From the Allen Family History.

I was born October 3, 1908 at Preston, Idaho to George and Rosa Barfuss Young. The house is still standing on the northwest corner of the intersection of lst North and 3rd East. It is a two-story house with two rooms upstairs and two rooms down. It originally had a smaller stained glass window in the south room on the ground floor. This house was built by my father and my grandfather, William Lowe Young, who was a carpenter by trade. Grandfather learned the carpenter business in England as an apprentice for seven years.

Grandfather Young was living with us the earliest I can remember and he lived with us until he died. He used to tell us about his trip across the plains in the wagon train led by a Captain John Smith. Grandfather and Grandmother's wagon was pulled by a team of oxen, a team of milk-cows, and a team of steers. The steers would be called oxen when they grew bigger and were well-broke to work. The cows were milked night and morning. I don't think they would have given very much milk.

Before my sixth birthday I started school in the Central School, an eight-room school on the corner of Center and lst East in Preston. (Torn down about five years ago). I attended lst and 2nd grades there.

During this time, my father bought 40 acres of land east of Preston, from George T. Benson (Apostle [President] Ezra Taft Benson's father). This was on the west side of what was called "The Old County Road". In the early days this was the main road from Gentile Valley to Franklin and on to Logan. Dad built a new house on his new land and we moved. There was a two-room brick schoolhouse a mile west, back toward Preston. My teacher in the 3rd and 4th grades was Mable Christensen. She was one of Aunt Lizzie Christensen's girls (a cousin of mine). The next four years Ether N. Reese was my teacher. He drove a Model T Ford from Cove, Utah to teach school.

The Preston 5th Ward was organized soon after we moved but until the new Church was built we held our meetings in the school. I remember working on the new 5th Ward Church with other boys in the ward to help pay Dad's assessment. In the Schoolhouse the two rooms were divided by curtains hung on wires for classrooms for Sunday School and Primary. Ward dances were held in the west room of the schoolhouse.

It was by this school house that Carl Mortensen and I tied Alma Clawson's Model T Ford to a telephone pole. He had parked with the rear end close to this pole and we wrapped two rounds of barb wire around the pole and rear axle. He had quite a time trying to go until he got out and discovered the wire. This was after dark at a ward party or ward MIA.

It was sometime--maybe a year or two--after this that I was walking home when Ken Oliverson came along with his girl in his Dad's Model T Ford. He stopped to give me a ride. I stood on the running board instead of getting in the car because it was only a short distance to the corner where he turned. As he slowed down I went to step off my other foot slipped and I fell on my back. The rear wheel ran up my leg, across my hip and off. I wasn't hurt except for a few bruises and a very dirty suit of clothes.

One time the 5th ward Bishopric: Andrew D. Mortensen, Bishop; Edward P. Moser, lst Counselor; Lenard Johnson, 2nd Counselor; and Edgar J. Alder, Ward Clerk took the Aaronic Priesthood boys sleigh riding in a sleigh that had a wagon box on it. At the top of the hill they unhooked the horses from the sleigh, then tipped the sleigh tongue back into the wagon box. This was the lever to steer the sleigh down the hill. When we got to the bottom of the hill this tongue was laid over on the ground, the horses hooked up and they pulled the sleigh back up the hill. Then the horses were taken off and we went down the hill in the sleigh again.

While we were living in the 5th Ward, Dad and two of our neighbors: Pete Moser and Henry Mockli would take their families on over-night camping trips to Riverdale for outings. Each family would load enough food and bedding in their wagon to last for two or three days. They also put hay in the wagon boxes for the horses to eat and to put under the quilts that we slept on. There was a big grove of Cottonwood trees east of the old Bear River Bridge on the north side of the river that we would camp in. One time Chris Mockli got lost. He was only two years old and everyone thought he had fallen in the river. We found him in some tall weeds away from the river.

Dad wanted his family to have a ride on a train so we went to Dayton, Idaho, got on the train and rode to Downey, Idaho. Uncle Johnny Barfuss met us and took us out to his place northeast of Downey. He had a Model T Ford by then so we also got a car ride. The next day he took us back to the station and we rode the train back to Dayton. We went by team of horses and white-top buggy from Preston to Dayton and back.

