Ruth Burns McBride

MY PIONEER MOTHER
by Claude Duval McBride

Ruth Burns McBride

My mother, Ruth Burns McBride, was born in the little town of Eden in Ogden Valley in northern Utah, in 1857. Her parents were Enoch Burns and Elizabeth Jan Pierce Burns, early Utah pioneers from Canada.

Ruth learned the Three R’s in the little school in Eden. She was a beautiful girl and grew up to be a very intelligent and refined young lady, and married my father, Peter H. McBride in 1874 in the Salt Lake Temple. My father had landed in Eden with his widowed mother and her five children after walking across the plains from Iowa as immigrants from Scotland and converts to the Mormon Church. They had come with the Martin Handcart Company, and Peter's father, Robert McBride had died and been buried in a grave with fourteen others at the upper crossing of the Platte river in western Wyoming territory.

My parents were called to go south into southern Utah, and then Arizona Territory to help colonize and develop communities when their first son, Robert Franklin was less than two years old. With eight other young couples they left Ogden Valley in covered wagons in the spring of 1877 to make their way to the United Order settlement called Orderville that was just getting started in southern Utah. Father's mission was to organize and develop musical and dramatic groups in the emerging Mormon communities wherever he went. Their first stop was to be Toquerville along the Virgin river. Before they arrived there, however their second son, Howard was born as they rested a day at Ash Creek a few miles south of what is now Cedar City. Howard was born, not in a manger, but in a covered wagon in the lonely hills of southern Utah. Like Mary of old, Mother Ruth was a chosen spirit for a wonderful mission as devoted companion and mother on the western frontier.

They reached Toquerville in a few days. There they met with the few saints who had started building rock houses and clearing the land and building ditches for irrigation. Father met with them in church and led the singing, and then organized a small choir group.

From Toquerville they made their way around the end of the plateau to Orderville. Here was one of the first experiments in Communal Living by the saints. The government was the United Order. All work was done under the United Order system. All produce went into the United Storehouse, and supplies were issued on the basis of need to all members of the community.

Mother worked with the sisters putting up fruit and vegetables, making quilts, weaving rugs, cleaning and carding wool, spinning yarn and making homespun clothing for the storehouse. Father worked in the fields, the rock quarry and the timber getting out stone and logs for building houses, a church and school house. Along with his manual labors he conducted the singing in Sunday School and Sacrament meeting and organized a choir and other singing groups.
After a year at Orderville my parents left for Kanab, another new settlement farther south. They said they soon got sick of the United Order because the lazy ones shared everything with the ambitious ones. The “workers” fed the “drones”. Others deserted the United Order also, and it was abandoned.

At Kanab father organized singing groups and led the singing in Sunday School, and mother worked with the sisters in Relief Society and Primary work, and in the Sunday School. She and her two sons, Frank and Howard were always at the side of father in everything he had to do.

The next spring they left Kanab and made their way to St. George thinking they could return to Ogden Valley. But there they met Brigham Young who told them their mission was not finished, and directed them to go on into Arizona and work with the new Mormon communities that were being settled in that area. With a few others they journeyed southward, crossed the Colorado at Lee's Ferry, and made their way, after weeks of slow and laborious traveling, and settled down at a place called Show Low. From there they went to Forest Dale near what is now Snowflake. Here they settled down to clear the land and build homes. Within three years this hardy band of pioneers had built log homes, cleared the land, built a public building they could use for church and school, and set up a town council. But again they were forced to move on. This time the Indians drove them out. Leaving their new homes and land they journeyed southward into the desert country of southeastern Arizona Territory and settled along the Gila. River. There they homesteaded the desert land, cleared off the mesquite, cactus and chaparral, dammed of the small river, built canals to carry the water to their thirsty lands and built adobe homes. It was near the little town of Pima, a Mormon settlement, but mixed with other adventurers from parts outside of Utah. Other towns were being settled in the Gila Valley, mostly by Mormons. Soon father was busy with his music work, and mother with her homemaking and family raising.

This became their permanent home. Little by little they cleared the land organized wards, developed church auxiliaries, and ultimately a stake, the St. Joseph Stake of Zion. Father organized choirs, quartettes, choruses, cantatas and became the stake chorister. He made his visits to each of the new wards to organize and develop choirs and other musical groups, and provided the music and choir numbers for the stake conferences as the years came along.

Mother was very talented and active in ward and community affairs. She played leading roles in some of father's cantatas and dramas, and was president of the Relief Society, the Primary and the Young Womens’ Mutual Improvement Association, and teacher in the Sunday School.

Soon the church authorities from Salt Lake City visited the valley and advised the brethren to take additional wives, under “The New and Everlasting Covenant.” Many of the good and faithful brethren followed their admonition and took one or more wives. Father and mother, being thoroughly devoted and loyal to their church and its leaders, considered the matter very seriously, but decided to disregard the advice of the church and its leaders. They were deeply devoted companions in life, and could not see fit to interfere with that sacred and romantic relationship. Again the church apostles came the next year for conference, and admonished the brethren to take additional wives as they were doing. More of the good brethren espoused the doctrine of polygamy and took additional wives. Still mother and father hesitated to follow their admonition. A third time the apostles came with the same advice. Finally mother told father that perhaps it was the thing to do, since it had been "revealed" to the prophet, and the general authorities were doing it, it must be what the Lord required of his faithful followers.

