The Memoirs of

I, Elizabeth Catharine Draughon Godwin, was born January 31, 1877 about 10 miles north of Roseboro, North Carolina and 11 miles northeast of Clinton, North Carolina. I grew up on my father's farm and went to school at a one teacher schoolhouse called the Fann School. When I was 18 years old I went to Salemburg Academy about 7 miles south of our house, and I graduated from that school. In June, 1897 I attended 4 weeks Normal School at Salemburg for teachers, and we all stood examinations to teach school and I got a first grade certificate to teach in North Carolina schools.

In 1895 the Mormon Elders came to North Carolina to open up a mission and in September, 1895 the two elders that were assigned to labor in Sampson County came to the Fann Schoolhouse to hold a meeting one Sunday afternoon. That being about one half mile from our home, my father invited them to our home. We began to investigate the message the Elders brought and in August 1896 my father and my brother Robert Taylor and his wife Ellen were baptized into the Latter-Day Saints Church. Three months later I was baptized being the 7th of November 1896.

After I became a member of the Latter-Day Saints Church, I began to be talked about. The young man I had been going with came one Sunday afternoon and took me for a buggy ride and we had a big fight over my joining the Mormon Church. He told me if I ever got a husband I would have to go to Utah to get one, for I had ruined myself for joining up with those Mormon Preachers. When I was at Salemburg Academy two Mormon Elders came through the school yard going to our home near Piney Green Church. Next morning at the breakfast table I had about 10 other students were eating when someone remarked about the Elders going through the yard. All the students said they would join a mob and help drive them out of North Carolina. Mr. Royals, who was standing in front of the fireplace said, "Miss Lizzie, what do you think about those Mormon Elders?" I said "Well, I think enough of them that I have joined their church!" Well, if I had dropped a bombshell in the middle of the table it would not have created any more confusion. After that the girls would not invite me to go with them on Wednesday night to the Baptist Church to Prayer Meeting. So I would stay in my room and study. Mr. and Mrs. Royals were the ones I boarded with and they were nice people. After joining the church I went home from the Baptist Sunday School one Sunday with Miss Bettie McLamb. After dinner Bettie and I went in her Mother's living room and she started lecturing me for joining up with those Mormon Preachers. She said I had ruined my life and she would like to shake some sense in me. I never said anything for several minutes. At last when she calmed down I said to her, "Mrs. McLamb, I would rather be a member of the Mormon Church knowing what I know than to be wife of the President of the United States!" "Oh!" she said. "I would like to shake some sense in you!" Her husband owned 2,200 acres of land. She was a Matthew and awful proud. She was Mr. Nathan McLamb's wife and sister to Mr. Joe Matthew.

All my brothers and sisters were born in Sampson County, North Carolina and are as follows: (listed) I was the last child to be born in the family. I put in application to teach school in several school districts, but the same excuse came from the school district committeeman that they didn't want a Mormon to teach their schools. However, in my own neighborhood where the committeemen knew me and my family from birth they gave me two months Summer School in 1899 and also in 1900. They would have given me four months Winter School in 1899 had it not been for Lawrence Tyndal that insisted on having a man to teach the winter term on account of his 14-year-old boy that was so unruly and woman couldn't handle him. So, when I lost out I went to Durham, North Carolina and got a job in the Cotton Mill and worked there until the 1st of March, 1899, when I went back to help my folks on the farm, my father being 71 years old and not able to do much work. (I had two brothers in Durham and two first cousins. I boarded with my cousin Charlie Draughon and wife Lilly through the week and on Saturday afternoon I went to my brother Andrew's and stayed until late Sunday. He would drive me back to Cousin Charlie's).

When I came home from Durham my brother Johnny and his wife were living at our home and he was building a house on my father's land. His wife had been accidentally shot in the calf of the leg and Mother and my niece Mary Eliza Odom were waiting on her hand and foot. So I pitched in and helped Johnny make a crop.

