James Edward Cook-Part One

LIFE STORY JAMES EDWARD COOK

James Nathaniel and Agnes Cook

 James Edward Cook was born 11 May 1881 in Aurora, Utah, to James Nathaniel Cook and Agnes Beverage Morgan. 

I spent my childhood days around Juab and Levan, Utah. Juab was a railroad town where all the men of the ten or twelve families worked on the railroad, leaving the women and children alone at home.  On different occasion, I remember masked men, ten or twelve at a time riding into the town.  We would see them coming, all the women and we children would gather in one house.  They would ride through, shooting the glass out of the windows and scaring all that were about by shooting over our heads and close to where we stood.  I remember holding on to mother's hand and running with the rest of the group.

     While playing with a neighbor boy, I fell on a large boulder cutting a large gash in my forehead, causing a scar which I still carry.

I moved with my parents to Gooseberry, Utah, where I commenced my schooling in a little log school house among the pines, with a lady teacher teaching all grades.  I and four sisters walked two miles to attend this school. 

It was while there that I was baptized, on the 11^th day of November, 1889, in a large spring coming out of the side of the mountain.  I was confirmed a member of the church on the same day.

I was ordained a deacon in 1893.

From Gooseberry, Utah, we moved to Salina, Utah, and from there to Blue Valley, Utah.  Blue Valley is situated in the southeast corner of Utah.  It is a narrow valley with cliffs rising two or three hundred feet on each side.  These cliffs are of slate rock with many engravings and writings on them.  The Dirty Devil River runs through the center of the valley.  I have seen this valley nearly covered with water, causing a great amount of damage to the crops, washing out dams, and running into homes.

Corn and sugar cane were the main crops raised.  Peaches, apricots, and all kinds of melons were also raised.  I have driven the teams used on the mill to crush the juice out of the cane, which was put into large vats and made into molasses.

From Blue Valley we moved to Vernal, Utah.  While in Vernal, I was ordained a teacher.  I worked as secretary of the mutual and Sunday School.  Later I was called to take a course in the planning of lessons for the Sunday School.  I didn't work at that long until lesson leaflets began to come from headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah.

At the age of fifteen, I ran a freight outfit hauling gilsonite and laterite to Price, Utah, a distance of 150 miles.  We hauled goods from the stores in Vernal back.  We used four horses and two wagons for this work.

We rode the wheel horse (A horse harnessed nearest the wheels of a vehicle.) as there wasn't room on the wagons to ride.  It took fourteen days in good weather to make the trip, and longer if the weather was bad.

      I have slept in wet bedding every night for as long as fourteen nights at a time.  On one occasion we were stopped at a dry creek bed for noon.  The sun was shining bright and warm, not a cloud in the sky.  We noticed two objects way out on the prairie coming toward us.  As they came closer, we saw that it was two horsemen.  They were coming as fast as their horses could run.  It was two Indians.  They came up to the wagons, dismounted and got under the wagon.  I asked them what was the matter?  One of them said, "Pretty soon heap rain."  In twenty minutes there was a sea of water all around.  It rained but a few minutes and the sun came out as bright as ever.

     After sleeping thirteen nights in wet bedding and being wet through every day, I still had to take more.  I put my lead team ahead of my brother-in-laws lead team and rode one of his to help him across the raging stream which but an hour before was dry.  We got in the middle of the stream and the horse I was riding fell throwing me into the stream.  The water was running so swift, I went down stream a hundred yards or more before I was able to reach shore.  We spent another night in wet bedding and arrived home the next night thanking God that we were still alive.

                                               

To Be Continued