Mary Ann Cheshire Ramsay

Roberta Flake Clayton, FWP

Maiden Name: Mary Ann Cheshire

Birth: August 28, 1841; Kensworth, Durham, England

Parents: George Cheshire and Elizabeth Phoebe Keys

Marriage: Ralph Ramsay; August 2, 1869

Children: Marian Cheshire (1871), Joseph Cheshire (1872), John Cheshire (1874), George Cheshire (1876), Rose Ann (1878), stillborn son (1880), Ralph Cheshire (1883)

Death: November 5, 1923; Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

“Well, Father, now that we have reached our destination and the long tiresome trip almost across America is over, I suppose our traveling days will end and we will not have any more use for the faithful old oxen that have hauled all our earthly possessions from Missouri River to here, so we might as well trade them off for something we need worse.” So observed Mary Ann Cheshire to her father shortly after the family’s arrival in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 4, 1863.

Mary Ann was born in Kensworth, England, August 28, 1841, the oldest child of George and Elizabeth Keys Cheshire. For generations, her family had resided in that vicinity and by honest toil and strictest economy had eked out a living. Eight children were born to this worthy couple, and as each child became old enough, he or she had to share in responsibilities.

As Mary Ann was a delicate child and could not receive the necessary attention because of the arrival of the other children, she was taken into the home of an uncle and aunt who had no children, and they loved and cared for her as their own.

Being of a very independent disposition, Mary Ann could not remain idle and accept their kindness, so at the age of fourteen she began learning the millinery trade. At eighteen, she went to Luten, a larger town about six miles from her home, where there was a greater demand for the work she had now become quite proficient in. Here she rented a room, and as she went to the shop in the morning she would take her food to the bakery to be cooked for her, getting it on her return from work.

Every shilling she could spare was carefully hoarded, as was that of her family, for now George Cheshire and all his household were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the desire to go to America was the greatest object of their lives. Whenever Mary Ann went home, stock was taken of the savings contributed by each one, but there were so many mouths to be fed, occasional sickness, and other unlooked for expenditure beside the large amount needed for the voyage across the broad Atlantic and the unknown expenses after their arrival in New York and until they should reach “the Valleys of the Mountains” that their dreams were delayed from year to year. Hope and determination never wavered, however, and at last when she was twenty-one years of age, Mary Ann became the “fairy godmother” and supplied the deficiency in their joint bank account for the long dreamed of journey, with the money bequeathed her upon the death of her uncle, her aunt having died a few years previously.

Mary Ann Cheshire Ramsay wearing a hat she presumably made for herself. Photo courtesy of Stinson Museum, Snowflake.

On June 4, 1863, all of her family but the eldest son, who was in the army, set sail from their beloved England for the New World.[1] Only the most necessary of their belongings could be taken, and there was many a heartache at the giving up of things so dear to them, and the relatives and friends whom they should never see again. America was a long way off in those days.

Of course, steerage passage was all that could be thought of because they did not know what they might meet before another home should be established, and the money saved by the family was gotten at too great a sacrifice to be spent unnecessarily. Besides, would not the steerage passengers get there as soon as the others?[2]

An ox team and covered wagon were obtained in Missouri, and with them the family journeyed westward. But one wagon for nine people and their belongings doesn’t provide much comfort, so Mary Ann rode part of the way on a threshing machine that was being brought to Salt Lake, and part of the time she walked. Her twenty-second birthday was spent on “the Plains.”[3]

Father Cheshire recognized his daughter’s business ability, so he readily consented to her suggestion that they trade off their oxen and wagon. For the latter, she got a cook stove, and the oxen almost paid for a city lot. As the legacy had all been spent by now, Mary Ann went out to work to earn enough to pay off the balance, and the treasured lot remained in her family many years. There her two oldest children were born.

Shortly after their arrival, Mary Ann established a shop and began making hats. She gathered wheat and oat straw, braided it and made the hats, then trimmed them with flowers also made of straw. If the hat was to be white, it was put into a box or barrel after it was shaped, and then [she] bleached it with sulphur fumes. If it was to be black or colored, dyes from roots and barks were used.

Her trade grew to such dimensions that before long she had six girls working for her. Hats of every shape and design were made by her, and many of the samples she had kept served in after years in fancy dress balls, home dramatics, and character pageants.

At the age of twenty-eight, Mary Ann Cheshire was united in marriage to Ralph Ramsay, but she kept up the millinery business and established a store on Main Street.[4] This venture was also successful, but after their two oldest children were born, her husband became restless and moved to several places, even down into Mexico before they finally settled in Snowflake, Arizona, in 1891, where they spent the remainder of their lives. They had lived in St. Johns for a while previously.

Mr. Ramsay was an artisan of rare skill. Wood carving was his avocation, though he was a first-class cabinet maker. He carved the eagle [on the famed Eagle Gate] that spans the principal street in Salt Lake City, the Lion and the Beehive that give to each of two noted buildings its name, and a bedstead of very intricate design that may be seen among the relics and curios at the Utah State Capitol building.[5] In Snowflake, on the three-story home of James M. Flake is a very realistic horse head surrounded by a horseshoe that he carved. Many ceiling pieces and mantels in homes in Snowflake are works of his hand, also mirror frames, hall trees, etc.

Both Mr. Ramsay and his wife being from England, and both artists in their line, their home was one of refinement and beauty. Seven children were born to them, five boys and two girls. All of them have families of their own except the eldest daughter who died in infancy and a baby boy born in a wagon during one of their frequent moves and who did not survive the exposure.

Sensing the need of nurses among the pioneering families, Mrs. Ramsay returned to Salt Lake City in 1886 and took a course in obstetrics. She served as a midwife for over forty years, assisting hundreds of babies into the world. Once when asked the exact number, her black eyes danced as she answered, “Oh, I don’t know; haven’t had time to count.” Her “territory” extended for more than a hundred miles and fortunate was the woman who could engage her services. She went calmly and efficiently about her tasks, no matter what the complications—never lost her head, seldom had a doctor in attendance, and in all her practice only lost one case. Indian and Mexican women were also among her patients.

Her services were much sought after in all classes of sickness because of her knowledge of human anatomy and also of the herbs that nature has provided for the cure of the ailments of her children. Small in stature, one wondered at her strength and endurance. Always dressed immaculately and in excellent taste, she was easily the best dressed woman in Snowflake, especially as long as her “black silk alpaca” lasted.

Never ruffled, never hurried, with a motto, “Oh, things are never so bad but what they might be worse,” she was always a welcome guest.

Her husband died January 25, 1905, and she departed this life November 5, 1923. Appropriate funeral services and burial was given to each. They are gone, but the memory of their unselfish service to humanity is cherished by all who know them.

Ellis and Boone:

Recognizing the service Ramsay gave to the community of Snowflake rather than remembering the acrimony of divorce, Clayton wrote this sketch in the 1930s for her former mother-in-law. RFC married Mary Ann’s oldest son, Joseph, in 1896; they were divorced about 1904 while living in New Mexico, with some rancor but mostly recognizing their differences.[6]

Because this was originally an FWP sketch, the subject of polygamy is not mentioned. Mary Ann was Ralph Ramsay’s fifth wife. In 1880, Ralph and two of his wives traveled to Arizona, settling in St. Johns.[7] The move to Mexico mentioned in this sketch was directly related to polygamy, but the families returned to Arizona in 1887 and settled in Snowflake in 1891.

Both of Ralph Ramsay’s wives who came to Arizona were midwives. Granddaughter Norma Baldwin Ricketts wrote, “Both wives were busy assisting at births. At first the fee was $3 which included two visits a day for ten days to care for the mother and child after delivery. Several years later the fee had increased to $5, sometimes as high as $10. (A great grandson, Jarvis Jennings, remembers his father telling him that he gave Grandma Ramsay a ten dollar gold-piece to assist at the birth of his first son.) No one was ever refused for want of money.”[8]

Ruth Campkin Randall

Roberta Flake Clayton

Maiden Name: Ruth Campkin

Birth: January 2, 1845; St. Louis, St. Louis Co., Missouri

Parents: George Campkin and Elizabeth Bell

Marriage: Alfred Jason Randall; November 16, 1867

Children: Annie Elizabeth (1868), Alfred Bradley (1870), Emerette (1872), George Campkin (1874), Walter John (1875), Frank Campkin (1879), Bert Davis (1882), Harry Jason (1884), Howard L. (1887)

Death: April 26, 1929; Pine, Gila Co., Arizona

Burial: Pine, Gila Co., Arizona

The Campkins were emigrants from England in 1844.[9] George Campkin and his wife Elizabeth Bell were on a boat, in the Mississippi River, docked at St. Louis, Missouri, when a wee baby girl was born to them, January 2, 1845. They named her Ruth. Her father was an expert shoemaker and plied this trade for a living. In 1850 the family immigrated to Utah, traveling in an emigrant train of Mormon Pioneers. Ruth grew up in Salt Lake City, and what schooling she had was obtained there.

A little story of Ruth’s courtship was found in an old letter that Alfred Jason Randall sent to her, probably as he was on a freighting trip hauling machinery from Kansas to Salt Lake City for his father’s woolen mill.[10] He wrote thus:

I know that I could give you

The love that should be thine

And for that reason I would

Make you a wife of mine;

If you will only say the word

I’ll make you my valentine.

In another letter, written later, he ended it this way: “If I live and keep my health, and the Lord is willing and the devil don’t care, and the Indians don’t get my scalp and father doesn’t raise any objection and I have a pony I will see you.” Evidently things were favorable to this union.

Ruth Campkin Randall at the time of her marriage. Photo courtesy of Maurine Heisdorffer.

Ruth was twenty-two years old when she married Alfred Jason Randall on November 16, 1867. Her older sister Annie was married November 9, 1867, to Wyllys Darwin Fuller, a close associate and a friend of Alfred’s. These two young men had been called to go to help in the settlement of southern Utah.

Soon after their marriage, preparations were made to take these brides with them to the outpost of civilization, a barren, Indian-infested country. Imagine what a honeymoon trip that would be. What courage and loyalty to a church and its leaders they manifested.

The Randalls settled at Harrisburg, Washington County, Utah, arriving there Christmas Day 1867. They lived there fourteen years, and six children were born to them. An infant son was buried there.[11] The Randalls had bought a larger home in Washington and had lived in it but a short time when they received a call to go to the Tonto Basin, Arizona.

In September 1881, they were on their way traveling to another isolated frontier. The trail led them up a gradual incline until they reached the top of the mountains; then it suddenly dropped over the rim several thousand feet into a narrow valley. The road was narrow, rocky, and steep. A tree was chained to the wagon to drag as a brake. As Ruth and her children stood looking down the road, she said to them, “I think your father is taking us into Hell.”

They made the descent successfully, and that first winter they lived in a small log room that had been a blacksmith shop. They used covered wagon boxes for bedrooms.

Three children were born to Ruth in Pine.[12] She helped care for her sister’s five children until they were grown, their mother having died when they were all young.[13] Wyllys (Wid) Fuller, their father, moved from Utah to Pine when the Randalls did.

As a safeguard from the Indians or other enemies, there was a stockade built by setting deep into the ground heavy slabs of timber on end close together in a circle with only one entrance. When an Indian raid was reported, all the residents were to get into this enclosure for protection. Once a call came for all to go to the fort, as it was called. Ruth said, “No, I have been dragged from pillar to post and from the post to hell and I am not going to the fort. I’m staying right here.”

This area was traversed often by a number of Indian tribes, and they were not always at peace among themselves. It was also in the path of [a] trail leading to Phoenix, where often the warring factions of the Tewksbury and Graham clans would travel.[14]

Ruth Campkin Randall (left) and another sister, Sarah "Sadie" Campkin Evans. Photo courtesy of Robert Fuller.

The Randalls were hospitable to strangers who came to their door asking for food or lodging. They never asked their visitors who they were.[15] They were generous in sharing and helping the poor and unfortunate any time.

While Ruth was on a trip to Tuba City with her husband and small son Howard, they camped for the night with their bed on the ground. One night Ruth’s hand was bitten by a prowling skunk. They were fearful the animal might be rabid. They had seen the death of a friend from hydrophobia who had been treated with a madstone.[16] They hastened their journey to Flagstaff; here Ruth boarded the train for Chicago, the nearest place she could get treatment.

After that experience, their camp beds were protected from prowling animals by skunk boats made by driving pegs around the bed and fastening the bed tarp so as to make a fence of the canvas around the bed.

Mabel Randall Shumway describes her grandmother Ruth Campkin Randall as follows:

She was the tiniest, wittiest, and most independent little person in the world. She combed her dark brown hair (streaked with grey) parted in the middle with a braided or twisted bun at the back. She never weighed 100 pounds and was hardly five feet tall. Her snappy brown eyes were full of laughter. She wore dark-colored dresses, gray or black (when I knew her), and always an apron and when outside, a bonnet. For dress-up she had a black velvet cape and a beautiful beaded one. As she sat in her home by the fireplace, in her last years, she most always had a little knit shawl across her shoulders and a cat in her lap.

Her home was kept neat and clean. Her delicious bread and jelly or cake that she always had ready for us kids tasted better than anything I can remember. I loved to skip into her parlor and play the piano; it was the first and only one in Pine for many years. What a thrill I got when she showed me her trinkets in an old trunk. A little pair of stockings she knitted for my father while she jolted over the road to Arizona was one of her keepsakes. Her stories were fascinating and full of her witty and original expressions. She was very outspoken, but she always spoke the truth.

She was addressed as “Aunt Ruth” by her friends and acquaintances. An old friend who was from Dixie, Frances Adair Peach, known as “Ma Peach,” who lived in Strawberry, always called in when in Pine to visit with Ruth.[17] Mrs. Goodfellow was another good friend who always came in when up from the Natural Bridge.[18]

Ruth was a good housewife and mother, supporting her husband in his public works in the Church and community but not holding positions herself. She taught her children the gospel and had a testimony of its truthfulness.

She was fond of pets, especially cats; two favorites she named “Mert” and “Tort.” Many of the grandchildren will remember [that] Mert was always curled up on her chair ready to lay on her lap and be stroked. She also liked dogs. She enjoyed parties and dances and danced with her sons at seventy-five years of age. In her last years, she could read without glasses. Often one of her granddaughters would spend the night with her if she was alone, and checker playing was her favorite game.

The accidental death of her husband in 1907 at Willow Valley, Coconino Co., Arizona, and the death of her son Harry in 1908 were too much for her, and she requested that her son Howard be released from his mission in the Society Islands.[19] She had her oldest son Fred move his family to Pine to help care for the cattle and be a comfort to her. After Howard married, three years later, he and his wife lived with her for four years. When they moved away, her daughter Emma came back to Pine and cared for her mother until she died.

Ruth was fearful that she might be a burden in her last years. Her fatal illness was short, and she waited upon herself almost to the last day. Her children were all at her bedside when she passed away April 26, 1929. Apparently, her death was as she had always wished it to be. She was a widow for twenty-two years. Surely she has lived nobly and left a posterity to bless her name; she has sixty-six grandchildren.

Ellis and Boone:

Although RFC submitted a short biography of Ruth Campkin Randall to the FWP on September 13, 1937, the sketch here is completely different. With the FWP account and modern databases, more information should be included on the two pioneer journeys, from England to Utah and from Utah to Arizona.

The Campkin family (parents and three children) were part of the first company of Saints to emigrate from England after the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. They traveled aboard the ship Norfolk, leaving Liverpool September 19 and arriving in New Orleans on November 11, 1844. The Millennial Star described this voyage, which included 143 Latter-day Saints: “We rejoice to see so practical an illustration of the faith of the Saints being unshaken by the late tragical [sic] events in the West, and that the Saints are not living according to the precepts of men, but the word of God.”[20] The FWP sketch states that they “went up the Mississippi [from St. Louis] on a steam boat as far as Kanesville, Iowa, the outfitting post of the pioneers.[21] Here they obtained two yoke of oxen, one yoke of cows, and a prairie schooner.”[22] MPOT lists the Campkin family as traveling to Utah in 1850, company unknown; this is not from information in PWA but is circumstantial evidence from the 1850 census and the death of one child (Mary) and birth of another (Elizabeth).

Finally, when grandchildren were writing about Alfred and Ruth Randall, they included more information about the move to Arizona. Two granddaughters wrote:

In 1877 Alfred was directed, in company with five other men, to explore Arizona, in particular the Tonto Basin. This was the first of four trips he made before finally moving his family in 1881. On his second trip he moved his cattle to the Tonto Basin area. In January 1879 he helped his brother-in-law, Wid Fuller, move his cattle down. At Lee’s Ferry the Colorado River was frozen over, so the cattle crossed on the ice. It was on this trip that he and Rial Allen bought squatters’ rights to Pine from [Henry] Siddles and [William] Burch for $300.[23] In March of 1881, Alfred, Wid, and Dave Fuller made another trip to Pine in a light wagon. About 60 miles north of Pine they were snowed in for ten days. Their food supplies ran low and they were forced to kill a cow for food and use the hide for shelter. In June he returned to Utah to bring his family to Pine.[24]

Then a grandson gave this detailed list (from his father, who was eleven years old at the time of the journey) illustrating the route the family took from Utah to Pine: “Pine [Pipe?] Spring, Kanab, House Rock, Pooles, Soap Creek, Lee’s Ferry, Navajo, Bitter and Willow Springs, up the Little Colorado River by Black and Grand Falls, Winslow, Sunset, Mt. Jarvis Pass, Antelope Tank, Long Valley, Potato Valley, Baker’s Butte, Seven-mile Tank, Nash Point, up Strawberry Valley to Pine.” He also states that the family arrived on October 23, 1881.[25]

Both Alfred and Ruth Randall are buried in the Pine Cemetery, in a little town that they helped to create.

Susan Temperance Allen Randall

Author Unknown

Maiden Name: Susan Temperance “Tempy” Allen

Birth: January 24, 1871; Washington, Washington Co., Utah

Parents: Rial Allen and Susan Elizabeth Collins

Marriage: Alfred Bradley “Fred” Randall;[26] September 28, 1891

Children: Alfred Harvey (1892), Della (1895), Ruth (1897), Rial Melvin (1899), Pearl (1902), James Leslie (1904), Grace (1905), May (c. 1908), Ivy (1911)[27]

Death: January 29, 1941; Holbrook, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Joseph City, Navajo Co., Arizona

Tempy Allen, the name she was known by, was about five feet, five inches tall. She was a beautiful, attractive girl with blue eyes and blond wavy hair which in later life turned to a lovely silver gray. She had very good taste in choosing her wearing apparel. She always looked richly dressed; lavender was her favorite color, which she wore becomingly. She was a good seamstress. She made nice clothes for her daughters, was a good cook and homemaker. She had a dignified bearing, ladylike manners, and a kind, gentle disposition.

Tempy Randall with children, Harvey, Ruth, and Della; Ruth and Della died shortly after this photograph was taken. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./ Dilworth Brinton Jr.

The Rial Allen family lived in Southern Utah when their daughter Susan Temperance was born. She was always called Tempy. When she was seven years old, her parents moved to Pine, Arizona, in Yavapai County, now known as Gila County. Their home in Pine, Arizona, was a log house built by her father. Tempy had two brothers and six sisters.

Her first schooling was in Pine and was taught by Mary Allen, the wife of her father’s cousin Marion.[28] When nineteen years old she went to Snowflake and attended the Academy the winter of 1889−90. She lived in Snowflake with Jane Freeman, her father’s sister.

The next September 1891, she married Alfred Bradley Randall, known as Fred. They moved that fall with her parents to Tuba City, Arizona, which is ninety miles north of Flagstaff. Tempy’s father had given her a horse and sidesaddle, which she rode on this trip, helping her husband drive about thirty head of brood mares, with mule colts. Her father turned his horses out on the range around Tuba City, and the Indians drove them off to Navajo Mountain, and the Allens never saw them again.

Tempy had some stock with a brand of her own at Pine; she sold them to her husband’s mother. About six miles west of Tuba City, Fred and the Allens bought a farm. This ranch was called Moenava. Tempy and Fred lived in a two-room adobe house, later moving to a two-story frame building called the Bates home. Tempy was afraid of Indians; she had a good neighbor, Susan Foutz, who always came to her rescue should she see Indians around Tempy’s house when she was alone.[29]

They made the trip to St. George to the temple in a light wagon and a mule team, which took a month’s time. They belonged to the Tuba City Ward.

Tempy lived in Tuba City while her husband was away on a mission to Texas. She had three children; a daughter, Della, had died before her husband left for the mission field. She had Harvey, her oldest son, and her little daughter, Ruth, and then Rial Melvin was born soon after his father departed for his mission.[30] Ruth died of a kidney infection January 2, 1902. This great sorrow brought her husband home from his mission. Another infant daughter, Pearl, died in 1903; all three children were buried in Tuba City.

Tempy often spoke of the help Fred Tanner [her brother-in-law] rendered during her husband’s absence.[31] Sometime after the death of Tempy’s mother in 1895, her younger sister, Lottie, came to live with them and stayed for about eight years. Their father died in 1889.

