Son of Emanuel Hanks and Maraldia Willey
History - Austin was born October 1, 1886, in Bountiful, Utah to Emanuel Hanks and Maraldia Willey Hanks. Emanuel loved to sing and sang as a choir boy in the Church of England. Emanuel was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England in 1881. He and his cousin, Edward, had a strong desire to go to America and gather with the Saints.
To earn the money for passage, Emanuel bought three little pigs at one pound each. He gathered scraps from the neighbors for feed for them, and when they were grown, Emanuel sold them for $30 each. His brother Henry marveled that "Manny" would spend his entire $90 to go to America to be with those "terrible" Mormons. Henry told him that if he went to America, he would never write him a line, and he never did.
Emanuel and his cousin, Edward, sailed on the Wyoming, leaving Liverpool April 16, 1881, and arriving in New York ten days later. Also sailing on the ship was William Wallace Willey who had completed his mission in England and was returning to his family in Bountiful, Utah. Emanuel and Edward were much "taken" with William and decided to take the same train as he did from New York to Ogden, Utah. Elder Willey's brother-in-law, Joseph Mabey, met him at the train station. Elder Willey introduced Emanuel to Joseph. Emanuel asked Joseph for a job and was hired by him. Emanuel was thrilled to be earning $20 a month. He thought it was a vast amount of money, and that he could save much of it. Thus Emanuel ended up in Bountiful, Utah.
Emanuel set to work building a small house in Bountiful for his parents and sent for them. On September 3, 1881, William and Sarah sailed from Liverpool on the same ship Wyoming that Emanuel had sailed on a few months earlier and arrived in New York September 13, 1881. By the end of September they were in Zion.
Maraldia Willey, Elder Willey's daughter, was working for her Aunt Sarah Mabey, wife of Joseph Mabey, for 25 cents a day when Emanuel arrived in Utah. While she was working for her Aunt Sarah, she met Emanuel. Emanuel courted her for three years, and they were married in the Logan Temple August 26, 1885. They had a wonderful wedding reception with tables set out under the trees in the Willey's orchard.
Emanuel and Maraldia lived with his parents in Bountiful for two years. It was here they had their first child, a boy they named Austin Emanuel. Soon afterward, they moved to Vernal, Utah. Maraldia says of the move, "I had to carry my baby and block the wheels up the hills, and it seemed that the road was all hills as they were very bad. We had all of our belongings in a covered wagon where we slept, and camped out on the journey.
When we arrived in Daniel's Canyon we camped to eat. An Indian came and joined us. We invited him to eat with us, which he did. The horses got loose and wandered off, or else some Indians took them. Manuel lit out after the horses, leaving me for hours alone with the Indian. I was never so afraid in my life, as I was expecting our second child very soon."
Two of Austin's brothers, Wallace and Lawrence, were born while they lived in Vernal. After three years, the family returned to Bountiful because Emanuel's father, William, was ill. William died soon after of a ruptured hernia (August 25, 1947).
Emanuel and Maraldia enjoyed living in the Bountiful area with mountains, canyons, Salt Lake City, and other attractions nearby. They went to Salt Lake City when the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was raised, April 6, 1892. Austin was 5 ½ years old. Their family often went to the canyons or mountains for a week or so.
By 1903, Emanual and Maraldia had eight living children. Their baby, a girl named Cumorah, was two years old. Maraldia wrote, "We have had a taste of the bitter with the sweet. On one of our camping trips in Weber Canyon, Cumorah was asleep on the wagon seat and up in the wagon. I felt that she was perfectly safe, so we left camp for a few minutes. When I came back to the wagon the baby was not there. She had taken a little cup and gone to the creek presumably for a drink. I found her dead in a little shallow pool of water."
Saltair was a special attraction in Utah. It was a resort, an amusement park, built on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, resting on more than 2,000 posts and pilings. It was a family place, intended to provide a safe and wholesome atmosphere with the open supervision of leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Saltair was completed in 1893, and on August 8, a crowd of nearly 6,000 people visited there. A train from Ogden brought nearly 1,000 and the Rio Grande Western brought about half that number from Provo and south. A number of races were held and Austin won the race for the six-year-olds. He was awarded a box of candy.
Austin grew up in a rural environment and learned to be a good worker. His father, Emanuel, bought a swamp area of Clearfield and cleared it by building drainage ditches. It had very good soil. The thing that convinced Emanuel it would be a good place to raise orchards and crops was seeing all the wild bleeding heart flowers that flourished there. Emanuel built a beautiful red brick home, planted orchards, invented a machine for digging wells, and invented a water-powered washing machine. He built a fabulous workshop, and also kept bees. There was always plenty for Austin and his siblings to do.
During the summers, Austin's mother and sisters would pick berries in the evenings. Then in the morning before daylight, Emanuel and the boys would hitch the horse to the cart and take the fruit to Ogden. There they would go from house to house, peddling the fruit until it was all sold. The next morning they would repeat the same process.
On Christmas day, December 26, 1906, Austin married Linnie May Cooper of Bountiful. Their marriage was performed by Bishop David Cook. Austin was 20 years old, and Linnie 17. Linnie recorded the following about their wedding day: "Austin and I were married December 25, 1906, at high noon. Being in a hurry, and wanting to leave before Christmas dinner was served, we rushed out to the kitchen and had bacon and egg sandwiches. Then we hurried off to the Bamburger (local train) and to Bountiful. It was a beautiful day, and I wore a small shawl for a wrap. When we reached Bountiful, Austin, thinking he needed a shave before we had our picture taken, rushed next door to the barber, and somewhere along the way lost his orange blossoms. When he came back, we had our pictures, me with my hair done high with blossoms, and he without. We rushed back to Grandmother Willey's to refresh ourselves, then went to the dance in Hales Hall and had a wonderful time. The next day or two, we spent with Aunt Catherine Holbrook, then went home and stayed with Austin's folks awhile. Then we moved into part of the old factory farm house where the Clearfield Depot stands. We used to dance in the upper room of the Woods Canning Factory in Clearfield.
"About that time, the Clearfield Ward was made up of the Syracuse Ward, and we found ourselves without any public buildings. So we had to use our nickels, brain, and brawn to build a church school house and recreation hall, which was completed in a short time. (This was likely one building which was used for church, school and recreation.)
Until that time we held church in the factory room in which we danced and enjoyed all of our recreation. Austin prepared the music for our first conference, at which he worked very hard, and it came out very nice. Willis was one of the first five babies blessed in Clearfield Ward."
Austin was ward chorister in the Clearfield Ward for about ten years.
Austin and Linnie's oldest son, Willis Cooper, was born in 1907. Five more children were born while they lived in Clearfield. Edison Austin (Ed) was born in 1909. On December 1, 1909 Austin and Linnie had their marriage solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple, and had Willis sealed to them at that time. Lloyd Emanuel was born in 1910, Thelma May and Thead James (Ted), twins, in 1913, and Sarah Maurine in 1915.
As they grew, these children liked to walk along the railroad from their home to where their Hanks grandparents lived.
Austin bought a piece of ground from his dad. It had a little frame house that didn't have a ceiling covering the rafters. The boys loved to jump on the bed, hit the rafters, and grab the ceiling joists. They lived in that home a short while until Austin built a new, big house. It didn't have a basement, just a crawl space. The trap door to the crawl space was in the bathroom. If someone crawled into that space, and another person shut the door, the person underneath the door could not see anything.
One of the boys said it was darker than a black cat! The bathroom had a tub that stood on legs. The twins, Ted and Thelma, loved to soap the tub during their bath and slide down both ends. Water would fly everywhere. When the water started running under the door, their mother would take them out. Maurine was the only child of Austin and Linnie that was born in this new house that Austin built. They only lived there about two years.
As farm production increased the local farmers needed a market for their surplus produce. The Woods Cross Canning Cooperative was begun in Clearfield in 1892. They packed many different fruits and vegetables, but mostly tomatoes. Austin grew tomatoes, beans, beets, and peas for the cannery. They would plant peas by broadcasting them, harrowing them in, and cutting them with the mowing machine. They would pitch the peas on a wagon just like hay was done, and take them to the cannery. The pea vines that were left from the cannery were stacked for silage. The beets required a lot of work, thinning and topping. Their Uncle Douglas (Austin's brother) grafted some fruit trees and sealed the cut edges of the grafts with sealing wax to prevent the graft cuts from drying out.
Austin also had cows and his boys would herd their cows where Hill Field Air Force Base is now. Their farm was located near the highway going from Ogden to Sunset. They did a lot of truck gardening, raising vegetables to take to market. It was fun for Ed one day when he was following their neighbor, George Freestone, as he plowed a field. George plowed up a pouch, and saw that it contained his dad's watch. His dad was a railroad man, and he had owned that big watch that weighed a pound and had a stem wind. George wound the watch and it began running right away. Mr. Freestone was thrilled to have his watch back. It had been missing for ten years!
On October 23 of 1916, Thelma died of pneumonia at the age of three, after just 36 hours of illness. Funeral services for her were held in the Clearfield meeting house the next day. Years later, Ted's only memory of her was their sitting in an old surry, along the side of a board fence of the corral, playing like they were driving horses.
In 1916, Austin's brother, Augustin, whom the family called Gus, returned from his mission. Gus and Austin looked together for a place to farm. They first looked in southern Utah by Cedar City, but water wasn't available. Since that time deep irrigation wells have been used and there is fertile farming near Cedar City, but at that time there were no wells. Gus and Austin decided to look northward and were brought to the Snake River Valley by a realtor.
The valley was a new reclamation project being established with dams on the Snake River with a network of canals on both sides of the river. The land had a new, raw look to it as not all the land had been developed. Some was still in sagebrush. A new town was being raised on the Oregon Short Line Railroad at the confluence of Goose Creek and the Snake River. The railroad agent was a man named D.E. Burley, and the town that followed bears his name.
Gus purchased 40 acres of an 80 acre farm 2 ½ miles west of Burley and ½ mile south of the Snake River. He moved to Burley the spring of 1917. Austin purchased the remaining 40 acres of that 80 acres when he visited Gus in November of 1917.
In March of 1918, Austin and Linnie moved their family to Burley, Idaho. Their children at that time were Willis, Ed, Lloyd, Ted, and Maurine. Austin sold his land in Clearfield to some Japanese farmers. Austin was so impressed by the way they worked the land. They plowed the land leaving it full of clods and used wooden mallets to break up the clods. Next they watered the ground and worked it, and had a crop of tomatoes that very year!
Moving to Idaho was quite a venture. It was the custom in those days for the railroads which helped sponsor the settlement of an area through which their road passed, to charter railroad cars to the settlers for the movement of their machinery, household effects, etc. Gus, Austin, and a distant relative, Anson Call, leased a railroad car from the Union Pacific Railroad and this was the way they moved to Burley. They put all their belonging in a railroad boxcar, the cows and horses in one end, and the household things in the other end. Austin rode in the boxcar with it all. The rest of his family rode on the passenger train. They had to water cows at the stop in Pocatello. It took more than one day for the boxcar to get to Burley. There was a railroad stop just two miles out of town, not far from the farm they had purchased.
Austin and Linnie moved their family to a little brown house just south of Gus's house. Linnie was lonely there, and it meant so much to her that Gus's wife, Olive, would loan her books to read. Olive had been a school teacher and Linnie thought she was very generous to loan her books. Linnie would read them from cover to cover.
Linnie was a very reserved person and so good to her children. She loved to hold them and read to them after their baths. No matter how bad things were, no one else knew. She didn't talk about her troubles. As the family grew, she made 12 loaves of bread every other day! She had high blood pressure, and endured several cases of phlebitis in her legs.
Their living was mostly self-sustaining. They raised crops for the pigs and cows and other livestock. They would sell a few porkers and some milk or cream. It was a hard job to weed the crops of onions and get them to seed. It was frustrating when cows would get into the onions. The milk would then taste like onion soup! The meat from those cows was awful!
Austin and Gus exchanged work and co-owned machinery to establish their farming operations. Austin's 40 acres was nearest the road, and Gus had his down a lane. They were used to doing truck gardening on a small plot of land so hand work was what they knew best. They were both very hard working men like their dad.
Ted remembers that thinning beets was about the hardest job for him to do. He always disliked it very much. He enjoyed working in the hay more than any other work. They had quite a crew. The older boys would pitch and Ted would tromp and ride the derrick horse. Their dad could usually fork the hay off the wagons and stack it as fast as the boys could load.
There weren't any tractors in Idaho at that time. It was a thrill for the family when Austin went back to Utah about a year after moving to Burley and bought a new automobile! It was a Model T Ford. It was one of the open models with a black canvas top. In the wintertime they put isinglass windows with canvass siding on it which would close it up a little bit so they could ride around in it.
