September 6, 2024
Today is the 101st anniversary of my dad’s birth. He was born September 6,1923 in South Weber, Utah on his family’s farm.
Life was very different when Dad was born. When it was time, the doctor showed up at my grandparents’ house for the delivery. There was no rush to the hospital as is the norm today. There was one modern element to Dad’s birth, though. The doctor who delivered him was a woman. Dr. Alice Ridges was a general practitioner in Ogden. At the time, many people did not want a woman doctor, but my grandmother apparently was not one of them.
Early September was the harvest season in Utah. The local grain harvesting crew was scheduled to visit the Fernelius Farm on that sunny, September day. In 1923 the crew was still using horses to pull the combines, but according to family lore, 1923 was the last time that horses were used in South Weber. By the next year tractors had replaced them.
Dad’s birth certificate states he was born at 10:55 am. I’m sure that my grandfather was out in the fields helping with the harvest, since all the farmers helped on the combine crews. My grandfather was not the sort to shirk his work, and childbirth was for women. Men stayed away and left them to it.
Around noon he would have come inside for dinner. Dinner was served to the entire harvesting crew by the farmer’s wife. I don’t know who filled in for my grandmother that day, but I’m sure Grandpa’s new little son would have been the talk of the table.
My grandparents lived in what was a typical house for that era. It was an arts and crafts style bungalow with a living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom. The kitchen had a coal/wood burning range, but it did boast a sink with running water. Many of the neighbors still had wells or springs that were not piped into the house.
The house also had electricity, but my grandparents only used it for lighting. An electric refrigerator and stove were too expensive. They make do with a coal range and an icebox. My dad would be a teenager before he and his sisters pooled their money to buy their folks their first electric refrigerator. The coal range stayed as long as my grandparents lived – well into the 1960s.
When it was built, the house didn’t include indoor plumbing, but my grandfather had a bathroom installed when he married my grandmother in 1918. She had lived in cities all her life and expected those sorts of amenities, even though indoor plumbing wasn’t considered a necessity in many rural households at the time.
Heating for the house was provided by the kitchen range and a parlor stove in the dining room. Those two rooms were cozy, but the other rooms could get icy. As late as my childhood, the sinks and the bathtub faucet were left trickling all night in the winter. Otherwise, the pipes would freeze.
By the time my dad was born, his father had a car, but Grandpa preferred horses to automobiles. As soon as the weather grew cold in the fall, he took the tires off the car and put it on blocks for the winter. He was relieved to hitch up the sled to take his family to town for groceries or to church on Sundays.
My grandfather loved small children and especially babies. Family stories say that the day my mother brought me, his first grandchild, home from the hospital, my grandfather hurried to the house to see me. He was in too much of a hurry to clean the barnyard muck from his clothes, and my mother was appalled when he asked to hold me. I’m sure he was even more excited when his son was born. I can imagine him sitting in the old oak rocker (my sister still uses it) holding Dad proudly.
Thanks to family stories and genealogical research, I know a lot about that September morning so long ago when Dad’s life began.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society