After Zemira got back to the farm from Orderville he was busy fixing up the place, and the four children of Caroline moved into the cellar with him on January 5th. Then five days later he took his wife Sally who was living at Leeds, to stay with her mother until after the baby was born, explaining it this way: “Took my wife & her little children to her mothers at Clara to stay until we are better situated here.”
Sunday, January 20, 1878 he said: “Ex. Bishop Gaudy Hogan pay’d us a visit. Held meeting in the cellar—this being the first publick services held at this place, we dedicated our land improvements, ourselves, & our labors to God and the building up of His Kingdom.”
(Zemira mentions in a letter to his sister, Lovina, in the middle of 1879, that all of his boys were with him except Alma, his oldest. So he would be having the help of his sons with all the work which he mentions being involved in. Pioneer children were not left to be idle, but were kept busy with the many varied tasks of daily living, according to age and capabilities.)
He was given another responsibility on the 2nd of February, 1878. stating: “Attended Priesthood meeting at St. George, was set apart as Presiding Priest at the Orderville Cotton Farm Branch of the Washington Ward, under the hand of Pres. J.D.T. McAllister & his councillors T. J. Jones & Henry Eyring.” (Perhaps similar to a Branch President.)
Sally’s last child Chloe was born February 1, 1878. Three days later Zemira sent Susan, Caroline’s 15-year-old daughter, to Santa Clara to “tend upon my wife during her confinement.” By his two wives Zemira had fathered twenty children, four of these died in infancy.
A month later, after he had done more fixing on the cellar, such as adding on, putting in windows, putting floor in the west room, Zemira went to Santa Clara and took his wife and family back home with him. It was much more practical to have Sally and her children with him at the farm, rather than to have to travel back and forth to Leeds.
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