Constance R. Bidder Brown

              Crowder, Dr. David L. Oral History Project
Constance R. Bidder Brown: Growing
Up in Rexburg
By Constance R. Brown
December 8, 1975
Box 1 Folder 17
Oral Interview conducted by Roberta Carpenter
Transcribed by Victor Ukorebi April 2005
Brigham Young University- Idaho
I am Robbie Carpenter and today December 8, 1975, I am going to interview Constance
Brown and the general topic will be growing up in Rexburg.
Roberta Carpenter ( RC): Mrs. Brown, where were you born?
Constance R. Brown ( CRB): I was born in Rexburg, August 30, 1902.
RC: Would you tell us who your parents are?
CRB: My father was Hyrum Ricks Sr. the son of Thomas Edwin Ricks who was the
founder of Ricks College. My father and mother married in Polygamy in Logan, Utah.
Shortly after the persecution of the polygamists was so severe that Aunt Lizzy, she was
the second wife, came to Rexburg, Idaho to live; and my father went on a mission to
England and served there for two years. Mother took care of the store that they owned, a
mercantile store in Logan while he was gone and supported him with the proceeds of the
store. They moved to Rexburg in 1896 and father, with the help of his little boys and
some of his brothers, built a home in the outskirts of Rexburg on the west, southwest
side. I was the sixteenth child out of the family of twenty. Aunty Lizzy’s home was just
east of mother’s home. I grew up in that environment and I might say here that although
this generation frowns at the idea of polygamy, that it’s the greatest source of teaching
people to be unselfish [ of] anything I know of. There was no distinction between my half
sisters and I. we played and grew up together as just one big happy family.
RC: I have never talked to anyone that has come from a polygamist family before. What
did your parents do, your father do?
CRB: My father was an attorney. My grandmother Bidder, who was of German descent,
both grandmother and Grandfather Bidder were my mother’s parents and they had settled
in Logan. My mother was carried across the plains when she was a year old. Her parents
were converts to the church. My father was born in Farmington. His father and mother
were pioneers in the Salt Lake area. He served a term as Probate Judge at one time. The
County seat was at St. Anthony and it was Fremont County, before a division was made
and his office was there. Father was a successful attorney and he needed to [ be], because
he had plenty to support. He said polygamy was just [ as] hard on a man as it was on a
woman because they had so many problems keeping everybody happy and satisfied. But
we were really happy together. My childhood memories are just one sweet story.
RC: Do you remember anything in your childhood of ever not having enough?
CRB: I never recall not having enough to eat. I do recall one Christmas that my brother
and I were the youngest children in my mother’s family of eleven; we went to town and
had a few pennies to spend for Christmas shopping. I recall I was seven, rubbing my nose
or pressing my nose against the store window to see the candy and all the wonderful
display because very, very seldom did we ever have a chocolate. I bought a box of candy
for my father and mother for Christmas out of my meager supply, meager pennies.
Because I was sure that they would share and that I’d be able to have a treat.
RC: You said your grandfather was the founder of the school? I understand that the
school was in debt or almost failed, or something?
CRB: My Grandfather was considered a wealthy man at one time. He had five wives and
many children. He died a poor man in 1901 before I was born. Most of the things, the
money or anything that he’d accumulated went to help sustain Ricks Academy. It wasn’t
even a four year school, it was just eighth grades at one time. It started out with just a few
grades and then increased. But they had such a struggle. Persecution was bitter against
the Mormon people, apostate people. People, who had dropped away from the church,
some of them had come from polygamist families and had fallen away. I never recall
going hungry but I surely recall longing for some of the special things that everyone take
for granted today. We always had a wonderful garden, and we had a cow and a horse and
a buggy. We had to travel back and forth from town with a horse and buggy. When I was
growing up, three of my older brothers served on missions and they were hard years,
even though it didn’t take what it takes now to keep a missionary out, it surely depleted
the family income.
RC: What year were you married?
CRB: I was married in 1922. I married Jay Earl Brown. He was born and raised in Bear
Lake; went on a mission to the Central States and I became acquainted with him when I
went on a visit to Bear Lake to visit a sister. The years of World War I were difficult
years. People had to buy bonds. They had to help support and give money to help the
soldiers to contribute from many sources to help them, this is the service men. It was
difficult all through my growing years so when we were married, I started out with
practically nothing at all. They were hard times and since I had come from a big family
and always been conservative, I didn’t know anything else and so you just followed the
pattern.
RC: When you had children did it get harder?
CRB: Well yes, as the children came along we were able to cope with the problems that
existed. I don’t believe when I see some of these young people struggling today that
perhaps it seemed any harder to us then, than it does [ to] them now because they have to
start from scratch sometimes. Having spent their time trying to get an education, some of
them have gone in debt. That wasn’t a normal thing at that time.
RC: Do you remember when the stock market crashed?
CRB: Yes. Rexburg had been going through a period of rejuvenation and building.
College Avenue was the street, was built through and College Avenue was built and
some nice homes were built along on each side of the street. New buildings, the
Commercial Building, the Idamount Hotel and different buildings that we just thought
were exceptionally buildings for our little town. My brother, Hyrum Ricks Jr., he was my
oldest brother, was a promoter of a lot of these improvements that took place. At one
time, I think he would have been considered wealthy for the time we lived in. But he
ventured farther than he should have considering the years and the times, the things that
were going on. Then one night, we went to bed and the next morning when we got up the
news came that the banks had closed their doors, that there was no chance to get the
money, that the stock market had crashed, and that the people would have a terrible time
to survive. They did and a great depression followed that particular period.
RC: Was your family directly affected… your family?
