Welcome to the James Alva Hendricks Family Blog

Throughout my life I have always been proud to be a Hendricks and to know so many of you. I have tried to live up to those who have gone before us, sacrificing so much so we could live where we live and have the things we have. We are all blessed with such a rich family history, preceded by so many people. This blog is a place where we can collect and share favorite family pictures, stories and memories of who we are. Please feel free to visit as often as possible and if there are things you want to add or correct, please contact any of the contributors listed on the right side panel. Desmond Tutu once said, "You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. Let us take the time and remember ours together. Mike



Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Annetta Lucinda Clifford Wilson autobiography


This is Ione's Grandmother's sister


Biography of Annetta Lucinda Clifford Wilson


            I was born at Providence, Cache County, Utah, March 29, 1863, the third daughter of John Price and Mary Lois VanLuven Clifford.  I had six sisters and one brother.  My parents were among the first of the Saints that were called upon to pioneer and settle Cache Valley.  My father was one of the Mormon Battalion and also an Indian Interpreter and could speak the language fluently.  They moved from Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah to Providence, before I was born, and remained there until 1876. 
            I was almost fourteen years of age when we moved to Clifton, Oneida County, Idaho.  Before going to Clifton, I was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 
            Prior to this time while still living in Providence, I had a very bad sick spell, which resulted in my throat becoming very sore, and my jaws were locked so tight that I could not even get a knife blade between my teeth.  It continued to be so for three or four weeks.  My father administered to me and my little sisters prayed for me.  They did all they could to relieve me, but it was so slow and painful.  Sometimes I thought I could not endure the pain.  One day my uncle told them to poultice my neck with coal oil and fat meat, which they did, and the pain and swelling was gone almost in a day or two so that I could begin to get my finger between my teeth. 
            When about sixteen years of age, I went to help Joseph Wilson’s wife, Lerona Monroe Wilson, one of our old neighbors that had been our neighbor before we had left Providence.  They moved from Providence to Clifton soon after we moved there.  While staying with Lerona Wilson and her husband, I became acquainted with her husband’s brother Oliver, who had at that time met with an accident while cutting timber for the Logan Temple, and had injured one of his legs.  We became attached to each other.  His mother was a widow and he was obliged to take care of her, as his other brother was also a cripple.  Oliver left Clifton and went with his mother and brother to Arizona.  He stayed there for about four years.  I never seemed to care for anyone else, nor did he. 
            After he had been in Arizona three or four years, he wrote to me to see if I was married.  No one knew that I had been praying for my absent lover to return, if he was not married or if his love for me had not changed, so I wrote and told him that I was still single.  We began writing to each other.  He also composed some beautiful verses and sent to me, which we learned to sing together, and also about which I will have more to relate farther on in this sketch of my life. 
            He came from his Arizona home on the Gila River in the fall of 1882.  He arrived in Gentile valley where I lived at that time.  I had moved there with my parents in 1880. 
            Shortly after his arrival, we were married on October 3, 1882 by Bishop Robert Williams, a minister of the Gospel.  On November 9, 1882, we went to Salt Lake and received our endowments.  We bought a little farm in Gentile Valley, but with us it was quite a struggle.  We did not have the necessary implements to run a farm, and my husband’s health was quite poorly, owing to the change in climate. 
            In July 23, 1883, our eldest child was born.  We named him Oliver Elbert.  When he was about six months old we sold our home in Gentile Valley for a team and wagon and moved to Logan.  We stayed there until about October when we started to go back to Arizona, as my husband thought he could do much better there than in Logan.  We put what few household effects we could carry, along with dishes, fruit and some potatoes also a pig that we had killed and salted down.  We had our wagon fixed with projections, so that we could put our bed on slats and trunks and other necessities underneath.  It seemed a great undertaking to me to start on this journey so late in the fall with our wagon loaded and just one small team of horses.  But we had faith that we would accomplish the journey all right, which we did, but we were two long months in the wild and storm. 
            Just after leaving Panguitch, Utah, we met a young man and his wife and another older Lady.  The young couple also had a young baby about two weeks old.  The young man had been on a mission and had only been home about a year and was again called to go to Arizona to help colonize that part of the Lord’s vineyard.  The young wife seemed to think that was almost too much to expect from them so soon after her husband had already been away from home so long, but they started out and trusted in the Lord to take care of them. 
            Two or three days afterwards, while we were traveling on our journey, we stopped at a little store to get some necessary supplies.  Those people bought some coffee, about two pounds.  We traveled about ten miles farther on before camping for the night.  When the older lady went to roast the coffee to prepare it for their supper, she saw in looking it over, a ten dollar gold piece.  Then she examined the rest of the coffee and found more until she had found sixty dollars in all in the two pounds of coffee.  How it got there was a mystery.  But they thought it was a gift from Heaven and was very thankful for it.  As no one came to claim it, they of course kept it.  We left those people where the road divided and went on our way towards the Gila River.  When we got to the Apache Mountains, it commenced to snow, and it kept getting deeper and the mountains were so thick with tall pines and trees all around us.  At last the snow got so deep that we could scarcely go on, and the hay and grain that we had brought along with us was almost gone.  There were two young men that were going over the mountains too that helped us to tramp the snow down so that the horses could get through.  Finally we had to take our wagon back in the timber and leave it.  Then they put the four horses on the one wagon and we went on over and got to my husband’s brother’s place in three or four days.  
