2. | Benajah Julius Record was born 2 Aug 1867, Falmouth, Pendleton, Kentucky, United States (son of Josiah Calaway Records and Catherine Caroline Enders); died 12 Mar 1959, Henderson, Clark, Nevada, United States; was buried 16 Mar 1959, Deweyville, Box Elder, Utah, United States. Notes:
MY LIFE STORY WRITTEN BY BENAJAH J. RECORD
Contributed By RecordJoanRuth1 · 17 October 2013 ·
I Benajah Julius Record was born the 2nd day of August, 1867, near Falmouth, in Pendleton County, Kentucky – son of Josiah Callaway Record and Catherine Caroline Enders. My mother was born in Herborn, Hessen, Nassau, Germany. She came to America between the age of 14 and 15 years, and lived in Texas, where she married a man by the name of Mr. Miller. They had three children, one, a daughter named Mary Verna Miller, who later married Thomas Sargent. The other two children were unknown to me, as they died, along with their father from yellow fever and were buried in Galveston, Texas. My mother, being left a widow, with her daughter Mary Verna, later left Texas with a German family by the name of Earon, and went to Foster, Bracken County, Kentucky to live, probably going by boat up the Ohio River from Galveston, Texas. Later my mother married my father, Josiah Callaway Record, who was a bachelor forty years of age. To them were born six children, five boys and one girl, as follows: Weeden Thomas, Lewis William, Archibald Dixon, Benajah Julius, Josiah Grant and Julie Hannah. When I was about six years of age, I attended summer school, and during the hottest part of the day, I would get so sleepy that I could not hold up my head. The teacher would lay me down on one of the benches and put her bonnet under my head and let me sleep as long as I cared to. The teachers name was Polly Huffman. She was an old maid, but everyone loved her for her kindness to the children. They called her “Aunt Polly.” My next teacher was another old maid who was just the opposite in her disposition. No one liked her as she was so unkind. Her name was Bell Maynes. My next teacher was Sylvester Pribble. I attended his school for two terms. He was a good man, as well as a capable teacher. The next teachers were just average, but the best the county could afford to hire, as funds were not available. Teachers were not selected for what they knew, but for how strict they were with the pupils. I have seen them whip children for practically no reason at all except to give cent to their hatred for children. The only whipping I ever got was from Bell Maynes. She wrote words on the blackboard for the children to read. When it came my turn to recite and word “it” came up, I pronounced it “hit” and got a whipping for it. It was two years later before I found out what the whipping was for. That incident gave me a dislike for old maids that has stayed with me all of my life. I have learned something from that experience and that is “If you want to know how to raise your children, just ask an old maid, and she can tell you how”. Often in my boyhood days I had a dream, not once, but several times which were almost the same. As they come to my memory now, I would dream of traveling on a highway and seeing a building with spires extending up from the rest of the town. I have never seen but one place that reminded me of my dreams and that is Salt Lake City and the Temple. This may be just a coincidence and the dreams may have had nothing to do with the dream, at all. When I was just twelve years of age, my father moved to Lincoln Co, Kentucky. It was just about the same with our family there, as it was in Pendleton County. We were barely able to make a living at farming. It was not long after we moved here that my brother Archibald, who was older than I, got killed while working in the timber, cutting cross ties for the railroad. As he and I were generally together, it was lonesome for me afterwards as my youngest brother, Josiah, was five years younger than I, and the one older was about that much older, so that left me quite alone. When I was seventeen years of age I went to Jessamine County to work for a Mr. George Quimby during the summer and fall. The next year I went to Boone County and farmed with my brother, Lewis, who was the one left older than I, and he had married Margaret Ann Courtney. I stayed with there with them one year. I next hired out to a Mr. Joseph Cleek, and was with him for three years, and while making a trip to see my father and mother, I stopped to visit a friend who lived in Jessamine county. When I arrived there I found that he had died a few days before with Typhoid Fever. I stayed with my oldest brother, Thomas, for a week and then went back to Boone County, and in a few days I came down with Typhoid Fever also. If it had not been that the Lord had a work for me to do, I would have went the way my friend Allan Ball did. When my three years were