MEMORIES OF
MARY ELIZA BLOOMFIELD JAMES
Written by her granddaughter
Agnes Johnston Rose
Mary Eliza Bloomfield James was born on 21 January 1864, to John
Bloomfield
and Harriet Wilkinson Bloomfield, in Hyde Park, Cache County,
Utah. She was the third child. She had two older sister, Ellen
Marie Bloomfield, Elizabeth Salome Bloomfield, and a younger
brother John Parley Bloomfield. Her oldest sister (Ellen Marie)
died near Omaha, Nebraska, on their trek across the plains.
When Eliza was four years old her mother died. Her father later
married Elizabeth Ann Barton Ashcraft who was also
widowed. There were also children from that union, and Elizabeth
Ann had children from
here first marriage.
When Eliza was eleven years old her father and family were
called to Obed,
Arizona as pioneers. After they had been there for a while the
town was ill with chills and
fever. There was no one to care of those who were ill. The
people of Sunset, Joe City
and Brigham City towns nearby came and took the sick home with
them, where they cared
for them until they were well.
They stayed in Sunset and lived the united order with about six
hundred other
saints. This is where she met Joseph Henry James. I loved to
visit Grandma and listen to
her tell the story of their romance:
She said he would come to their home and she thought he came to
see her, but he
"ups and marries my sister!" Then she would go on to tell how
the "old fool kept coming back," (to court her). She said he
asked her to marry him, and she thought about it and
decided she might not get another "chance," so she married him
(at age 14)!!!!
When they went to get married they lived in Sunset, Arizona and
the closest
temple was in St. George, Utah. They went by team and wagon.
When they got to Lee's
Ferry at the Colorado River, the ferry to carry the wagon across
was on the other side.
So, Grandpa left her and walked a mile upstream, to swim across
the river. He did this because the current was so strong that it
would carry him down stream a mile by the time
he was across the river and he would be at the place he needed
to be to get the ferry.
Grandma said she was so afraid as she watched him bob up and
down in the water as he
swam across the river. As she told it she said "I still get
goose bumps when I think of
what might have happened to me if he hadn't made it." She would
be alone and a long
way from any form of civilization, also there was problems with
Indians, in those days. He
did make it and brought the ferry across and got her and the
wagon safely across the river.
They were married in the St George Temple on the 10th
of January 1878.
When Eliza was only 20 years old and had three children they
moved to Mexico.
This was when polygamy was outlawed in the United States; they
went with several other
families and settled in the Hawk Valley, Colonial Juarez,
Colonial Dublan and Colonial
Diaz areas. She said when they first got there; they were living
in their covered wagons. They would hang their grain in the
trees, so it would be safe from varmints, and also Mexicans. In
the morning they would find a hole cut in the bottom of the bag
and the grain was gone. One night while the children were
sleeping they even came in and stole
the blanket off their bed.
Smallpox broke out the first year, adding to their hardships.
Her oldest daughter came down with it so Eliza took her new baby
to her sister to care for him so he wouldn't
get it. Besides nursing her own family, Eliza found time to care
for many others who were
ill.
The little colony, with all the grit and determination of early
pioneers, stuck it out and
finally prospered in spite of all their difficulties and
hardships. They accumulated land
herds of cattle, orchards and a sawmill in the nearby mountains.
Joseph had built a home for each of his wives; I was told that
the river made a fork so he built a home on each side
of the river.
At times Eliza would scrape the last bit of flour to mix a batch
of bread for her large family. Grandpa would come in and cut the
dough in half telling her of someone
who had no flour left and he would take them the dough. She said
that they never went
hungry; that somehow by the time they needed more flour it was
there.
Eliza was left a widow at a very young age (44). Grandpa (Joseph
Henry James) was on the mountain where they cut logs and rolled
them down to the bottom of the mountain to a catch pond, where
they loaded them on wagons, and took them to the sawmill.****
He was there checking on things, and saw a log rolling down the
mountain that
was going to hit one of his workers who was deaf. Grandpa jumped
to push the worker
out of the way of the log, but was not quite quick enough and it
hit them both and they
died instantly.
When the war broke out in Mexico (when Poncho Villa raged in
1911) it was close
enough that her sons would get on the roof and could see the
fighting. The U.S.
