- CHAPTER 11 -


THE HISTORY OF SOME DALTON WIFES


These are stories of some of the wife’s that our Dalton men married in America.

The first Dalton to marry in America was Thomas Dalton, born 1731 in Wales and who supposedly married a Polly or Betsy Freeland from Ireland, naturally before their first son was born in1763 and the last one on this list is my own great-grandmother, Charlotte Ellen Whittaker. She was called “Nellie” all her life.


(Sources of these stories is the same as all the other chapters in this book)

Contents:


1. Ann Casbourne Williams Dalton. (John Dalton Jr.)

2. Lydia Goldthwaite Knight Dalton. (John Dalton Jr.)

3. Rebecca Turner Cranmer Dalton. (John Dalton Jr.)

4. Marianne Catherine Gardiol Dalton. (John Dalton Jr.)

5. Anna Hodgkinson Dalton. John Dalton Jr.)

6. Letitia Williams Dalton. (John Dalton Jr.)

7. Anna Wakeman Dalton. (Simon Cooker Dalton)

8. Mary Elizabeth Veach Dalton. (Simon Cooker Dalton)

9. Caroline Louise Durham Dalton. (Simon Cooker Dalton)

10. Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton. (Charles Wakeman Dalton)

11. Sarah Jane Lee Dalton. (Charles Wakeman Dalton)

12. Julietta Bowen Dalton. (Charles Wakeman Dalton)

13. Elizabeth Green Dalton. (Henry Dalton)

14. Elizabeth Kittleman Dalton. (Henry Simon Dalton)

15. Elizabeth Ann Heskett Allred Dalton. (Charles Wakeman Dalton)

16. Emily Stevens Halliday Dalton. (Charles Dalton)

17. Emily Stevens Dalton. (Edward Meeks Dalton)

18. Emma Roberta Lee Dalton. (Charles Wakeman Dalton)

19. Elizabeth Cooker Dalton. (John Dalton Sr.)

20. Mary (Polly / Betsy) Freeland Dalton. (Thomas Dalton)

21. Mary Elizabeth Warner Dalton. (Charles Dalton)

22. Eunice Daniels Dalton. (Charles Dalton)

23. Amy Edgley Dalton. (John Luther Dalton)

24. Elnora Lucretia Warner Dalton. (Simon Cooker Dalton)

25. Elizabeth Mary Studer Dalton. (John Luther Dalton)

26. Mary Elizabeth Meeks Dalton. (Edward Dalton)

27. Iva Sarah Veater Dalton. (Martin Carroll Dalton Jr.)

28. Charlotte Ellen Whittaker. (Martin Carroll Dalton Sr.)


1- Ann Casbourne Williams Dalton; The forth wife of John Dalton Jr.


Ann Casbourne was born in Southery, Norfolk, England, 27, December 1832. She was the daughter of Abraham Casbourne and Susannah Ward. When eighteen years of age, she with her parents came to America. Crossing the ocean on the vessel “Hibarnium”. While at sea they encountered a terrific storm, which lasted twenty-four hours, during which they came in contact with a merchant ship, tearing a hole in their vessel, which badly disabled her. But through the courageous efforts of their captain and sailors, their ship was saved. After landing safely at New York, the Casbourne family continued their journey to St. Louis, Missouri.


They did not profess any religion, and although good honest people, they were not what is called a religious family. During the latter part of the summer, after their arrival in St. Louis, the father became very ill from working on a brickyard in excessive heat. He finally became so ill that he sent for one of the men with whom he had been working (a Mr. Jones) to come and pray for him, as he understood that Jones was a religious man, although he did not know to what sect Mr. Jones belonged. Mr. Jones came, and when the prayer was ended the sick man turned to his daughter, Ann, and said, "This man believes in the true Church of Christ. Live an honest upright life, for there is a great work for you to do." This greatly inspired the young girl, and has been an inspiration to her all of her life, for she had diligently tried to live up to the counsel of her dying father. He departed this life in the month of August 1851. This was a great blow to the family as they were almost strangers in a strange land, without a home.


They soon moved to the outskirts of the city, where they rented some rooms of a lady whom they soon discovered was of the same faith as Mr. Jones, namely, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


They soon became acquainted with quite a number of persons that belonged to this denomination. One Sabbath, Ann, with her mother, attended one of their meetings, and listened to a discourse delivered by Elder Orson Pratt on the Principles of the Gospel. Ann was converted to the new faith and was baptized the next day, and was a faithful member of the Church and active to the last, and a strong advocate of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She was the only one of her father's family to join the church.


For two years after her father's death, Ann worked very hard to help support her family. She then had a desire to get to Zion, although she knew it would be a great sacrifice to leave her mother. Her mother consented to her daughter joining the church if she felt disposed, but could hardly endure the thought of her leaving her home and going so far away to live among a strange unpopular people. But in April 1854 she left all who were so dear to her and cast her lot with a struggling band of people, driven from their homes by ruthless mobs, were crossing a continent, determined to overcome every obstacle and build them a home in the mountains of the West, where they could serve God and obey His Laws that He had given unto them.


She came to Utah in the company of Captain William Empey. While crossing the plains she cooked and washed for the Church teamsters to pay her way. Among the teamsters was a praiseworthy young man by the name of David Williams, who sought and won the promise of her hand in marriage, when they should reach their destination.


They arrived in Salt Lake City, October 24, 1854, after having a pleasant journey of so many hundred miles. Ann made her home with Brother Empey until the 14th of February 1855, when she was married to David Williams. For seven short months they enjoyed the bliss of perfect happiness. Then her husband went to work in a sawmill in Big Cottonwood for a Mr. Davis. David Williams acted as sawyer, and in some unaccountable way he was thrown across the saw and killed September 1855.


On November 19, 1855 she gave birth to a baby girl, Ann Susanna Williams.

In time she went to work for John Dalton Jr. on the Church farm in Sugarhouse Ward. While there she had many manifestations of the power of the Lord. President Brigham Young told Brother Dalton, during the grasshopper years when food was scarce, never to turn anyone away hungry and he would never want for flour. When Ann would go to the bin she would take out every bit of flour, wondering where the next was coming from, and she would bake it into bread, dividing it with any whom would come their way.

Ann Casbourne was married to John Dalton 23 August 1856 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

She had 6 children by John Dalton Jr.:


Margaret, born in Salt Lake City, 1857, died one year later in Salt Lake City; Mary Ann, born 1860 in Salt Lake City, died 1929 in Phoenix, Maricopa Co. Arizona; Jemima, born 1861 in Salt Lake City, died 1959 in Phoenix, Maricopa Co. Arizona; Miriam, born 1864 in Virgin City, Washington Co., died 1944; David, born 1868 in Virgin City, died 1933 in Inglewood, Los Angeles Co. Calif.; Ellen Latisha, born 1872 in Rockville, Utah, died 1960 in Denver, Colo.


She took part in the great move when Johnston's Army was sent to exterminate the Mormons. After this, her husband was called to settle Southern (Utah) Dixie. After moving south she suffered many trials and privations. They first settled at Virgin City. They then moved to Rockville. While living at Rockville, Sister Ann Dalton had a numb palsy stroke, and for three months she was perfectly helpless. Then at her request she was carried to Ward Conference, and there had the power of the priesthood exercised in her behalf, and she was partially healed. She then went to the St. George Temple, and did work for the dead.


When she returned home she was able to do her work, although her fingers and toes were somewhat drawn and doubled up from the palsy. This prevented her from doing many kinds of work. She kept on working, doing everything that poor crooked hands could do, for she had to help earn a living for herself and family with what aid her children could give her. In 1880 she moved to Arizona in company with Jacob and Charles Brewer and their families. Charles Brewer was her son-in-law, having married the little girl (Ann Suzanna) that was born so soon after her father's death. For a number of years she lived in Taylor, then a new place was situated on Silver Creek, a tributary of the Little Colorado. While there she labored in Relief Society, Sunday school and Primary Assistant.


She moved to Pinedale, Utah, about fifteen miles southeast of Taylor, where she continued her work in the same organizations. At one time, being President of the Relief Society, Feb. 2, 1906 to May 2, 1907, and at various times other positions in the Church. She was also postmistress at Pinedale for some years, running a little store in connection with it.


After leaving St. Louis, Missouri, Ann had not seen one of her relatives. While at Pinedale, Arizona, her brother, Abraham Casbourne of Kansas, paid her a pleasant visit.

In 1906, at the age of 74, she visited Salt Lake City, where she met many friends and acquaintances, and met and talked with some of the General Authorities of the Church, including President Joseph F. Smith. This trip seemed to be a great joy and satisfaction to her. Since then she has been spending her time with her children. The warmer months are spent in the mountains of northern Arizona, where she visits her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. At the age of 86 she is making these trips without an escort. When at home she often walks 2 miles to Sunday school.


It is her small stature that leaves the lasting impression, being only four feet and six inches in height and weighing eighty pounds.


When 90 years of age a friend greeted her this way, "Why Grandma, how do you keep so young? You look no older than you did years ago." To which she replied, "Just being happy and cheerful."


"Grandma Dalton" as she was lovingly called by all who knew her, had a large circle of friends, especially among the children to all of whom she had something pleasant to say. She was the mother of six daughters and one son and at the time of her death she had over 300 living descendents.


Ann Casbourne died 25 August 1925, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Mary Ann Smith, on the Huber Ranch, two miles west and one mile north of Chandler, Arizona. In life she had been called Grandma by three hundred and seventy descendants, three hundred living. Four daughters and one son were living at the time of her death; Mrs. S. J. Murphy, Mrs. Marium Hancock, Mrs. Mary Ann Smith, Mrs. Ellen Owens and son David Dalton. She was buried 28 August 1925, in Mesa, Arizona. Although small in stature, Ann Casbourne Dalton was a giant in courage, cheerfulness and endurance.


On Ann Casbourne's grave stone is engraved:

"Immigrant, England to United States, Pioneer Mother, Ann Casbourne

27-12-1832, 29 Aug. 1925.


Source: The personal Dalton Family History, by Rod Dalton, Dec. 1999. And from a story found in “Pioneer Women of Arizona”.


So it seems by the above accounts that Ann Casbourne Dalton moved to Arizona in 1880 and left her husband, John behind in Rockville Utah. We do have a clue why she did this but we have no proof that she first divorced him.


Some of Ann’s children moved to Arizona and married there, including her daughter, Ann Susanna. Also a daughter who we do know a lot about, Jemima Dalton, born 1861, married in 1879 in Rockville and then moved to Taylor, Arizona in 1880. So it would seem that Ann did in fact go to Arizona with her daughters.


Below is a story by Raymond B. Johnson, a grandson of Jemima Dalton. “Jemima Dalton tells about her father, John Dalton Jr. “On several occasions my grandmother, Jemima Dalton Johnson Murphy, (her married names) told me this story about life in a polygamist family”


Her father John Dalton Jr. was a polygamist with several wives. Each wife lived in a separate house with her children. The houses were all in a row. Her father assigned each one of the children a certain section of the garden to care for. As I recall the gardens were in front of each one of the houses. There was much bickering between some of the wives and they would sabotage one another. One of the aunts (she told me her name but I forgot it) got angry at Jemima's mother and sent one of her children over to sabotage Jemima's mother's garden. As it turned out, the child cut or knocked down several rows of Jemima's corn. When "Father" found out about it, he held Jemima responsible and beat her severely with his cane. She described to me on several occasions how he beat her with the cane and how she could never forget the brutality of it as well as the fact she was innocent of any wrong doing. As I recall, she didn't have much love for the "aunt" who sent the child or the child whom did the actual sabotage.


Another story:


My grandmother, Jemima Dalton Johnson Murphy, told me a story about an old polygamist who wanted to marry her"


When she was a young girl of approximately 14 or 15 years old there was an old polygamist who took a fancy to her and kept trying to court her. She was not interested. She described him as an old ugly man with long hair and a beard. One day she was doing the family laundry under a cottonwood tree. She was boiling the water in a large metal caldron. He came to the area she was working and told her that he was there inform her it was her duty to marry him. He had prayed about it, the Lord gave him a manifestation that she should become one of his plural wives (Grandma did not say how many he had), he had talked to the bishop and her father, John Dalton Jr., and both of them agreed that it was God's will that she marry him. It therefore became her duty in all righteousness to do so. As I recall the story, he was sitting at the time. She had a gourd that had been cut to function as a dipper. She dipped into the scalding water, filled it with boiling water and threw it in his face. This dampened his enthusiasm for her so much that he never bothered her again.


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2- Lydia Goldthwait Knight; The third wife of John Dalton Jr. With some history of her family.


Lydia Knight was 39 years old and was the widow of Newel Knight and had seven children before marrying John Dalton. Newel Knight had died January 11, 1847 in Nauvoo.


She married John Dalton Jr. on August 13th, 1851 in Salt Lake City. They had one child,

Artimesia who after her mother divorced took the last name of Knight. When John Dalton, Jr., married other plural wives, there was family friction between him and Lydia. But mutual consent, the couple appeared before Brigham Young and were separated.


From the book “History of Utah” by Orson F. Whitney.


Knight, Lydia Goldthwait, wife of Newel Knight, was born June 9, 1812, in Sutton, Worcester County, Mass., and the daughter of Jesse Goldthwait and Sally Burt. When fifteen years old she was sent to a boarding school in a village where she met a young man by the name of Calvin Baily, to whom she was married in the fall of 1828. This marriage proved an unhappy one (though it was blessed with two children), and three years after her marriage she was deserted by her husband. She then returned to the home of her parents. During a visit to Mt. Pleasant, Upper Canada, she first became acquainted with the Latter-day Saints, the Nickerson family living at that place being visited by Joseph Smith the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon in October 1833. A number of meetings were held, and the Nickerson family, Lydia and others were baptized. When Lydia, in the summer of 1834, returned to her father's home in New York State, her relatives did all they could to persuade her to leave "Mormonism." At length she grew restless and unhappy on account of the constant raillery and derision showered upon her by her parents on account of her religion, and therefore decided to go to Kirtland, Ohio, which at that time was a gathering place of the Saints. Immediately on reaching Kirtland in the spring of 1835 she met Vincent Knight, who approached Sister Lydia, saying: "Sister, the Prophet is in bondage and has been brought into distress by the persecutions of the wicked, and if you have any means to give, it would be of benefit to him." She at once emptied her purse containing $50, which was all she had. Bro. Knight looked at it, counted it and fervently exclaimed, "Thank God, this will release and set the Prophet free." The young girl was now without means, not having enough to procure a meal or a night's lodging. For six or eight months after that she lived a pleasant life in the home of Vincent Knight. In the fall of 1835 Hyrum Smith asked Lydia to come to his house and assist his wife. She complied with the request and while living there she became acquainted with Newel Knight, who boarded at the place while working on the Kirtland Temple. Newel Knight (who was not related to the Vincent Knight previously mentioned) is described by Sister Lydia as a tall man with light brown hair, a keen blue eye and a very energetic and determined manner; he was a widower, whose wife, a delicate woman, had died the previous fall, in consequence of the trials and persecutions she had suffered, and left an infant only two days old. Bro. Knight, in course of time, made Lydia an offer of marriage, which she after some hesitation accepted, and the two became man and wife Nov. 23, 1835, Joseph Smith the Prophet performing the marriage ceremony. It was the first marriage ceremony the Prophet ever performed. The young married couple gladly accepted the offer of Hyrum Smith to spend the winter at his home. In the meantime Newel Knight continued his labors on the Temple and generally attended the school of the Elders in the evenings. Together with his wife he also attended the dedication of the Temple and witnessed many marvelous manifestations of the power of God. After this Sister Lydia and her husband moved to Clay County, where a girl was born to them Dec. 1, 1836. In February 1837, Newel Knight purchased 40 acres of land from the government near Far West, Caldwell County, Mo. A boy (named James Philander) was born to Lydia April 29, 1837. She passed through the persecutions of the Church in Caldwell County, Mo., and afterwards in Illinois, and she left Nauvoo with her family April 17, 1846, in the exodus of the Saints for the Rocky Mountains. While on the way, and while stopping temporarily together with many other Saints at a place known as Ponca Fort, upriver some 150 miles from Winter quarters on the Missouri, her husband died on Jan. 11, 1847.


Lydia Knight's story about her husband Newel's death:


"On Monday morning, January 4th, 1847, Brother Knight, whose health had been failing for some time, did not arise as usual, and, on my going to him, he said, "Lydia, I believe I shall go to rest this winter." The next night he awoke with a severe pain in his right side, a fever had also set in, and he expressed himself to me that he did not expect to recover. From this time until the 10th of the month, the Elders came frequently and prayed for my husband. After each administration he would rally and be at ease for a short time and then relapse again into suffering. I felt at last as if I could not endure his sufferings any longer, and that I ought not to hold him here. I knelt by his bedside, and with my hand upon his pale forehead asked my Heavenly Father to forgive my sins, and that the sufferings of my companion might cease, and if he was appointed unto death, and could not remain with us, that he might be quickly eased from pain and fall asleep in peace. Almost immediately all pain left him, and in a short time he sweetly fell asleep in death, without a struggle or a groan, at half past six on the morning of the 11th of January, 1847. His remains were interred at sunset on the evening of the day he died.


That evening [January 11, 1847] Newel was buried. No lumber could be had, so Lydia had one of her wagon-boxes made into a rude coffin. The day was excessively cold, and some of the brethren had their fingers and feet frozen while digging the grave and performing the last offices of love for their honored captain and brother. As the woman looked out upon the wilderness of snow and saw the men bearing away all that was left of her husband, it seemed that the flavor of life had fled and left only dregs, bitter, unavailing sorrow. But as she grew calmer she whispered with poor, pale lips, "God rules!"


Time was empty of incident or interest to Lydia until the 4th of February, when Brother Miller, who had been to Winter Quarters for provisions, returned and brought tidings of a revelation showing the order of the organization of the camp of the Saints, and also the joyful news that Brothers E. T. Benson and Erastus Snow were coming soon to Ponca to organize the Saints according to the pattern given in the revelation.

On the day of the organization, Lydia returned from the meeting and sat down in her home full of sad thoughts. How could she, who had never taken any care except that which falls to every woman's share, prepare herself and family to return to Winter Quarters and from thence take a journey a thousand miles into the Rocky Mountains? The burden weighed her very spirit down until she cried out in her pain, "Oh Newel, why hast thou left me!" As she spoke, he stood by her side, with a lovely smile on his face, and said: "Be calm, let no sorrow overcome you. It was necessary that I should go. I was needed behind the veil.... You cannot fully comprehend it now; but the time will come when you shall know why I left you and our little ones. Therefore, dry up your tears. Be patient, I will go before you and protect you in your journeying. And you and your little ones shall never perish for lack of food."


The little babe [born after Newel's death] was a week old when a sudden severe rainstorm came up. Lydia told her daughter Sally to give her all the bedclothes they had, and these were put upon the bed and removed, as they became soaked. At last, finding the clothes were all wet completely through and that she was getting chilled sitting up in the wet, she said, "Sally, go to bed. It's no use doing any more unless some power beyond that which we possess is exercised; it is impossible for me to avoid catching cold. But we will trust in God; he has never failed to hear our prayers."

And so she drew her babe to her, and covered up as well as she could, and asked God to watch over them all through the night. Her mind wandered back to the time when she had a noble companion, one who would never allow her to suffer any discomfort and who loved her as tenderly as man could woman. But now he was in the grave in a savage Indian country, and she was alone and in trouble. As she thus mused, chilled with the cold rain and shivering, her agony at his loss became unbearable and she cried out, "Oh Newel, why could you not have stayed with and protected me through our journeying?"

Oftentimes the pioneers struggled to control their own herds and teams.


Lydia Knight described a prairie stampede:


It was here in this "buffalo country" that the famous stampedes of the animals were wont to take place. Without one second's warning, every ox and cow in the whole train would start to run, and go almost like a shot out of a gun. No matter how weary or how stupid they were, when one made the spring, the remainder of the horned stock were crazed with fear. On, on, they would go for miles, and seemed unable to stop until headed and brought back into camp.


One day while slowly plodding along beneath the burning, sultry sun, the start was made, and as every wagon was drawn by oxen or cows, away went cattle, wagons, and inmates; tin and brass pails, camp-kettles ... jingling merrily behind and underneath the wagons where they were tied; children screaming, everything that was loose flying out as they bumped along. Over the un-trodden prairie flew the maddened cattle, nearer and nearer to the riverbank, which was here a precipice of twenty-five feet down to the water. Women, seeing their danger, sobbed out wild prayers for God to save; men ran and shouted to no avail; when suddenly over the plumy grass flew a horseman, spurring and screaming to his quivering, panting horse. Mothers clasped their frightened babes in their arms and prepared to face their watery grave. But the rider was up with the head team, and just as the head wagons were within ten feet of the deadly bank, he turned them aside and they were saved. Lydia's wagon was near the lead, and she came within a few feet of the precipice. When she once more was safely traveling in the road, she and her children thanked God for his deliverance, praying that they might be so endangered no more. Her prayer was granted.


Newel Knight:


After the Martyrdom, Newel penned his feelings for the Prophet and his brother Hyrum: "O how I loved those men, and rejoiced under their teachings! it seems as if all is gone, and as if my very heart strings will break, and were it not for my beloved wife and dear children I feel as if I have nothing to live for, and would rejoice to be with them in the Courts of Glory." One year and a day after their deaths Newel and Lydia visited Carthage Jail to see the room where the Martyrdom took place. Blood still stained the floor and bullet holes pocked the walls.

Continuing bigotry and mobocracy forced Newel and his family to abandon Nauvoo and join the migrating Saints in Iowa Territory. On 1 January 1847 he seemed to sense that his death was near: "I scarcely know why I am thus anxious, why this world appears so trifling, or the things of the world. I almost desire to leave this tenement of clay, that my spirit may soar aloft and no longer be held in bondage, yet my helpless family seem to need my protection."

Three days later Newel wrote his last diary entry. He described his preaching in church that day of the Saints' need to purify themselves so that "the Lord's presence [will] go before us, while we are journeying in the wilderness." He died on 11 January 1847 from lung inflammation. His remains were placed in a lumber coffin fashioned from a wagon box. Because of the cold, the fingers and feet of the men digging his grave froze.

Lydia, a widow with seven young children, wondered why he had left her. According to her history:


As she spoke, he stood by her side, with a lovely smile on his face, and said: "Be calm, let not sorrow overcome you. It was necessary that I should go. I was needed behind the Vail to represent the true condition of this camp and people. You cannot fully comprehend it now; but the time will come when you shall know why I left you and our little ones. Therefore, dry up your tears. Be patient, I will go before you and protect you in your journeying. And you and your little ones shall never perish for lack of food."


The eagerly awaited opportunity to emigrate came to Mrs. Knight early in 1850, when, her two wagons having returned from the Valley, (one a useless wreck, the other susceptible of repairs) the indomitable little woman hired two yoke of Church cattle, and on the 1st of June started with her children for this place. The company in which she traveled was commanded by Bishop Edward Hunter, the agent of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company, who, before leaving home, had received instructions from President Brigham Young to exercise a kindly watch care over the widow and her family and bring them across the plains that season. Jesse Haven was captain of the ten wagons that included her vehicle, which was driven most of the way by her little son James, aged twelve. He, with others of the children, trudged on foot the greater part of the way to Salt Lake City, where they arrived on the third day of October.


Mrs. Knight settled in the First Ward. She bought a vacant lot and erected a humble log and adobe dwelling, in which she opened a small school, teaching her own children and those of the neighbors, during the winter. She succeeded so well that she was solicited to take the Ward school, and did so in the spring. Her first act, after obtaining enough means, was to pay her debt of sixty dollars to the Perpetual Emigrating Fund for the use of the cattle in crossing the plains. In the fall of 1851 she married John Dalton Jr. and moved with her children upon a farm six miles south of the city. Jesse's earliest recollections are attending his mother's school and herding cows on the East Bench. Afterwards he worked on his stepfather's farm, tending sheep. A pet lamb was given to him by Mr. Dalton, and this increased until he had ten sheep of his own, the first property he ever possessed. Five years later, his mother having separated from Mr. Dalton, Jesse left his little flock behind, and returned with his mother to the city, where she again taught school.


Lydia Knight’s story about how she married John Dalton Jr.:

The year is 1851. Lydia and her family are living in SLC after crossing the plains in Bishop Miller’s wagon train. Her husband, Newel Knight had died in Jan.11 1847 at Fort Ponce, west of the Missouri River. Spring came and went, summer passed, and Lydia was teaching school in her church ward.


Lydia's own words about the next events in her life:


"Sometime in the fall of 1851, a friend by the name of John Dalton proposed to become my protector for this life, if I wished him to do so. He had a farm six miles from the city, (This would be the Church farm that he managed in the Sugarhouse area) which he had no one else to live upon, as his first wife lived in the city in a comfortable home. Said I could think of it, and sometime he would call again. This was a new idea to me; for since my dear Newel's death, I had never thought of marrying again. It had been all my study to take care of our little ones, and try to teach them those principles which would prepare them for usefulness in this life, and to meet their father in eternity, so that we might be an unbroken family in the future state of existence. What should I do? What would be for our best good?


"My boys had to go from home to get work, and the responsibilities upon me were very heavy. I prayed, I sought to do for the best. I had always believed in the principle of celestial marriage, since I received a testimony of its truth in an early day from the Prophet Joseph's teachings. I have heard him teach it in public as well as in private; have heard him relate the incident of the angel coming to him with a drawn sword, commanding him to obey the law, or he should lose his priesthood as well as his life if he did not go forward in this principle; and I had received a strong testimony of its truth when under the Prophet's teachings. The spirit seemed to whisper to me, you can now test your belief by practice. What would be for the best for my children? If we were situated on a farm, it would give them employment, always at home; and the change would relieve me of many cares and burdens which were fast growing too much for my strength. My constant prayer was, 'Oh Lord give me wisdom to do that which will be Thy will!' At last, I concluded to accept."


Lydia soon found herself, after accepting the proposition, situated on a farm, with plenty of labor for herself and family. She moved in September, 1851. In December, 1852, a girl was born to her, whom she called Artemesia.


Nearly five years were spent upon this farm, and at the end of that time, Lydia returned to her home in the city; Mr. Dalton having expressed a desire for her to do so. He said she had performed all the labors required of her in an acceptable manner, but she was welcome now to return home.


She had lived under the celestial law, and had found no more trials than she could bear, and she thus gives her testimony concerning the principle:


"It may be some will inquire of me, 'how do you like plurality after living in it and getting the experience you desired? What are your feelings now?' I will say I like it first-rate; my belief is strengthened; I do believe it is a principle that if not abused, will purify and exalt those that enter into it with purity of purpose, and so abide therein."


On her return to the city, she took up school again, and the people were very glad to have her do so. She again began to teach in the Ward school in the spring of 1856.


In the early spring of 1858, when rumors of Johnson's army began to come like a blasting air upon these peaceful mountain homes, Pres. Young called out a standing army to prepare for future emergencies. Lydia's oldest daughter, Sally, had married a young man named Zemira Palmer, some two years previous to this, and they were living in Provo. This young man was called to act as a soldier in this standing army, and he wrote to Lydia, asking her if she would not come and live with her daughter, the boys taking charge of the farm. She complied. But very shortly afterwards the standing army was disorganized. Pres. Young had decided to make a complete move from the city, going south, so that when the army should come in, they would find nothing but desolation and loneness. The general excitement caused many weak and doubtful spirits to quiver with affright. Among the rest, an old man living in Provo, named Hoops, had become so alarmed that he was determined to leave Utah at any cost. One morning Zemira came in and said; "Well Sally, old man Hoops is going to sell out if he can, give out if he can't sell out, and get out whether or not. He has a good farm, a city lot and tolerably good house, but nothing will keep him here."

As he ceased speaking, the spirit whispered to Lydia; "The hand of the Lord is in this. Because of your faithfulness in the past, you shall have a good home. Go, and you shall obtain this for yourself and children." Presently she said quietly to James who was with her; "Are you acquainted with this old gentleman, Hoops?" "Yes, mother; why?" "Zemira will not need us here now, and as we do not wish to return to the city in the present state of things, I thought perhaps we might be able to buy this place of the old man."


"Why, mother, all we have would not begin to buy the place. It's worth several hundred dollars. It would be an imposition to ask the old man to take a wagon and what few other things we could give him. I could not bring my feelings to consent to such an imposition."

Lydia felt that she knew that when she listened to the guiding of that Spirit which had so often prompted her, that she had always succeeded and been prospered; and she was sure, although it looked hopeless, that she would succeed this time.

Waiting a little while, she next asked Zemira if he would go with her and introduce her to Bro. Hoops. With a peculiar smile he answered;


"Yes, mother, I will go with you, if you really wish it, but I have no faith that you can possibly get the place."


They went down to the old man's place and Lydia stated to him the object of her visit. He asked her what she had, and as she named over the various articles she could turn out, he said: " That's just what I want."


And when she had told him all she had to give, he eagerly answered, "It's a bargain."

So she was once more in possession of a good home.


Just before leaving the city for Provo, Lydia had gone to President Young and stated her circumstances in full to him, and asked if he knew any reason why she should not have a divorce from Mr. Dalton. She had then been separated from him for some time. The President did not know anything to prevent her being a free woman, and accordingly gave her a legal divorce. So she was once more alone and battling with life without earthly aid. Her farm was a good one, and with the valuable assistance of her boys, she soon became comfortable.


A widower, named McClellan, was living at the time in Payson who had two motherless girls, aged eleven and thirteen. He was comfortably situated, and, becoming acquainted with Lydia, he very much admired her kind, motherly ways and general thriftiness, and he besought her to unite her fortunes with his and be a mother to his girls who had been orphaned about two years previously.


Lydia was not very willing to once more embark upon the perilous sea of matrimony. Her heart was buried with her husband and no love ever bad or ever could waken it to life. She had had a sorrowful experience in that state with Mr. Dalton, and as she was now getting in years, being upwards of fifty, she shrank from again taking a wife's burdens upon her. Still, her heart yearned over the little helpless, motherless girls. Finally, after much serious thought, she again accepted an earthly companion, and joined her fate, for time, with James McClellan. They then moved to Payson, Utah Co. in 1860, where his farm was situated. Two or three years after this Bro. McClellan was called south, and Lydia moved with him, leaving Jesse and Hyrum with their brother James in Provo. They settled in Santa Clara, Washington Co. and soon became very nicely fixed.


In the Fall of '71, Lydia's brother, Jesse, wrote to her that their father and mother were both dead, and, as there was some property to be divided among the children, she had better visit the old homestead where he lived and get her share. She therefore went east and was treated very kindly by her brothers and sisters and enjoyed herself quite well. As her share she received $1,500, and then returned home.


On the 1st of January, 1877, work was commenced in the St. George temple. President Young called upon Lydia to act as one of the workers. Circumstances beyond her control did not permit her to go until the Fall of '77, when she entered the sacred walls as one of the regular attendants. In the Winter of '80-81 Brother McClellan's health failed altogether, and on the 10th of February, 1881, he died. She took him to back to Payson, where she buried him. Thus, after a companionship of twenty years, Lydia was once more a widow. The work in the temple, however, was so constant and pleasant that she could not feel lonely. In 1882 Lydia purchased a piece of property in St. George and has there settled. She shut up her house in Santa Clara, and manages to live quite comfortably with the proceeds of her little estate.


She is all alone, as Samuel lives in Santa Clara; Sally and Lydia, with their husbands, in Orderville; Newel, in Provo; James, Jesse and Artemesia, in Payson; Joseph went to Arizona and died there four years ago, and Hyrum died at Payson three years ago unmarried.


Her posterity are numerous; they outnumber that of her eleven brothers and sisters put together. She has upwards of eighty children, grand-children and great grand-children, and is proud of her labors and the "helps" she has raised to assist in the up building of this kingdom. When the relief society was organized by the Prophet Joseph in Nauvoo, Lydia was one of its active members, and from that time until now she has almost continuously labored in one of these societies.


In the old-time fairs she has often taken prizes for the production of her hands. She has always taken a very active interest in sericulture since its introduction into this territory. There is now on exhibition in the Philadelphia silk rooms several silk skeins of various

colors so well spun and twisted as to be indistinguishable from the imported article; also nets, mitts, etc., of Lydia's make. Her labors in the temple are constant and full of the greatest joy and pleasure. She has labored there as a work-hand 621 days, has received endowments for over 700 of her dead and those of her friends; and has blessed many sick, sorrowful and afflicted. Shall I paint a little scene of almost daily occurrence during the past season in St. George?


Tall trees shade a modest house so deeply set in its leafy frame that the passer-by scarcely discerns its shape. Birds sing in their bright green home, and the grass hides many a harmless insect. The dewy freshness of the morning shimmers on every bough and grassy hillock. The chickens cluck over their morning meal; the cow stands in her cozy shed, happy with her dewy green breakfast and chewing the cud in contentment.


Out of the front door steps a brisk little woman with so blithe an air, and free a step that you are surprised to look under the veiled bonnet and find a kind, withered face surrounded with a silvery halo of pure white hair. The firm lines around the mouth are rather deepened with experience but the lips wear that pleasant half-smile seen on the faces of the cheerful; the blue eyes, a little dimmed with age and tears, but full of a sunny light and the expression so soft and sweet that little children love to kiss the dear old face. Over the path goes she, and steps into the waiting temple carriage before the clock strikes eight; her house as neat as wax, everything about her clean, happy and well fed. This is

Lydia, now seventy-one years old, and living alone, but for the beloved spirits of Newel and her children who often visit her in dreams and visions. She has earned her present peace and rest, and today, as it passes, is but the one link less between her and her longed-for eternal home within her beloved husband. But it is a very golden link, for it is gilded with precious blessings and privileges but few mortals enjoy. She blesses and is blessed. And here let us leave her, with the prayer to know and greet her when we shall be united on the glorious resurrection day!


Lydia Goldthwait Baily Knight Dalton McClellan died on April 03, 1884 in St. George, Washington Co. Utah.


Patriarchal blessing of Lydia Knight, by Joseph Smith Sr:

For Lydia Knight, who was born in Sutton, Worchester Co., Mass., June 9th 1812:


Sister Knight, in the name of Jesus Christ, I lay my hands upon thy head and ask my Heavenly Father to give me wisdom and power to pronounce such things as shall be according to the mind of the Holy Spirit. I also ask God to prepare thee to receive blessings, and pour them into thy soul even a fullness; and to give thee wisdom to abide all things that shall come upon thee; and bless thee in thy out-goings and in thy in-comings. I seal a father’s blessing upon thee and thy posterity. For thou shalt be a mother of many children. And thou shalt teach them righteousness, and have power to keep them from the power of the destroyer; and thy heart shall not be pained because of the loss of they children, for the Lord shall watch over them and keep them. And your children shall raised up for glory and be ornaments in the Church.

