By Della Parsons Ware
April 10, 1955
Arthur Stanley Parsons, the eldest of a family of 7, spent
his boyhood days in Salt Lake City and Richfield, Utah. About 1882 the Parsons family moved to
Koosharem. He worked with his
cousins, Enoch and Erastus Sorensen, with cattle and sheep on the Henry
Mountains in Eastern Utah. Later
he went to work for Shadrich Nychwanger in Grass Valley. This was a real opportunity for him as
he was permitted to take his pay in cattle and meadowland. As he worked for a number of years, he
accumulated a considerable amount of property.
In March 1898, he received a call to the Southern States
Mission, spending the last 8 months of time in the Northern States. He received his release on his
birthday, June 26, 1900.
During the following summer he pastured his dairy herd at
Fish Lake where Browns also ran a cheese dairy. Father and Bertha Brown began a courtship and were married
in the Manti Temple, January 16, 1901.
They made the trip to Manti and back by covered wagon, bringing back
with them a nice three-piece bedroom set.
Their first child, Della May, was born in their small farm
home about 2 miles south of Koosharem.
Mother spent many lonely hours there while father attended to his church
duties. The following year they
moved into town, living in a home owned by my grandfather Brown. During this time their new home was
built by Theodore Anderson. The
home was made of sawed logs. It
was a two-story house, four rooms downstairs with clothes closet and pantry,
and an unfinished upstairs. Mother
was an excellent homemaker and made the rooms attractive with new woven rag
carpets and gaily patterned wall paper.
Several years later he built a room over the artesian wall;
a gasoline engine furnished power to operate the pump and draw water for the
livestock in the yard, also to run the cream separator and clothes washer. This was before the time when electric
power was available and everyone depended on either artesian or ditch water for
culinary purposes. So this was a
really up to date set up at that time.
During the summer of 1904 father nearly died of typhoid
fever, which left his health permanently impaired.
His life’s ambition was being realized, he owned meadow and
farm lands, barns, beautiful horses, range and dairy cattle, and best of all he
had a family and a comfortable home.
On the 20th of December 1908 he was set apart to
labor as 2nd counselor to Bishop Andrew Anderson after being
ordained a High Priest at a quarterly conference in Richfield by John Henry
Smith, Apostle. He was active in
civic and political groups and did a great deal to promote the dairy industry
in the valley.
As horses provided the only means of travel at that time,
travelers must stop overnight in the various communities. My grandparents, the Browns, kept a
traveler’s home and father had a stable for feeding their horses. Our folks became very well known and
they were highly respected.
In 1916 father sold his property in Grass Valley and bought
a home with a fruit orchard and a small farm in Monroe. He had spent weeks in Salt Lake City
with specialists trying to find relief from asthma but there seemed to be no help
for him so at that time he was unable to do strenuous work. There were six children in the
family. The boys, Stanley and
Aaron, learned to assume responsibility early in life. More farmland and sheep were
bought. Eventually, they built up
a farm industry again.
I would dare say that never did a wife and mother work
harder than mother did to help carry on in the face of these difficulties. She was a good conservative manager,
very industrious and capable, and she bravely faced her many discouragements.
Father was a very studious man, deeply religious, and
conscientiously tried to do right, always.
After enduring much suffering, he passed away at his home in
Monroe the 28th of August 1935.
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