DELILA
VANLEUVEN
ALLDREDGE
(1882-1983)
MARIA DELILA VAN LEUVEN ALLDREDGE
Mariah Delila VanLeuven (known as
Delila) was born to Mariah Elizabeth Durfee and Newman
VanLeuven on the eleventh day of November 1882 in
Aurora, Utah, a town named by her father and meaning
beautiful. She learned from her parents about the
beauties of the earth. She had a happy and active
childhood in Aurora, made up of both work and play. Her
carpenter father made toys for his children - little
chairs, dressers, and tables and she had dolls and other
playthings. She often enjoyed a game of checkers or
dominos with her father. One of her favorite sports was
to play baseball with her brothers and that may be the
reason she was such a baseball fan and loved to attend
the games of her grandsons and great grandsons as long
as she lived. She was educated through the eighth grade
while in Aurora.
Delila had her share of work to do on the
farm along with other members of the family - hoeing the
big garden, and doing household chores. She says,
"Boy! Fun we did have there! We had a farm. We had to
work, but we had fun while we were working!"
Her mother taught her to do many useful things. From
their sheep they carded the wool and made it into yarn.
They mixed white and black wool in varying degrees to
attain the different shades of grey that they wanted.
When Delila was older she was taught to help knit that
yarn into the mens' socks.
She also learned to crochet and has
been doing it ever since. At the age of nine she was
awarded a prize at the county fair for a tidy (doily)
she had made. She did other handwork also, such as hair
flowers, and those made of wool which were framed in
velvet and also hand-beaded collars. She learned to make
quilts and through her later years made a hundred or
more and gave many of them to her children and
grandchildren.
Her parents moved from Aurora to
Mexico when she was fifteen years old. Before they left,
her young folks' group gave her a lovely birthday party
as a farewell gesture. Her father chartered a train to
go down on and a freight car for the animals, two
wagons, and things like that. They left Aurora on
November 24, 1888 and went to Deming, New Mexico close
to the border. They lived in tents there for two weeks
waiting for President Anthony W. Ivins to meet them as
had been arranged to help them across the border through
customs. He was so sweet when he helped them through, it
didn't cost them nearly as much as it would have without
his help.
In Mexico they went first to Galiana
and then moved to various places during their fifteen
years in that country. They lived in Dublan, Morelos,
and San Jose and had good homes and gardens and an
active church and community life. In Dublan they grew
strawberries so big her father said he'd give them a
quarter if they could put a strawberry in their mouth
without crushing it.
Delila was always afraid of snakes.
In her autobiography she tells of some incidents with
different reptiles:
"When we were living out in
Morelos, our horses were turned loose out in the
country and if we had to use them we went and got
them. One day we went to get the horses; and there was
a clump of trees, and he went on one side and I went
on the other side. We could see that there were some
animals down a-ways and I looking strongly to see if
it was ours and not paying attention to something
under my foot. That's where I stepped on the Gila
Monster. I had my foot right on the neck of a Gila
Monster, and he was throwing his head up and with his
tongue way out trying to strike my leg. Well, when I
saw what it was it frightened me to pieces and I
jumped and went to screaming and hollering. And Neil
came running over there to see what was the trouble.
By that time he had run down in a hole under the
bushes. Neil said I was white as a sheet. When I got
back to the house, Mother asked what on earth had
happened, I was still so white. Two weeks after that
while reaching down in a barrel where we kept our
discarded clothes a lizard ran up under the loose
sleeve of my dress. Oh, I was dancing and screaming
and could feel the legs as it moved and Mother was
trying her hardest to get it out. She said, "If you
don't stand still I'll never get it out." And I said,
"Mother, I can't! I can't!" I was just a-screaming and
carrying on there; but she eventually got it. But it
was weeks before I finally got over that shock, it
kept me so nervous. We had so many experiences with
those rattlesnakes; it was a miracle that we never got
bit. Out on the Arizona Strip one got right under our
water wagon. I couldn't kill one, though I could sure
run from them. But Nora got up on the wagon and came
down on it with a shovel and got it. I was out herding
Fred Schulze's bucks one day while the boys went after
a load of water. I was sitting under a Cedar tree
reading from the Era and heard something squeaking up
in the tree. I looked up just as a red racer fell down
right on my dress where it was spread out beside me. I
throwed that book and my hat and just went out of
there on my hands and knees. I never sat under a tree
again. If I was out with the sheep or anything, I
stayed out in the open. That's why I can't stand to
even look at the picture of a snake now."
On August 16, 1902 Delila was
married to Isaac (Ike) Alldredge and four of her six
children were born in Mexico. Her oldest, a daughter
named Aritta, lived only a few hours. Their other
children were Irvin, Nora, Lurie, Dee, and Verl. Delila
was Ike's second wife. When she talks of Aunt Annie (his
first wife) her comments are, "We never had bad
words, her children were like mine."