"Thou hast been afflicted much in thy past days, and thy heart has been pained. Many tears have fallen from thine eyes and thou hast wept much. But thou shalt be comforted. The Lord loves thee and has given thee a kind and loving companion for thy comfort. And your souls shall be knit together, and nothing shall be able to dissolve them. Neither distress nor death shall separate you. You shall be preserved in life, and go safely and speedily to the land of Zion. Thou shalt have a good passage, and receive an inheritance in Jackson County. Thou shalt also see thy friends in Zion, thy brothers and sisters, and rejoice with them in the glory of God. Angels shall minister unto thee; thy heart shall be comforted. Thou shalt receive all the heart’s desire. Thy soul shall be enlarged, and thou shalt stand to see Israel gather from their dispersion, the tribes come from the land of the north country; the heavens rend, and the Son of Man come in all the glory of His Father. And thou shalt rise to meet Him and reign with Him a thousand years, and thy offspring with thee. Great are thy blessings. I confirm blessings on thee in common with thy husband. Blessings of the earth, and all things which thou neediest for thy comfort. And thou shalt be a mother in Israel. Thou shalt relieve the wants of the oppressed and minister to the needy. All needed blessing are thine. I seal them upon thee, and I seal thee up unto eternal life, in the name of Jesus. Amen.”


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3- Rebecca Turner Cranmer; The first wife of John Dalton Jr. With some history of her family.


Rebecca Turner Cranmer was born on April 24 1796 in Towanda, Bradford Co. Pennsylvania. Her parents were John Cranmer and Ketura Turner of Towanda, Bradford, Co., Pennsylvania. Rebecca Turner Cranmer married John Dalton Jr. of Wysox on Jan. 21 1822.


Below is a story of the Cranmer Family in Bradford County.


The Cranmer Family in this country are supposed to be descendants of the martyr Thomas Cranmer, who was burned alive for his religious belief in the reign of Queen Mary of England, and to have come to America at about the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1620.


NOADIAH CRANMER, born August 26, 1736, was a patriot, and as a soldier participated in nearly all battles fought in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War.


In 1791, he followed his son, Samuel, to Monroe, Bradford County, where he died February 14, 1829, in his 93rd year.


JOHN CRANMER was a wagon-master in the Revolutionary War. In 1791 he joined the settlement of his brother, Samuel, in Monroe, where he died May 10, 1810, aged 51 years. He married Katurah Turner, who died May 23, 1853, aged 93 years.


The Taxables of Bradford Co. Towanda Township for 1812 shows the following Cranmers:


Cranmer, Calvin.

Cranmer, Josiah .

Cranmer, Keturah.

Cranmer, Noadiah.

Cranmer, Samuel .


The geographical situation of the township of Towanda is between the townships of North Towanda, on the north, the Susquehanna River (which divides it from Wysox) and Asylum on the east, Monroe on the south, and Burlington on the west. The area of the township is about fifteen square miles. Its surface is hilly, running up into high, pine-covered summits, except along the Towanda creek, where alluvial flats lie on either side of the same. The soil is fertile, even to the very summits of the hills, and produces the cereals and the grasses with certainty almost universally. Dairying is the principal business of the farming community. The Towanda creek passes northeasterly through the southeastern portion of the township, with two or more small affluence coming in from the north. The township is divided into four school districts each having a schoolhouse, in which schools are taught an average of six or more months in each year.


How John Dalton Jr. met Rebecca Cranmer is a mystery. The little town of Towanda, which is directly across the Susquehanna River from Wysox at the time John married (1822) Rebecca was quite a bit larger than Wysox and must have had a general store that the Dalton family visited.


Rebecca had 6 children by John Dalton Jr., all born in Wysox: Ellen, born 1823, Henry (Harry), born 1825, who was to joined the Mormon Battalion after his family joined the LDS Church and settled in Nauvoo (1843) with the other saints. Edward, born 1827, who also joined the Mormon Battalion. Daniel Henry, born 1829. Amanda Delilah, born 1832 and Sophia Milissa, born 1835.


When all the Dalton family packed up in the fall of 1835 and made the move to Washtenaw Co. Michigan, Rebecca and her group of 8 made the long and danger trip

To a area then unknown to her. She was a strong women to endure all the traveling she did before she was buried in the little southern town of Annabella in Utah.


It was from 1843 to Feb. of 1846 that Rebecca made a home in Nauvoo with all the Saints that had followed Joseph Smith there. She Had land and a little cabin on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was while living in Nauvoo that John and Rebecca lost two of their children; Amanda died in 1844 and Daniel died in 1845, causes unknown.

It was also in Nauvoo that Rebecca’s two sons after joining the Legion that Rebecca said goodbye to them on July 20th, 1843. She was not sure that she would every see them again, but it was with great joy that she did on her arrival in SLC in 1848. She also had a great surprise at this time, because she found out that her son, Edward had married.


Because of all the troubles the Mormons were having in Nauvoo, Rebecca was again uprooted from her home to make another long trip to an unknown place. The John Dalton family left Nauvoo sometime in early Feb. 1846 to cross the frozen Mississippi River to get to the other side and Iowa. It would take Rebecca and her family over two more years before they entered the Great Salt Lake Valley in Sept. of 1848.


John, Rebecca and family had no trouble in finding room in the forts that was home to them for a few months before moving onto the plot of land that was assigned to them by the church. It was in block 32, lot # 4 and was just south of his younger brother Charles lot # 5. I’m sure that all the Dalton brothers helped to build the log cabins on these lots. Rebecca also was enjoyed that her brother, Luther Cranmer and his wife were living next door to her. Her sons, Edward and Henry would in a few years move to southern Utah, no doubt following their father.


It was in the fall of 1849 that the Presidency of the Church ordered a company of 50 men to go explore Southern Utah. John Dalton Jr. and his nephew, Charles Wakeman Dalton was one of the 50. From this time on for quite a few years, Rebecca would have to raise her children alone in Salt Lake City.


The Utah census of 1860 shows Rebecca living in the Sugar House area about where 21st, South and Highland drive is located today. There were five adults and 6 children listed in this census; John Dalton and four of his Rebecca, age 64, Letitia, age 25, Mary, age 20, Ann, age 28 and the rest children.


It was probably sometime in1862 when her husband was called to the Cotton Mission that Rebecca finely moved from Salt Lake City and made another long move to the extreme south end of Utah and set up house in the newly settled town of Virgin City, on the Virgin River in Washington County, also called “Dixie”


Copied from Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. 13, p.531:

Dalton was the name of a small LDS settlement commenced about 1864 by John Dalton and half a dozen other men with their families on the north side of the Rio Virgin, about a mile and a half above Virgin City. The people were members of the Virgin Ward during the time they lived in the area. Some farming and ditching was done, but after about two years the place was abandoned because of Indian troubles, and has never been resettled. John Dalton, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, was with the company of pioneers that entered Salt Lake Valley in 1848. He moved to Parowan in 1851 and to Virgin in 1862, having been called to the Cotton Mission by Brigham Young. He had four wives: Rebecca Cranmer, Letitia, Mary and Ann, and was the father of 24 children. He died of old age at Rockville, Washington County. -


It was in 1872 that Rebecca Dalton moved to Rockville, Washington County where John Dalton Jr. had finely made his last home, or homes, because all his wives had their own. We do not know how long Rebecca lived there in Rockville, or if she had problems with John’s other wife’s, which were so much younger than she was, because she is reported to moved north and lived with her son, Henry in Annabella, Sevier Co. Utah. It is recorded in a book by Lloyd Meeks Dalton that Rebecca moved to Annabella to help Henry with his young children after his wife, Isabelle died in 1873. Rebecca Turner Cranmer Dalton died in Annabella in December of 1875 and is buried in the Kanosh Cemetery in Millard Co.


LDS Church information for Rebecca Dalton:


Baptized: July 15, 1838 by Moses Smith.

Endowment Date: January 5, 1846

Temple: Nauvoo, Hancock Co. Illinois.

Sealed to Spouse Date: January 21, 1846

Temple: Nauvoo, Hancock Co. Illinois.


PATRIARCHAL BLESSING OF REBECCA CRANMER DALTON:


No. 333, May 16 1845 - A blessing by John Smith, patriarch, upon the head of Rebecca Dalton, daughter of John and Katurah Cranmer, born April 24th 1796.


Sister Rebecca, I lay my hands upon thy head in the name of Jesus Christ and place upon thee a father’s blessing. Thou art a daughter of Abraham and a lawful heir to the blessings which were sealed upon the fathers, to be continued through their lineage, the same as sealed upon thee securely, and inasmuch as thou wilt give diligent heed to keep the commandments of the Lord, living every word that proceedeth from his mouth, abide in the counsel of his Son until thou shalt enjoy all the blessings of Heaven and Earth, have faith to heal the sick in thine house, and amongst thy (sisters 7) where there is no other present. The fruits of the earth shall not be with held from thee, thy table shall be well supplied, thy family shall increase, even like the gravel in the mountains for number and thy name shall be had in everlasting remembrance in the church. Thou shalt be able to do all things which thy heart desires. By the power of the priesthood in common with thy companion thou shalt live until thou art satisfied with life, come up in the morning of the resurrection with thy companion and children and all thy father's house unto eternal life, which is the greatest gift of God, inasmuch-as you live to the conditions named these words shall not fail. Even so. Amen. Albert Carrington, Recorder .


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4- Marianne Catherine Gardiol; The sixth wife of John Dalton Jr.


Marrianne Gardiol was born March 28, 1834, at St. Germain, Piedmont, Italy. Her father was Jaques Gardiol and her mother was Catherine Marguerite Durand. She had eleven brothers and sisters but she was the only one of the family as far as she knows that came to America. Marianne was five feet tall, weighed ninety to one hundred and ten pounds, black hair, brown eyes and fair skin.


Marrianne's ancestors were some of the French Huguenots, the Vaudois or Waldoness, a group that settled in Northern Italy, then Southern France. Here they lived for centuries being isolated from the Italian people by the religion and their Romanish language.


The history of the small group of Vaudois who became converts to the Latter-day Saints Church and migrated to Utah, furnishes one of the most fascinating and unusual stories in Church annals. The ancestors of this group were fugitives who came principally from France, with the great Vaudois movement, driven by persecution to search for a new home. They found refuge in the Piedmont Valleys of Italy, high in the Alps which border France and Switzerland.


The Vaudois or Waldenses, through whom all Protestant Churches proudly trace their origin, had for eight centuries suffered persecution because of their religious convictions. Just as Mormons have undergone oppression, so had this small group of mountain Christians endured exile, imprisonment and unnamable cruelties because of their earnest desire to worship God in the best light and knowledge they possessed.


On February 17, 1848, a decree was issued, granting freedom to these people. It is recorded that they received the news with simple gratitude. The following year the Latter-day Saints Church, for the first time, sent its missionaries into nations where the English language was not spoken.


The first group of emigrants left the Piedmont Valley on February 7, 1854. The party consisted of 8 members from the Philippe Cardon family, 5 from the Pons family and 5 from the Bertoch. The Cardons had been able to dispose of their property for enough money to bring themselves and 5 others to Utah. Later groups from this section were helped by the Latter-day Saints perpetual immigration fund, since persecutions against Mormon converts had increased to such an extent that they were unable to dispose of their property. The first group spent two weeks in London, waiting for the Saints there to prepare for emigration. At Liverpool they were delayed 17 days while the ship "John M. Wood," then under construction, was completed. The ship, whose several hundred passengers were Latter-day Saints, sailed March 12, 1854, and arrived at New Orleans May 1, after a passage of 51 days.


Members of this company, under the supervision of Robert Campbell, did not go through Florence, Nebraska. From St. Louis they went to Kansas City Mission where they procured outfits for the overland journey, and from there proceeded directly to Salt Lake City, where they arrived October 28, 1854. They spoke a combination of French and Italian and found difficulty in making their wants known. They settled in Ogden and vicinity, where they constructed homes of whatever material was available. The radical change in diet was one obstacle these people had to overcome. Especially they missed their fruit. In their former homes, each family had its cellar of labeled and dated unfermented wine. A little was served with each meal just as we might serve milk or water, and Paul Cardon said that he had never seen anyone intoxicated from it. Source: Heart Throbs of the West, Kate B. Carter, Vol. 4.


"Sun. 12. [Mar. 1854] -- The ship John M. Wood sailed from Liverpool, with 393 saints, including 58 from Switzerland and Italy, under the direction of Robert L. Campbell. It arrived at New Orleans May 2nd."


She immigrated to America by the perpetual emigration fund in 1854. Marianne gave up everything for her religion. She came with a "Cardon" family and as she had to learn a new language, which she did not master too well and never learned to read and write the new language.


Marianne, then a young lady, married John Dalton Jr. on February 1, 1857 in Salt Lake City and she was his and last sixth wife. They were the parents of seven children.

You can pretty well tell where Marianne lived by where her children were born; Jared,

1858, John, 1859 and Melvina, 1861, all in Salt Lake City; Brigham, 1863 in Parowan, Iron County; Lorenzo, 1865 and Alonzo, 1867 in Virgin City, Washington Co. Utah; and Vilate, 1872 in Rockville, Washington Co. Melvina lived less than 3 years. Lorenzo lived only one month.


John Dalton Jr. moved to Rockville, Washington County and built a home for we think the three wives who stayed with him. There may have been separate houses, but we don’t know how well off he was. Washington County in the southwest corner of the state includes a large area around St. George in the valley of the Virgin River and its tributaries; it has the highest average temperatures in the state and very mild winters. The eastern third of the county, including spectacular Zion National Park, is part of the Colorado Plateau province.


In 1861, Mormon Church President Brigham Young called hundreds of families to relocate to southwestern Utah to help establish a Cotton Mission. The principle objective was to produce enough cotton to supply church members' needs and thereby end reliance upon eastern markets for that product. The influx of settlers strengthened existing communities in the Virgin River Basin and gave rise to new ones such as St. George, the mission's capital.


The early settlers of Virgin City, Grafton, Rockville, Springdale, Duncan's Retreat, and Shunesburg quickly learned that the Virgin River was generally untamable. They needed water, yet it often betrayed them with angry tantrums that left their dams, ditches, and crops in chaos. The farmlands in these small villages lay in very narrow strips along either side of the Virgin River and its tributaries and were highly susceptible to erosion from flooding. Families inhabited "tiny plots of soil" and struggled to farm small garden spots called "dinner baskets." In the end, half of the upper basin communities lost the battle with the river and became ghost towns.


She was very clean and a hard worker. All her life religion meant more to her than any other possession and she tried to teach it to her children and those about her. She died October 14, 1923, and was buried in Rockville, Washington County, Utah.


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5- Ann Elizabeth Hodgkinson; The second wife of John Dalton Jr.


Ann Elizabeth Hodgkinson married John Dalton Jr. on May 19 1850 and she was his second wife. It was at this time in John Dalton’s life that he decided to live by the teachings of his Church and take up polygamy. There were no children born to this marriage, and it lasted for only a few weeks. Ann Hodgkinson was at the time married to another man who had gone to the gold fields in Calif. On reliable but mistaken information Ann was told he had been killed while there. Soon after she married John Dalton, her husband returned to Utah and took back his wife.


Ann Elizabeth Hodgkinson was baptized at Chipping Roman Catholic Church, near Preston, Lancashire on 24 August 1807. She was the ninth child of Francis & Jane or Jinny (nee MALLEY) Hodgkinson. She was married at Chipping on 25th December 1826 to Thomas WALMSLEY. By the end of 1835 she had given birth to four sons - Walmsley, Francis, William & Thomas.


In July 1837 the first seven Mormon missionaries, led by Heber Chase Kimball, arrived in Liverpool. On 30th July the first nine converts were baptized in the River Ribble, an event witnessed by nearly 9000 people.


Kimball wrote that Ann "was sick of consumption and had been for several years; she was reduced to skin and bones, a mere skeleton; and was given up to die by the doctors". Indeed, her doctor had warned her that the sudden immersion in the water would probably kill her! However, within a few days she made, apparently, a miraculous recovery.


In 1839, Ann gave birth to a daughter, Nancy Marinda. In the year 1841 the family was on the ship "Sheffield" carrying British Mormons to Illinois. Ann's youngest son, Heber Chase Kimball Walmsley was born at LeHarpe, Hanock County, Illinois. Sadly, on 16 November 1842 her husband Thomas died at Nauvoo, a Mormon Settlement.


In 1844, Ann remarried to Isaac Palmer, and the family set out by wagon train to Salt Lake City. Ten days after they set off, Ann gave birth to another son, Journal. At Salt Lake City she had two more children, Rhoda and Isaac. However in 1849, Isaac Palmer went to the gold fields of California.


A few years later the family moved to the Bear River Country in Idaho, a harsh country with severe winters plagued by Indians. Seventy five miles from the nearest town they grew their own food, but the growing season was so short that many of the crops froze before being harvested.


Ann married a third time to John Dalton, by and in the house of Brigham Young.


On 4 February 1878 an article in the "Desert News" of Salt Lake City, referring to her unique place in the history of the church, described her as in very good health though nearly 76 years old.


Towards the end of her life Ann Elizabeth lost her sight, but her granddaughters used to read the bible to her. They would purposely leave out verses but she would make them go back to read those they has missed! She died in Wardboro, Idaho, on 16 November 1888 at the home of her daughter, Nancy. She was buried in Bloomington where a monument erected in 1938 reads:


"Ann Elizabeth Walmsley, August 24 1806 - November 16 1888. The first female convert to the LDS Church in Europe. Baptized by Heber Chase Kimball July 30 1837. At the time she was ill and a cripple, unable to walk. She was healed by the power of the priesthood."


Ship: “Sheffield”

Date of Departure: 7 Feb 1841 Port of Departure: Liverpool, England

LDS Immigrants: 235 Church Leader: Hiram Clark

Date of Arrival: 30 Mar 1841 Port of Arrival: New Orleans, Louisiana

Notes: "EMIGRATION. -- We feel truly thankful that amidst the general distresses, poverty, and famine which prevails throughout this country, several hundred of our brethren and sisters have just been enabled to embark for the country which God has provided for a refuge for all nations. Upwards of two hundred and forty of the Saints were to sail from Liverpool, for New Orleans on Sunday last. They were from Preston, Manchester, and various other towns in England, and were destined for the colonies of the Saints in the state of Illinois, and in the Territory of Iowa. Among this company was a large proportion of the industrious poor, who were upon the point of starvation in this land, or who were working like slaves to procure a very scanty subsistence. By the kindness of their brethren they were enabled to escape from worse than Egyptian bondage, and go to a country where they can by their industry obtain an inheritance, and enjoy plenty for themselves and their children. May the Almighty preserve them upon the waters. And bring them to Zion with songs of everlasting joy. May they obtain 'joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away.' We sincerely hope that the Saints will continue to cultivate that spirit of love and union which will work a full and complete deliverance of the rich and poor of his people, that they may all be gathered in one; that 'there may be one fold and one shepherd.'


"FOURTH COMPANY. -- Sheffield, 235 souls. The following is culled from the History of Joseph Smith: Saturday, February 6th, 1841, a council meeting was held at Brother Richard Harrison's, seventy-two Burlington Street, Liverpool, for the purpose of organizing a company of Saints going to New Orleans on the ship Sheffield. Captain Porter, Apostles Brigham Young, John Taylor and Willard Richards and other officers were present. Elder Hiram Clark was chosen president, and Thomas Walmsley, Miles Romney, Edward Martin, John Taylor, Francis Clark and John Riley, counselors to President Clark. Edward Martin was appointed clerk and historian of the company. President Clark and his counselors were blessed and set apart for their mission. The Sheffield sailed from Liverpool, bound for New Orleans, with two hundred and thirty-five Saints on board, on Sunday the 7th. . . . . . . After a passage of fifty-one days the company landed in New Orleans; three deaths and two births having occurred on the voyage. On arriving at New Orleans, Elder Clark made a contract with a steamer to carry the company to St. Louis for two dollars and fifty cents each, including baggage. From St. Louis to Nauvoo they secured a passage on the Goddess of Liberty for one dollar each. About thirty of the emigrants who had become disaffected through false reports, tarried at St. Louis. The bulk of the company landed in Nauvoo, April 18th, 1841, about eleven o'clock in the evening. Notwithstanding the late hour, quite a number of the brethren stood on the shore to welcome these new arrivals from the old world."


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6- Letitia Williams; The fifth wife of John Dalton Jr.


Letitia Williams was born on July 12th, 1833 in Dankas, Pembrook,Wales. She emigrated to America in 1856 and crossed the plains with the Third Company, Edward Bunker, Captain and arrived in Salt Lake City on Oct. 2, 1856. It was less then a month later that she was married to John Dalton Jr.


Where and when she met John Dalton Jr. we do not know, but he must have been very

Ready to marry another wife. It was a this time that he told Lydia Dalton, his third wife that she could move out of the Church Farm and back to the city. John Dalton married two wives in 1856 in Salt Lake City, one being Letitia. Evidently she got along with her husband John, because she was with him in all his adventures and his exploring Southern Utah and eventually living out her life in Rockville, Washington Co. Utah. She had 7 children by John Dalton before she died on Jan. 6th, 1902 and is buried in the Rockville Cemetery. (The story of Letitia Williams life after she married John Dalton Jr. is basically the same as John Dalton’s other wife’s as they traveled through Southern Utah’s Dixie)


Below is the story of Letitia Williams passage on the Ship "Samuel Curling" With some information about the trip by other passengers.


Ship: S.Curling

Date of Departure: 19 Apr 1856 Port of Departure: Liverpool, England

LDS Immigrants: 707 Church Leader: Dan Jones

Date of Arrival: 23 May 1856 Port of Arrival: Boston, Massachusetts.


WILLIAMS, Letitia, Age: 20 - Origin: Wales - Occ: Spinster.

NINETY-FOURTH COMPANY. -- Samuel Curling. 707 souls. The ship Samuel Curling cleared the port of Liverpool, on the eighteenth of April, and sailed for Boston the following day with seven hundred and seven British Saints on board, under the presidency of Elders Dan Jones, John Oakley and David Grant. There were quite a number of elders who had labored in the ministry in Great Britain, including William Woodard, (Utah elder) Job Welling, Thomas D. Giles, John Parry, John Price, Thomas Morgan, William Lewis, Thomas Jenkins and Thomas D. Evans. Also John McDonald, a Utah elder, sailed with the company. About five hundred and fifty of the emigrating Saints were from Wales. As soon as the ship was fairly under way, the usual organizations were effected; several severe storms were encountered, and on several occasions the brethren assembled for prayers and curbed the fury of the winds and waves by the power of the holy priesthood. During the passage six children died, and two were born. One of the little arrivals was named Dan Curling Dee, and the other Claudia Curling Reynolds, in honor of Dan Jones, the president of the company, and the ship.


On the twenty-third of May the Samuel Curling was towed to quarantine ground, at Boston. In a few hours the inspectors came on board welcomed by the spontaneous three cheers of seven hundred people, 'and strange as it may seem,' writes Elder Dan Jones, 'called the names of all and passed them in less than one hour and a half without any further complaint than that "I was taking all the handsome ladies to Utah." The passengers were all remarkably clean, as well as the ship, which commanded the admiration of all. In proof of the latter I would say, that I had made a wager with Captain Curling, upon leaving Liverpool, that the Lower decks would be whiter than his cabin floors, and the quarantine doctor decided in my favor.'

On the twenty-fourth of May, President Jones contracted with the railroad officials to take about four hundred of the passengers to Iowa City, for $11.00 per adult over 14 years old, children half price. The kind-hearted captain allowed the passengers to remain on board the ship till Monday the 26th of May, when the journey was continued to Iowa City.


Source: Millennial Star, Vol. XVIII, pages 283, 411, 426, 542. Deseret News, Vol. VI, page 160"


Autobiography of William Butler:


A little before I was released from my mission, in a dream it was shown me the ship I was to sail in, and I also saw it land safely at Boston U.S.A.; also the railway trains, handcart companies on the plains, and that I would return with my wife in safety to the Valley. After I had the dream, I told my wife Emma, that we should go home that season and soon after, my release was published in the Millennial Star to go home that season.

Eighteenth of April, 1856, we set sail from Liverpool in the S. Curling, a sailing vessel bound for Boston, U.S.A. S. [Samuel] Curling was the captain and owner of the vessel and was a very mean man. On his return voyage him and his crew, ship and all, was lost, (i.e. went to Hell across lots.) While traveling in the ship we had considerable trouble with the captain and crew to keep them from the women.


Fifteenth of June, we landed at Boston U.S.A. The cook, a good-natured Irishman, was kind and attentive to us, cooking our provisions in the captain's galley. Dan Jones was the captain over the Welsh Saints while crossing the seas and also the plains. [David] Grant and [John] Oakley, two returning missionaries, when they found out we were treated so well by the cook, forced themselves into our mess. We enjoyed ourselves first rate while in Boston, visiting the Plymouth Rock and other principle places and after three days started by railway, first class to Iowa City. While on the way, we stayed with Joseph France, a returning missionary who treated us kindly. The same J. [Joseph] France was one of the men who accompanied me on my way to Europe.

We started from Iowa City with the handcart companies. We traveled through Jackson County, some apostatizing by the way, a distance of some three hundred miles till we came to Council Bluffs. Here we stayed ten days waiting for the companies to organize and proceed further on their journey. We then traveled along till we met with President Young and company at the head of Emigration Canyon. He felt very badly for the suffering of the people. We traveled into Salt Lake City about the last of September in the fall of fifty six.


Reminiscences and Diary of John Parry:


In the beginning of 1856 I as released to emigrate to Zion, and about one hundred Saints from North Wales came the same time. We embarked from Liverpool, bound for Boston, on the 19 of April, in a vessel called Sanders Curling. Dan Jones being President, David Grant, and John Noakland [Oakley] his counselors. I had a charge of a ward in the vessel, there was about 900 Saints in all, 3 or 4 hundreds of Welsh. My sister Mary & her husband with four daughters, my cousin, John Parry & wife and two sons and two daughters. My distant relation, Edward Parry & wife. Also Sarah Parry and her husband and child, with myself, wife & child, makes 20 of our family, emigrated together. We had a very rough passage. Five weeks on the ocean. Only two or three deaths in all. The captain was very kind to us.


After landing in Boston, we took train on railway to Iowa, via, Buffalo, Chicago, Rock Island, and Iowa City, and camped within 3 miles to the city. Our little boy had the measles (as other little children before we left the vessel) and on our way before we came to Chicago, as he was very sick all the way, we administered to him often, but did not have but little effect on him, and as he was in such pain, I with my wife agreed to ask the Lord, if he was not to recover, for him to take him out of his pain, and in a short time after he died, viz. a few hours. We buried him in Chicago Burial Grounds and Thomas Giles's little girls in the same grave.


We camped in Iowa for three weeks to wait for wagons and for handcarts. This was the first time for handcarts to be used to go across the Plains. The first company went a few days before us, Edmond Elsworth being captain. Another company started before us a few days, MacArthur [Daniel D. McArthur] being captain.


Thirdly, the Welsh was organized a company, Edward Bunker being head captain, and David Grant, myself, and George Davis, being captains of hundreds. After we traveled the first day and put up our tents, it began thunder lightening, and we had the awfulest storm that I ever witnessed in my life.


When near the City [Salt Lake], my Father met us on horseback. Tears of joy filled my eyes when we met him, and we kissed one another. We arrived in the City of the 3rd of October, and had a glance at President Brigham Young the time we entered the city.

We camped on the Union Square.


Letter from Robert David Roberts:


We started from North Wales, Meirionethshire Parish, Festiniog, Bethania in the year 1856, April 9th. On the 10th arrived in Liverpool and on the 19th we went into the ship S. Curling which was on the 20th to start her journey across the Atlantic. This journey was very rough the sea was raising like mountains and tossing the ship in every way. May 24th we arrived in Boston on the continent of America. In a day or two we took the railroad cars to travel from here to Sea City, Iowa. We was about eight days on the railroad and stayed here nearly three weeks. After this we took our journey across the plains to Utah with the hand carts and arrived in Salt Lake City October 2nd. This journey was very hard because we did not have half enough to eat for the support of our bodies and very hard work to draw the handcart.


Autobiography of Priscilla Merriman Evans:


After visiting with our friends and relatives a few days, we took a tug from Pembroke to Liverpool, where we set sail on the 17th April, 1856, on the sailing vessel Samuel Curling. Captain Curling said he preferred to take Saints aboard his ship, as he always felt safe. We learned that later his ship went down, with all on board, but there were no Saints on board. We were on the sea five weeks and lived on the ship's rations. I was sick all the way, and had a miserable time. We landed in Boston on May 25. Then traveled in cattle cars, three hundred 30 miles to Iowa City, where we remained three weeks, waiting for our handcarts to be made. We were offered many inducements to remain there. My husband was offered ten dollars per day to stay and work at his trade of iron roller. But money was no inducement, as we were anxious to get to Zion. Many who stayed to better their circumstances died of cholera and many apostatized from the church. When the carts were ready we started on a three hundred & 30 mile "walk," to Winter Quarters on the Missouri River. Edward Bunker was the captain of our company. We reached Salt Lake City Oct. 2, 1856.


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7- Anna Wakeman; The first wife of Simon Cooker Dalton.


Ann Wakeman married Simon Cooker Dalton in 1825 according to a newspaper article in the "Settler" from Wysox, Bradford co. Pennsylvania. See the history of Simon Cooker Dalton for a complete explanation and the document found on this marriage. It was thought for years that the name on Simon’s first wife’s surname was Annabelle. It is recorded in the “John Dalton Book” that her surname may even have been Hannibal. The marriage record that Rod Dalton found proves that her name was actually Wakeman. This is probably the reason that the first son of Simon Cooker Dalton was named Charles “Wakeman” Dalton.


Below is all I have found about “Anna Wakeman” This is one area of research that we must fill in, as we have no history about this Wakeman family is known.


There are no Wakeman's in the 1820 Pennsylvania Census.


Wakeman's in the 1830 Pennsylvania Census:


Alamo Wakeman, Phil. Co.

Evi Wakeman, Pott Co.

Taylor Wakeman, Luzerne Co.

Wiltback Wakeman, Luzerne Co.


In the 1840 Pennsylvania census:


Aaron Wakeman, Luzerne Co.

Bradley Wakeman, Luzerne Co.


In the 1830 Wysox, Bradford Co. Census;


Hawkins Wakeman

Brooks Wakeman


There is a marriage record of:


Benjamin E. Wakeman age 21 of Monroe, Bradford Co. and Harriet G. Phinney of Wyo. Co, marrying in Monroe in 1864


Note: Any one of these Wakeman names could be of Anna Wakeman's line.


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8- Mary Elizabeth Veach; The third wife of Simon Cooker Dalton.


Mary Elizabeth Veach was born on January 28 1836 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny Co. Pennsylvania. She was daughter of William Veach and Ann Elliot, the former died at Nauvoo and the latter came to Utah in September, 1851, Orson Pratt Company. When she was a child her parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and emigrated to Montrose, Missouri. Later Mary Elizabeth lived at Winter Quarters crossing the plains to Utah. She married Simon Cooker Dalton on July 30 1854 in Centerville, Davis Co.Utah. Together she had three children by Simon Dalton. Only a son, Almeron Ambrose lived to adulthood.


For whatever reason Mary Elizabeth did not stay married to Simon Cooker Dalton for more than a few years, for we find that she was to marry Luther Moses Palmer in July 29, 1860 in Salt Lake City.


In the 1880s Mary E. Veach Dalton Palmer ran a boardinghouse in Chicken Creek (Levan). Her son, Almeron Dalton had a stage line from Chicken Creek to St. George. At his suggestion she moved to Fayette and established the Palmer House Hotel, about 1890. The house had been built by an early settler, of adobe, plastered both outside and inside. It had two large front rooms with a fireplace in each room and there were smaller rooms at the back. A front porch was built along the east side. The name "Palmer House" had been painted in black letters across the north side of the house, which lettering was so large and clear it could be read for a distance by travelers approaching from the north. This hotel was maintained for several years.


Mary Elizabeth Dalton died on Christmas day, December 25 1911 in Salina, Sevier Co. Utah.


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9- Caroline Louisa Durham; The fifth and last wife of Simon Cooker Dalton


Caroline Louisa Durham was the daughter of Allen and Hulda Wood Durham. She was born in St. Albans Bay, Franklin Co. Vermont March 16, 1807. She died on September 30 1884 in Springville, Utah Co. Utah. She married Simon Cooker Dalton on December 30 1865 in Centerville, Davis Co, Utah.


In young womanhood she married Israel Brown and during the years several children were born to them. The Browns joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and shortly thereafter moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1847 they began preparations to join the Saints in their trek across the plains to Utah. While on a trip up the Mississippi River to obtain teams and supplies, Israel contracted pneumonia and died. Some of the older married children came to Utah in 1849. One daughter, Ann Mariah who later married Anson Call, accompanied her older sister and brother-in-law. She drove a four-horse team all the way from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake Valley being then only in her fifteenth year.


In the spring of 1851, Caroline Louisa with her four youngest children started for Utah. During the journey she assisted a Mr. Haws with his family, as his wife was an invalid. Mrs. Haws died along the way and shortly afterwards Caroline Louisa and Mr. Haws were married and brought the two families together into the valley. They later went to California in search of gold. Mr. Haws died there and Caroline Louisa returned to Utah to be near her children. She died September 30, 1884 in Springville, Utah and was buried in the Provo cemetery. Her life span covered a great and dramatic period in United States history. She saw and participated in the expansion of the country from the Atlantic seaboard to the vast country west of the Allegheny Mountains, to the Mississippi Valley, over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake Valley and to the California coast. She suffered the trials and persecutions of the Mormons in Iowa, Illinois and the settlement of the West.


"The story of a pioneer women's family you should know" by Mrs. Katherine Bowen Rassmussen.


Somewhere in the state of New York about 1825 two young people from Vermont age 20 and 18 were married.


The first child a son was born in 1826 in Genesee County New York State. (Albert)

Three daughters followed while the family was still in Genesee County, (Julietta, Marinda and Ann Maria) another daughter followed at Aurora, Cayuga County (Eliza Jane) and another son was born somewhere in Indiana, (David) and the last child a girl was also born in Indiana October in 1844. (Harriet)

This family followed closely the Mormon migration westward and were undoubtedly among the earliest members of this unpopular religious organization and may have been in or near Nauvoo, Illinois as a record has been left stating the wife was acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith and we assume the others of the family also knew him, It is quite likely the family suffered the violence, cruelty hardships and persecution so vigorously executed against the Latter Day Saints by their enemies during the years prior to and subsequent to the expulsion of the Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846.


In 1847 at the age of 42 the husband died of unknown causes in an unknown place and is buried in an unknown grave.


In 1849 the oldest daughter gave birth to the first grandchild on the banks of the Sweetwater River in Wyoming and also in 1849 a man by the same name as the oldest son came to Utah with Captain George A. Smith's Company.

How many of the family came to Utah in 1849 is very indefinite. The second daughter may not have come at all as to Utah as no record of herself or her husband has yet been located.


