HISTORY OF GUY' FRANKLIN GILES AND HIS FAMILY

HISTORY OF 

 GUY FRANKLIN GILES

1920-2008

             ACIE LUVELLA PROVOST GILES

1889-1980

I want to tell you about my angel grandmother, Acie, who was the sweetest little woman.  When I was a child I loved to go to her house because I knew that she loved me!  She spoiled me and always gave me a glass of juice.  It was usually apricot juice and it tasted so good because she served it in her special little juice glasses. 

She was an angel mother to my father, who was her only son.  She adored him and spoiled him, and that made my mother quite jealous.  My mother always said my Dad was spoiled by his mother!  She spoiled everyone she loved!

Grandma Acie loved her husband, Frank, and spoiled him also!  She waited on him throughout their life together.  He died three years before she died and she was very lonely after he was gone!  She lived to be 91 years old.   She lived in her daughter’s  basement apartment,  so Lora could take care of her.  When she died my two sisters and I sang “Where Love Is” at her funeral.  We chose the song because she was all about love and wherever she was that’s  where love was also!    

She was a wonderful wife and mother.  She went with her husband to live in Canada because Frank’s uncle said they could make a lot of money there..  She did not want to leave her parents and brothers and sisters in Utah but she went with her husband and three young daughters because he was excited for the adventure..  They traveled on the train all the way to Canada.  Acie packed a suitcase of food for her girls to eat on their long journey.  They settled near Mcgrath, Alberta on 120 acres of land.  They traveled seven miles to town by horse and buggy until they bought their first automobile.  They had to buy the telephone poles to bring the telephone out to their farm.  They lived in a four room house with a bedroom for the parents,  a bedroom for the children, a kitchen and a frontroom.  There was an outhouse outside and a pump for the sink inside and a cellar for vegetables at the side of the house.

                                               Acie on the farm in Canada.

They worked very hard farming and raising wheat.  There was a barn with 16 horses and pigs and cows.  The girls would harness the horses and milk the cows before school every morning.  Acie washed the clothes with a washboard and boiled them on the stove to get them nice and white.  She was a spotless housekeeper and hard worker.  Frank and Acie were thrilled to have a boy in 1920 and they named him Guy Franklin Giles.

                                                             Sweet little Guy.

                                     . 

The years in Canada were hard and they struggled to survive the droughts and the insects that always plagued them.  During the bad times Frank trapped and shot coyotes for bounty to put food on the table.  Many times they were on the brink of starvation.  Acie worked hard beside her husband staying cheerful and happy.  Acie cooked for all the farm workers besides her family.  She was an excellent cook.   While they were in Canada Acie lost her brother and sister from the flu epidemic in 1918.  Acie lost 7 of her cousins in that terrible epidemic. 

They never got rich as they hoped and they missed their families so they auctioned their horses, farm equipment and house and everything they couldn’t fit in the back of their truck in 1929 and drove all the way to Utah.   Acie was so happy to be coming back home.   They settled in Holiday.  These were hard years of the depression and they lost everything trying to raise chickens when 500 baby chicks died.  In the next 10 years Acie lost her parents and all of her brothers and a sister, they all died except for one sister.  This sweet gentle Acie, who loved her family above everything else, missed out on so much time with them while she lived in Canada.  Her letters and cards she wrote home expressed her homesickness and her love for her Ma and Pa and her brothers and sisters.  One by one she lost them all after she returned to Utah. 

Her saddest day came a few years later in 1945,  when  she lost her beautiful 30 year old daughter Geneva, who was a sweet, gentle, kind and loving girl.  She got polio and died within a few days in an iron lung.  Iron lungs were huge, barrel like machines that compressed and released lungs too weak to breath.  Polio was a terrifying disease that struck thousands of children and adults. They had to view her in her casket through a glass divider because of the fear of contacting this dreaded disease.   This was the hardest thing that Acie suffered in her life.  She never got over this loss.    

Acie was born in Midway, Utah on March 20, 1889.   Her parents were David Woodruff and Clarissa Van Wagoner Provost.  Acie was the seventh of their nine children. Clarissa Florence, David, Luke, George, Mary, Cynthia Loretta, Acie Luvella, Trella May and Earl.   She was born in the house her father built with the bricks  he made.  The house is still there in Midway. She had a happy childhood and her  family was one of the most prominent and loved families in Midway. 

                                                              Acie's parents 

Acie was baptized into the LDS church when she was nine years old.  She was very active as a young woman and attended with her family.  She sang in the choir and loved to dance.  Their home was a happy home full of activity, music and dancing.  Everyone was welcome in their home and they hosted many parties.

  

                                                     Acie at home in Midway. 

Acie married Frank Giles from Heber City, when she was 20 years old.  Her parents were worried about her marriage.  Frank didn’t attend church and liked to play around.  He quit school after the eighth grade to help  support his family.  He was only 10 years old when he lost his father, who was hit by a falling tree in the canyons while cutting logs for winter.  He and his 6 siblings were raised by their widowed mother. 

Acie’s first baby was a stillborn baby girl born in 1910.  Her second child, Reva was born in 1911,  Lora in 1913 and Geneva in 1915 and her son Guy was born in 1920.

She was a wonderful mother and grandmother and always had a treat and kind words for us when we went to visit.  She thought her children and grandchildren were perfect and always told us so.  She loved my husband and my little family very much.  When we visited it made her so happy and my small children loved this sweet little wrinkled lady.  She loved to tell us about her life and how much she loved us!      She was very proud that her grandmother, Clarissa Van Wagoner, was a pioneer woman who crossed the plains and was a friend of Joseph and Emma Smith.   

She had many friends and touched many lives with her sweet gentle spirit.  She had many sorrows but she was a strong pioneer woman who set a good example for us.  She was an example of pure love as she sacrificed herself  for her family.  We can follow her example and be strong and loving,  and also be  where love is throughout our own lives.   I am sure she is a guardian angel to all of us, her perfect posterity!

          Acie and Frank and their family.