We kept going on until we arrived at Malad. Then I inquired if he [Thomas Barnard] had passed and nobody seemed to know anything of such an outfit passing that way. I thought I must be ahead of them. So I did not drive fast so as to give them a chance to catch up. They had been also asking if such an outfit had passed that way. When we left in the morning they arrived in Malad that evening and when they were told that we left in the morning they made a early start and arrived up with us in the evening and after that we traveled together. His children and mine had quite a time. Most of the time they would go ahead and stop when they got tired. When we arrived in Pocatello our teams were getting tired as the road to the North was getting heavy. The next morning we started out and about five miles out it began to snow quite heavy and the best we could do was to make it to Blackfoot. We went to a feed stable and made arrangements with the boss to sleep in the hay loft. Some fellow who was also up there was drunk and making a disturbance, so we did not sleep very good, but it was better than sleeping out in the wagon as we had been doing.
The next day we started and made Idaho Falls. We did the same thing there by sleeping in the hayloft, but no one disturbed us that night. The next day we started and the roads were getting worse and it was quite late when we arrived here with the wind blowing quite strong. When I pulled off the road into the sagebrush my wife wanted to know why I was stopping and I told her this was the place. She could not believe me and others began to complain but all we could do was to make a fire and tend the horses, have something to eat and go to bed on the ground. When they looked around next morning there were several houses to be seen at a distance. We had been on the road twelve days which made it the 12th day of April 1903 when we arrived here.
The next morning we left the women and children to do as they could and we went to Rigby to hunt Will Nebecker up and his wife and children. They had unpacked all the furniture and left a little place to crawl into at night as it had been storming all the time they had been up here. She was glad for Will to take her out where the folks were camped and Alfred had gone to work for D. Sessions, helping to clear his farm. Grandpa [Barnard] and me went to hunt up Joseph Bonham, found him at his home, and he told me he had got a farm with two houses on and also a good log grainary which had been used as a house, so we went and looked it over and made agreement to rent the place for one year. We chose each a house and Will took the grainary which was a good large room. By the time we made camp again it was dark, but they were glad to hear what we had to say. When we got through, if it had not been dark, they would have wanted to move that night, but as it was we slept there that night, but the next morning it was moving day for all of us.
During the summer of 1903 we had several very bad storms, but this one in particular I want to mention. Emmerett Nebecker was rolling an empty barrel towards the ditch to soak it up when a flash stuck near the house. It knocked Emmerett over and burned her some so that she was helpless. My wife was standing in the doorway looking at her rolling the barrel and it also stunned her. There were four of us between my wife and an open window and we all felt the effects of it, but not so much as the other two mentioned above. Some of the neighbors knew it must have struck near the house. They came over and saw the condition Emmerett was in and some of the men picked her up and carried her to the nearest house and took care of her. At that time she looked as if she would die, but she rallied from it to the extent that she was able to get around, though her right side was affected and she was lame.
My wife, after that could tell when there was a storm coming for she would be so deathly sick until it passed over two or three hours.
Hyrum was working up at Shelton that summer and part of the winter and while there he made arrangements for a log house of one room and a lean-to, so long about the first of February we began to pull it down and hauled it down to the ground that I got from Mr. Bonham. There were several visited us while we were putting it together. They all thought we would not be able to make it. Charley Harmon who lived at Ucon, owned a piece of ground East of us and he was a frequent visitor, passing too and fro, sometimes stopping and having a quiet talk about different people who lived around the neighborhood.
N. Freeman, D. Sessions, Richard Bates, Joseph C. Jordan, all seemed glad that the ground was being taken up because it helped to keep the jack-rabbits from their crops. Mr. Bates was willing that we should use his sage puller, with which one could clear lots of brush during a day. After it was pulled loose from the ground, then they gathered it up and at night you could see the sage being burned.
About the first thing after the house was made so we could live in it, we moved from the Rudy Ward to the Milo Ward. Then to rail the brush to the corner of the bugalow grounds, for it was better for us as well as the neighbors on the South. It was hard work for the horses climbing over the brush and hard for us to drive and ride the rail as the brush was quite tall for sage brush.
The boys would sit in the shanty and shoot rabbits as they ran across the ground and about every two weeks there would be a rabbit drive. It was done by making a corral out of the brush and then people at different settlements would go to the outskirts of the sage brush and would string themselves out to meet the people from other settlements, until the brush was surrounded with their clubs beating brush. All would work towards the corral. There would be men, women, and children making a real rabbit drive and if a rabbit tried to run past someone would fire at it and when they got them in the corral some men would get in there and club them. Then those that wanted any rabbits to take home would take what they wanted until they would be cleaned up.
The people had to do something with them or the people on the outside would not have any crops. At that time we were about on the level. A rich person would not live as we were doing then, but we were waiting the time when these pests would be done away with and the canals and ditches and ground broken up and leveled. Then it was our day to reap the harvest from the people who were trying to make homes for themselves.
