Elmer Hendricks

              Voices from the Past
Teachers and Places Taught
By Elmer Hendricks
September 25, 1982
Tape # 45
Oral interview conducted by Harold Forbush
Transcribed by Theophilus E. Tandoh
November 2004
Brigham Young University- Idaho
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Side two of this tape will deal primarily with the community of Hibbard. And the
interviewee, that I am privileged to chat with this 25th day of September 1982, is Elmer
Hendricks who has lived in this kind of a bedroom community of Rexburg for all these
many years. Now that particular terminology I guess is referred to such popular places as
Salt Lake and the Bedroom communities would be Bountiful and Farmington and so on,
but as this time as we are recording many people have their employment in Rexburg and
yet they drive in and bought a ten minute’s drive from Hibbard where they live. There
they have a two or three or four- five acre lot in their home and have their garden and
maybe a cow or whatever. But they sleep out there, about what… five miles out?
EH: Yes.
HF: Three to five miles away they come in to Rexburg and have their daily employment.
Now Elmer, would you share with me the date and the place of your birth.
EH: I was born in Huntsville, Utah, on December the 3rd 1898 at the home of my
grandparents, John Felt.
HF: F- E- L- T?
EH: Yes. My grandfather comes from maybe.
HF: Well, now alright. But you had… your mother had been living already in the
Hibbard area?
EH: Yes. The folks were married in 1896 and they moved into Rexburg. Father had
already acquired a farm here. The place a number of years before. They moved into the
new one room log cabin on the farm. And when I was due to come to the earth, mother
went down to Huntsville to live with her parents, stayed with her parents while I was
born.
HF: And that explains why you were born in Huntsville near Ogden.
EH: Yes.
HF: Now who were your parents?
EH: My father was James Hendricks, he was the son of Josiah Hendricks, from Logan,
born in Logan, Utah. My mother was Josephine Felt. And lived in Huntsville, her parents
would come from Sweden. And establish a home and farm in Huntsville and she was
born in Grantsville and moved to Huntsville.
HF: Did any of her people ever come in to the Upper Snake River Valley? The Felts?
EH: Well, her one brother come up here for a few years, Hyrum Felt lived. She was from
a polygamous family, her father had five women. She was of the youngest family and
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there and her immediate family was four, children that lived, some have died earlier in
life. But there was four that I new, Hyrum Felt, Gest, Steve, Lindy, their sister, there
were four of them.
HF: Elmer, had your father and mother homesteaded out in the Hibbard area?
EH: Father come first and took as a desert act. He come here and work for his brother
and live with him and found this piece of land available and he bought the relinquishment
from a man and took it over as a desert claim and then when they were married and
moved the wife’s mother here and he turned it into a homestead. And then filed on as a
homestead.
HF: A hundred and sixty acres?
EH: Yes, I think it is hundred and sixty to start with yes. And he sold off thirty acres
later on and to his brother, that come as a sort of a… Hugh, when he was working here, he
worked with the time that sugar factory was being built in Sugar city; quarry out the rock
and helped faced the rock… at that time he got some rock in his eye. And because of that
lost his eyesight, practically so. Had to go to Salt Lake for treatment and sold thirty acres
of his land in order to pay for that debt.
HF: He didn’t loose his sight then.
EH: No, he was fortunate enough that he was able to have doctors, doctors thought
maybe he was going lose, he took treatment here in Rexburg for a time and just kept
getting worse and worse and finally he had to go to Salt Lake. I think it is Dr. Stopper
treated him there.
HF: Dr. Stopper.
EH: He was one of his doctors and then maybe the first one or the young ones but he is
one of the doctors.
HF: That is interesting because he was my doctor.
EH: Was he?
HF: Years later.
EH: Well.
HF: Now what is your earliest recollection of your home on the range where you were
brought back as an infant to be reared?
