The Life History of Emerson Wilcken Pratt

<html<head<title>Emerson Pratt history</title</head<body>

This history was written in letters to his son, Emerson Wayne Pratt, during the time Wayne was on his mission in Argentina, and later in the army of the United States serving in Germany.

Dear Wayne:

I was born on November 26, 1901, a son of Helaman Pratt and Bertha Wilcken, in Colonia Dublan, Chihuahua, Mexico. At a very early age I showed a pugilistic tendency that seemed to have stayed with me most of my life. I remember my first year in school, I and a little red-headed boy would meet out behind the wood- shed and would fight during recesses and after school. Neither one giving in to the other. I also remember a boy whipping my older brother and when I heard of it, I whipped the boy the next day.

Mine was a happy life, even with all the fights, until my eighth birthday. I remember my mother having all my little friends over to a party and my father sitting at the head of the table with about twenty little eight-year-olds sitting around the table with him. We were celebrating my eighth birthday and I was promised that on the morrow my Father would take me out to the lake and baptize me. I was so happy. The next day I awoke early and rushed into my parents bedroom to wake them up so we could get started early. I found my father sick. The doctor was there and my mother told me that we would have to postpone my baptism. An hour after that my father died. This was a great blow to a young eight-year-old. My father was so understanding and such a wonderful pal that I did not know how I could get along without him. Perhaps the reason that I have failed so many times in being a father is that my father left me while I was so young in life. I can say for my mother that she tried to fill both father and mother's shoes and I appreciated her very much.

In finishing this chapter, I think it well to give you a little of my ancestry. My father is the next youngest son of Parley Parker Pratt and Mary Wood. Parley joined the church in the early days and was a great missionary. My father Helaman was also a great missionary. He was the first president of the Mexican Mission. His sons Rey L. and Harold W. were also presidents of the Mexican Mission. My mother was a daughter of Charles and Carolyn Wilcken. Charles was a member of Johnson's Army who were sent to exterminate the Mormons. Instead of the Mormons being exterminated, my grandfather was converted to the church and brought a much needed talent to the early settlers of Utah.

Son, I will continue this story from time to time, I hope it does not bore you too much. May God bless you in your missionary labors. I am sure that your great-grandfather and your grandfather and your father are proud and happy in the work that you are doing. It is one of the greatest services that man can render to humanity, that of giving to the plan of salvation, whereby they might have an opportunity of life everlasting.

I love you, son. May God bless you is my prayer.

E.W. Pratt

Dear Wayne:

I'll continue with the story of some of the interesting happenings in my life. It seems that from my earliest recollections, I have had horses in my life. My father was a breeder of fine Hamiltonian horses and when I was about six he gave me a mare and all of her offspring were to be mine. I remember that I had a saddle pony, and it was my job to get the milk cows from the prairie every night. This pony was a very independent animal and sometimes quite difficult to handle. One day I went out to the corral to get him and he didn't want to be bridled. After my trying for a long time to bridle him, he became tired of the game so he picked me up by the clothes on my back and tossed me out away from him. I never remember of him hurting me, but he surely could stall the wheels of progress. Another time, I was riding this same horse in the corral and our Jersey bull rushed us and lifted the horse, me and all, right over a five foot board fence. On another occasion, while on this pony, I was driving a bunch of colts to water when one of them kicked me knocking me unconscious. The pony stopped and stayed by my side until I was found by some Mexicans an hour or so later. On another time, I was chasing a calf, which ran under a large cottonwood tree, the pony and me right after it. A large branch caught me under the chin, dragging me off. The last episode with this pony: I was chasing another calf out on the flat east of Dublan and the pony ran into a prairie dog hole, breaking his leg and knocking me out. When I didn't come home after night had fallen, they sent out a searching party and found me and the pony. They had to shoot the pony to get him out of his misery.

I was given another horse. This time it was not just a mexican pony, but a real blooded saddle horse along with a new saddle and bridle with lots of silver on it. Boy, was I proud of it! One night I came home with the cows and when I got there I found a group of bandits there. One grabbed the bridle of my horse and the other reached to pull me off so they could take my horse and saddle. As quick as a wink, I hit one Mexican with my quirt and then hit my horse, running over the other Mexicans and headed for the river where I hid my horse, thus saving him from the Mexican bandits.

