0393370
50 PIONEERS
The Pioneer Ancestors of
Dallin Harris Oaks and June Dixon Oaks
by Dallin H. Oaks
—— \
-~.—--*"
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June 1997
FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY
35 NORTH WEST TEMHLE
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84150
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Jesus Christ, Savior of the
world, was and is the
ultimate pioneer, for He has
gone before, showing all
others the way to follow.
President Thomas S. Monson
And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour,
and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the
vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat.
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and
in truth
Choose you this day whom ye will s e r v e ; . . . but as for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Joshua 24:13-15
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Dallin H. Oaks' Ancestors
Father:
Hyrum Oaks & Sarah Ann Wood Oaks
(with David Martin Oaks);
David Wood & Catherine Crites Wood
William Pitt Reynolds & Melissa Bardwell Reynolds
(with Abigail Mary Reynolds)
Zadock Sturgess Bethers & Sarah Collins Bethers
11
(with William Samuel Bethers)
Daniel McMillan & Janett Davies McMillan
16
(with Phoebe McMillan)
Mother:
Emer Harris & Parna Chapell Harris
19
(with Charles Harris)
Benjamin Kimball Hall & Mehitable Sawyer Hall
27
(with Louisa Maria Hall)
Henning Olsen & Ane Magdalene Rasmussen
31
Justus Azel Seely & Mehittabil Bennett Seely;
Justus Wellington Seely & Clarissa Jane Wilcox Seely
35
(with Sarah Wilcox & Orange Seely)
Hans Olsson & Kjerstina Olsson;
Hanna Olsson
in
46
June D. Oaks' Ancestors
Father:
Mother:
Elizabeth Humphrey Dixon;
Christopher Flintoff Dixon & Jane Elizabeth Wightman
(with Charles Hyrum Dixon)
49
William Douglass & Agnes Cross Douglass
57
Hans Heinrich (Henry) Schaerrer & Anna Goetz Schaerrer
(with John Jacob Schaerrer)
62
Benjamin Taylor & Ann Jane Hiatt Taylor
(with Lamecia Ann Taylor)
67
Cyril Call & Sally Tiffany Call;
Anson Call
70
Margretta Unwin Clark
84
John Stout White
89
Addison Everett (with Ann Eliza Adelaide Everett)
93
Pedigree Charts
Lloyd Edress Oaks
99
Stella Harris
101
Charles Hyrum Dixon
103
True Call
105
1
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ J F ^ ^ ^©V©^-^ K^®£—,0F
iv
50 PIONEERS
The Pioneer Ancestors of
Dallin Harris Oaks and June Dixon Oaks
Introduction
President Gordon B. Hinckley has said, "We gain strength to face the future /.her.
we look to the past" (KSL-TV interview, May 13, 1997).
This year we are celebrating the sesquicentennial of the pioneers* entry into the
Salt Lake Valley. During the pioneer period, 1847-69, approximately 70,000 came to
the Utah Territory with 9,600 wagons and 650 handcarts. Latter-day Saints have been
asked to learn about and honor these pioneer ancestors. As part of that effort, we have
written and compiled this summary of the lives of each of our ancestors who came to
the Salt Lake Valley in the pioneer period. We have done this for our children and
grandchildren and their descendants and for interested members of our extended
families. We hope what is written here will befrequentlycopied and freely shared.
We have not attempted to provide a comprehensive history of each ancestor's life,
but have concentrated on those facts and circumstances most relevant to (1) when and
where they joined the Church and the extent of their participation in its history prior::
the exodus west, (2) their travel to the Salt Lake Valley, (3) where they settled, and
(4) some especially important events from the rest of their lives. Our sources, in
addition to family group sheets, have been the existing family histories listed after each
section. We have not done extensive original research, but we have consulted original
sources or reliable secondary sources to resolve any inconsistencies noted in family
histories. We have also consulted the list of pioneer companies at the headquarters of
the Sons of the Utah Pioneers and the Church Historical Department. (Verification
from these sources is indicated by the * symbol.) What is provided here will lead into
further research where that is desired.
We have included pedigree charts to facilitate identification of relationships. To
concentrate our pioneer ancestors on a minimum number of pages, we begin these
pedigree charts with each of our four parents, rather than with ourselves or our
children. Although we have not noted this consistently, so far as we are aware, all
temple work has been completed for all of the ancestors described here.
We were astonished to learn that every one of our ancestors who came to Utah
traveled here during the pioneer period. We had fifty pioneer ancestors who did so,
thirty-one on Dallin's line and nineteen on June's. Two other ancestors died on the trip
west, both in Iowa. Not one single ancestor emigrated to the Utah territory after 1869.
Thesefiftypioneer ancestors had the following relationships to our four parents:
their grandparents
their great-grandparents
their great-great-grandparents
their great-great-great-grandparents
13
27
7
_1
50
The oldest of our pioneers to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley was seventy-eightyear-old Elizabeth Humphrey Dixon; the youngest were four-year-olds: Martin Oaks
and Orange Seely. Thefirstto arrive was Addison Everett, who entered the valley with
vi
Brigham Young on July 24, 1847. The last to arrive were Benjamin and Ann Taylor
and their daughter Lamecia, who came in 1869, the year the transcontinental railroad
was completed. One family, that of Zadock Bethers, became disillusioned and left, but
one of his young sons who was taken back to Iowa, our ancestor, returned to Utah.
Other ancestors made several trips across the plains, aiding other immigrants or
traveling to andfrommissions.
On arrival in the valley, our pioneer ancestors were scattered by assignment to
virtually every area of Utah. Some also made brief but temporary forays into Idaho,
Wyoming, Nevada, and California. Dallin's ancestors settled in or near American
Fork, Castle Dale, Heber City, Junction, Mt. Pleasant, Ogden, Parowan, Pleasant
Grove, Provo, Vernal, and Utah's Dixie. June's ancestors settled in or near Bountiful,
Brigham City, Farmington, Fillmore, Payson, Salt Lake City, and St. George.
The variety of experience of our pioneer ancestors is impressive; their sacrifice
and accomplishments are staggering. These unselfish, obedient, and faithful pioneers
were the strength of the Church in the settlement of the west. We can never repay our
debt to them!
We know that what is written here is important for our descendants. Even in the
midst of his work on matters of considerable importance to the Church, Dallin has felt
great pressure to assemble these pioneer histories in a readily accessible form in time
to share during the sesquicentennial celebrations. Often he has thought a history
completed, but has been restrainedfromleaving it until he pursued further inquiries that
led to other information that proved essential to include. We know that the Lord's
Spirit has impelled and guided this work.
vn
In teaching his son, the prophet Alma declared that "by small and simple things
are great things brought to pass," and that their written records had "enlarged the
memory of this people . . . and brought them to the knowledge of their God unto the
salvation of their souls" (Alma 37:6, 8). We pray that the acquaintanceship with noble
pioneer ancestors made possible by these histories will do the same for those we love.
Dallin H. Oaks
June D. Oaks
Salt Lake City
June 1997
Acknowledgments
We express our appreciation to the many faithful relatives who have written the
individual histories and preserved the recollections and photographs from which these
pioneer histories have been compiled. Thanks is also expressed to Lorrie Brockbank,
Brook Call, Linda Dursteler, Amy Jo Long, Madge Tuckett, and Belle Wilson, who
reviewed and gave valuable suggestions on various drafts. Finally, these pioneer
histories could never have been compiled and produced without the untiring efforts of
Dixie Derrick, who processed the aging photographs and typed the seemingly endless
drafts of these histories with precision and good humor.
vm
HYRUM OAKS & SARAH ANN WOOD OAKS
(Lloyd E. Oaks' great-grandparents)
and their son
DAVID MARTIN OAKS
(Lloyd E. Oaks' grandfather)
and Sarah's parents
DAVID WOOD & CATHERINE CRITES WOOD
(Lloyd E. Oaks' great-great-grandparents)
Hyrum (sometimes Hiram) and Sarah Oaks and their three little children arrived
in the Salt Lake Valley on October 1, 1852*. He was then twenty-eight, and she was
twenty-five. Their eldest child, David Martin Oaks (our ancestor), was four years old
when they arrived. The captain of their company of about fifty wagons was Sarah's
father, David Wood, who was then fifty-three. His wife, Catherine, was fifty-four.
Upon arrival, both families were sent to settle in American Fork, Utah.
Hyrum's mother and perhaps his father had joined the Church in Niven,
Springville Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, probably in 1832 or 1833.
It seems probable that Emer Harris, brother of Martin Harris, was the missionary who
brought them the gospel. (See the Harris history.) Hyrum's father, Selah Oaks,
disappears from available records after 1835, but his mother, (Catherine) Almira
Prichard Oaks, and their nine children (of whom Hyrum was thefifth)left Springville
sometime after 1836. Almira (sometimes Almera) Oaks and her children appear in the
Church records in Missouri andfrequentlyin Illinois. In 1843 Almira, then fifty-one
1
years of age, married Artimus Millett, a widower, in a ceremony performed by Brigham
Young. (Millett had been one of the contractors on the Kirtland Temple.) During the
exodusfromNauvoo, this couple took sick on the Iowa prairie about sixty miles west.
Artimus survived, but Almira died in October 1846 at Faun River, Iowa, and was
buried nearby.
Five of the sons of Selah and Almira left Nauvoo for the west. Four of them got
as far as Winter Quarters, but so far as can be determined Hyrum was the only one of
the nine children to come west with the Church to Utah. His faithful wife, Sarah, was
doubtless a powerful influence in that outcome.
Sarah's parents, David and Catherine Crites Wood, who were prosperous property
owners living in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, were converted to the Church and
baptized in April 1840. They promptly uprootedfromtheir home and journeyed to join
the Saints, crossing the St. Lawrence River on July 4, and arriving in Nauvoo on
October 1, 1840. David Wood worked on the temple as a carpenter. They received
their temple blessings February 2, 1846.
•:•:•:-:-:-:•»:•:•:•-.•:-:-::-:-:-:-.
•ASA-A'AAA'S-A;:--
David Wood was captain of the company
of aboutfiftywagons during the trek across the
:•:•:•;-:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•;
plains. While they were living in American
immmxm
AAyAA:-AA:
Fork, David was one of the men who helped
rescue the stranded handcart companies in
Wyoming in 1856, contributing a wagon and
driver, four horses, and one hundred pounds of
flour.
mmms/Awmmsmm
Catherine Wood
In 1859-60 they followed members of their family to Midway in the Heber Valley,
where they resided until their deaths in 1871 (David) and 1875 (Catherine).
Sarah Wood was ages thirteen to seventeen during the Nauvoo years. To the end
of her days she bore a strong testimony of the prophetic callings of the Church leaders
she had known. In a life sketch written in her own hand shortly before her death, she
recalled:
I was well acquainted with the Prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr. I have heard him preach
and prophecy many times and have seen his prophecies come to pass. I heard him
when he said, "I now throw this mantle, meaning the presidency, off my shoulder
on the shoulder of Brigham Young," and that he was to be head of the Twelve
Apostles and the Prophet and Seer. I was personally acquainted with Hyrum
Smith also. I was in Nauvoo when they were martyred, and I saw their dead
bodies. I know that they were prophets of the Lord.
