My full name is Mildred Adaline Haymore Lewis. I am the daughter of Franklin Demarcus Haymore and Elizabeth Ann Lant. I was born at the San Pedro Ranch, Chihuahua, Mexico in the year l891. No one remembers the day or month. There were two or three American families living on this ranch as well as a few Mexicans. There was no ward organization there. My older brother Arthur, says he remembers father telling him to take the team and wagon and go for the midwife (a Mexican woman) that lived near the road. Arthur said father told him to hurry so he drove the horse on a good trot. When he got there the Mexican woman would not sit up in the spring seat by him, but sat flat in the wagon bed just back of the spring seat. Arthur said by the time he got back home, bouncing along over the rocky road, the Mexican woman had bounced until she was clear down to the other end of the wagon box. Father told me that just as soon as I was born, the Mexican woman took me in the other room and put me down in a big pan of cold water. Father said it nearly scared my mother to death, but the Mexican woman said she did it to harden me. I had an older brother named David Franklin (Lynn) who was born April 6, 1889 at Payson, Utah. While still in Mexico my mother had a baby boy born in 1892 or 3. They named him Alvino (a Mexican name). He was born in San Pedro Ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico. Alvino died in 1893. Later father took mother to Mapleton, Utah. Here my brother John Lester was born 5 August 1894 or 5. John Lester lived and was married twice, first to Lucile McClellan and second to Erma Romney. John Lester died on the 18 of March 1926 at Bisbee, Arizona. From Mapleton mother moved to Spanish Fork Field. I must have been about 6 years old then. I remember one time my mother was in the kitchen and I went in the kitchen and laid my hand on the table, about that time another child picked up the butcher knife that was on the table and began hacking up and down on the table real fast and came down on my little finger and cut about the top third of my little finger clear off. My finger was just hanging by the skin. My mother and father took me to the doctor and got my finger sewed back on. My finger was always crooked after that and I can still see the scar where it was sewed back on.

My mother was a second wife and it was customary for the second wife to name her first girl after the first wife, so the Adaline in my name was after father's first wife. Her name was Lucinda Adaline. They called her Adaline. My mother being a second wife, lived on the underground for sometime, because the saints were persecuted for living polygamy. For a long time mother and we children went by the name of Thane. When we children were first told that our name was not Thane but Haymore, it embarrassed me to start telling people that our name was not Thane, but Haymore. My mother was severely tried in polygamy and she became discouraged and left my father and married a man by the name of Andrew Crump. By this marriage she had a son whom she called Daniel. When mother's next child was born, mother got blood poison and died 12 April 1898 at Spanish Fork Field, Utah. I was then seven years old. After my mother's death, my older brother, David, and myself went to live with my mother’s sister, Ella Kerr. She lived at Payson, Utah. My younger brother John Lester went to live with my mother's brother, John Lant. He lived at Payson also. In the meantime father's first wife, Adaline, had also died in Colonia Oaxaca, Mexico.

Next father married a widow , Pearl Melissa Wilson Brown. Pearl had a little girl by the name of Pearl Brown at the time father married her. After Pearl married father, she also took care of Adaline’s children, Arthur, Adrum, Millard, Eva, Veda, and Walter. Father and Pearl were then living in Colonia Oaxaca. Father soon learned of mother's death and he came to Utah and took us three children David Franklin, John Lester and myself to Mexico to live with him and Pearl. Daniel went to live with a sister of his father's. By Pearl’s marriage to father she had two girls that lived to maturity, Emma Julia and Centenna. So Pearl really had part of four different families of children to care for and raise. She was one of the most just stepmothers that I have ever known. I think she was one in a million. To me she always seemed like one of the best women that ever graced this earth. Pearl treated us all like we were all her own children. By nature my two brothers and myself were religiously inclined. Our stepmother, Pearl, was very diligent in teaching us the gospel. She had us attend primary and Sunday School regularly. She also taught us to pay our tithing. When we were little she had us count all our pennies and pay every tenth one for tithing.

