Bernard Fife Leigh

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The following history of Bernard Fife Leigh was provided by Mary Leigh Talbot.  Bernard was the father of Mary, and she recorded the information as her dad dictated to her.

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Bernard Leigh – History

Introduction.

Bernard Leigh was the ninth child in a family of eleven. All that I know of his early life are the things that he or my mother mentioned from time to time. He apparently was baptized at age ten and he claimed that it took the additional two years for them to catch him.

My mother, Idona, told me that grandfather Leigh would have paid for college and/or a mission if Dad wanted either. Apparently he did not. At a fairly young age he went (or was sent) on the mountain with his older brother, Peter, to help him with his herd of goats. This is where he learned his trade – shearing sheep. He told me that the sheep were easy to shear after the goats.  No one ever said anything out loud, however he could not have been unaware that shearing animals was fairly lucrative, and to a young man at that time and place hard cash must have been inviting.

Beginning to Shear

In or about the year 1910 when my dad was 17 or 18 years old, he and a friend, Harvey Rosenberg, decided to go out and see the world and look for work. Their quest first took them to a mine east of Beaver, but there was no work for them, so they went on to Black Rock where a man named Walt James had sheep.

At first his job was helping with the wool and wheeling the wool carts. Here is where he learned to shear the sheep using blades. That was the first and last time he used blades. After that he always went to a site with a machine plant. From Black Rock he went to Milford where he sheared using a machine. This does not mean that he wasn’t good with the blades. Years later, when dad was probably well over 70 years old, he went to Draper to help Stewart shear the small herd that he kept for eating weeds around the property. Dad took hold of a sheep, sat it down on its rump and proceeded to shear with his blades. The sheep sat there quietly and the wool rolled off as nice as can be. The sheep looked nice and tidy with their new haircut. It had probably been about 25 years since he had sheared. When Stewart picked up a sheep and sat it down, the two of them rolled over and down the hill. Dad looked at them and simply remarked: “Sheep has to be comfortable”.

From Milford he took the train to Peek-a-Boo (now known as Sun Valley) in Idaho and sheared there until fall. That fall he went to Rockland Idaho and stayed the winter with his relatives, the Webbs’.

At some point early on his father, Daniel T. Leigh, bought a small plant so that he and Pete could shear their own goats. Dad had been going with Pete to help him tend the goats every summer since he was about ten years old. He told me that sheep were easier to shear than goats. Apparently experience with the goats helped him shear sheep faster and better.

The following summer was spent shearing. That winter he went back to school for exactly one month, then it was off to shear again. And thus began a career that lasted close to 35 years and took him to almost every state in the west, anywhere there was sheep and a shearing plant. At one point he was offered a chance to go to Australia to shear but he turned it down.

In 1911 he joined the Sheep Shearers Union. The union headquarters were in Butte, Montana. A trolley ran from the depot to the union office. It was the custom to hang around the union office in spring and into June or July, to wait for shearing jobs. The majority of shearers were hired only through the union. You had to sign up, then they would let you know when your turn came up. Except for one year when he dropped out he always belonged to the union.

In Salt Lake City there was a company – The Flexible Shaft Company – (Now known as Sunbeam) which made cutters for shearing plants. My dad bought his cutters from them. (I remember the cutters, they were at least 6 or 8 inches wide and they were attached to a shaft that could be plugged into a receptacle at the shearing plant.) The Flexible Shaft Co. also handled jobs, much like the union.

Shearing in general

The ease or difficulty of shearing a sheep is affected by many things, including climate, area, weather, and the amount of sun or shade. A shearer was paid by the sheep. My dad often had tallies of 200 or over in a ten hour day. Prices were one string, which was a regular price, or two strings which meant double for rams.

Apparently labor held the reins. An outfit in South Dakota, with 3000 rams, no plant, and it was raining, offered one string. The union said forget it and go to Malta.

At this time sheep, being raised only for wool, were trailed from Texas to Montana for the summer. The plants were located along the railroad for easy loading of the wool.  Travel to the site was often by train in the early years. Later by car or pickup truck.

Shearing in Utah

In Utah my dad sheared at Modena, Iron Springs, Great Salt Lake Island, and Blackrock, mostly along the railroad line. Before 1916 he sheared at a place called Goulds, in Hurricane. It was the largest in the area and it was run by John C. Carpenter. (The man who built the house on 2^nd West in Cedar City the family moved into about 1944) Goulds was the only place in Utah where the Union sent men. Except for Milford it was the only Utah plant which had machines until after 1916 when others started getting them.