Hyrum and Sarah Oaks
3
Hyrum and Sarah were married in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, December 6, 1846.
They lived in nearby Pottawattomie, Iowa, where many Mormons settled temporarily,
from 1848 until they departed for Utah in 1852. They lived in American Fork until the
summer of 1859, when they joined with thefirsteighteen families to settle in the Provo
Valley, as the Heber Valley was then called. They lived in Heber and nearby Daniel
for thirty years, where Hyrum pioneered saw milling and timbering activities (begun
when he worked in the pineries of Wisconsin getting out timber for the Nauvoo
temple). Hyrum was a man of many talents. He was a blacksmith and a surveyor.
(See the Bethers history). He was renowned as a hunter and marksman, and he also
played the violin for pioneer dances. He served in the militia during the Blackhawk
War, 1865-66.
In 1889, when both were in their sixties, Hyrum and Sarah moved to Maesar, near
Vernal, where Hyrum located a sawmill in the mountains to the north, at what is now
Trout Creek Park. A great walker with remarkable stamina, Hyrum would often walk
the thirty miles to his sawmill and home again. Hyrum and Sarah had eleven children.
He died in Vernal in 1903, she in 1906. Both are buried in Vernal.
Little Martin Oaks (he went by that name), four and a half when his parents
arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, was also a pioneer. He and his wife, Mary Abigail
Reynolds, whom he married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City in 1869, were
among the six or seven families who left the Heber Valley in November 1879 and made
thefirstwagon journey to what is now Vernal. They arrived December 4, and endured
one of the hardest winters in pioneer history in a rough log cabin. Martin also
pioneered a sawmill in the mountains to the north, giving his name to what is now
known as "Oaks Park." Like his father Hyrum, Martin was a community builder, but
also like his father he left no record of activity in Church leadership. He died in
Maesar, near Vernal, in 1894 (age forty-six).
Martin and Abigail Oaks
Like her parents, Abigail Reynolds Oaks was a person of great accomplishments
and spiritual strength. (See the Reynolds history for her early life.) After she and her
husband arrived in the Ashley Valley in the hard winter of 1879-80, she taught the
valley's first school classes, meeting students in a private home for three months in the
spring of 1880. Later she studied midwifery and served many by that skill. In March
1883 she was called as president of the Primary in the Ashley Valley, and when the
Uintah Stake was organized in 1887, she was called as the first stake Primary
president. She served for sixteen years, most of this time after Martin's death in 1.894.
Her granddaughter wrote this tribute:
The path was not an easy one.
Grandmother and her helpers [counselors
Elizabeth Bingham and Annie Hacking and secretary Caroline Stringham] lived
in pioneer homes widely separated from each other. They labored in the fields
with their husbands to provide the meager fare for their families. They traveled
over almost impassible roads in fair and stormy weather in order to organize and
carry the message of the Primary to the various wards of the stake.
"Aunt Abby," as she was affectionately known, survived her husband by eighteen
years, dying in 1912 during a visit to San Diego. She was returned for burial beside her
husband in the Maesar Cemetery.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1.
Dallin H. Oaks, Selah and Catherine Almira (Prichard) Oaks and their families, June 1978, 33 pp.
2.
Linda M. Dursteler and Dallin H. Oaks, The William Hyrum Oaks and Janett Bethers Family, May 1987, 216 pp.,
bound.
3.
Amy Josephine Oaks Long, from Liverpool to Utah: McMillian, Oaks and Bethers: A Grand Heritage, June 1987, 87
pp.
4.
Hazel Heoft, Sarah Ann (Wood) Oaks, May 1939, 1 p.
5.
Phoebe Swain and Lizzie Anderson, History of Hiram Oaks, undated, 3 pp.
6.
Venice Oaks Humphries, A biographical Sketch of the Lives of David Martin Oaks and his Wife, Mary Abigail
Reynolds, summer, 1955, 3 pp.
7.
Life of Sarah Ann Wood Oaks, undated, 1 p.
8.
David Wood, son of Benjamin Wood, undated, 1 p.
9.
Biography: Catherine Crites Wood, undated, 2 pp.
WILLIAM PITT REYNOLDS & MELISSA BARD WELL REYNOLDS
(Lloyd E. Oaks' great-grandparents)
and their daughter
ABIGAIL MARY REYNOLDS
(Lloyd E. Oaks' grandmother)
William and Melissa Reynolds came to Utah in 1853. We do not know the
wagon company. He was then thirty-seven, and she was twenty-eight. They were
accompanied by five children, including the eldest, eleven-year-old Abigail Mary. (For
details on Abigail's marriage in 1869 and her later life, see the Oaks history.)
William and Melissa were born in western New York (she in Nunda, about fifty
miles southwest of Palmyra, and he in Yates County, directly south). They eloped and
were married in Erie, Pennsylvania, about one hundred miles from their homes, in 1841
(when he was twenty-five, and she was sixteen). From that shaky beginning grew a
marriage that was blessed with fourteen children (three died in infancy) and fifty-nine
happy years before their temporary separation by his death.
William and Melissa joined the Church as young marrieds, baptized in Nunda
in 1844. From 1848 to 1853 they lived in Franklin and Adrian, Michigan, accumulating
resources for the 1,700 mile trip west. In 1853 they reached the Saints in Florence,
Nebraska, which was near the midpoint of their journey. Melissa was so ill with
malaria when they began the second part of their trek that she insisted their wagon
carry enough lumber to build a casket for her burial on the plains. She recovered by
the time they reached the valley, but the extremely high fever caused her to lose her
hair permanently.
Thereafter she always wore a handkerchief on her head.
7
Notwithstanding such a frail beginning, this tiny woman lived almost fifty years beyond
her pioneer trek.
When the Reynolds arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, William was called to run
a sawmill in Cottonwood Canyon. They lived in South Jordan. From 1856 to 1861
they lived in Provo, where William served in the Utah militia. In 1856, he was one of
the men who answered Brigham Young's call to rescue the snowbound handcart
companies. While he was away, their four-month-old son died, and Melissa had to
bear that burden alone. In 1861, they moved to Heber Valley where William
established a "chop-mill" and later a grist mill on a millpond east of Heber to grind
wheat into flour.
In
1880,
William
and
Melissa, then ages sixty-four and
fifty-five, went pioneering again,
following two of their sons and two
daughters (including Abigail Oaks)
who had joined the earliest settlers
at the pioneer outpost in the Ashley
Valley (Vernal) the preceding fall.
The Reynolds gristmill, which they
soon established in nearby Maesar,
was a major community resource,
and its large all-purpose room was
a community gathering place for
many years.
William and Melissa Reynolds
William and Melissa were leaders in their communities wherever they lived.
They were also devout members of the Church all their lives. They were sealed in the
Endowment House in Salt Lake City in 1879. They often made the long journey to
Manti, Salt Lake City, or Logan by team and wagon to do temple work. William was
called to the high council when the Uintah Stake was organized in 1887. He served
there until his death in 1900 at age eighty-four. Six of his fellow high councilors served
as pallbearers. The Vernal Express reported:
Throughout his life he had been a man of strong character, honest, upright,
generous to a fault, cheerful under adverse circumstances, devoted to his family
and friends and a consistent Latter-day Saint. He was an indefatigable worker
and his strength of mind and body were phenomenal. He was more than able to
support himself up to the date of his last illness.
Though modest and retiring, Melissa was a dynamo of energy. She was an
active Relief Society leader and worker, serving as first counselor in the first Relief
Society presidency in the Mill Ward, now Maesar. She seldom participated in public
affairs, but she wrote articles for the Woman's Exponent. In this public activity she
signed only her initials and did not reveal her writing activities even to her family.
After about five years, one of her daughters learned by chance of her mother's
authorship and was scolded for her curiosity. Melissa died in Vernal in 1904, and was
buried beside her husband in the Maesar Cemetery.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1.
Rose M. Reynolds Hardy, The History of William Pitt Reynolds, undated, 4 pp.
2.
Evelyn Oaks Hammond, History of Melissa Bardwell Reynolds, June 1995, 3 pp.
3.
Linda M. Dursteler and Dallin H. Oaks, The William Hyrum Oaks and Janett Bethers Family, May 1987, 216 pp.
bound.
10
ZADOCK STURGESS BETHERS & SARAH COLLINS BETHERS
(Lloyd E. Oaks' great-grandparents)
and their son
WILLIAM SAMUEL BETHERS
(Lloyd E. Oaks' grandfather)
Zadock and Sarah Bethers arrived in Utah on September 6, 1852, with the
Joseph Outhouse Company, in which Zadock was chosen as one of the five "captains
often [wagons]."* He was then forty-seven; she was forty-six. The fact that Zadock
had two or three wagons and oxen indicates that they were relatively prosperous at this
time. They were accompanied by seven children, ages two to seventeen, including our
ancestor, William Samuel Bethers, age nine. Their wagon journey had taken exactly
three months and had been uneventful, with only one death in the company (a child).
The family did report seeing wolves digging up the body of a woman buried by an
earlier company. As directed, the family proceeded immediately to reside in Provo.
Zadock and Sarah were both born in Maryland and later moved with their
families to Kentucky, where they were married in 1832. At about that time, Zadock
changed his name from Bernards to Bethers. They moved to Quincy, Illinois, about
1834, and joined the Church during tlie time the Saints were gathering to Nauvoo in
1838-39. The Bethers accompanied the Saints on the exodus from Nauvoo. At about
this time, they endured the death of their oldest son, who left home to work in Missouri
and never returned. When Zadock traveled there to inquire, he was told that the boy
was killed because he was a Mormon and if Zadock didn't leave immediately he would
receive the same as his son.
11
The Bethers lived in Iowa, three miles east of Council Bluffs, prior to the trek
to Utah. Two of their ten children were born there. Zadock was a well-digger, and
Sarah was a skilled weaver and was also known as a "doctor woman" (probably a
midwife).
Zadock and Sarah Bethers
Zadock was not happy in Provo. A recently discovered entry in the journal of
a Provo pioneer provides insight. Jonathan Oldham Duke, Bishop of the Provo First
Ward during those early days, recorded on November 21, 1855, that in a High Priests'
meeting Zadock Bethers had spoken "very disrespectfully of the authorities of the
Church and of the doctrine of plurality of wives." Two days later, Duke recorded that
Zadock was tried before his bishop (Fawsett) and "cut off from the Church" for
disrespect of the authorities and "for his pretensions to being a prophet." A little over
a month later, Bishop Duke recorded that he had "received a visit from the pretended
prophet Z. Bethers to put away my wives." The Church archives contain a November
30, 1855, letter from Zadock S. Bethers to Brigham Young in "thus saith the Lord"
language denouncing Joseph Smith and Brigham as "deceived prophets" over the issue
of plurality of wives and "commanding" Brigham to repent.