In Morelos she lived a mile and a half
from the chapel and had to walk. Once in a while her
folks would come by with the buggy and sometimes they
would walk. She was Sunday School secretary and had to
be there at eight o'clock for prayer meeting. Of course,
every morning she had to do chores before she went, come
back and get dinner and slop the pigs and anything that
they had to do and then be back to meeting at two
o'clock. They had Mutual on Sunday nights. She was an
officer and took her kids with her every time. They
walked that distance back and forth, three times on
Sunday. Now people can't go around the corner unless
they have a car.
Because of the Mexican Revolution in
1912 the families returned to the United States. Delila
tells this of their life in Mexico and what they left
behind when forced out:
"We just went through everything -
poverty like - and we just got to where we had built
it up and had to leave it all...just all out in the
street. We turned everything we had out to the street.
They, the insurrectors, raided our home after we left.
As soon as we moved out the Mexicans moved in. I had
two beautiful hogs all ready to kill...and one hundred
of the pettiest white leghorns (I raised them from
five hens) just ready to start laying." While
they lived in Mexico they trusted the local Mexicans.
She explained, "We never did lose a thing from the
Mexicans. If you get a friend, they'd die for you." However,
when the family moved back to Utah, her dad hung a side
of pork up and the next morning it was gone.
"Stolen!" she claimed. "In Mexico, we never
lost five cents worth of things!"
During the following nine years they
made their home in several places in Utah and Nevada --
Hinckley, Delta, Abraham, Eureka, St. Thomas, Kaolin,
Mesquite, and St. George. In all of these places Delila
held many church positions in the Relief Society, Sunday
School and Primary organizations. She has held almost
every office there is in Relief Society, being president
in Mt. Trumbull. She has been a Relief Society teacher
from the time she was 18 years old.
When the family was living in
Mesquite NV in 1918 Delila's husband, Ike, went back to
Utah to find work and left Delila, her new baby, Verl,
and her other four children there for several months. In
the following paragraphs she tells of a faith-promoting
incident that occurred while they were there:
"Tobler, the mill man there, was
a great friend of Dad's and he left him owing some to
keep me in flour. And Ike had bought me a sack of
flour before he left. I had some bacon and stuff like
that and I could go to the store and get what we had
to have. Across the street was my neighbor, Mr. H----,
and he had a cow that gave five gallons of milk to the
milking and he was separating the milk and shipping
the cream. I tried to get that man to sell me a quart
of milk a day for my baby and I would give him a
quarter. But do you think he would do it? I said, "Do
you know, Brig, that you could never get a quarter's
worth of cream out of one quart of milk?" But he still
wouldn't let me have it. Then my neighbor up a mile
above us found it out, and he sent his girl down every
day for I don't know how long, with a bucket of milk
as full as she could carry it, without slopping over.
And a great big slab of the loveliest bacon; that was
the difference in them. This was the one who was
furnishing me with the flour; I could pay him and he
would keep me in flour. Well, a big flood came down
and took the dam out of the river, and that stopped
them from making any more flour until the could get
the dam put back in again. Well, he only had three
sacks of flour left in his mill when this flood came.
All the neighbors around were low in flour of course.
Then Mr. H----'s wife (the man who wouldn't let us
have the milk) said, "Sister Alldredge, will you let
us have some flour? We have no flour and our babies
are hungry." Well, I dished them out a pan of flour.
Then the neighbor over here wanted some and I let her
have it. And I just kept them all in flour until my
sack was gone. The last bit of it I took out and made
a batch of biscuits for my children. Well, here they
came, "Have you got some flour or bread or something
so we can get enough for the babies to have something
to eat?" I said, "Well, I have just made the last
flour I had into biscuits, but I will divide with
you." And if anybody ever prayed to the Lord for help,
I did it; and if anybody was ever answered, I was. I
kept a biscuit apiece for my babies and gave the rest
to the three neighbors. I just trusted in the Lord to
see what would happen to us. Well when Brother Tobler
came home (he had to go right by my place to go home
from his mill) he brought me a sack of flour. He said,
"Sister Alldredge, I have been prompted very strongly
that you are out of flour." I said , "Brother Tobler,
a prayer never was answered straighter in your life. I
have divided my flour; my last biscuit, with my
neighbors who were clear out around here. I'm so
thankful that you have brought this flour. Now I can
divide with them again." And I did. I told my
neighbors, "I have flour; now I can divide with you
again." By the time that was gone they had the mill
fixed and operating again.
We had an awful hard time out to Mt. Trumbull when we
first went out there. For three weeks we never had a
speck of flour. We had corn meal and that was about
all we lived on. Well, I was never so thankful in my
life as when that sack of flour came into my house,
not only for myself but for my neighbors. I told this
once when they were telling faith- promoting stories.
I said, "I am not boasting over this, but I want you
to know how the Lord came to my rescue when I needed
it." Several asked me if I had that recorded and when
I said, 'No.' They said, 'You must get that recorded.
That will be one of the greatest things for your
children and grandchildren.'"
