Oscar North Rice was born on October 19, 1835, in a frost-bitten, rattlesnake-infested country called Washtenaw in the wild territory of Michigan, where Indians lived, wolves prowled and bears were known to snooze beside the schoolhouse on hot spring days. It was a land without roads or bridges, and transportation was by foot, horseback, or waterways. The Rice family hunted bear and deer, and other wild game in the normal course of events in order to feed themselves. In 1842, the family made the long trip from Ypsilanti, Michigan to Nauvoo, Illinois because they had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Oscar knew nothing of ease or comforts in his day-to-day life, but he did know a lot about the Prophets and leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ and would have followed them to the ends of the earth, as well as to the end of time. He was seven years old when the Prophet Joseph and brother Hyrum Smith were killed. His father left a large family, the last one a baby brother, and crossed the Mississippi in February 1846 in a raging blizzard to satisfy the persecuting mobs.
In the spring of 1848, Brigham Young brought a message back from far-off Deseret (Utah), in which his father Ira Rice had said for them to come with the large companies crossing the Plains to their new home. Oscar was then thirteen years old. His mother’s health had been destroyed by hardships of the flight from Nauvoo, Illinois and she could not follow the family to Utah. Consequently, Oscar left her, three sisters and baby brother Ephraim to face 1,100 miles of wilderness without the support of his parents. What he found upon his arrival in Utah was of little comfort—the emptiness of a cabin shelter at the end of the journey with no mother to greet or care for them. Soon after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Oscar North was called to be a scout to help with the Indian troubles in the Lemhi Valley of Idaho. During that time, Indians killed one of his best friends.
He with his father and brothers were the first to try to make a settlement in North Ogden, Utah. He had little formal schooling, but he learned how late frosts, bad winds, crickets, and Indians could dash the hopes of any person. From there he labored in Smithfield, Utah (1861-62), but trouble with Indians convinced him to return to Providence.
To supplement his income, he began freighting from Utah to Salmon, Idaho, after gold was discovered there. He loved to teach the Gospel to all who would listen and many times he preached to miners and others when away from home. Goods brought back on these trips he and his brother Dell sold in the first store in Providence, known as the Rice Brothers Store. On one of these trips, he had an accident, from which he suffered the rest of his life.
By 1870, he had taken up a homestead along the south side of the Logan River where tall willows grew far from the banks. Once when he was grubbing them, he met a bear. Later when cutting hay with a scythe, he came face to face with a mother bear. He wanted to cut her in half, but he succeeded only in snagging a bit of her hair on his scythe blade. One of his great desires was for his children have more schooling than he had. He helped build more than one public building, roads, bridges and canals. He also helped pay teachers to teach in Providence and Logan, Utah.
Oscar North married Jane Clarissa Miller in the spring of 1859. They were listed as being among the first families to go to Providence, Cache, Utah, to establish a new settlement. No Latter-day Saint group was ever without a place of worship and hold school. He helped to supply logs in 1859, and they had a flagpole from which flew the stars and stripes for the flag they loved. He hated to think about how he had taken sweet Jane from a good home in Farmington and asked her to live in a wagon box all summer while he helped in the plowing and planting and the gathering of logs needed to build shelters for everyone. That fall they went to father Daniel Miller’s place for the winter, where their daughter Alice was born in February 1860. Undaunted, they drove back to the log cabin with willows and sod for a leaky roof, rough floorboards, and no glass windows. Like all the rest of the pioneers, a fireplace provided the heat in their log cabin.
Oscar married a second wife—Margaret Mathews—which marriage was solemnized in the Endowment House by the authority of God in 1869. She was a faithful daughter in Zion who took an active part in the church in Providence, Utah. Oscar North Rice died on 17 September 1880 in his forty-fifth year. He was followed in death by Jane Clarissa on February 15, 1896, and Margaret on 18 February 1926.
The Oscar Rice family knew all about going hungry and sacrificing for others. He could never tell of leisure or having plenty of anything, but dangers. His chief satisfaction was in doing the best he knew how and living up to the Priesthood he held and honored. He firmly believed in all of the teachings and commandments made by God through his authorized leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was a faithful tithe payer, he gave freely to the Church. Like Abraham of old, who would have sacrificed his son if God required it of him. Oscar was willing to obey every requirement of God—even the law of plural marriage. It was not an easy law to obey and only a few entered into that covenant.
Leonard Gurley’s parents, Ira and Sarah Ann Harrington Rice, were living in Northville, Wayne County, Michigan, when he was born September 3, 1829. Missionaries came to their home in Michigan while Leonard was a young child, and the family became members of the newly restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and soon joined the body of the Church at Nauvoo, Illinois. He remembered well, watching his father and other men helping on the building of the Temple there. He remembered, too, those sorrowful days surrounding the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum Smith. He stood with the thousands of Saints in that hot summer sun when their bodies were returned to Nauvoo in an open wagon.
The Rice home was burned by mobs the year the Latter-day Saints crossed the Mississippi River in 1846. Leonard’s father and two of his older half-brothers had preceded him to Utah to prepare ahead for the rest of the family. By this time his mother, Sarah Ann, had given birth to twelve children, ten of whom were living. Leonard, who was then 19, and the oldest son of the remaining children, carried the responsibility of bringing part of the family, Oscar North, 15; Adelbert, 9; Hyrum Smith, 4; Adeline, 11; and Caroline, about 7; across the plains to Utah. It was a great disappointment to Ira that not all of his family came with Leonard. Sarah Ann, the wife, and mother, had, no doubt, died, for no mention is made of her. The motherless children were often placed in the custody of someone in the family until they were old enough to sustain themselves.
