The History of Emmett and Madge Leonard and Their 64 Years Together

By Madge Leonard

Emmett was born in Price, Utah, on April 22, 1907, to Zoe Ellen and Leo Leonard. He was the second of nine children. They lived in Peerless, Utah, a coal mining town and the children were bused to school in Price, Utah, about 25 miles away.

I was born in Orangeville, Utah, August 12, 1908 to Annie and John Irving Jewkes. l was the second of five children. My father and mother moved to Wattis, Utah, a mining town where Dad worked in the coal mines mining coal. I finished high school in Wattis. The family then moved back to Orangeville and I stayed there and worked in an ice cream and candy store and also went to beauty school.

During that time Emmett's parents moved back to Price while he remained in the mining camps and worked in the coal mines. Leo, Emmett's father, had a ten-piece orchestra. Emmett and his brothers, Lee and Clair all played in it. Emmett played the saxophone. They were called "The Night Hawks." They played for dances all over Utah and other states for 10 - 15 years. That's where I first met Emmett, I was sixteen and he was seventeen. They were playing for a dance in Helper, Utah. My friends and I were there having a good time. The music was great. I looked up and saw Emmett and thought he was a tall, good-Iooking guy, so I winked at him. When the dance was over he came over to talk to me and to my surprise he was short, but still good—looking. (I was never going to marry a short guy.)

We went together for a while, but on one date we had to go to a dance and he called and cancelled saying he had to work. It just happened that Birdie, Emmett's sister, came and asked if I was going to the dance. I said, "No." She insisted, saying. “If you get a date, you take me. And if I get one, I'll take you."

Birdie got a date and he had a friend, which made it nice for me. Surprise, there at the dance was Emmett dancing with a new girlfriend. Well, that was enough of that two-timing guy, I thought. Needless to say, we started going together again two months later and on October 27, 1927, we got married in Orangeville, Utah.

A History of Leo Pold and Zoe Ellen (Powell) Leonard

Written By Clair Leonard in 1987 

What I remember about my parents:

Although I had many a licking and grabbed by the hair of the head when I tried to get away from my mother, it was because I did not do what I was told to do at the time. Playing came first with me, as it does with all kids, and when a woman has a baby every two years her strength and nerves are not in the best shape.

Dad was more easy going, and was a good provider, but mother was the money manager. When I was a teenager and would have a run in with my mother, I would go up and stay with my grandmother Powell. My mother was the 8th child of Sarah Jane and John Powell, born December 6, 1887. She met Leo P.  Leonard at Sunnyside. Utah while working at her sister Florence's Boarding house. They were married June 17, 1904 and had nine children - seven boys, and two girls.

Mother was quite high strung and could get quite hysterical, and would become a screaming female when something unexpected would happen. A good example of this behavior is one that I will never forget. We were out in Carbon Co. in 1919 when a cloud burst happened. It rained so hard that Price River was flooding over its banks and the fire truck came down past our house at 2 a.m. with siren and fire bell blasting, and a string of cars behind.

Mother started screaming, "What's happening". Dad went out and down to the river to find out what had happened. It seems that a young couple had been parked to close to the river bank which had caved in and took them and their car into the river. I don't know if they ever did find them. As Dad talked with people. They were all afraid the Scofield dam was going to break. The next morning they put a train of cars together, loaded the cars down with men, scrapers and horses, and sent them up to the dam to save the dam. Clark and I both tried to get on but they kicked us off.

Personal History of Stanley Floyd Leonard written by himself

Written by Stanley in 1994
Born June 23, 1915, Price, Utah
Early in the morning of June 23rd, 1915, I was born to Leo B. and Zoe Ellen Powell Leonard, in Price Utah. I was number six out of what was to be a family of nine children -- seven boys and two daughters.

My father was born and raised in Kamas, Utah. He was a kind man, hard—working, dedicated to his family - working really hard to see that we had the food and clothes we needed.

