HOUGHTON SOCIAL HIERARCHY by EUGENE

Social Hierarchy

By Eugene

Charles   Catherine Houghton

Let the reeve be all the time with the serfs (peasants) in the lord's fields.....because serfs neglect their work and it is necessary to guard against their fraud......the reeve must oversee all work...........if they (serfs) do not work well, let them be punished.

It was not much of a life for the poor.  They were his property and if they displeased him he could simply have them beaten or killed.  In Scotland, and Ireland thousands of people were forcible driven from their ancestral homes when raising sheep was more convenient or profitable.       

Well, that time has passed, and the “masterless” peasant could now leave the “Lord’s” fields.  But where could an uneducated farmer go.  The industrial revolution was slowly changing the power of the land owner over his serfs.  He no longer owned his farmers and workers, so he had  to pay a reasonable wage to keep them on his estate.   

Charles   Johnny  Bill Houghton

The “Gentle Folk as they liked to be called lived entirely off rental income and management of their land; they never had to work for a living.  Squire John Robert Champion ancestral family owned the Georgian Mansion with its deer park and 600 acres 3/5’s of Heather and the home of Earl Howe.  Champion belonged to the “Gentry” rather than the Nobility, but like the nobility they were privileged not to work for a living.  A bailiff managed the estate, servants to run the household a estate.  He visited, played cards, had dinner parties, hunted and whatever he cared to do, all with other Gentry.  He had little contact with other classes except for the Reverent of the Church who mingled equally with the Land Lords. 

Church was the only place all the classes were gathered together but they were seated separately. 

The middle class were the farmers, craftsmen, school teachers and tradesmen. 

The coalminers and brick workers were near the bottom. 

But as always there were the really poor who were close to starvation.  Unemployment, sickness, death or drunkenness of a breadwinner or old age was the poor-poor.  Debts meant starvation or being sent to a debtor’s prison (workhouse).     

The Gentry cared little for the people or their town.  At night Heather was dark at night, there were no street lights.  No running water, water was carried in buckets to the home from a few wells.  No sewage, just outhouses out back.  No garbage collection, rubbish was burnt or buried in the garden.  Medical treatment was mostly nonexistent.  Typhoid fever and scarlet fever outbreaks were common as well as other diseases.  With the railroad, brick plant and the coalmines it was smoky and noisy.

They did have a national school system but little money ever came to the town.  The children at Heather paid a weekly fee, so the poor were left mostly illiterate.  There was no secondary education school in Heather. Charles and Catherine Burrows Houghton had lost five children living in Heather.  When the Mormon Missionaries promised that they would have more children and they would all live if he came to America.  Charles Arthur, Wilfred and John Thomas were born and lived here in Castle Gate, Utah

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SMITH OLD FARM in MYTON, UTAH by ROWE SMITH

Grandma Sarah Sariah   Grandpa Jack Smith

Old Farm Memories of the Past

By William Rowe Smith

For several days a gnawing urge haunted my mind to visit the “Old Farm” and the area where is spent my youth.  Old Farm is located in the north-east corner of Utah’s Uinta basin.  Duchesne is the County Seat, Roosevelt is the largest town, Myton is where Grandpa Yokum and the four boys fount the whisky still in my story “The Old West Never Dies.  The farm is twelve miles upriver from Myton.   The graves of my parents and a brother are in the Roosevelt cemetery.  The graves of my two sisters are in a tiny cemetery four miles up road from the old farm.Last Friday our eldest son, Steve, and I drove through Daniels Canyon on the way to the Old Farm.  Twenty five years have passed since I used to drive Daniel’s Canyon weekly, to inspect my schools under construction.  It’s a darn lot longer than that, since I left the Old Farm.

We left Salt Lake just as the morning sun was starting to warm the valley.  It was a quarter to nine when we entered Daniel’s Canyon.  Sunbeams were dancing off the mountain to our west, ticking the bright yellow autumn leaves of the Aspin.  A slight breeze though to sparkling leaves tinkled them like chimes.   Leaves of Cadmium Yellow blended into Ochre then Orange as the sun rays accentuated the red leaves of the Scrub Oak.  I closed my eyes tight to register and frame that beautiful autumn scene in my mind.  The God of my heart is female, her name is Mother Nature.  Heaven is right here this morning. 

