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136 Idaho Voices Religious History Clara Miller describes a polygamist’s warning system. Interviewer: How many brothers and sisters did you have? Miller: We had seven, Mother had. Interviewer: And then your father married twice more, did he not? Miller: Yeah, Father married Carolyn Rudby, and they had about thirteen , I believe, children. And when Father was a polygamist, you know, the sheriff used to come and get him, and while they would go in the house to eat[,] us children had to be out watching the trails to see whether any of the sheriffs would come. He had a nice place where he could a hid if we could a got him in that in time. Then our neighbor—Father and his brother, they sleep together in the willows, and whenever they’d come in the house, why, us children, we’d watch the trails. And they made an agreement that—we could just see across the valley, Uncle Chris was living against the sidehill and Father was living, I guess, about three miles this side, so they said we will make a fire whenever they came, the sheriff, to Uncle Chris, he was going to make a fire so Father could go hide. And the night the sheriff was up on the mountain, we saw a big fire by Uncle Chris, and we knew that the sheriffs were up. And Uncle Chris told us, he says, “I have never made no fire and I’ve never saw the sheriffs; they never stopped at my place.” So, some good spirit made a fire to warn Father, but he didn’t take the warning. It was in the morning. Father was just going down to get a little cream out of the dairy house, and while he was in there, the sheriff rode down on him and took him. And if he could a got in the house, we had a double wall built. No one would have known that it was a double wall, and he could a went down the cellar and just pushed up a board, and no one would have known anything better than that. And they’d a never found him, but he wasn’t there at the time that happened, so the sheriff took him and we all cried—and our dad, he have to go six months to jail. Idaho Voices: Religious History137 * * * Political activist Genie Sue Weppner analyzes the Latter-day Saints’ role in defeating Proposition 1. Interviewer: I’m wondering what comments or memories or stories you have about the importance or maybe the lack of importance of the LDS church particularly in east Idaho? Weppner: I think that was the reason we defeated it. What we did with the campaign was have small house parties, small group meetings where friends would invite friends, neighbors would invite neighbors, and then individuals would go there and speak about the issue. I think that allowed some candid discussion that might not have occurred in other situations. . . . My memory is, is we had a discussion at one point at which somebody said, “You know the church leaders have an understanding of what this really is all about. It’s not really about gays and lesbians. It is about denying specific rights to people who are not deemed Christian.” And they had experienced similar discrimination early on in the formation of the church with Joseph Smith and the kind of things that they experienced there. And I think that they were able to make the leap between “this is not really about what we believe is the right thing to do and what we believe about homosexuality. But it is about denying rights to a group of people. And we’ve experienced that, and we don’t want to have that happen again. And we believe that if this happens, then there will be more opportunities for those kinds of things to happen in the future.” That’s the discussion I remember going on. Note John and Clara [Henry] Miller were interviewed by Harold Forbush, November 2, 1959, Cedron, ID, transcript (OH0311) from Idaho Oral History Center/Idaho State Historical Society, 11–13. Used with permission of Idaho State Historical Society. Genie Sue Weppner was interviewed by Troy Reeves, Boise, ID, October 13, 2006, transcript (OH 2449) from Oral History Center/Idaho State Historical Society, 2–3. Used with permission of Idaho State Historical Society. ...

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