12
Within a few years Zadock left his farm and his family in Provo and returned to
Iowa. Not long thereafter, he returned to Provo and took Sarah and his six young sons
back to Council Bluffs. Two daughters, who had married, remained in Utah. One of
his sons, Zadock (bora in 1848), is recorded as being baptized into the Reorganized
LDS Church in Pottawatomie County, Iowa, on July 13, 1862.
Sarah died in Iowa in 1881. Soon thereafter Zadock returned to Heber City,
Utah, to be near some of his children. We have been unable to find any Church record
that he was ever rebaptized. The Heber East Ward recorded his death January 11,
1885. He was buried in Heber. In 1916 his descendants had him baptized, endowed,
and sealed in the Salt Lake Temple, by proxy.
After he was taken back to Iowa as a teenager, William Samuel Bethers, Lloyd's
grandfather, had an unusual spiritual experience. While boarding with and working for
a neighbor, he conversed all night with a mysterious stranger, an overnight guest, who
introduced himself as a disciple of the Savior. This experience convinced William that
his life's mission was in Utah with the Saints. By 1862, at about age nineteen, "Billy"
had made his way to the home of his married sister in Heber City. He worked for a
time as a teamster, helping to build the transcontinental railroad. He served in the
militia from Heber during the Blackhawk War, 1865-66.
In 1866 William married Phoebe McMillan in Heber City. (See the McMillan
history for her early life.) (They were endowed and sealed in the Salt Lake Temple in
1896.)
13
WBk
WSA
A
William and Phoebe Bethers
William and Phoebe lived for a time in Wanship while William was involved in
freighting. In 1874 they homesteaded a 160-acre parcel near the mouth of Daniel's
Canyon. They were the first white settlers to establish a home (initially a log house
with a dirt floor) in the new community of Daniel (named for Daniel H. Wells). There
they had fourteen children and were much respected. William served in the bishopric,
and Phoebe was also a stalwart leader, serving as a Primary president and for over
eighteen years as president of the Relief Society in her branch or ward. She died in
1909, and he in 1926. Both are buried in Heber, Utah.
The Centennial History of Wasatch County ("How Beautiful Upon the
Mountains"), pages 821-23, credits William Samuel Bethers and Hyrum Oaks (Lloyd's
great-grandfather; see the Oaks history) with a remarkable feat of pioneering. In 1879,
14
the water out of Daniel's creek was insufficient for the irrigation needs of the growing
population of the Daniel area. Using only a spirit level and plumb bob, these two
pioneers surveyed a three-mile canal to bring water from the north end of the
Strawberry Valley (the Colorado watershed) into Daniel's Canyon (the Great Basin
watershed), including a one thousand foot tunnel through the divide into McGuire
Canyon. With pioneer labor and tools, it took several years to construct this canal
(including the tunnel and courses around steep hillsides and through rock ledges and
forest lands), but by 1889, the "Strawberry Canal" was delivering about thirty-three
second-feet of water down Daniel's Canyon into the Daniel area. In later years, skilled
surveyors who studied the canal said it was one of the best mountain ditches ever built.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1.
Vicki Barbara Llewellyn Poff, an attempt to record the times, trials, and travels of the Bethers family. . ., 1985, 16 pp.
2.
Almira T. and Albert Francis Bethers, A Short History of Zadock Samuel Bethers and Sarah Collins Bethers, undated,
2 pp.
3.
Letter of Howard M. Bethers, Oct. 29, 1987, forwarding excerpts from Journal of Jonathan Oldham Duke published
by Duke Family Organization, July 1970.
4.
Linda M. Dursteler and Dallin H. Oaks, The William Hyrum Oaks and Janett Bethers Family, May 1987, 216 pp.,
bound.
5.
Amy Josephine Oaks Long, From Liverpool to Utah: McMillian, Oaks and Bethers: A Grand Heritage, June 1987, 87
pp.
6.
LetterfromZadock S. Bethers to Brigham Young, November 30, 1855, from Church Archives, copy in possession of
Dallin H. Oaks.
7.
Early Reorganization Minutes, 1852-71, Book A, 306.
15
DANIEL MCMILLAN & JANETT DAVIES MCMILLAN
(Lloyd E. Oaks' great-grandparents)
and their daughter
PHOEBE MCMILLAN
(Lloyd E. Oaks' grandmother)
Our McMillan ancestors, Daniel, age forty-four, and Janett, age forty-nine,
arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 4, 1863, with the Thomas E. Ricks
Company. With them were two daughters, the eldest being sixteen-year-old Phoebe
(our ancestor).
Born in Scotland to devout Catholic parents, Daniel went to Liverpool at age
fifteen to apprentice as a blacksmith. Janett was born in West Darby, near Liverpool.
They were married by a Church of England minister in 1844. In Liverpool, in 1849,
they met the missionaries and were baptized. They were active members of the Church
in Liverpool for about fourteen years. Liverpool was the center of LDS emigration;
over 87 percent (287 of 333) of the identified voyages of Mormon emigrant companies
from Europe through 1890 embarked from Liverpool. As they saw other members
come and go, Daniel and Janett were doubtless struggling to accumulate enough funds
to accomplish the emigration that was counseled in those days. Even then, their
journey was at least partially financed by a loan from the Perpetual Emigration Fund.
Leaving two teenage sons behind to finish their apprenticeships (They joined
their parents in two years, traveling with home-bound missionaries.), the family of four
left Liverpool on May 30, 1863. They sailed on the ship Cynosure, carrying a company
16
of about 775 LDS immigrants. Their company was led by George Q. Cannon and was
organized on board into six wards. Their voyage was uneventful for the McMillans,
but tragic for others. During the voyage twelve children died from an outbreak of
measles.
After forty-nine days at sea, they arrived in New York City July 19, 1863, and
proceeded up the Hudson River to Albany. In that city they boarded a train that took
them west to Chicago (via Ontario and Detroit) and then to Quincy, Illinois. (A rail line
linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River had been completed in 1855, and
this was the popular route for immigrants after that time.) From Quincy a pack boat
took them down the Mississippi to St. Louis and up the Missouri River to Florence,
Nebraska, near Winter Quarters, where they arrived on August 5. On August 10 they
commenced their journey across the plains by ox team. They were part of a group of
four hundred Saints with sixty wagons. Phoebe later recalled that she walked every
step of the way except for one-half day. Their journey from Liverpool to the Salt Lake
Valley took four months and four days, including forty-nine days on the Atlantic and
fifty-five days on the plains.
•••AAA'*
Daniel and Janett McMillan
17
In 1865, the McMillans moved to Heber City, which had been settled six years
earlier. Daniel was the first blacksmith. It was said that "Uncle Dan," as he was
affectionately known, could fix, make, or mend anything. He and Janett were sealed
in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City in 1867. She died in 1869. Both were
devout members of the Church and stalwarts in the community. Daniel was a firm
believer in the gospel, and all his life bore strong testimony to its divine source.
Phoebe married William Samuel Bethers in Heber City in 1866. (See the
Bethers history for her picture and further details on her life.) After the Salt Lake
Temple was dedicated, Daniel and his daughter, Phoebe, did vicarious work for many
of their departed loved ones. Daniel lived with William and Phoebe Bethers during the
last two years of his life, when his eyesight had failed. He died in 1902, and is buried
in Heber.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1.
Mamie Fisher, A Sketch of the Life of Daniel McMillian, undated, 3 pp.
2.
Almira T. Bethers, A Sketch of the Life of Daniel McMillan and his wife Janett Davies McMillan, undated, 2 pp.
3.
Amy Josephine Oaks Long, From Liverpool to Utah: McMillian, Oaks and Bethers: A Grand Heritage, June 1987,
87 pp.
18
EMER HARRIS & PARNA CHAPELL HARRIS
(Stella H. Oaks' great-grandparents)
and their son
CHARLES HARRIS
(Stella H. Oaks' grandfather)
Emer and Parna Harris, his third wife, came to the Salt Lake Valley in separate
wagon companies with two different groups of their family, she with William Snow's
company, September 23, 1850 (at age fifty-seven), and he with captain Cutler's
company in October 1852 (at age seventy-one). His.party included their eighteen-yearold son, Charles, our ancestor. (A company led by a Captain Harmon Cutler arrived
in September 1852. Neither Emer nor Charles Harris' names appear in the list of this
company, but the list notes that it omits many names.)
Emer Harris was one of the earliest members of the restored Church. His family
moved to Palmyra, New York, when he (the eldest child) was twelve years of age and
his brother, Martin Harris, was ten. In 1802, at age twenty-one, Emer married Roxann
Peas, by whom he had six children. For reasons unknown, Emer and this wife were
divorced in 1818 in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where they had lived for most of
their married life. In 1819 Emer married Deborah Lott of Luzerne County. In their six
years of marriage this couple had four children, including Martin Henderson Harris and
Dennison Lot Harris (of whom more will be said later). Deborah died in 1825. A year
later (when Emer was forty-five) he married Parna Chapell, a thirty-tliree-year-old
spinster, who became the stepmother of Emer's three motherless children. Emer and
Parna had four children of their own, the youngest being Charles (our ancestor), born
July 2, 1834.
19
During the time Martin Harris was acting as scribe for Joseph Smith's translation
of the Book of Mormon in Harmony, Pennsylvania (April-June 1828), Emer and Parna
Harris and their young family were living on Mehoopany Creek, seven miles upstream
from where it emptied into the Susquehanna River, about forty-two miles southwest of
Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania. Family tradition states that Emer walked
twenty-five miles to have brother Martin tell him more about the new "golden Bible."
No doubt this was the time and place where that occurred.
Two years later, when the Book of Mormon was published, Emer traveled from
his Mehoopany Creek home to Palmyra (a distance of about 135 miles), and received
from the hands of Martin what was said to be the first bound copy of the Book of
Mormon. (About twenty years ago Deseret Book Company purchased this copy from
one of Emer's descendants; it is now held in their vault.)
Emer was baptized on February 19, 1831, by Hyrum Smith, who was then living
with Newell Knight in Colesville, New York (about fifty miles from Emer's home), and
preaching in that area. (We do not know when Parna was baptized.) A few months
later, when Church members were asked to gather in Kirtland, Ohio, Emer and Parna
and their family obeyed, using overland routes and steamers on the Great Lakes. They
lived first in Brownhelm, Lorain County and later near Kirtland. Emer was one of the
first high priests, being ordained at the direction of Joseph Smith October 25, 1831.