The first electric fence for pasture was quite an experience. They had no way to reduce the current. They would run it through a low watt light bulb. There were a few head of cattle electrocuted before there was a better device.
While they lived next to Gus, four more children were born. They were a stillborn son in 1918, Eleanor in 1919, and Lawrence and Florence(twins) in 1921. Then the family moved to the Pella area to a Booth place. Phil was born there in 1923. Darriel was born in 1926 after they returned to the home by Gus.
For a period of time between 1926 and 1930, the family lived in a cement stucco three-room house. It was on an 80 acre farm known as the Allen place located three miles west and one mile south of Burley. While they were living in the little cement house Florence got meningitis. She was sick for a long time, and her head started to pull back. When she passed away they buried her in the orchard.
The family built a new brick home close to the cement house. Austin did most of the work on the home and Mr. Kloepfer from Rupert engineered what needed to be done. Mr. Kloepfer laid the brick on the home. The children helped with the building. They were proud of the home and especially happy that they didn't have to sleep three in a bed any longer! The little cement house continued to be useful as each of the children married. The couples often lived in that home until they could obtain a home of their own.
Directly across the road to the north of their new home was the Starrh's Ferry church house. The Starrh's Ferry Branch was spun off from the Burley First Ward. The name, Starrh's Ferry, came from the ferry that George Starrh had established on the Snake River in 1880, four miles west of Burley. He had established the ferry for the purpose of hauling freight from the Wood River country to Kelton, Utah where the nearest railroad was then located. The first Sunday School the family attended was in a little one-room wooden building by the ferry. Although there was a school by Starrh's Ferry, the children attended the Palisade School two miles south and 1- 1/2 miles west of Burley.
Austin helped build the church. It was red brick and had a big furnace down stairs which used coal and wood for fuel. Sometimes they used sage brush which they stacked into a pile almost as high as the building. It was a grand building. As one entered the front doors, a wide staircase led up to a large open room that was used as a chapel and cultural hall. At the far end of the room was a stage. The windows on either side of the room were very tall and had long velvet drapes which matched the velvet curtain of the stage. Classrooms were downstairs. Even the furnace room downstairs was used as a classroom. There was no running water.
Every summer the ward held a big 24th of July parade and party. Booths were set up on the back lawn under the shade of the trees where a variety of food was sold and games were played. Bazaars were also a big part of the ward activities. The Starrh's Ferry Branch became the Star Ward in 1920.
Austin, with a fine tenor voice and musical appreciation developed in his youth as a member of a singing family, participated in the ward choir and served as ward chorister. He also answered calls to be the YMMIA president, the Sunday School superintendent, and a missionary in the Burley Stake. He faithfully attended church and supported all church activities. He observed and taught his family to observe and honor the Sabbath day. He held the office of High Priest. Grandchildren recall that Austin would frequently stand in fast and testimony meeting and request that the congregation sing "We Are Sowing".
Austin got smallpox and it was a bad case! His entire body was covered with the pox, even the bottom of his feet. He hated being sick in bed and one day Ed saw him going down to the barn on his hands and knees. The entire family was sick, so they would phone someone for groceries, which would be delivered to their gate. No one dared come near the house.
One afternoon Ted came home from school and no one else was home. He was hungry, but couldn't find anything to eat. So he went to the chicken coop and got some eggs. The chicken coop was right against the haystack.
He decided the best way to cook the eggs would be to use some dry hay and build a fire right between the chicken coop and the haystack. He turned a tin bucket over the fire and tried to cook the eggs. Then he left and went to his Uncle Gus' place where his mother was. He could see Uncle Gus coming up through the field on a high gallop with his span of horses he had been working with. Gus could see the smoke rolling up by the shed at Austin's place. At the end of the chicken coop in the garage was Austin's car! Gus rushed over there and threw a chain around the back axle of the car and the horses pulled the car out into the clearing. The haystack and stable all went up in smoke. but the car was saved!
On a few occasions Austin would let the kids go fishing on Saturday afternoon in the Snake River two miles north of their home. Maurine, being the oldest girl, got the brunt of housework, along with her mother. Ironing was a huge job for Maurine. She had a big galvanized tub full of dampened-down clothes, and ironed all day Saturday.
Although they had no refrigeration, the family had fresh milk every morning and every night from their cows. They kept a box (about a bushel size) on the north side of their home where they would keep butter, and sometimes meat. They put a wet sack (likely burlap) over the box to keep it cool. After each milking the milk was poured into a big bowl on top of a separator, and the milk was spun around causing the cream to come out of a spout on top. Skim milk came out of a lower spout and was fed to the pigs. Cream was taken to town and sold to a creamery. They always hoped for a high content of cream because they were paid on that content.
To get ice, they drove a team and wagon to the river each winter and loaded up with ice. They took the ice to their ice house and covered it with saw dust. That kept the ice frozen so that in the summer they could dig into the ice house and get a block for making ice cream.
Austin bought another 80 acre farm, four miles south and three miles west of Burley from a Mr. Perrine. It had a house on it that was on the desert side of a canal, and had big corrals. Austin liked to run a little band of sheep on the land and he always had cattle around, milk stock mostly. The land was fenced and he used it as a grazing area. During the day time he liked to run the sheep west of there out onto a butte. Sometimes Austin would send his boys out to stay overnight with the sheep so they could keep the sheep somewhat contained on the butte, rather than bringing them back into the fenced area by the canal.
Austin soon bought another 80 acres west of the first purchase, and Gus bought 80 acres west of Austin's. Then Austin bought Gus's 80 acres, giving him 240 acres. Austin fenced it and used it as dry land, a place mostly for pasture. Willis did the actual fencing. Phil remembers having to keep Willis supplied with a can of drinking water. Phil got so he would trust their old horse to take him back and forth with the water. The biggest thing for them was milk cows. With seven boys, Austin saw there was always plenty to do. He would assign each boy a certain number of cows to milk.
On the subject of cows, Gus's family stored their potatoes, cabbages and turnips in a cellar, located west of Gus's home on what they called the "hill". After the harvest was completed and the food put into the cellar, the double doors were sealed and it was prepared for winter. One day Gus went by the cellar and noticed that there was a hole in the roof.
He checked his herd to be sure none of the animals had fallen into the cellar, and then repaired the hole in the cellar roof. In January Gus and his boys went to the cellar to get the potatoes inside and prepare them for shipping. When they opened up the top half of the split doors, an animal "just exploded out of the cellar, having been there for a couple of months." Come to find out, the animal belonged to Austin who had missed it, but thought it was with another neighbor's cattle. Gus's family had the unfortunate task of cleaning up the mess!
Harvesting the hay for the cows was quite a process. To cut it, horses pulled a mower that had a cutter bar/pitman bar, that drove the knife back and forth to cut the hay. A little grass was in the hay making it much harder to cut. It was a challenge to keep the knives sharp and to sharpen the guards the blades ran through. Austin's first sharpener was a large hand-turned stone that sat upright on a tripod much as a spinning wheel does. It was about three inches wide and two feet in diameter and was turned by a foot pedal that was attached to an eccentric that stuck out from the center of the stone. A little can of water above the stone had a hole in it that would let the water drip down. The stone had to be wet. It was hard work for the horses to pull the mower through the hay.
After the hay was cut, a horse pulled a dump rake through it with shafts on each side. The hay would dump the hay into piles. The rake was pulled around a second time to make the piles higher and tighter. The third time around the rake was pulled in the opposite direction so both sides of the piles were flipped in. This would form a driveway around the field, and they would go around and around the field. They did this three times each summer, as there were three crops of hay to be harvested. It was their biggest summer job. They fed the hay to their pigs, cows, calves, horses, all the animals.
As the years passed, and there were only four children left in high school, Austin enjoyed driving a nice car. It was in their new Dodge that their son, Ted, courted Mae, his future bride. Austin and Linnie took frequent trips to Utah. They were always sure that one trip was on Memorial Day. They made it a point to remember old friends and attended funerals of dear ones who passed away. After Lorraine was married, they spent several winters in Arizona.
Austin and Linnie enjoyed entertaining their family in their home. Linnie's sister and brother, Eleanor and Eli, and Austin's siblings, Doug, Arlean, Gladys, and Phyllis, visited often in Burley with their spouses and always stayed at Austin and Linnie's home. Austin and Linnie's children and grandchildren often gathered at their home for Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas Eve, a birthday, or in the summer for watermelon and lounging outside on the lawn.
Austin and Linnie were great promoters of family reunions, and hosted a large one to honor Emanuel, Austin's father, on his 80th birthday. When the children of Emanuel and Maraldia decided to hold regular reunions, Austin's family hosted the first one in Burley. A favorite part of every reunion was having Austin's sisters sing, "Grandma's Left You Nothing But the Old Arm Chair."
Austin wanted to be helpful in getting his boys each set up on their own land. When land 3 ½ miles west of Burley near the Snake River, known as the Loveless place, came up for sale, Austin asked his children if they wanted it. Ted was very interested and was able to get a loan for enough to make the initial payment on the land. He bought it in 1942.
In the 1950s, R. O. Hatch drilled a well just north of Austin's 240 acres, the first well drilled in that part of Burley. The Wyatts and the Satterwhites were also pioneers in drilling in that area. Austin thought he would like to drill a well. He talked with each of his boys to see if they would be interested in going in on the venture. Ted really wanted to do it. Ted put up the money to drill the well and Austin put up the land. It was a risk for Ted because there was no guarantee water would be found in that particular location, but it turned out to be a good investment. He had Lane and Bowler drill the well in 1955, and they did find water. It was a very exciting day in December of 1956, when the first stream of water flowed from the deep well. Austin, Ted, Lawrence, Darriel and Phil worked diligently to put the place under cultivation.
Austin stayed involved in leveling and shaping the land so that water would run through the furrows. It was a big project because the land had laid dry for so long. As the men drove the equipment through big gullies and pulled the dirt along, it was so loose it just rolled like water. The dirt was like flour and it would roll far out in front of the tractor. When it looked like they finally had the land level, the wind started blowing and blew for three days straight! When it stopped, the gulley was just like it was before they started leveling. It took a lot of work to get the land settled and compacted enough to stay in place.
Other people were "breaking" the land at the same time. As they cleared sagebrush from their farms, and burned the sagebrush, it was quite a sight at night to see all the fires.
Austin was 69 years old when he was helping get the new land ready to put under cultivation. He hadn't had much experience with the big equipment they were using, and a couple of incidents convinced Ted that his dad should do other work than driving the tractors. One such incident was when Austin was pulling a scraper behind the John Deere, going from side to side pulling dirt into the gully to get it level. Austin drove the tractor down through one of the gullies and didn't trip the scraper in time to dump the dirt. The heavy drag on the tractor caused the front end to be pulled up in the air and to flip Austin over to the side of the seat. His leg was pinned against the seat. It was very painful. Ted used the tractor he had been driving to hook on to the John Deere and pull the front end down where it belonged. That whipped Austin up into sitting position. He got a very sore leg out of it. It was a miracle he wasn't hurt worse.
Another scare was when Austin was driving a John Deere across some railroad tracks and tried to shift into another gear. The tractor stalled. Austin saw a train coming and jumped off the tractor to save his life. Ted, who was pulling a rig in front of Austin's tractor, saw what was happening. He jumped off his tractor, ran to the John Deere, jammed it into reverse, and backed up the tractor just seconds before the train roared past.
Ted and Austin went 50-50 on the farm for several years. After Linnie passed away, Ted paid Austin for his half and the farm then belonged to Ted.
As Austin's and Linnie's 50th wedding anniversary approached, and their children were making plans for a celebration, Linnie became ill. She passed away on December 29, 1956. Austin was very lonely without her. He married Violet Ada Ostler May 12, 1958, but that didn't work well, and they divorced.
On June 30, 1958, he married Mary Emma Kelly. She was a gift from heaven. She loved and cared for Austin so well, and his family loved her. After Austin's passing, Mary married Linnie's brother, John Cooper, and they lived in Moreland, Idaho. She had a sweet disposition and made her husbands happy.
Austin passed away October 1, 1967, on his 81st birthday. He was buried next to Linnie in the Syracuse Cemetery in Syracuse, Utah. He left a wonderful legacy. Of the 13 children born to Austin and Linnie, nine grew to maturity. In 1967 there were 33 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren.
History - Austin was born October 1, 1886, in Bountiful, Utah to Emanuel Hanks and Maraldia Willey Hanks. Emanuel loved to sing and sang as a choir boy in the Church of England. Emanuel was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England in 1881. He and his cousin, Edward, had a strong desire to go to America and gather with the Saints.
