I have decided to publish the history I wrote of Grandma McCune a few years ago. I hope that by serializing this on the web I can make it available to many of you cousins and other relatives who never received a print copy. Hope you enjoy.Mary Lue Knell was born July 17, 1924 in Cedar City, Utah, the first child of Mary Smith and Karl J. Knell. Delivered at Iron County Hospital by Dr. M. J. McFarland,1 her thick, black hair was so long that she was given a haircut within a few weeks.2 At the time Karl and Mary, both age 21, were living in an apartment over the garage of Mary’s parents, Mary Carpenter and Thomas James Smith.3 It was here that Mary Lue would spend her first few years, as she put it, “soaking in the love that was around—lots of doting people—Mom, Dad, uncles, aunts, great aunts, and grandparents from both sides of the family.”4
At the time of Mary Lue’s birth, her father Karl was a farmer by profession. The son of Olive Philena Emmett and Walter John Knell, Karl was born and raised in Pinto, a small community about 28 miles west of Cedar. While a student at Branch Agricultural College, he met Mary Smith and on graduation day, May 29, 1923, the sweethearts and fellow-graduates were married. On June 21, they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple.
When Mary Lue was two years old, her father got a job selling Ford automobiles for Charlie Petty at Petty Motor Company. “He was very outgoing and surely seemed like the perfect salesman,”5 she said of her dad. Little did Karl know at the time what an impact his twenty-five-year career with Petty would have on his family.
At about this time, the young family moved to a new home at 156 South 2nd West, Cedar City. It was there that on August 18, 1927, James Karl, Mary Lue’s only sibling was born. Soon after his birth, while the family was discussing the question of what name to give the newborn, three-year-old Mary Lue suggested, “Let’s call him mud turtle!”6 Mary Lue and Jim “got along very well” as children, rarely fighting or showing signs of sibling rivalry.7
Mary Lue’s childhood in Cedar City was characterized by her close relationship with her family, immediate and extended. Her husband Keith would later state, “One of the things I always remember is Mary Lue’s love for both sides of her family.”8 She loved both the Smith and the Knell families and spent much of her time in association with them. The Smith’s were in the sheep business. Thomas had homesteaded a great deal of land, stretching from Cedar Mountain (near Cedar City) to Nevada, upon which he raised sheep. Growing up around the sheepherders in the Smith family and in their employ, Mary Lue was exposed to some rough language. Unbeknownst to her parents, their tiny daughter began to pick up on a few interesting expressions. Her mother told of one occasion when Mary Lue burst into the house from the rain and exclaimed, “Hell-a-mighty, Dad, it’s raining all over!”9 On another occasion, her feisty pet kitten scratched her. She promptly took the kitten into the kitchen, put it in the refrigerator and shut the door. Her dismayed mother overheard her declare, “That’ll teach you, you little son of a b____!”10 Punishment for such indiscretions sometimes consisted of being placed on the mantle by her father and not being allowed to come down until she had recited the following poem:
I had a little doll
The prettiest ever seen,
She washed me the dishes,
And kept the house clean.11
Her relationship with her grandmother Smith was extremely close. Mary Lue recalled, “my mother’s mother…was very ill and went blind. She never complained but endured. Through this experience, after school I would sit at her knee and brush her long gray hair and we two touched souls. I was glad when I learned how to read so I could take a book from the beautiful library and read simple things to her and play the wind-up Victrola. She gradually got worse and finally passed away [in 1934]. I remember climbing on a stool to see her for the last time.” Mary Lue always felt close to Grandma Smith and believed that “her presence [was] like a guardian angel at times of personal distress.”12
After Grandma Smith passed away, Grandpa Smith moved in with Karl and Mary. He was alone as all nine of his children were grown and gone. Mary Lue fondly remembered his red Ford pick-up truck. “I don’t think he ever learned to shift gears,” she wrote. “He would go everywhere in low gear, up the mountain and down checking his sheep and cattle. At his side was Duke, a German Police dog.” Before the Depression, Smith was said to be worth over $1 million, though one wouldn’t have known it by his appearance. Mary Lue said he dressed like a tramp. One of her favorite stories about him took place around the end of World War II. While visiting Salt Lake City, he stopped at Zion’s Bank in his ruffled sheepherder’s garb. He marched right up to the teller and wrote out a check for $10,000. One of the suspicious bankers was about to call the police on this apparent transient, when the manager looked into it and discovered how much he was worth.13
Despite Grandpa Smith’s rough appearance and countenance, he endeared himself to Mary Lue. He was “an idol to all the grandchildren.” Mary Lue recounted how they would “climb in the back of the truck—sometimes 10 of us—and off we would go. We would stop at the candy store with one dime for candy.” Her regular purchase consisted of 2 cherry baseball suckers, 2 bubble gum balls, 1 stick red licorice, and a 5 cent box of malted milk disks. Mary Lue remembered her grandfather as “a very patient person with a big heart.” She recalled that many of the Piute Indians near Cedar City would come to him for work or a handout. One Indian, “Paul Jake (who loved vanilla because he could get drunk on it), was a pretty lazy but harmless Indian who always found odd jobs at Jim’s and Mary Smith’s.”14 Mary Lue and the other Smith grandchildren would frequently participate in the various workaday activities of the ranch, such as preparing meals for the hands.