As you can tell by my writing, Mexico was in a terrible turmoil about this time in my life. The revolution was starting and there were bandits and revolutionists everywhere. The story of the revolution will come in another chapter, but just one more horse story and then I will stop for this time. We had a Hamiltonian stallion that we had paid twenty-five hundred dollars for. When the bandits started to take our horses, my brother Leon was successful in getting him upstairs in our house and there we carried to him feed and water. All went well until one day when the bandits were in our yard looking for this horse, one of their horses whinnied and the stallion naturally answered. That was the last we ever saw of him. And so it went, we trying to hide our horses and the revolutionist trying to find them.

God bless you, son.

Your father, E. W. Pratt

Dear Wayne:July 25, 1954

I have been so busy taking care of the present and planning for the future that I have had very little time to think of the past.

ABOUT 1911:

This period in my life is one of excitement and change. The Mexican revolution had started. Not only was there fighting between the government and the rebels but there were also a number of bandits roaming the country, taking possession of whatever they could lay their hands on. One of these bandits was a man by the name of Salazar. He was a local man and had mobilized quite an army of followers. When he had what he thought was enough strength in horses and men, he decided to attack the federal garrison that was stationed at Casas Grandes, which is about five miles from Dublan. It was about five in the morning when we were awakened by cannons booming and rifle fire. The attack was on. My brother Leon and some other of his friends went up to an old abandoned church so they could see what was going on. They climbed up in the tower where they could see the fight. They were enjoying it immensely, seeing the rebels charge and take a position, and then seeing the federals countercharge and retake the position. Then the federals discovered that there was someone in the church tower so they turned the cannon on it. The first shot plowed a big hole in the wall and buried itself in the floor. The boys didn't wait for the second shot. They left on high. After the battle, Leon went back and dug up one of the shells which he kept in memory of that event.

The rebels finally won the battle and then our troubles really began. They stole our horses, drove off our cattle, robbed our granaries of wheat, destroyed our crops, and threatened our lives. Finally, they gave us an ultimatum to leave, or they would kill us all. This was hard to do. We were in fair circumstances, a comfortable home, good farms and ranches, and now everything that we owned we must leave. I remember it was in July. The orchards were loaded with ripe fruit, the fields still unharvested with ripe grain, the prairies green with waves of grass. We were to leave all this, perhaps never to see it again, and further more, where would we go? Would we ever see our friends again? How could we live with not much money, no farms, no ranches, no homes? But we must go or die, so we decided to leave. The men of the villages decided to send the women and children to El Paso on the train and they would try to salvage some horses and cattle that had been hidden in the mountains.

JULY, 1912:

I remember the whole town assembled at the railway track, waiting for the train to come. It was due at six p.m., but it didn't come. We waited and waited; it was to come at seven and then at eight and then nine. We got tired of waiting. We were so hungry so some of my boy friends and I went back home and picked a gunny sack full of peaches and then went back to the track and ate peaches and waited some more for the train. There was really a mess at the track. Babies were crying and mothers were trying to find their children. There was bedding, suitcases, and trunks scattered all around. Most youngsters were lost from their parents when along came the train. We were all loaded into box cars with many a worried mother still not having found some of their children. (They finally got together in El Paso). So with troubled hearts, crying and bawling and yelling, we started for a new country and a new experience. When everyone was loaded in the box cars they closed the doors and then started the train. Then I got sick. It must have been too many peaches, the odor of too many people closed up in a box car with no fresh air, and the motion of the train in travel. There was no window to hang my head out of, no corner that was not taken up, and there I was. I couldn't hold it down and so up it came; the devil pity the one that caught it. We finally arrived in El Paso dirty, smelly, tired and hungry. But that will come in another chapter, son.

May the Lord bless you in your missionary labors, I pray.

E. W. Pratt

October 31, 1954

Dear Wayne:

We received your wonderful letter and were surely glad to get it. We look forward to getting your letters each week. I can see that you are very busy and that is the way it should be, always more work to do than one can accomplish. May God bless you in your labors.

