My first recollection was being put to the table and not
being able to make my hands get what I wanted. I can remember clearly the first
time I saw my baby sister. I was two years and seven months old. I can remember
how I cried when I was carried to my grandfather's house. Also, how I felt when
they came to get me and told me about the baby. At first I could not go near
her. I can recall my mother trying to teach her to walk.
I was born in Llandeilorfan
Parish, Breconshire, Wales on August 25, 1854
to Samuel D. Williams and Ann Price. We lived on a rented farm in a big rock
house with an upstairs. (Top Glass Farm). The windows
were set in with lead and it faced the south. The floor was of material similar
to cement (large flag stones). Larger rock tablets were in front of the
fireplace in which we burned peat. Peat was the dark earth that Father cut and dried in chunks. There was a big stream of water
running through the dooryard but we were not allowed to catch the fish. It was
against the law. We had ducks, geese, chickens, cows, horses and sheep on the
place. When I was large enough we used to ride the ponies without bridles - just
grab the mane and go.
I was taught to work very young. I learned to knit when I
was five. In the spring we had to gather rocks and beat manure with a flat
toothed rake and scatter it around on the ground. In summer we had to herd cows
from grain and hay. We had to keep them on the grazing ground until the hay and
grain were put up. When the cows had their fill and would lie down, then we
would hunt birds' nests in the tall grass and native brush. There was an
abundance of wild flowers that we gathered. All hay was cut with the scythe,
and we had to rake the lightest side of the swath over the heaviest. It had to
be done clean. We also had to shock the grain, first in two bundles, then in
four.
In the winter we had to knit stockings to sell. I never was
in school until I was twelve years of age as we lived too far away. Before I
was twelve I could knit three pairs of small children's stockings in a day.
In the spring before I was twelve in August my mother died.
She died suddenly in the night of April 27, 1866. My little brother wasn't a
year old until May 2nd. Mother was forty years old on the 10th of April. Father
called us and lifted us down from the stairs telling us our mother was dying.
He then put us on the bed beside her while he went for help. There we sat, my
sister, baby brother and myself by the side of our
dead mother in a lonely farm house. She was buried 30 April, 1866 at the
churchyard of Cefnarthen Independent Chapel.
Just at first after mother's death we got on as well as we
could, then Aunt Ann, Uncle Roderick's wife, came to stay with us until my
brother could walk. The first batch of bread I made I had to put the pan on the
floor as I wasn't tall enough to reach it on the table.
My mother was a heavy set, blue-eyed woman with dark brown
hair. She was a well-built, good looking lady. My twin daughters look like her.
Her teeth were in good condition when she died. She had embraced the Gospel
when she was a girl. My father also belonged to the Church before his marriage.
I heard him say that he had collected a great many songs of the day such as
were being sung by the young folks. When he embraced the Gospel he burned them
all thinking they were nonsense. My father was about five feet nine or ten
inches in height. He had black, easily waved hair, light brown eyes. He was
slender when young and became heavy-set with age. He lived to be past
seventy-four years of age.
We moved in the fall away from the farm where my mother died.
We sold our things at an auction. We moved to a village and here I had my first
chance to go to school. My father had married again. That is why we moved to
the village. The next spring we moved to an old farm house. Here there were all
kinds of fruit trees - apples, pears, prunes, damsel plums, green gages, and
cherries. There were native blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, also
walnut and hazelnut trees. My step-mother and I used to gather the hazelnuts
and sell them. A lady on a burro came to the house to buy the nuts. She was
called a huckster.
We stayed in Wales
two years after Mother died. Mother and Father had always planned to come to America, but
Mother lies buried in a chapel graveyard. The chapel was called "K"
near the place where I was born. The chapel faced north and Mother was buried
on the east side of the churchyard.
In 1868 we auctioned off our household goods. We left Wales June 3rd;
it was a beautiful spring morning. I didn't want to leave that verdant land. We
went on the train from Talybont to Liverpool.
We arrived there that night. We were father, step-mother, Ruth age 11, Samuel
age 3, Lizzie over a year old and myself not quite 14,
as I was 14 the day after we came to Salt
Lake City.
We went on board ship the 4th of June. it
was a sail called John Bright. We were on the sea six weeks and two days. The
sea was very rough, at times, and I was very sick. Our life on the ship was
anything but pleasant. My step-mother was the only one who could speak English.
We were allowed just a certain amount of provisions each
day. We would fix it the best we could and take it up on deck to be cooked. We
had oatmeal, split peas, bacon out of brine, hard tack, which is great big,
flat biscuits as big as saucers and as hard as iron, very few potatoes, brown
sugar and a very small portion of flour. The water was in large wooden kegs
which got very stale before the end of the journey. There was a man that used
to come every day through the ship to clean and gather up trash, etc. Articles he
picked up were put in a barrel and then that afternoon were
held up to be identified or sold. One day mother missed her black dress. She
looked everywhere then she thought of the man that cleaned. She rushed up on
the deck just in time to see her black dress being held up. She was certainly
glad to get her best dress back again. I remember a lady getting buried in the
sea and seeing the husband and the small children weeping. In after years I met
this man because he had married an aunt of my husband.
