27.

THE LIFE OF JOSEPH ELMER MOTT, compiled c. 1977 

by PAPA & GWEN (Joseph Elmer Mott & his second wife Gwen)

from book by Harvey Paul Mott, son of Joseph Elmer Mott & Annie Prudence Coombs

                                  Back, L to R: Joel Heber Mott, Joseph Elmer Mott;                                                  Front, L to R: Jacob Lyman Mott, Mary Emeline Kelly Mott

“I (Elmer) am the oldest son of Joseph Louis Mott and Emeline Kelly Mott. Father came from Italy as a young boy with his mother’s brother. They were musicians. Father’s instrument was a full sized harp. One of my earliest recollections is of father loading the harp into the wagon on a bed of straw and going to play for dances in La Jara, Monte Vista, Del Norte or Manassa.

Soon after they came to the USA, father and his uncle became separated in Denver.  Father always thought his uncle had been killed, but he never did know exactly what happened to him.

Father went to Idaho then, where he got a start in cattle. An extremely hard winter wiped his small herd out. He met the Beers family there and came with them to Manassa. He joined the LDS church and was baptized May 1,1881, by W.M. Ball and was confirmed by Hencel H. Heiselt. That same year he became a citizen of the United States, getting his papers June 26, 1881, at Del Norte.

Mother was born in Perry County, Tennessee. She joined the LDS church there and the family came to the valley in 1882 or 83. I’ve heard Granddad Kelly say that if he had had the money, he would have gone back on the next train, it was such a desolate place. They settled in Richfield first, then homesteaded at Morgan.

Dad and Mother were married January 21, 1886. Father was homesteading a quarter section. It had a two-room log house where they set up housekeeping. The house was (a) half mile west of Quince Norton’s on the southwest corner of the quarter. He later moved the house to the northeast corner of the 160 acres where artesian water was available. He built a lean-to on the south of the house for a kitchen. I was the first child born to them in the house, followed by Heber and Oscar. Jessie Oscar only lived about a month.

We moved to Manassa for one year. Father owned a piece of land on the northwest corner of Manassa across the road from Rogers. Jake was born while we lived there. I started school in Manassa. Then we moved back to Morgan where father farmed for two years.

Father became ill in the fall. He underwent surgery for what the doctors called telescoped intestines. The operation was performed on the kitchen table by Drs. Gale and Boothe from Alamosa. Dad never regained consciousness.  He died Oct. 4, 1894.

Our neighbors finished stacking the grain for us. Pete Mortensen thrashed the grain free of charge and all the men donated their work. Granddad Kelly hauled the grain to Conejos to the mill by team and wagon, a two day trip. He hauled about a thousand pounds a load.  It sold for fifty-five or sixty cents a hundred. The money was applied on the doctors bills. Mother went out to do house work at two dollars and fifty cents a week to finish paying the doctors.

Grandma (Mary Malinda Hunt) Kelly took the three boys into her home while mother worked. We grew up in the same home with the Kelly boys and girls, our uncles and aunts. 

Dad was a loving father, affectionate and kind. I still remember Jake running to meet him, to ride his shoulders to the house. He was short, wore a black mustache and had black wavy hair. He looked somewhat like Troy (Mott) except he was heavier.

Early in the settlement of Morgan the need for a school became evident. The school was built across the road from Alfred Price's present home.  Dad gave the land. The building was made of logs and was erected by donated work (about 1 1/2 to 2 miles north of homeplace).

Dad and Grandma Kelly did much of the work. The building served as school and church. There was one room with a few regular seats, but some of us had to sit on benches and hold our slates on our laps. The school term was four months in the summer for the first six or eight years.

. . . Times were very hard and money extremely scarce. After Father’s death, it was worse for us. After I was ten years old, I only got about six weeks of school a year as I had to work. Alma (James Alma Kelly) and I worked as a team.  We were too small to handle the team of broncos and the plow one so one of us held the plow and the other one drove.  Grandpa would broadcast the grain and we would plow it under as there were no drills then. 

. . . Once when Alma and I were about 5 years old, we wanted to bake some potatoes in (the) Kelly’s fireplace.  We were not allowed to, so we tried to do it in the barn.  Result: complete loss of barn, hay and corrals.  Needless to say, what a tragedy this was.

. . . One day at school we were digging to make a cave in an old sand mound. When we got down about 18 or 20 inches, we started finding bones. We dug up most of a human skeleton. Some people thought it was an Indian. We put the bones back and covered them up."