ELWOOD WARD RECORD & CERTIFICATES

His Father's name------------------------------------------------James Kirkman Green

His Mother's name-----------------------------------------------Clara Elizabeth Hammer

Born-------------------------------------------------------------------------30 March 1890

Blessed by Jacob Hansen-------------------------------------------------1 May 1890

Baptized by M.C. Mortensen-------------------------------------------- 3 October 1898

Confirmed by Carl Jensen------------------------------------------------3 October 1898

PRIESTHOOD
 

Ordained Deacon by------------------------------------------------J.Walter Green-------22 October 1904

Ordained Teacher by-----------------------------------------------J.M. Haws-------------19 April 1908

Ordained Priest by--------------------------------------------------C.M. Nicholaisen--13 December 1908

Ordained Elder by--------------------------------------------------K.H. Fridal------------- 1 October 1911

Ordained Seventy by----------------------------------------------Seysmour B. Young--4 December 1920

Ordained High Priest by--------------------------------------George F. Aposhian--22 November 1953

MISSION

NORTHERN STATES MISSION 25 October 1911

Minister certificate is signed by Joseph F. Smith and Anthony H. Lund 24 October 1911. 

Moved to Wilford Ward, Granite Stake 27 March 1922 

I had a sister Ruth who moved from Salt Lake City with her husband Anton E. Samuelson to Tremonton, Utah. I visited her several times. On one of these trips I met Joseph at Sunday School. He asked if he could sit by me; why of course yes. I was a bit flattered to have a returned missionary pay attention to me. I heard him speak at the afternoon meeting.

In that locality they always had a dance on Saturday night. The next Saturday night I saw him at the dance. I knew he would ask to take me home so I asked Anton if it would be all right to go home with him if he did invite me. Anton said yes and laughed.

Well, he asked for the first dance, the middle dance, and asked if he might take me home. And he did. I don't know just when we fell in love. However, he wrote the most endearing letters to me from then on and came to Salt Lake several times. I wish I had kept those letters as I would have enjoyed them right now.

We were married 15 September 1915 in the Salt Lake Temple for time an all eternity. My Mother prepared and gave us a lovely reception at her home which was at that time in Wilford Ward. That home she later deeded to us. We were forever grateful.

I don't seem to be able to write about Joe without including me. As I seemed so very much a part of his life. He always referred to me as his Good Wife, and was his first consideration after marriage. There wasn't anything to good for me. I never wanted for anything he could provide. 

Lets go back to his early life. He was born in a log cabin which consisted of 2 large rooms and a lean too. The log cabin was built on the west bank of the Malad River. Bear River City was not far south; about 3 miles. 

They used the witch light which was a rag in tallow. All they burned was sage brush, both for cooking and for heat. Joseph's Mother always called him Josey. She was a good neat housekeeper.. Very tidy ; and I remember how in order everything was in the home when I knew her. When I knew her they had a nice brick home in place of the log cabin which was built before Leron was born the 12th December 1893. This house was the best house in Elwood then and compared with any of them when I lived in it in 1915. So you see they were progressive people.

Joseph was a very small baby and had a hard time to live. He had typhoid fever when a little boy. They thought he had died at one time but he hadn't. Joe seemed to have a strong constitution. He was small an wirey; full of ambition with a desire to live and acpomplish much He never did anything half way. 

His Mother was a beautiful soprano and his Father a bass. In the evening the children would all sit on the floor around the fire to listen to their parents sing Nellie Gray, and When You And I Were Young Maggie etc.. That's when they had their farm together as a family. There was much work to do in the early morning, day, and evening. 

It was Joseph's job to tend to the cows. As a little boy he herded them bare footed. Never had a chance to go to school until winter and stopped in the early spring to work on the farm. 

His Mother told me one day Myrtle came home and reported that her teacher said to tell her Father that it's no use to send Joseph to school yet. The next morning the teacher asked Myrtle what her Father had said. Myrtle said that her Father said for " you to go to hell ". Joe continued going to school. 

