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Submitted by Alexa West, a student at Little Valley Elementary School in St George, Utah.
(1886-1953)
Esther Stucki Gubler was born to Samuel and his third wife, Anna Mary, on August 11, 1886. She was their second daughter. Her older sister was Mary Stucki Tobler. Her father began going blind about the time Esther was born, but he did not give up and kept on with many of his activities.
She helped her family with the gardening and the peach orchards. In the evenings at home they would peel peaches and apples and the girls would spread them on the shed and house roofs to dry. It seemed to Esther, as a young girl, that after they had been working in the field all day they shouldn’t have to continue on with this drying process at home. But that was the main way they had of making a living other than when her mother worked for others. They sold dried peaches wherever they could. While Esther cared for her father, her mother and older sister worked in the cotton fields in Bunkerville, Nevada, and accepted cotton as pay. This they took to the Washington cotton factory where it was made into a course cloth for their clothing supply.
Esther was educated up to the eighth grade at Santa Clara school. Esther and Ensign Gubler were in their late teens when they started going together. Esther was a beautiful woman with dark brown hair with brown eyes. She and Ensign were married September 22, 1909, in the St. George temple by David H. Cannon.
After her father, Samuel, died she received $400 dollars from his estate. She and Ensign used the money to buy uncle Ensign’s home. The uncles second wife, Ann, was still living. They signed an agreement with her that she could live with them for the rest of her life. She lived with them for twenty years.
Esther was the mom of eight children: Marvel Joy, their first, died at 18 months, Veda Blossom, Norman Ensign, Florence Mary, Mae, Nina, Rena and finally Doreen, who was born when Esther was forty-nine years old.
Esther sewed all of the clothes for the family, including underwear. She churned her own butter, and every year bottled 1,000 quarts of fruit and vegetables to last through the winter. Esther was a hard worker and everyone always loved her. She’d work with her husband in the fields, come home and fix the family lunch, rest for a bit, then go out and work again. She would wear the same coat, dress and shoes for years. She rarely bought anything for herself.
Esther and her daughter, Doreen, were killed instantly in a car accident at 3:45 p.m. while they were driving to St. George to shop. We still do not know the reason the accident happened.
It was cool learning about my great grandma Esther, especially because my middle name is Ester after my grandma West.
Alexa Ester West
Brother Joseph
Pioneer John