In 1851 the third daughter at the age of 17 was married to a well known Mormon colonizer, 23 years older than herself, This colonizer already married to his first wife had received instructions from President Brigham Young to settle his first wife in Bountiful and take a young wife to go with him into various places and got colonies established. This man's name was Charles Dalton.


In 1853 the first daughter' second child was born in Iron County, Utah indicating the family probably was among the very earliest pioneers into that county.


The widow apparently established a home in Centerville, Davis County after her arrival in Utah with the remaining unmarried children.


The oldest son, with his family does not appear to have reached Utah until sometime between 1863 and 1866 and moved to Centerville for a short time and then to Provo to establish his home where he become Utah County's first sheriff. Probably his mother and younger brother and youngest sister moved to Provo with him. The fourth daughter’s home and family was raised in Ogden Utah so she may not have gone to Provo. Later the mother and widow remarried and lived in Springville Utah in 1871.


The fourth daughter, having become the mother of another of 8 children at the age of 35 died of hardships and worry connected with a mission with her husband Into the Salmon River Country of Idaho. It is probable her death was responsible for the scattered family getting together. A photograph is preserved which could have been taken at this time showing the mother, the oldest son and the first, third and fifth daughters.


In 1893 the oldest son visited his mother in Springville Utah and upon returning to Prove was called to pool hall because of a disturbance being created by a drunken man. During the performance of his duty he was shot by the disturber and died two or three days later.


In November 1877 we find the mother and a grandson at the St. George Temple doing temple work for her son and her first husbands kindred.


The second son married a daughter of one of the original pioneers into Utah with Brigham Young's original company on 24th of July 1847.

The youngest daughter married in Provo and very little is known of her history.


In 1884 at Springville, Utah the mother died and was buried in the Provo Cemetery in a plot of ground set aside for patients from the state mental hospital. The hospital authorities have advised there is no record of her ever having been a patient there, also that there is no record of a reason why she is buried where she is. Her grave is unmarked and apparently lost to her numerous living descendants.


This mother's name was Charlotte Louisa Durham. Her first husband was Israel Bowen. She married her second husband Simon Cooker Dalton. His first son, Charles Wakeman Dalton married Charlotte's daughter, Juliette Bowen in New York State earlier.


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10 - Sarah Lucinda Lee; The forth wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton.


Sarah Lucinda Lee was the daughter of John Percival Lee and Elisa Foscue, and was born in Coosa County, Alabama, Feb. 9th 1847. She was the second child born in the family of eight children. Her father John P. Lee took the family to DeWitt County, Texas sometime in 1849, where they joined a group of Mormons going to Utah. Her family started across the plains with the company of Thomas Johnson but they finished the journey in the company of Shadrack Roundy and arrived in Utah in 1850. In early 1951 John P. Lee was one of a group of families sent on the San Bernardino, California mission, but they returned to Utah during the Utah War in 1857-58. Shortly after the settlement of towns in Southern Utah, the Lee family moved to Beaver, Utah where on October 03, 1868 Lucinda married Charles W. Dalton, and became the mother of a large family. The greater part of her life was spent in the schoolroom as a teacher. "Aunt Lue", as she was affectionately known, by her friends and pupils, was one of the outstanding educators of the period. She was the mother of a large family, which always included a baby.


Note: Sarah's Father, John Percival Lee was one of the best-remembered teachers in early Beaver days. He began teaching in his own home. It was a 2- room log house. His family lived in one room and he held school in the other.


Sarah Lucinda Dalton was living in Circleville, Utah in 1876 when she wrote a autobiography letter to Mrs. E. B. Wells discussing her problem of being educated, liberated woman in a world dominated by men.


She was a sincere and energetic worker, and at all times brought out the best efforts of her pupils, and encouraged them to seek a higher and better education. Her students speak of her with love, and remember her untiring interest in their behalf. In the crude and rough buildings and with little of none of the equipment belonging to a schoolroom, she carried on, and kept the spirit of learning alive and active.


In the latter part of the 1880's, she moved to Manti, Utah where she continued her work of teaching. Some time later she went up North to Ogden, Utah where she again taught school. She returned to Manti, Utah where she spent her last days in working in the Temple and attending to Church duties. During and after her years of teaching, she did considerable writing. Many of her articles were published in the Church papers and magazines. Also her talent for poetry was known and accepted, a small value of her poems being published. Sarah Lucinda was also linked to the women's suffrage movement in Utah in 1895.


We who knew her, and the work she accomplished, are proud to honor and recognize Sarah Lucinda Lee as one of the outstanding pioneer women of the early life of Beaver City. She passed away at Manti, Utah 24 Nov. 1925.


Source: This information has been obtained through “Heart Throbs of the West.” Vol.12. The History of Beaver Utah, page 19: Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton "Other teachers who left lasting memories in the Lumber and brick schools almost continuously until the late 1880's". Compiled by the Daughters of the Pioneers.


Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton, 1847-1925:

By Lavina Fielding Anderson, from the book, “Sister Saints”

(Edited by Rodney G. Dalton)


A good way to meet Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton is through one of her poems, a feminist statement of power and passion, irony and even bitterness, yet, paradoxically, of faith.


Woman is the first to know sorrow and pain,

Last to be paid for her labor,

First in self-sacrifice, last to obtain justice, or even a favor.

First to greet loving a man at his birth, last to forsake him when dying,

First to make sunshine around his hearth, last to lose heart and cease trying.

Last at the cross of her crucified Lord, First to behold him when risen,

First, to proclaim him to life restored, Bursting from death's gloomy prison. First to seek knowledge, the God-like prize, last to gain credit for knowing

First to call children a go from the skies, last to enjoy their bestowing.

First to fall under the censure of God, last to receive a full pardon,

First to kiss meekly the chastening rod, thrust from her beautiful garden,

First to be sold for the wages of sin, last to be sought and forgive.

First in the scorn of her dear brother, man, Last in the kingdom of heaven. So, a day cometh, a glorious day, Early perfection restoring sin and its burdens shall be swept away, And love flow like rivers outpouring. Then woman who loves, through sorrow and shame. The crown of a queen will be wearing, and love, freed from lust, a divines pure same, shall save our sad earth from despairing. That latter-day work is already begun, the good from the evil to server, the word has gone forth that when all is done, The last shall be first, forever.”

"Woman," Woman's Exponent, 21 15 January 1893.


This poem contains the four great passions that weave the fabric of Lucinda's life. Most obvious is her strong sense of the injustice done to women, and as an inseparable second, how worthy women are of honor. Equally powerful is her sense that the issue of women's rights was a theological issue as well as a political one. Women's ultimate redemption and compensation for the wrongs of mortality will be part of the purification of the earth itself. The fourth characteristic is simply that Lucinda Lee Dalton is an eloquent and polished poet, clear and forceful in her expression. She is not merely angry, merely sorrowful and merely hopeful. She is all three at the same time, her emotions controlled and channeled by her ironic edge and her poetic form.

And the poem, possibly her strongest, is an excellent introduction to the woman, still a mystery fifty years after her death. Her talent, her clear mind, her great personal strength, and her unflinching faith make her acquaintance valuable.

In surveying Lucinda's writings, we sense that her feelings about being a woman are inseparably connected with her feelings about men and those feelings were generally not good. She was born in Alabama in 1847 to John Percival Lee and Eliza Foscue. Two years later, they joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Texas, crossed the plains in 1850, went to help colonize San Bernardino, California, in 1851, and after seven years left to settle in Beaver, Utah, in the winter of 1857-58.


John P. Lee was a great influence on his daughter. Oldest of thirteen children, Lucinda was intelligent and thirsty for knowledge, recalling with gratitude that her father "at the close of his days” work patiently taught us, while yet too young to attend the common schools. At the age of twelve she helped him teach school; four years later she was a teacher herself a profession she dearly loved and followed for the rest of her life.

Lucinda says little else of her father in her unpublished autobiographical sketch, but later he was to take a new wife, a practice that was socially accepted and respected in the Mormon view that countenanced plural marriages; however, his action possibly because of his manner or because of the timing, deeply hurt Lucinda's mother and alienated his children.


Lucinda mentions two more men who influenced her youth. One was her first teacher in Utah. "O bless him!" she exclaims. With compassion upon "my ravenous hunger for knowledge. He gave to me instruction many a noontime hour when other children played and other men went home to dinner." It was "this beloved tutor and friend" she had to leave when she began teaching school.


The second man, likewise a teacher, was someone she humbly approached, asking, if in his opinion, I was sufficiently advanced in mathematics to study algebra with profit. This "gentleman teacher" replied that it would be wasted time for me to ever study it, because I already had more learning than was necessary for a good housekeeper, wife, and mother which was a woman's only proper place on earth. Then she adds something significant: "It is but justice to him and myself to say that he has since warmly commended my efforts at self culture and the good I have done as a teacher." Lucinda's sense of justice never deserted her; she would not lie, even by omission, and we learn to trust her unsparing honesty.

Lucinda, then, entered adolescence with some sense that being a woman meant being limited, and she remembers that she had always longed to be a boy, because boys were so highly privileged and so free. She envied their liberty, their mobility, and the encouragement that they received to seek education, but wryly

attributes this envy to "my youth and blissful ignorance." and chastises men in one of the most scathing passages in her autobiography:


"Not for all their boasted supremacy, superiority, and extensive advantages would I have women come down to their low moral level. Intellectual acquirements, fame, power, wealth, and even their self-conceit added, are as feathers in the scale against moral purity."


She wrote this autobiography in 1876 for Emmeline B. Wells, then editor of the Woman's Exponent, "rising in the night" to do it. She was at that time twenty-nine years old, living in Beaver, the fourth wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton, without doubt the man who was most significant both for good and for ill in her life. They had been married for eight years. Lucinda had borne six children and lost two. Her sixteen-year-old sister Emma had also married Charles five years earlier and had divorced him only the year before; Lucinda herself was to apply to President John Taylor for a cancellation of sealing in 1884, eight years in the future and barely a year after Charles' death. This cancellation President Taylor granted in 1887. Because of these facts, we might be tempted to interpret Lucinda's scorn of men as the result of a disappointing marriage, one in which she had expected too much, or expected the wrong things. Lucinda's marriage was a disappointment, but for spiritual reasons rather than romantic ones. We misread Lucinda completely if we do not take her deep faith and strong desire to obey the Lord into consideration as one of her most enduring motivations. She recounts, in her autobiography, several accounts of answered prayers, including one heart-rending story about the illness of a much-loved little brother. Feeling, in all humility, that she was entitled to claim the Lord's promise that he would grant the prayers of the righteous, the sixteen-year-old Lucinda "fasted and prayed with intense fervor that the little one's life might be spared." Indeed, she seemed to have halted the illness, but he did not improve. He simply lingered, suffering, and she felt "like I had lifted some heavy weight just to the edge of a place of rest, but lacked the one ounce of power necessary to deposit it thereon. Coming at one time suddenly into the room, I saw my mother wring her hands and cry in anguish: 'Why oh why must my innocent baby suffer so much; If it is God's will to take him away, oh, let his cruet sufferings end!” Lucinda says, "My heart smote me guiltily. Perhaps, thought I, it is God's will to take him, perhaps my shortsighted wishes stand between the beloved and his rest. I hastened away and with streaming eyes fell upon my knees crying, 'Thy will, 0 Lord; not mine, be done!' As soon as I was calm enough to re-enter the sick room I did so and was struck to the heart by the change in the precious one's face; and that same evening he died."

It was characteristic of Lucinda's faith that she could effect a great work and accept a hard answer. It stood her in good stead later. She tells this story purposefully as prelude to "the greatest spiritual manifestation ever vouchsafed to me." Her decision to marry Charles W. Dalton, she explains, indirectly, why her need of a special manifestation was so great: "I had seen in the married state so much that was disagreeable and humiliating to woman, that I was firmly resolved to remain single." She could support herself and provide for her old age. She knew she wanted children but expected to care for neglected motherless children in the community and also to influence children through her teaching.


Obviously, she could not be driven to marriage by economic necessity or because of personal restlessness with her situation. Instead it was her faith in the principles of Mormon theology that brought her to the altar. As her conviction that its teachings were true deepened, she was unable to avoid the stark fact that, "in the highest glory of heaven, none are single." This was in full keeping with the Mormon doctrine that marriage, when performed and "sealed" by the proper authority, is an eternal as well as a temporal union and that the family unit can endure and increase throughout the eternities, the woman and man sharing power, kingdom, and glory together. Lucinda resolutely contemplated the idea of being "handmaiden to some sanctified woman" (the fate she felt was reserved for the righteous but unwed), since she "had been told in express terms by some blind leaders of the blind, that the Kingdom here, and hereafter belonged only to man; and that woman enjoyed its gifts and blessings only in sufficient degree to make her man's efficient servant; and that looked to me not worth striving for."

The doctrine of celestial marriage-or eternal union as one of the blessings of salvation-, however, remained "worse than gall and wormwood to me, for in my pride of heart, I had determined to win my soul's salvation alone, forgetting that the best and bravest of us are only too happy to be acknowledged coworkers with Christ."

Then she met Charles Wakeman Dalton. She was about twenty and he, nineteen years older, was only two years younger than her father. He had married his first wife a month before Lucinda was born and had married twice more by the time Lucinda's family came to Utah. She mentions no objection to his age or to his other marriages, and apparently objected to him only because he was male-for when he proposed, "I resented the thought, and told him that the man who thought I should be a meek, obedient, unobtrusive servant was very sadly wrong." He was apparently intimidated by neither frankness nor intelligence, for he overcame her objections by reasoning, an approach that communicated respect for both Lucinda's mind and her free agency. By pointing out that Christ had served all of mankind and thus exalted the position of servant, Charles was able to draw the analogy with marriage: by benefiting from Christ's service, we are his debtors. So a husband and wife, in need of mutual service, both have obligations, not just the wife. And no obligation, which bound one did also bind the other. Lucinda exulted: "This was new light on a difficult problem. This was speaking from reason and common sense instead of vaguely hinting at some foggy superstition about man's being created first and consequently best, noblest, and superset. These were arguments at once indisputable and satisfactory."


As this new concept penetrated Lucinda's mind, love also began to touch her heart, but fear followed. She remembered the unhappy marriages made by wiser women than she, and felt the salvation of her soul in jeopardy. "For time alone, as the people of the world marry, I could not and would not, because I considered that in a woman's case, the burdens and trials of matrimony far exceed its benefits and blessings.

Only for the sake of its expected joys in eternity, could I endure its trials through time; but that cherished 'free agency' which gives a woman the choice with which of her fellow beings she will undertake to find eternal happiness, began to look far more like a burden and a snare than a privilege or a blessing." She applied the energies of her mind to the problem, and took her questions to the Lord: "I thought and dreamed about it," she records. "I fasted and prayed about it; I grew pale and hollow-eyed over it but found no conclusion. I was at last willing to love a man, but dared not assume the responsibility of becoming his wife." The only answer she got to her prayers was one, which drastically humbled her pride:


In very despair-and in deep humiliation because I was impressed so to do-I called on him to pray with me on the subject. I knew he was startled by the demand, and felt it like assuming a great responsibility but he hesitated on enough to learn that there was no shadow of trij7ing in me. He knelt down first, and I placed myself beside him and laid one of my hands on one of his; and as I did so, I felt a thrill through every fiber of my being and I know he fell the same. I was utterly crushed under the knowledge that within a few minutes a question would be settled which would shape and determine my destiny forever, and cowardly I dreaded to meet the decision. The prayer was short, simple and unassuming, but direct, earnest, and sincere; and at every word uttered, a huge stone of my mountain load of doubt and fear rolled from my heart. My stony pride and bitter humility were alike softened; a peace sweeter than joy took possession of my soul; I felt that we were in the presence of the hosts of heaven; and a direct incontrovertible testimony was given me that it was the will of God and not my will that I should accept this man for my yoke fellow. He knew as well as I what the decision was; and in awe-struck solemn silence, we left the spot. To this day it is to both of us a most precious and solemn recollection, and is never mentioned between us except with deepest reverence."


They were wed in the Endowment House October 3, 1868, and it should have been the beginning to an idyllic Mormon love story, not the prelude to a cancellation of sealing several years later. Lucinda was teaching, and was loved by her pupils and respected by the community. She also apparently participated in the meager cultural life of Beaver by singing in the choir, partially satisfying "the master passion of my soul," her craving for music. Lucinda was also a mother, little Charles having been born in 1869 or 1870. Her experience with this baby shows again her sensitivity and her faith. Six years after Charles' birth and four after his death, she records:


Early in my married life, one day my mother was sitting with me in my own house,

and I was embroidering a delicate muslin robe for my expected child. After much pleasant conversation she inquired playfully, how I felt doing such pretty work for a child of my own. A most natural and innocent question, but my mother thought most direr in its effect; for, throwing down the work and bursting into hysterical weeping I wailed. "Oh! Mother, I feel like I were sewing on a shroud." She was alarmed for my safely, and urged the necessity of self-control, and begged to know if she had said anything wrong. When I was sufficiently recovered, I explained. For months a haunting dread had hung like a great black cloud over me, that my child would died in infancy. I had tried to smile at it; I had refused it admittance to my thoughts; I had fought it like a deadly foe and barred the doors of my soul against it; but still it lay in wall, and my mother's unexpected question suddenly swung wide all those barred doors and gave the enemy full possession. Lying, as I may say, a bound and helpless captive at the feet of my foe, I confessed my secret grief. As in duty bound, even had she not fully believed it, my mother argued that I had mistaken nervousness for presentiment and assured me that by the time I had borne a dozen children I should be able to discriminate better. I sobbed forth "I wish you were right, Mother, but my child will live six months or a year or possibly two years, but not longer. Great was my surprise and delight when, instead of the puny, wailing little skeleton I had expected, my child was a great, lusty boy who seemed the very impression of good health, high spirits, and precocious intellect. Nothing ever seemed to hurt him, and in the pride of my heart I laughed my former fears to scorn. I told my mother she was right and I was tempted to give up my belief in presentiments entirely. But in his fifteenth month, I found myself compelled to wean him; and it was with a sinking heart that I took him from the breast and began the old warfare anew. He pined from that day and in spite of all care, all weeping and praying, he died in my arms on the second anniversary of his birthday, and we buried him in the embroidered dress I had once called a shroud. A strange and sad experience, truly, and my mother lives to testify to its truth; but the warning which was once my torture and foe, is now my comfort and friend, because it assures me that it was not my ignorance of the laws of life and health which deprived the world of so noble a soul, but the will of God.”


Lucinda was to mourn this loss with elegiac poems for years; but even in so bitter an event, she was able to find sweetness and strength. It was still far in the future as she moved tranquilly through the opening months of 1870 with her beloved child and loving husband, but within a few months, her happiness was clouded. Ironically, those who had most power to hurt her were those closest. Her father took another wife in 1870, even though the price was the breach of his marriage with Lucinda's mother, the woman who had married him at fifteen and followed him faithfully into a new church and through three different states be- fore they found their home in Beaver. Apparently the rupture was a painful one, for about the same time, Lucinda's sixteen-year-old sister Emma left the family home and came to live with her.

A year later, in April 1871, the ward teachers (representatives of the local presiding church authority who routinely visited a given number of homes monthly) were sent to make peace between Charles and his father-in-law. It was apparently an important case, for, in the ward clerk's uncertain orthography, "Bishop Ashworth spoke at some length on the difficulty existing between John P. Lee & Charles W. Dalton. Three of the brethren were appointed to visit these brethren." The trio returned to say that they "could not make any reconciliation with them. The minutes do not specify the cause of the quarrel, but it may have been an event that occurred only six months later. Emma's marriage to Charles, apparently they had been engaged for some time, possibly without the estranged father's permission. Before that fall wedding on October 16, 1871, in the Endowment House, the loss that Lucinda had been prepared for by premonition had occurred and the summer serenity was shattered by the death of her little son, an unimaginable strain on the devoted mother, still recovering from the birth of her daughter Belle on June 1.

Apparently Emma shared her sister's home after marrying Charles; relationships between the sisters seem unmarred by jealousy or competition, for Lucinda always speaks of Emma tenderly and affectionately. But the marriage itself was evidently a mistake for the seventeen-year-old girl and the forty-five-year-old man. They had no children and Emma seems to have refused domesticity.


We know little of the family during Emma's four years with them. A daughter Rosette was born to Lucinda probably in 1874, but apparently died within months. On February 18, 1875, Lucinda's third child, a son named Clifford, was born. Apparently Emma had reached the end of her optimism and patience the same year, for on September 12, she sent a cryptic letter to Brigham Young: “Sir, I was married to Charles Wakeman Dalton in the house of endowments, on the ninth day of October, 1871. For reasons, which Pres. Murdock has kindly informed me, you do not require me to state, I now desire a divorce. By giving this matter your earliest convenience, you will confer an eternal obligation.

Yours respectfully Emma Lee Dalton”


A clerk has noted on that letter that blank forms were sent to Bishop Murdock on September 15. However, two weeks later, the Beaver Literary Institute was organized for "persons of good moral character" under the auspices of that same John Murdock, and on October 4, Emma Dalton was there, nominated to serve on a committee to propose a list of officers. Between then and Christmas, she presented an essay, edited the first number of the Literary Star, helped plan the Christmas party, appeared on a spelling team, and gave a recitation. However, this flurry of activity faded suddenly, for the minutes of January 17, 1876, include the report of a delegation sent to find out why Mrs. Emma Dalton was absenting herself from meeting with the Institute at regular meetings. Emma told them "that it is no intention on her part to relinquish her membership in the Institution and considering herself an honorary member, therefore [illegible] to excuse to offer and further-more was not aware that she was violating any of the rules, or by-laws, or that an absentee was required to furnish an excuse in case of being absent a specified time.”


Despite these excuses, Emma never reappears in the minutes and apparently left Charles, Beaver, and the church, having decided, in Lucinda's sorrowful words, that "Mormonism was inquiry, and its followers hypocrites." According to Lucinda, she went to work for the Rio Grande and Denver Railroad in Little Rock, Arkansas.


In Lucinda's obituary, Emma is listed as "Mrs. Emma Sutherland of San Francisco." She had married Jabez Gridley Sutherland under her maiden name sometime between 1893 and 1897. Judge Sutherland, a widower, was a prominent gentile in Salt Lake City, some thirty years older than his bride, who was then in her late forties. He died in Berkeley "after a lingering attack of paralysis" at the age of seventy-seven, only a few years after their marriage.


We know very little of what happened during those four years when Emma, Lucinda, and Charles struggled to make the marriage work and eventually abandoned the effort. It was during those four years, however, that Lucinda began writing for the “Woman's Exponent” a lively paper devoted to matters feminine and feminist, first edited by Louisa Lula Greene Richards with a circulation that never rose above a thousand, although readership may have been that high. It was only five months old when Lucinda saw her work in print for the first time on November 1, 1872. This initial essay was, pointedly enough, a criticism of fathers in a concrete and vernacular style that shows a keen mind and a satirical eye at work: "Oh, yes, I know the boys are wild, that they use bad language and cultivate bad habits, and, as you say, 'Make themselves a great nuisance; but, my friend, I don't think the boys deserve quite so much blame as they get.... When I heard a father complain that 'outside influences' was too strong for him, and it was almost more than he could do to keep his boys under any restraint whatever, I could not help wondering if 'inside influence' were what they should be."

A Plea for the Boys," “Woman's Exponent”.


It would be mere wishful thinking to make her articles replace Lucinda's missing journals and letters. She was a woman with a deeply developed sense of privacy, and these articles are very public. But even if we cannot read them autobiographically, they are extremely valuable in showing us her attitudes on certain issues. A common theme was mourning the death of little Charles. She describes his baby beauty and bewitching ways, but finds comfort in his immunity from the world's guises and snares:


I fear not worldly pride may win thee now, Nor guilt betray, nor flames or guilt devour; 

God's will is wiser than our flail desires, His mercy tendered than our purest love;

And I can yield to this since He requires, And name thee now, "My waiting saint above."

"A Mother's Resignation.” Woman's Exponent, November 15, 1872


The same issue also contains an article condemning intemperance. Charles drank, both before and during their marriage, and this essay may contain a hint of her feelings about his weakness. One trenchant paragraph slashes:


"Do you degrade yourselves 'below' the brutes by disregarding Nature's laws in your own homes, and seeking only your own sensual gratification, persistently closing your eyes to the fact that thus you perpetuate and foster a low tone of morals, and send abroad into the world, exaggerated types of your own depravity, to carry their pestilential presence and shameful deeds everywhere?"

Woman's Exponent”, November 15, 1872.


Her opening essay in 1873 was unabashedly feminist. She advocated exercise for girls, not only skating, swimming, and ball, but even shooting. She does not rely only on the relatively safe argument that exercise means better health. Instead she argues the psychological necessity for recreation as well as work and the desirability of a more self-confident generation of women. In passing, she thwacks such "foolish and groundless customs, as the deep prejudice against whistling" and sketches a sarcastic portrait of the nineteenth century miss "laced up in corsets, with smelling bottle at nose, giving little plaintive screams if she should spy a mouse."

Woman's Exponent”, January 31, 1873.


She returns to one of her favorite themes, prayer, for her next essay, a thoughtful and reverent article that differs in tone from the polemics she had written heretofore. From a few paragraphs we can see that her faith was maturing as she successfully assimilated her sorrows and learned to trust the Lord despite her pain:

That very frame of mind, which is necessary to produce true prayer, is in many cases the answer to Prayer-the starting point from which we may accomplish the good we desire. In His wisdom God so ordained it that many prayers should thus answer themselves. To cultivate this prayerful resigned state of mind is the very best preparation against adversity, for we can believe our seeming misfortunes to be blessings in disguise, and generally prove them such. And prayer is an armor fitted to all wearers”.

Woman's Exponen”t, February 15, 1873.


She also mentions the great shield prayer can provide for the innocent maiden who may not see beneath the roses. That she herself had formed the habit of prayer early is attested to in her autobiography where she states:


"I do not recollect ever attending a ball or place of amusement without asking God to keep me from all ill or unbecoming thoughts, words or deeds, and from accidents or harm of any kind. During the entertainment I often recalled the prayer and I can truly say that my prayers were answered. Few young girls ever met with fewer little mortifying mishaps, or moved amid giddy pleasures with less danger of becoming enamored of them."


She returns to the theme of temperance in her next essay, printed on March 1, 1873, but now discusses more than alcohol. One particularly vivid passage described the effects of lust: "Love, that heavenly radiance which ... lifts the weakest of mortals to a level with the angels ... is a name sorely misapplied. Alas, that it should be so! but many, by giving unrestrained liberty to all the emotions which it awakens in their peculiar natures, and pursuing the object with headlong speed, miss it altogether and grasp, in- stead-passion; that adder to sting the heart that warms it."

"Moral Temperance," “Woman's Exponent”, March 1, 1873.


Lucinda's own life seems to have been free from illicit sexual passion, and even from its temptations:


Even while attentions from gentlemen were in themselves pleasant, I always fell a sort of guilt in accepting for my personality what I knew was rendered merely to abstract youth and beauty; and much disgust at the thought that my quick intellect, my honest heart, my high aspirations, all the sterling worth that was really of myself were never considered in this glittering realm of pleasure to which I was beckoned. What girt that ever paused to think that she was caressed in society merely for her youth and freshness, things not in the least due to herself and which advancing time soon take from her, and that then she will surely be forsaken by this same society through no fault of her own; could ever become enamored of its seething pleasure and hollow praise? I never was. Although the metrical movements of the dance in time to the rhythm of sweet music were very pleasant, I could grow tired as of any other kind of exercise, but I have seen girls who professed never to tire of dancing. I have open looked on while the beautiful girls, radiant of youth and happiness, with their devoted partners, whirled through the dreamy waltz and mused on the possibility of one of these lovely and carefree maidens, become a woman and perhaps wife of one of these same adoring youths, wearing out not only her youth but her very life, drudging from morning till night to keep his house in order, and from night till morning with his ailing baby, and be looked on by him as an inferior being, designed how and true to serve him. I wonder if man could have the effrontery to ask, or any woman the suppleness to lay down the scepter and crown of girlhood to assume the yoke and burden of wife hood. My prayer was then as now, that the time may come when women will know and hold themselves at their true worth; when their eyes will be opened to the degradation of wasting their spotless lives on worth- less and depraved men; when by the depth of their contempt for men who lead unholy lives, and by the firmness of their resolution and the dignity of their self-respect, they shall compel men to come up to their standard of morality and with them seek some- thing still better, or be outcast from the Eden of woman's association.”


Possibly Lucinda's mistrust of men generally immunized her against sexual temptation, and she saw with sorrow and compassion those whose uncontrolled love became passion. She may have seen its effects in the marriages in her own family, possibly that of her father, or possibly that of her blooming sister, barely out of childhood, to Charles, who was already the father of twenty-five children.


Two months later appears "To Ernest," a love poem addressed to "my own." She remembers a "sweet night" when they wandered out, hand in hand, and:


Lowly bowed before the Eternal throne (But one in spirit, though two hands were joined) .You plead 'for guidance for our troubled souls, O'er our coming lives a Father's kindly care, And that when dread temptation darkly rolls, Our steadfast faith might keep our purpose fair. The pure petition fell like summer rain upon the fields when parched and gray; And doubts and fears that on my soul had lain like cliffs of terror, melted soft away” ...


The details of that last stanza, the shared prayer that reassured her about her choice of a marriage pardoner, made it clear that she is recalling her own courtship with Charles. Why she chooses the name of Ernest we do not know, but six years later she gives that last name to her last child.


The hour is spent-thy girlhood's knell is tolled, as by a passing bell.

Thy bridegroom comes, with Joyous eye, To lead thee to thy destiny.

With smile had sad but wholly sweet, Thou turnest thy heart's lord to greet.

"Woman's Exponent”, August 15, 1873.


This is hardly a glad celebration of matrimony. The woman's wisdom and acceptance of suffering contrast with the groom's blithe-and blind-happiness, but it reflects Lucinda's own unswerving faith in the essential nobility of womanhood.


Perhaps it is only coincidence that the very same issue contains one of the most scathing exposes of male insensitivity that she was ever to write for publication. Deliberately gossipy, she addresses the reader with a cordial confidentiality suitable for raking the male sex over the coals; “You are a young matron whose girlhood, with its peculiar tastes and feelings, stands so near you that you could almost touch the hem of its garments; You

Think your husband about perfection; You have one baby old enough o toddle about, and in your family lives and aunt whom you greatly respect” (If indeed this is autobiographical, it is Lucinda’s only published reference to Charles’ other wives, all of whom were at the time living in Beaver)


She continues, “Your husband is absent on business much of the time, and you have to be both master and mistress of the house; cut your own wood, water your own garden and do your own marketing, but as you pride yourself on your cheerfulness and independence, you do not even sigh over this.”


This model little wife decides to forgo the pleasure of celebrating a July holiday with the rest of the town even through a married friend would willingly take her. Her little daughter would enjoy the festivities and she would also like a pleasant holiday herself.

The deciding factor is that “Charles, might feel a little sad to think you could really enjoy such an excursion without him; or he might return during your absence to find only an empty house, and in his loneness, he might think you ungrateful for all his toil and care”


Then Charles reappears on the night before the outing. The loving wife circumspectly waits until he has been fed and had a good night’s sleep to tell him the news. He decides that it’s too late to arrange for a buggy, but proposes instead, “a little home holiday and a cozy dinner together.”


The darling fellow you are so happy to think a day passed quietly at home could be a holiday to him, that you are a thousand times glad you had not made any arrangement to go aboard. Full of happy thought’s you set about dressing Rosebud while Charles goes on his errand. Presently he returns laden with parcels, and overlooking Baby, who runs to meet him looking like a little white bird, he tells you hurriedly that “Brown and them” encountered him in town, and nothing would do but that he must go out with them to see what the picnickers were doing. He explains that he had no idea of such a thing when he left the house, but that they were good fellows and he didn’t wish to offend them.


All your boasted “independence” could not keep your countenance from falling, and as your husband is neither blind nor a fool, he asks co-punctiliously, “Would you like to go too.” “No” you answer softly, winking very hard to keep back the tears while he says in a "livened sort of way, and with the air of one who has done his whole duo. "I didn't think you would, since there are to be only men in the carriage, and I am not an invited party; but you can make yourselves comfortable here and have your little dinner together all the same as if I was with you." Then with hasty adieu your adorable Charles hastens away to his bachelor friends and a day among the rocks. No longer able to conceal your tears, you throw yourself face downward on your bed, grieved to the heart, not for the loss of a day's pleasure, but for the bitterness of the discovery, that all your delicate consideration was unheeded, and because the slight and loneliness you would not risk putting upon him, he would lay upon you ten times magnified.”


The anger and hurt of this description comes from the very heart, but by the next and concluding paragraph, the wife regains control with a wry extravagance: she rises, bathes her face, spurns the parcels of groceries, gives the baby to Auntie, and sits down to write a hot letter to the Exponent, "hoping in [her] secret soul that 'he' will read it and be very indignant, thus proving that his conscience pricks him." That consolation isn't worth counting on, though, and the young wife turns to a more sure consolation, her certainty that "scores of wives, will exclaim, Isn't that the truth? Just the way they do! And applaud your fixed resolution to learn a lesson from this experience, and, where you can in the future, take care of yourself.”

"Woman's Exponent”, August 15, 18731.


Were those tears, those crushed hopes, the wounded tenderness Lucinda's? And even more poignantly, did she, in moments of betrayal, feel sustained by the sympathetic sorority of women who also knew the hard necessity of emotional independence?

Two weeks later in an essay written in the middle of the previous month, Lucinda is blasting again at the nineteenth century's equivalent of male supremacists who demand belief without the courtesy of offering proof. After a half-dozen trenchant examples, she gives her crowning illustration:


You women sympathize with the Woman's Rights movement and honestly believe that the mothers of men and women have as deep an interest in their Present and future world as the fathers, and, therefore, would be, if as well educated, quite as capable of properly shaping their destinies. But you learn with wondering and awe that "Woman never was and never will be capable of understanding political economy nor of acquiring a man's education. Having the testimony of all sacred and profane history that women have been chief rulers, high priests, counselors, commanders and warriors, you suppose, in your innocence, that you are to receive some new light on the subject, but instead of that, your informant looks the picture of injured innocence, that you even imagine that statement needed confirmation. Surly you do not doubt his veracity?

Now what I want to know is just this. Am I obliged to swallow all these nauseous doses of wisdom and call them "good" for me, or may I speak my mind, and say "If you can give me a reason sufficient to convince my judgment, then I will accept your views, if I shall consider myself at liberty to express my own opinion as highly as yours."


Then she issues her own manifesto:

If, in order to be womanly and keep my "sphere," I must do the former, then let spheres take care of themselves, for I've no use for them. I do not feel like 'giving proof’ of woman's inferiority by any such complaint course. Every person within whose soul the least spark of reason exists, has a right to cultivate that reason and give it satisfaction before adopting any principle or opinion; and because my head may be weaker than yours and my judgment less reliable, is no reason I should not cultivate and improve them. And when you give me your views on any given subject and withhold the support of these views, you defraud me of an opportunity to cultivate my judgment and arrive at a just conclusion for myself."

