The Cove
03/09/08 09:58
I was born July 11, 1894 at “the Cove”, a farm
near Orderville, Utah; the eight child of Harriet
Lenora Allen and John James Esplin.
As Told By Francis Allen Esplin
I was born July 11, 1894 at “the Cove”, a farm near Orderville, Utah; the eight child of Harriet Lenora Allen and John James Esplin.
Aunt Emily A. Hoyt Esplin, father’s other wife, whom he married at the same time as my mother had twelve children born to her buy only six lived to maturity.
Of these who attained maturity, four were older than me and two younger. Aunt Emily was a quiet, kindly person who, from my earliest recollections, maintained a happy home in Orderville where all of us were made welcome.
The only place I could think of as home until after I was twelve years of age was a homestead called “The Cove” because it was surrounded on three sides by hills. It was impossible at this time for me to consider any other place home -- in fact, no other place where I have lived has ever meant so much to me as this place where I spent my childhood. I remember with sorrow hearing my mother and older brothers and sisters say that they disliked living so far from the Church and social activities of the little communities. For me, it was all one could wish for, in reality “Home Sweet Home.”
Although only a little over a mile from Orderville, the road led over quite a sizable hill, and with walking, riding horseback or on a lumbering farm wagon the only means of transportation, it was quite isolated. Since mother was hardly able to walk the distance and did not after I knew her, ride horseback, she got to town only on Sundays or very special occasions.
From our farm buildings, a high steep hill rose abruptly on the East, was a little further back on the North and lower and about three hundred yards away on the West. From the elevated position of these buildings, one could see all the adjacent farm land and tell what the stork or workmen in the fields were doing at all times. We could also see the tops of the cottonwood trees near the Section house and the poplars half a mile farther down the valley which marked the “Green” farm. At these places lived our nearest neighbors, the Carrolls and Alvin F. Heaton family.
The Cove house being above the ditch and the soil being of hard, impervious clay, we did not have many flowers around the house except iris, hollyhock, roses and such hardy plants. Mother persisted until she secured two white ash trees, which we planted across the drive west of the kitchen door and which she hoped to have shade the kitchen when the low afternoon sun got around the tall poplars. For these trees and the flowers we had it was necessary to carry water two or three rods, from the ditch. The spring which furnished drinking water was about seventy yards from the house and ditch water was settled and used for all except culinary purposes.
We were not without plenty of flowers, however, with a spacious orchard and nearly every variety of fruit and an abundance of wild flowers in the surrounding hills and fields. The first thing I can remember doing to please anyone beside myself was to go, with my older sister Hattie, three years older, and my younger sister Vera, three and a half years younger, and gather wild flowers. We would get huge arms full of red bells, lady slipper, larkspur, flax, slippery elm, sego lily and Indian paintbrush, to name only a few, to please our mother and aged grandmother Allen.
I was born July 11, 1894 at “the Cove”, a farm near Orderville, Utah; the eight child of Harriet Lenora Allen and John James Esplin.
Aunt Emily A. Hoyt Esplin, father’s other wife, whom he married at the same time as my mother had twelve children born to her buy only six lived to maturity.
Of these who attained maturity, four were older than me and two younger. Aunt Emily was a quiet, kindly person who, from my earliest recollections, maintained a happy home in Orderville where all of us were made welcome.
The only place I could think of as home until after I was twelve years of age was a homestead called “The Cove” because it was surrounded on three sides by hills. It was impossible at this time for me to consider any other place home -- in fact, no other place where I have lived has ever meant so much to me as this place where I spent my childhood. I remember with sorrow hearing my mother and older brothers and sisters say that they disliked living so far from the Church and social activities of the little communities. For me, it was all one could wish for, in reality “Home Sweet Home.”
Although only a little over a mile from Orderville, the road led over quite a sizable hill, and with walking, riding horseback or on a lumbering farm wagon the only means of transportation, it was quite isolated. Since mother was hardly able to walk the distance and did not after I knew her, ride horseback, she got to town only on Sundays or very special occasions.
From our farm buildings, a high steep hill rose abruptly on the East, was a little further back on the North and lower and about three hundred yards away on the West. From the elevated position of these buildings, one could see all the adjacent farm land and tell what the stork or workmen in the fields were doing at all times. We could also see the tops of the cottonwood trees near the Section house and the poplars half a mile farther down the valley which marked the “Green” farm. At these places lived our nearest neighbors, the Carrolls and Alvin F. Heaton family.
The Cove house being above the ditch and the soil being of hard, impervious clay, we did not have many flowers around the house except iris, hollyhock, roses and such hardy plants. Mother persisted until she secured two white ash trees, which we planted across the drive west of the kitchen door and which she hoped to have shade the kitchen when the low afternoon sun got around the tall poplars. For these trees and the flowers we had it was necessary to carry water two or three rods, from the ditch. The spring which furnished drinking water was about seventy yards from the house and ditch water was settled and used for all except culinary purposes.
We were not without plenty of flowers, however, with a spacious orchard and nearly every variety of fruit and an abundance of wild flowers in the surrounding hills and fields. The first thing I can remember doing to please anyone beside myself was to go, with my older sister Hattie, three years older, and my younger sister Vera, three and a half years younger, and gather wild flowers. We would get huge arms full of red bells, lady slipper, larkspur, flax, slippery elm, sego lily and Indian paintbrush, to name only a few, to please our mother and aged grandmother Allen.