Grandfather of Keith M. Chandler
Written by Himself and his Wife
[Editors Note; Known as Bill throughout his life, He was born to Elbert Morton (known as E.M.) and Mary (Mammie) May Chandler1. He died quickly on 4 Mar 91. Aged 84 years four months and four days. See also History of his Wife Ivy Turner Chandler on page 19]
Bill was born October 28, 1906 in Pawnee Oklahoma. The 4th child and first boy in a family of twelve kids total2. In his early life they moved real often as they never owned any place, just rented. So it was nearly every year, all over Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Kansas.
My folks moved from Oklahoma to Keno, Oregon when I was small, about four years old. The only thing I can remember is I tried to walk across the road without any shoes on and blistered my feet because the road was so hot. Another thing was our cow corral. It was on the other side of a creek, and when it got high, and we used a boat to go across.
We moved onto a 480‑acre farm in Oregon. We grew mostly grain and hay. All the work was done with horses. We had lots of horses. We could hitch up an eight horse team all at once besides a saddle horse and one team for the buggy. That was all they were ever used for as that was the only way we traveled in those days.
We lived on some other plot before we moved to Keno, but I can’t remember anything about it.
It was about one or two miles to Keno and ten miles to Klamath Falls where we did most of our trading. That was what the buggy team was for. In the winter, the buggy was school transportation. When it snowed, we would take the wheels off and put sled runners on.
Here Hazel Muriel Ella and I all went to school about three miles, in Keno. In fall and spring we walked. On this place there was a big lovely house with a picket fence and back yard full of pine trees, and a mountain quite close behind the house. All inside the picket fence was grass. This was the prettiest place that we ever lived and Pa [E.M.] wanted to buy it. But before he could raise the down payment it was sold.
We had a herd of dairy cows to take care of, and it took everybody to help. It seemed the biggest job was the plowing of the ground and planting the seed, then in the fall to bind the grain for thrashing. The last year we thrashed on this plot, we had twenty-two men for eleven days. The first year we used horsepower on the thrasher. The last year we used a steam engine. We thrashed about a hundred thousand bushels of grain the last year.
This place in Keno was sold, and we had to move. We sold all our cows but three and part of the horses, but seven. We kept the best to move with. We loaded our household and belongings and loaded on a train at Klamath Falls and headed for Price3, Utah.
Father put all our things in one freight car. The rest of the family went by Pullman. Father had went to look for a place before we left Oregon, so he knew where he was going. We landed in Price in the spring. I’m not sure, but I think it was April of 1917.
We unloaded and reloaded all our things on three wagons. One was what they call a double hitch. That is two wagons, one behind the other, Pa drove this with four horses. The other was a single wagon with three horses. Mom drove this and had kids bedding food and water. There was a skiff of snow on the ground and with rain and snow it took ten days to make the trip over the mountain to Duchesne4 and on to Randlett5.
There was a freight wagon on the road. We came to a place where the snow was so deep all the wagons were getting stuck. Father helped them all to get out, and then they just went and left us to get out the best way we could. We put all seven horses on one wagon at a time and made it through. We were not very long in catching up to the other wagons and just passed them by.
We landed at Randlett, North of the Uintah river where the old bridge used to be. We had bought a place south of Randlett. Pa had bought the place on sight unseen and got took on it. Imagine the disappointment to find no house on it. The guy had told him there was a little house to live in there. It was just boards and 2x4 no insulation and cold, but it did have a proper roof. I thought it was a rock farm. I think there was more rock per acre than any other place in the world. It was the kid’s job to haul the rock all the time. We would get them all off a piece of ground, then plow it and all you had was rocks. We had the best rock farm in the country.
The first thing we did was to build a house on the property. We lived here for ten years in spite of the rock farm and did prosper some. The farm now had 15 cows 15 or 20 good horses 35 geese pigs chickens a few sheep and goats, so we had meat milk and eggs.
We got a herd of milk cows. They had to be milked and fed twice a day. Everybody had their part of the chores.
At the age of twelve, I had an appendicitis. The doctors did very little operating in those days. He said to put ice packs on my side to keep down the infection. I laid on my back for six weeks with ice on my side. I was very skinny after that, but was never operated on.