Woman's Exponent”, September 1873.


We do not know who these men are, but we are not necessarily justified in numbering Charles among them. If the picnic episode really records an incident of their domestic life, he may have been insensitive to her tender feelings as wife, but there is no evidence that he ever considered her intellectually inferior. In her autobiography, after a particularly scornful passage about men who consider themselves superior, she adds:

I am not so unjust as to make no exceptions to all the sweeping assertions I have been making. I know all women are not good and true, nor all men tyrannical and unjust. I could mention the names of several men pledged heart and soul to the Latter day work of woman's emancipation from her long bondage; and one at least of my acquaintance is a far more ferocious antagonist of woman's slavery than 1. From him I received the first antidolic draught to cure my misanthropy and disgust of life. He it was who first showed me wherein Religion is not leagued with woman's oppressors; who first assured me with a man's lips that a woman has as good a right to her individuality and her free agency on the earth as her brother-man. So you see, my dear friend, that for his sake, did I never know another liberal minded, large-hearted man, I could not, and would not wish to condemn the whole race. I shall give honor where honor is due and while waiting for the good time coming when all men and women shall be free and equal, put in my feeble oar wherever I can in her service. “


A later paragraph makes it clear that this man is her husband. Lucinda wrote voluminously for the rest of that year and through 1874. Only five months passed in those two years without a contribution to the Exponent, usually one but not infrequently two, in every number. She recommends singing to babies, defends women's suffrage, denounces the Frelinghuysen Bill which would have admitted Utah to the Union at the price of permanently disenfranchising its women, contrasts the economic and legal inequality of gentile women with Mormon women, points out the advantages of Relief Society for every Mormon woman, vehemently denounced "interference" from busybody neighbors during first pregnancies, writes occasional verse, writes a rousing feminist song called "Woman Arise!" and writes a tender comparison between her sleeping baby daughter and the dead baby Charles.


Personal philosophy giving us another view of her marriage seems to appear in a poetic exchange between her and "Query," who demands somewhat rhetorically, "Is it a crime for woman to love?" meaning, "How aggressively may a woman pursue a man?" Lucinda answers that forwardness is not sin but is usually stupid, since "man is perverseness within, And values not things lightly won." She is not just offering a nineteenth-century version of fascinating womanhood, however. The concluding stanza gives the reason why love should always be kept in check:

No passion should break our control, No love supersedes love of God, This anchor made fast to the soul will save from the angriest flood.”

"Woman's Exponent”, 15 December 1874.


"Query" responds the next month, hinting that Lucinda's answer was jaundiced by her mistrust of her own husband. Loyally, Lucinda counters, defending Charles, and-what is more significant-explaining the wryly practical need for womanly self-restraint: one rarely meets a man so ideal he won't take advantage of a woman. She continues, expressing concern for women married to the type of man she fears and mistrusts, one who through misunderstanding or a desire for power will betray a woman through her own love:


Who think that God made her a slave to man's will; if not, he will make her so yet,

Who will win her affections with cunningest skill and lead her to lifelong regret,

I wish her to learn to be wary and wise that by such she may never be won,

That poor, sightless Love may be furnished with eyes and never cool judgment outrun.

Woman's Exponent”, 3 February 1875.


It is ironic that this is Lucinda's last contribution for almost a year. Perhaps, considering the subject, it is even significant. She wrote her answer to "Query's” romantic argument in January 23 1875.


Less than a month later, Clifford was born. Lucinda writes nothing during the entire spring and summer. In September, Emma applied for her divorce, obviously as the result of her own deteriorating marriage. She is gone soon after January 1876. Lucinda is, at that time, pregnant with Guy, who is born April 24 1876. Apparently her babies keep her busy, for we see only four poems: two seasonal offerings, one mother's out poured hopes and fears for her children, and one jibe at men who worry about what their own "true sphere" will be if women begin working.


Charles, by this time, is in financial difficulties and his health is failing as well. By1878, Lucinda and Charles are in St. George, returning to Beaver after a three-year's stay.

On April 1, 1878, the Exponent published her "Questionings," a poem of poignant power lamenting the bitter lot of women.


An endless round of weakness, toll, and pain, of deep humiliations, longings vain, And blind out preachings for the light above. Self-sacrifice we drain as nectar cup; For others one we are taught to live. Oh, darling, you have last seen His face. And in His presence felt no diffidence; Oh, tell! You forget or my heart break, If now you are forever banished thence? If after we have worn his crown of thorns, And borne, like Him, the cross, with bleeding feet, To touch our outstretched hands He will come, or send, not bring, the balm of healing sweet. Not his the tongue a scornful word to fling, To wound a sister soul and rankle there; Not his the heart to whisper I am king And she my subject now and evermore; Not he says laughing, this child is mine, But tenderly and proud, It is ours; And deems the marriage vow a pledge divine of mutual bonds, and equal joys and powers.”

Woman's Exponent”, May 15, 1878.


Since she also hinted broadly that an unhappy marriage could be cured if the wife would change her selfish attitudes, Lucinda quite properly saw in it a personal attack against her own marriage and responded, not by defending herself from charges of selfishness, but by defending her husband from charges of oppressiveness.


The next four years see scanty contributions, although Lucinda's carefully reasoned defenses of polygamy and Mormon principles in 1882 are important. Then Charles died on July 18, 1883, in Beaver, and Lucinda mourns him and supplicates his departed spirit for some sign of continued love a year later:


A year and a day-a year and a day!

I linger and hearken; one whisper I pray:

No matter how lightly your footstep may fall I'll hear it; I'll answer your faintest call;

My famishing soul in your presence could gain The courage to labor and struggle again. My heart is weary. No longer delay!

I've waited and listened a year and a day.”

Woman's Exponent”, 13 August 15, 1884.


After scattered poems and essays during the next four years, she wrote another expression of grieving widowhood:

My eager hands that would clasp his own in fond and fervent grasp, With patient labor strive to still the trembling pains that through them thrill. My paling lips that would press upon his brow a pure caress, may only breathe his name so low.

That none but God can hear or know.”

"Sundered, Woman's Exponent”. September 15, 1881.


These public expressions of love for her husband-certainly with the ring of sincerity-are a continuing counterpoint to the private tragedy she was experiencing. That first lament, "Invocation," was written only a month before she began the steps that would lead to the cancellation of her marriage sealing, and "Sundered" was penned eighteen months, after she was eternally sundered from a man for whom she obviously felt unquenched love. What, then, explains her action? Certainly we do not have full access to all the facts, but we need to remember her unwavering testimony-for ironically, it was her understanding of the gospel, accurate or not, that led her into eternal separation from Charles.


On August 24, 1884, she wrote to David Henry Cannon, president of the St. George Temple and the St. George Stake. His uncle, John Taylor, was then president of the church:


It is with reluctance almost amounting to shame that I come to you this time for counsel, because it is on the subject of marriage, and my husband has been gone scarcely thirteen months. I was always true to him in thought, word and deed during his lifetime, and I laid his body in the grave dreaming naught else than that I should be his only in time and in eternally, though I knew he had many imperfections. But now the brethren say he was unworthy, (though I know not who appointed them to judge him,) they urge that I stand in a very insecure position, and that for my children's sake, as well as my own, I ought to marry again.”


One of these judges was a suitor. She does not say whether his attentions annoy her; with her fine sense of justice she describes him only as being "beyond doubt, a faithful Latter Day Saint, above reproach in his daily walk and conversation" and already married with a wife and children. The insecurity Lucinda feels is not economic or social, but spiritual. She confesses: "I have indulged in thoughts of being more to my deceased husband than wives usually are; of assisting him with my faithfulness and my favor in the sight of God, to recover any ground he may have lost, to expiate any offenses. Is this vain dreaming or could it be done?"


Possibly her suitor and the other "judges" had seized on this dream of "atoning" for another's sins, a mission reserved for the Savior, and stressed the implied pride as a sign of her spiritual "insecurity." It seems uncharacteristic of Lucinda to have discussed this dream openly, however, since it would have entailed discussing the faults for which she was "atoning" and she was obviously reluctant to refer even to Charles' lapses from strict sobriety, evidently a matter of common knowledge in Beaver.

In any case, the argument that has the most weight with Lucinda is not that her dream of redeeming Charles is vain but that by remaining married to him she will forfeit her claim to her children:


Here is the thought that appalls me. My feelings as a mother are far keener and deeper than my feelings as a wife. I am the mother of six children; four still living, and two gone before; and I would not forfeit my claim to them as their mother, for the sake of the best man in God's kingdom. And whatever these four may do, I know those two to be spotless in the sight of God, and that they will act under his own perfect counsel; therefore, if I could but know what course they will take, it would decide my own. If they would choose to wait for their father to reprieve his mistakes and come up to their standpoint, then by all means, so would I; but if they thought best to press on toward Perfectio, waiting for none, I should be anxious to do the same, though it looks to me like a selfish decision. But since I cannot know this now, I feel too weak and ignorant to decide so great a matter for myself and so many others, alone.”


Her request to President Cannon, with whom she has taken counsel before, is rooted firmly in her faith:

God come to you, knowing you to be a sincere friend to my deceased husband, as well as to myself; and because there is not in Beaver any one to whom I can go with the same confidence that I would get disinterested, impartial, unprejudiced advice. As I said before, 1 feel almost ashamed of even asking counsel on this matter; but I am pressed for a decision, and I dare not rely on my own unaided judgment. Dear Brother Cannon, pray for me fervently; pray in the Temple, where your prayers will surely be heard, and if need be, take counsel for me; and then write to me and advise me what course to take”.

Her faith in the prayers of this righteous man and her faith that the temple is a house of revelation is clearly exercised in her willingness to abide by his decision. She adds revealingly in the last paragraph:


God knows I would not wrong the dead; I only wish to know what is right. I do not even desire to be married, for I naturally prefer a single life; but I do fervently desire to serve the Lord with all -my might, mind and strength, and am willing to do all that can be required of me in righteousness; and I know that God will not require more than this, and to him I commend myself and all that a" dear to me. Amen.”


President Cannon wrote back, giving her what she calls "hard" counsel. Even though we do not have his letter, he obviously advised her to write to the president of the church and lay the case before him. Lucinda protests:


It almost seems more than my soul's salvation is worth, to make a written accusation or complaint against Brother Charles, and then be so cold hearted and relentless as to ask somebody to sign it. I am by no means sure that I can get my own consent to do that, although, as you say, I ought to know him better than anyone else. I have grown so accustomed to befriending, consoling, and sustaining him that it would be hard to recognize myself if doing the opposite. Pray God, pity him as I do."


However, his counsel apparently prevailed, at least in part, for she wrote to President Taylor, heard nothing, and sent an anxious letter on November 24, inquiring after the previous letters. Her usually exquisite penmanship is rough, she misspells two words, and has gone back to put in others. If ever a letter breathed agitation, this one mutely does. Her worry must have increased as again she received acknowledgment of receipt but no reply from President Taylor. He was suffering the anti-polygamy persecution that would drive him as a polygamist to the Underground within a few months and she did not hear from him until March 17, 1887, two and a half years later. They must have been anguished years, but we know little of how she spent them. She continued teaching school. Although she is a widow and the sole support of her children, she is listed in Relief Society records as having contributed two bushels of wheat for storage in 1885, that first year of her patient wait. The Beaver Sunday school minute books for 1886-94 list Lucinda as both a student with one hundred percent attendance in a class where no teacher is mentioned, and as a teacher for at least two classes; she also appears on the list of choir members.


But we have no indication of what Lucinda was thinking during the nearly three years before President Taylor was able to respond to her request. There may have been other correspondence between them, for when President Taylor wrote on March 17, 1887, he did not address it to Lucinda's home in Beaver but to Inverury (outside Richfield) where she was visiting. He apologized for not having answered her sooner and then said:


After considering your case and giving it such examination as has been possible under the circumstances, I have decided that if you desire the dissolution of your marriage for eternity with your deceased husband, Charles Wakeman Dalton, it should be granted to you. From all that I can learn concerning his life, in addition to what you yourself have written to me, I consider your future unsafe in his hands. If you should decide to have the marriage for eternity dissolved, you will please give me the date when and the place where you were married to him, and I will have the entry made upon the record to the effect that the marriage is dissolved. When this is done you will be at liberty to contract a new alliance for time and eternity and of course will take your children with you”


It is worth noting that President Taylor does not tell her what to do. With a delicacy that honors her free agency he gives her the choice, his opinion, and the projected results, thereby assuring her that he has made a separate inquiry as well as considering her own report. The last sentence is ambiguous to a modern reader; was he promising her that she could have her children regardless of her marital status, or was he promising her children if she re- married? Lucinda clearly interpreted his instructions as a guarantee of her children. She sent him the information he requested, then pled poignantly for even more explicit reassurance. She wrote on April 2:


I realize solemnly the magnitude of the step you advise me to take, and my whole soul goes out in prayer to my Heavenly Father that His hand may lead me and his spirit guide me into all righteousness, and preserve me from all evil. and in the Book of Covenants that whomsoever you bless God will bless, and whose so ever sins you remit on earth they shall be remitted in the Heavens; therefore I beseech you, in the exercise of your rightful authority, to pronounce me pure and blameless in this thing, and bestow upon me by the holy spirit of promise the blessings of the Elect; that I may press forward in the battle of Life strengthened by the assurance that I am justified in the sight of God.”


President Taylor, responding to this wholesale pleading, re-plied immediately, informing her that her sealing had been annulled. He reassures, "This will make you free to contract such an alliance as may be agreeable to you, for time and for eternity; and on taking this step you may rest assured, from all that I can learn of your former husband's conduct, you are free from all blame and condemnation, and stand acquitted before the Lord. It is not right that you should remain connected and bound up with that man for eternity, and for this you have been released, and are fully justified in the step you have taken.”


With this bleak comfort, Lucinda's marriage of almost nineteen years to "that man" came to an end. What do we know of him, the silent partner in this drama? The clues are pitifully sparse. We know that his father, Simon Cooker Dalton, gave him a heritage of sacrifice and courage. According to family history, Simon's first wife (Anna) left him when he joined the church, but undaunted, Simon took his two oldest sons, one of whom was Charles, and went to Nauvoo where he remarried. He crossed the plains in 1849. Charles, then twenty-three, either accompanied his father or followed him closely, even though he is not listed in the company, since his own oldest son was born "on the banks of the Sweetwater" in Wyoming on August 26, 1849, to Julietta E. Bowen, his first wife.

Juanita Brooks lists Charles among those called to colonize the Iron Mission December 2, 1850, "all of whom," she comments tantalizingly, "would be involved with John D. Lee in the blackest deed of Utah history"- the Mountain Meadows massacre." (Of note is that Charles Wakeman Dalton was not involved in this massacre. RD)


Charles was, by Lucinda's testimony, a loving husband and father to the end of his life, and was also a good provider. However, only Julietta, his first wife, was willing to retain her title for eternity. His third wife, Sarah Jane Lee, daughter of John D. Lee, and Lucinda's sister Emma divorced him while he was still alive. Lucinda and Elizabeth Allred, his second wife, canceled their sealing after his death, Elizabeth apparently to be sealed to her second husband, Calvin White Moore, whom she had married on July 26, 1887, four years after Charles' death and, coincidentally, only four months after Lucinda's own sealing was canceled. (This cancellation was later revoked by President Heber J. Grant on February 26, 1931, fifteen years after her own death which would, in effect, left her sealed to Charles again.)

We cannot, of course, attribute what amounts to the failure of four marriages exclusively to Charles Dalton. We have reason from ward records to believe that his behavior may have once prompted ecclesiastical inquiry, and that people felt he did not deserve his wife and children. We do not know why he did not rebuild what had apparently been a good character. But perhaps, in all justice, we must share that burden of blame with Lucinda. She may have refused to let him repent. She was not a weak woman, and she must have been dismayed to the very depths of her soul that the man she had married with such a clear promise from the Lord had proven himself less than worthy. Possessed of few illusions about marriage in the first place and willing to marry "only because of its expected joys in eternity," as she says she may have seen in both her husband and her father lights that failed, towers that crumbled, whited sepulchers full of the bones of her dead dreams. Responding out of that disillusion, she may have given up on Charles completely and pressed him so closely with her mistrust that he could never build his own self-respect again. She was strong enough to do whatever her faith required; as she interpreted the gospel, her faith required her to press Charles toward righteousness in his lifetime and to separate herself from him after his death. Obviously she loved him during his life and grieved for him after his death. Her decision after his death was obviously agonizing for her. But once she had what she thought was a clear answer, she was inexorable. But did she review her decision during those thirty-eight years? Did her love for her children and the church sustain her through the times of loneliness and discouragement that must have come?


Even though our information about how she spent those years is scanty, we have one important piece of evidence; she died, Lucinda Dalton, Charles' wife in name if not in fact. We do not know what happened to that wooing suitor in Beaver. Perhaps his ardor had cooled in the long interval between his first interest and her permission to remarry three years later. Perhaps the ordeal had been so trying that she could not face the prospect of another marriage. And perhaps the simple political facts of the persecution against polygamy dictated her continued single state.


She moved, probably in 1888, to Manti, and probably at the same time her mother also transferred her residence to that city so she could "work in the temple." We know that Lucinda continued to teach school and, at some point, taught for a few years in Ogden as well, then returned to Manti "where she spent her last days in working in the Temple and attending to Church duties.” She continued to write occasionally, and her poems and essays appear in the Exponent and the Young Women's Journal.


She opened 1893 with the blazing manifesto in "Woman," the poem that begins this sketch of her life. In it we feel her pride in womanhood, her sense of outraged justice, and her unwavering faith that the Restoration includes the restoration of woman's eternal honor as well, ending with its exultant prophecy: "And the last shall be first, forever." That year was a banner year for Lucinda's feminism. "Woman, Arise!" a rousing, militant song, was published March 1, and later became part of a suffrage songbook. The next year she authored a "Woman Suffrage Column" on the front page, demanding rhetorically: "Shall our sons be untainted with servitude and degradation if their mothers be not free, any better than they could be all white if we gave them African mothers?"


Her contributions to the Exponent were not her only contributions to the suffrage movement. There are still minutes extant from a suffrage association in Beaver a few years after she left the town that she would certainly have participated in earlier years.


Her sister Rose was appointed Utah vice-president of the Utah State Chapter of Women Voters, and Lucinda is listed among five women praised in Manti for making "education and promotion of equal suffrage part of their daily lives.” She was a teacher in Manti North Ward's Sunday School for several years, and gradually, her family dwindled as death took one after another. Her mother died in March 1905, and the obituary contains a curious error: "Mr. Lee died in 1871.” In point of fact, John Percival Lee was still alive and would not die until April of 1907, almost exactly two years later. Given the vagaries of reporters and the case with which numbers may be mistaken by a typesetter, it would be foolish to put too much emphasis on this discrepancy, but we recall that 1871 was, in fact, the year when John P. Lee and Eliza Foscue Lee separated, bitterly and permanently. Perhaps for her that was his death date. Only a brief notice marks the passing of Lucinda's father two years later in Thatcher, Arizona. "Father Lee," it says, "was a man of sterling good character. His funeral was conducted here, where many friends of the deceased turned out to show their respect to him. The summer of 1912 five years later was one that wrung Lucinda's steadfast heart again. Her son Guy, by then the father of a four-year-old daughter, had suffered from tuberculosis for some time. That summer he decided to try the air in a canyon near Manti, but his health was more fragile than he had supposed. He died even before they reached "the point of their intended destination." The obituary reports: "Mrs. Dalton relates that there was nothing she could do but to place the dead body of her husband in the buggy and drive down the canyon to their home. The spectacle was a pathetic one when friends first saw the grief-stricken woman managing the team and seeking to comfort the 4 year old daughter, while the husband and father lay dead in the bottom of the buggy. Thus, only two children survived Lucinda, her oldest daughter, Belle, and her youngest son, Clifford. She died herself on November 24, 1925, seventy-eight years old. Her obituary records that her services were held on a Sunday in the North Ward chapel; her former bishop read some of her poems and commended "the good life and character of the deceased." The minutes list the names of two other speakers and add that the songs sung were "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" and "There Is A Green Hill Far Away."" We have no way of knowing if the songs were her own choice; it would be appropriate if they were, for every line breathes her own unflinching faith in the Savior. We also do not know what poems he selected, but "House of Life" would have been an exquisite choice. In this poem, written a quarter century before, the narrator describes herself as the mistress of a beautiful home, exquisitely built, carefully furnished, and lovingly given to her by "my Lord." Yet the sight of more splendid palaces dispelled her joy. Dissatisfied, she neglected her mansion. Dust collected on the windows, the lovely rooms went un-repaired and un-garlanded, cobwebs festooned corners, and "its beauty began to decay."


A footstep draws near! My Lord-He is here!

He gazes in pain and amazement.

This wreck is the Temple for you I did rear," For shame I could not raise my eyes.

0, foolish one, what doest thou lack, but the will? If these were too narrow for thee,

More stately apartments to plan and to build? Who loves not my gift, loves not me."

He passed, and I dared not beseech Him to stay-

My opened eyes, yes saw clearly now,

How foolish and blind was my envy; straightway I made with repentance a vow-

To honor my gift, to fill it with light, Embellish and keep it with care,

That henceforth it be in my Lord's kings sight A dwelling place lovely and fair.

When next His dear footsteps draw near to my door, With gladness I'll usher Him in;

No mildew or rust shall He see as before, To restore it at once I'll begin.

I'll live my dear home for the Giver's sake, nor sigh if more stately ones be,

For God, the dear Giver, can make no mistake; He knows what is best for me”.


That last stanza represents reconciliation, not relaxation; peace, not mere patience. There is a wholeness and holiness about its acceptance that fairly radiates. Possibly it was in this mood-envy laid and dissatisfaction dissolved by joy-that she spent the next quarter century before her death.

She had cause for bitterness during those last years in Manti. She had thought marriage something to be endured during life for the sake of its blessings afterwards, and now she would not have those blessings. In this time of double bereavement, she must have clung to her children as the one great good that her marriage had produced-but death took half of those that remained after Charles' death. However, the quality of her previous life and the resolution of her character let us predict with safety that those years at the close were indeed years of peace and faith. If she had, at any point, been given the choice between suffering with eventual salvation, and shallow contentment with dulled sensibilities and a less-than-total achievement, she would have held out both hands to pain at once. She was that kind of woman.


The following is the official Autobiography of Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton.

Sarah Lucinda wrote the story of her life in the form of this letter to Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells, then the editor of the “Woman’s Exponent” an unofficial journal reflecting the interest of the Mormon Relief Society and dedicated to promotion of woman suffrage.


In this letter of autobiographical material discussing her problem of being educated, liberated woman in world dominated by men. Born in Alabama, 1847. Joined Mormons in DeWitt County, Texas, 1849. Crossed plains to Utah, 1850. Settled at San Bernardino but returned to Utah at outbreak of Utah War, 1857-58. She was a Teacher. Married Charles W. Dalton. Spiritual experiences. Written in Circle Valley, Piute County, 1876.

The Woman's Exponent was a bi-monthly paper independently published in Salt Lake City between 1872 and 1914. It was outspoken in its support of feminism and suffrage, regularly editorializing and reporting on the movements. It also reported on the activities of LDS women's organizations, including Relief Society and Young Ladies Association. It received encouragement from church leaders but was financed by subscription.


AUTOBIOGRAPHY of Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton:


Circle Valley, Piute, Co. Utah

27 December 1876


Mrs. E. T. Wells

Salt Lake City, Utah


Dear Sister:


I prefer giving the brief sketch of my life, which you have asked of me, in the form of a letter to yourself; and although I leave you liberty to do with it just as you please, so abridge, to prune--yet I think I would prefer to have you treat me in the third person, still reserving to yourself the right to make extracts from my own words.


I was born in the year 1847 on a plantation in Coosa County, Alabama. The Gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gained my parents in DeWitt County, Texas in 1849. In the spring of 1850, they started with many other converts to Utah. And one incident of their experience, which, as related by my parents, always possessed most fascinating interest to met I must relate.


They were waiting at Council Bluffs or Kanesville in company of, many gold hunters and other unbelievers for the spring rain to start the grass for the support of the teams. The spring was warm but dry; and for weeks they waited and watched without seeing the least favorable indication.


At last Elder-Orson Hyde, who was presiding over the companies of Saints, instructed them to inquire into the condition of the poor among them, minister to all their actual needs, set all temporal things in order and then come with pure hearts and clean hands before their God and ask for rain. They did so; and the gold hunters looked on in round eyed wonder at the preparation; and when, all 'things being, prepared, a protracted meeting was called and the Saints began to pray so fervently for rain, they, the gold hunters, looked up at the smiling sky and shook their heads.


However, they forbore to scoff because they hoped for the same thing the Saints prayed for. The first afternoon a few small dots of clouds appeared and passed over. The second day a small but damp-looking cloud hovered about and I think it was on the third day "they fled, every man to his tent, for the windows of heaven were opened" so widely that some talked of a second deluge. The gold hunters shook their heads more than ever and declared it to be more than they could understand. The warm earth drank the refreshing draught and shot up the beautiful herbage all were so anxious to see, and then all joyfully crossed the river and took their way into the wilderness. I was not more than three years old at the time, but I distinctly remember crossing the river, and also many incidents connected with the journey to Utah.


Early in 1851 my Parents went to California with the company led by A. M. Lyman and C. C. Rich; remained there seven years and returned to Utah in the winter of 1857-8. They were so poor that sometimes we wanted for broad; but in my tenth year, a small patrimony of my mother's relieved the case a little. But during the deepest of his poverty, my father determined that his children should not be ignorant as well as poor. At the close of his days work patiently taught us while yet too young to attend the common schools. So effectual was his care on me, that when, according to law I completed 5th year and entered the public school, I found myself in a class of great, untaught girls entering their teens. My mother, too, was so energetic in the matter of sending us to school, that though having many small children, and being under the necessity of "taking in work" for the sake of what she could earn, she kept the older ones in school so resolutely, that I only remember losing half a day in several years. I was eleven years old when we returned to Utah, and though I did not then know, what I know now, how she sat by her candle far into the night while I slept, to keep up with woman's everlasting work so that she could spare me, her eldest daughter (the mother's right hand) to attend school. I was not ungrateful even then for I loved my books and came to regard the head of the class as my rightful place, my parents desired to give me especially every opportunity at their command, hoping that afterwards I would be able to teach my younger brothers and sisters. But the mixed and ill-regulated schools of new countries such as Southern California and Utah were twenty years ago, are not capable, of even when supplemented by diligence, of giving that thorough and methodical training which is the great object of school life. Scattered in- formation is certainly better than none, but in my opinion, for the purpose of life, it compares with symptomatic training much like a weak crutch with a strong leg. I keenly feel this great defect in my merely common school education, but much was the best then to be had.


The first teacher whose instruction I enjoyed in Utah, --bless him! Seemed to think me a sort of rough diamond, and compassionating my ravenous hunger for knowledge, gave to me instruction many a noontide hour when other children played and other men went home to dinner. He introduced me to a few of the elements of common philosophy, gave me a few simple lessons in botany and some other branches of natural history, and led me through some of the enchanted vales of poesy; and his criticisms on elevated and manlin sentiment in poetry are still my guide. He also gave me the first sweet drought from the immortal fountain of music--and the love of music was truly the master passion of my soul. On his authority I have the temerity to say that I had a genius for music: but alas, and alas! It is dying of hunger. His rudimentary instruction, the village choir and an accordion limit ray musical advantages and attainment. And OH, pity me that it in so ! because my longing for musical culture has been so intense as to be beyond expression. No weary traveler across the burning desert ever longed more bitterly for water, nor famished slave for bread, than I for music.


At the age of twelve years, this beloved tutor and friend began training me for a teacher; but a few months later my father opened a private school and took me to assist him, and from that time I was a pupil no more. I worked with him the greater part of the time until about sixteen years old, when I was installed teacher of an infant school. I followed teaching as a profession several years during which time the infant school resolved itself into a mixed or common school, and I found myself under the necessity of applying myself to my books or acknowledging myself vanquished by industrious boy or girl. Many an evening I faithfully fathomed the few pages in the Arithmetic which the first pupil would likely to achieve during the following day and the knowledge that it must be done, so sharpened wits that I never failed, and seldom had any serious difficulty.


Thus I advanced my knowledge of the common branches of learning, but my great ambition to gain a liberal education is still ungratified. In the early days of Utah, the struggle for bare sustenance was so severe that there was little time or opportunity for anything else, but I am thankful it is so much better now. I am truly thankful for every advantage I did enjoy, and truly wish I had improved them better; but there are times when my heart faints within me as I think of my God-given talents rusting away

for want of polishing and I do believe there is sin in coveting that which is my neighbors when I see others slight their privileges and trifle those inestimable opportunities for which I have been almost consumed with longing. And it is most humiliating to see boys and girls get in their teens acquiring greater proficiency than all my tedious years of self culture have enabled me to gain. But I am glad they are not limited to my meager opportunities and I console myself for all that I lack, with the hope and determination that my children shall have a large part of that which I sought but never found.


From my childhood I have done considerable thinking and long years ago, pondered questions which puzzle me still. As long ago as I can remember I longed to be a boy, because boys were so highly privileged and so free. Thousands of things for which I heard girls gravely reproved, met only an indulgent smile when done by boys. They could go when and where they pleased, alone or otherwise, without a thought of danger or impropriety. Education was offered to them accompanied with bribes, promises and persuasions, while doled out to girls grudgingly as something utterly wasted and expected to be of no further use. Well I remember my disgust when I asked a gentleman teacher if, in his opinion, I was sufficiently advanced in mathematics to study algebra with profit and he replied that it would be wasted time for me ever to study it, because I already had more learning than was necessary for a good housekeeper, wife and mother which was a women’s only proper place on earth. However, it is but justice to him and myself to say that he has since warmly commended my efforts at self culture and the good I have done an a teacher.


Often I have winced under the unconcealed contempt for "Females" expressed by masculine of all grades from the urchin in pinafores to the finest scholars and ablest stamen of the world. For these and many other reasons, in my youth and "blissful ignorance” longed to be a boy; but like Fanny Ferin "I am now thankful that I belong to a more respectable class of society".


Not for all their boasted "supremacy", "superiority" and extended advantages would I have women come down to their low moral level. Intellectual acquirements, fame, power, and even their self conceit added is as feathers in the scale against moral purity and since undeniably there are vastly more good women than good men on the earth, who will dare decide that it would not be better for all potent custom to allow, two or more of these good woman to marry one good man, than to condemn them whether they would or not, either to live single or to wed a man a thousand fathoms beneath them? I never could see a spark of justice in that rule, inalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, that unless married, a woman passing to middle age must be severely condemned, while there is so little in the condition of matrimony and its male candidates to tempt a refined and noble minded woman.


(When I first entered "society" it did not take me long to perceive that the smiles and courtesies, the attentions and polite services which were showered upon me were given, not to me, but to my youth and personal appearance; while my mother whose noble soul and heroic self sacrifice for her children’s good I knew to be so well worthy of respectful homage, was indebted for brief courtesy to the sole fact of being a sort of appendage to a young lady's state.)


Even while polite attentions from gentlemen were in themselves pleasant, I always felt a sort of quilt in accepting for personality what I knew was tendered merely to abstract youth and beauty; and much disgust at the thought that my quick intellect, my honest heart, my high aspirations, all the sterling worth that was really of myself were never considered in this glittering realm of pleasure to which I was beckoned. What girl that ever paused to think that she was caressed by society merely for her youth and freshness, things not in the least due to herself, and which advancing time will surely take from her and then will surely be forsaken by this same society through no fault of her own, would ever become enamored of its fleeting pleasure and hollow praise? I never was. Although the metrical movements of the dance in time to the rhythm of sweet music were very pleasant, I could grow tired as of any other kind of exercise but I have seen girls who professed never to tire of dancing. I have often looked on while the beautiful girls, radiant in youth and happiness, with their devoted partners whirled through the dreamy waltz or sprightly cotillion, and mused on the possibility of one of these lovely and carefree maidens, become a woman and perhaps a wife of one of these same adoring youths, wearing out not only her youth but her very life, drudging from morning to night to keep his house and from night until morning with his ailing baby, only to be looked on by him as an inferior being, designed by nature to serve him. He will also think her a lucky women to have won so superior a man as himself to take care of her; and he will talk about supporting her as if she did not perform more actual work and do more real contriving in twenty-four hours than her lord and master in a week. I wondered how any men could have the effrontery to ask, or any woman the supiness to lay down the scepter and crown of girlhood to assume the yoke and burden of wife hood. M pray or was then as now that the time may come speedily when women will know and hold themselves at their true worth; when their eyes will be opened to the degradation of wasting their spotless lives on worthless and depraved men when by the extent of their knowledge of life as it is and as it should be by the depth of their contempt for men who lead unholy lives, and by the firmness of their resolution and the dignity of their self-respect they shall compel men to come up to their standard of morality and with them seek something still better, or be outcast from the Eden of women’s association. Since there is nothing in nature to prevent woman from sharing all the good things of this world. I am proud and thankful to see her beginning to burst the bands of that ironhanded custom which has so long warned her not to touch, and asserting her co-heirships with her brotherman. I am not so unjust as to make no exceptions to all the sweeping assertions I have been making. I know all women are not good and true, nor all men tyrannical and unjust. I could mention the names of several men pledged heart and soul to the Latter day work of woman’s emancipation from her long bondage; and one at least of my acquaintance is a far more ferocious antagonist of Woman Slavery than I. From him I received the first antidote draught to cure my misanthropy and disgust of life. He was the first showed me wherein religion is not leagued with woman's oppressors; who first assured me with a man’s lips that woman has as good a right to her individuality and her free agency on this earth as her brotherman. So you see, my dear friend, that for his sake, did I never know another liberal minded, large-hearted man, I could not, and would wish to condemn the whole race. I shall give honor where honor is due, and while waiting for the good time coming when all men-women shall be free and equal, put in my feeble oar wherever I can in her service.


I am religious by nature; and in behalf of my religion I will bear witness that it has upheld me through many a bitter trial, and comforted me in grief when nothing else could. I was early taught to pray, and for the greater part of my life never closed my eyes for sleep without prayer. I do not recollect ever attending a ball or place of amusement without asking God to keep me from all ill or unbecoming thoughts, words or deeds and from accident or harm of any kind. During the entertainment I often recalled the prayer and call truly say that my prayers were answered. Few young girls ever met fewer little mortifying mishaps, or moved amid giddy pleasures with less danger of becoming enamored of them.


I was baptized at eight years old with the understanding from my parents' teaching, that this ceremony and covenant, entered into willingly, entitled me to all the privileges and blessings of a beloved child of our Father until I should arrive at years of discretion; when it would become necessary for me either to ratify or repudiate the covenant. Looking back, I see Multiplied Manifestations of grace which should have comforted and strengthened and satisfied me. But, from reading and tradition, I was so deeply imbued with the methodistical idea of a sudden and entire change of Heart that I was blind to try open sweet experience of the grace of God; and sought mourning for that, which was already mine. Where can be a need of a "change of heart" if one's heart is already at the feet of Christ? And what could convince one of being accepted by God, if not such an experience as that.


