Francis Joseph Bowler 1879

 FRANCIS JOSEPH BOWLER 1879

History as written by himself

I was born in Nottingham, England, February 27, 1879, to James Samuel Page Bowler and Matilda Hill Bowler. I was less than two years of age when we left England and sailed on the Ship “Wisconsin”. I can remember my parents telling of the rugged trip we had. We ran into a heavy storm and the ship sprang a leak. The pumps broke and they were taking in about two feet of water an hour. It looked like the ship was about lost but the crew was able to repair the leak and the trip was made in safety. We landed at New York Harbor in 1881.
  The family boarded the train in New York and journeyed to Salt Lake City. When we reached Salt Lake, the finances were just about exhausted. Bishop Hunter found a place for us to stay for several weeks while we rested from our travels and then father was called to Hebron.
Father was a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After father and mother were married the Elders stayed at our home. Father was leader of the Nottingham Choir and through his association with the Elders they made our home their home. President Francis M. Lyman was instrumental in bringing the Gospel to mother. He spent considerable time right in our home. President Lyman, along with Zera P. Terry, converted mother and she was baptized by President Francis M. Lyman in Nottingham, England.
When I was born. my parents named me Francis for President Lyman, and Joseph for the Emperor of Austria, who was a second cousin of mother. One of the reasons it was so hard on mother when she came to this country was that she had always been used to the finer things of life and when she joined the Church her family would not help her at all. Zera P. Terry and President Lyman encouraged my parents to bring their family to America and on to Utah so that they might live with the Saints under the influence of the Church.
After they reached Salt Lake, Zera P. Terry and Thomas S. Terry, his father, asked the President of the Church to call father to Hebron to teach vocal music and as he was a shoe maker by trade they also needed his services in that line.
We came from Salt Lake to Milford by train and were met by Aaron Huntsman with a team and wagon. The first night we camped out and had to sleep on the ground. All of our possessions were in that wagon for a family of eight children and two adults: Harry, Elizabeth, John, Kate, Annie, Florence, Walter, myself, father and mother. The coyotes were howling and mother said later she never closed her eyes all night.
The next night we arrived in Hebron after dark. We were taken to a little log house. Nothing was in the house but one door and two little windows. It was right out in the sage brush. We were in one corner of the lot and an Indian camp in the other. The Indians were friendly, but when mother awoke the next morning and looked out the window, the first thing she saw was the camp of Indians, and she said, “We aren’t going to stay here.” I am sure it was very hard on mother to be enclosed by a “rip-gut fence with a band of lndians in one corner of the lot, corrals in another corner, and Daniel Tyler’s house in the other corner and millions of sage brush between.
Daniel Tyler was a telegraph operator and taught school until father arrived. He was a cripple. He had his leg thrown out when he was a youngster and it had never gone back into place, consequently one leg was a foot to a foot and a half shorter than the other and he walked on crutches swinging the short leg.
There was no water in the town for either irrigation or culinary use. The water was carried in barrels on a “lizard” from the creek a half mile away. Boys and men (also women) would have to carry or haul the water. Sometimes the barrels would slide off the “lizard” and we would have to go back for more. We would put cloths over the barrel to keep the water from spilling out. It took two people to get the water. One person would drive the horse and one would steady the barrel. While we were there they built a flume to carry the water into town. This was not successful for the first summer it leaked terribly and the next winter it went out with a flood.
We stayed in Hebron for two years. While we were in Hebron, Elizabeth married John David Pulsipher. She was 15 years of age at the time.
Due to financial conditions the family was forced to move out of Hebron. School was held only three months and the teacher had to take his salary in a little grain or produce of some kind. There were not enough people to enable father to make any money making shoes, so we moved back to Salt Lake, leaving Elizabeth and John at Hebron. The Pulsiphers had lots of cattle so they were able to stay there.
We lived in Salt Lake for three years. Father was Historian in the Church office. I guess we would have remained there but Harry wasn’t happy there and returned to Hebron. He lived with his sister Lizzie and John.
My brothers, John and Walter, would gather the milk cows up around Salt Lake and take them out on the range in the mornings and then bring them in to the various owners at night to be milked.
Mother wasn’t happy having her family separated, so when they were offered some property out by Terry’s ranch, called “Sheep Springs”, we moved back to Hebron. Father tried to keep his family by farming “Sheep Springs” but was unable to do so. It was hard to raise things and a large family required a great deal of food and clothing, so the family moved to Panaca.
Father set up a shoe shop in Panaca where he made boots and shoes and also repaired them. He was able to make a good living there. Pioche was growing at that time and there was a demand for father’s services. We stayed in Panaca for two years and then for some reason, other than financial, we moved back to Hebron. Kate had married Charles Pulsipher before we moved to Panaca.
