ANN ROGERS SNOW

Taken from History of the William Snow and Robert Gardner

families, Celestia Snow Gardner, Published 1942

Acorn Printing Co. 2^nd Printing 1996, BYU Press

with additions from

the History of Levi and Lucina Streeter Snow Family

compiled by Bess Snow (great granddaughter) self published

Just how much does your religious faith mean to you?  What sacrifices would you be willing to make for it?  Would you abandon a comfortable home and take a long tedious journey to a foreign land for it?  Would you forsake a youthful dream of love and leave behind your sweetheart at its promptings?  Would you trudge footsore and weary a thousand miles across a trackless plain at its call?  Could you in your forlorn condition face with courage the loss of loved ones snatched from the family circle?  Could you bear the toil, the exposure, the privations encountered in pioneering a dry and barren country?  Enduring all these trials, could you still keep sweet, trusting amiable?

Some of our pioneer ancestors did this very thing.  Among them was Ann Rogers Snow.  She was born Dec 30, 1834, at East Lake Farm on a gently sloping upland overlooking the sea, in the southern part of Wales (Amroth Pembrokeshire). The old-fashioned farm house, surrounded by beautiful flower beds and walks was enclosed by a hedge fence and shaded by great elms, venerable with age.  There was an orchard containing fruit and hazelnut trees.  Not far away were blackberry bushes where the children delighted to go “berrying” on warm summer days.  She played at the seashore with other children.  Here they went in wading and caught fish.  There was a certain kind of shell fish they used to catch as a special treat for her father.  He liked it baked in the oven so that the shell would come open and the meat could be taken out.  She was christened Jan 6, 1835.

The family was well-to-do.  Its members enjoyed a home furnished with the comforts and conveniences of that day.  A maid and hired men were kept to do the work on the farm.  Ann was the 9^th child and the youngest of her mother’s children.  Her mother died when Ann was 2 years old.   Her sister Elizabeth cared for her like a mother.  A few years later her father married again.  The children never got along very well with their stepmother. 

When she was 12, her father let her go to the neighboring town of Tenby to school to take a tailor’s course.  She became very efficient in this work, and later used her skill to help make a living for her family.  The Mormon missionaries came to their home and converted the family.  They all joined the church except her two brothers John and William and her sister Janette.  In the year 1842, the family at East Lake Farm accepted the Gospel message and soon the spirit of “gathering” came upon them.  John Rogers, the father, made arrangements to go to Zion.  His oldest son was a school teacher and taught Ann in school.  She would walk to school holding on to his hand until they got close enough so that the other students could see them, then he made her let go so he could look more dignified before his pupils.  He was also the parish minister, and tried to dissuade his father from going, telling him he was not strong enough to withstand the North American climate.  But John’s mind was made up.  Passage was obtained Jan 12, 1850, on the ship “Josiah Bradlee” and it sailed on Feb 18, 1850, with a group of Saints for America. 

A number of years before they left for America, Grandmother’s sister, Martha, went to the seashore with some friends to swim and she was drown.  She was just 15. 

The Bess Snow record says “..the family boarded the ship ‘Osprey’ at Liverpool and sailed for New Orleans with a company of 100 Saints.”  However, there is no record of an “Osprey” over the ocean.  The “Osprey” was a river boat on the Mississippi River only.

Before Grandmother left Wales, John Thaine asked Grandmother to marry him.  As she was only 13, she told him she was too young but would wait 3 years for him in America.  He promised to write to her often and said that he would join her later.  All the family came to America except the three that didn’t join the Church.  However they were always friendly and wrote to each other as long as they lived.  At the time they left Wales, great grandfather couldn't sell his property.  His son John cared for it and over a period of years sold it and sent the money he received to the ones in America.  They spent 10 weeks at sea, arriving in New Orleans about the 1st of April.  Here they began to see strange sights and peculiar customs of the new land and to suffer minor disappointments.  On April 4^th the Rogers family took passage on a steamboat up the Mississippi River, bound for Council Bluffs.  When they reached St. Louis, Ann’s brother Thomas and wife and her sister Sarah and husband, who had just been married, decided to stay and get work then come on later.  Thomas did come on later but Sarah died that summer.  Janette also died in Wales that same year.