To earn the money for passage, Emanuel bought three little pigs at one pound each. He gathered scraps from the neighbors for feed for them, and when they were grown, Emanuel sold them for $30 each. His brother Henry marveled that "Manny" would spend his entire $90 to go to America to be with those "terrible" Mormons. Henry told him that if he went to America, he would never write him a line, and he never did.
Emanuel and his cousin, Edward, sailed on the Wyoming, leaving Liverpool April 16, 1881, and arriving in New York ten days later. Also sailing on the ship was William Wallace Willey who had completed his mission in England and was returning to his family in Bountiful, Utah. Emanuel and Edward were much "taken" with William and decided to take the same train as he did from New York to Ogden, Utah. Elder Willey's brother-in-law, Joseph Mabey, met him at the train station. Elder Willey introduced Emanuel to Joseph. Emanuel asked Joseph for a job and was hired by him. Emanuel was thrilled to be earning $20 a month. He thought it was a vast amount of money, and that he could save much of it. Thus Emanuel ended up in Bountiful, Utah.
Emanuel set to work building a small house in Bountiful for his parents and sent for them. On September 3, 1881, William and Sarah sailed from Liverpool on the same ship Wyoming that Emanuel had sailed on a few months earlier and arrived in New York September 13, 1881. By the end of September they were in Zion.
Maraldia Willey, Elder Willey's daughter, was working for her Aunt Sarah Mabey, wife of Joseph Mabey, for 25 cents a day when Emanuel arrived in Utah. While she was working for her Aunt Sarah, she met Emanuel. Emanuel courted her for three years, and they were married in the Logan Temple August 26, 1885. They had a wonderful wedding reception with tables set out under the trees in the Willey's orchard.
Emanuel and Maraldia lived with his parents in Bountiful for two years. It was here they had their first child, a boy they named Austin Emanuel. Soon afterward, they moved to Vernal, Utah. Maraldia says of the move, "I had to carry my baby and block the wheels up the hills, and it seemed that the road was all hills as they were very bad. We had all of our belongings in a covered wagon where we slept, and camped out on the journey.
When we arrived in Daniel's Canyon we camped to eat. An Indian came and joined us. We invited him to eat with us, which he did. The horses got loose and wandered off, or else some Indians took them. Manuel lit out after the horses, leaving me for hours alone with the Indian. I was never so afraid in my life, as I was expecting our second child very soon."
Two of Austin's brothers, Wallace and Lawrence, were born while they lived in Vernal. After three years, the family returned to Bountiful because Emanuel's father, William, was ill. William died soon after of a ruptured hernia (August 25, 1947).
Emanuel and Maraldia enjoyed living in the Bountiful area with mountains, canyons, Salt Lake City, and other attractions nearby. They went to Salt Lake City when the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was raised, April 6, 1892. Austin was 5 ½ years old. Their family often went to the canyons or mountains for a week or so.
By 1903, Emanual and Maraldia had eight living children. Their baby, a girl named Cumorah, was two years old. Maraldia wrote, "We have had a taste of the bitter with the sweet. On one of our camping trips in Weber Canyon, Cumorah was asleep on the wagon seat and up in the wagon. I felt that she was perfectly safe, so we left camp for a few minutes. When I came back to the wagon the baby was not there. She had taken a little cup and gone to the creek presumably for a drink. I found her dead in a little shallow pool of water."
Saltair was a special attraction in Utah. It was a resort, an amusement park, built on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, resting on more than 2,000 posts and pilings. It was a family place, intended to provide a safe and wholesome atmosphere with the open supervision of leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Saltair was completed in 1893, and on August 8, a crowd of nearly 6,000 people visited there. A train from Ogden brought nearly 1,000 and the Rio Grande Western brought about half that number from Provo and south. A number of races were held and Austin won the race for the six-year-olds. He was awarded a box of candy.
Austin grew up in a rural environment and learned to be a good worker. His father, Emanuel, bought a swamp area of Clearfield and cleared it by building drainage ditches. It had very good soil. The thing that convinced Emanuel it would be a good place to raise orchards and crops was seeing all the wild bleeding heart flowers that flourished there. Emanuel built a beautiful red brick home, planted orchards, invented a machine for digging wells, and invented a water-powered washing machine. He built a fabulous workshop, and also kept bees. There was always plenty for Austin and his siblings to do.
During the summers, Austin's mother and sisters would pick berries in the evenings. Then in the morning before daylight, Emanuel and the boys would hitch the horse to the cart and take the fruit to Ogden. There they would go from house to house, peddling the fruit until it was all sold. The next morning they would repeat the same process.
On Christmas day, December 26, 1906, Austin married Linnie May Cooper of Bountiful. Their marriage was performed by Bishop David Cook. Austin was 20 years old, and Linnie 17. Linnie recorded the following about their wedding day: "Austin and I were married December 25, 1906, at high noon. Being in a hurry, and wanting to leave before Christmas dinner was served, we rushed out to the kitchen and had bacon and egg sandwiches. Then we hurried off to the Bamburger (local train) and to Bountiful. It was a beautiful day, and I wore a small shawl for a wrap. When we reached Bountiful, Austin, thinking he needed a shave before we had our picture taken, rushed next door to the barber, and somewhere along the way lost his orange blossoms. When he came back, we had our pictures, me with my hair done high with blossoms, and he without. We rushed back to Grandmother Willey's to refresh ourselves, then went to the dance in Hales Hall and had a wonderful time. The next day or two, we spent with Aunt Catherine Holbrook, then went home and stayed with Austin's folks awhile. Then we moved into part of the old factory farm house where the Clearfield Depot stands. We used to dance in the upper room of the Woods Canning Factory in Clearfield.
"About that time, the Clearfield Ward was made up of the Syracuse Ward, and we found ourselves without any public buildings. So we had to use our nickels, brain, and brawn to build a church school house and recreation hall, which was completed in a short time. (This was likely one building which was used for church, school and recreation.)
Until that time we held church in the factory room in which we danced and enjoyed all of our recreation. Austin prepared the music for our first conference, at which he worked very hard, and it came out very nice. Willis was one of the first five babies blessed in Clearfield Ward."
Austin was ward chorister in the Clearfield Ward for about ten years.
Austin and Linnie's oldest son, Willis Cooper, was born in 1907. Five more children were born while they lived in Clearfield. Edison Austin (Ed) was born in 1909. On December 1, 1909 Austin and Linnie had their marriage solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple, and had Willis sealed to them at that time. Lloyd Emanuel was born in 1910, Thelma May and Thead James (Ted), twins, in 1913, and Sarah Maurine in 1915.
As they grew, these children liked to walk along the railroad from their home to where their Hanks grandparents lived.
Austin bought a piece of ground from his dad. It had a little frame house that didn't have a ceiling covering the rafters. The boys loved to jump on the bed, hit the rafters, and grab the ceiling joists. They lived in that home a short while until Austin built a new, big house. It didn't have a basement, just a crawl space. The trap door to the crawl space was in the bathroom. If someone crawled into that space, and another person shut the door, the person underneath the door could not see anything.
One of the boys said it was darker than a black cat! The bathroom had a tub that stood on legs. The twins, Ted and Thelma, loved to soap the tub during their bath and slide down both ends. Water would fly everywhere. When the water started running under the door, their mother would take them out. Maurine was the only child of Austin and Linnie that was born in this new house that Austin built. They only lived there about two years.
As farm production increased the local farmers needed a market for their surplus produce. The Woods Cross Canning Cooperative was begun in Clearfield in 1892. They packed many different fruits and vegetables, but mostly tomatoes. Austin grew tomatoes, beans, beets, and peas for the cannery. They would plant peas by broadcasting them, harrowing them in, and cutting them with the mowing machine. They would pitch the peas on a wagon just like hay was done, and take them to the cannery. The pea vines that were left from the cannery were stacked for silage. The beets required a lot of work, thinning and topping. Their Uncle Douglas (Austin's brother) grafted some fruit trees and sealed the cut edges of the grafts with sealing wax to prevent the graft cuts from drying out.
Austin also had cows and his boys would herd their cows where Hill Field Air Force Base is now. Their farm was located near the highway going from Ogden to Sunset. They did a lot of truck gardening, raising vegetables to take to market. It was fun for Ed one day when he was following their neighbor, George Freestone, as he plowed a field. George plowed up a pouch, and saw that it contained his dad's watch. His dad was a railroad man, and he had owned that big watch that weighed a pound and had a stem wind. George wound the watch and it began running right away. Mr. Freestone was thrilled to have his watch back. It had been missing for ten years!
On October 23 of 1916, Thelma died of pneumonia at the age of three, after just 36 hours of illness. Funeral services for her were held in the Clearfield meeting house the next day. Years later, Ted's only memory of her was their sitting in an old surry, along the side of a board fence of the corral, playing like they were driving horses.
In 1916, Austin's brother, Augustin, whom the family called Gus, returned from his mission. Gus and Austin looked together for a place to farm. They first looked in southern Utah by Cedar City, but water wasn't available. Since that time deep irrigation wells have been used and there is fertile farming near Cedar City, but at that time there were no wells. Gus and Austin decided to look northward and were brought to the Snake River Valley by a realtor.
The valley was a new reclamation project being established with dams on the Snake River with a network of canals on both sides of the river. The land had a new, raw look to it as not all the land had been developed. Some was still in sagebrush. A new town was being raised on the Oregon Short Line Railroad at the confluence of Goose Creek and the Snake River. The railroad agent was a man named D.E. Burley, and the town that followed bears his name.
Gus purchased 40 acres of an 80 acre farm 2 ½ miles west of Burley and ½ mile south of the Snake River. He moved to Burley the spring of 1917. Austin purchased the remaining 40 acres of that 80 acres when he visited Gus in November of 1917.
In March of 1918, Austin and Linnie moved their family to Burley, Idaho. Their children at that time were Willis, Ed, Lloyd, Ted, and Maurine. Austin sold his land in Clearfield to some Japanese farmers. Austin was so impressed by the way they worked the land. They plowed the land leaving it full of clods and used wooden mallets to break up the clods. Next they watered the ground and worked it, and had a crop of tomatoes that very year!
Moving to Idaho was quite a venture. It was the custom in those days for the railroads which helped sponsor the settlement of an area through which their road passed, to charter railroad cars to the settlers for the movement of their machinery, household effects, etc. Gus, Austin, and a distant relative, Anson Call, leased a railroad car from the Union Pacific Railroad and this was the way they moved to Burley. They put all their belonging in a railroad boxcar, the cows and horses in one end, and the household things in the other end. Austin rode in the boxcar with it all. The rest of his family rode on the passenger train. They had to water cows at the stop in Pocatello. It took more than one day for the boxcar to get to Burley. There was a railroad stop just two miles out of town, not far from the farm they had purchased.
Austin and Linnie moved their family to a little brown house just south of Gus's house. Linnie was lonely there, and it meant so much to her that Gus's wife, Olive, would loan her books to read. Olive had been a school teacher and Linnie thought she was very generous to loan her books. Linnie would read them from cover to cover.
Linnie was a very reserved person and so good to her children. She loved to hold them and read to them after their baths. No matter how bad things were, no one else knew. She didn't talk about her troubles. As the family grew, she made 12 loaves of bread every other day! She had high blood pressure, and endured several cases of phlebitis in her legs.
Their living was mostly self-sustaining. They raised crops for the pigs and cows and other livestock. They would sell a few porkers and some milk or cream. It was a hard job to weed the crops of onions and get them to seed. It was frustrating when cows would get into the onions. The milk would then taste like onion soup! The meat from those cows was awful!
Austin and Gus exchanged work and co-owned machinery to establish their farming operations. Austin's 40 acres was nearest the road, and Gus had his down a lane. They were used to doing truck gardening on a small plot of land so hand work was what they knew best. They were both very hard working men like their dad.
Ted remembers that thinning beets was about the hardest job for him to do. He always disliked it very much. He enjoyed working in the hay more than any other work. They had quite a crew. The older boys would pitch and Ted would tromp and ride the derrick horse. Their dad could usually fork the hay off the wagons and stack it as fast as the boys could load.
There weren't any tractors in Idaho at that time. It was a thrill for the family when Austin went back to Utah about a year after moving to Burley and bought a new automobile! It was a Model T Ford. It was one of the open models with a black canvas top. In the wintertime they put isinglass windows with canvass siding on it which would close it up a little bit so they could ride around in it.
The first electric fence for pasture was quite an experience. They had no way to reduce the current. They would run it through a low watt light bulb. There were a few head of cattle electrocuted before there was a better device.
