Interviewee: Morris and Geneal Ogden

Sevier County Oral History Project

Interviewee: Morris and Geneal Ogden
Interviewer: Bryce Jolley
Date: December 7, 1997
Place: Richfield, Utah
Subject: The Great Depression in Sevier County

Bryce Jolley: I am interviewing a married couple of sixty-eight years on December 7, 1997, in Richfield Utah. My name is Bryce Jolley. The subject for interviewing will be the effects on them during the Great Depression.

When and where were you both born?

Morris Ogden: I was born in Richfield, 1905.

Geneal Ogden: What else do you think he should know.

Morris Ogden: I'm ninety-one years old

Geneal Ogden: I was born the twelfth of May, 1906 in Richfield, Utah.

Bryce Jolley: How many brothers and sisters did you have in your family?

Geneal Ogden: You go first (nodding to Morris).

Morris Ogden: Well I, guess I lost one, so there's seven that's alive.

Bryce Jolley: All seven still alive?

Morris Ogden: No, some of them have died. Some of them on the earth, some in heaven.

Geneal Ogden: He's the youngest in his family. I'm the oldest in my family.

Morris Ogden: I'm the baby in mine.

Geneal Ogden: I have two sisters and two brothers.

Bryce Jolley: How was the depression bad for you?

Morris Ogden: Let Geneal tell you first.

Geneal Ogden: No, I think we'll start with you.

Morris Ogden: Well, the thing that was bad for me was I was born in the depression, didn't have any way to make a living. Dad had a little farm.

Geneal Ogden: He just came off a mission.

Morris Ogden: I'd just been on a mission for two years.

Bryce Jolley: Where did you go?

Morris Ogden: I went over to England. I was there for two years and then I went and spent a month in Denmark. That's where my mother came from. She wanted me to go over there and spend a little time with her folks to see what they were like 'cause I hadn't ever been over, and mother's folks hadn't been there; she wanted somebody to go over. So she went over, or she asked me to go over, so soon as my mission was through, then I got leave of absence and I went over to Denmark and spent nearly a month there. Going around and visiting with a lot of those people. None of them knew me, nobody. . . . I didn't know any language, I was just on my own but I made friends. I had a cousin there; he had written to me in Danish oh for three or four months and I sent them to President Telmage, and he took them, corrected them, and put them in English. He sent me a copy of English; then we just transferred them that way till I got so I could understand a little of his language, not a lot, but we got so—he did too—we got so we could talk together and make each one understand what we meant and what we had in mind.

Many of them [Danish] were Mormons, just two of my cousins had met the missionaries over there and they had joined the church. One of them, Thomas,—[there] were two brothers they had both joined the church at different intervals. The oldest of them wanted to come to Utah to see what Utah was like. Wasn't long before the other one decided to come. So they joined together and came over as a group to find out what they were like.

My youngest brother, my youngest one of the brothers that joined the church, he didn't have any money. The older brother had been a mechanic and he'd learned the language and made enough money to pay his way here. The other one said he got a job from a man who had joined the church and he offered this cousin fifty dollars if he would take care of his family, [on the way over to the U.S.] He said he'd take care of them till you get over to Utah. When they got to Utah, the younger brother found his older brother and lived with him for a few years until he got a job and a place to stay. This younger had found his wife on the boat over the Atlantic. They hadn't known each other only by coming over for the eight weeks that they were on the boat, or something like that they got for acquainting. Then they came to Utah and were married, the younger brother got a job working with his older brother, and they started in the mechanical business so he stayed with him and worked with him for, I don't know how many years; they worked together as a family more or less. That's when my mother came along.

(Hurrying) Now while I'm talking, I want to tell you another little story. One of the cousins, the one that wasn't over here, he says I want to talk to you and I want to find out something about Utah, what kind of people you were and how you live. I noticed that each one of you that come over here want to know something about mankind, they want to know about Utah and wherever they expected to live. I 'd like to know what there is about Utah that can make so much money that they can afford to send their children over here to see our country and our people. Your the tenth one of my ancestors, all males, that have gone over to Utah and come back, and he says I notice everything they have is bought as they have to buy all their way over here and I want to know if money really grows on trees? That's the way it seems to me 'cause ten of you brethren have come over here and bought your own way and got a passport to go back now there living back in their country, and they want to know how come.

Geneal Ogden: He also said they were all real nice guys.

Morris Ogden: Yeah, we can we can have them come over here and every one of these nine boys were good religious people and he says what's the reason? How can you do that? But that's one of the things that I want to know. How come they have so much money over in Utah to do that and pay their own way? There was the question that I had to answer. I said I can tell you how I paid my own way; my brother does the same. It's because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that's our motive. We love the church and the people that are in it; we love to do that, to make friends with our cousins and the people we know are true people that are prepared to take their own way and pay their own expenses. That was the answer that I could give him I couldn't tell him in Danish . . . . [but that's what I told him].

Bryce Jolley: Did you attend school regularly?

Morris Ogden: Yeah, I graduated from high school; that was as far as I went; then I got a job, and the next year I went on a mission. My folks wanted me to go on a mission, so that's where I went. I was going to come back to go to school again, carry on, but I didn't go to school anymore, went on a mission and took that up as my vocation, and stayed right there and got a job.