When I was about sixteen years old, a beloved baby brother was very sick and sinking so rapidly that 1 had great fear that he would die; but I felt, in all humility, that I had lived near to the Lord, had tried to do His will and was entitled to claim the promise “Whatever ye ask in my name in faith that ye shall receive". Un-know to my parents, I fasted and prayed with intense fervor that the little one's life might be spared. I could not fail to see that he no longer grew worst, but neither did he grow better; but just remained at one point which was a point of deep distress. For several days he lingered thus, I felt like I had lifted heavy weight just to the edge of a place of rest but lacked the one-ounce of power necessary to deposit it thereon. Coming at one time suddenly into the room, I saw my mother wring her hands and cry in anguish: “Why, Oh why must my innocent baby suffer so much” If it is God's will to take him away, Oh, let his cruel sufferings end!" My heart smote me guiltily. Perhaps, thought I, it is God's will to take him, perhaps my shortsighted wishes stand between the beloved and his rest. I hastened away and with streaming eyes fell upon. my knees crying: "Thy will 0 Lord, not mine be done” As soon as I was calm enough to reenter the sick room I did so and was struck to the heart by the change in the precious one's face and the same evening he died.


But the greatest spiritual manifestation ever vouchsafed to me was in relation to my marriage. I had seen in the married state so much that was disagreeable amid humiliating to women, that I was firmly resolve to remain single. I knew I was quite able to provide for myself and lay up a competence for age without any man's assistance and although I loved children, I could not bring myself to believe that rearing children was the only way in which a women could serve the Lord acceptably. I knew that in my own profession of teaching I could do more to mold the moral nature of the young than any one mother in the privacy of her home. Moreover there are few who yearn for children who cannot find some poor, motherless lamb of the fold needing shelter and though I never tried to cheat myself into the belief that any such could ever be quite one’s own flesh and blood. I believed then as firmly as I do now, that it is the good we do rather than the personal pleasure in doing it, which brings us joy hereafter. I was quite willing that those who chose that manner of serving the Lord might marry; but I was determined to choose the "better" way according to St. Paul. But as I gained "here a little, and there a little" knowledge of the religion I professed and especially when after much meditation, study and prayer, I in my twentieth year, willingly renewed my covenant and enrolled myself a responsible member of the church. I learned that in the highest glory of Heaven, none are single. One man or one woman is but half of a perfect individual and we must bid adieu to reason itself when we try to suppose that anything short of absolute perfection will attain to the highest glory. The highest Heaven had always been my goal, this little insurmountable piece of reasoning was worse than gall and wormwood to me, for in my pride of heart, I had determined to win my soul's salvation alone. I did not want a co-worker, forgetting that the best and bravest of us are only too happy to be acknowledged coworkers with Christ. It took some time to reconcile my hard heart to this fact; I even told myself I should prefer to become handmaiden to some sanctified woman than what I termed "chief servant in a gentleman's household". I had been told in express terms by some blind leaders of the blind; that the Kingdom, here and hereafter be- longed only to man; and that woman enjoyed its gifts and blessings only in sufficient degree to make her man's efficient servant; and that looked to me not worth striving for.


It was in this state of mind that I first became acquainted with Charles Wakeman Dalton, who, after a time, intimated to me that I would make a most desirable wife. I resented the thought and told him that the man who thought I should be a meek, obedient, unobtrusive servant was very sadly wrong. When he comprehended my bitterness and my position on the subject, he mildly reasoned that to be a servant is not always a degrading thing, but the reverse. The greatest service ever performed on earth was done by Christ for the whole human family, and which left us all deeply his debtors. It benefits conferred, produces a corresponding obligation on the part of the one benefited. Between husband and wife there is need of mutual service and whichever fails in discharging this obligation falls thus far under condemnation. For the wife is no more bound to follow the husband's advice than he hers; but when advice is really good, either would lose by not doing so. He know of no such obligation which was not equally binding of each. This was new light on a difficult problem. This was speaking from reason and common sense instead of vaguely hinting at some foggy superstition about man's being created first and consequently best, noblest and supreme. These were arguments at once indisputable and satisfactory. No true woman wishes to evade her just obligations, but she scorns to enter into a contract which binds only herself. While mutual service is pleasant and desirable, one-sided service is bitter and detestable; the one is truly ennobling, the other degrading. I began to see that artificial rule had superseded natural ones in this matter, but that because most people arrived at a false conclusion by taking a false starting point, I had no need to do the same. With a husband who is willing, a woman may easily preserve her individuality even after marriage; always provided she has any to be preserved, and that I considered I did have. Here, thought I, is a man who does not think that merely because he is male he stands a whole flight of stairs higher in creation than a woman and believe him to be honest and true as well as liberal minded. I could see that it would be easy to love him. At this point a new hydra rose up before me in this shape: "Who are you and how did you become so wise as to dare choose with whom you will pass not only this brief life but the countless ages of eternity?" I felt that I did not dare; for had not thousands of wiser and better women than I made mistakes which wrecked not only their own happiness here and hopes for the hereafter, but entailed misery, disgrace and ruin on. innocent children. For time alone, as the people of the world marry, I could not and would not, because I considered that in a woman's case, the burdens and trials of matrimony far exceed its benefits and blessings., Only for the sake of its expected joys in eternity, could I endure its trials through time; but that cherished "free agency" which gives a woman the choice with which of her fellow beings she will undertake to find eternal happiness, began to look far more like a burden and a snare than a than a privilege or a blessing. I thought and dreamed about it; I grew pale and hollow-eyed over it but found no conclusion. I was at list willing to love a man, but dared not assume the responsibility of becoming his wife.


Getting no answer to all my prayers, in very despair and in deep humiliation because I was impressed so to do--I called on him to pray with me on the subject. I know he was startled by the demand, and felt it like assuming a great responsibility, but he hesitated only long enough to learn that there was no shadow of trifling in me. He knelt down first, and I placed myself beside him and laid one of my hands on one of his and as I did so, I felt a thrill through every fiber of my being and I know he felt the same. I was utterly crushed under the knowledge that within a few minutes a question would be settled which would shape and determine my destiny forever. Cowardly, I dreaded to meet the decision. The prayer was short, simple and unassuming, but direct, earnest and sincere and at every word uttered a huge stone of my mountain load of doubt and fear rolled from my soul.


I felt that we were in the presence of the hosts of heaven and a direct incontrovertible testimony was given me that it was the will of God and not my will that I should acquire this man for my yoke-fellow. He knew as well as I what the decision was and in awe struck solemnity we left the spot. To this day it is to both of us a most precious and solemn recollection and is never mentioned between us except with deepest reverence.


Early in my married life one day my mother was sitting with me in my own home, and I was embroidering a delicate muslin robe for my expected child. After much pleasant conversation, she inquired half playfully, how I felt doing such pretty work for a child of my own. A most natural and innocent question, but, my mother thought, most direful in its effect; for, throwing down the work and bursting into hysterical weeping I wailed: "Oh! Mother, I feel like I were sewing on a shroud." She was alarmed for my safety, and urged the necessity of self-control, and begged to know if she had said anything wrong. When I was sufficiently recovered, I explained. For months a haunting dread had hung like a great, black cloud over me, that my child would die in infancy. I had tried to smile at it; I had refused it admittance to my thoughts; I had fought it like a deadly foe, and barred the doors of my soul against it; but still it lay in wait, and my Mother's unexpected question suddenly flung wide all those barred doors and gave the enemy full possession. Lying, as I may say, a bound and helpless captive at the feet of my foe. I confessed my secret grief. As in duty bound, even had she not fully believed it, my mother argued that I mistaken nervousness for presentiment and assured me that by the time I had borne half a dozen children I should be able to discriminate better. I sobbed forth "I wish you were right, Mother, but my child will live six months, a year or possibly two years, but not longer.''


Great was my surprise and delight, when, instead of the funny, wailing little skeleton I had expected, my child was a great, lusty boy who seemed the very impersonation of good health, high spirits and precocious intellect. Nothing ever seemed to hurt him,, and in the pride of my heart I laughed at former fears to scorn. I told my mother she was right and I was tempted to give up my belief in presentiments entirely. But in his fifteenth month, I found myself compelled to wean him; and it was with a sinking heart that I took him from the breast and began the old warfare again. He pinned from that day and in spite of all care, all weeping and praying, he died in my arms on the second anniversary of his birthday and we buried him in the embroidered dress I had once called a shroud. A strange and sad experience truly, and my mother lives to testify to its truth; but the warning which was once my torture and foe, is now my comfort and friend; because it assures me that it was not my ignorance of the laws of life and health which deprived the world of so noble a soul, but the will of God..


In the year of 1874, one of my inmate friends lost her husband by death. She was a woman of weak nerves and frail health and it was a heavy blow to her. I visited her in her bereavement and thought she found comfort in my visits.


One night a few months after, when alone but for my second and only living child, I was suddenly, but without any stock or fear, with a vivid impression or consciousness that my friend's dead husband was present. I opened my lips to say: "Are you here Bro. and what can I do for you?" When the thought, "Who are you and what were you to him that you should receive communication from the dead?" I checked the words upon my lips. But the drawer was given that the husband dared not approach the wife because it would endanger her life and it was necessary that she should yet live--and that she would believe my word just as implicitly as a direct communication. At this point a pang, like grief reflected from another personality smote my heart and I knew that the presence was gone. Sorely did I repent my wicked humility, and with a sense of guilt I felt that I had lost an opportunity of doing good. After a few weeks my friend’s youngest child, an angle on Earth, died after only a few hours of languid discomfort which could hardly be called sickness. When I heard of it, I seemed to know that it was warning of this very thing, which I had been, desired to convey. When looked on the lovely, smiling face and dimpled hands, in all but color, a picture of blooming life and health, and beheld the frantic grief of the mother, my sense of guilt was almost more than I could bear. Soon afterward, I attempted to ease my mind by relating to the stricken one by incomplete experience, hoping she would utterly refuse to credit its genuineness. So far from doubting, she asked: "Oh, why did you not tell me even what you could? Do you think that had I known even that much, when my little girl came to see as she did only the day before she died, kissing and petting me, and saying so earnestly and so lovingly, "Oh, Ma, what makes you so good?" I say do you think anything on earth could have hindered me from returning her sweet caresses and precious love, instead of saying as I did say, "Shame on me, run away, dear, I am busy now” Do you think I would have been so busy as that, had you told me even a little?" Thus did that self-distrust which many are pleased to call modesty, become in me a sin; and as such do I repent it.


These are not all of my spiritual experiences, but sufficient to be here related. I acknowledge my comparative ignorance of the things of God and the laws of spiritual progression here and hereafter; but what I do know. I know!

I bear my testimony that God has stretched forth his hand to redeem his people; that Joseph Smith was a Prophet, Seer and Revelator, and Brigham Young his rightful successor; that the whole content, of the records from which the "Book of Mormon" was translated have not yet been revealed; but will be in the own due time of the Lord, at which time all who love him will rejoice. Blessed be most holy name. Amen


(Signed) Lucinda Lee Dalton

P.S. Dear friend: Even after "Rising in the night" I have overstepped the limits I gave myself, but truly have done my best. My husband's full name is Charles W. Dalton., and you may insert it where I had left it out if you think best. I hope I have not been tedious and that my story may do some good. I think you should send me a proof sheet. Received your postal too late. Sent a letter too just before, "By" unimportant. Please write as soon as you read this.


In love and haste,

L. L. D.

(Lucinda Lee Dalton)


Another letter written by Lucinda Lee Dalton:


Payson, Utah Co., U.T.

Dec. 9, 1891.


Dear Cousins Lois & John.


Mother forwarded your letters and her reply to me so that mine could go with hers. I was very glad indeed to hear from you, for I was feeling very lonesome, because I am a stranger here. I am teaching school here, and of course you will want to know how that is. Well, I "had too much to say"; that is, I always took the liberty to assert that it was a disgrace to the town to hire girls who had education enough, ability-enough, and character enough, to be trusted with our little children, for three dollars a week. The girls learned my tune and sung it to the Board until they were forced to raise their wages to the extravagant sum of $4.50 a week! Holding me to blame for this squandering of the publics funds, the Board resolved to take it out of my salary this year. But when I refused to rebate a hundred dollar of my wages, they hired another man, paid him as much or more, and left me to learn wisdom by the things I suffered. But Providence was on my side; I know, because Payson sent for me unasked, and I am all right yet.


Annie had been urging mother for some time to come and visit her and since I was to be away so long, she thought it a favorable time for her visit, so it works well all around. Clifford has been having mumps, but very lightly, and is on the mend. Emma was in Provo last week with Rose but is now back in Salt Lake. Mary Black, Mary's oldest daughter, visited mother at Manti since I came away. Mother does have letters from Rupert and Charles, and will now get more news, Ellen lives in Provo. Please write again. Your affectionate cousin, L. L. Dalton.

(The following was written upside down in the top margin)


Love to all your children and Ida Udall, and all inquiring friends. Cannot answer you

properly this time, but try, please.

Lu.


The below article was written by Lucinda Lee Dalton and read on 16, April 1912.


"Sketch of the life of John Percival Lee" by Lucinda Lee Dalton.


Among the converts to the new and much abused faith called in derision "Mormonism",

Encamped in Council Bluffs, Pottawatomie Co. Iowa during the winter of 1849-50 was a small family named Lee, consisting of father, mother and three small children. The father, John Percival Lee was born in the state of Tennessee; The mother who was formerly Miss Eliza Foscue, was born in Florida, the first child in Kentucky, the second in Alabama and the third in Texas; and in after years it was said of the Lee that they hunted up their children all over the U.S.


It was in Texas, Dewitt Co. that they first met a missionary, his name was Preston Thomas, teaching the principles of the new gospel dispensation. They hailed the doctrines with had long hungered and regarded with amazement their neighbors who could not discuss their principles or their advocates without anger. Undeterred, however by the opinions of others, Mr. and Mrs. Lee received baptism at the hands of these Elders.


They felt to congratulate themselves on the fact that they had not yet invested the small means they had brought with them from Alabama because now they could clearly see there would be no peace for them among their former friends and the only course was for them to go West where the Saints were located two years before. They hired a team to convey them to San Antonio Bay at the mouth of Guadeloupe River from thence sailing along the coast to New Orleans.


The writer, the Alabama child has been suspected of gross error for insisting that she remembers clearly one small incident connected with the re-embarkation on board a river steam boat at New Orleans, but I do remember it and ever shall. I and my brother, the Kentuckian were allowed to stand near a railing and look through at a swarm of row boats laden with various things for sale. We were both wildly excited when we spied a small clean boat which displayed a beautiful array of seashells and brought our mother to come and look. On her arrival the boatman began importuning her to buy and we children were not slow to add our entreaties. I coveted a snow white shell about the size of my two little fists, that was pink or red inside; and my brother begged for a spotted one. Our mother finally bought a few, giving each of we children two. And where is the wonder that even so small a child should remember the first real treasure upon which her baby heart had ever been set? I also remember how some four or five years later those two shells went out of my possession and who was to blame for it? The treasures of childhood are few and precious and to be bereft of them is tragic.


I do not remember anything about the voyage up the Mississippi nor the debarkation; but

something about the encampment at Council Bluffs. The ground was slightly rolling with clumps of trees, here and there, a few log houses and many tents and wagons and the Indians were called Pottawattamies. Apostle Orson Hyde was presiding over the saints; advising, cheering, encouraging the motley and mixed assemblage of humanity, most of whom had been driven with violence and reviling from there comfortable homes in Missouri and Illinois. They may be said to have been in want of all things because it was so little that they could bring away with them. My father who had come by water had scarcely a beginning of a traveling outfit. He had been brought up in a county store, was little used to teaming and worst of all was afflicted with ague, and as he himself said could not be counted for more than "half a hand" He and others in like predicament secured the countryside in search of wagons, teams etc. and be succeeded in securing at very high rated, a light wagon and a heavy one, a span of horses, two yoke of oxen, three dry cows and a small tent.


He desired a teamster to drive the ox team, thinking the light rig enough for a semi invalid to handle. No really suitable person was found and finally my father accepted the services of a gold seeker without bag or baggage. In the meantime the spring was advancing and the camp growing more and more congested. Even those whose preparations were completed, would not begin their long journey because there had been no rain consequently there was no feed for the teams.


Day after day and week after week the weather remained fair and bright, the people were steadily consuming their provisions, anxiety was increasing and still all reports from westward said, "No rain, no grass". Finally Bro. Hyde told the people on Sunday that all needful blessings had been promised to the Saints and no good thing would be withheld from them and it was their right and privilege to ask from their Heavenly Father and receive whatever they stood in need for. He instructed them to go home and prepare for rain. Not only put their possessions under cover, but see that no human soul was left shelter less, open their houses or tents to such as had none. When all was in readiness They would hold a three-day meeting and pray in faith for rain.


Besides the Saints there was quite a large number of gold-seekers also waiting for rain and chafing in extreme impatience. They could not forbear to ridicule these grave and diligent preparations for rain when there was not the smallest indication in nature. However they desired it as much as anybody, so they curbed their scorn in some degree and waited.


On the appointed day the Saints met to sing and pray and praise and some of the gold seekers hung round the edges of the congregation to listen and smile. The first day of fasting was fair and pleasant and the second was like it, except that in the afternoon appeared on the horizon, a little cloud about the size of a man's hand. On the third day rain began to fall before the congregation was dismissed. That night and for a whole week, the windows of heaven were open and the thirsty earth was filled and satisfied. Saints and sinners rejoice together, while the latter said it is a "fine coincidence". The former said, "Our God has heard our prayers". Just as soon as the ground dried a little, they started out.


My father's anxiety was at its height when the gold hunter presented himself and offered to drive for his keep, saying that he had been in partnership with two others in a light rig and a few supplies, but that the others had taken advantage of a temporary absence of himself and had sneaked away with all he owned, And now he wanted nothing on earth but to overtake them on their side of hell.


The companies were organized in fifties, fifty wagons or families to a company with a Captain at the head. These were subdivided into tens, each with a Captain of ten, so that all measures of safety and business could be conducted without jar or friction and not the least unit be neglected. Here I have another glimpse of memory. The wagon I was in proceeded a short distance and stopped facing the great Missouri River and I looked out the front of the wagon at the dark rolling flood and wondered if it were possible for our horses to wade through it. I must have fallen asleep and missed the crossing in a flat boat, for the next thing I remember was looking through the back of the wagon and wondering how the river got behind us.


The Omaha Indians on the west side of us were friendly, but by the time we reached the Platte River, we had left all friendly Indians behind us. Captains cautioned the women and children to stay with the wagons. My mother had a very vivid dream that made her extra cautious. It seemed that because her children grew very restless in the wagon, for a little change she alighted with them to walk a little. The Kentucky boy and the Alabama Girl was able to use their own little trotters but the Texas girl who was puny and ailing had to be carried in arms. The children ran from side to side in the road and wanted to examine every new object, making so little distance that the mother soon says that this would not do. On raising her eyes she was frightened to see the last wagon, which happened to be her own, disappear round a point of the hill and she could not hurry the little ones even enough to catch sight of the last train. Soon she was surrounded by mounted Indians who leaned from their horses and caught up the last helpless ones. She Remembered the dash into the hills, the weariness of the swift face, the fretting of her teething babe, the silent fear of the two older children held in the arms of the naked savages; and her own blank despair; also the cold sleepless night spent on the bare ground with the children in her arms. But the culmination of horror came at dawn when the screaming children were torn from her arms and born away in three different directions and herself in a forth. She awake sobbing and shaking to find herself and her darlings still safe and to resolve never to be guilty of the smallest indiscretion of that kind.


The Indians hovered round sometime succeeding in spite of all care in killing an ox or a cow or in stealing a horse; but did not capture any stragglers, or ever really attack the train.


At one crossing of the Platte, two of our cows bought forth beautiful heifer calves; but since they could not travel and there was no means of transportation, the pretty little things had to be killed and their poor loving mothers driven away without them. The grass was sweet and young and these cows gave an abundance of milk, which was a


Great blessing to their owners and others. The Indians soon killed one of our oxen and my father was obliged to put the dry into the yoke. The poor uneducated creature fretted and worried and wasted what strength she had and it was not very long until she was so reduced to a poor skeleton, with tender feet and sore shoulders. Then she could no longer walk beside her ill-tempered yoke mate. One of the other ones was substituted and it still was a failure the failure the cows could not take the place of oxen.


My father's health continued to be very poor and although he managed to do his part of guard duty, take his turn at driving the loose stock etc; he was poor help around his own camp fire. Timber was very scarce and the travelers would have suffered from lack of fuel had not the noble buffalo, who at that time roamed those plains in vast herds kindly strewn the earth with droppings, which the travelers could use for fuel. Mr. Clay, the driver of the ox team proved to be a surly ungracious churl, who would look after his team, but never lent a hand at anything else. Once while mother was gathering chips for cooking supper and her baby fretted and cried in the wagon. Clay lay on his back contentedly until a neighbor said, "Clay, why don't you gather that fuel and let Mrs. Lee tend to her baby?" He answered gruffly "I earn my salary by driving the team and never bargained to do women's work" "Oh bother your bargain, persisted the neighbor, while a little tired woman waits on your lazy bones while a baby cries for it's mother" Nothing seems to effect him.


When cholera broke out Mr. Clay was one of the first victims. He suffered terribly and mother did all she could for him but he soon succumbed. We wondered whether or not he met those who had defrauded him. Numbers of others old and young passed away with that dreadful disease and were buried the best way possible with a fire burned over each grave to keep wild animals away from the grave. The refugees who had been driven from their comfortable homes with curses and boasts and rejoicing from their enemies that if the wilderness did not swallow them up that savages surly would, had resolved to face all these dangers with songs and gladness and never show a sign of fear. To this end they conducted public prayers and almost nightly concerts around their central fires and further more they often brought out a violin or two and danced under the stars.


The deaths in camp interfered with the singing and dancing in some degree but did not suppress it altogether. Did not prevent Sunday services. The death of Mr. Clay left my father with both teams on his hands, and the days when his chills were on him he was not able to walk all day beside the oxen, as all ox drivers do, so on these days mother was obliged to drive the ox team. She had never done such a thing be fore, of course, but she never quailed under any new demand of duty born of the experiences of the times. On such days the two younger children rode in the ox wagon with her and here I remember another incident. Mother had been up in the wagon to comfort her baby and when ready to get out again, did not stop the team for they would have stopped every one behind it, but set her foot on the tongue and sprang to the ground behind the off ox which kicked at her with both feet as she went. This ox was a black one and hated Indians worse than his owners hated cholera and smallpox. He often gave warning by snorting and tossing his horns, when the Indians were anywhere near, especially if they were to windward and several times when Lee's black ox came bolting into camp from the herd ground, the guard was doubled.


The train had not proceeded far on its way until our heavy wagon caught on fire, i.e., in the axle tree and one wheel had to be taken off and lashed on the back and the poor tired oxen made to pull the wagon with one axle being drug on a pole. At camp that night the wheel was fixed. Since both wagon and team were growing weak my father cast about for some means to lighten his load. Among his fellow travelers he found one who was willing for a reasonable consideration to take one box to Salt Lake City for him.


When the time came that they could get another teamster they were glad to hire him, and he proved to be altogether better than Mr. Clay had been. His name was Moore.


Now the way became strewn with bones of animals, part of household furniture, abandoned wagons, etc; etc; The chief Capt. whose name mother refuses to tell for his own sake eternally forbid any one of his company to pick up anything no matter how desirable it may be, for fear they might contain infection of cholera.


One day this Capt. came to my father and informed him that someone's was weak and that Mr. Lee ought to take part of that load for the rest of the trip. My father explained that his own team was too weak to haul anymore and the Capt. grew angry and remained so the rest of the trip. Some in the company had to throw away some heavy articles to lighten their loads.


At one time the baby had a canker of the mouth and had found a pickle to chew at, mother was frightened thinking that would prove dangerous, but a neighbor said "Why that is good for canker" so after ward they kept the pickles for sore mouths in children. They had to stop every once in a while to wash clothes, do hunting for food, etc; Word came that tomorrow they would cross the Platte again, which meant that they were leaving the longest part of the journey behind them, which was good news to all. In a little while Bro. Lee lost an ox and was left behind his company, but another one led by Shadrick Roundy came along and he joined his company on Bro. Roundy's request.


On the Laramie plains occurred what mother calls the great stampede. The teams were tired, but one day suddenly, without known cause the whole outfit of oxen flung up heads and tails and with a dreadful bellowing set off at a wild gallop, scattering out on both sides of the road totally unmanageable. Mr. Moore was seated on the wagon tongue to give his weary feet a brief rest when the race began and he leaped in haste into the foot path, stepped on something that rolled and fell spraining his ankle badly. He sprang up and hobbled on in great fear for he knew he could not overtake them, they were headed directly toward a bluff, and Mr. Lees little boy was in the wagon. Providentially, some men on horse back, who had been out looking for game, rode in between the frantic oxen and the bluff, and gradually brought them into the road again, where they slowed down and stopped panting and exhausted. When the driver came up to them, the young Kentuckian looked out and cried cheerily, "I had a fine ride didn't I Mr. Moore"? How often do we escape danger without knowing it has been near us.


When within a few hours drive of Salt Lake City the Company went into camp for the purpose of having a general washing and cleanup. It occupied two or three days and was so through that even the wagons were brushed and dusted, the horses curried, the men shaved and cropped and the children put into clean aprons. Mr. Moore was anxious to push onto California before the 49ers should get all the gold but he was equally anxious to have his own wardrobe put into some kind of order. He stayed by, gathered fuel, carried water, build fires, lifted tubs, hanged out the wet cloths, amused the children and helped in the good work all that a mere man could.


Then all was prepared in putting the best foot foreword, they drove down to Salt Lake City, the three year old haven of refuge where the exiles hoped to have no fiercer foes than the Redman, who is as proud to display the scalp of a child as that of a fighting man.


Here the gold seeker and the Mormon family, whom he had so faithfully served, parted with mutual kind regards, and good wishes, never to meet again. This family had been six long months on the road. They waited beside the Missouri for grass of spring, and before the journey ended the nights were frosty and the grass sere. It was with profound thankfulness that Bro. And sister Lee took possession for the winter of a small two roomed log house on Big Cottonwood, which they were so fortunate as to rent from Bro. Homer Duncan and there on the last day of the year 1850 there forth child was born. They're little Utah girl.


Obituary of Lucinda Lee Dalton from the Deseret Evening News, 1 December 1925 - Section 2, p. 14.


"Pioneer School Teacher is buried at Manti"


Manti, Dec. 1 - (Special) - Funeral services for Mrs. Lucinda Lee Dalton were held in the North ward chapel Sunday under the direction of Bishop E.T. Reid. Speakers were: Bishop N. R. Peterson, Ezra Billings and L. H. Hoogard. Bishop Reid read some of Mrs. Dalton’s poems. The choir furnished the music. Mrs. Dalton was born Feb. 9 1847 in Coosa County Alabama. She came to Utah in 1849 with her parents, John P. Lee and Eliza F. Lee. John P. Lee was called with others by Brigham Young to go to California to settle the town of San Bernardino.


Mrs. Dalton started to teach school when 15 years old and taught 35 years in Manti, Beaver, Payson, Ferron and Ogden. She was a writer of both prose and poetry. She was married to Charles Wakeman Dalton in 1868. Six children were born to her, two of whom survive; C. W. Dalton, Salt Lake City and Belle D. Robbins of Los Angles Calif; Also four sisters; Mrs. Mary Black, Fruita; Colo. Mrs. Emma Sutherland, San Francisco; Mrs. Ellen Sanders, Salt Lake City; Mrs. Rose Sutherland, Washington D C.

and a brother, Charles A. Lee.

Buried in Plot A, Block 21, Lot 2, Grave 3.


Note: From the Ogden City Directory of 1899: "Dalton, Lucinda Lee (wife of Charles W.) res, 2147 Jefferson Ave.


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11- Sarah Jane Lee; The third wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton.


Sarah Jane Lee was born 3 Mar 1838 in Vandalia, Fayette, Illinois. Sarah died 27 Mar 1915 in Panguitch, Garfield, Utah, and was buried 29 Mar 1915 in Panguitch, Garfield, Utah.


From her childhood, Sarah Jane had a vivid memory of the occasion when the Prophet Joseph and his brother, Hyrum, were killed, as she lived near the Smiths. When their bodies were brought home from Carthage Jail, she cried bitterly. One day the Prophet's mother took her into a room of the Smith home, which had an unused fireplace with a curtain around it and showed her the Egyptian mummies Joseph had received.


She crossed the plains with her father's company at the age of nine or ten years, walking most of the way with her aged grandmother, Abigail Shaffer, who died on the trail soon after they crossed the Missouri River. The company eventually arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848. She lived around with her folks, as circumstances would permit, until she was fifteen years old, and then was persuaded to marry a polygamist, as the third wife of Charles Dalton. The ceremony was performed by George A. Smith. She had three children before she was twenty. She was in love with a young man when she married Dalton, so was not very happy with him. Dalton married three other women after he married Sarah Jane, one of who was Lucinda Lee. Not related.


Sarah Jane wanted her children to attend school. In order to pay for their tuition, she cleaned Lucinda's home, as well as doing the washing, ironing, and other various jobs for her. Sarah Jane always had to work very hard to educate and support her growing family since her husband provided very poorly for them.


After many years of marriage to Dalton, and bearing almost every privation, she decided to leave him and make a go of it on her own. A bishop's trial was held and she was granted a divorce. He was present at the proceedings and gave his consent for the separation. He gave her a small one-room house, which she sold for $150.00, and applied the money on a $600.00 home. She found a job at Minersville, Utah as proprietress of a hotel and finished making the payments on the home. Dalton gave her boys a small piece of land, a team of horses, and a few cows, which they turned over to the United Order, and came out of it with nothing. This experience embittered them to the extent that they did very little for or in the church thereafter. They worked very hard, however, to help their mother until they married and made homes for themselves.


When her ninth child was about seven years old, she met and married George McCook Underwood, who had come to Beaver when the army was stationed at Fort Cameron, just outside the town. He was a blacksmith and worked for the soldiers at the fort. On June 29, 1869 she had her tenth child, whom she named Lucy. She still had to work hard helping to provide for her family. After George left the service of the army, they moved to Marysvale, Pieta Co. Utah, to work in the mines, which were booming at that time. She divorced him while living there because of his heavy drinking, and moved to Beaver. Underwood went to Panguitch and put up a blacksmith shop, the only one in the vicinity for many years. He was an expert in this line, and could have made money but he continued drinking. Not many years before his death, he quit drinking and threw away his tobacco, tea, and coffee.


Sarah Jane spent several summers on the Prince Ranch at Panguitch Lake, making butter and cheese, which she sold for tax money and provisions. Later she re-married Underwood and lived with him until his death. Her worldly possessions were limited. They lived in a small frame house first and then in a two-room house across the street from the church. The third home they bought was a small house one block west of the church where they lived until both had passed away.


She married Charles Wakeman Dalton, 30 Dec 1852 in Parowan, Iron Co. Utah. He was born 10 Jul 1826 in Wysox, Bradford, Pennsylvania. Charles died 18 Jun 1883 in Beaver, Beaver Co. Utah. They had 9 children.


Sarah married George McCook Underwood about 1877 in Beaver, Beaver, Utah. He was born 25 Dec 1830 in West Middleburg, Columbiana, Ohio, the son of Jacob Underwood and Nancy Via. George died 3 Jun 1912 in Panguitch, Garfield, Utah, and was buried 5 Jun 1912 in Panguitch, Garfield, Utah. They had one child.


More: From the Personal Dalton Family History, by Rod Dalton.


Sarah Jane Lee Dalton, 1837-1915:


Sarah Jane Lee was born 3 March, 1837, at Vandalia, Illinois, the third child of John Doyle Lee and Agatha Ann Woolsey, his first wife. Since the two older children died before their second birthdays, Sarah Jane was, in effect, the oldest child. She was just a month or two old when her parents accepted the restored gospel and moved to the vicinity of Far West, Missouri. They arrived in Far West on June 4 and first saw the Prophet Joseph Smith on June 10, and heard him speak on the same day. They then settled some twenty miles southeast of Far West, where they were baptized on Sunday, June 17, 1838. It was a beautiful location for a home, land with deep, rich soil, a fine stream of water, a clump of trees for firewood, and a small lake teeming with fish. They soon built a small sod house and had some crops growing.


Sarah's father was in Far West at the time of the anti-Mormon trouble in November, 1838. Agatha Ann stayed at the farm with the baby. Mobs were ranging over the countryside, burning and looting. Lee was "examined" by General Wilson and was ordered to accompany the troops to Adam-ondi-Ahman since it was known that he lived in the vicinity. He received a report that his house had been burned, so as they approached the vicinity he asked for, and received, permission to go on ahead.

The report was true. From across the clearing he could see the charred logs of one corner of the house and the black place where the chimney had been. Agatha and little Sarah were huddled together in the shelter of the unburned corner, over which they had put some boards and a piece of canvas. A small fire burned in front, and a pile of brush and sticks was at one side, enough to keep it burning through the night.


On November 20 the little family set out from what had been their home to return to Illinois, but winter had now settled down in earnest, with so much snow that they could not travel, so they turned back toward Par West. It was mid-February before John D. Lee and his family finally started again for Vandalia, Illinois.


They moved to Nauvoo in early April 1840, where ultimately they had a fine home, with all the conveniences possible for that time.


From her childhood Sarah Jane had a vivid memory of the occasion when the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed, as she lived near the Smith home, and when their bodies were brought from Carthage she cried bitterly. One day the Prophet's mother took her into a room of the Smith home 'and showed her the Egyptian mummies Joseph had received.


March 4, 1846, was their day to leave Nauvoo. They crossed the Mississippi River on ice. They must now be content with parched corn meal, dried beans, wheat, salt pork, etc. Sarah Jane was just a day past her 9th birthday. Her father, although he kept the official records of the church at the time, says little of his family affairs, but on Saturday, 2 May, 1846, he wrote: "This morning I lay rather late, having neither bread nor meat in my tents, and having 28 persons to feed. I knew not where to go. However, I got up and walked east and soon met a man who offered to lend me both flour and bacon."

Lee was frequently gone on Church business. His first entry after his return from one such trip, on 31 July, makes it clear that there was sickness in camp, for on that day Presidents Young and Kimball "laid hands" on the head of Sarah Jane, and prayed for her recovery, and later in the evening President Young administered to her brother, John Brigham Lee.


Sarah lived in a tent in Winter Quarters until about December 1, 1846, because her father had been called by President Young to follow the Mormon Battalion to Santa Fe and bring back the soldiers' pay. He returned late in November and set about building cabins for his families. They were made of logs, with sod roofs, and were covered inside and out with mud.


