Bayles History in a Nutshell

By Josephine Bayles Harris
Contributed by ggg granddaughter Lisa Rarick

MARY ANNE

By Mildred Bayles Palmer
Mary Ann was my great grandmother Mary Anne Durham Bayles who died in childbirth


South of here on a rocky bluff,
There is a grave.
It is not a lonely grave,
There are others there.

A lovely girl came to a lonely, barren place,
To make a home for the man she loved.
To follow the destiny of mother, wife.

She bore four children,
I wonder if she ever spoke of pain.
One day when her only son was five,
In childbirth she died.

Her grave is sand and rock,
A marble marker placed with love is there.
Even so, I wish she could be
By the one she loved
Where it is cool and green.

(The son was my grandfather Hanson D.Bayles Her husband is buried in the Blanding cemetery.

Song of Sorrow

By Mildred Bayles Palmer
Dedicated to the James Bean and Anna Maria Mickelsen Decker Family
Published 1980 in San Juan County Centennial Sampler

Decker story

Bluff December 15, 1901

My beloved husband died today.
The sickness is throughout the house.
My small young son lies pale and still.
He too is dead; he is only five.
Weariness and sorrow weigh me down.

Dec. 16, 1901

Today again a life is stilled.
My darling Mary, just approaching womanhood.
The sounds of carpentry fill the night.
Three coffins must be made for burials
In cold and frozen ground.

January 25, 1902
Did we have Christmas?
I remember not.
The cabin smells again of suffering and death.
My stalwart son of seventeen lies quiet now,
His song of life cut short.
The winter wind blows,
Echoing the sorrow in my heart.

January 26, 1902

My own dear son is gone.
The softness of his laughter stilled.
He was just past ten, awakened not,
After the long dark night.
Friends come to wash and dress my dead.
The sound of hammers once more fill the night.

The men must carry the coffins
Up the steep and twisting trail.
The open graves are waiting.
Here my loved ones shall lie side by side,
On this barren windswept hill.

Below me in the valley I can see
The tall white house newly finished,
Stark and lonely in the winter morn.
I shall never live there now.

A song of sorrow fills the air
As friends and family gather round.
A prayer of comfort quietly is said.
I turn, blinded by my tears and blowing snow.
Retrace my steps a second time
To the still empty cabin
at the foot of the hill.


Note: This poem is based upon the tragic events which befell the James Bean and Anna Maria Mickelsen Decker family during the winter of 1901-1902 when five members of the family died of diphtheria.

Coming Home

By Jean Nielson Bayles

Published in San Juan Centennial Sampler 1980

What is this, but rocks and earth and air?
This place where wind drinks dry the ground,
Where sand will swirl and settle and wait--
Silent--to be stirred up again?

Here sun beats down on rocks and sand
Too hot to touch or rough to rest;
Where feet are bare, and then --there is the quiet.
It shutters every door and window of this place.

How sweet the seldom green and cooling shade
That must be searched for here.
What is it then--but rocks and earth and air?
What?  This--a silent voice will tell.

"Tis bed and hearth and home for some
Whose time preceded mine,
Whose unknown faces fill my dreams,
Whose hands I see, have shaped my past.

It is the rocks which mark in grooves
The memory of wagon after wagon
Laden with life's substance.
For only heavy burdens etched their way.

Rocks, where hide the secret, shadowed caves
Where many came to rest, weary;
Or to dance with the dancing bonfires flames;
Or only to find, in solitude, the strength
to descent to the sand again.

This place is air--the early
Morning river scent from that
Temperamental river which
They fought--and which they loved.

And evening smells of dusk and tiny
Purple blossoms--south in cracks and corners
Of the cliffs-a precious, simple
Beauty they found to fill their homes.

And here is earth.  They walked its lonely paths
They plowed its empty fields,
Up from it they built their homes, their town
To mark their presence in this place.

They brushed its endless dust
From off their chairs and pantry shelf
They swept it hard and smooth outside their door--
To make it clean, this earth.

And here they came to lay at last
Among the rocks and earth and air.

What is this place?  It is the whispers
of their words, the echoes of their footsteps.
And listening, listening, I can hear my name.
The voice of what I was and why I am.

This is coming home.

