Genealogy: Nathaniel Leavitt & Deborah Delano > Nathaniel Leavitt & Amanda Wilson > Jasper William Leavitt > Louis Sylvester Leavitt's wife, Bessie Irene Urry

This life sketch is a combination of two documents. Bessie Irean Leavitt dictated one to a grandaughter, Susan Shaw. Another grandaughter, LaRay Merrell, found a history, in Bessie's own handwriting, among the papers of Ella Irean Leavitt, after her death. Ella cared for her mother at her home in Lovell, Wyoming until her death. Her funeral was on Thursday, June 12, 1980 in the Grant Third Ward Chapel in Salt Lake City, and she was interred in Ogden, Utah beside her husband, Louis Leavitt. It was a simple matter to combine both documents, since they were both in her own words.

Bessie Urry Leavitt

I was born August tenth 1889 in the old 19`h Ward in Salt Lake City Utah. My father [Charles Phillips Urry] was born in Gosport England, December 15th 1863. My mother, Clara Poulter was born in Farmington Utah, 1868.

Father was a Railroad man and became a foreman and was often transferred to different cities. So we moved quite a lot when I was young. His health was not too good and he was told by his doctor to get out into the country for a while to gain back his health, which he did. In the spring of 1897 he moved his family to Plain City Utah [just northwest of Ogden] where he bought a few acres of land and built a home on the ground. I remember so well going from where we lived in a little log house while building. Mother and the rest of the children would go almost every day to help him.

My earliest memories were from about five years old. I was told to watch my younger sister and in our yard there was an irrigation ditch. We were warned not to cross the ditch on the narrow footbridge because of the danger. Some other children on the other side called to me to come and play so I led my two year old younger sister across the ditch. I remember it was wash day. Soon mother came looking for us, and saw us over this ditch. She right away took a switch from one of the trees and switched my little legs and put me in a dirt cellar for about an hour. A few days before this I had seen a small garter snake run down into this cellar. Of course I was terrified. Mother knew nothing about the garter snake. I tried very hard to get up to a small window about 12 inches square so I could be in the light. I couldn't make it. There was some stove pipe in the cellar so I tried to stand on that and got very black. When my mother opened the cellar door I must have been a frightening sight to see, black as I could be and tears streaming down my face. Mother nearly collapsed. Once out in the fresh air and sunshine I was alright. I'll never forget the bath! It was a real scrubbing. That incident taught me a lesson in obedience I shall never forget.

In the mean time we were saddened that first year in Plain City by the death of my younger brother, three years old. I was in school and came down with Scarlet Fever. Then the family all had it. I remember three of us in a bed at a time. There was an epidemic of it at the time. Then as I was getting better, little Johny died. It was so bad. Everyone was so scared of it. My father called his brother in Salt Lake and he came to make funeral arrangements.

The people were wonderful to us. I can see the many carrying in food and a wonderful old lady came to help mother as she and father were the only ones that were not sick with the fever and were up night and day. So this wonderful sister Groo came and stayed with us and she and her sons and daughters became our sweetest friends. And when the sickness cleared up she would take me and my sisters to her home to visit. Later on her son, Joseph Groo, was our church choir leader. He also had a class, so father had him give us lessons. I remember they were so much fun, and I later sang in the choir for socials, funerals and sacrament meetings. He also baptized me in the canal that run near our home. I had a wonderful happy childhood, loving father and mother, brothers and sisters and friends.

Every Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter we would spend it at our Grand Parents Home or Aunt `s and Uncles. There was always plenty of food and we all played games and had a lot of fun. Then when it was our turn we would have them all at our house. I was taught to respect and help the aged in any way I could.

My father first bought a milk cow and a couple of pigs. Then we soon had more added to them and soon a small dairy. We milked six or seven cows night and morning. I would get up every morning and milk three or four cows before going to school. Then I had to walk, rain or snow, up to our knees, to school. I had over shoes and would follow the tracks in the road that the farmers had made to feed cattle. We oftimes walked through eight to ten inches of snow to church and loved every minute of it, my dear old father and I, swinging hands as we walked along.

I was the oldest in the family so would go and work in the fields to help my father as he didn't have any boys old enough. I rode a horse to cultivate the crops. Some days we would stop only long enough to eat a bite of lunch. He would irrigate and I would help the hired man pull weeds. He had a hired man to work for him and I would work right along with him. He was a dear old fellow. He was lame in one leg but was a good dependable worker. We would pick tomatoes, (and anything in season) hoe and weed and thin sugar beets and top them by hand by tonnage. Twice a week the whole family would make the ten mile trip to Ogden to sell vegetables. Father would take one side of the street and I the other and we would sell until all the vegetables were gone. The money helped with groceries and living.

By this time I was in my early teens and was a very busy girl. There was choir practice, mutual, and Sunday school and sacrament meetings and also a dance, on Friday nights mostly. We lived in a ward of about 300. My sister Pearl [only sister listed is Nydia Lillian] and I would go to Ogden to Union Meeting. I was Librarian in the Sunday School. We enjoyed so much hearing David O McKay speak to us and teach the youth of the church the gospel and how to live it. He was Stake Superintendent of the Sunday School at that time in Weber Stake. We would all ride home so enriched by his talks. He never once doubted the youth of the church and gave us so much encouragement. We all dearly loved him and his wife who was always by his side.