Joseph's Father was a very stern frontier religious man and it seemed to me rather overly strict and cruel at times. It is only of late years I can understand him and maybe appreciate him more. Knowing that he had asthma and very sick most of the time. He had a large family to raise, and a farm to look after. It wasn't easy I am sure. He turned the first furrow in the Bear River Valley. There were two or three other families there but they were sheep men. He spent a great deal of time with the Wasakee Indians helping and educating them. 

The Malad River was full of rushes, cat tails, and cheese grass. In the winter it froze over. Joe and Laron got a pair of ice skates for Christmas. They became very good on them skating up and down the river as far as Tremonton and back. 

The Malad River was 1/4 of a mile wide. It was a beautiful river untill they took the fresh water at Twin Falls for irrigation. Now it was naturally salty, full of carp and suckers. Lots of beautiful swans on the river. The boys used to catch fish in the Malad River before breakfast and for their breakfast. Now it is just a river bed with carp not fit to eat. 

One Sunday morning Myrtle, Joe, and Leron were walking to Sunday School. The Church was about two miles going around by the road .Leron suggested that they take a shortcut through the fields. Myrtle had on a new blue dress. Joe was so proud of it. He said " oh no Myrtle, we will go around by the road cause it would spoil your new dress ".

When Joseph was twelve his Father died. Of course there were no undertakers at that time. 

The boys were good marksman including Joe. They had guns and got rid of coyotes and shot many ducks and rabbits. Green head ducks were choice as were mallards and geese. 

Going back to the year Joseph was born in 1890. The older boys helped dig a ditch 5 miles to get irrigation water. There were rattlesnakes and scorpions and big spiders that went sailing down the ditch. The whole farm went under irrigation. After that there wasn't so many snakes, scorpions, and big spiders around. 

Joe's Father and Mother were very hospitable. He ran a camping ground for freighters from Ogden and Idaho. They would feed their horses etc. Joe's Father also spent much time with the Indians helping to civilize them. 

After Joe's Father died the boys worked the farm. Myrtle worked the orchard. Mattie and Ruby took care of the home. Joe and Laron were little boys but had plenty to do. Ivy and Ada were married. Charley was on his mission in South Carolina. Walter went on a mission to England before his Father died. 

Stories told me by Joseph and his sisters. After threshing the wheat the Indians from Waskislye reservation would come to the farm and glean the wheat, and sweep the ground where the thrashers and stacks stood. Take the wheat to the river and wash it. Then take it home. 

One time a squaw left them and went up over the dam. After a time she came back with a little papoose. The Green children were so surprised and asked where she got it. The squaw said she got it out of the mud over the dam. Four of the children ran for shovels and just about dug up the slew for a papoose. That experience in life told them you didn't get a papoose out of a mud hole. 

They traded the organ for a piano about 1891. There Father was still alive. After that there was much music in the home playing and singing mostly hymns. Mattie and Myrtle were natural born players. And Ida and Ruby sang. 

Ida came to Murray to take nurses training. While there Joe was operated on in Murray for a hernia. After Ida got her schooling she practiced nursing all over Bear River Valley. She never lost a Mother or baby having delivered hundreds. 

One Christmas they were so proud of their winter banana apples. They were the first banana apples grown in the valley. Joe worked very hard in the orchard. Some beauties were put out for old Santa to take a bite. Christmas morning Joseph was fighting mad because Santa had taken all the apples. Of course he found one later in his stocking. 

One day some of the children went down to the Malad River to play. John threw a match into the river but it landed on the bank where there were lots of dry brush. In no time at all there was a raging fire. They were surrounded by fire. Charlie took off his shirt and beat a little path through the fire. Myrtle jumped on his back, Mattie on John's back and followed. They came out alive, wet and wiser. 

One day Father and Mother went to Bear River City. Just as soon as they left the children got hot water and scalded the pigs until the pigs broke the pen down. When Father and Mother got home the children were working like beavers to get the pigs back in the pen. Father said " you were very good to hold the pigs together and not let them scatter". What won't kids do. Myrtle said " we never had anything to play with so we had to make our own fun. All we did was stir up mischief to make what we thought was a little fun". 