We turned off the highway, down into Tabby Valley, where years ago I hunted deer, and where I put my gun away, never to hunt again.  On that hunt, my seven-year-old son and a friend walked into a large patch of willows by a small trickling stream.  From across the valley I heard someone yell, “There’s a deer in there I saw it move.”  A rifle shot echoed like thunder wall to wall as the sound raced up the canyon.

I screamed. “There are people in there.”  Two more shot rang out from across the valley, then a third.  The third came from my rifle, as the bullet ricocheted off a rock and whined through the air.  It got the attention of the idiots.  Our boys came running out of the willows.  That was my last deer hunt and the last gun I ever fired. 

This memory faded

Sara Sariah with Jack

as we approached the farm where my Abplanalp grandparents spent more than half their life.  Nothing was there, no log cabin so precious in my memory bank, no corals, just nothing.   The fields were there, but not a think to tweak my memory.  

From there we stopped in Duchesne and spent an enjoyable hour visiting mu Aunt Helen.  Her husband my Uncle Tom is gone now and the last ten children.  On, down the river, to “Old Farm”.   On the way we stopped for a time at the cemetery where my sisters, Deon who died at the age of seven, and one year old Barbara are buried.  A small stone nearby marked the grave of my Uncle Lynn.  As we drove down the road I could see Old Farm across the large reservoir of water.  My God, I thought, what has happened to the beautiful row of giant cottonwood trees along the ditch bank, in front of the house.   I remember they reached the sky.  And the great willow tree that I recall as the largest, most beautiful tree in the whole world.  So many years have passed since I swung in the tire swing of that old willow tree.  Where has it gone?

I was driving at the time.  As we circled the reservoir and started down the narrow dirt tracks atop the dike there was a heavy feeling of emptiness in my heart.  I kept going slower and slower not realizing what I was doing until the car the car chugged and stalled.  We sat there for a few moments.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  Steven had not said a word, he started to say something and choked back his words.  So many years have passed for me; Steven was recalling even more years since he had spent many summers with Grandpa and Grandma Smith on Old Farm. (Jack and Sara Sariah)

William and Barbara Abplanap

I had forgotten about the old farmhouse burning down years ago.  An ugly stucco box like thing has the audacity to occupy the very spot, where the simple frame farmhouse, held us in its arms.  The old granary is still there, leaning like it was ready to give up and collapse.  It’s the only thing from Old Farm.  No corrals, nothing but dead limbs and stumps of the once handsome cottonwoods. The orchard that fed us well, for many years, is now only dead stumps and dry limbs reaching out like praying for rain.  The final shock was the willow tree reaching out with a thousand bony arms begging me to remember how I loved and cherished the cool shade I would lie under, after a hard day’s work in the hot sun.  We did not wander around the fields as I had intended.  I was not even sad or disappointed.  My emotions were as empty as the as the alkali flat where our haystack and corrals once stood. Come back again to the Old Farm? No way, never again!  It lives now, only in memory.

From Old Farm we drove twelve miles downriver to Myton.  Grandpa Yokum is long gone as the old bank where he and the boys discovered the whisky still.

On to Roosevelt, we stopped at the cemetery and stood a while at my parents, and brother’s graves.  Fresh again in my mind was the February day I stood at the flower covered grave of my mother.  I thought again, as I thought before, those dry bones in the vault below are only the worldly vehicle that carried those beautiful souls as they treaded down the path of life.  One day, as it is with everyone, my footprints in the dust of that path will slowly fade and end.

We had lunch in Roosevelt and then drove the back road to the mountains to Altamont.  My niece and husband have an Elk hunting lodge there, called “LC Ranch.  A crew there was filming a so-called “Hunt” for a television show that will air next June.   Steve and I were driven along a six and a half fence that encloses fifteen hundred acres of Cedar trees where the elk run, to see and hear all about the operation.  It is a serious business but I have to say that with a bit of tongue in cheek.  Well-healed hunters they call “Shooters” pay up to twenty nine thousand dollars for the chance to shoot one of those beautiful Bull Elk

Sara Sariah  Jack

.

That evening we were invited to have dinner with the film crew.  The crew; an elk ranch promoter, a camera man, a “shooter” who shot with a muzzle loading gun and two “shooters” introduced as an attorney  and wife from Texas.  The camera man hooked the camera to a television set and showed us two kills he filmed that day.  Once upon a time I hunted deer and on occasion elk.  I never even saw an elk, during two long days of tramping through the brush,  “Hunting”.  The film left me sorry for the elk that trusted the people who raised and fed them.  They stood broadside on the horizon looking down at those strange people in fatigue clothes, lying prone on stomachs, resting their great powerful guns across a flat rock.  BANG!!

