1837 – 1923
Compiled by Amy Cardon Odell, from “Cardon Family Saga”
Daugher-in-law of Philip and Martha Cardon
Wife of Louis Philip Cardon
Susette Stale was the daughter of Jean Pierre Stale and Jeanne Marie Goudin. Born 12 Feb 1837, Poiza, Angrogna, Torino, Italy. Died 19 Jul 1923, Tucson, Pima, Arizona
Her granddaughter, Lucille Cardon Matthews,(14). continues the story of Susette. “Susette found work as soon as they arrived in Salt Lake City, (1856) but it proved to be unsatisfactory. She found work with another family whom she loved. Her trials seemed to make her religion dearer to her. In 1857 she married Louis Philip Cardon in Logan, Utah. It was a plural marriage. They had five children; Joseph Samuel, 1858, Emanual Philip, 1859, Mary Catherine, 1861, Louis Paul 1868 and Isabelle Susette, 1872 who died as a child.
“From my earliest memory of Grandmother to the last time I saw her, she never seemed to age a day. She was not the type of grandmother on whose lap you sat, leaned your head against her ample bosom, and listened to her stories while stuffing yourself sick on the cookies she baked.
“Her eyes were sparkling black, and in her youth her hair was a beautiful brown. She was small–not over five feet–and weighed less than 100 lbs, even in all the many “pettiskirts” she wore. Her movements were quick, light and graceful. She had a keen sense of humor, a cheery disposition and was always energetic and industrious.
“She took to Mexico almost enough clothes to be her life’s complete wardrobe. Some were the same clothes she had when she moved to Arizona, still in excellent condition at the time of her death. I remember best three homespun woolen dresses–a bright dark blue, a magenta, and a forest green, each in about one-third inch checks with black. She made them the same way she did most of the clothing for her children when they were young, by gleaning the wool from bushes and fences after flocks of sheep brushed through them. She took her small children on these field trips. I think it would have just hurt her thrifty soul for the wool to go to waste. After cording it, she would spin it into thread, dye it with indigo and dyes she made from roots and herbs native to the country, then set it with chamber lye. Their soap was made with grease and lye.
“She exchanged spinning for weaving by someone who had a loom. For blankets she used a coarser thread. Some blankets she knit, as she did their hose and stockings. I have a blanket she decided needed cotton thread to give it “strength-a”, so she unraveled the whole blanket, recorded it, and re-knit it with a fine silkateen. I saw her do it.
“She had two fashionable winter dresses made of very fine wool, blue and wine. They were made in the period before the gay 90’s, as were all of her dresses. Whenever there was a new one, it was made in the same period if not the same style. For summer there was a beautiful cream-colored challie printed with many colored pansies. The little bonnets she wore with her dresses were what we call “darling.” Usually a dainty shoulder shawl completed her ensemble. For ordinary she wore somber black embossed sateen for summer, black wool crepe for winter, and always with a long straight white apron that had handmade lace above the hem.. . . She was never without a native Alpine headdress or kerchief tied around her hair to keep it clean, for it was only shampooed when the moon was right. To shade her eyes on the desert she wore a pioneer “sunbonnet”
“Grandmother’s house (in Dublan, Mexico) consisted of two rooms made of adobe and another good-sized frame room facing north. When she was not using this room as a summer kitchen she used it as a store room.
“Strawberries were traditional with her. From the time she was married she planted berries, a source of revenue. In Mexico her patch was between her house and the fence. In Idaho she had a “strawberry parlor” where she sold the berries with sugar and cream, a forerunner of the ice cream shop. She made preserves and also dried them to sell, as well as for their own use. During the United Order days in Arizona she just had to hold back a few jars and some of the dried berries as souvenirs. They traveled to Mexico with her, along with some very sour blue plum, also dried.
“I never knew her to be really ill, upset a few days, maybe . . . my father teased her about the time she outran the horses. It was during the time it was not uncommon for the saints to be baptized at the time they were administered to for healing the sick. Grandmother had an advanced case of erysipelas ( a febrile disease characterized by inflammation and redness of skin mucous membrane, etc. and due to Streptococcus erysipelas) and was with several others down by the river for that purpose. It was a winter day, a fire was built and a carriage ready to take those baptized home. Grandmother had been ill for quite some time and needed help into the water, so those holding a blanket to wrap her in were not a little surprised when she passed than on a run down the street for home. The carriage was sent in pursuit, but it did not overtake her. When they reached her home, she was nearly dressed in dry clothes. She saw no reason for them to follow her. She had been baptized to be made well, and well people don’t need a ride. Through her faith and prayer she had been cured.