At the Church's conference in Amherst, Ohio, January 1832, Emer was called
as a missionary in a revelation recorded in D&C 75:30. He served for one year, from
June 1832 to July 1833. His labors were fruitful. In December 1832 the Saints'
Evening and Morning Star reported that Emer Harris and his companion, Martin
20
Harris, had baptized one hundred persons in New York state and had "organized a
branch of the Church at Springville, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania." In May 1833
Emer wrote Parna from Springville, a township about midway between Harmony and
their old home on Mehoopany Creek, reporting his visits to her family members and his
labors with their old neighbors. These references to Springville are significant. This
thickly wooded and sparsely populated area included the tiny village of Niven, which
was the residence of Selah and Catherine Almira Oaks and their family (including
eight-year-old Hyrum Oaks) during this period. (See the Oaks history.) It seems likely
that Emer Harris was one of the missionaries who brought the gospel to the Oaks
family.
Emer employed his crafts of carpenter and joiner on
the Kirtland Temple. He was responsible for making the
window sashes and other intricate details. On September 5,
1838, he and his family started for Missouri by wagon,
arriving at a family member's house on October 12. Two
weeks later, Governor Boggs signed his infamous
extermination order, and militia and mobs promptly forced
all Mormons to leave Missouri. So it was that within a
month after their arrival in Missouri, Emer and Parna Harris and their family returned
eastward toward the Mississippi about a hundred miles away.
They arrived in
November and made their home near Quincy, Illinois, for a little over two years.
In 1841 the Harris family moved near Nauvoo. Emer did carpentry work on the
Nauvoo Temple, and on January 30, 1846, he and Parna were blessed to receive their
endowments there. During their Nauvoo years Emer served as president of a small
branch near Nauvoo. In 1844, their nineteen-year-old son, Dennison, was involved in
a celebrated act of courage when he and another young man overheard enemies plotting
21
to murder Joseph Smith and, despite threats to their lives, immediately warned the
prophet. (This experience is related in Berrett, The Restored Church, 228-32, and in
many other Church publications. Dennison later became the grandfather of Franklin
S. Harris, President of BYU, 1921-44.)
The Harris family endured the tragedy of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum
Smith, and were present at the memorable reorganization meeting in August 1844,
when Brigham Young was heard by many to speak with the voice of Joseph and seen
by others to have his appearance. Young Charles Harris, then ten years of age,
described his reaction to this manifestation with youthful candor, declaring "It nearly
scared the hell out of me." It must have, for he was a faithful member all of his life (see
below).
Early in 1845 Emer took a plural wife, Polly Chamberlain. Tlie Harris family left
Nauvoo in the fall of 1846, and made their way to Pottawattamie County, Iowa. On
January 11, 1848, soon after he returned from his initial trip to the Salt Lake Valley,
President Brigham Young officiated in sealing Emer and Polly Harris. She died a little
over a year later and was buried in Iowa.
On June 14, 1850, Parna Harris left for the Great Salt Lake Valley with her
stepson, Martin Henderson Harris, and other family members. On the way they saw
hundreds of buffalo and buried several members of their company who died of cholera.
They arrived in September 1850, and immediately traveled north to Brown's Fort, near
Ogden. Martin is the settler who gave his name to Harrisville, north of Ogden. Parna
lived with him and with her own sons in that area until her death in 1857 in Ogden.
Emer and Ins sons, Dennison and Charles, remained in Iowa with other family
members for two more years. Perhaps this was at the request of the leaders, for their
22
work was making and repairing wagons for the emigrants. This remnant of the Harris
family arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in October 1852. Emer was ordained a patriarch
in Provo in 1853. After Parna's death, Emer lived with his married sons in Harrisville,
Willard, Ogden, Southern Utah, and Logan. He died in Logan in November 1869 at
age eighty-eight, and was buried in the Logan City Cemetery. Emer had not seen his
brother, Martin, for over thirty years. Finally reconciled with the Church, Martin Harris
arrived in Salt Lake City on August 30, 1870, just nine months after Emer's death.
(Martin died in Clarkston, Utah, near Logan, July 10, 1875. The Church erected a
monument at his gravesite there.).
Emer and Parna's youngest, Charles (our ancestor), drove an ox team across the
plains and was eighteen when he arrived with his father, Emer. In 1855, at age twenty,
he married fifteen and a half-year-old Louisa Maria Hall. (See the Hall history for the
events of her early life and their elopement to marriage. Their marriage was sealed in
the Endowment House in 1858.) This couple had eleven children, of whom Silas
Albert, Stella's father, was the seventh, bom June 14, 1871. They first lived in Willard,
Utah. From there Charles served in the militia during Indian wars, and was one of the
men detailed to burn Salt Lake City if the men of Johnson's army violated their 1858
agreement to march through that city and off to tlie remote desert camp.
Charles and Louisa were called to the Dixie Cotton Mission in Southern Utah.
This was a hardship mission, but they responded with the obedience and selflessness
that characterized their pioneer generation. They left by wagon in November 1862, and
settled in Washington, Utah. Their fourth child was born in a covered wagon being
used as their home. Louisa remembered having to make one pound of sugar last an
entire year, using it only to sweeten medicine for the babies. After two years they
23
were released from their missionary assignment by Elder Erastns Snow
, who presided
there.
After a year in Toquerville, Charles and Lonisa settled in Parowan for eleven
years, and then, from 1877 to 1887, hved on _ r a n c h
on the Sevier
^
^
rf
^
•s now Junction, Utah. Since their remote ranch was on the mam road for settlers
bonnd for Sonthern Utah and Anzona, they were often host to travelers, including the
promment, the o r d i n a l and the dnfters. Othenvise, they were isolated, forty miles
from the nearest stake organization and over ten miles from a school. Ttneir children
were largely whhout fortnal r e n i n s or school trammg (only what they could receive
at home) in this period.
Despite their remote location and
primitive surroundings, Charles Harris
was widely respected for his impeccable
manners, his skills in oratory and debate,
and his strict honesty. His son Albert
observed that his father "never tired of
pointing out the ways of spiritual and
financial successes as taught by Brigham
Young." He also observed that his father
"retained his figure straight as an arrow
to the very last. He was always guessed
Charles Harris
to be fifteen or twenty years younger than
he redly was." In 1887 Charles moved his family to Richfield to improve their social
opportunities.
24
During the mid- and late 1880s federal authorities were vigorously pursuing and
prosecuting those married in polygamy. Despite that pressure, Charles and Louisa
believed plural marriage was a duty of those able to practice it. On April 10, 1889,
with the full consent of Louisa, Charles married Elizabeth ("Lizzie") Anderson in the
Endowment House in Salt Lake City. He was then fifty-four, and she was seventeen.
This union, a happy marriage that yielded four children, also had several unhappy
consequences. Sought by the authorities, Charles went into hiding and had to live on
the "underground" in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Farmington, Utah. After about
four years, Charles and Lizzie returned to their former home, hoping the persecutions
were over. Their hopes were in vain. He was arrested, and on May 3, 1893, in the
Second District Court in Beaver, Utah, Charles Harris was sentenced to three months
imprisonment for unlawful cohabitation.
He served his time in the Utah State
penitentiary in Sugarhouse until July 18, 1893, making him one of the last to be
imprisoned for that offense.
At about this same time, Louisa made a
difficult decision.
Being advised by a
lawyer of a way that Charles could marry
Lizzie legally and be free from further threat
of prosecution, Louisa divorced Charles
(being first assured that this would not
affect her eternal marriage to him). He gave
her an agreeable property settlement, and in
the spring of 1896 she moved to Provo to
begin a new life. She was then fifty-six
years of age.
Louisa Hall Harris
25
For about eighteen years Louisa earned her living by providing board and room
for BYU Academy students. She was renowned for her absolute honesty, stalwart selfreliance, and generosity to the poor. She finished her life living with her various
children. When she was in her eighties, she often told her granddaughters of her
"sincere devotion for Charles and the longing for him that had possessed her during the
many years they had been separated."
Louisa was always totally stalwart in the faith. Stella, Belle, Grant, and Madge,
in whose household Louisa lived for a time in her later years, remembered her patient
and serene attitude when trouble arose. This was characterized by her frequent
comment, "Well, I guess the Lord knows his business." Louisa died in Provo in 1923,
and is buried in the Provo Cemetery.
Charles was also a lifelong stalwart member of the Church. He lived out his life
in Junction, dying there in 1916. He is buried in a small family cemetery on or near his
old ranch, about a mile north of that city. The tall stone shaft marking his grave is
clearly visible from Highway 89.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1.
Madge Harris Tuckett and Belle Harris Wilson, Biography of Emer Harris in The Martin Harris Story (Provo, Utah:
Press Publishing Ltd. [1983]), 115-40 (includes all of the contents of various typewritten histories of Emer Harris and
his family and much additional original research).
2.
Silas A. Harris, A Brief Sketch of the Life of Charles Hams, 1916, 7 pp.
3.
Silas A. Harris, A Brief Life Sketch of Louisa Hall Harris, 1916, 9 pp.
4.
Madge H. Tuckett, Life of Charles Harris, 1970, 9 pp.
5.
History of Jesse Orson Harris, undated, 5 pp., in Rodney E. Harris, Harris Family Histories, an August 19, 1989,
compilation of various typewritten histories.
6.
Memorandum of Martin Henderson Harris, undated, 5 pp., in Rodney E. Harris compilation.
BENJAMIN KIMBALL HALL & MEHITABLE SAWYER HALL
(Stella H. Oaks' great-grandparents)
and their daughter
LOUISA MARIA HALL
(Stella H. Oaks' grandmother)
Benjamin and Mehitable Hall arrived in the Salt Lake Valley by wagon in the
James Pace Company, October 20, 1850*. He was then fifty-six, and she was fortythree. They were accompanied by six of their children, ages three to twenty, including
ten-year-old Louisa Maria.
Benjamin was born in New Hampshire, Mehitable in Maine. He served in the
war of 1812. They married in Maine in 1827, when he was thirty-three, and she was
twenty. They were baptized into tlie Church in 1833 in Maine. By October 1836 they
had joined the Saints in Kirtland. In the summer of 1838 they left Kirtland for
Missouri, where they shared the sad experience of being expelled by mobs and militia.
In 1839 they were living in Exeter, Illinois, and from 1840 to 1845 they lived in Lima,
Illinois, about twenty-two miles south of Nauvoo (and about ten miles south of the antiMormon center of Warsaw).
During the house-burnings in September 1845, a mob drove them out of their
home in Lima. In later years Louisa recalled hiding in a nearby cornfield while the mob
burned their home. She was then six years of age. Her mother, Mehitable, ran back
into the burning house and recovered her pewter pitcher, saying, "They're not going
to have that to make bullets to kill us with." Louisa's seventeen-year-old brother,
27
Horace Loomis, roused from his sick-bed at this time, died soon after (October 7,
1845) from the stress and exposure. After a winter in Nauvoo, the Hall family made
their way 160 miles to the Mormon settlement of Mt. Pisgah, Iowa (two-thirds of the
way to Winter Quarters), where they lived until the trek west in June 1850.
Benjamin and Mehitable were devout members. He was ordained a high priest
in 1842. Both were endowed (but not sealed) in the Nauvoo Temple during its brief
operation in the winter of 1845-46.