Mary Lue was equally close to her Knell grandparents. The Knell’s were among the few families living in the rural farming community of Pinto. As Mary Lue, wrote, “They lived off the land, worked hard always, loved hard too.” She admired their tender relationship as a couple from an early age. “Such sweethearts I have never met. He saw her in Church when he was 20—she was 10—he said to himself, ‘I’m going to wait for 10 years for her.’ When he was 30 and she 20, he proposed and began a sweet, sweet love affair that just never quit.”15 The Knell’s had raised 5 children without the aid of electricity, running water, or heat. They lived a very self-sufficient lifestyle. They canned vegetables and meat and kept them in a root cellar during the winter, together with potatoes and dried fruits. Mary Lue remembered riding the Knell’s milk cow, Old Blackie, into the barn for her nightly milking.16
Grandpa Knell served missions after his marriage, during which his wife Olive stayed with his family, her in-laws, inducing Mary Lue to remark, “She must have been very easy to get along with.”17 During one of Grandpa Knell’s missions (England and Ireland), he served with Elder David O. McKay. The two companions kept in touch over the years. Grandpa Knell was a student of the scriptures and his spirituality impressed Mary Lue from a young age.
Mary Lue’s memories of Grandma Knell included her sitting by the light of a Kerosene lamp at night, piecing together scraps for quilts and rewarding the grandchildren for their help with sugar cubes. She became the de facto post-master of Pinto Valley since all passers stopped at their big home near Pinto Junction.
Each year, the young Knell family would travel to Pinto to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with Grandpa and Grandma Knell and all the Knell cousins. Mary Lue described a typical Knell Christmas during her childhood:
One bedroom was prepared for the big entrance Christmas morning. This room had a big fireplace with about 23 stockings hanging with names of every single man woman and child in the family. As we turned up the Kerosene lamps and lit the big “potbelly” stove, Grandpa threw big, homemade feather mattresses on the floor for the grandchildren. It was the longest night of the year. We lay for several hours, too cold to get up, too cold to go to sleep. At midnight, Santa would go through town and ring the school bell—sure enough he managed to know we were at Pinto not Cedar City. The door to the south wing opened but we couldn’t let him see us. He would be pretty busy for a while, then the door would close. That was almost agony, but to have to get up, wash, eat breakfast before we went in that room was even more so. At last, when every wax candle had been lit on the cedar tree we all went in and sat in a circle. One by one, the presents were opened and seen by all. I suppose Grandma Knell worked all year long to give something she had made to each one.18
During the summer of 1932, Karl and Mary went to Chicago for the World’s Fair and left Mary Lue and Jim at the Knell’s in Pinto. Grandma Knell subscribed to several magazines and “was always winning a little money here and there by entering contests in them.”19 Jim recalls spending the summer with Mary Lue going through their Grandma’s old magazines and clipping coupons that they would send away for free samples of lotions, balms, soaps, etc. They collected as many free samples as they could as a way to pass the time while their parents were away.20
Some of her best friends and playmates as a child were her cousins. She remarked, “As my first cousins entered my life, it truly was as though we were one single family. Mostly we lived within a few steps of each other.” Later, after Mary Lue had left for Salt Lake, “they’d come up from Cedar City and one of the first things they would want to do was to get in touch with Mary Lue and be able to be with her and partake of her warmth and spirit and fun.” She also was close to her Uncles Dell and Burt Smith.