Next morning we returned to Salt Lake.  Really, no Old Farm memories occupying our minds, our minds were filled with the beautiful trusting Elk and the “BANG” still fresh, still haunting.

BURROWS in CROSSWAYS COTTAGE ENGLAND by KATHLEEN DAWN BURROWS

BURROWS IN CROSSWAYS COTTAGE ENGLAND

23 October 2005

Dear Gene

  I cannot thank you enough for all the trouble you have taken in re-uniting me with the Burrows side of my family. I had to smile to myself when you said that son John had received a negative response from the family he spoke to in England. My own father’s reply when I questioned him was “they are dead. Leave them in peace”. But I was not at peace. I needed to know. Fortunately, with Dad being the youngest child, and knowing roughly the number of children born into the family, I counted back 2 years per child, allowing for a couple that did not survive, and so came to an approximate date of marriage for William Burrows to Alice Rudin  Fortunately, I hit it spot on.

Dawn picking blackberries with friends

I knew very little about them. As I may have told you , William died when my father was very small, so Dad did not have any stories to relate about him. All I know is that the family came to live in Woodend Fillongley after their marriage and William worked in Arley Colliery, as did most of the men in Crossways Cottages. The Burrows family lived in the end one, number 31. Dad was born there in the front bedroom, as was I. In the same bed in fact. The cottages were all joined with common backyard(known as “the causeway” ) Beyond the “causeway” were fields as far as the eye could see and at the front of the cottages more farmland and a narrow lane with much older cottages and a small chapel.  Woodend was and still is, part of the parish of Fillongley. The Woodend chapel no longer exists. A new one was built in Fillongley, and this was the one that I attended as a small child.

Life in Crossways Cottages must have been noisy and busy. All the men engaged in the same work at the colliery, all of similar ages and all with large families. The women constantly washing, scrubbing and giving birth. My one clear memory of No.31 was the smell of steamy bleach. Gran was spotless. Her pot lids shone like silver and hung on the kitchen wall, her coal range gleamed like black satin. Her front parlor had pictures of “her boys” hung around the walls. What happened to them I do not know - I wish I did? For one who never had money to spend on frippery, to me as a child, her parlor was full of  countless little treasures. Tins with pretty ladies on them, an old print of a returning crippled soldier hobbling down a lane towards his wife and child waiting at the cottage gate,  I was quite privileged to be allowed to explore the parlor. My Aunt Gladys’s family which was quite large visited rarely and when they did apparently Grandma Burrows used to cover the legs of her dining table and chairs with old stockings so that tiny swinging feet did not scratch them.

Bluebell woods

According to some, Grandma was a hard lady. Perhaps life had forced her to be that way.

She never held back in expressing her opinions and in the most colorful of terms. I heard the story that on one occasion she physically attacked the coalman who had inadvertently tipped a sack of coal on a litter of kittens in the coal shed. Despite this side of her nature, it was always Mrs. Burrows you called on in your hour of need. She was the one who was there to aid them with their sick and dying. I’ve been told by various people that no-one could lay out the dead like Alice Burrows.

To support her large family, she had also worked at the colliery. First in chopping kindling, then working in the office staff canteen. She also cleaned at the local public house. During the war she also supplemented her income by making rag rugs, using old sugar sacks that she boiled and bleached and any old clothing beyond repair. I used to watch her doing this and she would let me sort the colors. I think most of the houses in Fillongley had a rag rug made by Grandma Burrows. I know we did.

 Life must have got a little easier after her children started work. Harold and Walter both worked in the colliery. Thomas became a butcher and William a baker. Both had their shops in Fillongley at one time... My father, determined not to be sent to work down the pit, put himself into an apprenticeship and used to cycle 15 miles each way to his place of work as a tinsmith. The girls all married. I do not remember Cicely at all, but Gladys in Nuneaton with her large family and my favorite, Aunt Alice lived in Leicester. She eventually had a curtain and haberdashery shop just off the market square. I loved to visit her there.