My mother was a native of Price and lived there nearly all her life. She was a very strong personality, with a great deal of good common sense. She was a competent planner and could get things done that needed to be accomplished. Mother and father always kept our home very attractively, as it was one of the nicest homes in Price at that time.

One of the earliest experiences I can remember (when I was approximately three years old) is the night my family arrived home from Idaho. We pulled into the railroad station at Price. It was dark, wet, and cold. Years later, I talked to mother about these memories and she said that it had to have been when we came home from visiting Dad, who was working in Idaho. I can also remember a lot of people at the station.

We lived in Peerless for nine or ten years. While there, Max and Jack were born. It was my job to wash the diapers and, boy, were there a lot of them! Some wash days, usually Saturday, I headed for the hills and hid. A boyhood friend, Ken Howard, and I would take enough food to get by for the day. We would come slinking back at night, only to be rewarded with a good spanking.

I had little odd jobs to earn money, such as pass bills for a dollar, or work at the company store for a new pair of shoes, bananas, or whatever. We would have to go to Mutual and Sunday School at Spring Canyon. I joined the Boy Scouts in Spring Canyon, where I would have to go alone at night. It was scary coming home at 10 o'clock and I would run all the way. But at Christmas time, I was always the one who had the privilege to go up in the mountains to get our Christmas tree at Peerless. I didn't have to go far, just up a mile or so but the snow could be quite deep at times.When we moved back to Price, I remember that I got sick and had to stay with Dad and Birdie in Peerless, where I could be close to the company doctor.

Memories, Anecdotes, and Reflections on my Father Leo P. Leonard

Recorded April 25, 1991 by Max G. Leonard, seventh child of Leo P. Leonard.

Leo P. Leonard was born October 28, 1882 in Kamas, Utah, the youngest of five children of George Bradford Leonard and Julia Hillock. He married Zoe Ellen Powell of Price, Utah in 1904. He died March 1963 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

This is not a short biography of my father because I have not been able to collect sufficient data on his long and eventful life to do it justice. What I have recorded here are a few of my most vivid memories and anecdotes and some reflections about his impact on my life over a period of approximately 37 years from 1926, when I was slightly over three years of age until March 1963 when he died.

One of my first recollections of my father was meeting him after work as he came off the Peerless Mine tipple, walking with him to the miner’s bathhouse where he bathed before going home and sitting on one of the benches used by miners to undress while he removed the coal dust and sweat from his body with the other miners working that shift. The odor of sweaty bodies mingled with steam and soap are still clearly etched in my memory. It seemed, however, that no amount of soap and water completely removed the coal dust that collected on my father’s and the miner’s eyelashes and eyebrows, and around the fingernails. This contrast of white faces against dark eyebrows and eyelashes made a distinct impression on a three year old; Our walk home from the bath house was always enjoyable because dad would hoist me up on his shoulders and I could sit there and ask him all kinds of questions about his job as a Tipple Foreman and Weigh Boss, which he always patiently answered.

The Mining Legends - Caleb Baldwin Rhoads

Perhaps mining presents more legends than any other source.  In our chapter on mining in Utah, we told of a religious man who came into a mining camp, claiming he possessed the power to resurrect the dead.  How alarm spread the camp as the miners considered the many embarrassing triangles that would be exposed.  How grudges would be revived and perhaps men would be killed if the resurrection took place.  The prosperous miners panicked. They collected 2,500.00 and gave it to the religious fanatic on condition he leave Alta’s grave yard intact.  In our files are many such incidents.

Caleb Baldwin Rhoads was a pioneer of 1846, who camped in the valley in the summer of 1846 on his way to California.  This is a story of a very rich gold deposit that was supposed to be in the Uintah Mountains.  Its whereabouts were known only by Caleb Baldwin Rhoads, who was married to Malinda Powell.  Believe it or not but here is the story I have heard from my father and old Caleb’s mouth.

