These dishes belonged to my Great Grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Stephenson Gray, who came to Albion in 1875 with her husband, Charles Monroe Gray. They had come from their home in Missouri to Ogden by train with relatives, the Dilley Family, and were headed to Oregon Territory, full of hope after the horrors of the Civil War. The children came down with measles and by the time they had all recovered, many of their precious resources had been depleted. They bought their teams and wagons and headed out. The Kelton Road originally went through Almo and down Goose Creek where it joined the trail to Boise and on to Oregon. Some looped around the Jim Sage Mountain through the Elba Valley and over the pass into Albion and down to "The Flat" where they also joined the trail to Oregon. When the bridge over the Raft River was built at Bridge, just south of Malta, it cut miles off of the journey as travelers went from Bridge to Conant, a stage stop and settlement just east of Connor Creek. I haven't been able to tie down a specific date for the bridge at Bridge. During the 1860's, huge cattle ranches had been set up by JQ Shirley, Andrew Sweetser, Thomas Keogh, and the Pierce Family. There were hundreds of thousands of cattle throughout the valleys of Cassia County. By the mid to late 1870's, settlers mostly out of northern Utah---the children of the Mormon Pioneers who needed more land---began to settle in these valleys. The cattlemen did not have claim to the lands where they had been grazing their cattle and the settlers could own the land under the 1862 homestead act. When Grandma and Grandpa Gray and the Dilleys passed through the Albion Valley in 1875, they could see signs of settlers in the valley. They made it as far as Rock Creek and, as my Grandma Clark used to tell the story, the women decided they had enough. They wanted to go back to the pleasant valley they had just passed through. The men were eager to get to Oregon to see the fertile land their relatives had written home about. So Grandma Clark claimed that her mother and Mrs. Dilley got out of the wagons with the younger children and refused to go any further. (Grandma's nephews disputed the story and claimed that Grandpa made the decision to return without any mutiny involved.) Anyway, they turned around and settled at the foot of Mount Harrison. Another of my ancestors, James Stapleton Lewis, had moved to Albion only months earlier from Brigham City area. He and his family had planted a garden and they kept their family and their new neighbors fed from that garden until the Grays could get established. Several other families settled in Albion that year. Some, like the Grays, dropped off the trail. More came from Brigham City area. The town and valley grew quickly. Grandpa Gray was one of the first county commissioners in the new Cassia County.

So back to the dishes.  Grandma Clark always used the platter for family dinners and I loved drying it and seeing it put back in her cupboard. It was one of her treasures and I felt honored when I was given the dishes.   I always imagined Grandma Gray sending away for her fancy dishes---with the gold trim on the edge and their initial and always felt that they were a little better off than some of my other families.  I was researching on newspapers.com the other day.  I ran across an advertisement from the "Golden Rule Mercantile" in the new town of Burley, Idaho.  They were offering a $10.00 set of fancy dishes---with rose colored flowers and green leaves, gold trim on the border and your initial!!!!!!!  You could get the set by using your punch card at the Golden Rule Mercantile for your purchases!!!!!  Who knew!  Makes the dishes even more precious.  Grandma was a very careful housekeeper and widowed early.  Life was harder than I can imagine.  I wonder how long it took her to get enough punches on her card to own her precious dishes!!!