Like most Mormons, the Hall family was poor.
It took several years to
accumulate enough resources to set out to join the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley. On
that trek they had one yoke of oxen and one yoke of cows to pull their wagon. Louisa
and the older children walked. In later years she remembered wading the streams and
also picking up pretty beads left behind where the Indians had camped.
After spending the winter in the Thirteenth Ward in Salt Lake City, in the spring
of 1851, the family moved to Ogden, where Benjamin practiced his trades of hatmaking, broom-making, and farming, and Mehitable served as a midwife. One winter
young Louisa worked for a family who gave her board and room and thirty-three and
one-third cents per week.
In a few years Louisa attracted the attentions of a prominent older man, who
wished to marry her in polygamy. Benjamin favored this, but Mehitable sided with
Louisa's love for a handsome younger man, Charles Harris. Mehitable helped the
young couple elope. They were married April 20, 1855, in Ogden, without the consent
of Louisa's father. She was then fifteen and a half; Charles was twenty-one. (For
Louisa's picture and subsequent events in the life of this couple, see the Harris history.)
Great-granddaughter Belle Harris Wilson described one of the consequences:
28
Ev.den.ly tins [action of Mehftable in helpmg her daughter elope and marry
without the consent of her husband] was one of the factors, along with others we
know nothing of, winch caused the separation and divorce of Benjannn and
Mehttable Sawyer Hall [sometime between April 1855 and September 1857]
So tins couple who had gone through the trials of Kirtland, the mobbmgs of
[Missonrr and] Nauvoo,tire*ek across the plains, the p e e r i n g of the west the
beanng of nine chtldren and burymg three in the course of then moves from
Ma,ne to Utah, were unable to solve their differences in the twilight of then
lives.
Both remarried and finished
their lives with other companions,
to
whom
they
were
sealed.
Benjamin married a widow in
February 1864. He died and was
buried in Ogden in 1875.
On
September 11, 1857, Mehitable
became the plural wife of Bishop
Erastus Bingham of the Ogden First
Ward. Many years later the house
she lived in after this marriage was
moved for display in a pioneer
Benjamin Hall
village on Conner Street in Salt
Lake City. It was known as
"Mehitable Bingham's cabin." In 1989 this pioneer village was moved to Lagoon
Resort. Mehitable died in January 1886. She was buned in Ogden.
29
There is an interesting sequel to
Mehitable's life.
While she lived in
Ogden and before Louisa's marriage,
she joined with other women to
counteract the effects of a supposed
spell cast upon a neighbor boy by an old
woman thought to be a witch. During
the exorcism effort, Mehitable barred the
door and resolutely resisted a huge black
dog who savagely sought to gain
entrance. Her grandson, Silas Albert
Harris, who heard this story told many
Mehitable Sawyer Hall
times by his mother, Louisa, wrote and
submitted the account to the National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers under the
title "Witch or What?" This was one of the eight "Story Contest Winners" in 1953.
The SUP published these winning stories in pamphlet form in 1954. A copy is in our
files.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources (all typewritten')
1.
Belle Harris Wilson, History of Benjamin Kimball Hall [and] Wife, Mehitable Sawyer Hall, 1960, 5 pp.
2.
Madge H. Tuckett, Bitter Sweet, 1968, 3 pp.
3.
Susan Easton Black and William G. Hartley, eds., The Iowa Mormon Trail (Orem, Utah: Helix Publishing [1977]).
4.
Silas A. Harris, "Witch or What?," The National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers Story Contest Winners, 1953
(pamphlet, 1954).
30
HENNING OLSEN & ANE MAGDALENE RASMUS SEN
(Stella H. Oaks' great-grandparents)
Henning and Ane were both adults, both previously married, and perhaps
unacquainted and in separate wagon companies when they arrived in Utah from their
native Denmark in 1861. At the time of his arrival, Henning was thirty-one; at the time
of her arrival, Ane was about forty-one. Both proceeded immediately to the Danish
settlements in Sanpete County.
Henning and his first wife, Sidsel, were living in Copenhagen when the
missionaries found them. They were baptized in 1857. In 1861 they and their two
young children made their way to Liverpool, from which they embarked for America
with a party of 955 Saints on the clipper ship "Monarch of the Sea." Two-year-old
Maria died on board and was buried at sea. About a month later, as they neared New
York City, Sidsel gave birth to another daughter, who lived only a few days and was
buried on shore after the ship docked.
The Civil War was raging, so Mormon lrnmigrants could not use the route up the
Mississippi from New Orleans, and had to make their way overland and by northern
rivers to the Saints' gathering place in eastern Nebraska. Weakened by the effects of
childbirth and the strains of the long journey, Sidsel fell prey to illness and died June
29, 1861, in St. Joseph, Missouri. (St. Joseph is three hundred miles up the Missouri
River from St. Louis and two hundred miles down that river from the Mormons'
gathering place at Florence, Nebraska.) Grief-stricken in a strange land with an
unfamiliar language, Henning was vulnerable. The men hired to dig the grave for his
wife took most of his money for this menial task. When he protested, his adversaries
set their dogs on him, and he and his little boy had to flee without recourse.
31
Henning and his five-year-old son, Ole Lewis, the remnants of a family of five.,
were finally able to join friendly Saints in a wagon train. They walked across the
plains, arriving in the valley in 1861, probably in September. They soon settled among
the numerous Danes in Spring City, Sanpete County.
Soon after his arrival, Henning renewed his acquaintance with Christina
Mortensen, a young woman who had helped his family members during their travels
from Denmark. (During her first six months in Utah, Christina had worked as a cock
in Porter Rockwell's Pomt-of-me-Mountain home, a wayside inn for travelers and Per/.
Express riders.) Christina and Henning were sealed in the Endowment House b)
Wilford Woodruff, March 8, 1862. They lived in Spring City for more than twenty
years, including the dangerous times of the Indian wars, when Henning served in the
militia. Nine children were born to their union. All went by the name "UngermanA
though Henning was also known as Henning Olsen during most of his life. (As his last
name, Henning used Ungerman and Olsen almost interchangeably. We do not know-'
why.)
Ane Magdalene Rasmussen had married Claus Rasmussen in Denmark in as : s.
1840, and had borne him six children before his death about 1854. She seen remarried
a man named Christian Lunby, but he was harsh with her and her children
Le esa:
circumstance she met the missionaries and joined the Church (apparently her husband
did not). With her husband's consent, she obtained employment and arranged to send
her two oldest children to Utah with the missionaries. Continuing to work and save,
she finally accumulated the money and realized her dream to leave her domineering
husband and emigrate to Zion with her three youngest children. (Our record is silent
on whether there was a divorce.)
32
After the voyage to America, Ane and her three children, then abont eight to
seventeen years of age, traveled by rail and nver boa, to join the Saints at Winter
Quarters. THey made their way across the plams and mountains to amve in Utah in
September 1861. Like most Scandma.an m i g r a n t s , they settled in Sanpete Connty
where Ane continued to struggle to earn a living for her unmarried children
AA
Henning Olsen
Ane Magdalene Olsen
When Henning was called to enter polygamy, he married M e on December 19
1863. He was then thirty-three and a half, and she was forty-three and a half TlnA
union was blessed with one exceptional child, Abinadi Olsen (our ancestor
bom
December 31, 1865, when his mother, Ane, was forty-five and a half vears old
Because of Ane's age, Chnstma nursed the little baby, hi later years Christina said :ee:
she had done everything for "Nadie" but give him birth.
Ane died in Spring City in January 1880. The following year, Henning becaree
a pioneer for the second time when President John Taylor called him to uprom free
Spring City and take his family east across the Manti-LaSalle mountains :o A s r .
County, where Mormon settlements were just beginning. The year after his arrival
there, 1882, Elder Erastus Snow called Henning as bishop of the new Castle Dale
Ward. The 1880s were the years of the polygamy prosecutions. Because of Henning's
1872 polygamous marriage to a widow, Marie (Simonsen) Beck Justensen, he was
compelled to flee the U.S. marshalls on many occasions. Despite this harassment, he
continued to perform his duties as bishop and served in that calling for fifteen years.
Henning had learned the trade of mason in his native Denmark. He built many
houses and buildings in the pioneer settlements and was deeply respected for his
craftsmanship as well as his leadership and service. In the last years of his life, he and
Christina lived in a brick home built about 1890 at 411 West 300 North in Castle Dale.
The curved brick work above the windows in this home was Henning's trademark. He
died in Castle Dale in 1904. His obituary records that forty carriages followed his
casket to the burial. He was hailed as a man "without an enemy." Father to sixteen
and stepfather to twelve others, he is loved and honored by his numerous and faithful
posterity.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1.
Evelyn Oaks Hammond, Belle H. Wilson, and Dallin H. Oaks, Henning Olsen Ungerman History, August 1986, 15 pp.
2.
Obituary of Henning Olsen, January 1904, 2 pp.
3.
Chasty Olsen Harris, History of Anne Magdalene Rasmussen, edited and retyped by Evelyn 0. Hammond, June 1995,
2 pp.
4.
Sarah Clawson Johnson, History of Anna Magdalene Fredrickson Clawson, undated, 2 pp.
34
JUSTUS AZEL SEELY & MEHITTABIL BENNETT SEELY
(Stella H. Oaks' third great-grandparents)
and their son
JUSTUS WELLINGTON SEELY & CLARISSA JANE WILCOX SEELY
(Stella H. Oaks' second great-grandparents)
and her mother
SARAH WILCOX
(Stella H. Oaks' third great-grandmother)
and their son
ORANGE SEELY
(Stella H. Oaks' great-grandfather)
The Seely (sometimes Seeley or Seelye) family arrived in the Salt Lake Valley
with a large wagon train led by John Taylor. They were in Edward Hunter's hundred
(the "second hundred"), which arrived on September 29, 1847, just two months after
Brigham Young.
The Seely family is unique in our pioneer ancestry because when these pioneer
ancestors came into the Salt Lake Valley they constituted three generations. The family
was led by Justus Azel and his wife, Mehittabil, ages sixty-eight and sixty-seven. Their
son, Justus Wellington and his wife, Clarissa Jane, ages thirty-two and twenty-six, were
accompanied by three small children, the oldest being our ancestor, Orange, age four,
and by Clarissa's mother, Sarah Zieley Wilcox, age sixty-six. (She died in Manti,
35
Utah, in 1856.) Like about 1,500 other arrivals of 1847 who did not return to Winter
Quarters, the Seelys spent the first winter in Salt Lake City, and then scattered to other
locations as noted below.
During the Revolutionary War, the Seely family were loyalists who fled the
colonies for Nova Scotia. They returned to Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and then
went to Canada, near Toronto, just before the War of 1812. There Justus Azel was
drafted into the British army for a time, and there Justus Wellington was bom in 1815.
