Joseph Bissell came to Utah from Boston, intending to settle in Salt Lake City, and was negotiating to buy some property on the east side of Main Street, diagonally across from the Temple Square, but hesitated at the price of $500.00. While hesitating, he was asked to go with a party of settlers to Springville, which he did. There he opened a drug store, which, even in those days amounted almost to a general merchandise store, Including one of Utah's first agencies fox the new Singer sewing machine. He prospered rather substantially. In this atmosphere, Anna Catherine was born on January 24, 1860 to Joseph W. and his wife Anna Catherine Alleman Bissell.

Little is now known of her early childhood, other than that she grew up in what was then a fairly well-to-do household, but mothers in those days did not pamper their daughters, so she acquired all the training for her future. At the time of her birth, the family was living in a home which consisted of two rooms and a lean-to on Second South and Fourth West In Springville, and she was the fourth of nine children born to her parents.

When she was 17 years old, a new school teacher came to town. He was only 19 himself, but was a graduate of the "Academy" and a product of Dr. Karl G. Maeser, its headmaster. He was a fine looking young man, nearly 6 feet tall, and well proportioned, with dark hair, and a very pleasing personality. With six daughters on his hands, Father Bissell was not overlooking any good prospects, and invited the young man into his home. It paid off. In 1880, July 1st, he and Anna were married in the Salt Lake Endowment House.

They continued to live in Springville for another five years, then moved to Salt Lake, where her husband, John James Walton, obtained a position as teacher in the 10th Ward School. In the early 90's, they purchased a lot In a new court, which they named Ivan Court after their young son, and built a house at 246 Ivan Court (which was still standing in 1964) and where they lived until leaving Salt Lake City in 1902.

During these years she bore eight children, six sons and two daughters, John Wadsworth, Joseph Austin, Xenia, Hazen Bissell, Ivan Bissell, Tessie, Rex Bissell, and Leon Charles. She lost both daughters and her second and fourth sons.

Otherwise, her life was typical of the early Utah wife and mother. Infant mortality was high, so the loss of some of a family was not unusual. Housekeeping was quite different from the present, but her life was generally like that of her neighbors.

At the turn of the century, they became Interested In something that promised something big, John had forsaken teaching due to the rising cost of living above the rising salaries, and, having been raised as a farmer, this new feature looked good. Alberta opened a large section of the southern part of the province to homesteading and offered glowing promises to attract settlers. John became interested, and decided it worth a try. They sold everything they could not take with them, including his excellent library, and in 1902 started for the frozen north. He went on ahead with their effects in a freight car, while she and the children remained in Springville. All except her son John, who was working In Salt Lake City.

John went to the town of Raymond, established by Raymond Knight from Provo to introduce beet sugar making to Alberta, where he established what was probably the first such factory in the Dominion. Here John built a comfortable house, where the family joined him In July of that year, 1902. Most of their neighbors were from Utah and Idaho, there for the same purpose, and many of these friendships endured for life. Her son John remained in Salt Lake.

Her husband and son Hazen filed on quarter sections about 35 miles northeast of Raymond, along the Canadian Pacific railway, about 30 miles east of the town of Lethbridge, at Woodpecker, now called Barnwell. The two quarters adjoined, John's the southern quarter and Hazen's the northern. The railroad traversed the quarter to the south, which John later acquired by the process of "pre- emption", but with the same requirements as "homesteading."

Hazen and his father went to the farm early in 1903 and constructed a "dugout" in which to live, and started their work. First, the half section had to be fenced with barbed wire, three miles of digging post holes a rod apart, and stringing two strands of wire. Then came the plowing. Using a hand plow, which meant walking the entire distance, Hazen did most of the plowing, turning just enough to meet the requirements. They also started construction of a house. That winter they returned to Raymond, and John worked in the new sugar factory, sacking the first sack in the new factory. That was to be his job that winter, and the winter following, providing muchly needed funds.

In the summer of 1904, Anna and the other two boys, Rex and Leon, moved to the farm, making the trip across the prairie in the double bedded wagon. The house was not finished, and they lived in the dugout for a few weeks. Farm life then was nothing we can visualize today. Their water had to be hauled a couple of miles in barrels, as the well drilled on the farm was unsatisfactory.

Anna made her own soap, which was quite common in those days. One day she had it on a bench to dry, and an old sow knocked it over and ate most of it. of course, the lye In the soap was very poisonous, but the hog never showed any effects. The winter of 1904 she and the boys remained on the farm while John went to

Raymond for the few weeks of the sugar factory season, and that was a real winter, with overabundant snow and cold to go with it. There were a few families in Taber, a new village five miles to the east, but that might have just as well been 100 miles. The writer of these lines was then only four years old, so many things have been long since forgotten.

