Christopher Marion Eppich

Christopher Marion Eppich

Christopher Marion Eppich was born in Wellesley, Ontario, Canada on 1 March 1864 to Johann George and Kathrina [Katherine] Rau Werner Eppich. His parents were of Germany ancestry—his father an immigrant from Prussia and his mother’s family were long-time Canadian citizens.

The Eppich family including Johann George, his wife Katherine and five of their six sons moved south into the United States and settled in Chicago, Illinois between 1871 and 1874.

The family moved again and were found on the United States 1880 census living in WaKeeney,Trego County, Kansas where Johann George was listed as a farmer—his five sons, Christopher Marion, Georg Justus, Henry Ludwig, Michael August and Charles Julius were helping on the farm. By the mid-1880s the family had relocated to Denver, Colorado where the youngest son Leonhard Ernest was born in 1886.

 Christopher Marion Eppich

cir. 1884

Christopher worked as a baker in the late 1880s. He married Lizzie F. Ramsey on 8 April 1888 in Arapahoe County, Colorado.

 

Christopher’s brother Charles Julius Eppich explained about his brother, Christopher, to his nephew Sheldon Eppich,

"Your dad married some woman and for a while lived in a small frame house just under the edge of the viaduct [in Denver, Colorado]. I think he purchased a 25’ lot and built a bakery. There was a store in front and the bakery and oven was in back of the store—it was on Sante Fe Drive. Guess the idea was that the woman he married would run the store while he did the baking and delivered the goods. He somehow he [Christopher] heard rumors about her and so one day he came home early, and the rumors were confirmed."

Christopher’s son Leonard stated about his father’s divorce,

"Never once did I ever him refer to a wife other than mother. Nor, did I ever hear him speak of a divorce. Shell and I learned of it when we found some old letters from an attorney to mother assuring her that Dad had indeed been divorced. I think mother wanted to make sure."

Christopher is nextly found living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Whether because of his divorce or an urge to move along, Christopher went to Salt Lake City.

His brother C. J. Eppich tells,

"He [Christopher] told me one day as we drove down some street in Salt Lake City, where mulberry trees shaded both sides of the street and the berries actually painted the sidewalks a rich purple, that there he had walked along and satisfied his hunger by picking up and eating those berries. He applied for and got a job laying brick. He asked for an advance of pay and from then on paid his way. He found a place to lodge and board with a family in a private home. He took very sick with inflammatory rheumatism. It was there that he met your mother [Katie Hodges]. She nursed him though his sickness."

 Christopher became acquainted with and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 3 March 1890. The story of his conversion is lost to history.

 Katie Hodges [an English immigrant to the United States at the age of 16 years] was working for Walker’s company as a seamstress and at Madam Watson’s as a milliner [hat maker and trimmer]. The couple married on 6 June 1892 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The couple’s first child, Leonard Hodges Eppich was born 6 April 1894 in Salt Lake City. At this time Christopher was working in a bakery, but because the flour dust blocked his lungs, the small family relocated to Meadowville, Rich, Utah where he worked for Katie’s brother, Nathanial Morris Hodges freighting flour, vegetables, etc. to Evanston, Wyoming and back to Randolph and Laketown. Nathanial had large land holdings near Garden City on the west side of Bear Lake, a couple of saw mills in the hills to the west and a flour mill at Laketown at the south end of the lake.

Christopher and Katie were listed in the Utah State Gazette and Business Directory in 1889 working as farmers and milliners in Randolph, Utah. Winters were cold in Randolph and sometimes blizzards raged. Often when Christopher did his deliveries to Wyoming, he would have to stay at local ranch houses for the night. He had a small coal stove fastened to the floor of his sleigh to keep himself and his passengers warm.

In Randolph, Christopher built a large room of rough lumber onto the front of their log cabin. He got the lumber from his brother-in-law Nathanial Hodges. Christopher and Katie’s son, Leonard remembered, “The rough boards were nailed vertically on the outside walls with narrow strips called battens nailed over the cracks."

 The couple’s second son, Sheldon Paul, was born 3 November 1895 in Randolph, Rich, Utah and their third son Darrel Verne was born 29 July 1898 also in Randolph, Utah.

Leonard recalled of the log home of which the family lived, “One day I had gone to school [my first year] in about 1901. Someone looked out their window and saw our place was on fire. Seems Shell [my brother] wanted a bon fire and somehow got some matches and started his fire right in a straw shed. He had his bon fire! Not much was saved from the stable. I think perhaps Dad’s harness was all. Our winter’s supply of coal and all of the hay was burned along with the stable and sheds. I was allowed to go home and get in the way of the neighbors who were fighting the fire. The only source of water was the open well with a bucket on each end of a rope and a pulley at the top to pull the buckets of water up one at a time. They concentrated on saving the house by throwing water on the walls and roof.”

Not long after this, Christopher bought a lot on South Main Street in Randolph and built a new home. He tore down the front room and used the lumber from that along with more he got from Nathanial and built a four-room house with a bay window. The walls between the studs were filled with a thick clay mud to help keep out the cold. Winters in Randolph were very cold.

 Leonard remembered, “We built some sort of small chicken coop [by the new house] and one night, Mother, Shell, Verne and I went to the old place and caught and carried the chickens the two or three blocks to our new home. At the time, it seemed like Shell and I each carried half a dozen chickens, but it couldn’t have been more than three or four. Verne was too small to carry more than one, and he dragged its head all the way.”

