My father was Samuel Echols, born in Alabama, 13, January 1856. He was the oldest child in a family of eight boys and four girls. They moved from Alabama to Georgia. It was here they met Elders Packer and Taylor and were converted to the Gospel, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After they joined the church they moved to Manassa, Colorado. Father was called on a mission from here to labor in the southern states, Georgia in particular. While here he met Arminta Missouri Lee and after his release they were married in the Logan Temple. They lived in Manassa, Colorado, where I born to them on 11 August 1889.

Mother got rheumatism and the cold in Colorado bothered her so they decided to move to Arizona. Mother, father, my brothers, Ben, Orson and sister Mary left for Arizona in 1896. I remember one day on our way to Arizona, we camped where there were a lot of berries and a bunch of us were picking berries. The first thing I noticed I was alone and I started out but when I got to the road I went the wrong way. I finally discovered I was going the wrong way so I was quite awhile catching up with the wagons. My older brother, Ben, had quite a laugh.

We located about four miles above Franklin, Arizona and bought a farm from Mr. Day. We had a dug out to live in. There is where we lived in my first school days. We raised corn, cabbage, and hogs. I pulled Careless weeds to feed the pigs night and morning.

We lived here four years and then moved to Thatcher, Arizona. One of the horses lost its halter one day and father told me to go to the field and find it and not to come back until I did. I hunted and hunted and could not find it. We had been taught to pray so I prayed to the Lord to guide me to it, and when I got up off my knees, to my surprise I walked straight down the corn row to where it lay. I was in my seventh year at the time.

Father was bishop of Franklin Ward , so on my eighth birthday we got into a wagon and drove about two miles to a reservoir and I was baptized by Morton Mortensen, and on the following day I was confirmed by my father.

In the year 1900 we moved to Thatcher, Arizona. We lived in a cellar there at this time. I attended school the first few years in Thatcher, Arizona. I worked on a hay bailer in the summer of 1904. I drove the team working on the hay bailer for 37 and one half cents a day. Then when I got bigger I pitched the hay to the bailer for 75 cents a day. Then when I was 14 , I was paid one dollar. Father bought a herd of goats in 1904, twelve or thirteen hundred, and I herded goats in the Graham Mountains for three years or longer. My older brother, Ben, was with me part of the time. I saw a lion, a bear with two cubs, and a lot of Bob Cats, and I helped shear the goats, in the Spring and Fall. (Dad told us how he used to get so lonesome up in the mountains without anyone to talk to at all), One time Ben and I were letting the goats feed up a canyon, Ben was on the left ridge and I was on the right at the head of the canyon. It opened into a flat where the goats were feeding when a coyote took after the goats. They started back down the mountain and just at this time Ben came in front of a cave where a big mountain lion stood facing him. I started yelling, "Look out! Look out! There he comes." Ben thought I was talking about the lion, so he ran and got upon a great big rock and here came the goats right down toward him. The coyote saw us and ran away, but he was too scared to go back and see what happened to the lion. When we met at the head of the canyon and talked it over we had quite a laugh.

In the fall of 1911, I attended the Gila Academy, then I got a call to go on a mission to the southern states. My grandfather Lewis Barton Echols saw me off at the train in Thatcher, Arizona. This is the last time I saw him. He died when I was on my mission. My sister Mary also died when I was in the mission field. I was sent to Mississippi where I labored for 19 months, then I was transferred to Georgia where my mother's folks lived. My companion and I went out to my grandfather’s, near Dallas, Georgia and worked out in the country all week and then returned. to Dallas Saturday night and held a street meeting. Then back to grandfather’s for Sunday. My father had left a Book of Mormon with Grandpa when he was there on a mission 35 years before, and he was converted to our faith, but Grandmother did not have much to say. Grandpa wanted to be baptized and when the time came Grandma Lee was ready. I dammed up a little creek just below the house and on Saturday planned to baptize them. We held a little meeting there and about fifteen people came, and I baptized them After Grandmother came up out of the water she exclaimed, "Oh, my Savior has saved me." I was indeed happy. He was 91 and she was 86 years old.

I took the chills and fever and was sick for a week or so, and I stayed with Uncle James C. Lee for a week or so. Elder Potter, my companion administered to me and I got well. From there I was sent to Macon, Georgia to conference and was released 20 January 1914. I was out of money by this time, in fact, I never had enough left to get me something to eat on the way home. I met a lady on the train and she asked me if I would accept her lunch as she did not need it, which consisted of a nice roasted chicken and so I took her lunch which lasted me till I reached home. This is how the Lord provided for me and I know as I live that the gospel is true.