We stayed in Hebron a year where father taught school, and then we moved to Gunlock. We bought Bishop Joseph S. Huntsman’s place, which is now owned by Moroni Bowler, and father taught school. We had some cattle, also owned the two Doty lots, the Glen McAllister lot and the Page Bowler lot. We owned the Arvel Leavitt house and lived there. We stayed in Gunlock five years and were getting along nicely, but the Laub boys came down from Hebron and wanted to trade a meadow, a fine house, lot, barn, nice corrals for our property. Lizzie and Kate were still living in Hebron, so the family moved back there.
We lived in Hebron about 5 years and in 1894 the family moved to Parowan. During the next four years we were leasing James Adams’ farm and I did considerable riding for the Adams brothers; Charles, William B., Hugh L., and James, driving their cattle to and fron the winter range, “Waweep”, on the Colorado River. During the winter I worked as an apprentice in the shoe store, father was foreman. I selected the leather, cut out the tops and helped get the material ready for the other workers. In preparing the leather everything had to be done by hand except for one small-arm machine. The tool used was an “awl.” White linen thread was used and waxed with black wax until it was black, then a pig bristle was stuck in the end. These were woven to hold the leather and make the shoe. We also used a roller to roll the soles. I bought the first saddle made in the Pumi Shoe Shop.
We were doing well in Parowan, but moved away because of mother’s health. All of her children were in Gunlock or in Hebron, so the family moved back to Gunlock in 1898. Walter was in Hebron, and George, my bother who was born in the United States, didn’t ride much so I did most of the riding, but George and I together ran the farm.
I spent two years with Bert and Billy Truman and Reuben Gardner, gathering wild cattle out of Bull Valley. These cattle belonged to the cattlemen around the St. George area and they weren’t able to keep them in their herds. They would break away from them and they wouldn’t be able to find them. These men would pay us anywhere from $2.50 to $10.00 a head for gathering these cattle. The country was full of wild cattle. We stopped at the old Alger cabin and would work from there. We would rope the cows and lead them into a big log corral and keep them as long as we could without water, then we would trail them into Gunlock, feed them good, and then deliver them to the owners. Occasionally there would be a particularly wild cow. If we caught two cows for the same party they would often give us one cow for
delivering the other one.
Mother was much happier after she moved to Gunlock, but due to her weakened condition she developed pneumonia and died on the 15th of December, 1900.
The second or third night after we moved back to Gunlock, some of the fellows and I were walking down the street and we passed Annie Holt. One of the boys said, “There’s one girl that won’t go with the boys.” I said, “We’ll see about that.” So I turned around and went back and asked he for a date for the dance that night and she said, “Yes.”
That night when I went for her, there was another fellow there, so I made the excuse I came after candy. Annie’s mother had a store in her home, so Annie got up to help me with the candy and we left together without going back in to see her boyfriend, (Ben Chadburn). From then, until we were married, we were going together most of the time.
While we were going together I went back to St. Louis. Pomroy and Handley put notices in the paper for mules and horses, so Charles Pulsipher, Am Truman, and Bert Truman gathered up a load to ship and when they got to Modena they decided I should go with them. I was 17 at the time and I was away from home for three weeks. We had to unload, water, and feed the horses along the way. We stopped in Cheyenne, Wyoming to see how things were. I talked to the yard man and when I started to leave another man came around the corner and he said, “What is that kid doing with the horses?” The first man said, “I think he’s going to Washington, D.C. to buy a seat in the Senate for Reed Smoot.”
They didn’t sell the horses while I was there. I persuaded them to give me $10.00 to come back home because I was broke. I got back to Ogden and I found that my pass wasn’t good in Utah. I had a picture of the station in St. Louis, so I gave it to the brakeman for a ride into Ogden. There, I had to get off the train. One of the brakemen got off the train and asked if anyone wanted to pitch some coal. This I did for my ride to Salt Lake. When we got into Salt Lake there were a lot of officials waiting. The crew came to me and said, “You have implicated all of the crew, so get off like you have been kicked off or we’ll kill you.” So I tried to get off, carelessly I fell off backwards and rolled and rolled.
Arthur Winter was the only person I knew in Salt Lake. He took father’s place when we left Salt Lake. I found the place and his wife fixed me dinner and called Arthur. She fixed me a lunch and Arthur bought me a ticket to Modena. I got a ride to the Meadows and stayed with Lym Canfield. He loaned me a horse and I arrived home that night. It was Christmas Eve. I was tired from my trip and didn’t want to go to the dance, but mother thought I should go, so tired as I was, I got ready and went to the dance.
While I was in St. Louis I bought a pearl handled pen that I gave to father and brought Mom a bracelet with pearls strung on copper wire with a little heart that said, ‘Merry Christmas’.