Bio. of HARRIET TEMPERANCE UTLEY CARTER 1835-1925 |
Concerning the Samuel Turnbow Family |
Reproduced with permission from Shanna Jones (Her email) |
I was the third child in a family of six children, having but one sister who was four years older. Here we all lived, until our parents heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when we were all converted to it and baptized members, except my brother Gabriel, who was not yet old enough for baptism. I can vividly remember some of my childhood days in Alabama. There were many kinds of nuts that grew in the nearby countryside, and I well remember going with my brother and sister to gather them for the winter. Then, during the winter evenings, we would sit around the fireplace and crack nuts, and oh, how we did enjoy it! The wild flowers that grew in that part of Alabama were very beautiful and plentiful. I loved going into the forests to pick the wild honeysuckle. I also remember my first fishing trip. My grandmother, Elizabeth Berry, was a great fisher-woman, and she would gather her stuff together, throw her basket over her shoulder, and start off down the stream, fishing and visiting all her friends who lived up and down the way. She would go for a week at a time, and having negro slaves at home to do the work, all was taken care of. She accompanied me on my first fishing trip, which was to a creek near our home. I caught three large fish. Grandmother didn't catch any, and I was really pleased with myself. (I was later baptized in that same stream.) I can also remember some of the first Mormon Missionaries that came to Alabama. They were: John Brown, James Brown, Benjamin L. Clapp and Elder Winchester. Grandma Berry just lived a little way up the creek from us. She had some negro slaves. There was the negro man and his wife, who we called Aunt Nancy, and their three children, John, Violate and Patience. All us children were sent out to play together. But I never liked playing with the negro children, they were so black and I always felt a little afraid of them. My Grandfather Utley, who lived in North Carolina, wanted my father to take some negro slaves with him when he first came to Alabama, but he said, "No, I will do my own work." Which he did all his life. While we lived here, I can remember my mother and father sending donations to the Nauvoo Temple. In 1847, my father moved us all to Mobile, where we stayed with my mother's sister for a few days while my father sold his farm and made preparations to move to Winter Quarters. We sailed down to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, and then up the Missouri River to Kanesville, which was later called Council Bluffs. While on the boat, the day before we reached our destination, there was a woman on deck, doing her washing. She sent her husband for a bucket of water. As he reached for it, the bucket filled full and pulled him into the river, and out of sight. The people tried to rescue him, but they could not find him. Someone rushed to tell his wife, but she calmly declared, "I could not save him if I went down," and went on with her washing. Upon our arrival at Winter Quarters, we found the first company of Pioneers ready to start on their trek across the plains, to find a home for the Saints, west of the Rocky Mountains. Here we met our old neighbors, the Turnbows, who lived by us back in Alabama, and they were getting ready to follow the pioneers out later. We were not able to go as we had no wagon or team. Samuel Turnbow, our old neighbor, said we could live in his house at Winter Quarters after he had gone. In the meantime, father got us a place at Council Bluffs, where we remained for a while. While here, a terrible misfortune befell our family. We all contracted the measles, except father. He took care of all of us. My mother, my only sister, and three of my brothers all died within six weeks of each other. My seven-year-old brother went first, Henry Lafayette; then my mother eleven days later, on the 14th of October. When she died, her last words were: "Samuel, keep the children in the Church." James William Saunders, my oldest brother, went next; then seven days later, Jacob Jeffersen went on the 12th of November. My sister was dying six days later, and when she knew she was going, she said, "Oh father, I can't die, I must stay and take care of my little sister." She was sixteen years old. My youngest brother, Gabriel Marion, who was three years old, and myself who was twelve years old, also had the measles. He was crying for a drink of water. I got out of my bed and crawled across the floor, to where the water bucket, with its dipper, stood. I took a big drink of water to him, and had one myself. Just when we were finished, my father came in, and he was very much upset, thinking that the drink of water would take us also. But we were the only ones that lived. My father wrote back to Alabama, and told them of the family tragedy. One of my uncles wrote and asked for me and my brother to come and live with him and his wife, as he was well-to-do and wished to give us every opportunity. But they had not accepted the gospel. Father asked my if I would like to go, and I said, "Father, don't you remember what mother said, "Keep the children in the church"?" So we remained with father. Later on we moved across the river, to Winter Quarters into the house of Samuel Turnbow. Here my father taught school and did a bit of farming. He cut some green timbers and seasoned them up in the rafters of our house, and later made us a wagon to cross the plains in. Finally in 1852, we started on our journey across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. We had the wagon that father had made, two milk cows for our