OLIVE JEWELL

Recorded by Helen M. Smith, Field Report

I was born in Mississippi , in 1865, and came to Arizona with my mother and a sister in 1884. My mother was a widow, and except for a married brother in Mississippi, we were all the family. We went to Snowflake, a small Mormon settlement. My sister and I worked out as hired girls, farm hands, and any other work we could get. We were allowed all the wheat we could glean for our own use; altogether we managed to make a good living. The Apache Indians were thick around Snowflake. I saw some of Geronimo’s band, but not that famous Indian himself, when they were being shipped to Florida. They were taken through where we lived on their way to Holbrook from where they were to be shipped.

Typhoid broke out in the camp, of a virulent type, and almost all in camp took it. My sister died, and for a while my mother’s life was despaired of, but I was not even sick. I was quite worn out, though, from nursing so many sick. There were a great many deaths, sometimes three or four from one family. It was a terrible experience.

Soon after that we went to Utah, where I was married in the Temple to Leonard Jewell. Returning to Arizona, we went to Safford, where my husband farmed and raised cattle. While living there three children were born to me, and one died of measles.

We were not molested by Indians ourselves, but murder by them was of frequent occurrence all around us. They did not attack settlements, but killed and robbed when one or two persons could be caught alone. There was the murder of the two Wright brothers by Indians, while the brothers were trying to recover stolen horses. Once two freighters were killed and their wagon burned very close to us.

There was a Mr. Merrills and his daughter killed a short distance from Solomonville by Indians. Two years later during a 24th of July celebration by the Mormons of the community, the whites and the Indians were having a tug of war. Mrs. Merrills was present, and she saw her daughter’s dress on an Indian girl. There were a great many questions asked but no one could find out who had killed Mr. Merrills and the daughter.

At Safford for two or three years we had no flour except what we produced ourselves. Sometimes there was no way to grind our wheat, since the mill didn’t work without plenty of water. Later, flour began to be freighted in from Wilcox, probably from the Eagle Flour Mills at Tucson. I cooked on a fireplace for three years, having no stove. We built our house ourselves—one room with four posts for the four corners, walls made of two thicknesses of sheeting sewed together. We put small logs across the posts for a rook, brush on the logs, and a cattail leaf which shed water like shingles, over that. We did have a good floor, but that was all.

We raised hay and grain and sold it at Fort Thomas and San Carlos and also kept bees and raised an orchard. As soon as we could afford it we built a house of cottonwood logs. We had just begun to get a good start, when malaria got my husband so badly that we had to leave. We went back to Snowflake where Mr. Jewell freighted for a while, but the location did not seem favorable for his health, so we went to Woodruff. At Woodruff we bought a home, and another baby came to us there, while we also lost a child. It was the same old story—Mr. Jewell was not well. All the rest of our lives we moved from place to place trying to find a favorable climate for him.

From Woodruff we went to Pinetop on the line of the Indian reservation. There was no water there, so we stayed only a short time, and drifted onto the Blue River toward Clifton from Luna Valley, New Mexico. We were in Arizona, of course. My husband got work at a sawmill there. While we were there his brother, Herschell Jewell, was severely frozen at Springerville. He was brought to us, and I cared for him for nine months during which he could not walk and could not even feed himself. The balls of his feet and some of his toes had to be removed. He was always afterward crippled, and was never able to work after.

We had to move after that in order to get somewhere where the older children could go to school, as their education had been neglected long enough. We chose Duncan because we thought the climate might be beneficial to Mr. Jewell, and there was a school there. He worked for a dollar a day and board, but on that we lived nicely. Soon we were able to buy a little slice of land. We cut cottonwood poles and put up for the sides of the house, these covered with willows woven around and across the poles. The roof was of dirt. There the children got a start in school.

From there our wanderings took us to Huachuca Flats, between Naco and the Huachucas. We lived in a tent while there—not long because of the grasshoppers, which were more numerous and more ferocious than any others I have ever seen. Our next stop was St. David, where Mr. Jewell freighted, farmed, and did anything else he could, his health rapidly growing worse. We drifted to Tombstone, and from Tombstone shortly to the Sulphur Spring Valley, where we homesteaded.

At first we lived in tents, but afterward built a mud house which was more comfortable. Soon after it was built, the Arizona Eastern started to build a railroad to Naco, and in the survey our house was on the right of way. They paid us for the house, and we bought lumber and built another house from the proceeds.

We sold the homestead to buy medicine for my husband, but nothing we did was of any avail. Most of our married life was spent under the shadow of sickness. When he was unable to work, I picked cotton, worked in private homes, in the fields, at anything I could, to earn enough for the family to live.

I am just an ordinary woman who has always lived a pioneer life, to whom nothing but drabness and hard work has ever come. I used to be so tired from trying to keep up the family work and at the same time earn a little money and care for one or two sick men, that it seemed that even death would be a welcome rest. It seemed to me for some years that there was not enough sleep in the world, enough food or medicine or clothing.

In 1925 my husband died. My children are grown and married. Now I am alone, still active, but unable to read or sew much by reason of failing eyes. Time hangs heavily on my hands, the hours pass so slowly, that I often long for some of the old responsibility again. I would like to be dead tired from working for my family once again, so that I could sleep at night.

But none of the old times can be brought back by wishing. One of my sons has offered to buy me a car. I am not eighty years old yet—still young enough to learn something new, so I think I’ll accept his offer. Perhaps then the hours won’t drag so endlessly.

[2011 Transcriptionist note: According to her family, Olive Jewell was born Olive Electra Youngblood, April 10, 1870 (or 1871) in Randolph Mississippi. She is listed on the LaFayette County, Mississippi census on June 1880 as being 10 years old. She is listed on the 1900 census for Luna, New Mexico as being 29 years, being born in April 1871; and on the 1930 census for Safford, Arizona as being 60 years old. She died March 8, 1957 in Douglas, Cochise, Arizona. On the 1930 census, Leonard and Olive Jewell were recorded living in Safford, Arizona. The family lists the death date of Leonard Jewell as April 9, 1932 at the age of 73.]

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