History compiled by Rex Leroy Al

Allred Family Organization
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History compiled by Rex Leroy Allred, son of Calvert Alonzo Allred

Submitted to AFO by Misti Allred Rossell, great grand-daughter of Calvert Alonzo Allred and grand niece of Rex Allred.

Life history of Calvert Alonzo Allred

I was born in Colonial Dublan in the state of Chihuahua in old Mexico on July 11, 1891. I was the second child, first son, of Calvert Lorenzo Allred and Gertrude Maria Jensen. My father was born in Spring City (Allred’s Settlement), Utah on May 12, 1864. My mother was born in Mosbjerg, Denmark on October 16, 1870. They were married May 31, 1888 in the Manti Temple. As this was during the time of polygamy, my father was able to marry my mother’s sister, Andrea Jensen two years later. My folks had 10 children, and I had 7 half brothers and sisters.

Mother’s family came to America when she was eight and Aunt Drear (Andrea) was six. After arriving in Utah they were directed to Spring City with a large group of Saints from Denmark. There were eight children in mother’s family, sixteen in dad’s. My oldest sister was born in Spring City March 23, 1889. Shortly thereafter when polygamy was banned in the United States, Dad moved his family to Mexico where I was born in Dublan. My brother Joe was born in Spring City, as was the youngest, Mabel. All the others were born in Colonial Juarez, Mexico.

Before I was a year old our family moved to Juarez where my father freighted and ran a few head of cattle. By the time I was six years old I was milking cows, six each morning and evening and going to school. This was to be my only full year of schooling. After that my schooling was a hit and miss affair. (Father did not approve of schooling, nor insurance, believing only in very hard work. Still he was a very good man.

At eight years of age I was driving freight and at 12 I was driving 3 span and two wagons in Tandem. I continued freighting until we were driven out of old Mexico by Pancho Villa just shortly after my marriage.

At quite a young age I did some threshing by horse power and remember having to whip them often to maintain the speed needed for proper threshing. About 1905 the Allred Stage Line hauled mail (and supplies) once a week from Juarez up into the mountains to Pacheco, Garcia, Hop Valley and Soldier Canyon, a trip of about 35 miles. Often we had to stay over night and start back the next day. We had to sleep on the floor of where ever we stayed. This was ok during the summer, but come winter time it got cold.

The first year I traveled by horseback mostly, then we got a buckboard and started to haul passengers as well. The buckboard was pulled by two mules, one a sorrel the other a black. The sorrel once kicked both my spurs off at once and me along with them. I still don’t know how it happened. Damn, but they were mean. About this time I left the freighting line for a year. I went to punching cattle. One day while punching cattle, I and Earl Stowell stopped to eat lunch. Throwing one leg over the saddle horn, I started to unwrap my lunch. The horse must have thought the rattling of the paper was the rattle of a snake for he spooked and threw me and the lunch all over. Earl said, “even if it had killed you I would have rolled all over the ground laughing. You looked so funny.” Which he did anyway.

Dad’s freighting line was hired by the Corletis Cattle Company to haul windmills. I was back with the freight line by this time. The windmills proved to be too heavy, and we could only make ten miles a day. Water was too far between and our teams flunked out. There was good pay in it however. We also used to haul lumber from the mountains. The Allred Stage would pull into the Sawmill, load the wagons, care for the horses, and do all the other chores before going to bed; which quite often was after twelve o’clock at night. Other freighters would then get up saying, “May as well get up and go to work. You Allred boys make so much racket we can’t sleep anyway.”

During this time we would often work all day, then hitch-up the buggy or go by horseback to a dance and be gone all night, then back home just in time to go to work again.

When I was nineteen years old about thirty of us boys with not much education behind us entered the academy at Juarez for a preparatory class which included reading, spelling, arithmetic, and carpentry. The carpentry class was taught by Ed McClellen.

It was at an academy dance that I met Cornelia Cardon. The girls were supposed to pin a ribbon on the fellow they wanted to dance with. Nelia pinned hers on me. We courted for a year and a little more. We were married on May 20, 1912, in Colonial Juarez. I had threshed all day, then went home and cleaned up. Then I went to get Nelia who was staying with her sister, Minnie Taylor. We were married in the bishop’s office by Bishop Joseph C. Bentley. I had fifty cents in my pocket at the time.

After our marriage I took Nelia to Dublan with me to stay with her sister Edith. I went on to Nueva Casa Grande, Mexico to thresh wheat. After a weeks work, on a Saturday night, I picked up Nelia to return to Juarez. On the way the team took the wrong way, being so dark we couldn’t see a thing. We came out on an old road and followed it home. Later we found out a troop of rebels had passed by on the road we should have been on. Who knows what would have happened if we had been on that road at the time.

It’s a wonder at that time that several of the fellows who were freighting weren’t killed by outlaws and rebels. After hauling freight they’d start home and often camp out over night with 12-1500 dollars which had been paid for freight.

We lived in my father’s home for one and a half months until we were driven out of old Mexico by Pancho Villa and his rebels. The women were put on a train to El Paso after having buried all their silverware etc. to keep it from the rebels. Being just married I was elected to be a guard on the train trip to El Paso. We arrived there on July 12, 1912. There was a car load of bedding that I was put in charge of to get through the inspection station.