The family's sturdy loyalist allegiance is evident in this son's name; the Duke of
Wellington was one of Britain's heroes in the Napoleonic Wars (1800-14).
In 1836 the Seelys were living in Port Whitby, Ontario, about twenty miles
northeast of Toronto. Justus Azel was a shipowner, involved in shipping on Lake
Ontario. At this time John Taylor, later President of the Church, was a Methodist
preacher in Toronto. Missionaries found him and baptized him into the restored
Church. In the summer of 1837, the Saints in Toronto were visited by the Prophet
Joseph Smith. Soon after this he called their leader, John Taylor, to be a member of
the newly formed Quorum of Twelve Apostles.
We do not know when or how tlie missionaries found tlie Seely family of nearby
Port Whitby, but we do know that they were baptized by Almon W. Babbitt on
February 15, 1838. Elder Taylor had left Toronto for Kirtland, Ohio, the preceding
month, and the newly baptized Seely family left Canada that summer to join the Saints.
Justus Azel and Mehittabil and the younger children left Toronto by boat across the
Great Lakes and then by river passage to Missouri or Illinois. Justus Wellington, age
twenty-two, and his eighteen-year-old brother, David, traveled the distance in wagons
carrying the family's possessions.
36
X
\
Justus Azel Seely
Mehittabil Bennett Seely
The Seely family arrived as the Samts were being dnven out of Missouri They
settled for a tune in Calhoon County, Illinois, and then moved to Burlington, and then
Nashvdle, Iowa (across theriverfromNauvoo). Tins family was devout and fafthful
Whentemplework began in Nauvoo, Azel was crippled by arthritis and unable to walk
Exercsmg great farth, his family carried him into tie temple on a blanket where he was
baptized seventimesfor his health, healed, and walked out on his own power. Justus
Azel and Mehittabd were endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on February 3, 1846.
Clarissa (pronounced to rhyme with "Pharisee") Jane Wilcox was bom in Carmi
Illinois, in 1821, the tenth of the twelve children of Hazard and Sarah Zieley Wilcox'
who had emigrated to the United States from Canada. Clarissa's father died in 1824,'
but her mother Sarah and many members of her famtiy joined the Church in Illinois!
When Clarissa was a young married woman of twenty-three, just after the martyrdom
of the prophet, she attended the August 1844 conference meeting at which Brigham
37
Young took on the appearance of Joseph, and his voice sounded just like Joseph's.
This was a confirmation to her and many others that Brigham Young was to lead the
Church. Clarissa told this experience to her daughter-in-law, Hanna Olsson Seely, who
told it to Nad A. Peterson when he was about six years old in Mt. Pleasant, Utah.
Justus Wellington Seely and Clarissa Jane Wilcox Seely were married in Iowa
in 1842. They received their endowments in the Nauvoo Temple, February 3, 1846,
but before they could be sealed, the Saints were driven out. (Their marriage was finally
sealed on January 25,1869, when they traveled from their home in Sanpete County to
the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.)
The Justus Azel and Justus Wellington Seely families shared the pioneers'
adversities in the trek across Iowa. They endured the hard winter at Pigeon Grove
above Council Bluffs, Iowa, and departed on June 21, 1847 (two month's after
Brigham Young's initial party), in a wagon company with six hundred wagons and
1,553 people. It is noteworthy that this company was an "emigration company"
(unlike Brigham Young's initial party of men, with only a few women and children,
who went to pioneer the path and secure the destination). The emigration company
included people of all ages and an abundance of cattle, sheep and chickens. They went
to settle—to stay for the winter and to grow crops or starve in the attempt. En route
their company met Brigham Young and others, eastbound to rejoin their families in the
main body of the Church at Winter Quarters. He told them of the selected place, and
they continued westward, rejoicing.
After their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Seelys spent the first winter in the
southwest comer of the Old South Fort, at the site of what is now Pioneer Park. Each
family constructed adjoining log or adobe dwellings with one wall that comprised the
38
outside wall of the fort. They experienced the hunger and cold and fear of the first
winter in the valley and the next year witnessed the miracle of the seagulls who rescued
their crops from the crickets. Justus Azel established the first cooper shop (making or
repairing barrels) in Salt Lake City. A few years later, Justus Azel and Mehittabil
moved to Pleasant Grove, where he died and was buried in April 1859. She died in Mt.
Pleasant in 1861. A blessing given to him by Patriarch John Smith in Salt Lake City,
May 18, 1849, contained this promise, whose fulfillment is evident today: "Thy
posterity shalt become a mighty people that cannot be numbered for multitude."
Two years after the Seelys' arrival in the valley, November 2, 1849, Justus
Wellington and his brother, David, left their families in Salt Lake City and journeyed
to Northern California to dig for gold. They returned a year later with Charles C. Rich
and Amasa Lyman and others.
In March of tlie following year (1851), Justus
Wellington and David and their families joined a company of volunteers the Church
invited to go and settle in Southern California. On June 11, the party arrived in the
vicinity of San Bernardino, where Elders Rich and Lyman installed David Seely as the
stake president, the first in what is now California.
The Seelys engaged in many pioneering activities in the San Bernardino area,
including grapevines and a sawmill (since memorialized by a monument in what is now
called "Seeley's Canyon.")
In the fall of 1857, President Brigham Young summoned the outlying
settlements, including San Bernardino, to return to Utah to help resist Johnson's army
in the "Utah War." Justus and Clarissa and their family (including fifteen-year-old
Orange) obediently loaded their belongings into a wagon and made their second
pioneering journey into Utah. In April 1858, after a four-month trek, they arrived and
39
'7^S^^A7/77AA^^^^,
Justus Wellington and Clarissa Seely
settled near Justus Wellington's parents in Pleasant Grove. During their journey they
became acquainted with Colonel Thomas L. Kane, traveling to Utah to help mediate
the Mormons' dispute with the United States government.
David Seely's wife refused to return to Utah. He rode to Salt Lake City, saw
President Brigham Young, and was counseled to stay with his wife. He returned to me
San Bernardino area. No Church organization was reconstituted in that area, ano ne me
years that followed David Seely's posterity were largely or entirely lost to Com;a
membership.
Soon after the April 1859 death of their father, Justus Azel. the Se-
„ j , ii
A
^_
_„_
•*
moved from Pleasant Grove to Mt. Pleasant in Sanpete County, abou: seventy m..e>
south. They arrived there May 2, 1859, being among the earliest settlers
1 - , w * L1*W i 'L V U
to build the fort in Mt. Pleasant. Justus Wellington Seely served as bishop's counselor
in Mt. Pleasant for seventeen years, as justice of tlie peace for twentv > ears, and en the
city council for four years. He also served as doctor and dentist scream broken bone?.
40
sewing up wounds, and pulling aching teeth. He died in Mt. Pleasant in 1894. Clarissa
died in that same city in 1908.
Orange Seely, four and a half years of age when his parents and grandparents
arrived in the valley, came of age in San Bernardino and Mt. Pleasant. In 1862 (at age
nineteen) he was called as a teamster in a party sent to the Missouri River to pick up
Mormon immigrants to Utah. His outfit was a good Shuttler wagon, four yoke of
cattle, and provisions for six months. Their party arrived at the river in July. After a
few weeks a river steamer unloaded a party of immigrants, including Hanna Olsson, a
nineteen-year-old Swedish girl to whom Orange was instantly attracted. (See the
Olsson history for information on her birth and parents.) They left for the west on
July 24. Hanna could not speak a word of English, but love has its way, and she and
Orange got acquainted on the trip west in Captain Murdock's company. Hanna said
she walked most of the way. After overnight in Salt Lake City, they continued south
to Mt. Pleasant.
Orange and Hanna were married in Mt. Pleasant on July 24, 1863. Elder Orson
Hyde performed the ceremony in the Seely home. Five years later they were sealed in
the Endowment House.
Orange was a lieutenant in the militia in the Blackhawk War. which began in
1865. He was in battles with Indians in Fish Lake, Grass Valley, Thistle Valley, and
other locations. His horse was wounded in one encounter. Orange was always very
restrained in speaking of his role. For example, in his personal history he tells of die
battle in Thistle Valley in which several were killed on each side. As to his own
participation, he says only, "In the direction in which I was shooting I saw a horse
gallop away without a rider."
41
Orange was the first town marshall in Mt. Pleasant. He also served several terms
as a city councilman and three terms as a county selectman (commissioner). On July 4,
1877, he was installed as bishop of the Mt. Pleasant North Ward. President Brigham
Young ordained him. He served for only a few months, and was then called to another
pioneering venture.
Orange and Hanna Seely
On August 22, 1877, Brigham Young wrote President Canute Petersen in
Ephraim, Utah, asking him to "find out what brethren in the stake of Zion over which
you preside would like to settle in [Castle Valley]", where, President Young said, "the
water is abundant and the soil is good." That letter was to change the lives of Orange
and Hannah Seely. Brigham Young died one week later. Castle Valley therefore
became the last area whose colonization he specified.
President Young's settlement instruction was initiated in a priesthood meeting
in Mount Pleasant on September 22, 1877, when President Petersen invited members
of his stake to settle Castle Valley. He called seventy-five men, chosen proportionately
from tlie various wards of the Sanpete Stake, including a man from Spring City who
42
was called to preside. But only a few of these men responded. Even the called leader
found himself unable to act on the calling. A group of apostles then met in Nephi and
called thirty-four-year-old Bishop Orange Seely to lead the founding of the new
settlements. Almost immediately, in October 1877, Orange and a small party of men
with five wagons (without their families) crossed the mountains to the east and arrived
in Castle Valley November 2, 1877. Orange and others located land under the
homestead laws, Orange's being immediately southeast of present Castle Dale. Then,
most of them returned to their homes in Sanpete County for the winter.
For the initial two years of settlement, from 1877 through 1879, Orange was the
bishop over all of Southeastern Utah, including Carbon, Emery, and Grand Counties.
He presided over the founding of various communities and formally located the towns
that are now Castle Dale, Ferron, and Huntington in Emery County. The town of
Orangeville was named for him. His periodic visits to minister to the needs of the
different settlements in his ward required ten days to two weeks, as he counseled the
people and distributed provisions to the needy. His family remained in Mt. Pleasant
during this period, and he must have traveled back and forth on horseback to attend to
his widely separated duties. Orange was released as bishop October 7, 1879, when
separate wards were organized (under the Sanpete Stake) in several communities over
which he had presided.
Orange Seely moved his family to Castle Valley late in October 1879. He and
Hanna uprooted themselves and their seven children, including a six-month-old baby,
from an attractive home and circumstance, put a few possessions into a wagon, and
began what was to be a fourteen-day trip. They built a wagon road as they went.
Hanna later told how she and her older daughters cried every day as they built the road
that was carrying them away from everything that was dear, including their fine home
43
and Hanna's Swedish parents. Hanna later wrote: "The first time I ever swore was
when we arrived in Emery County and I said, 'Damn a man who would bring a woman
to such a God-forsaken country.'" The new arrivals took shelter in a one-room log
dugout to protect them from the fast-approaching winter. The two oldest children,
Emma, fifteen, and Hannah, thirteen, had to sleep outside in a wagon box, even in the
bitter cold of winter.