Through her family associations, Mary Lue was introduced to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She wrote, “I was surrounded with love of the Gospel through parents and grandparents. My parents taught me to love truth and two houses away from our home, was Cedar 2nd Ward Chapel. I was very close to Church activity through Primary.”21 On September 8, 1932, she was baptized by Roscoe G. Booth and confirmed by her grandfather, Walter Knell.22 Jim was also baptized at age eight.
In addition to participating in family life, Mary Lue attended grade school in Cedar City. She completed her elementary education to the 6th grade in the Cedar City Elementary School in the Iron County School District.23
The Great Depression hit hard in Utah. In 1933, the state unemployment rate reached its peak at 35.8 and wages for employed workers dropped 45%. Despite these trying conditions, the Knells survived admirably. Karl retained his job with Petty Motor and they benefited from their close and continued relationship with their extended families. Mary Lue recalled, “I can’t remember of really wanting for the necessities of life. We were able to live off the land during the depression. Both [the Smith and Knell] families were able to provide vegetables, milk, meat, cheese, and eggs.”24
In early 1936, Charlie Petty decided to open a Ford dealership in Salt Lake and asked Karl to be his sales manager there. Karl and his family had made several trips to Salt Lake before to visit Mary’s sister, Ann Wright who lived on Michigan Ave. On one of these trips, just prior to their move, Karl located an apartment on Westminster Avenue, just above 1300 E. and made arrangements to rent it. It was difficult for Mary Lue to move so far from her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Mary Lue’s 12th birthday—July 17, 1936—was to be the day of the big move. They packed all their furniture in a large moving truck and prepared to leave the house. The night before they departed, Karl decided to park the truck under a pagoda garage at Grandpa Smith’s place. When he drove under the stone archway that spanned the Smith’s driveway, the bicycles, which were tethered to the top of the truck, caught on the two-ton lintel stone, dragging it out of its place and onto the top of the truck. Fortunately, the stone just missed the cab of the truck and the passengers were safe. Mary Lue recalled, “We didn’t even have the heart to survey the damage that night but left the next morning for our new home. Much of the bedroom furniture was completely crushed but they were all ‘just things.’”25
Her relationship with her grandmother Smith was extremely close. Mary Lue recalled, “my mother’s mother…was very ill and went blind. She never complained but endured. Through this experience, after school I would sit at her knee and brush her long gray hair and we two touched souls. I was glad when I learned how to read so I could take a book from the beautiful library and read simple things to her and play the wind-up Victrola. She gradually got worse and finally passed away [in 1934]. I remember climbing on a stool to see her for the last time.” Mary Lue always felt close to Grandma Smith and believed that “her presence [was] like a guardian angel at times of personal distress.”12
After Grandma Smith passed away, Grandpa Smith moved in with Karl and Mary. He was alone as all nine of his children were grown and gone. Mary Lue fondly remembered his red Ford pick-up truck. “I don’t think he ever learned to shift gears,” she wrote. “He would go everywhere in low gear, up the mountain and down checking his sheep and cattle. At his side was Duke, a German Police dog.” Before the Depression, Smith was said to be worth over $1 million, though one wouldn’t have known it by his appearance. Mary Lue said he dressed like a tramp. One of her favorite stories about him took place around the end of World War II. While visiting Salt Lake City, he stopped at Zion’s Bank in his ruffled sheepherder’s garb. He marched right up to the teller and wrote out a check for $10,000. One of the suspicious bankers was about to call the police on this apparent transient, when the manager looked into it and discovered how much he was worth.13
Despite Grandpa Smith’s rough appearance and countenance, he endeared himself to Mary Lue. He was “an idol to all the grandchildren.” Mary Lue recounted how they would “climb in the back of the truck—sometimes 10 of us—and off we would go. We would stop at the candy store with one dime for candy.” Her regular purchase consisted of 2 cherry baseball suckers, 2 bubble gum balls, 1 stick red licorice, and a 5 cent box of malted milk disks. Mary Lue remembered her grandfather as “a very patient person with a big heart.” She recalled that many of the Piute Indians near Cedar City would come to him for work or a handout. One Indian, “Paul Jake (who loved vanilla because he could get drunk on it), was a pretty lazy but harmless Indian who always found odd jobs at Jim’s and Mary Smith’s.”14 Mary Lue and the other Smith grandchildren would frequently participate in the various workaday activities of the ranch, such as preparing meals for the hands.
