ESTHER MARIA TRUMAN &
JUNIUS WESLEY CHADBURN
Histories of Esther Maria Truman And Junius Wesley Chadburn
by daughter - Isadora Chadburn PriceEsther Maria Truman was born 1 February 1894 at her grandmother Elizabeth Boyce Truman’s home in Gunlock, Utah. She was the second child of Albert Henry and Florence Matilda Bowler Truman.
That spring the family moved to Old Hebron, Washington County, Utah. This town was just a few miles west of where Enterprise is now located. They lived there until Esther was five years old when they moved back to Gunlock. While they were in Gunlock, grandma Bowler died. This was on the 15th of December, 1900. Grandpa Bowler wanted grandma and the children to come and keep house for him and his three boys that were still at home. They were Walter, Francis, and George. Grandpa Truman was away in Pioche, Nevada working. These boys must have been really good to the kids because mother loved them for the rest of her life. They, in turn, made quite a fuss over her.
In October, 1901 the family moved to Mesquite, Nevada. I don’t know just where all they lived down in Nevada, but mother told of living some place close to where terrible floods came down. I believe someplace on the Beaver Dam Wash. She said she could remember wading in some of the smaller floods, and when the big floods came, one of them would stomp on the edge of the bank while someone behind would hold on to their dress to keep them from falling in. She said it was a wonder some of them were not drowned.
The lived in Mesquite, or near, for about four years. Esther was baptized while they lived there, on the 4th of May, 1902 in the Virgin River, I believe.
At the age of nine, Esther and Mattie (Elizabeth Matilda), who was eleven, had to do all the housework and do the washing on the board because grandmother Truman was so ill that she couldn’t even turn over in bed (without help) for a complete year. Mother said they used to say to her, “Use a little more elbow grease and so much soap”. They were poor, and I guess soap was scarce. They probably made their own.
Grandmother said she wept many time because of the burden put on the little girls. She also wept because of the “tattle tale grey” in her clothes.
The family was poor and variety of food wasn’t too good. Many times all they had to eat was bread and gravy and milk to drink. In the summer they had fruit after the young trees began to bear. I believe that was after they moved back to Gunlock or maybe up on the Truman Ranch.
After they returned to Gunlock, grandfather and the family homesteaded a ranch in partnership with John Young Bigelow. Later the ranch was divided. Brother Bigelow took the southern portion -- it is known as the Bigelow Ranch and grandfather took the northern portion on the Magotsu Wash. This ranch has been known since as the Truman Ranch.
On Sunday mornings the team was harnessed up and hitched to the wagon and they all drove to Gunlock to church. This was a day the kids looked forward to all week.
The family moved to Gunlock in the winter so the children could attend school. Esther really loved school. When she finished the 8th grade she wanted to go on to high school, but they really didn’t have the money. Besides that, grandfather couldn’t see any need of a girl having more education. Time hung heavy on her hands the next fall when school was to start again. She decided to take the 8th grade over again. Her teacher, was Uncle George Bowler, has since said, “Esther could have taught that school as well as I did”.
All during my four years of high school, whenever a problem was too hard for me I could go to my mother. After she had studied it over she could help me. This was especially true if it was English, Spelling or Arithmetic.
At age fifteen Esther started going to the dances in Gunlock and it was here she met June Chadburn. She wasn’t very impressed with him at first, but when she was about 16 the started going together. Through the years he came courting on horseback or in a buggy, usually two weeks went by between visits, many times a month. They went together in this fashion for about 5 years before they were married on April 22, 1914 in the St. George Temple.
