Home

My grandmother, Alice Olive Hancock Wanlass, was a very tiny woman. She was always very clean and proud. She worked hard all of her life and always took good care of herself and her family. She was born in a log cabin in Payson, Utah on June 21, 1889 to F. M. Hancock and Alice Lorinda Malloy Hancock. She had one sister, Clarissa, and four brothers, Harvey, Joe, Charles, and Francis. When Grandma was about a year, her mother died giving birth to a stillborn baby. To add to the family’s grief, Francis, who was about three, climbed on a chair and got into the matches and ate the matchheads. The matchheads were made of arsenic and so they lost him too. Times must have been very hard for Grandma’s father. He had five children to care for plus provide a living, but that wasn’t the end of his troubles. Soon after his wife and Francis died, the cabin caught fire and burned everything they had.

When Grandma was about four, Clarissa fell in love with a gypsy who was passing through town. She told her father she was going with him and when he couldn’t talk her out of it, he made them get married first. She married Gotlep Smith, 17 Sep, 1897, and had six children, John, Godlieb, Clara, Rose, Olive, and Charles. They settled in Chico, California.

Needless to say, at a very early age, Grandma learned to cook and sew and take care of the house while her father and brothers worked on the farm. The log cabin must not have had too many comforts. I know it had a dirt floor because once when I was complaining about sweeping the floor, Grandma told me to quit quibbling and be thankful it wasn’t a dirt floor like she had when she was young.

At school age, she started Payson School and completed the 6^th grade which was quite an accomplishment in those days.

Grandma was born with bright red, naturally curly hair, but when she was about six, she became very ill with typhoid fever and was unconscious for several days. At this time it was common practice for doctors to use leaches to suck out the bad blood when someone was sick and they did this to Grandma. The blood became so matted in Grandma’s hair that finally her father took the scissors and cut it off very close to her scalp. Later when it grew back, it was straight and brown. I loved my Grandma’s hair. It was very long which she piled in a bun on the top of her head. I loved to watch her comb it out at night because it was so long, straight, and silky.

Francis Hancock, her father, must have been a very difficult man. As each of the children got old enough to leave, they found other jobs and left. Harvey and Charles went to Colorado and Joe went to Salt Lake. Harvey was killed on a return trip home at the point of the mountain in Utah County when something spooked his team of horses.

Soon, Grandma was the only one left at home and it became her job to ride the old mare while her father plowed. This was the same horse that earlier had kicked Grandma in the eye and caused it to water all the rest of her life. The horse was mean and would buck Grandma off. Each time she was bucked off her father would tell her to get back on. Finally, Grandma told her father she would not get back on the horse. He said if she didn’t she would have to leave, so Grandma left that night for Salt Lake. She was only sixteen.

Next: Married at Nineteen

Alice Olive Hancock Wanlass

House in Payson, Ut Francis Marion Hancock

standing in front

Homestead with mule and Francis Marion

standing in front

Peteetneet Academy was built in 1901. Grandma would have been 12 years old and probably in the 6th grade. More likely, she just missed the new school and graduated from the old rock school.