She was born in Knolen, Utah∼Maggie Tolman Porter was the youngest of 24 children of Cyrus Hewett Tolman. My mother's name was Margaret Eliza Utley. My father was worn 6 April, 1820, in Augusta, Maine. I was born 26 April 1877, at Knollen, Tooele County, Utah. I write these memories of my father. I was not associaited with him very much in my early childhood. He was with his first family, with Alice Bracken and thier mother moved to Tooele, Utah to the Goose Creek County in Idaho. He tried to get my mother to move there also. Three of my brothers were grown men, were working in the mines near Ophir, Utah, close to our home and refused to leave their work to go with my father,so my mother chose to keep her family together by remaining in Knollen, Rush Valley, Wyoming.
The boys had kept the family from the time they were able to get work. Father had given them a good home, except for the water shortage, it was a wonderful place. As the years went by the water shortage increased. It became impossible to farm at all, so we decided to hunt for a new home. It had been my mother's constant prayer to get her children out of the mine influiences and settle among the Latter-day Saints. We moved to Star Valley, Wyoming in 1888. My father came from Idaho to help us make the move. He always seemed to us children to be a guest in our home. A very welcome guest to me at least. He always brought us presents adn was kindness personified. He never harshly corrected us. When anything of the moment arose he handed the reins of Government over to my mother. This government was done with love and firmness.
...I never attended any school until I was thirteen years old. The girls my age had a lot of fun at my expense, but when school began I was ahead of all the girls my age (15). My sister gave me a private, well ballaned and most instructive program of learning. I taught my first school before I was seventeen years old. I held a second grade certificate from the State of Wyoming at that time. I was married that winter of 1894 to Orson Merit Porter (1869-1935). I had been called as a Sunday School Missionary from Star Valley (LDS) Stake along with Harvey Allred, a married man with a family of four. I was married by the time I got down to Salt Lake. I went to Provo for the Sunday School course, and my husband went to Porterville as a hired hand bailing hay. After twenty-four hours of married life, I did not see him again for four months. I had a quite a time convincing the students and especially one of the teachers that I was married.
When I returned to Star Valley, Wyoming, I raised my second grade certificate to a first class certificate that August and held it. All told I taught school (sandwitching in a baby occasionally) for about twelve years.
While I was in Provo, I was chosen from a group of 800 students as the secretary of the College Sunday School. I can assure you that the students Juniors and Seniors--were very jealious of me, a strange country girl chosen as one of their leaders (BYU). But I knew that my clear voice was on the calling card. My husband, Orson, was chosen Stake Superintendent of the Young Men's Mutual...