Samuel Davis was
born on June 12 1848. While still very
young, he went with his father to work in the coalmines. Most of the boys eight
or nine years old in the town of Tredegar, Bedwellty Parish, Monmouthshire, England,
worked there. Samuel didn't want to be there. It was a dark, damp, cold place,
and his brother had been killed in a mine when he was only fourteen years old.
When Sam injured his hand seriously, he determined he would live without
working in the mine. He dreamed of one day owning his very own green farmland.
His parents, John
and Margaret Edwards Davis, joined the Mormon Church in 1851, and on August 23,
1856, he too was baptized. The family was finally able to sail to America on August 27, 1871, and they settled in Willard, Utah.
While there, Sam
met Mary Blanch Jones (known as Polly). They had lived within 6 miles of each
other when he lived in Wales,
but Polly, having been born on September 9, 1859, was 11 years younger than
Sam, but now they began looking at
each other with renewed interest. Polly, her parents, Zephaniah and Caroline
Thomas Jones, and their family had come to America on June 4, 1863, on the ship
Amazon. They too had traveled across the plains to live in Willard.
When Polly was
only 10 years old, her mother died. Four years after arriving in Utah, when Sam was 26 and Polly was 15, they were married
in the Endowment House in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Samuel's
parents accompanied the young couple, and
they too received their endowments and sealings.
Sam and Polly's
first son, Zephaniah (Niah) was born on December 4,
1874, while they lived in Willard, but soon after his birth, they moved to Malad, Idaho,
and settled in Frog Town, in lower St.
John on Devil Creek.
Sam became a
citizen of the United States
on November 23, 1880. Two years later on February 4, 1882, he received a land
patent for 160 acres of land. His dream was finally achieved, and he owned his
own farm.
During the
ensuing years, his parents and some of his brothers had moved to Malad. They all worked together clearing the land, building
houses, corrals, fencing and all the things necessary for creating homes. Sam and
Polly had one of the nicest frame homes in the valley with lots of flowers, an orchard
and fine horses.
Almost every two
years, another child was added to the family, and after giving birth to seven children
in 10 years, Polly died at age 25.
Sam's parents and
a handicapped brother moved in with the family to help care for the children. Grandmother
Davis had poor eye sight but had sewed for Queen Victoria
when they were still in England.
She taught her granddaughters to be good homemakers. Sam was a very clean man
and demanded excellence in his children, but he was a hard taskmaster. As the
years passed, the children married and created homes of their own.
Sam's parents
died, and his son, Niah, with his wife, Isabell (Bell),
and their two children moved in with Sam to care for him. Sam still demanded
his own space, but they settled down with day-to-day living, each of them
having a job to do and getting it done. Mornings they had a leisurely breakfast
after the children had gone to school. Summer evenings they sat on the porch
contemplating a day's work well done and the quiet beauty of the valley. Winter
nights they sat around the coal oil lamp and read, enjoying the warmth of the
old wood burning stove.
Things were not
always good. World War I came with men from the valley giving their lives
fighting on foreign soil, and the aftermath of influenza that took the lives of
so many of their friends and neighbors was hard to accept. But that too passed.
Sam's son, Niah, died, and Bell stayed on the farm
and cared for her father-in-law. As he grew older and his health was failing,
he took turns staying with his daughters. He became a calm, quiet, serene man
and helped with the work on the farm as much as his physical abilities allowed
him.
His grandchildren
call him Pap, and they lived side by side with few skirmishes to mar the even temperament
of their days. He was still a proud man who cared about his appearance. When
his hair began turning gray, he had Bell
put unsalted butter in a pan on the stove and scorched it until it turned
brown. He then kept it in a little jar and would put it on his hair supposedly
to keep it from going gray. He still had to have hard starched collars that
were attached to his shirt with little pins. Samuel always wanted to look nice.
Then Pap got
sick. He had cancer and had to go to the hospital. He didn't like that at all but
enjoyed when his grandson Sam would drive buggy to the hospital and take him
for a ride look at the farm.
He died on July
30, 1926 and the next day he was buried in the St. John Cemetery.
Submitted by: Betty Richards