In August 1880, a special conference presided over by Elders Erastus Snow,
Brigham Young, Jr., and Francis M. Lyman organized the Emery Stake, and Orange
was called as first counselor in the stake presidency. He served eighteen years in that
position, being released with the original stake president in January 1899.
Orange's civic and community service included superintendent of schools,
assessor and collector of Emery County, three terms as probate judge, and one term in
the Utah State Senate (1894-96).
Orange was a large man. A newspaper article published about him on his
sixtieth birthday commented on his "natural generous dimensions," and quoted him as
saying that he was "feeling very well, [but] is a little off in weight at 270 pounds.'"
Universally honored and loved as a founding pioneer and leader, Orange died and was
buried in Castle Dale in 1918.
Hanna Olsson Seely was tall and slender and quiet, not one to take an active part
in public affairs. She was a member of her ward Relief Society presidency for many
years. After the death of her husband, Orange, she worked diligently compiling the
records of her ancestors. With tlie help of her children and grandchildren, she was
instrumental in having the temple work done in the Manti Temple for five hundred of
44
her family. She died suddenly and peacefully in Castle Dale on her ninety-second
birthday, November 27, 1934.
[DHO: 6/97]
Sources
1. Montell and Kathryn Seely, SeelyHistory (Provo, Utah: Community Press, 1988), pp. 90-96, 107-9, 118-43.
2. Lucinda Seeley, History of Justus Azel Seeley, undated, edited by Belle H. Wilson, Nov, 1985, 8 pp.
3. Belle H. Wilson, Mehitable (Bennett) Seeley, Oct. 1985, 4 pp.
4. Belle H. Wilson, History of Justus Wellington Seeley (Seely), Oct. 1968, 5 pp.
5. Statement of Nad Alma Peterson, related at 1988 Olsen Family Reunion, I p.
6. Albert Antrei, "Sarah's Story," Deseret News, Jan. 23, 1983, p. SL
7. Orange Seeley Sr., History of Orange Seeley, Sr., undated, retyped, 4 pp.
8. Bertrude Seely Mitchel, Orange Sr. and Hanna Olsson Seely, both Utah Pioneers, undated, retyped by Belle Wilson and
Madge Tuckett, 1985, 24 pp.
9. "A Jolly Time," The Emery County Progress, Feb. 21,1903.
10. Speech of Orange Seely, Sr., at the Seely Reunion, June 26, 1912. 4 pp.
11. "Pioneer of 1847 Ends Useful Creer [sic]," Mt. Pleasant, Sanpete Count1/, Utah, Friday, Nov. 22, 1918 (obituary
article).
12. Sarah Seely Larsen, Other Facts About Hanna Olsson Seely, undated, 1 p.
13. Chasty O. Harris, History of Hanna Olsson Seely, May 1932, 8 pp., revised and retyped by Evelyn 0. Hammond,
undated, 6 pp.
14. Andrew Jensen, Encyclopedic History ofThe Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret
News Publishing Co., 1941) 226-27.
15. Edward A. Geary, A History of Emery County (Utah State Historical Society, 1996) 62-69. 79.
16. Emery County, 1880-1980 (Emery County Historical Society, 1981), 21 -29.
17. Minutes of the Emery Stake for 1880, 1899, Church Archives.
45
HANS OLSSON & KJERSTINA OLSSON
(Stella H. Oaks' second great-grandparents J
and their daughter
HANNA OLSSON
(Stella H. Oaks' great-grandmother)
Hanna Olsson arrived in the Salt Lake Valley September 27, 1862 in Captain
John R. Murdock's company*. She was then nineteen years of age. Her parents, Hans
and Kjerstina Olsson, arrived in the Valley September 29, 1866, in Joseph S. Rawling's
company. They were then sixty-five years of age. (A company led by J. S. Rawlmgs
arrived October 1, 1866, with many Scandinavian immigrants, but the names of Hans
and Kjerstina Olsson are not listed among them.) In each case, these Swedish
immigrants proceeded directly to and settled in Sanpete County.
The youngest of her family, Hanna Olsson was bom in Skurup. Sweden, m.
November 27, 1842. She and her mother, Kjerstina Pers'dotter (Persson) Olsson, wars
among the first converts in Sweden. At midnight on October 13. 1S55. mother me
daughter slipped out of their home (because of the opposition of husband m.a earner.
Hans) and walked six Swedish miles to meet the elders, who chopped a asm as me me
and baptized them.
Hanna Olsson later worked in a china factory in Copenhagen, rmemam :; mm
money to go to Zion. She left with a party of 4S4 Scandinavia Semes ee r e m e
Athena, which sailed from Hamburg, Germany, April 21. and arrived e \A••« A :>ri A r ,
on June 7, 1862. During the voyage five adults died of various .A -a as. am ae.m.46
three children died from measles. These thirty-eight deaths were a very high toll for
an emigrant company.
In New York City Hanna stayed briefly at the Castle Garden Hotel, a meeting
place for the Saints. A train and river boats then took the passengers toward their
promised meeting with Church representatives at Florence, Nebraska, where she
arrived June 19, 1862. (See the Seely history for her picture and the details of her
arrival and her marriage the following year to Orange Seely, one of the teamsters who
brought her across the plains.)
Hanna's three older sisters made the journey a year later and joined her in Mt.
Pleasant. Four years later, father Hans Olsson succumbed to Kjerstina's pleadings and
consented to emigrate to America to join their children. This sixty-five-year-old couple
embarked upon the square-rigger, Humboldt, sailing on June 3, from Hamburg,
Germany, and arriving in New York City, July 19, 1866. This was one of the last
voyages of the Humboldt, which was lost at sea soon afterwards.
Hans and Kjerstina Olsson
47
The Olssons made their way across the plains by ox team and settled in Mt.
Pleasant, where Hans was baptized a member of the Church June 9, 1871. Hans and
Kjerstina were sealed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City in July 1875. Neither
ever learned to speak English, but both were faithful Church members to the end of
their days. Hans died in Mt. Pleasant in January 1896.
Kjerstina died in Mt. Pleasant April 27,1888. The English version of her name,
Chasty, was given to a great-granddaughter born three weeks earlier in Castle Dale,
Utah, to Hannah Olsen, daughter of Kjerstina's daughter, Hanna Olsson. Chasty is the
mother of Stella H. Oaks.
[DHO:6/97]
Sources
1.
Chasty O. Harris, History of Hans Olsson—Pioneer of 1867, undated, edited and retyped by Madge H. Tuckeit and
Belle H. Wilson, June 1985, 2 pp.
2.
Chasty Olsen Harris, History of Kjerstina Pers'dotter (Persson) Olsson, undated, edited and retyped by Evelyn O.
Hammond, June 1995, 4 pp.
3.
Sarah Seely Larsen, Other Facts About Hanna Olsson Seely, undated, 1 p.
4.
Chasty O. Harris, History of Hanna Olsson Seely, May 1932, 8 pp., revised and retyped by Evelyn O. Hammond,
undated, 6 pp.
5.
Brigham Young letters, Church Archives.
48
Chart no. 1
Pedigree Chart for
LLOYD EDRESS OAKS
David Martin OAKS
BIRTH: 2 Jan 1848
Winter Quarters,Nebraska
MARR: 2 Mar 1869
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH: 27 Oct 1894
Maesar,Uintah,Utah
William Hyrum OAKS
BIRTH: 22 Jul 1872
Heber City,Utah
MARR: 22 Oct 1890
Daniel.Utah
DEATH: 18 Mar 1946
Maesar,Uintah,Utah
9 Sarah Ann U00D
BIRTH: 8 Apr 1827
Cornwall.Ontario,Canada
DEATH: 8 Apr 1906
Vernal.Utah
DEATH: 18 Nov 1900
Vernal.Utah
11 Melissa BARDWELL
BIRTH: 5 Sep 1825
Nunda.New York
DEATH: 10 Jul 1904
Vernal.Utah
1 LLOYD EDRESS OAKS
BIRTH: 25 Sep 1902
Vernal,Utah
MARR: 14 Jun 1929
Salt Lake City.Salt Lake,Utah
DEATH: 10 Jun 1940
Denver,Colorado
12 Zadock Samuel BETHERS—
BIRTH: 24 Aug 1805
Snow Hi 11.Maryland
MARR: 25 Jul 1832
William Samuel BETHERSBIRTH: 18 May 1843
Quincy,Illinois
MARR: 14 Sep 1866
Heber City.Utah
DEATH: 7 Oct 1926
Daniel.Utah
3 Janett BETHERSBIRTH: 22 May 1871
Heber City.Utah
DEATH: 8 Aug 1921
Provo,Utah
DEATH: 11 Jan 1885
