Martha
and John Cousins
Excerpts
from “Freystrop & Folks” compiled by Beryl
Davies, p. 133 –
(Some
of the wording has been changed to facilitate the reading.)
Martha, the eldest daughter of Moses Cousins
and Emily Rowe, married her cousin John Cousins against her parent’s wishes . They went to
America
with assisted passage from the Mormon Church and the promise of a better
life. When Martha and her husband John
left for America they were
amongst the first pilgrims to move to Utah. All their belongings were put into store and
each family was issued with a handcart.
John Cousins became the leader of a small
group of men and established a new settlement in an area known as Clover
Creek. He laid out a new town putting up
fences, digging ditches and building road and bridges. Today this town is called ‘Montpelier.’
John then set up a freighting business between Montpelier
and Evanston, Wyoming and carried mail using ponies and
toboggans.
In the spring of 1882 the Oregon
short line railroad began construction work in Idaho and John and a Joseph M. Phelps
(another local name in Freystrop) obtained a grading contract from which they
made a lot of money. John also
established two farms, some hay land and livestock and began operating a
thriving butchery business.
John Cozzens (Cozens or Cousins) was the
eldest of nine children of James Cozzens and Dinah Thomas of Freystrop Cross. His
father was killed in the mines at the age of thirty-seven and John was left the
breadwinner. At the age of nineteen he
married Martha and soon after they heard the missionaries of the Latter Day
Saints preach the gospel and were converted.
They left for America
on April 19th 1856 from Liverpool on the ship Samuel Curling
arriving at Boston
May 23rd 1856. Utah at that time was an
independent state and did not come under the rules of the government so they
could practice their own religion without prejudice and practice the
‘Patriarchal Order of Plural Marriage’.
Early in the year 1870 John and Martha
separated, as they had no children.
Martha obtained a divorce and moved to Evanston, Wyoming
where she later remarried and lived to a good age. In July of that year, John married two wives
on the same day, Emily Almira Merrill and Sarah Jane
Perkins. They were good friends but each
had her own home. Both reared large
families and both died of gallstones aged 70.
By this time John had been ordained a priest.
During the crusade on polygamy John was
forced into hiding, but in 1890 he was arrested and convicted to serve six
months in the Boise
penitentiary and pay a large fine. In
the autumn of 1905 he and his son Luke died of typhoid fever.
John Couzzens was
a pioneer to Utah in 1856, to Idaho in 1863 and to Big Horn, Wyoming in 1890. He was the father of thirteen sons and five
daughters. He was a faithful Latter-day
Saint, a kind and just father and husband, and a true friend.
