Transcript

"Sometimes when I think of the long and satisfying life I've lived, I have to let off steam," Mrs. Mary Susannah Sleater sighed Saturday as she recalled many incidents—happy and sad—in her 100 years of full living.

And she did a good deal of "letting off steam." Reminiscing about her early school days, when she "attended school with Brigham Young's children," the times when her best beau came "sparking" and they spent the evening dipping and making tallow candles, her marriage, "in a dress I fixed to look like new with a few yards of store ribbon," her career as a dancer and singer in the chorus in the old Salt Lake theater.

Mrs. Sleater, whose memeory is razor-sharp, who still retains the ability to laugh at herself, and can still read without the aid of spectacles, will celebrate her 100th birthday anniversary on Feb. 11.

Mrs. Sleater was born Feb. 11, 1849, in Utica, N. Y., a daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Stowe Higgs, and came to Utah by ox team when she was eight years old.

She recalled they arrived in December, "in weather just like it has been this year," and were marooned in Emigration canyon, where "rations got so low we were existing on "one tea biscuit a day."

"I remember coming down Big mountain," she said, "because it was so slick the oxen had to sit right down and slide down. And I remember coming up the other side because the wagon tipped over and we children had to sit on a quilt in the snow while they turned it right side up again."