HEBER
ALBERT HUBAND
Heber Albert Huband, son of William Perry Huband and
Ann Jeffery Huband, was born 11 October 1860 in West Haddon, England, where he
lived until 1869 when the family set sail for America. At the time of sailing, the Huband family consisted
of Mr. and Mrs. William Huband, three boys,
and three girls. Sailing on the S.
S. Colorado from Liverpool, they arrived in New York some twelve days
later. Mr. Huband, having a sister
living in Cache Valley, and also knowing Brother Moses Thatcher who had been a
Mormon missionary in England, decided to go West to Logan, Utah.
“Boarding
a train in New York,” relates Heber Huband, “the family stared on the trip
west, which was filled with many and varied experiences.” Traveling with the Hubands were several
Mormon missionaries who having completed their missions were returning
home. Train coaches at this time were
lighted with candles and other conveniences were few. On one instance, Mr.
Huband relates how his father produced from an unknown source a pot of steaming
tea. Asked by the missionaries where it had come from, his father pulled back
his coat from in front of the seat to disclose an empty tin can from which
sputtered a candle over which he had heated water in a small teakettle and brewed
the tea. Heber tells further of the
train being stranded and the passengers sleeping in cattle cars for the night.
It turned out, however, to be a rather sleepless night as the mosquitoes (or
“scatters” as the English call them) were very bad. Seeing Indian teepees in the distance also helped to disturb
their would be slumbers.
Another
time the tracks were washed out and the train was forced to stop over for some
time near Morgan, Utah. People living nearby brought squash and corn to give to
the passengers to eat. Never having
seen squash or corn before, the Hubands tried eating them raw and were sadly
disappointed in the taste of the much-needed food.
Showing
the loyalty and respect the Saints have for the missionaries, Heber relates
that his father and mother left many small keepsakes, etc., in England in order
to carry a large base violin for a missionary by the name of Zeb Jacobs of
Ogden, Utah, all the way from England to Zion.
Arriving
in Ogden, the Church furnished a team and wagon to carry the family to Logan,
because the railroad was as yet unfinished. The family was welcomed at Logan by
Heber’s uncle, William Green, who took them by wagon to his home in Paradise,
Utah, some eleven miles distant where they remained a few months, and then moved
to Hyrum.
Heber’s father was a carpenter by trade
and through some work acquired two lots on which they raised some vegetables
although the grasshoppers were very bad at this time. Conditions being more
favorable for carpenter work at Logan, the family soon moved to that city. Mr.
Huband built a house there for Moses Thatcher and several others, some of which
are still standing.
While
building a house for a Mrs. Peacock, in
the year 1872, on September 22, Heber’s father was killed in a fall from the
second floor. A few weeks later another child was born to the Huband family,
making a total of eight children, one boy having been born at Hyrum, Utah,
after the family came from England.
Shortly
after the death of Heber’s father, a Mr. Bevans married his oldest sister,
Bertha. Mr. Bevans, being a kind-hearted man, did many things for the Huband
family at this time of need. He succeeded in building them a two-room house
where they lived for some years.
Having
heard a story of coalfields in Wyoming, near where Kemmerer now stands, Mr.
Bevans decided to move to Carter, Wyoming.
In the year 1875, he started for Wyoming taking Heber with him. Heber,
at this time fourteen years old and one of the main supports of the family,
decided to try new fields of adventure and new means of making a living,
Arriving
in Carter, Mr. Bevans decided to make brick and sell them to the mines to make
coke ovens, but the mines made other arrangements and all their work was for
nothing, In the meantime, Mr. Bevans and Heber went back to Logan and moved the
family to Carter. Late the same fall, Mr. Bevans left for Bear River where he
worked on a ranch.
Heber had
a job washing dishes and waiting table for train crews for a dollar a week, and
so he and his mother stayed at Carter, Wyoming. He told of one experience of
being snowed in for thirteen days between Carter and Sage, Wyoming -- a
distance of 25 miles. The snow was very deep and the weather very cold. They
had nothing to eat but a small amount of black tea. It was a miracle that fifteen year-old Heber and four men lived
through the cold and starvation for thirteen days.
The next
spring Heber’s mother and family moved to Sage, Wyoming, where they stayed a
short time. They then moved to Laketown
Utah, on the south end of Bear Lake. A
short time later they moved to Kimball Town, now known as Meadowville, four
miles from Laketown. This was the home of J. Golden Kimball and here Heber
first met the Kimball family. While the family lived here, Heber took a job for
his board at Farmington, Utah, where he stayed about five months, then returned
to Kimball Town. He received only 3 years of schooling as the family kept
moving to earn a livelihood.
Heber was
living in Kimball Town at the time J. Golden Kimball’s brother was accidentally
shot. Heber was sent to Logan on a
horse for a doctor, but the boy died before help could get there.
Later the family moved to Duck Creek,
which is just two miles north of Sage Creek. Here Mrs. Huband intended to
homestead, but they later moved to Eden, Utah, on the east side of Bear Lake.
During this time, Heber was herding sheep between Woodruff, Utah, and Hot
Springs, Idaho, for the sum of $8.00 per month. On returning home to his mother
in the fall, he gave her his check, every cent of which was there, including
some extra from trapping beaver.
The family
was very poor and the boys always on the alert for work. He went to work in the
spring of 1879 or 1880, for Bishop Ira Nebeker. Mr. Nebeker was boss of a cattle
herd to be driven from Salt Wells, near the promontory in Utah, to Clear Creek,
Wyoming -- some eighty miles east of Poser R1ver, Wyoming. Heber and an elder brother, Dan, with
fifteen other men, started out on this long trail through the wilderness, through
mountains, and over plains driving ahead of them 2500 head of cattle. Month
after month passed by as the weary
cowboys slowly pushed this large herd forward. Drinking water from buffalo
wallows, which were green and stagnant, many of the men became ill, among one
of who was Heber’s brother, Dan.