On the way across the ocean, a young man fell in love with grandmother’s sister Elizabeth and asked her to marry him, but she refused.  One night when they were some miles beyond St. Louis, Elizabeth saw grandmother to bed then went out on the deck of the steamer in the moonlight.  Here the young man found her and again asked her to marry him.  When she refused, he became angry and strangled her to death.  When the people on board found out about it, the captain said to the sailors, “Boys, if you are with me, we will give this girl a decent burial.”  So they stopped at a plantation, dug a grave in a lovely spot, and buried her by the riverside.  The remainder of the family went on up the river.  This was a terrible blow to Ann, for the two girls had been inseparable companions.  Ann was lonely indeed. But the cup of her sorrow was not yet filled to the brim.

Acting upon the advice of the presiding Elder, Mr. Hyde,  John Rogers decided to rent a farm and stay at the Bluffs awhile.  They arrived just as Grandfather Snow was leaving for Utah so they bought his farm and home.  Mr. Hyde advised great-grandfather to stay there and raise crops for about two years to take to Utah as food was scarce in the Salt Lake Valley.  (It was through this that Ann became acquainted with the Snow family.)  He was not strong, and about a year later he fell ill with chills and fever and died in August, 1850.  Ann also took the same illness but recovered.   His wife now decided to sell the farm and come on to Utah with the 2 girls, Henry having left with a family for California. (Here we will begin a brief synopsis from another part of the history)  Ann bade him goodbye.  After he reached California he wrote to her and Uncle Thomas several times, and they answered.  Finally Ann said that she got to the place where she didn’t have means enough to buy a stamp and paper so she stopped writing.  She never heard from him again.  Later they learned of some freighters in California that had been killed by the Indians and they always thought that likely he was one of them.

The stepmother now decided to go on to Utah.  She and a man that had a wife but no children bought a covered wagon, a yoke of oxen and a cow together and started out for Utah with a company of Saints.  They hadn’t gone very far when stepmother quarreled with the man, and she made him cut the wagon in two so that each had a two wheeled cart and an oxen to make the journey with.   Ann walked and drove an ox team most of the way from Council Bluffs to Salt Lake.  After weeks of plodding over rough dusty roads exposed to all kinds of weather, they finally neared the Salt Lake Valley.  Their wagon was the last one in the train.  They were caught in a snow storm just outside of Salt Lake.  A wheel came off their wagon and they were left behind.  Ann walked in alone for help.  In her own words she said, “I walked afoot and alone in a snow storm into Salt Lake to get help.”  When she got there she met a man on the streets and told him of the plight she was in.  He asked her if she knew anyone in the valley.  She told him she had known the Snows in Council Bluffs.  So he took her there and some of the men went out and helped them.  Out of the family of 8 that left Wales, she was the first to reach Salt Lake; in fact she was the only one of her own family who ever came except Uncle Thomas who moved out later. 

Soon after settling in Salt Lake, Ann’s stepmother married again.  Ann had never cared for the woman and things grew worse after the second marriage, so she decided to work out for a living if she could.  She went to work for William Snow’s wife Maria, who had a new baby.  She told Maria her troubles, who in turn told them to Grandpa William.  So Grandpa told her to suit herself.   He told her she could live at his home like one of his children and he would care for her as long as she needed it, or she could marry him if she wished.  The man she met the day she first entered Salt Lake also asked her to marry him.  She told them both  she had promised to marry a boy in Wales who was coming to America.  She had promised him she would wait for him 3 years in America.

So she lived at the Snow’s while she waited. When the 3 years were up and she never heard from the boy in Wales, she decided to marry Grandpa.  She married him March 12, 1853.  Three months later she received a bundle of letters from the boy in Wales, and he was on his way to Salt Lake.  John Thaine did come to Utah to see her after she had 2 or 3 children.  He was married then and had two children of his own.  He told her that he had remained single until he heard that she was married.  Although Grandpa was 29 years older than Grandma, she said that she was always glad that she had married him.

