Chloe Kimber Tanner was born in Huntington, Utah on July 18, 1894 to Charles Kimber Jr. and Persis Josephine Laird.

When we moved to Grouse Creek we moved into an adobe house down on the Kimber Ranch, and that was a beautiful ranch.  My aunt and uncle lived in one part of the house, and we lived in the other.  My dad bought, oh, it was a beautiful field, you know.  They was just beautiful, and my dad bought some land up in Grouse Creek, and him and the boys proceeded to build a home, a house up there.  Then we moved up there, mother and us little kids, and I remember going in.  They didn’t have the house done.  I remember going there, and there was a fire in the middle of the room.  That roof wasn’t on, but we stayed there, and dad and the boys soon finished it.  They had two great big rooms and I think it was Oz and Billy probably that helped finish the house.  We thought it was wonderful.  It was two great big rooms, log rooms, and a dirt roof, but nobody else had any better.  The house faced the east and faced the road, and we had quite a big yard, and the corrals were up west, and dad dug a well there so we had plenty of good water.

I remember going to Sunday School.  The people who lived way to the top end of Grouse Creek, David Thomas and his wife, stopped for us every Sunday morning, and Mary, my sister, and I would lift Winfred in the buggy.  We struggled and we struggled.  They had a white-topped buggy and it was beautiful.

Dad had a lot of horses and he was out on the horse round-up a lot of the time, leaving mother and us kids there alone.  I remember we had a tin tub and they’d put it on two chairs because mother could not bend over very good.  She’d put warm water in it and she’d bathe one of kids in it and then empty the water, heat some more and then bathe the other one.  We had quite a bathing time on Saturday.

We had to improvise most of our things that we used and most of the things that were wrong with us.  One time Winfred got a sunstroke and Mother didn’t know what to do.  She put mud on his head all night and he did just great.

My father was married before he married my mother.  There were eight children there, one had died.  The oldest child was nearly as old as my mother.  We grew up with them, with our half brothers and sisters.  Of course, the older ones got married before long.  I was the oldest of our family of twelve children.  We added onto our house.  We added a kitchen and a cellar, a basement, and then a couple of rooms at the back.  One was the bedroom and the other was where we stored things, kind of like a storehouse.  We lived north of the dugway.

We had lots of shows and lots we put on ourselves.  The Mutual was always doing something that we enjoyed and I can remember when I was little enough that they stood me on the table, so they could see me when I would have to give a reading.  We went to school in the log schoolhouse that was above the cemetery a little way.  We went there about three years, I guess, and then they built a rock schoolhouse down below the dugway and I went to school there until I graduated.  After I graduated, I went to Logan to college.  I went until Christmas time and then I got sick and went home, and I stayed home.

I had every sickness that came along.  First I had diphtheria.  I had rheumatism of the heart, which was probably rheumatic fever, and the next thing I had was typhoid fever when I was about eight years old, and then we all had smallpox.  Mother had them when she was pregnant with Fern.  She was so sick.  Winfred was up and about by the time we got them and he did the chores and went up to the field every day and across the field to Nell Toyn’s and brought us a great big pan of food.  He fixed food and slid it under the fence.  They would not come in and we did not want them to.  Then Grandma Horsley came.  When she got to Lucin, Dad called her and said to go back.  “Don’t come here in this.  You’ll get it if you do,” and she said, “No, I’m coming.”  She came and she got it, of course.  She was really sick with it.  Fern was born sick and two days later she broke out with the smallpox.  All the doctors that she talked to about it said it was the biggest wonder that she lived.

Dad was a member of the Board of Education and I used to go with him over to Yost and Park Valley and all them places.  He had a little black top buggy and we went in that.  I went with him so he wouldn’t have to go alone.  We had a lot of fun going to different places.

When I was quite young, we would all go to the dance.  Mother would take all us kids, and everybody else took their kids, and up on the stage they would put two benches together and make us a bed, and all the kids slept there in beds.  We had picnics, too.

I married Ralph Tanner on November 19, 1914, when I was twenty years old and Ralph was twenty-five.  I had known him all my life.  For our first date, we went for a buggy ride.  The surrey had a fringe on top.  We borrowed the surrey from Ralph’s mother, Amanda Tanner.  We were married in the Salt Lake Temple.
We moved over on the ranch.  There were three rooms, three of the old log rooms.  We lived there for about a year and then we lived in the new one. Therma, Edna, Florence and Berniece were born in the new house.  Dean and Deloy were both born in the hospital.  We lived there until we divided up the fields and then we moved up to the meadow northwest of the ranch.  I and the kids lived up there one year.  Ralph was gone most of the time gathering cattle.  We had a stream of water that came down through it and early in the morning we would get up and dip a barrel full of water and et it settle for our drinking water.  We never did get sick from it.

From there we moved over to Grouse Creek in the Richins’s house by the cemetery so the kids could go to school.  We bought that and we stayed there two or three years.  We stayed there in the winter and back to Etna in the summers.  Ralph rode to the ranch every day and did the feeding and tended the cows.

My sister Florence died of appendicitis.  Mother and I were both pregnant when she died.  Another sister, Mary, died of appendicitis and then I got appendicitis when I was seven months pregnant and we were so scared, but I went to Ogden to the hospital and was operated on.  Ralph asked the doctors if I was going to make it and they said I would, but they did not think the baby would, but she did.  I went home and had hay men to cook for and threshing men to cook for, and then we had our new home to move into, and I did that before the baby came.

Additions from Therma Lee:

Mom was a visiting teacher in the ward at Grouse Creek.

Many happy hours were spent at the ranch.  Mother would take us walking a lot.  We picked sego lilies and how we loved their smell.  We would also walk over to the Morris place and pick Johnny Jump-ups in the meadow and tassels along the way.  Mother would take us on an Easter hike where we could climb the rocks and roll our hard-boiled eggs down the hills.  There was a nice grassy spot at the base of some rocks with a stream running through that had watercress.  We would picnic there and mother would pick watercress.

Dad leased some cows in Naf, Idaho, so we spent some time on the ranch there and then Dad moved us to Brigham City, Utah in September 1933 so we could attend school.  We spent winters in Brigham and summers on the ranch.

When Mom was younger, she suffered with horrible headaches.  The doctor tapped her spine and it caused her to be paralyzed and for a time she could not walk.  Mom and Dad stayed at the Broom Hotel in Ogden while she went to the doctor.  After going to a chiropractor for many times, she was able to walk and dance again.  It came back on her several times and she had to be treated again.
She spent many hours tending and taking care of relatives that came from Grouse Creek for illnesses or just to visit. Several of the relatives that came from Grouse Creek to attend high school stayed at Chloe’s home.

She loved to visit and play cards.  She baked a lot of bread to take to her neighbors.  She loved being with her sisters and family.

Chloe worked at JC Penney’s store as a clerk in the toy department, and also worked at Bushnell General Hospital in Brigham.  In later years she gave loving care ro Ralph, whose health was not good.

Chloe was a friend to everyone.  After having heart problems for a number of years, she passed away on January 5, 1981.  She is interred in the Brigham City Cemetery.