? caused from a scare or shock, she fell from
a swinging bed.)
We went back to White Hills, stayed one summer, moved
to Chloride Depot where Hyrum Rose and Henery Averett ran a short order house
or restaurant. There our son William Henery was born Sept.
15, 1899 died Sept. 20, 1899 buried at Chloride, Arizona.
While at Chloride, Mohave Co. Ariz. we bought lumber to build us a house.
The lumber dealer warned us that there were lumber thieves around. So we
moved our tent close to the lumber. Mr. Rose was working nights. I had two
little girls staying with me. I was reading to them. When we heard steps
outside. I put out the light. One of the girls handed me a stick of wood.
I looked out but couldn't see anyone but I could see what I thought was a
seamless sack of cloths. I went to pick it up to take it to the tent. I stooped
to pick it up by one end and Oh, boy I put my hand in an Indian's hair. He
grunted, I hit him with the stick of wood, he ran, But never bothered us
again. (Some thrill)
We next moved to Cottonwood, Arizona near the mining camp,
Jerome. Here we rented a farm. Our corn had got almost as high as a man's
head. Mr. Rose was plowing the corn to water. I had a hen with little chicks.
On the hill above our house about 30 Indians were camped. A chicken hawk
tried to get a chick. I got the shotgun and shot the hawk from a tree between
the house and the Indian camp. As the hawk fell the Indians screamed. I thought
I had shot an Indian (my, I was scared). I set the gun in the house and went
to the field to Mr. Rose but I hadn't hardly got to him till here came a
dozen or more Indians carrying the hawk. I was the first woman they had ever
seen shoot a gun. (What a relief). This was in 1900?
We went to Globe, Ariz. for two winters. Next we started
for my old home at Pine Top, Arizona. We left Globe and went to the San Carlos
Reservation on the Gila River. Here the Indians directed us where we would
find water. We left the river [and] went over a hill that was very steep.
We couldn't haul water up it. When we got to the top the spring was dried
up. We had ten miles to go to the next water. The team was tired. The Indians
said to follow the cattle trails, they would lead to water. So we unhooked
and Mr. Rose took the horses and canteens and followed the cattle tracks.
I was to build a fire to guide him back to the wagon. But there were too
many wild cattle to get out of the wagon. But after he had been gone two
hours. I got nervous and shot off the shotgun twice every half hour. I shot
the gun ten times before he came to the wagon at eleven thirty. For once
I thought I was going to choke to death. But next morning we found water
in about a mile by the side of the road. I sure had a sore shoulder from
the gun kicks.
We went on to Black River. We crossed it and camped to fish.
While Mr. Rose was fishing I made a fire preparing to cook fish. I wanted
water. I took the bucket and tried to get where I could get a bucket full.
I stepped on what I thought was a chunk of cottonwood in the shallow water.
It was a sturgeon fish. It went and I went--down in five inches of shallow
water. (One thrill). As I went down a dozen Indians coming down the hill
hollered and laughed. (Another thrill). I had to cook supper for them in
wet clothes. I had no place to change. How the Indians did laugh.
We went from Black River, crossed White River, on to my old
home, Pine Top, then Navajo Co. Arizona to see my grandmother Mary V. Adair.
I had a good visit with old friends. We went through the San Carlos Indian
Reservation and the Apache Indian Reservation on this trip.
From there we went to Gallup, New Mexico. On this road we went
through several Zuni Indian villages. Once we got on the wrong road in the
sand and went up in the hills to a village that travelers seldom visited.
The Indian agent said he thought I was the first white woman to ever go up
there. I was a novelty to the papooses and squaws.
The Indian Farms were like little forests. They stuck a little
green cedar twigs down where ever they planted corn to mark the place in
the sand. We went to one village against a hill where the roof of one house
was the door yard of another for 5 or 6 dwellings high. We passed under cliffs
that hung over the road that were covered with ancient hieroglyphics or writings.
We went on to Gallup, N.M. where Mr. Rose got work hauling coal for two months.
Here I had mumps on one side and quinsy all at once. (My, I was sick).
While [I was] sick Mr. Rose and George Wagner took a contract
on the Rock Island railroad which was being built through New Mexico and
Texas. Rather than stay among strangers, sick, so far from my husband I went
with them. I was quite sick when we got to Las Vegas, N.M. Mr. Rose went
to a Dr. and got some tablets. They helped me but the Dr. didn't tell him
I shouldn't eat sour. So he brought some ripe tomatoes to the camp. I ate
some next morning. We went on to the Pecos River. It was quite hot and the
spring close to the river was cool. I had no taste, my throat was so sore
yet. I drank freely of the water and it cramped me terrible. (It was a salt
spring.) Mrs. Wagner gave me Jimoca Ginges. It choked me. I went blind and
almost paralyzed We went to where the men were to work. I didn't see again
for three months and had creeping paralyses. It started in my face and head
and gradually went down.
I took a government preparation called U.S. Saphrilla.
This finally cured me. After three months my sight came back. These three
months I was in the way of everybody not right down in bed. They filled the
contract in four months. We went back to Las Vegas, N.M. I gained my strength
and sight. We went from there to Cimarron, N.M. where Mr. Rose worked on
a quarry all winter for an English company. They were putting up a twenty
room house for a hunting park lodge. I cooked for twenty-one men all winter.
And only missed getting shot once with a shot meant for the boss by my bed
being extra low.
In the spring we moved to town of Cimarron, Colfax Co.
New Mexico where Mr. Rose got work with Bird Pain for the government killing
prairie dogs.
