Several months after her parents arrived at the new settlement of Plain City, Weber, Utah, on 17 March 1859, Evelyn Carlisle Sharp was born in a wagon box on 12 October 1859. She always noted she was born on Columbus Day and the first white girl born in Plain City. Her father was William Sharp, stonemason and cornet player, one of the founders of Plain City. Her mother was Mary Ann Bailey Sharp, seamstress and dressmaker, who had crossed the plains with an ox team in the early 1850s.
Evelyn Carlisle Sharp and Victorine Mary Sharp
Evelyn’s own account of her early life was preserved in the Utah Pioneers Biography, Vol. 28, Pages 6–7, copied by Maurice L. Howe of Ogden, Utah. It is nice to have some first-person voices from Plain City’s founding generation. The marriage notice from the Ogden Standard Examiner of 22 January 1881 and her Oregon death certificate of 19 April 1941 are limited records, in my possession, of her long life.
Evelyn Sharp Taylor and Victorine Sharp Maw
Pioneer Personal History of Mrs. Evelyn Sharp Taylor
Copied from Utah Pioneers Biography, Vol. 28, Pages 6–7, by Maurice L. Howe, Ogden, Utah.
Mrs. Evelyn Sharp Taylor, Widow of James Henry Taylor, has the distinction of being the first white girl born in Plain City. Her family was one of the early subscribers to the Standard Examiner and after her marriage she and her husband subscribed for many years before they moved from Ogden.
Mrs. Sharp Taylor is now a resident of Portland, Oregon. In relating some of the incidents of Pioneer days Mrs. Taylor said: “I was born on Columbus Day, October 12, 1859 in a wagon box in what is now Plain City — at that time it was just wilderness. My father was William Sharp and my mother was Mary Anne Bailey. They crossed the plains with an ox team in the fifties.
“When they moved up to Plain City, father set to work to build a log and adobe house and during that time the family lived in the wagon box placed in the ground. There were two white boys born previously in Plain City.
“I was the first white girl born there. After I grew up I married James Henry Taylor, who was one of the first white children born in old Binghams Fort on West Second Street at Five Points.
“My parents used to tell me about one of the first trips I ever made to Ogden. I was just a baby in arms and my mother and father went to town with their ox team and wagon. It was winter time and when they got home that night the sky was so dark and the roads so drifted over with snow that they lost their way when they were nearly home.
“Finally they discovered the wagon was on a big patch of ice where the river had overflowed. Try as they would they could not find their way so they unhooked the oxen and let them find their way the best they could. Father and Mother said I cried with cold. The wolves howled around the wagon all night while we were huddled there nearly frozen.
“When morning came my parents discovered we were only a short distance from our house. We used to see lots of Indians in those times.
“My family used to take the Ogden paper by mail in the early Seventies. I enjoy getting back to Ogden to meet my friends again.
“My husband in Weber Co. for a time, then we moved to Eureka, Utah where he worked in the mines. Later we moved to Baker City, Oregon and since his death lived in Portland.
“I am surprised at the mildness of the winters here in recent years. When I was young we never used to be able to see a fence for months because the snow covered them up. Snow 2 to 4 feet deep was not uncommon here in early days.”
The Taylor–Sharp Marriage
Evelyn married James Henry Taylor on Sunday, 16 January 1880, at the Taylor residence in Plain City. The ceremony was officiated by Rev. J. L. Gillogly. James Henry Taylor was the youngest son of John Taylor, and had himself been born in old Binghams Fort on West Second Street at Five Points in Ogden. About forty invited guests attended and partook of bountiful refreshments.
The notice in the Ogden Standard Examiner of 22 January 1881 — apparently updated or annotated years later — adds that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were then nearly 70 years of age, “having reared and married off 12 children — and yet they both seem as full of life and viracity as ever.” Together they raised twelve children, eventually settling in Oregon.
Death and Survivors
Evelyn Sharp Taylor died on Saturday, 19 April 1941, at her home at 345 Third Avenue, Seaside, Clatsop County, Oregon, at 6:10 in the evening. She was 81 years, 6 months, and 7 days old. The cause of death was recorded as apoplexy, due to senile changes. She had lived in Oregon for 38 years.
Her obituary, headed “Weber Woman Dies in Oregon,” identified her as “the first white child born at Plain City.” She was survived by three sons and three daughters in Oregon, and by her sister Mrs. Victorine Maw of Ogden — Victorine Mary Sharp, born 8 April 1862 in Plain City, who had married Robert Edward Maw, son of Plain City pioneer Robert Maw. The last two surviving daughters of William and Mary Ann Sharp, separated by nearly three thousand miles.
Funeral services were held Wednesday in Portland. Evelyn was cremated at the Portland Crematorium; the funeral was conducted by E.B. Hughes Mortuary of Astoria, Oregon.
A Note on the Family
Evelyn was the sixth child of William Sharp and Mary Ann Bailey Sharp, and the first born in Plain City. Her brother Milo Riley Sharp — my great-great-grandfather — had been born two years earlier, on 23 July 1857, in Lehi, Utah, while the family still lived there before the move north. Younger sister Victorine Mary Sharp was born on 8 April 1862, also in Plain City.
The Personal History of William Sharp — a separate document in this family record — places the family’s arrival at Plain City on 17 March 1859, traveling with the large body of Lehi colonists who left on 10 March. It describes the journey vividly: seven days of cold, muddy travel, the wagons doubled-teamed through the muddy flats, arriving at about five o’clock in the afternoon with the ground covered in snow. The wagons were lined up and sagebrush piled behind them as a windbreak against the north wind. They dug a hole in front and built a campfire. This is the scene into which Evelyn was born seven months later.
William Sharp built the adobe home in Plain City that was later used by the Edward Sharp family — Dean Sharp lived in it as a child — and built the first Episcopal Church building, which still stands today as the Plain City Lions Civic Center, designated a historical site, its original bell refurbished and sitting atop the building. He played the cornet in Plain City’s first band. He served on the board of directors of the cooperative store organized at Plain City in 1869. He and Mary Ann divorced on 19 May 1876. William later married a widow named Charlotte Elizabeth Earl and moved to Ogden’s Mound Fort District, where he died on 22 December 1900 and was buried in the Ogden Cemetery.
Mary Ann Bailey Sharp lived on in Plain City until her death on 31 October 1913, and was buried there. She had been born on 28 November 1828 in Mattersey, Nottinghamshire, England — a village less than ten miles from Misson, where William was born.
For more on the Sharp family and Plain City’s founding generation, see:
I served as a missionary for the church from 1998-2000 in the Manchester England Mission. I am still an Elder, but my missionary work is more limited in scope, venue, and time.
Recently, an investigator was asking why the need for authority. He felt his baptism was just as valid as the LDS baptism.
It reminded me of a portion of a talk I carried around as a missionary. The talk was given by Boyd K. Packer at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, 3 February 1980. The talk has many good points, but I focus on the copy I carried when discussing the priesthood.
Our MTC District, I only know four of the 11. From l-r, #5 is Elder Olson, #9 Elder Scow, #10 Elder Young, #11 Elder Ross. The rest were going to Peoria, Illinois if I remember correctly.
“Consider this illustration.
“Suppose an agent came to you with a real bargain in insurance. He claims that his policy offers complete protection. He talks of generous coverage, very low premiums, no penalties for making a claim—even a heavy claim. Other features make the policy look better than any you have considered before. He tells you of the company he claims to represent. You know it to be very reputable. You study the policy and find more offered to you, with less required of you, than any policy you have looked at before. You check carefully on the company and come away satisfied that they are indeed reputable. They do stand behind their policies. Some of your friends have dealt with them for years and have always been satisfied. You, it appears, have found a real bargain.
“But in this imaginary account there is one thing that you did not discover, one hitch. This agent was never hired by that company. They have not authorized him to represent them. The company is not even aware that he is using their name. He obtained copies of the policy and adjusted it to give it a little wider appeal. He had some forms and letterheads printed and set himself up in business. When he writes a policy and collects the premiums, they do not go to the head office. The policy goes into a drawer somewhere, and the premium money into his pocket. Chances are, he figures, there will be no claim against the policy anyway, at least not while he is around. And since it is life insurance, certainly there will be no claim while the policyholder is around.
“You have, as the expression goes, been sold a bill of goods. For all you know, you are well insured. You feel content and suppose that when the day comes, as it surely will, your claim will be paid.
“Too bad for you! No doubt the company will reject your claim. They cannot be compelled to honor policies except those written by authorized agents whom they have hired and certified, no matter how convinced you were that this man was a bona fide agent.
“Will you get sympathy? Oh yes. Full value of the policy? Not a chance! Would you not receive anything? Well, for as long as you didn’t know the difference you felt secure, for whatever that is worth.
…
“If you had been sold the insurance policy we talked about, you might be quite complacent, thinking you were well insured. But oh my, how that gets reversed. Somewhere in later conversations would come the sermon, “You ought to have been more careful about where you put your trust. You should have checked more carefully.”
After reading the parable, we would often turn to Hebrews 5:4, “And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.”
James and Sarah Goodlad Bailey are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter Mary Ann Bailey to William Sharp, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp. William and Mary Ann were married at Loup Fork, Howard, Nebraska on 10 July 1853. (Loup Fork appears to have been a crossing of the Loup River, somewhere between Fullerton and Palmer Nebraska, in order to go turn south to rejoin trail along the Platte River.)
William is mason and farmer. They will make their home wherever they are called to settle once they arrive in the Utah Territory.
Due to the circumstances of this family, it is pretty unlikely an announcement would have ever been written. Everything about these families was in motion. Family members on both sides were strewn all over two continents and their lives were still recovering from a number of personal blows. While this was probably a high point, they knew there was a long road still ahead of them. All four of their parents had passed before their marriage.
William was born the third of eight children born to Thomas and Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp 10 December 1826 in Misson, Nottinghamshire, England. His baptism is recorded on 7 January 1827 at Misson Anglican church, confirmed by the Bishop’s Transcripts at Nottinghamshire Archives. He spent his life as a mason but kept a farm. We do not know where or how he learned how to be a mason. His father, Thomas, is listed as “Ag Lab”, which is probably an agricultural laborer on the 1841 English Census. Thomas died in 1841 after the census was taken.
In 1848, the LDS missionaries came to visit in Misson. William was the first in his family, that we know, to join the church on 20 June 1848. His mother followed 11 August 1849 and his sister Isabella 16 September 1849. The records available do not show that William’s siblings, Elizabeth and James joined the church, but they came with the family to the United States on their way to Zion. The family story tells the family was friendly and open towards the missionaries. One of the missionaries was a George Emery (the only potential George Emery I could find appears to have lived 1792 – 1867).
Elizabeth Sharp was determined to emigrate with her family to Utah. Her family attempted to discourage her by warning her about the dangers of the American Indians. Nevertheless, she departed with William, Isabella, Elizabeth, and James. The other four children had died as infants before leaving England. The family purchased tickets at 25 pounds sterling in Liverpool. The family set sail on the “James Pennell” on 2 October 1850 commanded by Captain James Fullerton. The LDS leaders on board were Christopher Layton (1821–1898) and William Lathrop Cutler (1821–1851) leading the company all the way to Zion. Right before hitting the waters of the Mississippi the ship encountered a storm where the masts were broken and the ship drifted for a couple of days. Luckily, a pilot boat found them and another ship (that left two weeks later from Liverpool) tugged them to New Orleans, Louisiana. The ship arrived at dock on 22 November 1850. The family struggled with sea sickness and chills and fevers that beset them in New Orleans and St. Louis. From there the entire group boarded the “Pontiac” and continued to St. Louis, Missouri where they found work and spent the winter. Despite having crossed the Atlantic, Elizabeth, the mother of the family, died 17 February 1851 in St. Louis and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
Among the fellow passengers on the James Pennell were the Singleton family of Misson. The Singletons were neighbors in Nottinghamshire. William Singleton (1793–1850) sailed with his children, including Thomas Singleton (1825–1885) and Charles Singleton (1838–1907). Tragically, William Singleton died in St. Louis on 16 December 1850, just three weeks after the ship docked. His son Thomas pressed on, becoming one of Plain City’s 1859 founding pioneers, where he worked as a carpenter and band leader alongside William Sharp. Thomas Singleton is listed among those excommunicated alongside William Sharp on 31 January 1879. Generations later, Thomas’s grandson Bert Elmer Singleton (1918–1995), born and raised in Plain City, became one of Utah’s most celebrated baseball players, pitching in the major leagues over 28 seasons. The Sharps and Singletons, neighbors in Misson, remained neighbors in Plain City across the generations.
Elizabeth’s death left the four siblings to fend for themselves. William and Isabella both still desired to move on with the Saints to Utah. William became fast friends with Mary Ann Bailey Padley, a widow who had lost her husband before leaving England. They were such good friends that Anne Elizabeth Padley (she went by Sharp her whole life though) was born 31 October 1852. Isabella married Joseph Carlisle, who had arrived two years earlier, 18 May 1853, in St. Louis. That same day the Moses Clawson Company, “St. Louis Company,” departed from St. Louis. Joseph and Isabella Carlisle, along with William Sharp and Mary Padley (with her son Lorenzo Padley and new infant Anne), left with the company. Joseph and William were well respected because they were apparently very good athletes and challenged anyone to a wrestling match.
The Sharps and Carlisles drove a wagon for William Jennings, a Salt Lake City merchant and freighter. The outfitting was done in Keokuk, Iowa. The company for traveling over the plains was formally organized in Kanesville, Iowa. On the trail, William and Mary Ann Padley were married 10 July 1853 in Loup Fork, Nebraska. The company arrived in Salt Lake City between the 15th and 20th of September the same year.
Mary Ann was born the first of seven children born to James and Sarah Goodlad Bailey on 28 November 1828 in Mattersey, Nottinghamshire, England. Her baptism is recorded on 8 December 1828 at Mattersey Anglican church, confirmed by the Bishop’s Transcripts at Nottinghamshire Archives. James was a blacksmith. The Bailey family were practicing members of the Church of England. Mary Ann attended school and obtained training in millinery and sewing. Sarah died in 1843 and James remarried to a lady named Harriet. We don’t have a death date for James at this time.
Shortly before her 18th birthday, Mary Ann met missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and converted. She was baptized 20 October 1846. Her father and Harriet dismissed her from the home for becoming a Mormon. She soon met William Padley, another LDS member and a tailor who lived on Allen Street in Sheffield, and married him on 4 February 1847 at the Church of St Peter and St Paul (now a cathedral) in Sheffield.
Padley – Bailey marriage record
William Padley was born 22 September 1826 in Morton, Lincolnshire, just across the River Trent from Mattersey, and they may well have known each other from their home area before both moved to Sheffield. They had a son, Lorenzo Joseph Padley, born in December 1847. William became ill when Lorenzo was born and died 22 February 1850 in Morton, Lincolnshire. Left alone with a new son, Mary Ann went back to her parents, who would have nothing to do with her unless she gave up her religion. She would not, and instead decided to join the Saints in Utah.
Mary Ann and Lorenzo sailed from Liverpool on 8 January 1851 on the “Ellen” with James Willard Cummings (1819–1883) as the leader of the company. The ship had a difficult passage with measles and what others thought was whooping cough. She arrived in New Orleans 14 March 1851. On the 19th they left for St. Louis on the “Alleck Scott” and arrived on the 26th. Mary Ann and Lorenzo stayed in St. Louis while the company moved on, and it was there that she met William Sharp and his family.
William and Mary Ann grew close during their time in St. Louis. A daughter, Anne Elizabeth, was born to them on 31 October 1852. Both were still determined to join the Saints in Utah. They arranged to drive a freight wagon west for William Jennings, a Salt Lake City merchant and freighter, as the means of joining the Moses Clawson Company. On the trail, William and Mary Ann were married on 10 July 1853 at the crossing of Loup Fork in present-day Howard County, Nebraska. The company arrived in Salt Lake City between the 15th and 20th of September that year.
They settled in Lehi, Utah, Utah for a couple of years but had a number of issues with range for the cattle and some other minor squabbles. Water was also not found to be very dependable in the Lehi area. During this time, William and Mary Ann gave birth to two children, William and Isabella in 1854 and 1856, but both died as infants. Milo Riley was born in Lehi 23 July 1857. I have written of Milo and his family previously at this link: Sharp-Stoker Wedding.
William learned of land north near Ogden, Weber, Utah that was going to be opened up from some of the Saints passing through Lehi (abandoning Salt Lake City before the arrival of Johnson’s Army). These Lehi Saints were told of ample land and good water that was available west of Ogden. A scouting expedition went to search out the area in the fall of 1858 and visited with Lorin Farr (1820–1909) who told them of the available plain to the west.