In the year l906 while living at Oaxaca, Sonora, Mexico one day the river began rising and continued rising higher than it had ever been before. About noon one day my father sent my brother David Franklin down to the river to water a saddle horse and expected him to be back in a little while to go up to the cattle ranch. When my brother got down to the river the family living nearest the river had moved out of their house as the river had overflowed its banks and getting very near the house. My brother helped them move their belongings farther down the street. By that time the river had reached the next place so David F. helped them move a little farther down the street. By this time the next family was moving out and so it went the rest of the afternoon until all the families of that side of town finally moved into the church house which was on higher ground. My father and his boys had a store in Oaxaca and my brothers Adrum and David F. took enough canned goods from the store to do the people for two or three days up to the church house. Then David F. went over to the other side of town to see how my mother Pearl’s parents were faring. The people there were all moving out and going up to the nearby hills for safety. When David Franklin first arrived there he tied his horse up to a fence post. After all the families had gone to the hills, David Franklin went back to get his horse and he had to wade out in water up to his arm pits to get to his horse to untie it while all this was going on father had gone to see how near river had risen to our house. This was late in the afternoon. when father came back, he said it was time for us to go to the hills. Mother Pearl quickly bundled up a few clothes for us and a bundle for each of us children to carry with us. Father and the boys threw some bedding over their shoulder. Mother Pearl gathered us some bread and cooked beans and what food she could get together quickly and also a few dishes, to eat on and a few cooking utensils and we started on a good walk up to the hills, I remember as we walked along the river was rising so fast that as we stepped forward the river water would touch our back foot. We managed to get to the hills in safety. That night by the campfires, people could hear first one house fall and then another and kept saying, "There goes my house." Most all the houses were melted down or washed away, A few days later when the ground had dried enough that we could go back where our house had been, the walls had crumbled leaving the roof lying on the ground. Father and the boys removed the roof, and All we could see of the furniture was about a foot of the tall head piece of the bedsteads. Stove, table and everything else was completely covered with mud and had to be dug oat. After this most of the town people moved away to make their home somewhere else. Father bought a place that had belonged to Brother Mortenson. He lived in this house until after Pearl died. My brother Adrum moved to Colonia Morelas and father bought Adrum’s new brick house soon after he married Aunt Mazie and we lived in this house as long as we stayed in Mexico.

My schooling commenced at Colonia Oaxaca Sonora Mexico. It was a small school held in the church house. There was just two teachers. A lady teacher taught the younger classes and a man teacher taught the older classes up to the eighth grade. My favorite teacher was Filenda Keeler, She taught us drawing in a most interesting way. She taught us how to pronounce words by the way they were marked which has been a big help to me all my life. At recess we often played baseball, pomp pomp pull away, or stink base. Then sometimes the boys would play marbles and the girls would play jacks. We lived just across the road from a large family of boys and girls and in the long summer evenings we would all play games in the street for awhile, and sometimes we played run, sheep, run. When I was 8 years old my father baptized me in the river (that was where the baptizing was done). I do not know the date of my baptism but I remember it was during the week and the following Sunday I was confirmed 1 April 1900 by George C. Naegle. My girl chum was Hortense Langford. She lived just across the road from me. We were together a great deal until I graduated from the eighth grade at the age of 15 years. When I was 16 years old my brother David Franklin and I went to the Juarez Stake Academy. While there my stepmother Pearl died and I left school and came home to take care of the family. I was the oldest girl at home.

My father worried a great deal because he was left with four girls to raise and no mother, so father sent for four of Jake’s Cattisms (catechisms) -- a book of questions and answers. He gave each of us girls a book of our own which we were to read one chapter a week from and learn the answers. At the end of the week father lighted the coal oil lamp and set it in the center of the table in the evening and called all the family around the table while he asked the questions to see how many we could answer. The boys took part in the discussion also.

A year or so later my father married Mary Ellen Cluff. She was usually called Mazie. I do not have a picture of Aunt Mazie alone so I am putting in one of Aunt Mazie and father. At the time father married Aunt Mazie she had one son named Orson LeRoy Cluff. A little later three of the older children and myself went to the Juarez Stake Academy to school one more year. While there I went to Patriarch James Skousen and got a Patriarchal Blessing, This blessing was a great blessing to me. This was the last year that I went to school. I just completed first year high school. When the war broke out in Mexico, father took his family to Douglas, Arizona. I worked out doing house work for a little over a year, for which I received 25 dollars a month. For three months I worked at the Calumet hospital and received 30 dollars a month. Shortly after this I went to Salt Lake City with my brother David Franklin. While there we got a Patriarchal blessing from the Presiding Patriarch of the Church (Hyrum G. Smith). This blessing was even more comfort to me than the others. Many blessings promised me in this blessing have been fulfilled. While living at Douglas, Arizona, I acted as secretary of the Sunday School about three years and as secretary of the Relief Society for one year. I used to do Relief Society teaching once a month in connection with another teacher. For two years I taught a class of young girls in the Mutual Improvement Association. I also taught the Kindergarten Class in Primary.

