HOLMES SIGNE SHORT STORY

HISTORY of

SIGNE ELISABETH HOLMES 

by SIGNE

                 I was born 21 June, 1904 at Frisco, Utah.  It is a small mining town, one of the first silver and lead mines in Utah.  My Mother Lisa Antbrams Holmes, had no doctor only a mid-wife.  She and my sister, Edith, had just come over from Vora, Wasa, Finland in the Summer of 1903.  My Father, John E. Holmes came in 1902 (immigration records indicate 1 September 1900).  He worked in Michigan for a while for 50 cents a day on the railroad tracks.  He came to Bingham and got work at the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company.  He could have bought shares at the Utah Copper at the time for four cents a share.  But he decided to work in Frisco.

My Mother said she regretted leaving their home in Finland because she had it much nicer there.  She lived in part of her mother-in-laws home, Brita Maria Holmes.  Her husband (my father) was an only child.

sister, Edith, was born in Finland.  I had one brother who was born in Wasa and died there at age two.  My sister often tells how good her grandmother was.  She was about seven years old when she crossed the ocean to come to America with mother. She was a big help to mother because she did not get seasick.  They landed in Liverpool, England, and Edith said there were many poor children and big work horses there.  She told a little of New York, the slums near the waterfront and the many people who lived there.  They boarded a train for Frisco, Utah, which they thought must be the end of the world, for they never saw a worse place, so desolate and worn down.  Water had to be brought in by train and sold for 5 cents per bucket.  Five cents in those days was a lot of money.

We moved to Eureka when I was about three months old.  I was baptized into the Lutheran Church and Christened when I was about a year old.  I had four Godparents.  We lived in Eureka until I was eight years old.  I remember going to many vaudeville shows with Dad, also the Ringling Brothers' Circus. My mother ran a boarding house and my sister worked very hard there.  I remember one Fourth of July very well even though

I was only six.  I slept with my sister, Edith.  She had bought a pretty umbrella, a new hat, shoes, stockings

and a pretty white dress which she pressed before retiring, but she forgot to put out the candle when she dropped off to sleep.  Soon we were awakened by mother who said the house was on fire.  Edith dragged me out of bed and we ran outside.  Dad put out the fire; it had burned all of Edith's Fourth of July clothes.  If she had taken time to hang them in the closet, they would not have gotten burned, but she left them on