On my return home my folks had moved to the west part of Thatcher, Arizona. They lived by a family by the name of Barney so I went over to their place and met their daughters, Ada and Frances. They were going to a dance at Pima, and Frances invited me to go with her and her sister Ada and her fellow. After we got home I asked her for a date the next night and that is how our courtship began.

About this time my folks moved to Pima, Arizona. As I had no transportation I would ride my bicycle to Thatcher to see Frances. It wasn’t long till we were engaged to be married. (The story is told how he would come to see Mother and sit in the living room and when it was late he would tell Mother goodnight and she would go into her room and go to bed and he would lay down on the sofa and go to sleep. He got up early in the morning as it was just getting light and off he would go on his bicycle. He did this for quite awhile before Mother even knew about it, and when her mother told her, she could hardly believe it.)

We decided to go to the Salt Lake Temple to be married. So my mother, her mother, and her grandfather went to Salt Lake City with us. We went to Conference and were married in the Salt Lake Temple 2 October 1914. We spent our honeymoon in San Diego with my brother, Ben, and his wife. When we returned home, we had fifty cents. I went to work with father on a house and got orders on a store for groceries and lived in a two room lumber house at the base of the foot hills on the Barney place. When the house was completed, I got work from Haken Anderson on a farm at Pima, Arizona. We lived in a three room house on the south side of the street facing the Big Anderson Home.

While we lived there our first boy, Ethan, was born 9 November 1915. I worked there 18 months and then went back to Thatcher and went in partners on an orchard with my father-in-law Alfred A. Barney. We traded it for a place in Benson, so we went there to run the farm for one half of the crop, where we stayed for two years.

At that time we went to church in Pomerene, Arizona. I was chosen president of the Mutual there and was a ward teacher. We traded our model T Ford car and five hundred dollars for forty acres of land joining the San Pedro River. I built a two room house on it and our second son, Gilbert, was born there. Just before we moved into the house, Frances got sick and was in the hospital for 18 months at Phoenix, Arizona. I worked at Yuma and different places during this time. When she got well we moved to Eden, Arizona. I worked on a farm for Mr. Roy Hoopes. Here Roger was born 22 April 1922. I was a ward teacher there. We moved from there to Pima, on Fred Webb’s farm, and picked a crop of cotton. I bought another Ford and went to Benson and traded our place there for an Oldsmobile car, then came back to Pima and traded it for 16 head of cattle and traded them on a lot in Pima to Sheff Marshall. I planted cotton there for two years and paid for the place and built a house on it. Before we moved onto the lot we lived in the back of Dad’s two story house in Pima. Arminta was born at Samuel Echols place in Pima. Shortly after she was born we moved on our lot in a Rock and Brick one room house, one of the first houses built in Pima. While raising cotton I built a four room block house. Just got it finished and moved in when our second daughter, Delilah, was born in our new home. I worked as a carpenter and built several houses in Pima. One day I traded for a pony, from Uncle George, and while driving a cow over to Milton Lines's place the pony fell and broke my leg. I soon got well and went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Tucson for about fifteen months. I worked as a carpenter and built several houses in Pima and vicinity and carpenter work became scarce. In 1941, I worked for Phelps Dodge in Morenci, Arizona. Frances was called as a Stake Missionary. My heels got to bothering me so I came home and they put me in as a stake missionary and I labored for one year. Work got scarce so we moved to Mesa, Arizona. We sold our place in Pima to Osmer Crockett. We built a garage and lived in it until we got our house built. We cooked outside on a fire for some time. They were slow about getting our gas connected up. We spent Thanksgiving of 1944 here, cooking our dinner outside over a fire. I worked building refrigerated houses on dairies. My wife and I were called as stake missionaries in 1947 and served until November 1951.

Later on, I got a chance to buy a lot on South LeSuer Street, but could not get a permit to build, so I just waited a few years, then got a chance to buy a lot joining it so I went back to the city for a building permit and they gave it to me in 1952. I bought the blocks and Roger laid up the walls. I was janitor at the fifth ward church and worked on my house between times. By the first of the year, 1953, I finished it and we moved in on February 27, 1953 and I rented the one on South Mesa Drive.

Frances and I went on a trip to Georgia and South Carolina to find genealogy. We had a wonderful trip and were gone two months. During the Civil War, the south had a blockade where they kept the prisoners not far from Atlanta. They had no water and got so they were about to choke. Finally some suggested to pray so they formed a circle and began to pray and before they got through a great big spring burst forth, pure cold water and when Frances and I were back there in 1947 we drank out of this spring. That shows what can be done when people put their trust in the Lord. I have had my prayers answered many, many times.