About this time I met a very fine young man, George Albert Lewis. He was a counselor in the YMMIA. We had a very fine courtship and when we decided to get married, my brother Adrum and his wife Mary Ann took us to Salt Lake City in their car. A friend of George’s, Carl Gutkee, also took his car, taking his daughter Thelma with him. He also took my father and my two sisters Emma and Tenna in his car. Carl Gutkee had relatives in Salt Lake City. After arriving in Salt Lake City and visiting relatives, George and I were married 1 October 1919 in the Salt Lake Temple. At this time I was taking care of my niece, Norma, my brother John Lester’s daughter. Her mother had died with the flu and my brother John Lester was in the Mission Field, The Spanish American Mission. When we returned home from Salt Lake George and I set up housekeeping, taking Norma with us. We lived in a rented house for about a year. When one day I decided to go visit a friend who lived near by and Norma did not want to go. So I took my young baby, George, who had been born in this house, and started to go. I got as far as the gate and then I thought "I do not like to leave Norma here alone", so went back and got Norma and took her with me. After I had been to the neighbors a few minutes we heard the fire whistle blow, I looked out and my house was on fire. It was completely destroyed by the fire. If I had left Norma alone in the house, she would have been asleep and burned to death. I never left a child alone after that. George and I then lived in back of father's house for awhile and moved to a rented house of my brother, David Franklin’s house on 5th Street. It was in this house that Mildred was born. Next we moved to a house out near the smelter where George worked. We lived there about a year and then moved to a little house just across the railroad tracks in Douglas. It was in this little house that Franklin , Emma and Ella were born.

In about 1930 we moved to Mesa, Arizona and made our home on a farm about 4 miles from Gilbert and also about four miles from Mesa. We joined the Gilbert Ward. While living in the Gilbert Ward our children took an active part in the activities of the ward. My husband George was in the superintendancy of the Sunday school about three years and when he went out of the Sunday School Superintendancy, the Sunday School gave him a 3 in 1, Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants. During the time we lived in the Gilbert Ward I taught a Primary class in Sunday School about a year. I also taught the Beehive Girls in the Mutual Improvement Association. For five years I gave the Social Science lessons in Relief Society and then gave the Literary lessons in Relief Society for three years. The next year in 1950 we moved to New Plymouth, Idaho, and rented a farm of Mr. White. There was a large house on the place with a basement, so we had plenty of room in this house. The house was upon a hill. We were not used to living where it snowed so much. In the winter it would snow a layer of snow and then freeze ice, and snow another layer of snow on the ice and when Wee went outside our feet would go through the snow down to the layer of ice and then scoot out from under us like we were on roller skates and we found ourselves sitting down in the snow real quick. We soon learned to sprinkle sand on all the walks so we could walk without our feet scooting out from under us. If we went anywhere in the car while the snow was on the ground, as we came back when we got to the bottom of the hill the driver of the car had to back over across the road to get a good start up the hill or he did not make it to the top of the hill, and then they had to drive right in the same tracks that they came down in order to keep on the road. I remember one time we made it up to the top of the hill to the house and the car turned clear around Just like we were going down hill again. All this happened so quick that we hardly knew what was going on at first. Farming up in Idaho is very different from farming here. My husband and son had to learn to farm all over again up there. We lived on the farm for two years and took an active part in the New Plymouth ward while we were there and met some very fine people. They were very friendly and nice to us. Farming in Idaho did not prove very profitable to us, so at the end of two years in Idaho, my son George bought a farm in Ontario, Oregon. Part of this farm was an island. We farmed this farm in Oregon for three years. While there we joined the Ontario Ward. At the end of three years in Oregon my husband and I moved back to Arizona. My son George had married in the meantime and he and his family are still living in Oregon. My husband is buying a farm in Mesa. We are living in Gilbert at present and attend the Gilbert Ward.