(Contributed by the Thomas Tolman Family Organization. Excerpt from Judson Tolman: Pioneer, Lumberman, Patriarch by E. Dennis Tolman, Second Edition, 2004, pages 162-164).
Maggie Tolman Porter was born April 26, 1877 at Knowllen, Utah, the youngest of the twenty-seven children of Cyrus Tolman. When Maggie was a child, she was in the yard playing right next to a large rattle snake that was ready to strike. She was rescued by her mother who received the impression that something was wrong.
Maggie did not associate with her father very much in her early childhood. He and his second wife, Alice Bracken, and their family moved from Tooele to Goose Creek, Idaho in 1881 when Maggie was only four. Cyrus wanted Margaret Eliza to move also, but three of their boys were grown men and were working in the mines near Ophir, Utah, close to their Rush Valley home. They refused to leave their work to go with their father and mother to Idaho, so Margaret Eliza chose to remain at Knowllen, Rush Valley.
The boys had helped keep the family from the time they were able to work. Cyrus had given them a good farm, and except for the water shortage, it was a wonderful place. As years went by the water shortage increased. It became impossible to farm at all so they decided to hunt a new home. It had been Margaret Eliza’s constant prayer to get her children out of the mine influences and settle among the Latter-day Saints. They moved to Star Valley in 1888.
Maggie wrote, “My father came from Idaho to help us make the move. He always seemed to us children to be a guest in our home. A very welcome guest to me. He always brought us presents and was kindness personified. He never harshly corrected us. When anything of the moment arose he handed the reins of government over to my mother. This governing was done with love and firmness. I remember one time when I was small, Frank and John had a disagreement over something on the farm. Mother felt that John, a grown man, was right. She took his part. This caused Frank, about 16 years of age, to decide to leave home. He told mother of his intentions. She said if that was the way he felt to go ahead so she packed his clothes, gave him a little money and told him he needed a good tanning for what he had done so she tied him up and took the four horse lash and tanned him plenty. It almost broke my heart for I loved Frank very much. When she untied him, instead of taking his clothes and the saddled horse that stood nearby, he walked into the barn, hooked up the team, went into the field and did the thing John had requested him to do that was the cause of the quarrel. She cautioned us to make no allusions to what had taken place. Mother was a wise woman and my father acknowledged her wisdom.”
Maggie had miraculous answers to her childish prayers; through those answers her faith grew into something very fine and precious. She truly thanked our Heavenly Father for those little testimonials that came to her in her childhood.
Maggie continued, “At about this time of my life I first began receiving my ‘hunches.’ I could always tell when Milton would come in with horses; I never failed on this. The hunch would come to me on awakening on the day he would arrive….I’d climb up on the threshing machine shed and watch for dust, which I could see for ten miles. It was open desert country. Once in a while I’d fail to see the dust until it was dark, but I’d stay up—he always came, even if it was very late in the night.
“Milton was my oldest brother—twenty-two years older than I. Because he loved me so much I was rather attached to him, much more than my other brothers. Many times in my younger days he had taken me from my mother when she was going to administer a needed spanking. If he had not humored me, perhaps I would have been more of a model child.
“My brother, Frank, was married that fall (1891), so Mother allowed me to go to dances with other young men as I had no one else to go with. I was fifteen years old at that time. I never attended any school until I was thirteen years old. The girls my age had a lot of fun at my expense, but when school began I was ahead of all the girls my age. I was in the highest class in the little country school. I cannot remember when I began to read. My sister (Martha) gave me a private, well balanced, and most instructive program of learning. I taught my first school before I was seventeen years old. I held a second grade certificate in the State of Wyoming at that time.
“I had been called as a Sunday School Missionary from the Star Valley Stake along with Harvey Allred, a married man with a family of four. I went to Provo to take the Sunday School course and my husband, Orson, went to Porterville and worked bailing hay. After twenty-four hours of married life, I did not see him again for four months. I had quite a time convincing the students and teachers I was married. While I was in Provo, I was chosen from a group of eight hundred students as the secretary of the College Sunday School. I can assure you that they were jealous of a strange country girl being chosen as one of their leaders.
“When I returned to Star Valley, I taught summer school at Auburn, Wyoming. I raised my second-grade to a first-class certificate that August and held it thus for several years. All told, I taught school (sandwiching in an occasional baby) for about twelve years.
“I, myself, never saw inside of a high school. And I held a first-class certificate for years in this state….When the teachers of this state were notified that the next teachers’ examination would be on the subject of agriculture, I wrote to the State Board of Examiners and found out what textbook would be used. They told me. I purchased the book and studied it. When examination time came, I scored 99% perfect. I received a letter from the Board of Examiners congratulating me, as I scored the highest in the state by quite a margin. This just shows you that I was not smart, just clever! The teachers these days must hold diplomas. In those days we were judged by examinations—by what we really knew.
“I met your daddy in June. We were soon in love. He, then a man of twenty-five years, had just returned from a two-year mission and was in a hurry for a wife. I had made a pact with my mother to the effect that no matter who the man was, or how much in love we were, she was not to give her consent under any circumstances for me to marry before I was twenty-two. That would give me time to attend school for six years and really make something of myself.
“Well, I would not give Orson one bit of assurance of the hasty marriage he desired. I told him about our pact, and he insisted on talking it over with Mother. I had a word with her long enough to whisper, “Don’t forget our pact.” Then I let him go to Mother.
“It was only a few minutes later when they both came into the room. I was in bed, ill. It was just before Christmas. I was to report in Provo on January 5th for my Sunday School mission. I had my wardrobe all completed, and practically packed. My mother looked like the cat that ate the canary. I shall never forget how she looked. “Well, darling,” she said, “We have talked it over and decided that from all points you should be married before you start to school.”
“No, Mother, no—I am too young,” and I began to cry. “I want to get an education,” I sobbed. They were both first-class salesmen, for I was married on January 4, 1894 to Orson Merit Porter. My advice to all my blessed granddaughters and grandsons is this: Don’t be in a hurry to marry. You’ll have all time (and Eternity!) to be married but only a few years to get an education and prepare yourselves for your life’s work. You can accomplish so much more for yourselves and for our Heavenly Father if you are well educated and understand about things both past and present, the sciences, etc., and the blessed Gospel.
“When we came first to the Big Horn Basin in 1902, we had two children: Winnie and Valeria. We had lost our daughter, Viola in Star Valley. We lived in Otto for three years, where Rhea was born, then Orson felt he should return to Porterville….We remained ten years in Porterville. Our three sons, Alma, Elwood, and Rex were born there….It seemed the Lord wanted us in the Big Horn Basin. Deuel Ernest was born in Lovell and Maggie Mae in Basin, Wyoming.
“We were never prosperous in a financial way. Perhaps the Lord knew we could not stand prosperity—that if He prospered us as a family, we would forget to serve Him. We never suffered for the necessities of life, only the luxuries were denied us.
“Our religion has been an everyday religion. God hears and guides us in life’s smallest things as well as in the great things. In my later life I lived in tune with His Holy Spirit….The only time it leaves me is when I allow anger, selfishness, or hate to enter my heart. Then that sweet spirit, the Comforter…is driven out. Harmony and love in the home is the foundation upon which to build for that Presence to dwell with us…Every one of God’s children can have it to comfort, guide, and bless him if he will put himself in tune by humble faith and prayer. Yes, Dear Ones, prayer is the wave length that tunes us in. Drive from your souls all the static that is caused by all these negative faults. Love one another, not only our own.” Maggie Bell died August 1, 1969 in Lovell, Wyoming and was buried at Otto.