One day little Myrtle was out herding cows. She caught a little bird that couldn't fly. Sat down on the road west of the house and made a nest for the bird. She heard a noise but didn't pay much attention to it. She looked back and there was a big rattler all curled up. The snake took the bird and Myrtle jumped up and ran to where the men were hauling hay. She told all about the many snakes she had seen; and exciting stary. There were hundreds. So Father stopped all the men from working to go look for snakes. They found the big one on the road. Myrtle was scared to death that was all all they would find. But luckily as they ran their picth forks thru the sagebrush there was a high place and a den of snakes. About 27 of them. Myrtle breathed easily again. The men put a bunch of straw over the snakes and set it on fire. 

Ida was a midwife in that part of the valley. She had a horse and buggy tied to the gate most of the time ready to leave. Chickens were feeding on the brow of the hill. One old hen spread her feathers and stretched her neck out and ran straight for the wheel and put her head under the buggy wheel. Well the horse moved a bit and the wheel went over that neck of the hen. It limped away sick as a chicken could be. Myrtle was laughing all the time she was telling me about it. 

I had never cooked for more than 3 people at a time and we never had swearing in or about our home. So it got on my nerves to hear the harvesters swear. One day I bent over to get wood from under the stove, as I raised up and hit my head on the stove. It was the first time I ever swore. I said damit. Then I cried. It was a good thing they all had a sense of humor. 

It was a full moonlight night and there was 40 acres of hay ready to be piled. Charlie, John, Mattie, and Myrtle got their pitchforks and started to pile hay. At 3 in the morning they had piled nearly all the hay. They were exhasted and went to bed. If they had been required to do that it would have have been something terrible. They made it fun by doing it on their own. 

Father had 18 stacks of wheat ready to be thrashed. Myrtle was always getting into mischief. She was playing with a little fire between hay stacks and the wheat stacks. She got tiered of it and just left. There was a little wind and the fire started up the hay stack. Fortunetly there was a group of men working on the old dam of the Malad river close by. They saw the flames and rushed over with buckets of water and with their pitchforks put out the fire. If it had got to the wheat stacks Father would have been ruined forever. Because he thrashed out 4,000 bushels of wheat that year. Father and Mother went to their grave thinking it was a tramp that had carelesly set it on fire. Myrtle accepted that explanation and said thanks to the tramp. 

Back to Joseph. He was really loved by his brothers and was a pet of his sisters all His life.

After our marriage we took the train to Tremonton and went to work cooking for potato and beet harvesters three meals a day. It was a new experience for me. I could hardly wait for Joe to come in after work. He had the chores to do a quarter of a mile away so it would be dark. Joe would always come home whistling. I always loved that music. If he didn't whistle I would know there was something wrong. 

We worked in ward dramatics together all winter taking our plays to Honeyville, Deweyville, etc. Joe taught a Sunday School class, was in the Mutual Stake Board, also a Ward Teacher. Elwood always had 100% Ward Teaching. He also served a 2 year stake mission. They traveled many miles with horse and buggy. He had great success in his labors. People loved Joe and he loved to teach them the gospel. 

When Fay was born he was really amazed that he could have such a wonderful baby. He was such a proud Father. He seemed to enjoy each baby more as they were born to us. Also the grand children were dear to him. I wonder what he would think of our great grandchildren that we have now. 

Fay was the first baby born in the old Tremonton hospital. 18 November 1916. People didn't go to the hospital very much at that time to have babies. I guess we started something. She was also the only baby in Elwood at that time. Pearl was also born in the Tremonton hospital 2 June 1918. Joe thought she was special. Arnold was born in Salt Lake City at Mothers home 24 March 1920. Joe came down for a week but he had to go back before Arnold was born to take care of his interest in the farm. Joe didn't see Arnold until he was six weeks old. The day he met us at the train in Tremonton, Pearl cried because he made such a fuss over his new son before he spoke to her. But that didn't last long as he made it up to the little girls right away. 

When Fay started school we left the farm and came to Salt Lake to live. It just wasn't the thing to do for us to stay on the farm. So Joe took a correspondence course in electrical enginering. Put all our transferable belongings in a wagon and hayrack. Then took the hayrack back and brought our stove and cow down in his wagon. He later sold the wagon and horses. 

