Mother was left with a large herd of horses and cattle.  She was still the only woman in the valley, but she stayed on farming with the help of her brothers Jim and Will and the others.  She took her family to Holbrook the winter after father died.  Uncle Jim stayed with them.  She took us all to a Christmas program in the Holbrook church house, and some one exposed us all to the red measles.  Practically the whole town had them,including all of us.  We were all very sick,  and mother was so thankful for Uncle Jim to help her take care of all of us, as we were more than she could handle alone, but we all recoved without any after effects.  Durng the siege of sickness a terrible snow storm and blizzard raged, so the who town  was  blocked from the outside world.

(more to come) 

We lived in Uncle John Willie's one room cabin in Holbrook, Idaho, the winter after I was born.  Holbrook was ten miles south of our farm.  We moved there so that Marion and Rob could go to school.  I was blessed 5 Nov, 1905, in the Holbrook Ward, Curlew Stake by Biship Herber Holbrook.  My father wanted me named Margaret after my mother and his sister.  Later when doing genealogy I found that he had many grandmothers named Margaret, too.  But mother had read of Norma Talmadge in the newspaper and was set on naming me Norma, however she did consent for me to be named Norma Margaret.  When my father handed me to Bishop Heber Holbrook to be blessed, he went to say 'Name her Norma Margaret', and then he thought "What a terribly long name to tack on to a little baby", so instead he said, "Name her just Norma".

The next winter we lived in a house on the townsite in Holbrook.  Uncle Im Willie lived with us and went to school in Holbrook.

Father had many friends.  He was very friendly and loved to tell a joke on the Scotch and their stinginess.  He talked in a real Scotch brogue that impressed everyone, and amused them.  Every one loved him and admired his honesty and uprightness.  I've heard men say that he was a wonderful  judge of horses and loved to trade, but he'd never take advantage of anyone in a trade.  Heber Holbrook said, " I didn't know one horse from another, but when I traded with Bob Smith I always got the best of the deal."  He loved to tell of the stinginess of the Scotch people, but he himself was just the opposite.  He was really too generoud.  Every traveler who stopped to water their horses at our well was treated  hospitably by father and asked in to eat and sleep, even the Indians who father loved.  He never joined the church, but he was not bitter against it.  He thought that every Mormon should live up to the teachings of the Church, and wheen aleader stooped to a little or dishonest trick  in his dealing with people, it served as a  stumbling block in his way.  Mother always blamed   herself for not explaining and telling him more about the church.  She thought if she gave him  time he would find out for himself that it was true, but he didn't live long enough.  He did tell her that he would join some day, so she never pushed him.  Many of his best friends were high church officials.  President Joseph Morrell of the Logan Stake was a very good friend of his, but I have not been able to find out how they met and became such dear close friends.  Father had some of his mares out to the farm and was raising colts for him at the time of Father''s death. 

Father's health was never too good,as he had a bad heart ad was  bothered a  lot by rheumatism.  In May, 1907, he was riding the hills chasing horses one day when his horse stepped in a badger hole and rolled over.  The horn of the saddle brused him around the heart.  He had to go to bed and crawl to get from one room  to another wheever he got out of bed as the pain was too severe for him  to stand on his feet.  The doctor was thirty miles away, and they had no way tgo go except  in the white top buggy and he was in too muc pain to stand the ridein that over the jolting roads, he thought.  He had suffered so much pain for years that he never realized this was serious.  But three weeks after the accident, he died, in our Sheep Creek home June 12, 1907, leaving a heart-broken widow and five children,  the oldest Marion,  not quite ten years old and I, the youngst, not quite two years.  The funeral was held in the Holbrook Church House and he was buried in the Holbrook Cemetary.  

At this time I could talk real well,  because I've heard mother say how whenever she cried after father's death, I would go up and put my arms around her and say, "Don't cry Mamma, Papas just sleeping in a pretty bed.  I talked so much and so loud at the funeral that Aunt Arment had to take me outside.