CRB: I don’t believe that we realized how much we were affected. It was a struggle to
pay the bills. If it hadn’t been for our garden and the things that we have learned how to
take care of, both for in the summer and the winter, we would have suffered. But we had
learned through past experience of pioneering that you had to conserve, you had to take
advantage to use every available source. When you had a new dress, you didn’t wear it a
few times and discard it, it had to be worn until it was sometimes threadbare.
RC: Do you remember Rexburg, like Ricks College, being affected by the stock market
crash? I mean, could everybody afford to go to this school?
CRB: No, the school had a struggle for years and years and had it not been church
supported I think that it would have had a difficult time to continue to exist. I do think
that those trials and the years of trouble made the people cling together and they
supported the school. I graduated from Ricks College in 1921, and since that particular
time or as far back as I can remember, people have said that Ricks has an exceptional
spirit. People have gone to Utah State, they have gone to the University of Utah, they
have gone to Moscow to the University, and to Pocatello to the school there. I have heard
countless people, young people bear testimony that never have they ever found the spirit
that exists at Ricks. The only thing that I could contribute was that they had such trials.
Oh, I remember when we put the “ R”, Ricks, on the Spori building, that we saved pennies
for a long, long time to contribute to help to pay for the “ R”.
RC: Do you have any feelings about the President at the time of the stock market crash or
of the New Deal or of the programs that he introduced?
CRB: There were government agencies that helped people to… oh, they made projects if
it was even digging ditches or doing something that seemed perfectly senseless at the
time to give people something to do. Then they paid them in turn. Many people were in
this area, after the crash, they were out of work. It was employment that was scarce and
hard to cope with. Many people lost everything that they had accumulated through years
of struggle. They were real difficult years. It was in the early part of the depression when
the church authorities first advocated the food storage program and the welfare program.
The church helped. They used to ship in car loads of grapefruit, oranges, and a lot of
commodities that people who were active in the church; and my husband was in the
bishopric at the time and they used to deliver it all over to the people who were poor and
couldn’t afford the things that we feel are most essential.
RC: Do you remember any bums or hobos?
CRB: Oh yes. Ever since I was a little child, we lived next to the railroad track. They
would come and they would walk the railroad track, back and forth. Sometimes there
would be as high as ten or fifteen stop at a day, when I was a child, asking for, oh they
would say, could they do a little work to get something to eat, but most of them weren’t
very anxious to work. It was a real burden sometimes to, cause mother was of the nature
that she felt she couldn’t turn a hungry person from her door. We also had a lot of Indians
come into the area and they were great beggars and some good thieves among them.
RC: Can you tell us some of the basic commodities that you had to do without? That
were short at that time?
CRB: Yes, soap was scarce. Sometimes we weren’t able to buy a toilet tissue, sugar, was
really scarce. In fact, sugar and shoes were rationed. We had ration stamps that, oh I
recall one time I said to one of my sisters who was married, “ Penny’s are going to have
some sheets and pillow cases in and don’t you think that we’d like to get some?” She
said, “ Well, we got money to buy them any time.” There came a time when people stood
in lines for a block or two to try and get sheets and pillow cases and some very essential
things. When we killed a beef or had a beef killed, we’d take care of the grease or when
we killed a pig and made our own soap and we never thought of buying bread. That was
the last thing we would ever thought of, buying a loaf of bread. Everything had to be
made from scratch. I recall that during the depression years as our little family was
growing up, that many times our main diet was cereal for breakfast and milk, and for
dinner we had boiled potatoes and gravy made from putting some flour in some lard and
thickening it with flour and milk. We didn’t suffer but we surely didn’t have luxuries that
we would have liked to have had. When the authorities of the church first instituted the
welfare program and asked the people to get in their supply, if it was possible, of food. I
made enough soap that I thought would last us a year and every time there was a sale we
purchased a case of tomatoes or something that we could change our diet a little from
potatoes and gravy. Some of the neighbors were a little critical and they said well if times
got any harder if you had a storage of anything you’d have to share it with someone else.
It wouldn’t do you any good anyway. So one year we had a flood. Yet the snow was deep
and in January 21, the rain storm came and the great thaw. As the water ran off the hill
like a river and it struck the side of our house like the crack of a gun, and then it filled the
basement. Some of my neighbors were a little critical because we had to have the water
pumped out of the basement eventually. The chickens had to be carried from the chicken
coop to the barn and thrown up on the hay loft so that they wouldn’t fly down into the
water and drown. The neighbor down the street from us, a man and his wife and children,
were brought up the road in a boat. So you know how deep the water was. People
suffered extensively from that. Some of my neighbors laughed because a mile and a half
down the highway the water had to come up the hill so fast that it bubbled, you know
how water gets white, and we used to call it Indian soap when we were youngsters. But it
bubbled and had a lot of white on top of the water and the neighbors said that that was
Brown’s storage of deep floating down. For a long time, I raked up soap from the lawn
that they had to, when they pumped the water out of the basement; however, we didn’t
get the water in the main part of the house. We had two floods and a fire. After we had
been married for a few years, our house caught fire and did a lot of damage. They were
trying years but I don’t think that those years were any different than people’s lives are
now because everyone’s tested in some form or the other. Some people can’t take
prosperity. Some people can’t take a lot of money. So they are tested to see if they’ll
serve the Lord. Now I know that it was really difficult for people to pay their tithing
through those years but those who did were surely blessed. Given the desire and the
stamina to face up under problems and difficulties and think that if they worked at it hard
enough that tomorrow will be better.
RC: Well, thank you very much. This has really been enjoyable and I have really learned
a lot. This tape will be placed in the library at Ricks College for use by future researchers.
Thank you.