The Lee family was not chosen to go to Utah in 1847 with the pioneer company, but instead was sent 17 miles from Winter Quarters, to a place known as "Summer Quarters" or "Brigham's Farm." There, houses were built, and vegetable plots were assigned to each family. The people raised good crops and were thus provided with a greater variety of foods.


On 1 June, 1848, John D. Lee, with his seven wagons, and in company with Brigham Young and a combined company of 623 wagons, not counting those under Willard Richards, pulled out of Winter Quarters for the trip to the Great Salt Lake Valley. When Sarah crossed the plains with her father's company at the age of eleven she walked most of the way with her aged grandmother, Abigail Shaffer, who died on the trail at the last crossing of the Sweet- water River, a few miles short of South Pass in Wyoming. Her father buried a load of grain he was hauling and used the wagon box to make a coffin for her grandmother to be buried in.


While walking and wading streams they became very tired and the grandmother had frequently to be taken into the wagon to rest. One evening after they had walked all-day they made camp in a canyon near two graves. Abigail walked around the graves and then said to Sarah Jane, "How would you like to leave me beside them" During the night she was stricken with mountain fever and died within forty-eight hours. Sarah Jane was very lonely without her grandmother and cried much because of leaving her at so lonely a spot. They arrived in the Salt Lake Valley at the end of September. Lee was assigned a lot in town and a farm eight miles out, in the cottonwood area. Agatha and Sarah Jane were among those who moved out to the farm early, where they had fuel nearby and feed for the cows.

John D. Lee was among the first to be called to settle in the south and work the iron deposits, in December1850. However Agatha had two very small children, so he took two of his other wives south that winter. The record does not tell just when Sarah Jane went south, but it was probably in the fall of 1851.


When Sarah Jane was fifteen years of age she was persuaded to marry a polygamist, becoming the third wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton. The ceremony was performed by George A. Smith. She was in love with a younger man so she was not very happy in this marriage. She became a mother for the third time before she was twenty years of age.


Sarah Jane wanted her children to attend school so, in order to pay for their tuition, she cleaned house for Lucinda Lee, another of Dalton's wives, who was the schoolteacher. She always had to work very hard to support and educate her growing family. She traveled around quite often, and her various moves can be reconstructed, in part, from what we know of the places where her children were born:


Heber in Cedar City in 1853. William, Henretta, and John Doyle at Fort Harmony in 1855, 1857, and 1859. Agatha Ann and Mary Rosebell at Centerville, Davis County in 1861 and 1863. Sarah Vilate, at Fillmore in 1866, and the three younger ones at Beaver in 1869, 1871, and 1879.


It would be interesting to know the reason for all those moves, but we do not.


Lee mentions that he visited his daughter, Sarah Jane Dalton in Salt Lake City in December 1857. She was living there at that time. It was on this trip that he met and courted Emma Batchelor. The story, as told by Juanita Brooks, "The next morning he took Emma and Sarah Jane to the city to shop. They were almost the same age, these two, and were as much at home with each other as if they had been two sisters. He let them have their pictures taken together; he had his own done, too, but alone. He bought each of them a pretty fascinator to go around her shoulders and a lace handkerchief to carry. He took Sarah Jane home first, for though it was early afternoon, her two children would need her."


After many years of marriage to Dalton and bearing almost every privation, she decided to leave him and make a go of it on her own. A Bishop's trial was held and she was granted a divorce. Dalton was present at the proceedings and gave his consent, and gave her a small one room house, which she sold for $150 and applied the money on a $600 home. He gave her boys a small piece of land, a team of horses, and a few cows, which they turned over to the United Order, and came out of it with nothing, which experience embittered them toward the Church. However, they worked very hard to help their mother until they arrived and made homes for themselves.


After her divorce, Sarah Jane found a job in Minersville, Utah, as proprietress of a hotel and finished making the payments an her house. When her youngest child was about seven years of age she met and married George McCook Underwood, who had come to Beaver when the soldiers were stationed at Ft. Cameron, just outside the town. He was a blacksmith and worked for the soldiers at the fort.


On June 29, 1879, she had her tenth child, whom she named Lucy. She still had to work hard helping to provide for her family. After George left the service of the Army they moved to Marysvale to work in the mines that were booming at the time. While living there she divorced Underwood because of his heavy drinking, and moved back to Beaver. Underwood went to Panguitch and built a blacksmith shop, the only one in the vicinity for many years. He was an expert in this line of work, and could have made good money had it not been for his drinking.


Sarah Jane spent several summers on the Prince Ranch at Panguitch Lake, making butter and cheese, which she sold for money and provisions. Then she remarried Underwood, and lived with him in Panguitch until he died.


Her worldly possessions were very few. They lived in a small frame house, which was later used for a printing office. Then they lived in a two-room house across the street from where the chapel was built in 1958. They later moved a block away, where they lived until they both passed away. Sarah Jane Lee Dalton Underwood died on March 27, 1915. Her grave is near the center of the Panguitch Cemetery, marked by a square sided stone. She is identified simply as Sarah Jane Underwood.


Sarah Jane was a faithful Latter-Day Saint and did all she could to teach her children the gospel as she understood it. She had them all baptized, though the records are missing for six of them. She was a Relief Society teacher for fifty years; she cared for the sick when called upon and went into the homes of her children to give aid when she was needed. Soon after the death of her mother, Agatha Ann Woolsey Lee, her younger sister, Louisa, became very ill and was sent to Sarah Jane to be cared for.


She had many sorrows during her life. Two daughters died in their early-married life. one of them, Henretta, was treated so cruelly by her husband that it nearly broke her mother's heart. She reared two of this daughter's children, after they ran away from their father. She also raised three of her daughter Agatha Ann's children after their mother's death.

Sarah Jane was a very patient and good woman and a devoted mother. She was a noble, courageous pioneer, and deserved much more than this life afforded her.

We are grateful to Juanita Brooks, to Manetta Henry, and to Sarah Jane's daughter, Lucy Underwood Pendleton, for even these few glimpses into the life of the woman who was my great grand- mother. Perhaps, by preserving this bit of her history we can begin to understand and appreciate the brave pioneer woman that she was and the difficulties under which she persevered to raise her large family.


The gravestone of Sarah Jane Lee Dalton Underwood is in the Panguitch Cemetery.

12- Julietta Bowen; The first wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton.


Julietta Bowen Dalton was the second daughter born to Israel and Louisa Durham and was born on August 28, 1829 in Bethany, Genesee County, New York. When Julietta was a young girl, she and her family became interested in the newly organized LDS Church. The entire family, including her father, mother, brothers, Albert and David, and two sisters Harriet and Ann Maria were converted and baptized. Julietta's sister Eliza Jane refused to be baptized. Eliza Jane was horrified and sorrowful when the rest of the family accepted the Gospel, and she remained in New York when the family left to join the other Saints.


When the Bowen family was making plans and arrangements to travel further west, Julietta's father Israel died. The determination of Julietta's mother kept the family together for the journey west with out a man standing at the head of the family to protect and guide them.


Julietta met a young man, Charles Wakeman Dalton, who, after a brief courtship, asked for her hand in marriage. On January 13, 1847, the young couple was married in New York prior to their journey to Nauvoo to join the Saints.


On their trip to Nauvoo, Julietta and Charles crossed Lake Erie by boat. This route had been chosen in order that they might take with them some highly prized purebred animals. A fierce storm arose before the voyage was over, and it continued to get worse as the boat tossed to and fro against the enormous waves. The animals became terrified and almost uncontrollable so it was deemed advisable to turn them loose and let them go overboard. The young couple was sick at heart at their great loss but knew they need not grieve because they had done the only thing possible.


Julietta and her husband made a home in Nauvoo and lived there during the time of the worst persecution. The young couple left for the Salt Lake Valley in 1849.

Their son Charles Albert was born August 26, 1849, on the banks of the Sweet Water River.


One of their first homes in Utah was in Fillmore. During their stay there, Charles carried the mail by horseback. This work kept him away from home and family a great deal of the time. While Charles was away on one trip, the Indians went on the warpath, attacking the white settlers and burning everything as they went. Julietta was very frightened at the thought of being home alone with her small children but she tried not to transfer her fear to her children. One night she heard a noise but could not tell what it was in the darkness. She then heard someone drive up in a wagon. She froze with fear as she waited, forming a silent prayer on her lips. She went to the door and saw that it was the bishop. He called to her and told her to get her children in his wagon and leave as quickly as possible. Julietta did as the bishop bade her and swiftly collected necessary clothing and awakened the children. At the fort they found protection and courage as they waited with the rest of the town folk who were gathered there. Early the next morning, Julietta and her children returned to their home only to find it burned to the ground. Courageously, she set about the task of trying to salvage anything from the rubble. Only their strong faith and courage made them return to build again.


Later they moved to Beaver. Charles had married other wives in polygamy. Charles and two of his brothers, John Jr. and Simon, owned a store in Beaver, but their profits were barely enough to care for their families. Charles was very religious but was very easy going. He more or less neglected all of his wives, not meaning to as he loved them, but he could not take care of them properly. There were petty grievances and jealousies among some of the wives, so shortly before the ninth child was born to Julietta, she and Charles separated. Julietta, who had known some happy years with her husband, could not stand the continual strife and bickering.


Julietta was deeply in love with her husband and had consented when told by Charles that he had been commanded to take other wives. Now she was sad because things had not worked out, as they should. There were three wives, including Julietta, who left Charles at this time. After separating from her husband, Julietta continued to live in Beaver until her youngest child was about four or five years old. Then she took her children and moved to Circleville. She and her children made a home there and had a farm. Her sons were able to care for her. It was a hard life with moments of happiness as Julietta saw her children grow to maturity. Her son Myron had a farm in Circleville and worked in the mines in Marysvale in the winter. He died at the age of thirty-eight from arsenic poisoning contacted in the mines.

.

Julietta never remarried. She had a dream one time in which she saw her husband (who was at this time deceased) sitting at a long table. He was holding on his knees two of their children who had died in infancy. He motioned to her and told her to sit down beside him in the only vacant chair. After the dream had occurred, she always felt that her husband would be waiting to receive her as his only wife and companion.


Julietta Bowen Dalton died on September 29, 1917, at the age of eighty-eight in Circleville, Piute Co. Utah. She was buried in the northwest corner of the Circleville Cemetery. Her grave is covered by a slab of cement put there by her son-in-law Joseph Alfred Elder, to keep a promise. She always dreaded having dirt as a covering, so years before she had exacted a promise from him that he would not let that happen.


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13 - Elizabeth Green; The wife of Henry Dalton.


After Henry Dalton drowned in the Susquehanna River in 1833 his widow Elizabeth and their children traveled to Washtenaw County Michigan with the other Dalton’s in the fall of 1835 to live. (Or shortly after) We don’t know much about her life after 1836 except she did settle somewhere in Iowa, after coming from Bloomfield, Wisconsin with her son Orsemus William Dalton and his wife, Victoria Elizabet Buckland.


Elizabeth E (Betsy) Green (Greene), is reported born on 10 Mar. 1803, "Wilkes-barrie" Village, Luzerne County, Pa., She died on the 10th, of Oct. 1875, in Chester, Howard County, Iowa. Elizabeth Green Dolton (notice the spelling) was buried in the Chester Hills Cemetery.


The following Green Names are found in Bradford County Township's:


Amos Green, in the 1812 Taxable list for Orwell, part of Rome Township.


In the 1820 Census of Litchfield Township:

Joesph Green

Henry Green


In the 1830 Litchfield Census:

Joesph Green

Joesph Green Jr.

Isacc Green


More Green name's found;


Green's in the Wysox Cemetary:


name born died

Green Alfred E Aug 30 1927 Sep 21 1927

Green Catherine 1825 1915

Green Catherine DECKER Jul 02 1867 Sep 17 1920

Green Edith KING 1870 1921 w/o Lester D.

Green Edna B 1877 1883

Green Eliza Apr 08 1832 Sep 18 1868

Green Elizabeth C ALLEN Apr 12 1849 Mar 21 1916

Green Experience M Aug 09 1874

Green F. H. Jun 26 1826 Aug 31 1902

Green Frank James Aug 07 1861 Feb 10 1934

Green Fred J Aug 23 1891 Oct 09 1902

Green Geo. H. 1888 1926

Green Henry Mar 12 1848 Mar 26 1918 s/o Wm. S.

Green James B May 09 1848

Green Julia King Dec 21 1882

Green Lester D 1859 1936

Green Mary MARSH Sep 19 1895 Aug 13 1934

Green William Henry Mar 12 1848 Mar 26 1918

Green William S 1828 1901


Harry Green and Lodowick Green are both listed in the Athens Township Taxables for 1812


Lodowick Greene and Willard Green, of Wysox fought in the Rev. War. It is reported that Willard Green may have been a brother on General Nathanael Greene, the Famous Rev. War hero.


Athens Township 1812 taxables:

Samuel Greene

Harry Greene

Lodowick Greene


Could some of these be Elizabeth Green's family.


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14 - Elizabeth Ann Kittleman; The wife of Henry Simon Dalton.


She was born on May 26th, 1831 at Downington, Chester County, Pennsylvania, the eldest daughter of William and Elizabeth Hindman Kittleman. Elizabeth Ann married Henry Simon Dalton on March 12th, 1848 in San Francisco California.


Below in her own words is her story about her trip to California on the ship “Brooklyn”

And her trek from California to Utah.

Source: Our Pioneer Heritage; The Ship Brooklyn - Volume 3.


"In 1838, my father, William Kittleman, was working for a railroad company. One day as he was preparing to eat lunch two Mormon Elders came to talk to him. They had not eaten so he shared his lunch with them. They asked if they might call at his home and hold a cottage meeting. He assured them they would be welcome. People heard of the gathering and came from far and near to hear the Elders' message. They converted my Grandfather and Grandmother Kittleman (John and Sarah), three aunts and two uncles, George and Thomas, my father, mother, and their family. None of my mother's people were converted and were very much opposed to our joining. I was baptized in the summer of 1840 by Elijah Sheets. When I was a small girl, the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, came to Grandfather Kittleman's home and held many meetings.


On January 4, 1846 my parents and their family, together with my grandparents and their family, left our home in Downington, Chester county, Pennsylvania for New York where we set sail February 4, 1846 on the good ship Brooklyn.

We were on the ship six months and landed twice, once on Juan Fernandez and once on the Sandwich Islands. We landed in Yerba Buena Bay, Sunday, July 31, 1846, so we stayed on board until the following Tuesday. We, with many more of our friends, had no place to go. We took our bedding and went to stay in a large adobe house for the winter. It was the time of the Mexican-American war and the streets were guarded and every one had to be in by 9 p.m., if not they were marched to the guardhouse. In the spring the peace terms were settled and the people bought land and started out. Father bought a lot, built a shanty, and we moved from the adobe house. He planted a garden and raised some of the first vegetables in that settlement.


Samuel Brannan had chartered the Brooklyn, the cheapest ship he could find, a ten-year old sailing ship that would end up with only 2,500 square feet of living space for the 239 or so people on board. The ship set sail from New York harbor on February 4th, 1846. Crammed into the hold were all the things that Brannan and the early church members felt they would need to begin a new colony on their own--including two sawmills, a grist mill, tools for 800 farmers, two cows, 40 pigs, and Brannan's three-ton Acorn printing press (which would come to play an important role in California's Gold Rush).


It was an arduous six-month sea journey, and the ship's log reports that ten passengers died on the voyage. At times the sea was so rough that women and children had to be tied into their bunks. Two babies were born on the pilgrimage--John Atlantic Burr on the Atlantic leg, and Georgina Pacific Robbins on the Pacific leg of the trip.


When Brannan and his fellow Saints arrived on July 31, 1846, they were not the first Mormons to make landfall in California. A small group of hardy Mormons had arrived the year before, and actually taken part in June, 1846, in the Bear Flag Revolt at the village of Sonoma. The Brooklyn Saints, with women and children, immediately established San Francisco in the image of an older Eastern Seaboard town, something that remains remarkable about this West Coast City down to our own time. He effectively bullied the Saints into paying 30% "tithing" and invested the money in property and buildings, including his home which at the time was the most lavish in San Francisco. And then he did not welcome the Saints into his home.


He and his followers constructed nearly 200 buildings in their first year at Yerba Buena. It would be another year, July 24, 184 before Brigham Young would arrive in the Great Salt Lake Basin with the main body of the Saints, many pulling handcarts loaded with essentials over a 1,700 mile trek.


"They were honest and industrious citizens," wrote famed California historian Hubert H. Bancroft of the Brooklyn Saints, "even if clannish and peculiar."


Yerba Buena, the name for the City by the Bay until it took on the name San Francisco in 1847, was unsettled in more ways than just the lack of streets and buildings. The recent take-over of the town by a small American garrison as the Mexican-American War continued, left many fearing that Spanish troops might arrive to recapture the highly desirable port city.


Continuing with Elizabeth’s story:


On July 16, 1847 the Mormon Battalion boys were discharged at Los Angeles and scattered out, some coming to San Francisco. Among them was Henry Dalton (Company B.) who came to work in a butcher shop and boarded in our home. He stayed with us until the following March when we were married by Elder Addison Pratt. The next May gold was discovered and the people all rushed out in search of the precious metal. We went to Mormon Island where I washed gold.


We left San Francisco in June, 1849 to come to Utah. We arrived October 1, 1849 and settled in the First Ward in Salt Lake City. In 1850 we moved north to Centerville. In May, 1856 we were called on a mission to Carson Valley. We were camped on a mountain near the upper road of Carson when some Indians rode into camp. I, at once, recognized the quilts, blankets and some silks they had as being the property of my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Muir. They also had a Spanish hat which, Mr. Muir had purchased in San Francisco. The Muirs were on their way from California to Utah and had camped near the Humboldt River. With them was Mrs. Haws, mother of Mrs. Muir. They started on the lower road which, was about four miles below the upper. Indians followed and killed these people, took their horses and other possessions, and then set fire to the camp. They wanted to trade these articles to us for food, so I exchanged food with them for the silk dress Mrs. Muir had worn the last time I saw her.


The Carson Valley Mission was organized in 1855. A number of families, including many who later became prominent in both the civic and ecclesiastical life of Utah, were called by the Church to settle in Carson Valley, under the direction of Elder Orson Hyde of the Council of the Twelve. Elder Hyde, who changed the name of the settlement from Mormon Station to Genoa in honor of the birthplace of Columbus, served not only as its ecclesiastical leader but also as its judicial leader, being the first probate judge.


In 1857 the Carson Valley settlers were called back to Utah and on the way we met Mr. and Mrs. Zacheus Cheney. Mrs. Cheney, Amanda Evans, came with us on the ship Brooklyn. When we arrived in Centerville my husband sold the upper portion of the farm to the Cheneys and then built a home for us on the other part We left our home again in 1858 at the time of the "move south." We went to Spanish Fork but returned to Centerville in July of that year. She was an active Latter-day Saint and was a member of the first Relief Society organized in Centerville. Mrs. Dalton was the mother of five children:


John George, born in Dec. 1848 in San Francisco California, died 1926 in Centerville Davis Co. Utah; Sarah Elizabeth, born 1851 in Centerville, died 1916 in Salt Lake City; Eliza Jane, born 1853 in Centerville, died 1912 in Heber City Utah; William Henry, born 1855 in Centerville, died 1936 in Centerville; Mary Marie, born 1859 in Centerville, died 1953 in Centerville.


On December 13, 1917 Elizabeth Kittleman Dalton passed away, having lived fifty-seven years on the land purchased by them shortly after their arrival in Utah in 1849.

She is buried next to her husband in the Centerville City Cemetery. They share the same

gravestone.


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15 - Elizabeth Ann Heskett Allred Dalton:

The second wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton and is Rodney Dalton’s

great-great grandmother.


Elizabeth Ann Heskett Allred Dalton was born Feb. 23 1833 in Monroe City, Monroe Co. Missouri. Her parents were Martin Carroll Allred and Mary Polly Heskett.


Below is a history of Elizabeth’s father, who was Martin Carroll Allred. He was a member of Zion's Camp in 1834 and was a member of the High Council at Nauvoo. Martin Carroll, along with many others, was taken prisoner. He was brought before Austin A. King, at Richmond, for trial, charged with several crimes of high treason against the state, murder, burglary, arson, robbery, and larceny on Nov. 11, 1838. The charges brought against Martin Carroll were dismissed because nothing could be proven so he and several others were discharged. Martin Carroll covenanted to assist the saints in removing from Missouri on Jan. 29, 1838.


Martin Carrol Allred (1806-1840). Was born in Warren, KY. He participated in march of Zion's Camp 1834. Received anointing or special blessing in Kirtland Temple, 14 April 1836. Received into elders quorum same day. Moved to Caldwell Co, Mo. In the fall of 1836.


The Allred family had joined the LDS Church in 1832, the year a son, James Franklin was born, and suffered much of the persecutions of the Mormons which took place for the ensuing fourteen years. They moved from Monroe County to Clay County, thence to Caldwell County in 1836, and finally under the Mormon “Extermination” order of Governor Boggs, were driven from the state of Missouri in 1839. A direct quotation from Mavis’ writings is informative and interesting: “James Franklin’s father was one of the men arrested and put in prison with the Prophet Joseph Smith, although he was later released. Some of the Allred’s moved first to Pike County, Illinois, and then later to Nauvoo. Family tradition states that Martin the father died from exposure suffered at that time. He died May 2, 1840, but the place is unknown. The history of mother Mary - or Polly - is not available, but she undoubtedly died during this time, because her children came west with their grandparents, after the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo in

1846.”


Just how Elizabeth traveled across the plains is really not known, but it is believed she traveled with her grandparents or others of the Allred family who must of arrived in the Valley before Elizabeth met Charles Wakeman Dalton. (See article below on Isaac Allred)


The family lived in Nauvoo until 1846, when with the rest of the Saints, Isaac Allred and his family were forced to flee for their lives. He crossed the Missouri River on the ice in February of 1846. After much deprivation, suffering and sorrow, the family struggled across the whole State of Iowa to a point 8 miles east of Council Bluffs. Here with his brother James and the other Allred families, they formed a camp and planted crops. Here they stayed in what was known as "Allred Camp" until 1849 when they moved west in Allen Taylor's Company, their son-in-law who had married Sarah Lovisa. The company started on July 12, 1849, with Captain Taylor in command and Isaac as one of his counselors, and captains of fifty. The company consisted of approximately 300 emigrants and 100 wagons. Isaac Allred and his wife and family arrived in Salt Lake Valley on October 10, 1849”

Source: LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, Andrew Jenson, Vol. 3.


Elizabeth Allred married Charles Wakeman Dalton in Salt Lake City on Nov. 2nd 1850.

During her long life in a typical Mormon marriage, she bore her husband five sons and five daughters, including Martin Carrell Dalton Sr., Rodney Dalton’s great-great-grandfather. All of Elizabeth Ann’s children lived to adulthood except two, Landon died in infancy and Brigham Wakeman Dalton died at age 13.


I’m sure that after Elizabeth Dalton married Charles Wakeman she lived in SLC and probably first lived in the same log house that her husband and his first wife did. In the 1851 Salt Lake County census, it shows Charles W. Dolton, Juliet and their first son, Charles Albert and a brother of Juliettia, Merritt Bowen. It does not list Elizabeth Ann. So where was Charles Wakeman’s second wife? By this time he may have built her a separate home.


Elizabeth Dalton moved to many places with her husband Charles. We assume that she lived in the places her children were born in; Orson in Parowan, Iron Co.1851; Brigham in Cedar City, Iron Co. 1854; George in Fort Harmony, Washington Co., 1856; Ann, Monetta and Landon in Centerville, Davis Co.1858; Levira in Chicken Creek, Juab Co. (very near the present town of Levan) 1865. Martin in Circleville, Piute Co., 1867; Harriet in Beaver City, Beaver Co., 1870; and Effie in Wild Cat Canyon, (Near Zion Park) 1875.


Elizabeth Ann Dalton must have spent quite a bit of time alone raising her children, as Charles Wakeman was on the road most of the time. Read the history of Charles Wakeman Dalton in Chapter 7. She died on Nov. 8 1916 in Circleville, Piute Co. Utah and is buried in the Circleville Cemetery.


Go to Chapter 14 for the history of James Allred, the grandfather of Elizabeth Ann

Heskett Allred Dalton (RD)


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16 - Emily Stevens Halliday Dalton; The third wife of Charles Dalton.


Source of information below is by Leslie Dalton Crunk - Dec 1, 2001. Copied from The Dalton Family Web Site.

Emily was born in Froad, Hampsire, England on November 26, 1825. Her parents were Isaac and Mary Marshman Stevens. She was baptized and confirmed a member of the LDS Church on May 19, 1845 in Froad. She married Able Stephen Halliday in 1847 or 1848. Able was born on June 4, 1826 in Tranbull, Wales. Emily and Able had 9 children; 7 died in infancy.


Emily and Able migrated to Utah in either 1850 or 1860 (prob. 1860). They crossed the plains with ox teams. In either 1852 or 1862 they returned to St. Louis. Apparently either on the first trip to Utah or after they went back to St. Louis, there was a shooting accident. The tale goes something like this:


Emily's husband, Able, came in from hunting and was telling a man about his hunt. He said, aiming the gun, "it was about as far as from here to my wife." The gun discharged and shot Emily in the leg so severely she had to have it amputated. From that time n she had to walk on a wooden stump.


Due to his intemperance, Emily left her husband in about 1867 and returned to Utah, taking her two young children with her. She settled in Morgan City, Utah, where she met Charles Dalton. Able died in about 1871 in St. Louis.


Charles Dalton lost his second wife (Eunice Daniels) on August 4, 1867. She left him with 6 sons under the age of 12. We don't know exactly how Charles and Emily met, but one story goes like this:


Charles had a sack of flour at home and he told his sons that when the flour was gone he would go to the store and bring them home a new mother. The boys must have wanted a mother real bad as they hid flour everywhere they could think of; behind the bed and in the cupboard where it was never kept. This way the flour would be gone faster and they could have a new mother sooner.


Somewhere I heard that Emily worked at Rich's Store in Morgan. But when I checked the historical society in Morgan about a store called Rich's I was told there was no such place. BUT, I was told that there was once a ZCMI store run by a man named Rich! So it is somewhat likely that Charles and Emily met at this store when Charles went to town for goods.


Charles and Emily were sealed in the Endowment House on October 3, 1868 by Apostle D.H. wells and witnessed by Apostle Wilford Woodruff. Emily's two children lived with Charles and Emily in Peterson until they all moved to Hooper Utah in 1870.

The Halliday family came to America on the Ship “New Jersey” on Feb. 5th, 1853.


Ship: Jersey

Date of Departure: 5 Feb 1853 Port of Departure: Liverpool, England

LDS Immigrants: 314 Church Leader: George Halliday

Date of Arrival: 22 Mar 1853

Port of Arrival: New Orleans, Louisiana

Sources: BMR, Book #1044, pp. 87-103 (FHL #025,690); Customs #96 (FHL #200,173)


Notes:

"DEPARTURES. -- Elders George Halliday, Abednego Jones, William Parry, and John Davis, all presidents of conferences, with a company of 314 Saints, sailed on board the Jersey, on the 5th instant, for New Orleans, on their way to the mountain home of the Israel of God. Thus are the elders and Saints, flocking to the Lord's hiding place, as 'doves to their windows,' that they may dwell in safety when judgments shall make the nations desolate."


"SIXTY-THIRD COMPANY. -- Jersey, 314 Saints. On the fifth of February, 1853, the ship Jersey, with a company of three hundred and fourteen Saints on board, including Elder George Halliday, Abednego Jones, William Parry and John Davis, who had all acted as presidents of conferences, sailed from Liverpool en route for Utah. Frederick Piercy, an artist, also accompanied them. He sketched the beautiful illustrations, which were afterwards published in James Linforth's 'Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley.' In addition to the foregoing, we may add that six marriages were solemnized on board the Jersey. Elder Halliday remained at New Orleans awaiting the arrival of the Elvira Owen, and Elders John Hyde and William Parry took charge of the Saints in going up the river. At St. Louis, Elder Isaac C. Haight had made arrangements with the Keokuk and St. Louis packet line to take the Saints from one boat to another free of drayage expenses, so that the emigrants were not detained in St. Louis. The Jersey company did not stay there over night. After a prosperous passage, lasting a few days only, the company landed safely in Keokuk. (Millennial Star, Vol. XV, pp.121, 282, 329.)"


"February. Sat. 5, 1853. The ship Jersey sailed from Liverpool, England, with 314 Saints, under the direction of George Halliday; it arrived at New Orleans, March 21st."


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17 - Emily Stevens Dalton; The first wife of Edward Meeks Dalton.


Emily Stevens was born on July 19th, 1854 in Buckingshire, England to Robert and Mary Stevens. She married Edward Dalton on April 10th, 1871 in Parowan, Utah.


Emily Stevens sailed on the Ship "Amazon" with her family on June 4th, 1863.


Ship: Amazon

Date of Departure: 4 Jun 1863 Port of Departure: London, England

LDS Immigrants: 895 Church Leader: William Bramall

Date of Arrival: 18 Jul 1863 Port of Arrival: New York, New York

Source: BMR, Book #1047, pp. 277-316 (FHL #025,691); Customs #747 (FHL #175,587)

Notes: "AMAZON. -- The splendid packet ship Amazon, Captain H. K. Hovey, also sailed from London on the 4th instant, with a company of 895 souls of the Saints on board under the presidency of Elder William Bramall; Elders Edward L. Sloan and Richard Palmer being associated with him as his counselors. The company passed the Government Emigration Officers on the 3rd, who eulogized their order, harmony and general appearance, after which President Cannon, who was accompanied by several elders from various parts of the mission, held a meeting organized the company and gave appropriate instructions. The interest manifested by strangers and the officials whose duty called them to be contiguous to the ship, evinced how much excitement the novelty of a ship-load of Saints, leaving London, produced. During the meeting, which accompanied the organization, the officers of the ship, the cabin passengers and the visitors on board listened with marked attention; while the unanimity of feeling manifested by the Saints, and the deep interest with which they listened to the instructions given and took part in the proceedings on the occasion, evidently made a deep impression on them, displaying, as it did, a something so different from all their conceptions of us as a people. A brass band, from South Wales, the performers being members of the Church on their way to Zion on the Amazon, discoursed sweet music on the poop-deck before and after the meeting, while the sun shone down upon the crowded deck as if the heavens and the earth were combining together to bestow their blessings upon the last company of the season. The presidency having been appointed and Elder William M'Lachlan nominated as clerk, Elder Kay closed the meeting with prayer, President Cannon having pronounced a blessing upon the ship, her officers and crew and the Saints on board. There was considerable excitement manifested by the people on shore as this vessel left the dock and moved down the river, the people on the wharves cheering, and, on the banks of the river and on the vessels anchored in the stream waving their handkerchiefs and hats and giving vent to other demonstrations in response to the singing of the people and the music of the band. It is worthy of note that the departure of the Amazon from London, laden with Saints, is another instance of the fulfillment of prophecy. Some years ago, while Elder Eli B. Kelsey was laboring in London, he predicted in a public meeting in that city that ships should yet leave that port filled with Saints emigrating to Zion. It was with no intention of bringing about the fulfillment of the at prophecy that we chartered the Amazon, for we were entirely ignorant of the utterance of such a prediction until we heard it stated in a meeting of the Saints held on Sunday, the 1st instant, three days before she sailed. Indeed, the chartering of this vessel was not a matter of choice with us but of necessity. We could not obtain a vessel in the port of Liverpool suitable to our purpose -- vessels of this description being almost

un-precedentedly scarce this spring, and we were, therefore, compelled to go to London. Thus were circumstances overruled to bring to pass the fulfillment of the words of a servant of God! Of the elders who sailed on the Amazon, four were from the Valley -- Elders Bramall, Palmer, Edward T. Edwards, and A. W. Van der Woude. . . ."


"June. Thurs. 4. [June 1863] -- The packet ship Amazon sailed from London, England, with 882 (or 895) Saints, under the direction of William Bramall. It arrived in New York harbor July 18th, and the immigrants reached Florence [Nebraska] a few days later."


Emily’s husband, Edward Meeks Dalton was shot and killed December 16th, 1886, in cold blood by a deputy United States Marshal, while under indictment for a misdemeanor under the Edmunds Anti-polygamy law.


After her husband was killed in Parowan in 1886, Emily stayed on in Parowan, struggling against poverty, frail health, and her growing deafness, which she mentioned often in her diary. In later life she used an old-fashioned ear trumpet and was unable to hear except when friends and family bent to her ear and spoke loudly. Her skin took on a transparency and her figure such frailty that one wondered at her strength to work. She moved through our town softly as she worked at the tasks of her life.


Her four sons in maturity gave her love and respect. They were often seen at public celebrations walking her proudly down the church aisle or across the square, speaking tenderly into her ear trumpet-these men of the rough frontier who had known so much of life's grimness. When they were children they worried that she worked so hard. They knew she stayed up late into the night to braid the straw hat she would sell next day for a quarter. Often their only meal was water-gravy and bread she had baked in the night. By day she took in sewing, wove carpeting, and pressed suits for the pittance with which she supported her six children, all under fifteen years of age when their father was killed. Through all this adversity, the ward bishop always knew she would contribute a tenth of her income for tithing.


In time the Mutual Improvement Association of the Mormon church began sending her money for a suitable monument to be placed at the grave of Young Ed. It came in dimes and dollars from wherever Mormon youth lived. She saved it all and solemnly placed the order when there was enough.


The years moved on and sorrow still haunted her door, for both daughters died in childbirth-one at eighteen and the other at age twenty-nine-and a son's wife and baby died, leaving a two-year-old daughter. Emily wrote pitifully of these tragedies in her diary and ended each account by recording a prayer. And, to her way of thinking, there was still to come the ultimate grief, for Lylie died first. Emily had lived with an abiding trust that she, the first wife, would be the first to meet Ed in another world. How could it be that Lylie should have this coveted reward? Emily sank into deep, almost bitter, mourning, refusing at first to attend the funeral or even the viewing which was to be held in her own son's front parlor when Delila's body was brought home from California. But yielding to the kind persuasion of her sons, Emily went timidly to the coffin side, bent over Delila, bade her greet Young Ed with her love, and then she quietly attended the funeral. However, she stayed by a solemn decision made some days before: Delila should not be buried on the left side of their husband as was customary in polygamous burials. She should lie far right with space saved for Emily by his side and between them when her hour came.


It is reported that she went back to England and died there on January 9th, 1942. (In our Dalton database it shows that she died in Buckingshire, England, but she is actually buried in the Parowan, Iron Co. Cemetery)


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18. Emma Roberta Lee Dalton; The fifth wife of Charles Wakeman Dalton.


Here is all we know about the life of Charles Wakeman Dalton's last wife, Emma Roberta Lee.