While they lived next to Gus, four more children were born. They were a stillborn son in 1918, Eleanor in 1919, and Lawrence and Florence(twins) in 1921. Then the family moved to the Pella area to a Booth place. Phil was born there in 1923. Darriel was born in 1926 after they returned to the home by Gus.
For a period of time between 1926 and 1930, the family lived in a cement stucco three-room house. It was on an 80 acre farm known as the Allen place located three miles west and one mile south of Burley. While they were living in the little cement house Florence got meningitis. She was sick for a long time, and her head started to pull back. When she passed away they buried her in the orchard.
The family built a new brick home close to the cement house. Austin did most of the work on the home and Mr. Kloepfer from Rupert engineered what needed to be done. Mr. Kloepfer laid the brick on the home. The children helped with the building. They were proud of the home and especially happy that they didn't have to sleep three in a bed any longer! The little cement house continued to be useful as each of the children married. The couples often lived in that home until they could obtain a home of their own.
Directly across the road to the north of their new home was the Starrh's Ferry church house. The Starrh's Ferry Branch was spun off from the Burley First Ward. The name, Starrh's Ferry, came from the ferry that George Starrh had established on the Snake River in 1880, four miles west of Burley. He had established the ferry for the purpose of hauling freight from the Wood River country to Kelton, Utah where the nearest railroad was then located. The first Sunday School the family attended was in a little one-room wooden building by the ferry. Although there was a school by Starrh's Ferry, the children attended the Palisade School two miles south and 1- 1/2 miles west of Burley.
Austin helped build the church. It was red brick and had a big furnace down stairs which used coal and wood for fuel. Sometimes they used sage brush which they stacked into a pile almost as high as the building. It was a grand building. As one entered the front doors, a wide staircase led up to a large open room that was used as a chapel and cultural hall. At the far end of the room was a stage. The windows on either side of the room were very tall and had long velvet drapes which matched the velvet curtain of the stage. Classrooms were downstairs. Even the furnace room downstairs was used as a classroom. There was no running water.
Every summer the ward held a big 24th of July parade and party. Booths were set up on the back lawn under the shade of the trees where a variety of food was sold and games were played. Bazaars were also a big part of the ward activities. The Starrh's Ferry Branch became the Star Ward in 1920.
Austin, with a fine tenor voice and musical appreciation developed in his youth as a member of a singing family, participated in the ward choir and served as ward chorister. He also answered calls to be the YMMIA president, the Sunday School superintendent, and a missionary in the Burley Stake. He faithfully attended church and supported all church activities. He observed and taught his family to observe and honor the Sabbath day. He held the office of High Priest. Grandchildren recall that Austin would frequently stand in fast and testimony meeting and request that the congregation sing "We Are Sowing".
Austin got smallpox and it was a bad case! His entire body was covered with the pox, even the bottom of his feet. He hated being sick in bed and one day Ed saw him going down to the barn on his hands and knees. The entire family was sick, so they would phone someone for groceries, which would be delivered to their gate. No one dared come near the house.
One afternoon Ted came home from school and no one else was home. He was hungry, but couldn't find anything to eat. So he went to the chicken coop and got some eggs. The chicken coop was right against the haystack.
He decided the best way to cook the eggs would be to use some dry hay and build a fire right between the chicken coop and the haystack. He turned a tin bucket over the fire and tried to cook the eggs. Then he left and went to his Uncle Gus' place where his mother was. He could see Uncle Gus coming up through the field on a high gallop with his span of horses he had been working with. Gus could see the smoke rolling up by the shed at Austin's place. At the end of the chicken coop in the garage was Austin's car! Gus rushed over there and threw a chain around the back axle of the car and the horses pulled the car out into the clearing. The haystack and stable all went up in smoke. but the car was saved!
On a few occasions Austin would let the kids go fishing on Saturday afternoon in the Snake River two miles north of their home. Maurine, being the oldest girl, got the brunt of housework, along with her mother. Ironing was a huge job for Maurine. She had a big galvanized tub full of dampened-down clothes, and ironed all day Saturday.
Although they had no refrigeration, the family had fresh milk every morning and every night from their cows. They kept a box (about a bushel size) on the north side of their home where they would keep butter, and sometimes meat. They put a wet sack (likely burlap) over the box to keep it cool. After each milking the milk was poured into a big bowl on top of a separator, and the milk was spun around causing the cream to come out of a spout on top. Skim milk came out of a lower spout and was fed to the pigs. Cream was taken to town and sold to a creamery. They always hoped for a high content of cream because they were paid on that content.
To get ice, they drove a team and wagon to the river each winter and loaded up with ice. They took the ice to their ice house and covered it with saw dust. That kept the ice frozen so that in the summer they could dig into the ice house and get a block for making ice cream.
Austin bought another 80 acre farm, four miles south and three miles west of Burley from a Mr. Perrine. It had a house on it that was on the desert side of a canal, and had big corrals. Austin liked to run a little band of sheep on the land and he always had cattle around, milk stock mostly. The land was fenced and he used it as a grazing area. During the day time he liked to run the sheep west of there out onto a butte. Sometimes Austin would send his boys out to stay overnight with the sheep so they could keep the sheep somewhat contained on the butte, rather than bringing them back into the fenced area by the canal.
Austin soon bought another 80 acres west of the first purchase, and Gus bought 80 acres west of Austin's. Then Austin bought Gus's 80 acres, giving him 240 acres. Austin fenced it and used it as dry land, a place mostly for pasture. Willis did the actual fencing. Phil remembers having to keep Willis supplied with a can of drinking water. Phil got so he would trust their old horse to take him back and forth with the water. The biggest thing for them was milk cows. With seven boys, Austin saw there was always plenty to do. He would assign each boy a certain number of cows to milk.
On the subject of cows, Gus's family stored their potatoes, cabbages and turnips in a cellar, located west of Gus's home on what they called the "hill". After the harvest was completed and the food put into the cellar, the double doors were sealed and it was prepared for winter. One day Gus went by the cellar and noticed that there was a hole in the roof.
He checked his herd to be sure none of the animals had fallen into the cellar, and then repaired the hole in the cellar roof. In January Gus and his boys went to the cellar to get the potatoes inside and prepare them for shipping. When they opened up the top half of the split doors, an animal "just exploded out of the cellar, having been there for a couple of months." Come to find out, the animal belonged to Austin who had missed it, but thought it was with another neighbor's cattle. Gus's family had the unfortunate task of cleaning up the mess!
Harvesting the hay for the cows was quite a process. To cut it, horses pulled a mower that had a cutter bar/pitman bar, that drove the knife back and forth to cut the hay. A little grass was in the hay making it much harder to cut. It was a challenge to keep the knives sharp and to sharpen the guards the blades ran through. Austin's first sharpener was a large hand-turned stone that sat upright on a tripod much as a spinning wheel does. It was about three inches wide and two feet in diameter and was turned by a foot pedal that was attached to an eccentric that stuck out from the center of the stone. A little can of water above the stone had a hole in it that would let the water drip down. The stone had to be wet. It was hard work for the horses to pull the mower through the hay.
After the hay was cut, a horse pulled a dump rake through it with shafts on each side. The hay would dump the hay into piles. The rake was pulled around a second time to make the piles higher and tighter. The third time around the rake was pulled in the opposite direction so both sides of the piles were flipped in. This would form a driveway around the field, and they would go around and around the field. They did this three times each summer, as there were three crops of hay to be harvested. It was their biggest summer job. They fed the hay to their pigs, cows, calves, horses, all the animals.
As the years passed, and there were only four children left in high school, Austin enjoyed driving a nice car. It was in their new Dodge that their son, Ted, courted Mae, his future bride. Austin and Linnie took frequent trips to Utah. They were always sure that one trip was on Memorial Day. They made it a point to remember old friends and attended funerals of dear ones who passed away. After Lorraine was married, they spent several winters in Arizona.
Austin and Linnie enjoyed entertaining their family in their home. Linnie's sister and brother, Eleanor and Eli, and Austin's siblings, Doug, Arlean, Gladys, and Phyllis, visited often in Burley with their spouses and always stayed at Austin and Linnie's home. Austin and Linnie's children and grandchildren often gathered at their home for Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas Eve, a birthday, or in the summer for watermelon and lounging outside on the lawn.
Austin and Linnie were great promoters of family reunions, and hosted a large one to honor Emanuel, Austin's father, on his 80th birthday. When the children of Emanuel and Maraldia decided to hold regular reunions, Austin's family hosted the first one in Burley. A favorite part of every reunion was having Austin's sisters sing, "Grandma's Left You Nothing But the Old Arm Chair."
Austin wanted to be helpful in getting his boys each set up on their own land. When land 3 ½ miles west of Burley near the Snake River, known as the Loveless place, came up for sale, Austin asked his children if they wanted it. Ted was very interested and was able to get a loan for enough to make the initial payment on the land. He bought it in 1942.
In the 1950s, R. O. Hatch drilled a well just north of Austin's 240 acres, the first well drilled in that part of Burley. The Wyatts and the Satterwhites were also pioneers in drilling in that area. Austin thought he would like to drill a well. He talked with each of his boys to see if they would be interested in going in on the venture. Ted really wanted to do it. Ted put up the money to drill the well and Austin put up the land. It was a risk for Ted because there was no guarantee water would be found in that particular location, but it turned out to be a good investment. He had Lane and Bowler drill the well in 1955, and they did find water. It was a very exciting day in December of 1956, when the first stream of water flowed from the deep well. Austin, Ted, Lawrence, Darriel and Phil worked diligently to put the place under cultivation.
Austin stayed involved in leveling and shaping the land so that water would run through the furrows. It was a big project because the land had laid dry for so long. As the men drove the equipment through big gullies and pulled the dirt along, it was so loose it just rolled like water. The dirt was like flour and it would roll far out in front of the tractor. When it looked like they finally had the land level, the wind started blowing and blew for three days straight! When it stopped, the gulley was just like it was before they started leveling. It took a lot of work to get the land settled and compacted enough to stay in place.
Other people were "breaking" the land at the same time. As they cleared sagebrush from their farms, and burned the sagebrush, it was quite a sight at night to see all the fires.
Austin was 69 years old when he was helping get the new land ready to put under cultivation. He hadn't had much experience with the big equipment they were using, and a couple of incidents convinced Ted that his dad should do other work than driving the tractors. One such incident was when Austin was pulling a scraper behind the John Deere, going from side to side pulling dirt into the gully to get it level. Austin drove the tractor down through one of the gullies and didn't trip the scraper in time to dump the dirt. The heavy drag on the tractor caused the front end to be pulled up in the air and to flip Austin over to the side of the seat. His leg was pinned against the seat. It was very painful. Ted used the tractor he had been driving to hook on to the John Deere and pull the front end down where it belonged. That whipped Austin up into sitting position. He got a very sore leg out of it. It was a miracle he wasn't hurt worse.
Another scare was when Austin was driving a John Deere across some railroad tracks and tried to shift into another gear. The tractor stalled. Austin saw a train coming and jumped off the tractor to save his life. Ted, who was pulling a rig in front of Austin's tractor, saw what was happening. He jumped off his tractor, ran to the John Deere, jammed it into reverse, and backed up the tractor just seconds before the train roared past.
Ted and Austin went 50-50 on the farm for several years. After Linnie passed away, Ted paid Austin for his half and the farm then belonged to Ted.
As Austin's and Linnie's 50th wedding anniversary approached, and their children were making plans for a celebration, Linnie became ill. She passed away on December 29, 1956. Austin was very lonely without her. He married Violet Ada Ostler May 12, 1958, but that didn't work well, and they divorced.
On June 30, 1958, he married Mary Emma Kelly. She was a gift from heaven. She loved and cared for Austin so well, and his family loved her. After Austin's passing, Mary married Linnie's brother, John Cooper, and they lived in Moreland, Idaho. She had a sweet disposition and made her husbands happy.
Austin passed away October 1, 1967, on his 81st birthday. He was buried next to Linnie in the Syracuse Cemetery in Syracuse, Utah. He left a wonderful legacy. Of the 13 children born to Austin and Linnie, nine grew to maturity. In 1967 there were 33 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren.
Son of Emanuel Hanks and Maraldia Willey
History - Austin was born October 1, 1886, in Bountiful, Utah to Emanuel Hanks and Maraldia Willey Hanks. Emanuel loved to sing and sang as a choir boy in the Church of England. Emanuel was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England in 1881. He and his cousin, Edward, had a strong desire to go to America and gather with the Saints.
To earn the money for passage, Emanuel bought three little pigs at one pound each. He gathered scraps from the neighbors for feed for them, and when they were grown, Emanuel sold them for $30 each. His brother Henry marveled that "Manny" would spend his entire $90 to go to America to be with those "terrible" Mormons. Henry told him that if he went to America, he would never write him a line, and he never did.