You asked for another chapter of my life, so here it is:

Upon arriving in El Paso we got a small apartment and stayed there for a few days. We were more fortunate than most of the exiles. Many of them were taken out to an old lumber yard where they camped with no privacy and where thousands of curious came to look at the Mormons each day. Your mother was one of these that was in the camp.

El Paso was the first city I had ever been in; therefore there was much to interest me. So many people, street cars, large buildings, and windows to look at with all the sights and smells that go along with a big city. After staying in El Paso for a few days we boarded the train for Salt Lake City. Upon getting settled in Salt Lake City, my mother secured a position teaching school in a town north of Salt Lake. I stayed in Salt Lake with my Aunt Dora where I went to the Webster school during my fourth and fifth grades. Being quite athletic, I was chosen to be on the school soccer team. We played a number of the other schools in Salt Lake.

The first summer in Salt Lake I picked berries all summer, making about a dollar a day. Boy was I in the money! After buying my winter clothes I had enough money to buy me a bike. I was surely proud of that bike. The following summer I worked on a dairy, up by Park City. Working on the dairy was very enjoyable to me. I was the cow wrangler, so I got up at five in the morning, got my horse, and went out to bring the cows to the barn. The country is very beautiful up there; it is among the pines and the grass reaches up to a horse's belly. There are all kinds of wild flowers and an abundance of wild life. While rounding up the cows, I could see deer, bear, pine hens, and turkeys. That summer, Mr. Dahl trapped four bears that were killing his calves. After finishing the milking, we would put up hay. I would drive the team while a man loaded the wagon. This was done by hooking the wagon onto a loader that would bring the hay up to the wagon bed, and then the man would spread the hay over the wagon bed. After working all day in the hay, I would again go after the cows and then we would milk them and go to bed by nine o'clock. On Sundays there was no church because we were too far away from town to get to church. It was still the horse and buggy days. I would either fish for trout in the stream or go hunt pine hens with a .22 rifle I had. I got so I could knock the head off a pine hen every shot. I lived all week for Sunday to come around so I could fish or hunt. That was before I was told it was wicked to hunt or fish on Sunday.

After staying in Salt Lake City for two years, my aunt Dora and my brother Harold left for Mexico again and my brother Joe and I moved up to Clinton with Mother. There I skipped the sixth grade and completed the seventh grade in one year. It was in Clinton also that I learned to skate on ice. There were many ponds and canals in Clinton and when they froze over, that was our winter sport. I remember one day of skating to Ogden and back home again on the canal, a distance of about 15 miles. Speaking of winter sports, we used to sleigh ride down the hill from 15th East in Salt Lake on 7th South to beyond 9th East. It was a great sport for us kids.

After spending one winter in Clinton, my mother, Joe, and I returned to Mexico. We had been in Utah for three years, now. We thought that things had quieted down in Mexico so that we would be able to live peacefully in our home. However, that was not the case as you shall see in subsequent chapters. May the Lord bless you in your missionary labors is my prayer.

Your father, Emerson W. Pratt.

Dear Wayne:

By the insistence of your sister Maurine, I am continuing with my life story. The last chapter that I wrote you was at the time I left Utah and returned to Mexico. At that time it appeared that the revolution had died down and it would be safe to return home to Mexico. So in the spring of the year, after school was out, we returned to Mexico. Everything seemed to be quiet for a short time but then the revolution broke out more severely than it had done in the past. Villa's army had taken charge of the northern part of Chihuahua and had moved into our town, Colonia Dublan, in great numbers. They demanded that we deliver all of our horses and livestock over to them, that they might have transportation and food for their armies. In Dublan there were located in the neighborhood of 15,000 soldiers and we could not walk up or down the streets without stumbling over soldiers or their camps. On our return to Mexico, the school board asked my mother to teach school again in Colonia Dublan. There were many times I have known her to walk down the streets from our home to the school with soldiers bathing in the irrigation ditches on either side of the street; but she was not molested in any way by any of the soldiers. These were perilous times, but Villa had complete command over his men. They respected his orders and he had ordered that not any of the Mormon people be molested and so they obeyed his command.