My father had a large apple orchard east of our home, a plum orchard west, and some peach trees north of our house. We also had two large scuppernong grape harbers that got ripe in September, and two or three small harbors. Some were white and some were black. Father had a wine and cider press where he made cider and wine in the summer. In the first week of September, 1899 my sister-in-law Ellen and I were picking cotton south of our home when we saw a man coming down the road with a small suitcase in his hand. We wondered who it was and said it must be a Mormon Elder and were sure it was when he opened the gate at the end of the lane and went up to the house. When we got to the house my mother introduced me to Charlie Allen Godwin (who turned out to be my future husband). He had been to my father's home twice the winter before going to and coming from Cumberland County where he labored six months with Elder Albert Holt from Bountiful, Utah as a missionary. But I was not at home either time. He said he had heard so much about me from the Elders that he wanted to meet me, so he stayed around for two or three weeks and helped me pick cotton and grapes and my father got him to press off some wine. We fell in love and became engaged to get married, but he wanted to wait awhile so he could work out some money. His folks lived in Wayne County about thirty miles east of our hone, but when he left me he went down to the coast in Pamlico County and worked in a store for awhile and also worked five months at a saw mill for ten dollars a month and his room and board. We corresponded while he was gone.

Charlie came back in August, 1900 while I was teaching school at the Fann Schoolhouse. He wanted me to marry him then, but I put him off until I could help my mother to house the crop. My father died the 27th of November 1899 and had been dead nine months at that time. Mother had hired a man to farm for her that spring and summer and I felt like it wouldn't be doing her right to get married until I had helped her gather and house the crop. Charlie came back to see me in October for a week when I told him I would be ready by December.

Finally I wrote Charlie to come the second week in December when we were married the evening of December 11, 1900. Next day we went to Mt. Olive North Carolina where we stayed until the next June. We both got sick and I wrote and told mother. She came and took me home with her and we left my husband with his sister until he could travel. After three weeks he came and my mothr begged us to move back to live with her and farm her land which we did.

We lived there with Mother until March 1909 when my husband sold everything we had but our clothes and bedding, bought two large trunks, and packed everything in it. That was all we brought with us but our four children Portia, age 7, Verda, age 5 years and 5 months, Reston, age 4 years and two months, and Leila, age 14 months, coming to Salt Lake City, Utah at 1 AM on the morning of the 5th or 6th of April at Conference time. We could not find a room, so a night watchman took us to a furniture store and threw down some mattresses and blankets. We went to sleep at 2am and got up at 7am. It was cold, cloudy, and snowing. We gave him my husband’s oldest brother's address and he took us to the streetcar telling us where to get off. We soon found his home and stayed there a week. Then we went to Aunt Acenith Royals, Charlie's sister, and stayed there a week.

I bought a bed and all my family slept in it but Reston, who slept with Aunt Acenith at the foot of her bed. She had a slight case of smallpox the week before and as soon as we moved and my husband had worked four days Reston came down with a hot fever. Next morning we called the doctor who said the boy had smallpox. He quarantined us and inoculated us all, but it didn't take on any of us except my baby. We were quarantined for six or seven weeks. Charlie and I had a bad case of smallpox, but the children had light cases.

After we were let out of quarantine my husband couldn't find any work at painting, so when his sister Alice, who was married to Atty. Davis of Malad City, Idaho, came to Salt Lake and encouraged my husband to move to Idaho in Malad, as there were a lot of new homes going up there and no painter, he and his nephew went up there and contracted a lot of work. I did not go up there until five or six weeks later because Charlie couldn't find a house for me to move to; however, he finally found a one half of an old storehouse that had been made into two family units. In the meantime I stayed in Salt Lake with my children.

I went to Patriarch John Smith (son of Hiram Smith who was martyred in Carthage Jail with his brother the Prophet Joseph) and received a patriarchal blessing. Among other things he told me my mission on Earth had barely begun and that health and peace would always dwell in my dwelling and that my table would always be spread with the bounties of life and no one should be turned away from my door hungry.

While in Malad City Charlie got a lot of fine jobs, but we spent a lot trying to homestead some land. We went out on the homestead in 1912 and built a two room house and plowed up a little land. We went back in the Spring of 1913 and started to plow the land.