Geneal Ogden: I took one year over to Koosharem, then I came down here [Richfield] because I got the chicken pox over there; the whole family was going through six weeks of chicken pox. Then I came over to Richfield and finished first grade here. My mother [unclear] to take me down to school. We were all in the same room, but I finished high school there. Any way I went to Fish Lake and worked three summers for a dollar a day. It was fun, but there wasn't any money in it 'cause that was when the depression was on.

Bryce Jolley: Did your family produce food and living needs from farming or by other means?

Morris Ogden: My father had a little farm but not enough for two families. I was the last one there. All my other brothers had left and one of them had died—he got kicked by a horse. As soon as I got so I could make a living, I got a job. I went to dad and I said can I borrow one of your two horses and I could get a job hauling gravel from one place in my town to build and beautify the roads, to build the roads, I got two dollars a day, me and his team. We had to take that out in tax-credit to pay your taxes on my little home and that's how it bothered me. We had TV and we had to pay taxes on it. Part of that money went to taxes, the rest of it went for food whatever you could get.

Geneal Ogden: We didn't have electricity water or power. We had an old pear tree down there by the toilet (points at the southeast corner of the room) we didn't have much.

Morris Ogden: Yeah, we lived pretty humble during those years. If I hadn't a borrowed dad's team . . . .

Geneal Ogden: Well, Morris worked for construction and helped build roads. So he got us a job. We didn't have any kids; it was still about three years before that so there was those three years that we worked construction. So we decided to go on the road to do construction from Price... St. George or somewhere down in that area.

Morris Ogden: Down in the southern part of Utah, just about the edge of Utah.

Geneal Ogden: So first we stopped off around Helper to see if we could help there. Then the road moves . . . .

Morris Ogden: We had to go where the jobs were.

Geneal Ogden: We had a little canvas tent. And a cupboard that was really an old orange crate. We also had a bed about this wide (indicates approximately a foot and a half with her hands).

Morris Ogden: Just enough to hold on.

Geneal Ogden: We went all the way down to Green River, and that's where the big geyser was.

Morris Ogden: Tell him about the price of the watermelon.

Geneal Ogden: I will when I get there. Anyway we stopped there to see the geyser. Then we went down to this road camp. There were about twenty-five there. We worked there until the job was finished.

Bryce Jolley: So after those three years on the road did you come back to Richfield to settle down and have a family?

Morris Ogden: No we got a job on the road working as one of the managers; we were in charge of the work and so I kept the team ready.

Bryce Jolley: Where did you start your family then?

Morris Ogden: Yeah, we jumped back down to Richfield.

Geneal Ogden: When we came home in September, LeIla was born in June. During that summer Morris had earned a thousand dollars working on the road. When we got back, he went down to put it in the bank. The next morning he went to get it out, and the bank had closed. The next five to nine years we got most of it back, but we didn't get all of it. The man that ran the bank, Blackbird, he had moved and that was the last we saw of him. He was a nice man with a nice family and a pretty good house but he kept two sets of books. One for the auditors and one for his own self.

Morris Ogden: They got put in jail finally.

Bryce Jolley: When your children were growing up, did they have material possessions such as dolls or toys?

Geneal Ogden: They always had what they needed; they didn't have anything fancy, but they got along.

Morris Ogden: They never went without school stuff or equipment.

Geneal Ogden: Morris made them chairs and tables and cupboard that they could play with. When they got ready to go to college, they all had enough money to buy a car, not as nice one, but a car.

Bryce Jolley: Describe what their Christmases were like.

Geneal Ogden: They always got what they needed . . .

Morris Ogden: The necessities of life.

Geneal Ogden: One time we had a little Indian boy that stayed with us, and he had a little scooter that he played on for hours at a time.

Morris Ogden: I made them a teeter totter once that was good for them to play on.

Bryce Jolley: What kind of sacrifices did you as parents, or a family as a whole, make so they could go to school?

Morris Ogden: They didn't have anything that deterred them from going to school. They worked in the summer and went to school in the fall. We tried to get them to save their money so that when they were old enough to go to high school and college they were able to.

Bryce Jolley: What type of jobs did they hold when they were living here?

Geneal Ogden: In the summer LeIla worked up at the pool as a lifeguard. Then she got a job down at the show house selling candy at first; she didn't like that job, but then she got to run the movie-projector, and she liked that job. The boys worked up at Fish Lake most every summer for the Forest Service. They were all three good workers and never had any trouble with their managers or bosses for that matter.

Bryce Jolley: What impact did the depression have on you?

Geneal Ogden: It taught us to know where our money was and where it was going and to buy things that aren't going to put you broke.

Morris Ogden: We bought a car once, before we went on the road, for four hundred and forty-two dollars. The cheapest you could get at that time. But when you have somebody to keep their eyes out for sales, you'll always have a chance to save money on something.

Bryce Jolley: What advice would you give to a younger generation if we were to go into another economic depression?

Morris Ogden: I think the one thing you could do is to look ahead. Don't wait until your last penny is gone before you say oh no we're out of coal or wood.

Bryce Jolley: That's all the questions I have. Do you have anything you want to add about the times during the Great Depression.

Morris Ogden: Save your money for rainy day, don't spent it foolishly, buy what you need, save the rest. That's what got me by without too much trouble during the Great Depression.

Bryce Jolley: Well, thank you for letting me come; it's appreciated.

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