Emanuel and his cousin, Edward, sailed on the Wyoming, leaving Liverpool April 16, 1881, and arriving in New York ten days later. Also sailing on the ship was William Wallace Willey who had completed his mission in England and was returning to his family in Bountiful, Utah. Emanuel and Edward were much "taken" with William and decided to take the same train as he did from New York to Ogden, Utah. Elder Willey's brother-in-law, Joseph Mabey, met him at the train station. Elder Willey introduced Emanuel to Joseph. Emanuel asked Joseph for a job and was hired by him. Emanuel was thrilled to be earning $20 a month. He thought it was a vast amount of money, and that he could save much of it. Thus Emanuel ended up in Bountiful, Utah.
Emanuel set to work building a small house in Bountiful for his parents and sent for them. On September 3, 1881, William and Sarah sailed from Liverpool on the same ship Wyoming that Emanuel had sailed on a few months earlier and arrived in New York September 13, 1881. By the end of September they were in Zion.
Maraldia Willey, Elder Willey's daughter, was working for her Aunt Sarah Mabey, wife of Joseph Mabey, for 25 cents a day when Emanuel arrived in Utah. While she was working for her Aunt Sarah, she met Emanuel. Emanuel courted her for three years, and they were married in the Logan Temple August 26, 1885. They had a wonderful wedding reception with tables set out under the trees in the Willey's orchard.
Emanuel and Maraldia lived with his parents in Bountiful for two years. It was here they had their first child, a boy they named Austin Emanuel. Soon afterward, they moved to Vernal, Utah. Maraldia says of the move, "I had to carry my baby and block the wheels up the hills, and it seemed that the road was all hills as they were very bad. We had all of our belongings in a covered wagon where we slept, and camped out on the journey.
When we arrived in Daniel's Canyon we camped to eat. An Indian came and joined us. We invited him to eat with us, which he did. The horses got loose and wandered off, or else some Indians took them. Manuel lit out after the horses, leaving me for hours alone with the Indian. I was never so afraid in my life, as I was expecting our second child very soon."
Two of Austin's brothers, Wallace and Lawrence, were born while they lived in Vernal. After three years, the family returned to Bountiful because Emanuel's father, William, was ill. William died soon after of a ruptured hernia (August 25, 1947).
Emanuel and Maraldia enjoyed living in the Bountiful area with mountains, canyons, Salt Lake City, and other attractions nearby. They went to Salt Lake City when the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was raised, April 6, 1892. Austin was 5 ½ years old. Their family often went to the canyons or mountains for a week or so.
By 1903, Emanual and Maraldia had eight living children. Their baby, a girl named Cumorah, was two years old. Maraldia wrote, "We have had a taste of the bitter with the sweet. On one of our camping trips in Weber Canyon, Cumorah was asleep on the wagon seat and up in the wagon. I felt that she was perfectly safe, so we left camp for a few minutes. When I came back to the wagon the baby was not there. She had taken a little cup and gone to the creek presumably for a drink. I found her dead in a little shallow pool of water."
Saltair was a special attraction in Utah. It was a resort, an amusement park, built on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, resting on more than 2,000 posts and pilings. It was a family place, intended to provide a safe and wholesome atmosphere with the open supervision of leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Saltair was completed in 1893, and on August 8, a crowd of nearly 6,000 people visited there. A train from Ogden brought nearly 1,000 and the Rio Grande Western brought about half that number from Provo and south. A number of races were held and Austin won the race for the six-year-olds. He was awarded a box of candy.
Austin grew up in a rural environment and learned to be a good worker. His father, Emanuel, bought a swamp area of Clearfield and cleared it by building drainage ditches. It had very good soil. The thing that convinced Emanuel it would be a good place to raise orchards and crops was seeing all the wild bleeding heart flowers that flourished there. Emanuel built a beautiful red brick home, planted orchards, invented a machine for digging wells, and invented a water-powered washing machine. He built a fabulous workshop, and also kept bees. There was always plenty for Austin and his siblings to do.
During the summers, Austin's mother and sisters would pick berries in the evenings. Then in the morning before daylight, Emanuel and the boys would hitch the horse to the cart and take the fruit to Ogden. There they would go from house to house, peddling the fruit until it was all sold. The next morning they would repeat the same process.
On Christmas day, December 26, 1906, Austin married Linnie May Cooper of Bountiful. Their marriage was performed by Bishop David Cook. Austin was 20 years old, and Linnie 17. Linnie recorded the following about their wedding day: "Austin and I were married December 25, 1906, at high noon. Being in a hurry, and wanting to leave before Christmas dinner was served, we rushed out to the kitchen and had bacon and egg sandwiches. Then we hurried off to the Bamburger (local train) and to Bountiful. It was a beautiful day, and I wore a small shawl for a wrap. When we reached Bountiful, Austin, thinking he needed a shave before we had our picture taken, rushed next door to the barber, and somewhere along the way lost his orange blossoms. When he came back, we had our pictures, me with my hair done high with blossoms, and he without. We rushed back to Grandmother Willey's to refresh ourselves, then went to the dance in Hales Hall and had a wonderful time. The next day or two, we spent with Aunt Catherine Holbrook, then went home and stayed with Austin's folks awhile. Then we moved into part of the old factory farm house where the Clearfield Depot stands. We used to dance in the upper room of the Woods Canning Factory in Clearfield.
"About that time, the Clearfield Ward was made up of the Syracuse Ward, and we found ourselves without any public buildings. So we had to use our nickels, brain, and brawn to build a church school house and recreation hall, which was completed in a short time. (This was likely one building which was used for church, school and recreation.)
Until that time we held church in the factory room in which we danced and enjoyed all of our recreation. Austin prepared the music for our first conference, at which he worked very hard, and it came out very nice. Willis was one of the first five babies blessed in Clearfield Ward."
Austin was ward chorister in the Clearfield Ward for about ten years.
Austin and Linnie's oldest son, Willis Cooper, was born in 1907. Five more children were born while they lived in Clearfield. Edison Austin (Ed) was born in 1909. On December 1, 1909 Austin and Linnie had their marriage solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple, and had Willis sealed to them at that time. Lloyd Emanuel was born in 1910, Thelma May and Thead James (Ted), twins, in 1913, and Sarah Maurine in 1915.
As they grew, these children liked to walk along the railroad from their home to where their Hanks grandparents lived.
Austin bought a piece of ground from his dad. It had a little frame house that didn't have a ceiling covering the rafters. The boys loved to jump on the bed, hit the rafters, and grab the ceiling joists. They lived in that home a short while until Austin built a new, big house. It didn't have a basement, just a crawl space. The trap door to the crawl space was in the bathroom. If someone crawled into that space, and another person shut the door, the person underneath the door could not see anything.
One of the boys said it was darker than a black cat! The bathroom had a tub that stood on legs. The twins, Ted and Thelma, loved to soap the tub during their bath and slide down both ends. Water would fly everywhere. When the water started running under the door, their mother would take them out. Maurine was the only child of Austin and Linnie that was born in this new house that Austin built. They only lived there about two years.
As farm production increased the local farmers needed a market for their surplus produce. The Woods Cross Canning Cooperative was begun in Clearfield in 1892. They packed many different fruits and vegetables, but mostly tomatoes. Austin grew tomatoes, beans, beets, and peas for the cannery. They would plant peas by broadcasting them, harrowing them in, and cutting them with the mowing machine. They would pitch the peas on a wagon just like hay was done, and take them to the cannery. The pea vines that were left from the cannery were stacked for silage. The beets required a lot of work, thinning and topping. Their Uncle Douglas (Austin's brother) grafted some fruit trees and sealed the cut edges of the grafts with sealing wax to prevent the graft cuts from drying out.
Austin also had cows and his boys would herd their cows where Hill Field Air Force Base is now. Their farm was located near the highway going from Ogden to Sunset. They did a lot of truck gardening, raising vegetables to take to market. It was fun for Ed one day when he was following their neighbor, George Freestone, as he plowed a field. George plowed up a pouch, and saw that it contained his dad's watch. His dad was a railroad man, and he had owned that big watch that weighed a pound and had a stem wind. George wound the watch and it began running right away. Mr. Freestone was thrilled to have his watch back. It had been missing for ten years!
On October 23 of 1916, Thelma died of pneumonia at the age of three, after just 36 hours of illness. Funeral services for her were held in the Clearfield meeting house the next day. Years later, Ted's only memory of her was their sitting in an old surry, along the side of a board fence of the corral, playing like they were driving horses.
In 1916, Austin's brother, Augustin, whom the family called Gus, returned from his mission. Gus and Austin looked together for a place to farm. They first looked in southern Utah by Cedar City, but water wasn't available. Since that time deep irrigation wells have been used and there is fertile farming near Cedar City, but at that time there were no wells. Gus and Austin decided to look northward and were brought to the Snake River Valley by a realtor.
The valley was a new reclamation project being established with dams on the Snake River with a network of canals on both sides of the river. The land had a new, raw look to it as not all the land had been developed. Some was still in sagebrush. A new town was being raised on the Oregon Short Line Railroad at the confluence of Goose Creek and the Snake River. The railroad agent was a man named D.E. Burley, and the town that followed bears his name.
Gus purchased 40 acres of an 80 acre farm 2 ½ miles west of Burley and ½ mile south of the Snake River. He moved to Burley the spring of 1917. Austin purchased the remaining 40 acres of that 80 acres when he visited Gus in November of 1917.
In March of 1918, Austin and Linnie moved their family to Burley, Idaho. Their children at that time were Willis, Ed, Lloyd, Ted, and Maurine. Austin sold his land in Clearfield to some Japanese farmers. Austin was so impressed by the way they worked the land. They plowed the land leaving it full of clods and used wooden mallets to break up the clods. Next they watered the ground and worked it, and had a crop of tomatoes that very year!
Moving to Idaho was quite a venture. It was the custom in those days for the railroads which helped sponsor the settlement of an area through which their road passed, to charter railroad cars to the settlers for the movement of their machinery, household effects, etc. Gus, Austin, and a distant relative, Anson Call, leased a railroad car from the Union Pacific Railroad and this was the way they moved to Burley. They put all their belonging in a railroad boxcar, the cows and horses in one end, and the household things in the other end. Austin rode in the boxcar with it all. The rest of his family rode on the passenger train. They had to water cows at the stop in Pocatello. It took more than one day for the boxcar to get to Burley. There was a railroad stop just two miles out of town, not far from the farm they had purchased.
Austin and Linnie moved their family to a little brown house just south of Gus's house. Linnie was lonely there, and it meant so much to her that Gus's wife, Olive, would loan her books to read. Olive had been a school teacher and Linnie thought she was very generous to loan her books. Linnie would read them from cover to cover.
Linnie was a very reserved person and so good to her children. She loved to hold them and read to them after their baths. No matter how bad things were, no one else knew. She didn't talk about her troubles. As the family grew, she made 12 loaves of bread every other day! She had high blood pressure, and endured several cases of phlebitis in her legs.
Their living was mostly self-sustaining. They raised crops for the pigs and cows and other livestock. They would sell a few porkers and some milk or cream. It was a hard job to weed the crops of onions and get them to seed. It was frustrating when cows would get into the onions. The milk would then taste like onion soup! The meat from those cows was awful!
Austin and Gus exchanged work and co-owned machinery to establish their farming operations. Austin's 40 acres was nearest the road, and Gus had his down a lane. They were used to doing truck gardening on a small plot of land so hand work was what they knew best. They were both very hard working men like their dad.
Ted remembers that thinning beets was about the hardest job for him to do. He always disliked it very much. He enjoyed working in the hay more than any other work. They had quite a crew. The older boys would pitch and Ted would tromp and ride the derrick horse. Their dad could usually fork the hay off the wagons and stack it as fast as the boys could load.
There weren't any tractors in Idaho at that time. It was a thrill for the family when Austin went back to Utah about a year after moving to Burley and bought a new automobile! It was a Model T Ford. It was one of the open models with a black canvas top. In the wintertime they put isinglass windows with canvass siding on it which would close it up a little bit so they could ride around in it.
The first electric fence for pasture was quite an experience. They had no way to reduce the current. They would run it through a low watt light bulb. There were a few head of cattle electrocuted before there was a better device.
While they lived next to Gus, four more children were born. They were a stillborn son in 1918, Eleanor in 1919, and Lawrence and Florence(twins) in 1921. Then the family moved to the Pella area to a Booth place. Phil was born there in 1923. Darriel was born in 1926 after they returned to the home by Gus.
For a period of time between 1926 and 1930, the family lived in a cement stucco three-room house. It was on an 80 acre farm known as the Allen place located three miles west and one mile south of Burley. While they were living in the little cement house Florence got meningitis. She was sick for a long time, and her head started to pull back. When she passed away they buried her in the orchard.
The family built a new brick home close to the cement house. Austin did most of the work on the home and Mr. Kloepfer from Rupert engineered what needed to be done. Mr. Kloepfer laid the brick on the home. The children helped with the building. They were proud of the home and especially happy that they didn't have to sleep three in a bed any longer! The little cement house continued to be useful as each of the children married. The couples often lived in that home until they could obtain a home of their own.
Directly across the road to the north of their new home was the Starrh's Ferry church house. The Starrh's Ferry Branch was spun off from the Burley First Ward. The name, Starrh's Ferry, came from the ferry that George Starrh had established on the Snake River in 1880, four miles west of Burley. He had established the ferry for the purpose of hauling freight from the Wood River country to Kelton, Utah where the nearest railroad was then located. The first Sunday School the family attended was in a little one-room wooden building by the ferry. Although there was a school by Starrh's Ferry, the children attended the Palisade School two miles south and 1- 1/2 miles west of Burley.
Austin helped build the church. It was red brick and had a big furnace down stairs which used coal and wood for fuel. Sometimes they used sage brush which they stacked into a pile almost as high as the building. It was a grand building. As one entered the front doors, a wide staircase led up to a large open room that was used as a chapel and cultural hall. At the far end of the room was a stage. The windows on either side of the room were very tall and had long velvet drapes which matched the velvet curtain of the stage. Classrooms were downstairs. Even the furnace room downstairs was used as a classroom. There was no running water.
Every summer the ward held a big 24th of July parade and party. Booths were set up on the back lawn under the shade of the trees where a variety of food was sold and games were played. Bazaars were also a big part of the ward activities. The Starrh's Ferry Branch became the Star Ward in 1920.
Austin, with a fine tenor voice and musical appreciation developed in his youth as a member of a singing family, participated in the ward choir and served as ward chorister. He also answered calls to be the YMMIA president, the Sunday School superintendent, and a missionary in the Burley Stake. He faithfully attended church and supported all church activities. He observed and taught his family to observe and honor the Sabbath day. He held the office of High Priest. Grandchildren recall that Austin would frequently stand in fast and testimony meeting and request that the congregation sing "We Are Sowing".
Austin got smallpox and it was a bad case! His entire body was covered with the pox, even the bottom of his feet. He hated being sick in bed and one day Ed saw him going down to the barn on his hands and knees. The entire family was sick, so they would phone someone for groceries, which would be delivered to their gate. No one dared come near the house.
One afternoon Ted came home from school and no one else was home. He was hungry, but couldn't find anything to eat. So he went to the chicken coop and got some eggs. The chicken coop was right against the haystack.
He decided the best way to cook the eggs would be to use some dry hay and build a fire right between the chicken coop and the haystack. He turned a tin bucket over the fire and tried to cook the eggs. Then he left and went to his Uncle Gus' place where his mother was. He could see Uncle Gus coming up through the field on a high gallop with his span of horses he had been working with. Gus could see the smoke rolling up by the shed at Austin's place. At the end of the chicken coop in the garage was Austin's car! Gus rushed over there and threw a chain around the back axle of the car and the horses pulled the car out into the clearing. The haystack and stable all went up in smoke. but the car was saved!
On a few occasions Austin would let the kids go fishing on Saturday afternoon in the Snake River two miles north of their home. Maurine, being the oldest girl, got the brunt of housework, along with her mother. Ironing was a huge job for Maurine. She had a big galvanized tub full of dampened-down clothes, and ironed all day Saturday.
Although they had no refrigeration, the family had fresh milk every morning and every night from their cows. They kept a box (about a bushel size) on the north side of their home where they would keep butter, and sometimes meat. They put a wet sack (likely burlap) over the box to keep it cool. After each milking the milk was poured into a big bowl on top of a separator, and the milk was spun around causing the cream to come out of a spout on top. Skim milk came out of a lower spout and was fed to the pigs. Cream was taken to town and sold to a creamery. They always hoped for a high content of cream because they were paid on that content.
To get ice, they drove a team and wagon to the river each winter and loaded up with ice. They took the ice to their ice house and covered it with saw dust. That kept the ice frozen so that in the summer they could dig into the ice house and get a block for making ice cream.
Austin bought another 80 acre farm, four miles south and three miles west of Burley from a Mr. Perrine. It had a house on it that was on the desert side of a canal, and had big corrals. Austin liked to run a little band of sheep on the land and he always had cattle around, milk stock mostly. The land was fenced and he used it as a grazing area. During the day time he liked to run the sheep west of there out onto a butte. Sometimes Austin would send his boys out to stay overnight with the sheep so they could keep the sheep somewhat contained on the butte, rather than bringing them back into the fenced area by the canal.
Austin soon bought another 80 acres west of the first purchase, and Gus bought 80 acres west of Austin's. Then Austin bought Gus's 80 acres, giving him 240 acres. Austin fenced it and used it as dry land, a place mostly for pasture. Willis did the actual fencing. Phil remembers having to keep Willis supplied with a can of drinking water. Phil got so he would trust their old horse to take him back and forth with the water. The biggest thing for them was milk cows. With seven boys, Austin saw there was always plenty to do. He would assign each boy a certain number of cows to milk.
On the subject of cows, Gus's family stored their potatoes, cabbages and turnips in a cellar, located west of Gus's home on what they called the "hill". After the harvest was completed and the food put into the cellar, the double doors were sealed and it was prepared for winter. One day Gus went by the cellar and noticed that there was a hole in the roof.
He checked his herd to be sure none of the animals had fallen into the cellar, and then repaired the hole in the cellar roof. In January Gus and his boys went to the cellar to get the potatoes inside and prepare them for shipping. When they opened up the top half of the split doors, an animal "just exploded out of the cellar, having been there for a couple of months." Come to find out, the animal belonged to Austin who had missed it, but thought it was with another neighbor's cattle. Gus's family had the unfortunate task of cleaning up the mess!
Harvesting the hay for the cows was quite a process. To cut it, horses pulled a mower that had a cutter bar/pitman bar, that drove the knife back and forth to cut the hay. A little grass was in the hay making it much harder to cut. It was a challenge to keep the knives sharp and to sharpen the guards the blades ran through. Austin's first sharpener was a large hand-turned stone that sat upright on a tripod much as a spinning wheel does. It was about three inches wide and two feet in diameter and was turned by a foot pedal that was attached to an eccentric that stuck out from the center of the stone. A little can of water above the stone had a hole in it that would let the water drip down. The stone had to be wet. It was hard work for the horses to pull the mower through the hay.
After the hay was cut, a horse pulled a dump rake through it with shafts on each side. The hay would dump the hay into piles. The rake was pulled around a second time to make the piles higher and tighter. The third time around the rake was pulled in the opposite direction so both sides of the piles were flipped in. This would form a driveway around the field, and they would go around and around the field. They did this three times each summer, as there were three crops of hay to be harvested. It was their biggest summer job. They fed the hay to their pigs, cows, calves, horses, all the animals.
As the years passed, and there were only four children left in high school, Austin enjoyed driving a nice car. It was in their new Dodge that their son, Ted, courted Mae, his future bride. Austin and Linnie took frequent trips to Utah. They were always sure that one trip was on Memorial Day. They made it a point to remember old friends and attended funerals of dear ones who passed away. After Lorraine was married, they spent several winters in Arizona.
Austin and Linnie enjoyed entertaining their family in their home. Linnie's sister and brother, Eleanor and Eli, and Austin's siblings, Doug, Arlean, Gladys, and Phyllis, visited often in Burley with their spouses and always stayed at Austin and Linnie's home. Austin and Linnie's children and grandchildren often gathered at their home for Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas Eve, a birthday, or in the summer for watermelon and lounging outside on the lawn.
Austin and Linnie were great promoters of family reunions, and hosted a large one to honor Emanuel, Austin's father, on his 80th birthday. When the children of Emanuel and Maraldia decided to hold regular reunions, Austin's family hosted the first one in Burley. A favorite part of every reunion was having Austin's sisters sing, "Grandma's Left You Nothing But the Old Arm Chair."
Austin wanted to be helpful in getting his boys each set up on their own land. When land 3 ½ miles west of Burley near the Snake River, known as the Loveless place, came up for sale, Austin asked his children if they wanted it. Ted was very interested and was able to get a loan for enough to make the initial payment on the land. He bought it in 1942.
In the 1950s, R. O. Hatch drilled a well just north of Austin's 240 acres, the first well drilled in that part of Burley. The Wyatts and the Satterwhites were also pioneers in drilling in that area. Austin thought he would like to drill a well. He talked with each of his boys to see if they would be interested in going in on the venture. Ted really wanted to do it. Ted put up the money to drill the well and Austin put up the land. It was a risk for Ted because there was no guarantee water would be found in that particular location, but it turned out to be a good investment. He had Lane and Bowler drill the well in 1955, and they did find water. It was a very exciting day in December of 1956, when the first stream of water flowed from the deep well. Austin, Ted, Lawrence, Darriel and Phil worked diligently to put the place under cultivation.
Austin stayed involved in leveling and shaping the land so that water would run through the furrows. It was a big project because the land had laid dry for so long. As the men drove the equipment through big gullies and pulled the dirt along, it was so loose it just rolled like water. The dirt was like flour and it would roll far out in front of the tractor. When it looked like they finally had the land level, the wind started blowing and blew for three days straight! When it stopped, the gulley was just like it was before they started leveling. It took a lot of work to get the land settled and compacted enough to stay in place.
Other people were "breaking" the land at the same time. As they cleared sagebrush from their farms, and burned the sagebrush, it was quite a sight at night to see all the fires.
Austin was 69 years old when he was helping get the new land ready to put under cultivation. He hadn't had much experience with the big equipment they were using, and a couple of incidents convinced Ted that his dad should do other work than driving the tractors. One such incident was when Austin was pulling a scraper behind the John Deere, going from side to side pulling dirt into the gully to get it level. Austin drove the tractor down through one of the gullies and didn't trip the scraper in time to dump the dirt. The heavy drag on the tractor caused the front end to be pulled up in the air and to flip Austin over to the side of the seat. His leg was pinned against the seat. It was very painful. Ted used the tractor he had been driving to hook on to the John Deere and pull the front end down where it belonged. That whipped Austin up into sitting position. He got a very sore leg out of it. It was a miracle he wasn't hurt worse.
Another scare was when Austin was driving a John Deere across some railroad tracks and tried to shift into another gear. The tractor stalled. Austin saw a train coming and jumped off the tractor to save his life. Ted, who was pulling a rig in front of Austin's tractor, saw what was happening. He jumped off his tractor, ran to the John Deere, jammed it into reverse, and backed up the tractor just seconds before the train roared past.
Ted and Austin went 50-50 on the farm for several years. After Linnie passed away, Ted paid Austin for his half and the farm then belonged to Ted.
As Austin's and Linnie's 50th wedding anniversary approached, and their children were making plans for a celebration, Linnie became ill. She passed away on December 29, 1956. Austin was very lonely without her. He married Violet Ada Ostler May 12, 1958, but that didn't work well, and they divorced.
On June 30, 1958, he married Mary Emma Kelly. She was a gift from heaven. She loved and cared for Austin so well, and his family loved her. After Austin's passing, Mary married Linnie's brother, John Cooper, and they lived in Moreland, Idaho. She had a sweet disposition and made her husbands happy.
Austin passed away October 1, 1967, on his 81st birthday. He was buried next to Linnie in the Syracuse Cemetery in Syracuse, Utah. He left a wonderful legacy. Of the 13 children born to Austin and Linnie, nine grew to maturity. In 1967 there were 33 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren.
History - Austin was born October 1, 1886, in Bountiful, Utah to Emanuel Hanks and Maraldia Willey Hanks. Emanuel loved to sing and sang as a choir boy in the Church of England. Emanuel was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England in 1881. He and his cousin, Edward, had a strong desire to go to America and gather with the Saints.
To earn the money for passage, Emanuel bought three little pigs at one pound each. He gathered scraps from the neighbors for feed for them, and when they were grown, Emanuel sold them for $30 each. His brother Henry marveled that "Manny" would spend his entire $90 to go to America to be with those "terrible" Mormons. Henry told him that if he went to America, he would never write him a line, and he never did.