In the winter, we put ice in what was called an icehouse. We would find a place on the river where the ice was good, cut it in pieces three feet long and eighteen inches wide and whatever the thickness of it was. Some years it got two feet thick. We would load it in a wagon, haul it to the house, place the blocks close together packed in snow. If there was no snow, we would crush ice up small and fill the cracks. We would leave a two‑foot space all around the edge and fill it full of sawdust or gilsonite and cover it over the top. We would have ice all summer.
I also hauled water to several families to use. I had a water sled pulled by one horse with one barrel on it. I would go to the river, fill the barrel, take it to the people’s place, pack it in the house and put it in their barrel a bucket at a time. I got twenty-five cents per barrel.
School had one teacher for all eight grades. Later, there were more teachers as there were more kids.
About this time they had a track meet for all the schools in the district. Ours was the smallest in number, but we took every event they had. We sure enjoyed sports.
The school had a basketball team. One game I remember in particular, we played Whiterocks. We beat them 22 to 18. Of the 22 points, I made 20 of them.
My last year of school Ivy Turner, of Deep Creek6 came to stay with the Rasmussen’s and go to school.
Her father ran a coal mine called Little Walter, about twelve miles north of LaPoint. I went up to see Ivy in the summer. I rode my saddle horse up and stayed all night and came home the next day.
Her father sold his coal mine shortly after, and he moved his family to California. I lost track of her for a period during this time.
About this time, my family moved to Ouray7 valley as the rock farm would not pay it’s way and we lost it.
Father filed on a homestead and built a log house on it. We lived there for a few years. It was south of Pelican Lake. All we ever grew on this place was a garden. We had watermelons a person could hardly lift. We would take a wagon and haul them down to feed them to the pigs.
About this time, I filed on a homestead one‑half mile south of this place. The next spring I heard from Ivy. They had moved back from California. Ivy had stayed in Murray with her Grandmother at 601 East Vine Street and went to work in a broom factory. I went to Murray to see Ivy, and while I was there, I got a job in the canning factory.
We got married that summer on August 17, 1929 at the Salt Lake courthouse, with Iva Newman and Earnest Turner as witnesses. We rented an apartment and set up housekeeping. We worked there until the fall, October, then came back to the folk’s place in Ouray valley, just in time to go deer hunting with my dad.
About this time, I, Dad E.M., and the boys went to the mountains up Mosby way and got pine logs and I built a two‑room log house on my homestead. The homestead had a two room board shack on it when I filed on it, enough boards to put a roof and floor in our homestead. We had to live on it six months out of the year. We did a little bit of everything in those days to make a living. Here we lived until Bea was six months old.
We cut cedar posts up by Duchesne for two winters. While up there, we got two fence contracts. We made good money off the fence jobs, and it was cash which was hard to come by at this time.
I took a fence job in Randlett to fence the cemetery. I had to take a Dodge car for half the pay. This was the first car we had. The tires were not very good and there was no spare. When we had a flat, we would take the tire off and go home on the wheel.
We had half hollow days for several years at this time. Every Saturday afternoon there was always a ball game and foot races. Every other Saturday we would go to some other place to play ball. We would get in Cal Jorgensen’s school bus and take off.
The depression got real bad about this time. We got a few commodities from the welfare and three dollars a month. That was all the cash we had. We hunted rabbits for our meat. We had a cow and a few chickens. We would take a few eggs to trade for what we needed. We got eleven cents a dozen. I hauled wood from [the] Green River to Randlett. I would go to the river one day and take it to Randlett the next day and would get three dollars a load for it.
We could not get any water to irrigate, so did not farm the homestead. I leased the Lyman place across the Duchesne River. We lived there for three Years.
We moved to the Wallace Jensen place where we lived for a Year. Then we moved on the Howard Stevens place and stayed there two years.
I worked on the state road in Gusher for W.W. Clyde for a summer.
