An Interview with Junius G.  (Doc) Berthelson

By Donald L. Haynie

During the 1960s, President La Vere N. Bagwell of what is now the Manassa Colorado Stake, together with Bishop Jay Campbell, interviewed a number of people in the Stake and recorded their conversations on cassette tapes, as a form of oral history.  President Bagwell has permitted me to borrow these tapes, some thirty of them, and I hope to be able to make a copy of the interviews in this collection of historical accounts. 

One of those interviewed was Junius G. (Doc) Berthelson.

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My name is Junius G. Berthelson, and I hate my first name more than anything I can think of  I had to take that name with me  to the War and into the damned Army, where I had to write it a thousand times or more.  Being asked to say my first name has spoiled my whole damned evening, now!  Just call me “J.G.” or “Doc.”  I don't want "Junius" on my tombstone; all I want is "J.G." or "Doc."

I was born in 1895 in Sanford, Colorado.  My father was James C. Berthelson, and my mother was Botilda Gylling, a convert of his from Denmark.  My mother and her family were converted to the Gospel in Denmark by my father who was serving a mission there, having been called on his mission while living with his family in the San Luis Valley.  My mother was a sister of Walt Gylling of La Jara.  Walt is the only one of the family that is still living.

My father, James C. Berthelson, and his brother, my uncle, Soren C. Berthelson, were early Colorado Mormon Pioneers.  They had been called to come here from Utah.  They were really not farmers, or tillers of the soil. Rather, they contracted to build railroad grades, ditches, and roads. While I was born in Sanford, I did not always live there as a boy.  My earliest memories are of living in Creede, Colorado, in its early days, in the times of "Soapy" Smith, where my father and uncle had a contract to produce railroad ties.

My uncle, Soren C. Berthelson, was the promoter and the one who lined up the contracts, and my father, James C. Berthelson, was the one who saw them through. In Denmark, they had worked in pottery, and I am not sure how this experience might have help ed them in producing some of the brick that was used in constructing houses and other buildings in Sanford,

Following that time in Creede, we lived for a time in the Chama River country in New Mexico, where a dam was being constructed to dam up the waters of the Chama River to be used for irrigation purposes.  I distinctly remember a number of the early Mormon Pioneers who lived in that vicinity and who participated in the development of Marianna, a town where some of the brick houses were built, resembling the architecture of brick houses in Sanford.  We were formed into a branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we attended services in an old Catholic monastery.  I believe we lived down there for two or three years, as near as I can remember. The idea was to organize another community in which Mormons could settle.  Pete Mortensen, who lives in Sanford, was down there, and so were members of the Shupe family.  I started to school down there, when I was about five years old, along with several Hispanics and several other Mormon children. 

I went to school one year in Sanford and the teacher was Fred T. Christensen.

After several years, however, my father got wind of big things going on among the Mormons in the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming, so he left us here in Sanford and he went up there to see if he could get involved.  Later, he sent for his family to join him.  It was up there that we went through some of the worst privations imaginable, It was a desolate country and the people up there really had to struggle.

When I was about thirteen years old, it became necessary for me to go out and work. I would go out with the sheep herds, and I herded sheep.  In the spring, I assisted with "lambing on the open range." Later, I worked with cattle. Because of my work, I was away from home much of the time.  I would make from $35 to $50 per month, and I would bring all of this money home to my folks because they needed it.

I hardly got acquainted with my brothers and sisters, because I was out with a "rough-neck" outfit trying to earn money for the family.

I remember helping to build the Cody Dam and, despite the rough element and the fights, I got along well with all the others.  I would come home once in a while to attend school in a little one-room school where all the grades were taught by some East ern "school-ma'rm."

My father was one of the most wonderful "fellers" I have ever known. He died of the effects of tick fever.  My mother has also passed away.  All that I have left up in Wyoming now are a sister and a step-father.  

My father was a Patriarch for many years and he devoted a lot of time going around to all the Mormon communities in the Big Horn Basin, giving patriarchal blessings, and talking with the members of the Church.

In 1917, I volunteered to go into the Armed Services. There was no high school and I had been attending a Church school.  The bishop had called me in and had asked me if I was ready to go on a mission.  But, there was a war to be fought and I had to decide what to do, whether to join the Army or go on a mis sion. The bishop told me to think it over and to let him know what I was going to do. Several days later, I told him that I was going to "join-up."

After the War, I came back down here in the Valley. Old Uncle Walter (Gylling) was here.  I got married in 1924, a year be fore I was out of school and I had no damned business getting married.  We nearly starved to death.

Previously, between my sophomore and junior years at college in Fort Collins, the government had jerked me out of school and put me to work at Fitzsimmons for fourteen months.  That took quite a bit out of me. I would go out with old George Carr from the Valley here and he suggested that I ''tie-in" down in the San Luis Valley at La Jara.  I wasn't out of school yet, but I had worked every summer and had a good working knowledge of the business (veterinary). So, I came down here with an old bag of instruments and a bottle of iodine.

So, I came down here with an old bag of instruments and a bottle of iodine.  The old vet here said, "Well, sonny, I'll back you up!”  I didn't make much money, but I was successful enough that my ego was boosted somewhat, and I determined to back to school and finish.

These kids nowadays get everything handed to them. I get out of patience with the little ones in my family who have everything they want. We had to go through a lot of privations in our day.  Those privations developed a kind of character that kids nowadays don’t have.  They don't know what it is like to be hungry. 

After I got established in my practice down here, I had a great desire to bring my dad back here to learn more about our family history.  I was especially interested in that caravan that came from Fountain Green to here.  Uncle S.C. (Soren C. Berthelson) led the caravan.  Then, before I had the opportunity to get my dad down here and have him review history with me, he got bit by a tick and died of tick fever. There was a world of history and family background that has now been lost. 

