Chapter 30.
In Memory of My Wife, Tamar.
More than four thousand years ago the Lord said to the children of Israel, "Honor thy father and thy mother," and thou shalt inherit a blessing; and today, among Christian or heathen nations, the child that gives love and obedience to its parents is in return loved and honored by his fellow men.
In 1869, I was laboring in President Young's cotton factory at Washington, Utah. Joseph Burch, the superintendent, sent me with a four-horse team loaded with factory goods, to Beaver, with orders to exchange the goods for wheat. I was to store the wheat in the Beaver grist mill, then come home with a load of flour.
One day, when working at the Beaver grist mill, I received a note from Sister Black, stating that her daughter Tamar wished to go back with me to Washington to see her father, who was then running the Washington grist mill. I declined to take her for the reason that it was stormy weather, and that I was heavily loaded.
The next day Sister Black came to see me. She told me her daughter had an offer of marriage from a man of wealth, the owner of a good home. It looked, from a worldly point of view, like a splendid offer; but the girl doubted the man's profession of faith in the Gospel, and she wanted to counsel with her father. I told the sister that without doubt the trip would be muddy and disagreeable, but if the daughter could put up with the inconvenience, she was welcome to go. She went. We were eight days wallowing through the mire and snow.
Tamar was young and bashful, thinly clad, and I know she suffered from the cold, but she did not murmur, for she was going to see her father. Her appreciation of his counsel was supreme. Her devotion and loyalty to her father made her companionship sweet to me.
When I was a boy of sixteen I received my endowments in the old council house. President Heber C. Kimball made the most impressive talk on virtue and chastity that I have ever heard, and purity became, in my mind, an ideal more precious than gold or silver. It was my practice of this ideal that led to the winning of Tamar's love, and that gave me unreservedly her father's blessing.
A few days after returning from Beaver, I walked with Brother Black over to St. George, seven miles, to attend a priesthood meeting. On the way, I asked him what answer Tamar had given the man who wished to marry her. He replied, "I advised her to decline his offer, and she did it." As events turned out, our trip proved providential. Eight days of companionship under such trying circumstances could not fail to awaken a mutual admiration. I too discovered in Tamar a high and lovable type of womanhood, a type that no outward vicissitude of life would daunt or weaken. Perhaps her first appreciation of me was in the nature of perfect trust, and indeed her virtue had been as sacred with me along this lonely road as it would have been with her father or mother.
Fifty years ago, we of Utah had no railroads, nor automobiles, and not even brakes on our wagons. I got my Brother Joseph W.'s big mules, loaded up with cotton yarn, then with Albina and her children, and Tamar, I hiked to Salt Lake to be married. As we got into the wagon Father Black put his arms around Tamar, and said, "My daughter, you are going to marry into a large family. Many trials will come to you; and I want you to remember, 'It is better to suffer wrong, than to do wrong.'" This was splendid counsel, and the daughter never forgot it. The following incident illustrates Tamar's presence of mind in sudden danger.
As I remember, about fifteen miles north of Beaver, we went down a long, serpentine hill. Rains had washed the old road into a deep gully. The new track above it was sidling and very rocky. In the front end of our wagon was a mess box, the lid being level with the top of the wagon bed. A sheepskin on this box formed my seat. As we reached the top of the hill, the wagon began to crowd the mules. I stopped to get out to lock the wheel with the chain fastened to the side of the wagon bed. As the team stopped, the ring in the neckyoke broke, letting the tongue down. The mules sprang forward with fright, and would have jerked me off the wagon; but Tamar, quick as a flash, placed her knees against the mess box, clasped her arms around my body and held me firm; while I, with a grip of iron, held the wagon bunt against the mules. Down the hill we went like a whirlwind, the end of the wagon tongue, in front of the mules, sending the cobble rock flying in every direction. On reaching the level flat, I succeeded in stopping the outfit, and no injury was done, save the shock of fright that we all received.