Another trip I remember was from Preston to Soda Springs with Bert Bowman in a new Buick or Studebaker. Bert was Aunt May Barfuss's brother. He had herded sheep out north of Soda as a young man. Uncle Fred Barfuss had also herded sheep out in that area. They wanted to get some soda water from Hooper Springs. They invited Dad to go with them. They each had a boy to take along so Dad took me. Bert took his oldest son, Virlo; Uncle Fred took his son George. The car was called a touring car. It had a cloth top and the sides were open. However, there were cloth side curtains carried under the seats to put on when it rained. When we got to the Rocky Canyon there was no bridge across the creek. We drove down into the water and up out on the other side. I remember Uncle Fred and Bert sitting on the ground drinking Hooper water out of pork and bean cans. Dad didn't like the taste of it nor did any of us boys.

Dad use to take our family from Preston to Mink Crook [Creek?] to stay over night with Uncle Fred and Aunt Milly. He had a team of horses called Butch and Prince that he hitched up to a white-topped buggy. Uncle Fred lived on Birch Creek. George Barfuss and I used to fish in the creek for trout. The fish we caught were 8-10 inches long.

Dad also use to take us to Providence, Utah the same way (team and buggy) to visit John Abersold who came from Switzerland when Grandfather Barfuss and his family came. From Smithfield to Logan the road had a hard surface on it--the rest of the road was dirt or gravel. I still remember the loud sound the horses feet made on that road from Smithfield to Logan. I think it was cement.

After graduating from the 8th grade at Eastside School I went to Preston to High School. This was three miles and I rode a horse or walked (mostly it was by horse). I took Old Testament in Seminary, taught by K. Marcel Widtsoe, son of Apostle John A. Widtsoe. I didn't like English, Algebra was worse, but I did enjoy History, Physics, and Chemistry.

I graduated from Preston High School in May of 1927 in a class of about seventy. They came from all the surrounding communities. Some rented rooms or stayed with relatives, as there were no buses and not a lot of cars. But by the time I graduated there were quite a few cars around.

In the fall of 1926, J. N. Larsen, a real estate agent from Preston took Dad, Brig, and I to Thatcher, Idaho to look at a ranch that was for sale. The Thatcher cemetery was in the northeast corner of the property. There were 558 acres in the ranch. Dad fell in love with the place. He told Brig and I after we got home, "I will give each of you a third interest in that place if you will stay with me until it is paid for." He signed the papers for the place on October 4, 1926. That was the day after my 18th birthday. The next spring he rented the Benson place to Clyde and Ione Oliverson and moved all the family except me to the ranch in Thatcher. I stayed with Clyde and Ione until after graduation exercises the last of May. The next morning after graduation I saddled "Old Dick" (a flea-bitten gray horse that Brig had bought from Ted Swann). I rode north up "The Old Country Road" to Riverdale, then up Bear River Narrows past the Utah Power and Light Plant to the Cleveland Bridge. Here I crossed Bear River and went west up to George Smith's place up on the flats. Bill Smith married my cousin, Ruby Christensen. I had come to Smith's the year before and worked on the header, cutting grain. The next morning I saddled up and rode north along the power lines until I got to the ranch. It was good to be with the rest of the family.

Soon after I reached the ranch we started getting ready to plow (summer fallow) the grain land. Dad had one two-bottom plow that he pulled with four horses abreast. But there were so many acres to plow that he put on six horses and drove them three and three. The three next to the plow were called wheel horses and the three in front of them were the lead horses. We drove with two pair of lines to control them. As soon as we could we got another two-bottom plow and rigged up another six horse outfit to plow with. Dad always had more horses than he needed up until this time. I can't remember where he got the extra harnesses or horses. When we started plowing on the big hill north of the house we could only get two rounds in the morning and two in the afternoon. It took us almost the whole month of June to plow that big hill. Caring for those 12 head of horses morning, noon, and night plus our other chores was a lot of work. They really went through the hay and grain. When we weren't plowing, the horses were turned out in one of the pastures. After we got our last tractor I plowed this same hill in four days with a 10 ft. Wheatland Plow.

