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HISTORY OF
COLLINS ROWE CHARLESWORTH
written by his wife, Josie Juantia Abraham Charlesworth
and their daughters
He was born 24 July 1890, to Sarah Melissa Hakes and James Charlesworth in Mesa. Maricopa Co., Arizona, the last child of a family of four two boys and two girls: Mabel Ann, James Emery, Sarah Melissa and Collins Rowe. The three older children were born in Kanosh, Millard County, Utah. The parents moved to Mesa, Arizona, where Collins was born. His mother died when he was 2 1/2 years old. His father moved the family back to Kanosh and they lived with the grandparents, Alice (Barrows) & Thomas Charlesworth, where they could help take care of the children. Later, his father James, married May Morrey and they had two sons, Evan Clair and John Alva.
Collins was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,
His father and stepmother divorced, then later, his father married Nell Penney, and Coll remained with them until he got married.
As a youth he was liked by young and old with his jolly disposition and ready wit. He loved sports of all kinds and was a perfect shot when playing marbles, a game played on the ground, and he always ended up with a pocket full of marbles. He enjoyed playing pranks on people, nothing serious, but funny. He, along with his mischievous friends, threw a bucket of water over Will Robert's head while sleeping on his back. They ran, but could still hear him gurggling and hollering a block away. It's a wonder he didn't drown: They didn't realize the seriousness of it.
Another time this gang spied a pie through a neighbor's window and slipped it out on a pitchfork, then replaced it with a fresh cow pie (dung).
One night he was going to a party with Etta Christensen Hawley and offered to carry her cake. As they walked along some fellows reached out just as they got to a tree and snatched the cake and ran. Etta scolded Coll, thinking he was part of the prank, but he really wasn't. It was one time he was innocent! Another time he was accused of being involved in something he wasn't guilty of was when some fellows got into Aunt Alzada Day's melon patch, and she didn't speak to him for a long time.
He spent several summers at Ruby Valley, Nevada working in the hay for some of the ranchers out there.
He loved to dance and was a good dancer. It has been said
That he would dance with all the girls, including the unpopular ones. Even after a hard day's work in the fields,
he was ready to dance the evening away! He could dance all types of dances too. He attended youth gatherings, and he sang a solo in M.I.A.
He married Josie Juanita Abraham 24 June 19l4 in the Manti Temple at the age of 24. They settled down in a little log home in Kanosh, that his father had given him. To this union five daughters were born, Carma, Dathel, Leora, Geraldine and Iris.
He was an honest, hard-working farmer and provided well for his family. Two summers were spent at the Jew Farm, two miles west of Hatton.
Before the fifth daughter was born he bought the Ella Gardner home across town. He paid $2500 cash for the home, and the deal was made over the phone through A. A. Kimball who had it in charge.
He ventured into several businesses trying to make a living, three of which were turkeys, chickens and cattle. refer to Juanita's history
Coll was an exceptional gardner and had it planted earlier than anyone else in town, worked and weeded it daily, until it was a 'sight to see'! After storing the produce for his family he took a wagon load of potatoes, onions, cabbages, squash, carrots and apples to sell on his way to Delta. Some of his daughters would go with him and they stayed over-night with his sister Melissa and her husband Ed VanWinkle. He felt sorry for the families who couldn't afford to buy so gave it to them anyway. He couldn't stand to see them go without.
One Sunday afternoon Coll & Nita, Leora and two little Watts friends (Lois & Ola) went for a ride in their Model A car. They were just pulling onto the highway by A.T. Rappleye's corner when a car, coming from the south, ticked the right fender, turning them around, causing the other car to rollover into the ditch across the road. The other driver had a terrible gash in his leg with the others in the car being severely injured. This car was traveling at a high rate of speed and there was liquor found in the car. The other driver was very thankful that Coll made a verbal settlement, because he knew he was in the wrong.
Not having any sons, Coll's daughters went after wood with him, and they remember how early they would leave, and get home with a huge load. He would cook breakfast before day-light and have everything cleared away so he could start cutting wood. They recall how interesting it was when he made flapjacks, tossed them in the air, and caught them in the pan, not missing even one!
Coll and his brother-in-law Leonard Abraham hauled wood together. They left town at 2 a.m. with a heavy 5 gallon bucket full of hot coals to keep warm with and were back home by noon with a huge load of wood, which they sawed with a power saw. They also sawed wood for other townspeople.
He and George Rogers were very good friends and shared farm machinery. One day Coll was tired and cross and needed an errand run so he asked his daughter Leora to go down to Brother Rogers and ask if he could borrow his fresno. Leora didn't know what a fresno was, and didn't dare ask her dad, so went on to Bro. Rogers who said, "You bet:" She just stood there thinking he would hand it to her because she thought it was a small tool. He told her again to tell her dad he could borrow it, so Leora ran home, and without telling her dad she had already gone on the errand, she said, 'Papa, what is a fresno?" He jumped up off the chair and said, "Go cut the longest switch you can get off that lilac bush, and bring it to me!" Leora ran around the porch and rolled up in a huge denim camp quilt that was on the porch. The summer sun was beating down on her until nearly smothered and she heard her dad yell, "Nita, where is that block head, anyway!" She stayed there the rest of the day, which seemed an eternity! By the time she crawled out he had forgotten the whole thing and was back to his sweet self again.
