This is a story that ran in the Idaho State Journal 7 April 2013.

    Editor’s note: The information for this story comes from an account of pioneer life written by Marlene Christensen, granddaughter of Charles Nuffer, in 1949.

    In the late 1800s, the line between Northern Utah and Southeast Idaho was pretty blurred, but the hardships endured by pioneers knew no state lines.

    One of the many immigrants who settled in this harsh frontier was Charles August Nuffer, who came to Logan, Utah, with his German parents in 1880. The family eventually settled in Worm Creek near Preston.

    His granddaughter, Marlene Christensen, pieced together diary and verbal accounts of the Nuffer family’s struggles to survive. It paints a story as seen through the young eyes of Charles Nuffer.

    “After three weeks, we found a little old log house with one room and dirt roof and plenty of bed bugs to keep us company,” Nuffer recalled. “It was on a vacant lot on the street going to the college just east of the canal.”

    The log house with the dirt roof was traded for a home belonging to Jacob Engle within a month, but Nuffer’s father struggled to find work.

     “Father would go out wherever he could get some work,” Nuffer said. “He worked on the threshing machines, and I went with him to help, and he got a bushel of wheat a day. Grandma Spring, Regine and I went out in the north field to glean wheat, we would cut the head off and put them in a sack. Father threshed them out with the flail and it made about 16 bushels.” Nuffer said the effort fed the family, and his brothers, John and Fred, earned money to pay the rent.

    There were other chores to attend to as well.

     “We had to get the wood from the hills nearby,” Nuffer said. “They have brought a team and an old wagon so we went to get some wood. Father told me to drive, as I drove out the gate and over a little ditch, the tongue dropped down and the reach came up and the team ran away. I fell under the horse’s feet and received a broken shoulder, and the horses ran around the block and back in the gate.”

    Nuffer was 10 years old when this happened.

    The next order of business for the young German American was to master the language.

    “I went to school a few month during the winters of 1881 and 1882 and learned to speak English,” Nuffer said. “We lived in Providence from June 1880 until October 1883. So from here we went to Idaho, the place the Lord has chosen for us to build our future home.”

    It would take herculean effort and stout horses to pull the family’s belongings to Worm Creek. Paradise didn’t await the Nuffer family.

    “On arriving at Worm Creek (Preston), we found a place with a house on it, a log house about 14 by 16 feet, all one room, with dirt roof, no fence around it and no plowed land, and when it rained the mud would run down the walls, and we had to set pans on the bed to catch the rain,” Nuffer said.

    Winter brought even bigger challenges. Nuffer talked about a trip to retrieve straw purchased from farmers in Richmond and Smithfield, Utah.

    “The snow was so deep Regine and I filled some big sacks we had brought from the Old Country with straw and tied on the hand sled and pulled it over the crested snow for home,” Nuffer said. “The Miles’ were the only family that were living on the creek besides us on what is now known as the Webster Ranch, and we lived on what is now known as the Fred Wanner Place. The Miles family ran out of feed for their cattle in March and they shoveled a path over the south side of the hills where the wind and sun had taken snow off the grass that had started to grow, and when they drove the cattle thought the path you could not see them because the snow was so deep.”

    That was the long winter of 1884.

    Undeterred by winter, the family then moved to Cub River and started building a new log home. Lumber was in short supply.

    “They had lumber at the sawmill but they would not sell us any for wheat, and the store in Franklin did not pay cash for it,” Nuffer said. “Father had already laid some lings down to put in the floor on so we just had to step over them all winter, but maybe it was a good thing as we got the warmth from the earth as we only had a lumber roof over us 14 feet to the top and just a four-hole cook stove to warm the house and wood to burn, and it was not at all dry.”

    The hardships didn’t deter the family’s faith.

    “Still we were happy and thanked the Lord for what we had,” Nuffer shared. “Mother would read a chapter from the Bible. We would have prayer and go to bed.”

    By Christmas, things grew tougher.

    “On Christmas Day 1884, Father sent me over to John’s after 25 pounds of flour,” Nuffer said. “The snow was up to my knees. After that flour was gone we had to grind the wheat in the coffee mill as no one went to the store any more that winter until Father and I each carried a basket of eggs to the store in Franklin on March 2 over 2 feet of frozen snow to buy some groceries. We could not buy much as we had no money.”

    To help make ends meet, Nuffer’s mother baked sugar beets in the oven and ground them up to make a sweet sugary substance to put on the family’s “bread and mush.”

    The final leg of the winter provided even more trials for the emigrant family.

    “Finally the cow went dry so we had no milk for some time and no sugar, but we got thought the winter without any sickness,” Nuffer said. “But we thanked the Heavenly Father for what we had.”

150th Territorial Series

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Idaho becoming a territory, the Journal will continue historical stories about life in the early frontier each Sunday. A special event will be held July 4 at the Fort Hall Replica in Pocatello to mark its 50th anniversary with additional sesquicentennial recognition.