George Weslie Richardson

  Family stories and traditions from the Pheasant Hunt of 1999 and other sources.

  I will attempt to write a few things from that day.  There is a video recording that you may view.  Each of the Brothers and Sisters should have one.  The following children were born to Dad.  Donna, Betty, Thomas, Paul, Patricia (Pat), Pauline, Sterling, Lynn, and Michael Brent.

  George Weslie Richardson was born to Thomas and Eunice Richardson the 14th of April 1899 in Benjamin, Utah.  They apparently lived in a home just south of where Lynn Lives.  There remains only an old well.  When Dad was young they moved to the old school house just north of where Lynn lives.

  Dad was about five foot ten inches tall.  He was heavy built and weighed about 210 to 225 pounds.  He had dark black hair and heavy black eyebrows.  He was a strong man and a hard worker.  Donna said he was quite good looking as a young man.

  He married Pauline Isabela Butler on 5 Oct 1919 in Benjamin, Utah.  They lived most of the time in Benjamin in two homes.  The Matley place, as it was called, was in the eastern part of Benjamin, and the main home was about 7101 So. 4000 West in Benjamin.  There were eleven children born to them, one other child was stillborn.

  His farm was part of his father's old farm.  He worked with his brothers Alton, Leslie and Sterling.  They often traded work and shared equipment, but each maintained their own farm.

  His idea was to work all day.  Four loads of hay in the morning and three in the afternoon.  The perspiration made a large band around the waistline of his striped coveralls as he worked.  He plowed the ground with horses.  He harrowed, planted, and harvested with them.  He even used them to compete in pulling matches with other horses in the area.  A blacksmith shop behind Grandma Richardson's house and a few tools kept the equipment going.  A shovel, pitchfork, axe, and a hoe were the hand tools of the day for farming.

  Dad raised hay, alfalfa seed, sugar beets, peas, corn, barley, and wheat.  He had two chicken coops full of chickens and he raised pigs and cows.  Dad also raised sheep down on the West Mountain for a short time.

  There was a short period of time when Dad worked in the mines in the Eureka, Utah area.  Mom and Dad lived in Mammoth for a short time.  Betty was born there.  Dad returned to the farm when his mother asked him to return.  Grandpa Richardson was sick and they needed Dad to help.

  Dad had a good disposition.  Except when the horses acted up, then he would use some "barnyard language."

  He loved to sing.  When Mom was alive she said that when they were courting, Dad and John Zeeman would ride their horses past her home and they would sing.

  Some of the songs he would sing to his children are:  Old Shep, Come Sit Upon My Knee Sonny Boy, O How I Miss You _______________, and Red Sails in the Sunset.  I remember Dad and Mom singing while they drove down the road with us children in the car.

  Dad was proud of his children.  He wanted his daughters to be ladies.  Dad always stressed modesty in the home.  He would proudly introduce his boys to others.  He gave council as they left the home during the Second World War, "Remember who you are, and watch who you associate with."

  Dad smoked cigarettes.  He didn't want his children to do that.  He called it a filthy habit.  He said that if the kids didn't smoke he would give them each a wristwatch.  Betty said that she still had her watch.  Dad died of the effects of lung cancer at the age of 52 years.

  Discipline was usually without anger.  There was no back talk to Mom when Dad was home.  Dad would just lift his right eyebrow and look at the troublemakers and that would stop what was happening.  At the dinner table if things got out of hand he would get up and leave the table.  Then Mom would say, "You kids have done it now!"  Then no one would feel like eating.

  The girls would sometimes complain about doing the dishes.  All Dad would have to say was, "Girls, sit down and I will do the dishes."  That is all it would take.  The girls would do their job.

  Dad wasn't shy about giving spankings when needed.  Some of them would make the seat of your pants sparkle a little.  He would usually use the palm of his hand, but sometimes a green willow would do the job.  Nobody seemed to think that what they got was not deserved.  There was no question that Dad still loved you.

  Dad didn't mind sharing the things that he had.  When he would butcher animals on the farm, he would take some of the meat to his sister-in-law whose husband had died.  He gave a sack of flour to some needy people in the southeast part of town once.  He gave corn and peas to whoever needed them.  Sometimes they would take them from the fields that bordered the highway without asking.  When our food supplies were stolen from the cellar, he said, "I hope they need it more than we do."

  Dad loved to hunt.  He hunted deer, elk, and pheasants.  Paul recalled two shots and two pheasants.  He was a very good shot.  He hunted in Strawberry Valley, Scipio, Nebo, and up at uncle Ray McKinzie's ranch in Diamond Fork.  He loved to fish at Utah Lake.

  Dad had a calling in the ward.  He was over the old folks committee.  He did that for 25 years.  That didn't require him to go to church.  Tom said that he remembered seeing Dad read the Bible and the Book of Mormon.  I remember once when the Ward Teachers came.  Dad seemed to know a lot about the Church and there was a lively discussion.  All children gathered when the Home Teachers came.

  Dad was president of the PTA.  Dad was a good democrat.  It seemed he was pretty involved at times with them.  He worked on the Utah-Idaho Sugar Beet Committee and traveled into Idaho as well as Utah for them.  He was a county road supervisor during the depression.  He worked for the county as a tax assessor for a short time and worked for the Ironton Steel Mill.  I believe that he did this, plus farming.

  Dad loved Mom.  There were seldom disagreements, especially in front of the children.  I never heard him raise his voice to Mother.  When Dad and Mom would go to the Benjamin dances, Dad would always dance with Mom first.  He then would dance with his daughters.  Donna said that the last words Dad spoke before he died was, "I love you Mom."

--Lynn Richardson

Nov 29 2000

To read a biography of Wes' wife, Pauline Butler Richardson, click here.

To return to the Richardson Family Index page, click here.

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