We bought a new four door Chevrolet car in 1936 for $800.00 and decided to go to California where Ivy had been. We sold two cows and three horses to make the down payment. We had four children by now, Tom, Elva, Morton, and Beatrice. We put a trailer on the back of our car, loaded all our things and took off for Anderson [Redding], California. We went to Ivy’s Uncle George Potter’s place. We landed there with six dollars in my pocket. Uncle George had all his kids home to go to a dance, the fireman’s ball on the bridge on the highway. It was five bucks a ticket, we told them we wouldn’t go. He said don’t you have that much money, and I said yes, but I better keep it. He said if it will cramp you go anyway, I’ll pay your ticket, and you will stay with us till you get a job. Well we went and had a wonderful time.
So when we got there, the next day, Uncle George got me a job working for a friend of his Figernberg. He was a trucker and ran an egg route and a produce truck to Sacramento, and wanted me to farm his forty acres. He had a persimmon orchard. He paid us a small wage plus a small four room house. I milked for half the milk, he had two cows to milk, so we had all the milk we wanted. and we would pick up day old bread cakes cookies pies anything off the truck, where he delivered the eggs in Sacramento. I got all the eggs and bread we could use and a house to live in plus $35 per month. We lived there for about a year.
While here, we had a flood in the creek. We had sixteen inches of snow one night where they said it had never snowed before. The next day it started to rain on the snow. By the night, the creek was full. The orchard was in the curve of the creek. After dark, the creek overflowed and came down through the orchard. The house was on the lower end of the orchard. This is wet country so the house was up on three foot posts. I had gone to bed, and about eleven o’clock, Ivy woke me up. She said she could hear water running. She went to the door. The screen on the outside opened on the outside. She opened it and it touched water, so we was surrounded by water three feet deep. Out the back door and there was the orchard with three feet of water on forty acres. We sat there trying to decide what to do. We had a clothes line that ran from a tree by our house to a tree in the bosses yard on a knoll. I said if it gets any higher I will take the kids one at a time and hold on to the clothes line and take them across. The water never got any higher, by three a.m. the water was going down, and by morning it was down. By nine Ivy’s cousin came riding a mule and leading one. She said the mules were belly deep in water part way, but we can make it back. We folded all the bedding and put half on each mule, saying if the quilts get wet we can dry them. We put two kids and Ivy on one, Cliff and two kids on the other. I had a saddle horse to use on the place, so I could come any time I wanted to, and we went to Uncle George’s place a mile away. It took ten days to make the roads passable again after that. After that every time it rained we went to Uncle George’s place.
We pruned trees all winter. We had eighty acres to do.
The next spring, I traded our car for a one and a half ton truck. Which was paid for and we were still paying on the car. I went to help Ivy’s cousin haul scrap metal from a smelter. There were six or eight iron pots with four inch thick walls and five feet across. These were broken up with powder caps in small pieces. Then load them. I couldn’t lift anything bigger than a dinner plate. We took one load a day to Redding California.
We lived there about three months. Leo & Wennie Reynolds and their three kids were there. We camped on the river just below the dam. We were told that there were rattle snakes up here, we had lived over two months and never saw a one. Ivy came one day to call us to lunch. All seven kids went past several old buildings to get there, starting back they were holding hands, got by one old building and she sees a rattler seven or eight feet long, it was a mountain rattler. She started to scream. I say what’s the matter, and Leo says a snake. We both came running with 2x4s by then the snake has crawled under a piece of tin, and was he every playing a tune. We flicked the tin over and the coil was bigger than a large dishpan. He had nine rattles on it, Leo put them in a jar and we had them for years. Ivy says we go back to town today. We said, that’s the first snake you have seen, move back tomorrow or the next day. Well we stayed till the next day, Wennie and Ivy are taking the kids for a walk, didn’t get very far and there is a shot, sounded like from camp. They go back and there is a big black nigger sitting at the table, he says, I killed this eight foot rattler here by the kids swing, so I thought I had better tell you to watch the kids close. Well Ivy says that settles it we go back to town today. Again we say that is the first snakes you have saw. Tomorrow we move back to our place. So we stayed. That night when it started to get dark, Ivy is out with a stick and a flashlight looking for snakes, in every clump of grass or every sage brush. Needless to say she didn’t get much sleep that night nor did anyone else. So next day we load up and go back to town.
