Roger Rugg in a recorded interview captured the words and memories of his father Horace Frederick Rugg. Any words in parentheses are the remarks of my Uncle Roger.

After the death of my mother, dad married Eliza Engburg, our housekeeper while my mother was sick. Our stepmother did not take much interest in us boys and we ran loose a lot and had to fend for ourselves. (Dad once told me that she would lock them out of the house in winter) We had some relatives in Salt Lake that would feed us occasionally. My father worked nights and slept during the day and was not aware of what was happening.

We boys were too young to think to tell him and we didn't see him a lot. This went on for 4 years until I was eight.

Our Uncle John Woolley became aware of our situation and told my grandmother (Ruth Kelson) that if she could get us away from our dad and stepmother, he would raise us. Grandma didn't have any trouble getting us through the courts. Soon we were out on my Uncle's farm in Centerville, Utah, about eight miles east of Salt Lake. (I hope that I will meet John Woolley and my great grandmother somewhere, sometime and be able to thank them for what they did for my father, my Uncle Mont and Uncle Sam.)

Those were happy days for us boys. I was about eight years old at the time. It was during

those day that we were able to get some formal education. (Dad was able to finish the eighth grade) When we were younger we didn't have too many chores to do on the farm

and we spent a lot of our time playing with the boys of Uncle John's two older sons, John and Lorin. Lorin, who has two wives, lived on the farm and had kids about our age. We had a lot of friends then as we grew up. Grandmother (Ruth Kelson) moved out on the farm with us boys and did most of the cooking. Uncle John married mother's half-sister, one of the children of Samuel Ensign's first wife. (Uncle Woolley was born John Wickersham Woolley om 30 December 1831 in Newlin Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He married Julia Ensign, the daughter of Samuel Ensign and Mary Everett Gordon. As he grew older he was a Temple worker and worked in the Temple Monday through Friday, and would come home on the weekends. John was listed as a member of the Nauvoo, Illinois 1st Ward in the book 'Our Pioneer Heritage' by Lyman DePlatt.)

As we grew older we began to have more responsibility on the farm and it was there that I learned how to milk cows. We went to church regularly. (It was there that he received the priesthood and was ordained a Teacher. It would be many years later before he would be made an Elder (!956))

Comments by submitter. The boys were adopted by their grandmother, Ruth Kelson. Their surname were changed to Ensign, that of their mother's. Uncle John kept his promise and raised the boys. He was their father figure. John was a sealer in the Salt Lake Temple. In 1892 he had the children and their mother, Mary Jane Ensign, sealed to him.

Submitted by Michael Rugg, son of Paul Wendell Rugg, son of Horace Frederick Rugg, the subject of this writing