Fred [Randall] moved his family to St. Joseph (Joseph City) in March 1903. Here an infant son, James Leslie, passed away. Three more daughters came to their home. Five children grew to maturity. Except for two years’ residence in Pine from 1908 to 1910, the remainder of her life was spent in Joseph City.

Tempy had poor health the latter part of her life; her husband did everything possible to make her life pleasant and happy. At her sudden death, he could hardly be reconciled. This occurred in the hospital in Holbrook, January 29, 1941.

Ellis and Boone:

Two short sketches of Alfred Bradley Randall mention the Randall family moving to Tuba City, “where they lived until the government bought the holdings of the Mormon settlers.”[32] Tanner and Richards give a brief history of Latter-day Saint settlement at Tuba City, an area which was a natural halfway station between Lee’s Ferry and the settlements on the Little Colorado River. Originally, the Hopi chief, Tuba, gave permission for Mormon settlement, but from the beginning, there was tension between Anglos and American Indians. Eventually, the Hopis discouraged further settlement, saying, “The water is scarce in our country for our numerous flocks and increasing people, and our good men do not want your people to build any more houses by the springs. But we want to live by you as friends.”[33] This was the area that Lot Smith moved to after the abandonment of Sunset, and where he was killed after a disagreement with Navajos in 1892.

The Mormon population of Tuba City and Moenave increased as people like the Allens and Randalls moved to the area. In 1886 there were 156 Mormons; in 1889 this number rose to 229; in 1890 it was 286; and by 1893 there were 305 Latter-day Saints. These numbers then fell, and the population was down to 149 in 1900. Tanner and Richards describe the demise of the Tuba City Ward, writing, “In 1900 the federal government took over control of the area in order to establish reservations for the Indians, and the Mormons who had only squatters’ rights were required to leave. After much negotiation, the government appropriated $48,000 to the Mormons as compensation. By late 1903 all the Mormon residents had moved to other localities.”[34] Then they gave a list of nineteen individuals or couples who received compensation, stating that “older residents of Joseph City will recognize many of these families. At least five lived in Joseph City [including Fred and Tempy Randall], and other[s] lived in wards of the Snowflake Stake [mainly Woodruff and Holbrook].”[35] Another important relocation site was the Fruitland area of San Juan County, New Mexico, where five families moved, including Anna Elese Schmutz Hunt (288). By 1910, families from Tuba City were living in Bluff, San Juan Co., Utah; Alamo, Lincoln Co., Nevada; Fruitland, San Juan Co., New Mexico; and Joseph City, Holbrook, Woodruff, and Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona.[36] It is interesting to note that these people generally moved to areas on the periphery of the Navajo Reservation; they did not move to Show Low and Springerville, but instead they moved to Joseph City, Holbrook, and Woodruff.

Tempy Randall (center) with her husband's family (left to right): Walter and Martha Florence Randall, Alfred and Tempy Randall, Frank and Lucinda Randall, Bert Randall. Photo courtesy of Maurine Heisodrffer.

Tanner and Richards summarized the settlement at Moenkopi this way: “Tuba City was the first of the Arizona Mormon communities to complete a building, to clear land and plant crops, and to build a dam to irrigate their fields. While not the first to lose a dam, they had experience with dam losses too. The supreme distinction to which Tuba City should be entitled was its attempt to convert the Indians and do them good. That they failed largely in this was not due to lack of an honest desire, but to their methods and lack of long-term patience.”[37] Actually, much of this concern for Native Americans moved with these people to their new locations. Fred Tanner “spoke the Hopi language and enjoyed his association with the Indians” in part because he was postmaster in Tuba City and “knew everyone in the area.”[38] A descendant of William and Elese Hunt today makes his living at Waterflow trading with both Navajo and Anglo residents. James L. Allen, besides living at Tuba City, also lived at Keams Canyon and “while there he learned the Navajo language and acted as an interpreter.”[39] Finally, Fred Randall “became acquainted with the ways and languages of the Indians and understood them better than most people did. All of his children have been interested in Indian welfare. The Indians called him ‘Hosteen Yazzie.’”[40] The time that Latter-day Saints spent in Tuba City influenced relations between Native Americans and Mormons for generations.

Mary Sutton Pettit Willie Richards

Roberta Flake Clayton, FWP Interview[41]

Maiden Name: Mary Sutton Pettit Willie

Birth: May 31, 1850; Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co., Utah

Parents: James Grey Willie[42] and Elizabeth Ann Pettit

Marriage: Joseph Hill Richards;[43] November 30, 1867

Children: Joseph Parley (1869), James Willie (1871), John Ezra (1873), Emma Elizabeth (1876), Mary Amelia (1879), Hyrum Enos (1881), Anna Belle (1883), George Elmer (1885), Lettie Pearl (1889)

Death: June 2, 1941; Joseph City, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Joseph City, Navajo Co., Arizona

When the pioneers were immigrating to Utah, many modes of conveyance were employed to bring their few belongings across the plains. The “prairie schooners,” covered wagons drawn by horses, mules, and oxen, were the most successful method, and, for those who had lived in the east and had owned these animals on their farms or could trade some of their possessions for them, the cheapest. But for the emigrants from the old country, it was too expensive [to purchase covered wagons and teams], so handcarts were made to be drawn and pushed by two people, which could carry all the luggage brought with them.[44] At best, these journeys were never pleasure trips. They were begun by easy stages, and, as the people got more used to walking, longer distances between camps were the result.

We are considering in this sketch the life of Mary Willie Richards, and it so happened that her father James G. Willie was the captain of the most ill-fated of these companies.[45] He had been a missionary for his church in England for four years and on his return home was called to take charge of a company of over five hundred converts from Europe to America. It was late in the season when they started, and the company suffered untold misery from snow, cold, and hunger. Mary well remembers when her father arrived with his feet wrapped in sacks and then they were badly frozen. There were very few of that ill-fated company but lost toes, fingers, and even limbs.[46]

She was born May 31, 1850, in Salt Lake City, the second in a family of five born to her mother, Elizabeth Ann Pettit. When Mary was nine years old, her father moved to Mendon, a small town in Cache Valley, Utah, and there she grew up. She had very little schooling as three or four months in the middle of the winter was as long as school kept in these early days, but her education was not confined to the schoolroom. She learned to do many things that would later help her to be a competent wife, mother, and pioneer.

First thing in the morning, she helped milk the cows. Then out came the spinning wheel, and four skeins of yarn was Mary’s task each day but Sunday, week in and week out. She did this in order that her mother would have plenty for weaving the cloth that was made into clothes for the family.

No matter how long or hard the tasks, love always finds a way, and because their homes were not far apart, Mary and Joseph Hill Richards were easy victims to love’s spell. Soon the young people developed a strong attachment to each other. Joseph was nine years older, but this was no hindrance to their love and devotion for each other, so on November 30, 1867, they were married in Salt Lake City, returning to Mendon, where they made their first home. They were in the midst of their family and were very happy. Three fine boys were born here.

McClintock used this photograph of Mary Willie Richards for Mormon Settlement in Arizona. Photo courtesy of DUP album, Snowflake-Taylor Family History Center.

One day, like lightning from a clear sky, came a call for the little family to leave their happy home, their kindred and friends, and go out into the wilds of Arizona to help colonize. No matter what the sacrifice, nothing but death could prevent Joseph H. Richards and his wife, Mary, from answering this call.

Now all was hurry and bustle. The little home must be sold for whatever it would bring. Cash was scarce, so grain, flour, corn, and anything in the way of provisions would be taken, as each family was advised to have enough on hand to do them two years.

By February 8, 1876, they were ready and made a start on that long, perilous journey in the middle of the winter, leaving behind all that was dearest to them on earth. When they reached the Panguitch Divide, they found the snow two feet deep. They could travel only a few miles a day; then after the snow, it was deep mud. When the feed they brought was gone, their poor tired animals gave out, and the travelers must stop every little while for them to rest. For more than three months they toiled on the way but felt they were greatly blessed, for the Lord spared all their lives. On April 20, 1876, they arrived at the settlements on the Little Colorado River, the first companies having arrived the March before. Such a barren, desert-looking country they found! Not a tree for miles except an occasional cottonwood on the river.

There were four colonies or camps, as they were called: Lot Smith’s, Ballenger’s, Lake’s, and Allen’s camps. They were called after the man that presided over each. Later these places were named Sunset, Brigham City, Obed, and St. Joseph.[47] The Richards family lived first at Lake’s Camp or Obed. Immediately after arriving, they went into the United Order. Mary and her husband were very well fitted with provisions, cows, chickens, etc., and had they not turned all they possessed into the Order, would have been very well fixed for pioneers.

But some of the Saints were very poor indeed, yet all must, and did, share equally. The women took turns cooking and washing the dishes. Then there were washings to be done in wooden tubs on homemade washboards with soap they had made with lye, from cottonwood ashes. There were later great quantities of molasses to be made, as bread and molasses was their chief diet.

At first they all lived in tents and wagon boxes, with a large bowery where they met to hold religious services, and where they spread the long tables at which they all ate together. In this camp there were sixty men and twenty women, besides the children. Soon they began building homes of rock which was near and plentiful. Mary had the joy and honor of living in one of the very first houses with a roof. Nearly all the houses in early days had dirt roofs, but not this one. Philip Cardon, a member of the colony who emigrated from Italy, understood the art of “flat roofing,” fitting large flat stones together so they would shed the rain.[48] This was the kind of roof that sheltered the Richards family. Mary tells us that it was far superior to dirt, as the mud did not run through, and it did not leak, no matter how long it rained.

In those early days when there were no doctors or nurses to welcome the stork that made frequent visits in pioneer homes, some dear, kindhearted woman with a love for humanity and a little knowledge of the human body had to qualify in each community as a midwife. Mary began at the age of twenty-six and for fifty-two years served in that capacity, assisting in bringing hundreds of babies into the world, and in all that time she never lost a mother nor a child. With a prayer in her heart she went cheerfully about her task, be it day or night, hot weather or cold, and to this day she is held in love and esteem by all whom she so faithfully served.[49]

When her fourth baby was expected, their house was not finished, and the tent house was soaking wet because it had been raining almost constantly for two weeks. The men folks worked all night to get the roof on. Then they took the wet tent and hung it between her bed and the unplastered walls, and how happy she did feel! The baby arrived at dawn the next morning. The modern mother would be terror stricken in going through the ordeal of childbirth without doctor, midwife, or even a nurse; not so with our heroine. She sent for two neighbor women, one a girl just married and the other the mother of one baby. She told them what to do and they very tremblingly did it. Thus was born her first daughter, and first Arizona baby. She adds, “With all my nine children, I never got along better.”

There were many swamps near Obed, and when summer came almost the entire colony was stricken with malaria. It became so serious that the camp had to finally be abandoned. Some of the people went to the other camps, while others went to the southern part of the territory where there were two Mormon settlements. The Richards family moved across the river to Allen’s Camp. Here the fort was almost finished. The schoolhouse was completed and was used for all public gatherings. Every evening all who were able gathered in this large room for the singing of a hymn and a prayer, after which the men planned their work and the women visited. It was a real social center.

Joseph Richards was called as first bishop of the new St. Joseph Ward, and Mary was chosen as president of the Relief Society.[50] This position she held for seven years. In those days a bishop’s house was the free stopping place for all who might come. It was nothing uncommon for twenty or thirty people to be entertained at conference time, when they came by team for miles around and remained three or four days.

While Mary was nursing in this wilderness country, her husband was taking the place of doctor and dentist, setting all broken bones and pulling all the aching teeth. Mary’s time was so completely filled with the caring of the sick and entertaining the well that she was released from her position as president of the Relief Society and was put in as head teacher. This position she held for more than thirty years.

Mr. Richards was postmaster of St. Joseph for twenty-nine years, his busy wife doing as much of the work as he.

In 1891, Mary’s husband was called on a mission to England. He left his wife and nine children and gladly answered his call. He sailed on the S.S.Abyssinia. When about half way across the ocean, the ship, which was partly loaded with cotton, took fire. The passengers became panic stricken, but Elder Richards was calm and unafraid, for the Apostles who set him apart for his mission had promised him: “You shall go and come in safety.”

There was no wireless in those days, but just as it began to look very serious and hopeless, they sighted a German ship. They fired their signals of distress, and the German ship hastened to their rescue, and every passenger was taken aboard it. Before they were out of sight the Abyssinia sank. Elder Richards’ luggage was all burned and now must be replaced. He jokingly wrote his wife that they all went on a spree, meaning the German boat was named the Spree.[51] When he had been gone more than two years, their fifteen-year-old daughter, May, became seriously ill with typhoid fever. For three weary weeks the mother watched over her day and night, then May passed away, and it took a month for her husband to receive word of their daughter’s death. As the Apostle promised, Joseph reached home in safety, after being gone more than two and one half years.

On July 3, 1924, Mary was called upon to part with her dear companion. This trial, as her other trials, she bore bravely. Service is so much a part of her very life that she must continue it, so she turned to temple work. She has worked in the Salt Lake, Logan, St. George, and Arizona Temples.

What great reward must be waiting for one who has spent more than three quarters of a century doing for the “least of these.” When her mission here is finished, surely the Master will say, “WELL DONE THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT. ENTER INTO THE JOY OF THY REST.”[52] And “rest” to Mary Willie Richards will be “eternal serving.”

Mary Willie Richards, wife of Joseph Hill Richards, died at Joseph City on June 2, 1941.[53]

Ellis and Boone:

The importance of this couple to the development of Joseph City is readily apparent in the two histories of the town, Unflinching Courage and Colonization on the Little Colorado.[54] A story told by Alice Hansen illustrates:

Times were difficult in the newly established Little Colorado Settlements. The family of the midwife, who had been especially called to Arizona to serve the Obed colony, had early become discouraged and had gone back home to Utah. Mary and Joseph Richards had just arrived with three small sons and it was nearing the time when the arrival of a fourth child was expected. All the inexperienced young people of the colony turned to Mary. “You have had three babies,” they said. “We are expecting our first, you will have to help us.”

Fortunately, Mary Richard had brought with her a “Doctor Book.”[55] One of her first patients was a woman, thought to be dying, and this was at a time when Mary was very near her own confinement. With some trepidation, Mary took her big doctor book, said a prayer, “searched her brain for all the remedies she had ever heard about,” and the woman made a full recovery. Hansen concluded, “Mary Richards later served the entire area as a midwife, everyone learned to respect and have confidence in her administrations. She was blessed with unusual natural aptitudes as a nurse. Through the aid of her ‘doctor book’ and keen observation, she added to her knowledge and skill. When doctors came to Northern Arizona, they marveled at the success of Mary W. Richards as a midwife and at her uncanny skill in various arts of healing.”[56]

Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers Rogers[57]

Unidentified Granddaughter

Maiden Name: Anna Matilda Doolittle

Birth: December 24, 1820; Wallingford, New Haven Co., Connecticut

Parents: John Doolittle and Ruth Ann Davis

Marriage 1: Amos Philemon Rogers; January 12, 1846

Children: Amanda Jane (1846)

Marriage 2: Samuel Hollister Rogers; March 7, 1850

Children: Amos (1851), Smith Doolittle (1852), Davis Samuel (1854), Sarah Matilda (1856), Chloe Ann (1859), Orpha Amelia (1861), Mary Malinda (1864)

Death: September 23, 1887; Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

My grandmother, Anna Matilda Rogers, was born December 24, 1820, at Wallingford, Connecticut. Her father, John Doolittle, was a mechanic and cabinet maker. Her mother, Ruth A. Davis was a small, lovable woman, a good homemaker, winning the love of her children and the respect of older folks.

Anna Matilda came from Wallingford, Connecticut, to Nauvoo, Illinois; then to the camps of the Saints: Sugar Creek; Garden Grove; Mount Pisgah; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Winter Quarters, Nebraska; and on west to Utah by ox team.

Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers. Photo courtesy of DUP album, Snowflake-Taylor Family History Center.

She was married to Amos Philemon Rogers on January 12, 1846, in the Nauvoo Temple by Brigham Young. After a short five months of marriage, she was left a widow. Her husband died June 26, 1846, following several weeks of illness. He was buried on the lonely mountain side at Mount Pisgah; his brother Samuel helped dig his grave.

At Council Bluffs, October 14, 1846, the brokenhearted widow became the mother of a baby girl, Amanda Jane, by name. The tiny one took a great deal of her time but helped to while away the lonely hours when on the plains.

In September of 1849, she reached the Salt Lake Valley with the help of her brother-in-law, Samuel, who met her and the baby and his sister, Sarah, the remaining ones of the family. Samuel helped them on the last lap of the trek.[58] This way of life was not easy.

She and Samuel, her deceased husband’s brother, were married in Salt Lake in 1850.[59] They stayed there but a year or so, and then they were called to Parowan, Utah. In Parowan, she and her husband built a comfortable home (which still stands in 1958) and raised seven children. They were active in both Church and civic affairs, and they did much temple work in the St. George Temple.

She was a homemaker in every way. Her home duties were her first and last consideration. Gossiping had no place in her busy, active life. She was a hard worker and particular with everything she undertook to do. She did all the spinning, weaving, and sewing for her family and even made the cloth for the menfolks’ suits. She cut them out and tailored them herself. Everything she did, she did well.

Her home was a place for family and community entertainment. Their home was open to all young folks, and she and her husband encouraged home parties and dances. She was never too busy to teach her children the principles of the gospel by word and example. She was quiet, firm, and understanding of the needs and interests of her children. All her family honored and respected her, and her teachings were ever a guide to them.

They were called to help colonize Arizona, and they reached Snowflake January 8, 1880. She was fifty-nine years old at that time. She passed away in Snowflake on September 23, 1887, at the age of sixty-seven years. Jesse N. Smith says of her, “I don’t know of any one person that could do so many things as Matilda Rogers did. She could do anything.” Aunt Ellen Smith says of her, “There wasn’t anything she could not do such as sewing, weaving, spinning, cooking, and other arts of pioneering.”

Ellis and Boone:

Most of the years Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers spent raising her children were in Parowan, Iron Co., Utah. Parowan was originally established to support the Iron Mission, and the town celebrates its founding as January 13, 1851. Samuel H. Rogers did not bring his family to Parowan until 1853 and was not considered an iron missionary. Nevertheless, he became a leading figure in Parowan for twenty-five years. Because many of the residents (including the Rogers family) eventually left Parowan for other settlements, Parowan is often called the “Mother Town of Southwestern Utah.”[60]

Little is recorded of Anna Matilda’s life other than the information here, but a few details from Samuel’s life help readers understand the family dynamics. In 1853, three years after marrying his brother’s wife, Samuel married a second wife, Ruth Page.[61] Shortly afterwards, he moved his family to Parowan. Then in 1857, he married a third time, to Lorana Page, a sister of Ruth.[62] Neither of these two women had any children, but instead helped raise the children of Samuel and Matilda.

In 1869, Samuel H. Rogers was made bishop of the “east ward” in Parowan. He was also the justice of the peace, a director for the United Order, and a local missionary. In July 1877, he was called as bishop of the Second Ward in Parowan.[63] All of these activities left little time for his family, and many family responsibilities fell to his three wives. By 1877, there was some disharmony in Parowan over a new stake president; for over a year, this priesthood office was left vacant.[64] In March of 1878, William H. Dame was sustained as president with Jesse N. Smith as first counselor, but as Joseph Fish wrote, “I think that the disunion or party feeling that had existed in Parowan for some time at the division in getting a president for the stake had some effect upon the Smith boys and particularly Jesse N. This may have had some influence in our taking the move that we made at this time [to Panguitch].”[65] Then Jesse N. Smith was on his way to Arizona by December 1878, and in his party was Smith D. Rogers, son of Samuel and Matilda Rogers. By September 1880, Samuel H. Rogers was in Snowflake and was sustained as a member of the high council.[66]

Matilda Doolittle Rogers lived less than ten years in Snowflake. Jesse N. Smith’s journal entry for September 23, 1887, reads, “Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers having died, I preached her funeral sermon.”[67]

Avis Laverne Leavitt Rogers

Autobiography

Maiden Name: Avis Laverne Leavitt

Birth: June 17, 1878; Kanosh, Millard Co., Utah

Parents: Lyman Leavitt and Ann Eliza Hakes[68]

Marriage: George Samuel Rogers;[69] January 8, 1896

Children: George Vernon (1896), Collins Rulon (1899), Mabel Ann (1901), Avis Pearl (1902), Lyman Henry (1905), John Leavitt (1907), LaVerne (1910), Samuel Glenn (1913), Florence (c. 1918),[70] Betty Jo (1923)[71]

Death: March 9, 1965; Mesa, Maricopa Co., Arizona

Burial: Mesa, Maricopa Co., Arizona

I was born at Kanosh, Utah, June 17, 1878. My parents were Lyman Leavitt and Ann Eliza Hakes.

