Basic Data
Full Name at Birth: Merle Mortensen
Relationship to Me: Mother
WikiTree ID: N/A
FamilySearch ID: G7GC-JBG
Alias: Merle Vaughan or Merle Allen
Date of Birth: 13 February 1934
Place of Birth: Brigham City, Utah
Gender: female
U.S. Military Service Number: N/A
Father: Christian Hyrum Mortensen
Mother: Violet Stella Smith
"Three Quarter" Siblings: Blanche, Hulda, Clara, et al
First Husband: William Knowlton Vaughan
Date of Marriage: 24 March 1961
Place of Marriage: The Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah
Only Child of William Knowlton Vaughan and Merle Mortensen:
William Mortensen Vaughan
Second Husband: Ralph Lavene Allen, Sr.
Date of Marriage: 8 October 1978
Place of Marriage: Ogden, Utah
Stepchildren:
Ralph Lavene Allen, Jr.
Carol Loretta Allen Koegler
Biography
My mother, Merle Mortensen raised me from the time I was born, until I was eighteen years old.
She told me that she was born on February 13, 1934, in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah. She also told me that her full name at birth was "Merle Mortensen," and that she did not have a middle name or initial, until she was married.
She told me that neither her father, Christian Hyrum or Hyrum Christian Mortensen, nor either of my father's parents lived long enough to meet me. However, I did meet my mother's mother, Violet Stella Smith, once, when I was about eight years old, and I also attended her funeral.
Merle the Missionary Meets Bill and Gets Married
Merle told me that she was a Mormon missionary, working at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, circa 1960, when she met her first husband (my father), a man about forty years old, named William Knowlton Vaughan, nicknamed "Bill."
She was walking home from Temple Square, and crossed the street between Temple Square and the Hotel Utah. He struck up a conversation with her, and followed her to her apartment, to see where she lived. He told her that he would return to see her, but she doubted it, and she wasn't interested in seeing him again.
Another day, he returned and wrote a note on a piece of her room-mate's mail, indicating that he would return at a certain time to take her to a baseball game. My mother wasn't home, but her room-mate was, and she saw my father.
When my mother came home, her room-mate told her about "the most wonderful man" who had come and left the note for her. She wasn't even offended that he had used her mail to write a note to my mother. My mother wasn't interested in the man, but her room-mate persuaded her to get ready in time for my father to take her to the baseball game.
(This story shows how times have changed. Why was my mother's Mormon Missionary Companion at home when she was out? Why would she let a man she had just met in the street follow her home, to see where she lived?)
At the baseball game, my father bought them hot dogs, and asked for onions on his hot dog.
Coincidentally, my mother had recently decided that she wanted to marry a man who liked onions. She didn't know it at the time, but my father had hated onions all of his life. It was only a coincidence that he had come to like eating onions shortly before their first date. Perhaps my mother's room-mate had given him a hint. Who knows?
Anyway, my mother didn't particularly like onions, sports, or my father, but his eating onions on his hot dog sealed the deal; he was the man for her. She obsessed about this all through the night, after their date, telling her room-mate "And he likes onions!" over and over, again and again, ad tedium ad nauseam.
For his part, Bill had never been married, even though he was about forty years old. He had reason to believe he was going to die any day then. He had worked at various odd jobs, including as a janitor and stocking shelves. Something had fallen off a shelf, and hit him in the head. His injury was so severe, that he sought medical attention, and the doctor told him that he was "living on borrowed time"; he should already have been dead, and would probably die at any moment.
Because of his Mormon beliefs, Bill felt that it was important to get married before he died. He went to his Mormon Bishop to ask for advice. His Bishop told him to go home and write a list of what exactly he was looking for in a woman.
The first thing that he was looking for was "a Testimony" of the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mormonism. He was also looking for an educated woman.
My mother was a Mormon Missionary, born and raised in Utah and "in the the Covenant," so she had "a Testimony." She was, however, "slow." By her own admission, she only graduated from Box Elder High School "with a lot of extra help." She never learned to drive or ride a horse, or swim. But she owned a lot of books - especially books about Mormonism, such as Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie, and Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage.
