From Gary Tietjen, Ernst Albert Tietjen: Missionary and Colonizer (Bountiful, Utah: Family History Publishers, 1992), 308–20
Ernestine Olena, the third child of Ernest Tietjen and Emma Oleava Erickson, was born March 9, 1878, at Savoia, New Mexico. She was born in the one-room log cabin built while Ernest was at Savoia on his first visit. The family lived at Savoia a few years, then moved to Savoietta Canyon, several miles south and east of Ramah. Their nearest neighbor was Jose Pino, the Navajo leader in that area. Ernestine says he was “very hospitable, and kind and good.” She remembers one occasion when she was six years old. Her father was away from her home and her mother had to go to Ramah, leaving the children at home. Jose Pino came to them and said, “I want you girls not to be afraid, don’t be nalset (that’s afraid in Navajo), because nobody will hurt you, and I’ll watch over you and I’ll take care of you.”
In early April, 1886, Ernestine was eight, the age at which Mormon children “reach the age of accountability” and are baptized. Testimony that Mormon parents are reluctant to delay this important ordinance was Ernestine’s recollection, on her 80th birthday, that “when I was baptized, I can remember that my father broke the ice, and we got in there and we about froze … My father confirmed me I think, right there on the ice.”
Ernestine was the first girl in a family of nine children. She says that
“When quite young, being the oldest girl, it became my duty to take the oversight of my mother’s children in her absence. [As a result], my schooling opportunities were very limited and the family grew up more in ranch life than in any other way. The school I did attend was a tuition school and I paid my tuition by janitor service at the schoolhouse. It lasted for four or five months of the year.
“When we would go from this ranch to school and church in Ramah, most of the time [we would go] on foot through snow and among the Indian neighbors who had learned to appreciate Father and his family for the friendly spirit he always manifested to them. They were very dependable in times of need. I attended school from the time I was 10 years old to about 14 years old … we children could have but one pair of shoes at a time, which in order to care for them and make them last longer, would take them off and walk barefoot nearly to town when we would put them on again to go into town and to school.
“When I was between eight and nine years old [I would go with] my brother Joe up the canyon 3 miles to do the plowing and planting with a yoke of oxen named Sam and Jeff, and was accompanied by Eda and Manda [my sister and my Father’s third wife] to help what we could in the planting and hoeing. We would help yoke up the oxen as Joe was between 11 and 12 years old and too small to yoke them up without help. Father was gone so much of the time … when he was doing missionary work … that we had to all work together to make ends meet, as we were very hard run.
“Beginning when I was ten years old … I stayed with Manda a good deal of my life, and from her I learned … to do all kinds of housework for a family. From Manda I learned to knit and braid straw for hats and make them for the family [and] I became quite artistic. I also learned the arts of spinning and carding and needlework [and] I assisted in the maintenance of the family in our remote location to good advantage.
“After Manda’s house burned, she became very ill and moved to the canyon with mother. Previous to this time mother and Manda lived in Ramah. During this period I, being the oldest girl, was trying to get a little country schooling and assist in the housework and help Manda all possible. She being so ill, she had to have someone with her all the time … and [as a result] my schooling was limited to about the fourth grade. When I was 15 we moved from the canyon to Ramah. Manda and I put in her garden and in the Fall mother moved from the canyon to Ramah. Manda died December 30th.”
The loyalty of Ernestine’s father to the Church and his uncompromising commitment to serve became a significant trait in Ernestine’s life. In an interview a few years before her death, Ernestine said of her father’s missionary call:
“[My father was] a very good man. I used to say, ‘Father, why did you come out in this country among the Indians?’ and he said, ‘Because I had a call, and I wouldn’t turn down a call for nothing in the world.’ I said, ‘Well, now, father, if we had lived in Salt Lake City, we would have had a good education, but out here among the Indians that is not possible.’, and Father said, ‘Well, I was called on a mission, and I will fulfill that to the very end.’” Partly in jest, but with a grain of truth, she stated, “Father was always on a mission.”
Continuing her brief narrative, Ernestine wrote:
“The following spring, after Amanda’s death, we moved quite a distance to Bluewater, New Mexico, 40 miles northeast of Ramah. The day I was 16 I saw my first train. That was the day we landed in the Bluewater Valley to live. We were the only white family in the Bluewater Valley for several months, but as an irrigation project was being established there, neighbors soon started coming into the valley.