(When I used to sleep with Grandma, she told me this story.  I asked her if she was sorry she had married Grandpa.  She replied “Heavens no, child.  I did cry when I got those letters that he (John Thaine) had been writing to me all the time after I left Wales.  When I thought what they would have meant to me after my folks died and I was making that long dreary trip to Utah and felt so alone in the world, but I was never sorry I married your Grandpa.  Why child, he was as good a man as ever lived.  He was always so good to me that I was never sorry for a minute I married him.  Why, my children alone were worth all I ever went through.”)  I once asked Grandma how she felt being married to a man with other wives and if they ever quarreled and were jealous.  She said, “I can never remember of anything coming up but once in all the years I lived with your Grandpa.  Aunt Sally never had good health and was in bed a good deal of the time, so she was never able to get out and do rough heavy work like the rest of us were.  One day Maria and I had had an extra hard day doing some heavy outdoor work.  Maria came over to my house and we were talking.  While we were sitting there your Grandpa came in and we complained to him about us always having to do the heavy work.  He just looked at us and smiled and said, ‘Well, you girls must remember a crying baby will be tended.’  After he went out Maria and I decided that maybe things were harder for him than they were for us so nothing more was ever said that I know of.”  I think that Grandpa must have been more like a father to her than a husband.  She always spoke of him as Brother Snow or “your Grandfather” when talking to us children about him.  She never said William.

When conditions began to promise a reasonable comfort for Ann in Salt Lake, her husband was called to Fort Supply.  Maria accompanied William on this call while the other three wives remained in Salt Lake.  He had married Aunt Roxania the same day that he did Grandma.  While they were away news came to Ann that Johnston’s Army was nearing Utah.  Rumors were that the army intended to take control of the state.  This was a grave situation for Ann and her young son Willard.  President Young advised the Saints to move from Salt Lake and go south before the army entered the Valley.  From early morning to late at night, wagons on every street were being loaded with household goods and provisions for the exodus.

Early in the fall William returned to Salt Lake and moved the anxious families to Lehi.  The first winter Ann lived in a log house within the fort.  The house had been hurriedly built and many cracks let the cold wind whistle through.  When her second son Jeter was born, the cold December winds blew the snow over the floor. The kind midwife had warm blankets at the big pine fire and wrapped them around the sick woman to keep her warm.  When morning came and the wind had gone down, Mrs. Jacobs, the midwife, swept a tub of snow from the board floor.

Ann lived within the mud fort for 6 years; two more children, Celestia and Charles, were born there.  As the settlers became more numerous and the Indians more friendly, Grandfather decided to build a new home outside of the fort for his families.  He built a long log house with a roof of poles covered with willows, straw, and dirt.  It held its own with the wind and sun but was no match for the rain and snow.  Inside each wife had one large and one small room.  In the large one was an open fireplace where the family meals were cooked, and where a cheerful fire blazed to warm the house in cold weather.  A frying pan and a bake kettle were the chief cooking utensils.  The latter had a wide lid that could be covered with coals and fit snugly over the kettle to make an oven.  It was while they were living here that Frank, my father, was born.  He was born Oct 12, 1863.  While living here, Grandfather took turns living with each family. 

About 1864 President Young sent word to Grandpa to get ready to go to Southern Utah in 1865 to help build up the Dixie Mission.  So the family began to make preparations.  Uncles Willard and Jeter husked corn for a neighbor on shares and got enough to fatten the family pig so that Grandfather could save his corn to take along to feed the animals and use for seed in the south.  Grandma also began to make ready for the long trip.  About this time she received $300 from her brother John in Wales.  He had sold some of the family property there.  This was like a Godsend to the family who were going to the southern tip of the state and would be hundreds of miles from the source of many important supplies.  Grandma took the money and went to Salt Lake to buy the things that she felt that she most needed for the long trip and to use when she got to her new home.  She bought a cookstove that lasted her the rest of her life, a clothes chest, clothes for all the family, a complete sewing outfit as she made all the clothes for her family and for many of the neighbors as well.  She got a cane-bottomed chair, that was a real luxury in that day, but the first night out on the trip one of the horses ate the bottom out of it.  She bought a lovely new shawl for herself.  It took much planning and preparation for such a long journey. 

A big jar of butter was put down, and a pig was killed, cured, and salted away.  These things with other provisions as corn for the animals and seed for planting were placed in the wagon of Jode Cox, an about to be son-in-law, who was helping to move the family south. The household things and Grandmother’s personal things were placed in another wagon.  Aunt Sally’s things were arranged in a third.  One fine November morning they left Lehi headed for the south.  Grandfather, with Aunt Sally and her family, headed the train.  Uncle Willard, who was just 12, followed with Grandmother and her family in another wagon drawn by an ox team.  Jode Cox, with his load, brought up the rear.  Uncle Jeter, a lad of 10, rode a horse and drove the cattle.  Aunts Maria and Roxania remained in Lehi to be moved later when they had things ready for them in the south.  They had to move across a wild unsettled state over which roved bands of Indians, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile but never to be depended upon.  But they willingly obeyed the call, and in November, 1865, they started south.