I was the oldest of my mother’s children.  When we were down in Marianna in New Mexico on the Chama River, the baby died in the spring of the year and is buried down there; she was the second child.  My mother was a "funny" Danishman in many ways. She was never reconciled to burying her baby down there.  Along in the fall, they were planning on making a trip to the Valley to take a load of apples and peaches from the fruit country down there.  My mother insisted that the baby's coffin be dug up and put in the wagon along with the apples and peaches, to be taken to the cemetery in Sanford, Colorado.  The trip went well until they got up around San Antone Mountain, and some bad storms came up, so the family bedded down under some blankets.  My mother put me under the canvas on top of the coffin. I laid there and I could smell the dead body of my baby sister. We brought her on to Sanford and buried her body there.  Little simple things like that trip with a coffin seem to be the things that stick with you for a long time.

My father's first wife burned to death and she is also buried there, along with several others in the family. I got the burial lots fixed up and put up some grave markers. It pleased my mother very much to spruce up the "James C. Berthelsen" family burial lot.

I have a pioneer background and I have quite a collection of historical books about the early days, including such things as the handcart company trials and so forth. I revere those kinds of things very much.

Sometime after I had built my cabin up the canyon, I was out digging a ditch one day when Old Man Hartley came along and he told me to dig down deep and I would find some of the best damned pipe clay there was.  I did dig down deep and, after a couple of shovelsful, I came up with some pretty good clay and a lot of charcoal.  Hartley told me that there used to be a sawmill on that site and that my father had burned a lot of clay there. He told me that he had worked for my father at the sawmill. There was another sawmill set up at Cumbres.  I liked to ride horses and many times I have ridden a horse following the stumps left over from the trees that were felled for the sawmill operations.

I had always wanted to ask my father about a little stretch of toll road just up the creek from Osier. Some Frenchman had cut the road out of a cliff and, then, collected a little toll for the use of this road down into Los Pinos by the Mormon immigrants.  I have followed this road and have found all kinds of things along the road, such as clevises and different kinds of tools.  That was rugged territory in those days when the folks went into New Mexico.

Before my father moved to Colorado, he lived in Sanpete County, Utah, in the town of Fountain Green.  I don't have very much information about his life in Fountain Green. My sister, however, has done a lot of research and knows about his life.  I know he and his brother were instructed by Church leaders to come to Colorado to help with the colonization.  This was the plan begun years before by President Brigham Young, that is to call people to leave their homes and go out into new territory to help with its settlement.

My father's older brother, S.C. (Soren C. Berthelson), was one of the first Bishops of the Sanford Ward. He had come to this country several years before my father and had established himself.  He had a big brick house and it was that house that was headquarters for a lot of the things that were done in Sanford.   Church Authorities who came here in the early days were guests in that house.  That house has deteriorated much in the last few years. It is just a dump anymore.  I don't like to go around it any more.

After my father died, my mother got some land and, in order to sell it, she had to have a certificate of marriage.  I told her I would go to Conejos County to get it, but I wasn't sure we could get it because they didn't register things like that in the early days, births and marriages and the like. I went into that old courthouse in Conejos and asked if they could help me.   They said they would try and we went into a musky room amid the cobwebs and took out a big, old book, which they put before me.   Shortly, there it was, in fancy script. When my father married my mother, it was the thirty-second marriage in the area and it was recorded in beautiful writing.  I got a photocopy of it and send it to my mother.  I was thrilled to find it in that old musky book.  I remember that, in that old book, the name of Lawrence Petersen "crops up" often; he was county clerk, I believe.  The entries in the book were all handwritten; there were no typewriters in those days with which to make entries.  It was the most beautiful penmanship.

My father was not well educated formally, but he was a good penman, and he was always studying to learn more about things.   They don't teach penmanship in school anymore.

I have wanted to learn more about my family and about the early days in this country. It seems that if you put such things off they never get taken care of. I wanted to talk with John W. Shawcroft and others who were here in the early days. My father and others built a road to Platora when it was a booming site up there at the head of the Conejos River. The road was needed to haul the gold ore out of the mine up there. I guess the "bubble burst" up there and it was abandoned.

My father and his brother were always busy building railroads, canals, and roads. They had a railroad contract up there in Wyoming, the Mormons did, and that was an unholy country in those days. All the people up there were so hard-up.  But, the Mormons got a contract to build the railroad up to Billings, Montana. There were over sixty horses being used, including my father's four which were used on a fresno, a piece of equipment used to scrape dirt out of excavations. About that time, "glanders," a contagious and destructive disease of horses, hit the United States and, of course, it affected all of the horses on that project in Wyoming. The government came in and diagnosed the illness and ordered the horses shot to death.  So, they were used to scrape out a big pit and, then, they were all lined up and "every damned horse in that outfit" was shot, and the horses fell into the pit where they were covered up with dirt and quick lime.  Losing those horses was a hard blow to those people.

The Church once had a big tract of land that was on the Mexican land grant.  After many years of struggle and work, it appeared that clear title could not be obtained for it.  Church members had built fences and canals, and had made many other improvements, but they finally had to give it up.

The history and the background of the West has always been extremely interesting to me.  I have lived part of it and have seen it from all angles, mostly from the rough end.   Manassa was a town settled mostly by Church converts from the South, and Sanford was settled mainly by Danish Mormons.  I wish all the historical accounts could be correlated and made into one big story. It would be a tremendous thing to do. I would love to read it. 

6-3-90   (1965)