Father was a talented and handsome man, and more than one of his singing; and performing young ladies would not turn down a chance to become his second wife, or his third or fourth. The young lady he chose was Laura Lewis, a beautiful and talented girl.

So father became a polygamist,- with mother's consent,- and from these two talented and lovely women came two families of McBrides, all very talented and versatile children, who grew to be men and women of the highest caliber, each in his or her own right, very religious and spiritual minded, with high ideals and noble ambitions.

Mother gave birth to fourteen children, but raised only six of them to adulthood. Eight succumbed to childhood diseases. Laura raised six of her eight children.

Proving up on the old homestead, clearing it and bringing the land under cultivation with water brought from the river in canals, proved to be a lifelong task for mother, father and the boys. Mother was the planner and manager. The boys helped set up a mill to make adobes for the house and cellar. Mother sent to a hatchery in California for baby chicks to start in the chicken business. Then she bred up her flock year by year and became one of the leading egg producers in the valley. She and father and the boys made their daily rounds caring for the chickens, gathering the eggs, sorting and candling them and filling crates for the market at the stores in the valley.

Sometimes in the spring, when she was brooding a large batch of chicks the cats would break in and kill dozens of them in one night. Cats and skunks were a constant menace to her young chicks each year.

Mother was a great hand to plan ahead for her home and family. She prided herself on her winter vegetable garden where she raised hardy vegetables that could withstand the mild frosty nights that occasionally came along. Her spring garden was always filled with tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, cantaloupe, squash, watermelons, onions, peppers, lettuce, radishes, carrots, beets, and others. She also had some pomegranate, fig and plum bushes. Our adobe cellar, with double walls and an open air space between them kept fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products cool in the summer and from freezing in the winter. We also had a pit outside full of sweet potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets and potatoes. On the shelves of the cellar mother stored an ample supply of bottled fruits, pans of milk, jars of cream, honey, sauerkraut, mincemeat and rounds of homemade cheese. There were also barrels of pickles, hams, bacon, flour and sugar, and baskets of fresh eggs in the cellar.

Mother also raised turkeys for thanksgiving and Christmas, pigs for hams and bacon, and made soap from fats and scraps. She had an old wooden churn for making butter, and a washer run by hand. That's where I got my start, and such a good start it was, on my way through life.

Mother had great ambitions for her farm and family. She dreamed of the farm becoming a prosperous enterprise under scientific management by one of her boys. She wanted all of her children to receive a good education, and hoped that one would specialize in scientific farm management and take over the homestead and develop it into an ideal farm.

Frank, Howard and Perle grew up and married before the schools had made much progress in the valley. They had to be satisfied with a grammar school education. But their main schooling came in the School of Life on the frontier. In that school they became Men-Among-Men in every endeavor in life into which they were cast by the challenging circumstances of that early western life.

Enoch was the semi-invalid, stricken as a baby with spinal meningitis and left with impaired speech and muscular control. He could never go to school, but always busied himself with the chores and farm work in his slow and poorly coordinated, but persistent way. He had a brilliant mind, but his impeded speech made it difficult for him to express his ideas. He was mother's constant helper and her care throughout life. She understood him better than all of us did, and knew how to care for his needs and yearnings.

With Frank, Howard and Perle married and gone from the old farm, mother centered her doting ambitions on me, to go on to college and specialize in scientific agriculture and return to take over the farm. She was my great inspiration to get an education and make something of myself. It was her ideals and ambitions in life that started me on my way to seek a college education. And it was her faith and idealism that guided me through life in many trying and discouraging situations.

And so it was that I, the youngest boy, and Bessie, my baby sister, were to be the only ones in the family to gain a formal education beyond the grammar school. We went away to school and worked our way through college, Bessie became a teacher and married a rancher and lived on a big cattle ranch in Wyoming. I became a teacher, and then a college professor, but never got back to the old homestead to develop it into a scientifically managed operation.

Mother and father lived and died for their religion, always following the advice of their church leaders and bearing their testimony to the truthfulness of the gospel and the divine calling; of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the founder of the church. Their life's ambition was to help build a temple in their frontier homeland and do their temple work in it. Their ambition was rewarded when they did their temple work in the Mesa Temple which they had helped to build. They returned to their maker satisfied that their mission had been fulfilled.

With their unshakeable faith and devotion, high ideals, rugged honesty and noble ambitions driving them on to ever new industrial undertakings, they left their footprints on the sands of time in every community and in every endeavor through their long and rugged life together. Their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and future generations will be forever grateful for their noble example and the eternal characteristics which they passed on to their posterity.