When I was four years old, my father was called to leave his home and help settle in Arizona. We left Kanosh in the winter, and the ground was covered with snow. I was just four years old, and I remember as we left the people came out along the way to bid us all good-bye. I can also remember we crossed the Colorado River on a ferry or flat boat. While crossing, one of Dad’s horses stepped off the flat boat with his hind foot. I can just see Father patting his head and talking real low to him and finally getting him back on the boat. We went through a town called Hackberry, and when we camped that night I found a nice white towel with red stripes for the border.[72] This was one of my prized possessions, and I kept it for many years. We had many hardships on our way down, and roads were rough and long.

Avis Leavitt with siblings: front row, left to right: Joseph, Mabel "Mae," Lucy Pearl, Avis; back row: Lucinda "Cindy," John. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./ Dilworth Brinton Jr.

The wind and dust storms we had in those early days were awful. The first summer [in Mesa], we had a hard one which hit just after we had gone to bed. Mother and Dad were each trying to hold the tent down to keep it from blowing away. One of the neighbors crawled in under the tent and rolled me up in a blanket and carried me to their house and put me in bed with her mother and father, then went back after my brother John, who was two years old. Another time a terrible storm was coming, and Dad thought it was a cyclone; it looked so terrible. He rolled us all up in quilts and took us all out in the orchard and waited to see what it would do. If it got worse, we were to put our arms around a peach tree and hang on for dear life. This time it went around, and we only got a part of it, for which we were very thankful. Father soon bought a lot and built an adobe house on it. It was where the Catholic church now stands. The jailhouse was where it is now, and the windows had iron bars across them. Father would take my brother John and myself across the road to the jailhouse and we would sit on the ground while Father sang songs and talked to the men in jail.

We went to church under a bowery made of logs and brush. Logs were set in the ground with logs across the top of them, then brush and willows spread on top of them for shade, with benches for seats. When my sister Mabel and I were old enough to go to school, we had to walk to school and then home for our dinner. As soon as it was warm enough, we went barefoot. Some days the ground was so hot that we would run as fast as we could until our feet got so hot we would throw our bonnets on the ground and step on them to cool our feet, then run on. Our bonnets were made with pasteboard slats across the front and tied under our chins. One day we were running along and an Indian girl stepped out from behind a tree and whipped our legs good and hard, and it made us late for school. A few months later, as some of us were coming home from school, she took after us with a scythe and said she was going to cut our legs off. We all ran through the pasture, screaming to a neighbor. When he came out, the Indian girl, Juana, ran home. She was about fifteen years old then, and soon after she was sent back to her people.

In a few years, Father bought a twenty-acre ranch out east of town, north of the temple. Father built a large home for us, and when it was partly finished we moved in. My brother John and I helped make adobes for the walls, then we would help load them up and then unload them. We helped on the farm and had the usual chores to do. I was always happy when I could wade in the water and mud to help set out sweet potato plants. We also had a large strawberry patch. Many times I have helped pick the strawberries and then take[n] them to town in a big white dishpan and sell them to the hotel, which was run by my Grandfather and Grandmother Hakes. Father planted a nice orchard and vineyard, and we always had a good garden. One year the farmers went in together and bought a lot of orange trees, and not knowing how to protect them, they froze.

Wedding photograph of George Samuel Rogers and Avis Lavern Leavitt, January 8, 1896; Hartwell, Phoenix. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./ Dilworth Brinton Jr.

We had bees and extracted lots of honey. We used to help with the extracting about four times a season. It would take five or six days to get the honey extracted. When the peaches were ripe, we would pick them in the afternoon, and then at night everyone would pitch in and spread them on crates. We would put them in the smokehouse and burn sulfur under them, leaving them in all night, and in the morning they would be nice and white. We would put them out to dry, and it took about a week. We also made peach preserves using honey. This was put in five-gallon cans. We had a herd of cows, and I used to help milk.

I remember one year we cut and dried peaches to sell to pay my mother’s way to Salt Lake to conference. The night she left, while Dad was taking her to the station, my brother John accidentally tipped over the coal oil lamp. It threw oil on the table and floor, which caught on fire. I remember grabbing the burning lamp and running to the kitchen door and throwing it out. I grabbed the mop and began to beat out the fire. After it was all over with, we were all so scared we didn’t dare light a match, so we huddled in bed with our clothes on until Father came home. He thought I was a brave girl.

As a child, I remember the smallpox epidemic that caused a good many deaths and severe sickness. A young boy had been away from home and came back with an awful case of prickly heat, so everyone thought, and the people all went to see what he looked like. It later turned out to be black smallpox, so everyone was exposed. Grandfather Hakes did a great deal of nursing the sick at this time.[73] They put the people in what they called the pesthouse. My mother, along with the other women, would cook food to send to them. We children would take whatever Mother fixed and carried it down past our front gate, and someone would be by to pick it up. If we heard a lumber wagon in the still of the night, we knew they were taking someone to the graveyard to be buried.[74]

Whenever it rained good and hard up in the mountains, floods would come roaring down the Salt River, and we would all go down to watch the rolling water. It would be carrying trees, brush, and logs, and did it look wicked. No one could go or come from Phoenix until it went down enough so they could ferry across. It was too dangerous to ferry across when the river was at its highest. When the water started over the banks, the Indians would start leaving to camp up on the hill. They would jog along all night and day, in their old wagons or walking or riding horses, chanting their Indian chants. After the waters receded, the Indians returned to their homes.

Ice was very scarce, and when we got a little, we would make ice cream by filling a large bucket with crushed ice and salt, then whirl a bucket filled with ice-cream mix around in the ice. Every little while we would open the bucket and scrape the sides down and then whirl some more until it was frozen.

One time, thirteen of our ducks were missing at feeding time. We couldn’t find them, so Mother and I went over to the neighbor as they had ducks just like ours. The extra ducks were there, but we couldn’t tell which were which. Father always stacked his wheat instead of thrashing it, so we always fed our ducks by pulling the bundles of wheat out, and our neighbor always fed theirs by throwing out thrashed wheat. As they didn’t have any stacked grain, Mother went to their haystack and pulled out handfuls of hay. Immediately here came thirteen squawking ducks. Our neighbors said, “Take them, Sister Leavitt, they are yours.”

As I was growing up, I learned to cook and sew and keep house and do the things girls should do. My mother was an excellent teacher, and when I grew older I used to work out for people. I would work every day with just Sunday afternoons off and get two dollars a week. It was while I was working with my aunt and uncle, who ran a boarding house at the mines, that I met George Samuel Rogers.[75] He drove to the mine with loads of hay and watermelons. He would make the trip about every two weeks. This was in 1895. After I moved back home, I started going with him, and we were married at my home by Collins R. Hakes, my grandfather, January 8, 1896.

In August 1897, we traveled to St. George by team and wagon. It was a hard trip and took us seven weeks to make it. On the way home, we found the water was so high in the river we had to camp for a week, waiting for the water to go down so we could ferry the wagon across. We came through Flagstaff and camped about five miles out in the pine trees. We had had our evening meal and were prepared for bed. While we were kneeling in prayer, we heard this terrible whooping and yelling and thundering of horses’ hooves. The temptation was just too great, and I couldn’t resist taking a peek. I turned my head just enough so I could look out the corner of my eye—my heart beat about three times faster than it should—three Indian braves, all painted up, were riding in on us just as hard as they could ride. How he did it I will never know, but George, not even hesitating to peek, just kept right on praying and asking Heavenly Father to protect us from these Indians. They rode right to the wagons before they reigned up. They were so close we could almost feel the breath of the horses as they sat down on their hind legs to stop. The Indians looked in and saw George praying, they gave a whoop, whirled their horses around and left. We could hear them yelling as they rode away. Needless to say, we had a great deal to be thankful for that night. We were told later that Indians are very superstitious about people praying, and that was probably why they left without bothering us at all. We knew that the Lord had answered our prayers as he had done so many times before.

A visit to Pine stands out in my memory. It was when my sister-in-law was sick. I was sitting up with her, and about midnight I heard a rumbling noise. It sounded like a lot of mice running around and got louder and louder. Then the whole house started to tremble. I had never heard such an eerie sound or had such a queer feeling. I remember thinking it was an evil spirit. The chair I was sitting in just rocked back and forth. I was so frightened, I just didn’t know what to do. Then just as suddenly as it had began, it quit. Mother stuck her head in and said, “Laverne, did you feel that earthquake?” I was so relieved I remember saying, “Thank the Lord it was only an earthquake.”

Avis Laverne and George Samuel Rogers. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./Dilworth Brinton Jr.

When we were married, we lived in Mesa two years, then moved to Lehi, where we lived for fifty-seven years. My husband took sick, so we sold our farm and moved to Mesa, and nine months later he died, March 4, 1954. We had ten children, five boys and five girls, but two boys died in infancy.

I have been a counselor in the Maricopa Stake YLMIA and was treasurer in the Lehi Ward Primary, then counselor from 1903 to 1910, president from 1911 to 1916, and teacher in 1920. I was president of the ward Relief Society at two different times, and I was work director and visiting teacher. My hobbies are making rugs, knitting and crocheting, and making nice quilts. I have made a quilt for every one of my children, grandchildren, and many others.

I lived in the days of pioneering in this valley, and I am thankful that I was allowed to come to earth at this time. Our home was one of love and kindness, and my father was a man of God. Mother and Father were diligent Church workers and brought their children up in the way of the Lord. We had very few conveniences in my day. It would take us all day to wash, and now if we are willing to get up early we can have the washing on the line by breakfast time. We used to travel with wagons and buggies; now it is the automobile and airplane. We used to go to church, first in a brush shed, and then later on, a stake house was built, and we were so proud of it. When we went to Pine forty years ago, it would take about six days of traveling with a wagon and team. We would stay a few days and then the long journey home. Now we can travel it in a few hours by auto on well-paved roads with all streams bridged over. The heat was almost unbearable. We had no coolers in our houses, and the clothes we used to wear are even too hot for winter now. It would take us days to get ready to go on a trip; now we can be ready in a few minutes and be 150 miles away in a couple hours.

Thus ends the story of Avis Laverne Leavitt Rogers. Death came to her March 9, 1965, at Mesa, Arizona. She was beloved by everyone that knew her and was truly a pioneer in every sense of the word.

Ellis and Boone:

In this autobiography, Avis Laverne Leavitt Rogers provides descriptions of farming around Mesa. The settlers used these farm products for both subsistence and sale, giving them cash income. Rogers also tells of drying fruit to preserve it for later use. Dried apples, peaches, and apricots were used for pies—sometimes fondly remembered and sometimes not. Elizabeth Lambert Wood of Oracle remembered Charlie Jackson, an African-American cook for mine owner John DeWitt Burgess, and wrote, “It did not take us long to learn that Charlie made the best dried apricot and peach pies in the land.”[76] On the other hand, an anonymous boarding-house guest in Tucson penned the following poem:

Dried Apple Pies

I loath, abhor, detest, despise!

Abominable dried apple pies.

I like good bread, I like good meat,

Or anything that’s fit to eat;

But of all poor grub beneath the skies

The poorest is dried apple pies.

Give me a toothache or sore eyes,

In preference to such kind of pies.

The farmers take their gnarliest fruit

’Tis wormy, bitter, and hard, to boot;

They leave the hull to make us cough,

And don’t take half the peeling off.

Then on a dirty cord they’re strung,

And from a chamber window hung,

And then they serve as roost for flies

Until they’re ready to make pies.

Tread on my corns, or tell me lies.

But don’t pass me dried apple pies.[77]

Although the sketches in PWA do not generally mention sanitation problems, Mesa, as probably all other towns of that era, had to contend with animal and human waste and flies spreading disease. W. Earl Merrill wrote a newspaper column titled “Pioneers Had Garbage, Too,” citing early Phoenix newspapers telling about city ordinances to deal with the accumulation of waste. Merrill wrote, “Such were the unsanitary habits of the early citizens of our neighboring city of Phoenix. Though we do not have the newspaper clippings to prove it, early residents of Mesa were probably just as careless.”[78]

Clara Maria Gleason Rogers

Roberta Flake Clayton, FWP[79]

Maiden Name: Clara Maria Gleason

Birth: May 28, 1860; Farmington, Davis Co., Utah

Parents: John Streeter Gleason[80] and Desdemona Chase

Marriage: Andrew Locy Rogers;[81] August 28, 1879

Children: Andrew Locy (1880), Spencer Chase (1883), John Thomas (1885), Marion (1887), Alvirus Ogden (1889), Leroy (1892), Clara (1894), Desdamona (1896), Leone (1899), Thora Aurelia (1902)

Death: December 26, 1932; Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

On May 28, 1860, in the little town of Farmington, Utah, was born to John Streeter and Desdimona Chase Gleason a baby girl who was later given the name of Clara Maria. She was one of six children of this sturdy pioneer couple, who had accepted the gospel in Ohio, had sacrificed their all, crossed the plains, and gave to their little family what care and comfort frontier life at that time could afford.[82]

She was educated in the best schools of the day and led a comparatively uneventful life, until she met Locy, the son of Thomas and Aurelia Spencer Rogers, pioneers from Canada and Connecticut. This was a red-letter day in her life, for his mother, a sincere and enthusiastic worker for truth, was later the founder of the Primary Association, and had inspired her son with many of her ideals.[83]

Locy and Clara Rogers. Photo courtesy of Stinson Museum, Snowflake.

Her future husband, though unsuspected at that time, was employed in the ZCMI, from which position, in 1876, was called by President Brigham Young, with about 200 others, to form the first company to make a settlement in the then wild and unknown wastes of Arizona.[84] This company left Utah on February 21, 1876, crossed the mountains with snow six feet on the level, parts of the trail having to be plowed through enormous drifts. In spite of hardships, they arrived at their destination, Sunset Crossing (across the river from where Winslow now stands), with cattle, sheep, horses, seeds, etc., lived in their wagons until the first crop was in and water on the land.

The Order of Enoch [United Order] was established, with Lot Smith in charge. The buildings were arranged and built on a cooperative plan. A large building in the center served both as dining room and chapel, the kitchen adjacent was in charge of a man (the position in that day being too important for a mere woman), but the women, three in number on a daily relay plan, did the work. Food was sometimes scarce, but bread and sorghum molasses were staples. Because of this shortage, a rule was made that all food should be eaten from the plates; any left would be reserved to those particular individuals at the next meal. A cheese factory took care of the surplus milk, a tannery produced leather for buckskin clothes, shoes, and harnesses (the latter not being very satisfactory however, because the character of the tan permitted [the leather] to stretch), a sawmill cut sufficient lumber for all their needs.

The women were supplied with spinning wheels, carding machines, and looms, and made good, substantial “homespun.” By filling in cotton warp with wool, a good linsey was made. As some were more efficient than others in spinning and weaving, they exchanged work with those less fortunate.

Nearly three years passed, and having made all preparations for his life partner, Locy took the trail back to Farmington, where he surprised his fiancée and upset her feminine plans for a fitting trousseau by insisting on an immediate marriage. Through the advice of her mother, she finally consented, and they were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, Utah, on August 28, 1879, by Elder Joseph F. Smith, who later became President of the Church. On their return trip to Farmington, they bought about a dozen fine watermelons, a delicacy not to be had as yet in Farmington, and upon reaching home they found their relatives, friends, and a wedding supper awaiting them, the melons supplying a luscious finale to the feast, which is still remembered with gastronomic delight.

Shortly afterward they started for their new home alone but later met two families from Ogden, which proved beneficial for each, as Locy knew the trail well and the others relieved the monotony of the journey.

As a means of encouragement and a source of consolation in food deficiencies, poor water, or similar conditions to be met, Locy would frequently speak of the wonderful bread and milk to be had in such abundance at the journey’s end. Well, the trip ended, as all trips must do, and upon pulling into camp, they found their friends, who had so anxiously and impatiently awaited the coming of Locy’s bride, with true hospitality had prepared a feast of the best the fort afforded. With much joy and some misgiving, they were seated together at the bountiful board, and Clara, recognizing the much-talked-of milk, reached for her bowl, tasted it, and set it down. Later she tried again and finally said, “Well, if it comes back forever, I’ll not drink that milk.” Locy, wishing to save his bride an infraction of the rules, drank it for her. The strained feeling dawned at last on the hosts when a child refused to drink its milk also. Investigation then proved the milk to be in that sickly “blue-john” stage, so unpalatable to all. The trouble had arisen when a sour milk pan, instead of a sweet, had hurriedly been brought from the row of shelves in the milk house. The event was speedily forgiven when the fresh milk, in quantity and quality which Locy had advertised so fluently, was served as needed.

Of course, there were no canned fruits or vegetables on the table; such things were an unheard-of luxury. Sometime later, however, when some old friends from Farmington came to work on the railroad grade and brought some canned fruits and vegetables, especially for a feast with “Locy and Cad” (with the understanding that they were to furnish the milk), an old Danish man said it was an outrage that some could have such “victuals” as that—fit for a king—while others were deprived of anything approaching it.

Mrs. Rogers and her husband were sincere workers for the success of the order. While they could have found fault many times, they preferred to remain quiet and “boost” the work along, anxious to see if it could be made a success.

About this time, Locy was assigned to the position of wood-hauler to the camp. He arose early and returned late with all he could haul. When the weather was extremely cold, the women [were so desperate for wood that they] waylaid him with axes [to help cut it into appropriate sizes], and the wood sometimes literally failed to touch the ground. In the summer, they were transferred to the sheep range, and while engaged in that work on one occasion, Mr. Rogers was impressed very strongly to move away from the place where they had made their camp. He paid little attention to the first urge to move; when in a short time it was repeated, it appealed to him with greater force. When it came the third time, he was so impressed that, although they had retired, they got up and hurriedly packed their camping equipment and moved at once. Later, they learned that their delightful camp had been a battleground between the Indians and U.S. soldiers and an Indian had died in their newly built cabin.[85]

Impressions were not always regarded in the same light, however, for later when they had returned to the fort, Mrs. Rogers was waiting with fond heart in anticipation of her husband’s fortnightly visit, he coming one weekend and his partner the next. Much to her surprise, instead of Mr. Rogers, the partner came two weeks in succession, explaining, “I just could not rest until I came to see you, but I’ll tell you, I had an impression to come and leave Locy out there with the sheep, and so I came.”[86] She told him she wondered if he would ever have an impression to let Locy come twice, whereupon he answered, “I’m sorry, but I see it hasn’t impressed you as it did me.”

Sometime after this, Mrs. Rogers was again appointed as companion to her husband in sheep herding, thereby releasing one man for more strenuous work. One day, her husband was much startled at the sheep stampeding down the mountainside, and, rushing up to see the cause of the disturbance, came face to face with a large bear. Being unarmed, Mr. Rogers stopped when the bear stopped, and they surveyed each other steadily for a little while, then the bear dropped to all fours and withdrew slowly up the mountain, leaving him victor of the field and the spiritual uplift that “the true shepherd will give his life for his sheep.”

Clara Gleason Rogers (seated, gray dress) with her two sons, Andrew Jr. (left) and Marion with wives and daughters: Rebecca Smith (seated) with baby Beatrice Rogers (Papa) and Lenora Smith (standing) with daughter Mayola (Miltonberger). Apparently the family was visiting their grandmother, Aurelia Spencer Rogers (black dress), in 1914. Photo courtesy of LeOla Rogers Leavitt.

Their first baby, a boy, was born at the fort, and while no great sensation to the general inhabitants, for other babies had been born there, it was a never-to-be-forgotten day in the Rogers household. He was a lusty little fellow and thrived on frontier life. Notwithstanding their dearth, he was supplied at one time with a multiple musical rattle that is seldom surpassed in value; though of short duration, it was superb while it lasted. It happened thus: Five or six years before this, a Mexican employee had robbed his employers of about seven or eight thousand dollars in U.S. double eagles. A posse had formed and pursued him. He had hidden the gold or lost it from his saddle and when caught could not retrace his steps and find it, although he was hung until nearly dead to force a confession. Mr. Rogers’ sheep were on this range, and while walking along the sheep trail one day, he noticed a peculiar glitter to the oak leaves. On closer observation, “the leaves” proved to be twenty-dollar gold pieces. About ten feet away, he saw one of the little mounds of rocks which had been made to mark the ground as a guide to the searchers that that part of the country had been thoroughly searched. He tied the ends of his coat sleeves, filled them with gold, and hurried after his sheep. Arriving at the camp, he notified the owner that the gold had been found and that he might have it by calling for it. So the baby played with the gold pieces on the bed and rejoiced at the musical clink as they jingled together, for the owners had given Mr. Rogers a handful of coins which counted out to be $200.[87]

The Order went along with more or less dissatisfaction—the people were American-born and restriction irked—a few dollars’ extra profit failed to compensate for personal prerogative. So when the dam went out of the river, as it had done frequently before due to current and quicksand (but this time had taken the gristmill with it), they decided to have the requiem sung over the remains of the Order of Enoch. President Taylor appointed a committee to investigate, audit, and give a just settlement when each family went to itself.

The Rogers family moved to Joseph City, remained there for about a year, then bought land in Snowflake, where they have resided ever since. They had ten children and reared seven, all receiving good educations, some college graduates.