Now I wish to related some of the things that took place while we lived with my mother. We farmed her land and paid her rent and took care of her, for she was 65 years old when we got married and 74 years old when we left to come to the west. She begged us to stay with her until she passed away, but my husband was determined to come out west. He said we owed it to our children to bring them where they could have better schools to attend and could be brought up in the Church better here than there at that time. My husband and my brother Willie cut down pines and hauled them to the saw mill. They had them sawed into lumber and built a nice framed Chapel for us to hold Sunday School and other meetings in when the Elders came. My sister Narcissus Jane McLamb furnished the pines to build the church as well as the land on which to build the church. My husband was Sunday School Superintendent and we had Sunday School there until we came out west in March 1909. My sister Mrs. McLamb joined the LDS church in 1898, my brother Willie joined in September 1904. Our little Chapel was built in 1905. During the time we were there and after our Chapel was built, we taught the Gospel to three different men, i.e. Mr. Cephas Tew and wife, Mr. William Mitchell and wife, and Mr. Louisian Spell and wife; also two or three of Bro Cephas Tew's young brothers were baptized too, but they were never active. Bro Cephas died at Tarboro, NC a faithful Latter Day Saint and he raised a large family of children in the church. His son Talbert is Branch President at Tarboro now (or was the last time I heard ) and has made two trips to Salt Lake to do Temple work.

Our home with Mother was always open to the Elders and we entertained lots of them from time to time. After we left the Sunday School quit, and some years later when the woods caught fire, the little Chapel burnt down.

My mother was not baptized into the LDS church until May 1909 about two months after we left for the west. My husband's brother Edmund was there on a mission at the time we left for the west and he baptized my mother. She believed the Gospel the elders brought but she said she didn't want to be a hypocrite. When we left two neighbor ladies took hold of her arms and led her down the lane to keep here away from the house becauss she said it would kill her to see us leave, as she loved my husband as good as she did me, he having always been so good and kind to her. She said she loved my children as good as if they were hers. When my husband brought home the trunks she said they were just like coffins to her. I loved my mother very dearly. She was a very good mother and it hurt me very much to leave her. I was 32 years old at the time. It was in September 1909 that our family moved to Malad City, Idaho. later my husband filed on 320 acres of dry farm land in the Black Pine valley. We had 40 LDS families to go out and file on homesteads at the time we did. We built a chapel there and my husband put in 24 days as a carpenter and then the Bishop asked him to paint it. He painted it inside and outside and that took another month, but we had a church building which could also be used as a schoolhouse.

While we lived in Juniper, Idaho I was a primary teacher. I was also a Relief Society teacher and my companion and I used to drive around in my horses and buggy which took all day going around our district. Also, when I lived in the 25th Ward from 1923 to March 1928 I taught a class in Sunday School; I taught a Book of Mormon class; I was also a Relief Society teacher; and I was a teacher in the Religion Class Organization. When I moved to the Richards Ward I was made a Relief Society visiting teacher; however, I was never asked to teach in Sunday School although I attended Sunday School when my health would permit.

In the Fall and Winter of 1916 and 1917 there was so much snow and blizzards that we left there in September 1917 and I have lived here in Salt Lake most ever since. In APril 1918 we moved out to Farmington 20 miles north of Salt Lake City where we lived on a 4 acre home with a lot of fruit trees. We also raised a lot of vegetables and I put up about 500 quarts of fruits and vegetables that Summer. We moved back to Salt Lake the first day of November 1918.