When this was done, I built a camper on the back of the truck. I think we probably had one of the first campers. We built two beds in the end next to the cab, three and a half feet wide, with windows between to see out front. Also a bigger window on each side and back could open for ventilation and cool air. There were clothes closets cupboards and a table. We loaded all our things and took off for Coos Bay, Oregon where Ivy had a cousin working in a saw mill.
We went to a logging camp on the Coos River. They had a dam in the river made of planks, the only one I have ever saw. They had pilings drove into the ground to hold the planks. We made camp in a camping area. I went to look for work.
The first place I came to was where they where they were unloading truckloads of logs into a splash pond of water and floating them downstream. I went out, all the logs had to be big end down river, I had never been around this kind of work but someone told me they all had to be big end down stream. They had a big splash pond and it was nearly full. I watched the work for a while, and the boss showed up. I asked for a job. He said they did not need a man right now and said to come back in a day or two. Being nimble on my feet picked up a cant hook and jumped on a floating log. I stayed there all afternoon; and helped unload logs. That evening he came back and told me to come back at eight a.m. in the morning to go to work, he was really impressed with me. He also gives me a card and said get anything you need from the company store and we’ll take it out of your check.
When we landed here, we had $3.65 and a few groceries. We were sure glad to get the job. The company had a commissary where we could get groceries. We had a tent and soon bought another one and put boards around the sides and put them end to end. We had a nice summer home. It was close to the creek.
I got $1.11 and hour and worked a sixteen‑hour day. I was making real money for these days, back home it would be $5 a day, and lucky to get that much. They really liked me. I started out at the bottom of jobs and worked my way up. I tried all of the jobs. The boss would let me do whatever I wanted to do.
One day a man never showed up for work. That was a top job, loading truck. I told the boss I could do it. He said it was a Swede’s job; that I was not big enough, but he gave me a try. The tongs we used weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds. They always set them on the ground then picked them up and put them on a log. After the first try, I decided there should be an easier way. I caught the tongs in the air and laid them on the log. I just about worked the Swede to death until he done it my way. We were loading a truck every thirty minutes for sixteen hours a day. We had the fastest crew on the mountain.
While here, we had a forest fire. It started close to where I was working. We saw it when it was about three feet across. Before we could get shovels to it, it was twenty feet across. We just about had it surrounded when a whirlwind hit it and picked the fire up and took it down a ridge and scattered it for a mile down the ridge. Within thirty minutes, it was out of control.
We went to work saving the equipment. We worked seventy-two hours to protect the equipment until relief help arrived, then we got a four-hour break, then went back to help control the fire.
Ivy had to keep the tents wet to keep them from catching on fire. We were camped about four miles from the fire, and with the loss of millions of board feet of logs that were ready to load, this fire broke the logging company. I had worked here for about a year and got real good at all jobs in the timber, and could pick my job so I got the biggest pay and only new at it. I never had any trouble making friends with any boss. Some of the men were mad because I got the job they were working for and me only a new hand.
We had two tents, one twelve by twenty and one sixteen square. Had two homemade cupboards with places to store our food supply. In the big tent in front of it we had an area roofed with a picnic table and out side barbeque under the roof. There was all kinds of lumber and corrugated tin they had moved out in a hurry and only moved part of the building.
We decided to go back to home for a visit after the fire, at Christmas time. We ask the boss if we can go home for Christmas. He said yes but be back by Jan 1st as there is a strike called and it should be over by then. We spent time with my folks and Ivy’s Dad Ivan Turner and sister Vera. After our visit, we decided to go back to Oregon. Ivy’s father and Vera, decided to go back with us. Ivy’s father had a cow he wanted butchered, so we canned it and a lot of vegetables. Nearly two hundred cans of meat, and a hundred of vegetables. We had a very good supply of food. We had built bunk beds in the camper. We stacked the cans under the beds.
We went back over the John Pay road through Oregon. When we came to the coast range, it had snowed. We stopped to inquire of the road. They said it was closed for the winter. It was four hundred miles around, so we decided to try the mountain. They had plowed the road to the top of the mountain, but weren’t going to touch the other side till spring. When we got to the top, there was fourteen inches of snow and it was night, so we just kept going. It was downhill. We had to go very slow. Took us driving all night, to get to the bottom, but I would say we were the last over the mountain that winter.