up with Mr. Cleek, I went to see my half sister, Mary Verna Sargent, who was sick with Tuberculosis, and stayed with her until she died. I went there in March, and she died in August of that same year. Then I went back to Jessamine County and worked for Mr. George Quimby again, and while there his daughter Leaner Quimby and I were married December, 1893. I was twenty six years old, and she was twenty one. I had seen her grow up from a little girl to womanhood. Leaner and I left and went to Lincoln County to live near my father and mother who were old and alone. We were there about six years. During this time I contributed to their support. While living there I met the Mormon Elders. I went to a meeting to hear them preach one evening, out of curiosity, and that was the starting point that later caused me to join the Church and later move to Utah. Out of all the men that were at that meeting, I was the only one interested enough to get one of their books. It was the “Voice of Warning” by Parley P. Pratt, which I read. That was the beginning of our conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was baptized October 9, 1899 by Elder George Mays. My wife was baptized the following spring. My mother and father were very much opposed to our joining the Mormon Church, as they had heard only the worse things about it. The left, shortly after, and went to live with my oldest brother, Weeden, whose wife had died in Buena Vista, Garard County. We left Kentucky in September, 1900. My wife and I had four children at the time; Hubert, Eugene, Odes Bodine, and Cecil May. We went to Honeyville, Box Elder County and stayed with George Mays family until spring. I later worked on the railroad section for about three months and then rented a farm at what is now known as Harper Ward. I was Assistant Superintendent in the Sunday School there for about two years. I then bought a 20 acre tract of land with a house in Deweyville. It was under the Hammond Canal. I did well at raising sugar beets for the first year. The second year the canal broke and I lost everything because for lack of water. I then rented for the next ten years in Deweyville. The Lord gave us thirteen children as follows: Hubert Eugene, Odes Bodine, Harold King, Cecil May, Victoria Catherine, George, Joseph Theron, Julius Clifford, Millie E, Willie T., Viola, Pearl, and Bernie. I will give a word picture of my wife here, as she was a kind and loving wife and mother, good to her children and always the same to each. She never made a favorite of one, at the expense of another. She kept the children clean, never putting on clean clothes over dirty ones. She always had a smile for me whenever I came into the house or when we met in the yard. She never had very much time to attend Church, as there was always a little baby in our home to look after. I always let Odes help on wash day as he liked to do that for his Mother. I remember the first time that I saw her. She was just a little girl around eleven years of age – very quiet and never talked much. She was a very sweet little girl and remained the same all her life. The first time I met her was in 1883 when I first worked for her father, but if she ever spoke to me than I don’t remember it, as she was very reserved and I was not much better. I was only 17 then, and ten years later, she and I were married. On September 26, 1916, my wife Leaner died of breast cancer. That was the hardest thing I have ever been called on to experience in all my life. Now, after thirty five years, the wound has not healed. My life has been lonesome, more so than most people think or care. I have not cried on their shoulders or wanted their sympathy but made the best of the ordeal, and tried not to show my own troubles, so that others would make light or sneer. If there is a hell worse than to lose a companion, then I don’t want to experience it. All thirteen children were living at home, as none were married when my wife passed away. Since then, the Lord has taken two of them, Willie T., and Bernie, to be with their mother. Elder George Mays said at her funeral that Sister Record was the sweetest tempered person he had ever met. Dr. Whitlock attended her when our last child was born and as he was leaving we were talking out in the yard. I said she was very reserved and he said she was modest to extreme. I will give a few of the outstanding events that have happened during my life. The first one is an incident that happened about the year 1890, while I was working for Mr. Quimby. A young man was drowned in the Kentucky River. His name was Robert Dorman. The body was not recovered for nearly three months. While I was plowing land in the river bottoms to plant corn, the river was up high, and rafts were running about 100 yards apart. One of the men on one of the rafts hollored to me and said there was a dead man in the turn