Then in 1903 my sister Eveline died of Scarlet Fever and at the time I was sick also with it. In fact the doctor said I was the worst of the two of us. But her throat was abscessed and in March of 1903 she passed away. Again the people of the town were wonderful to us. Then my father and Uncle Edward carried her little casket to the grave. It was so hard for us all to have to remain at home while the burial was taking place. Then we all got better of the fever and the next year a sister was born and a brother the 1^st of May 1904. I was the only help Mother had while Father went for the doctor 8 miles away. I kept the house clean and cared for my brothers and sisters, did the cooking, washing and ironing. I also still helped with the chores and farm work.

Then we would have watermelon busts and in the winter, bob sledding. We would heat bricks all day long in the coal range to take on the ride. There was always lots of fun in our ward. It was small but we were all happy in our work and activities in the church.

Every fall Father would take the family to gather sage brush for kindling wood for the fire, and the ride would be on a hay rack. Mother would pack a nice lunch and it would be so much fun. Then we would take turns going with Father to Ogden Utah to get our winter coal. I remember so well getting ready for winter; canning fruit, and getting a big list of groceries (sugar, flour, soap and all). I guess it was instilled in me to always prepare for winter.

I must say that we had such happy Christmases. My Father and Mother had a joke or two in our stockings. We didn't get so much for Christmas, but it was of good quality and it was mostly clothes when we got older. My dear Mother would tear apart coats and make them over, (also dresses), but I can remember how pleased we were to get them.

In the year 1904 there was a drought, and Father lost most of the crops. So being in debt for machinery etc., he decided to go back to the Railroad to work to pay the bills. So we moved back to Ogden and there I met my future husband Louis [Sylvester] Leavitt. He had just come back from San Francisco. In fact he was in Reno Nevada the morning of April the 6^th when the earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco .

We met at Tollers Dance Hall in Ogden. I had been going to the dance with my neighbors daughter and son. So it was about the second meeting when he asked me for my steady company. That was in April of 1906 and we were married on September 18, 1906. We didn't have a reception. Instead he took a new job as an engineer helper and was sent to Nevada. He was kept there for two weeks training and I didn't know what had become of him. He did not write to me because he thought every day he would be coming home.

Finally he did get home. I was in bed at my mother's house. So at six o'clock in the morning he came in and frightened me to death because he had just got off the Engine as a fireman and his face was black as coal. Mother lighted the lamp and there he was, so black I thought he was a colored man. This was in the early morning and it was still dark outside. He lifted me up to hug and kiss me, then I was so happy he was back. He had left with no experience - as a fireman's helper, so he needed the extra two weeks training in Nevada before he could come home.

Later, after my father went back to railroading we moved around a lot and I became inactive in church work. After I was married and settled in Salt Lake City, my girls and I became active in Primary, I being secretary under Sister Bennett. I have always tried to keep the children in Sunday School work and I love the gospel very much. It is my regret that I was not married in the Temple. Some day I hope to be. I have now had my endowments and been sealed to my parents, (a dying request - a promise I made them before they died).

(A note on a blank page that accompanied the foregoing sketch said: "This is a story as I am trying to finish it at 88 years old.")

Notes from a Grandaughter - LaRay Kochrhans Merrell

Grandpa once told me what he thought of Grandma and I will record it here. He said she was not like "these women now days that feed you hot dogs and hamburgers". He said "She is a real homemaker. They don't make `em like her anymore! She fixed us meals. We had all kinds of chops of lamb and pork and what not. And we had roasts of beef and steaks and vegetables!" He went on to say that they had mounds of fluffy mashed potatoes and her own brown gravy to smother them. They had fresh vegetables as well as cooked garden produce all summer. Grandma canned every kind of fruit and berries that grew. And she made every kind of jam and jelly to with the home made bread she baked. As a child I remember seeing her pies on the kitchen counter, waiting for the Relief Society to come pick them up for a funeral. As a young mother I went to visit one day and she invited my family to stay for a roast beef dinner. I will never forget it. The brown gravy was in a big dish and it was the best I have ever eaten. She served it with fresh cabbage, cooked with bacon and a relish dish.

Grandma Leavitt's house was the cleanest one I have ever entered. There was not even dust in her storage closet! The windows sparkled and the curtains were freshly starched. She had a "green thumb" and grew plants in pots on her windowsills and around her home that were beautiful to see. I loved to sit in her porch swing and look at the pansies and roses etc. in her yard. She had a snowball bush higher than I was and perennial flowers that filled the borders around her home. She grew concord grapes all over the fence that separated her home from her neighbors. When she was over 80 years old, the Deseret News paper featured her in it's home section, standing in her garden. They thought it remarkable that a woman in her 80's still maintained her own extensive yard and garden.