History of Rhoda Jane Bone Blamires

Rhoda Jane Bone Blamires

Rhoda Jane Bone was born June 24, 1858 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. Her father, William Henry Bone, was born August 21, 1837 at Exeter, Devon, England and was the son of Richard Bone, born about 1802 in Kennford, Devonshire, England, and Elizabeth Anstey who was christened October 8, 1802 in Kennford, Devonshire, England. Rhoda’s mother, Ellen Carter, was born June 24, 1837 in Price Rock, Devonshire, England. She was the daughter of Edwin J. Carter and Mary Ann Stockdale. Edwin J. Carter was born 1810 or 1811 at Whitechurch, Devonshire, England and was a stone mason and died after an accident while working in a quarry at East Lynn on June 10, 1842. Mary Ann Stockdale Carter (Martin by a second marriage) was born at Penryn, Cornwall, England, baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1851 at Ledbury, England and died May 20 1898 at Stone, Idaho and was buried at Snowville, Utah. Rhoda’s parents were married August 13, 1854 at Devonshire, England. They were endowed and sealed for time and all eternity on March 24, 1865 at the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

They were the parents of twelve children.

Rhoda’s parents, William and Ellen, heard and accepted the gospel while still in England. Since Ellen’s mother, her sister’s Jane, seventeen and Mary Ann, sixteen, her half-brother, James Martin, ten, had sailed to America on the sailing vessel, Thornton, leaving England on May 4, 1856, arriving in New York on June 14, 1856, where they stayed about three years, except Jane who married William Mortin Harris, and came to Utah with a handcart company arriving in Salt Lake City on September 4, 1859, they too decided to come to America. They left friends, home and country and with their baby daughter, Mary, set sail from Liverpool on the sailing vessel “George Washington” on March 28, 1857 arriving in New York the 23^rd of April 1857, where they remained about four years and where her father followed his trade as a shoe maker. While in New York, William and Rhoda were born, but in 1861 William, Ellen and their children, Ellen’s mother Mary Ann Stockdale Martin and Mary Ann’s son James Martin, left New York to continue on to Zion. They rode the train as far as Florence, Nebraska, and then by ox team they crossed the plains in the Milo Andrus Independent Company, arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah, on September 12, 1861 and went directly to Kaysville, Utah, where Ellen’s two sisters, Jane and Mary Ann were living.

Rhoda’s father, William Henry Bone, as a child had the misfortune to break his leg in the knee joint. It was improperly set, re-broken and re-set again but he was left a cripple and unable to walk long distances. As a result, while crossing the plains he and the two little girls, Mary and Rhoda, alternated, they walking while he rode and he walking while they rode.

Upon their arrival in Kaysville, Rhoda’s father purchased a two room house at approximately Fourth North and Second West where they lived until he built a home on property purchased from Jesse Dredge between First and Second North and Main Street in Kaysville. This was a brick home. They moved into it in 1865, in 1871 extra rooms were added and a shoe shop at the south east corner of the lot where people from neighboring towns came to have fancy shoes made. This was a well built house and is still occupied in 1970, almost one hundred years later. The east wall of the Fort which enclosed about twenty-six blocks of the town of Kaysville ran in front of their home. It was built as a protection from the Indians but by this time it was not needed as the Indians had become friendly to the Saints who had treated them kindly.

Rhoda was a beautiful child, but delicate. She had violet blue eyes, dark lashes, fair complexion and brown curly hair which she wore in ringlets, except occasionally when she came from school and she had had someone braid it to be like the other children. She attended school into the third “reader”, having to take turns with other members of the family and sharing slate and state pencil with them. School was held in the basement of the unfinished church. It had a dirt floor and was cold and dark. The seats were hand-hewn slabs of wood resting on wooden blocks. When the building was completed, they met in the upper rooms which had more light and warmer, but Rhoda attended very little at that time. She was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on June 6, 1866.

The children had no toys but made rag dolls, corn cob dolls and in the summer, hollyhock dolls and trimmed burdock leaves with wild flowers for play hats for themselves. Nothing could be wasted. They were sometimes given dry crusts of bread which they played were ships. They floated them down a stream which flowed in front of their home until the bread was soft enough to eat.

