Mt. Pleasant Birth and Early Life in the Fort:
I was born in Springville, Utah, on September 23, 1856. In the early spring of 1860, Father moved my mother's family to Mt. Pleasant, Utah. We moved into an adobe house built against the 12-foot fort wall which formed the back of the house. It had a dirt roof but lumber floor with a fireplace in the south end of the house, also a window and one door in the east side of the south and larger room, and a door passing into the north room which contained one small window. The roof had a ridge pole, or small log, with a log halfway down on each side to support the roof. Small poles were then placed crossing these and extending out in front to form eves. Willows then crisscrossed these poles and then a layer of straw atop the willows, all nailed quite solidly with more than a foot of dirt. This was a splendid roof. Only when an extended rainstorm prevailed or the spring snow was melting did it sweat with the labor of carrying the roof until great drops of sweat fell down from the underside of the Eli A. Day roof or even came down in trickles. Oh! how pleasant! Not! Pans, buckets, cups, anything that would hold water, were then placed upon the beds to keep them dry.
Then again, how very pleasant when mice would get working in the straw and dirt of the roof, peppering everything below them with dirt. This wonderful house, twelve feet to the square, stood on the north side of Pleasant Creek, on the brink of the bank. But it contained for a few years, a very merry and happy bunch of children, though we lived in destitution.
Fishing: In those days, Pleasant Creek, which passed through the center of the fort, was the best trout stream I ever knew; and I had to go only a little way north of the house through a small gate in the wall of the rock fort to get to a good fishing hole where I caught much fish using a bent pin and homemade line.
School, Games, Chores & Childhood Injuries: Those were happy days for me! Going to school, learning my lessons, going herding barefooted on stormy days, carrying fire in a torch made of cedar bark, for we had no matches in the sixties to speak of, playing on the hard ground, gathering the cows at night, and trudging along behind, barefooted and weary, sore feet, cracked and bleeding, washing those poor sore feet at night in warm bran water, greasing them with a healing salve made of equal parts of rosin, beeswax, and mutton tallow. And when the stone bruised our feet, curing them with fresh barnyard poultices. Not very pleasing to the nose, but the most efficacious remedy for taking out inflammation and blood poisoning that I have yet discovered, even in these days of learned doctors.
When herding in the fields in spring or fall we often caught the big green frog, took the hind legs only, and skinned, roasted, and ate them. It was said that frogs hind legs in those days were a great delicacy in France. I know they are tender, juicy, and tasty when rightly prepared.
I do not remember my first days in school but, I am told that when my brother Herbert started school at "Auntie Hyde’s School" (Charlotte Hyde), I wanted to go so much that I cried all the forenoon so Mother let me go in the afternoon. My first memory of school, Auntie Hyde gave me a book and set me to teaching Herbert his ABC's. The privilege of teaching another was so great that I remember it to this day.
In spring and fall, we herded mostly in the fields, which, in those days were considered joint enclosures. That is, when a tract of land was taken up for cultivation, it was divided by lot generally to the men who were to get the land, in five, ten, fifteen, and twenty-acre pieces, as the case might be; then the whole tract was fenced in one large public field; thus each man had to put up but two or possibly four or five rods of fence for each acre of land he got. The larger the field the fewer rods of fence per acre were needed.
In early spring these fields were open to the stock of the public; also, when the crops were gathered in the fall, they were again thrown open, and remained so all through the winter and until the cattle began to do damage to the spring crops.
You did not have to be an owner of the land to get your stock into the field. All were welcome. When we herded neighbors' cows we got 2 or 3 cents each per day.
Swimming was a very popular pastime, and when we couldn't go to the Sanpitch river, where there was plenty of water, we dammed up a large hole in Pleasant Creek, just inside of the field below the west street of the town. The bed of Pleasant Creek was deeper there than almost any other place of its whole length. The banks were sloping, especially on the north side of the creek, and there was a clear place close down to the water on the north side, backed and surrounded by heavy tall brush, so it was well isolated. The pool of water was large and deep, considering other parts of the stream, and by making a dam a couple of feet high we had the best swimming hole in Pleasant Creek. It was monopolized by the boys, who always stripped naked for swimming. Hundreds of boys, now old men, still have pleasant memories of the old town swimming hole.
Our Homes in Early Mt. Pleasant: Living in the little adobe house in the "Old Fort" was inexpensive. We generally had plenty of flour and potatoes, some fruits in the fall and late summer, sorghum in the fall and winter, and sorghum fruit preserves. Sugar preserves were out of the question, as also bottled or canned fruits. But one year I remember, about '63 or '64, the grasshoppers had taken so much of the grains in Utah that wheat was $5.00 per bushel. That summer we lived on potatoes for six weeks, with a little milk, butter, and pork. For me, it did not matter, but my brother Herbert was very delicate and it was hard on him, and although Mother did not complain, I think it was hard on her too, but I was happy as a lark. But those were certainly hard times. Tea was $3.00 a pound, calico 50 cents a yard, or more, other merchandise as costly.
There was very little money in the country. Most of the trade in the store was with butter, eggs, grain, and sometimes paper rags. In 1864, Father and Joseph took up squatter's claims on land laying on both sides of Sanpitch, where the State Road crosses Sanpitch west of Mt. Pleasant. They built three log cabins between the Sanpitch and the low hills where the three families lived until the next summer.
