164. My great-grandparents, Haden Wells Church and Sarah Ann Arterberry, many missions, and pioneers to St. George.
I wrote about my great-grandfather Haden Wells Church in blog # 23, last December 3, 2013. That was about the day the original pioneers arrived in St. George, Utah, and he was among their number. In that blog there is a very brief history of his life. In this entry, I will tell more details. He was a great pioneer, and went on 5 missions, the last of which was in Tennessee, where he died of typhoid fever, and was buried next to his father, in his home town of Shady Grove, Tennessee.
Haden was a member of the Mormon Battalion, and this story begins with their arrival back in the Salt Lake Valley on July 27 or 29th, right after the very first company arrived with Brigham Young, when he said "This is the place!"
The battalion members were listed as being mustered-out of the army on July 16th since their year's enlistment ended on that date.
Little is known of Sarah Ann and her baby, Hyrum, before they were reunited. But it is known that they were members of the A.O. Smoot Wagon Train Company that headed west on June 21, 1847, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on September 25, 1847, where it is assumed that Haden, Sarah Ann, and Hyrum spent the winter together. That winter of 1847-48 was very severe, and the nearly two thousand saints that spent that winter in the valley had a very meager diet and suffered many hardships. Their second child Haden Wells Junior, was born the following September 8, 1848.
A year later Haden was called on another mission. The usual procedure was for the wife of the missionary to use her own ingenuity to provide for the needs of the family and to help support her husband while he was serving on his mission. This time Elder Haden Church and others were to go with Elder Franklin D. Richards, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church, to assist Elder Orson Pratt who was already in the British Mission. This mission call was approved by the First Presidency of the Church on October 6, 1849, and was announced in General Conference the following day. All of the Apostles who were in the Salt Lake Valley were also called to foreign missions at this time. At this same Conference, the Perpetual Emigration Fund was announced as was the plan to "lay off a city in James Brown's neighborhood" (Ogden,) another one in Utah Valley (Provo), and to make a settlement in Sandpitch Valley (Manti).
Emigration to the United States to help build the main body of the Church was the recommended pattern for the members during the first century of the Church in the British Isles. The Perpetual Emigrating Fund was established in September 1849 to assist. Those who emigrated with the help of this revolving fund were to pay back the money as they could, so that others might be helped. The fund was formally discontinued in 1887, after thousands had benefitted from it. From 1847 to 1869, more than 32,000 British and Irish converts to the Church left their homelands for a new life in pioneer America.
I love the story told of when the novelist Charles Dickens visited the Amazon before it set sail from London on June 4, 1863, to see what the Mormon emigrants were like, he noted:
"I…had come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what eight hundred Latter-day Saints were like….
Nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch or lie in, people, in every suitable attitude for writing, are writing letters. Now, I have seen emigrants ships before this day in June. And these people are strikingly different from all other people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, and I wonder aloud, "What would a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!'…I should have said they were in their degree, the pick and flower of England" (Dickens, pp. 223-25).
This particular group of 35 Elders were the first to leave the Salt Lake Valley as missionaries. On November 12th, they were attacked by a part of 200 Cheyenne Indian warriors but escaped without harm. On December 11, Elder John Taylor (later a Prophet) wrote: "We found our journey to be very toilsome and unpleasant at this inclement season of the year, and were it not for the missions of a public nature in which many of us were engaged, we should have felt great reluctance at leaving our comfortable homes and firesides, to combat the chilling winds and pitiless storms of the Rocky Mountains and Desert Plains." Someone wrote: "Where can greater devotion than this be found? Leaving their families poorly housed, or sheltered and provided for, they set out from their new found resting place to proclaim glad tidings to the world."
The missionaries to Great Britain arrived in Liverpool on April 19, 1850. Elder Church served until February, 1852, and was released to go home, having served about two years and ten months, arriving home on August 18, 1852. On their voyage home there were three births, four marriages, and one death. Haden and Sarah Ann resided in the Salt Lake 14th Ward from 1852 to 1860.
Haden's 3rd mission call came at General Conference on April 8, 1854, as a call to serve in the United States, less than two years since he arrived home from England. He wrote a letter on January 22, 1855, to President Erastus Snow (who later was with him in St. George). He mentions on the 26th day of July, 1855, "Owing to its being so extremely hot and sultry in that country, I thought it best for me to return back to Tennessee." He mentions going to the city of Nashville, and then down to Alabama. He mentions that in Alabama he traveled 534 miles, preached 34 discourses and baptized 5 persons, and re-baptized 8 more.