The Sharp family left with other Lehi Saints on 10 March 1859 to travel to this new area. The group of about 100 arrived 17 March 1859 at what is present day Plain City, Weber, Utah. The company arrived at about 5 PM during the middle of a snowstorm. The company lined up the wagons to protect them from the wind and dug a hole in the ground for the campfire. Reports indicate that snow was deep and conditions uncomfortable. Plain City apparently lived up to its name with sagebrush that rose over 4 feet tall from the high water table beneath the soil.
William Sharp put his carpentry and masonry skills to work making adobe brick and helping build the first homes in Plain City. William and Mary Ann lived in one of these homes. William served in the Plain City band, on the Plain City Z.C.M.I. board, acting as a builder, and also serving as a city leader. William and Mary Ann’s daughter, Evelyn, was the first girl born in Plain City in October 1859. Victorine Mary was born 8 April 1862 and was their last child. Mary Ann kept busy sewing and making suits, coats, and other jobs. Each of her daughters learned to become dressmakers.
William and Mary Ann each received their initiatory and endowment on 17 August 1861 at the Endowment House. On the same day, Mary Ann was sealed by proxy to her deceased first husband William Padley. As a woman already sealed to another man, she could not be sealed to William Sharp during their marriage, as the church did not permit women to be sealed to more than one husband at that time. The Sharp children’s sealing situation caused considerable family angst as all children born to Mary Ann after the 1861 sealing were born in the covenant to William Padley rather than William Sharp.
Lorenzo Joseph Padley died 24 July 1866 at Plain City, aged 18 years, 7 months and 11 days, putting his birth approximately 13 December 1847 in Mattersey, Nottinghamshire, England. He had grown up to become a valued member of the Plain City Music and Dramatic Association, which mourned him as a true friend and gifted musician. His remains were followed to their last resting place by a very large number of citizens, preceded by the brass band of the Association. The notice requested the Millennial Star in England to copy — a reminder that Mary Ann’s roots, and Lorenzo’s birthplace, lay in Nottinghamshire. The photo we have of him is pretty scratched, but here is a cleaned up photo, but it is not perfect. It is hard to tell what is his nose and what was deformities in the photo.
Anne Elizabeth married Daniel Claiborne Thomas Jr. on 29 January 1872 in Salt Lake City at the Endowment House, where they also received their initiatory, endowment, and sealing the same day. Daniel had been born 14 July 1850 on the Platte River in Nebraska on the trail to Utah. His father, Daniel Claiborne Thomas Sr., had been converted to the church by his brother Preston while on a mission to the Southern States, and the family had come to Utah in 1850, settling in Sulphur Springs (later named Lehi) among the earliest settlers there, before joining the Plain City founding group in March 1859. They settled in Plain City and had six children: Claiborne William (1872), Francis Milo (1875), LeRoy Bertrand (1878), Estella Inez (1884), Delbert (1888), and Elizabeth La Vieve (1889). Anne Elizabeth died 29 July 1891 in Plain City at thirty-eight, leaving six children ranging in age from two to nineteen. Daniel outlived her by thirty-eight years, dying in Ogden on 2 September 1929, and was buried beside her in Plain City Cemetery.
After several instances of desertion, Mary Ann moved out of their home on Christmas Eve 1875 and utterly refused to go back to William. William sued for divorce and Franklin Dewey Richards (1821–1899) granted the divorce (in probate court) on 19 May 1876.
At this time, it is possible that Bishop Lewis Warren Shurtleff (1835–1922), branch president 1870–1877, bishop 1877–1883, extended himself beyond what the members felt was right — going so far as to dictate how much everyone should pay in tithing — and some families were very vocal in expressing their discontent. William Sharp began construction on St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in 1877, and many disaffected members found a religious haven in this new faith. The building still stands today, owned by the Lions Club in Plain City. A significant group of members were excommunicated on 31 January 1879, including William Sharp, Mary Ann Sharp (listed separately because of the divorce), William Skeen, Edwin Dix, George Musgrave (father of their future daughter-in-law), Thomas Musgrave, Thomas Singleton, Thomas Davis, George W Harris, Jonathan Moyes, John Moyes, Winfield Spiers, James Wadman, Robert Davis, John Davis, and Thomas Robson. These lists also have “and wife” as well as “and family” which seems to indicate that spouses and families were included. Many of these families returned to the church after time away, some individuals never did. Milo Ross’s 1997 oral history interview offers one family perspective on the causes of the split.
This same year, William remarried to the widow of Charles McGary, Charlotte Elizabeth Earl, about 1879. We do not know exactly when or where.
Milo Riley married Mary Ann Stoker (aka Lillian or Lilly Musgrave) 11 May 1879 in Plain City in the little church William built. He died in 1916 in Plain City. Read about them here.
Evelyn Carlisle married James Henry Taylor 16 January 1880 in Plain City. She died in 1941 in Oregon.
Victorine Mary married Robert Edward Maw on 8 April 1883 in Plain City, her twenty-first birthday. Robert had been born in Plain City on 15 October 1859, the son of Robert Maw, one of Plain City’s founding pioneers who had consecrated his Lehi property in January 1857 and arrived in Plain City on 17 March 1859, the same day as the Sharp family. William Sharp had built the elder Robert Maw’s adobe house in those early Plain City years and had played cornet alongside Abraham Maw in Plain City’s first band. The marriage of Victorine Sharp and Robert Edward Maw united two of Plain City’s founding families. They had seven children: Ruby Ada (1884), Alice (1885), Jessie (1886), Florence Eveline (1888), Grace (1890), Edith Louise (1893), and Edward Clyde (1896). On the morning of 23 April 1897, a snow slide struck the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company’s Garfield Mine in Gibbs Canyon, four miles north of Brigham City. Robert was killed. The Brigham City Bugler reported the disaster that week, noting that he was a married man who left a widow and seven children. Victorine was thirty-four years old. Her youngest child, Edward Clyde, was barely a year old. She did not remarry, living in Plain City and later Ogden until her death on 18 March 1945. She is buried in Plain City Cemetery.
Mary Ann Bailey Sharp
Mary Ann continued to work as a dressmaker until she could not do so any more due to age. She lived with her Granddaughter Elizabeth Taylor from before 1900 and even moved with her to Baker City, Baker, Oregon. Mary Ann moved back to Plain City not long after Beth married.
Evelyn & Victorine Sharp
~
Evelyn and Victorine Sharp
William died at 950 Washington Ave in Ogden on 22 December 1900 at 74 years and was buried two days later in the Ogden cemetery. Mary Ann died 30 October 1913 in Plain City at 84 years and was buried there three days later.
Mary Ann Bailey Sharp death certificate
William and Mary Ann both died outside the church.
In December 1933, fifty-four years after the excommunication, three of Isabella Sharp Carlisle’s sons — Joseph Carlisle, James Carlisle, and Harvey Carlisle — wrote to LDS Church President Heber J. Grant requesting proxy reinstatement for their Uncle William and his former wife Mary Ann. Their letter described William as “honest, virtuous and kind” and was addressed care of Mrs. James S. Thompson — Annie Thompson, who would later write the 1957 history of Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp, and who was the daughter of James Carlisle. The letter explicitly identified William as “born 10 Dec. 1826, Misson, Notts., England, and later settled in Plain City, Utah.”
President Grant responded on 16 December 1933, consenting to proxy baptism for both William and Mary Ann. He noted that since they had previously received their endowments on 17 August 1861, those ordinances would need to be restored by proxy as well, and authorized Elder George F. Richards, President of the Salt Lake Temple, to officiate. On 3 February 1934, proxy baptism and confirmation were performed for both William and Mary Ann at the Salt Lake Temple, with William’s sealing to parents following on 2 July 1934. The restoration of William Sharp and his wife to the church, by the hands of his sister Isabella’s sons, closed that chapter.
This document found its way into my family history files for good reason. Settler no. 68 — William Sharp (1825–1900) — is my ancestor. William was born 10 December 1825 in Misson, Nottinghamshire, England. He married Mary Ann Padley and the couple crossed the plains in the Moses Clawson Company, arriving in Salt Lake City on 15 September 1853. They went first to Lehi, but as the Plain City History records, “the land was not too good and there was no good grazing for their cattle.” They consecrated their Lehi property to the Church on 8 January 1857 — the same day as William Clark himself — before joining the group that would found Plain City.
The Daughters of Utah Pioneers history of Plain City describes William Sharp simply as “the first stone mason in Plain City.” That understates it considerably. He built the Episcopal Church in 1877, the old Singleton home, and Robert Maw’s adobe house — that last detail connecting two Lehi consecrators (nos. 68 and 47) in the work of building their new community. He played the cornet in Plain City’s first band alongside Abraham Maw. He made adobe bricks with Joseph Skeen, Joseph Robinson, and Jeppe G. Folkman — all men who appear on Clark’s consecration list. He worked with Thomas Singleton constructing many of Plain City’s early houses. His daughter Victorine Mary Sharp married Robert Edward Maw, connecting the two founding families by marriage as well as by community. His son Milo Riley Sharpplayed first base on Plain City’s founding baseball team, and Milo’s wife Lillie Stoker Sharp performed in Plain City’s second dramatic association. Milo served as school trustee beginning in 1897. Across generations, W. Albert Sharp served as a founding trustee of both the town board and the cemetery district when Plain City incorporated in 1944.
The Sharps were not alone in making that journey north from Lehi. The consecration list reads almost like a founding roster for Plain City — and the primary sources confirm it. Robert Maw (no. 47) left his own first-person account: “I Robert Maw, say that I was one of the first pioneers who came to Plain City on March 17, 1859. We left Lehi on the 10th of March.” The fall 1858 scouting party that selected the Plain City site included Daniel Collett (no. 14), Joseph Skeen (no. 69), William Wallace Raymond (no. 64), Joseph Robinson (no. 67), Joseph Folkman and Jeppe Folkman (no. 28), and Thomas Ashton — men who had consecrated their Lehi properties just months before. When Plain City Branch was organized in May 1859, William Wallace Raymond was appointed the first Presiding Elder, with Daniel Collett and Jeppe G. Folkman as counselors. Joseph Skeen — who built Plain City’s first log cabin and is credited with introducing adobe making to Utah — was appointed the first water master. His wife Alice Booth Robinson was recorded as the first white woman to set foot on Plain City soil.
Jeppe Jorgen Folkman (no. 28) managed Plain City’s cooperative ZCMI store from its founding in 1869 and operated one of the settlement’s first stores from his home. The Folkman family remained central to Plain City’s commercial and civic life for generations. Robert Maw (no. 47) founded the Maw family line in Plain City — his descendants produced three generations of ward bishops, a commercial dynasty in the Maw store and canning operations, and civic leaders serving on the town board and irrigation company board well into the twentieth century. William Van Dyke (no. 78) operated one of Plain City’s earliest merchant stores, confirmed as a living pioneer at the 1909 50th anniversary celebration. The Raymond family (nos. 63–64) provided the first Presiding Elder, first Relief Society president, and LDS Sunday School assistant superintendent.
The Lehi fort of the 1850s was, in a very real sense, the nursery of Plain City. Clark’s consecration list and the Plain City founding history are two windows into the same group of people, two years apart.
The following is a transcription of Clark’s paper, with the three original images and footnotes collected at the end.
Wayne E. Clark, a Lehi native and retired Auburn University professor of entomology, spent years examining the consecration deeds signed by early Lehi settlers, comparing them against Utah County property records, the 1860 Federal Census, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, and family history sources. His 2017 paper, part of the Wayne E. Clark Collection at the Lehi Historical Society and Archives (lehihistory.com), has been cited by the University of Utah’s Century of Black Mormons project and published in the Lehi Free Press. The underlying deeds are held in the Utah County Office of Land Records and at the BYU L. Tom Perry Special Collections.
Early Mormon Settlers in Lehi, Utah Territory, Consecrated Their Properties to Their Church
Wayne E. Clark
Lehi, Utah, 2017
The Lehi Pioneer Monument was erected in 1908 on the Northeast corner of First North and First West Streets in Lehi, Utah. A photographer pointing his lens toward the Southeast captured a portion of a small adobe home in an early photograph of the monument. That home stood on First North Street on the block on which the Lehi Memorial Building would come to stand in a few years. In pioneer times the block on which it stood was the northeastern-most of sixteen city blocks that were enclosed within a twelve-foot-high mud wall erected as protection against the fear of hostile Indians. The monument was constructed on the site of the last crumbling remnants of the old wall.
Things have changed in Lehi since the little adobe home stood across the street from the monument. The wall is gone and forgotten. The old Lehi High School/Junior High School athletic field that came to occupy the site on which the monument and the adobe house in the background is gone, if not entirely forgotten. Instead of the athletic field, chairs and umbrellas surround a small wading pool on a deck that extends south of the swimming pool that’s part of the large Lehi Legacy Center complex on the ground on which the monument stood, and a large parking lot covers the ground on which the house once stood. Today, if one stands on the spot where the photographer stood in 1908, or some time not long afterward, automobiles that carry people to and from the Lehi Legacy Center occupy a prominent portion of the scene. The Memorial Building can be seen along the photographer’s line of site in the background.
The owner of the home was my second great grandfather, English Mormon immigrant William Clark (1825–1910). He and at least 84 other heads of families in Lehi did what he did between 11 April 1856 and 30 January 1858. A little more than three years later he consecrated his little adobe house to the church.
Feramorz Young Fox provides an explanation of the “Consecration Movement” of the 1850s.2 He writes that the movement was church-wide. Hundreds of documents he calls “deeds of consecration” were generated in the Utah Territory between 1855 and 1862.3 The first public announcement of the Consecration Movement was given at general conference in April 1854, but the implementation was delayed until a proper form compliant with the laws of the Territory could be developed and printed. He writes that Brigham Young’s consecration deed4 is dated 11 April 1855, but notes the existence of an earlier deed recorded in Millard County on 1 January 1855.
Fox presents a table5 in which the numbers of deeds by county are listed, along with the population of each county between the years 1855 and 1857. The total for the fourteen counties in the table is given as 2,747. This must be the figure used by Leonard Arrington to calculate that about forty percent of the 7,000 heads of families in the Utah Territory deeded all their property to the church during the period in which the program was in effect.6 Fox gives the following numbers for Utah County: 69 (1855), 147 (1856), and 92 (1857) for a total of 922.
William Clark’s consecration deed is representative.
Be it known by these presents that I, William Clark, of Lehi City, in the county of Utah, and Territory of Utah, for and in consideration of the good will which I have for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, give and convey unto Brigham Young, Trustee in Trust for said Church, his successors in office, and assigns, all my claim to and ownership of the following described property, to wit:
One lot in the City of Lehi with buildings thereon and improvements: Lot no. 6 in Block 16 containing 50/160 of an improvement.
Also Lot 9 in Block 7 of Plat B in the American Creek Survey of Farm Land containing 5 acres … $25.00
Also Lots 12 & 13 in Block 5 Containing 2 acres in the Lehi Garden Lot Survey … $20.00
Also Lot 15 in Block 10 Containing 10 acres in Plat B, American Creek Survey of Farm Land … $30.00
Also outstanding account in land … $200.00
1 yoke of oxen, 1 horse … $140.00
1 wagon, $45, 1 rifle, $10 … $55.00
2 cows @ $30.00 each, 1 two year old, $25 … $55.00
1 yearling heifer, $15, 1 hog, $17 … $32.00
Farming tools, $10. Mechanics tool, $2.50 … $12.50
Household furniture … $50.00
35 Bu. of Wheat @ $2 per Bushel … $70.00
10 Bu. of Corn @ $1.5 per Bushel … $15.00
30 Bu. of Oats @ $1 per Bushel … $30.00
30 Bu. of Potatoes @ $1 per Bushel … $30.00
Garden Vegetable $6, Hay $24 … $30.00
120 lbs of Pork at 20¢ per lb … $24.00
Total Amount of William Clark’s property … $1048.508
Together with all the rights privileges and appurtenances thereunto belonging or pertaining. I also covenant and agree that I am the lawful claimant and owner of said property and will warrant and forever defend the same unto the said Trustee in Trust, his successors in office and assigns, against the claims of our heirs and assigns, against the claims of any heirs, assigns, or any person whosoever.
[signed] William Clark his x mark
Witnesses: Thomas Taylor George A. Leslie Thomas Ashton
Territory of Utah, County of Utah. I Lucius N. Scovill, Recorder of the aforesaid County, certify that the signer of the above transfer, personal known to me, appeared this 8th day of January AD 1857, and acknowledged that he of his own choice executed the foregoing transfer.
Lucius N. Scovill Recorder of Utah Co. UT.
The property William Clark and his neighbors in Lehi consecrated to the church included title to land. This falls into three categories for Clark and for the others: farm land, garden plots and lots on city blocks. The farm land is defined in what the deeds refer to as the “American Creek Survey of Farm Land.” This survey has not been located.9 Likewise, the survey for the Garden Plots referred to on the consecration deeds has not been located.10 The third category of property in land recorded on the consecration deeds refers to a “Lehi Survey of Building Lots.” The survey was evidently done in 1853 by Bishop Evans, as described in the consecration deeds.
