Lewis Black Biography by Jen M. Black

LEWIS BLACK

(As written by Lewis Black- a son of James M. and Cecelia Christena Larsen Black)

I was born in 1861 and I was a good-sized boy before I saw a match. We went to the neighbors when our fire went out, they used a powdered rag and a flint to start fires.  I was quite old before I saw a stove.
   

I will never forget the hardships and the fear we had of Indians.  On April 6th, Indians attacked a company under Bishop Olsen on the Sevier River near Richfield and killed Lars A Justensen, Charles Wilson, and wounded R. Thompson.  On August 13, 1867, Indians attacked Spring City and killed James Meeks and Andrew Johansen, and wounded William Blain.

    

Some settlers soon built log cabins, but most lived in dugouts, all with dirt roofs. Everything was hauled from Omaha, with ox team, and no money to buy. 

    

On July 19, 1867, grasshoppers came in great numbers and destroyed most all the crops in Sanpete and they stayed here for three years. They were so thick they darkened the sun along about noon you could hardly see the sun, and not a green leaf left on the trees.  People think the depression here today (1935) is terrible.  They should have been here in early days.  This is Paradise today compared to that time when you could not see the sun on a clear day for grasshoppers. In that day the people were honest, neighborly and dependable. 

    

On September 20, 1876, John D. Lee was convicted of murder in the first degree for connection with the Mountain Meadow massacre.  The fall of 1876

I took Tanner Smith down to York Station and we stopped at Bob Statards hotel and John D. Lee also stopped there.  The next morning he came out in the barn and talked to me and some others that were there and he said, "I am to be shot in September."
    

The first real communication over the air with Europe was on December 25, 1929, on Christmas Day. When Belgium, Holland, Germany, and England sent a concert and Christmas greeting to the United States Broadcasting System.  They sent it to short wave to Long Island and then to New York and then to Salt Lake and we received it here in Spring City over K. S. L.  Told me by Angus M. Black, a son.

Lewis and Trena Jensen were married October 27, 1880 and they first lived across the road west from where Eleanor Barney's home now stands.  I was born there and so were all the other children except Mabel.  Then we moved down to the other place, where the folks lived until their death, and the home still stands, one half block north and one block east of my home.
    

In his early years, dad worked in the canyons getting out red pine timber for railroad ties for the Moss Company.  He also did a little farming and cattle raising, although he never owned more than 20 acres, and the lot where the house now stands. He and mother were married 63 years and 5 months and they had many pioneer hardships to face.  Besides raising 6 children of their own, they cared for others than their own.  They made a home for Trena's sister Leate and her brother Jim because their father and mother were separated. 

   

Dad died May 5, 1944 at 1:10 P. M. at the age of 83.  He was a member of the Elders Quorum of the L. D.S. Church.  Lewis Black was one of the first white children born in Spring City on April 18, 1861, a son of James M. Black and Christena Larsen Black, early Danish pioneers.  His parents came to America in a company of 1,800 Danish immigrants, and his father was one of the early shoemakers of the community of Spring City.

    
Mr. Lewis Black married Trena Jensen October 27, 1880, the ceremony being performed by his uncle Lauritz Larsen of Spring City.  The couple later received their endowments and were sealed in the Manti Temple. (March 19, 1902)
    

Lewis Black was ordained an Elder by James A. Allred on March 2, 1902.

    

He was buried in Spring City on May 9, 1944. 

April 15, 1959
    

On the lot formerly owned by Lewis Black and later Angus M. Black, the house now is in a state of remodeling and three large rooms added.   The three rooms built by Lewis Black are still left there.  Francis J. Black, a grandson, is having it built and will live there.