Emanuel and his cousin, Edward, sailed on the Wyoming, leaving Liverpool April 16, 1881, and arriving in New York ten days later. Also sailing on the ship was William Wallace Willey who had completed his mission in England and was returning to his family in Bountiful, Utah. Emanuel and Edward were much "taken" with William and decided to take the same train as he did from New York to Ogden, Utah. Elder Willey's brother-in-law, Joseph Mabey, met him at the train station. Elder Willey introduced Emanuel to Joseph. Emanuel asked Joseph for a job and was hired by him. Emanuel was thrilled to be earning $20 a month. He thought it was a vast amount of money, and that he could save much of it. Thus Emanuel ended up in Bountiful, Utah.
Emanuel set to work building a small house in Bountiful for his parents and sent for them. On September 3, 1881, William and Sarah sailed from Liverpool on the same ship Wyoming that Emanuel had sailed on a few months earlier and arrived in New York September 13, 1881. By the end of September they were in Zion.
Maraldia Willey, Elder Willey's daughter, was working for her Aunt Sarah Mabey, wife of Joseph Mabey, for 25 cents a day when Emanuel arrived in Utah. While she was working for her Aunt Sarah, she met Emanuel. Emanuel courted her for three years, and they were married in the Logan Temple August 26, 1885. They had a wonderful wedding reception with tables set out under the trees in the Willey's orchard.
Emanuel and Maraldia lived with his parents in Bountiful for two years. It was here they had their first child, a boy they named Austin Emanuel. Soon afterward, they moved to Vernal, Utah. Maraldia says of the move, "I had to carry my baby and block the wheels up the hills, and it seemed that the road was all hills as they were very bad. We had all of our belongings in a covered wagon where we slept, and camped out on the journey.
When we arrived in Daniel's Canyon we camped to eat. An Indian came and joined us. We invited him to eat with us, which he did. The horses got loose and wandered off, or else some Indians took them. Manuel lit out after the horses, leaving me for hours alone with the Indian. I was never so afraid in my life, as I was expecting our second child very soon."
Two of Austin's brothers, Wallace and Lawrence, were born while they lived in Vernal. After three years, the family returned to Bountiful because Emanuel's father, William, was ill. William died soon after of a ruptured hernia (August 25, 1947).
Emanuel and Maraldia enjoyed living in the Bountiful area with mountains, canyons, Salt Lake City, and other attractions nearby. They went to Salt Lake City when the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was raised, April 6, 1892. Austin was 5 ½ years old. Their family often went to the canyons or mountains for a week or so.
By 1903, Emanual and Maraldia had eight living children. Their baby, a girl named Cumorah, was two years old. Maraldia wrote, "We have had a taste of the bitter with the sweet. On one of our camping trips in Weber Canyon, Cumorah was asleep on the wagon seat and up in the wagon. I felt that she was perfectly safe, so we left camp for a few minutes. When I came back to the wagon the baby was not there. She had taken a little cup and gone to the creek presumably for a drink. I found her dead in a little shallow pool of water."
Saltair was a special attraction in Utah. It was a resort, an amusement park, built on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, resting on more than 2,000 posts and pilings. It was a family place, intended to provide a safe and wholesome atmosphere with the open supervision of leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Saltair was completed in 1893, and on August 8, a crowd of nearly 6,000 people visited there. A train from Ogden brought nearly 1,000 and the Rio Grande Western brought about half that number from Provo and south. A number of races were held and Austin won the race for the six-year-olds. He was awarded a box of candy.
Austin grew up in a rural environment and learned to be a good worker. His father, Emanuel, bought a swamp area of Clearfield and cleared it by building drainage ditches. It had very good soil. The thing that convinced Emanuel it would be a good place to raise orchards and crops was seeing all the wild bleeding heart flowers that flourished there. Emanuel built a beautiful red brick home, planted orchards, invented a machine for digging wells, and invented a water-powered washing machine. He built a fabulous workshop, and also kept bees. There was always plenty for Austin and his siblings to do.
During the summers, Austin's mother and sisters would pick berries in the evenings. Then in the morning before daylight, Emanuel and the boys would hitch the horse to the cart and take the fruit to Ogden. There they would go from house to house, peddling the fruit until it was all sold. The next morning they would repeat the same process.
On Christmas day, December 26, 1906, Austin married Linnie May Cooper of Bountiful. Their marriage was performed by Bishop David Cook. Austin was 20 years old, and Linnie 17. Linnie recorded the following about their wedding day: "Austin and I were married December 25, 1906, at high noon. Being in a hurry, and wanting to leave before Christmas dinner was served, we rushed out to the kitchen and had bacon and egg sandwiches. Then we hurried off to the Bamburger (local train) and to Bountiful. It was a beautiful day, and I wore a small shawl for a wrap. When we reached Bountiful, Austin, thinking he needed a shave before we had our picture taken, rushed next door to the barber, and somewhere along the way lost his orange blossoms. When he came back, we had our pictures, me with my hair done high with blossoms, and he without. We rushed back to Grandmother Willey's to refresh ourselves, then went to the dance in Hales Hall and had a wonderful time. The next day or two, we spent with Aunt Catherine Holbrook, then went home and stayed with Austin's folks awhile. Then we moved into part of the old factory farm house where the Clearfield Depot stands. We used to dance in the upper room of the Woods Canning Factory in Clearfield.
"About that time, the Clearfield Ward was made up of the Syracuse Ward, and we found ourselves without any public buildings. So we had to use our nickels, brain, and brawn to build a church school house and recreation hall, which was completed in a short time. (This was likely one building which was used for church, school and recreation.)
Until that time we held church in the factory room in which we danced and enjoyed all of our recreation. Austin prepared the music for our first conference, at which he worked very hard, and it came out very nice. Willis was one of the first five babies blessed in Clearfield Ward."
Austin was ward chorister in the Clearfield Ward for about ten years.
Austin and Linnie's oldest son, Willis Cooper, was born in 1907. Five more children were born while they lived in Clearfield. Edison Austin (Ed) was born in 1909. On December 1, 1909 Austin and Linnie had their marriage solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple, and had Willis sealed to them at that time. Lloyd Emanuel was born in 1910, Thelma May and Thead James (Ted), twins, in 1913, and Sarah Maurine in 1915.
As they grew, these children liked to walk along the railroad from their home to where their Hanks grandparents lived.
Austin bought a piece of ground from his dad. It had a little frame house that didn't have a ceiling covering the rafters. The boys loved to jump on the bed, hit the rafters, and grab the ceiling joists. They lived in that home a short while until Austin built a new, big house. It didn't have a basement, just a crawl space. The trap door to the crawl space was in the bathroom. If someone crawled into that space, and another person shut the door, the person underneath the door could not see anything.
One of the boys said it was darker than a black cat! The bathroom had a tub that stood on legs. The twins, Ted and Thelma, loved to soap the tub during their bath and slide down both ends. Water would fly everywhere. When the water started running under the door, their mother would take them out. Maurine was the only child of Austin and Linnie that was born in this new house that Austin built. They only lived there about two years.
As farm production increased the local farmers needed a market for their surplus produce. The Woods Cross Canning Cooperative was begun in Clearfield in 1892. They packed many different fruits and vegetables, but mostly tomatoes. Austin grew tomatoes, beans, beets, and peas for the cannery. They would plant peas by broadcasting them, harrowing them in, and cutting them with the mowing machine. They would pitch the peas on a wagon just like hay was done, and take them to the cannery. The pea vines that were left from the cannery were stacked for silage. The beets required a lot of work, thinning and topping. Their Uncle Douglas (Austin's brother) grafted some fruit trees and sealed the cut edges of the grafts with sealing wax to prevent the graft cuts from drying out.
Austin also had cows and his boys would herd their cows where Hill Field Air Force Base is now. Their farm was located near the highway going from Ogden to Sunset. They did a lot of truck gardening, raising vegetables to take to market. It was fun for Ed one day when he was following their neighbor, George Freestone, as he plowed a field. George plowed up a pouch, and saw that it contained his dad's watch. His dad was a railroad man, and he had owned that big watch that weighed a pound and had a stem wind. George wound the watch and it began running right away. Mr. Freestone was thrilled to have his watch back. It had been missing for ten years!
On October 23 of 1916, Thelma died of pneumonia at the age of three, after just 36 hours of illness. Funeral services for her were held in the Clearfield meeting house the next day. Years later, Ted's only memory of her was their sitting in an old surry, along the side of a board fence of the corral, playing like they were driving horses.
In 1916, Austin's brother, Augustin, whom the family called Gus, returned from his mission. Gus and Austin looked together for a place to farm. They first looked in southern Utah by Cedar City, but water wasn't available. Since that time deep irrigation wells have been used and there is fertile farming near Cedar City, but at that time there were no wells. Gus and Austin decided to look northward and were brought to the Snake River Valley by a realtor.
The valley was a new reclamation project being established with dams on the Snake River with a network of canals on both sides of the river. The land had a new, raw look to it as not all the land had been developed. Some was still in sagebrush. A new town was being raised on the Oregon Short Line Railroad at the confluence of Goose Creek and the Snake River. The railroad agent was a man named D.E. Burley, and the town that followed bears his name.
Gus purchased 40 acres of an 80 acre farm 2 ½ miles west of Burley and ½ mile south of the Snake River. He moved to Burley the spring of 1917. Austin purchased the remaining 40 acres of that 80 acres when he visited Gus in November of 1917.
In March of 1918, Austin and Linnie moved their family to Burley, Idaho. Their children at that time were Willis, Ed, Lloyd, Ted, and Maurine. Austin sold his land in Clearfield to some Japanese farmers. Austin was so impressed by the way they worked the land. They plowed the land leaving it full of clods and used wooden mallets to break up the clods. Next they watered the ground and worked it, and had a crop of tomatoes that very year!
Moving to Idaho was quite a venture. It was the custom in those days for the railroads which helped sponsor the settlement of an area through which their road passed, to charter railroad cars to the settlers for the movement of their machinery, household effects, etc. Gus, Austin, and a distant relative, Anson Call, leased a railroad car from the Union Pacific Railroad and this was the way they moved to Burley. They put all their belonging in a railroad boxcar, the cows and horses in one end, and the household things in the other end. Austin rode in the boxcar with it all. The rest of his family rode on the passenger train. They had to water cows at the stop in Pocatello. It took more than one day for the boxcar to get to Burley. There was a railroad stop just two miles out of town, not far from the farm they had purchased.
Austin and Linnie moved their family to a little brown house just south of Gus's house. Linnie was lonely there, and it meant so much to her that Gus's wife, Olive, would loan her books to read. Olive had been a school teacher and Linnie thought she was very generous to loan her books. Linnie would read them from cover to cover.
Linnie was a very reserved person and so good to her children. She loved to hold them and read to them after their baths. No matter how bad things were, no one else knew. She didn't talk about her troubles. As the family grew, she made 12 loaves of bread every other day! She had high blood pressure, and endured several cases of phlebitis in her legs.
Their living was mostly self-sustaining. They raised crops for the pigs and cows and other livestock. They would sell a few porkers and some milk or cream. It was a hard job to weed the crops of onions and get them to seed. It was frustrating when cows would get into the onions. The milk would then taste like onion soup! The meat from those cows was awful!
Austin and Gus exchanged work and co-owned machinery to establish their farming operations. Austin's 40 acres was nearest the road, and Gus had his down a lane. They were used to doing truck gardening on a small plot of land so hand work was what they knew best. They were both very hard working men like their dad.
Ted remembers that thinning beets was about the hardest job for him to do. He always disliked it very much. He enjoyed working in the hay more than any other work. They had quite a crew. The older boys would pitch and Ted would tromp and ride the derrick horse. Their dad could usually fork the hay off the wagons and stack it as fast as the boys could load.
There weren't any tractors in Idaho at that time. It was a thrill for the family when Austin went back to Utah about a year after moving to Burley and bought a new automobile! It was a Model T Ford. It was one of the open models with a black canvas top. In the wintertime they put isinglass windows with canvass siding on it which would close it up a little bit so they could ride around in it.
The first electric fence for pasture was quite an experience. They had no way to reduce the current. They would run it through a low watt light bulb. There were a few head of cattle electrocuted before there was a better device.
While they lived next to Gus, four more children were born. They were a stillborn son in 1918, Eleanor in 1919, and Lawrence and Florence(twins) in 1921. Then the family moved to the Pella area to a Booth place. Phil was born there in 1923. Darriel was born in 1926 after they returned to the home by Gus.
For a period of time between 1926 and 1930, the family lived in a cement stucco three-room house. It was on an 80 acre farm known as the Allen place located three miles west and one mile south of Burley. While they were living in the little cement house Florence got meningitis. She was sick for a long time, and her head started to pull back. When she passed away they buried her in the orchard.
