David Phillips
Stephens was the 3rd child and 3rd son of Daniel Daniel Stephens and Ann
Phillips Stephens. He was born on December 28, 1801 or in 1809, at Alltfechan,
Llanfihangel-Ar-arth, Carmarthen, Wales. Family records show both 1801 and 1809
as birthdates, although there is a christening date in some of the records
showing he was Christened 13 Jan 1802 in Pantifferddgay, Llanfihangel Ar-arth,
Carmarthan, Wales. Family records also state that Pencader is 12 miles (N by E)
from Carmarthen. Alltfechan was the name of their house or street which was
close to the village of Pencader in a vale on the banks of Tafwili
stream.
Alltfechan is actually in the hamlet of Gwyddil, Llanfihangel Parish.
Jane Evans (or Jones)
was born July 15, 1813, at Felin Llyswen (Llanarth), Cardigan, Wales. She
was the daughter of Thomas Evans and Elinor Jones who both came from near
Cardigan, Wales, according to one account. The 1851 census also records her as
being born in the parish of Llanarth, Cardiganshire.
According to David
Evan Stephens' diary (David Phillips & Jane's 8th child), his parents
married young, Father David was 22 and Mother Jane was just 19 (17) on December
9, 1830. They were the parents of 10 children. They lived in a straw-thatched
cottage common to the Welsh farming community in those days. According to Steve
Dube in an off print of The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, Vol 38, 2002, it was a
tenanted cottage of Alltfechan, whose stones lie behind a short terrace of the
same name (built after the arrival ten years later of the railway). This
laborer's cottage of rough stone and thatch stood at the side of the road
leading westwards up the hill from the old village of Pencader clustered near
the church.
Dube says (although I could find no other reference to this) that David
Phillips Stephens was known as Deio. Deio listed his occupation in the 1841
census as an agricultural laborer, one small step up from complete destitution.
It was customary to put the children to work as soon as possible because of the
poverty of the farm laborers. All of them it seems were about the age of 3 or 4
and worked in the garden. Then when they were about 8 or 9 they went to work on
farms and later, as they got older, in the coal mines. The girls worked in the
factories and/or mills.
It has been written
that Father David could earn only about 25 cents for a hard day's work, while
Mother Jane, working in the fields all day long, would get a little less and a
loaf of dark barley bread to take home at night to feed her family. She even
had to come in out of the potato fields as it came time for some of her babies
to be born.
Son David's diary
states that both of his father's and mother's ancestors were quite noted
authors. On his father's side, he states, there were some quite noted ministers
of the Independent Church as well as noted writers. And on his mother's side,
there were noted writers too, who nearly always took first prize at the
Eisteddfod.
The Stephens's
children credit their education mostly to their mother Jane because she taught
them to read from the Welsh bible. They were deeply religious and belonged to
the Congregational Church until they heard the missionaries (Captain Dan Jones)
from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, from America, preach the
true gospel. Captain Dan Jones was a Welshman who became a Mississippi
riverboat captain, bringing Mormon immigrants up the river from New Orleans to
Nauvoo. He had returned to his homeland as a missionary during the "hungry
forties," a low ebb in the history of that proud land according to Charles
Jeffrey Calman (Excerpts from THE MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR). Deio and Jane
converted and were baptized in July 1849. Deio became the President of the
Pencader Branch of the newly founded Mormon Church, and his home was the
regular meeting place for members. They believed the doctrines of the
Latter-Day Saint church, and they finally had hope for a better future with the
advent of coming to the United States, specifically to the Great Salt Lake or
`Zion'. Their main belief was that they should all emigrate to Utah to get away
from the bad times and the poverty. It is said that Jane always dreamed of a
better life for her family and that she was a happy mother despite the hardships
she endured. There would be happy laughter of children at times in their home
which would be accompanied occasionally by a sweet voice singing in the musical
Welsh tongue.
