Adelila Hogensen Bagley

Adelila Hogensen Bagley about 1973

I looked in the mirror and wondered what my grandmother was doing in my bathroom! I inherited her features, but I missed out on her green thumb.

Her name was Adelila and she loved flowers. When we visited she always took us on a tour of her yard to show off whatever was blossoming. In her living room she had a special stand that held small pots of African Violets. They were cultivated until they bloomed, and then she gave them away to her friends.

I once took a trip with Grama and Grampa to see my cousins in Las Vegas. As we drove through the Utah desert she admired the cactus flowers, and we stopped several times so that she could dig a cactus up by the roots and load it in the trunk to replant in her yard.

But she wasn't always a grandmother. She was once a little girl in Montpelier, Idaho.

Adelila and her little brothers, 1910. (Yes, the little person in the white dress is a boy.)

Her mother was Emily and her father was Charles. This picture was taken when she was thirteen, the year after her father died.

"I remember the 4th of July, 1909. I was 12 years old. My dad set off his usual firecrackers--big ones-- and laughed when we all jumped. It was such a happy holiday. He took sick that very night with pneumonia. He was ill for two week and passed away on July 19th.

"My memories of him are so vivid. He took us to the canyons and the lake in the summer. He was a good swimmer and loved to take us out on his back. When the skiing was good, he took us with him and we'd ride behind him down the long, gradual slopes a block from home. He took us to school in the winter in a horse drawn sleigh over deep, snowy roads with no sidewalks to walk on. I remember riding under fur robes, the horses throwing snow in our faces as they galloped along. How we loved the bells jingling on the harnesses! He taught me to ice skate on Bear Lake. It was all so much fun and it ended so abruptly.

"After my dad died, mother took in boarders and school teachers to help support us four children. I worked at mother's elbow to help get the food ready for meals. We saved rags and tore them in strips, sewed them together, and then we would wind them into a big ball and mother would weave them on a loom. That's the kind of rug we had in our front room for the winter.

"I helped card wool by searching for places where the sheep had rubbed up against the fence. I would pick up all those little bits of wool, and then use a carder to pull it through and brush it, to get all the dirt out and refine the wool. Then mother would spin it and make it into yarn.

"As a little girl, I was taken to church and made to be quiet. I recall how hard it was to sit still for so long. We always went to Sunday School. I remember on one occasion a friend invited me to go riding with her. Her family had a Shetland pony and a cart. It was a very special invitation, but mom would not allow me to go because it was Sunday. I really cried over that.

"Our house was made of huge sixteen-foot logs. We had no piped in water, but that did not discourage mom from having flowers. We kids carried water from the irrigation ditch across the street, always at sunset. That was our daily chore during the summer. Mother had lovely sweet peas and morning glories. How I loved the odor and have always thought of mother when I smell flowers."

I think of Grama when I smell flowers, but she cultivated more than just flowers. Her garden is blooming all over the place!

Adelila Hogensen, 1918

What legacy did your grandmother leave you?