The below was copied from a letter by Sarah Lucinda Lee Dalton:


Lucinda's sixteen-year-old sister Emma left the family home and came to live with her.

A year later, in April 1871, the ward teachers (representatives of the local presiding church authority who routinely visited a given number of homes monthly) were sent to make peace between Charles and his father-in-law. It was apparently an important case, for, in the ward clerk's uncertain orthography, "Bishop Ashworth spoke at some length on the difficulty existing between John P Lee & Charles W. Dalton. Three of the brethren were appointed to visit these brethren." The trio returned to say that they "could not make any reconciliation with them. The minutes do not specify the cause of the quarrel, but it may have been an event that occurred only six months later. Emma's marriage to Charles, apparently they had been engaged for some time, possibly without the estranged father's permission. Before that fall wedding on October 16, 1871, in the Endowment House, the loss that Lucinda had been prepared for by premonition had occurred and the summer serenity was shattered by the death of her little son, an unimaginable strain on the devoted mother, still recovering from the birth of her daughter Belle on June 1.


Apparently Emma shared her sister's home after marrying Charles; relationships between the sisters seem unmarred by jealousy or competition, for Lucinda always speaks of Emma tenderly and affectionately. But the marriage itself was evidently a mistake for the seventeen-year-old girl and the forty-five-year-old man. They had no children and Emma seems to have refused domesticity.


We know little of the family during Emma's four years with them. A daughter Rosette was born to Lucinda probably in 1874, but apparently died within months. On February 18, 1875, Lucinda's third child, a son named Clifford, was born. Apparently Emma had reached the end of her optimism and patience the same year, for on September 12, she sent a cryptic letter to Brigham Young:


"Sir, I was married to Charles Wakeman Dalton in the house of endowments, on the ninth day of October, 1871. For reasons, which Pres. Murdock has kindly informed me, you do not require me to state, I now desire a divorce. By giving this matter your earliest convenience, you will confer an eternal obligation.


Yours respectfully Emma Lee Dalton"


A clerk has noted on that letter that blank forms were sent to Bishop Murdock on September 15. However, two weeks later, the Beaver Literary Institute was organized for "persons of good moral character" under the auspices of that same John Murdock, and on October 4, Emma Dalton was there, nominated to serve on a committee to propose a list of officers. Between then and Christmas, she presented an essay, edited the first number of the Literary Star, helped plan the Christmas party, appeared on a spelling team, and gave a recitation. However, this flurry of activity faded suddenly, for the minutes of January 17, 1876, include the report of a delegation sent to find out why Mrs. Emma Dalton was absenting herself from meeting with the Institute at regular meetings. Emma told them "that it is no intention on her part to relinquish her membership in the Institution and considering herself an honorary member, therefore [illegible] to excuse to offer and further-more was not aware that she was violating any of the rules, or by-laws, or that an absentee was required to furnish an excuse in case of being absent a specified time."


Despite these excuses, Emma never reappears in the minutes and apparently left Charles, Beaver, and the church, having decided, in Lucinda's sorrowful words, that "Mormonism was inquity, and its followers hypocrites." According to Lucinda, she went to work for the Rio Grande and Denver Railroad in Little Rock, Arkansas.


In Lucinda's obituary, Emma is listed as "Mrs. Emma Sutherland of San Francisco." She had married Jabez Gridley Sutherland under her maiden name sometime between 1893 and 1897. Judge Sutherland, a widower, was a prominent gentile in Salt Lake City, some thirty years older than his bride, who was then in her late forties. He died in Berkeley "after a lingering attack of paralysis" at the age of seventy-seven, only a few years after their marriage.


It is reported that Emma Lee Dalton Sutherland died on September 21st, 1940, probably in San Francisco.


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19 - Elizabeth Cooker; The only wife of John Dalton Sr.


Elizabeth Cooker or Kucher as it was spelled in the records we found about her father, Simon Cooker (Kucher) was born December 26, 1767 in Bucks County Pennsylvania.

She died on September 21, 1858 in Hazelton, Buchanan Co. Iowa. We know she emigrated from Bucks County to Bradford County Penn. Sometime in 1835 she moved to Michigan with her daughter’s Elizabeth family (Hiram Vargason) and then with Moses and her other daughter, Jemima Dalton Vargason to Kenosha, Wisconsin, then to Iowa.


Below is the history of her father, Simon Cooker:


Someone has determined that Simon Cooker was born about 1734, and that he came from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The age determination was obviously made by using the standard Church estimate for a man being 26 years of age when his first child was born. His daughter, Elizabeth Cooker, who married John Dalton, was born 25 December, 1760, in Bucks County.


Bucks County is located on the Delaware River just north of Philadelphia. Several books inform us that much of the early settlement there was by German immigrants, mostly from the Palatinate, which is on the upper Rhine, and includes the city of Worms. The trip from Germany was often long and hard for the immigrants. Some of the captains of the ships were reputed to be cruel and inhuman masters. Others were known as kind and considerate.


One such emigrant ship is reported in the Colonial Records, vol. III, p. 456, as follows:

Philadelphia, 25 September, 17 32. At the courthouse in presence of the Honorable the Governor, and Samuel Hassel, Esquire, Mayor, the within list was swore to by Robert Turpin, Master of the LOYAL JUDITH. At the courthouse aforesaid one hundred fifteen Palatines, who, with their families, making in all --- persons, were imported here in the ship LOYAL JUDITH of London, Robt. Turpin, Master, from Rotterdam, but last from Cowes, as by clearance thence.


There were three lists of the passengers:

List A. The Captains list.

List B. List of signers of Oath of Allegiance to George II.

List C. List of singers of Oath of Allegiance to James III (A pretender to the English throne)


Each of these lists contains the name of Johann Peter Kucher. In one of them the name Cooker appears in parentheses, Obviously an anglicized spelling of the name. His age is given as twenty. Since only males were listed, we do not know if he was married or not. We also do not know if he is our ancestor, but the timing is right to have had a child (Simon) born about 1734. I found some other Kuchers in the records but none seem to match as well as this one. I have done some extensive checking of Quaker and other records, but all to no avail. I do not think at this time that we will ever be able to prove this connection. It is also possible that he was married in Germany and that he brought a wife and child, Simon Cooker, with him.


Simon Cooker, 1769 Pennsylvania Archives, 1769-1779 Third Series, Vol 14.

Proprietary Tax- County of Philadelphia.

Germantown Township-1769.

Simon Cooker


I also found Simon Cooker and his family on the 1790 census of Bucks County. His family consisted of:


2 Free White Males 16 and up

4 Free White Males under 16.


No further details are available. This certainly indicates a family of more than one child, as our records show. Since Elizabeth was probably married and gone by then, anyway, it probably includes one or more younger children and several wives and perhaps grandchildren.


Below source from the "The John Dalton Book of Genealogy"


Bucks County Transcripts, Pennsylvania Archives - 1779-1786, Third Series, Vol. 13.

Page 23, Millford Township - 1779.

Simon Cooker; Arces - 6; Cattle - 2.


Page 183, Millford township - 1781.

Simon Kucher; Acres--6; Cattle--1


Pennsylvania Archives - 1769-1774-1774-1779, Third series, Vol. 14;

Proprietary Tax--County of Philadelphia

Page 87, Germantown township - 1769;

Simon Cooker.


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20- Mary (Polly) Freeland; The reported wife of our immigrant to America, Thomas Dalton.


Of note is there is no proof that Mary's surname was Freeland. The only true information we have ever discovered about the wife of Thomas Dalton is what Is reported in the notes of John Luther Dalton, and he only lists Thomas Dalton married a women named Mary from Ireland. We have never found where the surname of Freeland come from. Someone over the years put this name in the LDS FHL database and people have believed this for years.


On Page 36 of the “John Dalton Book of Genealogy” is this note; “Thomas Dalton, who was christened on 7 May 1732, Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, Wales, or England. He was our immigrant to American. He married Betsy or Polly from Ireland.


The Dalton family tradition tells us that the wife of Thomas Dalton was a Polly Freeland and Thomas Dalton probably married her somewhere in Maryland. Read below what I have wrote in my FTM database about Polly Freeland. (RD)


Notes:

These are the names that Thomas Dalton's wife has been listed on various records and programs.


Elizabeth, Mary, Polly, Betsy Freeland.


She is also listed as living in Little, Pennsylvania in the LDS Ancestral File.


From the book "Maryland Marriage Records"

Maryland section: 975.2 V25b


Eliza Freeland, married James Woadland, 1785 Kent County, Maryland.

Frissy Freeland, married Sarah Rolle, 1771 Talbot County, Maryland.

Mary Freeland, married William Harrison, 1757 Calvert County, Maryland.

Rebecca Freeland, married Edward Wilson, 1764 Calvert County, Maryland.

Robert Freeland, married Marianne Holland, 1764 Calvert County, Maryland.


Other names found in a Maryland book: # 975.2 P28s Vol. 11;


Alexander Freeland

Francis Freeland

Jacob Freeland

Robert Freeland


We don't know if any of these Freeland name's can be connected to our "Polly/Betsy Freeland, but this is the first time I have found the name Freeland mentioned in any record at the SLC LDS Library” (RD)


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21 - Mary Elizabeth Warner; First wife of Charles Dalton.


Mary Elizabeth Warner was born on Feb 10th, 1826 in Manchester, Ontario Co. New York. She was a daughter of Luther Warner and Permelia Stanton. Mary Elizabeth had at least 7 brothers and sisters. She married Charles Dalton on August 11, 1842, possibly in Homer, Calhoun Co. Michigan. Mary Elizabeth Warner had an older sister, Elnora Lucretia Warner that was married to an older brother of her husband, whose name was Simon Cooker Dalton.


The newlyweds left Michigan sometimes in the spring of 1843 for Nauvoo. When the Dalton's arrived in Nauvoo they at first boarded in town before buying property on the outskirts of town. Charles Dalton only paid $50 for their lot. The family then had to build a log cabin on this property, which had a good view of the Temple that was in the process of being built.


On October 18, 1843 a son, John Luther Dalton was born to Mary Elizabeth and her husband Charles.


Mary and Charles Dalton both received their Patriarchal Blessings on October 15, 1844 from Patriarch John Smith. The text of Mary Elizabeth's blessing is below:

Beloved Sister (Mary Dalton), I lay my hands upon thy head and seal a Father's blessing by the authority of the holy priesthood, upon thee. Thou art also of the blood of Joseph and a lawful heir to the Holy Priesthood in common with thy companion and all the blessings which were sealed upon the daughters of Abraham and as thou art mother in Israel thou shalt have faith to heat thy children and this blessing I seal also upon them, when sick and too preserve them in life to old age being agreed with thy companion thou shalt also have faith to save thy dead friends and many of thy living ones if not all, the number of thy years shall be according to thy faith even to see the curtains of Zion extend over the land of America. Universal peace prevail and if you desire it with thy whole heart thou shalt see the Son of Man descend in His glory, thou shalt not taste death but shalt be changed and caught up to meet him in the cloud and be forever with him and enjoy all the glories and blessings of eternity with thy companion. All these things are according to thy faith, therefore, be humble and not one word shall fail for I seat it upon thee in the name of thy Redeemer, Amen.


In Feb. of 1845, Mary Dalton traveled to Jackson County Michigan with her husband Charles, where he was to serve as conference president. While in Michigan, Mary took the time to visit with her parents, who she had not seen for a few years. Back in Nauvoo after the conference was over, a baby girl was born to Charles and Mary Dalton. They named her, Permelia Elizabeth and she was born on July 20th, 1845. Something went wrong, because Permelia Elizabeth Dalton died on Oct. 21, 1845 for reasons unknown.


The Charles Dalton family had to leave Nauvoo with the other Saints in Feb. of 1846. They were probably in the first wave of 500 families that left first.


It was on Sept. 31, 1846 that a second daughter was born to Mary Elizabeth Dalton. Unfortunately Martha Jane Dalton died of dropsy on May 9th, 1847. Charles and Mary buried her at the Winter Quarters Cemetery.


Charles and Mary Dalton left Winter Quarters with the Willard Richard Company on July 10th, 1848 and followed the other Saints that had left for the trip across the plains to the Great Salt Lake Valley. After a long and hard trip, the Dalton family arrived in SLC on Oct. 19th, 1848.


Note: Read more about the lives of the Charles Dalton family in the history of Charles Dalton in chapter 6.


Mary Elizabeth Warner Dalton died at her home in Farmington, Davis Co. Utah on Nov. 28th, 1856 of unknown causes. She was only 30 years of age.


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22 - Eunice Daniels; The second wife of Charles Dalton.


She was born on July 29th, 1833 somewhere in Jackson County Missouri.


The below information was copied from a book by Leslie Dalton Crunk. Added material by Rodney Dalton:


March 1854 brings a number of changes into the Charles Dalton family. First, they appear to be living in Farmington, Utah (20 miles north of Salt Lake City). But most dramatically, Charles Dalton takes a second wife. He is following in the footsteps of his brothers and has entered plural marriage. Her name is Eunice Daniels. She is the daughter of Sheffield and Abigail (Warren) Daniels. The only description we garnered of Eunice is that she wore ringlets.


Eunice's family joined the church in Ohio probably sometime in 1831. They moved with the Saints to Missouri. Eunice was born on July 29,1832, in Jackson County, Missouri. As evidenced by her siblings' births, the family followed the Church as it moved to Clay County, where Lehi was born in 1835, and to Caldwell County, where another daughter, Philena was born in 1838. The family had at least nine children. When the Saints were run out of Missouri, the Daniels family settled in Lee County, Iowa, just across the Mississippi from Nauvoo, where numerous other Mormons also settled. Eunice was baptized in 1841."' Eunice's father died by 1844 and her mother remarried a Mr. Christopher Williams. This combined family is found on the 1850 Salt Lake City, Utah, census where Eunice is shown as being 18 years old.


We don't know how Charles and Eunice met or how long they knew each other before they were married. Eunice was 22 and Charles was 43. Generally speaking, couples who entered into plural marriage did not have long courtship’s. One dilemma Mormon women encountered was an excess of single women and a shortage of Mormon men. Compounding this discrepancy, the church strongly emphasized marriage within the faith. For the Latter-Day Saints, the Lord's solution to this predicament was polygamy.


Eunice and Charles were married at least three times. The first marriage was undoubtedly a civil ceremony performed by the local bishop. My evidence for these statements is as follows:


Eunice Daniels Dalton signed a "rebaptism" record as Eunice Dalton on March 26, 1854. This is one month before their known sealing/marriage date.


They were sealed/married on April 23, 1854, at 12:50 p.m. by Heber C. Kimball. This ceremony was performed in the President's Office before the Endowment House opened. The rule was that if at all possible, sealings performed in the President's Office should be redone once the Endowment House opened. It opened in May 1855, at which time Charles Dalton was on his mission to Salmon River.


Charles and Eunice were resealed in the Endowment House on May 9, 1856, by Heber C. Kimball while Charles was home for a brief time during his mission.


Eunice bore Charles a son on February 11, 1855. He was born in Farmington and they named him Dell Dalton. Charles and Eunice had 5 more children, all boys: Charles Sheffield, born Feb. 12 1857; Orlando, born Feb. 3 1859; Don Carlos, born Feb. 7 1861; Simon, born Mar. 10 1863; And William Henry, born May 1 1865.


Next is a story wrote in a letter wrote by a granddaughter of Charles and Eunice Dalton:


AN INCIDENT WHICH TOOK PLACE ON SALMON RIVER MISSION-IDAHO”


At the annual conference in Salt Lake City, April 7,1855, President Brigham Young

called a number of brethren as missionaries, to locate a settlement amongst the Bannock and Shoshone Indians in the far North, what was then Oregon Territory. Most of the brethren who were called on the mission responded. Thomas S. Smith of Farmington, was appointed their leader. Charles Dalton was one of the missionaries called and was one who took part in the Indian outrage, which took place. An attempt was made by the Indians to steal their cows and horses and oxen, one hundred and fifty Indians appeared with guns and bows and arrows. Some of the brethren were killed. Charles was one amongst those trying to drive their stock into the Fort, while his wife, Eunice Daniels Dalton and their two little boys watched from inside the Fort, standing on a pile of logs with CHARLES SHEFFIELD, the baby, in her arms, while Dell, the other little son, clung to her skirts. She watched her husband, fearing every moment he would be killed, make his way into the Fort, with his cow between himself and an Indian with who m he had been very friendly, Charles with his gun over his cow's back never taking his eyes

off the Indian with his bow and arrow. The Indian knew Charles was a good shot and was afraid to take action. The Fort was later vacated and everyone returned to their former homes.


This baby, CHARLES SHEFFIELD, in later years became my husband and I have many times heard him relate the foregoing incident told to him by his father, Charles Dalton. Charles Sheffield was a wonderful husband and father to his family. He filled many trustworthy positions; loved to be of service to others, humble and true to his faith. He passed away December 6, 1931 in Pocatello, Idaho.''

Signed - Sarah Davis Dalton (Read the full story about this mission in the history of Charles Dalton in chapter 7.


The 1860 Utah census shows Charles and Eunice Dalton living in Salt Lake City (probably somewhere near SugarHouse. Their property is valued at $300. His brother John Jr. lives next door. John Jr. manages the Church farm. John's property is valued at $2,000.


Charles Dalton 50

Eunice Dalton 25

Luther 18

Del 5

Charles Jr. 3

Orlando 2


In the spring of 1861 the Charles Dalton family moved from the SugarHouse Ward in SLC to the Weber Valley, through Weber canyon, northeast of Ogden. They settled in Peterson, Morgan Co. Utah. Charles Dalton opened up a blacksmith shop, which was located where the Union Pacific Station later stood. The farmers who went to Charles Dalton’s blacksmith shop would exchange grain, flour or anything of valve to pay for Charles’ work.


It was six years later, after having six boys, on August 4th, 1867 that Eunice Daniels Dalton died at the young age of 34. Charles Dalton was devastated by the death of his young wife. Remember this was the second wife that had died so young on him, as his first, Mary Elizabeth died in1856 at 30 years of age.. He was left with the care of six sons under the age of 12. Luckily his oldest son by his first wife, John Luther Dalton and his wife, Elizabeth Studer Dalton lived nearby and took in the children to raise.


Below is a poem Charles wrote about his wife Eunice:


0, Eunice when I think on thee I long for pinions like the dove and mourn to think that I should be far distant from the ones I love.


While here I walk on hostile grounds, the few that I can call my friends are like myself in fetters bound and weariness our steps attend.


But yet I hope to see the day when to my friends I shall return when all our sorrows flee away

and we no more again shall morn.


The thought that such a day will come makes even the exile portion sweet

Tho now a stranger far from home,


I hope my friends to again to meet.

Keep these few lines till time shall end, in memory of your dearest friend who wades through life's tempestuous wave the meek, the humble, poor to save.


While I shall live I'll spend my breath In prayer for them that love the truth 0're hills and dates I call to mind, my true and faithful friend so kind.


Lot these few lines adore the place where you retire to seek God's grace then lift your voice in humble prayer for him whose lines are hanging there. Charles Dalton


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23 - Amy Edgley; The second wife of John Luther Dalton.


The history of Amy Edgley who married John Luther Dalton starts in England where she was born to Joseph Edgley and Mary Ann Stillman. She was born on December 19, 1869 in London, Middlesex Co. England. The following story about Amy Edgley was complied from a book by Leslie Dalton Crunk. Edited by Rod Dalton.


Joseph and Mary Ann Edgley and their nine children were baptized in England and immigrated to Utah individually and in groups. Joseph and his daughter Mary Ann were sponsored by Mary Ann's future husband, William Owens, who while on a mission to England lived with the Edgley's. Evidently the rest of the Edgley family members, including Amy come to Utah in 1887 and 1888.


LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, Andrew Jenson, Vol. 3, p.69:


"Joseph Edgley, a Patriarch in the Church and a resident of Pocatello, Idaho, was born August 25, 1843, at Wickhambrook, Suffolk, England, the son of Thomas Edgley and Amy Simpson. He was baptized June 11, 1882, by Joseph A. West and confirmed by M. F. Brown; Ordained a Deacon in June, 1882; Ordained an Elder in July, 1883; was married Sept. 5, 1864, in London, England, which marriage was blessed with eleven children. Emigrating to America with his wife and nine children he sailed from Liverpool, in September, 1886, in the steamship "Wisconsin" and arrived at Logan, Utah, Sept. 28, 1886. He located at Pocatello, Idaho, in 1887; was ordained a High Priest in 1896 by Apostle Marriner W. Merrill and was appointed to preside over the High Priests at Pocatello, May 28, 1890. He also acted as second counselor, and subsequently as first counselor, to Bishop Carl J. Cannon in the Pocatello Ward. Prior to this he acted as a Ward teacher from 1892 to 1897 and also presided over an Elders' quorum for several years. His first wife died in June, 1906, and in April, 1908, he married Mary Ann Price. Bro. Edgley was ordained a Patriarch August 15, 1915, by Apostle James E. Talmage".


The story of William Owens is a very interesting one. The following is copied from a CR-ROM, Pioneer Heritage Library:


Source: Heart Throbs of the West, Kate B. Carter, Vol.10, p.385


William and Joseph Owens.--Robert Owens and his wife joined the church in Ohio in 1844, and moved to Nauvoo. When the United States called for volunteers, Robert accepted the call and went with his brothers in the Mormon Battalion to California, while his wife drove her ox team to Utah and brought her five children. When Robert came home in 1850, he met and married a second wife, Martha Allen, who had come to Utah with her brother. They had five children, two girls and three boys. Their first son, William, was born in Salt Lake City, February 6, 1853. He was blind at birth. Five years later, two more boys, Rial and Joseph were born, and one of these, Joseph, was also blind.


These two blind boys never went to school, but grew up at home together. From early childhood William had a strong desire to investigate all machinery from threshing machines to old clocks and watches. When he was fourteen years old he left home with his brother, Joseph, to make their own way. They traveled by foot and after the railroad came they walked the rails from town to town; Joseph selling books, while William mended watches and clocks and tuned pianos.


When William, was a man, he wanted to find a doctor to help him gain his sight. This desire took him to England, where he lived with the, family of Joseph Edgley. The oldest daughter, Mary Ann, was his guide while in London. William never found any help for his eyes, so the time came to go home. Knowing the desires of the Edgley family to come to Utah, William offered to pay the passage for two members, so Mary Ann and her father, Joseph, came with him. Soon after on September 26, 1888, William and Mary Ann became man and wife. They lived for a few years in Logan and Smithfield, where five children were born. He built a home there himself and it is still in use. In 1898, the family moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where the Edgley family had settled, and there William Owens built a home and a store. He called it "Live and Let Live Mercantile." He sold most everything needed in the home. He arranged things in their places and insisted they were to be kept there so he could find them. His wife helped him and they did well, but her health failed so they sold the store and moved to Shelley, Idaho, where father farmed for two years, but since it took eyes to farm, he did not do well, although mother's health improved. Soon the ' family moved back to Pocatello where father built another home. He hired carpenters, but bossed the job himself, and when it came to the plumbing, the plumbers charged too much so he sent away for the fixtures and did the job himself. That plumbing is still in use. He opened a small store in that home and the rest of his life he sold groceries.


Father had a very great sense of hearing, and with his cane he could go anywhere he had ever been before without help. He always knew when he came to a corner or a hole in the sidewalk. He could count the buildings and doorways by sound. But for his cane, one would never know he could not see his way. Sometimes as a young girl I tried to hide by being very quiet when I saw him coming, but he always knew and spoke to me. He was a High Priest in the Church, and died July 17, 1923, in Pocatello.


John Luther and Amy Edgley had an alfresco wedding, being sealed for time and all eternity on Monday, February 17,1890, at 12:50 p.m. on a hillside in Paso Del Norte, Mexico. The marriage was performed by A. F. McDonald and witnessed by W. Johnson and Thomas Burmingham. Others present were F.P. Torkelsen, his wife and Mrs. T. Burmingham. Grandma's diary account of the marriage shows that she and Grandpa solemnized their marriage two more times.


Why did they go to Mexico? Undoubtedly it was because of all the anti-polygamy hullabaloo. February 1890 was right in the middle of some very difficult times for the Saints still practicing polygamy. The issue of plural marriage became a serious argument to Utah gaining statehood. An "anti-bigamy law" passed in 1862 and was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. This bill called for a $500 fine and/or a five year prison sentence; it also include a provision forbidding a religious body in a territory to hold real estate in value to exceed $50,000. This law wasn't seriously enforced and it wasn't until 1874 that its constitutionality was challenged. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law in 1879. This was a stunning blow to the Church and the forerunner of a period of intense persecution. In March 1882, Congress passed the "Edmonds Bill" amending the "anti- bigamy" law of 1862.


The first child of John Luther Dalton and Amy Edgley was born on Nov. 22, 1891 in Logan Utah; they named him John Luther Jr.


Amy's husband, John Luther was president of the California Mission from 1892 to 1894. Amy traveled to California with him and lived in various place in Oakland. (Read about the story of this Mission to California in the diary of John Luther Dalton in another part of this book). Having filled a successful mission he left San Francisco Feb. 23, 1894, for home, accompanied by his family.


Excerpt from the diary of John Luther Dalton:


Tuesday, Feb. 27th:

2:05 a.m. Arrived in Pocatello, Idaho. Father Edgley and Arthur Tom and Eddy met us at the depot. We went home to their house, they and Dave live opposite each other. Sarah is Amy's sister.


In March of 1895 John Luther and Amy Dalton are recorded as residing in the Logan, Utah 7th, ward.

During the winter of 1895-96 Amy Dalton worked in the Logan Temple doing work for their deceased ancestors.


On Dec. 15th, 1899, Amy's fourth and last child was born in Blackfoot, Bingham Co. Idaho. The U.S. census taken in June of 1900 shows the John Luther Dalton family as living back in Pocatello.


Amy's husband John Luther Dalton died on Dec. 29th, 1908 in Pocatello, Idaho. He is buried in the Pocatello Cemetery.


In 1910-11 Amy Dalton and her family was living in a house on Buchanan Street in Pocatello and of that time period a daughter, Voyla writes:


Mother had her home remedies and every spring we got sulfur and molasses and sassafras tea. If we didn't feel good we got a dose of “Jollys" in some coffee which made it taste awful. Hall's cancer medicine was another of her favorites, which I hated but it did the work”.


Another concoction she mixed up was a conditioner that we took as a prevention against contagious diseases. One time l was exposed to smallpox and then Alvin came down with diphtheria. As a preventative I was given this medicine so i wouldn't get diphtheria, which I didn't and I had only about 2 pox break out on me and was not even sick. That was after Dad died in July.


Because of these awful tasting medicines we had to take, I never complained when I didn't feel good. Mother went out nursing and we children stayed at home alone.


In the fall of 1910 Alvin was taken ill and I didn't feel good but never said anything; this was the beginning of a long siege of typhoid fever. For days and days I was kept alive with Laudanum. I'm told my life was despaired of .... then mother having become run down with nursing me contacted typhoid and was taken to the hospital. She was there for about 3 weeks. The two of us had to learn to walk all over again. While mother was in the hospital i was taken to grandpa Edgley's home and while convalescing and learning to Walk, etc.


Mother sold our home and we moved down on Clark St. and mother operated a little confect store selling a few grocery's - such as lunch goods, ice cream, home made candies - and in the winter chili and tamales. Then mother bought the Wallen House taking in roomers and boarders. This was in the 500 block on north Main St.


Alvin remembers:

Mother used to go out and work as a midwife to earn money for us... When i was about 12 years old mother sold our house and bought a confectionery store; sold candies, ice cream, crispettes (like Carmel corn but pressed into piece, thick and 2" across) ... five in a package and we sold them for five cents each. We had a horse and wagon, which i drove around town ringing a bell and selling the crispettes, candy and ice cream. Mother kept this business for about two years and then she sold out and brought a rooming and boarding house at about 555 North Main.


Amy during the following years lived in various places with some of her family members; Portland, OR., Boise Idaho. In April of 1921 she is living in Salt Lake City with her daughter Voyla.


On August 6, 1922, Amy Dalton writes the following to her children:


"Dear Children All:

I expect to undergo my operation tomorrow, and of course i realize under such conditions life is very uncertain, but i am convinced that whether i recover or am taken hence, it is all right, and acknowledge the hand of God in all things. However, should i not recover, in order there be no confusion, I thought it best to leave a few hastily written instructions.


The deed to the cemetery lot is in the leather wallet in my trunk at Uncle Will Edgley's, the key is in my traveling bag I have here at the hospital Get the plainest and most inexpensive casket, and endeavor to make funeral expenses come within the limit of my insurance $150.00. My Temple clothes will have to be bought, with the exception of the apron, which Aunt Alice has. I give my watch to Alvin; Voyla my wedding ring; May my breast pin; Margaret my lavaliere and chain; Luther my diamond ring; Edgley shall have a small piece of jewelry later. "O shoot" I can't bother my head to distribute my (vast) belongings, so I am determined to get well and take care of them myself. You see if I get well, and as i am indebted to Uncle Will for my operation, if there is anything whatever in my belongings in Boise, that he can use, I think he should have them. So I simply leave you to do the best you can, trusting no unkind feelings to be engendered, and may God bless you all and lead you to the light of the gospel.


With undying love, I remain ever, Your loving Mother.

P.S. If Uncle Will would like the desk and the chair let him have them, otherwise draw cuts, distribute my books, pictures, and other small treasures among you.


Amy Dalton never recovered from her operation and died six days later on August 12,1922, in Pocatello, ID. She is buried beside her husband in the Pocatello City Cemetery.


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24 - Elnora Lucretia Warner; The second wife of Simon Cooker Dalton.


Elnora Lucretia Warner was born on June 8th, 1822 at Walworth, Ontario, NY to Luther Warner and Permelia Stanton. Her father Luther Warner was a private in the war of 1812.


Copied from Genealogical Records: Massachusetts Genealogical Records, 1600s-1800s

Massachusetts Militia in the War of 1812, Militia Rosters by Regiment, Page 96:


Capt. A. Platt's Company, Maj. W. Ward's Battalion of Rifles.

From Sept. 22 to Oct. 31 1814.

Raised at Whalety, Mass. Service at Boston.

Privates: Warner, Luther


Luther Warner probably joined the Mormon Church while living in New York and then traveled to Michigan to settle before he joined the others Saints in Nauvoo, Ill. In the exodus of the Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846-1847, Luther Warner and his family joined the Saints in their hazardous trek across the open plains to the Salt Lake Valley. Luther Warner died on April 21 1850 after contracting cholera and died on the plains.


While in Michigan one of his daughters married Charles Dalton who may have been on a Church mission there. Her name was Mary Elizabeth. It is interesting to know that a few years later when both the Warner and the Dalton families lived in Nauvoo, another daughter of Luther Warner would marry a brother of Charles Dalton. (See below)


While the Warner family was living in Michigan, Elnora Lucretia Warner married her first husband, Robert Berry.


Robert Berry married Elnora Warner in 1842 in Reading, Michigan. They had two children, Mary Rosetta Berry and Charles Alma Berry. This family left Michigan with a caravan for the west to Nauvoo. As the work was scarce in Nauvoo, Robert Berry decided to return to Michigan, leaving his family in Nauvoo with her family who was also in Nauvoo at this time. Elnora didn’t hear a word from her husband after that and felt she was abandon, and when she met Simon Cooker Dalton in Nauvoo he talked her into marrying him. (Read more about this story in the history of Simon Cooker Dalton in another chapter of this book. RD)


On February 4, 1846, Heber C. Kimball was presiding in the Nauvoo Temple and said, "We only have time to marry one more couple today." This couple was Simon Cooker Dalton and Elnora Lucretia Warner.


Elnora L. Warner was five feet five inches tall and weighed one hundred sixty pounds. She had blue eyes and black hair.


After leaving Nauvoo in 1846 with the rest of the Saints, Simon Cooker Dalton and his family was living in Kanesville, Iowa waiting their turn to join a wagon train for the trip to the Salt Lake Valley. Elnora Dalton and her family crossed the plains to the Great Salt Lake Valley with the Silas Richards Company. This wagon train left Kanesville, Iowa on July 10th, 1849 with about 100 wagons and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on Oct. 27th, 1849. Simon C. Dalton had one wagon, six oxen, two cows, two loose cattle. Simon's family included:


Simon C. Dalton, age 42.

Elnora L. Dalton, age 27.

Mary R Dalton, age 6.

Charles A. Dalton, age 5.

Francis E. Dalton, age 1


After arriving in the Valley of Salt Lake and building a cabin near his brothers, Simon and his family lived in SLC for a about two years. It was some time about 1852 that Simon C. Dalton moved his family a few miles north to Centerville, Davis Co., Utah to make a permanent home. Simon and Elnora Lucretta Warner had nine children and Elnora died in bed after giving birth to their 10th child. This child was never named and may have died stillborn.


The children of Elnora Dalton was:

Don Carlos Warner Dalton, born 1846 in Nauvoo, died after the Dalton family had to leave quickly, in Dec. of 1846; Frances Elnore, born 1848 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, died 1918; Miriam Tersey, born 1850 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, died 1858 in Centerville, Davis Co. Utah; Simon Eugene, born 1852 in Salt Lake City, died 1933 in Springville, Utah Co. Utah; John Melvin, born 1854 in Centerville, died 1915 in Salt Lake City; Frank Heber, born 1856 in Centerville, died 1933 in Montpelier, Idaho. Janthus; born 1858 in Centerville, died less than 2 months later; Joseph Alvin, born 1860 in Centerville, died 1933 in Salt Lake City; Alonzo Malon, born 1862 in Centerville, died 1928 in Provo, Utah Co.


Elnora Lucretia Warner Dalton died on Dec. 5th, 1865, at Centerville and is buried in the Centerville City Cemetery.


Church Ordinance Data:

Warner, Elnora Lucretia, Baptism, Date: December 10, 1844.

Temple Ordinance Data: Warner, Elnora Lucretia, Baptism, Date: February 10, 1934

Endowment, Date: February 2, 1846, Temple: Nauvoo, Hancock, IL.

Endowment, Date: March 1, 1934, Temple: Mesa, Maricopa, AZ.

Sealed to Parents, Date: April 20, 1892, Temple: Logan, Cache, UT.


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25 - Elizabeth Mary Studer; The first wife of John Luther Dalton.


Elizabeth Mary Studer was born on October 07, 1844 in London England. She was the daughter of Fedel Studer and Mary Cook. She married John Luther Dalton on September 21, 1866 at the age of 19. John Luther Dalton was called on a mission to England by President Brigham Young, departing the 28 April 1865. While in England he did an extensive amount of research work in the fields of genealogy. He also met the girl that was to become his wife, Elizabeth Mary Studer. She with her family emigrated to America and Utah. Eleven children were born to Elizabeth and John Luther Dalton.


Elizabeth Mary Studer and her family departed London, England for America on

the ship "Caroline" in early Sept. 1866. They went to Columbus, Nebraska, by rail and the rest of the way on was traveled by mule team.


