104.Sarah Adeline Butler Allen Tuttle!, gg grandmother, 2nd wife, pioneer midwife, stalwart!
My great grandmother Sarah Adeline Butler was born February 15, 1841, in Nauvoo, Illinois, and was blessed by the Prophet Joseph Smith. Her parents John Lowe and Caroline Farozine Skeen Butler lived neighbors to the Prophet, and at the time of the martyrdom, her father was a body-guard to the Prophet (told in blog # 66). Blogs # 71 and 72 tell stories about his wife, Caroline.
After the martyrdom of the Prophet, John and his family, along with other saints were driven from Nauvoo. She remembered her father with other men tying their shoes on their feet with heels to toes and walking that way in the snow so the enemy could not track them.
They settled on little Pigeon Creek, where she was baptized by her father when she turned 8 years old. From there they moved to Council Bluffs. Here she was cherished by a Sioux squaw who had lost her own little girl. This story is told in #71, in the Grandmother Squaw story. This friendly Indian lady helped them procure food, and made moccasins and clothing for them.
They stayed in Kanesville, near Council Bluffs, from 1847 to 1852. She walked most of the way across the plains, and arrived in Salt Lake City in 1852. Her mother Catherine used to gather what fat she could from dead animals along the way, the marrow from the bones etc. and cook it with water that she had soaked cottonwood ashes in. She made it into soft soap, and used to keep a barrel of this soft soap in the back of the wagon, when they were coming across the plains. Her mother, Caroline, was very resourceful, and was the one who sewed a man's thumb back on with the needle which she used to made buckskin gloves. (See blog # 72)
On their journey west, they met a wagon train and traded something for a sack of flour. Caroline made a pan of biscuits and gave one to each little child. Sarah Adeline, about 11 years old then, wanted to feast her eyes on it awhile and accidentally dropped it into the soft soap barrel, in the back of the wagon. But she was so hungry for bread, she fished it out, wiped it off and ate it anyway.(Page 184 in Pal's ancestor book.)
In 1852 they were called to help settle Spanish Fork. There her father was made Bishop, which position he held until his death. (See under "labels" of John Lowe Butler, her father. He had a colorful life, and I will tell more about him in future blogs -- sometime!)
She met her first husband while in Spanish Fork. She was married March 9, 1857, to Philo Allen, as his second wife, in Salt Lake City. He only married the 2 women. Philo was 39 and his first wife was 27, and Sarah was barely 16 years old. She had 6 children; her oldest, my grandfather, was born in Spanish Fork. The next 4 were born in South Weber, and the last born in Paragonah.
My grandfather, John Butler Allen was her first child, and my mother Ruth's father. Out of the six children, her first, and her 5th children lived to maturity. The other 4 children all died young, 3 of them in their first year, and the 4th about 4 years old. My mother Ruth once told me Sarah was unable to nurse her children, and that probably contributed to the early deaths of 3 of them. In those days if a mother couldn't nurse her children, they tried to get a "wet nurse", --a woman whose child had been weaned, but she still could nurse a baby. Or they tried to find a cow "with a soft curd" -- a cow whose milk could be digested by a baby. It usually resulted in infections, and other problems which could take the life of an infant or small child.
In 1868 Philo Allen and his 2 wives were called to help settle Southern Utah, and they arrived in Greenville, Beaver County. There they lived until the fall of 1871, when they moved to Panguitch. Sarah and her family settled in Panguitch, and when Philo was called to help settle Escalante in 1874, he took his first wife, but Sarah preferred to stay in Panguitch and raise her two remaining children. She lived separated from her husband as a single mother for many years, and it was "a very hard struggle" to support and raise them "as her husband was unable to give her much help."
She became and nurse and midwife, and brought more than a hundred babies into the world. Ruth, my mother, (Pal) told me that Philo was planning to come to St. George to be sealed to both Lucy and Sarah in the St. George Temple after it opened in 1877, and something happened that he was detained and didn’t come–illness or something like that. She was not happy with that, and went to St. George by herself and had herself sealed to Hyrum Smith. (She was a bit impulsive, it seems.) She later divorced Philo. Later she moved to Manti to be a temple worker. There she met John H. Tuttle. (some of this information came from the book "My Best For The Kingdom", which is a detailed life about her father, John Lowe Butler).
This is a more detailed picture of her in the photo below.
On June 28, 1895, she married John Henry Tuttle of Manti. With him she spend 14 years as an ordinance worker in the Manti Temple, and was very happy in this second marriage. At the death of her husband, John H. Tuttle, she returned to Panguitch to spend the remaining years of her life with her only surviving child, a daughter Sarah Elizabeth. Being a pioneer she endured many hardships, and also having 5 of her 6 children pass away before she did, she had many trials and heartaches in life.
She died June 20, 1923, at the home of her daughter Sarah Elizabeth Cameron, after a 20 month illness. I believe my mother Ruth told me she had met her grandmother, but she was quite old, and seemed a bit stern. Sarah would have been around 68 years old when Ruth was born in 1908, and Sarah lived until 1923. They both lived in Panguitch, so Sarah would have lived until Ruth was around 15. Ruth's father, Sarah's oldest son passed away in 1914, nine years before his mother. So she had only one daughter alive at her death and had 19 grandchildren, 47 great-grandchildren, two great-great-grandchildren, and two sisters.
John Butler Allen, her oldest son, and his wife Levinah have interesting stories which I'll tell in my next blog. It helps to understand what they and their parents went through during the days and years after Nauvoo. They truly were faithful and hardy souls! When we hear of their lives, we appreciate them, and we also are glad to live in these days -- right? ! But without their sacrifices we wouldn't be here!
It reads: Sarah Adeline Butler Tuttle, Born in Nauvoo, Illinois, Feb. 15, 1841, died June 18, 1923. Daughter of John L & Caroline F Butler.
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