The sixteen blocks inside the fort were numbered beginning with the block on the Southeast corner as Block 1 and continuing east to west with Blocks 2 through 4, then switching to east on the second tier of blocks and so forth to Block 16 on the Northeast corner of the fort.
Although the blocks inside the fort had to be re-numbered, this numbering system is consistent with one in use today. The current system apparently dates from 1861. According to Gardner,13 on April 27, 1861, the council received a numerously signed petition asking that the city be enlarged. This unmistakable sign of growth occasioned much discussion. For one, Bishop Evans seriously objected to any such extension of the city, giving as his reason the lack of water in Dry Creek to supply any considerable addition to the population of Lehi. Finally, however, all objections were satisfactorily adjusted, and the City Council ordered that a tier of blocks be surveyed around the wall. These did not supply the unexpected demand for building lots, so a tier each on the North and South was subsequently surveyed and sold to home builders.
Gardner included a diagrammatic depiction of the fort, surrounded by the wall, in his history,14 with four gates for ingress and egress, four guard towers, and the locations and layouts of each of the blocks, as well as the layout of the building lots on the blocks, are depicted. The numbers of blocks 1–16 are shown, with the corresponding numbers of the same blocks in the later surveys and continuing to this date, in parentheses. The lot and block numbers are listed on 71 of the 85 1856/1858 Lehi consecration deeds.15 The building lots on the diagram as assigned to the individual settlers are identified by the following numbers. Some of the homes listed on the consecration deeds are still standing. The house nearest current addresses of these are listed. The apparent location of houses no longer standing are also given below.
The Settler Lists
Note: Seventy-two of the 85 examined consecration deeds list the block number and the lot number of property in the city. All of the blocks listed are inside the fort. A few deeds list portions of additional lots, and some list two or more complete building lots. Thirteen deeds list no city lots. Presumably those individuals did not own their own homes. Thirty-two deeds list an adobe house and one lists a “mud house.” These are valued from $150.00 to $1,100.00. Two individuals, Abram Hatch and John Riggs Murdock, specified that their adobe houses had four rooms and one cellar. Joseph Skeen listed a 6-room adobe house. Eight log houses (on 7 lots), with values ranging from $60.00 to $200.00, are listed on the deeds. Eighteen deeds list a lot number and a block number but specify only that the property was “with improvements,” without describing the type of house. Fourteen of the 85 deeds have no lot or block numbers or houses. Presumably these individuals did not own their own homes. Lehi settler’s consecrations ranged from $127.75 to $3,075.00, for a total of $93,128.70.
South, 400 West 1. Andrew Anderson (1833–1909). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 12, with adobe house, $400.00, $1,203.00 total consecration. 17 November 1856. BK C, 1855, p. 83. 37 South, 400 West
South, 200 West 2. Thomas Ashton (1813–1903). Lehi, Lot 8, Block 11, with log house, $200.00, $1,543.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 109. 36 South, 200 West
140 South, 200 West 3. Charles Barnes Jr. (1827–1911). Lehi, Lot 2, Block 7, with adobe house, $300.00, $1,008.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 129.
69 South, 300 West 4. Alfred Bell (1794–1874). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 11, with adobe house, $400.00, $1,201.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 123.
5. Jens Peter Ipsen Benson [Peter Benson] (1831–1898). Lehi, no city lot, $135.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 177.
6. Yeppa Benson [Jeppe Bendtsen] (1795–1872). Lehi, no city lot, $168.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 177.
West, 300 South 7. Samuel Briggs (1826–1898). Lehi, Lot 3, Block 4, with adobe house, $150.00, $997.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 131. 382
West Main Street 8. George Brough (1823–1914). Lehi, Lot 7, Block 16, with adobe home, $150.00, $421.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 180. 55 North Center Street
North Center Street 9. Abram Brown [Abraham Brown] (1808–1891). Lehi, Lot 9, Block 12, with adobe house, $250.00, $608.00 total consecration. 26 January 1857. BK F, p. 208. 333 West Main Street
West Main Street 10. John Brown (1820–1896). Lehi, Lot 7, Block 9, with improvements, $150.00, $3,083.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 81. 45 West Main Street
15 West, 100 South 11. Martin Bushman (1802–1870). Lehi, Lot 6, Block 8, with improvements, $300.00, $1,032.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 167.
284 West, 200 South 12. David Clark (1816–1889). Lehi, Lot 2, Block 6, with adobe house, $600.00, $1,520.00 total consecration. 5 February 1857. BK G, p. 71.
100 West, 100 North 13. William Clark (1825–1910). Lehi, Lot 6, Block 16, with adobe house, $200.00, $1,048.50 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 91. 45 West, 100 North
West Main Street 14. Daniel Collett (1807–1894). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 15, with improvements, $200.00, $1,313 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 126. 188 West Main Street
West Main Street 15. Sylvanus Collett (1835–1901). Lehi, Lot 6, Block 10, with adobe house, $150.00, $360.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p.
104, 115 West Main Street 16. Sarah Couzens [Sarah Jaque] (widow of Joseph Couzens [Joseph William Cousins (1809–1856)], deceased). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 13, with improvements, $150.00, $927.20 total consecration. 9 March 1857. BK H, p. 40.
206, 389 West, 100 South 17. Daniel William Cox (1801–1858). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 5, with adobe house, $450.00, $2,225.50 total consecration. 20 January 1857. BK F, p.
West Main Street 18. William Taylor Dennis (1810–1894). Lehi, no city lot, $4,115.50 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 111.
West Main Street 19. Joseph Dobson (1804–1872). Lehi, Lot 2, Block 15, with mud house, $200.00, $721.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 83. 130
86 North, 400 West 20. James Downs (1815–1882). Lehi, Lot 6 and W1/2 of Lot 7, Block 13, with adobe house, $250.00, $1,813.00 total consecration. 9 March 1857. BK H, p. 46.16
North, 100 West 21. Robert Dunn (1818–1885). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 16, with improvements, $250.00, $1,085 total consecration. 20 January 1857. BK F, p. 272.17 86 North, 100 West
North, 100 West 22. Shadrack Empy (1822–1892). Lehi, Lot 7, Block 14, with adobe house, $200.00, $820.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 130. 229
West, 100 North 23. Abel Evans (1812–1866). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 14, except NE Quarter of lot, with house, $150.00, $528.00 total consecration. 31 December 1856. BK F, p. 40.18 90 North, 300 West
Main Street 24. David Evans (1804–1883). Lehi, Lots 2 and 6, Block 14, $1,100.00, $3,075.00 total consecration. 10 May 1856. BK C, p. 39.19 288 West Main Street
Main Street 25. Henry Beck Evans (1830–1911). Lehi, no city lot, $180.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 284.
200 West 26. Joseph Field (1831–1911). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 10, with improvements, $200.00, $489.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 178. 49
200 West, South 27. John Folker (1814–1884). Lehi, Lot 8, Block 6, with adobe house, $200.00, $984.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 94. 166
South, 200 West 28. Jeppe George Folkmann [Jeppe Jorgen Folkman] (1824–1916).20 Lehi, Lot 6, Block 1, with improvements, $65.00, $394.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 285. 65 West, 200 South
200 West, South 29. William Fotheringham (1826–1913). Lehi, Lot 3, Block 1, with two log houses, $100.00, $1,845 total consecration. 4 November 1856. BK C, p.
73, 66 West, 300 South 30. Charles Wesley Gallup. Lehi, no city lot, $438.50 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 170.
31. John Henry Glines (1831–1897). Lehi, no city lot, $387.00 total consecration. 31 March 1857. BK H p. 90.
Block 6, Lot 6, 6 North 32. Abram Hatch [Abraham Chase Hatch] (1830–1911). Lehi, Lot 6, Block 4, with adobe house, $750.00, $2,891.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, np. 132.21
100 South 33. Lorenzo Hill Hatch (1826–1910), and Sylvia S. Hatch. Lehi, Lot 2, Block 13, with buildings and improvements, $800.00, $1,608.00 total consecration. 11 April 1856. BK C 1855, p. 41.22 212 South, 300 West
125 West 34. John Joseph Hayes (1825–1899). Lehi, E1/2 Lot 7, Block 7, $100.00, $311.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 105. 125 West, 100 South
96 North, 200 West 35. William Brown Hill (1836–1883). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 15, with improvements, $150.00, $931.75 total consecration. 29 December 1856. BK F, p. 30. 96 North, 200 West
93 North, 100 West 36. William Hyde (1818–1874). Lehi, Lot 8, Block 15, $150.00, $1,040.00 total consecration. 23 December 1857. BK H, p. 106.
187 West Main Street 37. Ezekiel Hopkins (1801–1872), or his son, Ezekiel Hopkins (1839–1911). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 10, with log house, $200.00, $610.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 120.23 187 West Main Street
87 North, 300 West 38. Daniel James (1807–1880). Lehi, E1/2 Lot 7, and N1/2 Lot 8, Block 13, with adobe house, $200.00, $871.00 total consecration. 28 February 1857. BK H, p. 21. 87 North, 300 West
South, 300 West 39. Samuel James (1825–1893). Lehi, Lot 7, Block 12, with adobe house, $150.00, $490.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 278. 24
West Main Street 40. John Karren (1834–1905). Lehi, Lot 7, Block 11, with adobe house, $150.00, $441.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 181. 231
West Main Street 41. Thomas Karren (1810–1876). Lehi, Lot 2 & the E1/2 of Lot 3, in Block 12, with log house, $150.00, $1,766.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 92. 390 West, 100 South
217 South, 100 West 42. Henry Kearns (1778–1859). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 1, with improvements, $350.00, $1,049.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 128.
West Main Street 43. Suel Lamb (1833–1913). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 9, with adobe house, $150.00, $652.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 127. 95 West Main Street
261 South, 200 West 44. John Irvin Lawson [John Lawson] (1805–1884). Lehi, N1/2 Lot 3, Block 3, with improvements, $50.00, $145.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 117.
290 South, 200 West 45. Abraham Losee (1814–1887). Lehi, Lot 1, Block 3, with improvements, $150.00, $1,153.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 115.
290 South, 200 West 46. John Smiley Lott (1826–1894) and Permelia Darrow Lott (widow of Cornelius P. Lott, deceased) and Peter Lott (1805–1882). Lehi, Lot 1, Block 3, $150.00, $1,153.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 115.
[Peter] Lyman Lott (1842–1906). Lehi, Lots 6 and 7, Block 3, with improvements, $600.00, $2,226.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 100. 241 West, 200 South
47. Robert Maw (1834–1920). Lehi, no city lot, $285.00 total consecration. 19 January 1857. BK F, p. 182. PC
45 West, 100 North 48. James McGaw (1824–1872) & Elias Bassett.24 Lehi, Lot 6, Block 16, with adobe house, $400.00, $2,255.00 total consecration. 23 December 1857. BK H, p. 108.
100 North 49. Ephraim Mecham (1808–1891). Lehi, no city lot, $392.50 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 280.
50. John Miller (1846–1939). Lehi, no city lot, $127.75 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 280.
300 West 51. John Murdock (1792–1871). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 3, with house, $100.00, $295.00 total consecration. 31 December 1856. BK F, p. 38. 209 South
300 West 52. John Riggs Murdock (1826–1913). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 3, also 3/8 of Lot 3, Block 4, Lehi, with 4-room adobe house with cellar, $800.00, $5,097.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 114. 269 South, 300 West
238 West, 300 South 53. Orrice Clapp Murdock (1824–1915). Lehi, Lot 2 and 2 rods of the E side of Lot 3, Block 3, with house, $500.00, $1,665.50 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 95. 238 West, 300 South
South Center Street 54. Jens Nelson [Jens Nielsen] (1796–1875). Lehi, N1/2 of Lot 7, Block 8, $50.00, $306.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 171. 140
South Center Street 55. Henry Elliot Norton (1826–1913). Lehi, no city lot, $460.00 total consecration. 7 May 1856. BK C, p. 42.
74 West, 100 South 56. Peter Madsen Peel [Peder Madsen Pihl] (1820–1900). Lehi, Lot 3, Block 9, with log house, $100.00, $537.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 279. 74 West, 100 South
140 South Center Street 57. Hans Peterson [Hans Pederson] (1823–1881). Lehi, S1/2 of Lot 7, Block 8, with log house, $60.00, $537.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 286. 140 South Center Street
88 South, 300 West 58. Canute Peterson (1824–1902). Lehi, Lot 1, Block 12, with improvements, $150.00, $1,957.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 85.
59. Peter Peterson (1821–1901). Lehi, no city lot, $307.50 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 283.
290 South, 100 West 60. Stephen Howard Pierce (1816–Deceased). Lehi, Lot 1, Block 2, with improvements, $466.00, $761.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 275.
290 South, 100 West 61. Charles Price (1800–1873). Lehi, no city lot, $680.00 total consecration. 27 November 1856. BK C, p. 104.
South Center Street 62. Tunis Rappley (1808–1883). Lehi, Lot 8, Block 1, with adobe house, $200.00, $772.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK F, p. 282. 220 South Center Street
260 South, 100 West 63. Alonzo Pearls Raymond (1821–1904). Lehi, Lot 8,25 Block 2, with adobe house, $300.00, $2,305.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 108. 260 South, 100 West
215 South, 100 West 64. William Wallace Raymond (1824–1881). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 2, with log house, $200.00, $2,020.00 total consecration. 31 March 1857. BK H, p.
88 West, 215 South 65. William Reid (1805–1858). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 13, with improvements, $23.00, $450.50 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 179.
86 North, 400 West 66. Alonzo Donnell Rhodes (1824–1893). Lehi, E1/2 of Lot 1, Block 10, with house, $200.00, $1,164.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 102. 90 South, 100 West
125 West, 100 South 67. Joseph Robinson (1814–1891). Lehi, W1/2 Lot 7, Block 7, with improvements, $100.00, $521.00 total consecration. 28 January 1857.26 BK F, p. 281. 125 West, 100 South
100 South 68. William Sharp (1825–1900). Lehi, no city lot, $235.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 86.
86 West, 125 South 69. Joseph Skeen (1816–1882). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 4, with 6-room adobe house, $1,000.00, $2,764.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 99. 377 West, 200 South
205, 390 West Main Street 70. Joseph Johnson Smith (1821–1902). Lehi, Lot 3, Block 13, with adobe house, $500.00, $1,804.00 total consecration. 20 January 1857. BK F, p.
89, 267 South, 400 West 71. Samuel Thomas Smith (1823–1890). Lehi, Lot 4, Block 4, with adobe house, $150.00, $507.50 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p.
West Main Street 72. James Taylor [James Whitehead Taylor] (1819–1891) and Ann Taylor. Lehi, Lot 8, Block 7, $700.00, $1,300.00 total consecration. no date, no month,27 1856. BK C 1855, p. 40. 110 South, 100 West
382 West, 300 South 73. Thomas Taylor (1826–1900). Lehi, Lot 2, Block 2, with adobe house, $300.00, $932.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 106–107.
65 South, 100 West 74. William Taylor [William Whitehead Taylor] (1828–1907). Lehi, Lot 3, Block 10, adobe house, $200.00, total consecration $625.00. [no date]. BK C 1855, p. 81. April 1856. 65 South, 100 West
186 South, 300 West 75. Daniel Stillwell Thomas (1803–1878). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 12, with adobe house, $300.00, $842.50 total consecration. 26 February 1857. BK G, p. 204. 405 West Main Street
West Main Street 76. Preston Thomas (1814–1877). Lehi, Lot 5, Block 11, with log houses, $200.00, $2,207.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 97. 281 West Main Street
186 South, 300 West 77. John Titcomb (1800–1858). Lehi, Lot 1, Block 5, with adobe house, $300.00, $1,150.00 total consecration. 10 January 1857. BK F, p. 122.
37 West, 200 South
78. William Van Dyke (1830–1901). Lehi, Lot 7, Block 1, with adobe house, $200.00, $523.75 total consecration. 30 January 1858. Not found in Utah County book.28
11 West, 200 South 79. Andrew Vince [Moses Andrews Vince] (1809–1859). Lehi, Lot 8, Block 8, $450.00 total consecration. 8 January 1857. BK F, p. 88. 11 West Main Street
216 South, 200 West 80. William Sidney Smith Willes (1819–1871). Lehi, Lot 8, Block 3, with improvements, $700.00, $2,020.00 total consecration. 9 January 1857. BK F, p. 112–113.
168 West, 200 South 81. Thomas Griffin Winn (1829–1904). Lehi, Lot 3, Block 7, with adobe house, $200.00, $666.50 total consecration. 7 January 1857. BK F, p.
80 West, 168 South 82. William Henry Winn (1833–1884). Lehi, no lot or block, $148.00 total consecration. 9 April 1857. BK H, p. 84.
