Three Children

From Dora Baty Argyle

 

Ten months after our marriage our first child was born.  It was a boy, our pride and joy.  We called him Doyle J.  He used to spend lots of time in his grandparents home as he was the first grandchild on my side.  His Grandmother Baty taught him how to drive a car.

 

(1935 Doyle Argyle)

Four years later a little girl came to our house.  She also was a joy to us because we dreamed about a girl like her.  She weighed seven pounds and had lots of dark hair and eyes.  People told me she was a living doll and I named her Denece Ann.  I would fuss over her.   Her hair was always curled and she had two clean dresses on a day.  When she was ten months old she had "gathered ears" and she started to suck her thumb.  She and Doyle got along well.

(1937 Doyle and Denece Argyle)

 

Seven years later our home was blessed by the arrival of Doris Alene, a sweet baby of five pounds.  All my children were born at home and my mother took care of me.  A couple of months before Alene came, my father was taken in death from a heart attack on 17 March 1942.  This was our first experience with death in our family and it was hard to take but we realized the work of the Lord.  Dell and I rented the ranch from my mother.  She moved to Farmington, Utah.  Later we bought the ranch from mother.

(1943 Doyle, Doris Alene, and Denece Argyle)

 

Denece remembers her mother telling her that she had "gathered ears," but she never did know what that meant.

Teen Years

From Dora Baty Argyle

When I grew older, I used to spend time with my cousin, Beth Pace.  We used to pick cherries and also go the horse races at Lagoon near Farmington.  When it came time to go to school, Ora and I were the only children left at home.  All of our brothers had jobs and were married and Edna was a bookkeeper and lived in Ogden, Utah with Norma and her husband, Chick.  Mother stayed on the ranch with father and Ora, and I went and rented a room in the Call home and went to school.  We had lots of fun going to dances and having dates with boys.  This was in Chesterfield, Idaho, in my teen years.  I seemed quite lucky in being able to get dates, so I would take my sister along.

 

 

 

 

Chesterfield Idaho

 

 

 

The Family Home

From Dora Baty Argyle

 

The house I lived in was part log and soon my father added on to it and we all lived in four rooms.  A large kitchen and pantry were two of them.  We fixed the "cutest little front room", so we called it.  The other room was used for sleeping.  We had a cot in the corner of the kitchen and the whole family would rest upon it.  At night it was fixed out for the boys’ bed.

(1914 Ora and Dora Baty)

 

Influenza

From Dora Baty Argyle

 

One day we awoke to find we could not arouse my brother, Hugh.  One of my step-sisters, Norma , and also my sister Edna, had headaches and lots of pain it their backs.  We called the Doctor.  He told us what we were afraid of.  It was a dreaded sickness call Influenza.   One by one the whole family was sick in bed.  My father came to see us soon after.  It was his presence that kept me from getting sick.  I only stayed in bed for two days.  We all worried about Hugh but when he finally awoke, he was all right.  None of us had any ill effects from the diseases as many people did.  My favorite Uncle Harold Pace went to sleep and to this day he is an invalid in a wheelchair.

Homesick

From Dora Baty Argyle

After we got lost in the blizzard, we would go to Farmington, Utah, to go to school and leave my father alone on the ranch to feed the animals and live.  I used to get homesick for him.  One time my mother let me come home to the ranch to stay with him for awhile.

 

 

 

Farmington, Utah

 

A Conservative Young Lady

From Denece Ann Argyle Perkins

 

This I don't remember, but the folks have told it so often I feel that I was there.  It happened when Mom and Dad (Dora and Delbert) were courting.   My mother was always the outdoor type who loved horseback riding which came in very handy since she was raised on a cattle ranch.  When Dora was a teenager she wanted to be a trick rider when she grew up.  She would go out to the meadow and practice tricks.  She could stand on the saddle and put her leg around the saddle horn and lay backwards alongside the horse. She was always a very good rider.

 

My father's mother died when he was fourteen so his grandmother (Ellen Taylor Holroyd Argyle), a very  old fashioned lady who thought young ladies should never put on slacks and ride horses, helped raise him.  This night Dad was bringing his grandmother down to meet mom in hopes of getting her approval of the girl he hoped to marry.  Of Course, Mom primped all day long to hide her freckles she received from working in the hay fields and to look the way my great grandmother thought young ladies should look.  Finally she was dressed in her very best dress and looked very much like the lady she wanted to be when what should happen!  In walked Grandpa Baty, mother's  dad, with the simple statement that the horses had gotten out and mom would have to catch her horse and take them back to the field.  Well, you can imagine mother's horror, but it was an hour before dad was to be there so she thought if she hurried she'd be back and once more look like the conservative lady.  She got the horse to the field alright but just as she was coming down the lane as fast as the horse could run who would appear around the corner in the family's first car but my father.  Well, I guess he gulped and looked a little pale because all my great-grandmother could say was, "Dell, I hope that girl on that horse isn't the one you are planning on marrying."  Of course, after she got to know mom she approved and loved her but then you couldn't help loving my mom.

(1930 Delbert Argyle and Dora Baty)

 

A History of the Farm

Lettie Baty could not stay at the farm after she found her husband dead in the barnyard.  So, they moved her into Bancroft.  She later lived in Farmington and Salt Lake City.

The dry farm was Joseph Hyrum Argyle’s.  The ranch was purchased from Grandma Baty when her husband died.

(The Joseph Hyrum Argyle Family)

 

(Joseph Hyrum's Barn)

Dora Alene Baty Argyle's Birth

On a September day, the 7th to be exact, a very wonderful thing happened to John Gibbs Baty and Lettie Rebecca Stoddard Baty.  They had a pair of twin girls come to join their family of five.  It was in the year 1912.  Doctor Kackley came from Soda Springs, Caribou, Idaho by horse and buggy, a distance of eighteen miles to deliver the babies to my mother.  My birth place was Chesterfield, Bannock, Idaho.  How happy she was when she was able to realize her lifelong dreams had come true.  Twins was one of her life's desires and now it seemed to good to be true.

                My sister weighed three pounds and I weighed three and a half.  We were poor and as babies we gave our mother a great deal of worry.  She finally gave me cows cream and rice water, and my sister's life was saved by a dear old lady named Aunt Ruth Davids.  She was part Indian and nursed my sister until she was strong and healthy.  Our parents decided to call us Ora Norrine and Dora Alene.  I was to be called Ora, but because Carl Loveland got us mixed up when he blessed us I was named Dora Alene.

 

 

(1914 Ora and Dora Baty)

 

Written by Dora Baty August 20, 1950