EDITED FROM A HISTORY written by his wife:
Joseph was a very small baby and had a hard time to live. He had typhoid fever when a little boy. They thought he had died at one time but he hadn't. Joe seemed to have a strong constitution. He was small and wiry, full of ambition with a desire to live and accomplish much. He never did anything half way.
It was Joseph's job to tend to the cows. As a little boy he herded them bare-footed. Shoes were for Sunday and wintertime. He never had a chance to go to school until the winter and had to stop in the early spring. His mother told me that one day Myrtle came home and reported that her teacher had said to tell her father it was no use to send Joseph to school yet. The next morning the teacher inquired, "What did your father say, Myrtle?" "My father says you should go to Hell." Joe went to school.
Joseph was really loved by all of his brothers and was a pet of his sisters all his life. He was always active in the Church and when called to fill a two-year mission to the Northern States, he accepted, Leaving Salt Lake City 25 October 1911.
I met him in March of 1913 just after he came home from his mission. It was on a Sunday morning while I was visiting a Sunday School in Tremonton, where my sister Ruth lived. He asked if he could sit by me. I was a bit flattered to have a returned missionary pay attention to me. I don't know just when we fell in love. However, Joe wrote the most endearing letters to me from then on and came to Salt Lake several times.
We were married 15 September 1915 in the Salt Lake Temple. After our marriage we took the train to Tremonton and I went to work cooking for potato and beet harvesters. I could hardly wait for Joe to come in after work. He always came home whistling. I loved that music. If he wasn't whistling I'd know something was wrong.
When Fay had started school we left the farm and came to Salt Lake City to live. It wasn't the thing to do to stay on the farm, so Joe took a correspondence course in electrical engineering. We then put all our transferable belongings in a wagon and hayrack and Joe left for Salt Lake. Joe then took back the hayrack and brought our stove and cow down in his wagon.
We worked in Ward dramatics together, taking our plays to Honeyville, Dewyville, etc. Joe taught a Sunday School class, was on the MIA Stake Board, and was a ward teacher. Elwood always had 100% ward teaching. Joe also served two years as a stake missionary. He traveled many miles with horse and buggy and met success in his labors. People loved Joe and he loved to teach them the gospel. He worked for Utah Power and Light Company twenty-one years in all.
He loved gardening, raising both vegetables and flowers, roses and tulips being his specialty.

He was my grandfather, who died when I wasn't yet five. My only memory of him is looking up at a gray man lying in a bed a little taller than me. But my mother has fond memories of her father-in-law. She says that whenever she sees tulips, she thinks of him... Next to his house he had an orchard, and between each row of trees he planted masses of tulips.