When we got back to the timber camp on January 2nd it was still closed On Strike, there were no jobs. Everything was shut down. Hundreds of men out of work. We rented a house in Coos Bay, Oregon, a mile out of town, was a real pretty place. I and Ivan searched around and found a job cutting some wood and made it last as long as we could, it lasted about a month. This bought flour and sugar corn meal and a case of canned milk. Also a case of mixed vegetables, so we are good for several months now.
The great depression is really on people are going hungry didn’t bother us too much as we have all this canned meat and vegetables. I never saw so many folks going hungry as I saw in the next two months. Everyone we knew had always worked for wages in timber or saw mill, they didn’t know how to cook a meal without going to the store.
Ivy’s father got to going down to the dock where the fishing boats came in and any of the fish that was frozen, they would give away, and he was always there to get his share. We had plenty of fish to eat, and some for the neighbors. With what we had canned, we were not worried like a lot of people.
Then the government starts giving away commodities, once a week. Each family was given so much. I said much, but it’s so little to live on for a week. Three cans of meat ten pounds of corn meal and a box of dried milk. Each family would take a sack to carry their things home. Ivy’s father would always go along with all the neighbors. Ivan and Ivy both stood in line to get an allotment then gave most all of it to neighbors as they still went hungry and were having a hard time to live.
One night we were playing cards at the Coates their baby was crying. Ivan says what’s amatter with Garry, is he sick. He is hungry and we had to put him to bed without any supper. He gets up and goes home, about a block, and gets them a box of groceries. When we start home he says maybe when ours is gone we can get some more. It’s an awful feeling to see people going hungry.
I never saw so many people going hungry. Our neighbor had a twelve year old boy picked up for stealing pop bottles out of peoples garages. The judge asked him what he did with the money? I bought a loaf of bread to give to my sister was the answer. The judge turned him loose.
At that time we could have bought the place we lived for $800. We even talked about buying it, but decided we didn’t want to live that close to town.
By summer, things were real tough. The State decided to give all people out of work six weeks unemployment for $25 per week. They were so slow getting checks, they all came at once.
We decided this was going home money, so we packed up and started for home. We went to Portland, and we came to a place where they needed olive pickers, so we decided to try our hand at olive picking. We worked at it all one day, and we really got rich, only $2.75 for the days work. We went to the boss to get our pay, they said they only paid at the end of the week. We gave him a hard luck story that we needed it for groceries, so he paid us and we was through with olive picking.
We headed up to Salem, which is known as the world hop country. We heard they wanted sixty thousand pickers, so we decided to try hop picking. We did a little better here. We stayed two or three days and left.
We went up the Columbia River, and when we go to the falls, the Indians were fishing. They had “so” many days to catch what the tribe needed to dry. After that they would sell to the cannery. I wanted a fish. They said they would, but could not sell yet. I looked around and found a half breed and told him what I wanted. He pointed at his camp and told me to drive down there, and he would give me a fish. I got a salmon for a dollar, and he threw in a steel‑head trout for nothing. Ivan was awful worried as he was afraid they would pick me up for having hot fish. We stopped in a camp picnic area to have lunch. A car pulled in right beside us and he said “there they are.” But they had stopped to have lunch too. We took off and that night canned the salmon. We got forty cans of salmon. We ate the trout. It was about eighteen inches long. We did enjoy the salmon when we got home.
While at Coos Bay, we had picked blackberries and canned them. We sure enjoyed them after we got home. We carried everything we needed to can with us.
When we got back from the coast, all my sisters and brother were married but Cliff and Orvil. Dad and Mom were living on the old place where our kids grew up, and Pa was wanting to go to Moab way prospecting. Mom wanted to go spend the winter with the girls in California. She said if her health was better she would go with Pa but her back and legs hurt her so bad, she was afraid to tackle that kind of life at her age. So she went to California to stay with Roxie and Grace. So for them they lived alone, but Mom sent Pa every cent the kids gave her, also everything she got that she thought he could use like wool blankets and wool socks. She wasn’t happy without Pa. For years she spent her summers with us and her winters in California with the kids there.