Provisions ran out as they neared the Sweetwater in Wyoming and they
lived entirely upon meat from that point on. On one occasion, while crossing
the Green River, one cowboy drowned along with many of the cattle.
This long
trail led the wary men, horses, and cattle through South Pass, Wyoming and on
through the Bad Lands. Many hardships and privations were endured. Upon arrival
at Clear Creek with the herd, the owner was supposed to furnish horses and
$15.00 for the men to return home on.
He however had taken everything and left the country. Mr. Nebeker caught him at a hotel some few
days later and got a little money and they finally managed for horses and
started the long ride home. Not having
much to eat, they killed many buffalo calves and also stray beef to keep from
starving. Late that fall they arrived
home after some six months on the trail.
The next Spring Heber went to Sage Creek and worked on
a ranch for the Jensen Brothers, where he stayed about one year. While there,
be became ill with mountain fever and was very sick for a long time.
In the summer of 1882, Heber and 3 other men started
to drive a band of horses from Logan to Kimball Town or Meadowville, near Bear
Lake. Shortly after they started through Blacksmith Fork Canyon, Heber became
ill with tick fever and others left him on the trail to die. That night a
friendly Indian came to his aid and nursed him for seven days and nights with
herbs from the mountains. This Indian surely saved his life.
The following year, on April 9,1882, Heber’s older
brother, Dan, died at South Eden, Bear Lake, Utah. Sometime later, in the year 1883, Heber went to work for Joseph
Cheney at Laketown, Utah, working there most of the time until1885.
In the summer of this year, Heber, Mr.
Cheney, and his daughter Hattie, drove a wagon to Idaho where they filed upon
320 acres of land near where Shelley, Idaho, now stands. While there, they
surveyed a canal naming it the Cedar Point Canal, by which it is known today. Returning home to Eden, Heber and his mother
and her family all moved up to this new country of Idaho, after having lived at
Eden for seven years. On arriving there, they dug a cellar in which to live
until they could build a log room over it.
Idaho Falls
(then known is Eagle Rock) was the nearest trading post. Shelley wasn’t named
until seven years later. A company was organized, called the Cedar Point Canal.
After working for five years on the canal, water was carried from the Snake
River into Shelly. Digging this canal with limited means and very little
equipment was a very uphill business, and caused much work, worry, and
sacrifice.
In the year 1889, Heber returned to
Laketown where he married Hattie Cheney, 6 November 1889, in the Logan Temple
at Logan, Utah.. Staying near Garden City, Utah, at the Bisbing ranch that
winter, the Hubands left Bear Lake and returned to the ranch in Idaho the
following spring.
Heber, having lived in Shelley some 20
years, sold the ranch and moved to Logan for the next three years. He bought a lot and built a six-room house,
part of which was rented to students.
This took up most of Mr. Huband’s time.
The Hubands, about this time in the
year 1908, moved to Gridley, California. Buying a small farm in Gridley,
consisting of 16 acres of land and a large house, the Hubands lived there for
about three years. While living there, a daughter, GENE was born, 30
November 1908, and a son, GRANT, born 18 May 1911.
Mr. Huband became ill with malaria
while living at Gridley. So at the end
of three years, they moved to North Ogden, Utah, in the year 1911. Buying a
home in North Ogden from Frank Huband, Heber’s brother, the family resided
there for the 40 some years.
Mr. Huband took the job as custodian of
the North Ogden School in 1917, which he held until 1937 when he resigned,
after some 20 years of service.
Heber was very active in the Elder’s
Quorum of the North Ogden Ward. He never turned down an assignment. In 1924 he filled a home mission with James
Storey and Nellie Ward Neal as companions. On January 24,1926, he was ordained
a High Priest of the North Ogden Ward, Ogden Stake, by John W. Gibson.
His wife, Hattie, died May 22, 1951, at North Ogden
after 62 years of happily married life.
Heber died Oct. 8,1954, at the family
home after a four week’s illness following an operation — the 11th day of October
would have been his 94th birthday.
Heber and Hattie Huband at their house in North
Ogden, Utah (circa 1950)
CHILDREN OF HEBER AND HATTIE HUBAND:
Born to them were the following
children:
1.
LOLA: born 21
August1890 at Laketown, Utah, died 27 July 1894 at Shelley, Idaho;
2.
NINA: born 27 April
1893 at Laketown, Utah, died 2 August 1894 at Shelley, Idaho;
3.
BLANCHE: born 21 May
1895 at Shelley, Idaho; married Claude A. Ellis 22 November 1917; died May 26,
1984;
4.
MONTICE: born 7
December 1897 at Shelley, Idaho; died 6 November 1900;
5.
EDWIN: born 29
October 1900 at Shelley, Idaho; died 11 March 1907 at Logan, Utah;
6.
LANE: born 16
December 1903 at Shelley, Idaho; married Ruth Norine Peterson 29 March 1935;
died 12 September 1994;
7.
GENE ANN: born 30
November 1908 at Gridley, California; married Philo T. Ellsworth 21 November
1932; died 17 April 1978;
8.
GRANT: born 18 May
1911; married Virginia Kimm 24 December 1948; died 6 September 1988.
Heber Huband Family 1937
Back Row: Grant, Heber, Lane
Front Row: Blanche, Hattie, Gene
Heber Huband Obituary:
