George Henry McCulloch

Life History

I was born in Freedom, Lincoln County, Wyoming on the 19th day of Nov. 1893. I was the second child and the eldest son born to Henry McCulloch and Alice Jane Lee McCulloch. We lived in a two room log house two and a half miles north of Freedom. I started to school in Sept. 1899 in a one-room school house which was located one mile north of Freedom. I went to school here until I was in the sixth grade and then I quit because the teacher was so mean to me and all the other kids. There were several boys who quit school the same year I did because of the teacher.

In the year 1904, when I was about eleven years old, we moved to a three room log house about two miles southwest of the former home on Tincup which remained the family home. One night (July 3) not too long after we moved to this house, we heard a loud roaring noise and we looked outside and our barn, which was a big barn and sit quite a ways from the house, was being blown down by the strong winds. The boards were coming clear over to the house and landing on the porch, and hitting the house. That night the wind blew down all the big barns in Freedom.

In June 1910, my father took sick and lay sick in bed at home for seventeen days. Then he was taken to the hospital in Afton. I helped load him into a bed in the back of the white-top buggy for the trip to Afton, The doctors couldn’t do anything for him there, so we took him on to Logan, Utah, but he was so bad by this time that he died soon after he got there. He had appendicitis and his appendix had ruptured and broke and the infection had gone all through his body. He died the July 17. 1910, at the age of forty-three. They sent word for my mother to come, so I got a neighbor, Sern Nelson, to take her to Soda Springs to catch the train. He made the trip with a good team of horses and a buggy and drove the distance of fifty miles in three hours. When mother got to Cache Junction, she received word that he had already died. I was in church when Lewis Jenkins came and told me that my father had passed away. His body was brought back to Freedom for services and burial.

The death of my father left me with the responsibility of caring for the farm and helping mother care for my six younger brothers. We had a herd of cows to milk and raised hay and grain. The hay was our main source of income and we sold about one hundred ton a year at $3.50 a ton. One year however, we had a real severe winter and hay was scarce and we got $20.00 a ton, but we only had about fifty ton to sell. We fed some cows for a Richenbacher from Bedford, but about half of them died.

Then in December 1915, mother had been having some trouble with her stomach hurting, but she never complained much. One day while I was down to Snake River getting a load of potatoes, some doctors from Montpelier came to see mother and they took her back to Montpelier with them. When I got back home, I was told that they were going to operate on her, so I called the hospital in Montpelier and they told me when she was to be operated on. I called again after the operation and they told me that she was doing fine, but I had a feeling that something was wrong and felt like I should go there. I had to take a young colt and hitch to a black-top buggy, as we had just recently lost nine head of horses with brain fever. I got my Aunt Vine Lee to go with me and we drove the colt and buggy to the halfway house between Afton and Montpelier, and from there I took a team and sleigh on into Montpelier. When I got there, I went right to the hospital to see mother. When I talked to her, she told me she’d rather die than go through that again. I wanted to stay there at the hospital all night so I could be near her, but they wouldn’t let me, but said that Aunt Vine could stay and that they would call me at the hotel if anything went wrong. So I went to the hotel and stayed that night and next morning I went back to the hospital and mother was dead. She died during the night. (They removed a large cancer from her stomach.)

The trip back to Star Valley was one I shall never forget. We took mother’s body in the sleigh. Aunt Vine and George Walton, who ran the livery stable in Montpelier, were with me. We went as far as the Halfway House with the sleigh and then Uncle Lou Hale met us there with a team and a white-top buggy and took us on to Freedom. It was about 30 below zero and snow on the ground and I had to get out and run behind the buggy to keep my feet from freezing. We left Montpelier early in the morning and traveled all day and all night and got to Freedom the next night, a distance of eighty miles. Mother was buried next to my father and a baby sister (Mabel) in the Freedom cemetery. She died 11 December 1915 at the age of forty-three.

After mother died, I was left the responsibility of caring for my six younger brothers. My sister Mary Ann, who was older than I, was married. I cooked all the meals and even made my own yeast and mixed and baked the bread, did the housework, and got my brothers off to school. I took care of them until the spring of 1917 when Mame’s (Mary Ann) husband Edwin Schiess died from the measles and then she took Howard and Elmer to care for, while Willard and Hilton remained with me. Leo was in the Army and Eddie was away from home.

On the 20th day of June 1917, I was married to Olivia Jenkins, daughter of John Jenkins and Anna Maria Jensen Jenkins. We were married in the Logan Temple by William Young. We went from Freedom via Soda Springs in a covered wagon to Newton. Olivia’s father took us to Logan in a model T Ford to be married and he hit a trench they were digging and bent the front end and had to go to a garage and get it fixed. We returned to Freedom in the covered wagon and Meda came with us. It took us four days to make the trip. (Meda is Olivia’s younger sister.)

Olivia and I lived at the family home in Freedom and Willard and Hilton stayed with us for the next two years until we left Star Valley in the fall of 1918. We moved to Newton, Utah that fall and in November Olivia got typhoid fever and was seriously ill for several weeks. I wasn’t able to go to work for fear that I might bring the flu home to her, and the doctor was afraid that in her weakened condition it would be fatal for her.

Our eldest daughter, Fae Annie, was born 14 January 1919 and that spring I went to work on the railroad at Cache Junction, Utah. Then in the fall we went back to Star Valley and ranched again until September 1921. Our second daughter, Leah Alice, was born to us on June 24, 1920.

When we left Star Valley, we went back to Newton. Olivia and the two girls stayed with her mother and I went to work at the sugar factory in Cornish, Utah for a week or two, and I went to work at Utida, Utah. I worked on the railroad section gang, and thus started my career on the railroad which lasted for thirty-nine years until my retirement on October 15, 1959.