Dad wanted our tents and all our camp outfit. He said he would leave us his stock and the lease on the place for eight months. He left a few chickens, three or four horses broke to work, and eight or ten un‑broke horses. He had two cows we sold to get some to go on and get a little for Mom to have on hand . Pa died in 1951 and Mom died in 1956, they are both buried in the valley they helped to settlea.
The Chandler’s were all the entertainment the valley had for years. Mom on piano, Dad on banjo, me on saxophone. They played for all entertainment in the ward, both Randlett and Leota8 as well as the new Avalon9 ward.
I leased the Affot place across the Duchesne river. We had it for two or three years.
Then we went over to the Barney place on the bench. We moved around from place to place. I worked on the ditch to help out with the water assessment. Sometimes I would ride ditch for the summer. When I first rode ditch, I got a hundred and fifty dollars per month. Last year I got fifteen hundred a month [1981].
The depression is in full swing, people are going hungry, Roosevelt is now President. He made it possible for the head of all families to have a ham, also $3.00 a month. That don’t sound like much, but butter is fifteen cents a pound, eggs ten cents a dozen, hamburger ten a pound. Everyone is going hungry but the Chandlers. We had a throw line in both Duchesne and Green rivers. These were checked every day, and re‑baited mostly with magpie meat, as it is the best fish bait, as it is real red. Also the boys all hunted rabbits both jacks and cotton tails. The cotton tails were fried or roasted, jacks were boned out and ground with onions and other spices. We made lots of mince meat out of ground jacks. We always had our own milk butter eggs and cheese. Cottage, also yellow cheese. We would save milk for two or three days in the ice house in five gallon cans until we got enough to fill a twenty-five gallon copper kettle. Then dad [E.M.] would press it in a press he made. Made real good cheese. We also made our own clothes in them days. Out of anything we could find. Also made our own soap.
We had a good outdoor cellar, built in the ground it could keep most vegetables in it all winter, like apples, carrots, beets, turnips, also canned and dried all kinds of garden stuff. We always had a big garden. It was got the hard way as no summer water in the canal so put gallon or half gallon cans by all the plants in hills like squash, tomatoes, egg plant, peppers and cucumbers. These cans were filled every other day with water hauled from the river, unless it was windy or awful hot, then every day. Corn and potatoes would grow with only early water. Corn was only one ear and it was as thin as the stalk. But we always had plenty. We always pork and beef that we raised. Mom and Pa always made a barrel full of sour crout and another of pickles. Dad E.M. always made a barrel of corned beef and cured the rest. We went to Verna10 l in fall to pick apples for the cellar. These were sorted once a week to take anything with spots on them, these were canned, as now some bottles were getting empty.
About this time father [E.M. Chandler] decided to go prospecting. He wanted our camp equipment we had. I let him have what he wanted, and he left the place. He was supposed to buy it from me to pay for the deed. We had to pay $1500 for it. I tried to borrow the money to pay for it, but could not get it. I told the fellow I could not get that much money, he lived in Texas. He wrote back that he was very sick and if I would send him $500, he would send me the deed. I went back to the bank of Vernal and got the money from M.J. Mehger. That was the first of a lot of business with the bank. At one time I borrowed $10,000 from him. He was a real good banker.
I spent one summer in the mountains cutting the trees out of Whiterocks and Cliff Lake for the contractor that was building the dam for the ditch company. While at Cliff lake, Vera and Kenny and family came to visit. We decided to take them with us for a week. They drove their car to Paradise Lake. From there we had to go by jeep. There were too many to ride at once, so I told the kids to start up the road and be sure to stay with the road.
We loaded the camper and took off up the road, expecting to catch up to the kids. It took about three hours to drive to the lake. After we got half way there, I knew something was wrong but did not say so to the others, but started to hurry more. We got to camp and no Kids. I hurried and unloaded and took off back down the road. It did not take me three hours to drive back.
When I got back to paradise, the kids had just got back there. They were sure scared. After they had got started up the road, they decided to take a cutoff and had got lost. How they ever found their way to where they started from, I don’t know.
On my way back, I said a little prayer asking the Lord to guide the kids back to where they started so we could find them. When we got back, Ivy and Vera were sure something had happened, but all was well.
We spent the week there fishing. You will never know how enjoyable life is in a place like this until you try it.