The new gospel brought
much light into this home and great hopes for that far away land in
America. The family seemed united in their desires to come to the `promised
land' as they all worked in
the fields, in the coal mines, in the carding mills, herding sheep and cattle
to earn money for passage to America. Their friends and neighbors scoffed at
thisidea of leaving the “Old World” because the family was so poor. But Mother
Jane and Thomas and Ann especially, were undaunted and they began to plan ways
and means by which they could go. They had faith that the Lord would provide a
way for them. One year, Tom made enough money working in the mines that he
could've paid his own way, but he did not want to leave the family. But his
sister, Ann, my great grandmother, was ready to go and stated that nothing
would stop her if she had the money so Tom gave her his portion and she came to
America first on the sailing vessel, Cynosure, which sailed from England May
30, 1863. Brother Tom came a year later on the General McClellan ship which
sailed May 21, 1864. Together they raised enough money for their mother, father
and youngest brother Evan. Mother Jane did not want to leave another son,
David behind, so Jane borrowed enough money from a friend to pay for David and
they all sailed from their home country on the ship Arkwright May 30, 1866.
They were on the ocean 38 days arriving in New York on the 4th of July. From
there they took a boat from New York to New Haven, Connecticut, and then to
Montreal, Canada. The Mormon Church had contracted with the railroad to bring
all the emigrants, and Montreal was where they connected with the Grand Trunk
Railroad. They then went to Chicago, then to St. Joe, Missouri on the Illinois
Central Railroad and then took a boat up the Missouri River to meet the ox
teams at a point seven miles north of Nebraska City.
David, Jane, and the
two children crossed overland with the Joseph S. Rawlins Company in 1866. They
reached Salt Lake City on October 2, 1866 and a week later left Salt Lake for
Willard, Utah, where Tom and Anne had planned a home for them and negotiated a
farm for father David to run on shares. Their home in Willard consisted of an
unoccupied small log hut near the mountainside. It was just one room and in one
corner, a bed was improvised for father and mother. The two boys, Evan and
David. had straw beds laid on the rough floor in another corner. A dry goods
box or two was their table and cupboard. They borrowed a couple of chairs and
made a wooden bench. They were pestered with a nest of spiders and many
rattlesnakes during their stay in this little hut. Later on, they moved into a
more comfortable home which had two rooms, a cellar and a granary. Deio and
Jane stayed there four years according to son David's diary. He states that
they had harsh times during those first years because the grasshoppers were so
bad. He states that when they were harvesting their wheat, the grasshoppers
came so thick that they almost darkened the sun. The next morning the trees
were all but bare of leaves and the oats and barley were all cut down. They had
eaten the silk and the leaves off the corn and left the stalks standing like
sticks. The wheat was the only crop that was saved from being damaged. Also in
the fall, there wasn't enough sugar cane to be made into molasses also due to
the grasshoppers.
Young David states
that in the spring of 1871, he went up to the fertile valley of Malad where
they were clearing land for immigrant farmers and took up land for himself and
the family, although others said that the valley was full of prickly weeds. He
built a house for his mother and father and himself. The land wasn't surveyed
in 1871 even though they had `homesteaded or staked' the land, but they had
`squatter's rights' and when the land was surveyed and opened up to the public,
young David and his father were the first to file on their homesteads in the
St. John area. Deio and his relatives each took up a quarter section of land or
160 acres for the nominal price of $1.25 /acre, paid to the U. S. Government.
Each family built a log house and the group formed the nucleus for a village or
colony of people from Pencader.
The Stephens Family
had a great love for the land and nature. They planted trees around their
homesteads as well as lovely orchards that bore fruit of all kinds.
There were groves of trees, weeping willow, wild roses, wild berries and plum
trees. They took good care of their land, conserving moisture and providing
fruit, vegetables, grain and alfalfa for their needs. They were good farmers
and understood the theory of farming. The above information came from Tom
Stephens' Biography written by Margaret Jane Izatt James.The Stephens's were
soon joined by other families from Scotland and Denmark, and they set up a
branch of the Mormon Church which was named St. John. Later, Deio and Jane
donated 1 1/4 acre of land to the Church for the St. John Ward house and school
house on October 26, 1881, for one dollar. This was a log church and school
building and a white school house just north of the church building that now
stands in St. John. I also read that they donated the land for the St. John
Cemetery as well. Later on, Louis and Ann Stephens Deschamps would donate
about 1/4 acre for the building of the rock church building that was built in
1896-97. It stood where the 1950 church building sits now, and Tom Stephens
would deed to the church the ground for the school house that was built in
1913. Church service as also held in this building.
David Phillips
Stephens (Deio) died on May 19, 1882, at St. John and his wife Jane, died
November 10, 1889, at Salt Lake. Both are buried in the St. John
Cemetery.
Information submitted
by: Paula Ann Deschamps Morby,
Great Great Granddaughter
Pre-1880
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