EH: Well, I remember there is little fellow after getting big enough to get around. I used
to run around in the farm and only sage brush, the place was covered with sage brush
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when they threw it up and the land will clear few acres at the time of the year and pine
and the crop and go off to Montana and work for a while and make stake and finish
paying the debt and … and he left mother alone a lot of the time because he had to go up
to get help that way and he worked at Anacondas and Butte Montana and different places.
Hayle, Idaho, and they even that way made the expense to pay for the developing of the
farm.
HF: He was a miner then?
EH: Well, not necessarily, he worked at the mines, he worked in timber work, he work in
Anaco work and brick yards there, I have a picture of him and the crew and the
anacondas working at the brick yard and brick and so he had a variety of that just lame
and labor with their different jobs and he applied on the farm. He was a hard worker he
was big husky man and he used his strength to the maximum, he always worked hard and
done a lot of heavy work. He was well liked, made a good success on the farm and
developed it up. And I remember him when I was just a little kid who was down burning
sage brush one day and clearing some of the ground out… and got my sleeve on fire.
Started to burn my hand. I stated to howl and cry, Dad come around and grabbed me by
the hand, wrist around and smattered the fire out on my sleeve, and it was quite a scare
because I didn’t know how to remember how bad Dad got to going anyway I got the burn
on me, scared and cried. But I had that experience in growing up, I could I remember
through the years of the fall year seeing them burning sage brush. Out in the neighbor
fields and all grubbed it off and… into a rose and burn being a fires of strings going
across the fields. At night generally they burn at night.
HF: Were other neighbors doing about the same thing as your Dad?
EH: Yes. We had the neighbor of Joseph B. Rigby was our closest neighbor on one side.
The claimants on this west side of us joined our form. Was that the, what was his first
name… Eugene G. Clements, who is a father, he was a father of … Clement and those
boys.
HF: And he was a neighbor on the, your other side?
EH: Yes, he that time lived on the west side. Lived at home on the road, running east and
west. Later he built a home up on the other corner reserve up close to us. He owned a
big section of ground in there and he give donated the ground for the building the church
house, where it now stands.
HF: Now that wasn’t the first church, was it?
EH: No the first church in Hibbard was a log cabin built up in the Dewy Parker farm,
where Dewy Parker home now stands. He built first a one log cabin and started out, that
is for the church and school and all they used that. And finally a second room at his long
building of it. And I was pretty young when that was transferred in 1900; they started to
build the new frame building on the corner where the present church is. Built a nice
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frame house here and that clear where I grew is full of church activity. And while I was
on my mission in 1923, they built the new school. And then…
HF: Was it near the church?
EH: The school where I went to school was just kitty- corner across the street from church
like where Ferris Robinson now lives. It was a, well whilst I was there it was four room
school house, it started out with two rooms frame building. They added two rooms of
brick on those south sides of the frame. If I remember it was the own belfry in the tie and
bell in the top that ring if ….
HF: So kids would respond to the school bell?
EH: Yes, sometimes.
HF: Now the building preceded the brick building?
EH: Yes.
HF: Where it was built, about 1921 or ’ 22?
EH: Yes. Maybe it is now. And you see this other was up on the corner in this half a
mile… a little over quarter a mile north where the overall regional was.
HF: Do you remember your teachers?
EH: Some of them, I remember. Well it started out Leo Jake was one of the teachers, that
I had picture to build a school when I was stated a school. It was Leo Jake and Mrs.
White who taught. Mrs. White must have been our teacher. I don’t remember much
about that beginning. Leo Jake was the principal of the school that time. Then over
through the years, several of them. Remember toward the last one year Lewis McClellan
at the hour was had already come from back east used to hire a lot of student teachers
from different places back east them days because it wasn’t available here. And now
Lewis McClellan, he was a good sport kid and we all liked him and yet he was a good
teacher and I learnt and acquired a lot from him. Remember going to down the, he went
after elect year; he went down to a school close to Ogden, Korean, or somewhere they
were talking. I went visiting…
HF: He probably was not a member of the church, was he?