A Family of His Own
Leonard Gurley returned the next year to help other emigrant trains. He met and married Elizabeth Almira Babbitt at Kanesville, who was already planning to travel West with the next company. Their honeymoon was spent driving teams along the pioneer trail to Utah. Leonard was made Captain over ten wagons and his wife did much of the driving of their own wagon. They made their home in Farmington, Utah.
Leonard had proven himself to be an expert horseman and one who could drive an ox team with skill. He had learned the advantages of friendliness and patience with people and he had empathy for them that made him humble, as well as noble, and he knew how to keep the wagon train moving. These attributes of leadership put him in high demand as a wagon master for many trips back and forth across the pioneer trail.
In 1851, Leonard returned again to Iowa, hoping to bring the rest of his father’s family. In a letter to his wife, Elizabeth, he wrote that he had seen his older sisters who had married and preferred not to join the Saints in Utah and that his younger brother, Ephraim, who would have been 5 or 6 years of age, had drowned. This loss grieved Leonard much, for he had been most anxious that all of his mother’s family be reunited in Utah. Again, he made no mention of his mother in his letter, so we have to assume that she had died earlier.
On a later trip, he met his wife’s dear girlhood friend, Margaret Buckwalter, who had been widowed, but who had remained firm in her determination to get to Utah. Upon their arrival in Utah, a sweet experience saw Leonard and Margaret married as Elizabeth placed Margaret’s hand in Leonard’s in marriage on 2 January 1853. Leonard’s two families, Elizabeth’s 11 and Margaret’s 7 (though not all of these children grew to maturity) lived close for many years to enjoy a unity seldom found in single families.
Mission Call and a New Wife
Leonard’s life was one of sacrifice for others. Between the years of 1848 and 1867, there are repeated incidents of calls to assist not only the pioneers on their trek westward but rescue missions to destitute areas in outlying colonies. Leonard had the faith and courage of his families in Farmington while he was away from them so much of the time. Because of his skillful handling of teams, wagons, and people, he was in demand as a wagon master and Captain. He was a frequent companion of President Young on his many “preaching tours” to new colonies as the Church spread to outlying areas. He was called upon to help in the rescue of the Martin Handcart Company. He, with other elders, took six wagonloads of supplies to the stranded company under the leadership of Edward Martin.
He was one of a party of men called to assist in the Green River Expedition to Wyoming in 1853. In 1854, he again went with Brigham Young to settlement outposts in Southern Utah and into areas that later became Southern Nevada. There was also the time he was part of a rescue party sent to meet a company of pioneer Saints stranded in winter snows. They found and carried men too weak to walk, women almost frozen, and many children through the icy waters of the Sweetwater River. Never had men witnessed so much misery and suffering. That night, the bedraggled and freezing rescue party made camp for the destitute company five miles west of the Sweetwater River. It took almost a month to get back to Salt Lake City. Leonard took cold and became severely ill, from which he never fully recovered.
It is noted in Journal History of 1857 that Governor Young and a party of travelers left Salt Lake City to visit Idaho settlements along the way to the Salmon River Valley. The distance of this trip to Fort Lemhi was 380 miles. Their teams, carriages and wagons made the trip in 32 days. Leonard Gurley Rice was said to have driven Brigham Young’s carriage. Roads were non-existent. Fort Lemhi had only recently been established in 1855.
On 1 May 1865, soon after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Leonard was called on a European Mission by the Church. He left Elizabeth Almira, whose last child was due in September of that year, and Margaret, with her family of young children, in Farmington, with instructions for the older children to carry on and help their mothers all they could. It was 5 July 1865, when he and Elders Nathaniel H. Felt and Aureleus Miner began their journey by Overland Stage. They reached New York City August 19, and boarded the S.S. Virginia for bound England. Leonard performed an honorable mission. Through prayer, his knowledge of the Gospel increased and he was able to overcome the temptations of discouragement and the things of the world. In a letter to his family he wrote,
“My heart and mind are upon my children more than all things else in this world … I am thankful to say of myself (God be praised) I stand firm … I hope to perform the balance of my mission as honorable as I have what is past … May God bless you all is the prayer of your husband and the children’s father.”
He was released from his mission on 21 March 1867.
Leonard’s return home did not end his calls from the Church. He was assigned to be in charge of relief wagon trains sent to meet companies of Saints coming to Utah. On his last wagon train trip in 1867, he had command of foreign converts from many lands speaking different languages. In that last crossing was Lucy Jane Stevens, who became his third wife. Ruth May Fox was in this same company and some of her written words, expressing appreciation for Leonard Gurley as a Captain, were these:
“No one who has not had the actual experience of crossing the great plains … can realize what it meant to be a Captain of a large company of emigrants of different nationalities, various occupations and decidedly diverse habits of life, some of whom had never camped out at night in their lives, who had not so much as seen a yoke of cattle, and of course, did not understand the language which frontier oxen were accustomed to…There were weary ones to be encouraged, the over-zealous to be held back; order must be maintained, rations measured out, and men appointed to guard the cattle and the camp; many of these had never seen an Indian nor fired a gun … With Leonard as Captain, I remember him as a fine looking man, spoken of as an ideal leader who was not known to have lost his temper the whole of the journey, and of whom I heard few complaints…Oh, what could we have done without a Captain? God bless his memory.”
Source unknown
Leonard and Lucy Jane Stevens were married in Salt Lake City on 11 January 1868. They became parents of seven children; the youngest was only two weeks old when Leonard passed away on 12 September 1886, having suffered from pneumonia he contracted in the penitentiary while awaiting trial as a polygamist.
He saw the Church grow from a small beginning to be well established in the Valleys of the Rocky Mountains. He left a large posterity and bore a strong testimony of the divinity of the restoration of Christ’s Church on earth. He was buried in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Ann Victoria Rose was the sixth of eight children born to Abraham Rose and Catherine Nicholson Rose. She was born on June 4, 1839, in Howard, Steuben County, New York. Her parents had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1836. Her father was a prosperous, well-respected farmer in Steuben County. The spirit of gathering soon urged the Rose family to join the body of the Church in Nauvoo, Illinois. They left their comfortable home, loved ones, and most of their possessions, and traveled by covered wagon and ox team. Ann Victoria was a four-month-old baby at that time.