“In the summer of 1912 Mexico’s political unrest reached the LDS colonies. My sister, Katie, and I were home alone with Isabelle, our baby sister, one day when a neighbor boy rushed to the door to tell us the rebels (Poncho Villa’s men) were going through people’s houses and stealing their guns. Katie and I gathered Papa’s guns up and poked them through the man-hole in the attic. To reach it we opened a door that stood directly under it, for the hole was in the upstairs hall ceiling. One steadied the door while the other climbed to the knob, then into the attic. I ran across the lot to tell Aunt Katie to hide their guns. Almost as I went out the back door, the rebels came through the front and held poor Katie at the point of a gun while they searched the house. No guns.
“Next day it was discovered our town was covered on all sides by cannons as well as being disarmed. By 4 p.m. word went out that women and children would he evacuated. Everyone understood we were to be at the train stop in front of the store at 9:00 p.m. when a train was to pick us up.
“What a long night of waiting! A whole town of stunned people were standing in a drizzling rain with one trunk and a roll of bedding to a family. It was 4 a.m. before the train finally arrived. Susette Stale Cardon with 96 others piled into a box car already half filled with bedding rolls. There was no room to move about. Grandmother because she was 75, and others with afflictions or small babies had seats in front of the doors, for they could hang their feet down. The rest of us sat flat.
“Once again on the shortest notice Susette left the comfort of her home because of her religion, this time by train, even if it was a box car for coal. We reached El Paso, Texas in the evening. Those good townspeople and the soldiers of the US infantry fed us. We spent the night and several more in an empty lumber yard. We were grateful for the chicken wire enclosure that kept sensation-seekers from trampling on our beds as we lay an the floor or ground . . .Soon grandmother and Aunt Katie accepted invitations from relatives in Utah and went to visit them.
“After leaving El Paso, we located in Tucson, Arizona. There Grandmother joined us to live as pioneers once again, but in the midst of civilization. To men with large families whose whole financial structure has been slipped from under them through no fault of their own of necessity have to start over with a new country, with nothing much besides their hands and stalwart faith. Her son, Louis Paul, moved his family to Binghamton, near Tucson, where some of the refugee Saints were making a colony. He built a nice one-room place for her near his own. She didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.
Edith Cardon (7), another granddaughter writes: “When the Saints were driven from Mexico during the Madero Revolution, she had over six thousand dollars in stocks in the Union Mercantile Store. One of the greatest trials of her life must have been to be reduced from a condition of easy independence. She never complained or mentioned what she had left behind. . . When the colonists finally knew they were going to have to leave Mexico and would not be able to take their treasured possessions, many tried in various ways to hide them so they would not be stolen. . Susette was asked by someone if she wasn’t going to try and do something of the kind. She replied, “No, they will never touch any of my things.” Her son, Louis Paul’s home, a large two-storied home, at one time housed twelve Mexican families, and was badly misused and stripped. The large parlor and living room were used to stable the horses of the Revolutionists, planks being put on the front steps to bring them in. Her home, a neat little three roomed adobe, stood just a few yards away.
Edith continues, “When the first war storm passed over, Louis Paul sent some teams down to the colonies and told the driver to bring back anything of hers he could find. When he came back that was all he had on the wagons, for nothing had been molested. She had trunks of clothing, bed linen, and table linen quantities of dried fruit, preserved fruit. Elmer said that it did not look as though the door had been opened, although it was unlocked.
Edith continues: “Although she spoke English, she did all her reading and praying in French. She was intuitive, and at times would ask us if something had happened. When we asked her how she knew, she would say, “I knew it. I dreamed it.”
Lucille (13) writes: “One day in the shimmering heat the folks saw Grandmother running madly around, leaping into the air and flailing it with her hands. Afraid of a heat stroke, they ran out and gathered her in. She was exhausted. With wet packs an her head, she soon had enough breath to tell them she never liked bees anyway. One stung her, but she fixed him, for she had run him down and killed him.
“But, Grandma,” one of her grandsons said, “It died when it stung you!”
In a second she burst out laughing, “You mean I get even two times?”
Lucille continues: “After we left Mexico and were living near Tucson, Arizona, how proud we were to take her to town on window shopping tours. She looked as if she had just stepped out of Currier and Ives print in her quaint clothes and quite dignified bearing. She had no idea she was unusual, attracting attention wherever she went. People openly admired her. The comments always were, “Oh, isn’t she adorable! Where did she come from?”
“It was there on 18 July 1923 in her 86th year she was visiting with her grandchildren, laughing at the difference in dress styles and dances then and when she was a girl. To their delight she demonstrated her dances until she was out of breath. After a few minutes rest, she started to leave. As she reached the door, she swayed slightly. Willing hands helped her to bed. Papa came right over. After a little while she seemed to be over whatever had bothered, so he went back to the field. A change then came over her face. No one could understand what she was saying. Papa came again, but she didn’t recognize him.
“She was praying in French, her native language, when the shadows of life’s evening closed, as she had each night of her life before going to rest. On the shortest notice of all she moved to her home in another world.
