James Edward Cook - Part 3

Wedding Picture 1904

After this year of farming, we moved to Rexburg, Idaho.  It was here that I met my wife, Christine Magadelena Buchmiller.  I took the advice of one of the Apostles.  He advised the young to seek the Lord in humble prayer to select a life companion.  I saw my wife in a dream before I met her.  So life like was the dream that I knew her when I saw her.  Our neighbor’s house caught fire and I with many others gathered there.  After the fire, I walked through the crowd to where my sister Nora stood.  She was talking to a girl I was then going with and a strange girl whom up to that time I had not met but who has since become my wife.  I got acquainted with her brother John and we went to a dance together.  He took my sister and I took his.  After going with her for four years, we were married, the 16 November 1904 in the Logan Temple.  She was then nineteen and I was twenty four.  We were married by Thomas Morgan.  She has been a faithful and true companion, a true devoted and loving mother to our children.

Since our marriage, I have farmed most of the time, hauling wood and post from the Lavas and cut it up into kindling and haul it into Idaho Falls and sell it.  Jim McCoy handled most of it for me.

   

Church Census 1914

We took up a dry farm on the foot hills out from Taylorsville.  I went into the mountains and cut a set of house logs and had them sawed on two sides.  Then cut and hauled logs to get lumber to build us a four-room house.  Two rooms upstairs and two down.  We also built a granary and some sheds for our livestock.  By this time we had our children.  One Sunday while attending church, the Bishop asked to see the hands of all who would come to a meeting the next night as he wanted to organize a mutual.  We volunteered to go.  The next night we hitched a horse onto our buggy and drove 2 1/2 miles to the church.  We had just arrived when we looked back toward home and discovered our house was on fire.  Our children were in it.  We turned around and went back as fast as our horse could take us with a prayer in our hearts that our children would be able to get out.  Our oldest daughter, Agnes, discovered the fire and managed to get the others out safely.  Again the Lord was on our side and we thanked him for saving our children.  There was a large crowd there and a man among them who wasn't a member of our faith, went out in our behalf the next day and secured $37.00 and gave it to us.  We had to live in our granary the rest of that winter.

Church Census 1920

      We moved from the dry farm to Shelley and then to Woodville where I labored as assistant superintendent of the Sunday School.  While living there we had our potato crop froze in the ground and then the next year I had just started to cut my grain, when a hail storm came along and destroyed it.

We moved from Woodville to Ucon and then to Coltman and then to Grant where I farmed for several years.  While there I worked as assistant superintendent and superintendent of the Sunday School.

Church Census 1925

Home in Coltman

Church Census 1930

Church Census 1935

To Be Continued