240 South, 100 West 83. Solomon Wixom (1809–1879).29 Lehi, Lot 7 and N1/2 of Lot 8, Block 2, with adobe house, $400.00, $1,308.50 total consecration. 28 January 1857. BK H, p.
36 West, 100 South 84. Georg Gottlieb Zimmermann (1781–1866). Lehi, Lot 2, Block 9, with improvements, $125.00, $443.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 169.
88 South, Center Street 85. John Zimmerman (1820–1908). Lehi, Lot 1, Block 9, $125.00, $1,873.00 total consecration. 16 January 1857. BK F, p. 176. Fort Cabin Occupants
The cabins were arranged end-to-end to form a hollow square in the first of two phases of the fort. Van Wagoner says nearly three hundred settlers occupied sixty cabins, but he names only fifty-three individuals31 on the list corresponding to the numbers (1–85) of the diagram.
East Side (7)
North Side (12)
West Side (18)
South Side (16)
William Goates
2. Thomas Ashton
John Andreason
Orrace Murdock
81. George Zimmerman
4. Alfred Bell
17. Daniel Cox
51. John R. Murdock Sen.
John Zimmerman
22. Abel Evans
Samuel James
50. John Murdock
John Spires
23. David Evans
38. Samuel James
31. Abram Hatch
61. Tunis Rappley
14. William Dobson
75. Luke Titcomb
45. Mrs. Pamelia Lott
Martin Bushman
Philip Olmstead
Charles Partridge
45. John S. Lott
John Brown
Prime Coleman
7. Samuel Briggs
Ira J. Willes
William Coleman
William Goates
77. W. S. S. Willes
George Coleman
70. Samuel T. Smith
44. Abraham Losee
William Burgess
12. David Clark
Mrs. Lydia Losee
Jehial McConnell
57. Canute Peterson
68. Joseph Skeens
Joel W. White
9. Abraham Brown
40. Thomas Skeens
Israel Evans
John Mercer
Alonzo D. Rhodes
David Evans
69. Joseph J. Smith
Thomas Karren
Riley Judd
84. Daniel S. Thomas
John Winn
David Judd
Samuel Harwood
Silas P. Barnes
John W. Norton
Daniel Cox
61. Tunis Rappley
Henry Norton
Oley Ellingson
J. Wiley Norton
David Norton
Closing Notes
Some of the settlers remained in Lehi after their 1856/1857 consecrations were accepted and recorded. The locations of the homes of several of them in later years have been located in other studies.32 Some moved from Lehi. Some moved from the fort in Lehi to other property in Lehi. For example, William Clark moved from the Lot 6 property on Block 16(40) to a home on Lot 4 of the same block some time before he received title to both lots in 1871.
Some of the names absent from the cabins list are absent from the consecration deeds. This could reflect the fact that the individuals left Lehi before the consecration movement began, or that the individuals did not consecrate their property, or that their consecration deeds have not yet been located.
Sixty-eight of the 128 building lots on the sixteen blocks in the fort are represented on the consecration deeds. If 40% of the men in the Lehi settlement consecrated their property, as Arrington says was the estimated percentage of the participation of the men in the Territory, 51 lots should have been claimed on the deeds. It appears that participation in the consecration movement was higher in Lehi than in other parts of the Territory.
Notes
1 This, and similar documents by Wayne E. Clark, are posted at the Lehi Historical Society and Historical Archive Indexes, https://www.lehihistory.com. Thanks to John Knollin Haws Jr. and the other volunteers at the Lehi Historical Society and Archives for encouragement and support, and to Dan Olds for heartily pushing for the search for consecration deeds and for other important historical information. Corrections or additions welcome. wayneeldenclark@gmail.com.
2 Fox, Feramorz Y. (March 1944). The Consecration Movement of the Middle ‘Fifties,’ Improvement Era, 47 (2) February, March 1944: 80–81, 120–21, 124–25, 146–47, 185, 187–88.
3 He wrote that the recorded deeds were to have been sent to the office of the Trustee-in-Trust of the church in Great Salt Lake City. These must include the deeds now preserved in the LDS Church History Library, in Salt Lake City. Consecration Deeds, 1854–1867. One book, Consecration book, circa 1857–1858, Call Number CR 5 53, Identifier CR 5 53/b0001. No. 233, has a list of deeds from throughout the Territory. The original deeds on the printed forms of many are accessible from CR 5 53: Consecration Deeds 1854–1867. For example, the original consecration deed of John Brown is accessed from Deeds, B, #271–288. Fox mentions the existence of two deeds in possession of a man who found them in a rubbish pile.
4 Found in “Book A of Deeds” in the church historians office, and in “Pioneer Records, Salt Lake County Recorder’s Office, p. 249.”
7 Fox notes that this is an exact count, taken from records in office of the county recorder. He must have seen the copies of the deeds preserved in LDS Conveyance books in the Utah County Office of Land Records, 100 East Center Street, Suite 1300, Provo, Utah 84606. The contents of the books are indexed for electronic searching. Consecration deeds of early Lehi settlers are found in books labelled LDS Church Conveyances, BK C, BK F, and BK H.
8 His consecration was twenty cents below the average, $1,048.70.
9 Ownership and numbers of Lots and Blocks and acreage on various surveys throughout the county are contained in Webb Access to Utah County Land Records – Abstract Images — LDS Church Conveyance. Included are “American Creek Survey 1851,” “American Creek Survey of Farm Land,” 1853–1855, “Upper Dry Creek Survey of Farming Land,” 1853, and “Lake Farm Land.”
10 Presumably the garden plots in 1855/1856 were the same as the ones on later records. The earliest entry in the Utah County abstract book for garden plots for Lehi is for 1 December 1879.
23 Original in LDS Church History Library, CR 5 53, box 3, fd. 3
24 James McGaw, age 34, was in Ogden, Utah, in the 1860 Census. His wife, Mary Matilda Bassett (1800–1878), age 56, was with him, as was Mary’s mother, Matilda Salter Bassett (1800–1878), age 56, (1837–1906), age 23, and Elias Bassett, age 40. Elias must have been James’s brother in law.
25 This may be listed in error for Lot 6. Lot 8 of Block 2 is also recorded as having been claimed by Solomon Wixom on 28 January 1857. Alternatively Raymond and Wixom could each have occupied 1/2 of Lot 6 in 1857.
26 Immediately follows the deed of David Evans, dated 10 May 1856, and precedes the deeds of Lorenzo Hill Hatch, dated 11 April 1856, and of Henry C. Norton, dated 7 May [1856].
32 A subsequent study of the consecration deeds combined with the 1860 Census and other sources of information resulted in a more complete picture of the Lehi City fort in the years following the issuance of the deeds. Mormon Pioneers in Lehi, Utah Territory, 1854–1871, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wDxipAGQN2YzRBczAxMjlhsVFU/view?usp=sharing
Wayne E. Clark, Lehi, Utah, 2017. Part of the Wayne E. Clark Collection at the Lehi Historical Society and Archives, https://www.lehihistory.com. Contact: wayneeldenclark@gmail.com. Corrections or additions welcome.
Standing (l-r): Frank Carlisle, Harve Carlisle. Sitting: Fred Carlisle, Joe Carlisle, Jim Carlisle.
I thought I would share this photo because I have it and do not know how many others do. This is the five sons of Isabella Sharp and Joseph Carlisle. Isabella is the sister to my William Sharp, who I have written about previously at this link: Sharp-Bailey Wedding. Here are some of the details of the family, but I do not really know much more. They have a pretty large family with plenty of family historians so I will let them write the Carlisle history (which I know they have probably already done).
Joseph Carlisle was born 21 July 1826 in Sherwood on the Hill, Nottinghamshire, England and died 17 March 1912 in Millcreek, Salt Lake, Utah.
Isabella Sharp was born in December 1831 in Misson, Nottinghamshire, England and died 29 March 1904 in Millcreek, Salt Lake, Utah. Her christening record, dated January 1832, establishes 1831 as her birth year. Both her Deseret News obituary and the In Memoriam published at the time of her death recorded her birth date as 21 December 1832 — the year is contradicted by the christening record, and whether the day was the 21st or 22nd remains to be confirmed by further research. Her parents were Thomas Sharp and Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp. If you search her brother, mentioned above, you can read more about her parents and family.
Misson is a small village and civil parish in Nottinghamshire, England, situated on the River Idle approximately one and a half miles from the Yorkshire boundary and three miles east-northeast of Bawtry. The village’s ancient name appears in historical records as “Mysen” or “Misne,” both of Danish origin, suggesting the area was first settled by Danes who came up the Trent valley to Gainsborough and then followed the River Idle inland. Until 1886 the parish straddled the Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire boundary, when it was ordered placed entirely within the Bassetlaw division of Nottinghamshire. It was in this quiet fenland village, near the meeting point of three counties, that Isabella Sharp was born.
The Sharp family emigrated to America aboard the ship James Pennell, which sailed from Liverpool on 2 October 1850 under the direction of Christopher Layton and William L. Cutler, carrying 291 Latter-day Saint passengers. After a difficult voyage that included a severe storm near the mouth of the Mississippi that disabled the ship and nearly exhausted the provisions on board, the James Pennell arrived at New Orleans on 23 November 1850. The passengers then continued up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, where they found employment and shelter for the winter. The passenger manifest confirms Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp (age 45), William Sharp (age 24), Isabella Sharp (age 19), Elizabeth Sharp (age 26), and James Sharp (age 10) all traveled together on this voyage. The account of the voyage is preserved at Saints by Sea.
Isabella’s mother, Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp, died in St. Louis on 17 February 1851, just months after their arrival. Isabella remained in St. Louis, was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and married Joseph Carlisle there on 18 May 1853. That same month her brother William departed St. Louis with the Moses Clawson Company, arriving in Salt Lake Valley in September 1853. Joseph and Isabella followed, also traveling with the Moses Clawson Company, and settled first in Millcreek, Salt Lake County.
The Deseret News of 31 March 1904 reported her passing under the headline “Early Settler Dead: Mrs. Isabella S. Carlisle Goes the Way of All the Just.” The notice recorded that she was born in Misson, England, 21 December 1832, emigrated to Utah in 1851 [she arrived in America in November 1850 but did not reach Utah until September 1853], and passed away at her home in Mill Creek on Tuesday last after a well-spent life of nearly 72 years. She became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1850 and endured with patience and fortitude all the hardships incident to the settlement of these valleys. The funeral was held from the Mill Creek Ward house on Friday at 12 o’clock noon.
An In Memoriam published at the same time recorded that Sister Carlisle was one of the first to join the Relief Society when it was organized in the ward in 1863, and was a great support to it financially. She served as presiding teacher in the third district for twenty-one years, and as first counselor in the Primary Association, third district. She was honorably released by Bishop James C. Hamilton. The funeral was held at the Mill Creek Ward house, where a large concourse of friends met to pay their last respects, Bishop Hamilton presiding. She was interred in the Mill Creek Cemetery.
In December 1933, three of Isabella’s sons — Joseph R. Carlisle, James S. Carlisle, and Harvey C. Carlisle — wrote to LDS Church President Heber J. Grant requesting reinstatement by proxy of their Uncle William Sharp and his wife Mary Ann Sharp, who had been excommunicated from the Church on 31 January 1879. President Grant consented by letter dated 16 December 1933, authorizing proxy baptism and, if applicable, restoration of endowments and sealing through Elder George F. Richards, President of the Salt Lake Temple. The letter was addressed care of Mrs. James S. Thompson — confirming that Annie Thompson, whose 1957 history of Elizabeth Cartwright Sharp appears elsewhere on Sagacity, was the daughter of James S. Carlisle.
Joseph and Isabella were married 18 May 1853 in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri.
Joseph Richard Carlisle was born 19 December 1854 in Millcreek and died 2 April 1935 in Salt Lake City. He married Lily Naomi Titcomb 29 November 1883 in Salt Lake City in the Endowment House.
Isabella Jane Carlisle was born 12 April 1857 in Salt Lake City and died 1 April 1928 in Salt Lake City. She married Joseph William Walters 3 January 1875 in the Endowment House.
Thomas Matthew Carlisle was born 12 April 1857 in Salt Lake City and died 10 March 1869 in Millcreek.
James Sharp Carlisle was born 4 September 1859 in Millcreek and died 2 December 1938 in Millcreek. He married Keturah White 11 February 1885 in Logan, Cache, Utah in the Logan Temple.
Ezra Taylor Carlisle was born 14 August 1861 in Millcreek and died 12 February 1862 in Millcreek.
Elizabeth Ann Carlisle was born 24 November 1862 in Millcreek and died 6 November 1881 in Millcreek. She was engaged to marry John Calder Mackay and obviously died before that marriage could take place. On 21 December 1881 in St. George, Washington, Utah Isabella performed Elizabeth’s eternal ordinances in the St. George Temple. Isabella also stood in as proxy as Elizabeth was sealed to John Mackay, who accompanied Isabella to St. George.
William Frederick Carlisle was born 14 November 1864 in Millcreek and died 5 January 1922 in Millcreek. He married Sarah Ann Rogers 23 December 1897 in the Salt Lake Temple.
Harvey Cartwright Carlisle was born 22 September 1866 in Millcreek and died 3 July 1935 in Holladay, Salt Lake, Utah. He married Lucy Carline Cahoon 21 January 1891 in the Logan Temple. After her death he married Amelia Annie Towler 16 January 1901 in the Salt Lake Temple. After her death he married Emily Steven McDonald 19 July 1923 in the Salt Lake Temple.
Herbert Towle Carlisle was born 23 August 1868 in Millcreek and died 25 October 1870 in Millcreek.
Orman Carlisle was born 8 May 1871 in Millcreek and died 9 May 1871 in Millcreek.
Carrie Brown Carlisle was born 18 November 1872 in Millcreek and died 15 July 1873 in Millcreek.
Ether Franklin Carlisle was born 11 September 1873 in Millcreek and died 4 May 1915 in Salt Lake City. He married Maude Miller Harman 10 November 1897 in the Salt Lake Temple.
Rosamond Pearl Carlisle was born 29 July 1875 in Millcreek and died 13 June 1921 in Murray, Salt Lake, Utah. She married Uriah George Miller 19 February 1902 in the Salt Lake Temple.
The family certainly lost quite a few children. But all those who lived to marry did so in an LDS temple, or its equivalent at the time.
For more on the Sharp family and Plain City’s founding generation, see:
Plain City, Weber County, Utah is not a place that conjures images of billion-dollar industries. Its name suggests modesty, and its streets deliver on that promise — quiet fields, small farms, and houses set back from roads that run straight and flat through Weber County. There is substantial residential development in the past two decades. Even then, this small town produced a remarkable concentration of American transportation entrepreneurial energy. At the center of it stands one man: Chester Rodney England.
When a fire consumed Chester’s lumber yard on the evening of 6 April 1974, his neighbors rose to defend him to allow him to rebuild. Among those neighbors were my grandparents, Milo and Gladys Ross. What they did in the weeks that followed is documented below — eight pages of signatures collected on lumber yard estimate forms, a newspaper clipping, and a typed petition text. This post tells the story behind those pages.
Chester and Maude
Chester Rodney England was born 12 November 1896 in Plain City to William and Ismelda Thueson England. He grew up there, attended Weber Academy, and in 1916 married Maude Vivian Knight — a Plain City girl herself, born in August 1897. One month after their marriage, Chester received a mission call to the Southern States. He was set apart on 5 December 1916 by Apostle Anthony W. Ivins and left his new bride on 6 December 1916, serving for two years. He returned to find Utah in the grip of the 1918 influenza epidemic, his wife under quarantine, and her sister Elizabeth Knight Ericson dead. His mother was also ill, and he spent a week with his aunt Laura England before he could be with his family.
Chester wrote his own history late in life, and his voice is direct. After the mission he worked at the Amalgamated Sugar factory, farmed through the winters, bought a small Ford truck, and began hauling produce to the stores up through Cache Valley. “I found I could make more money doing this than farming,” he wrote, “so I turned the farm back to my father.” On 24 October 1919, his first son, Eugene Knight England, was born in Ogden. On 6 March 1923, his second son, William Knight England, followed. Two daughters, Rosemary and Carol, completed the family.
Milo James Ross (1921–2014)
In 1924 the Weber Central Dairy Association organized and asked for bids to truck milk from the dairymen into the dairy on 19 Washington Boulevard in Ogden. Chester submitted his bid, was accepted, and trucked the first load. He delivered milk in the morning and hauled potatoes up through Cache Valley in the afternoon. Gene and Bill grew up in the business. During summers Chester took them along on the long hauls, building a shelf of boxes out from the cab seat so they could nap on the road. He made sure they always had a bottle of pop at each stop.