After June and Esther were married, they moved to a small farm in Central, Washington (County), Utah. Here, on the 12th of may 1915, their first child was born and they named her Isadora, after June’s only living sister. Esther nearly lost her life in giving birth to her child. It became apparent that all the skill the mid-wife, Mrs. Ford possessed wasn’t enough and Dr. Alpine McGregor was sent for. The doctor came by team and buggy from St. George, and he was met by June’s brother, George, with a fresh team of horses. Years later, Dr. McGregor remarked that he had never come nearer to loosing a woman and still have her live, that he did (with) Esther. Childbirth was never easy for Esther but the remaining six children were born in St. George where she could have the care of competent doctor.
When Isa was small the family moved to Veyo. The prospered in Veyo, (and) that fall they sold their bean crop for $1300.00. June still preferred Central and when his brother Rob decided to sell his home & farm in Central, June sold his in Veyo and bought Rob’s home & farm in Central.
Junius Alpine was born 12 Dec., 1917 and Florence LaVerde arrived two and a half years later on the 20th of May, 1920. In spite of how hard June worked on the farm and Esther pinched pennies there just wasn’t enough money. June got a job that fall working at the gypsum mill. It was located somewhere below Glendale, Nevada. The family moved down in a covered wagon. They lived in a boarded-up tent that winter, and Isa started school there in the first grade. The teacher, Ada Syphus, taught school until Thanksgiving when she went home for the holidays and didn’t return.
Shortly after Christmas, they returned to St. George because of illness. Alpine had a carbuncle on his neck. To return home in the wagon would have taken days of traveling, and Alpine was in too much misery to stand it. June arranged with Lloyd Jennings to take the family up to the doctor. Lloyd had an old jalopy without any top. They had car trouble all the way. Esther and the children sat huddled in blankets while the men worked on the car. Finally they stalled again on the Indian farm summit when a man driving a big black sedan stopped and offered to take them to St. George. This offer they gladly accepted. The family remained the rest of the winter in St. George.
On the 21st day of March 1922, Rodney Lloyd was born. The family had all had the flu for several weeks before he was born. In Esther’s anxiety over her sick family she tripped and fell down the stairs. When she took the flu an abscess formed on her bruised knee. The doctor said this abscess probably saved her life, because all the poison in her body gathered there. Nevertheless, she was really ill, and it was a while before they could go home to Central.
LaVerde was still small and still needed attention, so it was good that Rodney was such a “good baby”. Mahala Bracken used to say, “I know that Rodney is the best baby that ever lived”. She frequently would come and get Rodney and take him home with her and keep him for several hours. This was really a help to mother who was still not too well.
In spite of the scarcity of money these were happy years in Central. Esther was always active in church. Through the years she held many positions. At one time she was president of the Primary, and when they released from that she was called to be president of the Relief Society. Later she was President of the M.I.A. (Mutual Improvement Association - Young Women). In addition she taught many classes.
June was not very strong on church activity. He was afraid to take part, but he loved to dance and they held many dances in the school house. Someone played the piano and Bill Bracken fiddled, and they really had a lively time. Everyone took their whole families. The babies were put to sleep in the little side room and the older children watched or danced. From the time I was sever or eight years old, my father always danced at time or two with me.
During the summer of 1924 Esther was so ill she had to spend a couple of months in St. George under the doctors care. Grandpa and grandma Truman and family were all up to the ranch, and they kept Alpine and LaVerde. Esther took Rodney, who was just two years old, and Isa with her to watch Rodney. Her sister Mary came down from the ranch to take care of her. Rodney was like a little lost lamb. No brother and sister to play with and his mother was too sick to give him much attention. He would sit out on the front porch steps, his chin in his hands and say, “Hom-a, I want to go hom-a”. If someone wasn’t with him every minute, he took off and tried to find home.
Esther’s diet was very restricted, in fact the whole family’s was. . . their chief food was asparagus, and luckily there was plenty of it growing in the lot.
Wesley Albert was born July 7, 1924 and within a day or two Esther had major surgery. She had her gallbladder and appendix removed. Dr. Clair Woodbury was her doctor this time, because Doctor D. A. McGregor was gone. Esther had suffered for months with this ailment and she could not hold off any longer.