The weather was fine, and had they gone straight through they might have had a good trip.  Cyrus Reynolds, who wanted to go with them, wasn’t quite ready.  He asked them to wait for him so he wouldn’t have to travel alone as there was much danger from Indians.  They waited 10 days for him in San Pete.  As a result, they were caught in a snow storm on the latter end of the journey.  They stopped at a few settlements along the way to wash a few clothes and bake bread to last them for several days.   After traveling through snow storms and cold weather, they arrived in Pine Valley on Christmas Eve.

Whenever Grandmother saw the sun, shining on the snow as it was about to disappear over the horizon, she always said it reminded her of the night they drove into Cove Fort on their journey down.  They had come through the snow and cold without a sign of a settlement in sight.  When they came over the rise where Cove Fort loomed into sight, the snow as sparkling in the sunlight as it was about to slip behind the mountains.  She told how thankful she was to find shelter for her family that night.  When they got close to the southern part of the state they met Uncle Erastus on his way to Salt Lake.  He was head of the Dixie Mission and directed the Saints where to settle.  As he had a house in Pine Valley, he told Grandpa to take his families there.

When they got about 3 miles outside of Pine Valley, they found that there was no road broken and the snow was so deep that they couldn’t get through.  They were forced to send someone into town for help.  Jode Cox took one of the horses and rode into town.  Uncle William Gardner and Bennett Bracken came out with 3 yoke of oxen and helped the weary teams through the deep snowdrifts.  When they got into town, there was 3 feet of snow on the level.  They arrived Christmas Eve.  They were taken to the home of Eli Whipple whose wife had a good hot supper ready for them.  They greatly appreciated this after so many days of eating over a campfire.

In this little village Ann maintained her home during the rest of her life.  Here as a bishop’s wife and a Relief Society worker she served her neighbors and her friends for 60 years.  In recalling my association with Grandmother, said her grandchild, and the incidents related by her children, I have tried to decide what her most outstanding traits were, what attributes enabled her to sacrifice and serve as she did.  The incidents related above constitute sufficient proof that she possessed in a high degree courage, patience and fortitude.

A visit to her home would immediately suggest that neatness was one of her qualities.  Not a speck of dust could be found anywhere.  There were no flies, no unpleasant odors.  Her dishes and stove were shining.  Beds were without a wrinkle.  Everything was in perfect order. An atmosphere of refinement would also be in evidence:  simple furniture; some homemade articles, tastefully draped and decorated; a few cherished old pictures and ornaments.  Not a stately mansion, but a cozy, restful home, obviously presided over by a woman of dignity and refinement.

Real pioneers learn to be resourceful, and Ann was not lacking either in resourcefulness or industry.  She was always alert to ways and means of improving the conditions of her home and family.  While she was living in Lehi, some easterners on their way to California stopped near her place to overhaul their wagons and make repairs.  On the evening of their arrival, the leader (identified in another source as Leonard Wines, a stepson of Grandpa’s) knocked at her door and explained, “We are traveling to California, madam, and our wagon covers have become badly damaged.  We should like to have them mended.  Would you be willing to fix them for us?”  Being an excellent seamstress, grandma said, “Yes, I can mend them tomorrow.”  “We have three heavy covers,” the man continued, “also a lightweight one which we cannot use.  You may have the light one for repairing the others if you want it.”  Grandma told him she would be glad to take the light one for her pay.  (The other account says they were ‘factory’ or Muslin)  That night her prayer was one of thankfulness to God for opening up the way whereby her family might be clothed for the winter.  (She got 45 yards of cloth out of this).  Some of the cloth was used for under-clothing; the remainder was dyed with Indigo and made into shirts and dresses.

When the Snow families moved to Pine Valley, there was no store.  Supplies of every kind were hard to get.  A few of the men decided to start a tannery and make their own leather.  Grandma used this crude leather and bits of jeans left over from the men’s clothing to make shoes for the members of her household.  After a store had been opened in the village, she sewed overalls and jumpers for the merchant’s customers in exchange for “storepay”.  By this means she was able to provide her family with articles they needed.

