TOLD BY IDA M. ROLLINS HAMBLIN
I can't tell you when we first met, but it was when we were both babies. My brother Charles had me in his care and Ephraim Marshall had Wallace and William Hamblin twins taking care of them. They were all playing together and I think perhaps that was our first introduction. As we grow older, as children often do, we single out certain persons and claim them among our school mates as our beau or boyfriends. So of course, I claimed Wallace as my beau. One night a bunch of us children about ten or eleven years old were invited to an old fashioned candy pulling party. We had them in those days very often. The candy was made out of molasses. My father had a molasses mill and of course it was not very hard to obtain it. When this party ended, Wallace accompanied me home as far as a bridge over a large ditch some distance from the house. I told him I could go the rest of the way home alone alright. I was afraid if he went any closer my brother Charles would see us and he would tease me about it. That was the first time he had ever taken me home.
We continued playing together. He would spend most of his time in the summer on a ranch assisting his mother milking cows and making butter and cheese. I visited a ranch of his stepfather's, as I and their girls were great chums. Some boys came riding up where we girls were one day and Wallace was one of them. He had a very nice little riding pony named Jack Knife. Well we girls all spoke up and said we claimed a ride on the pony. Well, of course, I got the first ride and I had not been used to riding. The horse started to trot and I clung onto the horn of the saddle and the horse stepped into a hole and I fell off and somehow or other the horse fell on me. I was not hurt, only badly scared and my face and clothes were black with dirt. Well that settled the horseback rides for that day.
Another time Wallace and I were out riding. We were older then and he had their work horses and his mother didn't like that and as we rode past their place she called to him to go put those horses up. I was like most thoughtless young people are. I thought it was terrible for her to call him and make him put those horses up. Our next ride was in a wagon with three or four spring seats in and about three or four couples with four horses on the wagon. Then we would go for a ride in the field or up the canyons for an hour or so after church on Sunday. Then in the winters our sports were dancing and sleigh riding.
Wallace always went on the ranches in the summer time working for the Murdocks, his brother-in-law. While he was away so much, I kept company with a home town young man and I thought at the time he was very nice, but he visited the saloon and played cards or gambled and one time he took me to a dance. He became intoxicated and was very sick and could not take me home so that settled it with he and I.
Wallace had made a trip with cattle to Wyoming (this was in the year 1880) and before he left he asked me for my hand. I told him I would have to think it over and give him my answer later. We were both 18 years old then. I went off to Provo to attend the B.Y.A. I heard from him occasionally while there. When I returned from school he had gone on another trip with cattle and he did not get home until about October of that year so when we met again he wanted my answer. I thought he was such a nice, large, good-looking young man and he had no bad habits and was a good living young man that he would be the one for me. Consequently, I gave my answer in the affirmative.
My brother Watson and Harriet Eyre were going to be married the following December so we made up our minds to be married at the same time. I suggested that we go to the St. George Temple to be married. He said he was afraid he could not get a recommend, but he had no trouble getting one.
When my girl chums and I were together talking of our fellows, as we sometimes called them, some of them were keeping company with some outsiders, as we called them. I remember I made the remark that I would not marry an outsider and one of the girls spoke up and said, "Shucks you don't know - you might fall in love with one." I said I would not go with them at all and then I knew I would not marry them.
Wallace rustled a spring wagon and a pair of mules and my brother Watson took a white top buggy and we started for the St. George Temple and were married Wednesday the 14th of December 1881. We left Minersville on a Sunday and returned the next Sunday so we were just a week making the trip. It will be just 54 years since that time and I have never seen another man I would trade him for.