Mrs. Rogers assumed responsibility and, with the aid of their children, enabled Mr. Rogers to fill a three-year mission in Europe, and later, a short-term mission in California. Each of their five sons has filled missions.

When her husband was called as a worker in the Arizona Temple sometime after its dedication, he bought a lot in the Temple Addition and personally built a small house, which Mrs. Rogers has made into the dearest, cutest little home one could imagine. Their lives, though busy, are happy and contented, for when the temple doors close, they migrate to the old home and familiar scenes about Snowflake.[88]

When the doors open, they are found ’neath the inscription “HOUSE OF THE LORD” in line of duty, where love is law and sacrifice a privilege.

Very few pioneer families were better versed in the classics than were the Rogers. Whenever one of the other of them had finished their tasks, they would read aloud to the others, and in the old candle-and-coal-oil-lamp days, their light was usually the last in the town to be extinguished.

For a while after moving to Snowflake, Clara was employed in teaching school, where she gave great satisfaction. During one entire winter, she and her husband taught an adult night class in Pedagogy and Teacher Training. Always associated in every cultural movement, her services were invaluable to the community in which she resided. Many inspiring poems and essays came from her pen, which appeared from time to time in the home paper.

The long illness and death of a very precious daughter took its toll in the health and buoyancy of Clara, who never fully recovered from the shock of it.[89]

For several years before her death, which occurred on December 26, 1932, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had spent their winters in Mesa, Arizona, where they built and furnished a nice little home.

Early in life, Clara learned to evaluate things and spent every spare moment in cultivating in herself, her family, and friends a love for the cultural, the good, and the beautiful.

In Clara’s home, love was law and sacrifice was a privilege.

Ellis and Boone:

Although Clara Rogers did not spend many years living in the United Order, it was nevertheless the living system in Arizona to which she came and is discussed extensively in this sketch. It, therefore, seems appropriate to add a little more about the dissolution of the Order.

In this sketch, the demise of the United Order was blamed upon dissatisfaction because “the people were American-born and restriction irked.” Undoubtedly this was true, and the sketch also stated that “a few dollars’ extra profit failed to compensate for personal prerogative.” But Lot Smith ruled with a firm hand, which Kenner Kartchner thought, in another context, was needed in the early settlement of Utah but not by the time Arizona settlement was well underway.[90] Both George Tanner and Charles Peterson discussed the United Order at Sunset; Tanner himself was a little closer in age to those living at Sunset, and Peterson gives a professional historian’s perspective. In particular, Peterson compared the United Order as practiced at Sunset and at St. Joseph, two very different models.[91]

Regardless of the reasons for people moving away from Sunset, the dissolution of the United Order was prolonged and contentious. A committee was formed to sort out property which had been commingled. David K. Udall was part of this committee and wrote, “I was the only committeeman who had had no business relationship with Brother [Lot] Smith or the United Order.”[92] The details Udall gave help readers understand the problems:

I was appointed as one of the committee of five to adjust and settle the many perplexing questions involving tens of thousands of dollars in property owned by the membership of the United Order at Sunset, over which Lot Smith had presided. The people had disbanded and scattered from Mexico to Canada. The other members of the committee were John Bushman of St. Joseph, chairman; Hubert R. Burk of Alpine, Frihoff Nielson of Ramah, and Thomas Brockbank [Brookbank] of Sunset.[93] We went through all the records, hunted out the old colonizers and wrote them for statements of claims and grievances. We had many meetings during a period of three years, some held at Mormon Dairy, at Woodruff and various ranches. A more conscientious body of arbitrators in my opinion could not be found. Hundreds of letters were sent out and received in all patience and without any remuneration. We journeyed from place to place, meeting time and time again until we finally adjusted the business between the members of the company; so far as I know giving satisfaction. Our final report met with President Woodruff’s endorsement and he blessed us for our services.[94]

John Bushman, in particular, found the committee work disagreeable and a nightmare, and he was not certain that all members got what was due them. Tanner and Richards wrote, “That the committee allowed Smith to get away with much more than he deserved was due in part to the way he abused them. But how could they chastise a man with so strong a will, especially in view of the fact that he had been, and technically still was, the stake president?”[95] David K. Udall was more sympathetic to Lot Smith and thought that “through his thrift and foresight he was truly the leading spirit in an organization which built up great flocks and herds and ranches, mills and farms. Had they been able to continue on unitedly and have stayed with the ‘Order,’ they would have become a great and wealthy people.”[96] Peterson’s analysis was both measured and thorough. As part of this discussion, he noted that Locy Rogers was “gentle and filled with good humor, he was altogether one of the most lovable figures in the region. He was loyal and honest but utterly without financial acumen.” Peterson thought that any prosperity Locy Rogers knew came from living the United Order.[97]

Eliza Snow Smith Rogers

Roberta Flake Clayton, FWP[98]

Maiden Name: Eliza Snow Smith

Birth: February 23, 1859; Parowan, Iron Co., Utah

Parents: Jesse Nathaniel Smith[99] and Emma Seraphine West[100]

Marriage: Smith Doolittle Rogers; October 12, 1875

Children: Eliza Roxie (1876), Smith Doolittle (1878), Emma Matilda (1879), Jesse Hollister (1882), Amanda (1884), Starling Chandler (1886), Wilford (1888), Samuel Lorenzo (1890), Noble (1892), Ione (1894), Lorana (1896), Daniel Kimball (1898), Mary (1901), Ralph Corum (1904), Paul Moroni (1906)

Death: December 26, 1927; Horse Prairie/Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Eliza Snow Smith was born in Parowan, Iron County, Utah, February 23, 1859. She was the fourth daughter of Jesse N. Smith and Emma Seraphine West.

She early showed a high appreciation for music and singing. As there was no musical instrument in the home, she drew on a board the key board of an organ and would sit by the hour playing and singing. Her father once said to Eliza, “If you’ll stop that everlasting singing, I’ll buy you a dress.” Often when he’d step in the door, she would suddenly stop singing and look like she had been caught doing wrong. Then he said, “Eliza, if you’ll quit looking so sheepish every time I come in and go on singing, I’ll buy you another dress.”

The older girls did all of the housework, leaving her to do only the odd jobs; this left her too much leisure time. So she often ran to the neighbors’ and helped them do their work. They freely showed their appreciation by happy approval of what she had done, and often delighted her by allowing her to play on their organ and practice her songs, which was her greatest delight. She was reproved by her mother on returning, but after the reproof, a mother’s loving word and kind teaching reinstated her in all the confidence she always felt for her dear mother. Even though she was sometimes considered a “tom-boy,” for she helped her younger brothers do chores, ride horses, climb the fences, and romp on the sheds, the lively little girl found comfort when her exacting father wished a speedy errand run. He would call for Eliza to go quick and come back quick, for he must have word soon. Often he said on her trustworthy return, “Thank you, my girl. I can depend on you to go when I send you.” And such appreciation from her father only gave her a deeper love for the dear father she always held in so high esteem.

Her childhood was spent attending the district school and music and dancing classes at night. She loved horseback riding, dancing, singing, and drama above all things. She profited by all she learned, and she taught her younger brothers and sisters all she had learned. She often composed plays and songs for them to perform.

When she was fourteen, there was a ball that everyone was anxious to attend, but each lady must have an escort. As she had none she could not go. She saw her four sisters, one half-sister, go off without her, and while she sat churning, her tears of disappointment fell freely. Suddenly there came a knock at the door, and Smith D. Rogers came in. He had come to see if her sister, Josephine, would go to the ball with him. She had already gone, but the mother said, “Eliza is here.” So to her delight, he asked if she would go with him. Joy lent speed to her feet, and they were soon off to the ball.

This was the beginning of their romance. Much time was spent on horseback rides, or in a sleigh through the mountains and vales she loved so well. This terminated two years later in their marriage, October 12, 1875. From this union there were fifteen children, nine boys and six girls.

Young Smith D. was made second counselor to President William H. Dame of Parowan Stake before their marriage, and Jesse N. Smith, her father, was first counselor. The privilege of becoming the bride of this aspiring young man was an honor.

In the fall of 1879, they were called to go settle in Arizona with the company that was leaving for that place. Although Eliza and their two children had the whooping cough, they prepared to go. The exposure was too much for little Smith, just four months old, and they laid him to rest at Sunset and then went sadly on to Snowflake, which was just being settled.

When they reached Snowflake, the people were just drawing for the lots to build houses on. Smith D. drew a lot on the hill. They thought it would be under the ditch, but for years and years it remained a bare hill with no vegetation on it. This was a great trial to Eliza, who was a great lover of flowers, but years later they bought a windmill and made the hill blossom as the rose.

In the first spring after their arrival in Arizona, they put in a crop and built a house, using one room for a granary to store their abundant harvest. In the early winter, Smith D. went back to Parowan to help move his father and mother to Arizona. While he was gone, the house burned down. Nothing was saved except the bed and part of the beans and grain, and these were badly scorched but furnished their food for the next year, and they were glad to have them. Also while he was gone, their second daughter was born. Eliza’s bed was a pallet on the floor of the Hulet home. Before he came home, the baseball team, of which he was a member, had a log house built up to the square for him.

Eliza always took an active part in public activities, especially in music and dramatics. There were few plays in the early history of Snowflake in which she did not have a part. Her home was the scene of many parties, for there was no place where the young people were more welcome or had better times. No one could lead a game or enjoy it better than she. At her funeral, a neighbor said he never saw a more lighthearted or happier girl than she.

She was the first president of the YLMIA in Snowflake, and held, at various times, Primary president, chorister for ward and auxiliary organizations, councilor in the stake YLMIA, member of the stake Primary board, and teacher in all organizations of the Church.

Eliza Snow Smith Rogers and children, tentatively identified (left to right) as Emma Matilda, Jesse Hollister, Starling Chandler, Eliza Roxie, and Amanda. If this identification is correct, it may be that Eliza used this photograph for the DUP album because it included two of her children that died before adulthood, Starling, age 1, and Roxie, age 16. Photo courtesy of DUP album, Snowflake-Taylor Family History Center.

She had a great love for the beautiful and spent much time in her garden, cultivating flowers, fruit, and vegetables, though often she had to raise them at quite a distance from her home. She was an expert needle woman. Her children’s clothes were always adorned with her embroidery and tatting. She selected the straw from the harvest field and braided it into hats, many of them very beautiful as she learned to make many kinds of fancy braiding.

In the early days, her husband made all the shoes for the family from home-tanned leather. For the girls’ Sunday shoes, Eliza embroidered velvet which he put on the soles to have them different and more beautiful. Sunday morning, the family found their shoes polished, standing in a row, and their clothes all in readiness if their mother had to sit up half the night before to have them so.

She was hospitable to a fault. It afforded her the greatest pleasure to serve apples, cake, or something to every caller who came. No one ever left her door hungry.

Along with her joys, she had many sorrows. A high sense of humor helped her to endure them. On July 13, 1887, her baby, Starling, swallowed a glass marble and, after a long time of intense suffering, passed away. June 6, 1893, her eldest daughter, Roxie, a girl of sixteen, was drowned. The shock was almost more than she could endure.

In February 1909, her husband, while quarrying rock, was hit in the stomach with a pine knot, which caused a growth. All that loving hands could do was done for him, but he died July 22, 1909. Now she was left alone with a house full of little ones to care for, but as ever she bravely met every obstacle that came her way.

In 1915, she went to Clay Springs and took up a homestead. But Snowflake was home to her, and she soon returned. Now the town of Snowflake desired her lot on which to build a new schoolhouse. She sold it and made a home in the outskirts of town. She made a beautiful home of it, but she was never entirely happy as she saw so few people.

In 1923, for the second time in her life, her home was destroyed by fire. She had never ceased to yearn for her old home in Utah, so she and her two youngest sons went to Salt Lake City. The boys were not contented, so they returned. Her children built her a new home, and for a time she was comparatively happy.

There were two things in her life that proved her undoing. When she came to Arizona, she was turned around. Although she learned directions, it never was right in a new place, and when cloudy she always went the way that seemed right to her. Also, whenever a disagreement arose she would always take a walk to calm her feelings.

On December 26, 1927, a disagreement came up between her and some of her sons concerning a land deal. True to her habit, she went out to take a walk. The boys went to town. She walked on for some time picking up shells and pretty rocks and putting them into her apron pocket. Suddenly a storm came up, obscuring the sun and all familiar landmarks. She went in the direction that seemed right. The rain fell in torrents, and when night came, it turned to drifting snow that covered everything in a few minutes.

The boys came home, and thinking that she was at some neighbor’s home helping out with sickness as she so often did, got ready and went to a dance. However, when they returned at midnight and she was not there, they were alarmed. The whole country loyally turned out as one man and joined in the search, but for thirteen days no trace was found. Then a lone hunter found her tracks and the place under a sheltering cedar where she had sat and covered her feet with earth to keep them from freezing. Her body was found out in the open flat. Under it, the snow had not melted, keeping it in a perfect condition until the searchers came.

She was a loving, faithful daughter, sister, mother, wife, and friend; what more can a woman be to merit the reward which is held out to a faithful, true Latter-day Saint. Such was Eliza Roxie Snow Smith Rogers. She passed away December 26, 1927, and was buried in Snowflake, Arizona.

Ellis and Boone:

During the time that Eliza Rogers was Primary president and stake Primary chorister, she organized a Primary jubilee, held four miles west of Snowflake on Cottonwood Wash. She taught the children many songs for the occasion, and everyone was invited. “People came from far and near. Older folks played games such as checkers and the children romped and played. . . . Large swings were put up and at noon a wonderful lunch was prepared.” The only incident to mar the occasion was when Owen Freeman, “one of the more active boys,” fell from a tree and broke his leg. Eliza’s husband simply set the leg and “the festivities continued, even to the braiding of the Maypole.”[101]

The faith of this mother is illustrated by two stories from her son Ralph. He wrote, “After Father died, we sometimes did not have everything we would care to eat. This isn’t a complaint, it is just a fact.” Then he told a story about how they never ran out of flour. Later Eliza took her boys to Clay Springs to live near her daughter Amanda and her husband, Edd Brewer. Ralph continued:

Because we didn’t have means to put up a good fence around our place, Edd kindly let us use ten acres of his land which was fenced so we might raise a crop. It was quite a job to plow and get the land ready but with patience and hard work this we managed to get the corn and a few rows of beans planted in check row fashion, so it could be cultivated every way. When the crop came up, [it] was us two younger boys’ job to do the cultivation. We had a pinto burro to do this with. One of us would ride him while the other held the cultivator to til[l] the ground around the crop. Finally we had gotten the ground all stirred up, along with some of the hills of corn, as boys will do. One morning Mother said, “Boys, I believe we better take the hoes and go over and hoe around our crop.” Like boys, we said, “Ah Ma, we’ve got every weed out of that corn and it don’t need no more stirring.” She just took her hoe and went for the crop about a mile away.

She should have rapped that hoe handle around the legs of two smart-alecky sons, but she didn’t. We were pleased to be left behind, as we were neither of us too fond of work. We played and got into all the mischief we could, finally ending up fighting. Then we went into a little bowery in the shade and went to sleep. I guess I was the first to wake up and like most boys we were hungry and wondering why Mother didn’t come back. Just as we started to find her, we could see her coming home. When she got close enough, I saw she was just as wet as if she had jumped into a tank of water. I said, “Well, did you get so warm you jumped into Edd’s tank?” She said, “No son, it rained on me.” There hadn’t been a cloud in sight to us two, so we chorused, “Rain, where?” She said, “I’ll tell you all about it.” So she told of hoeing around every hill of the crop, then said, “It looked so withered and dried up after I did that, I was quite discouraged.” Then we piped up with, “We told you so, Ma.” Her answer was, “Just wait, you aren’t so smart.” So we were took back somewhat, as we should have been, with shame. Then she told us that she told the Lord that she and her family needed that crop to live on the coming winter, would He please send some rain. She reminded Him she had done all in her power to make that a crop, now she was at her wits end and had to depend on His mercies. At this junction, she beheld a small cloud way over on the horizon. She asked that it be sent that way. This was done, and the extent of rain was all on her crop. The outcome was we sure had a bumper crop and even were able to let some of our neighbors have good seed for the next year. Mother proved to her sons that the Lord helps those who do their part.[102]

Emma Higbee Rogers

Author Unknown[103]

Maiden Name: Emma Higbee[104]

Birth: November 2, 1836; Caldwell Co., Missouri

Parents: Isaac Higbee Jr. and Keziah String[105]

Marriage: Henry Clay Rogers;[106] October 19, 1856

Children: Henry Collins (1857), Charles Ross (1859), Anna Keziah (1862), Joseph Higbee (1864), David John (1866), George Samuel (1869),[107] Martha Amelia (1871), Willis (1873), Isaac Higbee (1875), Emma Amanda (1879), Hester Caroline (1882)

Death: July 23, 1926; Mesa, Maricopa Co., Arizona

Burial: Mesa, Maricopa Co., Arizona

Emma Higbee, daughter of Isaac and Keziah String Higbee, was born November 2, 1836 in Caldwell County, Missouri. Her people came from New Jersey.[108] Her parents were driven from their homes in Jackson County, Missouri. They camped on the bank of the Missouri River, and it was here that Emma was born in the cold wintertime.

Two years later, they were again driven from their homes and her mother gave birth to another child, but both mother and child died.[109] Her oldest sister, Amanda, who was then twelve years old, cared for the family.[110] Two years later, her father married again, this time to a widow, Charlotte Woods Carter, with one son about her own age named John Carter. They became pals and remained so all their lives.

Emma Higbee and Henry Clay Rogers. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./Dilworth Brinton Jr.

On her eighth birthday, they broke the ice on the Mississippi River, and her father baptized her.

They came to Utah in 1848. Her father, Isaac Higbee, was a captain in their company.[111] There were few children in their company; the oxen were slow and Emma usually walked ahead of the teams. She was never afraid and was never molested. One time she walked too far on to go back; she came to a fork in the road but could not remember which one to take. Finally, she took one and came upon their oxen feeding. She decided to sit down on a rock and wait for the cow to go back for her calf so that she could follow it, but soon her father appeared, hunting for her.

One night they camped without water. She thought she would surely choke to death. She thought she could see a lake of water and begged her sister to go with her to get some, but she was afraid. It proved to be a mirage. She slept very little that night, and in the morning the men found water.

Her father was the first bishop of the 16th Ward in Salt Lake City. In 1849 they moved to Provo. They resided here for some time. In 1850, her oldest brother, Joseph Higbee, was killed by the Indians at the age of eighteen years.[112] His grave was the first in Provo.

At one time, they were with nothing to eat but suckers (fish) and mustard greens for three months. They had but one bran biscuit a day. Emma thought that one bran biscuit looked so small for such a big man as her father, so she pretended not to like the crust of hers and got him to eat it.

She married Henry Clay Rogers, October 19, 1856. When forty years of age, she left her home and friends and moved to Arizona.[113]

Emma Higbee Rogers. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./Dilworth Brinton Jr.

Henry Clay Rogers, possibly immediately before coming to Arizona; Ad. Anderson, photographer, Provo City, Utah. Photo courtesy of Wayne Standage Jr./Dilworth Brinton Jr.

Emma had a quiet, peaceful disposition and was loved by everyone. She was a counselor to the president of the Relief Society for years.

After her husband’s death on March 7, 1902, at Lehi, Arizona, she made a trip to Blanding, Utah, to visit her children. From there, she went on to Provo and Salt Lake City and visited relatives. She also made a trip to San Diego and Imperial, California, to visit her daughter.

While in Blanding, she had her first patriarchal blessing by Wayne H. Redd. He told her she should live as long as she desired life and pass away as in a sleep. She received her second eyesight. She loved to read and read most everything interesting and entertaining on week days, but on Sunday she never read anything of light nature. In her later years, she became quite hard of hearing. Shortly before her death, she fell and broke her leg just below the hip. She suffered considerably and seemed to lose the desire to live after that accident. After three weeks, she passed away quietly July 23, 1925, at the age of eighty-nine years.

Ellis and Boone:

Emma Higbee and Henry Clay Rogers were part of the Daniel W. Jones Company, the first group of Saints immigrating to the Salt River Valley and the founders of Lehi. In Brigham Young’s office, Rogers was given a vision of the place where the Saints would settle and knew the location when he saw the Salt River.[114] Henry Rogers is frequently mentioned in W. Earl Merrill’s books—as a counselor to Daniel Jones in 1877 and as a counselor to Alexander MacDonald in the Maricopa Stake in 1882.[115] In contrast, only one mention is made of Emma: “Here in Lehi women were appointed to act as a preliminary (Relief Society) organization . . . Harriet Emily Jones, president, Cyrena Merrill, first counselor, Emma Rogers, second counselor, and Melissa Merrill, secretary. . . . These sisters did a good work. . . . They pieced blocks, made quilts, and worked for the benefit of all . . . in the camp.”[116]

Emma’s family were some of the earliest converts in Ohio. They were living either in Clermont Co., Ohio, or Fulton, Hamilton Co., Ohio, when her grandparents, Isaac and Sarah Sommers Higbee, were baptized in May of 1832.[117] Almost immediately, three adult sons, Isaac Jr., John, and Elias, also joined with their wives.[118] Emma’s father, Isaac Jr. (1797–1874), settled in Jackson County, Missouri, in 1833, participated in the Battle of Crooked River, went on a mission, and helped build the Kirtland Temple. He was bishop of the Second Ward in Nauvoo, bishop of Salt Lake’s 16th Ward, and the first president of the Utah Stake at Provo. He was a justice of the peace, judge, county clerk, and county recorder in Utah County; he built a grist mill and butcher shop in Provo, served two more missions, and was circulation manager of the Deseret News.[119] With this list, it is easy to see how Emma and Henry C. Rogers followed in his footsteps when they came to Arizona.

