Bessie Morgan Rex letter to Harold. December 19, 1937, typed text.

A Christmas Card from Bessie's scrapbook.

Today it's Christmas in July. 

My attempt to post Bessie Morgan Rex's letters
to her missionary son in chronological order.

The following letter was posted here in 2009. 

I didn't type the letter at that time.
It follows below and is much easier to read.

Randolph, Ut.

Dec. 19, 1937.

My dear son.,

One week before Xmas. No word from you for two weeks, but I’ll just keep writing. Daddy & his two boys have been to church all day. They have done fine. Flora & I have stayed home. It made me sick Past Sunday, so I stayed here & rested. Have been reading a beautiful book, called “The Man of Galilee.” It is just wonderful.

When I write next week, Xmas will have come & gone. I am glad for swiftly passing time. You will see some changes when you get home. This family is simply walking out on me. Am think-[ing] of things I want to do when I am left alone. I should like to write stories & books. That would help keep me young. It is awful to think of growing old, but it seems only yesterday that I was as young as you.

The weather here is grand. It hasn’t been very cold, and no snow. Morgan & Maeser went over on the east hill for a Xmas tree. When he (Maeser) started to tell how he lost the

Page 2 - seat of his pants, I thot of you and your father. Remember what pretty trees you got, but what a job. Morgan reminded me of the fight I used to have to keep you in bed on Xmas morning.

Trees now are decorated with blue & white lights and are streamlined, but ours will be old fashioned. Tomorrow we make popcorn balls, & Maeser is going to string some.

Have you ever received a Reaper. Willie M. isn’t going to send it any more, because he thinks you don’t get it. There isn’t much in it.

The college students are home for the holidays. The H. S. has a good basketball team this year, or so they tell me. My boys just don’t play. Oh excuse me I forgot about you. Morgan is so serious. He likes physics & geometry & shop work and is a good student. But I wish he would take more recreation. He studies harder than his big brother used to. Never goes below C.

Do you ever hear broadcast from here. We have some very interesting news commentators, & I enjoy them so much.

Page 3 -  So much is going on in this world of ours. Boake Carter is a very brilliant one, who knows his stuff. There is one woman too who is excellent.

Tonight the L.D.S. church is giving “The Messiah” over the Columbia networks from Independence. I am sitting up to hear it.

Well, here this letter isn’t off. The next night we received your very grand letter of Nov 23. It made me feel so good. Also your Xmas card & it nearly made me cry. Never mind. Time will go fast now.

Uncle Will had to come up & tell me he had a letter & card from you. He was very pleased.

I received Xmas greetings from Vash Young & Clara. Oh of course all the folks. Xmas is know king.  My I’m not ready but then. This Xmas will have to be very quiet. Uncle Will asked us down to have dinner with them.

Page 4 -  I suppose these folks think my family wouldn’t fare very well if I had to get dinner for them.

We have Flora’s doll & Dr. set. The boys will get clothes & a game or two. Well I shall have to stop & let Maeser take this down.

Game & dance tonite.

Dance tomorrow nite

Snow & dance next night

Morg is happy.

Love & kisses from all of us.

Lovingly, Mother

Notes on Boake Carter and more here.

July 2013 trip to Wyoming's Brigham Young Pioneer Vanguard Trail.

During my recent visit to Northern Utah my cousins chauffeured me (in a big truck) to some of the early nearby Wyoming pioneer trail sites. This rock arrow is purportedly what remains of an arrow Brigham Young left to direct travelers who came after him. Our great great Grandparents Nicholas and Elizabeth Thompson Groesbeck passed this way with the John Banks Company in 1856.

This marker is for a crossing of the Muddy. Presently there is very little water near the site.

These large old trees are evidence of earlier moisture. Nothing more than the creek below, with a bridge built over it for modern-day pioneers to pull their handcarts across. It was beautiful and green, if not muddy.

Markers have been added at actual pioneer grave sites along the trail.

High on this sandstone rock  Philo Dibble Jr. carved his name here while hiding out from Johnston's Army in 1857.
  

Very near the sandstone carving pictured above is this marker. It identifies the site as part of the original Pioneer Trail.

On a highway northeast of Evanston, Wyoming stands this marker that reads:

ERECTED by the members of the 

Woodruff Stake of the Church 

of JESUS CHRIST of Latter day Saints

in honor of the PIONEERS

 who passed this spot July 12, 1847

 under the leadership of 

BRIGHAM YOUNG

Dedicated Sept 20, 1924

The monument was dedicated by Great Grandfather William Rex (1844-1927). His then six-year-old granddaughter Winifred Rex Andrus, attended the dedication, and wrote her name with others on a paper that was left inside of the monument. 

Last week's visit to Randolph, Utah. July 9-11, 2013.

Last week I was invited to Randolph, Utah to visit and quilt with cousins. 

The outing was as wonderful as it sounds.

I thought you might enjoy walking some streets with me. 

I passed P. H. and Bessie and Mary Rex's home on Canyon Street several times.

 It looks very very nice. 

An evening walk through the cemetery revealed the  Church Steeple

 amid the pines and the Crawford Mountains in the distance.

Walking back down Canyon Street from Cemetery Hill

 you pass a new school complex on the right. 

The lights were on in the Chapel on Main Street that evening. 

It is built of bricks made by my great-great Grandfather Samuel Brough.

I visited the Old Town Jail where it is housed on a lot east of town next to the DUP Museum. Both buildings were moved there and are filled with Randolph and family memorabilia. Such a treat.

 This wall phone hung inside the jailhouse door and looked to me exactly like the one that hung inside of Grandpa P. H. Rex's front door. I remember watching the grown ups crank it up to use it. Grandmother Bessie Rex wrote to her mother in Salt Lake about her phone, saying she'd have called her with the news, except she can't hear on their new telephone.

This cream separator is similar to the stainless steel separator

 my Grandmother Emily Frazier used in Woodruff, Utah.

 She kept it on her back porch. 

This is the front door to the DUP Museum that formerly

 stood behind the church house.

 This bench  is familiar, and very like the one that once sat
 on Grandpa P. H. Rex's front porch.

 It is an early bench from the Randolph Church.

 This pressed glass pedestal cake plate and the green vase below it

 were donated by Grandmother Aunt Mary Herbert Rex.

Whoever the items originally belonged to isn't known. 

  

This chrome trimmed stove displayed a Brough cast iron cooking kettle

 on the left rear of the cook-top. 

This Honor Roll hung in an early Randolph Court House. 

It names John Morgan Rex and others

 who made the supreme sacrifice in service to our country.

The view to the East across the meadows is beautiful.

 The Crawford Mountains border the valley on the East.

The Randolph Recreation Hall was built by the community in 1936. 

P. H. Rex was the bishopric counselor over the work project. 

It now houses the Senior Citizens Center and Library.