On Christmas Eve 1913, Arbon families gathered at the Central school house for a Christmas tree and program, and Santa Claus brought presents, candy, nuts and oranges for 125 children. The valley's correspondent told the rest of the holiday week in a letter printed in the American Falls Press on January 8, 1914.
The letter does not name its writer. Its subheading promised "Holiday Doings and Other Things," and it began by saying that the people of the valley had enjoyed the festivities "to the utmost, if we are to judge from outward appearances."
Arbon had been in Oneida County until January 1913, when the Arbon floor, with Pauline, West Fork and Crystal, became part of the new Power County; Summit and Buist stayed in Oneida. The Central school stood on the north Arbon floor, on land given by T. B. Evans, and was later known as Green Top for its green roof (see the Evans family). It was already the neighborhood's meeting hall: a Congregational church had been organized there that July, and the farmers' telephone company that September.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
The correspondent wrote:
The beginning was a Christmas tree and entertainment at the Central school house the evening of Dec. 24 at which a most interesting program was rendered.
After the program Santa Claus came with Christmas presents, candy, nuts and oranges for "the 125 children assembled." A few words of this passage are lost in the digitized page. When the entertainment was over, everyone joined in dancing until a late hour.
The next afternoon the children had a party of their own. "At three o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas day a dancing party was given for the children," the letter says, and the writer added that to say they enjoyed themselves would be "putting it very mildly." The grown-ups came next:
A dance Christmas night for the older folks marked the close of the real Christmas doings, but all the week there have been many parties and home gatherings, and a great many people have taken advantage of the fine roads to enjoy sleighing parties.
The same letter reported "a very pretty wedding" at the home of the bride's parents, in which Mr. John Price and Miss Stella Bowen were the principals. The site's family records identify them as John D. "Jack" Price and Stella Bowen, daughter of D. J. Bowen. The digitized text of these lines is jumbled, and in it only the last word of the officiant's name, "Arbon," can be read. He was probably Bishop Joseph N. Arbon, who led the Arbon Ward from 1908 to 1914. Family records date the wedding to December 17, a week before Christmas Eve. It is the earliest wedding yet found that took place in the valley itself, and the Stories entry on the first wedding tells more.
Grain on the snow road
The snow that made the sleighing good also made a road for hauling grain. "We have lots of snow and many of our people are taking advantage of the good snow road to haul their grain to Michaud," the correspondent wrote. Michaud was a railroad switch between American Falls and Pocatello, where, the Press had reported in 1908, a waiting car was loaded with sixteen wagonloads of Arbon wheat for Ogden. The valley itself had no railroad.
Reports of the 1913 crop do not agree. A week after the Arbon letter, the Press said that a single township in Arbon valley had produced 400,000 bushels of wheat that year, where six years earlier there had been no more than ten settlers. On the same date the Logan Republican reported a visit to Logan by Bishop W. F. Kowallis of the Meadow Ward, at the north end of the valley. He put the whole valley's crop at 300,000 bushels and said that for want of a railroad "some of the farmers are compelled to haul their grain twenty-two miles to market."
What such a trip meant is told in George Andersen's own account, written in 1967. Remembering his first harvests, he wrote that hauling to Michaud or to Malad took three days a trip. With no houses or meals to be had at Michaud, the men packed horse feed, bedding and their own food, and some of the trips were made in below-zero cold.
The Arbon letter also reported that Julius Abter (the digitized text reads "Aibter"), probably the homesteader of 1901 who had run the Arbon threshing machine, had been left lame by a recent accident: "A wagon loaded with grain ran over his foot." The letter does not say exactly when or where it happened.
News of the neighbors
The letter closed with family news. Two men whose names are garbled in the digitized text, probably Melvin Bailey and Newell Leishman of Arbon, were visiting relatives in Wellsville, Utah, the Cache Valley town the Bailey family had come from.
Earl, the infant son of the postmaster, James R. Bailey, and his wife Annie, "has been ill with pneumonia, but is said to be recovering at this time." He had been born at Arbon that year, the Baileys' youngest son, and the Arbon post office was then kept in the Bailey home.
On this site: James R. Bailey, Joseph N. Arbon, the valley's schools, and another valley Christmas Eve, Santa in a blizzard.