MARY ANN WILLIAMS JENKINS
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, Greconshire, 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 <i>John Brighti>. 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.