Indian Troubles & Fort Building: A large band of Indians camped that winter up Sanpitch a mile or more, and they sometimes came down in large numbers in the evening and got Father and Joseph to make music for them. Joseph beat the snare and Father the bass drum. They also came singly and in pairs begging for food, mostly bread. We sometimes played with the nanzits and ipis (Indian words for boys and girls). It was a jolly life for us boys.
The spring of 1865 (April 9th) saw a quarrel with some Indians in Manti and later a white man was killed. In addition, Chief Black Hawk, whose wives and children had died from evil diseases from mingling with wicked white men, was burning for revenge and incited the Indians to war upon the whites. Bishop William S. Seeley, of Mt. Pleasant, told Father he had better move to town, but Father said, no. The Bishop said he might get his family massacred if he did not. Father said the Indians would not attack until they had sent their wives and papooses away.
Sometime in May (26th), Conderset Rowe, a boy of some sixteen summers, had been hunting horses in the hills north of our homes, and coming by he told Father that the Indians had left their camp up the Sanpitch from us and gone off. He saw the trail up in the hills where they had gone north. Then Father said it was time to move to town, which he did that day.
That evening the Indians killed a sheepherder at the "herd house" in Herd House Hollow, now called the Milburn Meadows, five miles north of Northbend, now called Fairview. The next morning, very early, they massacred the Givens family at the head of Thistle Canyon, just below Thistle Valley. Thus the Black Hawk war was thoroughly launched and we were back in our little adobe house in the old fort.
In 1866, the Indians got so bad that the people of Northbend (Fairview) were ordered to move to Mt. Pleasant for the summer and the people of Sevier County abandoned their homes, many of them coming to Mt. Pleasant, where they made permanent homes. Other small towns were abandoned temporarily.
The same year, the people built the North Fort, the block on which the North Sanpete High School stands was enclosed with a twelve-foot wall like the wall south of it. But the north wall of the South Fort became the south wall of the North Fort, the rock wall ran across the streets thus joining the two forts. There was a twelve-foot gate in the street both east and west, also a twelve-foot gate on the north side, and small gates or doors on the east and west sides of the new fort.
The Day family took part in the building of the fort. Father, Andrew Madsen, and Father Rice had a portion assigned to them a little east of the northwest corner, possibly four or five rods long. I remember well that we small boys mixed most of the mud, and carried the smaller rocks and mud upon the scaffold. Andrew Madsen carried the larger rock up, while Father Rice and my father laid them into the wall.
The afternoon we finished, Andrew Madsen invited us to his home one block north and treated us to homemade beer1. Somehow he gave the beer to the boys first, and Father Rice jumped up in a huff and walked off home. I asked Father what was wrong and he said the old gentleman was offended because he was not served first.
This fort was built to put cattle in during nights to protect them from the Indians. During the worst of the Indian times, the cattle and horses gathered in the fall and spring drives were corralled in the fort, and the big cow herd were gathered every morning from all over the town and brought to and from the range for feed every day by members of the minute companies.
Sometimes, during the very worst of the Indian troubles, twenty or thirty men were sent to herd and guard these cattle during the day and bring them home at night, but even then, in the early spring or late fall, the boys were sent out herding because the Indians wintered over the mountain east in Castle Valley and did not come over in the spring until the snow was gone over the mountain passes, and traveling back and forth was safe. In the fall they went over the mountains before there was danger of the trails being blocked with snow.
As the war proceeded, the minute and home guard companies were organized. My brother Joseph was made captain of a home guard company and Father was urged to become an officer of a fighting unit, but because of his age and his service in the Mormon Battalion and a large and destitute family, Brigham Young had him excused.
In 1866, a large bunch of Northbend and Mt. Pleasant boys went out south of the graveyard to swim in adobe holes we had filled with water. We were naked, our clothes lying on the banks around. Suddenly, the old bass drum boomed from the public square, and the flag ran up to the top of the library pole! An Indian raid somewhere! Did we stop to dress? No! No! We grabbed our clothes and scampered for the town as fast as our legs would carry us! Yes, we dressed at the edge of town and went on, thankful that the hair and hide were still safe on our heads.
In 1867, a wall was started to enclose the town. I worked on it also. I was then working for Andrew Peterson, a near neighbor. But Father with a crew had a portion assigned to him. On this fort, I quarried rock, hauled rock, and mixed mud, though but eleven years old. This wall had bastions in it as well as gates and portholes like the other walls, but it was built only about one fourth the way around the town, that was across the east end.
After Peace was Restored: nearly everyone moved out of the fort, and Father bought the row of houses left standing, backed by one of the rock walls of the old fort. We used these houses for stables and granaries, and stacked grain and hay near them, using the land in the southwest corner of the fort for corrals. These houses were inside of the corrals and stockyards. We, children, had much sport climbing through, over, and around these houses. About 1868 or 69, Lucerne (Alfalfa) was introduced into the territory and soon took the place of the native meadow hay. Thus pioneer life went forward. I helped on Father's farm and worked on neighbors' farms. I also continued to attend school and tutoring other students. This led to my becoming a school teacher and continuing to serve in this capacity for the rest of my life.