hole, up the river. (A turn hole is an elbow in the river, and when any object gets in there, it may stay there for a day or so.) I acknowledged the information. As there was a family living close by, I went to the house and told one of the boys who was about my age. He said “Lets go get him.” We went down to the river and he got a canoe that he had tied to a maple tree along the river bank. A canoe is a log hollowed out and pointed at each end. We got in, and went across the river and up the opposite side to the turn hole, and there we got in, and went across the river and up the opposite side to the turn hole. There was the dead man. The boy with me was William Easley. When he saw the dead man he said, “I wouldn’t touch that for anything in the world.” I said, “It isn’t the dead man that I am afraid of, but the live one that is operating the canoe.” I told him to keep the canoe right side up and I would see to the dead man. So finding a piece of rope, I tied one end around one leg of the man, and the other end to the canoe. We retraced our route back to where we started, then drove a stake in the bank and tied the rope to it. It started to rain and rained all night and most of the next day. We sat up all night, along with some others, in the rain. The river kept rising so we had to keep pulling up the stake, bringing the body in closer to the bank, drive in the stake again and wait for the river to rise some more. By morning the stake was 25 feet from where we first drove it in the bank. The Sheriff and Doctor came about 10:00, the next day to get the body. That has been 60 years ago this May, 1950. Another incident was a few months before my wife and I came to Utah. I had a job hauling some lumber to the railroad station for Wyburg Hanna Company. One day while loading the wagons, as there were two of us, and I was in charge of the hauling. I was on top of a stack of lumber with a lumber rule, (the kind you could turn the boards over with.) Sometimes I would use the rule and sometimes my hands. When near the bottom of the stack, for some reason or other, I stopped turning another board with the rule, right where my hand would have been. There was a large copperhead snake coiled up. They are very poisonous and I know that there was some unseen power that caused me to stop using my hands, as I did, as I had never thought of the chance of a snake being in that lumber. Another time, later, while working at that same job which lasted for some time, I had a dream one night that the boiler at a small saw mill had blown up. I had just passed the mill the day before, and they were sawing lumber there. I didn’t give the dream such thought, but when getting near the mill the next day, my dream came back to my mind, and when I came to a point where the mill could be seen, the boiler was gone. I thought, perhaps, they had moved it to some other place. When, on further examination, I saw a hole in the ground about a foot or more deep. I went on another hundred feet and saw another hole in the ground, and nearly a hundred yards from where the mill was, laid the boiler. It had blown up and went end over end and made the holes in the ground. I have never been able to figure out when that dream came to me as it did. After the death of my wife, I later came to Garfield Smelter to work in September, 1922, and worked there for about eight years. While working there, a Superintendent sent a few brick masons to Amarillo, Texas, to construct a furnace at the Zinck Smelter. It belonged to the A.S.R. The man in charge to do the work was Dan Lloyd. He selected the men in Salt Lake City. One day he came to me while I was mixing mortar for the masons working on a repair job at the Smelter, and asked me how I would like to go to Amarillo with him. I asked if he thought the Superintendent would let me go. He said there would be no harm in asking. The next day Dan came by again and said Mr. Singer said, If Mr. Lloyd wanted to take me along, it was OK. We went to Amarillo in April, 1929, and finished the job in two months. I got back around the 1st of June. I worked at the Smelter until sometime in September, 1930. As the depression came on I didn’t get another job until 1932 when I was employed as a special officer at the Growers Market in Salt Lake City. This was a farmers market for their produce. I worked there until September, 1943, when I quit the market for work as a guard at the Vanadium Plant and was there for one year. I was now 77 years old and a night job was against my health and age. My next work was at the police Target Range from June 15, 1944 to June 1, 1950, where I worked as a caretaker there. Since my conversion into the Church, I have always been interested in Genealogy in trying to get data that could be used in doing temple work for my ancestors. Previous to 1917 I did not have any information about my mother’s