On February 7, 1855, while he was on his mission, there was a party held for veterans of the Mormon Battalion, (see photo on next page) and Sarah Ann attended the party, which included songs, music, and dancing. He wrote another letter to his president on April 24, 1855, mentioning he "traveled and preached considerable in Alabama and Tennessee, and finally succeeded in organizing a small company from the Bush Creek Branch, Perry County, Alabama." He mentions many places he traveled through on his way home, and some steamboats he traveled on.
Another letter written on Sept. 5th, 1855, says: "I am at this time in tolerable health and enjoying the blessings of the Holy Spirit. I have been laboring in the counties of Hickman, Maury, and Williamson. But the people in this part of the country do not appear to care but very little for the principles of Mormonism; the subject of politics has pretty much engrossed their attention this season. Notwithstanding the apparent indifference of the people, I hope through the blessings of the Lord, I shall be able to gather up a few honest souls for the valleys of the mountains by the next spring. My intentions are at this time to start soon to North Carolina. I have a great many relations in that part of the country. I would like very much to find a people disposed to obey the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. According to the intelligence I have received from Alabama, there is some prospect of a few being gathered out of that country, and also from Mississippi. I have heard from my wife's relations and they give me a very pressing invitation to pay them a visit." (At this time, Sarah Ann's parents, Elias and Matilda were still living in Alabama.)
In the JOURNAL HISTORY, dated March 29, 1856, it is mentioned that Elder Church was "released from his duties and permitted to go home to Zion with our blessings on them." In the minutes of the October, 1856, General Conference, presided over by President Brigham Young, Elder Church was asked to speak and he "testified to the truth of the work we are engaged in." A student of Utah History would note that the first of the Handcart Companies had arrived in Salt Lake City just days before the Conference, and that the "Utah War" with Johnson's Army was in the following year.
The 1860 Census listed Haden Wells Church as living in Salt Lake City with a household of eight, a real wealth (realty) of $600.00 and a personal wealth of $400.00. The eight would include Haden and Sarah Ann with their three children who were born before his third mission, and two more children had been added following. Their only daughter, Paralee Amanda, (our grandmother) was born July 8, 1857, and the 4th son and final child, Robert Robbins, was born October 29, 1958. The 8th member was Catherine Gardner Church whom Haden married as a plural wife on March 15, 1857, in the Endowment House. She was born Nov. 17, 1810, in Hampshire, England, and seven years older than her husband, being age 46 when they were married. No children were born of this marriage. Catherine died on June 10, 1881, and is buried in St. George, Utah, where Sarah Ann is also buried. They must have remained together the rest of their lives.
Their next mission was when they were called to the "Dixie Cotton Mission". Because of the Civil War, President Brigham Young was worried that the sources for cotton would be cut-off, so he was determined to establish a "Cotton Mission" in St. George to make the Utah pioneers more self-sufficient in this area.
At the General Conference of the Church held in Salt Lake City on October 6, 1861, the Prophet called approximately 300 families to the Dixie Mission, and they found out about this "call" as their names were read from the pulpit. These people were carefully selected "so as to insure the community with the right number of farmers, masons, blacksmiths, businessmen, educators, and carpenters, as needed." Haden and his family had been in the Salt Lake Valley for 14 years and were quite comfortably settled. Because so many families were called on this mission in October, and asked to be ready to leave by November, they had difficulties "selling out." One pioneer called could get only one yoke of oxen and a hear-old heifer for his home which also included hay and potatoes, as well as the household items that had to be left behind. He felt his property left behind was worth $1200.00.
President Young had seen the Dixie country in June, and seemed to sense the problems that would arise from its settlement, so he called men and women who had already proved their dependability. Haden and Sarah Ann Church filled this criteria. Those called were briefed in several meetings where they were instructed in their duties and the needs in establishing a new city. They were advised by the leaders "not to go on this mission unless they could go with whole hearts." The missionaries were told that their mission to raise cotton should be considered as important to them as if they were preaching the Gospel among the nations of the earth. The wives were to go with their husbands "in the spirit of joy, cheerfulness and feel pleasure in going."
The main company of the pioneer saints began to arrive in the St. George Valley December 1, 1861, continuing until the 4th of the month. The main camp was made about where the present Dixie State College is. On December 5th, Haden was chosen to be a member of a committee of 4 to ascertain the best point to take out the waters of the Rio Virgin into a canal for irrigation purposes.