At that time the schools were all closed on account of the flu and people were dying by the hundreds all over the world. We rented a house on Goshen Street on the west side of Salt Lake and stayed there until November 1919. I raised a lot of turkeys and a lot of chickens; however, our crop all turned to alkali when we turned on the water. By this time I was extremely homesick, so I took my two youngest girls and went to North Carolina. We reached Durham, North Carolina on Thursday night, Thanksgiving Day. I had sent Bro Andrew a telegram, but there was no one to meet me. I called him up and he sent a cab down to get me. On Saturday morning brother Taylor and Ellen, his wife, came to Andrew's to see me. Andrew had sent Taylor a letter I was coming when he got my telegram. I stayed in North Carolina until the last of the following March. My folks all begged me to come back there to live, but I knew my husband wouldn't go back. I returned to Salt Lake arriving the morning of April the 6th or 7th. My husband and my daughter Verda were there at the depot to meet me. He took me to a hotel where we stayed a week before I could find a house in which to move. I finally found a duplex on 6th Avenue where we lived until September. Then we moved to South Temple Street for one month, thence to Tyler Street in South Salt Lake.

In three weeks my daughter Leila took sick with typhoid fever and lived for only one week afterwards. We buried her in Salt Lake Cemetery. She was 12 years and 10 months old and died Thanksgiving Day, 1920.

Soon afterwards we bought our first home in Salt Lake City at 243 North Temple Street. We lived there two years then traded for a home on Redwood Road. While we lived at 243 WN Temple Street I gave birth to my ninth child. She was named Mamie Catharine and lived eight months. We lived on Redwood Road one year, then sold our place and moved to 540 Post Street where we lived fie years. While living here my son Reston got married - also Connie Bell. While we lived on North Temple Pertia and Verdie got married,

On the 15th day on March 1928 my husband and I signed up for this apartment house where I now live (1876 Lake Street). We moved here the following week. This place was all run down when we traded for it and it took a lot of work to get it painted and cleaned up and rented. My husband built for garages the year after we bought it.

Then the Depression came in 1929. My husband rented a farm 20 miles out at Granite. In 1930 we raised about 1800 bushels of apples and a lot of apricots, peaches, dewberries, potatoes, and vegetables. We came back to the apartment in the Fall and following Spring, 1931, we moved out to the East Mill Creek, rented a big hay farm and raised a lot of corn and vegetables. We stayed out there for three years, worked hard, but had a lot of good eats when a lot of folks were starving to death for lack of work.

Then President Roosevelt was elected and he gave the people a chance to save their homes by passing the Home Owners Loan Corporation. We got one on our apartment and it enabled us to keep up the payments. That was in 1934. We gave up the farm, started to do some remodeling, and kept the place painted and clean. We bought our first Stoker, which fed the furnace from that time on. Prior to that time my husband had hand-fired it throwing coal in with a shovel.

We reduced the rent to as low as $20 to #22 a month and people could hardly pay that. Part of the time some of our apartments would be vacant, for in the 1930s there was not any work to speak of. Railroad men worked only two or three days a week. President Roosevelt started the WPA and that put thousands of men to work at $55 a month and few extra groceries. My husband couldn't get on, so he made himself a job by putting down a floor in our basement and picking up rugs and shampooing them. Connie and I also cleaned and done up some curtains. Thus we were always busy and had a dollar in our pockets. In 1934 my son Reston built a one room house in the rear of our lot and in 1935 we bought it, built a bedroom in back of it, and lived in it for six or seven years. My husband contracted asthma and could not sleep in the apartment, because the air was cool and fresh out there. In the summer of 1938 my two eldest brothers died only three weeks apart. Andrew died on June 9 and George died about the 3rd or 4th of July. They wrote me that my oldest brother Willie had heart dropsy, so I asked my husband to let me go to see him. He consented.

I left Salt Lake the 8th day of August, 1938 on the bus and arrived in Fayetteville, NC on the 12th day of August 1938. After visiting until the 1st of October, I wrote my husband to send me money to come home on. He did not get my letter, so he came down on the bus to Fayetteville where we met him. We stayed in NC until the last week of March 1939 and arrived back in Salt Lake City at 2am April 1, 1939. It was my husband's first trip to NC for thirty years and my second trip. Connie and her husband were at the depot that nigh to meet us.

