EVAN JENKINS
The fourth child born to Anna
Evans and David Jenkins was named Evan after his mother's father Evan Evans. He
was born in a house called Lletty Shinkin
in Cwmbach, Aberdare on 18 May 1849. As an adult he was
taller than the average Welshman, being five feet ten inches in height. He had
black hair and blue eyes. He was strongly built but slender and maintained an
erect carriage to the end of his life.
His father was killed in a mine explosion when he was
three years old. Since there were no laws against child labor in Britain
at that time and money was scarce, my father was taken to the mines at the age
of six years to pick slate out of coal and to act as water boy. His schooling
was limited but, in spite of that, he learned the basic things through self
effort.
Since his parents were members of the Mormon Church when
he was born he always took an interest and, when old enough, sang in the choir.
He had a good bass voice and often joined his friends coming home at night in
singing church hymns and the folk tunes of Wales.
It was not uncommon for the young people to harmonize with other groups whom
they could hear singing a short distance away. His sisters, Esther and Anna,
were also good singers.
When Evan was nineteen years old his mother and the
family left for Utah, sailing from Liverpool 30 June 1868 on the steamship Minnesota.
There were cheers from all on board as the ship pulled away from the pier.
President Franklin D. Richards addressed them before their departure, and Elder
Charles W. Penrose dedicated the ship. They were eleven and a half days
crossing to New York where
Captain James Price reported it was the most pleasant crossing he ever had. The
weather had been perfect, and the officers said the converts had been wonderful
passengers, the men quiet, kind and excellent in habits. The group had done
much singing and dancing during the trip.
The family went by train to Laramie,
Wyoming. They left there 25 July in Captain
Chester Loveland's company. There were 40 wagons for the 400 passengers so most
of them had to walk the entire distance of 400 miles to Salt
Lake City. Father carried his one and a half-year old
niece, Catherine Anna Martin, on his back part of the way. At night the wagons
were pulled up to form a circle around the bonfire; and when supper was over
the nightly program was started with singing and dancing to help them forget
the weariness of the day.
On 20 August
1868 this group reached their destination. It was a wonderful
feeling to meet again his brother and sister who had come in 1866. Within a few
months, the family moved to Logan
to be near his father's sister, Ann, who had come out as a widow in 1856. They
spent the winter in the Third Ward.
The next move was to Samaria,
Idaho in the autumn of 1869. Here there was
land to be filed on and friends whom they had known in Wales.
Grandmother and her children lived in a dugout on the corner where Uncle Davy
Jenkins later built his brick house. Eventually, his mother and her sons filed
on homesteads and established a home about three miles south and east of town.
The land on these claims was largely meadow, and since livestock needed alfalfa
to supplement this, the Jenkins brothers exchanged part of what they called the
Malad field for sagebrush land north of Samaria
with Uncle Joseph B. Morse.
During the first years in this country my father walked
many times to Salt Lake
to find work in the mines. He and his brother David would take their bedrolls
on their backs, their food under their arms, and start out. They worked in Mercur, Highland Boy, and in Alta. Once coming down Little
Cottonwood Canyon, they both missed being smothered in a snowslide
by a matter of minutes. At times, Evan came alone. On one such trip he and his
friend, Joseph Masters, leased some mining property in Tooele
County where they struck a rich
vein of ore. My father's share came to about $5,000. The owner, however, would
not extend the lease. Returning home, Evan shared this money equally with his
mother and brothers to improve the farms. In this way they were able to buy
more fencing, livestock, and farm equipment.
In the first years of homesteading, there was a lot of
trouble over property lines and by people jumping claims. In the end the
government surveys settled things.
While working in Tooele
County, Evan met his future wife,
Ann Williams, who was living with her sister, Margaret. On 20 September 1875 they were married in the Salt
Lake Endowment House. They started a new life in Idaho
the year following their marriage.
It is hard to imagine the thoughts of a person who as a
child had seldom seen the sun while working. In Wales,
his mother used to butter the bread and then scrape most of it off before
cutting the slice from the loaf held under her arm. He had partly realized the
dream he had as a boy. It had meant a journey of almost 6,000 miles but Father
said it was worth every step of the way.
During the early years Evan raised cattle usually around
75 or 100 head. There was plenty of free range in the nearby mountains and in
the valley to the west. However, a good cow and calf sold for $13, horses for
between $15 and $30, and wheat for a period of years sold for 40 cents per
bushel while wool went for 10 to 15 cents a pound.
In 1890 Father, his brother John, Billy Price, and his
father purchased the flour mill and store at Gwenford
from Billy Thews. David Jenkins, the oldest brother,
was hired as the miller and became better than the man who taught him. Power
for the machinery came from a water wheel. When rollers came into use, they
couldn't afford to modernize so the property was sold to John E. and his
brother Dan E. Jones.