Delila and her children were in
Mesquite for four or five months then went back to the
Delta area for a few years. Their journey on New Year's
Day 1921 from Delta as they were moving to St. George
presents quite a contrast to the ease in which we travel
now. They came in two wagons, her husband driving one
team and her fifteen year old son Irvin driving the
other. It took them 13 days, plodding through heavy snow
much of the way. When they stopped to cook along the
way, Isaac would scrape the snow away so as to make a
circle for the fire, and a place for chairs around it on
which the children were to sit. At night heated bricks
wrapped in blankets helped to keep them warm in the
wagons where they slept. What a trip that must have
been! When they came down off the ridge by Pintura, they
were so glad to get out of the snow and down where it
was warm, the kids whooped and hollered and yelled and
played in the sand. They stayed three or four hours
there just letting the kids play in the sunshine.
Their stay in St. George was for
only a few months, then they moved to Mt. Trumbull on
the Arizona Strip in that same year of 1921 where she
homesteaded. Delila and her children worked hard out to
Mt. Trumbull. They ran a goat herd and shipped the milk
north to be made into cheese. They were 80 miles south
of St. George which was the closest town. Her children
remember their years at Mt. Trumbull with much fondness.
Their first years there held many hardships, but it soon
grew to be a lively community with a school and an
active branch of the church. She held several church
positions and participated in all the community
activities -- the dances, parties, programs, and
celebrations. Every Friday night the town held a dance
or other activity with the young and old folks joining
together. Delila said that her children didn't mind her
being there. "They never did act like they didn't
want the parents around. Thank goodness my girlies
wanted me to go with them."
She was very interested in plays, music, and the
performing arts. She told of a time she and her husband
were in a play. "I remember the night back around
1918, when my husband, Isaac and I were filling in
with a theatre troup and I was the maiden and Isaac
was the villain and I had to shoot him in the play. I
took quite a while to explain to my children that it
was only a play and daddy would be coming home that
night like he always did. After I shot Isaac he was
supposed to fall backwards and as he did his head was
over the line where the curtain came down. As he
looked up and saw the curtain about to bean him he had
to decide whether to stay 'dead' or get ot of the way
of the curtain. He moved and everyone laughed to see
it."
In May of 1936 because of the
drought at Mt. Trumbull the family moved to St. George
and this was her home for the rest of her life. She did
a lot of temple work, helped with cleaning in the
temple, and also laundrying for several months.
Every summer she went to the
VanLeuven reunion at Duck Creek and usually camped out
for a week. She only missed one year since about 1939
and that was in 1976. She was a very fun-loving gal and
very much enjoyed all the activities, in her later years
mostly as a spectator. If Delila was there you knew that
the activity won't be dull. She said, "I like fun
and have not time for crankiness or crossness."
She had several big birthday
celebrations including her 95th where she waltzed with
her son, Verl, and did the Virginia Reel with her
grandson, Danny.
She was very close to her brother,
Ed. They were nearly the same age and he taught her
almost everything -- they were always together. He
taught her to dance and she loved going to all the
dances she could.
Delila was very proud of her children and
was very close to all of them. She knew the names of all
her posterity and kept track of them and which ones were
expecting. In 1978 her large posterity numbered: 6
children, 42 grandchildren, 161 great grandchildren, 13
great-greats and 8 or 9 more on the way.
She indeed fulfilled the scripture
in Proverbs 31:27-28 which reads: "She looketh well to
the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of
idleness -- her children rise up and call her blessed."
Delila's granddaughter, Darlene Alldredge Larsen
once wrote in a tribute to her grandmother:
"Grandma loves beauty in her
world--and when things around her were not beautiful she
changed them. Crocheting hundreds of beautiful doilies
and large "Last Supper" sacrament table covers, making
quilts, beads, hair flowers, sofa pillows, raising a
garden--and her flowers, her beautiful flowers. How many
of us remember the Mother's Days when our gifts to our
mothers were beautiful bouquets of roses carefully
selected from grandma's bushes arranged in fruit jars
she helped us wrap with crepe paper to make them more
lovely. Even while living on the strip where water had
to be carried she had beautiful flowers both in and out
of the house."
"There is beauty all around when
Grandma or her influence is there because she is
love--Love of Life, Love of the Gospel, and Love of
Family."
Delila Alldredge lived to celebrate
her 100th birthday where she once again danced the
Virginia Reel. She lived in her own home until her death
on February 17, 1983, three months after her 100th
birthday.
---------------------------------------------
Compiled by Cindy
Alldredge from the following:
1. A tribute written by Dorothy Alldredge
(daughter-in-law) - September 18, 1978.
2. Autobiography of Delila VanLeuven Alldredge
3. Tribute written by Darlene Alldredge Larsen
(granddaughter)
4. Newspaper article by Elizabeth Weinsheimer.
5. Newspaper article by Janice F. DeMille
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Delila Alldredge autobiography
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