On 17 August 1903 an unnamed daughter was born to Christopher and Katie and died on the same date.

Christopher Marion ran a milk wagon in Randolph in the early 1900s. The family also spent one summer around this period at Nathanial Hodges ranch where Christopher worked. The children had a wonderful summer. They played with their cousins, rode an old mare named Daisy Dean and swam in Bear Lake. 

When the family returned to Randolph after their summer at the ranch, Christopher bought a lot and house nearer to town. He added onto the house a large front room made of logs and lumber salvaged from some stables located on the rear of their lot. On this site, he opened up a bakery and restaurant. A saloon was located just a few rods south of their lot. The family saw some pretty rough characters including cowboys and ranchers come into Randolph on the weekends.

 In the summer of 1906 or 1907, Christopher was offered and accepted a job to cook in the boarding house at Elkol, Wyoming, a new coal mining camp a few miles southeast of Kemmerer and Diamondville, Wyoming at a wage of $125 per month. To Christopher this seemed like a large wage and he took it. At first Christopher only took Leonard with him to work as a dishwasher and waiter. 

 The mine boomed and they had more than 50 boarders with 6 to 8 men to a room. A lot of drinking and gambling went on between the boarders. The boarding house kept them busy and there was no time for play. Later Katie, Shell and Verne went to help with the boarding house.

 The 1910 United States Census for Elkol, Uinta, Wyoming listed Christopher, Katie and their boys as being residents. Christopher was working in a local coal mine and Katie was the village postmistress.

Christopher and Katie had always yearned for a farm. A local friend, Ed South and others formed a company and promoted a commercial orchard under the newly-built West Cache Canal around Trenton, Utah. They sold Christopher five acres of orchard which he paid them back on a monthly basis.

  After the purchase of the orchard in Trenton, Christopher bargained for another down in Benson Ward but they deal fell through. A geologist who was working for the same mining company in Wyoming recommended Christopher to Cardon Real Estate Company, and they told him of places in the north end of the valley. He eventually bought a place in Cornish, Utah.

Christopher and his son, Leonard left Wyoming in the fall of 1909, bought a team of horses from one of Katie’s brothers in Garden City, went to Randolph, got his wagon and some things stored there and started for Cornish. When he traveled through Logan Canyon, he ran in to a lot of snow. A man in Round Valley loaned him a team to help pull him to the top of the divide in return for bringing some of his folks to Logan.

Cornish was beautiful. Christopher bought a hand plow and plowed 20 acres of land. It wasn’t until the Spring of 1910 that the rest of the family joined them from Wyoming. The family knew nothing about farming and had very little money to work with. Beets went for $4 per ton. The family purchased some cows for their farm and later found out that their irrigation water was unsatisfactory. Maybe if they had known anything about money and finances, they would have been okay. But the mortgage came due, and they were threatened with foreclosure.

Early in the Spring of 1914, Christopher traded his farm for a ranch at the head of Sugar Creek in Cub River basin, at Mapleton, Idaho. The ranch was located far back in the hills and was difficult to get to in the summer—almost impossible in the winter. One winter the family stayed at the ranch and were snowed in for several weeks. Verne started for school on skis one morning, got lost but finally got home late in the evening.

Later the boys, Leonard, Sheldon and Verne went to high school at Oneida Stake Academy, an LDS Church school in Preston, Idaho. They rented an upstairs room and did their own cooking. The boys studied hard, got good grades and were prominent in the school. They went home Fridays after school and back again on Sunday evenings. They brought most of their own food from home including, bread, butter, meat, fruit, etc.

 The winter of 1916-17 was hard in Mapleton, Idaho—the snow was deep and stayed late. Everyone in the area ran out of feed. Old straw stacks were dug up and fed to livestock. The family got molasses from the sugar factory at Lewiston, Utah twenty miles away and poured it on the straw to make the stock eat it. Hay was shipped into Preston from anywhere it could be got. When a car of hay came in, people would come from miles around and wait in line to get a few bales, sometimes two or three. Horses were so weak they would hardly make the trip.

 Christopher and Katie’s sons grew and matured. Their son Sheldon married Elsie Vera Marriott on 3 May 1917. In November of 1919, Shell moved his family to Trenton and then went on a mission to the Central States. Later in the year, Christopher, Katie and Verne went to Denver and left their place in Mapleton with their oldest son, Leonard.

 But the 1920 United States Census for Mapleton, Franklin, Utah listed the family again living in Mapleton with Christopher as a farmer and Katie a dressmaker, Leonard, a farmer and Vern working in a machine garage.

 Leonard married Sarah Whitehead on 20 September 1920 and Verne married Ethel Dorothy Larsen on 8 October 1924 in Cache County, Utah.

Around this time, Christopher and Katie moved to Trenton, Utah. Christopher worked as a manager of the West Cache Market.

Katie suffered for many years with hypertension [high blood pressure] and had a stroke and died on 22 April 1943 in Trenton, Cache, Utah. Christopher died from nephritis complicated by his prostrate problems and died on 13 February 1946 in Trenton, Cache, Utah. Both are buried in the Trenton, Utah cemetery.