Fortunately for the pioneers, this winter in St. George was a mild one as it was necessary for them to live in their wagons or tents until the town could be laid out. The Indians in the area, Shivwits and Piutes, proved to be somewhat friendly to the Saints. They planned a wonderful celebration of their first Christmas in the Valley. A children's dance was held in the afternoon with one for the adults to be held that evening. Early in the evening it began to rain, and it rained intermittently for a period of 40 days. The campground became a sticky bottomless quagmire, and streams became raging torrents." Wagon covers and tents were very inadequate for shelter, and their clothing, bedding, food, and fuel were soaked.
On December 27, 1861, the new tent and wagon city of St. George selected a committee to choose school teachers and to organize schools as there was a potential of 103 day school students and 48 evening school students. The candidates for teaching were asked to apply in writing to the committee. According to Bleak's ANNALS OF THE SOUTHERN UTAH MISSION, Haden Church was the first teacher selected by the committee. Their first schools were either a wagon with the tarps thrown back, or later willow school houses. There was a shortage of instructional materials, and it is assumed that "such books as had found their way to this frontier were used -- such as the blue-backed speller, an arithmetic book, McGuffey's Readers, The Book of Mormon,etc."
McGuffey Readers were a series of graded primers that were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and are still used today in some private schools and in home-schooling.
It is estimated that at least 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary. Since 1961 they have continued to sell at a rate of some 30,000 copies a year. No other textbook bearing a single person's name has come close to that mark.
On January 9, 1862, only 6 weeks after they arrived, President Erastus Snow sought for donations for a "stone building for educational and other purposes." A total of $2974.00 was raised, and the Church family donated $25.00 of this amount. The individual donations ranged from a low of $12.00 to a high of $40.00 with about $20.00 being the average contribution.
In December, 1861, the first Choir performed at the old campground on the adobe yard. This choir was led by James Keate and was accompanied by violin, flute, and clarinet. Haden Wells Church is listed second on the list of members of this choir. Four years later, in 1865, a musician named Charles J. Thomas came to St. George and organized a choir with a "tone and air of leadership." Haden W. Church is listed as a member of Professor Thomas' Choir.
By late February, 1862, the rain had stopped and the pioneers were able to move onto their selected lots to build permanent homes. The numbered lots were placed in a hat, and the names of the men were placed in another hat. A slip was drawn from each hat and handed to the man whose name was drawn. Most were satisfied, while others did some trading of lots. The first drawing of lots was for a site for a home and garden, about 6 times 12 rods. The next drawing was for an acre a little farther out of town to be used for vineyards and farming. The 3rd piece of land they drew was for out "past the black rocks to the east to be used for farming." The original plat map shows the Church Family home to be block 11, plot A, which is 35 West 100 South, one block south and one-half block west of the Tabernacle.
The next blog will be the final part of their lives.
Haden was a member of the Mormon Battalion, and this story begins with their arrival back in the Salt Lake Valley on July 27 or 29th, right after the very first company arrived with Brigham Young, when he said "This is the place!"
The battalion members were listed as being mustered-out of the army on July 16th since their year's enlistment ended on that date.
Little is known of Sarah Ann and her baby, Hyrum, before they were reunited. But it is known that they were members of the A.O. Smoot Wagon Train Company that headed west on June 21, 1847, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on September 25, 1847, where it is assumed that Haden, Sarah Ann, and Hyrum spent the winter together. That winter of 1847-48 was very severe, and the nearly two thousand saints that spent that winter in the valley had a very meager diet and suffered many hardships. Their second child Haden Wells Junior, was born the following September 8, 1848.
A year later Haden was called on another mission. The usual procedure was for the wife of the missionary to use her own ingenuity to provide for the needs of the family and to help support her husband while he was serving on his mission. This time Elder Haden Church and others were to go with Elder Franklin D. Richards, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church, to assist Elder Orson Pratt who was already in the British Mission. This mission call was approved by the First Presidency of the Church on October 6, 1849, and was announced in General Conference the following day. All of the Apostles who were in the Salt Lake Valley were also called to foreign missions at this time. At this same Conference, the Perpetual Emigration Fund was announced as was the plan to "lay off a city in James Brown's neighborhood" (Ogden,) another one in Utah Valley (Provo), and to make a settlement in Sandpitch Valley (Manti).
