Margaret Condie Sharp, b 1839
As remembered by her grandson, Al Barker, b 1897
Taken from a recording of Dad’s voice in November 1977
By his daughter, Marjorie C.B. Sorensen
Every Memorial Day, we decorated graves with flowers. While at the cemetery, I noticed that my grandmother, Margaret Condie Sharp, was a plural wife. She and her sister were both married to Joseph Sharp (1830). She raised her sister’s children, who died first.
My grandmother lived with us. She and my parents got along very well. The Sharps were a teamster family. My grandmother used to go to the temple every day. She was a midwife to other people, too. She was called a “practical doctor” and had studied with a doctor up in Morgan. She was famous for her medicines, and for her cough syrup. She treated people for many ills and infections, delivered babies (all of Al’s brothers and sisters), but did not operate. She used poultices to draw out poisons. (A poultice is a moist dressing put on a wound or swelling to bring out the inflammation.)
Any time I see a safety pin on the floor, I remember a fellow who came to my grandmother for a treatment. He had stepped on a pin, and you could see the imprint under the skin. She treated him with her bluestone poultice, one of her specialties. You’ve seen blue vitrol in your chemistry class? It is blue-green. Might be copper oxide. She bought the chemical from the drugstore and made it up. She kept a medicine chest out back in our summer porch, attached to the back of our house. She would put on a shawl in the coldest weather and go out there to prepare her medicines. She sold a lot of her cough syrup, but never told us what it was made of.
[Grandmother] felt she was very strong physically and mentally, and had a strong feeling for what is right. Al had “three bosses”, as he says, as a child—two parents, and his grandmother, Margaret Condie Sharp. Once, Al was helping a friend carry a stack of newspapers a few blocks up the hill. His grandmother saw him, and immediately stopped him. “Oh, no, no, you can’t do that! Take those off, take those off!” Al meekly complied. His grandmother feared the newspapers would be too much for his strength. [Her husband, Joseph Sharp, had died at age 34 after over-exerting himself, by single-handedly pulling a fully loaded pioneer wagon out of the mud, after others had failed to budge it.]
[Grandmother] was very active till just before the end of her life, when she got ill for about a month. I don’t know what she died from. (John F. Sharp was our doctor for Ruth and I and our children. He was a distant relative and delivered all three of our children.)
Editing Notes:
Source: Marjorie Cecilia Barker Sorensen