Our third daughter Lola Nina was born while we were living at Utida. She was born September 28, 1923. I was promoted to a section foreman in 1924 and did relief jobs until I received my first permanent foreman’s job at Pegram, Idaho in the fall of 1926. We lived there until the fall of 1930. While we lived in Pegram, we had many good times going on camping and fishing trips. Olivia would have food and bedding and camp equipment ready when I got home from work on Saturday night and we would go to Salt Canyon, or Crow Creek and camp out all night and fish the next day and go home Sunday evening.

In the late summer of 1928, I was burning weeds in the right-of-way between Pegram and Montpelier, and I was crouched down wrapping some waste material around a stick to make a torch. I used a piece of wire to secure the waste to the stick and there was a 1500 lb. electric dynamite cap attached to the wire and I never noticed it, and when I lit the waste to make a torch, the dynamite cap ignited and went off and went into my left leg in the thigh and exploded. When it exploded it tore my thigh all up. The section men loaded me on the motor car and took me the seventeen miles to Montpelier and took me to the hospital. I was taken right to the hospital operating room and the doctors wanted to amputate my leg to save my life, but the men begged them to wait and give me a chance to save it. So they decided to try and save the leg and I was on the operating table several hours. The doctors were afraid of poison setting in, but the wound gradually started to heal by injections of a rare medicine that was fifty time stronger than carbolic acid, but it was twenty days before they knew for sure if they could save it or still have to amputate it. I was in the hospital for two months, and it was about another month before I was able to go back to work.

We moved from Pegram to Virginia, Idaho in the fall of 1930. I was foreman here until the section was abolished during the depression of 1933.

In the fall of 1932, I had my teeth pulled by Dr. Schultz in Downey. Several days later I got awful sick and my whole mouth turned black, so Dr. Schultz started to take me to a doctor in Pocatello, but by the time we reached McCammon I was so sick that he took me to Lava Hot Springs instead. The doctor there said I had blood poison and he had to scrape all the inside of my mouth and clear down my throat to try to get all the poison. I remained seriously ill for several days but gradually recovered.

I also was section foreman at Warm River, West Yellowstone, and Big Springs before being assigned my first permanent job since the depression. My assignment was at Humphrey, Idaho in December, 1940. I had also been foreman on the fire patrol gang here a couple of years before. While living in Humphrey, I was able to pursue my hobbies of fishing and hunting. Beaver Creek ran by our front door and the fish were plentiful, and I would go fishing almost every night after work when the fishing season was open. Deer were plentiful in the hills nearby and I was able to get my game every fall. We lived here until March 1942 and then we moved to Spencer. We lived in Spencer until October 1942, and moved from there to Roberts where I remained until I retired form the railroad 15 October 1959.

In June 1955, after several months of painful stomach trouble I was operated on for ulcers at Pocatello by Dr. Gorton. He removed two-thirds of my stomach and I was in the hospital for two weeks or more. My testimony of the Gospel was strengthened at this time. I had always had a fear of being operated on for fear I would have cancer. But the night before the operation Bishop Marden Wells and Elder Don Barrett from Roberts came to the hospital and administered to me and the next morning when the nurses wheeled me to the operating room, I had lost all fear and had faith that everything was going to be alright. Then several hours after the operation was over and I was recovering from the antiseptic, I was in a great deal of pain and the Elders from Pocatello came and administered to me and my pain eased and I went right to sleep and rested for several hours. From this experience I know the power of the Lord to heal through the Elders.

In October 1958, we moved to our home we had purchased in the spring of 1945. Since my retirement, I have kept busy in the summer taking care of the yard and the garden. I still enjoy fishing and hunting, and baseball games. At this time I have three daughters, nine grandchildren, and four great grandchildren, in addition to my wife.

During my lifetime I have seen many great and wonderful inventions develop, among them, the automobile, the airplane, radio, television, and man into space. I bought my first automobile in 1922. It was a Model T Ford with side curtains and was a two-seated car. In 1924, I bought a Model A Ford with glass windows. The first radio I ever listened to was a crystal set with two sets of ear phones that my neighbor in Pegram bought. He and I would listen to “Amos ‘n Andy” every night. My only ride in an airplane was at Downey when we were living in Virginia. They were taking up passengers for rides in a small single-engine plane one Sunday. I went for a ride and when we went to land, the pilot overshot the landing area and went through a barbed wire fence, but no damage was done to the plane and no one was hurt.

During my younger days when I was living in Star Valley, I did a lot of freighting form Freedom to Montpelier with a team and a covered wagon. I also used to hitch up a team and sleigh and go to the dances in Freedom, Thayne, Bedford, and Etna. Sometimes it would be 30 below zero or more. Sometimes I would tie the reins to the sleigh box and crawl down under the quilts in the sleigh and go to sleep. Sometimes the team found their way home and other times they wandered off into some field. Sometimes I would ride a horse to Bedford to the dances and I’d go to sleep going home, but the horse would always take me home. Snow got so deep here in the winter time that you could drive right over the fences.

I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the 6th of Sept. 1902 at Freedom about one-half mile East of Freedom in the canal by William Evan Jenkins, and confirmed the September 7, 1902 by Elder Aaron Frank Bracken at Freedom, Lincoln Co., Wyo. At one time Bishop Frank Bracken asked me if I would go on a mission, but it was after my father and mother had both died and I couldn’t leave at that time as I had my brothers to take care of and I felt I was needed more at home. I have served as Ward Teacher in Pegram, Downey, and Roberts.

Note: This history was compiled by Lola Rose as told to me by my Father George McCulloch, 1964.

George Mcculloch