Lorana Page Rogers

Author Unknown

Maiden Name: Lorana Page

Birth: August 17, 1843; Fairfield, Cumberland Co., New Jersey

Parents: Daniel Page and Mary Socwell

Marriage: Samuel Hollister Rogers; August 22, 1857

Children: none

Death: May 13, 1886; Ascención, Chihuahua, Mexico

Burial: Ascención, Chihuahua, Mexico

Lorana was born August 17, 1843, at Fairfield, New Jersey.[120] She was the daughter of Daniel (son of Joseph Page) and Mary Socwell Page.[121] They migrated from New Jersey to Utah. The trials and hardships they endured crossing the plains were many, although to them no sacrifice seemed too much to pay because of their testimony of the gospel.[122]

After arriving in Salt Lake City, the family again began to clear land, plow, fence, plant crops and build homes. Because of their faith, thrift and industry they succeeded. They were busy and happy performing their church duties faithfully and well.

Quoting Samuel H. Rogers’ journal: “I was receiving information from the bishop that he had a letter from president W. H. Dame of Salt Lake City, which he received from President Young stating that I had the privilege to keep another wife, therefore I asked Lorana if she would marry me. She answered in the affirmative.”

Although this photo was unlabeled, three of these people can be easily identified. The men are Samuel Hollister Rogers (left) and Joseph Page (brother to Lorana and Ruth). The woman on the right is Ruth Page Rogers. The other two women have been tentatively identified as Mary Socwell Page (mother of Lorana and Ruth) and Anna Doolittle Rogers (center). Photo courtesy of DUP album, Snowflake-Taylor Family History Library.

She was sealed to him Saturday August 22, 1857, at 8 p.m., fourteen years after he had blessed her as an infant, a little over two months old in Fairfield, New Jersey, while he was serving as a missionary there. Lorana accompanied her husband to Parowan, Utah, where she enjoyed the companionship of her oldest sister, Ruth, a second wife of three years to the same man she had married.[123]

Here in Parowan, the family enjoyed happy times with their hardships, which bound them close together. Her mother Mary Page spent the winter with her daughter in Parowan preceding her trip to Arizona.

Lorana left Parowan for Arizona, November 6, 1879, with her husband, Samuel H. Rogers; his first wife, Anna Matilda; Matilda’s sons Amos, Smith D., Davis S. (and Minnie, his wife of seventeen years); and Matilda’s daughters Sarah, Orpha, and Mary.[124] Samuel’s wife Ruth didn’t accompany them this trip.

The cold was severe, roads terrible, and suffering intense for them as well as their livestock. On this trip, they took a hive of bees which Lorana and Minnie carried to the top of Buckskin Mountain to keep it from tipping over from the rough road. At another time, while trying to steady the hive in crossing a gulch after dark, it slipped, the corner of which hit and broke one of Lorana’s ribs.

They arrived in Snowflake January 8, 1880. Lorana and husband lived in their covered wagon box at first, as there was too many for comfort in the log room. They later moved into a log house.

She, like her sister Ruth, had no children of her own, but she loved those of Anna Matilda’s, and they loved and respected her. Amos always spoke of her with the deepest respect. Everyone shared alike in this family, who lived the United Order.

While in Utah, they unitedly did much temple work. From Arizona, numerous trips were made to Utah to do work for their dead ancestors. Lorana did some temple work on her few long visits to her parents.

She was set apart as stake secretary of the Primary of the Eastern Arizona Stake September 23, 1881, working with her sister Ruth, who was president.

Her father, Daniel Page, died August 17, 1881. On October 18, 1882, she went to spend the winter with her mother in Parowan. She was so happy to have had this visit, for she did not see her mother again. Her mother died April 2, 1884.

Samuel H. Rogers was invited with the other polygamist brothers to meet Church authorities at Chihuahua, Mexico. He and his wife Lorana and son Davis S. left Snowflake February 4, 1885. They arrived at Chihuahua, Mexico, March 6, 1885. After the meeting, they lived camp-style with others in similar situations. They did their washing in the river. Lorana and Julia [unidentified], wife of Davis, did some fishing. Davis S. returned to Snowflake with Bishop John Hunt.[125]

Here again in Mexico, they began to plant trees, plow, and plant gardens for their maintenance. On December 5, 1885, they moved into a tent made of willows plastered with mud inside and out and covered over with a wagon cover. Again they moved to the town site selected for the colonists. Lorana and husband returned to where they had had their garden the year before and dug up their rhubarb to replant. While living here in Mexico, Lorana contracted smallpox, a very severe case, which was the cause of her death. The pox were so thick the scabs formed a complete mask over her face.[126] She died a faithful Latter-day Saint on May 13, 1886, at Ascención, Chihuahua, Mexico.[127]

Amanda R. Brewer says her father, Smith D., lived with Lorana and her husband quite a while.

Ellis and Boone:

Lorana Rogers was the first LDS victim of the smallpox epidemic of 1886 in northern Chihuahua, Mexico. This outbreak of smallpox was particularly severe and was not limited to Latter-day Saints. As Annie Johnson wrote, “The colonists were unaware of the fact that the scourge of smallpox menaced them as soon as they set foot on Chihuahua soil. Soon after they established camps on the banks of the Casas Grandes River, their friend José Maria Olguin, notified them that smallpox was in La Ascencion.”[128] Smallpox in the 1880s was easily recognizable, the course of the disease was understood, and it was feared.

That pioneers in Arizona and Mexico understood smallpox contagion is evidenced by the building of pesthouses. Johnson describes the one in Mexico as two rooms, likely with a dirt floor and dirt roof, and located on the outskirts of town. Mesa also had a pesthouse with its smallpox epidemic, and the Perkins family in Taylor immediately quarantined their sick.[129]

Those who had been vaccinated or those who had survived smallpox provided the care for patients. Elijah Pomeroy, who had recovered from the disease, not only cared for those in Mesa, but in 1889, he cared for Will Merrill in Mexico. Annie Johnson wrote that “Brother Merrill says this saved his life as Brother Pomeroy kept the pox and phlegm cleaned out of his throat so he could breathe.”[130] When the group from Arkansas reached Savoia, New Mexico, the Hunt family took care of those who came with smallpox and others who then contracted the disease. The recovery rate in New Mexico was not good; the youngest Hunt children, who had not been vaccinated, became sick with smallpox and recovered, but soon the Savoia Pioneer Cemetery had twelve or thirteen graves from smallpox.[131]

As medical historian Frances Quebbeman wrote, “Vaccination against smallpox had been in vogue for three-quarters of a century by 1870, thus outbreaks which occurred in Arizona cities until well into the twentieth century need never have occurred.”[132] In 1796, Edward Jenner found that material from lesions of a related virus, cowpox, provided immunity.[133] Bishop John Hunt and his family were vaccinated when they lived in San Bernardino, California. Quebbeman noted that troops stationed in Arizona “were vaccinated and re-vaccinated regularly,” thus there were few smallpox cases among soldiers in Arizona.[134] In Mexico, Bishop William Derby Johnson Jr. was able to procure a small amount of vaccine, and also used the old variolation method.[135]

In Territorial Arizona, health officers were appointed, first to enforce quarantines and later to encourage vaccination. By 1883, physicians began to vaccinate Native Americans, who had no natural immunity and died at a higher rate. But there was little vaccination in Mexico. Dr. Nelson C. Bledsoe of Tucson described a smallpox outbreak in Bisbee shortly after the turn of the century. He wrote, “Smallpox, which had been the scourge of the world before the discovery of vaccination by Jenner, was still a dreaded disease in the early 1900s. Compulsory vaccination had not reached its maximum benefits. Along the Mexican border smallpox was still quite prevalent. In 1906 I was appointed assistant health officer of the Bisbee district, and at this time the so-called ‘Pest House’ was located on the edge of the garbage dump. It consisted of a one room shack where the inmates cooked, ate and slept. Some individual who had had the disease was installed as nurse.” Bledsoe then described patient care by family members, his own “hospital” rounds, an escapee, and a case of black smallpox. He concluded, “No one can doubt the efficiency of successful vaccination. . . . Thank God for vaccination.”[136]

Louesa Bee Harper Rogers

Autobiography, FWP[137]

Maiden Name: Louesa Bee Harper

Birth: April 18, 1868; Big Cottonwood, Salt Lake Co., Utah

Parents: Harvey John Harper[138] and Louesa Park[139]

Marriage: Joseph Higbee Rogers;[140] June 10, 1888

Children: Laura Bea (1889), Emma Grace (1891), Louesa May (1894), Joseph Rulon (1897), Alta Ione (1900), Grant Harper (1902), Thora Lee (1906), Cyril Elmont (1908)

Death: June 25, 1953; Mesa, Maricopa Co., Arizona

Burial: Mesa, Maricopa Co., Arizona

As I look back from 1880 till now, [I] see the marvelous changes that have taken place and what a different attitude that the young people have today of getting along and being somebody. Of course the future holds big things for them with the wheels all set ready to go and the training they have had from their old pioneer parents, for the aim of the pioneers was to build up the waste places and make homes. All down the stream of life, they have inculcated in the minds of their children to pick up the reins and go on and on. Sometimes they get a little craving to go right on and think they should have fine homes and automobiles like their parents have. But when they step out in partnership with each other for themselves, they begin to realize what a task it is. But I believe down in their hearts they know it is a task for themselves, and they are obliged to go on if they have the right kind of metal. And very few of this class of people fall by the wayside. We all know what this world holds at this time along with the tight times in money matters and all the terrible things that are happening. It will take great strength of character to pull through. In my youth, we did not have all these things of science to confront us. Our biggest aim was to get as good an education as this new country of Arizona afforded us, and now I can look back and see more clearly what education has done for the world and what it will do in the next fifty years, but I do know one thing. It will have all of this older generation of pioneers whirled right off the earth.

Well, before I forget my homely life, I had better go on with it. My parents were pioneers coming to Utah in 1847, leaving Utah for Arizona in 1880. Now from 1847 to 1880 would give Salt Lake City a chance to become quite a city. Then to take a family of small children into an unknown desert, the oldest child being twelve and the youngest one year, would raise up another bunch of pioneers. And that is what my father, Harvey John Harper, did. Although I was but twelve years of age, just old enough to know and realize all of the hardships and trials, I think I worried more than anyone else because I mourned for a long time for my old home and playmates and schoolmates of Big Cottonwood, Utah. I thought often of my old grandmother, Louise Smith Park, standing in the doorway with her arms up saying, “My God; my children all are gone. I’ll never see them again.” But never once did I hear my mother complain or regret their coming to Arizona. My mother would mourn for her dear parents, brothers and sisters, and friends sometimes and wind up singing with tears streaming down her cheeks:

Do they think of me at home?

In my happy early days

Do they ever think of me

I who shared their every grief

I who mingled in their glee.

Have their hearts grown old and strange

For the one now forced to roam,

Do they ever think of me,

Do they ever think of me at home?[141]

I have been made to believe that it was the Lord’s will, and feel thankful every day of my life, that we came to Arizona. We struggled on, and things that we didn’t much like we tried to improve on. We women folks made our own furniture and gardens. We had big luscious watermelons and grapes from our gardens, had cows and chickens to help with the food supply.

My childhood slipped happily away and before I knew it, I was madly in love with the man who was to become my husband. He was Joseph Higbee Rogers, and we were married June 10, 1888, by Bishop Thomas E. Jones of Lehi. Lehi is located four miles north of Mesa City, Arizona, a small town, the first [Mormon] settlement in the Salt River Valley. D. W. Jones was captain of the first company from Utah who were called by Brigham Young.[142] Henry Clay Rogers, one of the company, was my husband’s father, and he saw the place in vision when he was asked by Brigham Young to take his family and go to help build up Arizona. In his willingness to go, he saw the place as President Brigham Young said, “You will know the place when you get there, and you will see a man wearing a black hat and riding a white horse,” which was true. Four years later, my father, Harvey John Harper, and his wife, Louesa Park, and seven children arrived at this place in January 1881, and in the year 1888, we began our life’s work.

Our wedding took place at my father’s home, with the whole community in attendance. A program and banquet spread all outdoors on a long table with all kinds of good things to eat, and the only thing we were short on was the ice cream. To run out before all the guests were served was very humiliating. Our presents were numerous, and to this day, I still have some. Right away we moved to our new home (new to us). Joe’s father gave or sold him the old place of eighteen acres with one large adobe room, flat-roofed Mexican style, which we fixed up for our home. On a big bare floor, we had rag rugs which I took from my hope chest, also some nice quilts which my mother had helped me make. All the rags and pieces I sewed into a carpet. I had two large sacks full, ready for the weaver as soon as we could afford it. We had a fireplace in one corner of this large 14 by 22 [foot] room which provided warmth in winter. Of course we had a bedstead and a small dining room table and a chair or two and very small windows which didn’t cost much to shade. For my first good pillows, I gave 50¢ for a setting of duck eggs from which I raised the ducks, plucked the feathers, and made some lovely pillows.

Now for our kitchen: our stove was a pair of tongs and some rocks out in the yard on which we cooked our meals for three months before we were able to buy a stove. At this time, my Joe was hauling hay, working on dams, roads, and whatever he could get with his team and wagon. He also worked on the thrashing machine. I remember we went to Phoenix to buy a stove, made a small payment down, and in time got it paid for. With a cow my father gave me and a pasture to run her on, we made a pretty good living and a lot of pride to go with it.

Well, in due time, we began to prepare for an increase in the family, so put a partition in our big room, put down our new carpet, all in preparation for the great event which happened on the June 21, 1889, which brought to our happy home little Laura Bee, a darling little girl with brown eyes and auburn hair. In the meantime, my husband procured a job in Reymert, Arizona, doing blacksmithing.[143] We lived here until the year of the flood, 1891, when the river ran over its banks and we moved up onto the mesa until everything was normal again. Then in our home in Lehi, Emma Grace was born, a beautiful little girl with blue eyes and light hair.

My husband went into the blacksmith business on the mesa. We traded our water right, which was worth about $800, for a lot and sold our land for $250. With this money and lot, we built a one-room house with a lean-to. This was a lumber house. We dug a well and in due time, rigged up machinery out of an old mowing machine, using the wheel and an old burro for the pumping power, and erected a big square galvanized tank on four tall posts, and with pipes the water was carried into the house. This was the first water system in Mesa and was soon adopted by others.

While I was living in Lehi, I made many a dollar sewing. I sewed for the neighbors and made shirts and dresses for the Indians. My sewing machine was a Wheeler and Wilson.

Mesa pioneers, left to right: Orson and Rebecca Allen Phelps, Serena McGuire Pomeroy, Louesa Harper Rogers, Adelaide Allen Peterson, and Rosina Pomeroy Brewer (69). Photo courtesy of Lucille Brewer Kempton.

In the year 1894, on November 5th, Louesa May was born. She was a dear little girl, another brown-eyed, auburn-haired darling. She was a joy and a treasure even though our hopes had been that we would get a boy. The blacksmith business was taking good care of us, and we were very happy. During this time while Louesa was a baby, we, with Hunsakers, Dr. Williams, and Charley Mullins, made a trip to the Mogollon Mountains on a hunting trip. The trip was made over the old Reno Mountain road. We made a trip alright, but it was very dangerous. On the way home, our wagon broke down on Ox Bow Hill, and we had to ride home with the Williams.[144]

I’ll never forget when we arrived home, we found our house had been robbed and an old cow had taken possession of our back porch. But we had a wonderful trip and felt thankful that we arrived home safe and sound.

On May 16, 1898, Joseph Rulon was born. A boy! Just think of it! Our joy was complete, a beautiful baby with blue eyes and light hair.

In the year 1900, on May 30, Alta Ione, a little girl, came to us for a short time. She took the whooping cough nine days after birth, but stayed with us three months and passed away, August 31, 1900.

On January 9, 1902, a little son came to make us happy; Grant Harper was the name we gave him. After this baby came, I was called to work in the Primary. I was secretary for about fifteen years.

In the meantime, we bought the Orlando Merrill home on West Second Street. Orlando married my sister Nellie, who later died with typhoid.[145] Next added to our home was Thora Lee, born June 3, 1906, another sweetheart with brown eyes and auburn hair. Then on October 12, 1908, another darling boy came. His name was Cyril Elmont, and this completed our family circle.

At this time also my grandson Norris Steverson came to live with us while his mother taught school.[146] At one time, they were all in school, one beginning while another was in grammar and another in high school and also teaching. All the girls completed and graduated from Tempe Teachers’ College. Bee taught in Mexico City, Grace and Louesa here in Mesa, and Thora took up stenography and office work instead of teaching. Even the grandson, Norris Steverson, finished and is now teaching athletics in the Training School for teachers at the Arizona State Teachers’ College. All the children are married now and have families.

Joseph Jr. is now manager for the flour mill in Safford. Grant is working for the Johnson Pearce Produce Company in Mesa. At the present time, Bee is teaching in Mesa Public Schools, Grace is married to Dr. Hyrum Nielson, chiropractor in Mesa; Louesa is married to Karl Macdonald, who works for Warner First National Picture Inc.; and Thora is married to Clyde Harmon and lives in Salinas, California. He is a fruit and lettuce shipper.[147] In the meantime, the blacksmith shop was merged with the O. S. Stapley Implement Co., as my husband became a partner in the firm. I cannot begin to tell all the interesting things that happened after that; the story gets bigger and bigger. I do know that we were quite successful with our family, giving them the advantages of education and music with all the power we possessed.

We did our best to keep up our Church obligations and kept out of debt as much as possible. We have never lived in a mortgaged home, which is saying quite a bit. We once reckoned that our properties and holdings were worth about $1,000,000, but through depressions and reverses, we now can figure our holdings in a nutshell.[148]

Eight children were born to us, one of which died in infancy. All the girls graduated from Tempe Teachers’ College. Some became teachers and some held office positions. One son was manager of a flour mill in Safford, and the other worked for a produce company in Mesa.[149]

On June 10th of this year, 1938, all our children came home to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary, our golden wedding, and many friends came in to wish us many happy returns of the day.

My hobby is working in the soil raising flowers, home building, politics, and movies, the short cut to the happenings of the world. I have even been guilty of dancing a jig. One time especially was at the Heard Pioneer picnic in a large ballroom before several thousand people.[150]

My travels have been quite extensive in the United States, from the coast of the Pacific to the coast of the Atlantic and from the southern Arizona border to the Yellowstone Park in Wyoming.

Ellis and Boone:

Louesa Bee Harper Rogers lived another fifteen years after writing this sketch. Her husband, Joseph Higbee Rogers, died on October 17, 1945, and then she died June 25, 1953; both are buried in the Mesa Cemetery.

Not mentioned here are Louesa’s genealogical activities. For the sesquicentennial year of the Relief Society, a detailed history was published, and the authors noted that “from 1914 to 1921 genealogy formed a prominent part of the theology course work” throughout the Church.[151] As part of this emphasis, the Church encouraged both the Relief Society and the Genealogical Society of Utah to send delegates to the International Congress of Genealogy held in July 1915 in conjunction with the world’s fair in San Francisco. Louesa Rogers was part of the Relief Society’s delegation to this conference.[152] The Relief Society Magazine encouraged the women to save their money and thought that fifty dollars would pay for their travel and accommodations.[153] On July 22 in Salt Lake City, nearly 250 men and women boarded a short fourteen-car train for California, but Louesa Rogers may have traveled directly to San Francisco from Arizona. A day-long preconference session was held in which the Genealogical Society of Utah explained the Church’s family history activities, and Joseph Fielding Smith and Susa Young Gates were appointed to some of the permanent committees. The proceedings were published in the Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine in the October 1915 and January 1916 issues, showing that, according to a history of the Genealogical Society of Utah, “LDS Church genealogists were making their influence felt.”[154]

Lydia Ann Herbst Rogers

Roberta Flake Clayton, FWP

Maiden Name: Lydia Ann Herbst

Birth: July 24, 1861; Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co., Utah

Parents: John Herbst and Anna Eva Dittmore (Dittmar)

Marriage: Amos Rogers; December 29, 1887

Children: Anna (1888), Chloe (1889), Amos Philemon (1892), John Marcus (1894), Sarah Elizabeth (1897), Eugene Herbst (1903)

Death: November 28, 1931; Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Snowflake, Navajo Co, Arizona

Memories that “Annie” Rogers loved to recall were of her early childhood, spent in a pleasant home, although it was a humble one—they could afford no better—with a firm but understanding father and a calm, loving, and patient mother with a guiding sympathy.