EH: No, there were several of those that taught those days that were not members of the
church.
HF: But they were good community people.
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EH: Nice, nice community people. And then Jenson it was, I can’t think his first name
was. I graduated from eighth grade, there were ten of us. I have a picture of the
graduating class.
HF: What year was that Elmer?
EH: 1915.
HF: Is when you graduated from the eighth grade?
EH: Yes.
HF: Did you go on up here to Ricks then?
EH: Yes. Yes, I come up to high school at Ricks. I went through high school and
graduated in 1920.
HF: All four years?
EH: It took barely five years to make it. I wasn’t a brilliant student I guess, but we went
through a year of flu at that time. During that time is when the school was closed down
for sometime, was flu epidemic. Then one year I was out of school for quite a bit time
with the inflammatory rheumatism, I couldn’t get around so I missed school and slipped
back, I had to take an extra year. I should have graduated in 1919. But I didn’t quite
have credit to make it and graduated in 1920.
Sister Hendricks: I think the more you get through far, you ought to tell how your mother
kept track of you. Her only child.
HF: You were the only child?
EH: Yes, I grew up all alone.
HF: Is that right?
EH: I had one sister, who lived up to the age of six weeks and died so that is nearest I
come to having any companionship. I often say that I’m caught on of in the girl class. I
grew up alone as a boy in a home and when we started out we raised five sons no girls.
So I don’t how to look at women side.
Sister Hendricks: I’ve had a healthy mouth, because I’m feeling part of the girls. But
anyway, we got a lot in real world. But I do want to tell you how his mother kept track of
him mounting all that sage brush, which is higher than he has. She put a red sun band.
And she said she can see that bobbing up and down among that sage brush and that way
she kept following.
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EH: Had an old dog, use to follow me too. They call… by me.
HF: Oh, that is interesting. Did you do quite a lot of horse back riding Elmer?
EH: Not a great deal. I didn’t do a lot, we didn’t handle many cattle. Always milk cow
and that all I did ride. I didn’t do a lot of saddle.
Sister Hendricks: His boys are the horse back riders. Our Son, the last son we had Eric
Hendricks, was awarded, the all around cowboy at the BYU in 1965, so there are ones
that take spot up when you don’t know how to saddle.
HF: That is interesting.
Sister Hendricks: Yes, he was awarded a prize saddle because of it, had his name on it.
Then the year the Stirrups.
HF: Now thank you for that contribution Sister Hendricks. Now Elmer what was your
first employment where you earned maybe a dollar an hour or dollar a day or whatever?
EH: I didn’t do much of employed work only because were are the only ones in the farm
and Dad in the farm and I stayed at home and worked most of my life very little of
employment till later years, I remember just before I went on my mission, I worked some
in the beets and things and I thought I had made a fortune, I went and worked down to
neighbors top beets for a couple hours in the morning till it is time for the beet dump to
open. And I worked as tear man on the beet dump. I got five dollars a day, for my day at
the beat dump. I made couple of dollars topping beet, I thought that by that… I was really
making some money. That seems too small compared to nowadays, that it makes it hard
for me to adjust to all these inflated prices that were used to be fine nowadays. Now they
did have a beet dump in Hibbard. And there was a spare of railroad from Sugar City
down to Hibbard.
HF: Yes. And that indicates to me there must have been a lot of sugar beet producers
there in the Hibbard District.
EH: Those quite few produced beets there. See there was a series of dumps, down along
the track along the Sugar City, one in the Salem area. It is on the Salem road and it is
going from Rexburg to Salem as a bump dump there. One down they call Jacob’s dump
was in where Del Relbough now lives. There is a dump there, and the one we call the
Hinckley dump, is where we used to lay hold beef stew. That is down where the track
turned right; it was in the Hinckley farm at that time, it is used to be. It is right across the
road from where Denis Rock now lives out in the field where next to Rigby farm there.
HF: Is that the terminal of the…?