When the grain was ready to harvest, we worked with a neighbor, Bill Irish, who owned. a header and three header boxes. Dad didn't like this man's grouchy disposition and the next year or the second. year on the place we bought a header of our own from Joe Lund.

Brig worked for Joe and Charley Lund (who lived in the Preston 5th Ward in the winter and helped farm in the Winder area known as Poverty Flats in the summer). I don't know how many years Brig worked for them but I think all the years I was in high school or more. He saved his money or most of it and bought a Chevrolet touring car soon after we bought the ranch. He let me drive it to high school a few times. It was a dark blue with a black top and had cloth side curtains to put up when it stormed.

Joe and Charley bought one of the first combines or harvesters that came into Preston so they didn't need the header was why they sold it to us.

After farming about twenty years with horses we finally bough a D4 Caterpiller tractor from our neighbor, Titus Coombs. This was about the time Brig and I bought Dad's share of the place. It was really a relief to me to go out and start that "Cat" and plow. With the horses we had to get up and feed them the first thing in the morning, then milk the cows, separate the milk, feed the pigs, carry the cream to the ten-gallon milk can in the creek on our way to the house for breakfast. After breakfast we came out to the barn, curried and brushed every horse with a curry comb in one hand and a brush in the other. Then we put on the collar and harness, got the horses standing in proper position for work and drove them to the plow, hooked up six pair of tugs to six single trees and finally things were ready to start the days work. At noon one had to unhook, drive the horses to the barn, water and feed them, then go for your own dinner. At night it was the same thing in reverse I think we spent as much time caring for, hooking up, unhooking as we did plowing. That old "Cat" tractor was slow by today's tractors but up hill or down it kept going. The flies and mosquitoes bothered only the driver, not the horses.

By this time, Irene and I were married and living in the old house. Brig had built a house in the corner of the flat across the hollow from Manharts. When Dale was six years old, we started him driving the "Cat" on the flat. (He found out himself there were more gears and more speed than the 2nd we started him with.)

When the folks moved to Thatcher, Frank W. Harris was Bishop of the ward. When I arrived there June lst, Frank Harris had been released and Ira Hogan was Bishop of the ward. There were nine wards in Bannock Stake at that time and they all had baseball teams except Bench. Brig and I played on the Thatcher Ward team for years. When the wards had to stop because the ranchers wouldn't let their hired men have Saturday afternoons off, the lower end of the valley started a Sunday team. We played on this team until people lost interest in baseball. We played against Mink Creek, Treasureton, Oxford, Riverdale, and I think Downey and Soda Springs.

A year or two after we moved to Thatcher, Leo Anderson, who was a counselor to Ira Hogan hired me to help drive his cattle to Grays Lake. I did this for five or six years until his boys got big enough to do chores at home. Then Leo went with his cattle. Leo and I would drive his cattle to the top of Larkin's hill, there we would put them in with George Hogan's and Ira Hogan's cattle and start north for Grey's Lake. The first night we put them in a field at Alexander, south of the highway. The second night we put them in a field south of the Blackfoot River. By the third night we were at the Gentile Valley Company Ranch on the west side of Grey's Lake. There were three long days of riding from before sunup until sundown or dusk. This was usually during the middle of the month of May. It was a long monotonous day from Soda Springs to the Blackfoot River. One year, north of Soda, the men put these cattle in with Grover Hogan, Frank Harris, and Lowell Elsmore's herd of cattle and they said we had over eleven hundred head in the drive. There was no fence on the west side of the road from where Bill Corbett's granaries are to the field by the Blackfoot River.

I played basketball on the Thatcher Ward team with Milton Smith, Jack Fry, Willis Roper, and Robert Frazer. Millen Mendenhall was our coach. I had never seen a basketball game until I was in high school. I wasn't much help to our team except for my height. There were no girls athletic programs then but there were a lot of girls out to the games to cheer.