It seemed good to be back home, but the Depression was still on and no work. My cousin Donnie and Johnny Mathis' tenant left them in March 1939 and Mr. Mathis wanted us to stay and help him farm that year. He wanted us to raise tobacco, but my husband wouldn't stay saying he didn't believe in raising tobacco because he didn't believe in using it, for it was not good for man. However, he had been very sick that winter, so sick in fact, that I got my sister's grandson to drive me 50 miles to get the Elders to come and administer to him. That night they came and shaved him and administered to him. Then they drove back to Goldsboro that night. My brother Willie died the second day of March 1939 and was buried the fourth day. It being Sunday there was an estimated crowd of 1000 people that attended the funeral. We sent a telegram to Bro Cephas Tew at Tarboro who came and brought two Elders. Also my husband got his cousin to drive him to Goldsboro and get two Elders from there. Some of his children got a Holiness Preacher to come from Faison Depot. He happened to be a man that went to school with my husband. They shook hands and were glad to meet. He presided and Elder Jones did the Preaching. The four Elders did some pretty singing.

My brother Willie asked me to do his Temple Work and have his first wife sealed to him in the Temple and also Nicy, his living wife. I said "I don't know that I'll live longer than she will and I and your wife are the same age, but if I do I'll do the work for her if you want me to." He said that he did and I lived to carry out his wishes for both wives.

After we came back from NC in March 1939 my husband's hay fever kept getting worse especially in the spring and he was unable to do any public work. However, he did keep up the work at the apartment until a few weeks before he passed away. In 1942, he hired Bro Humphrey to help him build a three-room basement apartment on the east side of our basement. He also built some cabinets fro the west basement kitchen. We were able to keep them rented through the war years and this has enabled me to keep up payments on my apartments.

One day the Bishop came over and appointed my husband to be a Stake Missionary. This was in 1942 and he went out as long as he was able; in February 1943 he asked to be excused on account of his health. He continued to get worse. His blood pressure went up to 240. His doctor gave him some medicine to bring it down, but he didn't live but 10 or 12 more days and passed away July 26, 1943. We bought 2 lots in Salt Lake Cemetery and buried him on Thursday July 29. I have a lot there for myself. I also bought a large stone to put to our lots with our ages, births, and deaths and a space left for mine. After I buried my husband I was so lonesome that I made a trip to NC in the following September and came back on the 4th day of December 1943. I and my husband had bought a one half acre and a small house at Hunter, Utah. I sold it before I left for NC. After I returned home and following Christmas, I got sick. Then I was coming home from Church one day, fall down on the ice, and busted my head open. I lay in bed for three weeks having nervous chills and never eating anything during that time but a little skim milk. Verda came from Portland, OR and stayed with me three weeks. By then I could sit up an hour at a time. Pertia took me to her house for a week and Connie and Ceil brought me back home. However, I could hardly sit up but a little at a time and continued to be sick during the whole year of 1944. In January 1945 my doctor got me a bed at the LDS hospital and operated on me taking out my gall bladder and appendix. Connie took me to her house where I stayed three weeks. I stayed in the hospital nine days. When I came home I got better fast and have felt better ever since until two years ago when I fell and got hurt. That was the beginning of my bladder trouble.

During August 1945 I made a trip to Portland OR to visit my daughter Verda. I went on the bus and after I left Salt Lake there came over the wires that the War had ended. When we got to Burley ID the people were all out on the street and hollering and shouting that the ware was over. Nobody was in the Cafe and most of the passengers were hungry but couldn't buy a thing. However, I had made two or three sandwiches and had some bananas, so I got along all right. It was something everywhere the bus stopped and we didn't get to Portland until the following night at 9:00. Nevertheless, we found one place the next day where we bought food and one place in northern Idaho where we bought breakfast. I enjoyed my visit in Portland very much as I had three times before when I visited Verda in San Pedro, CA. I think I would much rather live in CA than in Portland OR. Still, I would rather live in Salt Lake City than in either of those places. I guess one reason is that this is the headquarters for the Church and the Prophet Isaiah said that the mountain of the Lord's House should be established in he tops of the mountains in the last days and all nations should flow unto it. Also I like the climate here. In about three weeks after I came home from Portland my eldest daughter became mentally ill and had to be taken to the State Hospital. I believe it was brought on by worrying over her sone that was in the Navy at the time when the war was going on and she was afraid he might be killed. In March 1947 my daughter Verda and her daughter Doris and husband came to Utah to visit with me for a week. A few days before they came by brother's granddaughter Florence Ivey came to visit me from NC. She got a job and worked until August. That was the year of the Centennial when Utah celebrated the whole year through. My nephew Robert Draughon and wife and family came out to attend the celebration and I went home with them.