EH: No, it turns the tractor and then it went down to the river, right across the street from
Hyrum Summer’s home. They ended right again just a side, there was a dump there.
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HF: There was a dump there?
EH: And that accommodated the people from Plano in quite a few beets will have grown
and brought in from Plano area and then that area down and the north corner of Hibbard,
all delivered their beets there.
HF: And so the farmers would bring their beets to these various dumps in wagons and
then they were put into a hopper and then transferred to a railroad cart.
EH: See the first dumps were highland dumps we call them, they built the high line
where they… the high ramp and they with a shoot… into a cars or the base cars could
drive right under the shoot and then they tip up the side of the beet bed, tip it sideways up
and let the beets go off in the cars.
HF: The houses have any problem doing negotiating?
EH: Well, yeah they teared what you need … what is ahead of horses, two on wheels and
two on lead… special wagon in these soft fields loading, they get a good load while they
have had ride a horses and they took a good teamster to drive and when it comes to going
up this high line, lot of them were scared, it is kind of job to get them going. Walk over
and have to hop and hold them and then while pull it bulk onto the side of the bed and
they will take hinge so they could tip up sideways the beets were dumped down over a
screen, screen the dirt out. The beets went off into the car. And that is where I worked as
a tear man. We’d…, these beets and we’d weighed the dirt that comes out of them and
then we catch a basket of beets and clean the top off and then weigh that there. And that
is what we call taking tare on the beets. And that is all figured off of the percentage of
the load.
HF: I see. And then the farmer would get credit then with the net poundage of beets.
EH: Yes, that is right.
HF: And who would pay him, the sugar company?
EH: Yes, that was a…
HF: Based on those figures those net figures, then the sugar company there at Sugar City
would make reimbursement?
EH: Yes, and they pay it in your, I don’t know how they work it. They used to test the
beets on the sugar percentage in that amount they figure it out. I don’t understand how
they figured that but they used to pay on the tonnage or the figure and applied it all to
the…
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HF: Did Hibbard produce good size beads as a community? How did Hibbard for
example compare with its productivity of beads per acre say with Salem or with Odette
Parker or whoever?
EH: Well, I think the… was a little better producer of the beet, the soil was a little handier
and easier to handle just as it is with the potatoes and Sandy soil over there. But we used
to grow some pretty good beets. Some grow worse than are using after all the backyard
manure to fertilize and that was all we had then days we didn’t have commercial fertilizer
and everybody hauled out the backyard and scattered on the ground, fertilized them to
make beets and… pretty nice beets.
HF: Now the soil at Hibbard is more of the clay soil is it not?
HF: Well, not too much so it quite a sandy… there is areas where there is quite clay soil
and it is quite sandy.
HF: But there isn’t anything like it over in… or sandy?
EH: No it isn’t a sand of that type. It is a little different type of sand…
HF: I see.
EH: Now along Rexburg, they receive a heavy clayey soil more here than it is out there.
HF: You mentioned a quite a few building being built of brick. There was a brick kiln,
out there wasn’t there?
EH: Yes.
HF: What can you tell me about this brick kiln?
EH: Well, my father and Josiah, uncle… my father’s brother and George Mortimer and
Joseph E. Rigby when to gather and organize the Herbert brick company. And they… and
their homes. We went to the timber at Island Park. Got out timber loaded it on freight
cars and shipped down to Sugar City and then we hooked horses on the cars and dragged
them from Sugar City down to the Hinckley dump. There is where we unloaded and
hauled the timber down then burning the brick. They built a dump down in my uncle
farm, down next to Uncle Josiah Hendricks. Down close to the river. We built a nice
brick kiln higher John Calhoun, who had been a brick man before. He supervised the
building of the kiln brick and burn it. I remember just a kid I went down and helped turn
brick and mold the brick bats, lay them out on the ground to dry and we do down turn
them over to let them dry all around had to cure before the put them in the kiln. And they
put them in the kiln and burn them and that way we got brick left for nice homes.