Dances were held in the basements of the Cleveland, Lago, Williams, and Central school houses and in the Thatcher and Grace Church houses. There were plenty of girls to dance with. It was a dance in the old Thatcher Church that I first met Irene Allen. She was a pretty school teacher who was teaching in Grace. A few months after this I asked her for a date and it wasn't long until we were going steady. We were sitting in the car at her parents place in Swan Lake when I proposed to her. She said, "Yes, I'll marry you but when I do I want you for time and all eternity. I want to be married in the temple." I am grateful to our four children that they also were married in the temple. I hope that all their children will have that desire to be married in the temple and will not consent to a civil marriage as good enough.

Dale was born about 13 months after we were married and was my father's first grandchild by the name of "Young". Dad was really proud of him. Glenn was born about 26 months after Dale and Robert about 22 months after Glenn. Five years later Carol was born and the boys were glad to have a sister to wash dishes so they wouldn't have to.

When we first came to Thatcher (1927) the electric power lines were only along a few of the main roads in the valley. We had no electricity, no water in the house, and the toilet was about 200 feet away. Later (about 1942) electricity did become available up some of the side roads.

I bought a new cook stove for the kitchen of the old house before Irene and I were married which cost about $39.50. It had a pipe connected to the fire box for water to heat which ran into a storage tank that stood to the back of the stove so we could also have hot water. Melvin Bartchi, Vilda's first husband, helped me wire the house. I started to remodel but didn't get finished before we were married. We put in a bathroom and an electric pump on the well for running water. The house was old and had been built on a rock foundation. The rocks had no mortar to hold them together and the wind and cold air made the floors cold.

It was eight years later (1950) that we built the new house. We planned to build the basement and live in it for a while. When we poured the basement, I hired gravel hauled to the hole, borrowed a cement mixer and asked eight of my neighbors to help. We worked all day and by night had the basement walls done. I tried to pay these men but not a one would take any money for helping me. We got the walls up and the roof on that fall. By spring we decided to borrow money and finish the main floor and not live in the basement. We put a coal furnace in the basement and a six-ton load of coal would do us a year. At that time coal was about $6.00 a ton.

CHURCH POSITIONS

I was called to be a counselor in the Thatcher Ward Sunday School in 1939 and 1940. After this I was called to be a counselor in the First Elders Quorum. There were Elders from three wards: Mound Valley, Cleveland, and Thatcher. Stake President, M. Ezra Sorensen called me to this position. Two or three years later the Stake Presidency was reorganized and Stake President Milton Hartvigsen called me to be Elders Quorum President.

After my release from the Elders Quorum it was only a short time until I was called by Bishop Millen Mendenhall to be Ward Clerk of Thatcher Ward. When Bishop Mendenhall was released, E. Parley Smith was called to be Bishop. I was sustained as his ward clerk. When he died of a heart attack, Lorin Hogan was called to be Bishop and Merlin Smith was lst counselor and I was called as 2nd counselor. We served for almost six years before being released. In less than a year I was called by Stake President Dee L. Andreasen to be Stake Explorer Leader. While I was in this position Don B. Harris and I took a school bus load of Explorer boys to Seattle, Washington to the World's Fair. Rob was one of those boys. I served here approximately 3 1/2 years and then was called to be 2nd counselor in the Stake Young Mens MIA to President Paul Christensen. Glen Turner was 1st counselor, and Syble McGregor was Young Women's MIA Stake President. After 3 1/2 years as counselor, Paul was released and I was called as Stake YMMIA President with Glen Turner as lst counselor and Ken Roberts as 2nd Counselor. About three years later an entirely new program, "The Aaronic Priesthood MIA" was initiated and our entire presidency was released.

Awhile after this release I was called by Stake President Dee L. Andreasen to be High Priests Group Leader of Thatcher Ward and held that position until we sold the ranch and moved to Grace. When the two Grace Wards were divided into three wards I was called to be Assistant High Priests Group Leader to George Kimball.

Except for the years I was in the Bishopric and on a mission I have been a ward teacher and home teacher since I was ordained a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood.

In September of 1971, Brig and I were going to Blackfoot to the Eastern Idaho State Fair. Along the freeway by Pocatello I had my first heart attack. After we got back I would have a dizzy spell every few days. I finally went to Dr. Charles Hyde in Logan. He sent me to Dr. Daines who told me I had a heart problem and would have to get away from the hard work and worry of the ranch. I told Brig I would sell him my half interest in our partnership. He said, "I'm sixty-five and I think I'm ready to quit too." We decided to sell the land and machinery and keep the cattle and summer range in Wolley Valley.