Emigration to the United States to help build the main body of the Church was the recommended pattern for the members during the first century of the Church in the British Isles. The Perpetual Emigrating Fund was established in September 1849 to assist. Those who emigrated with the help of this revolving fund were to pay back the money as they could, so that others might be helped. The fund was formally discontinued in 1887, after thousands had benefitted from it. From 1847 to 1869, more than 32,000 British and Irish converts to the Church left their homelands for a new life in pioneer America.
I love the story told of when the novelist Charles Dickens visited the Amazon before it set sail from London on June 4, 1863, to see what the Mormon emigrants were like, he noted:
Nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch or lie in, people, in every suitable attitude for writing, are writing letters. Now, I have seen emigrants ships before this day in June. And these people are strikingly different from all other people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, and I wonder aloud, "What would a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!'…I should have said they were in their degree, the pick and flower of England" (Dickens, pp. 223-25).
This particular group of 35 Elders were the first to leave the Salt Lake Valley as missionaries. On November 12th, they were attacked by a part of 200 Cheyenne Indian warriors but escaped without harm. On December 11, Elder John Taylor (later a Prophet) wrote: "We found our journey to be very toilsome and unpleasant at this inclement season of the year, and were it not for the missions of a public nature in which many of us were engaged, we should have felt great reluctance at leaving our comfortable homes and firesides, to combat the chilling winds and pitiless storms of the Rocky Mountains and Desert Plains." Someone wrote: "Where can greater devotion than this be found? Leaving their families poorly housed, or sheltered and provided for, they set out from their new found resting place to proclaim glad tidings to the world."
The missionaries to Great Britain arrived in Liverpool on April 19, 1850. Elder Church served until February, 1852, and was released to go home, having served about two years and ten months, arriving home on August 18, 1852. On their voyage home there were three births, four marriages, and one death. Haden and Sarah Ann resided in the Salt Lake 14th Ward from 1852 to 1860.
Haden's 3rd mission call came at General Conference on April 8, 1854, as a call to serve in the United States, less than two years since he arrived home from England. He wrote a letter on January 22, 1855, to President Erastus Snow (who later was with him in St. George). He mentions on the 26th day of July, 1855, "Owing to its being so extremely hot and sultry in that country, I thought it best for me to return back to Tennessee." He mentions going to the city of Nashville, and then down to Alabama. He mentions that in Alabama he traveled 534 miles, preached 34 discourses and baptized 5 persons, and re-baptized 8 more.
On February 7, 1855, while he was on his mission, there was a party held for veterans of the Mormon Battalion, (see photo on next page) and Sarah Ann attended the party, which included songs, music, and dancing. He wrote another letter to his president on April 24, 1855, mentioning he "traveled and preached considerable in Alabama and Tennessee, and finally succeeded in organizing a small company from the Bush Creek Branch, Perry County, Alabama." He mentions many places he traveled through on his way home, and some steamboats he traveled on.
Another letter written on Sept. 5th, 1855, says: "I am at this time in tolerable health and enjoying the blessings of the Holy Spirit. I have been laboring in the counties of Hickman, Maury, and Williamson. But the people in this part of the country do not appear to care but very little for the principles of Mormonism; the subject of politics has pretty much engrossed their attention this season. Notwithstanding the apparent indifference of the people, I hope through the blessings of the Lord, I shall be able to gather up a few honest souls for the valleys of the mountains by the next spring. My intentions are at this time to start soon to North Carolina. I have a great many relations in that part of the country. I would like very much to find a people disposed to obey the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. According to the intelligence I have received from Alabama, there is some prospect of a few being gathered out of that country, and also from Mississippi. I have heard from my wife's relations and they give me a very pressing invitation to pay them a visit." (At this time, Sarah Ann's parents, Elias and Matilda were still living in Alabama.)
In the JOURNAL HISTORY, dated March 29, 1856, it is mentioned that Elder Church was "released from his duties and permitted to go home to Zion with our blessings on them." In the minutes of the October, 1856, General Conference, presided over by President Brigham Young, Elder Church was asked to speak and he "testified to the truth of the work we are engaged in." A student of Utah History would note that the first of the Handcart Companies had arrived in Salt Lake City just days before the Conference, and that the "Utah War" with Johnson's Army was in the following year.
