Joseph Henry James
1855-1908
Joseph Henry James, son of Sarah Holyoak and Joseph James, was born October 22, 1855, in Ogden, Weber County, Utah, on of 12 children. Not much is known about his childhood, but records show he moved to Sunset, Arizona before 1877 where it is supposed he lived the United Order.
He was a short, stout, dark-complexioned man with a keen sense of humor. His first wife was Elizabeth Salome Broomfield, whom he married July 12, 1877, and from this union were born 14 children. His second wife was her sister, Mary Eliza, whom he married January 10, 1879, and she also bore him 12 children. His third wife was Orpha Emelia Rogers whom he married September 12, 1882, and she bore him seven children.
He moved to Mexico in 1885 with his three wives. They were the first settlers who moved into “Old Town” where they lived in a dugout and had a hard time finding enough food to eat that first winter. From there he moved to Colonia Dublan, then to Casas Grandes and finally settled in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Hop Valley, near Pacheco, which became his home for as long as he lived. By this time he had 25 children and he decided it was time for each of his wives to have a home of her own. So, on the banks of the river where it forked, he built a home for each wife, where, as he said, no matter where high water caught him he always had a home. Here he planted fruit trees that are still bearing (1967). He was a good farmer, ran a diary, made cheese and butter and also owned a saw mill and soon had a prosperous little family community.
The Jameses were good hosts and people enjoyed visiting them for they always had a good joke to tell and made everyone feel at home. Some of his humorous statements are remembered and are in common use today by people who heard him make them.
In 1908, he and his sons devised a shortcut to get logs from his sawmill at the top of the mountain to the valley by building a chute through which logs could pass. This would have saved many hours of travel over rough, hazardous roads. The plan was hailed with delight by some but with skepticism by others. There was enough interest in its outcome that many lumbermen were watching when the first log was ready to make its triumphant landing. His son Hollister regulated the take-off of the logs at the top, and then Joe James, with a couple of Mexican helpers, stood at the bottom to enjoy the safe landing and the successful outcome of his revolutionary idea. This expected thrill was short-lived, for that first log, coming with the speed of an express train, suddenly up-ended and jumped the chute. Joe James and his helpers, standing in the precise location to catch the full impact of the hurtling logs, were killed instantly. The scheme that was to have made Joe James immortal died stillborn. He was buried in the western cemetery April 22, 1908 in Colonia Juarez. His three widows and his large, sturdy and industrious family were left to mourn his loss and eke out individual existences in various parts of the United States.
His jocular comments on life as he met it have immortalized him among the people who knew him best. Though it took Joe James to tell a Joe James joke, the following have been preserved through the years and are still in common use in this area:
As Joe was going from Dublan to Juarez on horseback one night, someone had been putting a wire fence up near the road some distance beyond a limestone ridge and had just gotten up one wire of the fence. Joe, not being able to see it, rode right into it and hut his leg almost half off. When he got to Juarez he wnt to Mrs. Crow, the only doctor they had in Juarez at that time. She had nothing to give him to deaden the pain. “Go ahead and sew it up,” Joe said, so she started in on the job. Joe just sat there telling jokes. She said she might have to cut the leg off. When she was about through sewing it on, he said to her, “I’m only going to pay you half price.” She wanted to know why and he said, “Because it is half cut off now.”
He used to like to tell about the Pacheco farmers. He said that they would raise a little corn to feed their horses to haul a little lumber so they could have something to feed their horses.
One day as he was walking up the street one of the brethren met him and said, “Well, Brother James, I’m sure glad to see you. I heard that you were dead.” Joe said, “I did get shot but I turned around so quick that the bullet came out of the same hole it went in.”
Ida Skousen was out in her yard one morning and Joe came along and stopped and talked with her a moment. As he stated she said, “Brother James you look shorter every time I see you.” He said, “Yes, I get worn off up in the rocks.”
One day as Joe was going down the mountain he met one of the men coming up and stopped to chat a bit. He noticed one of the men’s horses was slo lame it was holding one leg up. Joe said, “Can that horse add?” “No,” said the man, “Why?” Joe said, “I see he was three down and is carrying one.”
