 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 "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 grandpa's
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 were members of and very much
involved in the Odd Fellows and Rebeka's Lodge -
both were Regional Presidents and had obtained
the highest of honors within the lodge.
Connie passed
peacefully in her sleep on 28 Aug 2012, at the
age of 99 years, and was laid to rest at
Resthaven Park Cemetery in Glendale, Arizona on
Friday, August 31st, beside her first husband
V.W. "Dave" Davidson, and her mother
Clara (Danforth) Neagle.
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