Mica Spencer Truman was the fifth child in a family of seven of Catherine Maxwell and Jacob Mica Truman.

Mica was hauling logs by horse team and wagon from Crandall Canyon saw mill to Vernal when he was courting Julia Euzell Crandall. He married Julia February 2, 1891. They were the parents of eleven children, six boys and five girls- Ralph, Guy, Iver, Floyd, Leslie and Glen; Catherine, Wilda, Harriet, Rhoda and Lila. They also raised five grandchildren-Stanley and Evelyn Simmons, Billie Jean McCarthy, and Truman and Russell Foster.

Their home was always in Huntington. They had a 15 acre farm south of Huntington where they raised wheat and oats, and a 40 acre farm up the canyon where alfalfa was raised. They owned their home as Mica never believed in owing people money or debts of any kind.

Mica played the violin and one time when Grandma Catherine Maxwell Truman was staying with Mica he got out his violin and played "Listen to the Mocking Bird" and "Pop goes the Weasel". Grandma would whistle right along.

He would travel to a mining camp in Hiawatha to sell his produce staying several days until everything was sold. In the summer it took a day to get there. In the winter, with a bob sleigh, it took two hours to get there and one hour to get home. One Christmas he brought home a piano because someone owed him $25.00 and they had to move and payed him by giving him the piano.

Mica enjoyed playing solitaire and eating and playing tricks on the grandchildren with pink and white peppermint candy. He would pretend to be asleep after sitting peppermints on the arm of his rocking chair. The grandchildren would go to get the candy and he would "wake up" with a laugh, and then it would start over. It could go on for hours and the grandchildren got their share of peppermints.

Mica and Julia were rarely ill but Mica did suffer from lumbago at times. He was quite a big man and must have weighed 200 lbs.
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HISTORY OF MICA SPENCER TRUMAN
By Cloe Truman Anderson

This information was given to Cloe Truman Anderson by Mica's sister Ellen Truman Brockbank in February of 1955. Mrs. Brockbank was 87 years old at the time. Cloe Truman Anderson is a granddaughter of Mica Spencer Truman.

Mica Spencer Truman was born the 19th of October 1865, in St. George, Utah, to Jacob Mica and Catherine Maxwell Truman. Jacob was born in New York State in l825, and Catherine was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1829 and lived in that country until she was a young adult. Jacob and Catherine were married 21 December l856 in the Endowment House by Brigham Young. Mica was the fifth child and second son born to this union, however his older brother Ralph died at the age of 13. Mica had three older sisters, a younger sister and brother.

In about 1850 Jacob, his first wife, Elizabeth Boyce, settled in the Cottonwood area of Salt Lake County on a good farm where he supported himself his wife, his mother, two sisters and their families. Catherine moved to the farm in 1856 after she and Jacob were married. In 1860, Jacob was called by Brigham Young to help settle the Kamas Valley in Summit County. He rode horse back between Cottonwood and Kamas endeavoring to operate both farms. At October Conference of 1861 he volunteered to go to Utah's Dixie to help build the settlement of
St. George. They lived in St. George under very difficult circumstances. After Mica Spencer's birth in 1865, Eurastus Snow called Jacob to move his family to Hamblin or Mountain Meadows, North and West of St. George.

Jacob Mica moved with both wives and families and lived in a rock house in Hamblin where he farmed and raised cattle. He raised dry land grain and used horses to do all his farm work. Seeding was done by hand by carrying a sack of grain over one shoulder and broadcasting the seed as evenly as possible. The next step was to pull the harrows over the seed to cover it up. He had a binder to cut the grain. There was only one threshing machine in all of the county and it went from town to town to harvest everyone's grain Mica was a teenager and was a great help to his father.

There was a small district school in Hamblin. The school had two teachers and the students went to school for about three months in the winter, until they past the fifth grade.

While living in Hamblin John D. Lee, the man the Government and the Church blamed for leading the Mountain Meadows Massacre, was brought to the sight of the massacre after his trial to be shot in 1877 nearly twenty years after the massacre. Mica's father, Jacob took some of his boys to see the execution but wouldn't let them get very close. Mica was one of the boys that witness the execution of John D. Lee. They did hear John D. Lee say, "Yes, Joseph Smith is a true Prophet of God, but Brigham Young is leading the people astray." Later Jacob would say about John D. Lee: "He has done our church more harm than any other thousand men in the world."