Names and Languages
My mother told me that she didn't have a nickname, although Bill called her his "sego lilly" and his "blackbird." She also told me that her full name, before she was married, was "Merle Mortensen." She became known as "Merle Mortensen Vaughan," when she married my father. She later became known as "Merle Allen," when she married my stepfather.
Danes and Swedes
My mother told me that she was descended from Danes and Swedes who converted to Mormonism, and migrated, to Utah, in the Nineteenth Century. She explained that Swedes spelled names such as "Mortensen" with an "o," instead of an "e," as the next to last letter; for example, they would spell "Mortensen" "Mortenson." She further explained that it was the tradition of my father's family to give the surname of their mothers to their children as their second, given names. Of course, it is a more popular tradition to name the firstborn son after his father, so my name was "William Mortensen Vaughan." My father's mother was Maud Osborn Knowlton, so Bill and his only sibling, a younger brother named Sid, were named "William Knowlton Vaughan" and "Sidney Knowlton Vaughan." Their father was the son of Luther Clay Vaughan and Mary Catharine Swift, and he was named "William Swift Vaughan." Maud Osborn Knowlton was the daughter of a man surnamed Knowlton, and a woman named Edna Osborn, so she was named "Maud Osborn Knowlton."
Welshmen
Unfortunately, my mother didn't know who my paternal forebears were before Luther Clay Vaughan, who she thought came to the U.S. on a boat from Wales.
My Mother's First Marriage
My parents were living in a mobile trailer home in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah, when I was born, at the Cooley Memorial Hospital, in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah. She told me that they lived there so that they could work, picking berries in Willard that fall; I was born, she told me, on October 5, 1962. She used to show me a picture that Bill had insisted on taking of me when I was an infant, while she was bathing me in the red sink of our trailer home. Because she was caught off guard, she placed one of her hands over my crotch to prevent my father from photographing that part of my body.
She told me that Bill moved with us to the Midwestern United States, near the Great Lakes, such as Lake Michigan, soon after I was born. She told me that our car broke down in Kansas, where we were stranded for at least several days, if not weeks or months.
She told me that my father got lost driving into an unmarked dead end, and drove on someone's front parking as he executed a three-point turn to leave.
Later, we were in church at a Mormon chapel, when the man whose front parking my father had driven over came in with a police officer, to handcuff my father and take him away for his crime. Luckily, one of the members of the congregation was willing and able to pay the fine, and persuade the policeman to unhand my father so he didn't have to be separated from his wife and child.
My father found a job as a teacher at a school in Illinois, but died before his first day on the job, at our home in Winthrop Harbor, in late August, 1966.
Utah
My father's brother, Sid, moved me and my mother into his home, and helped my mother make funeral arrangements. We couldn't have asked for a more supportive relative. Sid treated my mother like a sister, and me, as if I were his own son, even though he and his wife, my Aunt Char, already had two sons of his own, David and Warren.
He did, however, respect my mother's wishes, and understood her desire to return to Utah. After my father's funeral, my Aunt Sylvie helped us move from the Midwest to Salt Lake City, Utah. We lived in the historic Hollywood Apartments for about a year, circa 1967, when I celebrated my fifth birthday.
Before I could celebrate my sixth birthday, my Aunt Sylvie had moved us into a two-bedroom house, which she owned, at 1745 Childs Avenue, in Ogden, Utah.
Three Quarter Siblings
My mother told me that my Aunts Ruth, Sylvia, and Marian were her nieces, which meant that they were my first cousins, but I called them my aunts, because they were old enough to be my mother's sisters. My mother was the only child that Violet Stella Smith bore her husband, Christian Hyrum Mortensen, but his first wife, Hulda Amelia Smith, was Violet's sister, and had born him a lot of children, three of whom lived to meet me: Blanche, Hulda, and Clara. Because their mother was my mother's sister, and their father was the same man, my mother called them "three quarter sisters," instead of just "half sisters."
My Stepfather
Because my mother never learned to drive, we often walked for miles around Ogden, to get where we were going. We also took city buses, and occasionally, taxis.
To get to the bus stop, we often walked a half block south, from our home, to 18th Street. Then we turned left, and walked two blocks to Washington Boulevard. Washington Boulevard was the main street in Ogden, where most of the buses ran.