Mary Lue was equally close to her Knell grandparents. The Knell’s were among the few families living in the rural farming community of Pinto. As Mary Lue, wrote, “They lived off the land, worked hard always, loved hard too.” She admired their tender relationship as a couple from an early age. “Such sweethearts I have never met. He saw her in Church when he was 20—she was 10—he said to himself, ‘I’m going to wait for 10 years for her.’ When he was 30 and she 20, he proposed and began a sweet, sweet love affair that just never quit.”15 The Knell’s had raised 5 children without the aid of electricity, running water, or heat. They lived a very self-sufficient lifestyle. They canned vegetables and meat and kept them in a root cellar during the winter, together with potatoes and dried fruits. Mary Lue remembered riding the Knell’s milk cow, Old Blackie, into the barn for her nightly milking.16
Grandpa Knell served missions after his marriage, during which his wife Olive stayed with his family, her in-laws, inducing Mary Lue to remark, “She must have been very easy to get along with.”17 During one of Grandpa Knell’s missions (England and Ireland), he served with Elder David O. McKay. The two companions kept in touch over the years. Grandpa Knell was a student of the scriptures and his spirituality impressed Mary Lue from a young age.
Mary Lue’s memories of Grandma Knell included her sitting by the light of a Kerosene lamp at night, piecing together scraps for quilts and rewarding the grandchildren for their help with sugar cubes. She became the de facto post-master of Pinto Valley since all passers stopped at their big home near Pinto Junction.
Each year, the young Knell family would travel to Pinto to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with Grandpa and Grandma Knell and all the Knell cousins. Mary Lue described a typical Knell Christmas during her childhood:
One bedroom was prepared for the big entrance Christmas morning. This room had a big fireplace with about 23 stockings hanging with names of every single man woman and child in the family. As we turned up the Kerosene lamps and lit the big “potbelly” stove, Grandpa threw big, homemade feather mattresses on the floor for the grandchildren. It was the longest night of the year. We lay for several hours, too cold to get up, too cold to go to sleep. At midnight, Santa would go through town and ring the school bell—sure enough he managed to know we were at Pinto not Cedar City. The door to the south wing opened but we couldn’t let him see us. He would be pretty busy for a while, then the door would close. That was almost agony, but to have to get up, wash, eat breakfast before we went in that room was even more so. At last, when every wax candle had been lit on the cedar tree we all went in and sat in a circle. One by one, the presents were opened and seen by all. I suppose Grandma Knell worked all year long to give something she had made to each one.18
During the summer of 1932, Karl and Mary went to Chicago for the World’s Fair and left Mary Lue and Jim at the Knell’s in Pinto. Grandma Knell subscribed to several magazines and “was always winning a little money here and there by entering contests in them.”19 Jim recalls spending the summer with Mary Lue going through their Grandma’s old magazines and clipping coupons that they would send away for free samples of lotions, balms, soaps, etc. They collected as many free samples as they could as a way to pass the time while their parents were away.20
Some of her best friends and playmates as a child were her cousins. She remarked, “As my first cousins entered my life, it truly was as though we were one single family. Mostly we lived within a few steps of each other.” Later, after Mary Lue had left for Salt Lake, “they’d come up from Cedar City and one of the first things they would want to do was to get in touch with Mary Lue and be able to be with her and partake of her warmth and spirit and fun.” She also was close to her Uncles Dell and Burt Smith.