During World War II, while Gene and Bill served in the military, Chester hauled Mexican bananas coming into the country at El Paso, Texas, distributing them throughout Utah. Gene served in the 77th Infantry Division at Okinawa, earning the Bronze Star for crawling under fire to drag a wounded soldier to safety — 129 men went up to the escarpment, 27 came back after 72 hours. Bill served in the Air Force in the Philippine Islands from 1943 to 1946. The two brothers found each other on Cebu using a coded letter — Gene had written his middle initial as “B” to signal his location — and Bill arrived with a mattress, making Gene the only man in his division sleeping on something other than a canvas cot. A letter written from the Hotel Keystone in San Diego in May 1946 — Chester on the road at age 49 — gives a picture of those years on the home front. He writes to his wife about a load of bananas, his plans to buy a semi-trailer, and his satisfaction that Gene and Bill are doing well.
Shortly after their return from service, Gene and Bill joined Chester hauling produce. Their first postwar hauls included lumber from Oregon back to Utah, and it was that trade that gave the family firsthand knowledge of the lumber market. The first diesel truck — a used 1940 Kenworth conventional — was purchased during this period. As the business grew, the company also ran two packing sheds and a storage facility for Idaho potatoes at its peak. Around 1957, an unforeseen change in the potato hauling market prompted Gene and Bill to file applications for ICC licenses to haul all kinds of freight, opening an entirely new range of products and geographic lanes. That same year, C.R. England offered 72-hour coast-to-coast service, the first such offering available to American shippers. The first trip east was made by driver Robert Gould in a new 1959 Kenworth, tractor number 17, hauling produce from California to Philadelphia.
In the 1950s Chester stepped back from trucking, leaving Gene and Bill to run what had become C.R. England & Sons. He returned his attention to Plain City. As he wrote: “Our sons retired me from C.R. England & Sons so I started building homes on our property in Plain City. I soon decided I needed a lumber yard if I was going to continue to build. In 1960 I built a lumber yard on the property just west of the home we had sold.” The family’s years hauling lumber from Oregon had given Chester intimate knowledge of the lumber trade, and that knowledge informed the decision. He built three homes on adjacent property and sold them to Keith Lund, Ray Cottle, and Blaine Gibson. He built 25 homes in Plain City and many others throughout Weber County. He built a 12-unit apartment complex in Roy. He took second mortgages from young couples who could not otherwise buy. “It was a great satisfaction to have young couples come and tell me they would never have bought their homes without my help,” he wrote.
Maude was with him through all of it. Born in Plain City in August 1897, she never really left. She served as president of the Plain City Primary, held positions in the Relief Society throughout her life, and attended the Ogden Temple with Chester twice a week when they could manage it. She died in Plain City on 12 February 1982, having lived there her entire 84 years. Chester moved to Salt Lake City after her death and died there on 5 January 1989. He is buried beside her in Plain City Cemetery.
The Sugar Factory
The sugar factory was woven into both families long before the fire. The Amalgamated Sugar Company plant at Wilson Lane, just south of Plain City, was one of the economic anchors of Weber County from the early twentieth century onward. Plain City farmers hauled beets to the rail dumps each fall for decades; the railroad that came to Plain City in 1909 arrived largely to move beet cars to that factory. Chester England worked at the sugar factory himself after returning from his mission in late 1918, spending two winters there before he turned to farming and then trucking.
Milo’s father, John “Jack” Ross, worked for Amalgamated Sugar much of his adult life, following the company between its Ogden, Burley, and Paul, Idaho plants as work demanded. That movement accounts for the geography of the Ross children: Milo was born in Plain City in 1921, his brother Paul born in the town of Paul, Idaho in 1922, and Harold born in Burley in 1924. Amalgamated Sugar built its Paul factory in 1917, and families from the Plain City area followed the work north. The factory experienced difficult early years — a postwar agricultural depression after World War I, and then the beet leafhopper blight that devastated crops through the 1920s and into the 1930s — but it survived to become, in time, the largest sugarbeet processing facility in the world. Chester England and Jack Ross were contemporaries who had worked for the same company in the same corner of northern Utah before either of them had settled into the lives their families would remember them by. For more on the sugar factory’s role in Plain City’s history, see History of Plain City Pt. 1.
The Cradle of American Trucking
Chester England’s 1920 Model T purchase was the seed of something considerably larger than one family’s business. Four major American trucking companies trace their origins directly to Plain City, and all four connect back to Chester. The Standard-Examiner and C.R. England’s own history have documented this story in detail.
C.R. England & Sons grew steadily through the postwar decades into one of the largest refrigerated carriers in the United States, eventually operating a fleet approaching 4,000 trucks and headquartered in Salt Lake City. Gene England served as president of the company well into his later years, still coming into the office daily at age 88. He died on 13 November 2024 at the age of 105. Bill England, who married Fern Hadley — a Plain City Hadley, the same family that signed the petition — died on 28 March 2018 at age 95. He spent his last ten years without sight but maintained, as his family recorded, an extraordinary optimism throughout. He entitled his life history “It Is As Good As It Gets.”
Carl Moyes had driven trucks for C.R. England in his younger years. In the late 1950s, Carl and his wife Betty started B&C Truck Leasing in Plain City. In 1966, when their son Jerry graduated from Weber State College, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona and formed the company that would eventually become Swift Transportation — for many years the largest truckload carrier in the United States. Jerry Moyes later observed that he liked to say there was “diesel in the water” in Plain City, and that the people there were conceived in sleeper cabs.
In 1990, brothers Kevin and Keith Knight and their cousins Randy and Gary Knight left Swift to found Knight Transportation. All four had grown up in Plain City and gotten their start working for the Moyes family’s Swift Transportation. The Knights were also related to Maude Knight, who had married Chester England in 1916, making them family to the man who started the Plain City trucking tradition. Knight Transportation started with five trucks; four years after going public the company had between 250 and 300. Knight and Swift announced a merger in April 2017, creating Knight-Swift Transportation, valued at an estimated $5 billion with approximately 23,000 tractors and 77,000 trailers.
In 1976, Jeff England — Gene’s oldest son and Chester’s grandson — bought his first truck while still working at C.R. England as an owner-operator, initially under the name “Pride of England Enterprises.” In 1979, with three trucks and a haul contract moving produce from California to New York, he left the family firm to go fully independent. His wife Pat was his partner from the beginning. In the early 1980s he assembled a group of investors, purchased ten more trucks, and rebranded as Pride Transport Inc. By 2017 the company operated a fleet of 500 trucks. In 2012 Jeff passed ownership to his son Jay England. Jeff England said of his decision to leave: “I felt that I needed to do my own thing.” He was 76 at the time of that interview and still driving a truck a couple of times a month.
The fuel infrastructure serving these fleets also has roots in this region. O. Jay Call, who came to Willard, Utah in the mid-1960s, founded Flying J in 1968, naming it for his love of flying, and built it into the largest retailer of diesel fuel in North America. His uncle, Reuel Call, had founded Maverik convenience stores in 1928 in Afton, Wyoming. FJ Management acquired Maverik in 2012. The Call family’s fuel network and the England-Moyes-Knight trucking empire developed in the same northern Utah environment across the same decades.
In September 2022, representatives of all four trucking firms gathered at Peery’s Egyptian Theater in Ogden for the premiere of a documentary about their shared origins. Gene England, then 102 years old, was present on stage alongside Jeff and Dan England, Jerry Moyes, and Kevin Knight.
The Fire
On the evening of 6 April 1974, Chester England went over to open up the lumber yard. He was 77 years old.
He described what followed in his own autobiography:
As I opened the office door, the place exploded and was engulfed with flames. It had been smoldering during the night. We do not know what caused it but it burned everything. I ran in to get the invoices but the ceiling began falling and burned holes in my jacket so I could have lost my life. This was a terrible experience watching everything you have worked hard for go up in flames. I was down in bed for 10 days from shock. We had insurance on it but I had been buying so much merchandise that the insurance didn’t begin to pay for the loss. I appreciated the fire department and the ward members who worked so hard to help. It took many weeks after to clean up. My family thought I should retire and not build it up again. However, I knew I wouldn’t be happy without something to do so I started rebuilding as soon as I could.
The 1977 History of Plain City records the fire at “England Builder’s Lumber Company” and gives the date as April 6, 1975. That date appears to be a transcription error in the town history; Chester’s own autobiography gives 6 April 1974, and that account is the primary source. The fire also destroyed the adjacent Leigh Archery Company, operated by LeGrande Leigh and Robert Jones. The insurance fell short. Chester was 77 and his family urged him to retire. He refused.
Plain City Will Consider Future of the Lumberyard
A newspaper clipping, attached to the first petition page, reported what happened next:
PLAIN CITY — The City Council here will hold a special session May 9 at 8 p.m. to make a decision on requests to rebuild a lumberyard and business destroyed by fire.
Requests that the city permit reconstruction of the lumberyard and Leigh Archery Co. came from Chester England and LeGrande Leigh and Robert Jones.
The council reported, however, that there have been some objections from citizens who do not want to see the lumber operation reestablished.
It also was reported there have been some questions as to the nature of the archery business being conducted. It has not been determined whether it is a commercial business or a manufacturing operation.
The requests to rebuild have been referred to the city planning commission for its recommendation. The recommendation is expected to be received prior to the May 9 meeting. All interested citizens are invited to attend the meeting which will be held in the City Hall.
The council also will consider various projects the city can carry out under the Utah Extension Service Program. Ronald Bouk of the service outlined various programs cities such as Plain City can conduct that may bring it awards and other benefits. The city must make application for such projects by May 31.
Some citizens did not want Chester to rebuild. And so his neighbors organized.
Milo and Gladys Ross
Milo and Gladys Ross, 30 May 1942
Milo James Ross (1921–2014) was born 4 February 1921 in a log cabin just north of Plain City. His mother, Ethel Sharp Ross, died of puerperal septicemia in August 1925 when Milo was four years old, leaving three surviving boys. Milo went to live with his Uncle Ed Sharp, Harold with Uncle Dale Sharp. They were raised in separate homes within a few blocks of one another in Plain City, the extended Sharp family absorbing the loss. For more on the Sharp family’s tragedies, see Sharp Tragedies.
Milo grew up working Ed Sharp’s farm — tending onions, hauling salt from the flats at Promontory, doing whatever needed doing. He played baseball with the Plain City Farm Bureau team and attended Weber High School.
Plain City baseball team. Back (l-r): William Freestone (manager), Norman Carver, Glen Charlton, Fred Singleton, Elmer Singleton (1918–1996). Middle: Clair Folkman, Dick Skeen, Albert Sharp, Abe Maw, Milo Ross. Front: F. Skeen, Walt Moyes, Arnold Taylor, Lynn Stewart, Theron Rhead. See also: Plain City Hurler.
1937 Plain City Baseball Champions. Back (l-r): Ben Van Shaar, Ervin Heslop, Ellis Stewart, Kenneth Taylor, Don Gibson, John Reese. Middle: Frank Hadley, Howard Wayment, Wayne Rose, Ray Charlton. Front: Keith Hodson, Howard Hunt, Wayne Carver, Lyle Thompson, Milo Ross.
In 1940 Milo met Gladys Maxine Donaldson (1921–2004) at a Plain City celebration. They married on 4 April 1942. Six months later Milo enlisted in the Army. He served in the 33rd Infantry Division, 130th Regiment, Company C, trained in weapons and earned expert ranking. He arrived in Hawaii on 4 July 1943 — the same day his son, Milo Paul, was born in Utah, a son he would not meet for three years. He fought through the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines and was present at the Japanese surrender at Luzon in June 1945. He received two Purple Hearts and the Silver Star. His company received a Presidential Citation for outstanding performance during the seizure of Hill X in the Bilbil Mountain Province. For more on Milo’s military service, see Milo James Ross Military Medals and his 1997 oral history interview.
Milo Ross in uniform at Fort Lewis, Washington
He came home and went to work as a contractor and builder, eventually building and remodeling hundreds of homes throughout Utah, mostly in Weber County. That work is why, when the time came to gather signatures for Chester England, he had a pad of lumber yard estimate forms at hand. They were his working tools. He pressed them into service as petition pages.
Milo knew Chester England personally. A childhood photograph survives showing Milo alongside Harold Ross, Howard Hunt, Josephine Sharp, and Janelle England on horseback — the England and Ross and Sharp children together in the neighborhood as naturally as their parents moved among one another. In his 1997 oral history interview, Milo recalled Chester among the Plain City men who had struggled during the Depression years, when banks failed and farms were lost. Chester was woven into Milo’s memory of Plain City going back to his earliest years.
On Horse l-r: Harold Ross, Howard Hunt, Milo Ross, Josephine Sharp (arm only), Janelle England, Eddie Sharp. In front l-r: Ruby Sharp, Lucille Maw, and Milo Riley Sharp.
The Petition
The typed text at the center of the petition read:
We the citizens of Plain City feel that Chester England should be allowed to rebuild his lumber yard. Since when do you kick a man when he is down/ Lets stand together and help Chester England when he needs a friend.
The headers on the petition pages identify the organizers: “By Gladys and Milo Ross — To Help Mr. England — Rebuild Back Up.” The forms were passed through the community in the weeks leading up to the May 9 city council meeting. One page was circulated by Joan Jenkins.
My father, Milo Paul Ross, had worked for Chester England as a teenager. He and his first wife, Victoria “Vicki” Feldtman (1945–2018) — married 5 March 1963 — both signed the petition. For more on Vicki, see Vicki’s Class Pictures. My grandfather Harold Ross also signed. The Sharp cousins — W.A. Sharp and Florence Sharp, children of the family that had raised Milo and Harold — signed as well. Maude K. England and Chester R. England signed the petition themselves.
Among the more than 340 signers, the connections to Plain City’s history run deep. The Moyes family signed in force — the same family whose son Carl had driven trucks for Chester England and whose grandson Jerry would found Swift Transportation. The Knights signed — relatives of Maude Knight England and future founders of Knight Transportation. Elmer Singleton (1918–1996), the Plain City baseball legend who pitched in the major leagues for five teams over fifteen years, signed with his wife Elsie. Cherrill Palmer Knight (1931–2021), who had served as Plain City City Recorder and was the daughter of Vern and Viola Palmer — also signers — added her name alongside her husband Thayne (1931–2018). Roxey R. Heslop, who contributed the school and cemetery histories to the 1977 Plain City history book, also signed. Hildor England (1896–1983), born Johnson, who married into the England family, signed as well. Gordon C. Orton (1924–2008), a Plain City general contractor and World War II veteran who served in the Philippines, New Guinea, and Okinawa, signed with his wife Leone. Vernal Moyes, who had served as a Plain City councilman, signed alongside his family.
The 1977 History of Plain City records the outcome: “Builders Bargain Center, formerly England’s Builders. This business was started and run by Chester England for many years.” Chester rebuilt. The community’s voice prevailed. For more on Plain City’s history, see the Plain City series on Sagacity.
Circle A Construction
Milo Paul Ross and Larry Aslett
My father’s career at Circle A Construction was built substantially on the same industry that had shaped the England and Ross families in Plain City. Circle A, founded in 1952 in Jerome, Idaho by Marvin Aslett, hauled sugar beets for Amalgamated Sugar for most of its operating history. For roughly 34 years, from around 1971 until Circle A transferred the Paul operations to AgExpress in 2004, my father supervised beet hauls across the Magic Valley, from the fields to the Amalgamated dumps at Paul and elsewhere across southern Idaho — the same plants Jack Ross had worked in a generation before.
Marvin Aslett and Milo Paul Ross at Milo’s 20-year service recognition, 1990. See: Circle A Construction Honors.
Marvin’s sons Larry and Steve Aslett ran the company alongside my father for decades. We called Larry “Uncle Larry” growing up. The Asletts took us to roundups in Mackay, to ranch country above White Knob. I worked for Circle A myself from 1993 through 1998. My first job in 1994 was washing and waxing trucks at the old Hynes beet dump in Paul after harvest. Jack Ross had worked for Amalgamated Sugar in Paul in the 1920s. My father hauled beets to Amalgamated in Paul for three decades. Circle A’s beet hauls fed the same company in the same town across three generations of this family’s working life.
Circle A Construction trucks in front of the Idaho State Capitol, 2000
The Petition Pages
Below are all eight pages of the petition as collected by Milo and Gladys Ross in the spring of 1974.
Complete List of Signers
Names marked with an asterisk (*) represent uncertain readings of the cursive originals. Dates are given where confirmed through research. This list was transcribed from handwritten signatures; corrections and additions are welcome.
