Baby Margaret Estella Mattson, a few months old, 1898
Recorded by Michael Eckersley, Spring 1976
In my Grandma's own words:
"I was born November 4th, 1897, in West Weber County, Utah. My parents were Peter Adolph Mattson and Margaret Jane Gibson Mattson. It was a very cold, wintry night, and it was snowy and everything was so dismal. A midwife was tending my Mother’s delivery, and things didn’t go just right. My mother started hemorrhaging, and my Father became very much alarmed, and he rode horseback to Ogden to get a doctor, but an hour after my birth, my dear Mother passed away, leaving me a tiny, newborn baby and four other children. My Father was a very broken-hearted man. He hired help in the home but he had difficulty in getting good reliable people to take care of the home and children. My father wasn’t satisfied with my progress, so it was decided that my Aunt Annie Gibson Wiggins, my Mother’s only sister, would take me into her’s and her husband’s home, William Wiggins, and take care of me.
I was born with two teeth, and people had doubts whether I would live. My father and Mrs. Stather came riding into the Wiggins’ yard in a horse and buggy with a jersey cow tied on the back of the buggy. They were piled on beside me. My Father made sure that I would have plenty of nourishment. [The cow was a gift to the Wiggins, to help provide for baby Margaret.]
The Grant School was just across the street from the Wiggins’ home and when the Wiggins’ children and their friends saw the spectacle of my arrival, many of them asked permission to be excused and came running over to see the new baby. That must have been a great day. My Father didn’t intend to leave me at my Aunt’s and Uncle’s home indefinitely as he hoped in time to marry again to have a mother to care for this home and children.
Two years later he married Mabel Williams, of Kayesville, a beautiful young woman. Every time that he would plan to take me to his home, my dear Aunt, who I called "Ma," would be so broken-hearted that he wouldn’t have the courage to take me to his home."
[Note from Tammy: I don't know of any pictures of my Grandmother as a girl. If anyone has any, I will be glad to post them here.]
My dear Aunt Ma was a most wonderful woman. She had a very large family of her own, and raised four other children as well. Her home was really a home; she was a marvelous cook, loved to have lots of company, and her way of life was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and wait on, and care for the sick, and give good sensible counsel to those in trouble. She was jolly, she loved music, and occasionally saw a good opera at the Orpheum Theater. She had inflammatory rheumatism which made it hard for her to get around, but even so, she cooked and put up loads and loads of fruit and made her own soap and as well as did great big washes and cooked for everyone who came there. She was a wonderful mother to me. I think of her as a saint.
I grew up in this very interesting home, going to school, attending primary and religion class and Sunday School in the Ogden Third Ward. Our ward had lots of wonderful activities for children and everyone. They had plays and programs and dances and outings to parks. Once I remember our primary singing in the Salt Lake Tabernacle at conference time.
My Aunt Ma, as I called her, was so wonderful to me. Although she was not young, she would play house with me and let me have play dinners, and she would make darling doll clothes for my dolls.
Her sons, Tom, Ralph, Earl, and Jim, and her daughters, Mamie, Milla and Floss were like brothers and sisters to me. Ma and Pa’s grandchildren were my cousins, as well as my playmates. Tom Wiggins and Caroline Oatland Wiggins’ children, Francis, Raymond, and Jean were my close playmates, and their dear mother would tell us stories and teach us songs while she went about her work. Also Ralph, and the late Smith Wiggins children, Herbert, and Opal, and their baby brother, Winn, were very close playmates also, and we all grew up together. Baby Winn passed away when he was about eighteen months old. Oh how we loved him.
I completed six grades at the Grant School and attended the seventh and eighth grades at the Dee School on Twentieth, between Washington and Adams. From the Dee School I went to Ogden High School which was on the southwest corner of Twenty Fifth Street and Knoll Avenue. I would walk from my home on Grant Avenue between Twenty Second and Twenty Third street to high school. Even coming home for my lunch, Floss and I would do up the dishes and carry water in from the summer kitchen to fill the reservoir in the kitchen range. We also kept a bucket of drinking water in the pantry and of course that had to be filled.
There was never a dull moment in this wonderful home-- always lots of company, to meals, to quiltings, sewing, carpet nights for rugs, even for room size carpets for the dining room.
Circus days were really big days --many friends and relatives from the county would come into town to see the circus, and they would stop at our place for dinner. The circus was held on the Tabernacle Square on Grant Avenue between Twenty First and Twenty Second between Grant and Washington Avenue. It was a vacant lot at that time. We were living just a block away, so you can see why we had so many people drop into our home.
I have always said that Ma was like the widow in the Bible whose hands were never empty. How she ever cooked so many wonderful meals, made such delicious cakes, pies, puddings and cookies, I will never know. Every Sunday evening many of the family members would call in after Sunday evening sacrament meeting, and we would serve roast beef sandwiches made with home made bread and stacks of lovely cookies, cakes, pies and so on, and we also had lots of interesting discussions with the family all there visiting in the dear old Wiggins’ home, and sometimes we put on just really light programs, each one doing something or other like singing or performing in some way or another. It just seemed like we had lots of entertainment going on all the time, and also it seemed like people had such a keen desire to just drop in and stay a little while and visit. On the Fourth of July and the Twenty Fourth of July we always had lots of company. And sometimes we’d set the tables several times and feed, and it was a great big dining room table, and we’d set and fill the table several times.