Through her family associations, Mary Lue was introduced to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She wrote, “I was surrounded with love of the Gospel through parents and grandparents. My parents taught me to love truth and two houses away from our home, was Cedar 2nd Ward Chapel. I was very close to Church activity through Primary.”21 On September 8, 1932, she was baptized by Roscoe G. Booth and confirmed by her grandfather, Walter Knell.22 Jim was also baptized at age eight.
In addition to participating in family life, Mary Lue attended grade school in Cedar City. She completed her elementary education to the 6th grade in the Cedar City Elementary School in the Iron County School District.23
The Great Depression hit hard in Utah. In 1933, the state unemployment rate reached its peak at 35.8 and wages for employed workers dropped 45%. Despite these trying conditions, the Knells survived admirably. Karl retained his job with Petty Motor and they benefited from their close and continued relationship with their extended families. Mary Lue recalled, “I can’t remember of really wanting for the necessities of life. We were able to live off the land during the depression. Both [the Smith and Knell] families were able to provide vegetables, milk, meat, cheese, and eggs.”24
In early 1936, Charlie Petty decided to open a Ford dealership in Salt Lake and asked Karl to be his sales manager there. Karl and his family had made several trips to Salt Lake before to visit Mary’s sister, Ann Wright who lived on Michigan Ave. On one of these trips, just prior to their move, Karl located an apartment on Westminster Avenue, just above 1300 E. and made arrangements to rent it. It was difficult for Mary Lue to move so far from her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Mary Lue’s 12th birthday—July 17, 1936—was to be the day of the big move. They packed all their furniture in a large moving truck and prepared to leave the house. The night before they departed, Karl decided to park the truck under a pagoda garage at Grandpa Smith’s place. When he drove under the stone archway that spanned the Smith’s driveway, the bicycles, which were tethered to the top of the truck, caught on the two-ton lintel stone, dragging it out of its place and onto the top of the truck. Fortunately, the stone just missed the cab of the truck and the passengers were safe. Mary Lue recalled, “We didn’t even have the heart to survey the damage that night but left the next morning for our new home. Much of the bedroom furniture was completely crushed but they were all ‘just things.’”25
NOTES
1 Mary Lue Knell (McCune), Birth Certificate, in Mary Lue McCune, Book of Remembrance.
2 Darcy McBride, Reminiscences, 1.
3 Ibid.
4 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—1, 1.
5 Ibid.
6 Keith N. McCune, Interview—1, 18.
7 James K. Knell, Interview, 1.
8 Keith N. McCune, Interview—1, 17.
9 Darcy McBride, Reminiscences, 1.
10 Keith N. McCune, Interview—1, 18.
11 Darcy McBride, Reminiscences, 1. Additional verses:
She went to the mill
To fetch me some flour,
And always got it home
In less than an hour;
She baked me my bread,
She brewed me my ale,
She sat by the fire
And told many a fine tale.
12 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—1, 1.
She went to the mill
To fetch me some flour,
And always got it home
In less than an hour;
She baked me my bread,
She brewed me my ale,
She sat by the fire
And told many a fine tale.
12 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—1, 1.
13 Keith N. McCune, Interview—1, 17.
14 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—1, 1.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 James K. Knell, Interview, 1.
21 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—2, 1.
22 Certificate of Baptism, Mary Lue Knell (McCune). Roscoe Booth was a priest in the Cedar 2nd Ward. It was common practice at that time to select a priest in the ward to perform baptisms.
23 James K. Knell, Interview, 4.
24 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—1, 5.
25 Mary Lue McCune, Personal History—1, 1.
I just tried to post a comment - but I don't think it worked. Anyway, I will try again. I just recently started doing my family history, and have been googling family names. Roscoe G Booth is my grandpa - and your blog came up when I googled him. I would love to hear the story of your grandma's baptism. You can email me at alysonpincock@yahoo.com
ReplyDeleteAlyson: I wish I knew more about my grandmother's baptism. It was common for a priest in the ward in which a member of the church resided to perform the baptism. I would love to know more about Roscoe Booth. How old was he at the time? Did he have a particular calling in his LDS ward? I'm sure this information is available at LDS Church Archives. I might have to stop by one of these afternoons after work.
ReplyDelete