Government arranged for them to come to the United States. They
took only their clothes
they were wearing and one change of clothes, they were told that
they would probably be able to go back in a few days, but never
went back. They went by wagon to the train
stop, and on the train went to El Paso Texas. In El Paso they
had nowhere to stay so it
was arranged for them to stay in a lumber yard, there was so
many that their bed rolls were touching, and when they got up
they would have to roll up the bedroll to have room to walk. I
remember Grandma saying that there were women, who gave birth
there, and you would see blankets held up for privacy, and soon
you would hear a baby's first cry.
In the morning when they had stayed in the lumberyard, people
were staring at them and commenting, that if they were Mormons
"where were their horns!" Well, Grandma being the quick wit
that she was said "Oh! They dehorned us when they put us
on the train, so we wouldn't hook each other to death."
They could see that they would not be able to go back to their
home in Mexico, so
Eliza decided to take her family to live in Ramah, New Mexico
where her brother, John Parley Bloomfield, and father John
Bloomfield lived. They arrived on 11 September 1911. They went
by train from El Paso to Gallup, New Mexico and her brother John
and
his wife Alice met them in a wagon and took them to Ramah. They
went from Gallup to
Ft Wingate where they stayed overnight with Amila Kirk and
family, leaving there about
noon traveling over the Zuni Mountains to Ramah.* When she got
to Ramah they lived most of the winter with her brother John and
his family, then moved to the "Relief Society House" which was
on the church property. * They worked hard at any job they could
to
make a living, all pooling their resources to survive. That
winter two of Eliza's daughters
had Typhoid Fever (Jessie and Bertha). Eliza's stepmother
(Elizabeth Ann) died 13
September
1913, so she moved in with her father to care for him. There was
only one bed for five of them, so two of the daughters (Jennie
and Hattie) slept on the floor by the fireplace on a rug and
used coats for their covers.*
Eliza worked in Zuni during the winter, she ran the laundry and
taught the Zuni
Children how to darn their socks.*
In 1915-16 she moved to a sawmill near Greer, Arizona, her sons
who were still at home worked on the sawmill. Eliza was sick in
bed for nine months with rheumatic fever, so they moved to
Springerville and stayed with her married daughter Nellie and
Eliza's Daughters did the cooking for the men who worked on the
sawmill*
Grandma had 14 children of her own, two died while they were in
Old Mexico and were buried along side Grandpa James, and his
third wife Orpha.* When one of her
children died leaving 6 orphan children, she raised them. One of
them was so grateful that when he grew up and owned a sawmill,
he saved all the best knotted pine and built her a new home with
the interior all lined in beautiful knotted pine. It was a one
bedroom with indoor pluming and a nice living room and a
kitchen/dining room. He also carpeted the
living room and bedroom. When Blackie (nickname for Heaton
James, her grandson that
built the home,) asked her if she would live in a new house if
he built it for her, she told him she would if he would put lots
of windows in the bedroom. Grandma was used to sleeping on her
screened in porch, summer and winter alike. When they moved to
this home there wasn't enough bedrooms for everyone so she put
her bed on the front porch, and she was afraid she wouldn't be
able to get used to sleeping in the house. So many
times, when sleeping on the porch she would wake up in the
morning and had ice cycles
hanging from her hair, this was from her breath during the
night, being covered all but her nose and mouth so she could
breath, and the moisture gathering around her face and
freezing. Burrrrrrrr
I am told by one of my cousins (May White age 97)** that she was
at Grandma's
one day about two weeks after the house was finished. She asked
Grandma if she was ever going to move into her new home. Grandma
replied that she couldn't until her stove was moved in (It was
an old iron wood cook stove) So May and her friends moved the
cook stove in the house for her, and she moved into her new
home. At first she slept with all the windows opened, but one
time during the winter, she admitted she shut the
windows and actually felt good to be in a nice warm bedroom.
My earliest memory of Grandma James (Eliza) was when she was
going to have
her 78th birthday. There was much talk about her going to have
her 78th birthday, as that was very old in those days (1942).
She was the oldest person in our town (Ramah, New
Mexico).
I remember visiting her at her old home She was quilting, and I
exclaimed how
short her thread was. She told me she could get a lot of
stitches out of the remainder of
the thread on her needle, and she proceeded to show me she
could! (just one of many
examples of how frugal she was).