 A box would be put behind the huge wooden counter so that I could watch her measuring fabrics, laces and trimmings, and in the back of the shop I would watch fascinated as she pounded away on an old treadle sewing machine, making aprons,  antimacassars,  and cushion covers, etc. When I go into craft shops today, as I often do, I still get that little buzz of excitement that I felt there. I remember being bridesmaid to Alice’s daughter Kath and can still remember the smell of the silk and tulle dress with the little posy bonnet all of which were made by Aunty Alice. (photo enclosed)

Dawn exiting with father Ernest Burrows

Alice and my father each shared their mother’s all-embracing passion for life nothing was ever half measure. Wherever Dad was, he filled the room. People either loved him or hated him, but they could never ignore him. He worked as a Union Representative, he even joined the Nazi party until he realized what they were really up to then quickly got out of it.  . He coached the local soccer team. He could not be drafted into the army because of arm injuries he had received in a car accident, so he served his time in the home guard. He would laughingly tell you that he was the only one without a uniform hat, because they could not get one to fit him. Life was never without embarrassment with my father. Several times he ran foul of the law with silly pranks.  One was driving his motor cycle while sitting backwards on it through the village, just to prove that he could. Another was when he attempted to solve a dispute between two village youths who were fighting, by arranging a proper boxing match on the bowling green behind the village pub. This he did without getting a license to hold such a match, and secondly the local men were taking bets on the outcome of it.

After the birth of my sister, he was the only man in England with half a moustache, as he was obliged to shave half of it off because of  a bet he had with another local man whose wife had managed to produce a son. This had been the object of the bet - a son. My poor sister had to live the first couple of years of her life known as Billy Burrows.

Dad was always getting a group of 10 or more of the local children, me included and hiking them over the fields. He knew Fillongley like the back of his hand. The brooks that had the most sticklebacks, the names of all the wild flowers, the trees, the birds and where they nested (you were only allowed to look, never to touch), where to find chestnuts, hazelnuts, cobnuts, wild strawberries. In fact, on one occasion my mother was amazed to find a small local lad at the door asking if Mr. Burrows could come out to play.

Fillongley village

Life was never dull with my father. He could be unreasonable, opinionated, obstinate, but always loving. Whether these are Burrows traits or Rudin traits, I do not know but I am thankful for them. They have opened my own eyes to a world that is full of magic and color. Another thing my father taught me was the need to prove the basis of my argument, and argue we did, frequently. Once to prove a point I showed him that according to my encyclopedia, I was right. His response “They’ve printed it wrong”.

You could never expect Dad to back down. The only person I ever witnessed who was able to do this was his mother Alice. On one occasion when I was about 8 I ran away from home. My mother had given the last sweet to my sister and I was upset. So up to Grandma Burrows I go. Now this was about a mile away. My parents must have been

frantic. By the time they had searched the neighborhood and finally thought of Crossways cottages,. I was all snuggled up with Gran in the front bedroom.  When the knock came at the door, Gran opened the bedroom window, told Dad they should have more...........sense and to clear off till morning.  My champion.  Dad meekly trudged off and I was returned the next day with a mild ticking off.

Dad always found causes like raffles to help some unfortunate girl who had found herself in a predicament, or dictating letters that I had to write supporting the character of one of his workmates to had run into a spot of bother. Even after he had retired he took under his wing two male neighbors. Getting their coal in, lighting their fires, fetching their newspapers and bread, sitting a playing dominoes with them  Once they passed away, Dad seemed to go into a decline. My wonderful sister Jenny  supported my mother in his care and there were many difficult years for her and my mother who may I say, must be the one woman that I admire most in all the world.

 

I had gone over to the UK to be there for Mum and Dads Diamond wedding Although Dad was not well, he was aware of  the day and joined in the celebrations. . I came back to NZ knowing that he was getting worse and six weeks after getting back here my sister phoned to say that she thought I should be there. Six hours after her call I was on my way.

Dad was in hospital in Nuneaton. He seemed alert, so much so that he recited a list of all the people who had lived in Woodend, Crossways cottages and the number of the house that each of them lived in. Cousin Pauline Aunty Gladys’ daughter was an attendant at the hospital so she visited him frequently too. As sick as he was, he would hold the floor, relating all the goings on in the ward and making us all laugh. But he wanted to go home to Fillongley.  The doctors were against it, but as usual Dad persisted.  So home he went.

With the magnificent help of all the services put into place by the British Health system, Dad was able to spend the next couple of weeks in his own home surrounded by family, to be part of the everyday life that went on there. He was contented and when he finally passed over,  he was far from alone. The doctor who came later said “It was dignified”.

