My Great Grandma ~ by Wendy

 Wendy had an assignment for school to write about one of her ancestors. We are very lucky in that there are some very thorough autobiographies to help with such a task. Wendy chose to write about her Great-Grandmother Hannah Lucinda Howell Hurst Bohne. Hannah wrote a very detailed autobiography, 30 pages long (see it HERE). Wendy focused on Hannah's early life, and used some of the excerpts from her history in her paper.  You can read it below ...

My Great Grandma - Hannah Lucinda Howell Hurst Bohne

Written by Wendy Westra Jensen

Now, at ninety, my Great Grandma Bohne, with her soft gray hair and wrinkled skin, has trouble even remembering my name. But as she tells us the stories of how she got the scar on her wrist, and other stories of her growing up, her memory becomes vivid and sharp . . .

“ . . . My mother often told me how she used to sit me in one of those big half-bushel tubs when I was just a baby. This particular day, when I was just a young toddler, mother was peeling peaches. I began to become restless, so she sat me in the tub right outside the door of our small house, with a peach in my hand. Other families lived nearby, and some of them had pigs running loose. Mother was very busy with her work until she heard a frightened cry. Upon looking up, she saw that a large sow had grabbed me by the wrist while attempting to get the now slightly squished peach. It had tipped over the tub, and it was still dragging me by the wrist. My uncle was just coming around the corner of our small bunk house and rescued me before my mother could get to me. I am still carrying the scar from that pig’s tooth . . . “

The small town of Dublan, where my grandmother lived while growing up, had many buildings around, but not as many houses. They had moved into a small brick house with a fairly large farm. As nice as they thought their home was, they still had their problems. Their home was the farthest North in town, and they were in the Mexican district. My grandmother remembered when she was a young girl, and Mexicans would come to the Carletis ranch and from the San Jose district to trade at the Diblan stores. They would gather in groups in front of grandmother’s house to eat their lunches and drink their tequila, which was a poor grade of Mexican alcohol. They often became so intoxicated, it worried my grandmother’s mother.

“I remember how my mother would lock the doors and not allow any of us children to take a step outside”, my great grandmother told us.

By 1910 they were considering building a new home. There was one major drawback however; the Mexican revolution was doing its worst. The whole country was in an uproar and everything was unsettled. My grandmother wrote about what happened one particular day.

“I remember one Sunday late afternoon, a Rebel army marched through our town. They were a pitiful looking group as far as poverty was concerned. Some of them were barefoot, and their clothes would hardly hang on them. They were headed for Casus Grandes, which was a distance of twelve or thirteen miles from our town. At four A.M. the next morning the ferocious battle raged until the middle of the day. I remember I was working in the candy shop that day. Many places of business were closed because people were so upset they couldn’t concentrate. I have often described the noise from that battle as sounding like a community of lumber buildings, all falling down at the same time.”

Conditions went from bad to worse. Things went on this way until the July of 1912. The colonists could see that they were in grave danger. The church and the U.S. Government came to the rescue. Word circulated that they should evacuate the colonists, and railroad cars would be there Sunday to take them. They worked all night Saturday and Sunday to leave the best way possible.

They were only allowed two mattresses, a few quilts, pillows, and their best clothing. They had to turn loose their animals and leave the only life they ever knew. They fled to Utah with the other colonists and made a new life there. Here is the story in my grandmother’s own words.

“The whole town was there at the station at ten P.M. Sunday evening. We all stood there and waited until six A.M. the following morning. When the train finally came, it wasn’t nearly large enough to take all of us. It was finally decided that all of the women and children under seventeen of age would leave, with barely enough men to take care of us. The remainder of the men were left.

No more had the train pulled out, than a mob of Mexicans came into town. The men grabbed their horses and firearms and fled to the hills, with the Mexicans firing on them. My father, and the rest of the men found a place in the hills where they could march around a hill and make it look like there were a great many more than there actually were.

They fled to Colonia Juarez. Here they felt quite safe because they could ward off quite a large army. Many privations were experienced due to the fact that they didn’t have a chance to gather food or clothing, or bedding of any kind. Someone did take a sack of flour however. I heard Father tell how they stirred flour and water together and made hot cakes, and cooked them on a piece of tin over the coals of their campfire. It was two weeks before they were able to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, where they joined their families

In the meantime, we (the woman and children) that had left on the train the morning of July 29, 1912, landed in El Paso the same afternoon we left. I remember how terribly tired we were as we hadn’t slept since Friday, and this was Monday!”

When my Great Grandma Bohne and her family, plus the other women and children, had reached El Paso, they were given a small division, like a stall for horses. It was large enough to lay the two mattresses down, but there wasn’t enough room to walk around or between them. Their food consisted mostly of bread, milk, prepared cereals, and canned foods.

It was about the 19th of August before the men arrived from Mexico. How very glad my great grandma and her family were to see them. Her poor dad looked so pitiful and terribly worn out. They hadn’t as much as had a chance to shave or change clothes! Her dad didn’t even have a saddle on his horse most of the way

“Oh how glad I was to see my poor Dad after all that!” my great grandma replied, remembering everything that had happened that day.

Later, on August 21, 1912, Great Grandma Bohne’s family set out for Utah. They went to Fairview to live with relatives until they could maintain a home themselves. They had so many ordeals trying to keep a home and family. It was on May 16, 1949, that my great grandma’s mother passed away at the age of seventy four, followed by her father on February 6, 1956. He was buried next to his sweet and wonderful wife.

My great grandmother is now ninety, and will probably soon pass away too. I look at her now, with her wrinkled hands and small body, walking along slowly with her cane next to her, and try to picture her as a baby, being dragged by a pig -- a young girl living in Mexico -- and a young woman fleeing from her hometown to Utah. It’s hard to picture her this way, looking at her now, but we have learned much from her, and love to read and listen to the stories of what life was like for her when she was a little girl!

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In 2022, Christopher found a hard copy of Wendy's paper with some other printed histories. Unsure if Wendy had a copy, he retyped it so it could easily be included here and on FamilySearch.com. 

Also check out the blog post featuring Hannah here on the blog. Lots of pictures and a condensed history.  The Life Of Hannah Hurst Howell Bohne