I do not remember my Grandma James ever being able to walk any
further than her
chicken coup ~ probably 75 to 100 feet. She could not walk to
her nearest neighbor. She
had bantee (bamtam) chickens, to give her something to do, and
she used their eggs
however small they were. It was fun at Easter — she would give
us some to boil and
color, along with our regular eggs. She always had a table full
of houseplants, and birds.
She had
Canneries and Parakeets. Sometimes it was so exciting they
would have two or three eggs in their nest, and a few times they
even hatched and she raised the baby
canneries.
I remember a picture of Grandma in coveralls - and was told that
she was Jack in
the play - Jack In The Beanstalk. I heard that they made up
their lines as they went along.
She had a quick sense of humor and a quick reply to any given
situation so I can see her
being able to do that. I remember once she was splitting wood
for her cook stove,
apiece flew up and hit her arm, giving her a good bruise. She
immediately exclaimed:
"I'll kill my fool self before I die!"
Mary Eliza made one trip back to her old home in Mexico, with
two of her daughters and her grandson, Heaton James and his
family. Everything had changed so much since the 40 years when
she had left it, only the house and the apple orchard was
still remaining, the mountains had been cleared from all its
timber, and the river that ran past the house had long since
dried up.***
Seventy-five years after she was married in the St George Temple
she went back
there and with forty-two of her great grandchildren and a number
of her grandchildren
took pictures in front of the Temple. This picture was of her
daughter Nellie's family.
Few people had more zest for life than this little lady, who
stood less than 5 foot
tall and weighed an average of about 86 pounds. She loved to go
to the dances and
rodeos and whenever someone would come to visit her and cheer
her up, they would leave
feeling that she had cheered them up more.
Grandma was a lady of great faith. She believed in prayer and
the power of the
Priesthood. She had a stroke at about age 84 or 85. It left one
of her hands weak, and
she exercised it with a soft ball, squeezing it and regained her
strength, but I remember a
time when she was very ill, she would not stay with anyone, in
their home, she wanted to
be in her own home, so her daughters and grand daughters would
take turns staying with
her. Often two would stay so if she got sick or had a bad night
the younger one would go to get help. One night Aunt Mame and I
stayed with her she was having a bad night, so I went home and
got mom. Grandma wanted a priesthood blessing. Mother (Jennie
Johnston) went and knocked on Bishop Mangum's door (it was about
1 or 2:00 a.m. and
he got someone to come with him and gave her a blessing. She
rested well the rest of the
night. That is just one example of many when a blessing made a
difference for her.
One time she was very ill she had been so sick that she didn't
get out of bed for
two weeks. There happened to be a doctor in town visiting with
friends (the Voghts) a mile south of town. Someone decided to
see if the Doctor would come and check on
Grandma and see if there was anything he could do. He told us
that we should call in her
family, that she probably wouldn't live more than 24 hours. So
the sisters that lived in
Ramah, called the other brother and sisters, to come and say
their last goodbyes to
Grandma. Grandma, seemed to know just what was going on and told
her children that if they would fast and pray for her she would
get up out of her 'sick bed' the following day.
So that is what we did, I think I was maybe 11 years old, which
would make her about 85
years old, Her family and towns people-I think most of the town
were related to Grandma, and even if they weren't, she was "Aunt
Liza" to them held like a prayer meeting at the church, which
they only let adults go to, and true to her word, and faith,
Grandma got out of bed the next morning and had us push her
around town in a wheelchair, so she could
thank
everyone for fasting for her. She made a special effort to thank
the children, she seemed to know that they were fasting and
praying for her. She was better from that time
on, and
lived another eight years.
Eliza lived by herself except for a short time when she was
recovering from an
illness, until about two months before her death on 8 Feb 1957.
at age 93, then her
daughters took turns staying with her. Her posterity at the time
of her death was: 14
Children, 81 Grandchildren, 251 Great Grandchildren, and 60
Great Great-Grandchildren.
Making a total of 426 descendents.
Compiled from the following sources:
Memories of her grand daughter Agnes Johnston Rose
History of Jennie James Gallagher Johnston
**1998
***Article in Belen News Paper on her 91st birthday.
****This story has another version to it. The way I remember
hearing it is that the logs
were rolled down the mountain to a river, which carried the logs
to the Saw Mill, but after visiting the area in Mexico, I am
convinced that this is not correct, as there is no river at the
bottom of that side of the mountain