The Edmunds Act was passed by Congress in 1882 and later
modified to become known as the Edmunds-Tucker Bill. Its aim was to prevent
from voting anyone who belonged to an organization which tolerated polygamy. On
27 October 1888 my father
was one of twenty-six men who, acting under the guidance of the Stake
president, asked to have their names taken off the records of the ward. In
other words, they asked for excommunication so they could vote. This bitterness
reached a peak all through the valley at the presidential election in 1892. Men
deputized with guns at the polls in Samaria
were W. R. Thomas, Billy John, and Meyers Cohn, a man from Marsh
Valley. The first named had jumped
my father's claim while he was away working in Utah.
He and his wife lived in a dugout there until after the birth of their first
child. He was given twenty acres of land north of town to get him to move off
the claim. His appearance as a deputy at the polls upset my father as one of
his most highly prized possessions was his citizenship papers obtained 12 March 1873 in the Third District
Court of Utah. Finally, the bitterness died down, but the men who served as
deputies in the voting districts never fully recovered their trust with the
others. On 16 April 1893
the men who withdrew membership in the Church performed the rituals necessary
to become members again. (pp 70 and 82 F Idaho
S2 Serial #2540 Gen. Lib. SL City)
Some early pioneers had great hopes that valuable veins
of ore would be found in and around Malad Valley.
Father worked with William Jones, father of Jeremiah Jones, on a claim in Mine
Canyon near the Pocatello
Valley divide. The Lucky Boy claim
east of Malad was worked by him along with W. G.
Jenkins and Heber Sparks of Malad, and John Mandry and George L. Jones of St. John.
Other claims, such as the one on Birch Creek, one in Wood
Canyon, and one at Black Pine were
also worked on at times. Uncle Joe Morse and father's old friend, Joseph
Masters, of Salt Lake,
helped on some of these. With so much glittering ore around I used to wonder,
as a child, why there wasn't lots of money as well.
Throughout his life Father kept an interest in singing
with the ward choir. You would always find him in the bass section of the male
chorus when it competed at the Malad Eisteddfodau
(plural). They were really cultural events in the valley and were held on St.
David's Day.
As a very small child Father sometimes took me along when
a group of them went to a house party in another village. Riding along in a bobsleigh in winter, they sang most of the way with their
voices blending in complete harmony. Some of their Welsh songs included: AR HYD
Y NOS (All Through the Night), LLWYN ONN (The Ash Grove), and HEN WLAD FY
NHADAU (Land of My
Fathers).
Reading was
another special interest of my father. He was generally up before daylight in
his younger years. While the house was getting warm and time came to call the
family, he would read, sometimes aloud to himself. He liked history, biography,
and books written by the Church authorities.
My mother's death in 1894 was a severe blow to him and
the children. She had been a good manager and a great help in financial
matters. He remained a widower for almost nine years.
In politics, Evan was a staunch Democrat. He filled many
positions in the Samaria Ward and was appointed first counselor to Bishop
Daniel E. Price when William E. Hawkins moved to Logan.
Always interested in public events he brought the family
to attend the Golden Jubilee in 1897. It was the first time I had seen negroes, and some marched as soldiers from Ft.
Douglas. Seeing them I hid behind
the skirts of my oldest sister. Father came to Salt
Lake also for the parade honoring
the soldiers returning from the Philippines
and for the Eisteddfodau (plural), held in the Tabernacle during October 1895,
1896, 1898 and in 1908. They attracted Welsh people from all over the
intermountain west.
After being in the sheep business for a number of years
they were sold in 1916. At that time he also sold the old homestead to his son
David W. Jenkins who owned it at his death 31 May 1966.
In March of 1903 my father married Mrs. Sarah J. Evans, a
widow, who had come to Samaria from
Mountain Ash, Wales
a couple of years earlier. She was a capable and efficient homemaker. Her
mother was a sister to Catherine Deer Clarkson Evans and to Mary Deer Davis
Price. She died 23 June 1911
in Logan. He never remarried.
Perhaps it was the good time he had crossing the Atlantic
when nineteen years old that kept alive his fondness for the sea. During the
summer of 1922, Father was so happy when he found he could visit the big
battleships that were anchored in the Bellingham,
Washington harbor while living there. A
division of the Pacific fleet came in for several weeks at that time. A naval
friend took him often to visit them from top to bottom. The Idaho
and the Oklahoma were among his
favorites.
Death came suddenly at the age of seventy-five on 1 August 1924 at his home in Samaria
where he is buried. Father had a large funeral and the speakers praised him for
his integrity and for his deep loyalty to friends and church.
- Esther Jenkins Carpenter, Daughter