Mind you, Dad still had a joke up his sleeve. He failed to appear for his own funeral at the expected time.  They had to bring him from the funeral home in Bedworth , to his home in Fillongley, and then to the Fillongley Church.  We were all in a dilemma and kept pacing up and down the path looking out for him. When he finally arrived nearly an  hour late, we discovered that there had been a gas explosion in a road in Bedworth and that they had had to make a massive detour around Nuneaton that  would also have taken him past Crossways cottages into Fillongley and naturally, past them again on the way back from the church to the crematorium in Nuneaton.  Typical.

Fillongley Church

I feel privileged to have been part of this family. Ordinary folk, living ordinary lives, but facing extraordinary obstacles with fortitude and good humor. It has stood me in good stead for my own life, which I will not go into right now - it would be too much to digest at one sitting.

Kindest regards to all our Burrows descendants in the USA

  Cousin Dawn

HOUGHTON and WINSTANLEY FAMILIES in U.K. by TREVOR

1^st March 1999

Dear Mr. Halverson

I think that you must have given up on me.

Heather Church

Paul (Winstandley) has sent me copies of the information you sent him and very interesting it is.  As you will realize as you read on we now know more of the descendants of Charles Houghton than we do of our own grandmother.

I enclose a booklet on “Heather” that I am sure you will find interesting.  Heather is much changed.  I was last there about ten years ago when I took mother to see her two surviving cousins and of course developers had been busy.  Large parts of the village I visited had been swept away and replaced with modern housing. 

The two photos are of Sarah Jane Houghton, my grandmother, one as a young woman and the other taken in in 1929 with me as a baby.  I also enclose Family Record sheets for her and John Winstanley and their descendants as far as I have been able to trace.   My mother was my father’s second wife- his first died in child birth- and I enclose the sheet for dad’s first marriage to give a record of the family in which I grew up.

I am puzzled as you must be as to the identity of the Americans who called on grandmother during the 1914-18 war.  My recollection is quite clear that mother said they were Charles’s sons, which they obviously were not.  I can only conclude that they were friends of Charles. 

There is one thing in the sketch of Charles Houghton’s life that I would query.  It states that he was the only boy in the family with three sisters and that ‘not long after his father died’. 

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According to what I have been told his mother re- married a man called Smith and they had a daughter, Edith.  Ann Houghton died in 1908.  My source of this information was Betty Watkins who was my only contact we had with Heather for many years and this was originally the odd letter and card to my mother and infrequent telephone calls.  When mother died I kept up the contact.  Betty was gathering a much data on the family as she could but unfortunately she died suddenly just over a year ago before she sent anything on to me. 

Paul’s father and my mother did not talk about their early days in Llandudno but mother did let odd things from time to time and its from this that I have built up the following sketches of the family.

My Grandmother, Sarah Jane Winstanley nee Houghton was born in Heather, a small village on the edge of the Leicestershire coalfields.  The only employment was the mines, brickworks or the farms for men.  For the girls it was in the home or ‘in service’.  Is that a phrase you would use in America?   Here is an old expression for working as a domestic servant.  Mother told me that village girls wanted to get ‘in service’ as while the work was hard they did have meals every day and a roof over their head.  An interesting tale mother told me was, as a child she was taken by her mother on a Sunday afternoon to visit a relation who worked in a ‘big house’ (country mansion).  Apparently custom after Sunday dinner the servants had the rest of the day off.  They had tea there and were shown around the house by the ‘lady of the house’ and left with presents of food.  I wished I had of asked who this was and where.  It must have been near Heather.  I believe Sarah went into service-how else did she get to Llandudno some 150 miles away?

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There she met John Winstanley whom she married.  Paul has told you of John but further research into his ancestry has shown he came from a family of well-known clockmakers in North Wales.  Their clocks still come on the market fairly often- you might even see them in America as I saw a Welch clock in Vancouver last year.  Life could not have been easy for them.  Llandudno was, and still is a holiday town so work was seasonal which is probably why John was collecting seagull’s eggs when he fell and was killed.  They are still served as a delicacy in some hotels. 

