32 Sinking Roots in Arizona

While several major projects—reorganizing the stake, restarting and enlarging the academy, digging the Enterprise Canal, undertaking railroad construction, and negotiating about mine tailings in the river—went on, Andrew, Ollie, and their children also found their place in this new community.

The Kimballs lived for nearly a year crowded into the two back rooms of Hyrum Claridge’s home. In March 1899, with baby Fannie’s delivery imminent, the Kimballs moved to the Porter place, an adobe house with three small rooms and a kind of screened porch.⁴²⁴ Andrew erected an attached tent to give them more room. He put a board floor in the canvas tent, which had four tiny rooms, each big enough for a bed, a chair, and a little stand. They called the tent the “White House.” Because it had no heat, in cold weather they crowded the family of eight (and then nine) into the house’s three rooms. Ollie (and often friends) sewed rags together to be woven into carpets.⁴²⁵ Straw served as pad under the rag carpets. The roof of the Porter house and the White House tent both leaked when it rained.⁴²⁶ Ollie complained that the bedding got wet and made things miserable.

Until they finished digging a new well they had to carry water for washing from the irrigation ditch to the White House. They let the water stand until the silt settled out, then they dipped off the clear water for use in the washtub. On their quarter block there was room for animals and a garden.

The Porter house had three adobe rooms, a screened porch, and a tent to the left called “the White House.”

In October 1901 Ollie received $2,800 from final settlement of her father’s estate, twenty years after his death. She and Andrew immediately planned to use the money to build a new house. On November 5, Andrew staked out the location for the house at Church Street and First East, on the northwest corner of the ten acres given the Kimballs by members of the stake. On November 13, Ollie reported that twelve thousand adobe bricks had been made for the construction. They faced the adobe walls with brick. Andrew did some of the construction work himself, but not the masonry. In January 1902 Ollie cleaned the nearly finished house and installed rag carpet in the front room. In February she planted shrubs around the new house. In April she got more carpet and bought a used stove and some chairs. On May 3, they moved three loads of household effects from the Porter house. On May 7, while Andrew was away on Church business, Ollie moved her family into the house. When he returned he found his family in a real home after four years, and it was one of the nicest homes in the whole Gila Valley. Some tasks still remained,⁴²⁷ so Andrew worked on finishing the house. Sometimes for weeks he stained and painted.⁴²⁸ The family occupied the home until Andrew’s death in 1924.⁴²⁹

Olive built a new house with her share of her father’s estate. Andrew and Josie are seated, center. Spencer is standing on the far right.

The house as it looks in the early twenty-first century.

The house had three connecting rooms with large folding doors between them, opening up a large area for entertaining. One room was the parents’ bedroom, but the furniture could be removed when a social occasion required. Stained glass windows in the parlor and the entrance hall gave life and color. Furnishings included a wood stove for heat, a clock received when they married in 1882, sofas and chairs, an organ, a room-size rag carpet, and a big rolltop desk that served as Andrew’s “office.” The house was large enough to be divided into three living areas, one for the Kimball family and two rented to unmarried faculty members of the academy. The kitchen included a table long enough to seat the large family and guests.

The nice outhouse had a lattice with vines to screen it from view.⁴³⁰ The Kimballs planted hundreds of fruit trees, especially apple trees, but also peach, quince, pear, plum, and cherry trees. They planted grapes, blackberries, and currants, as well.⁴³¹ Every year Ollie preserved hundreds of jars of fruit. Along the property’s boundary Andrew planted pecan and eucalyptus trees, as well as cottonwoods. Water for the new house came from a covered well fifty feet behind the house, the well perhaps six feet across and cased with redwood. A ladder allowed a boy to climb down inside to clean the well or retrieve the bucket. The livestock were watered first by bucket, then by hand pump; later a windmill pumped the water up into an elevated holding tank built of planks.⁴³² Water from the tank was piped into the house for kitchen use and bathing.⁴³³ The home place had as outbuildings a granary, tool house, and sheds for buggy, wagon, and machinery. Pens and corrals kept the animals.

As wife of the stake president, Ollie often traveled with Andrew when he visited wards in the valley, and she entertained a stream of visitors to Thatcher. Few hostesses were warmer and more hospitable than Ollie. At Andrew’s request she often sang and played for company.

Ollie considered the children her first responsibility. She arrived in Arizona with six children, Maude having been buried in Utah. In 1899, a year after they arrived, Ollie bore Fannie. When just eighteen months old, baby Fannie wandered off while the other children worked in the yard. Ollie recorded:

I was getting very anxious as it was nearly dark. After looking everywhere Clare, my daughter, said, ‘Ma, if we will go in and have prayers the Lord will direct us to where baby is,’ so we did so and Gordon was led to the very spot right away. She was in a large box behind the chicken coop fast asleep. That was a great testimony to us all, and we thanked our Heavenly Father over and over again. We could think of nothing else all evening.⁴³⁴

After Fannie, the next child was Helen Mar. In 1901, Ollie managed to deliver ten-pound-baby Helen without either midwife or doctor.⁴³⁵ Helen was the last child who grew to adulthood, but Ollie also bore two other little girls (Mary Woolley, 1903, and Rachel Woolley, 1905), who died young.