Arriving in the southern part of Ohio, late in the season, they remained at Carthage, Ohio until 1843. They obtained work manufacturing maple sugar and maple syrup. Two more children were born while the family resided at Carthage. They left Carthage in September 1843 and arrived in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois a month later. Here they met the Prophet Joseph Smith. His noble personality made a lasting impression upon the Rose family. They had arrived at a time when persecution was severe and they were among those who crossed the Mississippi River in the great exodus from that beautiful city and temple. Ann Victoria was a child of seven years. Her family crossed the Iowa prairies with one ox and cow yoked together, as the mob had killed one of their oxen to feed themselves.
They arrived at Kanesville, Iowa (present-day Council Bluffs) in August 1846. Here, a year later, their last child was born. They were destitute and remained in Kanesville until 1853 in order to obtain enough supplies to continue the journey across the plains. Ann Victoria was fifteen years of age when her family crossed the Missouri River with two wagons, five yoke of cattle, one horse, and provisions to last eighteen months. Ann’s younger brother, their herdsman, rode the horse, bareback all the way across the plains. They had fourteen head of cattle in all. On their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Rose family decided to settle in Farmington, about seventeen miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. By this time, the town had an organized ward.
Ann Victoria married William Kelsey Rice, the son of a Farmington pioneer. He had crossed the plains with his father, Ira Rice, and brother, Asaph Rice. Ann became the second wife of Kelsey on June 7, 1855. They had a large family of fine sons and daughters. Ann Victoria died following the birth of her twelfth child, on May 26, 1878.
In spite of suffering hardships, privations, and heartache, Ann Victoria never wavered in her faith and testimony of the Gospel for which she and her family had given their all. She had, like her parents, the blessed ability to smile through tears and spread sunshine about. Ann Victoria, like her brothers and sisters, was musically inclined and had an appreciation for the finer things in life. These fine qualities are found in the posterity of William Kelsey and Ann Victoria to this day. A love of a well kept and attractive home, good literature, and the various arts is a part of the distinctive heritage that has left its mark on their descendants.
Margaret Buckwalter was the daughter of John and Sarah Shuler Buckwalter, born November 12, 1828, in Westenantmeal Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. At the time the missionaries came to their home preaching the restored gospel, her father was very ill. He told his family that he knew that it was the truth, but he passed away before he could be baptized. All of his immediate family joined the Church; Margaret was the oldest child. They left their home state to join the Saints in Illinois. Margaret was married to Lemon Wickel on April 23, 1847, by Nathaniel Felt. One son, Henry L., was born to this union before Lemon departed this life on June 4, 1850.
Margaret came to Utah in 1852 with her baby, mother and brothers, and sisters. The Buckwalter children and the Babbitt children had attended the same private home school in Nauvoo. The reunion of Margaret and Elizabeth Almira Babbitt was one of gladness. There seemed to be a strong, mutual affection between these two ladies. President Young married Leonard Gurley and Margaret on January 2, 1853, and a closeness existed between their two families through the years. Margaret had seven children, four boys, a girl who died as a baby, and last, a pair of twin girls.
The best rice grew in Farmington, Utah, it was said, as Rice sons (sometimes considered “wild rice”) appeared at frequent intervals. According to the two mothers involved, it was good rice, none-the-less.
Margaret was of noble character, deeply religious, and always concerned more for the needs of others than for herself. She was known by her friends and relatives as an extremely saintly woman. She loved to read Church books, and was a strict tithe payer. Her cleanliness was a legend with those who knew her. Spotlessness was a ritual in her humble cottage.
Margaret went to live with her sons who had moved to Cassia County, Idaho, about 1882. Later she settled in the Teton Valley and lived with her daughter, Martha (Rice) Drake, and her son-in-law Richard Asa Drake. When she was sixty-one years old, Margaret filed on a homestead next to Richard and Martha. To “prove up,” she had to build a house, clear land, plant crops, and build fences. With the help of Richard, she did “prove up.” Her hands were never idle—gardens grew, wheat was ground and eggs, butter and cheese were always on hand.
Later, her family built her a good home in the village of Victor, Idaho, where she could attend church as often as she pleased. She remained firm in the faith that she had accepted from Mormon missionaries years before. She left a life that had been a challenge in trying times, in exchange for eternal joys on the 10th day of October 1918, and was buried in Victor, Idaho.
My mother’s name was Mary Ann Darrow. She was the daughter of Stephen and Harriett Burbank Darrow of Hebron, New York, where she was born 28th of February, 1818. She married Edmund Richardson on 2 August 1840.
Edmund Richardson and Mary Ann Darrow, by Owen Richardson
She was a factory girl during her young womanhood; thus early beginning her trade as a weaver, which was of so great use to her family and to the many of her neighbors to whom she taught the trade after she came to the valleys.
Once when I gave a trivial excuse for not doing some duty, she told me, “I once knew a little girl who habitually soaped her hands so that when her mother asked her to do something she could reply, ‘My hands are soapy, I can’t’” After looking at her thoughtfully a moment I asked, “Ma, was that little girl you?” A smile was her answer. I have often thought what a queer beginning that was to the wonderfully industrious life she always led in after life.
She was a very determined woman when her mind was once made up. During her young womanhood a man who had become violently insane in the town where she lived, obtained a long sharp knife, and brandishing it, defied a large posse of men to enter the room where he had taken refuge. The neighbors, knowing her capabilities, sent for my mother who came to the door of the maniac’s lair and looked at him. For a few seconds he avoided looking at her; but when his gaze finally met hers, she looked steadily into his eyes for a minute, when he dropped his hands, his knife falling to the floor, and still looking into her eyes allowed the men to tie him without further opposition. Also one of my father’s brothers, named Dan, occasionally became insane and whenever she came into the room where he was, at a look from her, he always became tractable.
