Chapter 4  EXODUS

As time went on Provedio Dias, who had been President of Mexico for about thirty years, was losing popularity with the people. A fellow by the name of Blanco overthrew the Dias government. Then his officers thought they ought to have more recognition in the government and they started a revolution again, this revolution. This stirred up quite a mess around the country, then Pancho Villa got into it. The James' weren't bothered then, there hadn't been anybody that had bothered us on the ranch up until this time. The soldiers on either side didn't bother the American people there, but it was just the little armies. A bunch of men would get together, like a section gang working together. They would decide it was too hard work to work on the railroad anymore and now is the time to go up to the ranches and demand horses and food from the ranchers. Then they'd organize a little group and they'd start through the country from ranch to ranch, getting food and new horses and saddles and guns from the ranchers.

But we hadn't been bothered in any way up until President Taft. The trouble was getting so bad in the courts of Mexico that the President of the United States ordered all the American people that were in Mexico to leave Mexico and come out where they could be protected in the United States. So they issued orders for everybody to pack up and pull out.
Being on the ranch we were to join the people from Pacheco as they came by. I remember meeting those wagons, we joined them about five miles from Pacheco and about five miles from our ranch. We met the wagon train and joined with them and started on down to Dublan. We didn't go all the way to Dublan, we went to the end of the railroad which was a logging camp at Pearson. This was only about thirty miles from the ranch.

We hadn't even more than got all lined up on the road until we met a bunch of federal soldiers, soldiers that were overthrowing the Mexican government. They lined up on each side of the wagon train and demanded a rifle from each family. Us kids were riding in the back end of the wagon, but I can remember it like it was yesterday. All lined up and these Mexicans all dolled up with their strings of ammunition across each shoulder and around the waist. Each of them had three belts of cartridges. As they came by one of them would reach out and get the rifle and the other man on the other side would reach out and get the ammunition. So they had one kind of ammunition and the wrong kind of gun to use it in. But they were all happy as long as they got a gun and some ammunition and they didn't bother us any more.

We went on down to Pearson, Mother and the eight children at home at that time. Mother was only allowed to take one trunk and what she could put in suitcases on the train. We drove a team of mules down to the train and I guess they're still there because we drove up close to the train and unhitched the mules, put the harnesses back on the wagon, turned the mules loose out on the prairie there and got on the train. All the other people did the same. Some of the menfolk stayed and took care, of some of the stock for some of the colonies that were close by. But most of the ranchers up in the mountains just turned their horses loose for the time being and mounted the train and came out to E1 Paso.

It was a long day's travel to El Paso. It seems we traveled for maybe two or three hours and then they would cut the engine loose and the engine would take off and leave us parked out there in the middle of the desert, wondering whether the engine was ever coming back or not. They had to go ahead and get some more water for the engine and then they'd back up and hook on to the train and then we'd start out again.

We couldn't have landed in a better place in the world than El Paso. The way the people of El Paso treated the Mormon refugees as they came out of Mexico, they met us at the train and hauled people in their cars and their wagons out to any place they could find to put them in. The majority of them wanted to live together so there was an old lumberyard fixed up for distributing lumber that we used. Each one of the stalls had been cleaned out, the lumber had been sold but the stalls were still there. They moved a family in each one of these stalls. The city of El Paso furnished food and blankets until the army could put up a tent city outside of El Paso and we moved out there.

General Pershing, being young, was in charge of this camp at one time. My sister, Sister Wallace Gurr, was expecting a baby about the time we arrived in El Paso. A young lieutenant heard about her being in one of the tents close to his so he went over and had them move her into his tent until after the baby was born. Come to find out it was General Pershing that took care of her.

When we were in El Paso it was July and August, which are very hot months, but the people of El Paso were very good to the Mormon people there and furnished them food. Then the army took over and delivered food to us each day until we moved out and were transferred into other parts of the United States.

Some families chose to stay in Mexico and others went back from El Paso. One family that lived about three miles from Pacheco, Brother and Sister Stevens, elected to stay in Mexico rather than to come out with the rest of the people in Pacheco. Just a few days after we arrived in El Paso the Stevens family arrived and told us what had happened to their father and the reason they were out to El Paso so soon after we got out when they had elected to stay in Mexico. They said that the girls were out one morning picking blackberries in the garden, which they had lots of, and two Mexicans approached these girls to try to get between the girls and the house, as the story was told. The father, seeing these Mexican's intention, what he thought were their intentions, of getting between the house and these girls, whether they had that intention or not was never proven, but anyway, the father went out with his shotgun to try to invite these Mexicans to leave the ranch so they wouldn't bother these young ladies. They slowly walked towards his boundary out through the garden and orchard out to the fence. They walked slower and he walked a little faster and he gained on them and, I guess, carried on a conversation with them trying to get them to leave the ranch. As they approached the gate near his boundary line one of them whirled around with a knife in his hand and stuck Brother Stevens through the chest with this knife, mortally wounding him.

He shot one of them with the shotgun as he fell. The girls came running up and, according to their story, one of the Mexicans was running and they got the shotgun and shot him as he was leaving. They didn't say whether they killed him or not but said he was still lying there as they got help and got their father back to the house. The boys were out hunting and the girls and the father and mother were the only ones at the house at the time with the smaller children. Immediately then, they got out to the railroad and got out to El Paso and joined the rest of the colonists out there.

Some of the Farnsworth’s also stayed. Some of the men folk stayed at the ranch, but the rest of them came out. Then they immediately went back into Mexico and gathered up cattle and lived there.

Quite a few of the people went back to Mexico and gathered up the cattle of the James' and others that had turned their cattle loose. The men folk rounded up these cattle and drove some of them out to Hachita, New Mexico and they were sold and the money was distributed among the ones that helped drive them out. Others rounded up cattle and stayed in Mexico and went into the cattle business. They gathered stray cattle and cattle of their own and did pretty well for several years.
We stayed in El Paso for about two months, July and August. Come September the American government decided that things were so so rough in Old Mexico that we couldn't return to the ranches but they would furnish us transportation to any place in the United States that we wanted to go. Mother's father and stepmother were living in Ramah, New Mexico and the only thing she could do was go where her father was. She didn't have or know of any other place to go. So we went by train to Gallup, New Mexico and my Uncle John Bloomfield, Mother's only brother, met us in Gallup and moved us out. We lived with them until we got a house and moved out and started family life, the boys taking care of Mother and trying to find work around the Ramah area.

Some of the others went to Tucson, Arizona, and some of them went to Provo, Utah. Aunt Liz went to Provo and Aunt Orpha had died before this but the boys and her daughter went north, one of them went to Snowflake and one of them went up to Idaho. From then we've been separated and hardly know where each other lives. The thirty-five children in Dad's family were soon scattered all over the Southwest. We're still scattered around, getting more of us all the time and getting farther apart as the years go by and the older ones are passing on.