She was born in Paris, Idaho, in 1868, the sixth of eight children.
Her father, William, was a skilled cobbler and made his children's shoes, but with so many growing feet in the family, Dessie sometimes went without. She often ran through the snow
barefoot and then scurried on top of the shed to warm her feet in the sun.
In spite of poverty, when Dessie recounted the hardships of her early days,
she was never bitter, but always spoke of happy times filled with love.
School tuition was a strain on the family funds. It was considered most important for the boys to be educated, and due to lack of money, Dessie did not get to attend school unless one of her brothers had to stay home for the day due to work or illness. This made her all the more willing and anxious to
learn and she happily attended whenever possible.
As a teenager Dessie found work in a dairy to help support the family. One day when she was
carrying buckets of butter into the dairy, a man was waiting at the door and asked her a question. Because of the noise of the machinery, she was unable to hear him. Not wanting to appear rude, she just gave him a
nod. Later she learned that she had said "yes" to a proposal of marriage. Beautiful Dessie had had many chances for marriage, but had been waiting for her "one and only".
The young man who had proposed to her
at the dairy was Frederick William Hurst, Jr., an artist and builder
from Logan, Utah. He was in Paris at the time working on the LDS Tabernacle.
As he was passing the Lindsay home and noticed a
pretty little eighteen-year-old girl standing by the well with two huge buckets, he came to to
her rescue and proposed on the spot.
Frederick and Dessie kept company, fell in love, and were married within a
few months in the Logan Temple.
Frederick later had the privilege of using his wonderful talents in working on the interior of
the Salt Lake Temple.