Adams, Alice Adams, Allene C. Adams, Calvin Rex Allen, Jeanine Alsup, Marguerete W.* Alsup, Phil S. Amussen, Doris Maw Amussen, Richard W. Ashdown, Rex R. Ashdown, Virginia Bacon, R.A. Baker, Dean A. Baker, Penny Baker, Tom D. Baker, Vivian Beeler, Diana Beeler, Jack Beutler, Kandis C. Beutler, Lloyd J. Bingham, Dee Bingham, Evelyn Bingham, Farrell J. Bingham, Junior D. Bingham, Lorene Bingham, Zona F. Brown, Donna Brown, Robert Bullock, Duane Bullock, Joyce W. Bunn, Carol Bunn, John H. Burr, Adle R. Burr, Arnold K. Burr, Kenna F. Burr, Lester Burr, Roy D. Butler, Donnette R. Butler, Kenneth L. Butterfield, Judy* Calvert, Elaine Calvert, Kent W. Carver, Brent Carver, Harold C. Carver, Jane Carver, Liland Carver, Theone Chase, Dannell Chase, Ladd Chase, LaRene G. Chase, Norma P. Child, Melvin E. Chournas, Beverly* Chournas, Chris* Christensen, Barbara Christensen, Darrell Christensen, Ivan Christensen, Ken Christensen, Margaret Christensen, Ted Cliften, Elaine Cliften, Robert Close, Tom* Cook, Dee Cook, George Cook, Harvey Cook, Jennie Cook, LaRae Cook, Lyman H. Corey, Dean Corey, Fae Costley, Elsie Costley, Paul Cowell, Florence Crook, Carlene Crook, Lane Daley, Kenneth* Daley, Thora Dall, Kathie* Davidson, Donna Davidson, Kathy Davidson, Marland L. DeVries, Norm Donaldson, Betty M. Donaldson, David East, Ava M. East, Donald East, Jimmy K. Eddy, Beverly Eddy, Max Ellis, Carole Ellis, Diana Ellis, Donald B. Ellis, Glen Ellis, Janet Ellis, Lynn Ellis, Ray England, Boyce England, Chester R. (1896–1989) England, Hildor (1896–1983) England, Marvel S. England, Maude K. (1897–1982) England, Merlin England, Mona England, Orel W. Eskelson, David Lon Etherington, John E. Etherington, Nelda Fisher, Dorothy K. Fisher, Robert W. Folkman, Andrea Folkman, Carl Folkman, Clair Folkman, Clara Folkman, Cliff Folkman, Jim Folkman, LeRoy Folkman, Norma Folkman, Robert L. Folkman, Viola Foremaster, Bonne* Foremaster, Pete Fuller, Mary Lynn Fuller, Rex Fuhriman, Viola Gallegos, Edith Gee, Vilate Giles, Lewis Giles, Lucille Grieve, Claramae Grieve, Paul Haas, Julie Hadley, Barbara Hadley, Connie Hadley, Devaine Hadley, Doug Hadley, Gordon Hadley, Howard Hadley, Janet Hadley, Karma W.* Hadley, LaVirra* Hadley, Lenora Hadley, Mary Fee* Hamp, Beth Hansen, Gaylen G. Hansen, Loren M. Hansen, Nancy Havseler/Tesseder, Christine* Haws, Arlene Haws, Darwin C. Haws, Varnell Heslop, Roxey R. Higley, Shirley Higley, Willard J. Hill, Gary Hill, Kae Hipwell, Elmer Hipwell, Joanne Hipwell, Rosetta Hobson, Connie Hobson, Jack Hodson, Delbert Hodson, Lyle M. Hodson, Mr. Ivan Hodson, Ms. Ivan Holmes, Doug Holmes, Joanne Hori, Nancy Hori, Sam Howard, Virgie Howell, Kent* Howell, Peggy J. Hunt, Jan Hurst, Vick* Imlay, Nancy Imlay, Terrence Jackson, David W. Jackson, George Jackson, Mrs. George Jackson, Mrs. Keith Jackson, Keith Jenkins, Ellen W. Jenkins, Genevieve Jenkins, Joan Jenkins, JoAnn Jenkins, Joyce Jenkins, Quentin M. Jenkins, Ronald Jensen, Blaine R. Jensen, Joyce Jensen, June B.* Jensen, Kit O. Johansen, Barry L. Johansen, Carol Johnson, Judy B. Johnson, Randy Johnson, Rex L. Jolly, Grace Jolly, L.M.* Jones, Kathy Jones, Robert Kapp, Clara Jean Kapp, Leon Kawa, Grant D. Kelley, Bertha Kelley, Gail Kelley, Jesse R. Kelley, Leona Kennedy, Hazel Kishimoto, Lorn Knight, Argus* Knight, Arson* Knight, Cherrill (1931–2021) Knight, Thayne E. (1931–2018) Lakey, Dixie Lakey, Tom Large, Fred* Large, Kay* Larkin, Wade R. Laub, William R. Lord, Clarendon “Gene” (1929–2015) Lord, Cline Lund, Elizabeth Lund, Eugene Lund, Keith Lund, Pearl Mace, Rieths* Mahoney, Kathryn Mahnke, Eugene Mahnke, Laura Maw, Abram E. Maw, Floy A. Maw, Karen Maw, Monna B. Maw, Norma Jean Maw, R. John McFarland, Fenton McMillan, Nola L.* McMillan, Thomas A.* Merrill, Paul O.* Mikkelsen, Leo Mikkelsen, Renee Miller, Clarence Miller, Ranae Miller, Thomas A. Miller, Veda L. Moyes, Beverly Moyes, Dale L. Moyes, Edna Moyes, Elaine Moyes, Elbert Moyes, Fentis* Moyes, Ivan Moyes, Juanita Moyes, Kay H. Moyes, LuJean Moyes, Lynn V. Moyes, Mable Moyes, Orin Moyes, Vernal Nash, Augusta R. Neff, Mr. Wayne Neff, Ms. Wayne North, Janet North, Rick Olofson, Mary L. Olofson, Robert L. Olsen, Ian* Olsen, Mary Olsen, Ron Olsen, Yvonne Orton, Gordon C. (1924–2008) Orton, Leone Overman, Curt Painter, Cleo Painter, Lee Palmer, Douglas Palmer, Lawrence Palmer, Susanne Palmer, Thelma H. Palmer, Vern Palmer, Viola (1908–2009) Post, Bessie Post, Judy O. Poulsen, Bernard Poulsen, Nora Rasmussen, Don J. Rasmussen, MaryLynn Reese, J.D. Rhead, Bonnie Rhead, Steve Rhead, Theron Rhead, Vivian Ritz, Mark Robins, Jay* Robins, Mildred Robson, Amy Roddomy, Ronald* Rogers, Dennis O. Rogers, Shareen Roper, Mr. Rodney Roper, Mrs. Rodney Ross, Gladys (1921–2004) — organizer Ross, Harold Ross, Milo James (1921–2014) — organizer Ross, Paul M. Ross, Vicki (1945–2018) Russell, Joe Russell, Shirley Sargent, Evona Sargent, Kent Saunders, Carl R. Searcy, Hazel Searcy, Kenneth J. Seegmiller, Dale Seegmiller, Marie F. Sharp, Florence Sharp, Laurel Sharp, W.A. Shaw, Jerrell B. Shaw, Phyllis Simpson, Archie W.* Simpson, Florence Singleton, Elmer (1918–1996) Singleton, Elsie (–1988) Singleton, VaCona Skeen, Archie Skeen, Charles Skeen, Dick Skeen, Lorraine Skeen, Luella Skeen, Wayne Smith, LaWanna R. Smith, Vernon J. Sneddon, Dennis Sorensen, Gordon A. Sorensen, Karma Sparks, Mildred Stagge, Floyd Stagge, Myrle Statler, Lynda Statler, Richard Stevens, Debra Stevens, Gwen C. Stevens, John W. Tafoya, Arthur Tafoya, Via Taylor, Alice Taylor, Annette Taylor, Call Taylor, Clare Taylor, Edna Taylor, Elma Taylor, Elvin L. (1920–2004) Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Fern Taylor, Frances Taylor, Gerald J.* Taylor, Grant Taylor, Idona Maw Taylor, Jr.* Taylor, Kathlene Taylor, Kathy Taylor, Ralph A. Taylor, Rodney Taylor, Rolla H. Taylor, Ross M. Taylor, Sheri Taylor, Val Taylor, Valoy (1932–2024) Tesseder, Doug* Thomas, Duane F. Thompson, Gordon Thompson, Lavina Thompson, Margaret Thompson, Marvel Thompson, Merrvin* Tippetts, Larry* Truscott, L.C. Truscott, LaVona Valdez, Evelyn Valdez, Raymond J. Van Meeteren, Beth Van Meeteren, Frank Van Meeteren, Jean Van Meeteren, Ron Van Workom, Joyce* Vaughn, Bert Vaughn, Renee Wakefield, Marilyn Walton, Neale Walton, Rhea Weatherstone, Lorraine West, George C. West, Lillian Westbrook, Herman Weston, Becky Weston, Brent Weston, Eldon Weston, Fae Weston, Jae H. Williams, Arnold A. Williams, Charlotte Williams, Delbert Williams, F. LeRoy Williams, Karen A. Williams, Nadiene Winder, Jane Winder, Wayne Wright, Norma
Ross Leslie Andra, my great-uncle, died on 20 June 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was 87 years old. He was one of the younger brothers of my Grandma, Colleen Mary Andra. Some family figures cast long shadows, Ross was one of those characters.
On 29 June 2024, the Cannon Ninth Ward meetinghouse on West 1400 South in Salt Lake City filled with people who had been touched by him. Some had worked alongside. Some had received a knock at the door late in the evening. Some simply remembered the jokes. Before Bishop Ted Maxwell called the meeting to order, it was clear that a certain kind of man had died — the kind the eulogists kept calling, with unfeigned sincerity, bigger than life.
I have shared many posts regarding the Andra family. Many of those that reference Ross are listed below, but many more deal with the broader Andra family. This post attempts to bring some of that documentation together as a tribute.
The Family
William and Golden in back, Sergene, Millie, Colleen, June standing, Donald, Larry, Bill, Dale, Mary, and Ross sitting.
The world Ross was born into had been built across two continents and three generations. His grandfather Friedrich Theodor Andra had been born in Rosswein, Saxony in 1867 and died in Meissen in 1902, when Ross’s father Bill was just four years old. Bill’s mother, Christiana Wilhelmina Knauke, brought the family to America. Bill arrived alone in May 1909 — at eleven years old you paid reduced passage; at twelve, full price — and went first to Fairview, Utah, then to Preston, Idaho, where a former missionary named George Wanner had helped convert the family in Germany. Bill worked the Wanner farm for seven years, at $18 a month rising to $30, milking twenty-four cows, doing any work he could get. He married George’s daughter, Mary Louise Wanner, in the Salt Lake Temple on 10 March 1920. Christiana Knauke Andra — Ross’s grandmother — lived until Christmas Day 1957 in Salt Lake City. She was still alive when Ross stepped onto the plane for missionary service in Brazil.
Mary Louise was equally remarkable. She had nursed flu victims during the 1918 epidemic, nearly became a professional jockey at the Logan County Fair, outran all the girls and most of the boys at school in Preston. She and Bill built their life in Depression-era conditions — $1,000 principal and $500 interest on the farm, with Bill digging basements and hauling gravel and taking sugar beets to the factory at $4 a ton to make the payments. Mary’s autobiography, written in November 1961, records it without complaint: “With the Lord’s help and a good wife and children, we paid for the farm.” Her garden in Preston was massive — flowers surrounding it, vegetables in rows — and beautiful enough that even a nine-year-old boy visiting with his grandmother noticed and remembered. Ross spent the rest of his life planting tomatoes wherever he could find a plot of dirt. He was his mother’s son.
Twelve children were born to Bill and Mary between 1920 and 1943. Two died young — Robert Lee on his first day in 1934, Dennis Willard in January 1945, four days after his third birthday, of an earache in the night. The ten who survived grew up in close quarters on the Preston farm, with the pranks you would expect from six boys and four sisters sharing a household. Ross and his brothers once tied a cow to their math teacher’s front door.
Don, Ross, Bill, Dale, and Larry Andra, Preston, Idaho – 1950s
23 January 1957
Ross Andra, Preston High T-shirt, backyard
Ross graduated from Preston High School in 1955. He spent two years at Utah State Agriculture College, then headed east with his brothers Donald and Golden to work construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway project in Massena, New York. Golden was a general foreman on the Eisenhower Lock — photographed in the project’s official records, named in the local newspaper. Donald met and married a woman in Hogansburg, New York. Ross told me stories about New York, though I cannot remember enough of them to share now. What I know is that the three brothers were there together, Idaho farm boys pouring concrete on one of the great infrastructure projects of the Eisenhower era, on the St. Lawrence River in the far north of New York State.
Then Ross came home and left again — this time for Brazil.
Ross Andra Missionary Farewell Program – 30 December 1956.
The missionary farewell program for Elder Ross Leslie Andra is dated Sunday, 30 December 1956, Preston First Ward Chapel, 7:30 p.m. The opening hymn was “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go.” His brother William Jr. — who had himself served in Mexico from 1941 to 1943, the first of the Andra brothers to go — spoke at the service. His brother Donald gave the benediction. Ross made his own remarks. Bishop W. Dean Palmer closed. The program reads: Elder Ross Leslie Andra leaves for Brazilian Mission, January 23, 1957.
I remember Ross telling a story. He had just returned home from his mission in Brazil and was sitting on the stand at Stake Conference with other returned missionaries. Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith was speaking at the pulpit. Elder Smith was speaking about being strictly honest with your fellow man. Elder Smith related a story that told of a guy who admitted to Elder Smith that he was not as honest as he should be. The irony of a man honestly confessing his inability to be honest struck a nerve with Ross. He got the giggles. Apparently he looked at someone else who also found the irony humorous and the laughter broke out and spread. Apparently Elder Smith turned around to look at them with a very unfavorable look. It only added to the giggles. Ross admitted it might have been his Brazilian sense of humor. He laughed even as he told me about the story.
Four years later — on 9 October 1960 — Ross stood at that same Preston First Ward pulpit as his farewell and spoke at the farewell for his younger brother Dale, who was leaving for the Western States Mission. The brothers sent each other off, one by one, into the world.
Ross served in Brazil from 1957 to 1959. He came home, enrolled at Brigham Young University, studied political science, speech education, and Portuguese, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1964. But the most important thing that happened in Brazil was Adelaide.
Feliz Natal
Angela and Blas Gonzalez, Adelaide’s parents
Adelaide Gonzalez Carrenho, Brazil
Adelaide Gonzalez Carrenho — the daughter of Angela and Blas Gonzalez of Brazil — was a young woman of dark eyes and composed beauty when Ross encountered her. I seem to recall that he said they met on a trip back to Brazil after his mission. After he returned to BYU; they kept in contact across the distance. On 14 June 1963, in the Logan Utah Temple they were joined in the holy bonds of matrimony for time and for all eternity. The witnesses on the marriage certificate are William F. Andra Sr. and Dale Andra — Bill and Dale, father and brother, standing at the altar the day Ross married his Brazilian bride. A missionary friend named Phyllis Merrill, who had served in Brazil and become one of Adelaide’s closest friends, spent the wedding day interpreting for Adelaide as she went through the Logan Temple for the first time. (The wedding photograph, with full identification of those present, is available here. The marriage certificate is here.)
Ross & Adelaide Andra 1965 Christmas Card
That Christmas, Ross and Adelaide sent their wedding photograph to friends in Brazil as a holiday card.
His daughter Brenda captured it simply at the funeral: Ross had “a deep love for Brazil, its people and culture, and especially for his little Brazilian bride.” That love never left him. In his later years, when health prevented the overseas return mission he and Adelaide had always wanted, they served as local service missionaries to the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking wards of the Salt Lake Valley, driving all around visiting families, making sure they had what they needed.
Ross and Adelaide Andra, SLC home, October 2022
The Working Life
Ross, Adelaide, Brenda Andra – August 1967
The career of Ross Andra resists a single title. High school teacher. Coach. Candyman. Small business owner. Appliance installer. Furniture mover. UPS driver. Medical courier. He was, as his friend Frederick Johnson insisted at the funeral, an entrepreneur — a man who believed in the American dream and in hard work and gumption as its instruments.
As the Candyman, he kept the vending machines stocked in his eldest daughter’s school teachers’ lounge, and he would sometimes appear at recess to distribute candy on the playground, which made Brenda quite popular with her classmates. As a business owner, he often took his son Carlos along to deliver and install appliances and move furniture, with the result that Carlos learned to load a truck with the systematic precision of a Tetris puzzle. He gave his youngest daughter Denise a tutorial in personal finance when she was struggling with debt; she paid everything off.