Doctor bills were hard to pay. This time they sold a field to get the money. Two summers later June went to Idaho to work. The water supply was so small that little could be raised on the farm. June was working at Burley and when he sent his first pay check home, he wrote to Esther to give each of the kids $1 to spend on the 4th of July. Esther said to the family, “Your father is so homesick to see all of you that he wants to be extravagant, but I believe you could get along with less and save part of the money. Than would mean your father could come home quicker”. The children were all just a homesick to see their father as he was to see them. They agreed. Home just was not the same without him. Whenever they had a party, which was almost any time they asked for one, June & Esther joined in and had just as much fun as they did. He was their fortune teller, he monitored their games, helped them with new ones, even played hide and seek with them. For that matter, so did Esther. She dressed them up for the game of Charades, and she would be on one side and June on the other. Even killing the spring roosters for a chicken fry was taken with a smile.
June loved a picnic, and many an evening he would come in from the field and say, “Let’s take the family and all go over to the island for supper. Some nice green watercress would taste pretty good”. Many an evening meal was eaten there on the grass listening to the music of the water and also to the stories he told the kids about the terrible flood that had once come down that canyon. Many other meals were eaten around a campfire up on the white hill. June would come in and say, “How would you like some nice potatoes and onions cooked in the Dutch oven? Let’s gather everything together and go up in the trees and cook our supper”. Those were wonderful evenings. He had an inexhaustible supply of stories, sometimes kind of spooky one, and many nights as the family trudged home in the moonlight, the older ones hurried just a little faster to keep up with their father and mother and cast a few fleeting glances over their shoulder, because of them.
While June was in Idaho, Esther took care of the farm and milked the seven cows. It was hard work for a woman, and June hated to leave her so much to do. He hired a boy to do the milking, but in about a week the cows had dropped off so in their milk that Esther told the boy they would not need him anymore. The best cow they had, had just calved and she was afraid she was going to have a caked bag. Within several days of the time she dismissed the boy, the Holstein jerked a wire through her hand and cut a gash through her palm nearly to the bone. From then on for a month or six weeks she milked with one hand. Isa and Alpine helped her and she told them they were doing just as well or better than the boy had done before them.
The winter of 1927, before Margaret was born, the family spent in St. George. Esther had sugar diabetes and had to be constantly in the doctor’s care. Margaret was born on the 18th of December, 1927, and the doctor warned Esther and June to let that be enough. They even had to take insulin into the delivery room. Unfortunately, the diabetes did not clear up after the baby was born, and Esther had it the rest of her life.
The following year they sold the farm and moved to Panaca, Nevada. June worked at the mine in Pioche. The family had the measles, the mumps, chickenpox and were exposed to scarlet fever in the one years time they were in Panaca. When June was laid off at the mine along with a great many others, the family moved back to St. George with a sigh of relief. This was in the fall of 1929.
June worked on the AT&T telephone line all winter and Isa worked at the Arrowhead Hotel after school. Afton was born on the 22nd of March, 1930. She was the smallest child Esther ever had and she said it was the easiest delivery. During pregnancy, Esther dieted and starved until she was nothing but skin and bones. Her sister, Mary, came on a visit, and when she saw Esther she about wept. She said, “If June or one of your kids ever speaks a cross word to you, the way you look, they ought to be shot”. June was even more concerned about her that Mary was. It was a great relief to everyone when the baby had been safely delivered.
The following spring, June leased the Bigelow Ranch from Uncle John Bowler. The family was happy there. June was back doing the work he loved, and watching things grow, and Esther & the family all helped him. That summer they had hundreds of watermelons, the sweetest and largest ever grown around the country. Everyone said, “June has a green thumb; he can grow anything”. This had been the cry all his life. It is true that if anyone could grow anything, June could. But he did it by hard work, study and planning and patience. If it froze or was blighted, or for any reason didn’t come the first time, it was plant & replant. And he used the most modern methods of caring for the soil and fertilizing it.