We at first lived in an old sawmill. My first job in El Paso came when I was asked if I wanted to work. I said sure. There were ten men wanted to pick cantaloupes. While the others picked I was given the job of nailing the crates, so I didn’t have the back aches all the others had. We were paid $1.50 a day and our dinner. It was during dinner one day that I had my first taste of tea. Not knowing what it was I drank it.

A day or so later I rented a big house for us. Nelia and I and my cousin Byron and his two wives, Dad, Mother and Aunt drear.

I worked in Bisbee for a time with the city. Lowell Wright was then City Marshall.

On the first of October we left El Paso with a recommend, and via California we rode the train to Salt Lake City, reaching there on the eighth. We were married in the Salt Lake Temple on the ninth.

We went then to Spring City and through the Manti Temple that the Allred’s had helped build, along with the Salt Lake Temple.

After obtaining a job with a sheep man, I went over to Wasatch

County where I was suppose to do some plowing. But the snow was ten feet deep and way too cold to work there. On the way back to Spring City I stopped and worked in Bountiful for a week or so doing yard work. Then on to Spring City and Manti where I shoveled snow off the thrasher and thrashed all day. At night it would snow and the day would begin again by shoveling snow off the thrasher before starting work.

We soon went back to Salt Lake, for at that time the Church said they would pay one-half fare to those who would come to the Temple to be married. We wanted our fare back to El Paso. At the Presiding Bishop’s office Charles Nibley asked me for recommendations. Our old State President from Mexico, Junius Romney was standing near by and said, ‘I am his recommend’.

It was on New Year’s Eve when we got on the train, and the train wouldn’t leave the station until 12:30 am. Due to the New Year’s celebration.

We got back to El Paso after several days and I started work in a box factory making boxes and, of all things, coffins. I made $2.00 a day. There were 1,000 men and women employed there. The Foreman told me if I could buy my own tools, a square, a hammer and hatchet, so I could patch and repair, he’d raise my wages to $3.50 a day. I did this work, for three months until we received word my Mother had died in Thatcher, Arizona. We came to the Gila Valley at that time, and never went back.

I worked throughout the Gila Valley doing farm work. At Fort Thomas I pitched hay for Charlie Layton. Worked the thrasher, and did the plowing. Layton had 640 acres, and I plowed 200 of them behind a walking plow with a team. We planted 100 of them to wheat and 100 to barley. Twenty-four days each month we would have the water for irrigation. The sunflowers and cockle-burrs would start growing faster than the grain, at least four inches a day, and all we could do was move off and leave it, hoping the grain would produce also.

At Cork for ole man Pitt we planted a crop and the Gila River flooded and wiped the crop out. It was while we were at Cork that a contractor for Morenci Mines offered Nelia and me $1,000 for Calvert (who was born while we were yet in El Paso). The man wanted a boy he said. Nelia was afraid he might come back and take Calvert without our knowing it, so we moved off that place.

In Pima I worked for J.R. Layton, who was Bishop of the Layton Ward for over 18 years. We lived in Pima for two years, regular farming, haying, grain, corn, hogs, cattle etc. The reservoir and flume from the sawmill up on Graham Mountains kept us in all the water we needed. They would cut the timber then send it down the flume in which water flowed all the time. The lumber would come down at tremendous speeds. A boy fell into the flume one day at the sawmill. Someone phoned down here to Pima and they were able to get him out when he reached the bottom after a 4 mile run.

We then lived in Thatcher for ten months. Then to Safford where we worked for Will Eldreths for four years, then for Seth Prina one year, then for Eldreths for two more years. Then I helped build two cotton gins. J.R. Welker ran the press for bailing the cotton. One day J.R. told the engineers to toot their whistle before they started because he was going to clean the saw. The engineer forgot and started the gin and cut Johns hand off and that’s when I started working at the gin.

We lived then in Layton and while there I put in my application for the position of janitor for the public schools. George Hansen was the superintendent. I started the first of May 1929 at the North Ward School, which later became the City Offices. I made $100 a month. I also drove a school bus and drove for 27 years, until I quit driving in 1956.

I drove the teams to all their games and most of the other school activities as well as making the morning and afternoon runs for the students.

During the early years in Layton I was in the Sunday school

Superintendency for seven and one half years.

During the height of the depression we moved out to Cactus Flats where I worked the dairy for three years and driving the school bus. I would bring the bus home every night after delivering the children and then pick them up the next morning and take them to school.

We moved back into town in 1935 and I took on a full time job with the Safford schools as janitor and bus driver. I not only drove the teams to their games but also drove students on many a school picnic.

At this time, July 1, 1960, I am still working for the Safford Schools as Head Custodian. (Dad worked at the schools until 1963 when a heart attack caused him to retire at the age 72, having worked for the schools for 34 years).

Nelia and I are the parents of nine children, six boys and three girls. Calvert Alonzo Jr., Grant Joseph, Golden Manscill, Tharrell (who died at the age of two from the flu), Lorrine, Max Junius, Rex Leroy, Marie and Geraldine.

Nelia left my side on April 9, 1958 at the age of 65. She is waiting for me on the other side where we again will take up our life together, when I go to meet her again. (Dad died March 11, 1972. His last words were, “Mother wait for me”).

History compiled by Rex Leroy Allred, son of Calvert Alonzo Allred

Submitted to AFO by Misti Allred Rossell, great grand-daughter of Calvert Alonzo Allred and grand niece of Rex Allred.

Life history of Calvert Alonzo Allred