“I met the second son of Hyrum Chapman whose family came to Bluewater in the spring of 1896 [actually they arrived in August 1895] with a company of young men who came from St. Johns, Arizona, as irrigators, about nine of them as I remember. It became my good fortune to be connected in marriage with this young man, Welcome Octavus Chapman, at the age of 20. My sister Annie, who was a few months younger than myself, was married at the same time to an Edward Stevens of Fruitland, New Mexico.
“[We made the] team trip to Mancos Colorado, which took us five days to make … we went with one foundered horse, and the other one was so danged lazy he wouldn’t pull your hat off … and we had a wagon that would pat you in the back, and when we went over the rocks and everything it went tippety tap, tippity tap … [then there were] two days by rail on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad [before we] arrived in Salt Lake City and were married in the temple on the 11th of October, 1898. We spent two weeks in Salt Lake City on our wedding vacation. After returning from our wedding trip, [they] gave us a wedding dance and supper in the old adobe house where the Tietjens lived at the time.
“The spring after our marriage my husband Welcome began with his folks to build the old stone house which still stands. We began our housekeeping in a concrete addition to the north side of the old stone house, where we lived for several years. To our union was added seven children, all of whom are living at this date [January, 1932] and all of whom we feel justly proud.” [Ernest, Alda, Fulmer, Klea, Whitney, Glenn, and Joseph].
“In April, 1902, [Welcome] went on a mission to the Southern States when Alda was 6 weeks old, where he remained for 22 months and on his return found me cooking for a railroad gang and running the section house in Grants, with my two children, to help him finish his mission.” Welcome was working in Richmond and Manchester, Virginia, when “the suicide death of President Lorenzo Crosby, a boyhood friend who went to the mission field and conference with me, terminated my mission some two months earlier than I would have come home under ordinary circumstances. Elder Crosby was attacked by insomnia and became demented … while I was in the office. He was sent home, taking his life while on the train … it was the most trying ordeal that I have yet been called to pass through …”
“Two months after Welcome’s return, we got a job boarding a crew, of which your father was a hand, building the Drury Lime Kiln five miles southeast of Bluewater where he worked, I doing the cooking and your father driving team for the job, which we did during the summer. During this period Eugene and Hyrum were working on the railroad learning the section foreman trade, doing very well at it. At the end of the summer or in the winter Tom Bryne, who owned the store in Bluewater, decided to sell it out for $1000. We pooled our money and jointly bought it, paying $500 down and gave our notes for the balance.
“After about a month or six weeks the store was burned down, leaving us to pay the balance. The store carried a $1000 insurance that was to have been transferred to us, but on account of the failure to transfer the insurance, it was a total loss that we had to pay. [We got] our notes paid after a few months and some very hard scratching. Two months after our burn we opened up another store in the old stone house where we operated for a year or more, [then] built the store over on the railroad where I was the assistant in the store and Post Office.”
On March 9th, 1905, the Bluewater Dam broke. The Chapman rock home in the upper part of the Bluewater Valley was directly in the path of the surging floodwaters. On her 80th birthday, Ernestine recalled the flood:
“We put grandma [with the two children] in one of these little boats and Archie took them over to the section house. Hyrum and Eda were living in the section house, and I had a hold of Welcome’s arm, and that was before Fulmer was born. I had a stick, and we went in water clear up [to my waist], and we got in those malpais, and went around down on the railroad, and went over to Eda’s place, and we stayed over there until the water went down. That was the first break we had. Mister Allred, [who] looked after the water up at the dam, … came and said the dam is broke. [When we were] over to the section house, … we could see the trees, and the big rocks rolling out [of the canyon].
Chink (Fulmer) Chapman, could remember the second time the dam broke:
“It had rained so much that the dam was filled to capacity … Even with the turnout gates wide open, the spillway still could not handle the increased flow of water. A telephone line had been constructed up to the dam, and word was sent down to the valley for the people to evacuate as the dam was breaking. Tom Davy was the watchman at the dam at his time and because he was able to warn the people … there were no lives lost.
“I remember seeing the wall of water as it came out of the canyon. It was about ten feet high and big tree logs were being tossed in front of that wall of water … As the water proceeded to get closer to us, we evacuated the store building in which we were living … It was necessary for mother to wade through the water to the railroad that was about 50 yards away … we had two large hogs in a pen … the water was getting deep and rising and the hogs were swimming around in the pen. [Uncle Hyrum] … got them by their ears and tails and swam them across the water to the railroad up on high ground … the water rose high enough so that it run over the railroad tracks … I remember seeing water splash in front of a train as it came up the track … the grain had been cut and bound into bundles and was shocked and standing in the fields … the water had come up in the store about 14 inches … so there was a terrific loss of merchandise both in the store and in the warehouse. I remember in the old rock house … the water was about seven feet deep.”