There was a lot of hard work on the Bigelow Ranch, as well as good times. Esther bottled several hundred quarts of fruit and vegetables and dried corn by the sacks full. They hated to see anything go to waste, and anything they could not sell or give away, they bottled or dried. June would say, “Next winter it will beat looking up the road”. Many times they would dry the corn and then give it away.
They always went to Gunlock on Sunday to church, and in the fall they moved down to put the kids in school. After they had been on the Bigelow Ranch for several years, Lee Leavitt ask June to run his farm in Gunlock and they did this.
For a couple of years they lived in Gunlock and ran Lee’s farm, but during the winter there was absolutely no work, not even short term jobs, for June. There was no cream to ship to bring in an occasional dollar, and it was a pretty hard row. That winter they moved to St. George. June had a little work here and there, and in the spring they moved to Veyo. June was able to get more work here during the winter, and during the summer. He worked for his brother- in-law, Royal Hunt. After Royal was killed, the family moved up to the ranch and June ran the ranch for Phyllis, Esther’s sister. Phyllis sold the ranch and June and Esther moved back to Veyo in the fall. June bought a farm from Albert Bunker. They had worked so hard all through the years and now he and Esther both continued to work hard to pay for the farm, that it about took all the light-hearted gayness out of them. The younger children in the family never knew the same parents that the older children were privileged to have. By this time, June and Esther were both fully aware that it was a cruel old world and you worked and skimped and went without for what you had. They were considerably sobered.
For several summers and winters, June worked out in Pioche at the mines. Esther ran the farm and washed for the CCC boys. June would drive home on Saturday night and back to Pioche on Sunday night. They were both lonely.
Alpine had married Ida Stout in 1937, Isa married Jim Price in 1934 and LaVerde married Roger Daugherty in 1942. In 1941, after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Rodney enlisted in the Air Force (then, the Army Air Corps) and not too much later, Wesley was in the Army. They had times of deep despair, like all parents whose children were in the armed forces. June’s brother, George, had lived with him and Esther when he first returned from WW1, and from him they had learned something of the horror of war. In June’s most despondent moments he used to say, “I’ll never see my boys again”. Here he was wrong, because both boys returned home safely. However, Esther recognizing that it was not good for June to be too much alone, started going everywhere with him.
After the farm was paid for, they really began to build the place up. One year they sold $1600 dollars worth of apples. They started shipping tomatoes and melons and most anything else they had to sell with Rocky Mountain Produce Company.
Sometimes, June would take a load of produce out on the Escalante desert to sell, but he usually ended up giving about as much of it away as he sold. He could not stand to see anything go to waste as long as he could find someone that needed it.
Esther had been afflicted with sugar diabetes for so long and now her memory and her eye sight commenced to fail her. In 1948 they took her to Salt Lake to a specialist who told them that it was the diabetes that was causing her loss, and that it would have to be kept absolutely under control or she would completely lose her memory. June really tried, and she had the best care they knew how to giver her but she got steadily worse. In 1953 June felt he couldn’t leave her alone, so they moved to Henderson, Nevada near LaVerde and Isa. He worked over at the Desert Inn as a gardener.
By now Afton was married to Kenneth Leavitt, Rodney had married Faye Banks, and Margaret had married Paul Lamar Wilkin. Wesley was the only one still with them, and he also worked as a gardener at the Desert Inn.
In October of 1955 Esther was at St. George and June was on his way up there when he had an automobile accident and died two days later without ever gaining consciousness. When June went, Esther lost all desire to live and she died two days before Christmas that same year. They were never rich in worldly goods, but they were rich with a great and understanding love for each other and their family. June’s last desire was for Esther’s comfort and welfare and she wanted only to be with him.
Created 15 Aug 01
Updated 14 Sep 07
Owned and Maintained by Paul E. Price
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