James Sterling Boyle was born 14 February 1892 in Provo, Utah to Andrew McDougall and Margaret Graham Young Boyle. He was born the ninth of eleven children. Shortly after he was born, his family moved to Salt Lake City, where they had previously lived.
When James was 18 he was visiting his aunt’s millinery shop in Tooele. That day there happened to be a group of girls in the shop, one of whom was Ethel Shields. The girls were excited about the handsome young man, but Ethel was persistent, insisting he was hers. He was interested as well, and the two began to court.
James often would go to the livery stable and rent a horse and buggy for the evening. They would ride together in that buggy to court. He rented so often, that the man at the livery began to reserve it just for him. If anyone else wanted that horse and buggy, he would tell them it was reserved. The horse was named Flax. Ethel recalls, “Old Flax was or loyal motor through our courting days.
James and Ethel got married in the Salt Lake Temple on 19 April 1911. Ethel remembers having their wedding breakfast at the Chesapeake Café on 3rd South between West Temple and Main Street. A year later, their first child, Elda LaVon, was born(1912). James Keith was born in (1913).
James was working at the smelter in Garfield, Utah. A smelter takes the ore and melts it into metal. They get the metal they want, and take the red hot leftover metal and dump it under the railroad tracks. It becomes slag, or rock. James lost three of his toes when a car carrying the metal ran over his foot. When James came home at night, Ethel would pick molded rock out of his hair. The red hot metal would pop, get in his hair and then harden.
There was a giant chimney stack next to the smelter with a latter up the side. There was a common bet at the time with a reward for anyone who would climb up the stack and get married at the top. James tried to convince Ethel to get married there, but she refused to go up that high.
After living in Tooele for two years, James and Ethel moved their family to Sugarville, Utah to begin farming along with her parents, James and Matilda Shields. Each family bought forty acres of land side by side. They raised hay, beets and other crops. Ethel remembers the ground was hard, black clay and the work was difficult. They also had horses, pigs, and cows. The men would feed the animals while the women prepared breakfast. Then the women would take the kids with toys and blankets to the fields and all would work side by side.
In 1916, their third child was born, Ethel Maxine. Romulus Dean was born in 1918. At this time the family suffered many trials and hardships. A flu epidemic broke out and hardly anybody escaped it. James and Ethel packed up their family and went to her parent’s house, where 10 were sick at the same time. Later, while Dean was a baby, Ethel took the plague from a deer fly sting. She was sick for quite a while and almost died. She recovered, but soon Dean caught typhoid fever and also almost died. Finally, at the age of 11, Maxine died from a long battle with rheumatic fever.
In 1921 Eldon Wayne was born.
Farming in Delta was difficult and they worked very hard. Money was scarce. Jim, Ethel and her parents all decided to borrow money and buy some dairy cows. Before they had paid for the cows five of them died from overeating alfalfa. There was nothing that could be done to save them.
Jim hired out to work on construction of the high school that had burned down. However, he was injured and had to have an operation, which put a stop to this work.
In the mid-20’s James bought a 24 Flint, the first car in Delta. At the time he could be considered well to do. They also had a Model T Ford used to move the hay. From that point on James always had a vehicle.
In 1929, after LaVon graduated high school, the family moved their cows to Lynndyl, Utah, a terminal for the Union Pacific Railroad. They combined their cows with George Meyers’ cows and Jim and boys milked them. It was hard work and little money was in it. They took their cows and moved into town. Although at the time there were jobs, money was scarce because of the depression. The day before the banks failed, James and Ethel had put all of their money in the bank. They lost every cent they had.
In 1932 their final child, Clair Dee, was born. It was the middle of the depression and they hardly had enough money to feed the family.
In 1934, Pete Carlson, the football coach at Delta High School moved to Park City to coach and recruited Dean for his team. He promised to find James a job if he would move his family. So James began working in the coal mines.
In Park City, both James and Ethel were active in the church. They served as drama directors for the MIA.
James had a small stature. One Halloween a masquerade ball was held and James and Ethel went as two little girls in blue. They had matching dresses with big, full skirts, big hats, long gloves and high laced shoes. Nobody knew who they were. A stranger in the crowd liked how they looked and made a try for one. They danced, and he hugged his partner, and they danced some more. It came time for the unmasking and James revealed himself as the stranger’s partner. The stranger nearly died and left, never to return.
The family stayed in Park City until after WWII. One of James’ friends got the Con, a lung disease from working in the mines. James was not feeling well and felt he should get out of the mine to avoid the same fate as his friend. So the family moved to Bakersfield, California, where Keith was now living. James got a job in the boiler room on the railroad.
They only stayed in California for about a year. James wasn’t well enough for the job, so he had to quit. They moved back to Salt Lake City and both worked for the Purity Biscuit Company and at a bakery. James also worked at the Clover Leaf Dairy and then City Water Works. He retired in December 1960.
James and Ethel both loved baseball, and he played third base. He would play on a local team any chance he had, often travelling to towns nearby for games. He passed this love onto his children, particularly Clair, who has also been involved in baseball most of his life.
LaVon remember James as being a jealous man that often had fits of anger. He would always get jealous if the young single men in the small farming community would pay too much attention to Ethel, or if she would dance with more than one at the community dances. She also says he was a good man and a hard worker.
James hadn’t been feeling well for quite some time. In 1967 he was rushed to the hospital. He had a ruptured intestine and gangrene had set in. They operated and removed all but 18 inches of his large intestine. He was in the hospital for seven weeks and died on 31 October 1967. He is buried in the Delta City Cemetery.
Their last home was an apartment at 760 South 2nd East in Salt Lake City.
Information gathered from Ethel Shields Biography, memories of LaVon Boyle Mills, and an interview with Clair Dee Boyle. Biography compiled by Cameron Knowlton Boyle, great-grandson.
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