HF: Did you have to go very far to get the material to form the brick?
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EH: No, most of it was got right there on the river. Clay soil did, I don’t remember
where got some sandy stuff there was certain kind of sand they use to mix in that. And
they hauled I know in some of that. I don’t remember just where they got that. But
they…
HF: They made a pretty fine brick.
EH: Made a nice brick, yes.
HF: Now what will be, it wasn’t mike adobe, it was a…?
EH: Well, it made it dark like adobe, I guess it made clay and they did mold. They would
mill a horse on turned and mixed the mud. And then they would squeeze out and it
comes into molds. There were several molds that they put brick in, like batter holes.
And then they would damp them out on the ground and smooth off a big area of the
ground and spread them out on there and let them dry for so long. And then they were
taken and… into this brick kiln and style built, air vent through them and let the smoke
and then they built a fire there… or places that fired underneath the brick kiln and went up
to and burnt those brick.
HF: Now each partner got a brick home out of the kiln I guess?
EH: Yes, there was Mark… that built ah, when the first built, we build our home in 1910,
my uncle Josiah, Earl was first he built first 1908. I think he built his home I know he
completed in… that time anyhow. And then my dad built ours in 1910 and then Joseph E.
Rigby shortly after that. Morga who was numbered member of the company he sold his
brick to Earl Garner here in Rexburg and he built a nice home out of them and Martima
built a block house and so that is the way it ended up.
HF: And that ended the brick company.
EH: Yes.
HF: Now did they use any of that brick to put into the church?
EH: No, that was built so much earlier, the brick church was.
HF: The brick church was?
EH: The brick church was built in 1940 no ’ 47 I think it is. And they...
HF: You mean so much later?
EH: Yes, ’ 47. I went in as Bishop of the Hibbard Ward and Joseph… and the Delowa
Atchison his counselors and we decided that then discussed and worked on to get a new
building for a long time. So we just well, got started on it. And we organized a building
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committee and they started to make plans for a new building and we selected Herbert J.
Wilmore as supervisor to build and take charge of building the building. We started in
February tearing down the old building. Three of us took the… paid a hundred dollars a
piece for the… in the building. Elvin Rigby, C. Clement and myself, each gave a hundred
dollars for… and we got the old church and we tore it down. We divided the material
between us. Then we immediately started to excavate and prepare for the new building.
We were more as supervisor. We completed the building in 1949 and was dedicated by
LeGrand Richard in 1950, I forget, I should look that up.
HF: Well, the new brick church… was built at the same site as the old church?
EH: Yes, right on the same spot.
HF: Requiring of course that you first get rid of the old building and so on. Well, now
what do the community of Herbert do in the way of ah... how did they build their homes?
A lot of them building out rock, or a lot of them build out of wood? What seems to be
the major history of that part?
EH: Well, of course the first buildings were mostly log buildings they could secure from
timber and build log buildings without much expense and now the they are … built that
way. And then the progress, there is a few rock building built. And few brick buildings,
they scattered as the two principles kind. And then some build a frame.
HF: Mr. Parker was the first to build a rock building, wasn’t he?
EH: Yes, Parley Parker built a rock building, a nice one, along the road where Harold
Rigby now lives.
HF: And that still stands?
EH: No it’s gone now. It went after the flood. They tore it down. And then Fred Parker
his brother, built out in the field north of that, they each own a section, each own a farm
in there. And then Fred was over in the middle of the section and he built a home out in
the field there. A brick home there which is all gone now, and the land down a farming
ground where the old home site used to be.
HF: Well Elmer, has the topography of Plano changed very much since you were a boy
through the use of the bulldozer, the land leveler and so on? Has there been a great deal
of change?
