The James Gale Book [an excerpt]

Written by Carie Mae Wilkins McGrath

...William J. Flake and I decided to leave the company and do for ourselves. We went to Silver Creek and looked for a location and met a Mr. J. Stinson in the valley that was afterward called Snowflake. We sat down to talk as his Mexican man was preparing supper. We sat there until two o'clock in the morning. By that time we had bought his entire ranch which included the whole three mile square valley. The land had not been surveyed and had been used as a cattle ranch and farm. We were to pay him eleven thousand dollars in yearly installments. Our contract included all rights to the land and water, one thresher, one reaper, one mower, one rake, five span of mules, one wagon, some plows and other small tools.
We then returned to Taylor, where we had originally located with our families and settled up with the United Order Clerk. He paid us in our cattle, teams and wagons, that had been appraised to us in joining the United Order a few months before, which ended our contract with the United Order. We got back all of our own property, but had to pay for the amount of food that we had consumed.
Brother Flake did the trading for the company and went to St Johns sixty miles up the Little Colorado to trade horses for some wheat. The wheat had been threshed by sheep and winnowed by the wind. He took it to a grist mill that was turned by burros and everything that was in the wheat, sheep pills and all, was ground into flour. It was brought to camp an made into straight graham bread; the smell when baking was not so good, but we ate it.
We loaded up our "junk" and families and started for Silver Creek and got there in three days. We used some adobe rooms that were not finished; we put mud roofs on the buildings and moved into them. I commenced to cut the barley with the reaper and ran it until some of the machinery wore out. I then cut the rest with the mower and raked it up with the hay rake. The barley was quite ripe and the storms beat it down so that the rake could not gather it up. Then Mr. Stinson told the people to gather it up with garden rakes, thresh it an sack it and he would give them 7 cents a pound for the barley. They hauled it and stacked it in separate piles; I threshed it. Mr. Stinson paid us in cash. The wages were good and we soon clothed ourselves which was a great blessing to us all.
Quite a number of people came and joined us. They came from Arkansas a year or so before. In July of 1878 Jesse Brady and wife, Alonzo McGrath and child, and Sister Jackson (Alonzo's mother), Alexander Stewart and family, the Wansley family, Web Demsy, John and William Waddle, Father Quinn and family and others.