I was born of goodly parents on April 9, 1863, at Salt Lake City, Utah. My three older brothers,
Joseph Heber,
Ephraim, and
Dan were born in Salt Lake City, too. My parents moved to Kamas before I was born [1861]. They were pioneers of Kamas. No other help was available, so mother had to go to Salt Lake City to her mother's for help before my birth. She rode on a load of wood drawn by oxen. They were three or four days on the road. Mother arrived there at 2:00 p.m. and I was born at 6:00 p.m. I cried for hours! Finally father called in the Elders and I was administered to and slept all night.
Eight of my brothers and sisters (
Mary Elizabeth,
Rebecca Cornelia,
Sarah Christine,
John Benjamin,
Laura Amanda,
Parley William,
Agnes Emeline, and
Alice Adelia, who was stillborn) were born in a small log house in Kamas, Summit County, Utah.
Now a few words about my father (
John Lambert). He came to America when 20 years old. He met the
Prophet Joseph Smith in Illinois. He was one of his bodyguards, and heard him say, "I go like a lamb to the slaughter, void of any crime." Father has wrestled with him many a time. When working in his office, he [Joseph] would sometimes run out in the street, grab the boys, throw them down, for a rest. They all thought it was fun, and an honor to wrestle with the Prophet.
I have heard father say he saw a halo around the Prophet when [he was] preaching, also a gray-headed, white-bearded man standing by him while he was talking. When he was through this personage walked to the door, where the mobs were waiting to grab him, and he went right through the crowd and wasn't touched.
Once during a drought, the people met together to pray for rain. There wasn't a cloud to be seen anywhere, but when he [Prophet Joseph] prayed, the rain was pouring down before the meeting was out. Father had the handkerchief that was around the Prophet's neck and a bullet he was shot with. Many men came our home to see them.
Father never could talk about him without shedding tears. Whenever he was called on to talk in meeting he would end with something about him and have to sit down. Father said he was next to the Savior, and when he died he wanted him to come to accompany him to the spirit world, and he did. My brother, Dan, happened to be the only one in the room when Father passed away. He said he saw the Prophet hovering over father. Dan took out his watch to see what time it was and it was 20 to 6 p.m. He looked up and the Prophet was gone. It happened just that way, that we may all know that father's desire was granted.
Father came to Utah in 1850 (Sept. 11th) in Lorenzo Young's Company with a wife and two children. The family settled in Salt Lake City (Second Ward). My father was a mason by trade. He worked on the Salt Lake Temple for years. He didn't like his boss. Brigham Young told Father if he would stay and work on the Temple he would give him a choice piece of land or he could go and pioneer Kamas. Father always wanted to go where he could raise cattle, horses and sheep. He was called by Brigham Young in 1861 to pioneer Kamas. He had a good adobe home in Salt Lake. He left it all and went to a barren sagebrush valley.
We lived in a tent until he could build a log house, dirt roof and dirt floor. Only one man was in Kamas. He was a trapper, his name was Rhodes. Father built the first house and there now stands a monument right where his first house was [near the corner of 100 South and 100 East].
He was a lover of animals. He had the largest and prettiest team of horses I ever did see. Two strings of the largest and loudest sleigh bells, also. We could hear them very plainly three miles away.
My mother,
Eline Hansena Larsen, [was] born 13 Sep 1838, Copenhagen, Denmark. She being the first girl to accept the gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she with the rest of the family and others numbering 19 were the first family members to be baptized in Denmark. Three of her baby sisters were the first to receive their baby blessings under the hands of the Priesthood.
My Grandfather (
Hans Larsen) was a sailor. He was born 8 July 1806, Lund, Denmark. His progenitors go back to the royals. The family came to America in 1853 in a sail ship with Captain [of the LDS people on board] Erastus Snow. One of Mother's little sisters died, and they had to bury her in the ocean for fear of sharks tipping over the ship*. When they landed, they came the rest of the way by ox team. They never traveled on Saturday or Sunday. Saturday was wash and scrub day. Everything was taken out of the wagon box and scrubbed, everything put back clean. Mother said their yards at home (Denmark) were kept as clean as their floors.
As we grew up in Kamas we had friends all around us. The environment was good, although occasionally a man would get drunk at a party. Father and mother were both very strict and strict observers of the Sabbath Day and in paying of tithing. Many times I took butter and eggs to the tithing office. Father would always take the tenth load of what he raised to the tithing office. They taught us children to do the same. They had but very little education. Grandfather Lambert died when my father was seven years old, hence he had to earn his own living.
One winter the snow was so deep that nobody could get out to the grist mill. We had to live on boiled wheat, carrots and beef.
Mother had a very pleasant disposition. She would never do or say anything to hurt anyone's feelings. Father was more quick and stern. We were all physically strong, and brother Dan, when grown, was the strongest and largest man in Kamas.
The boys and girls played ball, rounders, baseball, and we liked steal sticks, pom-pom-pull-away. We had a lot of fun at rag bees, quilting parties and dancing parties, and home dramatic association plays. Sleigh riding with bob sleighs with a hay rack on them, two span of horses and bells on bobtail bays was always fun, too. At times about a dozen boys and girls with harmonicas and accordions would go. It was sweet music out in the open air at night.