Of course the younger ones didn’t care too much for the dish washing involved, but we still had lots of good times. And also if there was anyone who had to go to the hospital to be operated on or had to convalesce for a while, they could always come to my Aunt’s home and stay until they could get back on their feet.
Miracle the way she managed, and the way she could make food feed a multitude you might say. Another habit that she had that was so interesting was whenever she made pies, she’d always have enough material to make turnovers we’d call them, or if she was putting out jelly and jams she’d always have a few little glasses of jams or jellies and besides that, we had two cows and some chickens and she would send milk to some of our neighbors who had large families who she knew didn’t have enough milk for their children, or she would send bottles or glasses of jellies or jams, and of course I was the one who delivered most all of that.
Another thing that I did that was unusual--as a child we didn’t ever expect to get paid for any of our little errands or things like that, and because we had the two cows, we used to sell milk. And we had several customers, dotted around the neighborhood-- some several blocks away, and I used to have to take that milk when I got old enough. And when I would go to these various places, a lot of them were widow ladies, and Ma would say "Now Margaret take this bottle of jam to this sister so-and-so" or "This quart of milk to this one or that one." And we had a large family living down a block, and many times Ma would send me with a gallon bucket of milk to that family. And she was just so generous. And after she had passed away, the fruit that she had stored in her cellar fed a good sized family for several years."
[More of the interview will appear in future posts. Here are some more of my Grandmother's memories of her early life that she wrote down:]
On Sunday afternoons and evenings the big dining -kitchen combination room would fill up and we would have such a glorious time. Of course many subjects would be discussed and sometimes heated arguments would arise, but Ma had a way of pouring oil on troubled water.
Of course David W. and Elliot Kennedy and Carrie Wiggins, Roy and Vilate Wiggins, all would have a voice in politics, religion and labor, and what have you. And we kids would play games and get to giggling, and Ma would get disturbed at that. Then dear old Dad Wiggins would jump up and start to sing "Old Dan Tucker" and do a jig. We had vaudeville acts, solos, duets and all sorts of entertainment. Ma would say sing "Silver Threads Among the Gold," or "The Holy City," and many other beautiful old songs.
When the Hunt girls would visit us from Boise, Idaho they would bring a trunk of costumes - - beautiful ones-- and then we would have a show.
The whole family looked after me and would protect me at all odds. If Ma would slap my hands, Floss would fire up and say, "I’ll go and tell Papa Pete."
One time I sassed Ma when the room was full of country folks--like Aunt Hattie and A. Mary and Uncle Ralph and Uncle Jake, and Ma took my pants down quick as a wish and spanked me, and I nearly died. Just twice can I remember her spanking me. Usually she took me by the hand and took me into the log cabin bedroom and lectured me. I would rather have a spanking. She was so wonderful.
Some of my tasks were rather unpleasant to me--like on Saturday I had to carry out the slop jars and chamber pots to the old summer kitchen and empty them- -way down the lot to the old outhouse about a half block away, and then scour them with ashes and yellow soap and then scald them. Oh, how I hated that job.
One Saturday I had them all clean and in their places, and then I decided that I would hide them so the country folks (oldsters who couldn't walk so far to the John) wouldn't find them. Well, when they went to the bedroorn and couldn't find them, they came out and whispered to Ma, and she tried to tell them she was sure they were there. They nodded their old heads emphatically "No--no-no!" Ma got a hold of me and made me get the nice clean chambers and slop jars out and place themn under the beds. Boy, I was so mad. I laugh now.
Then I hated to haul the feather beds off and shake them up real good. That was a hard task. It was so hard to make them look good and smooth.
At night when I was old enough, Ma would say at Dad's bedtime, "Margaret, light the lamp for Pa and make him some number six and turn down the bed for him." There were two beds in that room. Dad and Jim slept in one, and Ma and myself in the other. I would pull the covers up on Dad and then climb into my bed, and Dad would call out, "Mag, are you a-sweatin'?" And then he would laugh, and I would be shivering my head off.
Old Dad would sit Jim and myself on his knees in front of the old pot belly heater and tell us stories of the pioneers and boy, he would hum and laugh and whistle and snort. We loved that. He would imitate the various wild animals.
We were so confined and held down. I am thankful for all that I had, but I didn't develop like the young ones do today. When I was real young, I used to watch my girl friends with their young parents, and I wondered how I would feel if my Mother and Father were young. I used to imagine that my young school teachers were my Mother, and how would I feel if my parents carne to my school room and saw my exhibits and my programs. Raymond Wiggins and I used to sing duets together a lot, thanks to Carrie Wiggins.
I loved Ma Wiggins and Dad Wiggins very much, and it was a privilege to live in their home. Ma was like the poem: "let me live in a home by the side of the road and be a friend to man." Our house was always full, and it was so interesting.