UPS company newsletter Big Idea, April 1976, Ross Andra is named as one of the drivers who helped get to 1,000 safe driving days
Ross Andra makes comments during breakfast held for drivers at Sambos
The April 1976 edition of the UPS company newsletter Big Idea photographed the Park City, Utah center — first in Utah to reach 1,000 safe driving days — and named Ross Andra in the front row. A separate photograph from the same period shows him standing at a drivers’ breakfast, mid-comment, captioned: “Driver Ross Andra makes comments during breakfast held for drivers at Sambos.” He drove a fully loaded truck the way most people drive a compact car, weaving through traffic with an ease that still astonished Frederick Johnson decades later. Before GPS, he had the entire I-15 corridor memorized. He was the GPS. In his later years, until age 84, he delivered blood and vital organs to medical facilities across Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. He made people laugh the whole way.
Ross and Adelaide Andra
Ross the Boss
Judy, Dale, Mary, Bill, and Ross Andra, September 1962
Frederick Johnson — known as Freddy, or Frederico — spoke at the funeral. His father Ranley had worked weekends with Ross for years delivering and installing appliances, and when Frederico turned sixteen the interview for joining the operation was brief. “Frederico, you’re sixteen, right?” “Yeah, I’ll be sixteen at the end of —” “Frederico, you’re sixteen.” “Yes.” That was the interview.
Working with Ross, Johnson said, was better than television, even when it was miserable hard labor. His father would come home Saturdays with tears rolling down his face from laughing. The phone would ring — Ross, calling to debrief, mostly to replay the jokes that were played during the day.
Ross was a virtuoso practical joker. He favored ice dropped down the back of your shirt on hot summer deliveries. He perfected the screwdriver dropped at precisely the moment a man was bent double lifting something heavy. For years he carried a novelty ID with Elvis Presley’s photograph and produced it whenever anyone asked for identification — cashier, security guard, TSA agent. “That’s what drugs will do to you.” He once deployed it at a Salt Lake airport checkpoint around September 11th while escorting Johnson to his gate. Johnson nearly missed his plane.
But the parrot story is the finest. Ross’s family had long laughed about his famous account of being called back to the farmhouse by his mother — or so he thought — only to find a chicken calling his name. That story about a chicken that was loud enough and gave a distinct “Rawwwsss” more than once was confused for his mother calling for him. One afternoon, Johnson’s father came home from a delivery unable to speak from laughter. They had delivered a washer and dryer to an elderly woman’s home. Ross was in the basement doing the hookup. There was a parrot. Ross called up the stairs: “Is there a drain down here? We need to drain a little water.” The parrot said: What? Ross tried again. What? Is there a hole where the water goes? What? Ranley, upstairs, was quietly disintegrating and trying to hold in the laughter. Ross, red-faced and fully irritated, eventually came upstairs. When he saw Ranley’s face, he understood he had been duped by a parrot. Ranley laughed about it the whole rest of the day. The story became one of lore.
“It was rare,” Johnson said, “to get one on Ross. He always had the drop on you.” The parrot did it magnificently.
For all his irreverence — and Johnson named it plainly — there was something untouched by it. Ross never swore. He had code words and nicknames. But when it came to his faith and his testimony, Ross was always reverent. Bishop Maxwell put it simply at the close: Ross loved the scriptures. He loved the word of God. He loved Jesus Christ. And he brought that light into everything he did.
The Mission Couple
Ross and Adelaide Andra
Clay Celestino, who served as bishop of the Mountain Shadows Ward, offered a different angle. The Brazilian immigrant wards of Salt Lake City in the early 2010s were large and underserved — hundreds of families struggling with injury, poverty, paperwork, language. The Andras came as service missionaries between 2009 and 2015, and Celestino said plainly they were indispensable.
He remembered a specific night: 22 January 2013, 12:19 a.m. He sent an email. Eight minutes later, Ross replied: “Hi, Bishop. That’s no abuse at all to ask for the things you’re asking. That is the reason why we are serving a mission. We want to help our brothers and sisters the best way we can. Tomorrow I will make a few phone calls and I will provide you with the information you need.”
The list of those they helped, Celestino said, went on and on. And then, at nine in the evening, talking to Ross, you would find out he still had deliveries to make for his other job.
When the Andras were transferred unexpectedly in September 2013, Celestino read at the funeral the farewell letter he had written them at the time. He had copied the entire ward leadership. He thanked Ross for allowing him, as bishop, to concentrate on other responsibilities. “For that I will be eternally grateful to you and to Heavenly Father.” He asked them not to forget the ward. “We will not forget you.”
The Brothers
Bill, Ross, Mary, Dale, Larry Andra – late 1950s
Larry Andra — the last of the twelve, the youngest surviving child of Bill and Mary — gave the family prayer before the service and spoke as one of the main eulogists. He described the family with the dry affection of a man who has lived long enough to be the last one telling the stories.
William Jr. went first among the siblings, in 1992. Then June and Colleen in 1999, Golden in 2004, Sergene in 2013, Donald in 2016, Dale in 2021. At Dale’s funeral in August 2021 — three years before Ross’ — Ross was listed among the honorary pallbearers. By the time Ross died in June 2024, of the twelve children of Bill and Mary Andra, only Larry remained.
Dale’s funeral was held during the week of the annual Andra reunion. Larry noted that was Ross’s last reunion here on Earth. The reunions had been going since the children were young — Preston Fairgrounds, Logan Park, Lava Hot Springs, Wolcott Park by the Minidoka Dam, Richmond City Park, Riverdale, then wherever families could gather. I remember Bill Andra at those reunions. I remember the sly look that sometimes crossed Bill Andra’s face when he was about to tease someone. Ross had inherited that look too. You knew when a tease, joke, or prank was coming by the look on his face.
2010 Reunion: Ross, Donald, Larry, Sergene, Neil Anderson – 2010 Andra Reunion
The Close
I snapped this picture of Ross the last time I visited him, 23 December 2023 at his home.
Bishop Ted Maxwell had only known Ross since the COVID years. What he had seen was enough. In the final months, when Ross could no longer come to church, he called the bishop after every sacrament meeting to report on how it had gone and offer observations. The calls grew shorter, then stopped. Maxwell told himself at first that Ross must be doing better. He knew eventually that wasn’t it.
What Maxwell said at the close was simple and accurate: everyone in that congregation had either been served by Ross or served with him, because that was what his life was. Service. Whether bringing joy or bringing the gospel — it was the same motion, from the same source.
In December 2023, six months before he died, I visited Ross at home. He was lying in bed, largely unable to rise. At one point he reached up and lifted a framed composite portrait — all twelve Andra children, the photograph that had defined the family across seven decades of reunions — and held it up toward the light, pointing at the faces one by one. He knew every one of them.
April 2024, rehabilitation with granddaughter Onyx, after fighting infection – still Ross!
In April 2024, in a rehabilitation facility after fighting an infection, Ross raised both arms in a victory pose for Onyx beside him doing the same. Frederick Johnson had sworn he had only seen Ross lying down twice — that April and on his deathbed. Ross never stopped moving. He never stopped working. He never stopped bringing the light out.
On 20 June 2024, Ross Leslie Andra died peacefully in his Salt Lake City home with his wife Adelaide, his daughter Brenda, and his son Carlos at his side.
The funeral closed with “How Great Thou Art,” sung by Sister Annie Löwenthal. Then the pallbearers — Carlos Andra, Paul Ross, Larry Andra, Frederick Johnson, Tim Andra, Felipe Johnson, and Aron Hsiao — came to the front. The congregation rose. Ross Leslie Andra was carried out into the June light toward Valley View Memorial Park in West Valley City, Utah.
Frederick Johnson, who had lost his own father just two months before, had a last message. “Ross the Boss,” he said, “your life mattered a great deal to us and to me. You will not be forgotten. We’ll keep telling the jokes and passing them on.” Then, more quietly: “Say hi to Dad for me, Ross. Tell him we miss him too.”
Pallbearers at Valley View Memorial Park, West Valley City, Utah 29 June 2024. Brandon Porter, Paul Ross, Tim Andra, Carlos Andra, Felipe Johnson, Fredrick Johnson, Aron Hsiao
Ross is survived by his wife, Adelaide; his daughter Brenda (Layton) Wagner; his son Carlos (Melanie) Andra; his daughter Denise Andra; his grandson Brandon (Danika) Porter; his granddaughter Onyx Andra; his great-grandchildren Tilia, Zeke, and Sevi Porter; and his brother Larry (Barbara) Andra.
The full funeral service for Ross Leslie Andra, held 29 June 2024 at the Cannon Ninth Ward in Salt Lake City, was livestreamed and remains available to view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1qDOIbls5Q.
Note: This transcript was generated from auto-captions and has been edited for readability. Musical interludes, unintelligible passages, and pre-service ambient audio have been omitted or noted. Speaker attributions are based on self-introduction within the service.
Opening of Service
Conducting — Bishop Ted Maxwell
You may be seated. Welcome, everyone, this morning to the funeral for Ross Andra. My name is Ted Maxwell; I’m the bishop of the Cannon Ninth Ward, where the Andras have been living. I’ll be conducting today. On the stand we have President Ingersol from our stake, who is presiding. We’re so grateful to have you all here on this fine, wonderful morning to celebrate the life of Ross Leslie Andra.
We will begin by singing ‘I Believe in Christ,’ Hymn Number 134. Our pianist will be Arlene Lenthal, and the chorister will be Anda, an in-law. After which we will have an invocation by Carlos Andra, Ross’s son.
[Congregation sings “I Believe in Christ,” Hymn No. 134]
Invocation
Carlos Andra (son of Ross Andra)
Let’s bow our heads.
Our Father in Heaven, this morning we open the service with your words: “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; man became a living being.”
You formed a man, and his name was Ross Leslie Andra. We thank you, Father, that we can all be here gathered together. We invite your Holy Spirit into this place in which we reflect and honor the life of my earthly father, Ross.
I ask you, Holy Spirit, to stir in the hearts of each person taking time out of the breath of their lives to come reflect and remember the impact that was made by you through this husband, father, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend.
Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for you are with us; your rod and your staff, they comfort us. You are Holy God; you are so loving. We love you and we thank you for your presence. We dedicate this time to let your Holy Spirit direct our time together to honor your servant, Ross Leslie Andra. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Amen.
Order of Service — Announced by Bishop Maxwell
We will begin the service with a musical number titled “My Testimony,” which will be performed by Sister Bastos and Arlene Lenthal. After which we will hear from — oh, I skipped something. I’m sorry, let’s back up. We’ll start by hearing the obituary read by Brenda Wagner, who is Ross’s daughter. After which we’ll hear from Larry Andra, who was Ross’s brother. Then we will have a musical number, “My Testimony,” performed by Sister Bastos and Arlene Lenthal, and after that we’ll hear from Frederick Johnson, who is a family friend. Closing for us will be President Clay Celestino from the Mountain Shadows Stake.
Obituary
Read by Brenda Wagner (daughter of Ross Andra)
Oh gosh — thank you so much for being here for my father and my family, my mom, everyone.
So — Ross. Now, if my eyes start watering it’s because it’s sweaty and hot outside, so that’s why.
Ross Leslie Andra, my father. At age 87, he returned to his Father in Heaven, which was on 20 June 2024. He passed with dignity and peacefully in his Salt Lake City home, with his wife Adeli, daughter Brenda, and son Carlos at his side.
Ross was born on 2 December 1936 in Preston, Idaho, to German immigrant William Frederick Andra and Mary Louise Wer— [you never know how to say that]. He grew up on a large family farm with four sisters and seven brothers.
Ross graduated from Preston High School in 1955 and then went on to attend Utah State Agriculture College — now Utah State University — for two years. Ross worked in construction with a couple of his brothers on the St. Lawrence Seaway project in Messina, New York, between February and December 1957.
He served a mission to Brazil for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints between 1957 and 1959, where he met his sweetheart, Adeli Gonzalez Cararu. They married in the Logan Temple on 14 June 1963. Ross had a deep love for Brazil, its people and culture, and especially for his little Brazilian bride.
After his mission to Brazil, Ross attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he studied political science, speech education, and Portuguese. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from BYU in 1964 and remained one of their biggest fans right up to the end, watching games and sporting a BYU ball cap everywhere he went.
Ross instilled a strong work ethic into his children. As a servant leader, Ross served his family by example and by teaching his kids how to help Mom with household tasks. He modeled Ephesians 5:25 very well: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.” Ross always made sure everyone was comfortable and that they had what they needed.
Ross loved to make people laugh, and he had a keen gift for engaging strangers with quick-witted quips. He spread many smiles and laughter across this planet.
Ross was a hard worker, and his career life spanned over various areas: from high school teacher, coach, Candyman, small business owner, appliance installer, and furniture mover to a medical career. He held unique skills and talents and applied them well throughout his life and service to others. He maintained a missionary mindset throughout his whole career.
As Candyman, Ross would fill the vending machines in the teachers’ lounge at his eldest daughter’s elementary school — me — and often he would show up during recess and pass out candy on the playground, which made his daughter Brenda — me — quite popular with her friends.
As a business owner, Ross would often take his son Carlos to work with him to deliver and install appliances and move furniture. As a result, Carlos learned to efficiently pack a moving truck like a Tetris puzzle.
Ross loved tomatoes. He would plant them anywhere he could find a plot of dirt — it could be this big, that big. His youngest daughter Denise worked hard to clear space in the backyard for a family garden so Ross could have his tomatoes.
At another point in life, when Denise found herself facing some debt, Ross sat down with her and taught her some financial principles, which she applied and was able to persevere in paying off all her debts in no time at all.
Ross was a faithful servant. With Adeli as his companion, Ross served locally as a service missionary with the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking wards between 2009 and 2015. Together they drove all around the Salt Lake Valley visiting with families and making sure they had the resources that they needed.
Ross and Adeli had a deep desire to return to an overseas mission in Brazil, but due to health concerns they could not go. Instead they fulfilled that desire by serving the Brazilian people locally.
In his latter years, until age 84, Ross delivered blood and vital organs to various medical locations spanning Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming — and as always, he made people laugh along the way.
We kids heard many stories from Dad about growing up on the family farm — like the time he was called back to the house by his mom only to discover that it was a chicken calling out “Ross,” or the time when Ross and his brothers tied a cow to their math teacher’s front door. With multiple brothers, you can imagine the pranks that were played on and with each other.
Dad, we miss your John Wayne toughness, your Popeye strength, and your cheesy dad jokes. You were a missionary for Christ until the end. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of the Lord” (Matthew 25:21). Ross has now entered the joy of his Lord.
We love you, Daddy.
Remarks
Larry Andra (brother of Ross Andra)
My name is Larry Andra. I’m the last of twelve. Ross would say, “I’m the last of the Mohicans.”
Ross was always saying to each person he had a nickname — like “teddy bear.” His kids called him Tom the Piper’s Son. And one nephew — it probably best they called him ‘Funkle’ — the funny uncle.
He lacked no jokes. He was likeable and really witty. Others said he loved to joke around with people. I always called him the numbers jokester. And I really didn’t understand when he talked to me — he knew Brazil too much; he forgot that I couldn’t understand the jokes.
Ross never did anything outside the church standards. My parents never had to worry about Ross. He had a little brother to do that.
Our father came from Germany, as mentioned before. Within a couple of months after being baptized, he came alone because he was eleven years old — at twelve you pay full price; at eleven you pay a high price. He got lost, so they came looking for him, and that’s where the twelve came in. He ended up with the missionary that baptized him going to his farm and marrying his daughter, and they had twelve children.
This week is the Andra reunion, which we’ve had — I think this is Ross’s last one here on Earth.
Death is just as important in the welfare of man as is birth. There is no greater blessing that can come than the blessing of birth. One-third of the host of heaven, because of rebellion, were denied that privilege and hence had no bodies of flesh and bone — which is the gift of God. But who would like to live forever in this world filled with pain, decay, sorrow, and tribulation — grow old and infirm and yet remain? I think all of us, if the proposition were placed before them, would not want life of that nature. We would reject it.
But death is just as important in the Plan of Salvation as birth is. We have to die. It is essential. Death comes into the world and fulfills the merciful plan of our great Creator.
Let’s talk a minute about what happens when one passes on. However painful the moment of death is physically, it is spiritually one of the most exciting and joyful moments of eternity. It’s like opening the door of a dark room — one who dies emerges into the light of the spirit world, where there will be friends and family waiting to greet him. There is no special period known to man in which they experience so much joy as when they pass through the portals of death and enter into a glorious change in the spirit world.
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp — and then dawn comes.
When someone dies, it is like a beautiful lagoon. On a clear day a fine sailing ship spreads its mast and its canvas in a fresh morning breeze on the deep blue, and gradually we see her grow smaller and smaller as she nears the horizon and someone says, “There she goes — gone.” But you can be sure that on the other shore someone says, “There she comes!”
While we’re mourning the loss of Ross, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil. Ross has joined Mother, Dad, June, William, Colleen, Millie, Golden, Serene, Donald, Dale, Robert, Dennis, and others.
Steve Jobs was a billionaire worth $7 billion at age 56. Lying on his deathbed sick with pancreatic cancer, he said: “All my life I have recognized wealth, but all that I had was meaningless in the face of human death. You can find someone to drive a car for you, but you cannot hire someone to carry the disease for you.”
