Homemaking was Different for a 1901 Bride…

 Mrs. Myrtle Goeglein was born in 1885 in Kansas, and when she was 14 her family moved to Victor, Colorado.  At that time Victor was a mining town.

 “I remember the first night we moved there.  It was the first mining town we had even been in, and we heard a group of men passing by.  We asked my aunt what they were doing and she said it was a group of men coming off the graveyard shift.  We thought it was some men out digging graves.”
 “There were three shifts, one at 8 in the morning and at 4 and 12.  All miners were paid in gold and they paid all their bills in gold.
 “We would go downtown every two weeks and change our checks for gold.  I recall in my very early years the impact of the silver boom and Haw Taber, who became the most controversial character in Colorado by marrying Baby Doe, a very popular gambling hall dancer.
 “There was a big strike in Cripple Creek,” continued Mrs. Goeglein.  “Owners and miners struck in Cripple Creek and Victor.  The state militia was called in to settle the strike.”
 Mr. and Mrs. Goeglein were married in the Cripple Creek district in Colorado in 1901.  On their wedding trip from Durango, Colorado, to Silverton they rode a little narrow gauge train that is out on the Knottsberry Farm now.  From Silverton to Ouray they rode in a big stagecoach with four horses hitched to it.  In those days they just had narrow little rough roads.  Some of the men on the stagecoach would have to get up and stand on parts of the wheels so that it would not tip over in a ditch.  From there they came to Cripple Creek.  
 “For a wedding present we got an old tin boiler.  My husband William took an old broom and took off the end of it so I could use it to stir the clothes.  All the water was delivered to us in tanks and that was all the water we had.
 “When we did our laundry we had an old tin tub and a metal washboard.  When we did our ironing we had to use a flat board and heat the iron on the stove and hang on to it with a thick pad.  Every so often we would have to heat it again.  About the only things we had to starch were things like our housedresses and our underskirts.”
 The grocery stores in those days carried everything from hay and grain to groceries.  There was not anything you could not buy at the store.
 “And I well remember you had to buy your own coffee and grind it,” added Mrs. Goeglein.  “We would store all the stuff we had to keep in caves or cellars.”
 “Everything was so cheap; eggs were fifteen cents to twenty cents a dozen and butter was 25 cents a pound.  We never heard of margarine or pasteurized milk.
 “The fashions are a lot different from what they are today.  All the ladies wore long skirts and they would never be above our ankles and they wore high button shoes.  The bathing suits were clear down to our ankles.  We always had to make our own clothes.  We would never go to a store and buy a dress.  We would only get the material and make our own.”
 In 1905 Mr. and Mrs. Goeglein came to Prescott where Mr. Goeglein was assayer at the Humboldt smelter.  Their first son was born in Humboldt.  Then when the smelter closed down they went to Los Angeles for a short time.  Then they moved to Globe where Mr. Goeglein was assayer at the Globe smelter.  In Globe their second son was born.
 “I remember Globe is where we got our first Model T Ford and Mr. Goeglein, learning to drive, drove to the top of the hill and lost control of the car and rolled down the hill and we sat there all night.”
 Then they returned to Los Angeles and put their two sons through school.
 In 1932 they came to Wickenburg on a Greyhound bus.  At that time the bus stopped where the Valley National Bank now is.  There was nothing where the main highway now is and most of the businesses now are.  At the time the Goegleins first came to Wickenburg most businesses were on Frontier Street.
 After a short time they moved to Congress where her husband and son had an assay office.  All the mines were going then and Congress was quite a community.  They would mine for gold, silver and copper.  There were about four or five hundred people living in Congress and most of them were miners.
 After living in Congress for nine years they moved back to Wickenburg.  The two front rooms of Mrs. Goeglein’s house used to be the stage stop.  In front of her house is where the town well used to be.  
 Mrs. Goeglein, 88 years old, still lives in Wickenburg.  Her son Mel is manager of the Western Garden apartments. Her other son lives in Vancouver, B.C.