Harriet Elsee Rhead
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"My mother was born June 18, 1883 in Coalville. She married Dad on May 21, 1903. She died April 27, 1927. She stood 5' 6" tall with gray eyes and light brown hair -- with a twinge of copper color in it."
"Mother was a wonderful cook. She always had good things for us to eat and we always had plenty to eat because of the way we were able to raise our own things. She kept us clean and with good clothes. If you will look in a picture I have in my history book you'll see a picture of me in the fourth grade with my class and you'll note that I'm the only one wearing a white shirt. She wouldn't let me go down that day to have my picture taken until I had a white shirt on. All the rest of them had colored shirts on but I was dressed up with a nice white shirt."
"Mother was a very excellent cook and to think she did it all on the back of that old black top stove."
"She always had our nice clothes, our Sunday clothes ready for us so we could go to Sunday school. When we were older, and held the Priesthood, why she always always had our clothes ready for us for Priesthood meetings -- sometimes they had meetings in the middle of the week and she was always ready for that. I never remember a time that mother sent us off in dirty clothes."
"She was so proud of us when we got into High School and she was always helping us getting costumes ready for different types of shows, and proud of our school work too. She was surely happy when we were able to go to college. Mother worked hard at home doing odd jobs and also keeping track of the house and scrimping on things and I know she went without some things she should have had just so they could keep us in school. So did Dad."
"She saw to it that we had good books to read and then when the phonograph came out -- we didn't have one with the round cylinder but we had the disk type -- we had the right kind of music. We had the best operas, the best singers, the best bands, and the best orchestras in the music they bought for us. We'd sit there in the evenings just listening to that old phonograph and talking about what had happened that day -- practically every evening and especially in the wintertime."
"She used to read to us and sing to us and, of course, rock us in the rocking chair and tell stories. The evenings were long because there wasn't any television and there wasn't any radio and so we had plenty of time to be together as a family."
"Dad and mother organized a little theatre group. They were active in it for a number of years. They would always put on an Easter pageant and Dad would play the part of Isaiah."
"Dad and mother loved the out-of-doors and we were always going camping, and fishing, and picking berries, overnight picnics, or picnics in the park, up Weber canyon, and many other places.
"We used to go up the Provo River to the top of the summit which is called Wolf Creek Summit. I know we went practically every 4th or 24th of July because we kids kind of hated to miss the celebration in Coalville -- but we went just the same and had as much fun I think or more.
"The raspberries were coming out about then and we'd take the cream and the old ice cream freezer, and gather snow -- there was always snow there -- and we'd make ice cream. Then we'd go out and pick wild raspberries and have wild raspberries and ice cream and boy was it good. It was right good thick cream too because we had four or five cows around the place. I ought to know because I had to milk them."
"My sister Elsee was a big fat lumpy baby and she got fat on Eagle Brand Milk but they later found out it had little nourishment. She almost died back then because of Mom feeding her Eagle Brand Milk. I remember going to the hospital (In Michigan -- see 'Back to law school in Michigan' on the Parley Hughes Neeley page') Finally she came out of it and they fed her other things -- and no more Eagle Brand Milk. Now that was a very famous milk in those days. It was supposed to be for babies -- especially for babies. It came in a can and it was rather thick and you had to take it out of the can with a spoon and mix it with water."
"The house was heated by coal stove, of course. You were only able to keep two rooms warm in the winter except on nights when there were lots of people coming over. -- like for a party. We'd keep what we called the living room and dinning room altogether in one room -- then of course there was the kitchen and then back to the bathroom. But until we got water in 1912 why we had to use the outdoors toilets. It was quite cold to go out there at night! ;-)"
"Mother died of an operation. She went to Salt Lake City for an operation, supposedly as we know now a 'female operation', but something happened. We later learned that the doctor first took our her appendix and she did not need it taken out because there was no problem there. The other doctors ask "What are you doing that for?" and the doctor said, "Well, we just as well take now we got started.". She died of peritonitis, which is now controlled by antibiotics, and I'm sure she would have lived another 20 to 25 years longer because she was strong and healthy. In those days you didn't think much about it but I know that in this day and age we would have probably sued the doctor. They did the best they knew how I guess."
"I was only 24 years old, just barely out of school, when she passed away."