“. . . My folks owned their home which had an acre or so of ground with low hills on two sides and a spring of water from one of the hills. There was a nice green pasture and meadow, an orchard with apple trees, plums, gooseberry and current bushes, and rhubarb. Also, I remember a large crabapple tree by the house. There was plenty of room for children to romp and play in the open sunshine. And, as I remember, we were happy and content. Our mother’s family came to visit us often from Wellsville. I also remember Grandfather Cantwell. We children would run to meet him to have a ride in the buggy pulled by his horse. He would always have a piece of candy for us.
One night I especially remember. There was a terrific wind and Father had not yet come home. Our house was a tall one-room frame with an attic above. One had to climb a ladder from the outside to get into the upstairs room. There was also a lean-to room at the back of the house for a kitchen. Mother was so worried that night; she walked the floor wringing her hands expecting any minute to have the wind away from the house by a large tree and made our bed. There, she thought we were safe. Later, my father came home and found us. He had us move our bed farther out into the open, away from any trees by the side of a pigpen. By morning, the large cottonwood tree had fallen across the spot where our bed for the night had first been. Trees had fallen or were blown across the road and everywhere many were down, but our house did not tumble down. I was only a small child but I shall never forget the experience that night.
Mother and Father would take us to Sunday School and church in a single buggy and one horse. We children would be tucked in the seat or down in front with some in the back. These were always happy days for us children. Also we would go with them to the Fourth of July celebration held in a grove of trees by the church building. This was about a mile from our home. Later the home had been mortgaged and sold. Our parents moved to Logan, Utah, and we lived there about one year.
I am sorry to tell this or to write it down, but my father had been drinking a lot for some time. He was spending what little money had made for liquor and spending his time in the saloons until late at night. Things were so serious that Mother’s parents finally had to move us in with them leaving Father to go his own way… Before this Grandfather Wood had sold his farm at Wellsville and bought a home at Logan. Later, Mother’s brothers, Joseph and John and families were moving to Rexburg, Idaho, to make their homes on farms. This was about 1902 or 1903. The furniture and farm machinery was loaded into a box care on a freight train and we all rode in the caboose at the back of the train. Mother and her little family also went to make a new beginning and start life without a father; they had separated for keeps. We arrived in Rexburg about dusk at night and went to Great Aunty Mary Wilson’s home. The house had been empty for some time and belonged to Grandfather Wood’s sister who, at the time, was living at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The older folks cleaned up and made beds on the floor and chairs from some of the children. The uncles bought farms. Mother and we children lived in this house for some time. My father felt very bad and tried to stop us from leaving Utah. Mother always said that if he would stop his drinking and support us, she would go back to him, but he never did. He did make a few trips to Rexburg to visit us be never straightened himself out.
Mother had always been handy with sewing and made all of our clothes, even our underwear: we always had plenty of flour sacks as she always mixed bread. There were two other uncles, George and Henry (Wood), who had farms out from Rexburg. They also helped us out a year or so later. They bought Mother a piece of ground with a log house on it. It was three rooms in all with a dirt roof. So we had room for a large garden, berries and few apple trees. We kept chickens, a pig, and a black cow which I learned to milk. I never remember a time when we did not have plenty of food and clothing – “not the best” – but made over. We had plenty of coal and wood to keep the house warm. Mother always canned garden vegetables, also fruits and pickles of all kinds. I never saw her bottles empty when summer and fall came or winter arrived. We had a new rag carpent and tacked it down over a layer of new fresh straw after thrashing had been done. Mother had made ticks for the beds and they were filled with fresh straw each fall. We had a wooden folding bed with a large mirror down the front which we though was very nice. The inside of the house had factor (a heavy muslin) tacked to the logs and then wallpaper was glued over which made it comfortable and warm. The windows were always filled with cans holding geraniums and other potted plants. Also there was a little house out to the back of the yard with a well-worn path.
This was our home for a number of years. As time went on, Mother took a trip to Salt Lake City with her parents’ help. She went to learn a course in dressmaking and drafting of patterns from the Brown’s School of Dressmaking. She was very efficient in this work. She opened a shop downtown (Rexburg) in the upstairs rooms of Henry Flamm’s Store.
She had a number of large cutting tables and a dozen sewing machines, and all the students she could handle; also all the sewing she could do. My mother was well-liked and respected by all who knew her.
During this time Mother’s brother, Joseph Wood, helped her take-up (homestead) a 160-acre dry farm. He built a cabin about two-and-a-half to three miles northeast of Rexburg. He plowed part of the land and planted grain and fenced it all in. He was to have eighty acres of the land for his share while Mother would live on the place a length of time to prove upon it. They gave us a horse and buggy to go back and forth from home and Mother drove in the evenings to the farm and back to work in the mornings. My neighbors a block away had two children near our age. My brother, Bob, and I spent most of the one summer there. My uncle had horses on the farm to pasture so we kids had to drive them about three-fourths of a mile to a canal to drink and back again, so we did not get too lonesome. We had to haul water from the canal for use, only the drinking water was hauled from home.
After the land was proved, Mother sold our share to Joe Sorenson, a carpenter from Rexburg. In exchange he was build us a new frame house (in Rexburg); then the old log house was torn down. By this time Mother’s health was not too good. She had asthma quite bad. She had been walking to town and home in all kinds of weather “and a long walk it was.” She had run the dressmaking shop quite a few years, so she gave up the shop and settled down in her home. She continued her sewing there, a little even up to the last years of her life.
She had made herself a nice flower garden east of the house and spent a lot of time in the sunshine caring for it. She had a sprinkler can to help water the flowers. Later, my brother Bob had a motor attached to the pump which gave her plenty of water.
Mother sang in the Second Ward Choir. She was a Relief Society block teacher besides being a father and mother to her family. Neither Father or Mother remarried. She passed away at her home after a week’s illness. The undertaker was from Idaho Falls, Idaho, and was her cousin Jack Wood. She had suffered a number of years with asthma. She was very miserable, especially in winter. Father traveled around some and later made his home in Ogden, Utah, close to where his brother Jim Cantwell lived.”
Mary Blanche Cantwell Steiner Bateman, Payette, Idaho, February 1960
The Star Café 
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