She had a very good education for those times; she was an effective reader and always had a story or anecdote to illustrate her advice which was constantly sought wherever she lived. She had the keenest sense of humor and liked a funny story if it was “clean.” Her little stories to her children were endless in number. Here is one:
She said a little girl was eating her supper of porridge from a bowl on the ground between her feet as she sat on the doorstep. A little pig came along and investigating the savory food in the bowl, put in his snout and commenced to swallow it. The little girl, seeing the liquid lowering began eating as fast as she could from one side of the bowl. When she saw that the pig was likely to get the most of the supper as things were going, she extended the handle of the spoon to the pig and said reproachfully, “Take a ‘poon, pig, ‘at ain’t fair.”
One of the ardent desires of her life was that her children should have a good education, but with her first two, the frontier life in Canolton, Indiana, and neighborhood, prevented its attainment which was always a great sorrow to her. But when her last ones came she constantly labored to that end.
She could make any undesirable trait that she saw in us look ridiculous and make us ashamed of it so easily. For instance she said a family of her neighbors were eating breakfast one morning when she heard one of the growing girls scream out as if she were in agony, “Sal’s got the most grease!”
As my mother knew nothing of the teachings of the true gospel in regard to the value and necessity of children, they did not intend to have any more than the two children that they brought across the plains. So that my brother Sullie and I owe our very existence on this earth to the teachings of the Gospel after my mother became acquainted with it.
I have often heard my mother tell of their fear of the dreadful Mormons. When the oxen died at the Big Sandy River, and they knew that it would be utterly impossible to continue the journey to Oregon until another spring, they were almost overcome with the dread of having to associate even so little with the people they knew lived in Salt Lake City. But the Indians were still more dreadful so they knew it was their only hope of life.
Arriving in Salt Lake City
When they arrived in Salt Lake Valley, they decided to go over west of the Jordan River which had the advantage of being apart from the bulk of the people and with few neighbors, but near enough for protection from the Indians.
The first intercourse they had with the neighbors was when a neighbor invited them to come over to their house for supper. They were fearful of offending the neighbor by refusing to go and were fearful that their host might get offended at persons professing another than the Mormon religion, and might murder them. However at the least of two evils, the invitation was accepted and it twas to them noteworthy as the first time in their lives that they had ever tasted flour “mush.” They had always supposed it must be made of cornmeal or buckwheat in order to be eatable.
In a few days another invitation followed, acquaintance having removed some of their fear they accepted an invitation to a Mormon meeting. That was the beginning of the end, because as soon as they heard the preaching of the true gospel they lost all wish to go on to Oregon. As there was then a call for settlers to go to build a home, and it was there five and seven years later than I and my brother were born.
I have heard people tell of an incident that happened in early days at Manti. My mother at that time lived in the outskirts of the town where the Indians came first to beg or ask for food. There had been some dissatisfaction on the part of the Indians and an outbreak of hostilities threatened. One day an Indian all painted up suddenly presented himself at her door and insolently demanded bread. My mother had an oven full of biscuits just baked, setting on the hearth. She opened it and taking out some of them, gave them to the painted brave. He received them, but demanded more. When she refused, he strode up to the hearth and stooped to take out more. My mother stopped him and he immediately drew from his belt a large knife to strike her, raised it in the air, clutching the hilt. My mother sprang back and seized a long-handled heavy-bladed fire shovel, raised it in the air to strike him. As the Indian saw determination blazing in her eyes and that she could reach him with the long shovel before he could reach her with the knife he decided that discretion was the better part of valor; he suddenly exclaimed in very good English, “Brave squaw,” lowered his knife and departed. But the sight of the threatened encounter which she could see plainly from the door of a house directly across the street, so agitated a neighbor woman that she fainted dead away. The neighbor was the person who told the story.
One day mother dropped a flat-iron on her toe, causing a very bad sore where the iron bruised the bone. Proud flesh formed in the sore and it refused to heal, or yield to any treatment she could bestow. She went to the doctor and he wanted a hundred dollars to amputate it. She told him she would give him twenty-five or fifty, but she would never give him a hundred. He thought he was sure of his point and told her to go home, but that she would be in back. She became irritated with its soreness and taking a carpenter’s chisel from my father’s chest, she placed the toe on a block of wood with the chisel on the toe. She struck the chisel a smart blow with a flat iron, which of course amputated the toe. I have often seen the amputated remains of the toe. The doctor later asked about it and was very incredulous of her story of it.
My earliest remembrance in Springerville [Springville, Utah] is of hearing the clang of my mother’s loom. She wove constantly, unless something unusual interfered. She would not quit the loom seat at night unless she had earned three dollars that day. When anyone wanting to learn to weave came, she always taught them all she could, but I do not think anyone ever learned to weave the fine blue and white coverlets that were her specialty, though she always showed the different steps necessary to make them whenever asked. But many a person in that early day learned from her all kinds of plain weaving. All our clothing was made from cloth woven by her hands and it was so well woven we were proud to wear it. My father, being a first class mechanic had built her an excellent loom, which of course had helped her to produce a finished product. People came from far and near to buy her beautiful coverlets and bed spreads.
Another incident will illustrate my mother’s presence of mind. She went in company with my sister, with my father and brother to obtain their pails and berries, while my father obtained a load of logs for a school house that was being built. While she and my sister were busy picking the berries, some Indians who probably thought to enjoy their fright and obtain their pails and berries, sneaked into the bushes around them, and when all was ready set up an unearthly yelling. As it came as an unexpected surprise with all the blood curdling effect of an Indian whooping it up in a forest, my sister dropped her pail and started to run. My mother called her back, chiding her, telling her that if the Indians wanted to catch them, running would not save them as they were no match for the Indians in a race. So they kept quietly picking berries. Their coolness discomfited the Indians who soon left them in peace.
