Almeda Day
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Almeda was a tiny woman physically, but she never asked anyone else to lift the heavier end of the load. She passed through hardships of pioneer life, of relative poverty, nearly all of her days; but Guy C. Wilson said of her, at her passing: "I'm sure there never was a soal who could do that with more grace and courage than Almeda McClellan. She bore the burdens of life without complaint. She was a patient, God-fearing woman."
Toward the end of her days, her youngest son Charles once asked her what was the greatest trial she ahd endured in the course of her long life. "Trials," she mused, "Never had any." Charles recalled some of her experiences . . . she was a frail, delicate baby, only weighed 2 1/2 pounds at birth. As a 6 year old child she crossed the St. Lawrence River on the ice, migrating with her family from Canada to New York. She lived with her in-laws for a while after her marriage to William C. McClellan who had just returned from the long trek with the Mormon Battalion. She started across the Plains for the West by ox team with a five-week-old baby. Spent about four years in the United Order up at the saw mill at Sunset, Arizona. Pioneered Payson, Utah; Brigham City, Arizona; and Colonia Juarez in Old Mexico. Lived the principle of Plural Marriage, raised a family of twelve children, and was driven out of her home in Old Mexico at the age of 81 years. "Wasn't that hardship and trials?" Charles asked. "Humph!" she responded, "all in the day's work!" And Grandfather William added, "What we did was just ordinary. Just what there was to do. You do what you have to do in this life, and that was all we did. We just happened to live in that time." Almeda had five children before she ever owned a stove. How proud she was of that Charter Oak wood burning stove. Prior to that time Almeda had cooked and baked over a campfire or in a cast iron bake or dutch oven, over oak or hickory coals in the fire place. She made her own soap, cooking it in a big iron kettle out in the yard and making it fragrant with a little of the mint that grew by the ditch bank. From 1850-1875, Almeda gave birth to twele children, seven boys and five girls. Other mothers were losing their little ones with one disease or another while Almeda seemed to be very fortunate. She only lost one little son at the age of nine and he had a bad heart from teh beginning. One woman came to Almeda and said, "What is the matter, you don't lose any babies . . . maybe it is the plain living." Almeda respondd later to her family, "As much as to say we didn't have enough to eat! I didn't cram a child with cake and pie, but they had what they wanted to eat. Maybe it was plain food. I find no fault wiht the way I had to live . . . They seemed hard times; but we lived through it and did pretty good. Most of us lived alike in those days." "I always kept my children's feet and legs warm. Though we had a large family, William was a good provider . . . always had a good garden. When he could, he bought sugar by the sack and cloth by the bolt. We usually grew some sugar cane and made it into molasses. We knit every pair of stockings the twelve children wore. My girls learned to knit by the time they were eight years old and that relieved me considerably. If I had two dresses for any of my babies, I was doing well." During the April Conference in 1877, the family was called by the General Authorities to go to Sunset, Arizona and join the United Order. Almeda still had seven of her children at home which would certainly be a trial to the mother of seven -- to expect her to give up her home and her friends and take the family into an unsettled country to pioneer all over again, to say nothing of the problems they faced by becoming members of the Order. But in all her life, when the Word of the Lord came through His servants, Almeda never questioned the rightfulness o the thing; so, she said, "Let's go." They began another trek toward the south; Almeda drove the light spring wagon part of the way. The Order did not expand and after the breaking up of the Order, the family moved to the Apache Indian Reservation at Forest Dale where they engaged in farming, stock raising and trading with the soldiers at the Fort. While living there the Indians got some whiskey from the White Man at Sho-lo Ranch. There was a shooting scrape that really started a fracas. The Indian mothers were afraid their little ones would be killed and they brought about 17 of them and put them down into Almeda's cellar where they stayed until things quieted down. In June of 1932 (at age 100), at a Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs held in Seattle, Washington, Almeda was honored as the oldest mother in Utah and was awarded a certificate, as was each oldest mother in the other 47 states. According to the report, she was the seventh oldest mother in the United States at that time and was said to have the greatest posterity of any of the mothers. She had nine living children, eleven of her twelve had gone on to rear large families; a total of 435 descendants at that time. compiled by Alice Jo Ellsworth: 1997
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