            On the Gila River in Arizona just before Christmas, we built a cabin of logs and factory.  There were logs for the corners of the house, two logs set close together for the window and the door, then factory stretched around and tacked to the logs.  The door was of rough lumber and the roof was brush, then straw and dirt on top.  We lived there about four years and while there, our two girls, Lucinda and Elizabeth Mary, were born. 
            There two of the children got severely burned in the fireplace.  One morning about the coldest of the season, the eldest girl and boy were out playing.  They found some ice and, of course, had to play with it.  They got their fingers to aching and came in crying.  All at once I heard them scream.  I was in the bedroom making beds when they came in crying.  I ran in where they were and there was the oldest girl right in the fireplace.  It frightened me so at first that I could scarcely move, but I jerked her out of the fireplace and in so doing I upset the teakettle on the baby girl’s feet and legs.  She was sitting there by the first to warm her feet.  To say I was frantic wouldn’t be exaggerating.  By the time I got the fire put out on the one’s clothes and back to the one who was scalded, her woolen stockings had held the heat until the skin came off with the stockings.  A neighbor lady came in and helped me poultice and care for them, but there were weeks of suffering for the children and days of care and anxiety for their father and me.  They suffered severely for several weeks, in fact all winter.  They still have the scars, but through faith and the blessings of the Lord, they both recovered without losing the use of their limbs or any defect of eyes or hearing. 
            From this place, we took up a small farm near a cold spring that we thought was wonderful, it being so cold.  But we found that we could not drink the water.  The more we tried to, the worse it was.  Then we had to haul the drinking water in a barrel about a mile from the river.  That was not so bad when there was someone to haul it, but my husband took the measles and then the children all took them.  My second boy, Wallace, was born at the same time and the neighbors were a long way off.  The girl I had staying with me only stayed five days, and we really suffered for water.  The Bishop came and administered to my husband when he was delirious.  From then on he was much better and the children also were greatly improved.
            A little more than a year later, we moved to Dias, Mexico, where there was a colony of Mormons or Latter-day Saints.  There we took us a farm and built an adobe house with two rooms.  We worked hard to clear off the mosquito brush which grew in abundance all over the place.  Our stable was built of mud, like the adobes, also the fence around the house and grounds.  My husband’s health had been bad for some time past, and he was in hopes he would have better health here than in Arizona. 
            When my second girl, Lizzie, was five years old, and Wallace about three, they were lost from just before sundown until noon of the following day.  That was certainly a shock to us, coming at a time when I thought I had all that I could stand.  But we do not know just what we can stand until we have to pass through the deep waters. 
            My husband, that morning had agreed to take a lady that was in town to her children several miles away from where we lived.  He was not feeling very well and I would much rather he would not go, but he was owing this woman, Mrs. Boyce, for a horse he had bought from her.  Therefore, he felt obliged to go and move her load of household goods to where she had left her children.  He said to me, “Nettie, there are several little errands I wish you would attend to, as I am in a hurry to get started.”  So I left my baby four months old with the older children and went with him.  While I was doing those errands for him, he was loading the wagon and in so doing he had a very severe heart attack.  I saw his team tied up and though I would speak to him before he went.  When I got to the door I saw the Elders administering to him.  He soon recovered enough to talk to me and soon got up.  I told my oldest boy to go and see how the baby was.  It was about four blocks to where we lived.
            It was a very hot day in July.  We had had no rain for several weeks, and that day seemed hotter than any other.  The first thing I knew, my boy came carrying the baby bareheaded.  The baby just looked at me and smiled a little then fainted or went unconscious.  It frightened all of us, and they said he was sun struck.  We did what we could and got the Elders for him also.  But he still continued to cramp and was in so much pain.  However, the woman we were indebted to still wanted Oliver, my husband, to go on with the load.  I begged him not to go and leave me with the baby so sick and himself so miserable.  But he said, “I must go, but if the baby doesn’t get better soon, send a boy after me and I will come back.”
            I was worried about my other children and I could feel a storm coming up, so I asked the boy if would go after my husband as the baby was no better, then I started for home.  When I was about a half a block from home there was a loud clap of thunder.  I heard a child cry out, and such a worried feeling came over me.  I heard a voice say to me, “What if you never hear that voice again!”  I hurried on with such a feeling of dread I could scarcely walk.  When I got to the house not one of the children was there.  My washing was on the line.  I knew that I would have to have dry clothes for my baby, so I laid him down, sick as he was, and went to gather the clothes in.  All the while I was calling to the children.  Just as I was coming in with the clothes, Oliver came in the door.  I told him the children were lost.  He said he thought they were coming with the cow, as he had heard the bell.  But he was so weak he could hardly stand, so I left him with the baby and went to find them.  However, I could hear two cow bells.  I was undecided as to which one was our bell.  As I would start for the one, I was afraid the other would be the right one so I ran back to the house and said, “Oh, Oliver, which is our cow bell?  I can’t tell, and the storm is coming on very fast.”  So he went himself to look for them.  He had scarcely gone when the storm broke.  Oh!  How it did rain!  It seemed as though it came in streams.  In a few minutes Oliver came in with the two oldest children.  The two youngest were not with them as we had thought they would be.  We sent the oldest boy to his uncle’s to tell him the children were lost, and to notify the town.  It was not long before there were men and boys from everywhere all anxious to join in the search.  They had lanterns and torches, but the night was so dark and it turned out so cold that they could not accomplish anything.  About two o’clock in the morning they had to give up the search until daylight.  Then they started out again.  They were to give the signal as soon as the children were found.  They were to fire their guns and ring the curfew.  