Hole-in-the-Rock Haikus

Published in Heritage and Horizon
in San Juan
by Heritage Arts Festival April 26, 1975

    Hole-in-the-Rock travelers
Twisting, steep switchbacks reveal
         Slow, rolling wagons.

   by Virginia Blake
        =========

     Our Prophet calls us
From family, home, and friends
      Chosen ones to teach.

   by Kay Bayles
-------------------------------------

Children's poetry from 1980 San Juan Centennial Sampler

(Couplets, Haikus, Cinquains)

The Founding of San Juan County
By Lynette Black (6th-8th grade category)

S  is the place where we will start
     to learn about the San Juan parts
A  is for the great accomplishment
     that our forefathers severely spent
N  is for the number of sacrifices borne
    once, twice, and many times more.
J  is the joy they spent in waiting
    on catching up, and never debating.
U  is the unaccountable times they shared
    which they loved and really cared,
A  is for their attitude rugged and strong,
     for that is what kept them rolling along.
N  is for Nature who showed them her worst
     but they made it through all in spite of her curse.
C  is for the children who didn't much play
     but they trudged along and were happy and gay.
O  is for the oxen who pulled heavy loads
     down the long, rough, and weary roads.
U  is for the ups and downs which they had,
     sometimes they were glad, and other times sad.
N  is for the necessary thing that they used
     to make life for them easy and for us, too.
T  is the thakfulness we should have for our country,
    and for the hardships our forefathers had settling this country.
Y  is for the few years we've got left to spend
    to make good use of life, before times come to an end.

* * *

The Hole-in-the Rockers 

by Nathan Wilcox  2nd grade

Pioneers,

Hardworking, brave

Covered wagon travelers

finding a new home

Trail blazers.

Hole-in-the Rock
by Jonas Manheimer, 2nd grade

Hole-in-the Rock
Slick, Rocky
Bumpy, hard, dustry
San Juan River
Cliff

* * *
Hole
by Krissa L. Shumway 2nd grade

Hole
White, brown
worked, built, camped
They took the wagon a part
Rocks

* * *
Pioneers
by Sheila Oshley

Pioneers
Blue, Black,
Work, walked, dug
They made a hole,
People

* * *
Clay Hill
By Kevin Palmer 2nd grade

Clay Hill
bumpy, rocky
slick, dusty, steep
Pioneers walked many miles
Cliff
* * *

Hole in the Rock
by Jerria Redd

Hole
Happy, pretty,
Worked, sang, danced
They walked really far to Bluff.
Travelers

* * *
The Pioneers of San Juan County
by Chad McDaniels, 4th grade

Journey
Scary, difficult
Blasted, worked, prayed;
It was a hard journey for the
Pioneers of San Juan County.

Travel
Oxen, horses, covered wagons,
Hard, bumpy, dusty and dirty;
It was hard travel
For Pioneers of San Juan

Trip
Hungry, long,
Cold, tired, hardships;
It was a hard journey
For the pioneers.

* * *

A San Juan Pioneer, Kumen Jones

By Josephine Bayles

We've heard about the Pilgrims
  who came across the sea,
And the Pioneers and the traders
  and the men of victory.
But the man I want to mention
  (Though the words I use are rough.)
Is a man who helped to settle,
  the little town of Bluff.

His years were not so many,
  when he first received his call,
To go into the great Southwest
  where he must give his all.,
To pioneer this country,
  and help the Indians too
And there were just a core of things
  he had to help to do.

I guess he didn't falter when there were no roads at all,
And they left their homes of comfort sometime in the fall
To make a home out in the rocks where thieves and bandits stayed
And some lawless wandering renegades just never had obeyed.,

With the others of his party
He helped establish Bluff,
And the way in which he did it,
Just can't be praised enough.
The Navajos learned to love him
For he was good and kind,
And in his home, the stranger,
Was sure a friend to find.

Down through the years he's traveled, he's been a real success
He's helped to steady others with his life of usefulness.
He's had his trials and troubles, and ordeals hard to bear,
But they come to all us mortals in this world of toil and care.

Well, now he's over eighty, and his step is rather slow,
But he's taught just dozens of us the best way we can go.
I hope when life is over and I have met my doom,
That I can just be somewhere near to dear old Uncle Kum!

Trails Across the Desert

Map courtesy Hole in the Rock Foundation

By Josephine Bayles

Published in San Juan Centennial Sampler 1980


Foreword:  The following are words written when the horse back trip was taken to the Hole-in-the-Rock in September 1940.  I wrote the first verse, but several of us, including Casse Monson, wrote the 2nd verse.
It goes to the tune:  Covered Wagon Trails


There are trails across the desert,
There are trails across the sand,
There are trails the Piutes used to travel
As they traveled in a warrior band.
When the trails of Indians and of Mormons
Came together in this dreary place,
They made history in this San Juan County,
"Tis their trail that we came to trace.

Covered wagons furnished transportation,
Weary horses plodded through the dust;
They came willingly because they must--
Weariness and troubles oft beset them,
Of their praise we love to sing and talk;
'Tis of them we're thinking as we travel
Down their trail to the Hole-in-the-Rock.
Riding down trails made long, long ago
By our forefathers all,
Who had answered, as we know
Their own dear leaders' call.

Chorus:
Down a covered wagon trail,
Not a brave heart dared to fail,
Over bush and rock they rode
Each with an enormous load.
Though they're nearly all gone now,
To their memory we bow;
Now our voices let's raise,
As we sing to their praise
Down this old time wagon trail.