The 1860 Census listed Haden Wells Church as living in Salt Lake City with a household of eight, a real wealth (realty) of $600.00 and a personal wealth of $400.00. The eight would include Haden and Sarah Ann with their three children who were born before his third mission, and two more children had been added following. Their only daughter, Paralee Amanda, (our grandmother) was born July 8, 1857, and the 4th son and final child, Robert Robbins, was born October 29, 1958. The 8th member was Catherine Gardner Church whom Haden married as a plural wife on March 15, 1857, in the Endowment House. She was born Nov. 17, 1810, in Hampshire, England, and seven years older than her husband, being age 46 when they were married. No children were born of this marriage. Catherine died on June 10, 1881, and is buried in St. George, Utah, where Sarah Ann is also buried. They must have remained together the rest of their lives.
Their next mission was when they were called to the "Dixie Cotton Mission". Because of the Civil War, President Brigham Young was worried that the sources for cotton would be cut-off, so he was determined to establish a "Cotton Mission" in St. George to make the Utah pioneers more self-sufficient in this area.
At the General Conference of the Church held in Salt Lake City on October 6, 1861, the Prophet called approximately 300 families to the Dixie Mission, and they found out about this "call" as their names were read from the pulpit. These people were carefully selected "so as to insure the community with the right number of farmers, masons, blacksmiths, businessmen, educators, and carpenters, as needed." Haden and his family had been in the Salt Lake Valley for 14 years and were quite comfortably settled. Because so many families were called on this mission in October, and asked to be ready to leave by November, they had difficulties "selling out." One pioneer called could get only one yoke of oxen and a hear-old heifer for his home which also included hay and potatoes, as well as the household items that had to be left behind. He felt his property left behind was worth $1200.00.
President Young had seen the Dixie country in June, and seemed to sense the problems that would arise from its settlement, so he called men and women who had already proved their dependability. Haden and Sarah Ann Church filled this criteria. Those called were briefed in several meetings where they were instructed in their duties and the needs in establishing a new city. They were advised by the leaders "not to go on this mission unless they could go with whole hearts." The missionaries were told that their mission to raise cotton should be considered as important to them as if they were preaching the Gospel among the nations of the earth. The wives were to go with their husbands "in the spirit of joy, cheerfulness and feel pleasure in going."
The main company of the pioneer saints began to arrive in the St. George Valley December 1, 1861, continuing until the 4th of the month. The main camp was made about where the present Dixie State College is. On December 5th, Haden was chosen to be a member of a committee of 4 to ascertain the best point to take out the waters of the Rio Virgin into a canal for irrigation purposes.
On December 27, 1861, the new tent and wagon city of St. George selected a committee to choose school teachers and to organize schools as there was a potential of 103 day school students and 48 evening school students. The candidates for teaching were asked to apply in writing to the committee. According to Bleak's ANNALS OF THE SOUTHERN UTAH MISSION, Haden Church was the first teacher selected by the committee. Their first schools were either a wagon with the tarps thrown back, or later willow school houses. There was a shortage of instructional materials, and it is assumed that "such books as had found their way to this frontier were used -- such as the blue-backed speller, an arithmetic book, McGuffey's Readers, The Book of Mormon,etc."
McGuffey Readers were a series of graded primers that were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and are still used today in some private schools and in home-schooling.
It is estimated that at least 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary. Since 1961 they have continued to sell at a rate of some 30,000 copies a year. No other textbook bearing a single person's name has come close to that mark.
On January 9, 1862, only 6 weeks after they arrived, President Erastus Snow sought for donations for a "stone building for educational and other purposes." A total of $2974.00 was raised, and the Church family donated $25.00 of this amount. The individual donations ranged from a low of $12.00 to a high of $40.00 with about $20.00 being the average contribution.
In December, 1861, the first Choir performed at the old campground on the adobe yard. This choir was led by James Keate and was accompanied by violin, flute, and clarinet. Haden Wells Church is listed second on the list of members of this choir. Four years later, in 1865, a musician named Charles J. Thomas came to St. George and organized a choir with a "tone and air of leadership." Haden W. Church is listed as a member of Professor Thomas' Choir.
By late February, 1862, the rain had stopped and the pioneers were able to move onto their selected lots to build permanent homes. The numbered lots were placed in a hat, and the names of the men were placed in another hat. A slip was drawn from each hat and handed to the man whose name was drawn. Most were satisfied, while others did some trading of lots. The first drawing of lots was for a site for a home and garden, about 6 times 12 rods. The next drawing was for an acre a little farther out of town to be used for vineyards and farming. The 3rd piece of land they drew was for out "past the black rocks to the east to be used for farming." The original plat map shows the Church Family home to be block 11, plot A, which is 35 West 100 South, one block south and one-half block west of the Tabernacle.
The next blog will be the final part of their lives.
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