But when the time went by and no guns were heard, I began to get so discouraged and uneasy, I just felt as though I could not endure it.  Some of the neighbors were with me.  They tried to encourage me.  At last we heard shouting and it was not long before they came in with the children.  It was about eleven o’ clock.  Then what a relief.  No one knows unless he has experienced something similar.  Our Bishop’s son was the one to first see them and they had lain out all night in the storm and cold with the coyotes and wild animals all around them.  They had had nothing to eat except the wild beans they had gathered before the storm overtook them.  It was the darkest night I ever saw, and many a prayer was rendered in their behalf.  They did not take cold or seem to have suffered in any way except the little boy, about three years old, was just about exhausted.  They had walked about three miles and then the Bishop’s son came across them when they were going towards home as unconcerned as could be.  He asked them where they had been, and they told him, “Oh, we just camped back there under a hackberry bush.”  Zeno Johnson, the boy who came across them first, said in Fast Meeting that before he found them he knelt down and prayed fervently to the Lord to guide him aright, that he would know the right direction to take, and he would take that as a testimony that the gospel taught by the Latter-day Saints was true and that prayers could be answered.  He got up and started in a different direction than he had been going, and in a short time came across the little fellow.  Guns were fired and the curfew rang to call all the searchers in, and all the town rejoiced to hear that they had been found.  The account of this incident was published in the Juvenile Instructor either that same fall or in the summer of 1893.
            At this time, flour was such a high price we could not get the means to buy it with.  We tried to sell our team or anything we had for flour, but there was none to be had that we could find without the ready cash.  We had to make bread of cornmeal and make hominy of the corn until I though I could not eat another bite.  I got so weak and hungry, I just though I would give almost anything for a piece of flour bread.  One morning, it being Fast Day, I thought I would fast and pray that the Lord would open up the way for us to get some flour, that I was almost starving on the cornmeal.  I went to Fast Meeting, and one of our neighbors told me that her husband had just returned with a load of flour.  I asked if they would sell us some, and they let us have seventy five cents worth.  But that was not very much, as flour was $6.00 per 100 pounds.  Then my husband got a chance to take loads of wheat over to the other valley and bring flour back, and he took flour for his work, which he was very thankful to do.  We still had some of the flour he had earned when he died.  From that day to this, I have never had to eat corn bread, which I am very thankful for. 
            In the year 1896, in the month of January, my husband was taken very ill with Typhoid Pneumonia.  He was so seriously ill that I felt very concerned about him.  I sent for the Elders and had him administered to, but instead of him improving as he always had done before, he continued to grow worse.  I went out to pray for him and ask the Lord if it was possible for him to recover, that he would heal him and make him well, but I did not get any consoling influence or any ray of hope from my prayer.  I went in the house to change my dress, as the one I had on was quite badly soiled.  I just had one good gingham dress, as my other house dress needed mending, and I just could not get time to mend it.  So I thought I would put on my best dress while he was in bed.  Just as I put out my hand to take it down off the nail, a voice said to me in a loud whisper, “Don’t you put that on!  You know that it is the best dress you have, and the only dress you have to wear to his funeral.”  I sank down on a chair overcome with grief, for I knew then beyond a doubt that would not recover.  Just a week from that day, about an hour before he died, I heard a voice exactly like my husband’s say to me, “May we meet again in heaven.”  He was unconscious and could not speak, but I knew it was his desire that that should be so.  Those words were in the last verse of the song he composed and sent to me before he came for me to marry him.  We had learned to sing that song together to the tune of The Gypsey’s Warning.  After he died, I could hear him pleading with me to sit down by him and sing our little song, but I just felt as though I could not do it.  The people would think I had lost my mind, but he seemed to say, “You will be helped.  You will surprise yourself.”  But I just could not raise the courage to do so.  Then I felt so disappointed and down-hearted.  I felt like I had shirked at my responsibility and left something undone.  I felt that I ought to have done so that night.  Finally I said, “Oliver, in the morning I will sing our son for you before they take you away.”  Which I did and I really was surprised at myself.  I did not feel afraid of anything it seemed.  I felt that he was right there helping me.  And after I had sung the song to him, I felt as I had pleased him in doing so and that I had accomplished something that he was anxious for me to do.  For so many hours those words of the song which we had sung together had been ringing in my ears, “May we meet again in Heaven, where our joys will have no end.”
            At the time of his death I was left with six small children…a baby girl about 3 months old.  I was glad to procure work of almost any kind, washing, housecleaning, or anything to help support my children.  I will not go into detail of how we all tried to live the next five years, but the Lord was kind to us.  We all lived and got along somehow, and the Bishop was kind and like a father to us.  I have always been grateful to him and my Heavenly Father for helping me in my hours of trial.
            The Folks wrote and wanted me to come back to Utah, and Idaho, so about the 10th of April, 1901, I started back to my people in Utah and Idaho.  My mother at that time lived in Smithfield, Utah.  My sisters, two of them lived in Idaho.  I lived in Smithfield three years.  Then I became acquainted with William Chadwick.  I married him and moved to Franklin, Idaho.  Several years after William Chadwick died, I sold my home in Franklin, and moved to Preston, Idaho where I still reside.  I have been greatly blessed in many ways and I thank my Heavenly Father for His kind and watchful care and guidance. 
            I am now almost sixty-eight years old.  I have five living children all married and with families of their own.  And when the time come for me to leave this earth and go to a better one, I hope to meet my husband, Oliver, and all other dear ones, and again be reunited with them.  And again may we sing our song together, and may the beautiful thoughts come true that “We will meet again in Heaven, where our joys will have no end.” 