We went through Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and the Grand Canyon of Colorado [I think she meant Arizona]. We also drove through the Petrified Forest. Everything we saw was beautiful and well worth going to see. At Bryce Canyon there came up a big thunderstorm and rain. I was really scared for a few minutes. We were 7000 feet above sea level.

We left Salt Lake the 6th of August and I returned back home the last week in September. I had a lady come back with me from Durham NC and she lost her purse twice on the way. I had to find it for her. I would have stayed longer, but I had to come back to look after my apartment.

After I came home I framed a quilt and quilted it out with but little help. Everything went along fine until Winter when I started to suffer with rheumatism or neuritis. I had pains all over my body. I went to Dr. Stebbe who gave me a shot in the arm. The next morning I had a chill and shook all over. Connie, my daughter, called a Jew Doctor who said to rush me to the Holy Cross Hospital. I stayed there about ten days and came home not much better off, as my neuritis continued until Summer. I got another doctor, Dr. Henry Raille, who treated me three months. Still, I didn't get any better, so he ordered me to the hospital and performed an operation on my colon. While it was painful, my neuritis got better and I got my strength back. That took place the first Monday in November, 1948. The next day Harry Truman was elected. I came back in five days and haven't been bothered with neuritis very much since.

That winter of 1948-1949 was the winter that we had so much snow. It started to snow the first of December (some fell in November) and after Christmas it snowed every day or every other day. There was four feet of snow in my back yard and most all over the state it was the same. People had to fly over the flocks of sheep in airplanes and drop down bales of hay to keep them from starving to death. I would rake off the snow on my porch in front every morning and feed the birds. On February 15, 1949 Miss Effie Jane Odom came to my house. She wanted to get a room from me. That she might come and live with me I cleaned the back bedroom. She moved in that day and has lived with me ever since. She has been some company to me and some help too.

In August 1948 my grandson Vernon Godwin came to my home and wanted to go to LDS Business College. He had been working in Ruth, NV and had $300 he gave me to put in the bank for him to start to school on. I kept him here three years, or until he had to go into the Army. The Korean War started in June 1950 and he was sent off that fall in training. He was in combat for 7 or 8 months in 1951.

In October 1949 I left Salt Lake for Durham NC where I visited for two weeks with my nephew Robert Draughon. While there Apostle Ezra Taft Benson toured the Central Atlantic States Mission. I sat at Robert's table and ate dinner with him and President Robert Price and his councilor. Elder Austin, Robert and wife took me down to Piney Green after two weeks and I heard him preach in the old home of Uncle Larry Draughon. It was owned by his daughter Mrs. Donnie Matthews. I spent the winter of 1949-1950 in NC.

I came back to Salt Lake the 24th of March, 1950. Bro Carlton Tew and wife brought me back. They came to be married and sealed in the Temple. While I was gone Connie and her husband took care of my apartment and she rented my apartment out. Therefore when I came home I moved into my three room house in the rear, living there until May 1951. I got the man to move out of my apartment and had it all painted, papered, and cleaned. I have lived there in No. 2 ever since.

It was May 1951 when I sent for Violet Tew to come out and stay with me and go to school. She stayed with me for a year going to school one half day and working in an insurance office one half day.

It was August 1950 when I went to the University of Utah and attended the graduation of my grandson Martin Mock. He got his BA degree and has taught school now for about six years - three in Utah and three in California.

In 1952 I had my house wired with plugs all over the apartment at a cost of $245.41. I also had guttering put around my porches for $85.