You will see from the record sheets that each of the children was born at a different address and mother mentioned two other streets in which they lived.  After John’s death Sarah kept the family together by taking in holiday visitors.   Mother told us of going to meet the trains at the station and giving out cards advertising their house.  She also told us of her mother ironing tablecloths for the big hotels.  These had intricate pleats that were pressed individually and for these she had special irons.  The family moved to Liverpool sometime between 1908 and 1912 as grandmother was told that she had a

Sarah Jane Houghton Winstanley

better chance of getting work in Liverpool- what a cultural shock for the children- from a small resort town to a busy seaport and commercial town.  What work she in Liverpool I was never told.  When George, her son married she lost her means of support and my father (William Jones) invited her to come and live with us.  I knew she had a hard life but it was only when we started to look into how and where she lived that I realized how hard.   She died in Heather whilst visiting her sister Catherine and is buried in the village churchyard with her Wragg relations.  She has been described as small, cheerful and a busy person which is just as I remember her.   It gives me a lot of comfort to know that for the last 10 or so years of her live she lived in security. 

Edwin Wood Winstanley  son of Sarah Jane

When his mother moved to Liverpool he had employment in Llandudno and stayed with his grandmother (Ann Wragg Houghton.   I assume that on her death in 1912 he came to Liverpool as mother did mention him in Liverpool.  That is all I know.  He was never mentioned and as far as I know had no contact with his mother.  He certainly had no contact with my mother. 

John Charles Winstanley son of Sarah Jane

He also stayed with his grandmother when the rest of the family moved to Liverpool.  I do not know a great deal about him as we had very little contact.  I know he served in both wars in the Royal Navy in minesweepers and I believe for a time in the 1914 war in “Q” ships.  These were old merchant vessels with hidden guns that sailed alone in hope that a U-boat would surface to sink them by gunfire rather than use a torpedo.  The disguise was then dropped and hopefully they sank the U-boat first with their own guns.  I think he had a hard time between the wars and my mother did have his wife to help her in our house for a time in the 1930’s.  As I said I did not see much of him but he always seemed cheerful when I did.  I have lost all contacts with his family.  When mother died I found a telephone number for his daughter but when I tried it was discontinued. 

Hannah Jane Winstanley - daughter of Sarah Jane’s daughter

She came to Liverpool with her mother and became a skilled dressmaker.  I can remember being taken to see her when she worked in a Liverpool store that closed just before the outbreak of the last war- Frisby Dykes- the name of which became famous in a wartime radio comedy show.   During the 1914 war women took over many jobs that had been the sole preserve of men and she became a tram car (street car) conductor or as they were known as “Clippies’.  She and uncle Bob had no children.  I saw more of Aunt Jinnie, as we called her, than any of the others.  She came to help mother in the house particularly after Uncle Bob died and before that when mother and father went away they would come and look after the house.

Trevor with grandma Sarah Jane

Florence Winstanley

My mother.  She was always annoyed that she was given only one Christian name when her brothers and sisters each had two.  As mentioned she would no be questioned about her earl life and all I have is little bits that came out now and then.  As you will have seen each of the children were born in a different address and mother, on visit to Llandudno, pointed out another.  Years later she told us of yet another road she lived in.  I have identified all the houses bar the last.  She attended school in Llandudno and told of the mothers bringing the children’s mi-day lunch and leaving it on the playground wall.  She also told of another school which was by a lifeboat station and the boat being taken down to the sea on a trailer hauled by a horse team as it is today except they now use a caterpillar trailer.  After leaving school in Liverpool she worked for a time as a child-minder in a little ale house in the city center.  From what she told us she virtually ran the place as the publican was drunk most of the time and his wife was ill.  From there she went to work in a Liverpool printers and stationers- H.T. Woodrow- where she was the first female to be employed in their office and retail shop.  This was in 1914.  She started as the telephone operator and worked herself up to be assistant to one of the directors whom she married two years after the death of his first wife.  At that time my half brothers were 14 years and 2 years old.  Our life style was very different to that of the rest of her family but she did help them where she could.  She employed john’s wife before the war.  Aunt Jinnie after the war for many years, and through my father her husband was employed by Woodrow’s.

George Houghton Winstanley  Paul’s father

I I am sure that Paul will have told you about him.

