Marvel married: Gus Chatterley Pendleton. Her Father is: James Smith Abbott. Her Mother is Chloe Robison.

I was born in Bunkerville, Nevada in 1900. When I was 19 years old, I took violently ill with pain in my back and legs. I was not able to leave my bed. We had no doctor. The neighbor women helped my mother apply hot packs for several days. One afternoon, I could feel that my life was leaving me. I asked my aunt to call my parents in from the other room. My father gave me a blessing and pled with the Lord to let me live and be well.

I was able to sit up after two weeks then with assistance was able to get out of bed. The pain localized to my right side but we had no idea that my appendix had ruptured. I finally recovered but was unable to finish my fourth year of high school. We would learn a few years later following surgery that my appendix had ruptured and abscessed chronically and I was told by doctors that I would never be able to bear children.


While I was 19, I met the man I would marry. My father was postmaster and I was a sworn postal clerk. Gus got his mail from our office, even though he lived across the river where he was herding sheep. He came for the mail twice a day. His transportation was horseback. He wore a 10 gallon hat , White Angora chaps and spurs. I had danced with him a few times. He later claimed that when he came to the dances in Bunkerville he asked which girl danced the closest and was referred to me. But, I don't remember it that way.

Our first date was when my girl friends and I , after sacrament meeting, saddled our horses and went for a ride. We met a group of boys who were out riding so we rode around together in a gang. When the time came to part, Gus didn't say much,. He just came and grabbed the reins of my horse and led me off. We dated for a few months and were married by my uncle, William Abbott, the bishop of Mesquite. My father and mother were very disappointed that we were not married in the temple. I had my recommend but when Gus went to Cedar City to get his, he found that his records, baptism and all, did not exist. So we got married and he was baptized and worked hard for a recommend. We went to the temple four years later,
when our little girl, Maxine, was 21 months old.

In our first few years of marriage, we lived in Cedar City, Iron Spring (where my appendix ruptured a second time), Bunkerville, and Las Vegas. While living in Cedar City , we went into the laundry business with Gus' brother Legrande. The old house was adobe with a hip roof. The laundry did quite will, even though I often chided Gus that I was the main equipment and the only laborer. We needed to enlarge. We lived in the room at the back of the house. Gus and Legrande decided to tear the walls down on the front part and increase the size of the laundry. When they started with the hose, to wash out the bottom course of adobe blocks, intending to let the walls collapse from the bottom and thinking it easier than tearing them down bit by bit form the top. I could see catastrophe. I warned them that the whole building would fall down if those walls collapsed. They just said to me, "what does a woman know?". They told me to watch and learn because everything was going to be alright.

I pled with them and said, "If you're going to do it, let's at least get the furniture out of the room in the back so that if it does collapse at least it won't ruin it." They wouldn't listen. So, on my own I dragged and pulled and toted all of the stuff out into the yard, while they went busily on with their job, dissolving the bottom course of adobe. When the walls collapsed, the roof still stayed there…for just a few seconds. Then, it tilted forward on the center partition and then the other walls began to weaken. They twisted slightly and collapsed, tearing everything apart, destroying the house. So that ended that project and we moved back to Bunkerville.