Her father, John Herbst, was born in Saye, Meiningen, Germany, on May 27, 1826. He came with his wife, Anna Eva Dittmore, to America in 1853 and settled at Quincy, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. There they continued to reside until the spring of 1860, when they moved to Mill Creek, one of the suburbs of Salt Lake City.[155] Their first home in the West was a one-roomed adobe that had previously been used as a stable but was thoroughly cleaned, whitewashed, and made habitable, and for a year served as the home of the Herbst family. In it on July 24, 1861, was born Lydia Ann. She was the fourth child in a family of nine children, seven girls and two boys. Father Herbst was a shoemaker, having learned the trade in his native country, and it stood him in very good stead in this new home. He was also a good farmer and provided well for his family, who were never in want for the necessities of life, most of which were produced on his own farm. He soon built a comfortable home, where he lived until the time of his death, September 26, 1897. One of his characteristics was a great love for fine horses, and he always had the best in teams and carriages. Lydia Ann’s mother was very methodical in her habits and kept her home in readiness for work, thus creating an influence for activity. There was nothing in the realm of homemaking that she did not understand, and she early instilled these excellent qualities into her children. All of this practical training stood Annie in good stead, because her mother was an invalid for seven years before her death, and Annie had to take her share of the responsibility. She assisted not only in the housework and caring for her invalid mother but in herding cows, piling hay in the fields, or binding grain into bundles. The farm had to first be cleared, and Annie did her share of that and enjoyed the pungent odor, as well as the bright, blazing fire of burning sage.

The nearest school was three miles away, so Annie had little chance of an education, only that which she acquired by her own efforts.

Lydia Ann Herbst Rogers. Photo courtesy of FamilySearch.

Lydia Ann Herbst Rogers. Photo courtesy of DUP album, Snowflake-Taylor Family History Center.

Her parents were hard workers and early taught their children that work was necessary and honorable. Annie remembered very vividly the struggle against grasshoppers when they would be driven into heaps of straw and then burned. At the age of thirteen, Annie’s was the responsibility of being the cook for the family and often times performed her task with her baby sister sitting on her hip. That, combined with the hard work she had to do during her early girlhood, was the cause of a great deal of suffering in her after life. After her mother’s death, May 8, 1880, and a stepmother came to live in the home, Annie went away to work, coming home occasionally to fix the favorite dishes of her father. He was never sparing of his praise and would show his appreciation by saying slyly, “I know who made this.”

It was on a frequent trip of Mr. Amos Rogers of Snowflake, Arizona, to Salt Lake City that he met Miss Herbst at the home of a business associate. He found that she was the artist who prepared the delicious meals, and, as Mother Eve won Adam through his love for something good to eat, so Amos felt this was the girl he had waited so long for.

One of the qualities for which Amos Rogers was noted, was the earnestness and dispatch with which he did things. His lovemaking was no exception. His time was limited; he must know his answer. Snow would soon make the mountains between Salt Lake City and his Arizona home impassable. He often said his courtship was “quick and devilish”; he didn’t want to come back without her, so “yes” to him meant now or never.

One of the relatives said, “Amos can’t keep a city girl.” Mrs. Cannon, with whom she had been staying for three and a half years answered, “Well, if Amos Rogers can’t keep that girl he don’t deserve a wife.” He probably decided he could “keep her,” and with only one week’s preparation, they embarked on the sea of matrimony on December 29, 1887.

“Time and tide wait for no man,” and Dan Cupid had a cruel rival in King Winter. While Dan kept the fires of love kindled and burning brightly within the hearts of the lovers, old Winter sifted his sparkling whiteness over hill and dale and heaped the snow so high in the Buckskin Mountains that there was no chance of anyone getting through, so Mr. Rogers and his bride had to bide their time and visited along the way with friends until the snow had melted sufficiently for them to reach Lee’s Ferry. But the Colorado River was frozen over, and here they had to remain nearly two weeks, while the ice was chopped loose and floated down stream. When they had safely crossed the treacherous river, there was still “Lee’s Backbone” to be crossed. The roughest place called a road on the whole trip was this. It seemed almost impossible to drive over it without the wagon tipping over, just one big boulder after another and a dugway so steep and winding it took hours to get up one side and down the other. From the apex of this terrible precipice there was a sheer drop of 1000 feet on one side, and only with the greatest dexterity and complete control of the team could the descent be made.

The homecoming of Mr. Rogers with his bride was an event. She was an acquisition to the community, and such a one as she proved to be—particularly in the field of nursing. It is safe to say there is not a home in Snowflake that has not been blessed by her knowledge of the symptoms of common diseases and their treatment. She knew the healing herbs and their properties. Her homemade salves, liniments, and medicines were sought after by all who were afflicted. This knowledge, together with the fact that she was never too busy, too tired, or too ill herself to go, may have been partly responsible for her untimely death. As she used sometimes to say when friends or family remonstrated with her for neglect of herself, “If I don’t keep going my misery will kill me!” (she was a constant sufferer herself) or, “When I stop, I’m a gonner sure!” Whatever the epidemic, she did all she could to relieve suffering. At one time, diphtheria was raging in town, and four of her children had it before it was stamped out. She would doctor her own, then rush off, maybe to the farthest end of the little town, to take care of others who were in a more dangerous condition. No matter how dark or cold the night, if she were needed, she never considered her own comfort and after once being called to a home on a case she felt responsible for it until all danger was over. Literally, she gave her life in the service of others and was beloved by all.

Mrs. Rogers was the mother of six children, three boys and three girls. Her home was always neat and attractive and a place everyone loved to go to. She early taught her children to do their part, and none of them are afraid to work. Each was given all of the advantages possible for an education and are honorable and respected citizens in the community.

Finally, her poor tired body was given, by death, the rest she could not have in life, and on November 28, 1931, she passed away, beloved and appreciated by all, as is evidenced by the following sentiments expressed at her funeral by the principal of the Snowflake Union High School, Silas L. Fish:

Once upon a time there lived a little woman just under the hill. She was so tiny and quiet that she could come and go without notice. She was so unassuming and retiring that she seldom went unbidden to the home of those not in need. When someone was wanted for a position of pomp and ceremony, for a presiding officer, or for an actor before the footlights, this little woman was not named—she was too shy, too unassuming. In fact many of her stalwart neighbors knew little of her worth or abilities until the dread specter, sickness, entered their homes. When all else had failed to drive the specter away, and dread and fear seemed to be making the home their habitation, this little woman would slip in, and as she entered, fear was dispelled as a mist before the rising sun, hope began to shine from the despairing eyes, and as if by magic, health and peace replaced sickness and dread. Never was welcomed guest more gladly received than was this little woman in the home of need. Her hands, hard and rough from excessive toil, had a velvety touch and a knack of chasing away aches and pain, and of bringing back hope and health. Verily a ministering angel she became. Often in the wee small hours of the night, braving storms and cold, she would leave her comfortable bed, unbidden except by her own anxiety for the sick, and grope her way across town to see how a patient was doing whose fever was about to break, or whose suffering was severe. Her own frail body, so accustomed to pain, never knew exhaustion while another needed her service. Verily hath Christ said that he that would be greatest in the kingdom of Heaven must be servant of all. The throne of glory giveth no brighter crown than to this our sister. God bless her memory.[156]

She never spent an idle moment, together with the housekeeping, cooking, and sewing necessary for her family; she made quilts, almost without number, has hooked, crocheted, braided, and woven rugs and carpets, made butter and cheese for her family, had time for gardening, and cared for bees and chickens. The products from all of these were supplied, not only to her table, but to that of others in need, with a surplus for the stores in exchange for small articles or food which she could not produce.

Ellis and Boone:

Roberta Flake Clayton gave this sketch to the FWP on October 24, 1936; it was one of her first submissions. In the sketch, she used the phrase “as Mother Eve won Adam through his love for something good to eat” when talking about the courtship of Amos and Annie Rogers. During the first part of the Great Depression, Clayton was living in Snowflake, and when she had no money for a gift, she would often write a poem. In 1934 she wrote a poem giving advice to a bride and groom, and the end of the poem included a similar reference to Adam and Eve:

Now Merle will do her part, I know,

Bake, stew and broil, care for the dough,

Keep her house both clean and neat,

And thru it all try to be sweet,

But one thing, Merle, you must not scold

If he stays away till the meal gets cold,

And leaves his clothing laying round,

And searches for things that can’t be found.

No man from Adam’s time till now

Was on time to meals, or could find things, somehow.

And that’s the reason, I believe

The forbidden fruit was laid on Eve.

She got hungry and could not wait

And so she went ahead and ate.[157]

Minnie Alice Wooley Rogers

Roberta Flake Clayton, FWP Interview

Maiden Name: Minnie Alice Wooley[158]

Birth: October 10, 1862; Nebraska City, Otoe Co., Nebraska

Parents: Robert Patterson Wooley and Martha Jane Reagan

Marriage: Davis Samuel Rogers; October 30, 1879

Children: Reuben Davis (1881), Alice (1883), Samuel Patterson (1886), Jane (1888), Eda (1891), Florence (1892), William Isaac (1895), Blanche (1899), Willard Ahlin (1901), Levi Robert (1903), Thurza (1906)

Death: December 25, 1952; Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Burial: Snowflake, Navajo Co., Arizona

Way back in Nebraska on an autumn day, October 10, 1862, a wee baby girl came to the home of Robert Patterson and Martha Jane Reagan Wooley. They named her Minnie Alice, but as the name was almost larger than the baby, they shortened it to Minnie, and as such she was known throughout her girlhood and for many years, but, now affectionately, her friends call her “Aunt Minnie.”

When she was only three months old, she became a traveler—the mode of conveyance a covered wagon and a yoke of oxen, and their destination Parowan, Utah. Her father remained in Nebraska for two years working in the mines before joining his wife and two babies. The wife was a very ambitious woman and during these hard times learned carding, spinning, and knitting to help with the family finances.[159]

They remained in Parowan for about twelve years and then moved to the Sevier River where the family lived in a dugout for several years, finally moving into a place called Junction where they bought a nice home, and there they lived until the death of both parents. Mr. Wooley lived to be one hundred years and five days old.[160]

As there was a family of nine children, each had to assist in providing for the family, and Minnie’s girlhood was mostly spent in working for other people. When she was so small she had to stand on a chair while washing dishes, she would often go to help the neighbors. She didn’t mind “doing dishes,” strange as that may seem. She would tend babies for busy mothers, who, because she was so dependable, were never afraid to leave them alone with her. For her services, they would give her five or ten cents. When she was twelve years, she did the work for a family consisting of a sick mother and eight children. For this service, she received the sum of fifty cents a week.

She was never idle; two summers were spent away from home drying fruit. In the evenings she would spin or knit. One of the diversions was for two or three of her girl friends to bring their spinning wheels over and contest to see which could spin their amount of yarn first. The last one through had to make the molasses candy for the others. Her mother always joined in the fun, while her father would parch corn for the girls while they worked. This was only “field corn,” but seasoned up with butter and a little salt, the girls thought it was very good.

Like Ruth of old, the girls would go to the fields to glean the wheat left by the reapers, as every head of wheat was precious in those days when there were so many pests to destroy it. Many times has Minnie joined in rabbit and grasshopper wars.

On being asked how long her school lasted, Minnie answered, “Just long enough for me to learn to say my A B C’s frontwards and backwards, about three weeks in all.” Always she has felt the desire for an education, and no one would guess that she was not a high school graduate, and the things she has learned in her life have been more valuable than those obtained from books, while among her descendants she has several school teachers.

Davis and Minnie Rogers with children (back, left to right), Reuben and Samuel, Jane standing, Florence on lap, c. 1893. In an era when women made all the clothes for their family, the details in this photograph are impressive. Note the white herringbone embroidery on Jane's dress, the crocheted edge on her white sash, and the crocheted lace collar. Minnie's dress has a pleated ruffle at the hem, extensive beadwork at the neck, and then the plaid design in the material is accentuated near the sleeve with French knots. The baby, although out of focus, appears to be wearing a knitted or crocheted sweater. Photo courtesy of Kendall Bettridge.

As a young woman, Minnie was strong and robust, rather small in stature, with sparkling blue eyes and a wealth of medium-brown hair that almost touched the floor when she sat in a chair. In those days, a woman’s crowning glory was beautiful hair, and in this she was highly favored.

Because of her fun-loving nature, she was a favorite among the other young people, and she had suitors, not a few. Some of them would ride for a distance of twenty-six miles to take her to the dances. Many a time has she has danced until nearly sunrise and then gone home and done the family washing. “And go to sleep over the washboard,” laughs Aunt Minnie, as she recalls those days. Distance seemed greater in the days of the horse and buggy, but time was of no consequence to those in search of love, and “the longest way round was the shortest way home.” When at last she selected her Prince Charming, one of the neighbors went to Parowan and broke the news that Davis Rogers had caught a Minnie (Minnow) in the Sevier River that weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds. He spared little time in making her his own, and they were married October 30, 1879, when she was seventeen years of age. On November 6, 1879, her wedding journey began, and a long, hard, perilous one it was, lasting three months. In company with the family of her husband’s father, Samuel H. Rogers, and two other families, the Wests and the Wardells, Minnie left a good home, loving parents, brothers, sisters, and friends for Arizona to join the pioneers who had gone previously to make a home in that desolate waste inhabited by Indians and outlaws.

During this journey they encountered much snow, and Minnie says she has walked many a mile in snow up to her knees helping to drive the cows. One of the most trying experiences of any, if one can be singled out as worse than any other, is when they came over “Lee’s Backbone,” the terrible mountain encountered immediately after being ferried across the Colorado River, and which was the dread of every traveler who came from Utah to Arizona. Over this precipice, she and another woman walked and carried a stand of bees.[161] These were probably brought along to provide sweetness later for that lacking in this honeymoon.

Although the memories of those heartbreaking days still brings a shudder to her who so bravely passed through them, she also recalls the nights when the bed was made down on the ground where the snow or rocks had been cleared, where they could lay their poor, tired, undernourished bodies down to rest. It was the only time these two lovers could be alone. Several times on this trip Minnie fainted from exhaustion and lack of food. Their teams and stock also suffered. Some of their animals died from lack of feed and water, and some of them were so footsore and poor that they were left behind in care of her husband and some of the other men and did not arrive at the settlement known as Sunset until two days after the teams.

The weary emigrants remained in Sunset two days visiting former neighbors and friends who were located there, arriving in Snowflake January 8, 1880.

Two of the brothers of Davis, Smith D. and Amos, had come to Snowflake in the fall of 1878 and had built a one-room log house on the hill south of town. Into this room this family of about fifteen people moved. The wagon boxes, with their bows and covers, served as sleeping quarters for the families and were the only privacy afforded.

Arizona was famous for its terrific sand storms in those early days, and after one of these blows—which usually lasted through days and nights—had overturned one of these covered wagons, the boxes were removed from the running gears of the others and placed them on logs or stones on the ground where the wind could not have such force. After the wagon which had been blown over was righted, it was discovered that many articles of apparel had been carried away by the gentle zephyr(?), among them hats belonging to Minnie and one of the other girls.[162] Minnie’s was never recovered—and she mourns it to this day, as it was her only one, and she says the prettiest she ever had. Sarah found hers at the mouth of the canyon over a mile away.

The wheat for bread had to be ground on a small coffee mill; it was quite a task as the family was large and sometimes the wheat was rusty and had to be “picked over.” Each member had to take turns in the grinding, and when it was Minnie’s turn, she would go away by herself and, as she thought of her home and loved ones so far away, tears were often mingled with the wheat.

The first June they were here, Davis, his wife, his father, and his father’s wife took the cattle and went up to Phoenix Park, where they had previously gone in March and planted a crop.[163] Here the women made butter. It was a lovely location and would have been very pleasant had there not been the constant fear of Indians who were frequent visitors. They used to come and sharpen their knives at Father Rogers’s grindstone and would often take delight in brandishing them over Minnie’s head just to see her fright, though she tried hard not to show the fear she felt. She says she had to keep her mouth shut tight on these occasions to keep her heart from jumping out. As was customary with the early settlers among the Indians, it was thought better to feed than fight them, and many a meal was given to them, also some of their best cattle; but, in spite of this, when the Apaches went on the warpath, they spared nothing, as was proven when they drove the Rogers and all the settlers in the mountains from their belongings and took or destroyed everything. The precious beehive carried over Lee’s Backbone, and which had been taken to Phoenix Park with them, shared the same fate. Mrs. Rogers can’t be blamed for hoping the bees retaliated.

On August 21, 1880, Davis and Minnie moved to their home—a one-roomed log house, but it seemed like heaven to them. Perhaps one thing that helped to make it more realistic was that, when the rains came, the roof leaked beautifully.

It was not until after they were the parents of five children that Minnie and her husband visited their old home in Utah. During the last illness of her mother she was called to her bedside, and, though it seemed impossible for the mother to live until she could make the trip from Arizona, her determination kept Death’s Angel away until after Minnie arrived. Then she passed peacefully away. Mrs. Rogers remained with her father a few months before returning home.[164]

In 1917, when the United States entered the World War, one of her sons, Isaac, was drafted into service and went overseas. Eleven children came to this couple, all born in the home on the hill. Three died in early infancy.[165] The others have grown, married, and have families of their own.

Her husband died July 5, 1928, but not before he provided a beautiful little home where they lived very happily together for many years, and where she is always at home to friends and family.

She has led rather a retiring life. Her deeds of charity and kindness are never told by herself but are remembered and cherished by the many to whom she has ministered. Very liberal always with her smiles and kind words, as well as her well-cooked meals, daintily served on a tray and carried to the homes of her sick neighbors. Entirely unselfish, her husband often remarked that, “If she had anything especially good, each of her children had to share even if there were none left for herself.”

She loves to have her friends come and dine with her, and the meal is never complete without one of her suet puddings for which she is famous. Mrs. Rogers’s artistic ability has found expression in the many beautiful quilts she makes. Her life has been filled with hard work, sadness, gladness, sunshine, and shadow; but, through it all, she managed to see the funny side, to smile, and to help others to see the silver lining of every cloud.

Ellis and Boone:

Minnie Wooley Rogers was one of not too many people who came to Utah without her family being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This does not mean that there were no Mormon connections, but neither of her parents were members when they first came to Utah. They were not baptized until after living in Utah for some time.[166]

Robert and Martha Wooley lived in Nebraska City, Otoe Co., Nebraska, in 1859 at the time of their marriage. In 1860, Robert listed his occupation as farmer, and living next door was Martha’s mother and her half-brother, James Applegate.[167] Also living in the same town was a half-sister, Lydia Ann Applegate, who was married to Allumbee Lemmon. Unbeknownst to the Wooleys, Allumbee Lemmon and his family were Mormons. John Lemmon, Allumbee’s father, had been a member of the high council at Adam-ondi-Ahman in 1838 and so was with the Saints in both Missouri and Illinois.[168] However, he died at Quincy, Illinois, in 1846, and only some of the family went to Utah.[169] Allumbee, his brother Peter, and his mother Priscilla were living in Nebraska City in 1860.

In 1862, Allumbee Lemmon decided to take his family and his mother to Utah, and they settled at Parowan.[170] Some descendants remember that his wife did not even know that he was a Mormon until they reached Utah. A short time later, his brother Peter also started west. James Applegate and Martha Wooley traveled with him, taking her one-year-old son, Franklin, and three month old daughter, Minnie.[171] They may have originally planned to go on to the goldfields of California, but they stopped at Parowan. There Martha was responsible for the support of her two children. Although records are unclear, with this move to Utah, Martha Wooley may have been leaving her husband; they later reconciled instead of divorcing.

It was not until several years later that Robert Wooley joined his family in Utah. He may have worked for a time in the mines at Pioche, Nevada; working in mines in Nebraska, as reported in the sketch, seems unlikely. But by 1870, the family was living in Parowan; three children are listed in the census: Franklin (age 9), Minna A. (age 8), and Robert M. (age 9 months).[172] James Applegate was also living in Parowan with his wife and one-month-old baby. Minnie, as the oldest daughter in the Wooley family, helped her mother both around the house and by working for others.

The 1880 census lists Robert Wooley and family as living in Panguitch, but family members remember them homesteading a ranch at Spry, Garfield County, where they lived in a dugout.[173] Minnie is also listed with the family, although six months earlier she had married and started for Arizona. Finally, sometime before 1900, the Wooley family made their last move—to Junction, Piute Co., Utah.[174] While living in Junction, Martha ran a boarding house. One document states that Robert Wooley was involved in mining ventures and was away from home much of the time; he is described as a taciturn man.