Catherine Salisbury nee Houghton  -Charles Houghton’s sister, my Aunt Kit

She lived her whole life in Heather and as you will have seen had a large family.  Until recently I only knew of Jack, Mabel, Madeleine and Edith.  My contact was Betty, daughter of Madeleine.  As a child I used to stay with Aunt Kit who at the time lived in a little on down two up thatched cottage.  This was pulled down many years ago.  No bathroom and a “privy” at the bottom of the garden.  There was a similar cottage attached to where Edith lived.  Cooking was done in the living room which also served as the village sweet shop.  Once I was old enough when I visited

Winstanley clock

Heather I would sleep at Madeleine’s house two fields away which I crossed on a path.  If you look on the map Aunt Kit’s cottage is marked.  It is in the same lane as the Primitive Methodist Chapel (19) and is the first house down the lane to the railroad line.  Madeleine’s house is opposite across the fields and the path I used is marked by a dotted line on the right just passed ‘21’.  Whilst there was mains water on to her cottage Aunt Kit for cooking and drinking always used water from a spring opposite her cottage.  After the death of my grandmother mother and I only visited Heather once.

Charles’s half-sister, Edith had a son and daughter.  Her daughter, Marie, is still alive.  She will be 71 and I do hope to find her address and write to her.

Charles Houghton  Catherine Burrows Houghton

The summer before last we were in New York and visited Ellis Island.  How interesting it was particularly as I knew that Charles Houghton must have passed through on his way to Utah and that in Liverpool we have a Martine museum where they have an exhibit to show the conditions in which the early emigrants travelled.  I do not know if you are aware of this but it is possible to obtain copies of the entry registers showing the entry for relatives

I do hope that you have found this interesting and of help building up your family history.  If you would like to hear of our further researches or there is anything you would like to know, please ask.

Thank you so much for all the information you sent Paul it was so interesting, particularly as Charles was just a name to us.

Best wishes to your family

Trevor Jones

BINGHAM A TIME TO CRY by EUGENE

A Time to Cry

By Eugene

a hundred trees like this

Where have all my friends gone, long time passing?
Where have all my friends gone, long time ago?
Where have all the people gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn? 

Chinky Aguayo said, “Yes, I envy all of you that can go back to your home town and sharpen memories of day gone by, because I have only my memories to reflect on.  The town I spent my youth in is gone.  There is no remnant of the town to sharpen my mind---nothing to focus on and bring in to sharper remembrance those long-gone days.” 

The man with all his money and the law of the land has taken my town and scattered my friends all over the world.  Will we ever see or hear from them again?

Some marvel at the size of this Giant Hole but not me.   I was born in those mountains would have been happy to live the rest of my life there.  Open-pit mining may be profitable but it ruins everything it touches, and now it reaches even into Butterfield Canyon.  The most scenic part left on the mountain.  Gone are all the clear-water streams and springs I remember in my day.  What water there is, is polluted and the mountain looks like something from the planet “Mars”.

My story today is about what we did to this “Wonderful Old Mountain”.

Oquirrh Mountains---Mother Earth, for thousands of years the valleys and mountains gave the Indians everything they needed to live here.  They called it the “Shinning Mountain”.  I followed their trails of flint chips and broken pottery from West Jordan up the Bingham Ditch past Copperton, up Bear Gulch to the tops of the highest passes.  I also followed their trails from their villages near Camp Williams, past Harriman up through all of Butterfield Canyon to the Middle Canyon Pass.  There were villages near Cedar Fort with trails up to the top of West Canyon.  They lived here for a thousand years and never left a mark on the land.  The white-man seems to crush everything in his path to fame and fortune. 

20 FEET CIR. 365 years old -we had a whole grove of them in Sliver Shield

In 1900 before open-pit mining began my Aunt Edla, a Swede/Finn emigrant said the canyon was wild and beautiful.  You could on your free time go on hikes and picnics.  Up between the mountains was an open, beautiful place where the youngsters used to have their picnics.  The boardinghouse was located in the canyon between the mountains and to reach the city itself, you had to walk through the mountain.  On the road to and from the dances the girls were afraid to be attacked by mountain lions.  If you run into one you were supposed to stare them straight in the eyes, and they would leave you alone.  It would stay still or run away.  Edla was told that mountain lions had attacked some from behind and killed them.  During the nights they always kept a gun or an ax close to the bed because there were bears and rattlesnakes.  One night when Jansson went over to another claim to borrow some light, he met a bear.  Jansson rushed down the mountain to Bingham.  Only the next morning did he dare come back up the mountain. 