We went back to Cliff Lake to open the head gate two or three years later. We went on horses. We took our bed and our groceries on two horses. We were going to stay a week. We took a piece of canvas for a tent. When we got to the end of the road there was a jeep there. As I rode up to it, there was a man asleep in the jeep. I told Ivy that it looked like Morton. She said it is Morton, and she said “Morton what are you doing here?” He said, “We are fishing.” Him and Roy and two other men had came out from Salt Lake to fish.
We made our camp down to the next Lake. We put a pole between two trees and stretched canvas over it for a tent. We did all right until it started raining in the night. Ivy told me to move over, her side of the bed was wet. I told her nothing to worry about so was mine.
I had to clean the trash out of the spillway. We stayed five days. Ivy fished all the time. We have made several trips in there since. The forest service has blocked the road after we got the Reservoir done, so we can not use the jeep road anymore.
One summer we took a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska. We drove a chevy car. We had taken camp outfits. We each had an air mattress and a quilt for a bed. We took canned food from home, so it did not cost us much to live on the road. Gas for the car was our big expense. Gas at home was twenty five cents then, yet we paid as high as seventy five cents in some places on the road. You would not pass a gas station without filling up, the stations were so far apart.
We went to visit Hazel and Orvil. They both lived in Fairbanks. It took us six days to drive up. We stayed at Whitehorse one night to camp. It was a very pretty place. We just got supper started and the mosquitoes move din. We could not keep them off what we were cooking. They were so bad, we threw it all out and took off. We stopped several places, but they were just as bad, so we drove all night.
We got there on the third of July. We were gone from home thirty one days.
The next trip we went to Iowa where Vera lived. We stayed there a week and then left for Oklahoma City where Uncle Tom lived and spent a week with him and Marie, then we left for home.
We sold our place we had bought and bought another one where we still live. Things have changed a lot in the time we have lived here. We sold our place for $20,000. Today it is worth $150,000, so we sold at the wrong time.
Somewhere back along through the pages we had two more children, Earnest and Jim. They live here next to us. Elva, our oldest daughter, lives here too. They have built homes here by us. We are called Chandler Hill11.
Obituary and Funeral Services
RANDLETT, Utah: William T. Chandler age 84, beloved Husband, Father, Grandfather, and Great Grandfather, died March 4, 1991 at LDS Hospital from complications.
He was born October 28, 1906 in Pawnee Oklahoma to Elbert and Mammie Chandler. Moved to the Ouray Valley when he was a young man. Married Beatrice Ivy Turner August 17, 1929. Marriage solemnized in Salt Lake LDS Temple in 1946.
Survived by wife Ivy, Randlett; Sons; Thomas Sandy; Earnie, Ibapah; daughters; Elva Dean, Randlett; Beatrice Davis, Worland Wyoming; 23 Grandchildren; 36 Great Grandchildren. Also survived by one brother Clifford Chandler, Running Springs California; Four Sisters, Blanche Rasmussen, Las Vegas Nevada; Grace Wardle, Calamessa California; Roxie Wardle, Garden Grove California; Iva Newman, Salt Lake city. Preceded in death by seven brothers and sisters, also two sons, Morton and James Chandler.
Funeral Services will be Saturday March 9, 1991 in the Randlett LDS Branch Chapel at 1 p.m. Friends may call at the chapel on Saturday from 10:30 until 12:30 p.m. prior to the services at 1 p.m. interment: Avalon cemetery.