Early Life of Parents  
I, Norma Smith Perry, came into this world at 7:00 A.M., August 20, 1905 to Robert Smith and Margaret Ella Willie, in Mondon, Cache, Utah.  I was born in the front bedroom of the rock house belonging to  my Grandfather and Grandmother, William Pettit Willie and Mary Ann Hunsaker.  My mother had been born in that same room 29 years earlier.  I was the youngest of five children.  Marion VaLoye, born 8 July 1897, Robert born 5 April 1899, Ada born 25 January 1901, and John Claud born 10 January 1903.   I was a large baby weighing over ten pounds, with a lot of dark hair.  I have no picture of me when I was a baby, but my mother and aunts always said that I was a  beautiful child.  The cord was wrapped around my neck three times, so I gave the midwife, my father and grandmother quite a scare as they fought for my life.  The next morning I was hale and hearty, so my father hitched the horses to the wagon and started back to the farm, eighty miles away, leaving Mother and I and the other children with Grandmother.  They had left the farm a few days before right in the midst of harvest.  So father had no time to spare after the big event was over.

Every one tells me that my father thought the world of me and I him from almost the minute I was born.  He called me his little Scotch lassie.  I have been told so often that it seems like I can remember it myself of him saying, "Coom my little Scotch lassie and bring your papa his shoes and soglings," or at other times booter milk, and they said as soon as I coud walk I would drag and pull the shoes to his bed.  

My father was born 1 July 1866 at Dunlop, Ayr., Scotland.  He was the son of Robert Smith and Marion Barbour.  When he was nineteen years of age he worked with a company who sold blooded stallions to America, and he was given a job as caretaker for the horses they were sending to Canada.  He had a brother, John, who was a fireman in Canada and he stayed with him for a few years and then heard of the gold rush in Alaska and decided to try his luck there.  In going there his train went through Salt Lake City.  He had heard of the Mormons who grew horns when he was in Scotland,  so he decided to stop off in Salt Lake City for a few days and get a look at hte strange Mormons.  He had a bad cold and when he got off the train it was raining real hard and he got soaking wet walking to the hotel.  

Two weeks later when he got out of the hospital, his ticket had expired and his money had gone so he found work as a chauffgeur for Mr. McCormick.  Later he came to Mendon, Utah, to work.  Here he met my mother, a good Mormon girl from polygamy parents.  He fell in love with her a first sight and finally won her. They were married 3 Oct. 1896 at her parents home in Mendon, Utah.

They lived in Mendon for awhile then they bought Uncle Ren Hunsakers farm and lived on it in Honeyville, Utah.  In 1901 the Robert Sweeten family and Grandpa Willie homesteaded some land in Holbrook, Idaho.  Father and mother also caught the pioneer spirit, sold their farm in Honeyville and went out west, and began to homestead 320 Acres of sagebrush covered land in the Sheep Creek valley, later called Buist, Idaho.  Father was a lover of hourses, and so he bought horses and cattle with the money he received from the sale of his Honeyville farm.  On their farm they raised alfalfa and a little grain to feed the cattle and horses which they had bought.  Mother was the only woman in the valley.  It was pioneering at the hardest, but they worked hard and soon accumulated a large herd of horses and cattle. 


Their first home was a one room log house with a dirt roof. Here mother, during harvest, cooked for 18 men.  Georhge Pettit, an old fellow whom my dad had picked up hitchhiking on the road also lived with them.  George had no plae to go, and he was crippled and could not read or write, so father felt sorry for him and brought him home and found odd jobs for him to do around the place for his keep.  George lived with them for two years until Father died, and then Mother wouldn't let him stay with us, but helped him to homestead 320 acres of land just east of us.  George would bring his horses downto water them at our wattering trough each noon, and always managed to come just as we were sitting down to eat dinner. So every day we would set an extra place on for George, and we all thought of him as one of the family.


In 1904, the year before I was born, father and Heber Holbrook built mother a two room log house which was surely appreciated after being crowded up so long.  Yet, I've heard mother say that she never did feed as many in the new house as she did in the old one.  This was the home that I came to a few weeks after I was born and was the only home we ever had while we lived with mother on the farm.