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Ancestor Pages
- bits and pieces of their lives
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Lula Eugenia Hassell (1895-1918 )
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Lula [with Whettens] in Bluewater NM
Gary Tietjen, Ernst Albert Tietjen: Missionary and Colonizer (Bountiful, Utah: Family History Publishers, 1992), 393–405 [these paragraphs found in the chapter on Ivy Tietjen]
Our story turns now to November, 1912, when the big Whetten family arrived by train in Bluewater. They were refugees from the Mormon colonies in Mexico. Forced to leave because of the Mexican Revolution, they had stayed in sheds in a lumberyard in El Paso, Texas, since July.
Some of them had made secret raids into Mexico to try to salvage some of their cattle and horses, anything to help sustain them in a foreign land. There were prospects for work in the lumber business in Bluewater, and that had attracted the Whettens and others.
The Whettens were engaged in a dangerous business: Charles Whetten wrote that:
“At eighteen I hauled lumber from Garcia to Dublan with two wagons, one behind the other and driving six horses. At that time we drove down the Santiago Canyon. It was so steep that it was a common thing to see a horse that had been drug to death, and a man all bruised up. I would tie the brakes of the back wagon, and pull the front brake of the leading wagon from the horse I was riding.”
Blanche Peterson has said that:
“Grandpa [John Thomas] Whetten was a very good musician. He sang beautifully and played the fiddle like no one else ... [With his fourteen children and four foster children] I can imagine the help this fine, active LDS family would be to any ward. They were all good singers, loved to dance, could furnish their own music anywhere, and were also talented in the theater. They also brought two large Cluff families of girls from their ward in Mexico. Lorena Cluff married Ivy’s brother Amos Tietjen.”
... “The work at the Zuni lumber camp shut down and the men were thrown out of work ... In disappointment, John Thomas Whetten moved back to Mexico*. Most of the rest of the family went to Arizona. Charles and Ivy stayed in Bluewater along with Alma and Clarinda and Hazel, who had married Charles Lewis. Some of the foster children, Maynard [Maynor] Hassell and Lula Hassell, also married and stayed in Bluewater."
[*With his wives Belzora and Ludie and younger children. About 1914 or 1915.]
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Contributors:
- photo of Lumberyard from newspaper - part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).
Call Number: LC-B2- 2765-6
- Lula's photo courtesy of Dwyn Larson dwyn@ancestorpages.com
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Related links:
Ben's parents
Lula's parents
Lula & Ben
Stories, Lists, Sketches, etc.
Lula's timeline
About Lula
Lula's family in Mexico:
Story of Ludie Ellis Part II
Story of Ludie Ellis Part III
Lula in Bluewater NM
Documents:
Lula's 1910 letters
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