Shearing North

Bernard Leigh sheared for Governor Gooding in Idaho and for Warren Livestock Co. in Wyoming, which belonged to Governor Warren. The Warren’s took good care of their men. They were always met at the depot and taken to the plant. When my dad's mother died, he was at Warren Livestock in Wyoming. The Warren took him to the depot and paid his way home and back so he could attend the funeral.

In Hannah, Wyoming he sheared for a man named Withro for 10 or 15 years. He remembers the exceptional amount of food they were served. The men were met at the depot by a wagon and four horses. He also sheared at Cheyenne and Casper in Wyoming, and Malta and Butte in Montana. Not so much in Nevada although he did shear at Battle Mountain and points south.

Shearing in Arizona and California

My dad took one trip with Jim Chatterley by car. They traveled south to Blyth and Needles and crossed the Colorado River by ferry and boat. The roads in the area at that time were very poor.

Bakersfield and west along the railroad was very big sheep country. The range was in the Mohave Desert. Of course my dad sheared in all these places – where ever there was sheep and a plant.

He worked at the Los Angeles Stockyards. Here he sheared mutton and they wanted them to look fancy. They had to look good or the shearer got paid off in a hurry.

Phoenix was the headquarters of the Arizona Livestock Company. He went to Phoenix for four or five winters, but they only had small jobs, nothing big. There he often sheared lambs in the fall. Generally one man owned the plant and moved it around in the area.

In about 1912 or 1913 he was shearing fat sheep in the field in that same area for 19 cents a head, but went to the hills north of Phoenix to shear goats at 5 cents a head. He made more because he could shear more goats per day. At this time he worked with a Mexican fellow and stayed at the Mexican quarters. Many of them belonged to the union. (Probably where he acquired his taste for hot chili peppers.)

Later life – After Shearing

Toward the end of the second world war, WWII, the great sheep herds of the west were beginning to diminish; shearing could no longer sustain a family. Dad began to branch out even further to make ends meet. I remember as a child him working for the Forrest Service.

It wasn’t long before he went to work full time at the open pit iron mines west of Cedar. If I remember correctly, he worked at Iron Mountain where his main job was to operate the crusher. The iron ore was blasted loose with dynamite and the resulting boulders were loaded onto trucks and carried to the crusher where they were broken down to a manageable size and could be loaded onto railroad cars. Bernard worked at the mine in various capacities until he was over seventy years old.

When I was five years old Mom got fed up with living on the outer edge of town. She was more than fed up with some of the neighbors. The combination pushed her over the edge, the property on the Leigh Hill was sold and the family moved to town. To 137 north 2^nd west to be specific.

The two oldest boys, Stewart and Forest, were serving in Europe at the time and George soon followed to the pacific theater. For a time Elaine and I were the only children at home; then George returned and lived at home. Finally Stewart returned and lived home for a while. Forest was married when he came home so he never lived at the new address.

The war years were difficult at the Leigh home; with three sons all away and facing danger. Because of the rationing and the lack of essentials the folks reverted to the economy they had practiced both growing up and raising their four older children during the depression.

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Jim Jordan told me one story that I was not aware of. It seems that Dad sold a valuable shotgun in order to buy Mom’s wedding ring.

I have no record of the date he was recruited for Australia, which he turned down. As far back as I can remember, when something notable occurred, he would say “I wonder what would have happened If I had gone to Australia?” What indeed! All of our lives would have been different.

When my husband and I moved to Sunnyvale, California, Dad was eager to come for a visit and to visit San Francisco. Seems that he had sheared in the Juaquin Valley North to South, but he had never seen San Francisco. He did however know all about Valley Fever.

Generally Dad traveled on his own to the various sites but on occasion Mom joined him on the road. Her participation depended on the number and age of the children. At first Dad got to the sites by train; later on he went by automobile. I have early memories of the ‘canvas camper’ that Forest built on the back of Dad’s pickup truck. It looked like a covered wagon and it was complete with a small stove with a metal lined opening for the stove pipe to exit.

One story that Mom liked to tell took place somewhere in Wyoming. The railroad was just being built in one area and there was speculation about the route. One company expected it to go through a certain area so they build the beginnings of a town. On Speculation. The ‘town’ had a number of businesses prepared for occupation, including an ice cream parlor. All were completely furnished. Mom was staying at the shearing camp and grumbling that she did not have a chair to sit on. She walked over to this ‘ghost town’, discovered the ice cream parlor and made off with one of the chairs. (I still have the chair.)