Heber City,Utah
13 Sarah COLLINSBIRTH: 23 Sep 1806
Snow Hi 11.Maryland
DEATH: 18 Jul 1881
Council Bluffs,Iowa
14 Daniel MCMILLAN
BIRTH: 2 Mar 1819
Dumbarton,Sect 1 and
MARR: 18 Dec 1844
7 Phoebe Hannah MCMILLANBIRTH: 18 Nov 1846
Liverpool.England
DEATH: 6 Apr 1909
Daniel.Utah
DEATH: 29 Mar 1902
Heber City.Utah
15 Janett DAVIES
BIRTH: 24 Dec 1813
West Derby,Lncsr,England
DEATH: 21 Apr 1869
Heber City,Utah
99
1a
DEATH: 19 Mar 1903
Vernal.Utah
10 William Pitt REYNOLDSBIRTH: 3 Apr 1816
Benton,New York
MARR: 6 Oct 1841
5 Abigail M. REYNOLDS
BIRTH: 2 Sep 1842
Nunda,New York
DEATH: 23 Dec 1912
San Diego,California
SPOUSE(S):
Stella HARRIS
Hyrum OAKS
BIRTH: 7 Sep 1824
Susquehanna Co. .Pennsylvania
MARR: 6 Dec 1846
1a
Chart no. 1a
Pedigree Chart for
LLOYD EDRESS OAKS
4 James Selah OAKS
BIRTH: Abt 1794
Long Island,New York
MARR:
DEATH:
2 Hyrum OAKS
BIRTH: 7 Sep 1824
Susquehanna Co..Pennsylvania
MARR: 6 Dec 1846
DEATH: 19 Mar 1903
Vernal,Utah
5 Catherine Almira PRICHARD
BIRTH: 1792
New Haven,Connecticut
DEATH: Oct 1846
FaunRivernearBonaparte,VaBu,Iowa
1 David Martin OAKS
BIRTH: 2 Jan 1848
Winter Quarters,Nebraska
David WOOD
BIRTH: 6 Jul 1799
Glengary,Schl,Canada
MARR: 17 Mar 1818
Ontario,Canada
DEATH: 6 Mar 1871
Midway,Utah
3 Sarah Ann WOOD
BIRTH: 8 Apr 1827
Cornwal1.Ontario,Canada
DEATH: 8 Apr 1906
Vernal.Utah
7 Catherine CRITES
BIRTH: 7 Dec 1797
Oshabruk.PtArthur,Ontario,Canada
DEATH: 2 Jan 1875
Midway,Utah
100
Pedigree Chart for
Chart no. 2
STELLA HARRIS
Emer HARRIS
BIRTH: 29 May 1781
Cambridge,New York
MARR: 29 Mar 1826
Charles HARRIS
BIRTH: 2 Jul 1834
Brownhelm.Ohio
MARR: 20 Apr 1855
Ogden,Utah
DEATH: 3 Feb 1916
Junction,Utah
Silas Albert HARRIS
BIRTH: 14 Jun 1871
Parowan.Utah
MARR: 10 Aug 1904
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH: 5 Oct 1964
American Fork,Utah
9 Parna CHAPELL
BIRTH: 12 Nov 1792
Sanderfi eld,Berksh,Massachusetts
DEATH: 4 Jun 1857
Ogden,Utah
10 Benjamin Kimball HALL
BIRTH: 7 Nov 1793
Chester,New Hampshire
MARR: 3 Apr 1827
Louisa Maria H A L L —
BIRTH: 30 Dec 1839
Exeter,II1inois
DEATH: 6 May 1923
Provo,Utah
DEATH: 26 Feb 1875
Ogden,Utah
11 Mehitable SAWYER
BIRTH: 1 Oct 1806
Andover,Maine
DEATH: 30 Jan 1886
Ogden,Utah
STELLA HARRIS
BIRTH: 27 Jul 1906
Provo,Utah
MARR: 14 Jun 1929
Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,Utah
DEATH: 8 Jan 1980
Salt Lake City,Utah
SPOUSE(S):
Lloyd Edress OAKS [Doctor]
DEATH: 28 Nov 1869
Logan,Utah
12 Henning Olsen UNGERMAN
BIRTH: 3 Jan 1830
Aastrup,Falster,Denmark
MARR: 19 Dec 1863
Abinadi 0LSENBIRTH: 31 Dec 1865
Spring City,Utah
MARR: 21 Feb 1887
Castle Dale,Utah
DEATH: 17 Jul 1931
Payson,Utah
3 Chasty Magdalene 0LSENBIRTH: 7 Apr 1888
Castle Dale.Utah
DEATH: 7 Oct 1977
Orem.Utah
DEATH: 12 Jan 1904
Castle Dale.Utah
13 Ane Magdalene RASMUSSEN
BIRTH: 24 May 182C
Ab1dthorpe,Ma rib,Denmark
DEATH: 2 Jan 1880
Spring City,-tan
14 Orange SEELYBIRTH: 20 Feb 1843
Nashvilie,Iowa
MARR: 24 Jul 1563
7 Hannah SEELY
BIRTH: 19 Sep 1866
Mt Pleasant,Utah
DEATH: 6 Mar 1925
Castle Dale,Utah
DEATH: 13 Nev 1918
Castle Dale.Utar
15 Hanna OLSSON
BIRTH: 27 Nov 1842
Skurup.Sweden
DEATH: ?7 Nov 1934
Castle Daie.Utah
01
2a
2a
Pedigree Chart for
Chart no. 2a
STELLA HARRIS
Justus Azel SEELY
BIRTH: 17 Nov 177S
Steubenvi H e . Hew i-atn.
MARR: 8 Apr 1800
4 Justus Wellington SEELY
BIRTH: 30 Jan 1815
Pickering,Upper Canada,Canada
MARR: 10 Mar 1842
Charleston,Iowa
DEATH: 28 Apr 1894
Mt Pleasant,Utah
2 Orange SEELY
BIRTH: 20 Feb 1843
Nashvi1le,Iowa
MARR: 24 Jul 1863
DEATH: 1 Apr 1853
Pleasant Grove, ift ah
9 Mehittabil BENNETTBIRTH: 12 Oct 1730
Luzerne Co.,Pennsylvani;
DEATH: 2 Aug 1861
Mt. Pleasant,Utah
10 Hazard WILC0XBIRTH: 25 Dec 1775
Rhode Island
MARR:
DEATH: 13 Nov 1918
Castle Dale,Utah
5 Clarissa Jane WILCOX—
BIRTH: 1 Oct 1821
Carmi.Illinois
DEATH: 5 Feb 1908
Mt. Pleasant.Utah
DEATH: 1824
Marion,Missouri
11 Sarah ZIELEYBIRTH: 16 Nov 1780
Albany,New York
DEATH: 9 Oct 1856
Manti.Utah
1 Hannah SEELYBIRTH: 19 Sep 1866
Mt Pleasant.Utah
6 Hans OLSSON
BIRTH: 1 May 1801
Skurup,Sweden
MARR: 12 Dec 1828
Sweden
DEATH: 22 Jan 1896
Mt. Pleasant,Utah
3 Hanna OLSSON
BIRTH: 27 Nov 1842
Skurup,Sweden
DEATH: 27 Nov 1934
Castle Dale,Utah
7 Kjerstina PERSS0N
BIRTH: 9 Jun 1801
Skurup,Sweden
DEATH: 27 Apr 1888
Mt. Pleasant,Utah
102
Chart no. 3
Pedigree Chart for
CHARLES HYRUM DIXON
Christopher Flintoff DIXON
BIRTH: 6 May 1816
Sackvi1le.New Brunswick,Canada
MARR: 13 Oct 1844
4 Charles Hyrum DIXONBIRTH: 23 Sep 1848
Kirtland,Ohio
MARR: 24 Jun 1872
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH: 7 Deo 1877
Payson,Utah
2 Charles Christopher Flintof DIXON
BIRTH: 6 Jan 1876
Payson.Utah
MARR: 22 Jun 1898
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH: 10 Jul 1929
Payson,Utah
9 Jane Elizabeth WIGHTMAN
BIRTH: 22 Jun 1813
German Flats,Herk,,New York
DEATH: 14 Nov 1877
Payson Utah
10 Willi am DOUGLASS
BIRTH: 2 Feo 1319
Donegal,Ireland
MARR: 14 Oct 1842
5 Matilda DOUGLASSBIRTH: 22 May 1851
Salt Lake City.Utah
DEATH: 1932
St George,Utah
DEATH: 19 Aug 1892
Payson,Utah
11 Agnes CROSSBIRTH: 5 Apr 1318
Carnnoney, Ire' and
DEATH: 5 Sec 1306
Payson,Utah
CHARLES HYRUM DIXONBIRTH: 26 Oct 1900
Payson,Utah
MARR: 11 Jun 1924
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH: 3 Dec 1967
Salt Lake City.Utah
SPOUSE(S):
True CALL
DEATH: 12 Sep 1905
Payson,Utah
12 Hans Heinrick SCHAERRER
I BIRTH: 13 Hay 1813
Schoenenberg. Switzerland
MARR: 24 Jun 1843
John Jacob SCHAERRER
BIRTH: 29 Dec 1845
Hegi.Zurich.Switzerland
MARR: 9 May 1870
Salt Lake City.Utah
DEATH: 4 Dec 1931
Payson,Utah
3 Adelia SCHAERRER
BIRTH: 2 Sep 1875
Payson,Utah
DEATH: 12 Jun 1959
Payson,Utah
DEATH: 15 Ose 1859
Payscn,Utah
13 Anna GCE7
BIRTH: 21 Zee 1317
-sc: .Zurich.Switzerland
DEATH: 15 l e : 1883
Payson,Utah
14 Benjamin TAYLORBIRTH: 14 Jun 1815
Mt Airy,Surrey,North Carolina
MARR: 9 Oct 1844
7 Lamecia Ann TAYLOR
BIRTH: 18 Jun 184S
Mt Airy,Surrey.North Carolina
DEATH: 5 Mar 1910
Payson.Utah
DEATH: 4 Nov 1888
Payson,Utah
15 Ann Jane HIATTBIRTH: 17 Jan 1825
Stakes Co..North Carolina
DEATH: 3 Oct 1912
Payson,Utah
103
3a
Pedigree Chart for
Chart no. 3 a
CHARLES HYRUM DIXON
Charles DIXON [2d]
BIRTH: 10 Jan 1766
Hutton-Rudby,Yorkshi re,England
MARR: 13 Oct 1799
Sackville.New Brunswick,Canada
DEATH: 22 May 1854
Buried Davenport,Iowa
1 Christopher Flintoff DIXON
BIRTH: 6 May 1816
Sackvi1le.New Brunswick,Canada
3 Elizabeth HUMPHREYBIRTH: 29 Mar 1777
Falmouth,Nova Scotia,Canada
DEATH: 17 Jul 1864
Payson,Utah
104
Pedigree Chart for
Chart no. 4
TRUE CALL
Cyril CALL
I BIRTH: 29 Jun 1785
Woodstock, '/error:
I MARR: 5 Apr 1806
4 Anson CALL-
BIRTH: 13 May 1810
Fletcher,Vermont
MARR: 7 Feb 1857
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH: 31 Aug 1890
Bountiful .Utah
2 Willard CALLBIRTH: 25 Apr 1866
Bountiful.Utah
MARR: 1 Apr 1886
Logan,Utah
DEATH: 17 Jun 1945
Bountiful.Utah
DEATH: 23 Hay 1373
Eounti ful.Utah
9 Sally TIFFANY
BIRTH: 27 Nov 1790
Fletcher, Vermont
DEATH: 15 Mar 1856
Bounti ful,Utah
5 Margretta Unwin CLARKBIRTH: 26 May 1828
Nottingham,Engl and
DEATH: 27 Dec 1908
Bountiful.Utah
1 TRUE CALL
[ BIRTH:
4 Oct 1902
Dublan.Chih..Mexico
MARR: 11 Jun 1924
Salt Lake City,Utah
DEATH:
SPOUSE(S):
Charles Hyrum DIXON
6 John S. WHITE
BIRTH: 15 Fes 1818
Middletown.New Jersey
MARR: 5 Apr 1349
Salt Lake City.Utah
DEATH: 5 Jun 1907
Farmington.Utah
3 Adelaide WHITE
BIRTH: 13 Dec 1868
Farmington,Utah
DEATH: 15 Dec 1957
Spanish Fork,Utah
14 Addiscn EVERETTBIRTH: 10 Oct 1805
Wal1<i11,Sew York
iMARR: 21 Jan 1831
7 Ann Eliza Adelaide EVERETTBIRTH: 30 Aug 1832
New York City.New York
DEATH: 19 Apr 1904
Farmington,Utah
DEATH: 12 Jan 1835
St. Georse.Utan
15 Eliza Ann ELTING3IRTH: 1 Mar 1305
New ''or k City.New York
DEATH: 17 Nov 1835
New tork City.New York
105