Ship: Caroline

Date of Departure: 5 May 1866 Port of Departure: London, England

LDS Immigrants: 389 Church Leader: Samuel H. Hill

Date of Arrival: 11 Jun 1866 Port of Arrival: New York, New York

Source: BMR, Book #1048, pp.232-48 (FHL #025,692)


"On the 5th instant, from London, the ship Caroline was cleared by the government officers, having on board 34 Swiss, 17 Hollanders, and 286 English, making a total of 337 American adult passengers, and they sailed with every prospect of a pleasant voyage. The officers, so far as we had opportunity of judging, were gentlemanly, and in a faithful discharge of duty, equal to the best that sail from these ports; and the vessel itself being 8 1/2 feet between decks, and possessing many other conveniences and comforts which the people seemed greatly to appreciate. The provisions, as usual, were selected with care, and a due regard to the health and comfort of the passengers. But what struck us as of far greater importance than these things, was that the people were inspired with the spirit of confidence in their God. One and all looked on the trials and dangers of a sea voyage with unflinching courage, having an assurance that God was their friend, and that his hand would guide them over the trackless deep safe to the promised land of Joseph. . . ."


A passenger on the "Caroline" was Charles Henry Haderlie. He tells the story of his voyage. "I was born March 29, 1859 in Oberurdorf, Canton Zurich, Switzerland. At the age of seven years I immigrated with my parents to America. Left Switzerland about May 1, 1866, crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a sailing vessel and while on board of ship my mother gave birth to a baby girl named Carolina.


After a long sea voyage we arrived in New York City and immediately took train for the west. Going through the state of Iowa, an axle broke on the car we were riding in and tipped us over. The car was a boxcar and contained quite a few emigrants but we suffered no serious injuries. Proceeding westward we arrived at the Missouri River, Winter Quarters, or Florence, Nebraska about the latter part of June, 1866. Upon our arrival, we were surprised to see my Uncle Jacob Zollinger who had come from Utah, having been called by the church authorities to go as a teamster. After resting a few weeks in camp and waiting for the organization of the company going west and give the mules a chance to rest up a little for the trip. We started on our journey. We were fortunate in being assigned to my uncle’s outfit, consisting of four mules and one wagon and assigned to Thomas E. Ricks Company. In my uncle’s wagon were Father, Mother, Sister, Louisa, Carolina, the baby and myself of our family. He also had another family in his wagon consisting of two aged people, two sisters and a brother with my uncle as driver. There were eleven persons in our wagon. With four heads of mules we left for the overland journey July 15, 1866, everything went well without any serious mishaps except while crossing the Platte River in Nebraska, one of the mules laid down in the water which was over three feet deep and it took considerable time to get him on his feet again. Proceeding on our trip, my little sister Carolina, took seriously ill of fever and ague and died somewhere in the neighborhood of Evingston, [Evanston] Wyoming. A little casket was made out of a mess-box of a wagon and she was laid away in a lonely grave. We arrived in Salt Lake City, Sept. 16, 1866"


Source: CD Disk; Mormon Immigration Index.


We do know that Elizabeth had met her future husband while he was in England on his mission. When and how did they meet? Did he knock upon her parent’s door and teach them the gospel? After they had reunited in Salt Lake City and after they were married,

Elizabeth Studor-Dalton left the following account of her first meeting with Charles and Eunice Dalton. It gives us our one and only glimpse of Eunice Dalton's personality.


The first time mother (Elizabeth M. Studor-Dalton) saw Charles he was the superintendent of the Sunday School and came into church at sunset with his wife (Eunice). Someone asked her (Eunice) if she wanted a seat. She responded, i already have one, i just want a place to put it'!


One source claims John Luther and Elizabeth Mary Studor were married by Charles Dalton. If so, the exact date is not known, but it would have been in early September 1866 as they were sealed for time and all eternity in the Endowment House on September 29, 1866, by Apostle Wilford Woodruff." She was 22 and he was 23.


After her mother-in-law died Elizabeth took over raising of her husband’s six brothers.

Elizabeth Studer-Dalton soon had reason to greatly admire the manner, which Eunice had been raising her sons, as the following story testifies.


She (Elizabeth Studer-Dalton) had been asked to be at the meeting where the women were going to organize the first Relief Society in Peterson. Each one attending the meeting had been requested to bring some donation with form a relief fund or surplus with which to help those in need. Well, poor little Mother had nothing to take. Grandfather Dalton (Charles) was pretty much a tyrant in a way, and he had refused to let her have anything. Father John was away working in Big Cottonwood Canyon, logging. Mother was disappointed at not being able to attend the meeting. She had told that she had been invited, and they were delighted.

As each day drew the meeting time closer they would ask "are you going to the meeting, Lizzie?" And each time she would answer, "No, I think not, boys. You see I have nothing to take" And each time they became a little more disappointed. Then the day of the meeting arrived, and all six of them were there, Charley, Lando, Dell, Simeon, Tossie and Hank. They were so anxious for her to go.

Their little faces were sad again when they asked, "Are you going to the Lizzie?" And again she answered, "No boys, I have nothing to take" They gathered around in a group at her side. One of them said, "You'd better get your things on so you can go or you'll be late. " By now their faces were no longer sad, but fairly beaming with mischief. She did not know what to think of it. She had nothing to take as Grandfather kept assuring her that he had nothing to give, that he could spare no eggs as there were not enough for themselves. Then young Charles spoke up. He had been accorded the honor spokesman as he was the oldest. He drew his hands from behind him, and there in his tattered old hat he had the priceless gift of one dozen eggs. "Here, take these Lizzie, and hurry, Father does not know. She was fairly amused. "But boys, where did you get them" They had taken them one at a time and hid them until they had the dozen so that their Lizzie could go to the meeting and help organize the first Relief Society in Peterson.


The 1880 Utah census shows John Luther and Elizabeth Dalton living in Hooper, Davis Co. Utah. They must have lived close to John’s father, Charles.

They had 11 children between June 6, 1867 in SLC and Oct. 10, 1891 in Ogden.


It was in 1886 that Elizabeth Studer Dalton purchased property in Ogden where they began construction of their new home later that same year. The home was called “The Dalton Mansion” and is located at 2622 Madison St.


There must have been serious problems between Elizabeth Dalton and her husband, John Luther when John informed her that he was taking another wife, who he married in Mexico in Feb. of 1890. John Luther Dalton was from this time on spending most if not all of his time with his new wife, Amy Edgley Dalton.


In April of 1895, Elizabeth decides to let her husband back into her home in Ogden with the stipulation that he “ pay board” When this first marriage reached its final breaking point is unclear, but at least two of their daughters, Beatrice and Rose were extremely bitter about their father’s plural marriage stance. Beatrice wrote about her bitterness In a letter to her cousin Rose Dalton Hardy:


You asked me why I was so bitter against my Dad. You gave the answer yourself, Rose, when you told me what a wonderful Dad you had. My Dad denied us all that. Were you ever hungry when you were a child? Did you ever have to quit school in the third grade because you had no shoes to wear? ... she (Elizabeth M. Studer-Dalton) refused to live in polygamy with the man she loved. She was a refined lady and simply could not (after 11 children and 3 that she lost) live in it with any man”.


She continues in another letter to Rose.


Your grandmother killed herself over extreme poverty or that she lost her mind over worry and curtly or that my mother died of a broken heart. She had sterner stuff and intestinally fortitude and enough courage to say "no, that she would not live the way my dad wanted her too". She was left with no money, a big house, 7 kids-2 babies and he never provided one cent in all the 15 years before he died in abject poverty and she even sent money to help bury him”.


Elizabeth Dalton remained in the Madison Avenue home until 1898 when she sold it for $3,500 and purchased a smaller house.


What is known about the later life of Elizabeth Mary Studer Dalton we can’t say. She died on November 04, 1931 and is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery.

Elizabeth Mary Studer Dalton’s Obituary in a headline in the Ogden Examiner newspaper: Weds. Nov. 4, 1931:


Elizabeth Mary Dalton is Dead

Services Will Take Place Friday Afternoon At 3:00 o'clock


Elizabeth Mary Dalton, aged 86, widow of John Luther Dalton, died this morning at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Audrey Newman, 2854 Madison avenue, after a long illness. Mrs. Dalton was born in London, England, on October 7 1844. She came to Utah in 1866, crossing on the ship "Caroline", in company with other LDS converts, who later came to Ogden. Among them were the late Mr. & Mrs. William Driver and Fred Foulger, who is still alive.

They went to Columbus, Neb. and the rest of the way was by mule team.

The year of her arrival in Ogden Mrs. Dalton was married and had lived here most of her life. Mr. Dalton

died in Pocatello in 1907.

Surviving are the following sons and daughters: Mrs. Newman, Lawrence Dalton, Mrs. Austin Johnson, Ogden; Mrs. Rose Rice, Sacramental; Mrs. Mary Ricker, Sovoy, Mont. One sister, Mrs. Alice Redding, Seattle; nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren also survive.

Services will be held Friday afternoon t 3:00 o'clock in the Lindquist and Sons chapel with Bishop C. A. Halverson presiding. Friends may call at the home of Mrs. Newman on Thursday afternoon and evening and Friday until 3 o'clock. Interment will be made in the Ogden City cemetery.


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26 - Mary Elizabeth Meeks; The first wife of Edward Dalton.


Mary Elizabeth Meeks life started out on July 02, 1823 in Spencer Co. Indiana, where her father, Priddy and her mother, Mary was living at the time. She had two brothers and one sister born before her. Mary Elizabeth was only 7 months old when her mother passed away on Jan. 24th, 1824. Mary Elizabeth was then raised by her stepmother, Sarah Mahurin, who her father married on Dec. 24th, 1826.


The Priddy Meeks family moved from Indiana to Illinois and settled on a farm on the River "Embarrass" The family however did not stay for long, but next moved west to Morgan County and built a log cabin on the banks of the Illinois River. Again they did not stay for long, before moving west. In Priddy Meeks own words:


"I lived on the south side of the Illinois River (Morgan Co.) Shortly after this i bought land at the bluffs on the north side (Brown Co.) half a mile from the river and moved over to it. Three miles west of us was a new town was laid off, called "Versailles" right on the public road....built a good log house under the bluffs and had a good sugar orchard on the land"


Again it was time to move further west. This time to the city that the Mormon's were building on the Mississippi River. The Meeks family arrived in the city in April of 1842.

The move to Nauvoo was the fourth that the family had made in Illinois. First were the farms on the Embarrass River, then Morgan County, next across the Illinois River to brown county and now finally to Nauvoo in Hancock county with the Mormon's.


It was while living in Nauvoo that Mary Elizabeth, now about 22 years old, had a horrifying experience involving her father. It seems that her father had been arrested on a charge of forgery. The explanation for this is copied from the book; "The life and times of Dr. Priddy Meeks and his Progenitors' by Dalton R. & Lenora Meeks. (As is most of this story is; - RD)


Dr. Priddy Meeks was one of the many involved in wagon making. He was trying very hard to be ready to move with the Saints on their projected departure in April. It was imperative for him to sell his real property in Brown County to have the cash to buy the supplies he would need. His son-in-law Orson Adams had property to dispose of they’re as well. Orson had given Dr. Priddy his power of attorney to sell his land, Orson's non-L.D.S. brothers said that Priddy had forged Orson's name, so they went to Carthage and had him arrested and jailed in the same cell where Joseph and Hyrum Smith had beer killed.


Dr. Priddy's oldest daughter Elizabeth often went to see her father in jail. One day she went with Sheriff Beckenstoes on horseback to Carthage. The Sheriff led a horse on which her father could ride home. Elizabeth was left in the woods outside Carthage. She was holding the extra horse and the Sheriff went to the jail and talked with her father. The Sheriff told Priddy Meeks if the jail door should happen to be left open and he got out, for him to walk right into the woods and he would find a girl there on a horse, holding a horse for him. The Sheriff then went out leaving the door open. Priddy soon found his daughter with the extra horse and they rode quickly to Nauvoo. Priddy tells it this way:


In 1845, I was returning home (to Nauvoo) from a business trip. While passing through Carthage, a mob took me and put me in jail where the blood of Joseph and Hyrum Smith was to be seen, and kept me there till the Sheriff, who was my f riend,ag said he knew they could not hurt me by the law, but only wanted to persecute me because I was a Mormon, “but they may bother you so you cannot get off to the west this season." I had sent for Edmunds, a friendly lawyer who tended to the difficulties necessary to help us get off. The sheriff went to Nauvoo and filed a bond for my release, signed as security by Charies Price. John Vanbeek came with the sheriff from Nauvoo and brought me a horse to ride home on. When we started from the jail, the jailer and Sheriff says, "Don't you look back till you reach the timber, or they might suspicion you." It was a task for me to keep my head straight, but I did accomplish it. Then we did not spare horseflesh much until we got home.


Priddy continued with his story:


I then had to wheel and cut to the best advantage to get away from my persecutors and go across the river. I had been working with William McCleary, brother-in-law to the Prophet, making each of us a wagon to cross the plains in. Mine was only half done, but I had to drop everything to get away and give a one-horse wagon two-horse wagon that looked like failing to pieces, having no iron about it but the tire. I wedged and wet it with water, then put a light load in it. It was thought I might go twenty miles to a blacksmith shop, supposed that twenty dollars worth would fix it so I could get to the buffs with it, having to leave part of my family in Nauvoo with my house and lot and furniture and stock and books, in fact, everything that I had, and never got anything for it”


So once again, Priddy Meeks uprooted his family from its home. This was ond time he had done it for religious purposes. This time he was actually forced to leave his home and possessions. His family was compelled to travel in a flimsy wagon with few provisions.


Mary Elizabeth Meeks after a very long and hard trip across the plains with her family finely arrived in the “Valley of the Saints” on the first of Oct. 1847.


Upon arriving in the Valley most Saints, including Priddy, settled in the 'Old Fort" built of adobe by the first group of Pioneers on the ten-acre site which is now Pioneer Park. Among the many things that needed to be done when Priddy's group arrived was to enlarge the Fort. Two more ten-acre blocks were added to the Fort, 450 log cabins were built, an adobe wall around the Fort was completed, a fence was constructed around the city to contain the livestock, and a number of roads and bridges were built. In addition the "big field" of 5,133 acres was cultivated, with 872 acres already planted in winter wheat.


The first winter in the Valley was mild, but there were many discomforts in the Old Fort. Wolves, foxes, and other predators annoyed the people. Swarms of mice were also a nuisance. The ground was full of them. They ran over the people while they slept, ate into their boxes, and destroyed much of their clothing. Various kinds of traps were devised. One of the most valuable possessions in the Fort that first winter was a cat. The Saints sent word back to Winter Quarters for the group who were coming the following year to bring as many cats as possible. Although their temporal needs were great, the spiritual life of the Saints was not neglected. Priddy remembered:


"Now, the first winter that we were in the Valley, we had most glorious night meetings. The Spirit of the Lord was much enjoyed. Preaching, praying, singing and speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues and prophesying was abundantly enjoyed among us".


The Saints were very much surprised when after such a warm winter, March and April turned stormy with heavy spring snow and rain. Not realizing that this would happen the Saints had built their homes with flat sod roots, which in the rain leaked profusely, still another discomfort to be endured.


Romance did not wait for comfort to come to the Valley. Twenty-four year-old Elizabeth Meeks was married to Edward Dalton on March 6, 1848 by Brigham Young. Edward was the son of John Dalton, longtime friends of the Meeks family. Elizabeth and Edward had known each other in Nauvoo and Edward had served in the Mormon Battalion Company C.


In December, 1850, a company, which numbered 118 men, which included thirty families, with 101 wagons, left the Salt Lake colony for "Little Salt Lake Valley” The company of settlers arrived in Little Salt Lake valley, over 200 miles south of Salt Lake City, on the 13th of January, 1851. In this first Company there was Priddy Meeks and Edward Dalton and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Meeks Dalton. They named this new settlement, “Parowan” It is believed that Mary Elizabeth never lived anywhere else but in Parowan, even after her husband married two other wife’s in polygamy and he moved around to other towns in the Southwest. Mary Elizabeth Meeks Dalton raised eight children to maturity.


One of Mary Elizabeth’s sons, Edward Meeks Dalton was murdered by U.S. Marshall William Thompson Jr. on Dec. 16 1886. This happened in Parowan, Iron Co. Utah.

(See the history of Edward Meeks Dalton in Chapter 7 of this book)


After living a tough and hard life as a Pioneer women in a era of polygamy, Mary Elizabeth Meeks Dalton died on October 04, 1892 and is buried in the Parowan City Cemetery. This Cemetery has a rock wall around it and is one of the most beautiful and well-kept cemeteries in the West.


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27. Iva Sarah Veater: The wife of Martin Carroll Dalton Jr. and Rodney Dalton's grandmother.


Iva Sarah Veater was born on August 20, 1896, at Orton, Garfield County Utah. She was the baby of the family, and thirteen years younger than her brother Carl. She had dark hair, clear blue eyes, a small frame, and a sunny disposition; to know her was to love her.


Iva was blessed and given her name on May 2. Iva was baptized on November 3, 1906 by Benjamin Cameron Jr. and confirmed a member of the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints by James B. Heywood. She was the sixth child of James Veater and Sarah Louisa Howd.


Her father, James Veater owed a ranch south of Circleville. The Veater ranch was at Spry, fifteen miles north of Panguitch on the Sevier River. This was the most popular and up to date one in the county, as it was located on the highway from Southern Utah to Salt Lake City. This highway is now known as Highway 89. This ranch made tons of excellent cheese and butter which was shipped to Salt Lake City markets and all over the country. It was also a large cattle ranch and a hotel, where travelers made it a point to stay. This ranch was the stopping place for the old horse and buggy mail line from Panguitch to Marysvale.


Iva's first memories of life on the Veater Ranch at Spry were when she was about three years old. She remembers when her brother, Carl, received a Shetland pony for his birthday, and he would have Mother hold her on the pony while Carl would lead the

pony around and around the outside buildings. Later memories were that he never seemed to tire of playing games with her. He taught her how to ride a horse, and how to make corncob dolls using the corn silk for the hair. He taught her how to remove an egg from the brooding chicken's nest without getting pecked. He taught her to put a worm on a fishing hook, and how to catch pollywogs. He also taught her a little poem, that many years later she would teach to her own children.


Soap making was a very necessary chore that took place at least once a year at the Veater ranch. After the pork grease had been rendered, and the lye had been made from wood ashes or had been purchased, Iva's father would send word to Circleville, for Bish or Howd or Carl, and their families to come home to help their mother with the soap making. The family's help was needed because the soap was made in a large heavy iron kettle that was hung over a wood burning fire outside. The kettle was very heavy. This was always a happy occasion for Iva. This meant that she would have her nephews and nieces to play with, and she would enjoy all the attention that her older brothers would shower on her. Iva's mother remarked often that "it wasn't Mother and Father that spoiled Iva, it was her sisters and her brothers and their wives." Everyone loved their baby sister.


Iva learned to help her mother in the kitchen at an early age. Their mother's time was not spent on fancy foods, but her cupboards were filled with all sorts of bottled fruits, vegetables pickles, preserves, and kegs of sauerkraut, and always, there was a pleasing aroma of foods being prepared for the freighters, mailmen, and travelers. In the kitchen, often you could smell the soft pungent aroma of freshly baked bread, biscuits, doughnuts, cakes, and pies. Iva's mother kept most of these delicious baked foods high upon the cupboard shelf in the pantry. Her famous Chewy Ginger Snap Cookies, however, rested in a gray stone cookie jar on the lowest pantry shelf. They fairly oozed with ginger and were off limits to her children, friends, and boarders.


One of the chores that Iva had in the summertime was to take the milk cows to the pastures where they could eat the tall, sweet grass and clover and drink the cool water. Then, in the early evening, she would go back and drive them to the barn, where the men folk would milk them. She loved to watch her pet tomcat "Charlie" follow close at the milker's heels to get his share of the sweet, warm milk before it was strained and placed in the shallow pans in the milk cellar for the cream to rise.


Making the cheese and butter was a very important job on the ranch, as this was where they made their cash. The Veater’s were known for making the very best cheese and butter. Each child took on the very important responsibility of helping their mother with this work as long as they lived on the ranch. Iva's job was to wrap the cheese in a soft clean oiled cloth, and then to store it in large crackpots until they had made enough cheese and butter to take-to the mining towns or to the larger cities to sell.

She also helped her mother make the sweet, fragrant cream into delicious butter. They would take turns working the dasher up and down, with firm pulsating pace, until the milk from the cream would separate and then to butter brake. Then, after the very last nuggets had been gleaned from the wooden churn, they would place the special “Veater" stamp on each pound of butter.


Iva loved to be with her father. She would go with him to cut the sweet-smelling meadow hay, and to catch frogs. Frog's legs were a delicacy that were much in demand by the traveling people who would stop by the ranch for nice meal and comfortable lodging.


Iva could hardly wait until she was old enough to attend school where she could have other children to play with at recess. She attended the little Spry School with Miss Dean Sudweeks as the teacher. The children were all different ages, and studied subjects suitable to their ages. Iva was thrilled when she started to read the McGuffy Reader Books. One of the first stories was Mary Had A Little Lamb. She felt that this was very special, as she had a pet lamb at home. She loved it when the children would stand and pledge allegiance to the flag. Sometimes the children would be assigned to memorize a short poem or a scripture; these were called "Memory Gems."


By the sixth grade of school, Iva had outgrown the little school in Spry. It was decided that she should go to Circleville. She could live with Carl and Minnie. She attended the old rock school and the teacher was Thomas Howell.

It wasn't long until she noticed a handsome young man whose name was Martin Carrell Dalton Jr. He was born on May 1, 1894, and was the second child of Martin Carrell Sr. and Charlotte Ellen Whittaker. Carrell was the oldest son of a family of six boys and two girls.


Iva and Martin Carrell Dalton Jr. were married on December 23, 1912, at Junction, Piute County Utah. He was nineteen, and she was seventeen. To this happy union came seven children. They are; Afton Garneta, Iris Uarda, Carrell Garth, France Cecil, Rhea Druce, Taylor Boyd and Syble Joy.


Carrell loved to get a crowd of boys and girls together and a corral full of calves or colts to rope and ride. He had many bad cuts and broken ribs as a result of these activities,

but he still thought it was fun. He broke many an untamed horse so that it could be ridden, while he was a young lad. While he was a young man, his father gave him a big, red racehorse and he was named Red Cloud by Carrell. This horse had a great love for Carrell, who trained him and rode him in many a horse race around Southern Utah. Carrell also had a great love for this horse; they understood each other perfectly. Many who knew Carrell said that they never remember the horse ever losing a race when Carrell was the jockey. Carrel's parents owned a roller skating rink. Skating was a very popular sport at that time. They would let him invite a crowd of his young friends to go in and skate for free between nights of regular skating time. Carrell and Iva spent a great amount of their spare time practicing some fancy steps and they won many contests.


Carrell's parents also owned a little country store, and the first Community Hall to be built as such, in the Valley. People would come from miles around and dance until morning, paying their tickets with vegetables or some kind of produce. Christmas parties were also held in the Community Hall where, after a good program, there would be treats for everyone and a gift on the Community Christmas Tree for all the children. These were happy times for Carrell and Iva..


Their first home was a two-room log home, and after Cecil was born, they decided to sell Red Cloud and use the money to add more rooms on to their home.


Carrell was always proud of his wife's ability to keep a clean, well-organized home. She was also a very good seamstress and an excellent cook. When he wanted to pay her a compliment, he would say to his friends, "Iva can make a silk pulse out of a pig's ear."


He loved to take his friends and neighbors down to the basement of their home, in the fall of the year after the garden and the orchard had been harvested and the foodstuff had been bottled and preserved. There were peaches, pears, plums, apple sauce, apple butter, jellies, preserves, all kinds of vegetables and meats, with plenty of dill and sweet pickles and sauerkraut in large crock pots. All these things she had learned to preserve while she was a small girl, working at her mother's side on the Veater Ranch.


In 1942, the Second World War was fast approaching, and Iva and her husband Carroll moved to Las Vegas, Nevada to find work. After working for a few years in Nevada at various jobs, Martin Carroll become very sick and Iva had to take him back to Circleville to live. His health seemed to improve for a short time. Only later, did he become very ill. Iva was compelled to take him up north (Provo) to a hospital, where she went every single week to visit him, even after she had moved back to Las Vegas.


While Iva was living back in Circleville, she had a severe heart attack, but she kept it a secret from her children. After her children moved her back to Las Vegas, where they could care for her, she had another heart attack. What a shock it was to her children, when they learned that their dear mother didn't have much longer to live. Iva passed away on October 24, 1960. Her funeral was held in Circleville, on October 29, 1960. Her beloved Carrell passed away on January 29, 1961. His funeral was held February 3, 1961. They were both buried in the Circleville Cemetery, surrounded by the tall mountains, and in the place they always called "Home Sweet Home"


My Grandmother, by Rodney Dalton:


Here is a personal note about what I remember about my Grandmother Dalton, which is not much before we moved from Circleville when I was 4 years old. I do know that when me and my family visited her later, she would give me everything I liked to eat, even against my mother’s word. It was my Grandma Dalton who named my Rodney according to my mother. It was many years later when she was living in Las Vegas that I remember taking many trips to Southern California alone and with my buddies, that I would stop in at her place of work on the main road through North Las Vegas and she would feed me. I think it was a “Dairy Queen” drive in. She also worked in a large store that sold groceries and hardware, like a present day “Wal-Mart. She would not let me leave before she had given me money for gas and food while on my trips back and forth through Las Vegas.


I remember her funeral in October of 1960 when I was working in Ogden and I drove my brother Russell to Circleville for it. We both had a bad time excepting her death, but somehow I kept it together and we buried her. The next bad thing was only a few months later, in January of 1961 we had to bury my grandfather, Martin C. Dalton. They are both buried side by side in the Circleville Cemetery.


She was a dear and kind lady who I loved very much and still miss her kindness to me after all these years. Below is a photo of me at my grandmother’s house when i was about 10 years old.


A Poem, by her daughter, Rhea Dalton Mortensen.


MOTHER -

She rocked me when I was tiny,

I found comfort in her loving arms,

Her lulling voice made me sleepy,

I felt safe from fear or harm.


As I grew up she prepared me,

For a day when she would be gone,

Oh, but how was I to know,

That her stay here would not be long?


The day Heavenly Father called her home,

Did not seem right or even fair,

Surely He knew that I needed my mother,

Much more than He needed her there?


But now I know He does have a plan,

And Mother is part of it, too,

For now she is in the Spirit World,

With all kinds of work to do.

I know she is busy in the Gospel,

there is so much to learn,

We will have much to talk about,

When it is my time to return.


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28 - Charlotte Ellen Whittaker; The wife of Martin Carroll Dalton. And Rodney Dalton's great-grandmother.


Charlotte Ellen Whittaker, daughter of James C. Whittaker and Mary Ann Arthur. Born 8 November 1864, at Greenville, Beaver, Utah. Married Martin Carroll Dalton 29 January 1889, at Circleville, Piute, Utah.

Died 30 June 1941, at Circleville, Piute, Utah.


Baptized by Gilbert R. Beebe and confirmed by Thomas Day, 12 September 1885. Temple sealing 16 June 1909.


1880: Living in Circle Valley.


29 January 1889: Charlotte Ellen Whittaker of Circleville.

Married Martin Carroll Dalton. Ceremony performed by James Wiley, justice of the peace. Witnesses: M.D. Morgan and Elvira Dalton.


12 December 1902:

Christmas Program to be Rendered at Circleville, Dec. 24-25th 1902. People to congregate from 1:30 to 2 p.m. at Dalton's hall, Dec. 24th. Christmas carol by the choir. Prayer by the Chaplain. Music by Lorin Fullmer and company. Grand display of Christmas Tree and distribution of presents. In the evening, at 8 o'clock sharp, a grand ball will be given for adults. An excellent supper to be served at 11 p.m. Dancing to be interspersed by toasts given by J.H. Fullmer, Willis Johnson, Jos. Johnson, Sarah A. Morrill, Jos. Meeks, Ellen L. Fullmer, Sarah A. Dalton and Leon Johnson. Presents for tree will be received from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Second Day's Program. December 25. Meeting will begin at 10 a.m. sharp. / Singing, Christmas greeting, by the choir. Prayer, by the Chaplain. Singing, by the choir Stump speech, by Jos. Neilson. Instrumental music, by Leona Johnson. Song, by Jos. Johnson. Why Christmas is a holiday, by Willis Johnson. Song, by Ina Fullmer and company. Recitation, by Mrs. Mary Horton. Music, by the Harmonica band. Recitation, by Almira Knight. Song, by Lulu Parker and sisters. Recitation, by Susie Meeks. Male Quartette, by G.M. Beebe, M.D. Morgan and others. A Round, by Messrs. Fullmer, Neilson and Meeks. Singing, by the Choir.

Benediction, by the Chaplain. Children's dance in the afternoon beginning at 2 p.m., prompt, and closing at 4:30. / Master of ceremonies, Jos. Johnson. Chaplain, J.E. Peterson. Committee on Decoration Sarah A. Morrill, Chairman. Mary Horton, Minnie Wiltshire, Susie Meeks, Walter Farnsworth, Caroline Dalton, Jose Bettenson, Annie Wiley, Willard Hayward, Dwight Fullmer, Jos. Meeks and Roy Dalton. Distributing Committee. Ina Fullmer, Sarah Dalton, Ethel Wiley, Ellen Simpkins, Maggie Petersen and Emma Lambson. Dancing Committee. Jos. Johnson and J.H. Fullmer, J.H. Fullmer, floor-manager. Finance Committe. Jos. Johnson, J.H. Fullmer, J.C. Whittaker, Geo. Corton and M.D. Morgan. Coffee Committe. Nellie Dalton, Mozetta Whittaker, Mrs. H.D. Wiley and Hanna Whittaker. Committee on Tables. H.D. Wiley, Jos. Bettenson, T.W. Smith, Ed Fullmer, Chas A. Dalton, Sarah Morrill, Mrs. Annie Parker, Mrs. Minnie Wiltshire, Ellen Meeks, Ellen Lambson, Lila Louth[?], Sarah A. Dalton and Lizzie Bettenson.


5 August 1903:

Signed petition asking County Commission to consolidate Circleville and Lost Creek School Districts, claiming that neither district "is able to build a school house of sufficient capacity to accommodate all the children of their respective districts, nor to grade the scholars according to their merits, resulting in the holding back of children that ought to be advanced, for their slower going class mates."


1916-17: Farming 68 acres (value: $420), at Circleville.


14 November 1918: Subscribed for bonds "of the fourth issue" (World War I war bonds), at Circleville.


1920: Living at Circleville. Can read and write.


30 June 1941: Of Circleville; lifetime resident of Utah. Housewife. Died of "paralysis of rectum". Funeral services held 3 July 1941 at Circleville, conducted by bishop.(


2 July 1941:


CIRCLEVILLE - Services for Mrs. Charlotte E. (Nellie) Dalton, 76, who died Monday at her home in Circleville, will be conducted Thursday at 2 p.m. in Circleville Ward. Burial will be in Circleville Cemetery. Mrs. Dalton was born Nov. 8, 1864, in Greenville, Beaver County, daughter of James and Mary Ann Arthur Whittaker. She resided in Circleville all her adult life, and was active in Relief Society work. She served as counselor to two ward Relief Society presidents and was treasurer of the group for six years. Her husband, Martin Carrell Dalton, preceded her in death. Surviving are three sons, Martin Carrell, Lawrence W. and Vernon A. Dalton, and two daughters, Mrs. Vera Haycock, and Mrs. Irene Smith, all of Circleville; two brothers, George H. Whittaker of Circleville and John Whittaker of Leadore, Idado; Two sisters, Mrs. Mary Sewell of Phoenix, Ariz., and Mrs. Louis Cheney of Blackfoot, Idaho; 20 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.


4 July 1941:

Circleville Woman Is Buried Thursday Afternoon. Lived in Community since about twelve years of age. Funeral services were held at the Circleville ward chapel Thursday of this week for Mrs. Charlotte E. (Nellie) Dalton. Mrs. Dalton died at her home Monday of this week at the age of 76 years. Mrs. Dalton was born in Greenville, Beaver County, November 8, 1864, a daughter of James and Mary Ann Arthur Whittaker. She came to Circleville with her family when 12 years old and has lived there ever since. She was married to Martin C. Dalton June 29, 1889, and eight children were born to the union. Her husband and three sons preceded her to the grave. She is survived by Martin Carroll, Lawrence W. and Vernon A. Dalton and Mrs. Vera Haycock and Mrs. Irene P. Smith. Twenty grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren also survive. All the survivors are residents of Circleville. Mrs. Dalton was well known and loved by everyone in the community and was an ardent worker in church organizations.


11 July 1941:

Mrs. Dalton Buried Thurs.

Final and sad rites were held in the Circleville ward chapel Thursday afternoon of last week for Mrs. Charlotte E. Dalton, who died at her home there June 30. Services were directed by a nephew of the dead woman, James L. Whittaker. "Aunt Nellie" Dalton, as she was known by her many friends, spent 64 of her 76 years of life in Circleville and was in every sense a true pioneer woman. Musical numbers included the opening song, "Oh My Father," and "I Know My father Knows" by the Circleville choir; a violin solo by Judd Haycock; a duet selection, "That Wonderful Mother of Mine", Ina Chamberlain and Beryl Whittaker; "My Thoughts of You," Nellie Fullmer; a trombone solo, Francis Haycock; and "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" by the choir. Speakers were Douglas Q. Cannon, president of the Garfield stake, and Arthur King. A tribute to the one who had been called was read by Daphne Smith and a scriptural reading was given by Druce Betenson. Henry Sudweeks offered the invocation and James Haycock pronounced the benediction. Following the services at the chapel the remains were taken to the Circleville cemetery and tenderly laid to rest. The grave was dedicated by Jay W. Applegate, bishop of the Junction ward. The grave was banked high with beautiful floral offerings, tokens of esteem held for Mrs. Dalton in the community. Several of the bouquets had been picked from the garden of the dead woman, which has always been one of the beauty spots in the community. Among out-of-town people who attended the services were Hattie Dalton Mellor and Emma Nay of Marysvale, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Christensen, Ada Thorley and Mr. and Mrs. Roy Heap of Cedar City, Lilly Lambson and Minerva Proctor of Antimony, President and Mrs. W.E. Bay of Kingston, Bishop and Mrs. Jay W. Applegate and Mr. and Mrs. Reed Beebe of Junction, Mr. and Mrs. Hal Haycock and baby of Pleasant Grove, Mary Sewell of Phoenix, Arizona; Louie Cheney of Blackfoot, Idaho; Ella Lipe and son, Robert, of Salmon City, Idaho, and Mrs. John Whittaker of Leadore, Idaho.


Sources:

Deseret News: 2 July 1941

Piute County News: 4 July 1941, 11 July 1941

Piute Chieftain: 14 November 1918

Piute Free Lance: 12 December 1902