Anna Rozella Forsgren Palmer Childhood

Anna Rozella Forsgren Palmer

4 August 1888 – 8 December 1967

 

Anna, the second child of Eli Forsgren and Francis Mary Smith was born on August 4, 1888. She had beautiful brown eyes and black hair.  She was taught to work and do it well.  Also, to build for the future. Eli, with others, worked long years to bring water to the higher land and when Anna was thirteen years old, on her birthday, they all went up to the banks of the canal to see the precious contents—water.  This was to quench the thirsty dry farms. The farms yielded too, in response to the people’s untiring efforts, and Riverdale Idaho began to blossom as a rose.  How they worked to care for their produce. They would keep the milk in pans until the cream came to the top, then to skim the cream and store it until it was ready to churn into butter, then to mould it into pound rolls, wrap it in paper with their name written on the wrapper.  This name on the butter meant the same as the name or brand on food today, and was just as important in selling the product.  Then with their eggs and butter they would travel to Preston in a buggy or wagon, some seven miles distance.  At the grocery store they would exchange their produce for items they needed.  Anna and her siblings always looked forward to the sack of candy the grocer would place in their groceries. For weeks before Christmas they would save this candy so as to have enough for the holidays.

Notwithstanding the hard work, they were a happy family enjoying the association with neighbors, friends and relatives. Many a winter evening the grown-ups played card games such as “Hi Five” and “Rook”, while the children went sleigh riding, played house and “raised the devil.”

Eli and Francis were strict with their children, they weren’t allowed to associate with anyone with a questionable character. Drinking and smoking placed people in this class. If a girl was to make a mistake of losing her virtue, she was ostracized from society. The other girls weren’t even allowed to speak to her.  Thus, Anna was raised to look on those things as real sin, and served as a background for standards by which she taught her own family.

Remembering Kevin Spencer Winn 

by Loni Ford Winn & Vance William Winn

Today I spent a couple of hours picking raspberries in our raspberry patch. I can’t pick raspberries without thinking of Vance’s mother, Thora. She also had a large raspberry patch and would pick raspberries and then make the most delicious jam. Then my thoughts wandered to Vance’s brother Kevin. Today, July 5th is his birthday. I only knew him a few short years. He was born in 1951 and died way to young in 1982 at the age of 31. I asked Vance to write about one of my favorite stories. This happened when Vance was about 6 and his younger brother Bob was about three years old. Here is what he wrote.

“My older brother Kevin had a very active mind. He didn’t think like the rest of us. He always noticed the funny in anything. One summer day just across the driveway from our raspberry patch was a performance stage Kevin had made. He decided to do a magician’s trick and so he stuck little Bob in a makeshift playhouse made out of straw. He had a little trap door set in the back so that Bob could move away, then he stuck a piece of bacon out there so I and all the other little kids would think he had turned Bob into a piece of bacon. When he lifted up the canvas top Bob was gone and the bacon was there. Then our dog Laddie came running in and ate the bacon in one bite. All the little neighbor girls (Robin Shaffer and the Bowen’s) when running home crying thinking the dog ate Bobby. Kevin got in trouble but that’s just the kind of guy he was, he was always thinking out-of-the-box and was funny. He always had a funny thing to say or different take on the situation.”

Remembering Amanda Matilda Johnson Nilsson born July 14, 1864.

Amanda Matilda Johnson (1864-1940)
By Ada N. Ford her Daughter

Amanda Matilda Johnson was the first child born in North Bend, now known as Fairview, Sanpete County, Utah on July 14, 1864. She was the third child in a family of six children born to Carolena and August Johnson who had immigrated to Utah from Jonkoping, Sweden. Because of Indian hostilities in this area the family moved to Salt Lake City in October 1865 it was there that Amanda spent a happy childhood.

Amanda, always eager to learn, attended school whenever one was available. Her teachers were often well-educated ladies from the East who made a deep impression on her. She especially enjoyed attending dramatic presentations in Salt Lake Little Theater and at times have roles in the plays given there.

Intuitively Amanda loved people. As a child she spent many hours with neighborhood children reading to them, organizing games and plays and reciting poems often of her own composition. She loved to pick the wildflowers that grew along the city creek near her home. She loved the stately mountains and the shimmering waves on Great Salt Lake.

During her early teens Amanda often visited her married sister who lived in Monroe, Utah. This Salt Lake City teenager was quite possibly the most vivacious person ever to visit this hamlet. She had a zest for good, plain fun quite alien to the Victorian sentimentality of that day. Her smallness of statute was compensated by flashing responses made more striking by her dark hair and pale, clear skin. These qualities made her the central focus of most any group. This prominence became a lifelong habit and was an inherent part of her nature.