For a few years he took care of Mothers (Mary Cornelia Woodbury Stay) fruit orchard and later worked for Utah Power & Light Company 20 years in all. 

Our fourth child Joseph Verl Green was born also at our home in Wilford Ward 22 April 1925. That was a real thrill as we hadn't had a baby for five years. He was appreciated by all the family especially Fay who felt bad every time our friends had a baby and we didn't. 

Joe belonged to the Seven Presidents Of Seventy in Wilford Ward. 

All the memories that crowd in upon me this moment-----------the years we belonged to this ward and the people we associated with , some of whom are here today. who was bishop some years president of the stake. Working in the MIA Ferdinand M. Billiter as superintendent and also George Z. Aposian as superintendent. some of the boys who were with Joe. I called him Joe but I would like to and Woodrow White. 

Brother Sudbury and some others and brother Henry White who was my when and I served in the Council of Seventy. Those things come now as we put our minds in reverse for a few memories. I doubt you will know any more about the Gospel when I am finished. But you young folks, you grandchildren who have known brother Joseph Arnold Green only during his years affliction------you'll know him a little better. You'll know some of the things he used to do and that's my purpose today -------to bring you a little information about Joe Green as some of us knew him, some of you also, but some of you maybe knew him only in recent years since work and prevented him from carrying on the things his heart would have him do. 

As a life sketch let's back up to his grandfather and be very brief. 

His grandfather was and moved to South Africa much as people now move to. It was new territory and he had the blood of Israel he recognized the Gospel, was baptized by the first missionaries the Church sent down to that area. He was to come to Zion. He sent his family on ahead. He himself never reached Zion. He passed away in South Africa. Joe's Father was a hard working man and Joe grew up under those . 20 home stead up in Box Elder County. 

And his Father is refuted to have plowed the first furrow in Box Elder County. Joe was born in March of 1890, the twelfth of a family of 13. Four older sisters survive-- Ida, Ada, Mattie, and Myrtle. I believe the 3 of them are here excepting Ada ( is that right ). She is too sick to come.

When Joe was 12 years old his Father died of asthma. I mentioned about how hard working they were. The first thing we have to do in life is earn a living and that was how it was then. Joe could go to school only on days when it was too cold or when it was too muddy so the farm work couldn't be done. So his school work was interupted as he went along. But there are many people in this life who get their education not in the school room but from and study and was managing the and he could see the trend of things and the need of having something to do besides farming. He took up the study of electrical enginering by correspondence. They moved down to Salt Lake and began his study of electrical engineering which qualified him for work at the Utah Power & Light Company. During the 30s when the depression was on and work was hard to get work and as he worked back to Utah Power & Light and worked 19 more consecutive years in their employ. 

Now then how did Catherine and Joe ever get together him up in Box Elder County and she down here. Now it is a simple thing. I asked Catherine before I started to talk if she would mind if we said some things that we could smile about. Because I said who could talk about Joe Green and be serious entirerly. You who know him will realize that and so if I make any statements that brought on a smile it will be with a who nearly up until his last breath. 

Catherine had a sister up in Box Elder County and she went up there to visit and in those small communities when people go to church it would be a rare thing to have anyone come in who wasn't LDS. So she felt that when a young man came in and sat down and said may I sit by her. Well he must be LDS clear and a smile and so he sat. She went the between Elwood and Salt Lake with occasional visits from Elwood to Salt Lake which is easy to understand and they were married in the Salt Lake Temple 15 September 1915. 

This was the beginning of that family 4 children. and our son Joe whom we used to call Verl in his younger days but he as he grew to carry on to take the name of Joe. 18 now back to the farm.

The family lived on the farm and Joe was working there taking care of his family and that was when he took up his electrical engineering because he could see the trend of affairs and he needed a job that provided a good living. 

Now one of my statements that will make a little smile but it is one of those common in family life. 

One day Catherine went to the tomato patch to gather tomatoes. The neighbors were also there and she didn't like that and she proceeded to drive them out and one of the neighbors was and he objected to Catherine's disturbing his little group and he took after Catherine. She the on the way and when he he persuaded the that it was worthwhile and he withdrew. 

