 John Neagle, who was born in
Waterford, Ireland in 1833 came with his father
to America when he was in his twenties and
settled in New York where he married Ellen Croty.
Their son, William Francis Neagle, who was born
in Chatsworth, Illinois in 1870 is the father of
my grandmother Connie.Connie's father William came to
Barnes county, North Dakota in 1892 and was
united in marriage to Clara A. Danforth at Valley
City. To this union was born one son and four
daughters: William, Helen, Ruth, Constance, and
Mildred Neagle. They lived on a section and a
half of land three miles from school and five and
a half miles from the small farming town of
Luverne. Besides their crops, they had plenty of
good pasture for their cattle and horses which
were mainly used for field work although they did
have lighter horses. According to my grandmother,
they drove a team of horses to school until the
older children no longer went, and then she and
her younger sister Mildred, rode horseback.
The Neagles also had a
surrey, a two-seater with fringe on top, and a
lamp on front driven by a pretty pair of white
horses. Her father was usually the one who drove
this, using it to take the children to church.
The town didn't have a Catholic church which her
father would have preferred; but it was a church
all the same, and by time they came home from
services, his wife Clara had a meal spread for
the family and whoever might have come back with
them.
The single buggy that
they owned was mostly used by her mother Clara
who took it to town where she sold or traded the
cream and eggs for flour, sugar and things they
did not raise on the farm. They always had a big
garden, but also grew their own corn, beans, and
potatoes - my grandmother doing the shucking,
shelling, and hoeing until 1925 when her father
died. Only twelve years of age, she then
took up the outdoor chores right along beside her
brother Bill. She had the chores of milking the
cows and driving the horses in the fields, and
worked so hard that her brother bragged to the
neighbors that he felt better with her in the
field behind the horses than any hired man he'd
ever had. This not only made her feel good, but
it saved the family from hiring another hand.
When that same summer came
my grandmother was hired out to a family who was
building a new house. Her days were filled with
carrying water, wood, and washing dishes - but
she also took to making bread as the lady of the
house would go off to the city and not have the
time herself to do it. Many times this lady did
not come home until past the evening meal, so
that my grandmother would also cook and prepare
the meal for nine men.
Her only salvation was an
older uncle who also worked there. As they did
not have electricity, he would help light the
wood stove which she used to bake bread, pies, or
cookies each day for the men who came in for
coffee break in the morning and afternoon. All of
this she did at two dollars a week, for fourteen
weeks - and during the entire time she worked
there, she went home but once.
Fortunately, school came
easy for her and she was able to stay out in
spring and help plant the crops like most of the
young school boys did. Because the boys were
needed on the farms, many of the young men
dropped out of school to work the farms, but
Connie managed to work on the farm and finished
eight grades in seven years, and then four years
of high school in three and a half years.
 She graduated and went on to college
where she worked for her board and room for one
year. Afterwards, she received her teacher's
certificate and taught school to fourteen
children - eight grades, for eighty dollars a
month in a one-room school house about a quarter
mile from the place where she stayed. - On
her teacher's certificate her duties included
"that the teacher is to do the janitorial
work of the school." And that "Each
teacher in the common schools shall teach pupils,
as they become sufficiently advanced to pursue
the same, the following branches: Orthography,
reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, language
lessons, English grammar, geography, United
States history, civil Government, physiology and
hygiene, giving special instruction concerning
the nature of alcoholic drinks and other
narcotics and their effects upon the human
system."
After she'd gone off to
teach, her brother hired on another hand to
replace her, and her life began to be her own.
Feeling that teaching was not for her, she did
not teach the second year, but decided to go to
work in a general mercantile store. 
In the spring of 1933, when
she was about twenty, Vernon Davidson rented a
farm with a lovely big house on it. He planted
his first crop and began raising cattle for his
father and brothers who were butchers in a
neighboring town. Feeling settled, he asked
Connie to marry him. The two had known each other
all their lives, having attended the same school
and social functions but they had also dated
other young men and women so that it was never
decided upon that they would marry, they simply
chose to do so. So like his own father, Vernon
married a neighboring farm girl - this marriage
took place in Valley City in 1934.With the
beginning of their new life together came the
drought - first one year and then the next.
Fearing even more difficult times, my
grandparents auctioned everything off on the farm
and headed out to Arizona in the fall of 1935.
My grandparents arrived in
the small agricultural and farming community of
Phoenix which was sunk into the clay baked
desert, and decided to make the small city their
home. Since the building of the dams was
essential to the growth of Arizona, my grandpaís
involvement with it, has become somewhat of an
historical tale in itself.
While working on the
reclamation and reconstruction of the dams, which
was for the purpose of modifying and increasing
the capacity of the spillways as well as
strengthening the concrete buttresses, my
grandmother lived with him in the work camps. She
worked nearly as hard as he did, canning meat and
vegetables and cooking meals for many of the men
in the camp. She endured the heat, rattlesnakes,
and inconveniences of living in the middle of the
desert with a sense that she was doing nothing
remarkable, but rather that which simply needed
done.
After a sixty-foot fall at
Parker dam in which my grandpa was injured and
laid up for nearly a year, my grandmother
supplemented their income by waiting tables in a
central Phoenix diner. They had also purchased
not long before this, two cabins and a filling
station that served the farmers on the far
outskirts of west Phoenix. Before, and
after his injury, my grandmother ran and cared
for these while my grandpa was working at the
dams and was later laid up.
When he recovered, my
grandpa began working as a cement finisher and
later became a licensed cement contractor.
Selling the service station and cabins, they
later bought a ranch off what is now known as
Thunderbird Road in what was then, a little
farming community called Peoria. Here they raised
their three children LaVerna, Victor, and Daryl,
until 1954 when they moved into the city of
Phoenix.
In the years that followed,
my grandmother became a bookkeeper for other
companies and eventually retired. She and her
sister Ruth have been, and still are involved in
the Odd Fellows and Rebeka's Lodge - both have
previously been Regional Presidents and have
obtained the highest of honors within the lodge.
Connie presently lives in
Glendale, Arizona - just east of Peoria. She is
86 years old, the grandmother of eight, and
great-grandmother of eleven. Always on the run,
off to North Dakota, Nashville, California,
Canada, or just buzzing around the state for the
lodge meetings, she remains active and involved
in her community, volunteering and helping when
needed - but above all, she has retained the
values and hardships of her North Dakota roots
which have made her a woman well admired by all.
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