                                                                                    Annette Lucinda Clifford Wilson

Written by her sister, Mrs. Rosa A. Sant
Typewritten by her grand niece Orella Sant Bunce, on March 10, 1931 (First typing)
Typed on Word 2012 by her great great grand niece Stacey Hendricks Goodman









Courtship and Marriage
Composed by Oliver C. Wilson

1.     Down beside the Gila River
Where its water swiftly glide
How my heart with joy would quiver
If you were by my side.

2.     Oh, I’d be a happy creature
If you were with me today
But alas! That ne’er can be so,
For you’re miles away.

3.     Oh, there’s many miles between us
Thou art nearest to my heart
And I hope that the time is nearing
When we meet no more to part.

4.     How I long to see you, darling
And all sorrow cast aside
And be happy every after
When you do become my bride.

5.     Now I’ve started on my journey
Towards you now I swiftly glide
And I pray the Lord to bless me
With an angel for my guide.

6.     May he shield me from all danger
Vice and folly may I shun,
Through this world of sin and sorrow
Till at length the race is run.

7.     Now my journey it is over
And you have become my wife. 
And I pray that we’ll be happy
And always lead a pleasant life.

8.     When this toilsome life is over,
And we’ve left all earthly friends
May we meet again in Heaven
Where our joy will have no end.


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