A steamer came out from land to get us from the ship. We
landed in Castle Garden,
now called Ellis Island, in New York
harbor. We were examined by doctors. Then we were put on the steamer again and
taken to the harbor
of New York. We landed on
the pier. The pier was out over the water with no railing but a shed over it.
We were there overnight and slept on the ground as we had to have our own
bedding. That evening Mother went up town to get bread and cheese. She saw some
tomatoes and thought they were some nice fruit, so she bought some. We tried to
eat them but couldn't. That was our first experience with tomatoes. We saw our
first bar of ice here, also. Next day brother Sammie came up missing. We were
terribly worried as he could have easily fallen over the side of the pier. We
looked everywhere when finally I ran along by the side of a railroad track and
there he was across the track playing with some children. I was surely glad to
get hold of his fat, dimpled hand, although I also felt like shaking him for
running away. I saw a woman and a child crying. The husband had gone up town
and drank too much beer, when coming back he walked off the pier and was
drowned.
Next day we boarded the train. When on the train we had to
buy our food whenever the train stopped long enough. At one stop Father sent me
after fresh water. The stream coming from the fountain was small, and it took
quite a little time to fill the container. I thought they expected me to get it
full. Just as I turned I could see the train starting to move. I ran and a man
reached down and grabbed me and lifted me onto the moving train. It was a close
call. I often wondered what would have happened had I been left behind because
I couldn't speak a word of English. We crossed the Mississippi
River on a steamboat. We then got on the train again. Some people
died because of the heat after we crossed the river. We came as far as Laramie on the train
traveling night and day. We stayed in Laramie
a couple of days. The boys from Utah were
there with wagons and mules to take us to Salt
Lake City.
We left Laramie
July 27th and arrived in Salt Lake August 24, 1868. All that were able to walk
did so. Sometimes the man driving our wagon pointed for me to ride beside him
for a while. We traveled over mountainous country. Sometimes there was sand up
to the hub of the wagon. We crossed the Platte and Green Rivers,
also other small streams. The drivers had brought supplies to feed us, also a
herd of cattle. A beef was killed every day. Each family was allowed an amount
of food according to the number in the family. Food was cooked on bonfires made
with buffalo chips. We had to travel every day until we could get water. I
We saw a herd of buffalo at a distance. We saw an antelope
one day when passing through a hollow. I saw no snakes. We saw some choke
cherries and gooseberries in the hollows. The stage used to pass carrying the
mail. We would have to turn out for it to go by. At night they formed a circle
with the wagons and in the morning the mules were driven into the circle to be
harnessed. The mules were allowed to graze out at night under guard.
We arrived in Salt
Lake at the old tithing
yard. It was where the Hotel Utah now stands. I had started to come down with
measles on the way across the plains so had to stay a week in the tithing yard.
We came from Salt Lake with a man named John Ellis with an ox team to Brigham City where my
grandfather and grandmother Williams lived. Just after getting to Grandfather's
I had mountain fever. I was very sick and my hair all fell out. I had my bed in
Grandfather's calf pen. It had a little roof on, but my bed was on the ground.
I was up walking around when Uncle John Williams came down
from Malad with a mule team after us. When we got to Malad, we had a place to sleep in a dugout. Father made
bunks in it. Uncle John just had one room with a dirt floor and my Aunt Jane
had one room with a half board floor that was used for the grain bin. The room
was divided in half where the stove, table and cupboard were. The bed had to be
made on the grain.
Uncle John had come to the country in 1853. He was a
blacksmith. Elvira, my cousin (later Mrs. James Harrison) was very good in
helping me learn the English language. In about a year I could do very well.
However, many a laugh they had on me when I called my toes thumbs.
I went to work for Dr. J. W. Morgan for six weeks the fall
that I came in. That was when Hattie Morgan was a baby. The next spring I went
to work for Mrs. Thomas, Tom Richards' grandmother. I was there for one year. I
had to milk cows, feed pigs, help churn, mop, wash, iron and knit.
For a while during the summer of 1870 I helped pick and burn
sage on father's land. (He had moved to Samaria,
a village near Malad City.)
Then I went to work for Mrs. Alderidge in Henderson
Creek. In the fall I came home. In January of 1871 I went to work for Mrs.
Tally Hughes. That was the winter their twin girls were born. I was there until
June. I took sick and had to come away from there. After I got better I went to
work for old lady Morgan in Willow Springs. That was in July of 1871. I worked
very hard. A hired man and I had to milk 30 cows night and morning. We had to
get up early and be late at night before we were through. There was a lot of work
to do there.
