ON THIS DAY IN WILLIAMS FAMILY HISTORY

September 30, 1915

Joseph Elmer Williams and Vera Louie Marsden were married

Elmer and Vera were neighbors in Taylorsville, Utah, and attended the same one-room school house when they were youngsters. Two entries from Vera’s Life History give a glimpse of their courtship and marriage.  Elmer’s father, Joseph Williams, was in partnership with his brothers raising sheep.  The Williams brothers had purchased 200 acres in Moreland, Idaho, near Blackfoot, and Elmer spent his summers there herding the flocks.  There is much to “read between the lines” in Vera’s account of saying goodbye to Elmer one spring as he left for Idaho.

From the Life History of Vera Louie Marsden Williams:       Elmer went to Blackfoot, Idaho in the summertime to help with his father’s sheep.  Their summer range was up in the mountains near Brockman Creek.  One time when he was going to Idaho he stopped to see me and tell me goodbye.  He was going to walk to Murray, (two miles) carrying a saddle, and his clothes in a flour sack.  He said, “I must go or I will miss the streetcar and the train.”  He kissed me and said, “Goodbye, Darling,” and I was so thrilled, I said, “Say it again!”  He did, and he missed the train.  He called from Salt Lake and said he was going to sleep on a bench in the depot and wait until morning for the next train.

In 1912 Elmer was called on a mission to the Central States, and two years later, prior to Elmer’s release to return home, Vera was called as a missionary to the same mission.  Elmer and Vera had been engaged since the fall of 1911, but it was important to her to put the Lord’s work first, and she entered the mission field in May of 1914. Vera wrote:   My fiancée had been home from his mission for a year in September [1915] when he went to Chicago with a [rail]car of fat lambs.   After selling the lambs, he went to Independence, Missouri, and had a talk with [mission] President Bennion.  I was called to the mission home.  President Bennion said, “This man needs you and I am going to release you provided you marry him within two weeks.  He will take the train home and you will leave later, and he will be in Salt Lake to meet you when you arrive home.”  Somehow he missed the train in Denver and caught the next train, the one I was on.  We arrived home on Friday and were married the next Thursday, September 30, 1915, in the Salt Lake Temple for Time and Eternity.  We had been sweethearts for six years, three of which we waited while one or the other was in the mission field.