It was necessary for everyone to help with work and as Rhoda’s father was a cheerful man she loved to go to the foothills with him to gather sumac which he used to prepare leather for shoes, and oak brush which he split into long thin strips, after which she cut the strips into small pegs to be used in place of shoe tacks to fasten the soles on the shoes as there were no shoe nails. She and her sister Mary dug sego roots and picked edible greens and water cress in the spring and later in the summer gathered service berries, choke cherries, elder berries and Pottawatomie plums which were very juicy and sweet but had tough sour skins. These fruits were preserved in molasses and stored in stone crocks for winter use. In the fall they went into the field and gleaned grain left by the harvesters and gathered dry peas and beans. They gathered sage brush, wood, buffalo chips or anything they could find that could be burned for heat and cooking. There were no matches so fires were started by striking flint on a shovel, letting the spark fall onto dried leaves or shavings, then blowing on it quickly until it ignited, or if a neighbor had smoke coming from his chimney they would borrow an ember on a shovel or wrapped in some cloth, running home as fast as possible before the ember died or burned the cloth. Bread was baked in a Dutch oven or a three legged iron pot by heaping red embers around it. They obtained saleratus or soda by scraping it from the ground where it formed near the shores of the Great Salt Lake. They gathered salt from ponds built on the shore of the lake where the water was left to evaporate.

When Rhoda was eleven years old her father took his family by ox team to Weber Canyon to watch the first train come through to Ogden. The brass band played and it was a very exciting occasion. Two years later she took her first trip to Salt Lake City by train. One day as the train came through Kaysville it was discovered that a car carrying red and blue denim was on fire. The burning material was tossed along the right of way and people gathered the bolts which had charred ends. Rhoda and Mary were there but the noon whistle sounded so they ran home because their mother insisted they be on time for their meals. Upon telling their mother she sent them back but all had been gathered except small pieces.

While Rhoda was still a young girl she went to live with Rose Layton whom she loved dearly and with whom she lived until her marriage. In 1877 she joined the Retrenchment Society which later became know as the Young Women’s Mutual Association, just two years after it was organized by President Brigham Young.

In 1869 Mary Kershaw Blamires brought her family to Kaysville from England, the eldest child being a young man of eighteen years named Lambert. Rhoda at this time was a little girl of eleven years old, but a few years later he noticed her and invited her to attend a “May Day” celebration to be held on May first at Lake Park, a resort on the shore of the Great Salt Lake just west and south of Kaysville. She accepted his invitation and he called for her in a brand new wagon and team of horses which he had just purchased. Every girl had a new dress and sun bonnet for “May Day” and Rhoda was no exception. After her death, the following story was told to Frank Blamires, Rhoda’s son, by Hector Haight who owned a farm near the resort. “As Lambert and Rhoda arrived in the new wagon, its red wheels glistening in the sun, the horses fat and shiny, Rhoda with a new blue calico dress and sun bonnet, blue eyes and brown curls they made a handsome couple and Rhoda was chosen “Queen of the May”. This friendship ripened into love and they were married on November 19, 1877 by President John Taylor. On November 6, 1879 they went to the Endowment House in Salt Lake City for their endowments and were sealed for time and all eternity.

Their first child, Mary Ellen (Ella), was born on February 26, 1879 at Lambert’s mother’s home on her natal day and to them was born six more children. For about two years they rented a home on the corner of First West and First North where Frank Herbert was born on March 16, 1881 but between 1881 and 1883 they bought their first home located on the corner of First North and Second East where Cinthy Frances was born on September 23, 1883. They later traded this home along with eleven lots, some hay and grain, commodities which Lambert had accepted as payment for work he had done, for twenty six acres of land south of Kaysville. Together they acquired other land near by and built it all into a place of beauty and peacefulness. Lambert was a successful farmer and Rhoda was an excellent homemaker, always busy and helping as she could. Their first house on the farm was one large room built of two-by-fours laid flat upon one another. This room was sub-divided into four smaller rooms with a hallway in the middle. Later a long lean-to was built on the back, the walls of which were covered with white calico with little pink roses. George Lambert was born in this home while their new brick home was being built. He was born on December 23, 1887. They later used this home for a granary and the lean-to as a storage shed and work shop. Before 1890 the brick house was completed and the other children, Lawrence bone, May 10, 1890, Clyde, June 13, 1893 and Albert May, May 1, 1897, were born there.

Lambert and Rhoda added to their property until they had over one hundred acres of cultivated land and some pasture land. They planted almost every variety of fruit, berry and grape that would grow in that climate. Before glass jars were available for canning, Rhoda cooked the fruits with a little sugar, poured it into a platter or plates and dried it in the sun. This could be lifted off in a sheet, put into white bags and stored for winter, and then a little water added and brought to boil and was like fresh fruit. Tomatoes were stored this same way. She also dried apples, apricots, plums, corn and peaches which when Lambert hauled hay in the winter time to Salt Lake, he sold to the stores there. Potatoes, apples, carrots and cabbage were stored in straw-lined pits for winter use. Beans were allowed to dry on the vines, at which time they were picked, laid on a canvas wagon cover, beaten with a broom or trampled by the children, and then when a stiff wind came they were tossed by handfuls into the air, the chaff was blown away the beans falling to the canvas. In the winter evenings she spent much time tearing carpet rags and sewing them, cutting quilt blocks, knitting stocking for the family and mending. For several years she did not have a sewing machine so all sewing was done by hand. Her baby clothes were a work of art, tiny even stitches done rapidly by her nimble fingers.

Rhoda found time for church duties, being a visiting teacher in Relief Society, twenty years of that with the same partner, Jane Layton. She taught a class in Primary and one in Religion class. Many, many hours were spent in compassionate service, sitting with the sick, sewing for the needy or whatever the call was. She loved to attend quilting and carpet rag bees where the women visited but did not waste time.

On the sixth of November 1903, tragedy struck their home. Their youngest son, Clyde, was shot with and “unloaded” gun. She mourned so deeply that it was making her ill. One afternoon she lay down weeping bitterly and dozed off to sleep. She said it seemed that Clyde stood by her side and told her not to mourn, that he was happy and that the family was suffering because of her grief. She immediately took up her old way of life and although she mourned it was in private.

At the end of May 1910 they turned the farm over to their sons and bought a home in town, the same property that they owned in 1883 with the old home still standing, but a new one just east of it. They again planted trees and flowers and a lady who lived across the street said “I love to look over there, it is so delightsome.”

Lambert passed away on June 11, 1922 and Rhoda lived alone but love for children helped her through her lonely hours. She kept a table with a jig-saw puzzle in her living room where the neighborhood children spent many hours. She entertained them with stories and with her clever scissors cut beautiful designs, made paper flowers and fancy Easter eggs. Many of the children called her “Grandma”. One little girl who wanted to see her before her burial said “one day I was going home from school crying with the cold. “Grandma” called me, let me sit by the stove with my feet on the oven door and gave me some hot soup. When I was warm I went home.”

By this time Rhoda’s hair was creamy white and still wavy, her complexion clear and beautiful and her eyes as blue as the sky. She was very agile and at seventy five could place her palms on the floor without bending her knees and seemed to be in very good health, but on the morning of October 9, 1933 when she arose she was stricken with a heart attack which took her life three hours later, her family around her. Her Patriarchal Blessing read in part “It is your privilege to live upon the earth until you are satisfied with this life.” This blessing was fulfilled as she had said she did not want to go through another winter. She lived a good life, but was ready to go. She often remarked how kind her neighbors were and how she loved them.

She was a member of the Phillips Camp of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers and was a pioneer in her own right. All of her children survived her except Clyde, also thirty grandchildren. One little granddaughter had passed away in infancy. We all remember her exemplary life and honor and love her for it. Proverbs 31:10-31 describes the kind of person she was and I mention it as a fitting tribute to her.

I remember her for her cheerful disposition, her kindness and gentleness, and love and honor her for her exemplary life and the teachings she gave us.

Written by her daughter Alberta May Blamires Streeper Sept 1970