The family built a new brick home close to the cement house. Austin did most of the work on the home and Mr. Kloepfer from Rupert engineered what needed to be done. Mr. Kloepfer laid the brick on the home. The children helped with the building. They were proud of the home and especially happy that they didn't have to sleep three in a bed any longer! The little cement house continued to be useful as each of the children married. The couples often lived in that home until they could obtain a home of their own.
Directly across the road to the north of their new home was the Starrh's Ferry church house. The Starrh's Ferry Branch was spun off from the Burley First Ward. The name, Starrh's Ferry, came from the ferry that George Starrh had established on the Snake River in 1880, four miles west of Burley. He had established the ferry for the purpose of hauling freight from the Wood River country to Kelton, Utah where the nearest railroad was then located. The first Sunday School the family attended was in a little one-room wooden building by the ferry. Although there was a school by Starrh's Ferry, the children attended the Palisade School two miles south and 1- 1/2 miles west of Burley.
Austin helped build the church. It was red brick and had a big furnace down stairs which used coal and wood for fuel. Sometimes they used sage brush which they stacked into a pile almost as high as the building. It was a grand building. As one entered the front doors, a wide staircase led up to a large open room that was used as a chapel and cultural hall. At the far end of the room was a stage. The windows on either side of the room were very tall and had long velvet drapes which matched the velvet curtain of the stage. Classrooms were downstairs. Even the furnace room downstairs was used as a classroom. There was no running water.
Every summer the ward held a big 24th of July parade and party. Booths were set up on the back lawn under the shade of the trees where a variety of food was sold and games were played. Bazaars were also a big part of the ward activities. The Starrh's Ferry Branch became the Star Ward in 1920.
Austin, with a fine tenor voice and musical appreciation developed in his youth as a member of a singing family, participated in the ward choir and served as ward chorister. He also answered calls to be the YMMIA president, the Sunday School superintendent, and a missionary in the Burley Stake. He faithfully attended church and supported all church activities. He observed and taught his family to observe and honor the Sabbath day. He held the office of High Priest. Grandchildren recall that Austin would frequently stand in fast and testimony meeting and request that the congregation sing "We Are Sowing".
Austin got smallpox and it was a bad case! His entire body was covered with the pox, even the bottom of his feet. He hated being sick in bed and one day Ed saw him going down to the barn on his hands and knees. The entire family was sick, so they would phone someone for groceries, which would be delivered to their gate. No one dared come near the house.
One afternoon Ted came home from school and no one else was home. He was hungry, but couldn't find anything to eat. So he went to the chicken coop and got some eggs. The chicken coop was right against the haystack.
He decided the best way to cook the eggs would be to use some dry hay and build a fire right between the chicken coop and the haystack. He turned a tin bucket over the fire and tried to cook the eggs. Then he left and went to his Uncle Gus' place where his mother was. He could see Uncle Gus coming up through the field on a high gallop with his span of horses he had been working with. Gus could see the smoke rolling up by the shed at Austin's place. At the end of the chicken coop in the garage was Austin's car! Gus rushed over there and threw a chain around the back axle of the car and the horses pulled the car out into the clearing. The haystack and stable all went up in smoke. but the car was saved!
On a few occasions Austin would let the kids go fishing on Saturday afternoon in the Snake River two miles north of their home. Maurine, being the oldest girl, got the brunt of housework, along with her mother. Ironing was a huge job for Maurine. She had a big galvanized tub full of dampened-down clothes, and ironed all day Saturday.
Although they had no refrigeration, the family had fresh milk every morning and every night from their cows. They kept a box (about a bushel size) on the north side of their home where they would keep butter, and sometimes meat. They put a wet sack (likely burlap) over the box to keep it cool. After each milking the milk was poured into a big bowl on top of a separator, and the milk was spun around causing the cream to come out of a spout on top. Skim milk came out of a lower spout and was fed to the pigs. Cream was taken to town and sold to a creamery. They always hoped for a high content of cream because they were paid on that content.
To get ice, they drove a team and wagon to the river each winter and loaded up with ice. They took the ice to their ice house and covered it with saw dust. That kept the ice frozen so that in the summer they could dig into the ice house and get a block for making ice cream.
Austin bought another 80 acre farm, four miles south and three miles west of Burley from a Mr. Perrine. It had a house on it that was on the desert side of a canal, and had big corrals. Austin liked to run a little band of sheep on the land and he always had cattle around, milk stock mostly. The land was fenced and he used it as a grazing area. During the day time he liked to run the sheep west of there out onto a butte. Sometimes Austin would send his boys out to stay overnight with the sheep so they could keep the sheep somewhat contained on the butte, rather than bringing them back into the fenced area by the canal.
Austin soon bought another 80 acres west of the first purchase, and Gus bought 80 acres west of Austin's. Then Austin bought Gus's 80 acres, giving him 240 acres. Austin fenced it and used it as dry land, a place mostly for pasture. Willis did the actual fencing. Phil remembers having to keep Willis supplied with a can of drinking water. Phil got so he would trust their old horse to take him back and forth with the water. The biggest thing for them was milk cows. With seven boys, Austin saw there was always plenty to do. He would assign each boy a certain number of cows to milk.
On the subject of cows, Gus's family stored their potatoes, cabbages and turnips in a cellar, located west of Gus's home on what they called the "hill". After the harvest was completed and the food put into the cellar, the double doors were sealed and it was prepared for winter. One day Gus went by the cellar and noticed that there was a hole in the roof.
He checked his herd to be sure none of the animals had fallen into the cellar, and then repaired the hole in the cellar roof. In January Gus and his boys went to the cellar to get the potatoes inside and prepare them for shipping. When they opened up the top half of the split doors, an animal "just exploded out of the cellar, having been there for a couple of months." Come to find out, the animal belonged to Austin who had missed it, but thought it was with another neighbor's cattle. Gus's family had the unfortunate task of cleaning up the mess!
Harvesting the hay for the cows was quite a process. To cut it, horses pulled a mower that had a cutter bar/pitman bar, that drove the knife back and forth to cut the hay. A little grass was in the hay making it much harder to cut. It was a challenge to keep the knives sharp and to sharpen the guards the blades ran through. Austin's first sharpener was a large hand-turned stone that sat upright on a tripod much as a spinning wheel does. It was about three inches wide and two feet in diameter and was turned by a foot pedal that was attached to an eccentric that stuck out from the center of the stone. A little can of water above the stone had a hole in it that would let the water drip down. The stone had to be wet. It was hard work for the horses to pull the mower through the hay.
After the hay was cut, a horse pulled a dump rake through it with shafts on each side. The hay would dump the hay into piles. The rake was pulled around a second time to make the piles higher and tighter. The third time around the rake was pulled in the opposite direction so both sides of the piles were flipped in. This would form a driveway around the field, and they would go around and around the field. They did this three times each summer, as there were three crops of hay to be harvested. It was their biggest summer job. They fed the hay to their pigs, cows, calves, horses, all the animals.
As the years passed, and there were only four children left in high school, Austin enjoyed driving a nice car. It was in their new Dodge that their son, Ted, courted Mae, his future bride. Austin and Linnie took frequent trips to Utah. They were always sure that one trip was on Memorial Day. They made it a point to remember old friends and attended funerals of dear ones who passed away. After Lorraine was married, they spent several winters in Arizona.
Austin and Linnie enjoyed entertaining their family in their home. Linnie's sister and brother, Eleanor and Eli, and Austin's siblings, Doug, Arlean, Gladys, and Phyllis, visited often in Burley with their spouses and always stayed at Austin and Linnie's home. Austin and Linnie's children and grandchildren often gathered at their home for Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas Eve, a birthday, or in the summer for watermelon and lounging outside on the lawn.
Austin and Linnie were great promoters of family reunions, and hosted a large one to honor Emanuel, Austin's father, on his 80th birthday. When the children of Emanuel and Maraldia decided to hold regular reunions, Austin's family hosted the first one in Burley. A favorite part of every reunion was having Austin's sisters sing, "Grandma's Left You Nothing But the Old Arm Chair."
Austin wanted to be helpful in getting his boys each set up on their own land. When land 3 ½ miles west of Burley near the Snake River, known as the Loveless place, came up for sale, Austin asked his children if they wanted it. Ted was very interested and was able to get a loan for enough to make the initial payment on the land. He bought it in 1942.
In the 1950s, R. O. Hatch drilled a well just north of Austin's 240 acres, the first well drilled in that part of Burley. The Wyatts and the Satterwhites were also pioneers in drilling in that area. Austin thought he would like to drill a well. He talked with each of his boys to see if they would be interested in going in on the venture. Ted really wanted to do it. Ted put up the money to drill the well and Austin put up the land. It was a risk for Ted because there was no guarantee water would be found in that particular location, but it turned out to be a good investment. He had Lane and Bowler drill the well in 1955, and they did find water. It was a very exciting day in December of 1956, when the first stream of water flowed from the deep well. Austin, Ted, Lawrence, Darriel and Phil worked diligently to put the place under cultivation.
Austin stayed involved in leveling and shaping the land so that water would run through the furrows. It was a big project because the land had laid dry for so long. As the men drove the equipment through big gullies and pulled the dirt along, it was so loose it just rolled like water. The dirt was like flour and it would roll far out in front of the tractor. When it looked like they finally had the land level, the wind started blowing and blew for three days straight! When it stopped, the gulley was just like it was before they started leveling. It took a lot of work to get the land settled and compacted enough to stay in place.
Other people were "breaking" the land at the same time. As they cleared sagebrush from their farms, and burned the sagebrush, it was quite a sight at night to see all the fires.
Austin was 69 years old when he was helping get the new land ready to put under cultivation. He hadn't had much experience with the big equipment they were using, and a couple of incidents convinced Ted that his dad should do other work than driving the tractors. One such incident was when Austin was pulling a scraper behind the John Deere, going from side to side pulling dirt into the gully to get it level. Austin drove the tractor down through one of the gullies and didn't trip the scraper in time to dump the dirt. The heavy drag on the tractor caused the front end to be pulled up in the air and to flip Austin over to the side of the seat. His leg was pinned against the seat. It was very painful. Ted used the tractor he had been driving to hook on to the John Deere and pull the front end down where it belonged. That whipped Austin up into sitting position. He got a very sore leg out of it. It was a miracle he wasn't hurt worse.
Another scare was when Austin was driving a John Deere across some railroad tracks and tried to shift into another gear. The tractor stalled. Austin saw a train coming and jumped off the tractor to save his life. Ted, who was pulling a rig in front of Austin's tractor, saw what was happening. He jumped off his tractor, ran to the John Deere, jammed it into reverse, and backed up the tractor just seconds before the train roared past.
Ted and Austin went 50-50 on the farm for several years. After Linnie passed away, Ted paid Austin for his half and the farm then belonged to Ted.
As Austin's and Linnie's 50th wedding anniversary approached, and their children were making plans for a celebration, Linnie became ill. She passed away on December 29, 1956. Austin was very lonely without her. He married Violet Ada Ostler May 12, 1958, but that didn't work well, and they divorced.
On June 30, 1958, he married Mary Emma Kelly. She was a gift from heaven. She loved and cared for Austin so well, and his family loved her. After Austin's passing, Mary married Linnie's brother, John Cooper, and they lived in Moreland, Idaho. She had a sweet disposition and made her husbands happy.
Austin passed away October 1, 1967, on his 81st birthday. He was buried next to Linnie in the Syracuse Cemetery in Syracuse, Utah. He left a wonderful legacy. Of the 13 children born to Austin and Linnie, nine grew to maturity. In 1967 there were 33 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren.
Family Members
Siblings
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William Wallace Hanks
1888–1909
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Lawrence Edward Hanks
1889–1895
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Sarah Miraldia Hanks Wilcox
1891–1979
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Augustin Leo Hanks
1893–1986
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Gladys Hanks Simpson
1895–1983
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Douglas J Hanks
1897–1975
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Nancy Catherine Hanks Green
1899–1931
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Cumorah Clissold Hanks
1901–1903
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Phyllis Eldora Hanks King
1902–1994
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Vosco Hanks
1904–1904
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Edith Hanks
1904–1904
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Arlean Hanks Olson
1906–1998
Children
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Willis Cooper Hanks
1907–1958
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Edison Austin Hanks
1909–1993
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Lloyd E Hanks
1910–1995
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Thelma May Hanks
1913–1917
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Thead James Hanks
1913–1999
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Maurine Hanks Tanner Stiens
1915–2002
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Eleanor Hanks Toone
1919–2007
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Florence Hanks
1921–1925
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Lawrence Wayne Hanks
1921–1999
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Phillip Donald "Phil" Hanks
1923–2019
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Melvin Darriel Hanks
1926–2011
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Lorraine Hanks Garrett Hogg
1928–2016
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