Malad Valley Pioneers
MRS. JANET DANIELS
(Written by L.D. Jones and contributed by Anna Lou Call)
Your correspondent had
a very pleasant visit with one of Malad’s worthy pioneers known as
Aunt Janet Daniels. She is in the eighty-sixth year of her life, being
born in Wales in 1837. She bears evidence of being used to
toil and acquainted with care. Nothing would give her more pleasure than
to be able to take up the tasks of life. But she earned a well
merited vacation and at present is under the loving care of Mrs. John S.
Williams and family at their home. She loves to talk of bygone days
and her experiences, though her memory of dates and chronological sequence is
getting a little faulty. She has been a sufferer of ill health for
some years.
Mrs. Daniels left her
native land in company with her parents, William and Ann Thomas, in February
1853, sailing from Liverpool in a sailing vessel for New
Orleans, where she landed after a trip of six weeks or
more. From New Orleans they came up the Mississippi river on
a steamboat and landed at Montrose, Mo. There they
remained for two months. From that point they started
for Salt Lake and arrived in October of that
year. While remaining in Salt Lake she went to earn a
livelihood. From Salt Lake she came with her parents
to Willard and from there to Brigham City.
At Brigham she
met Verlum Dives, the father of our well-known townsman of that
name. They were married at Salt Lake in the Endowment
house and settled at Brigham. There were five children born to them
when she was called upon to part with her husband by death. He had
been a worthy husband. Soon after they were married, they took part
in the great move south in 1858, which was so general from northern and central
Utah owing to the coming to Utah of a great army under General Johnston, who
were coming to crush the Mormons, who were reported to be in rebellion against
the government, which was an outrageous falsehood. The people were
determined not to submit to cruel treatment by the troops as many of them had
experienced in their expulsion
from Missouri and Illinois. Neither would they allow
them to loot their homes as they had done there. So, on the approach
of the army, the people moved to the south, leaving men behind in the various
towns to burn their homes if the troops came to
the Salt Lake valley.
But the truth had
reached Washington, the Mormons were not in rebellion and the President
sent commissioners to ascertain the true situation. They came to
the Salt Lake Valley ahead of the troops and met President
Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders. It was decided that there
was no occasion whatever for the troops, but they would be allowed to come into
the valley under the provision that they would not molest any of the property
of the people and they would encamp 30 miles from Salt Lake
City. They located at Camp Floyd at a point west of
the north end of Utah Lake, where they remained for a short time.
At the breaking of the
Civil War in 1861 they were called home to take part in the strife. General
Johnston, their commander, joined the Confederate army in the rebel
cause. So when we hear our old times speaking of the move south, it
means the circumstances related here. Grandma Daniels remembers the
episode very well. She and her husband went as far south as Pond
(now Palmyra) some twelve miles south of Provo. Here they
remained some time when President Young sent out a call for all to return to
their homes, that the trouble was over. On returning they found
everything as they had left it. The grain fields were covered with
beautiful crops, in fact, the finest they had seen.
Mrs. Daniels also
remembers a trip she made with her husband and a company of 12 teams led by
President Young to Fort Lemhi on the Salmon River in
April 1857 to visit a colony of Mormons, who had formed a settlement there in
June 1885. She said that the company came through
the Malad valley on their way. There were no houses in the
valley then. It was a waving sea of grass. After a short
visit at Lemhi, they returned to their homes. She remembers the care
exercised by President Young for the welfare and safety of the company, both in
camp and on the march. She also recalls being in conference in Salt
Lake City in October 1856, when the report came that some of the belated
emigrants had been caught in the unusually early snow storms on the plains of
Iowa and Wyoming. A call was made for men to go with teams and
supplies to meet them and bring them in. Her husband volunteered
with his team and started at once without returning home. He was
gone six weeks on that trip. She said President Young shed tears in
reporting the sad condition of the emigrants to the conference. Aunt
Janet was called to part with her husband by death, leaving her with five
children for which to care. She remembers gleaning wheat in the
fields assisted by her son, Verl.
She was again married
to Thomas Daniels, a widower with a family of six children. By Mr.
Daniels, she had eight children, making a total of 19 children she had mothered
as follows: by her first husband, VerlumDives, there were
William, Sarah, Verlum, Joseph, John and Gertrude; by Thomas Daniels the
following: Janet, Elva, Catherine, Henry, George, Theodore, Dora,
and Annie. The children of Thomas Daniels by his first wife were
Mary Jane, Thomas D. Daniel M., John D.,
David, Sarah Ann. She also cared for her father who lived
with her for the last eight years of his life.
She tells with
pleasure of how the large family got along together. In her earlier
life she was active in Relief Society being one of the teachers, and she
mentioned Mrs. Jesse Dredge as one of her companions. She had
experience in the cricket and grasshopper war that the people endured in the
early days, taking an active part in trying to save the crops from being
destroyed. Through thrift and toil, Mrs. Daniels has never suffered
from want.
Her pride in the town
of Malad which she has seen grow from a little cluster of log cabins
with dirt roofs and no schools or meeting houses, to the beautiful city it now
is, is very marked. She speaks in high terms of the people who, she
says, always treat her so kindly. She has witnessed the wonderful
transforming of the west from a wilderness, the home of the wild Indians and
the trapper and the wild animals, to a thriving commonwealth, enjoying all the
advantages of a civilized community.
If any of the boys and
girls would enjoy living for an hour in the past and living once again some of
the experiences the pioneers passed through, let them visit some of the pioneers
who are with us. When this article was written, Aunt Janet was with
us. She passed away at the home of her daughter on Sept. 2,
1927, at the age of 90 after a very useful life. She was born in
1837 at a time when there were very few white people living west of
the Mississippi. The headquarters of the church was then
at Kirtland, Ohio.
What a wonderful array
of important events have happened during her eventful life. She only
lacked seven years of being as old as the church. Her children,
grandchildren, and relatives have just cause to be proud of her.
She is a witness of
the predictions made by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 that the Saints would
go to the Rocky Mountains and there would become a mighty people.
