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Be It Ever So Humble

EXCEPT THAT THE TOWN was not built on a square plot and had no space for outlying farms on which to build barns and raise livestock the pattern for Colonia Juarez, like that of other Mormon villages, conformed to the original plot for the City of Zion in Kirtland, Ohio. The five-acre blocks were divided into four equal lots with a uniform location for the house specified and a place for outbuildings in the rear. This distinct Mormon pattern for laying out the town differed radically from the no-plan idea of pueblo-building in the nation. The simple gable-roofed houses were in sharp contrast to the flat-topped huts or jacales built by the natives while the speed with which the little rocky glen was changed into a thriving community stamped its founders as men and women of foresight, wisdom and thrift. The houses in Colonia Juarez were built of stone, concrete, adobe, log, lumber or brick according to the economic status of the builder and were on one or two levels according to the lay of the land. The entire town after five years of settlement, each house mirroring innate characteristics of the true pioneer, resembled a community of well-to-do inhabitants and was a credit to a people with no more resources than bare hands, a few tools, and invincible determination.

1. Houses

Simple and different as the houses were architecturally, in them was instituted a brand of home life that preserved family traditions. Meeting life on its own concrete terms these homes nourished culture, cemented home ties of love and understanding, and created memories that still remain. Most important to the colonists was the fact that the family life for which they had gone into voluntary exile was made possible. Children fathered by one man, but nurtured by two or more women in separate homes, usually, were kept in a family unit, the home of one always being the home of all, and children passing freely from one to another. The mothers in the respective homes working together like sisters endeared themselves to all the children no matter whether to them one was mother and the other "Auntie." Children were regarded as "an heritage of the Lord," and always a source of pride to the father who stood at the head of his large family in true patriarchal style. Respective homes of one family were usually within easy reach of each other, often on the same block and seldom farther away than across the street. Children working and playing together or gathering for special occasions often found every social need provided within the family group. When sisters of the same age sang together, created common "playhouses," studied in the same classes; when brothers took pride in escorting a sister to public functions, danced, sang, and worked with her, and "ran" in the same gang, it was not uncommon for "pairs" of children to become chums, for "twins" to find every need of a pal in a "half" brother or sister living across the street or on the same block and for ties to be formed that endured and carried over into later generations.