“Grandmother’s life was a living testimony and example that she did believe the words spoken by the Prophets and was faithful to the end of this mortal estate.”
Stanley Pratt Cardon (22) also tells of incidents he remembers of Grandma Cardon. He tells that grandma came out of her house and saw at the side of the two steps down a small rattlesnake. Without hesitating she jumped down on it and trampled it to death. Irena, mother, was so upset she made grandma promise never to do that again. However, soon after that, just as darkness was settling over the summer night, Irena decided to take a bowl of soup to grandma. As she approached the steps of grandma’s house, she heard the ominous sound of a big rattlesnake in the same place as the other snake had been.
Irena called to Grandma and told her she would get papa to come and kill it and asked Stanley to get a lamp so papa could see what he had to do. Papa came running carrying his gun. He took aim at the waving head of the snake. Papa smashed the snakes head. Stan was at the well getting water for grandma, who called him to hurry. When he hurried to her, she took the pail and gave him a handful of candy and nuts. He realized that they were stale, but they still tasted good!
Stanley relates that grandma couldn’t see very well and her dime store magnifying glasses which she wore for reading were uncomfortable so she only wore them when necessary. She felt free to come and go in Irena’s home and had a standing invitation to eat with the family whenever she wanted. One morning she asked mama what she was having for breakfast. Irena replied she was making white cornmeal mush and invited her to see if she wanted some. Susette, grandma, went to the black wood burning range, lifted the top of the big kettle and stirred the contents. “Eet ess too theen. Could I add some more?” “Of course, grandma. It is in one of the canisters on the side table.” Grandma lifted the lid of the nearest container and added a handful. The mush did not thicken, so she added another and another. The more she added the thinner the mush. She asked Irena to come and see what was wrong and mother told her she was adding sugar and told her to pour it into the dog’s dish outside. “No,” said grandma, “I make eet, I eat eet, eef eet keel me.” She dumped it into a pan and took it to her house.
Stanley (22) tells that grandma had rich and varied colored home-spun cloth made into clothes. He said when she attended church, she sat directly under the podium facing the congregation. She said it was because she was a little deaf, but he suggested it was so she could give the people a treat. On the top of her head was perched a little black bonnet decorated with a twig of red cherries. The big leg-o-mutton sleeves of the bodice nearly dwarfed her tiny figure. The high neck of the black top was trimmed with white lace and the long deep purple skirt bellowed over many petticoats.
She gave Irena some red flannel to make underwear for Stanley and Bartley, which warmed them, but made their skin itch. Later Stanley caught typhoid fever and was taken to Aunt Katie’s where grandma was living and could take care of him. Grandma would read the Holy Scriptures to herself. She sat in a rocker on the porch just outside his room. Her soft melodious voice as she read in her native French, soothed him.
When Stanley was well and returned to school, he took a quart bottle of milk to grandma at noon. Aunt Katie’s house was about 1/2 mile from school. Sometimes grandma had not used up all the previous milk and it had invariable turned sour, because there was no way to keep it cool. Grandma always drank the sour milk before returning the empty jar to Stan to take home.
The only mail she received was a monthly check received from the Government because her husband had been wounded while fighting with a troop of soldiers against the Indians. Stan took this mail to her. It was a pension check of $12 a month. This made her independent and she would sometimes give Stanley a buffalo nickel.
When Irena developed a bone felon on her finger, year old Orson was placed in the care of Aunt Katie. He was a puny child subject to colds and ear infections. One day grandma saw him crying and took him to her home. Two weeks later he was a different baby, strong and healthy.
The day grandma died she was visiting some of her nieces. Although she was 85 she was extremely spry and active. She told them stories about her youth in the Cortian Alps in Northern Italy. She remembered well the good times she had enjoyed there. “I show you a dance for the grapes,” she told them. She hitched up her skirt and began a lively dance. Suddenly she stumbled and fell, clutching her throat.
“Le couperet, le couperet!” she cried before losing consciousness. This was the name of the guillotine used to behead people during the French revolution. She was taken to Irena’s and later that night died. Her funeral was the next afternoon because she was not embalmed and the weather was hot. Papa made the coffin. She was dressed in whites robes with green apron and placed in her coffin. When baby Orson saw her, he cried for her.
“Although grandma could not be buried in her beloved mountains in Italy, she was laid to rest at the foot of the Santa Catalina Mountains, Binghamton, Arizona. They would protect her throughout the ages.”
References:
7. Thatcher, Edith Cardon, “Louis Philip Cardon (1832-1911)
13. Matthew, Lucille Cardon, “Susette Stale Cardon Was My Grandmother” Feb 1956
14. Hunt, Isabelle Cardon, “Susette Stale Cardon”
22. Cardon, Stanley Pratt, “Grandma”