Interview with Roy Wilhelm, December 24, 1992

'''Roy''':  Oh you mean to go back to grandma Clarrissa, huh?   

'''Roy''':  Well, the furthest I know is tradition about this old man, now it was handed down that his name was Johannas Katronis, but I don't think there was ever such a man.  I think he was trying to be funny, for his grandkids, making up a name for himself see because John A. Wilhelm is the old man that's buried back there.  

'''Roy''':  Yeah and people like that, they don't have this swimmin' the Rhine river.  But the hell of it is, the old man, the tradition come down through our family said that he had a knapsack full of bread, he'd saved it so he'd have stuff to eat when he deserted and  a razor, a big razor.  And I didn't see the razor,  somebody stole it from the ranch up there before I was big enough to know there was a razor.  My dad said the blade on that razor was that long, (indicated about ten inches) just a giant thing, and the old man swam the Rhine river with that.   

'''John''':  Which your Dad had and he got it from his Dad, along with the story.   

'''John''':  Now is there a generation between John A. Wilhelm and B.H.?   

'''Roy''': Yeah, oh yeah John Benjamin  was John A's (son) or whoever that old man's name was.  He probably got two or three names.  In fact look at the Wilhelms now, we don't know whether  we're Wilhems or Williams.  We've kicked it back and forth playin' ping pong with the name.  But he probably did that, being a deserter, he probably had two or three titles that he swung back and forth.  That's what fouls it up.   

'''John''':  John Benjamin's the one that pulled up stakes when they was fighting over the old mans estate?   

'''Roy''':  That's right.  He's the one that pulled out he's the one that died and buried.  Clarrissa, old grandma Clarrissa, got the black eyebrows like I got and like Andy's got, your boy.  And he joined the church.  

'''Roy''':  Well their first move was to the west New York.  I think that's where they joined the church.  But he got tuberculosis, I guess, at the Mississippi river.  He intended to go across the plains but he was too sick to make it.  So she drifted on down to where they had been down in Missouri where the mobs had run them out but she didn't tell them she was Mormon.  You've read her letter haven't you?   

'''John''':  I was going to say, we have an account of hers don't we, for a lot of that history?     

'''Roy''':  Well that's the guy; she buried him there, plus three kids and just had the two boys left.  ''(Ed. Note:  According to genealogy records, James Return, Susan Clarissa, Bateman Haight and Ellen Albinia were alive when they left Missouri)''  And then this Holliday, this wagon master, was lookin' for a good cook.  And she was a good cook and so she signed on to cook for him and his out riders for passage for her and the two boys.   

'''Roy''':  Haight and James.   

'''John''': B.H., the same old B.H. that we were talking about earlier?     

'''Roy''':  Yeah, the one that got hit on the head with the single tree.  James went back for a visit.   

'''Roy''':  Never knew what happened to him.  And that damn singer back there, Andy Williams.  Williams fits right in there, looks enough like, did up to a certain point, like Uncle Haight's kids did when they were young, twenty  year olds.  I don't know, if I knew how to go about it I'd try and see.  I figure that what he did he just told her he was workin' to get a little more grub stake to come on out.  He probably fell for some girl and she was anti-Mormon and he just washed his hands of the whole thing and stayed there.  Went back to, well they were already Williams.  They were Williams when they went there.  They went back to Wilhelm when they come down here to Arizona.  The church told them, on account of genealogical things, to take it back.  Then they told the old man when he went on to Mexico, better swing back.  So it was Williams down there.