Milo’s Living Grandchildren (4 of 7): Gwennie May Andrus Barfuss

This is the fourth in a seven part series highlighting Milo’s remaining living grandchildren. These profiles were written in 2006.

I, Gwennie May Andrus Barfus (Margaret Ann Boyce), was born to Benjamin Boyce Andrus and Lydia Rosetta French on August 24, 1916, in Hill Spring, Alberta, Canada. I had seven sisters, Grace, Nellie, Jacquetta, Fern, Phyllis, Alice and Beth, and one brother, Benjamin Milo, who was killed during WWII.

My dad had a farm southeast of Hill Spring. It was here that I learned what a hard days stooking as was as well as milking cows, feeding pigs, and driving six head of horses attached to a plow. I spent many hours working the fields with my dad. We were a very close family; we had to be as there was not room not to be close. Our home was very tiny in today’s standards.

All my activities centered around church, school, and family. I had good teachers both at school and church and I liked to go to both. I want to emphasize that my childhood and my growing-up years were fun and full of all good things. I was in theatre productions, participated in basketball, softball, and hockey.

One Sunday at church I heard a young man bare his testimony and I said to my friend, “I’m going to marry him!” I felt silly for saying such a thing, but in the weeks to come, he came to the dances and kept asking for me to dance with him.

I did marry him, Godfrey Barfuss, on July 19, 1934, in the Cardston Alberta Temple. To this union came three boys, Glenn G., Robert Dale, Milo Mark, and two girls, Truda Jean and Vicky.

We lived in a house on farm that we built with our own hands. We brought the logs by team from Oil City in Waterton National Park. The house grew as the family grew. We didn’t have indoor plumbing water until 1947.

As our children grew, the boys went on missions and to university, and the girls went to College. They all got married and had families of their own. I have 19 grandchildren and 50 great-grandchildren to date.

As my family married and left home, it freed up time for Godfrey and I to travel and also to serve a mission in Switzerland at the Temple in Zollikofen. That’s where Godfrey was from.

In January 1983, we moved from the farm to a house in Hill Spring on November 11, 1983, while working with the grandkids on the farm, Godfrey passed away.

I spent the next several years involved in the church and community. I enjoyed teaching primary and seminary, doing ceramics, gardening, camping, reading, teaching quilting to Aboriginal ladies, and spending time with good friends and family.

In 1999 I moved into the Chinook Lodge in Cardston, Alberta, Canada, where I still reside. Although I have many friends at the Lodge, I also enjoy other friends and family visiting me.

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