Finally came the time when they couldn't stay on the farm. The farm I think was to the family and Joe moved to Salt Lake. Put his family on the train and their belongings on the hayrack. And spent two days coming down 2 days more coming back again. and a cow in the wagon.

I know he was hard working he had to make a living and he never and never knew him to shirk even in Church work even in his work. A little about his Church work-------He taught Sunday School in Elwood, went on a mission from Elwood, serving in the Northern States Mission. 

His family never has been enough well to do to have financed a mission a stake mission He filled 2 stake missions. He went to the Temple as he could and in the later years when other activities were so he went to the Temple but it was hard to get through. He had to stop and get his breath caught up. You who have known him know how difficult it was for him to in recent times. And even that I think it was a

He farmed 3/4 of an acre by hand. That was all hand work. And in later years he insisted on going to work when he had to stop 2 or 3 times en route to the job to catch his breath. It is fortunate that he had a job that he could do without great physical effort. But it required the know how which Joe had. It was Joe's motto which you will find in 

Joe would his even though each day that he went he wasn't sure that he was going to get back. stayed home and think about his that but now some of the things that I know of him. He used to be in scouting. He was here in scout work for many years--here in this. 

The boys I mentioned were here in scouting when he was here. I have taken these notes from my own records to give you a few glimpses of Joe and his with me and scouting in this.

Back to December 1930-----The Church began to divide the older boys from the young ones. ( the national had not done so ) and the Church what they called a meeting in December of 1930 in January of 1931 They received pemission from the superintendent of the MIA, F B , to ask Joe Green to assist us in scouting and to work with the older boys. We had a young man who lived down here on 13th East I think and 33rd South. LaVoy Knight who was working with us and he and Joe carried on with the scouts.

Here's a note - June 4, 1931: Took with 14 boys, Joe Green and LaVoy Knight furnishing the transportation. Joe making two trips up and LaVoy two trips down. LaVoy didn't stay but Joe and Fathers of scouts . This morning Joe drove down and brought back our wives-- Mable, Catherine, and Olive and we cooked beans in the underground and then in hot coals and we had hot and beans waiting for us. June 15-Joe Green and I boys who had not qualified for a trip that was being planned. He for us shortly after 10 am and we spent the day during the forenoon while the he worked on my archery bow and completed it. Later in the afternoon we took the down to the William Penn school where they had Joe and his boy Verl went down the hill on a sled and he almost wrecked. I slid down the hill with Grant ( that is my boy ) on a gunny sack and the sudden stop at the bottom gave me something to remember the occasion by. January 21, 1932 The and we were there. Joe Green and his Olive and me. They had an automobile and I didn't. At the social we were given the war bonnet and these were to form the each month to which to complete the bonnet. You ask Catherine about the feathers. We called them eagle feathers but I think they got down where they Catherine had feathers all over the house. But it was for a good cause and she wasn't complaining. 

Today June 4, 1932 Joe Green and I went up with 18 boys responding to a call from to clean up campsites along the creek. Joe went up the with a group of boys from the rest of us just were organized and sent to work. Friday June 12, 1933 - The troupe went to Wigwam and stayed overnight and again on June 9 some of the boys spent the night in the old back of Joe Green's house. From these two experiences we selected the to represent the troop at the Camparee which was to follow. 

Well, those are some of the things that happened when Joe and I were in scouting. Joe was called as a scoutmaster in 1933, 36, 39 so he didn't quit when he moved away. Here are some pictures showing his . Joe Green was a first them many things in scouting. Joe has gone on but he hasn't quit. Can't you conceive of the need of a leader of boys over there and not doing anything about it ? He liked boys and boys liked him. 

Everyone who visited him came away enriched because Joe never would complain but always had a chuckle and a smile and a laugh even when he was suffering. May we emulate Joe Green in his approval of things and his in doing the things he had to do and may we in Church in the work. May we live so that we may do nothing that will keep us from him when we get. 

In the name of Jesus Christ Amen. 

The many spaces that were left open, most likely were to be filled in later, but evidently never got around to it. Typed by son Joe Green.

[BACK]