Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Franklin and Annie White - Courtship and Marriage

April of 1906 changed Annie Elizabeth Brady's life, when a young man from Indianola, which was 12 miles north of Fairview, had gone to Fairview with a load of wheat to have cleaned for planting. One of the horses he was using on this trip was a young colt that had not been used very much. About the time he started home in the afternoon, it began to rain. This meant that traveling became very hard because the ground soon became very wet and muddy, making it extremely hard to pull the wagon. About four miles out of Fairview, he decided this horse would not be able to make the trip home as it was getting too tired. He unhooked the horses and started back to Fairview, walking in the mud and rain. After he had gone about two miles, he came to Simeon Brady's farm. He knew Mr. Brady and thought it would be a good idea to ask him for shelter for the night for himself and the animals. When Mr. Brady opened the door and saw this tall, thin, rain-soaked, mud-covered young man, he thought to himself, 'What a hell-of-son-in-law you would make,' always thinking that someday his daughters would surely take mates. Mr. Brady, being a kind, considerate man, took him in and gave him a bed for the night. This man, of course, was none other than Franklin D. White. This was the first time Elizabeth met Franklin but little did she know that she would become his wife in just a short time.

During our courtship, we were not together too much as I was away from home a lot of time. When I was at home, it was 12 miles to where she lived, and in those days that was a long way to go by horse. Especially going home after spending an evening with your best girl with not a house or anyone on that long road. In the spring of 1906, my brother, Will, and I bought us a nice light buggy and we had two nice horses to pull it. It cost us $150.00 and that was as hard to pay for as a Ford car is today. But I enjoyed it immensely during the last year of my courtship.



On the 16th of October 1907, we were married for time and eternity in the Manti Utah Temple. The greatest day of my life for I had the girl of my choice sealed to me by one holding divine authority, given to him by God's Holy and recognized prophet to perform the wedding ceremony that day. We took my sister, Eunice, with us in that little buggy and she was baptized in the Manti Temple. We did not get out of the Temple until about 4:00 in the afternoon and then drove hack to Fairview, about 36 miles that night. We did get in just before daylight and that is how we spent our first night of married life. 

We went to Indianola the next day, we had no time for a honeymoon as it was harvest time and I had a large crop to gather on our large farm that year and our crop was good. We stayed with my folks for about two weeks until we could get some furniture, then we moved to a four-room home that was on the farm that my brother and I had bought. We lived there about four months, then our finances were gone and my wife went back to live with her folks for a while and I went on the desert to herd sheep. I came back home about June 1st, and we moved to Fairview.

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