Funeral Services; Family Prayer- Keith Chandler; Invocation Don Jorgensen; Music- Reed & Carolyn Bailey “Beyond the Sunset”; Eulogy- Lynn Chandler; Speaker- Arvene Cooper; Speaker- Rod Chandler; Remarks- Bill Harris; Benediction- Willard Wall; Pallbearers- Terry Davis, Cort MCKee, Todd Chandler, Craig MCKee, Lynn Chandler, Chris Chandler. Honorary Pallbearers- Keith Chandler, Rod Chandler. Dedication of grave- Reed Stanley; Interment- Avalon Cemeteryb
a: Buried in Avalon Cemetery. Headstones read Father Elbert M. Chandler Feb
28, 1878 - Oct 7, 1951, and Mother Mamie M. Chandler Aug 8, 1881 - Nov 6,1957
1; Elbert Morton Chandler born 28 Feb 1878 Cowley,
Borden, Kansas, and Mary May Murphy born 8 Aug 1881 Winfield, Cowley,
Kansas. Married 8 Feb 1901 in Guthrie,
Log, Oklahoma Ancestral File of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints, Elbert AFN# 3822‑K2
2; Children of family, in order, are; Hazel May 25
Dec 1901; Muriel Etta 14 Mar 1903; Ella Alberta 22 Nov 1904; William Thomas 28
Oct 1906; Iva Bell 28 Jul 1909; Elbert Morton 2 Apr 1911; Orval Klamath 17 May
1914; Stella Luella 29 Oct 1916; Blanch Elnora 3 Dec 1917; Grace Louise 9 May
1920; Roxana Marie 19 Jan 1924; Clifford D 16 Jun 1925;
3; Price; a focal point of the coal industry in
Utah. In 1869 William Price explored the
region and named the Price River. The
settlement was named after the river it is located on. Utah Place Names John W. VanCott
4; Duchesne; Settled in 1904 when the Uintah basin
was opened to white settlers. The name
Duchesne was the first name requested for the community, but was refused
because of conflict with nearby Fort Duchesne.
In 1905 the town was named Dora for the daughter of A.M. Murdock who
owned the first store there.
Subsequently the name changed to Theodore in honor of President Theodore
Roosevelt. When a nearby town took the
name of Roosevelt in 1915, the original request for Duchesne was accepted. Utah Place Names John W. VanCott
5; Randlett; First settled in 1902 abandoned and
resettled in 1905. Colonel James
Randlett was the local Indian agent and commanding officer at nearby Fort
Duchesne. Indians and whites both
considered him to be a good officer who tried to help the Indians. His name was given to the settlement after it
was previously called Leland for a short time. Utah Place Names John W. VanCott
6; Deep Creek; Although this label for this creek seems
to have been not noted on most maps (probably due to the multiple places called
Deep Creek) it is a very long creek that flows generally North South. On the South it joins the Uintah River just
north of Fort Duchesne. On the north it
goes past the canyon called Mosby. This
area here called Deep Creek refers to a rather large area as described in the
next paragraph as twelve miles north of LaPoint, and is dominated by this
drainage.
7; Ouray; a small Ute Indian community near the
junction of the Duchesne and Green rivers.
The community was named for Chief Ouray, who was born in 1820. He was chief when the White River Utes were
brought to the Uintah Basin Reservation from Colorado. He spoke both Spanish and English and was
friendly to the whites. His wife was
Chepeta, and important person in her own right since she was a great help to
her people. Ouray is the second oldest
settlement in the Uintah Basin. Utah
Place Names John W. VanCott
8; Leota; was an outgrowth of Randlett. The early Leota ranch was established in 1904
by R.S. Collett and others. The name was
that of a local Indian girl given by Mrs. Annie M Hacking an early
resident. Utah Place Names John W.
VanCott
9; Avalon refers to the Avalon L.D.S. ward which had
an elementary school next door. It’s
area lies east of Randlett and North West of Ouray and Pelican Lake.
10; Vernal; in the
heart of Ashley Valley, it was settled in 1876, although trappers and mountain
men previously explored the region and the Ute Indians had inhabited the area
even earlier. Vernal has had various
names, such as Ashley for the valley where the settlement is located (General
William H. Ashley led the early trappers into the valley). Jericho was another early name used to
compare the walls of the early local fort and the walls of ancient
Jericho. Vernal was also known as the
Bench for its location, and Hatchtown for the several Hatch families who
settled in the area. In the late 1800's
the town name was finally formalized as Vernal, which refers to a beautiful
spring-like green oasis covered with grasses and numerous trees. Utah Place Names John W. VanCott
11; Children of
William Thomas Chandler and Beatrice Ivy
Turner, in order, are; William Thomas Jr., 22 May 1930 AFN 3822‑BT;
Elva May 28 Jan 1932; Ivan Morton 13 Jan 1934; Beatrice Ivy 8 Nov 1935; Earnest
Edwin 25 Mar 1944; James Bailey 13 Oct 1948