Verda and Brad came and stayed three months in the Fall. Verda worked at JC Penney's while Brad tried to sell real estate.

In the spring of 1953 Connie found a lump in her breast, which she was told was a malignant growth. However she didn't have it removed until September 25 1953, her birthday, and in December she had another operating under her arm.

In June 1953 my grand-niece Violet Tew came to Salt Lake City to marry Stanley Kimball in the Temple. I saw them get married and also accompanied them to the Hotel Utah to have breakfast with their guests. The photographer met us at the Temple and took our pictures. Also he took our pictures at the breakfast table.

I went to NC the last of October 1953 and took Carol Stansen with me. We went with Elder Don Peterson as far as Roanoke, VA. I caught the bus from there to Durham, NC. We stayed in NC three weeks during which time my relatives gave me a big dinner at my sister's old home place. It is owned now by her grandson James Young. I think most of the credit for the dinner was given to my grand-niece Lois Faye McCullen, but most all of my folks helped with the dinner and came to it. That was one of the most enjoyable days of my life. I really enjoyed my trip down there and was sorry I couldn't stay longer.

In the spring of 1954 my dear girl Connie Bell Hansen started to have a very bad hurting in her right arm which kept getting worse until she had to go to bed in August. She lost her visition and kept getting worse until she passed away October 10, 1954 with cancer. Her passing was a terrible blow to me, her husband, and her two little girls Donna and Carol. But that is a debt we all must pay. She and Cecil had their recommends to be married in the Temple the 25th of January 1955 and stood proxy for her and Cecil to be sealed.

A few days later I went to California to visit my daughter Verda. She gave me a big birthday dinner. I also visited a week with my grandson Martin Mock at San Bernadino, CA. I visited about three weeks in all - two weeks with my daughter Verda in Huntington Beach, CA. I returned home the 20th of February when there was a lot of snow and ice on the ground.

I went to see Reston and family at Ruth, NV the 1st Sunder in March 1955. When we came home I put in a quilt and quilted it out all by myself and then I went to cleaning the house.

By the 1st of April I was really sick. At April Conference on Saturday we had a big snow. It snowed all day long and lasted through April. I was suffering with my bladder. The last of April, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I fell down and hit my head on a chest of drawers. I had a blackout. My screams woke up Sister Odom and I crawled back to bed. Sister Odom called Lilly Smith who stayed and waited on me three weeks. I got better but have never been very well since. However, I keep up and going and try to keep my plce clean and rented, but it's getting hard to rent now. The rest of 1955 was uneventful except for my going to the Temple to do some Temple Work. Also, in 1956 I did quite a bit of Temple Work.

In June 1956 six of my relatives came to see me - Frank Draughon's wife, his older son Tom, youngest son Glenn, his daughter Estella Holland and her two children. They stayed twelve days and then went to Reno to visit Frank's daughter Lucy. Then in July my daughter Verda, her girl Dorris Hennion, and her two children came to visit me from California. Also, my son Reston came to visit me from NV. Mr. Starr moved to CA in August. He had lived in my apartment for sixteen years and four months. I hired the place painted, furnished it, and rented it out for $75 a month. In March 1956 my grandson Paul Mock brought my daughter Portia home from the State Hospital and she has been with me ever since. She is getting along fine. She has a job of taking care of a Mrs. Koch as her nurse and she likes her fine.

On January 31, 1957 I celebrated my 80th birthday with a nice little party. I felt quite well all this year of 1957 until June. I've been sick with bladder trouble and am planning to go to the hospital to have it put back in place. I am going to the hospital tomorrow. I had a new bathroom built on the west side of my apartment this spring, so I could rent the two west rooms of my apartment.

I wish to say that I had a wonderful childhood. We had lots of fruit trees. We never had to move around, for my father owned his farm. My parents were very religious and we loved one another. It has been my privilege to go to the Temple and have my father and mother sealed for eternity. Also, I have had all my brothers and sisters sealed to my parents and hope they will accept the Gospel in the Spirit World, that is those that didn't accept it here, for I know that the Gospel has been restored to the Earth in these the latter days.