During the 1918 flu epidemic, where most of the families were down sick, Coll went to the Rogers home each morning, tapped on the window, found out what they needed done, which he
did until they were well again. Later, when Coll's family got down, Brother Rogers returned the favor.
Coll and George Rogers had such trust in one another that they never did need a written agreement because their word was their bond. On one occasion, George sold Coll a phonograph.
It was a crank-type machine, with tube records. When the price was discussed George said, "Let's put our backs together and you write in the snow what you will give for it, and I'll I
write what I'll take", so they did. Coll wrote $10.00, and George wrote $7.50, but George wouldn't accept any more than $7.50. Now, over 50 years later, his daughters sold it to an antique dealer, from Joseph, Utah, for $180.00, for their mother.
Coll looked forward to hunting deer and always came home with one on his horse, during the hunt. Once, after he had shot one, he straddled it to cut its throat, and the deer jumped
up, throwing him in the air, and when he landed, he was on a sagebrush. This could have been very serious! One year he got one of the largest deer shot. He cut up enough of the meat to fill a crock jar and made a special brine of salt and salt peter, brown sugar and water, which he heated, cooled and poured over the meat, repeating this process each day, and skimming it daily. This meat was delicious, and once when they had a big Thanksgiving dinner, everyone preferred the deer meat to the chicken.
While repairing a fence at the corral Coll jerked on a barbed wire and it flipped into his eye, cutting a three-cornered gash next to the pupil. Florence, his sister-in-law, who was a good nurse, looked at his eye and suggested he see a doctor, so she went with him to Dr. Evans in Fillmore, who stitched it up.
The Elders Quorum was roofing the Bill Allen home when Coll stepped back on a board across an uncovered cesspool when his foot slipped, but he caught himself just in time, or
he would have fallen in! This upset the entire group, and made him shudder the rest of the day.
He planted a big watermelon patch on a lot he owned in the center of town, which was real handy for the young people. When they got ripe a group of boys were stealing melons one
night and Coll popped out of the patch and said, "Boys, here's a knife. Be sure to get the ripe ones!" This patch was planted for kids because he enjoyed their pranks.
The older daughters looked forward to a trip to Fillmore with their Dad to take a load of wheat to the grist mill in exchange for the year's supply of flour. These trips were
made by team and wagon, taking all day. Carma and her cousin Hattie Charlesworth made one of the trips with their Dads, and as they were traveling along noticed sticks of gum in the wrappers along the road spaced several feet apart. They had fun picking each one up.
Coll was the town's Watermaster for several years and spent lots of time figuring out the turns to please everyone. Joe Pikyavit, an Indian, came to Coll and complained that his schedule was wrong. He said, "Coll, you make mistake." Coll refigured it, and found he had, made the error, alright, and told Joe he was sorry. Then Joe said, "It's alright this time, but NO MORE!" Coll told him he would be more careful next time and really got a chuckle out of it.
Another experience with Joe was when Coll was Bishop, handing the commodities out. Joe Pikyavit went to Fillmore to get his order filled, and when it came to the sack of potatoes
he wanted Coll to carry it out of the cellar, but Coll said, "If you want those potatoes, you carry them out yourself!" Indians expected handouts without any effort on their part.
For years Coll was janitor of the Kanosh Elementary school house, a building also used for all church meetings except Sacrament meetings and funerals. Besides the daily sweeping, dusting and scrubbing the restrooms, he and his family spent the summers painting, varnishing the benches, treating the blackboards, cleaning windows and oiling the floors, to have it ready for the new school year. The most irritating thing about this job was digging the gum off from under the benches, and he noted that most of it was under the benches of the adults. He was always anxious to get the building cleared and the door locked after each meeting, and he couldn't understand why people would hang around and visit afterwards, but this idea changed considerably when he became the Bishop, and he could see the importance of this time being spent to talk over matters pertaining to the ward.
He spent a lot of time playing marbles with the kids at recess and at noon, and if some weren't very good players, he always saw to it that they went home with some marbles, anyway!
He enjoyed making trips to Salt Lake City, and would be happy for an excuse to take different ones who needed to go. He loved to sit out in front, of the big stores or in the hotel lobby and watch people go by. Two entertainments that Coll really enjoyed while in the city were Vaudeville and the Ice Follies. In fact, the first time he saw the Follies he was so thrill with the performance that he made several trips back to S.L.C. to take others to see it. The act that stood out most in his mind was the waltz on ice skates done by an older couple, the man being large in stature and still with such grace. He was dressed in a beautiful white suit.
There was a sorghum mill east of Kanosh where the men would take their cane to be ground. This was a lot of work because the sugar cane had to be cut and hauled to the mill where the horse, hitched to a long pole, went around in a circle, and as the men fed the cane into the grinder, the juice would run into a huge barrel, then emptied, and cooked into molasses, which had to be kept skimmed. This way Coll got his winter's molasses.
A new car was Coll's pride and joy. It has been said of him that he would stop several times between the place where he bought the car and home, to dust it off! He was fussy about the way it looked inside and out, and traded cars nearly every two years. One day after attending stake conference in Fillmore, the family got into the car to leave, and when Coll started the motor there was a terrible bang, and he thought his car had blown up, but found out some kid had put something in the exhaust just for kicks. You can imagine how upsetting this was. Not only being fussy about his cars, he was also particular about keeping his garden tools clean. Nothing was more aggravating to him than to find his hoe or shovel muddy.
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