For soap, in those early pioneer days, she used the roots of a plant (oose, I think it was called).  Later like many other pioneer women she learned the art of making soap from scraps of fat and lye distilled from wood ashes.  In preparing meals for the household, she often resorted to substitutions, such as molasses for sugar, corn meal for flour, and salt rising for yeast. 

Perhaps honesty was Ann’s strongest quality.  In fact, it is a characteristic of the Rogers family.  Being convinced that the Gospel was true, they had to be honest with themselves and accept it even though it required great sacrifice.  “I wish I were as good a man as my father,” grandma’s nephew (her brother’s son) remarked to me.  “Talk about honesty and charity, well, he was it personified.  When I was a boy we worked together on a rented farm.  Always the biggest loads of hay, the finest shocks of grain, the best of everything went to the owner for his share.  Grandma was like that.  If she borrowed anything, she paid it back with interest even to a needleful of thread.

All of the children were thoroughly taught the lesson of honesty.  One son recalls that as a small boy he was taken to task for eating a biscuit stolen by an older boy from a farmer’s dinner pail.  Another son refused to sell his neighbor a certain horse he owned because he thought the neighbor would be cheated by the trade.  “I wouldn’t sell Jede Hill a horse like that,” he said.  “It wouldn’t serve his purpose, and he’s too poor a man to throw away his money.”

Ann R. Snow saw many changes take place in the world during her lifetime.  She lived to be 93 years of age at death.  When people asked to what she attributed her good health and longevity, she replied, “Mainly to my mode of living.  I was always systematic in my work and regular in my habits.  Our food was simple, and much of the time it was too scarce to tempt us to over eat.  Then, too, we always got plenty of exercise in the open air.”  “Didn’t you worry in those early days when you didn’t have much to live upon?” I asked her one day.  “We learned to trust in the Lord,” she replied, “and it is wonderful how the way was opened up, miraculously at times, that we might get the necessities of life.  These were the happiest days of my life because of the sustaining power of the Lord’s spirit.”

If she had any difficult or distasteful task to perform, she went quietly ahead and did it without complaints.  “Don’t like to have my peace of mind disturbed by thinking of disagreeable tasks to be performed,” was her comment.

She had her share of disagreeable tasks to perform.  Since there were no doctors in Pine Valley at that time much of the care of the sick rested upon the Relief Society.  Ann was especially called to assist the midwives.  In this calling she helped to bring a hundred babies into the world.  Since babies do not choose their time of coming, she was often called out from a warm bed to cross the town in deep snow or in a blinding storm, then await the birth of a child.  At another time she might be called to sit at the bed of the dying father and comfort and care for the fatherless children.  But there is joy in doing a good deed.

Ann was the president of the Relief Society for 30 years during that period when this association assumed the most arduous tasks from gleaning wheat to laying out the dead.  One of their meetings each month was for testimony; the other three were for work.  Sometimes they wove carpets, sometimes made clothing for the poor, and sometimes made straw hats for sale.  At other times they gleaned wheat to store for the famine.  There were frequent calls upon the settlements for mean and teams to go and meet emigrant trains.  One time the Relief Society was given the task of making the clothing and bedding for the man in the ward who was leaving to meet the emigrant train.  She also taught Sunday School for 16 years and was a Relief Society Counselor for 10.

Her patriarchal blessing told her that her life had been spared for a wise purpose, that she might be the means of connecting the link of her ancestors.  Of many of her people who left Wales to come to Utah, she and her brother were the only ones to reach Utah.  By the time of her death, the families of these two had gathered almost 3000 names and had the temple work done for them.  In searching the records of her ancestors, she found that she was a descendant on her mother’s side from kings and queens of the British Isles.  (On her mother’s side, she descended from Coel Godebog who was king of all Britain in 738.)   “I like to think,” said her granddaughter, “of her now as a queen among righteous spirits in our Father’s Kingdom.  Truly, she deserves the reward promised by the Savior where he says:  ‘And every one that forsakes houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother…for my sake shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”  She was the mother of 8 children, left a widow at age 44 with 3 children still at home.  She traveled over land and sea, much of it on foot or in primitive ships, slow and unsafe over those turbulent seas, to Pine Valley.  She died in this sheltered and peaceful little town on March 11, 1928 at the age of 93.