Notes for CHLOE BAIRD LEE:
Daughter of James Hyrum and Fanny Emmorett (Sessions) Baird.
Born: August 10, 1877 in Centerville, Davis County, Utah.
Died: April 14, 1928 in Venice, Los Angeles County, California.
Buried: Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, Los Angeles County, California.
Married: James Alma Lee, Sr October 25, 1899 in Salt Lake LDS Temple, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah.
Number of children: 9 daughters, 3 sons.
Chloe was born to James Baird, a farmer, blacksmith and polygamous with two wives. When the government was arresting men with more than one wife, James moved his family to Colorado. Chloe described these years as being "hard and conditions unpleasant for her mother with so many children".
Chloe was a girl of 13 when she attended LDS General Conference in 1890 and heard President Wilford Woodruff announce the "Manifesto", or the end of the practice of polygamy.
Chloe's family seemed to move every year or two in support of her father's work seeking blacksmith jobs. At age 17, Chloe went to work as a cook for three years in the home of Filo Farnsworth, a mining engineer in Utah.
At age 19, Chloe trained to be a midwife and obstetrical nurse under the direction of Dr. Margaret C. Roberts. Soon afterwards she was able to return home and help her mother deliver her 17th child, Joseph Reese, in August 1899.
One summer while working in the garden of her Grandmother's house, James Alma Lee rode up enquiring about rooms to rent. James had just returned from a 3 year mission in the Southern States. They were married 6 weeks later, Oct 25, 1899, in the Salt Lake Temple.
The couple had been living in Bountiful only a couple months when a mission call came to them - this time they were called by President Woodruff to go to the Big Horn Basin in Northern Wyoming and spend not less than five years in settling this country.
They left April 24, 1900 in covered wagons, blazing their own trail. It rained constantly for the first few days and it took them 9 days to go 40 miles. Chloe was sick the entire journey with morning sickness. Life in Wyoming was tough, yet they endured their five years, returning back to Syracuse Utah exactly at the end of their mission, where Chloe was much happier to live with her family close-by to support her.
Chloe suffered from serious gall-bladder attacks so two doctors and a nurse came one day to the home where they performed surgery on her removing her gall-bladder right there on the kitchen table.
Chloe's monetary contributions from her midwifery as well as from selling stockings were often all the family had to live on as their farming failed most years. The family eventually left the farming trade and moved with hope to California.
It wasn't long after the move to California that Chloe developed fatal abdominal cancer that eventually claimed her life in 1928.
A week before her death, Chloe said "It seems the family is now where I can enjoy life and have it easier, but it is not meant to be. If my children all live good lives and do right, then I shall feel rewarded."