Minnie Alice Wooley Rogers lived in Snowflake until her death on December 25, 1952. Although her family was not Latter-day Saints when they came to Utah, she was an integral part of the Mormon community of Snowflake. Family members in both Arizona and Utah remember that it was Minnie who traveled to Utah after her mother’s death and helped her father go to the Manti Temple to be sealed to his wife.

Ruth Page Rogers

Grandchild of Samuel Hollister Rogers

Maiden Name: Ruth Page

Birth: May 1, 1823; Downs, Cumberland Co., New Jersey

Parents: Daniel Page and Mary Ellen Socwell

Marriage: Samuel Hollister Rogers; February 21, 1853

Children: None

Death: May 20, 1907; Roosevelt, Duchesne Co., Utah

Burial: Roosevelt, Duchesne Co., Utah

Ruth was the daughter of Daniel and Mary Ellen Socwell Page.[175] She was born May 1, 1823, at Downs, Cumberland County, New Jersey.

She and her mother were baptized and confirmed by Elders James Flanagan and Samuel H. Rogers, who were serving as missionaries in that area in 1843 from Nauvoo, Illinois.[176] The missionaries were invited and made welcome in the Page home ofttimes before having to continue on in their missionary work, traveling from place to place.

Ruth Page Rogers; see also photo, 603. Photo courtesy of Ancestry.

Elder Rogers, two weeks after their visit to the Page home, opened his hymn book and to his surprise found a sixpence that Ruth had slipped in all unnoticed.[177] Little is known of Ruth’s life from then until the family migrated to Utah.[178]

The Pages, like the other pioneers, endured the hardships of crossing the plains from Fairfield, Cumberland County, New Jersey to Salt Lake City, Utah.[179] There Ruth lived and worked along with the family for their maintenance. It was here in Salt Lake that the Page family was again contacted frequently by Elder Rogers, as he had likewise reached the valley.

These visits resulted in more than just friendship relations between elder and converts. With the consent of the Church authorities, Elder Rogers asked Ruth for her hand in marriage. She became his second wife February 21, 1853, ten years after he had confirmed her a member of the Church in New Jersey.[180]

After her marriage, she stayed with her parents the remainder of the winter as her husband had been called to Iron County and had not yet gotten located. Ruth joined him later at Parowan, where she had her share of hardships in settling, work, sacrifice, and Indian trouble; sharing, too, her husband with another wife and three children, a helpmate she surely was.

The family of Joseph and Alice Mills Page, which also includes Joseph's sister, Ruth (top row, fourth from left). Photo courtesy of FamilySearch.

Ruth was an active church worker, especially in Relief Society and temple work. She was set apart as Relief Society teacher August 5, 1880, in Parowan. She was sealed to her parents April 16, 1880.

Grandfather wrote this in his journal: “This p.m., while we were packing our things in preparation for a start to Arizona, the Relief Society sisters came in and surprised us, presented my wife Lorana a pretty breakfast shawl and necktie, my wife Anna Matilda a breakfast shawl.[181] Some gave speeches of respect and esteem.” Grandfather thanked them sincerely, adding, “May the blessings of the Lord be upon the Relief Society and their labors.”

At four p.m. March 7, 1881, Ruth left for Arizona with her husband. Her membership was received in the Snowflake Ward April 24, 1881. There she did her share and more in the pioneering work.

Having no children of her own, she loved and helped mother the children and grandchildren of Anna Matilda, and they all loved in turn and respected her. She did much temple work in Utah, going back for that purpose from time to time. Her parents always joined them at the temple. Frequently the family met together for an evening or a family hour, we would now say. They were often held in Ruth’s home.

Ruth accompanied her husband on many of his missionary appointments, and he took her on her Primary assignments. She was chosen president of the stake Primary of the Eastern Arizona Stake on September 23, 1881.

She felt so lonely and alone when her husband and her sister Lorana (his wife) left for Mexico in February of 1885, called to go on account of the polygamy situation. This loneliness was added upon when she received word of her sister’s death in Mexico caused by smallpox and the aged condition of her husband due to the suffering and loss of his wife, which he felt so keenly. It was such a shock to him that he discontinued keeping up his record the remaining five years of his life.

She, Ruth, returned to Utah after the death of her husband in September 1891. She, a faithful Latter-day Saint, died at an old age, eighty-four, at Roosevelt, Duchesne County, Utah, on May 20, 1907.

Ellis and Boone:

Ruth Page Rogers wrote about her early life, recorded events in a diary/journal, and kept many letters written by family members. On July 12, 1887, she wrote:

When I commenced to write I done it for my own satisfaction and amusement, not thinking of writing to have it preserved for others, knowing I am a humble person, one that has lived in a humble condition all my life. My Worldly goods are few. From my writings this can be learned but as the Lord has been mindful of me and blessed me in this life and by the spirit has whispered to me that I should have my writings preserved. I desire that my writings be preserved in my father’s family for his future generations. Perhaps in my writings they may find something that will lead them to have faith in Christ and accept of his Gospel and inherit eternal life in his kingdom. My love has been great for my parents, brothers, and sisters. My desires are for them that they may be a happy people and acknowledge the giver of all good. How much I may write after this I know not. I desire the Lord will bless my writing for your good.[182]

Ruth described many early activities of Snowflake women, the death of her sister Lorana, and the death and funeral of her husband. Samuel Hollister Rogers died before it was the practice of taking the body and coffin to the funeral. She wrote, “The funeral services commenced at 10 o’clock at the Stake house here in Snowflake. I remained at home with my dead as it was not proper to remove to take him there. I was alone with the exception of an infant eleven months old. . . . The Babe and I remained at home while they buried him.

Dear husband

I do weep whilst you do sleep

You have pleasure whilst I’ve pain

Death parted us here

I will strive to be of good cheer

Until we meet again.”[183]

The next day, Ruth visited the grave and wrote, “I had supposed that I would find a place to rest my weary body when the labors of this life were over near him but in this I was disappointed there was no place near him left for me.”[184] She also kept a letter from her brother, Joseph Page, of Orangeville, Emery County, Utah. He wrote, “Ruth it is no use to grieve or mourn to much over it. it will not recall the dead. trust in God and do the best you can and all will be well. Now Ruth I want you to come and live with us. I cannot see that there is anything to keep you there now.” He then offered to send money for her trip to Utah in the fall and closed by saying, “Well Ruth I want you to answer at once and let me know what you will do. And be sure that you will be welcome and we will do the best for you we can. Write at once—from your Affectionate Brother, Joseph Page.”[185] Although Ruth Page Rogers did not return to Utah that fall as her brother suggested; she eventually went to Utah and lived close to her brother.

Through the years, Ruth kept in touch with the Rogers family in Arizona. In February 1907, she noted that Smith D. Rogers had been ordained a patriarch in Snowflake. Then her last entry, written in April 1907, read: “One more cold winter is past. Grass and flowers are appearing. To the present time the boys have kept plenty of wood on hand. My Brother Joseph has prepared the wood for my fire and brought it to me. all I had to do was to lay it on the fire.”[186] She died a month later.

Pioneer Widow Belle Stock Seymore. In 1901, seventeen-year-old Maybelle Stock (daughter of Mary Jane Kirby Stock, 702) married William Alma Seymore at Pinedale. Soon they had two boys, Roy born in 1902 and Harl (Hod) born in 1904. In 1905, her husband went to Ely, Nevada, to work in the mines. the company was drilling a test hole, and Seymore was down 30-40 feet sending debris up in a bucket. He complained of "bad air" and was brought up, but then he passed out and fell back into the hole. This left Belle Seymore a widow at age twenty-one. Needing to provide for her boys, she began working at Fort Apche, supervising the instruction of Apache girls who were to work as domestics (above). She never remarried. Traditional Apache dress is seen in the photograph below, probably at Lakeside. Mary Ann McNeil (431) and several other pioneer women of the area often sewed for the Apache women. Each skirt required about ten yards of material. Top photo courtesy of Beatrice Jarvis; bottom, Karen Schuck LaDuke.

Notes

[1] The Amazon, one of the largest and fastest packet ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean, sailed from Liverpool on June 4, 1863, with 895 Mormons aboard. This was the ship that Charles Dickens visited and then wrote his sketch “Bound for the Great Salt Lake,” with a description of the Mormon emigrants. Many of the Saints aboard this ship, like the Cheshire family, had saved for several years to pay their passage. With mostly English and Welsh emigrants, the passengers included the entire brass band from Cardiff, Wales, and William Fowler, author of “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.” Hymns (1985), no. 19; Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 153; Sonne, Ships, Saints, and Mariners, 9−11; Mary Ann Cheshire, “New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957,” ancestry.com.

[2] Steerage, sometimes called between decks, was located in the bottom of the ship and provided the poorest accommodations for the lowest-paying passengers. Sonne wrote, “In Liverpool, the Merseyside Maritime Museum has a mock-up of steerage quarters. It is a confined area with tiered bunks ranged along each side. A ladder or steep stairs provided the only exit, and during storms the quarters were ‘hatched down’ to prevent water from flooding the hold. The only light came from a few lamps hanging in strategic locations. . . . The only sanitary facilities were buckets or chamber pots. Some later packets [ships] had water closets built on the main deck, but during severe storms—sometimes lasting for days—steerage passengers were hatched down and could not get to the deck. It is easy to imagine the resulting chaos and stench.” Almost all Mormon emigrants traveled in steerage. Sonne, “Under Sail to Zion,” 6–14.

[3] The Cheshire family came across the plains in 1863, company unknown. It would seem that the company could be identified with her description of riding sometimes on a threshing machine, but references to threshing machines are only found in 1851, 1852, 1856, 1857, 1860, and 1864. MPOT.

[4] Ramsay’s name is always spelled with two a’s. A photograph of Ramsay also appears in “Snowflake Pioneers in 1908,” 708.

[5] For more information about Ralph Ramsay’s carvings, see http://www.ralphramsay.com.

[6] See Roberta Flake Ramsay Jordan (Acklin) Clayton, 2.

[7] For wives who died or were divorced from Ramsay, see Norma Baldwin Ricketts, “Ralph Ramsay, Pioneer Wood Carver,” in Clayton, PMA, 397−401.

[8] Ibid., 401.

[9] PWA listed this year as 1845, which would be incorrect with a birthdate of 1845; this has been corrected to 1844. See information from Ellis and Boone.

[10] MPOT lists an Alfred Randall with the William Streeper Freight Train, which arrived in Salt Lake City on October 1, 1867. However, there is some confusion between the database and the trail excerpts as to whether this is the son or the father. Here it is clear that at least Alfred Jason Randall (son) was with the freight company.

[11] This is apparently a reference to George Campkin Randall, born in 1874 at Harrisburg, Washington Co., Utah, but it appears that exact birth and death dates are not known.

[12] The Pine-Strawberry Archaeological and Historical Society was founded to preserve the heritage of this area, including information on early Mormon settlers. See www.pinestrawhs.org.

[13] Annie Belle Campkin Fuller died September 11, 1878, at Harrisburg, Washington Co., Utah. However, Annie and Wyllys Fuller had six children. Wid Fuller never remarried.

[14] See Dedera, A Little War of Our Own.

[15] This practice of not inquiring about visitors was a direct result of living in the area and the time of the Pleasant Valley War.

[16] A madstone, also known as a bezoar stone, is a hard mass found in the stomach or intestines of some animals, chiefly ruminants. It was thought by some to be an antidote to poisons.

[17] Frances Myriah Adair was born March 6, 1853, in Nephi, Juab Co., Utah, to Thomas Jefferson Adair and Mary Vance; she married Alfred Byron Peach on May 26, 1871.

[18] Lillias Robertson Watson Goodfellow, wife of David Gowen Goodfellow, was born November 3, 1863, and died September 10, 1936, at Payson (Natural Bridge), Arizona. The Goodfellow family was not LDS. AzDC.

[19] Alfred Randall loved good horses, but he was freighting between Flagstaff and Pine when something spooked the horses he was harnessing and he was trampled to death. He died September 26, 1907, and is buried in Pine. Harry Jason Randall died of diphtheria on January 11, 1908; he is buried in Snowflake. Teyva Rhoton Paten, “Reunion Stories of Alfred and Ruth Randall, June 19–20, 1987,” https:familysearch.org/photos/stories/1883870.

[20] Sonne, Ships, Saints, and Mariners, 154–55; “New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813–1963,” ancestry.com.

[21] The FWP sketch has this location as Canisville, Illinois, but surely this is Kanesville, Iowa.

[22] “Ruth Campkin [Randall],” 1, FWP sketch, ASLAPR.

[23] For information about Siddles and Burch, see Northern Gila County Historical Society, Rim Country History, 93–94, 174–75.

[24] Dot Toot and Mabel Shumway, “Alfred Jason Randall,” in Ibid., 166–68.

[25] Rial Melvin Randall, “Alfred Bradley ‘Fred’ Randall,” in Ibid., 168.

[26] For information about Alfred’s mother, see Ruth Campkin Randall, 572.

[27] Information for children comes from Ancestral File, AzBCs, and 1910 census, Alfred B. Randall, St. Joseph, Navajo Co., Arizona.

[28] Francis Marion Allen (1834−1907) and Mary Kimball Burnham Allen (1850−1931) moved to Snowflake about 1891 and returned to Utah sometime after 1900; Francis M. Allen died in Salt Lake City in 1907. 1900 census, Francis M. Allen, Taylor, Navajo Co., Arizona; 1910 census, Mary Allen, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co., Utah.

[29] Susan Content Judd (1871–1953) was married to Joseph Lehi Foutz Sr.

[30] With the death of Della on July 22, 1898, the birth of Rial on November 16, 1899, and the death of Ruth on January 2, 1902, the approximate time of this mission would be from 1899 to 1902.

[31] Frederick Tanner (1862–1932) was married to Ann Elizabeth Allen.

[32] Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 168; Rial Melvin Randall, “Alfred Bradley ‘Fred’ Randall,” in Northern Gila County Historical Society, Rim Country History, 168.

[33] Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 130. Tanner and Richards also give a detailed discussion of early Mormons and their interactions with the Hopis and Navajos. Ibid., 64–72.

[34] Ibid., 131.

[35] Ibid., 132.

[36] 1910 census: Joseph B. Tanner, Charles H. Algert, Emma Foutz, Susan Foutz, and William Hunt, Fruitland, San Juan Co., New Mexico; Ashton Nebeker and James Allen, Alamo, Lincoln Co., Nevada; R. E. Powell and John Tanner, Bluff, San Juan Co., Utah; and Frederick Tanner and Alfred Randall, Joseph City; Henry W. Despain and Seth Tanner, Holbrook; David Brinkerhoff and Lehi Heward, Woodruff; and Stephen Heward, Snowflake, all Navajo Co., Arizona.

[37] Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 132.

[38] Ibid., 170.

[39] “Obituary: James L. Allen,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 8, 1933.

[40] Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 168.

[41] Although Clayton’s FWP sketch has no mistake in the title, ASLAPR has indexed this sketch as Mary Willis Richards. Mary Richards, in her old age, appears in a 1938 photograph for Sophia DeLaMare McLaws.

[42] “James Grey Willie,” in Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 2:430.

[43] “Joseph Hill Richards,” ibid., 2:213–14.

[44] Missouri, particularly Independence and St. Louis, produced many of the wagons that emigrants used to cross the plains. In 1850, there were eleven wagon-making firms in Jackson County alone. Wagons were priced from $130 to $160 apiece; by 1876, Studebaker freight wagons ranged from $165 to $220. Gardner, “Wagons on the Santa Fe Trail,” 35–36, 101.

[45] James G. Willie presided over the fourth handcart company with 507 people, about 100 handcarts, and five wagons. They left July 15 from Iowa City and arrived in Utah on November 9, 1856. The suffering and number of deaths was extraordinary. A large number of journals and other references for this company can be found at https://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/companyDetail?lang=eng&companyId=319.

[46] When the Riverton Wyoming Stake began their “Second Rescue” project to identify the handcart pioneers and make sure temple ordinances were completed, they compiled a daily account of the Willie Handcart Company. Riverton Wyoming Stake, Remember, 3−17. See also Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion; Christy, “Weather, Disaster, and Responsibility,” 6−74.

[47] For short biographies of each of these men (Lot Smith, Jesse O. Ballenger, George Lake, and William C. Allen) and information on the colonies, see Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 133−49, 155−64.

[48] This is believed to be Louis Philippe Cardon (1832–1911), husband of Susette Stale Cardon, 99. The Cardon family was at Obed, moved to Woodruff, then Taylor, and in 1885 left for Mexico. Cardon’s given name is first listed as Philip and later as L. P. by Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 134–35. See also Palmer, History of Taylor and Shumway, 48, and many references to son Joseph.

[49] Unflinching Courage indicates that she delivered over 300 babies, but Colonization on the Little Colorado gives the figure of 340. Unflinching Courage adds that she did not even make “a charge until later years when she asked $5.00 for ten days care of mothers.” Westover and Richards, Unflinching Courage, 450; Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 169.

[50] Joseph H. Richards served as bishop of the St. Joseph Ward from September 1878 to December 18, 1887. Westover and Richards, Unflinching Courage, 15.

[51] The Abyssinia was a single-screw steamship which made only one voyage from Liverpool with emigrating Latter-day Saints (in 1882). As noted here, this ship was destroyed by fire in 1891, and all lives were saved by the German ship Spree. Sonne does not mention that the Abyssinia’s 1891 voyage included Mormon missionaries traveling to Europe. Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 132; Sonne, Ships, Saints, and Mariners, 3.

[52] See Matthew 25:21, 23.

[53] This last sentence was added to the FWP sketch (mistakenly indexed as Mary Willis Richards) when it was included in PWA. The greater detail for the first part of Mary’s life and the very short summary of her last forty years aptly illustrates how the residents of Joseph City saw their lives. The sacrifices and work necessary to establish the community was celebrated on Founders Day, March 24, through much of the twentieth century.

[54] Westover and Richards, Unflinching Courage, 448−51 passim; Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 20−23 passim.

[55] Some doctor books were available by the mid-nineteenth century (e.g., W. W. Hall, Health at Home, or Halls’ Family Doctor; Edward B. Foote, Medical Common Sense), but many others were common by 1880–90. For a reference to Dr. Gunn’s New Family Physician Home Book of Health, see Elizabeth Amy Barton Greenhaw, 222.

[56] Alice S. Hansen, “Mary’s Introduction to the Medical Profession,” in Tenney and Ellsworth, Diamond Jubilee Gems, 46–47.

[57] Anna was married twice, and both of her husbands had the last name Rogers.

[58] Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers traveled to Utah with the Samuel Gully/Orson Spencer company of 1849. MPOT. See discussion from Ellis and Boone, Sarah Olivia Rogers Driggs, 155.

[59] It is hard to know if Anna and Samuel Rogers considered this a Levirate marriage as described in Deuteronomy 25:5–10 or simply chose to marry each other.

[60] This phrase is on the official website for the town of Parowan. It also refers to Parowan being the first Mormon town established in southern Utah. Shirts and Shirts, Trial Furnace, xix–xx.

[61] See Ruth Page Rogers, 617.

[62] See Lorana Page Rogers, 602.

[63] Krenkel, Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 119, 143, 171; “Samuel Hollister Rogers,” in Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4:574.

[64] Krenkel, Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 169–79.

[65] Ibid., 174.

[66] Ibid., 219; Journal of Jesse N. Smith, 249.

[67] Journal of Jesse N. Smith, 342.

[68] See Ann Eliza Hakes Leavitt, 406.

[69] “George Samuel Rogers,” in Clayton, PMA, 418−21. For information about Avis’s mother-in-law, see Emma Higbee Rogers, 599.

[70] From 1920 census, George S. Rogers, Lehi, Maricopa Co., Arizona.

[71] AzBC: LaVerne Rogers, Samuel Glenn Rogers, and Betty Jo Rogers.

[72] With the mention of Hackberry (spelled Hackleberry in PWA), it is apparent that the Leavitt family did not use Lee’s Ferry but instead took the western route and used one of the ferries below the Grand Canyon.

[73] “Collins Rowe Hakes,” in Clayton, PMA, 209−11; also Mabel Ann Morse Hakes, 231.

[74] For a discussion of the number of deaths, see comments by Ellis and Boone, Julia Christina Hobson Stewart, 699.

[75] This boarding house would be similar to the one run by Ben and Rebecca Blackburn. See Ella Deseret Shill Biggs, 57.

[76] Wood, Arizona Hoof Trails, 21.

[77] Arizona Citizen, November 26, 1870.

[78] Merrill, One Hundred Yesterdays, 17–18.

[79] On September 9, 1938, RFC submitted this sketch to the FWP, titling it “Incidents from the life of Mrs. A. L. Rogers.” It was later transferred directly to PWA, and a few corrections have been made from the FWP sketch. For a more complete account of Clara’s life (including photographs), see Leonora S. Rogers, “Clara Maria Gleason,” in Leavitt, Our Rogers Heritage, 106−33.

[80] “John S. Gleason” and “John Streater Gleason,” in Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 3:91–92, 4:704.

[81] Cora R. Rogers, “Andrew Locy Rogers,” in Clayton, PMA, 415−17.