On Oct. 7, 1902 our daughter Hilda Grace was born, my fourth
child, but my first to live.
Up to this time in my travels I had crossed the big Colorado River four times,
the Little Colorado, the Verde, the Rio Virgin, the White and Black Rivers,
and the Gila River all in Arizona. The Rio Grande, the Pecos, the Red, and
the Cimarron Rivers in New Mexico. These were all native rivers, crossed
some in boats some forded in wagons, some on bridges. From Cimarron N.M.
we went to Tucumcari N.M. Here Mr. Rose took up a home under the Deseret
Act. Wells were drilled for colonizer and cattle use. We planted 10 acres
of corn, beans, and a garden. But in June it was so dry and hot, no rain
at all, that the beans, melons, and other green crops curled up and fell
off the vines. I saw my first cyclone while at Tucumcari. It took the tent
like it was paper. It carried the pillows a mile toward the dry lake and
left it on the sand. The sky was so red with dust one couldn't see to their
crills [corrals?]. We went into the hen house that was built with four post
set in the ground. Lots of loose-built shacks tumbled over. Some collapsed.
We gave up the homestead and went with team to Trinidad,
Colorado where Mr. Rose got work on a street car line that was being built
from Trinidad to a coal mine nearby.
From there we went to Cripple Creek, Colo. a gold mining camp. We were at
Cripple Creek when the miners union struck in 1903 and oh the trouble that
strike caused poor people. Mr. Rose was engineer at the Anaconda mine on
nonunion. When at change [of] shift in evening the platform was blown up
with 60 men killed and many wounded. Mr. Rose only escaped being on the platform
by forgetting to bank the engine fire and ran back to bank it. The blast
went off while he was gone. This was a railroad platform where the train
brought men to work and took the going-off shift to town. We were there two
years.
Once my two year old baby, Hilda, wandered off hunting flowers and was lost
for two hours. I was some excited. When we found her she had her dress full
of flowers and was not afraid. [She] was still picking flowers one and a
half miles from the cabin. Not far from the mine where her father worked.
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Opening camp at Vernal, Utah 1906
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From there we went to the opening of the Uintah Reservation
land opening in 1905 in Utah. Our homestead proved so rocky we were forced
to leave there. We worked on the canals that were taking out of White River to water many farms in Uintah country.
From there we went to Price, Utah where Mr. Rose freighted
from Price to Fort Duchesne. Then to Spring Glen, eight miles from Price,
where we got a dry goods store which we worked at till Mr. Rose's health
failed. He contracted kidney trouble when young. Working on a log river drive
for a sawmill in Mill Creek Canyon, Utah in winter where he got so wet and
often his clothes froze on him. It was years getting him down. Here our son,
John A. Rose, was born on March 12, 1908. We gave up the dry goods business
and traveled for a while, finally went to Nevada mining camps. He was night
watchman at the Old Demions mine, then at the Gerve mine at Kimberly, Nev.
Here his health got so bad I took him to the mountains to a saw mill for
the summer, he liked saw mill work. While there I helped cut 10,000 foot
of logs to be sawed at the mill. One day I was sent after the horses we could
see going over the hill. The men were all busy so I took my two children
and went up the creek through thick timber to head the horses back. At last
the hill was so steep I told the children to go down the road toward the
mill to where there was a bird's nest in a tree. They went and I went on
after the horses. The hill was so steep I couldn't make the horses go to
the road so I drove them along the side hill till I got them to the valley.
It took so long I got worried about the children and called to them, they
answered me and just then I heard a terrible crack of broken limbs and the
children screamed. I rushed to them, they said the animal that ran from close
to them looked like a deer. I took them with me. We drove the horses to the
mill and told the men there was a deer in the trees. So, as we needed meat
in camp three men went after the deer. But instead of a deer it was a large
mountain lion. My hollering at the children had scared it away before it
jumped on them. We didn't go for long walks after that in the timbers. The
lion measured 10 foot from tip to tip.
We went back to the mining camp at Ely and ran a boarding house that winter.
Next June we went to Salt Lake City to a specialist for kidney trouble but
we had waited too long to get any good results of the treatment.
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Ann (back row second from right) moved in
with her parents
after her husband's death. This picture was taken in 1914. |
Mr. Rose only lived till Dec 16, 1913 after much suffering.
During his sickness I did much hard work such as men's washing, raising and
selling vegetables, house cleaning, sewing, and many other things.
After Mr. Rose died in S.L.C. I went to my people at
Annabelle, Sevier Co., Utah where I worked at anything I could do to make
a living for my two children. On the 22 of April 1915 I went to Aurora, Utah
to keep house for a second cousin's husband who [my cousin] had died in 20
Feb. before. I stayed with Benj. Watts and his eleven year old daughter,
Miriam till the 8 of Sept 1915 when we were married. My two children, Hilda
and Jack were with me. In 1918 our daughter, Lola was born. Our son, Archie
was born Sept 27, 1921. While at Aurora my daughter, Hilda went through district
school, through high school at Salina, and college at Ephraim and the BYU
at Provo. She taught school four years then married Joseph M. Palmer of Blanding.
My son, Jack Rose went to high school at Salina after graduating from the
eighth grade at Aurora. Then he went to Calif. where he married Carrel E.
Fisk. Our daughter, Lola went through district school at Aurora and through
to the third high at Salina then married Loring Larsen and went to Los Angeles.
This is up to 1936 by Ann P. A. R. Watts
Ann Adams Rose Watts
died on 1 January 1943 in Aurora, Utah.
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