Memories  My memories only go back to living in Frog Town, when I was six and Lee four.  In my mind I can still see the large steep, bald, barren Mountain in back of the apartments.  Half-way up

before mining killed it

there was a trail cutting across it, both ways as fat as you could see.  Up didn’t seem interesting so down we went.  In time we came to a beautiful canyon we later knew it as Dry Fork.  We didn’t know we were walking on a buried water line coming all the way from Dry Fork Canyon.  We crossed a cement underground water tank that fed the houses below.  We never did go all the way to the spring, but we did look up into this beautiful canyon and we did see English’s Dairy and the Bingham Garbage Dump.  Mother from the very beginning made me aware that I was the eldest and would always be responsible for the both of us, so everything I did Lee was with me.   

Dry Fork was a beautiful Canyon.  Sage brush, scrub oak, Maple trees and all kinds of evergreen trees grew on both sides of the canyon.  Chokecherry trees and Elderberry bushes were scattered here and there.  Wild flowers, Indian Paint Brushes, blue bells and pinky’s grew mostly under the Oak trees. 

Sun Shine Peak looking down in ourcanyons

Ade Heaston owned most of the upper part of the canyon and it was his pipe-line we were walking on.  It supplied water to the town of Bingham.  He also constructed a large fence where the first Elk were brought to his property where it became the Heaston Elk Reserve. 

I remember the mountain on the other side of the road.  It had two large rocks on it one had a cave or tunnel under it.  I had many dreams about a big loin living there, so I called it, my “Lion Rock”.  I found many flowers under the Oak trees; I always brought back these flowers we called, “Pinkies” to give to Mother. 

Markham Gulch, when I was older Bob Madsen invited me to come down and see what he had found shortly after moving from the US.  It was probably late June or early July.  The stream was clear and making a pond for rafting and swimming.   “D” dump was the dam that made the pond.    

Freeman Gulch, As a kid David Thorne said, “I hiked all over the hills in Bingham.  My buddies at that time included Art Bentley, Teddy Allen and Floyd Timothy.  We had a favorite place we called “waterfalls”;  it was a real pretty spot with a nice stream and a pond.  We made rafts and poled around the pond.  The water was so cold we didn’t swim unless we fell off the raft.  The place has long since been filled in with a Kennecott waste dump. 

Sun Shine Peak looking down our clean pure water is now green

Telegraph; my house was surrounded by the higher mountain forests, pine trees, Quaken Aspin and even some Maple trees.  The main road would climb a steep grade for a half mile and flatten out as it entered  Galena Gulch.  It then traveled south below Silver Shield to the US.  A lesser traveled road followed Bear Gulch in the opposite direction.  It also would climb a half a mile before it flattened out.  And stayed flat until it was turned south by the Queen Ridge.  If you continued it would put you on top of the mountain above the Silver Shield and US.  The large forest between these two roads was a wonderful place for me and my dog to explore.  The Bear Gulch side had mostly deciduous trees that colored and lost their leaves in the fall.  I remember sitting with my mother in a Maple Groves where these hundred year old trees reached out high into the sky while the outer branched touched the ground.  The ground was covered in fallen leaves and it was kind of dark in there.  As Callie would say, “It’s pretty nice in here, except for the lions and tigers and bears”.  Up higher some of the canyons were densely populated with large Quaken Aspen with all kinds of bushes and flowers.  Then there was the pine forest all along the US road from the road to the top of the mountain.   

The “Big Grove”, was located high above the Sliver Shield.  It was completely cut down during pioneer times to build the Salt Lake Tabernacle and other buildings.  All I ever seen was the stumps and there must have been over fifty of them.  As I lay on my back reaching as far as I could with my feet and hands, some were larger than I was in diameter.  The bigger ones had to be at least six feet in diameter and being at least 300 years old.  Timpanogos and its mighty Monarch, There was another grove of trees on the Timpanogos pass that died in 1923.  It was 20 feet in circumference (61/2 feet diameter).  It survived fires, at the base, lightning at the top and beetles in its branches.  It was over 365 years old.

Looking down toward Queen

I lived early enough to see what a wonderful gift God has given us.  I could see the changes that the under-ground mines did as the fresh clear streams and springs disappeared.  This drying out of the mountain changed what could grow there.   But the open-pit mining is the worst thing that could happen to a mountain.  The mining companies will eventually leave to mess up another mountain while the people will have to endure a contaminated aquifer and a mountain that can never be healed.