We used to churn and put the butter away in big cedar
buckets. Then in the fall it would be reworked and made into two pound rolls
ready to take to Salt Lake City
to sell. All through July we made cheese every day except Sunday. She would take
30 pounds of cheese when it was well cured, and mash it up. She then put it in a crock, put liquor on it and covered it with a cloth. Then
it would be eaten the next spring. It was very strong. One could only eat a
little at a time. I worked one summer there, then my sister Ruth worked the
following summer. I went back the next summer.
In the spring before I was twenty, I went to work at Mrs.
Caldwell's. I was there for a while before Maggie C. Jones was born in April
1871. 1 stayed until July, then went to work for Mrs.
Sarah Thomas. In the fall I came home to help. My sister Joan was born November
20, 1874. I stayed home until January 1875.
In January I went to work for Mrs. Margaret Hawkins when her
baby was born. After that I worked for Annie Roderick when her baby was born.
When her baby was two weeks old I had to go up to the Big
Bend to work for Mrs. Joseph Palmer, when her daughter Martha was
born. I stayed there for six weeks and came home for two days. I then went to
work for Mrs. Eliza Thomas when Elizabeth Ann was born. I was there a month. I
was home through June. In July I went to work for Mrs. John Roberts. I was
there about two weeks. I then went to work for Mr. D. L. Evan's mother. I came
home in October.
On Wednesday, October 27, 1875, Emma Reese and I, with our
partners, David and John Jenkins, started to Salt Lake
to get married. We went in a wagon. It rained so we had to spend the first
night in Portage
at old lady Green's place. We traveled to Three Mile the next day. We stopped
at Dan Davis' place. He was a brother-in-law to Emma. We went from there to Ogden and had lunch at
Phil Phillip's place, another brother-in-law to Emma. The third night we stayed
in the wagons down in Kaysville, from there we went to Salt Lake.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon and drove to Mr. & Mrs. David William
place. He was the father-in-law to Evan Jenkins. We stayed there that night. We
went to the Assembly Hall to see the picture painted on the ceiling. This was
Sunday and we were invited to go to brother Joseph Master's place after church.
We stayed Sunday night at David Williams' place again.
Monday morning, November 1, 1875, we went to the Endowment
House to be married. It took all day to go through the Endowment House. When we
went back to David Williams' place Evan Jenkins and his wife, Ann (their
daughter), and Grandmother Jenkins had a fine supper ready for us. They had
invited a number of friends. The next day we went up town to look for
furniture. Grandma, Evan and wife went with us. We must have left Salt Lake
on Thursday as we arrived here Saturday night, November 6th.
Grandma went to live down at the South Field and we lived in
a little log house where Uncle David's brick house now stands. We lived there
fourteen months. Ann was born there.
In the fall of 1876, the logs for our house were brought
from the canyon. The house was built and we moved in on New Years day. It was
just one room we had at first and the slope. The next summer we built a cellar
where the old apple tree now stands. It served us until Catherine was born.
Then a terrible storm filled it with water and spoiled the things we had in it.
In 1886 the north room was built. In the fall of 1889 a fire
started near the pipe going through the roof of the slope. The slope was
damaged so much that it had to be taken down. Right away we built the big room.
In 1887 we bought the organ. I had some sheep so sold them
and paid for the organ. Mr. Woozley (the one who
taught Evan Stephens) gave Ann and Anna lessons for two years. John, my
husband, went into the Co-op store in the fall of 1883. He worked in the store
until the fall of 1893. He had always been a faithful worker in the ward. He
was second counselor to first Bishop Jonah Evans, in 1880. He served for a
number of years. He used to lead the singing a great deal. He had a beautiful
tenor voice.
In 1893 diphtheria was around here in Samaria. Catherine contracted it first, then
Ruth and Naomi. Naomi died on May 6, 1893. She was only seven years old. She
was tall for her age, with light red hair, and eyes that were blue-grey. Sarah
Jane and Ann had diphtheria. Sarah Jane had it so hard I never thought she
would recover. Mary, Anna and John went to live with Grandma Jenkins across the
street east of our home. We thought to save them from getting it, but after we
were together again John, then Mary and Anna had it.
The fall after the diphtheria John, my husband, took sick
and wasn't well all winter. On May 2, 1894, he died. Dr. Morgan said he died of
consumption, then called catarrah.
He was not quite 43 years old.
I was left to raise seven children. Our family consisted of
seven girls and one boy. Of course, as I told before, one girl had died so
there were now seven children. I have gone through many trials and had much
unhappiness since my husband left. My son and grandson, that I raised, are
farmers. Four of my daughters became teachers. Four grandchildren have also
taught school.
- Mary W. Jenkins
Note: This story was dictated to her daughter, Sarah Jane.
She died May 29, 1942, lacking three months of being eighty-eight years old.