“The dam break caused a lot of damage and hurt many people financially. Father had carried a farmer on open account at the store for the farmer’s needs, and when he couldn’t pay his bill, he came to Father and told him that he had a little mule that he would like to pay his account with. Father took the mule and we really put him to work. This was before I had started to school, so I would drive the mule with our little buggy to take Ernest and Alda to school, and then I would drive the mule and buggy back home so they could be used at home … On the way home I had to cross the Bluewater Creek on the bridge. I usually preferred to bypass the bridge and go down into the wash and then up the other side just to see that little mule pull up the bank on the other side of the wash. It was steep and sandy and made the little mule really pull to do the job. One day this all came to an end when I had to pick up Grandmother Tietjen and take her to the store to visit with mother. No sooner had we arrived when she said to mother. ‘Tene, do you know what Chinkie is doing? He is just going to kill himself the way he drives that mule and buggy into that steep wash! He is just going to kill himself!’ I really got raked over the coals.”
The Chapman Mercantile in the upper Bluewater Valley was marginal at best. In an area and during an era where too few people had money to pay their bills, it was always the Welcome Chapman family who got their cut last. Nor was the railroad environment one in which Ernestine and Welcome wanted to raise their family. Thus, sometime after 1913, the family was able to obtain property for a home on the hill in lower Bluewater. With the help of Ernestine’s father, a well was drilled that was described as the “finest well in the valley.” From the rock crusher facility near the mouth of the canyon, the family obtained an old wooden railroad boxcar type structure, and moved it home to live in until a more suitable residence could be constructed.
Klea, the youngest daughter, had occasion to remember October 20, 1915:
“School was being conducted in the … log church that my grandfather helped to erect long before I was born. Sister Deborah Nielson was my school teacher … It was Primary day and I remember that I was playing in my grandmother’s back yard waiting for Primary to start. Everything was going wonderful when someone said, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire! Your house is on fire!’ … I ran to the church; my sister Alda took me by the hand, and we started to run through the field toward home. When we arrived home, our house was gone. Ernest had gone down to my grandmother’s place with a horse and buggy to get water as there was no water on the old place (the well was not yet in operation). He didn’t arrive back until it was too late. Mother, trying to get the children out of the house and save a few of the belongings, was burned very bad … Father, seeing the fire, climbed down from the roof of the new school house and ran home to do what he could to save the house. When we arrived, mother was sitting back on the shocks of hay and corn in the barn, and we could see that she was burned awfully bad.
“This was the story that mother told after we could talk to her: She had gone into the kitchen to make a chip fire, and there was a little breeze blowing. The window in the boy’s back bedroom was open, and sparks flew down and caught the bedding on fire. After seeing the fire coming through the house, mother grabbed up the small children, Glenn and Whitney. Whitney tugged at her skirts and cried and didn’t want her to leave him as mother tried to save what she could. [She] only saved a rocking chair, a clock, a straight chair, and the two small children … We had no place to go except to my grandmother’s (Tietjen) home, where we stayed until we could prepare the new home. I went around to several of the good sisters, who made me some clothes. I remember Sister Annie Lamb making my first dress. Her sewing machine had a handle on it that she turned by hand … Mother was ill for a long time, but came out of it very well. Uncle Alma gave Dad a hundred dollars in cash, and the rest of the townspeople donated money as well, so the new house came forward rapidly.”
But the house was not the only damage from the fire. Ernestine wrote that
“While the fire was raging, someone went up and told Grandma Chapman that one of our children was burned in the fire, which caused such terrible excitement to her that she took a stroke … she never recovered and never was conscious of her condition and died 16 months later … bedfast from the day of the stroke.”
Ernestine served as a counselor in the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association for several years, then as a counselor in the Relief Society “for a long period.” Following that, she was president of the Relief Society for seven years. Welcome was a counselor to the Bishop for ten years. In times of death, Ernestine and Welcome, because of their great love and compassion, were called on many times to assist with dressing the dead, making a coffin, or giving a sermon.
Glenn, just short of five years old, was Ernestine’s next crisis. He writes:
“At one time my brother Ernest had his old motorcycle down in front of Grandmother’s place in town. Several of us boys were there admiring this animal that Ernest had. It seems that he didn’t have a crank on it as you had to push it to start it. One of the boys of the village got on it, and was begging us little boys to push it, so he could take a little ride. I was on the right side, far to the right and to the rear, pushing with two or three other boys, and as we were pushing, the thing gave a little chug or two, and almost started. I hit a rut and then I stumbled and fell. My right hand went down into the wheel and then into the chain … Joy Chapman was just to the left of me, and when he saw what had happened, he reared back on the motorcycle just in time to save my whole hand from being cut off. They backed it up a little, and out came a bloody hand. I could just see the raw meat sticking out, and I started running for the house, my right thumb dangling clear down below my hand.