First, I will mention some of the words which my father, John A. Powell, related to me.  My father and Caleb Rhoads were great hunters and were out in the mountains together often in their days, where on many occasions Uncle Caleb told my father many things in regards to the gold he knew of, but never would show him where it was located.  Although my father had seen much of the ore and said it was very rich in gold, he could not understand why, if Caleb knew where there was so much gold, he did not locate it or at least get more out than he did and not talk as much about it as he did.
One time in the early days of Kamas, Caleb and my father, being the first two settlers of Kamas Valley, went on a hunting trip back in the mountains west of Kamas.  While on this trip they killed a large buck deer but could not carry it to camp so they took the entrails out and hung it in a tree until they could come the next day with a horse and could take it to camp.  Nothing was said about the gold at this time, but a number of years later when they had moved from Kamas to Price, Caleb asked my father if he remembered the time they had killed the buck deer, where upon my father said, “Yes, very distinctly I do.”  Then Caleb told my father that not very far from the place where they killed the deer was where they got his rich gold ore, but he did not tell what direction or how far he meant by saying, “Not very far.”  So my father was at a loss to know whether it was one mile, five miles, or more.

James Leonard and the Puritan Ironworks

About James Leonard

James Leonard was born in 1620 in Pontypool, Monmouthshire, Wales. He died in 1691 in Plymouth and was buried in 1691 in Raynham, Bristol, Massachusetts. James came with his brother Henry from Pontypool, Monmouthshire to Providence in 1645. He moved to Taunton 1652. He built his house about 1670, although the weather vane on it was dated 1700, and when the house was torn down before 1850 it was reputedly the oldest in New England. He was a friend of King Philip but his house was used as a garrison during King Philip's War, in about 1676, and it is said that the head of the Indian leader was kept in the cellar of the house for at time. His second wife, Margaret, bore him no children and died c. 1701. His estate was settled Nov. 5, 1691. (The preceding is from Ancestry.com)

The following text is an excerpt from the book by Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. New York: Norton, 1995. pp. 263-268.

The Puritan Ironworks

The same pattern of reformation describes the fortunes of New England's premier ironworking family: the Leonards. During the seventeenth century, the Leonards were known for two things, ironworking and troublemaking. More than any other ironworking family, the Leonards illustrate the gulf between the culture of discipline and the culture of the hearth. The Leonard s may have been recruited from kinsman Richard Lennard's furnace in Brede, Sussex (in the Weald). Soon after their arrival at Hammersmith during the mid-1640s, the family-in fact an extended clan-established a reputation as the leading group of ironworkers in New England. "Where you find iron-works," ran a local saying, "there you will find a Leonard."

How Leo B. Leonard and His Sons met with President Eisenhower

During the summer of 1940 the Army had their most ambitious war games prior to World War II. The setting was the newly named Ford Ord, near Monterey, California. Many of the soldiers involved in these war games used wooden rifles. There was little ammunition for the First World War cannons. Trucks were used as mock tanks. This exercise was to be the U.S. Army's first attempt at amphibious landing. As the troops came ashore from rowboats in Monterey Bay, trucks zoomed back and forth with soldiers shouting boom boom, pretending they were tank guns firing away! Above the beach line, crowds of local citizens yelled and applauded while the 32nd Infantry regimental Band played. That band was conducted by Staff Sergeant Leo Bradford Leonard.

The Army maneuvers were partially planned by Mark W. Clark, a brilliant officer from the office of the Chiefs of Staff in Washington D.C. With Col. Clark was his friend and classmate from the West Point Class of 1915, Lt. Col. Dwight David Eisenhower. Ike (as he was called) was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, and wondered if he would ever get a regimental command. With nothing official to do but watch, Ike wandered over to the band and chatted with Staff Sergeant Leo B. Leonard. He asked Leo if he could play a song called "Abdul a bul bul a mir", Ike's favorite song. Staff Sergeant Leonard said that most of the boys knew that song from their many visits to the local bars, but they did not have the music with them since it was not scheduled for the program that day.