Ernest Fountain Langford

• Name: Ernest Fountain Langford
  
• Born: September 5, 1888, Junction, Piute, Utah
• Died: December 1, 1983, Ogden, Weber, Utah
• Related through: Dan's grandfather Heber Langford

Ernest Fountain Langford was born September 5, 1888 in Piute County, Utah, son of James Harvey Langford Jr. and Rose Ellen Jackson.

Ernest and his brothers and sisters grew up in pioneering circumstances. He was only three or four years old when his family moved to old Mexico and he spent his entire boyhood and young manhood in Mexico. When the family was driven out of Mexico in 1912, Ernest and some of his brothers went back and forth between Tucson, Arizona and San Jose, Mexico bringing out the wheat crop they had been forced to leave behind them. Several times they just missed being discovered by the revolutionaries.

He married Zina Charlotte Chlarson September 24, 1914 in Tucson, Arizona. They were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple, October 8, 1916. She was the daughter of Heber Otto Chlarson and Ida Isabella Norton.

Zina Charlotte Chlarson is on the
right

Ernest and brother James Harvey Langford III

Just after their marriage they moved to Hurley, New Mexico where Ernest had a job in the mines. Soon after taking this job, he took a job in the mines as a plumber’s helper. He realized that although it meant a cut in salary it was an opportunity to learn a trade. With this in mind, and with his wife’s encouragement, he applied for and almost completed a thorough correspondence course in plumbing and heating.

In about 1919 or 1920, Ernest took his wife and his then three children and moved to Ogden, Utah. He took a job with a contractor doing plumbing but soon decided to go start his own business. When he first started he didn’t even own a truck, but from this humble start he built a successful contracting business. Except for an unsuccessful effort at homesteading during the depression years, he always worked in plumbing and heating contracting.

About 1937, he and his wife bought a ten acre piece of property during a tax sale. They paid for their new home as they built it and changed an old brick yard into a lovely home site. Since then they subdivided the ten acres and it became a nice residential district.

Charlotte was a wonderful helpmate to her husband. She was extremely good at sewing and always made the children’s clothes, even her boy’s shirts. Every fall she would make several shirts for each of the boys — blue for Ernie, green for Jim and tan for Heber. She was also good at remodeling clothes and when she was finished with them they looked completely new. She always had the best dressed children on the block and for very little money.

She loved to garden and they had a large garden every summer. Each fall would see her shelves packed with fruits, vegetables and meats that she had canned. She had a cow and would make her own cottage cheese, butter, ice cream and cheese. She also would make her own baby food.

Ernest and Charlotte always seemed to be helping a relative. Charlotte’s parents came to live with them in their old age. She was the oldest child in her family and had helped raise her brothers and sisters and Ernest and Charlotte’s home was kind of a second home to the Chlarsons.

Both were members of the LDS Church. The gospel was important to them and they encouraged their children to be active in the Church. Charlotte was seldom without some church job. She was especially active in the Relief Society but worked in Primary and Sunday School as well. They were certainly wonderful examples to their children, teaching them the value of hard work, honesty and thrift.

Charlotte kept busy crocheting and quilting until shortly before her death from cancer in 1966. Ernest lived alone in his home on Orchard Avenue in Ogden for many years. He continued to garden well into his 80s. He passed away in 1983. 

This article was taken from the book "The Progenitors and Descendants of Fielding Langford" by his daughter Ida-Rose Langford Hall.