EH: Well, yes all through there area, Hibbard and Plano both have changed quite
extensively and apparent as hard to figure out all the old land marks. Because the
bulldozers have leveled up a lot of the ground, changed it. We used to do run when I was
a young boy. While we done, my father done quite a… with the old prisoner scraper and
tongue scraper… and… ground we had to dike up the ground other than irrigate then let
the flood ground right . But now they’ve leveled it so that it made a lot easier. I know our
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son Blaine has done a lot of [?] work down on … next to the river. And then a few years
changing, took out sloughs, filled them up where the sloughs were and really changed the
appearance of the…
HF: Now the south fork of the Teton River is kind of the boundary of the south area of
Hibbard.
EH: Yes, that used to Hibbard was called Teton Island or Island Ward when Hibbard was
first organized, it was organized as Island Ward.
HF: So the south fork of Teton River and the north fork of Teton River both of which are
tributaries to the Snake River, they kind of bounded in this community area.
EH: Yes, that is right. Yes on each side and then outside of the Hibbard Community is
that boundaries lines is Teton.
HF: Has most of the ground now been reclaimed? Do you find many sloughs of dark
places?
EH: Oh, there is areas where there is silo but a lot of it has been changed to quite a bit in
change to forming it was rugged and ruined brush, willows and stuff like that. That is
pretty well disappeared all over the country.
HF: Now when they first settled of course, each family settled on a homestead, hundred
and sixty acres.
EH: Yes.
HF: Over the years would it be sold, the size of that farm has dwindled to something less
than a hundred and sixty?
EH: Well, the scene in Hibbard has changed quite a bit excite at the time I grew up and
up while we lived in Hibbard, I was Bishop there, we built the new church we thought
we’d had a pretty good size building and… because we sold so many acres and couldn’t
see of the industry or anything much to change the population. Well, since that time,
they’ve subdivided lot and housing units in there and lot of more people to divide ward.
Each ward had more population. Whilst I was bishop there, now there it’s a lot of new
people in there.
HF: So a lot of these subdivisions, they have two or three acres per home per family?
EH: Yes that is right. Yes, some of them less than that just about a half acre. Just
building home side, and their garden spot.
HF: So literally it has become a bedroom community of Rexburg.
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EH: That is right.
HF: Well now, in that community you’ve always had elementary school I suppose?
EH: Yes, I think ever since we got community established there, they’ve had a school of
some kind. I guess one of the first taught that was there was on a own place, father when
he got there was a little cabin on the field and sister Beth Clement taught school in Idaho
cabin, had done for a year or so. My Dad got the place and he moved to… down from
one end of the field down to the other end more other than the main road. Went to, is it
developed it and turned it to a home. And then they built a little school up and church
house together, a combination of place where Dewey Parker now lives. Log building and
from that in 1900, they built the frame building, so it…
HF: Have there been any businesses established out in the Hibbard area, which would
employ number of people? Any co- operations established a business out there
established there is nothing, no history of that?
EH: No history of any business or anything, they all had to come in to town or in order to
bring any industrial line or business. It’s just then a rural community in that time.
HF: I am aware of the fact that there is a nursery or two out there, people have nurseries.
EH: Well, kind of there is some that own young people. Our granddaughter is starting a
little nursery school. It is just this year.
HF: I meant shrub and plant.
EH: Oh, well there hasn’t been too much of that. There was Woodinsons, Elvin
Woodinson, his wife, had quite a garden area for a number of years. It was about the
most extensive in that line.
HF: And then the Withers have a small…
EH: Yes, they have a small…
HF: Green house.
EH: Green house for mere growing plants and selling them. They have a hot house
where they can grow vegetables, flower plants…
HF: But other than that, the place haven’t been commercialized of anything of this nature.
Have the roads been changed, from the original layout from the pioneers when they used
wagons and so on?
EH: Well, when they first come in here, they angled more up to the corner up through the
country there. Some of the roads then, but then as they start developed the farms they
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established them on section lines. And the roads on, on the section lines square, so it
squared them up and go north and west on the east and west roads.
HF: Well, Elmer I appreciate the comments, the sharing that you have provided today on
this subject of the community of Hibbard. Thank you.