team, and the necessities we needed. We made good progress until we reached the alkali beds, and then one of our cows drank the water and died. The captain of the company had some extra animals, and he let father have a yoke of oxen. Shortly after this, cholera broke out among the company, and my father was one of the unfortunate victims. I can remember of being awakened by some voices just outside our wagon. I looked out and it was just grey dawn. There was a strange man talking to one of the men in our company. After a minute, the strange man turned and spoke to me. It was my father. He had taken cholera during the night and was so sick I could not recognize him at first. He was hanging over a wheel of our wagon, and they wanted us children to move to another wagon, and put father to bed in this one. But after father was put to bed, I would not leave his side. They said I was not to stay by him as I would catch the disease and die, too. But I told them that I did not care if I did, I was not going to leave my father when he was so sick. I sat by his side all day as we rode along, but he was too sick to talk to me, and I just gave him water to drink, fanned his face and moistened his lips. He died late that afternoon. That night when they made camp, the men cut the bark from a big tree, wrapped his body in a sheet, placed him in half the tree bark, and laid the other half over the top of him for a lid, and he was buried over on a hillside. There were several others who died the same day. A man without a team volunteered to drive our team, after father died, so I did not have to worry about that. Up to this time we had plenty of bedding to keep us warm, but due to the health measures practiced in those days, we discarded all of our bedding, and were only able to secure one pillow from the captain of the company. The epidemic of the cholera surely proved to be a hardship on us. We managed with the few things we had, but surely suffered from the cold. The man that drove our team was rather rough and cranky with us, and we did not like him much. After we reached Salt Lake, I heard him tell a man that father's wagon was surely a good one, as he had done his best to tip it over and smash it up, but he could not. Father had made it all himself, wheels and all, and the wheels bowel out a little at the bottom. When we reached Salt Lake City, we felt like strangers in a strange land. Reddin Allred, who lived north of the city, in another town, was very kind to us, and took us home to live with his family. We stayed there two weeks, when Samuel Turnbow heard of our sad state, and he sent his son, John, up to get us. We were glad to find friends and a home. We went to live with them, and they took us into their family, like we were their own, and showered all the love and affection on us that our parents would have done. Six months later, Sister Turnbow died, and I cared for her family until 1853. I had gone to school in the old 14th ward school house, in Salt Lake City. Reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic were taught there. I was 17 years old when I finished the fifth reader. The chief amusements were husking and quilting bees, and dancing parties. We also had home dramatics, which were enjoyed by young and old. On the 23rd of November 1853, I was married to William Carter, one of the original pioneers of 1847. William had a wife, Ellen, and a son, John. Ellen was ten years older than I, being 28 years old. She took me and my little brother, nine years old, into her home and her heart. She was a mother, friend and sister to us. We lived and raised our families together for thirty years. William farmed for a living, and we were very happy. After thirty years, William bought me a home, and when I moved into it, Ellen said it was the greatest sorrow of her life. In the summer of 1855, the grasshopper plague hit us again. I went out into the fields with my husband and helped to beat off the pests. We were able to harvest over a hundred bushels of wheat, while many of our neighbors raised nothing. In 1858, Johnston's Army came to enter the valley. William was off with the hand cart missionaries, to Eastern Canada, so when we were called to go south for protection and safety, Gabriel hauled our supplies in a wagon to Provo, which Ellen helped to load. We hired a boy to drive the other team. We went to Spanish Fork, where we made our home until we deemed it safe to return to Salt Lake City. In 1861 William was called to go to Southern Utah to raise cotton. He took his third wife, Sophronia Turnbow, their baby, and my brother, Gabriel, went with them. The next year William returned to Salt Lake City for Ellen and me and our children. We drove back to St. George, the name of the place we settled at, in the winter, and arrived at the ridge above the settlement at noon on Christmas day. Here we stopped and had our Christmas dinner. Then we travelled on to St. George. The ridge we stopped on was the Washington Black Ridge, the one that overlooks the town of Washington. When we arrived we found that William had built an adobe house for Sophronia, then there was the large tent, so we lived in these until William built a home for Ellen and me. Here we lived for many years and never had a quarrel. I taught her and others to card and spin and weave, and we wove many hundreds of yards of cloth on the hand loom. We had no cotton gins in those days, and had to pick the cotton from the seeds by hand. Later on we got some hand gins, which greatly helped with the work. A woolen mill was soon built, and then we did not have to worry or work so hard for our clothes. We still did our spinning, but had the weavers do our weaving. Source: Shanna Sullivan Jones |