Marshall &Kay Family  Histories

My father (Elias Henderson Cox) taught school where we lived (Huntington, Utah) but I didn’t ever have him for a teacher. My father was also the school superintendent. He taught in the higher grades. Schools used to go up to the tenth grade instead of the Twelfth grade as they do now. I knew my husband well while we were still in school – we were in the same grade. He was two years older but he was in the same grade because boys were busier with work on the farms. There were no other churches, just the Mormon Church in the community. Dances were given by the community more often than by the church. I used to go for buggy rides with “grandpa” (John W. Marshall) when we were courting. One time someone in the crowd asked when we were getting married? I (Martha) answered them,”sometime between now and Christmas”. I enjoyed all my school subjects but I especially enjoyed Seminary. I had to quit school when I was sixteen to help with the younger children. My mother’s health was very poor. She had a ‘heart condition’; I think it was “Bights Disease”. I was expected to help with the children because I was the oldest in my family. The next youngest sister (Mary Alice) was deaf and dumb. She had, had typhoid fever and whooping cough when she was an infant. She married a deaf man (Harvey Morris) when she was 35 years old. They were separated soon after. After John and I were married we went to live with my family where I continued to help take care of the younger children. In the fall as newlyweds, we left to live in Sunnyside. We lived in a boarded up tent in the winter and returned to Huntington in the summers. Then we started renting farms. John earned a living by building coke ovens the first winter in Sunnyside. For a number of years he would work farms in the summer and work in the mines during the winter. He worked for several years in the Marlin mines. Our oldest sons, Bill and Eve, both worked in the Marlin mines also. Bill and Eve helped their father cut timber and farm. The family homesteaded the Huntington farm up the canyon. It took seven years to ‘prove up’ on the land and obtain a clear title. After the farm was ‘proved up’ the family left it and stayed at the mines where they worked from then on. The family continued at the mines until John was killed in a mine accident. During the time the family stayed at the mines the farm had been leased out. John had originally intended going back to the farm the following year.

Some Memories of the Farm

We would get up early in the morning and chase the cattle off the farm before they ate the alfalfa. We made many improvements. We cleared the land of trees and stumps and large rocks. We planted some beautiful gardens. We planted corn, grain, vegetables, potatoes and alfalfa. We would get up early in the morning to pick the vegetables and wash them in the creek (Huntington river). Then we took the vegetables to the peddler in town. He would take them to the mines and sell them. We had a ‘root’ cellar in the house that was cool. That’s where we put the vegetables we would keep to eat. We kept the milk and other food there too. There was one big room in the house. Bill, the oldest, slept in a tent most of the time, except when it was too cold in the winter. He found snakes crawling in the tent several times. Once when I (Martha) went out to hang cloths I saw a snake. I told Eve to bring me a hoe and I cut the snakes head off. Eve said, “That was a rattle snake mom.” I didn’t know how brave I was. Snakes often ate the chicken’s eggs. We would trap and shoot rabbits and squirrels all the time because they ate all the vegetables.