A deaf man named Ralph Allen, Senior, owned two lots on 18th Street, including the empty lot on the northeast corner of Childs Avenue and 18th Street. His house was on the adjacent lot to the east. Our home was on the opposite side of Childs Avenue, and there were some bushes which had grown over the sidewalk, so we usually jay walked around them.
One summer day, when I was thirteen years old, and my mother and I were walking home, Ralph was trimming those bushes.
After we got home, my mother touched up her make-up, and left me at home, alone, while she went back to thank Ralph for trimming the bushes.
I didn't see much of my mother for the next month or so. They were married on October 8, 1976, three days after I turned fourteen. After the reception at a restaurant called Le Maison, I think, we moved into Ralph's home, where I lived until I graduated from high school.
My stepfather was abusive, but my Mormon Bishop told me that the Lord wanted me to remain in Ralph's home until I graduated from high school. I moved out less than a week after my high school graduation, in the spring of 1981. Eventually, after serving a Mormon Mission in Uruguay, I joined the U.S. Marine Corps, then the U.S. Army National Guard, and, finally, the Regular Army.
Ralph died in February of 2002, while I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I returned to Ogden to accompany my mother to his funeral at the Aultorest Memorial Park. As we rode together in the back of a car, in the funeral procession, my mother offered me one of Ralph's gold watches, which she said Ralph, Jr. had told her to give me. I told her to give it back, because I already had a gold tooth to remember him by.
Outside the chapel, at Ralph's funeral, my stepsister's husband, John, told me that, since my stepfather was dead, I would need to do a better job of staying in touch with my mother, as if I hadn't brought my mother to the funeral on time... That was the last time I saw him. He died about seven years later. I guess I hadn't done a very good job of staying in touch with my mother, because I missed his funeral.
The Pioneer Care Center
My stepbrother and my stepsister told my mother that she would need to find herself a new home when my stepfather died, because they were going to sell his property and divide the money between the two of them. My stepfather had made arrangements for her to receive an inheritance of approximately $800 per month, which they felt was sufficient for her to live on SOMEWHERE ELSE.
Both Ralph, Jr. and his sister, Carol, had nice homes of their own, and lived in better neighborhoods. In fact, I never sat foot in Carol's new home, and the one day that my mother went to see her new home, when she happened to be in Salt Lake City for a T.O.P.S. or Weight Watchers convention, and a friend was kind enough to give her a ride, Carol told her to never go there without first making arrangements. I don't think my mother ever went back...
When my Aunt Sylvie found out that Ralph and Carol were kicking my mother out, she had a conversation with them. I don't know exactly what she told them, but they decided to let my mother live in their father's home until she died, as long as someone else paid the taxes on the home.
Unfortunately, my mother fell, at home, alone, and couldn't get herself up, in October, 2013. Luckily, she often received visits from her Mormon "Home Teachers." They found her before she died. But my Aunts (Sylvie and Marian) and I agreed that the best thing to do was to put her in a nursing home, in Brigham City, where they could keep an eye on her. Marian lived in Brigham City, and Sylvie, nearby, in Mantua.
T O B E C O N T I N U E D . . .
Research Notes
According to the U.S. Census of 1940, "Christian Mortenson" was living in Box Elder County, Utah, with his wife, "Violet Mortenson," and their daughter, "Merle Mortenson." Christian was fifty-nine years old (born circa 1881); Violet, forty-six (born circa 1896); and Merle, six (born circa 1934).
According to my Utah Certificate of Live Birth, "Merle Vaughan" gave birth to me, "William Mortensen Vaughan," in Brigham City, Utah, on October 5, 1962, and my father was "William Knowlton Vaughan." She was twenty-eight (born circa 1934), and he was forty-one (born circa 1921); she was born in Brigham City, Utah, and he was born in Chicago, Illinois.
Mistaken Identities
T.B.D.
Discrepancies
See Also
- FamilySearch: Merle Mortensen
- WikiTree: Merle Mortensen
- FindaGrave: N/A
Merle Mortensen Vaughan Allen's portrait, above, was taken by Libertad Green, circa 2008, at the Maddox Ranch House, in Brigham City, Utah.
Biography by William Mortensen Vaughan
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