Royal Brigham Garff, Alva Helena Garff Wilson

Royal Brigham Garff, 1877 – 1967, married Rachel Ann Day 1902. From his obituary we learn that Royal Brigham Garff was an entrepreneur of great energy. Owner of Garff Grocery Store he was also listed as a Confectioner in one Salt Lake area business directory.  He moved in mining and automotive circles. One such, the Commonwealth Lead Mining Company and another in association with his son at the Ken Garff Company. He was inspector of weights and measures in the gasoline industry, as well, by the appointment of Governor Maw.

Royal also served his community through elected service, serving two terms as State Legislator and through church service, serving on the Liberty Stake High Council and through various service and civic organizations.

You can guess from this level of activity that like characteristics would be noted in his family. Royal Brigham Garff left a posterity of equal civic mindedness, and of successful industry.

 His wife, Rachel Ann Day shared in this influence. Born in Draper in 1881, she was characterized in the Henry Eastman Day Family history as physically strong, spiritually faithful and an educated, independent woman…very hard working, and taught by example the virtues and rewards of working long laborious hours. She passed away in Salt Lake City in 1956, where her husband followed a decade later. They are buried at the Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park in Salt Lake county.

Alva Helena Garff 1882 – 1977, was born in Logan the youngest of four children and lived there until she was about 8 years old. Her family has posted an autobiography that details some memories of her childhood on www.ancestry.com. Alva’s father operated a Door and Sash mill at that time and had selected, cut, planed and cured the lumber for their own home. Alva tells us that she was “born in a very fine, new two storied house, one half block from the main street” that had a concrete basement. This was a noteworthy structure, the yard in which it sat was enclosed with a picket fence “with poplar trees, evenly spaced, on three sides.” She recalled the fun the children had running through the leaves of those trees in the fall, and then raking them up for “the magnificent sum of ten cents.” Christmas and Mid-Summer celebrations, with their Scandinavian influence, were special memories for Alva.

Alva’s father lost his business in Logan through cross dealings of others, the family removed to Ogden. Alva tells us that they lived in a house “built on a tract of land given to father by the city of Ogden … Ogden was encouraging various enterprises to come … to stimulate growth and prosperity.”

One memory Alva recounts vividly is that of going by train from Ogden to Logan to be baptized. Her mother, she believed had remained devoted to their LDS Bishop Lewis in that place. The rite was completed “in the Logan River at the end of the street Aunt Emily lived on” (believed to be 4^th South).

The home in Ogden appears bleak in many ways, Alva wrote about it seeming unhealthy and attributing her sister’s typhoid fever and her own scarlet fever to that place.

The nearest neighbors were blocks away, and the area, near the railroad, was inviting to tramps, leaving the mother and daughters concerned about their safety. It was here that Alva’s mother died following a long period of poor health. Older brother Carl was in Sweden on an LDS mission and Father was in Hyrum building an electrical power station, leaving the three sisters to care for the failing and then sit with the deceased mother.

 Alva married Robert Emmett Wilson 1905 in Ogden. He was a native of North Ogden and their four children were born there. Robert was a sales representative for printing and wholesale paper businesses. By 1930 they were living in California, where they both now repose in the Inglewood Cemetery in Los Angeles.