birthplace, except the fact that she was born in Germany. In 1917 while I was on a visit to Kentucky, I was given an old letter that my oldest brother, Weeden, had in his possession. It was written to my mother on March 14, 1877 by her sister, Julie, in German language. It had been kept more as a keepsake, but we did not know the contents. I gave this letter to my daughter-in-law Eunice Record, who was doing some genealogical work. Trusting to providence, she wrote a letter of inquiry to the Parish of Herborn, Germany, believing that to be her birthplace. This letter was turned over to the Parish Clerk, who turned out to be very genealogically minded. He searched the records of Herborn, and found a most complete record of her ancestors back to Conrad Enders, who was born in the year 1737. Through the means of this letter we obtained 58 new progenitors and a still more extensive field of labor was opened to our family. I have spent a lot of time and money getting genealogy on the Record and Quimby lines and have done about 500 endowments in the Temple. I would like to do more but my health is not so good. Every time that I think that I will stop trying to get more records, there is an urge that seems to pull me on to try some other sources to see what I can get there. Up to the present time, I have made five trips back to Kentucky to gather more genealogy. I have been able to get several hundred names so far, and hope to get a lot more. While at Edenburgh, Indiana, this year 1951, I met a lot of nice people. One, in particular, Mr. Levi Records and his daughter Eva Sidner, and her two children Jane and Thomas. Levi helped me to get the names off of the tombstones in a number of cemeteries there. Some have promised to send me a copy of all the family records they have. I know that they do not understand the plan for salvation for the dead. If they did, they would not delay a minute in getting the records to me, as they are a good Christian people. At the present time, I have a feeling that I should go to New Mexico and, perhaps, I would be able to ge some names there. The Spirit of the Lord must have had something to do with my joining the Church. First, in leading me back to Jessamine County to get married to my wife Leaner, as I had never thought of her in all the times that I worked for her father. To have found one so willing to accept the Gospel, along with me, would have been hard to find. The Lord has given me a greater knowledge of the Gospel than most of the members of the Church have. I have always defended it anywhere or anytime. The first vote that I ever cast was for the Prohibition Party, and I have always supported it every time it has come up. It is now the first part of 1952 and during the last 18 months I have traveled 19,600 miles on the Greyhound Bus Line getting genealogy for the Record and Quimby lines. The last trip that I made was to Van Buren, Arkansas to see my son, Harold K. Record. When I arrived at his home I found that he had been taken to the hospital with what the doctor said was Virus Pneumonia. He entered the hospital on November 8, 1951. They later moved him from the Van Buren hospital on 2nd day of Dec. to the St. Vincent Hospital in Little Rock, where he died on the 22nd of December 1951. His body was sent back to Salt Lake City for burial in the City Cemetery on Saturday, 29th of December, 1951. On Sunday, the 30th I left for Cedar City, Utah with my daughter Pearl and her husband. It rained most of the day and we were tired when we arrived at Cedar City which was 266 miles from Salt Lake City. Dr. Arthur W. Records has promised to send me a copy of all the family records that he had while visiting him in the fall of 1950. When I arrived home from Van Buren on the 22nd of December, I found that Dr. Records had kept his promise and had sent the record to my son, Odes B. Record, which I was glad to get. This is a short story of my life and I think that my memory has done well to remember this much after 84 years. I will leave it open so there can be more added later. I know that my life is far spent and that the Lord will soon call me to be gathered with the ones that have gone on before. I want to do all I can for the salvation for the dead while my life lasts. The Prophet Joseph Smith said that we didn’t have too much time to do the work for our dead. The reason, I think, is that the more we do now, the more there will be ready for the first Resurraction.
Benajah married Leaner Quimby 13 Dec 1893, Nicholasville, Jessamine, Kentucky, United States. Leaner (daughter of George Quimby and Victoria E. Woner) was born 6 Jun 1872, Little Hickman, Jessamine, Kentucky, United States; died 26 Sep 1916, Deweyville, Box Elder, Utah, United States; was buried Sep 1916, Deweyville, Box Elder, Utah, United States. [Group Sheet]
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