The ground would produce good, but there was no market when the crop was grown. They thought things would be better some day, if not for them, it might for their children, but as years passed by what with their children and others who came in from other states, the people would clear away the brush and break up the ground and that drove the rabbits father away.
There were other things that came which we had to contend with and they are here to stay, so it seems to me as they are increasing quite fast. Those things are the real estate people who could see the condition of things. They came in and told the people they could mortgage their property for so much an acre and show their title to the ground and if it was a clear title, the money was paid over to them. The people did not look about the payday and interest that was to be met at a certain time and many of them lost their homes, and were forced to move elsewhere. Those that were able to hold out worked together to help build up the country by building school houses and meeting houses and improving their own places, so they can live a little more comfortably. Now comes the automobile which gave the people the fever or craze and now we have this to contend with. Those who indulge in such things are up against more trouble as it goes all the time.
I suppose they are a benefit to those who can afford them, but I find it keeps me watching every turn I make and I cannot always meet payments when they come due. I think it is the same with everyone else too.
There were six years the wife and I had the place paid for and the old house leaked so when it rained that it was misery to live in it any longer, so in the year 1918 we borrowed money to build us a new home and we signed notes thinking we could meet the payments in a few years.
However, in November 1918 the war with Germany quit and everything went flat. Working the farm, tending the water day and night, and building the house was too much for me to stand, so when we moved in, it was Thanksgiving Day. Soon after that I had to give up as I could not do anymore.
Since that time I have not been able to do much at any time for I have been sick so much and having quite a family as we have had, three more girls added to our home, making thirteen all told which most people who are raising a family knows keeps one russeling to try and supply them. [Editors Note: The three girls added to the family were Zina born 20 July 1904,k Tilley Hobbs born 22 Nov 1906 and Inez Nicholls born 4 Jan 1911].
I have tried to attend my Church duties besides other things. I have held the office of Seventy. My ordination certificate states: This certifies that Robert Lemuel Campbell was ordained a Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by B.H. Roberts on the 14th day of Nov 1909 and is therefore authorized to officiate in all the duties pertaining to said office and calling. By order of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventies, this 16th day of Feb 1914. Attest J.G. Kimball, Secretary Seymore B. Young, President. This Ordination was done at Iona, Bonneville County, Idaho.
At this time it was Bingham County and for four years I labored as a Seventy in the 155th Quorum and as I wrote about my health failing I was recommended to be ordained to the office of High Priest. There were younger men, also who could be advanced from the Elder's Quorum due to experience in missions to the Seventies Quorum. That was another reason there were some changes made.
High Priest's Certificate: "To Whom It May Concern: This certifies that Robert L. Campbell was ordained a High Priest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the 8th day of Sept 1918 at Idaho Falls, Idaho by T.W. Lee and was duly received as a member of the High Priest's Quorum of the Bingham Stake, now Idaho Falls Stake of Zion on the 11th day of May 1919, R.H. Fife, Secretary - James E. Steele, President."
I have also been chairman of the Genealogical Committee of the Milo Ward of the Idaho Falls Stake. At this writing I have been twelve years as Chairman; twenty seven years besides my own work on the farm as a Ward Teacher. Lately I have rented the place to my children.
On the tenth of December 1929, I lay my wife away in the cemetery at Milo, Bonneville County, Idaho.
Since that time I have lived alone most of the time. I have written this as near as I could think, at this writing the date of closing is April 14, 1932.
Myself, my Sister who lives at Salt Lake City, and my Brother J.H. Campbell of Ogden, Utah are all that is left of my people. I have twelve living children, fifty-eight grandchildren, and six great grandchildren.
Signed Robert Lemuel Campbell
Robert Lemuel Campbell died November 21, 1936 at 4 a.m. at the home of his daughter Henrietta Pickens. Funeral Services were held at the Milo Ward under the direction of Bishop Stanley Lee, November 24, 1936, North Idaho Falls Stake.
Pallbearers were: High Priests - Alvin Coles, Orin Lee, William Bowles, Joseph Wilding, Fred Storer, John O. Newman.
Flowers were carried by: Granddaughters, Alice Bowles, Lois Bowles, Arzella Bowles, Cleo Coles, Ruth Campbell, Chole Campbell, Rose Campbell, under the direction of supervisors Mable Chapple, Mrs. Lee and Mary Newman Relief Society Presidency.
Funeral Services were as follows: Conducting: Bishop Stanley Lee; Song: Choir - That Far Away Land; Prayer: Thomas Cook; Song: Choir - Beautiful Home; Life History: Given by William Bowles; Song: Song of Hope by Jim Brown Yourgeson; Speaker: M. E. Brown; Song: Silver Haired Daddy by Claude Burtenshaw & George H. Cook; Song: When We Come To The End Of a Perfect Day by Andrus Sisters; Speaker: Horace Baird; Remarks by: Bishop Lee; Song: Choir - Beautiful Isle of Somewhere; Closing Prayer: Tom C. Wilson; Interment was in the Milo Cemetery, Bonneville County, Idaho. Samuel Clifford Bowles dedicated the grave.
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