Simeon Harmon Dunn - His school days

Part 2 of 4 parts

During my boyhood in Eastdale, I worked on a farm, milked cows and did any other work to help. Times were hard, no money and we had to make our own amusements. At first we held dances in private homes. We were well blessed with musicians, there being five or six men in town who played the violin. My mother had a small organ that we carried from our home to the place where we held dances to accompany the violin and I usually played it. We had a good time.

Later, a log schoolhouse was built where he held all public gatherings. Quite often a dinner for everybody in town was held at this schoolhouse. Everybody was friendly and we had good times. During the summer of 1895, I worked in Sanford for Ira Whitney, helping make adobes and building. In the summer and fall of 1895, I drove the horses that run the thresher, six teams on a horsepower thresher.

I had been thinking of going to Utah to school as there were no high schools here, so one day a young man and woman came to the thresher to find someone to help take a team and wagon to Odgen, Utah. I quit my job and in company of Steve Spiker of Manassa, we started for Utah in October 1896. We were about three weeks on the road and landed in Huntington, Utah, the day of election when McKinley was elected President of the United States. My Grandmother and uncle lived there. My uncle was superintendent of the Co-op store. A telephone line had just beeen completed from Price, 25 miles north on the railroad and one phone in the store was all there was in town and men stayed in the store all night to get election news as it came over the wire. This was the first phone I ever saw or heard.

I was 19 that fall. I lived with my Grandmother, Eunice Chidester Harmon, through the winter and attended Huntington Seminary, a church school, where high school subjects as well as religion was taught. A. E. Wall was the teacher. I was ordained a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood by Bishop Peter Johnson and set apart as a counselor in the presidency of the quorum where I served that winter. An uncle, Oliver Harmon and family also lived in Huntington. The oldest boy, Oliver T., and I attended a music class where we studied vocal music under Professor Hardy. My mother was a good singer and I inherited some of her talent and was glad to have a chance to improve along that line.

Nothing of great importance went on except school work through the winter of 1897. The streets and roads were solid with snow so we had sleigh riding. When spring came and school was out, I went by train to Toquerville in Utah's Dixie, to work for Levi N. Harmon, another brother of my mother. I spent the summer on a small farm, irrigating orchards, alfalfa, and cutting and stacking the hay ten acres will produce. In this part of the country, the hay is cut four or five times a year. In the fall I helped pick peaches, grapes, and almonds, etc.

When school time came, I went to St. George, about 25 miles away, and spent the winter there in schoool with John T. Woodbury as teacher. I stayed at the home of another uncle, Melvin N. Harmon. He went with me and introduced me to the teacher and I was a homesick boy. As soon as opening exercises were over, a young man, Jospeh W. Webb, came and sat down by me and introduced himself and from then on we were together most of the time. A young lady, Della Rideing, also came and introduced herself. From then on, I made friends fast. I joined the baseball team (in Dixie they play all winter) and in many ways had good times besides attending to church duties as they were in the L.D.S church.

When school was out, I went back to Toquerville where my uncle Levi was getting ready to move to Castle Valley. Before leaving St. George, I was ordained an Elder by Edward H. Snow of the St. George Bishopric, and went through the Temple. My uncle and I went to Huntington by team and wagon, taking about a week to travel there. I again stayed with my grandmother. Shortly after arriving in Huntington, I took sick with some kind of fever and wasn't able to do any work for about a month. After getting well, I helped farmers put up hay and harvest grain.

During the summer, Professor Hardy organized a choir of 125 voices from several towns to attend and compete in a singing festival in Salt Lake City in October and I was chosen as one of the singers. The first part of September I went to Castle Gate and worked for the Rio Grand Railroad for a month and then went to Salt Lake to take part in the singing contest, 125 country people and we sure had a swell time. Of course we didn't win, but we had the time of our lives. Just singing in the Tabernacle was a thrill that I'll never forget.

Taken from Simeon Harmon Dunn's own history found in "A History of the Ancestors and Descendants of Simeon Harmon Dunn and Anna Buletta Jensen," Compiled by Vera Louise Olivier and published privately June, 1993, pp21 - 23