In the summer of 1905 something occurred which will always remain with the one sole survivor throughout the years. One afternoon, during a Chinook wind, smoke was observed to the southwest -- into the wind. With the caution dictated by necessity, they started preparations. Furrows were plowed about 20 feet apart, and the grass burned in between, along the western side of their land, and then they prepared themselves with every facility at their command, because a prairie fire can neither be described nor even imagined. If the fire jumped their guard, nothing could save them because horses drawing a wagon cannot outrun one. But the guard held, and the setting sun saw the dying of both the wind and the fire, after an unforgettable day, even for a five-yearold.

In the fall of 1905, the residence requirement having been met, the house was hoisted onto long poles strung between wagon units and hauled to Taber. It was not much of a town, but it was a town with a school where Rex and Leon attended. There was not much for one of Hazen's age, although although he did attend for a while. The school house was also the meeting house, as most of the people were Mormons. Here they lived the life of most small town people, and having a good well, the best In town, it was a pleasure to have plenty of good water. Anna still made her soap, likewise, of course, butter, mincemeat, fruit cakes and plum puddings. Except for chokecherries, there was no locally grown fruit, but she managed to bottle what she could find shipped in. In January of about 1907, Anna slipped on the ice and broke her leg, which was quite a catastrophe. However, with the aid of a hired girl, who worked from dawn to dusk for $3.00 a week, she managed until she was able to be up again. In December, 1906, her father died, and she arrived in Springville as the family was coming home from the cemetery. They stayed in Utah through the coldest part of the winter.

In August of 1907 her youngest son Leon was stricken with Polio, then diagnosed as Spinal Meningitis, so her burden was never lightened by the passing of the years.

In the summer of 1908 it was decided they had had enough of Canada, so they sold all their equipment and farm animals and put the land up for sale. At this time, Alberta opened some additional land for homesteading under the title of "pre-emption" for farmers who had already exercised the rights of homesteading. As the quarter next to John's was one of the tracts, he decided to try for it. Taking the morning train to Lethbridge, he lined up ahead of his neighbors after the same tract, and got it. This meant 18 more months of farm living, for which another house was

built, but he did not do the farming himself, hiring It done instead. in the fall of 1909, a five-room house was built In Taber, and the following spring Hazen married Margaret Johnson of Spanish Fork, Utah. In 1913 Rex married Pearl Ellis from Wellington, Utah, who was visiting relatives in Taber.

The winter of 1913-14 was a bright spot in their lives. Although crops were not very good, they decided to "shoot the works" and, with their remaining son Leon, spent the winter In Pasadena, California, with their eldest son John. During the next couple of years Hazen and Rex moved to Utah. In the summer of 1917 their son John passed away, and Leon remained in Salt Lake after the funeral. John and Anna returned to Taber, sold what was left, and returned to Utah. In the summer of 1915 they had sold the farmland, so had nothing to hold them any longer. Buying a home on McClelland Street in Sugar House, they at last settled down in a thoroughly modern home for their remaining years. Not long before she left Canada she remarked, "I would not go through the past years again for the whole west end of Canada." Thousands, like she and John, gave up in disgust, realizing the Canadian government had misrepresented, although, of course, many stayed, especially those who invested so heavily they could not extricate themselves.

After returning to Salt Lake, her youngest son Leon graduated from the University of Utah and then went on a mission to Holland. Returning in 1923, he married Katherine Peterson of Fillmore, Utah, also a returned missionary, whom he met in New York on his way home. He was accompanying the remains of a missionary who had died in Holland, and was asked to accompany an ill lady missionary home from New York. Naturally, she was the one and only. She lived to see their first child, a daughter, but their second, a son Howard, was born six months after her death.

Always a good Church member, she could always be counted on when asked for a contribution, although she never held any office, except occasionally a Relief Society visiting teacher. It seemed like she was always in demand for quilting, at which she was very good.

She contended with asthma all her life, as that was in the days when that ailment was considered Just one of the irritations for which no one attempted to do anything.

Then came the year 1930. July 1st would be their Golden Wedding anniversary, which their family proposed to honor. But, early in April Anna took sick and on the 8th of that month, closed her eyes for the last time. Her old alarm clock which she had faithfully wound every night for many years, stopped when her heart stopped, and never ran again.

She has 16 grandchildren to her credit. Of her eight children, in spite of the hardships she faced, only three survived her.

Her two daughters died in infancy, one son at the age of 3, one at the age of 15, and the eldest at the age of 36.

If every one of her female descendants can be the woman she was, it shall be said of her, "Well done."