We listed the place with a real estate agent, Sara Wiser, of Logan. She sold it to John Call of Bountiful, Utah. He had an engineering business in Salt Lake City. He put a hired man on the place to run it for him. John Call talked to someone that knew what a good herd of Herefords we had and that we had been breeding them by artificial insemination for about 12 years. We were able to get on this breeding program with Roland and Preston Allen, Corbridge Brothers because our summer range was near theirs. Allens and Corbridges had four or five hundred head each. We had around 125. Cache Valley Breeding Ass. hired a technician to inseminate the cows and he lived at Allen's Ranch for thirty days while the season was on. Then we turned bulls in with the cows to finish breeding.

While we were trying to sell the ranch, Irene and I bought the Lawrence Burgin house in Grace. Quite a few people from the valley moved to Logan when they sold out. I have always liked this valley and most of the people. I felt this was as good as any place to live. The thing I liked about the Burgin place was that there were open fields on two sides and the canal on the other. I didn't think I could be content to live where there were houses all around. The canal full of water was a welcome sound after living by the side of North Burton Creek for forty years on the ranch.

We moved to the Burgin house in October of 1972. It was the next June before the dizzy spells stopped altogether. During that winter I didn't have much of a desire to do anything but by spring I started finding things to do. There was the shop to clean up first of all. We had just piled things in any old way when we moved from the ranch I built some shelves on the north side and a work bench on the south side.

During October Conference of the Church in 1974 I was listening to President Kimball say, "We need many more missionaries, not only young men but married couples also. There is a great need for couples in the mission field." The thought came to me, "Why not us?" We could spend a year away without too many problems. I was feeling good and it might be now or never. We discussed it quite a bit for two or three days, what could we do with our home, our finances, our health. Would the doctor think I could go or not. Three or four nights later our Bishop, Ray Lloyd, came to ask Irene to teach a class. We finally told him what we had been thinking. He got so excited about it that I was really thrilled. I think all three of us were thrilled. I reminded him that Irene would have to finish her school year of teaching and that I was still going to Dr. Daines once a month. I would have to get his opinion and also our Stake President would have to interview us. Maybe he wouldn't want us to go for some reason or another. We decided it would be the next spring after school was out before we could go.

When I took my papers for a missionary physical to Dr. Daines, he though it would be all right to go but felt we should stay in the United States and that I should take enough heart pills to last throughout my mission. After the holidays and New Year's were over we really started preparing to go.

When we went for our interview with Stake President Dell Maughan, he said he thought instead of a year we should go for eighteen months. We told him if that was the way he felt, we would try it 18 months.

On the 12th of March 197[?] we got our call to the Texas San Antonio Mission. We were to enter the mission home on June 14th to begin training. After we received our call everything just seemed to fall into place. We rented our home to Larry and Laurie Thomas. We served first in the Kingsland area and then were transferred to Brownwood working there the last 13 months of our mission.

On our way home we attended the Mesa Temple with a recently converted couple from Brownwood. As we started for Flagstaff I began to look for snow on the high mountains but as we came up through Arizona, Utah and into Idaho we saw not a bit of snow anywhere. It was the first time and only time in my life that there wasn't snow on the mountains here or in Utah (winter of 76 and 77).

Our lot in Grace was big enough to put another house on, so we bought a Boise Cascade and stayed in Grace. The house was built in Pocatello, trucked to Grace and set on the cement foundation. We moved in just before potato harvest in October of 1977. The rest of the winter we worked to finish the basement and by spring we were ready to tackle the yard. I borrowed Frank Stoddard's tractor to scrape and level the dirt. We put grass turf on the front and planted the back and side ourselves.

In May of 1979 we returned. to Texas to visit the people who were so good to us. We spent two weeks with them and did some sight-seeing on the way home. We stopped at White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Taos Indian village and other points of interest.

November 6, 1979 we were called and set apart to work in the Logan Temple for two days a week. We are enjoying this calling very much.