Jacob Mica was farming as well as freighting from the Silver Reef Mine north of St. George. November of 1881, Jacob contacted pneumonia for a second time and after suffering for a week, he died on 23 November 1881 in his home near Gunlock. He was buried in the Hamblin Town Cemetery on the 26th. He was only 56 years old.

At the time of his father's death, Mica was16 years old and some of his neighbors were cutting timber in the mountains near their home when Mike stopped work and started looking around him, as though he had lost something. "What are you doing, Mike?" asked one of his co-workers. "Looking for something." "What?" "I don't know, I just had this sudden feeling that I had lost something, so I am looking for it." After a diligent search of the surrounding area, Mike went back to work, continuing to glance frequently about him and on the ground, as a sense of loss persisted. The next day, a rider came into camp and told the timbering crew that Jacob Truman had died. "What time was that?" asked Mike. When they told him the time, Mike realized what he had lost the night before, and just how fruitless his search for he had lost his father.

Catherine took her children and moved in with her married daughter in Gunlock, Rhoda and Amos Hunt, so the children could go to school that winter. The next summer in 1882
Catherine with her five children moved with to Huntington with the Westover and Mathie families. They lived in a dugout at Huntington for a short time. She then bought a lumber house that was only partially finished from John Black. Mica farmed, freighted and did every thing he could possibly do to provide for his mother and her family. Arthur the youngest son was ill and couldn't work.

Mica courted Julia Euzell Crandall for several years. In l891 the Hyrum Oscar Crandall family sold their property in Vernal and were headed for Mexico to escape persecution from the Federal Government for practicing polygamy. Euzell was twenty years old, the oldest child in her father's family, and she and Mica made plans to be married and she didn't move to Vernal with her parents and brothers and sisters.

Mike and Zell, as they were known, moved in with his mother for a little while after they were married. He left his wife with his mother and went back down to Southern Utah and hauled ore from the Silver Reef Mine to a smelter for processing for several months, but wasn't making the financial gains that he was promised. He came back to Huntington and built a small house on Second North and Second West. The children that were born in this two-room home were Kate, Ralph, Guy, Iver, Wilda and Floyd. After Floyd was born they moved up to 3rd North and 3rd West in a three-room home with a big south porch and Leslie, Glen, Odessa, Rhoda, and Lila were born in that home.

It was very rare at the end of the l9th century and the beginning of the 20th century for a couple to have a large family and raise them all to maturity. It was frequently said of Mike and Zell, "They had eleven children and raised them all." Mike made adobe for peoples homes, farmed, freighted and was an excellent butcher and butchered many animals for neighbors and friends.

During World War I, Mike freighted and took fresh produce and meat from Huntington to the mining camps in Carbon County. People from Huntington who raised garden produce, eggs and fruit would bring it to Mike; he would purchase it from them and haul it into the areas where these food items could not be raised. He would also raise and buy beef cattle, hogs, sheep and chickens and take them to Morhland, Hiawatha, and Wattis. These were the three mining camps that he tried to keep supplied with fresh meat and produce.

In l9l8 during the terrible influenza epidemic, almost everyone was quarantined and the health department almost forbid people from going from one community to another, Mike felt the responsibility to take his regular freighting trips into the mining communities, so he arranged with Andrew Anderson, a neighboring freighter, to gather his regular load of meat and produce and bring it part way to Hiawatha to him, while he stayed up there in a tent and would come half way to Huntington pick up the freight from Anderson and go into Hiawatha and distribute the food. They had so much faith in each other's integrity that no books were kept during this period of time.

Mike played the violin or the fiddle, as it was more commonly called and called square dances, for the community. Dancing was the most popular form of recreation for the town's people. I remember him playing, "Listen to the Mocking Bird,"

Mike had smoked Bull Durham for many years, but he had a desire to quit smoking, so while he was hauling his freight with team and wagon, he would set a goal to refrain from smoking until he got to a certain tree or over the next hill, when he got there he wouldn't smoke and would find another land mark and wouldn't smoke when he got to that one, until he disciplined himself to abandon the bad habit.