[82] John Streeter Gleason first came to Utah with the Brigham Young Company of 1847. Then he returned to Winter Quarters for his wife, and they came to Utah with the Willard Richards company of 1848. Their son Alvirus was born July 5, 1848, only a few days after leaving for Utah. John Gleason also made two other trips across the plains, with the Horace S. Eldredge company of 1858 and the Horton D. Haight company of 1863. MPOT.

[83] Aurelia Spencer Rogers (1834–1922) was 6 years old when her parents joined the Church. At the age of 12, she helped her older sister take care of four younger siblings when their mother died and their father was called on a mission. Besides organizing the first Primary in Farmington, Utah, in 1878, she served as a delegate to the 1895 Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, and the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C., that year. Rogers, Life Sketches of Orson Spencer and Others and History of Primary Work, 301–11; Shirley A. Cazier, “Aurelia Spencer Rogers,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 3:1238–39; “Aurelia Spencer Rogers,” in Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 3:224–25, 4:295–96.

[84] ZCMI, Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution, was established during the pioneer era as part of the cooperative movement and when, as Brady wrote, the “people were isolated from other business and commercial centers.” In Arizona, an ACMI was established with stores in Snowflake, Holbrook, St. Johns, and Eagar, participating in both wholesale and retail trade. Peterson wrote that the ACMI was “never able to effectively turn back the importunings of destitute Mormons,” so it always extended credit, and much of the trade was on a barter basis. The Zenos Cooperative Mercantile and Manufacturing Institute (ZCM&MI) was organized in Mesa and operated until 1906. Rodney H. Brady, “Church Participation in Business,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:240–43; Peterson, Take Up Your Mission, 136–53; Wilhelm and Wilhelm, History of the St. Johns Arizona Stake, 44–45; Willis, “Early Mesa,” 42–43.

[85] During the summer of 1882, the family sheep cabin was located near Baker’s Butte, south of Mormon Lake but still in Coconino County. On July 17, a band of 60−70 Apaches under Na-tio-tish fought with U.S. soldiers at Big Dry Wash. The battle ended at nightfall when Apache warriors escaped under the cover of darkness. This was the last major battle between Apaches in the Arizona Territory and the U.S. Army. See Northern Gila County Historical Society, Rim Country History, 63–64; Ferris, Soldier and Brave, 50; Sam Palmer, “The Battle of Big Dry Wash,” http://www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past/the-battle-of-big-dry-wash.

[86] This sentence is exactly the same in PWA and the FWP sketch. However, it seems likely that the first pronouns are incorrect, and it should begin: “Locy said he just could not rest until he came to see you, but I’ll tell you, I had . . .”

[87] Locey wrote, “For my part, I paid my tithing $20. I gave to my father $100 and $40 to my wife’s mother. We were advised by President Erastus Snow to own good firearms so I bought a Winchester rifle out of the remaining $40 and the balance went to buy baby clothes.” Bushman, Climbing Life’s Mountains, 3; Turner, “Shepherded by Sinners and Saints Alike,” 225−34.

[88] The Arizona Temple was originally not open during the summer months due to the lack of air conditioning. In 1936−37, the schedule was from September 21 to June 26. Peterson, Ninth Temple, 207, 317.

[89] This statement is identical in both PWA and the FWP sketch and could refer to one of two things. First, Clara and Locy Rogers had two daughters who died of diphtheria only five days apart in 1902; Desdamona, age 6, died on October 4; and Leone, age 3, died on October 9. Second, this could refer to daughter-in-law Nellie Smith Rogers, wife of Andrew Locy Rogers Jr., who died in 1910, age 28, from complications of childbirth. All three burials are in the Snowflake Cemetery. Snowflake Cemetery Records; AzDC, Nellie Smith Rogers.

[90] Kartchner, Frontier Fiddler, 16–17.

[91] Peterson, Take Up Your Mission, 91–122; Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 143–49.

[92] Udall and Nelson, Arizona Pioneer Mormon, 201.

[93] The incorrect surname Brockbank, instead of Brookbank, is a common error and probably crept into the Udall book because daughter Pearl Nelson was living in Utah when helping her father publish his book; Brockbank is a common surname in Utah. See Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 147–48; Krenkel, Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 521.

[94] Ibid., 200.

[95] Tanner and Richards, Colonization on the Little Colorado, 146–49.

[96] Udall and Nelson, Arizona Pioneer Mormon, 201.

[97] Peterson, Take Up Your Mission, 120–21.

[98] The editorial changes for PWA were generally not an improvement, so the sketch has mostly been returned to the FWP version.

[99] George H. Crosby Jr., “As My Memory Recalls: Jesse N. Smith,” in Clayton, PMA, 447−48; “Jesse Nathaniel Smith,” ibid., 449−50.

[100] Emma Seraphine West Smith, 673.

[101] “Primary Jubilee,” in Erickson, Story of Faith, 61.

[102] Ralph Rogers, “Some Happenings in Smith D. Rogers’s Family After His Death,” in Tenney and Ellsworth, Diamond Jubilee Gems, 56–57; punctuation added.

[103] A version of this sketch lists Mabel Ann Rogers Randall as author. Emma Higbee Rogers Biographical Sketch, MS 12245, CHL.

[104] Although the entry for Emma Higbee Rogers just lists biographical data, information about both progenitors and descendants is found in Higbee and Higbee, Higbee: Frontiers of Hope, 243. For histories of each of her children, see 243−67.

[105] Isaac Higbee Jr. was the first president of the Utah (Provo) Stake. Isaac and Keziah, and extended family members for both, were living at Cincinnati, Ohio, when they were baptized in 1832. For information about Isaac and Keziah String Higbee and another daughter Mary Keziah Higbee (Zabriskie), see Zabriskie, Zabriskie Family, 1:348; “Isaac Higbee,” in Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 1:480–81.

[106] “Henry Clay Rogers,” in Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4:526.

[107] “George Samuel Rogers,” in Clayton, PMA, 418−21; for one daughter-in-law, see Avis Laverne Leavitt Rogers, 585.

[108] Although the Higbee family was originally from New Jersey, they were living in Clermont County, Ohio, by 1820 and Fulton, Hamilton Co., Ohio, in 1830.

[109] Keziah String Higbee had another child between Emma’s birth and Keziah’s death. Margaret Keziah Higbee was born October 31, 1839, and died August 25, 1843, and is buried in Nauvoo. Keziah’s last child, Lucy Ann, was born October 31, 1841, and died November 2, 1841; Keziah died November 3, 1841. The burial location for both is unknown but is probably at Nauvoo.

[110] Amanda Higbee was not Emma’s oldest sister, but the oldest sister in the home; Mary Keziah had married Lewis Curtis Zabriskie in 1838.

[111] Mormon pioneer companies were organized into groups of hundreds, fifties, and tens, with captains over each. This large company (704 individuals), with Heber C. Kimball as captain, left Council Bluffs on June 7, 1848, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on September 24. Isaac Higbee may have been captain of one of the hundreds, fifties, or tens. Traveling in this same company were Ellen Celeste Woodward Fuller (199), Alfred Jason Randall, Harvey John Harper, and Sarah Matilda Colborn Pomeroy (550), who all eventually settled in Arizona; William Clayton, who wrote “Come, Come Ye Saints”; and Mary Fielding Smith, widow of Hyrum Smith, and her brother Joseph Fielding. Because this was such a large company and included so many early church leaders, there are many descriptions of their journey. MPOT.

[112] Joseph Higbee died February 9, 1850. However, he was not Isaac and Keziah Higbee’s oldest son; their son Josiah, born January 10, 1820, also died as a young man, either age 21 in Nauvoo or on March 17, 1847, at Council Bluffs, Iowa. (Daughter Mary Keziah Higbee Zabriskie died March 17, 1847, at Council Bluffs, Iowa.) Records probably do not exist to sort out all births and deaths in this family.

[113] Henry and Emma Rogers lived in Provo until they moved to Arizona (1860 and 1870 censuses, Provo, Utah Co., Utah). In 1880, they were living at “Utahville, Maricopa Co., Arizona” with eight children.

[114] Merrill, One Hundred Steps Down Mesa’s Past, 24–29.

[115] Merrill, One Hundred Footprints on Forgotten Trails, 244; Merrill, One Hundred Echoes from Mesa’s Past, 121.

[116] “From notes in a 1915 Lehi Ward Relief Society minute book,” in Merrill, One Hundred Footprints on Forgotten Trails, 244.

[117] Subsequently, the Higbee family became important participants in many aspects of early Church history, and these are only the briefest of references. 1830 census, Isaac, Isaac Jr., and John Higbee, Fulton, Hamilton, Ohio; 1830 census, Elias Higbee, Tate, Clermont Co., Ohio; History of the Church, 1:410.

[118] Elias Higbee (1795–1843) was Church Historian from 1838–1840 and Church Recorder from 1840–1842. He accompanied Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon when they traveled to Washington seeking redress from President Martin Van Buren in 1839. Elias Higbee died in Nauvoo on June 8, 1843. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 1:429, 2:229; History of the Church, 4:13, 5:421; D&C 113:7–10. John Higbee (1804–87) was arrested with the Prophet Joseph Smith and about fifty other men in 1838 in Missouri; later he was part of two different expeditions to rescue Joseph Smith. He was also an early settler of Utah Valley. History of the Church, 3:209, 4:365, 5:482; Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 3:479.

[119] Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 3:458–59, 467–69, 479–80; http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~maureenbryson/id108.htm.

[120] This was originally written “Fairbanks” in PWA but is likely Fairfield, Cumberland Co., New Jersey, as found in Ancestral File. (Changed in two places.)

[121] PWA sketches for both Lorana and Ruth Rogers have this name as “Stockwell,” but it apparently should be “Socwell.”

[122] The Page family came to Utah in 1852 as part of the Joseph Outhouse Company. The company left on June 10 with fifty individuals, but others joined until there were 135 people in the company when it arrived in Utah on September 6. MPOT.

[123] See Ruth Page Rogers, 617.

[124] See Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers, 583 and Minnie Alice Wooley Rogers, 612.

[125] Lois Barnes Pratt Hunt, wife of Bishop John Hunt, died on March 9, 1885, in Snowflake as a result of burns after fainting and falling into the fire. It was two weeks before Bishop Hunt heard the news, and he immediately returned to Snowflake. Rencher, John Hunt—Frontiersman, 77, 96.

[126] When the smallpox blisters merge to form sheets, the patient often remains ill even after scabs have formed; the mortality rate for confluent smallpox is higher than for ordinary smallpox.

[127] PWA lists this location as Cencion Galesua.

[128] Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, 174–75.

[129] See comments by Ellis and Boone for both Julia Christina Hobson Stewart, 699, and Rhoda Condra McClelland Perkins, 523.

[130] Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, 175.

[131] John Hunt’s daughter Nettie Hunt Rencher wrote, “Father and one of the girls would care for the sick one night, Manasseh [Blackburn] and one girl the next night. This went on for some time before Manasseh came down with a violent case. On January 4, 1878, after eight days of intense suffering, he passed away. It was like losing one of our own family.” Rencher, John Hunt—Frontiersman, 74.

[132] Quebbeman, Medicine in Territorial Arizona, 154.

[133] Previous to Jenner’s discovery, inoculation was sometimes tried with powdered smallpox scabs or nasal discharge, but mortality rates, though less than from the disease itself, were high enough that variolation (from the scientific name of the smallpox virus) was not universal.

[134] Quebbeman, Medicine in Territorial Arizona, 155.

[135] Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, 176.

[136] Kennedy, Arizona Medicine, 85.

[137] All FWP references to Louesa’s children have been reinserted.

[138] Louesa Bee Harper Rogers wrote a biography of her parents which was originally published in the Genealogical and Historical Magazine of the Arizona Temple District. Rogers, “Brief Biography of Harvey John Harper and Louisa Park Harper,” 7, 16−24. See also Louisa Bee Harper Rogers, “Harvey John Harper,” in Clayton, PMA, 225−26; and Rogers, “Brief Biography of Harvey J. Harper,” 8, 24−28.

[139] Louesa Park Harper, 259.

[140] For Joseph’s mother, see Emma Higbee Rogers, 599.

[141] J. E. Carpenter, “Do They Think of Me at Home?” in Durham, Pioneer Songs, 54–55. As with many other songs and poems in PWA, these lyrics suffer from oral transmission and being quoted from memory. A July 20, 1909, recording is available at http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1719/.

[142] See W. Earl Merrill, “Daniel Webster Jones,” in Clayton, PMA, 247−49; Jones, 40 Years Among the Indians, 238–42.

[143] J. D. Reymert operated a mine at this location, west of Superior in Pinal County. The post office was discontinued in 1898. Granger, Arizona Place Names, 305.

[144] This trip would have been into Gila County, approximately to the Payson/East Verde River area. Ibid., 110, 113.

[145] Presumably they bought the Merrill home when Orlando and Nellie Merrill moved to Bisbee; Eleanor Eliza Harper Merrill died April 22, 1901, at Bisbee and is buried in Mesa.

[146] Norris Joseph Steverson, son of William N. Steverson and Laura Bea Rogers was born July 20, 1910. AzBC.

[147] Growing and shipping fruits and vegetables from the Yuma and the Salt River Valleys became an important source of revenue for the state of Arizona during the early twentieth century; many of these grower/shippers were associated with grower/shippers in Salinas, California. See Medley and Ellis, “Lettuce and Landscapes,” 39–60.

[148] This number was $1,000 in PWA, but $1,000,000 in the FWP sketch. Although $1,000,000 seems like a large number, $1,000 is much too small in this context.

[149] This paragraph was inserted into PWA to summarize all of the information left out when the FWP sketch was transferred to PWA. With reinserting FWP information, it becomes redundant.

[150] In 1920, the Arizona Republican began trying to identify and honor all Arizona pioneers, defined originally as someone who first came to Arizona before 1886 (later changed to 1890) or had lived continuously in the state for more than 35 years. The first reunion was held April 12−13, 1921. Later known as the Heard Reunions (named after owner Dwight Heard), the newspaper helped finance them until 1976. Zarbin, All the Time a Newspaper, 109−12.

[151] Derr, Cannon, and Beecher, Women of Covenant, 192.

[152] Findagrave.com, #65211668, Louesa Bee Harper Rogers.

[153] Relief Society Magazine (May 1915): 239.

[154] Allen, Embry, and Mehr, Hearts Turned to the Fathers, 79–80.

[155] The Herbst family came to Utah in the John Smith Company of 1860. The family consisted of John (age 33), Anna Eva Dittmore (age 26), Henry (age 5), Mary Elizabeth (age 3), William (infant), and Anna’s brother, Henry (age 24). Part of the impetus for people coming to Utah at this time was to avoid involvement in the looming Civil War. The company left Florence, Nebraska, on June 22 and arrived in Utah on September 1. Whooping cough broke out among the children before the company left Nebraska and caused some deaths, although none in the Herbst family. Karl G. Maeser, coming back from presiding over Saints in Philadelphia, was part of this group. MPOT.

[156] It is possible that the last paragraph of this sketch is part of the Fish eulogy; neither PWA nor the FWP sketch makes the authorship clear.

[157] Roberta Flake Clayton, “To Merle and Carroll,” in Clayton, Rhymes, Rhythms, Rhapsodies, and Reveries of Roberta, 5−6.

[158] Although President Spencer W. Kimball’s grandfather was Edwin G. Woolley, this family is apparently not related, and most contemporary records spell the surname with only one l.

[159] See comments by Ellis and Boone for additions and corrections to information about the Wooley family and Minnie Rogers’s childhood.

[160] Robert Patterson Wooley was born March 2, 1832, and died March 8, 1932; he is buried in the Kingston Cemetery, Piute Co., Utah.

[161] See Lorana Page Rogers, 602.

[162] Presumably RFC added the question mark after “zephyr,” a word which generally means a soft and gentle breeze, as a tongue-in-cheek comment about Snowflake’s winds.

[163] There are two possibilities for the location of Phoenix Park: first, 3.4 miles south of Zeniff, near Dry Lake; and second, between Heber and Aripine (4.7 miles NNW of Overgaard). Although farming was later tried at Dry Lake, her description of a “lovely location,” references to Native American visitors, and butter production (normal summer activity in the mountains), would lead one to suspect this was the Heber/Aripine location. Also Zechariah and Seraphine Smith Decker (142) lived for a while at Phoenix Park, “thirty-five miles west of Taylor.” Tenney, Taylor’s Centennial Stories, 203.

[164] This first visit would have been about 1893. Martha Jane Reagan Wooley died April 7, 1907, and is buried in the Kingston Cemetery, Piute Co., Utah.

[165] The three children who died were Alice on July 5, 1885; Eda on March 28, 1891; and Levi Robert on March 10, 1904. Snowflake Cemetery Records, 76–77.

[166] Some of this information comes from memories of descendants found at FamilySearch.org. There are wide differences in these documents, which probably represent Arizona versus Utah viewpoints; some details probably cannot be reconciled because documentation is lacking. See https://familysearch.org/tree/#view=ancestor&person=KW66-H9N&selection=memories.

[167] 1860 census, Robert Wooley, James Applegate, Nebraska City, Otoe Co., Nebraska. Robert Wooley was born in Missouri and Martha Reagan was born in Pike Co., Illinois.

[168] History of the Church, 3:38.

[169] Son James Abbott Lemmon, wife Maria Louisa Patten, and three children traveled west with the William McPherson Company of 1851. MPOT. Another brother, John Lemmon Jr., also moved to Utah, but the date is not known at this time. Most of the family did not go to Utah.

[170] Allumbee Lemmon, wife Lydia Ann, three children, and mother Priscilla Abbott Lemmon, company unknown (1862). MPOT.

[171] The Wooleys and Applegates are not found in MPOT, probably because they were not traveling with a Mormon company.

[172] 1870 census, Robert P. Wooley, Parowan, Iron Co., Utah. The Wooleys had previously lost a child, Emma Jane Wooley (1867–69), and two more children died in 1873: Robert M. Wooley on November 27, 1873, and Levi Wooley on December 7, 1873. All three children are buried in Parowan.

[173] 1880 census, Robert P. Wooley, Panguitch, Garfield Co., Utah.

[174] 1900 census, Robert Wooley, Junction, Piute Co., Utah. Martha stated that she had given birth to ten children, but only eight were living.

[175] Although entries for both Lorana and Ruth Rogers have this name as “Stockwell,” it should be “Socwell.” Ruth kept a diary and also wrote retrospectively. Her writings are at the CHL in two places: Diary of Ruth Page Rogers, 1823−87 (printed by Azra C. Page), M270.07 R728r, CHL, and Ruth P. Rogers Autobiography and Journals, MS 1854, folders 1–5 (folders 1−2 and film are restricted; folders 3−5 are open: folder 3: 1880−87, folder 4: February 1887−98, folder 5: March 1898–April 1907), CHL. A brief biographical sketch is included in Madsen, Journey to Zion, 721–22.

[176] Written Flamigare in PWA, this should be James Flanagan.

[177] Ruth called this a “fipenny” and defined it as 6¼ cents. A fippenny bit was a Spanish silver coin worth about six cents, which circulated in the United States before 1857. Samuel wrote on December 3, 1843, “This evening we found a sixpence in my hymn book which Sister Ruth Page had put there when I was last at her father’s house and it had not been discovered till now.” M270.07 R728r, CHL.

[178] Of her early life, Ruth wrote about times when the family was desperately poor; she worked in the cotton mills when still a child. She wrote, “My Father and brother Daniel had joined the Latter Day Saints when in Illinois” and brought a copy of the Book of Mormon back. Other family members then joined and immigrated to Utah. Ibid., 11−12.

[179] Ruth’s diary kept while crossing the plains with the Harmon Cutler Company in 1852 can be seen at http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/trailExcerptMulti?lang=eng&companyId=99&sourceId=5028.

[180] For information about Samuel Hollister Rogers’s first wife, see Anna Matilda Doolittle Rogers Rogers, 583.

[181] In 1856, Samuel Rogers also married Ruth’s sister, Lorana (see Lorana Page Rogers, 602). Ruth did not accompany Samuel, Anna Matilda, and Lorana on this first trip into Arizona.

[182] M270.07 R728r, CHL, 7.

[183] MS 1854, folder 3, CHL, punctuation added. In her journal, Lucy Flake noted the end of this practice when sister-wife Prudence Kartchner Flake died February 8, 1896. Lucy wrote, “We was permited to take the dead to the meeting House[.] for nearly five years the dead have been left at home while the people all went to the funeral[.] When Apostle Lymon was here in November I asked him if it was right for our dead to be left a home while the friends went to the meeting house[.] he said so take them to the meeting House every time[.] he seemed very much out of patience[.] I feel like that little talk done much good[.]” Flake and Boone, Diary of Lucy Hannah White Flake, February 10, 1896 (manuscript, vol. 2).161.

[184] Ibid., September 27, 1891.

[185] Joseph Page to Ruth Page Rogers, October 13, 1891, MS 1854, folder 4, CHL.

[186] MS 1854, folder 5, CHL.