“Ernest and Uncle Al came running out of the house and … placed the thumb back in place, thinking that it might save the life of the thumb. It was completely cut off except a small portion of skin that was holding it in the middle of the palm of my hand. They took me immediately to the house upon the hill where Mother and Dad were, and mother bathed it with some hot water, and then put turpentine on it. They then took me in Uncle Al’s little yellow bug to the station, where we flagged Old Number Seven [the train]. Number Seven then took us into Gallup, where Doctor A.T. Hannett sewed my thumb back on. It took eighty stitches of catgut to sew my thumb on in the proper condition. However, he told Mrs. Whiteside and Uncle Al, who went along with me, that it would be useless to do that because it would only die, and they would have to cut it off later. According to the wishes of my dear mother they kept it on, as that was the first thing that Uncle Al told them. He says, “This boy’s mother told us not to have it cut off, but to save it, and we just feel like it will be all right.”
“I stayed two weeks in the hospital … the hardest part of this operation was when they removed those large catgut stitches: I remember so well that it hurt so bad. They had a prayer circle in my behalf, and I feel that the Lord certainly saved my hand. From that day to this I have been able to use it and do all the things that requires the use of a thumb. I learned to shoot marbles with my left hand. I think that was the thing that taught me to write, and appreciate writing, so I learned to write quite well. I, in fact gained several diplomas in writing as a result of this accident.”
There were “disagreements over the partnership in the store”, and Welcome went to work in Gallup. Part of the work which he took was building bridges and culverts on the highway. On this job he “put in three pile bridges … and had to build a pile driver which he succeeded [in doing] with the help of the boys, Ernest running the pile driver on the job until this job was completed. [That] the job was completed and is used today is a monument to their success.”
After the burnout, a new store became necessary, and the family built on the highway near the railroad. This was sold and debts against it forced Welcome to go to work in Gallup again as a carpenter. Because of Ernestine’s expertise in cooking and bread making, it was decided that Chink, with his mother’s help, would operate a bakery. Chink, who was 16, went to Salt Lake City to get training and finally took a job with no pay to learn the trade. Back in Bluewater, their Ideal Bakery sold bread and pastries to railroad crews from Thoreau to Cubero. Collins Chapman, remembering her bread, revised an appropriate verse:
I remember Grandma’s kitchen of so many years ago,
It was always such a happy place where laughter seemed to flow
I remember coming home from school on a winter’s day half froze
To stand in front of Grandma’s stove to thaw my nose and toes.
But I think what I remember best of that kitchen’s warm aglow,
Was the fragrant smell of baking bread, and beans a simmering low.
A slice of Grandma’s homemade bread and a bowl of beans, I’ll swear,
Was the finest meal I ever ate and near beyond compare.
Another venture Welcome and his sons engaged in, with the assistance of several nephews, was the Bluewater Mill and Elevator Company. They remodeled the old tithing granary, and put in the necessary machinery to mill wheat and corn into flour and corn meal. They trucked in wheat from Colorado and northeast New Mexico. Health problems and disagreements among the partners brought the mill to a quick conclusion. Welcome’s stomach trouble and high blood pressure made it mandatory to go to a lower altitude, and he moved to Mesa, Arizona, and began to work in the temple. Ernestine stayed in Bluewater a year, then joined him and both worked in the temple until he died in 1945.
In March 1938 Ernestine’s oldest son, Ernest, was working with a Navajo friend on their windmill in Bluewater. Soon Janet, Ernest’s wife, who had been apprehensive all morning, answered a knock on the door. Though she could not understand the Navajo’s words, she knew at once that Ernest had fallen from the windmill tower. She ran to the George home for help, and they loaded Ernest in a pickup and took him to Gallup, but he died as they carried him into the hospital. Al Tietjen, Ernestine’s brother, had been called and was waiting on the steps of the hospital.
“Kind, generous, Uncle Al took charge and paid for what funeral expenses there were and in addition did what he could to give support and comfort to Janet. Chink and Janet’s sister, Imogene, were stalwarts, as well, in helping Janet endure and overcome this unexpected adversity.” To Ernestine, it was “an awful shock and … the greatest cross I was ever called to bear.”