Joe said that lumber haulers had to haul their lumber green because it warped so bad if it got dry that both ends tried to get off the mountain at the same time.
I remember at one time Joe raised what he called cow horn turnips. They would grow way out of the ground. One day he was to our place and was talking to my mother. Mother asked him how things were going with him and he said, “Oh, I[m having tough luck.” Mother asked him what the trouble was and he said, ”The wind is blowing over all over my turnips and I’m breaking all my cant hook handles turning over potatoes to keep them from sunburing, they are growing out of the ground so fast.”
Joe told me about a man who ran a store but could neither read nor write. He ran a credit account and he would just draw a picture of whatever he sold. One day a man came in and the storekeeper said to him, “Say, you owe me for a cheese.” The man said, “I don’t owe you for a cheese.” “Yes, you do,” said the storekeeper. “I got it down right here.” The man said, “Let me see,” and he saw the round circle. “That wasn’t cheese,” he said. “That was a grinding stone.” “Oh, yes” said the storekeeper. “I fogot to put the little square hole in the middle of it.”
One year Joe rented a piece of land up the river at a place we called Willow Creek, to a man by the name of Henry, to raise potatoes. Joe’s cows got to going up the river and eating the man’s potatoes. The man went down and told Joe to try and take care of his cows. Joe would make wisecracks and didn’t seem to do anything about it. So one morning he went down to Joe’s place as joe was just getting ready to go to Juarez. Henry said, “Joe, I wish you would bring back all the old boxes that you can find.” Joe looked at him and said, “What in the world do you want things like that for?” Henry said, “To cover what few potato vines your damn cows haven’t ate.” This was the only time I have ever heard of when Joe didn’t have a wisecrack to reply with, it had surprised him so.
Someone asked him once how he liked his farm over in Hop Valley. He said, “Just fine.” He said he went out to plant some cucumbers and they came up so fast they threw dirt in his eyes. Then when he looked back the first ones he had planted had runners on and he went to get out of the field but found runners going up his leg and had to cut himself loose to get out. In fact, they were actually growing so fast, he said, they were dragging the little cucumbers to death.
Brother Stowell went to visit him at a new home he had built. The house was right at the base of a hill. Brother Stowell asked him how he liked it and he said, “Just fine. I can go out and stand on the back porch and load my shotgun with pumpkin seed and shot them into the hill and then when they are ready and my wife wants one I can go on the porch and shoot one and it will roll right down to the door.”
Joe sent little Ammer over to Pacheco to grind a sack of corn. He didn’t come back until night and Joe asked him what took I so long getting back. Ammer said, “That old mill ground so slow I could eat it as fast as it came out until I’d starve to death.”
As some people were building a house Joe was watching them. A 2×4 slipped off and hit Joe, knocking him out. When he can go he asked them what had happened and they told him the board had come off and hit him. He asked if it hurt the board and when they said no he said, “Well, then, what’s the matter? Let’s get up and go to work.”
Joe asked one of his little boys to go get a hammer for hm. After some time the boy came back and was standing there when his father asked him if he was the boy he sent after the hammer. The boy said, “Yes,” and Joe said, “Well, you’ve grown so much since I sent you I didn’t know you.”
Someone asked Joe James why all Mormons rode 3rd class and answered, “Because there is no 4th class.”
When asked the reason of his good potato crop during the drought he said he always planted onions with his potatoes so that the eyes of the potatoes would water themselves.
When asked how he could feed so many children he answered, “I feed them dried apples for breakfast, water for dinner, and let them swell up for supper.”
When asked why he didn’t give a lady that was standing on the train his seat, he answered, because his seat was a birthday present to him.
When a neighbor asked Joe James how he was getting along he answered, “I’m holding my own, I came here with nothing and I’ve still got it.”
Bobby Cochenour and Eulla Davis, granddaughters.
Joseph Henry James Stalwarts South of the Border, Nelle Spilsbury Hatch page 321