Indian Babies
by Sullie Richardson
Soon after we moved to Springville [Utah] in the fall of 1861 or the spring of 1862, the Indian interpreter, Amos Warren, went down into the “Clay Beds” to an Indian Camp. A squaw had died in the night and the Indians were going to bury her and leave. But she had a baby girl about eighteen months old. None of them wanted to care for her and besides she was the only remaining heir of a chief who was dead. With the child out of the way, quite a lot of property would be divided among the tribe.
Just before Warren came they had set the child on the mother’s breast and stood off to shoot at her with their bows and arrows. As he rode up one shot an arrow at the baby sitting quietly looking at them in wonderment. The arrow went through its neck so near the jugular vein, it was a miracle it was not severed. The baby screamed and caught hold of the arrow. Another shot her through the leg near the body before Warren could interfere. Another Indian stepped out with a laugh to take his turn. Warren called him to stop, but the arrow was fitted and the bow raised before Warren caught his hand and argued for the baby, until they agreed to sell the child for an old buffalo robe and other stuff of the value of seven or eight dollars. But he had to give his faithful promise that she would never come back to the tribe to claim the ponies and property that would have been hers.
Carefully he took the arrow from her neck and brought her home and at last chose my mother as the one who would be nearest a mother to her. He was a poor man so mother paid him in cloth she wove for his price to the Indians. But it was so long before the wounds healed that I still remember the wound in her neck.
Kate Aldura had the care of a mother as we did. Had her home-woven dresses, went to school with us, and shared our home. She tried to be a good true girl and all that was worthy until long after mother’s death, when she was betrayed by a scoundrel white man, who had promised to marry her. But he ran away and left her to care for her daughter. Kate worked in a hospital in Durango, Colorado, and later became the matron of the principal Indian Schools in the Middle West.
In Sanpete, Ma had taken a little Indian boy to save its life, and after months of care, a woman sent to see if she could take him to nurse her breasts. Being assured there was no disease or fever he would nurse, Ma consented. The assurances were false, and the little fellow who had been robust, died of convulsions.
Mary Ann’s Life Nears its End
by Edmund Richardson
When my brother Sullie and I were small tots, my mother had a very serious illness. When it seemed to her that she could not live any longer, she turned her face to the wall and almost frantically prayed the Father to let her live only until her two boys could take care of themselves, promising that then she would be resigned to His call.
In telling it afterwards, she testified that she immediately began to recover; saying that she expected another call just as soon as her boys should barely get old enough to care for themselves. The call she expected did come when we were barely old enough, for when she died I was twelve and Sullie was ten.
Almost as early as I can remember, my father went to Nevada to the mines. He did carpenter work and put the greater part of his earnings into claims. He always expected to make a fortune for his family. Mother wove, and farmed and kept things going at home. So many robbers infested the road, it was almost impossible to sent money home, but once Mother wrote that she must have money to pay taxes and other necessities. Father sent several cans of honey, one of which mother sold; and a number of small chests of tea in boxes made in China, about six inches wide and seven or eight inches deep. Mother was a bout to sell a box of the tea, also, when on opening one she found a roll of bills buried in it. He had not dared mention it or he knew it would not get to her.
During the year just previous to the last call, I often heard her say that it doubtless would come soon, and with this feeling impelling her she begged all hands to hurry to get what work could be done for their dead completed so that she could go in peace.
…Arrangements were made to go to the Endowment House in Salt Lake City in order to do it. But as my older brother did not take any interest in religious matters, she was fearful that my tender age would prevent my doing as she told me that it should be an heir, to work for her dead.
When we arrived in Salt Lake City, she visited the presiding officer of the Endowment House to ask him if a boy of twelve could be allowed to have his endowments so he could work for the dead as an heir. Daniel H. Wells was then in charge of the House, and he replied that if they would bring me to him, he would decide if I could be admitted. When we went to see him the next morning, he asked me some questions as to my belief in the Gospel, and, on hearing my answers, he emphatically told my mother that I could be trusted to have my endowments.
When he gave his decision favorably, so that it made it possible to do her work in [the temple], the satisfaction that shone in my mother’s face was supreme. When the work was done, she remarked that she was not long going to stay with us, though at the time, she seemed to be in good health. Soon she was stricken with pneumonia and died January 13, 1872. She always thought she did not have any friends, but more people came to her funeral than I had ever seen to any funeral in town.
I was born on the 13th day of February 1816, in the town of Mount Holly, Rutland County, Vermont. My father was Calvin Richardson. He was a surgeon in the Revolutionary Army. My mother’s name was Mindwell Barrett. After living with my father until of age, I started for the west. I stopped off at Washington County, New York, where I married Mary Darrow 2 August 1840. Then I moved back to Vermont where myself and wife were united with the Presbyterian Church. Since my father’s family was of the Baptist and Methodist faiths, ill feeling and persecutions arose and grew to the extent that I could no longer live in peace. Therefore, I moved to Cannelton, Perry County, Indiana, where I lived five years, spending much time and money building up and promoting what I believed to be religion. As I was trustee, much of the work fell upon my shoulders. In a word, I was like Paul, a Pharisee, living according to rigid sectarianism, but still looking for light and truth.
Edmund Richardson and Mary Ann Darrow by Owen Richardson
At last I united with a colony and started for Oregon. Money began to fail so I joined my brother-in-law in one wagon. After being out some time, division began to arise, so at last at Independence Rock, I bought me a wagon. But my cattle were weak from alkali and everything seemed against me. I kept on to the big Sandy River however where my best ox died. I was obliged to leave friends and everyone I ever saw and turn toward Salt Lake, on account of the state of my team.
