Mary Blanche Beck Smith

Mary Blanche Beck Smith 1881-1954
(Emory's Mother)

Mary Blanche Beck was born March 16, 1881 on the Highland Bench, near Alpine, Utah County. She was the second of sixteen children of Jacob and Elizabeth Healey Beck. As her arrival became imminent, her father rode from the ranch at Highland through snow deep enough to cover the fence posts, to fetch the midwife.

As a young girl Blanche lived in Highland, walking to Alpine for her schooling and church activities. At home she helped with the care and raising of her younger brothers and sisters. She was an active, high-spirited, intelligent girl with a keen sense of humor. These charming characteristics she retained all her life. She had a cleaver phrase, a pertinent comment to make regarding all situations and people.

As Blanche was just a year and five months younger than her older sister, Minnie, the two became close friends. They did housework and tended cows together and attended school in Alpine in a horse and buggy. The road from Lehi to Alpine ran diagonally past the Beck home. It was covered with deep snow in winter and mud and dust in the summer, as there were no graveled roads yet.

Like her sister Minnie, Blanche had a talent for music, and the two sang many a duet together. Blanche possessed a keen sense of humor and a twinkle in her green eyes. Her fair complexion was set off by light auburn hair. As her younger sisters were born they looked upon her as their second mother. She was a hard worker and kept busy all her life. On holidays the children would take the cattle out to feed extra early so they could return by noon in order to attend the celebrations in the town later in the day.

When Blanche finished the grade school in Alpine she went to work for the Adams family in American Fork, where she attended school. In the summer she would return to the farm in Highland to help with the children and the many chores outside and inside. On one of these summers, she met Moroni A. Smith of Lehi, who had come to her father’s farm to buy cattle and feed. He says he first remembered Blanche as a lively girl of 15.

Six years later they were married, January 2, 1903, at her parents home. After the wedding a supper was given and the next evening Rone and Blanche had a large reception at the Lehi Opera House.

Moroni Alma Smith was born in Lehi, Utah County, Utah June 27, 1875, the youngest child of Joseph Johnson and Ann Coleman Smith, converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from England.

The first years of Blanche and Rone’s married life were spent with Rone’s mother, a widow in Lehi, and Blanche always recalled that time as a pleasant experience. Their summers were spent in Heber and in the sheep camps in the mountains of Wasatch and Duchesne counties, where Rone was in partnership with his brothers, David and Albert.

Blanche and Rone soon purchased a home in Heber, where six of their nine children were born. While Rone was a success in the sheep business, Blanche acquired a reputation for herself as an expert housekeeper. She would arise at four on Mondays in order to get her wash on the line before her neighbors did.

Blanche and Rone made many friends in Heber, but they were close to their family members as well. Blanche opened her home to her sisters. Each spent a portion of her time there, and it was here that three of the sisters, Minnie, Amanda, and Winifred, met their husbands. The summer after Blanche married, her mother, Elizabeth Healey Beck, had her last child, Golda. Blanche returned to Highland to assist her mother at this time.

Blanche and Rone were actively engaged in the sheep industry their entire married lives. Blanche was one of the first women in Utah to own and operate a sheep business independently. For 40 years Blanche and Rone’s home in Salt Lake City was open to relatives and friends. Both of them had come from large families and enjoyed having their relatives come and stay for an hour or a year. A “Cousins Club” was begun by Blanche and her sisters-in-law, which still held monthly meetings after twenty-five years.

Blanche and Rone had nine children, seven of which grew to maturity. The children are Lela, Ray, Merrill, who died at twenty years of age, Evelyn, Emory, Scott, Blaine, who died in infancy, Alice Marie and Phyllis.

Blanche enjoyed attending and working in the Relief Society, where for many years she was a visiting teacher in the University (now known as Federal Heights Ward) in Salt Lake City. Her children recall many visits with her to Sunday School and Sacrament Meeting. Her checkbook was ever open to any call from the church. Her memory will be of lively person whose generous, cheerful nature knew no bounds. Her excellent habits in housekeeping, her exquisite taste in dress, and ready wit will long be remembered.

In 1945 Blanche suffered from an attack of flu, followed by Parkinson’s disease. She became more and more helpless until a fractured hip totally incapacitated her in 1951. She died two and a half years later, in April 27,1954. Just ten weeks previous to the death of her husband, Moroni A. Smith.