Father and the boys would wrestle and box with boxing gloves to see which was the strongest, and at times would see who could chop the most timber. We all played at pull sticks and would grip each other down. We lifted on the scales. At the age of 16, I lifted 400 pounds on the scales, sitting down on them and lifting up on both sides. My younger sister who was larger than I, lifted 450 pounds. At that time I could pull up boys and grip them down, boys that were 3 and 4 years older than myself. There was one boy, George Leonard, that I couldn't do anything with because he was so strong.
We had very little time to play. There were times when my mother had to go out into the field and bind grain while father cut it with an old fashioned scythe.
It was a great help when we could wash our wool and send it off to be corded into rolls, then all we had to do was spin it. How well I remember the dye pot sitting by the stove, also gathering rabbit brush to dye with, the mader red and the pretty striped stockings we knit, at least we thought they were pretty, and with a blue denim dress how proud we were.
My father at that time owned many sheep and some cattle and oxen. Very often the oxen would run away with a load of hay and break the rack all to pieces. We had one ox that was awfully hard to yoke and many times he ran away with the yoke on his neck. We milked 25 or 30 cows, between the two families (Father had two wives), and when we turned them out in the morning we sometimes had a hard time to keep the oxen back. Many times I have run until I could not go any farther and had to lie down on the ground to get my breath, trying to get the oxen back after they got away. Father had to have them to work with in putting up the hay.
When I was eight years old, I made my first biscuits. I went to the shed, where father and the older boys were shearing sheep, to call them to dinner. On the way back I said to them, "You don't know who made the biscuits." When they ate dinner, how they did praise the biscuits! Why, I thought I was a real cook!
One day my oldest half brother, John, came home from fishing and he told his sister, Emma, to put her hand in his pocket and get some pretty pieces. She did and got a handful of snakes! Oh, what a shudder ran through me! It would have been worse for me than her for I was always scared to death of snakes. She was scared of mice. He would hold a mouse over her in the morning when he wanted her to get up and she got up right now! Once she and I were up along the side of a big creek in the grass, and all at once a snake about a yard long jumped to one side. Emma said, "Run, it's right after you." I turned to look and sure enough it was. Well, I ran to one side and it went on and I didn't wait to see where it went either.
When we were real little kids, we would get some bushy weeds and play with them for dolls out in front of the house. One day I laid mine down and went in the house for something. When I came back there was a green snake about a foot long crawling out of it. Believe me, we didn't have them for dolls any more.
I remember when [I was] a child I had my leg broken and my brother, Joe, carried me on his back out to see the little lambs. My sister and I had the whooping cough. How her nose would bleed and sometimes her ears. She had it much worse than I did. When we had the measles was the worst.
We had very little opportunity for an education. We didn't even know what a grade school was. I was nine years old when I started and know I had no more than an eighth grade education. Many times I had to stay out of school to help mother. While I did the housework, my mother would card wool and spin yarn and send it off to be woven into linsey for dresses, sheets, jeans and pants for father and the boys and yarn for all our stockings, mufflers and sweaters. We had knitting in our hands continually.
Our first school house was built of big rough logs, and if I remember right, our first benches were just logs. Later on, we had benches made of planks. Later, backs were added on them and then home made desks. My father's first wife [Adelia Groesbeck] was our teacher. One stubborn girl in my class would stand with her finger in her mouth and wouldn't say a word. One of my best girl friends had a real fight with the teacher. She pulled her hair all down and pulled out her watch.
The school house stood in the middle of the Fort that was built to protect us from the Indians. They used to come to Kamas in tribes and camp there. At one time we moved to Peoa and lived in a tent to get away from the Indians. My father said that Brigham Young said it was better to feed the Indians than to fight them, and he believed it. Many a time we had two long tables full of Indians. They used to always call for "Namba," which means Lambert, whenever they came to Kamas. I remember one time father gave them a big fat beef. They took it about a half block from the house and killed it, cut it up, put it in their pack saddle and away then went. Another time father gave them a mutton.
Later on, the Indians stole some horses and drove them off. They were about three miles from home when father saw them. He got his spy glass and looked at them and said, "Yes, they are our horses and the Indians." So we all got busy immediately. Horses were saddled, pack saddles, guns and ammunition were ready. Mother, and father's first wife, made bread and other things for them to eat. Away they went:
John [Carlos] Lambert, my half brother,
William Gibson, my intended brother-in-law, and Oscar Clark. Oh, the anxiety! We didn't know whether or not they would get back alive.
They were gone two weeks. They followed the Indians to Blue Mountain, then sneaked up on them just at break of day while they were asleep, got their guns and ammunition and then got the horses and brought them home. They got so thirsty that William Gibson killed a rabbit and drank the blood.**
Father would spy with his glass every day. At last he saw quite a dust in the distance and said, "Yes, it is them." Oh what a happy bunch we were! I shall never forget it.
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