We were twenty-seven days going one hundred and sixty miles. We were all alone all the time, except as we met someone now and then. We saw bodies of men that had been murdered by Indians, and we were surrounded by grizzly bears when we camped on the side of the mountain at night. But the hand of God was over us, and we arrived safely in Salt Lake City. My wife remarked that it was like Job’s captivity turning when he prayed for his friends, for our fortune turned when we turned.
Although we knew nothing of the Mormons except the false reports in circulation, we thought we might live with them for one winter. We soon began to feel the spirit of inquiry, and the consequence was that myself and wife were baptized by Ralph Thompson on the 3rd of October, 1853. In December, I was sent to Sanpete, and on 11 February, 1954, I was ordained an Apostle of the Seventies under the hand of Nelson Higgins. I was re-baptized, and on 11 February 1854 and in 1857 I paid $168.00 into the [Perpetual] Emigration Fund.
Thus far my faith has been firm in Mormonism. I know it is true and am satisfied to remain in it, which I pray may ever be the case.
— (signed) Edmund Richardson
An Account by Charles Edmund Richardson
My father told often of his early life in Vermont. They were very poor, his father being a hunter of game, rather than the head of the family. But when my father and his brothers came to manhood, things began to be financially better. The boys planted crops of potatoes and were generally successful with their farming. The best of all was that he grew up with very strict ideas of honor and integrity. He was a good father to Sullie and me. He has taken me in his arms dozens of times, telling me that he thanked the Lord for me. He never chastised, even when it seemed he ought to do so, but contented himself with a verbal chastising.
For instance he always kept a keg of whiskey under the bed. At one corner of the room under the further corner of the bed, there was a “Cat hole.” My brother George commenced to throw his saddles, straps and other boyish treasures under the bed, and while there rummaging among his things could draw a pint cupful of whiskey and shove it out to some of his pals outside. He would then come out and go down into the willows and drink it. One time my father happened to be outside and saw the cupful handed out. When he saw George come out, knowing the conditions as given, he only said, “George, you are a whale to drink whiskey.”
He loved my mother with unfeigned love, and was never tired of making things or doing all possible for her comfort. He made an arm chair with the back carved exactly to fit her shoulders. His devotion to my “stately mother,” as she was lately called by one who knew her, was unlimited.
Not long after the birth of my brother, Sullie, 26th of January 1861, my parents moved back to Springville, Utah County. My parents had two older children who had been born in the states, previous to my parents having heard the true Gospel. Their names were Emma Lynette, born 30 October 1841, in New York; and George Alvin, born 4 September, 1846. Father, mother, and sister Emma appear in an old manual—a record of the East Hebron Presbyterian Church.
Letters to the Family
(Note: The first four letters below were copied from originals in the hands of May Hatfield and Daisy Kelly, Springville, Utah, Edited by Lola Harm).
Father ran a tannery, a grist mill, farmed, and anything else he could find to do to keep his family. He soon became interested in mining. February 2, 1874, Sullie went over to father in Dragon Hollow. I was in Springville and sent him the following letter:
Springville, Utah Feb. 2, 1874
Dear Father:
Sullie thinks he will come over as he has got tired to school. Evans begins another quarter today and I do not now whether to start to school or come over there. You must write and tell me what to do, and what chance there is to get work over there. I paid the taxes out of that money you sent me over and got Sullie some boots. The goods have not come yet, and some think they will never come. But I guess they will get here some day. My shirt got so ragged that I had to get some cloth and Emma made it for me. There is not much news to write. Kindred died the other day and was buried. Erastus Jabez and Susan Kendall got married the other day and are now happy. I guess Sullie can tell you the rest.
From your loving son, Charles E. Richardson
Dear Son:
I don’t want you to be a teacher in school; if you go to Mr. Evans, attend to your own studies unless he pays you for it. My foot is lame yet. I want a pair of sox. Please send with that thirty-five and get me that pistol I wanted.
(Note: An Eastern company offered orders of goods for 25 [cents] with the order and one dollar when the goods arrived, so these were sent as orders to Emma as agent. The twenty-five cents went, but the order never came back. Evidently this letter was dictated by Edmund to his son, Charles Edmund. The S.C.R. is Sullie, Lynette is their older sister, Emma Lynette, and John is her husband, John Conover. —Lola Harms)
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
Pa says he will take a pair of boots No. eights, some flannel for shirts, 11 yards; hickory shirts 6 yards; Kentucky jeans 10 yards; coat lining for S.C.R., 1 pair galluses for S.C. R.; 1 hat for S.C.R. I sent measure. If there is any left, get it in tea and tobacco.
E. Richardson
Pa sends five dollars to help out.
Lynette:
I want you should copy this off so John shall understand it. Edmund can send for his. Dear children and grandchildren I send my love and respects to all of you, and wishing you health and prosperity.
E. Richardson.
Father worked in a tunnel of his own two or three days and about the 20th of March caught a cold. I walked over to Diamond City for some pain killer for him, and then at the instance of Dr. Wing over to Eureka. Sullie was with us then. When I saw that he was very sick, I walked down to Silver City and telegraphed to Springville for John and Emma.
Deseret Telegraph Co. Silver City, 24-1874
To: John Conover Springville, Utah
Father is very sick come if you want to see hi alive. Paid.
C.E. Richardson
During his sickness of one week, Sullie and I [Charles] were his only nurses. And as Sullie was too young he could not stay awake. I passed a part of the week when he was the worst with only a few hours sleep. John came over in the night in a wagon, and was there a short time before my father’s death, which occurred while Sullie and I and a stranger were with him.
Dragon, 25 March 1874.
Dear Sister:
We are all here. John got here alright but pretty tired. Pa is pretty bad yet, but I think he will come out alright again. He does not eat much. Dr. Wing is doctoring him. John is going over to Eureka to get some medicine. Pa wishes all the time he was over there and says he is going over there as soon as he can get well enough. I cannot write much this time, but I will write again pretty soon. John says he will not be over till Pa gets better and he can fetch him over so you must get along the best you can.
Well good by for the present.
Your affectionate brother, C. E. Richardson.
John took our dead father back in the wagon. We wrapped the body in bed clothes and started. But as the strain and anxiety had ended, I laid down in the wagon beside my dead and slept most of the way, not in his arms as I had been accustomed, but along side his beloved body, completely overcome with exhaustion.
Lucy Witter Geer was born on 23 February 1824, at Perry, Ashtabula County, Ohio, and the daughter of Moses Geer and Sarah, his third wife. Lucy was eight years of age when she and her father and older sister, Sarah, were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lucy and her sister became expert seamstresses and helped the family financially in this way. This skill proved invaluable to Lucy in her later life. Her parents died and were buried at McHenry, Illinois. Lucy was the only one of her family that traveled to Utah.
After Lucy’s marriage to William Kelsey Rice, 9 October 1845, the newlyweds became involved in plans to leave Nauvoo to their enemies and join in an exodus to new places. They were among the sorrowing Saints at the time Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed. They were among those first to leave Nauvoo in the winter of 1846. They drove a team that consisted of a steer and a milch cow. The cow gave them milk along the way. It took a certain kind of courage for this young couple to leave a warm home to face the winter blasts of parts unknown. It was a case of “I’ll go where you want me to go, Dear Lord.” Their first camp was called Sugar Creek. Winds howled and snow flew. Sickness and death visited many of the homeless outcasts, but a faith stronger than the elements carried them on. Their next camp was Mount Pisgah.
While Lucy’s husband was away (returning to Nauvoo for further supplies) Lucy gave birth to her first child. She was living in a wagon box backed against a hillside and banked with dirt. A Brother and Sister Martin H. Peck had made her bed comfortable with pine needles and cared for her and the baby, Ellen, faithfully. This was the first of twelve children born to Lucy.
They finally arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. They subsisted during the first winter in the “Old Fort” on the meager provisions they had brought with them and what they could procure from neighbors in exchange for milk. In the following spring, they planted a crop of wheat. Although crickets almost devastated the field, they harvested about seven bushels to the acre and ground meal for flour in a coffee mill. Lucy gleaned early-ripened wheat heads from anthill areas and when her husband harvested, she gleaned all that was missed.
When William Kelsey was in Parowan, Utah to settle Indian trouble, he gave a black whip and a lariat for a small Indian boy and girl about to be killed by revengeful and quarrelsome Indians. These children Lucy grew up in the Rice home with Lucy’s twelve children.
Lucy raised flax, which she cured, spun and wove into cloth. She sheared sheep for wool and made many articles of clothing for men, women and children. She took an active part in early Church activities and, like all the rest of the pioneers, was too busy to ever feel sorry for herself.
She died in Lewiston, Cache County, Utah, 28 March 1899, at the age of 75.
William Kelsey Rice was born in Manchester, Ontario County, New York on the 27th day of October 1822, to Ira and Minerva Saxton Rice. He was the fifth child and his mother died when he was just a baby in his second year. One year later his father married Sarah Ann Harrington and she became the mother who raised him. The Rice family lived about the same distance from the Hill Cumorah on one side as the Smith family lived on the other side. When William Kelsey was three years old, the Angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith. It is unthinkable that the Rices did not know the Smiths, for everyone in that neighborhood knew about Joseph Smith’s vision in the grove of trees near their home in Palmyra. By the time the Book of Mormon was published, the Rices had moved and were living in Michigan, first at Northville and later at Ypsilanti in Washtenaw County.
William Kelsey was approximately eighteen years of age when he, along with his father, stepmother and others of the family, was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and accepted Joseph Smith as a prophet, and leader. The family then moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. He and his brother, Asaph, and father, Ira, were among those who volunteered to make the first start of the Western exodus. Father Ira Rice owned good horses and wagons, which allowed them to help move the Lorenzo Snow and Orson Pratt families to Winter Quarters.
There must have been time for courting because the record states that on 6 October 1845, William Kelsey married Lucy Witter Geer at the home of Joseph Young in Nauvoo. In 1846, this young couple joined the westward move, setting up a temporary camp at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Because Ira and his sons had good teams, they were able to help other families move out of Nauvoo. Ira, Asaph and William Kelsey went back to Nauvoo in late summer to recover more provisions from their vacated home. Before they were able to return, William Kelsey’s first child, Ellen, was born 13 September 1846. The Rice family had planned to join the first company leaving for the West, but because of the trip back to Nauvoo, they were assigned to the second company, which left Winter Quarters on 21 June 1847. They were in Captain Hunter’s 100, C.C. Rich’s 50, and Shurtliff’s 10 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on 29 September 1847. They spent the winter in the “Old Fort”, where William Kelsey, Jr. was born.
In the spring of 1849, William Kelsey moved his little family to a log cabin he had built in Farmington. Together they worked to raise everything they could to supply the family’s needs and to share with neighbors, who found a welcome place to stay and were often in need.
William Kelsey was among those called to settle Indian troubles in Parowan, Iron County, Utah. He saved a little Indian boy of six and a girl of three, who were about to be killed. His wife, Lucy, raised the two with her own family. At the time of the Johnston’s Army episode, the family was moved south until all danger subsided. William Kelsey then joined the company led by Captain Lot Smith. He had great faith in the power of the Priesthood and had occasion to rebuke Satan and disease on behalf of others.
William Kelsey Rice, one of the first pioneers in Farmington, Utah, crossed the plains to be with those of his faith. Though his father, Ira, and his brother, Asaph, left to help colonize southern Utah and southwestern Nevada, William established his families in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps there was wisdom in his choice. He became a stalwart community leader and was often consulted when there was a bridge or similar community project to be built. In case of any town emergency, such as a fire, he was always among the first to respond. He was a member of the first choir organized and was in the first town band. In April and October, his yard was always filled with wagons and horses of people going to or coming from the Church Conferences in Salt Lake City.
On 17 June 1855, he married his second wife, Ann Victoria Rose. He took up a homestead south of Farmington, part of which he gave to the town of Farmington for a cemetery. He built Ann Victoria a house on this homestead and she bore him twelve children. The youngest, May, was only three weeks old when her mother, Ann Victoria, died in May 1877. Uncle Leonard’s wife, Aunt Lib (not to be confused with Aunt Libby Bybee) took May and raised her as her own.
William Kelsey lived a long life in Farmington. In his last five years, he moved to Centerville, where he died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Olive Duncan, who cared for him tenderly in his last days. He was 91 years of age when he died on 6 July 1913, and was buried in the Farmington Cemetery on July 10th. A beautiful funeral service crowned his life with numerous tributes. A later generation was reminded of a life well spent in generous deeds during a time of privation and hard work. All present were reminded that there laid a man who had lived when the gospel was restored and the first Prophet in this dispensation gave his life a martyr for the truths he had proclaimed. They were reminded, too, that William Kelsey helped to get out the logs and saw the lumber for the first meetinghouse, schoolhouse, courthouse, and mill in Farmington. They were told that he had taken part in the Echo Canyon War and had been charged with the cattle seized by Captain Lot Smith from the approaching Johnston’s Army. When the Mormons evacuated Salt Lake Valley, he was one of the guards left behind with orders to burn the homes of the Saints if the army proved hostile.
William Kelsey Rice was given a tribute in words reminiscent of mutual pioneer adventures and the faith and integrity of all the pioneers, of whom he was deemed prominent.
Mary Busenbark, a younger sister of Louisa, was born on 14 August 1829. She and her parents and other members of the Busenbark family joined the Latter-day Saints Church in New York State in 1842. They gave up relatives, money and all they had and went to Nauvoo, Illinois. Mary went to work for different families to support herself and her younger sisters. She came across the plains as hired help to a family and it was 1849 before she and her parents got to Salt Lake Valley.
Asaph and Louisa lived in Farmington until about 1852. Asaph then married Louisa’s sister Mary as his second wife and they all moved to North Ogden to live. The Busenbarks and this branch of the Rices always found their paths following side by side. Mary enjoyed the companionship of Louisa and her mother and father in all her pioneer ventures.
Mary’s children born in Salt Lake City, North Ogden, Farmington and Providence, Utah. Their days in Providence were hard and at times dangerous. Their first homes were in fort formation and the men and boys took turns standing guard at night that they might never be taken by surprise by Indians. They made friends with the Indians who did less damage than was done in many other settlements.
Mary belonged to the first Relief Society in Providence. She was always a faithful Latter-day Saint. She and Louisa could have rebelled when a new and seemingly unnecessary call came for another journey to a far away place needing settlers, but it did not enter their loyal hearts to do so. Mary buried a wee daughter September 1865, in Providence and soon was told of the proposed journey. To this family, no sacrifice was too great—if Brother Brigham called, they responded.
They met Brother Brigham in Salt Lake while on their way to the land of Utah’s Dixie and he asked where they were going. When told, Brother Brigham said he did not make such a call of Asaph—that a mistake had been made and he need not go so far away. However, Asaph had sold all he owned and felt they had just as well go on, inasmuch as they were now a part of a sixty-wagon train headed to what proved to be “No Man’s Land.” But be it known, it was not Brigham Young’s mistake as many of his sons and families grew up thinking. No woman was ever more dutiful to the man she had wed than Mary Busenbark Rice. Few are like her in this day and age. Mary Busenbark Rice departed this life on 18 December 1888.
Louisa Busenbark, born on 25 May 1827, was a daughter of Isaac Busenbark and Abigail Manning. She came from German Jewish descent. Her people were well-to-do in New York, but they lost everything—friends, relatives, and money—when her father’s family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Louisa was part of a large company of emigrants that reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. She came in company with her sister, Sarah Jane Busenbark Hall. Some where along the way, she married Edwin Calkins who enlisted in the Mormon Battalion, and was killed by Indians on his way home after he was released from service.
After her marriage to Asaph Rice in 1850, she and Asaph lived in Farmington, Utah, where some of their children were born. After Asaph’s marriage to Louisa’s sister Mary Busenbark in 1852, they all moved to North Ogden for a few years. They were among the first families in that locality. Louisa saw the Rice men folk help dig ditches, build the first meeting house in North Ogden, and went through real Indian problems brought on by a foolish white man.
Louisa and her children were hustled down south when Johnston’s Army came into Utah. She lived in a wagon box all summer while the men cleared land, cut ditches, and planted crops. Then all hands set out together to cut trees and build log cabins in a fort formation as a protection from the Indians.
Ten years later she was in another moving project–this time to St. George or Utah’s Dixie Land. In this day Louisa would have refused to move again, but she made no complaints. She was in a wagon train that numbered sixty wagons. Slowly and warily, they all went until they finally landed in Panaca, Nevada. Here Louisa Busenbark Calkins Rice died on 3 May 1885. She was buried beside her husband and was followed by her sister, his second wife.
Louisa never saw an electric light or a washing machine of any kind. She seldom rode in a carriage and never dreamed of a horseless carriage or an electric iron. If she could visit some of her granddaughters now, she would marvel at the life of common housewives today. And she would weep to find so many of them lukewarm in the Church of Jesus Christ for which she gave up so much just to be counted among the Children of God.