In 1856, in the Seaman's Bethel in Honolulu, I heard an anti-Mormon lecturer tell an audience that they could readily recognize the "polygamous children," for "they were born imbecile pigmies." No slander against my people could be fouler than this one. Utah's foremost citizens today are of polygamous lineage. Tamar was herself, a splendid refutation of this slander. Tamar's mother was a plural wife, and Tamar measured five feet eight inches in height, and weighed one hundred forty-five pounds. In disposition she was quiet and cheerful, yet in danger was quick and heroic. Here is a notable instance:
After I had lost my arm, in coming back from Mexico, while I was still feeble, when crossing the New Mexico desert, the Navajos were unfriendly. At Captain Toms Wash, they started in to rob us. A big buck, after making an inflammatory speech, sprang upon the wagon hub, caught hold of a sack of provisions to lift it from the wagon. As quick as a flash, Tamar struck him across the nose with a stick of wood. The blood spurted from both nostrils, and the brave, dropping the sack, got off the wheel quicker than he got on. For a moment my heart ceased to beat, for I expected trouble; but the warriors who witnessed the act, roared with laughter, and I soon saw that they were amused at the defeat, by a "squaw," of their windy-mouthed captain.
But it was in the home circle where she shone with the greatest brilliancy; not with a meteoric flare, rather with the continual glow of the summer's sunshine. Perhaps the darkest hour of my life was when I lost my arm, and fell penniless among strangers. But Tamar with a smiling face, nursed the mutilated man, and at the same time whirled the wheel of the washing machine; thus winning the bread that kept the breath of life in us. Tamar calmly and bravely met the responsibilities of married life, grateful for the gift of motherhood, and willing to sacrifice her own life, if need were, in order to give life to others. She believed and practiced the principle that "it is more blessed to give than to receive." I never was so weary or discouraged that her words would not rest and cheer me. She being younger than I by fifteen years, I fondly anticipated that my last hours would be comforted by her ministration.
I often hear the remark that "we never miss the water till the well goes dry," and that "we do not appreciate the loved ones until they are taken from us." Possibly I did not fully value the wealth I possessed in my family, but I always said—and it came from my heart—that God had blessed me with noble wives; that I became a better man through obeying the principle of plural marriage than I ever should have been without it. Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and no other principle taught by him would have done as much for the uplift of the human family, on the plane of purity and righteousness. The men and women who practiced that principle were not sensual sinners, but they were strong, clean souls, willing to suffer, and die if need were, for the right as they saw the right.
I have partaken of the hospitality of the common people in England and in the United States. I have witnessed the love and happiness that abide in the Christian homes of these Christian nations; but never have I seen more perfect trust, confidence, and love without guile, than I have witnessed in some of the plural families of the Latter-day Saints. Take for instance the father who will give to his beloved daughter, as a parting benediction, "It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong," and "it is more blessed to give than to receive," and you have a revelation of a clean heart, and a pure spirit.
It may not be possible for mortal man to teach truths as sublime as did the Christ, but if it be true that "from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," then that father possessed a pure heart, certainly the daughter to whom the precious admonition was given was a worthy child; and the diligent practice of those celestial ideals made Tamar B. Young a lovable mother and a peerless wife.
In conclusion, I will say that each of those three wives bore me seven children, making in all seventeen sons and four daughters. They were all strong and healthy children; not a weakling among them. Moreover they have all made honorable and virtuous men and women.
One of my sons, upon learning of the death of his mother, wrote:
"Oh, how thankful I am for my parentage; for the noble souls who gave me life! How I love them for the clean, uncontaminated body with which they blessed my spirit. No loathsome disease fastened to it, no craving for liquor and tobacco, as an hereditary hindrance to my progress. Oh, those noble women! Their crowns will be as bright, and will shine with a splendor equal to that of the Prince at whose side they walked unflinchingly through life, turning their sorrows into joy. Again, how thankful I am for my noble parentage!" And I add:
I am proud of my children, and they are proud of me;
When the reaping comes, what will my harvest be?
In the three chapters preceding this, I gave the best statement of motives and experiences of my life as it passed in rain and sunshine, with the three noble wives who shared my joys and sorrows. There is one other wife, who has claim as valid and sacred as the ones that I have so warmly eulogized. The reason that a chapter is not given to her memory is a sad one.
On the 10th of October, 1878, I married in the Salt Lake Temple, Catherine Coles, to me a sweet, chaste girl.
On the 27th day of November, 1879, she gave her life, in giving birth to a sweet baby girl. By her request the babe was named Mary Ellen, and with my consent she was adopted by Aunt Ellen Young, who cuddled her to her breast and held her there until the child grew to womanhood and found a pleasant nest of her own.
In that child's veins flows the blood of a Young. She came honestly and virtuously by that heritage.
The woman does not exist, either dead or alive, who can say that I ever invited her to commit sin.
My wives were given to me in sacred places, by those who had authority to seal on earth, and it was sealed in heaven, and if I can be pure to the end, those ties will be eternal.