“My mother, Elvaretta Petersen, was born in Richfield, Utah on June 20, 1881. She had four brothers, Steven, Clarence, Owen and Lloyd. She had two sisters, Geneva and Nellie. Nellie died at the age of eleven from a heart ailment. Their parents were Mary Jane Riley and John Petersen.
My father, Parley Alexander Gardner, was born in Payson, Utah on February 10, 1872. There were fourteen children in the family but only ten lived to maturity. His parents were Julia Huston Pratt and John Gardner. Although both parents were raised in Utah, they met and became acquainted while my father was working for Grandfather Petersen at a railroad tie camp near Evanston, Wyoming. They were married at Evanston on September 21, 1900 by a bishop of the Church there. The first year of their marriage they lived in Rexburg, Idaho, going to Kilgore during the summer to haul logs for Grandpa Petersen. My oldest sister, Maybelle, was born in Kilgore, Idaho on September 6, 1901. Later that fall they moved back to Rexburg and purchased twenty acres where they resided the next five years. My brother Parley was born in November, 1903 but lived just fifteen minutes. He is buried at Rexburg. Two years later on July 28, 1905 I was born. That same year my folks moved back to Kilgore where they purchased a 360 acre ranch from Ernest Conrad. It was about half way between Kilgore and Spencer so was called the Halfway Ranch. It was ten miles either way. Spencer was on the railroad and Kilgore was in a valley where they raised hay and cattle. Mother says there was just one big room in the house and it was about half full of baled hay so the first winter we ate, slept, and played on hay bales. The following spring and summer they lined and shingled the house, put in more windows and a partition. A few years later they added a kitchen and two bedrooms and built a cellar under the kitchen. Dad built a nice big barn with a big hay loft where we put our winter’s hay. A creek ran just back of our house and fed into a large pond which was used for watering stock. This made a good skating pond in the wintertime. We had many good times skating and coasting in the winter and playing along the creek and on a rocky hillside about one-half mile from our house during the summer.
The nearest LDS church was at Kilgore and in those days we traveled in wagons, buggies and sleighs. Sunday School was at 10:00 am. Mother took a lunch along so we could stay for Sacrament meeting at 2:00 pm. Sometimes we were invited to dinner by people living near church. When there was a dance mother said they would dance all night, eat breakfast and go home by daylight. Children were put to sleep on the seats of benches. Our church was also a school until the new church building was built.”
-Beatrice Gardner Straubhaar
Excerpt from Straubhaar Family History, July 1990
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