As we get older we grow smarter and slowly realize: a watch worth $30 and a watch worth $300 both show the same time. Whether we drive a car worth $150,000 or $2,000, the road and the distance are the same; we reach the same destination. If we drink a bottle of wine worth $300 or wine worth $10, we’re still drunk.
There are five undeniable facets: Do not educate your children to be rich; educate them to be happy, so when they grow up they will know the value of things, not the price. Eat your food as medicine; otherwise you eat your medicine as food. Whoever loves you and never leaves you, even if he or she has a hundred reasons to give up, will always find one reason to hold on. There is a big difference in being human. If you want to go fast, go alone — but if you want to go far, go together.
I really believe that Ross embodied what Steve Jobs was saying here — they went together.
Albert Einstein said: “Do you realize how important you truly are? Look around — who are you influencing, motivating, teaching, or inspiring? Some of the greatest souls who have ever lived will never appear in the chronicles of history. They are the great ones who spend every day of their lives serving and doing good.” Albert Einstein also said: “Try not to become a person of success, but a person of value.”
Thank you for the service you are willing to give to your families, your friends, neighbors, and community. Every great dream begins with a dreamer; always remember you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars and change the world. You are the difference — make it happen.
[Larry then shared a story about a woman whose car was stuck in the snow in a foreign country. A man came with a mule and attempted to pull her out. Before having the mule try again, the man yelled, “Let’s go, Bob! Tom! John! Lance!” — and the mule pulled the car out. When the woman asked why he called the mule different names, the man said, “Madam, my mule is blind. I wanted him to think he wasn’t pulling the car out alone.”]
People in this congregation — Adelaide needs you next to her, pulling and pushing for her. Adelaide’s happiness will return, her former capabilities will be restored, light will replace darkness, despair will give way to hope and life and will regain its meaning — but only through service. Neighbors, friends, relatives, family, and those who are in attendance here: Bishop and Friends, Adelaide does not need to be preached to, but she needs a void filled. Bless her and be of service to her, as the Savior asks of us, and I promise you that you will be blessed. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Amen.
[Musical number: “My Testimony,” performed by Sister Bastos and Arlene Lenthal]
Remarks
Frederick Johnson (family friend)
My name is Frederick Johnson — Todd Elijah. I’m known as Freddy; the full version is Frederico.
Like many, the summer I turned 16 I got my first job, and it was delivering household appliances with “the Boss.” The interview went something like this: “Frederico, you’re 16, right?” And I said, “Oh yeah, I’ll be 16 at the end of —” “Frederico, you’re 16.” “Yes.” And that was my interview. But admittedly it was essentially nepotism.
As long as I could remember, my dad — Ranley Johnson — had been moonlighting on weekends with Ross. As far as I’m concerned, they were the first and only two men in a truck there ever were.
Ross, like my father, had served a mission in Brazil and married a Brazilian. In the ‘80s, all these mixed families — nowadays the church and the Brazilian community in the Salt Lake Valley has become tremendous. But when I was a little child, and when Carlos and Brenda and their little sister Denise were young, we all kind of knew each other more or less. At conference time we went to reunions together. The connection goes back even further than that — about a decade before my mother first came to the United States. My mother, Louisa Coa Johnson, came to the US in the 1970s. Adeli had served in the tiny branch of Beloni, Brazil, where my mother, my aunt, and grandmother were new converts to the church. So as I say, it was basically nepotism.
I swear, Ross the Boss Andra was the strongest man I ever knew. Thirty years my senior, he had more stamina and strength in his late fifties than I could muster at his side as a six-foot-one man in my prime. He was compact and he looked powerful to me. He not only looked and sounded like Popeye — he even talked like Popeye. Except instead of eating spinach, I think where he got his strength was from eating tomatoes.
Ross’s strength was legendary. In fact, Ross wasn’t only strong — he was an irresistible force. My dad told stories of seeing Ross pick up a Ford Pinto by its bumper to make room for the truck to pass. And I don’t doubt it.
Now, Ross, when I knew him, could sometimes come across as a little unsophisticated. But anyone who knew Ross at all knew that to dismiss Ross the Boss as a blue-collar East Idaho farm-boy country bumpkin was making a grave mistake. Ross was intelligent, well-traveled, and educated, and he did not suffer fools or foolishness.
When I was still a teenager, we were working, delivering appliances. There was another man who worked with Ross who was actually a bit more unsophisticated — I wonder if Carlos remembers Joe Yanger. The way I remember the guy: he was big and coarse, had bad Marine Corps tattoos on his arms, and talked kind of low. I couldn’t understand a word he said except swear words. He was strong as an ox and probably about as sophisticated as one, if you take my meaning.
Anyway, one day Ross tells me: “Joe Yanger got hurt.” “What happened, Ross?” “I dropped a piano on his head.” They were moving a piano, and Joe was at one end coming down the ramp. Ross said, “Joe, are you ready?” Well, Ross didn’t know if he was ready or not — so he let go of the piano. Joe Yanger ended up with some stitches in the back of his head. I don’t think it made any difference to how Joe Yanger spoke or how well Ross could understand him.
Also, I want to emphasize — and if you get a chance, read again the beautiful obituary that Ross’s family put together — Ross was not a blue-collar guy with a truck, and he certainly did not see himself that way. Ross Andra was an entrepreneur. He firmly believed in the American dream, in hard work and gumption as the way to get ahead, and that’s what he did — whether it was filling candy machines, moving vending machines, delivering appliances, or contracting his truck out as a mover. Ross believed he was an entrepreneur, and he was.
In a world where hard work and gumption were enough, Ross would have been a financially wealthy man many times over, because I also don’t know anyone who worked as hard as Ross. That’s why most of my memories are from working with him — or working with my dad and Ross the Boss — because he was always working. In fact, I swear I’ve only seen Ross lying down twice: the first time was in April, when he was in rehab after fighting an infection, and the second time was on his deathbed. Ross never stopped moving and never stopped working, and he had lots of gumption.
Now, the work that we did with Ross was, as you can imagine, physical — hard work. But Dad would come home laughing. There was always this interesting other thing about working with Ross the Boss: there would be some kind of debriefing. He’d wait long enough for you to get home, the phone would ring, and he would call — mostly I think to go over the jokes he had played on you and laugh about them again.
My memory of even Dad working with Ross is Dad coming home, the phone ringing, and then Dad laughing. Or Dad coming home — I even remember him opening the door with tears rolling down his eyes, just couldn’t stop laughing. When I worked with both of them, it was better than television, because my dad was a wise guy in his own way and the two of them together could be very entertaining.
My mom even thought: “This isn’t fair — I’m home with the kids every Saturday and you’re off having fun with Ross.” But it was hard work, and with anyone else it would have been miserable. We enjoyed working with Ross, and we all worked with Ross. My brother Felipe worked with Ross; my friend Giorgino Brown, another one of these families that’s half American, half Brazilian here in Utah; my cousin visiting one summer from New York worked with Ross one day — and Ross made an impression on everybody. It was fun, even though it was miserable hard work.
A lot of this is because Ross was a virtuoso practical joker. One of his favorite things — if we were working in the summertime — was to drop ice down your shirt. Even worse than that: when we did deliveries we had shirts that said “DPEC” on them — short for Delivery Specialist, which made it sound kind of exciting and sexy. They always seemed like they were a size too small or too short, so Ross had a knack — one of his favorite things was to take advantage of you when you were bending down picking up something really heavy and that shirt rode up. Without saying a word, Ross would just drop a screwdriver down there right when you were really going. He would just chuckle. And of course at the end of the day he’d call and say, “Hey, do you remember when I dropped that? That was good.”
For years he had a novelty ID with Elvis Presley’s picture on it, and anytime someone asked him for his ID he’d show that — it didn’t matter who they were. They’d look at it and go, “Huh?” And he’d say, “That’s what drugs will do to you.”
One time, around September 11th — I was living in New York, but every time I’d come back to town Ross would say, “Frederico, do you want to go to work?” I’d work with them even for just one day. This time he offered to take me to the airport, because Ross was always on the road — always driving a truck, delivering furniture, delivering appliances, or delivering medical equipment. So he was happy to go. We go up, and I was the one who needed to show my ID. Ross comes up, already ready, and this TSA agent — some people go, “Huh? What? You already — what drugs will do to you.” And here I am thinking, ‘Oh no. I’m not going to make my flight. They’re going to take me to the back and interrogate me.’ That was one time where the person didn’t even blink. Ross would say something like, “I’m better looking now, aren’t I?”
It was rare to get one up on Ross — he always had the drop on you. But here’s one of the most famous stories: the parrot story.
[Freddy describes the chicken story from the obituary — the time on the farm when Ross thought his mom was calling him, only to find a chicken mimicking her voice. One day, while delivering a washer and dryer to a customer’s home, Ross was working in the basement and noticed a parrot. Ross called up the stairs, “Is there a drain down here? We need to drain a little water.” The parrot replied, “What?” Ross, thinking it was the elderly owner upstairs, kept asking. Each time — “Is there a hole in the ground where the water drains?” — the parrot answered, “What?” Freddy’s father, upstairs, realized what was happening and nearly collapsed laughing. When Ross finally came up and figured it out, Freddy’s dad laughed about it the whole rest of the day. Freddy’s father had been waiting for years to get something on Ross, and the parrot delivered it.]
Ross could move a fully loaded truck like it was a subcompact car — weaving in and out of traffic. Before GPS existed, he knew the entire I-15 corridor in Utah. He was the GPS.
Ross could sometimes seem a bit irreverent — he had code words, let’s say. Ross never swore, but he might include swear words in code names and nicknames he gave to things. But when it came to his faith, his belief, and his testimony of the church, Ross was always reverent. He wasn’t serious all the time — he was still joking — but Ross was reverent, and I always knew that.
I can say honestly that Ross was a big part of my entire life. Even when I’ve lived out of state for most of the last thirty years, he would call me every once in a while to check on me. I began to worry about a year ago when the phone calls started getting shorter — because normally I’d set aside 45 minutes or an hour, because we’d have to retell all the stories about every time he dropped a screwdriver down — anyway. He’d say, “Remember when I did that, and then your dad did this.”
I just want to finish by saying — and if I do get a little emotional, it’s not because it’s hot; it’s because I’m kind of that way — Ross, to me, always was and will be bigger than life. Ross the Boss, I want to say to you that your life mattered a great deal to us and to me. I love you and your family, and how close our families have been. Your life mattered, and you will not be forgotten. You will be with us and within us, and we’ll keep telling the jokes and passing them on. We love you and we bid you farewell — but only until we meet again.
My own dad preceded Ross to the great beyond just a couple of months ago. So I personally have to say: say hi to Dad for me, Ross. Tell him we miss him too, and that we love him. Thank you.
Remarks
President Clay Celestino (former Bishop, Mountain Shadows Ward)
Brothers and sisters, my name is Clay Celestino. I served as a bishop in the Mountain Shadows Ward at the time the Andras — that’s how we pronounce their name in Portuguese, and that’s how I’m going to refer to them — were serving in our ward. On behalf of all the Brazilians — mostly Brazilians — who were part of the Winter Ward branch and the Mountain Shadows Ward, I wanted to express our deepest gratitude to this couple.
The first thing anyone would see when they met them was that big smile, and sometimes a joke. It was not hard to love them. Truly, their lives represented the love of our Savior Jesus Christ to us. With hundreds of immigrants from Brazil, the Andras represented arms of salvation, of service — hearts that were willing to bring consolation in times of distress. They were deeply engaged in serving their neighbors because of their love for our Heavenly Father and their genuine love towards anyone around them.
As bishops, we had hundreds of active members coming to our meetings every Sunday, and there was a great need for members who could assist us in lightening the burdens of those Brazilian immigrants. At any time that I needed help, the Andras were there.
I remember one day — I even have the date here — it was 22 January 2013. I sent a quick email to the Andras at 12:19 a.m., past midnight. Eight minutes later, I got a response. I didn’t want to abuse their goodwill and their desire to help others, but this is the response I got:
“Hi, Bishop. That’s no abuse at all to ask for the things you’re asking. That is the reason why we are serving a mission. We want to help our brothers and sisters the best way we can. Tomorrow I will make a few phone calls and I will provide you with the information you need.”
There were people who were unable to work because they were injured and needed help to find a doctor. There were young men who needed their dental and medical paperwork taken care of so they could submit their papers to go on a mission. There were people who needed resources from the community because they were unable to provide for themselves — people transitioning from another culture and trying to get established in this country — and they were assisted by the Andras. The list goes on and on.
And then at 9:00 p.m., talking to Ross, you would find out that he would still have to run some errands, make some deliveries, because of his other side job.
We don’t have much time, but I just wanted to express our deepest gratitude to Brother Andra. When we got the news that they were going to be transferred from our ward — initially we thought they were concluding their mission in November of 2013 — and then in September, two months prior to that date, we were surprised with the news that they were being transferred to the Winter Ward, where they actually stayed. They didn’t finish their mission there; they actually stayed for quite some time.
When I found out, I wrote this email to them, and I think it’s very fitting that I can share it now to conclude these brief words:
“Dear Sister Andra and Brother Andra — in this email I copied the entire leadership of the ward: I am saddened by the news of your sudden departure, as we are today, mainly in our community when we found out that Ross had passed on. I believe our ward leaders and members will feel as surprised and astonished as I do. While your transfer will truly bless and benefit our brothers and sisters in the Winter 17th Branch, I know our ward will deeply miss you. On behalf of all ward members and leaders, I would like to thank you for your dedication, love, and service. I have been a witness of how you have touched the lives of our members in many different ways and how your service has helped me, and allowed me in particular to concentrate on other areas of my responsibilities as a bishop — and for that I will be eternally grateful to you and to Heavenly Father. Thank you for your love for Heavenly Father, for responding to the call to serve, and for showing your love to and for our members. Hopefully as your mission ends, you will return to visit us. Please do not forget us — we will not forget you. We will announce your transfer in sacrament meeting tomorrow. Sincerely, Bishop Clay.”
Brothers and sisters, there are many tragedies around us as we hear about tragedies happening worldwide. Many of us, if not all of us, have somehow faced tragedies in our own lives. In fact, in this congregation right now there may be some who are needing a helping hand — some who may be struggling with illness, financial problems, family issues, health, and all sorts of challenges, mental illness. Sister Andra will need some support — I know that — and I’m very grateful for the support you have already extended to her during this time.
But may we honor the life of our dear Brother Andra by trying to emulate the works of Christ: being a little bit kinder, helping one another, finding time to serve, and extending that love that comes from our Heavenly Father which he has for each one of us. We are his arms; we are his hands. Ross Andra represented that very well.
I know that we will meet again, and that is the beauty of this gospel — death is not the end. We will meet again. May the love of our Heavenly Father be with each one of you as you strive to follow in the footsteps of his Son, our dear Savior Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Amen.
Closing Remarks
Bishop Ted Maxwell
You know, right before I close I just want to say a word or two. In the last few months Ross had not been able to come to church because he’s been stuck at home. But initially I know he really wanted to be there, because he called me after church every Sunday and let me know how church went and gave me advice for the future. It was always really great to hear from him. As his calls dropped off I knew things were — at first I thought we were just doing better, but then I realized maybe that wasn’t the truth.
I think that’s the one thing I loved about Ross: everyone in this audience has either been served by him or served with him, because that’s what his life was — it was service. Whether it was just bringing joy or bringing the gospel, that has always been one of my great joys, getting to know him these last few years, although I’ve only known him since COVID, so I missed out on some of the really fun stuff, it sounds like.
I know the one thing Ross loved was the scriptures. He loved the word of God, and he loved Jesus Christ, and he brought that light out in everything he did.
When I think about the joy that Jesus shared with his apostles right before he died on the cross, he said: “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, ye may be also — and you know the way to where I’m going.”
It is my testimony that Ross knew the way to where Christ is — that we will see him again — and it will be in the mansions of our Heavenly Father, in that place that Christ prepared for us through his sacrifice. It is my testimony that we will see each other again, and that through the grace of Jesus Christ we may all be relieved of all those burdens that we suffer from daily — and that in those burdens we might have joy, the way that we saw our brother Andra in his life. I say that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Amen.
Closing Announcements — Bishop Maxwell
Let’s close our meeting now. We will — no, we won’t sing — we will listen to a musical number by Sister Annie Lenthal, “How Great Thou Art,” after which Paul Ross, who is Ross’s nephew, will give us the benediction. After that we’d ask the pallbearers to come up, and we’ll escort the body to the graveside, where we will reconvene.
[Musical number: “How Great Thou Art,” performed by Sister Annie Lenthal]
Benediction
Paul Ross (nephew of Ross Andra)
Our Father in Heaven, we thank thee. We thank thee for thy Son, Jesus Christ. We thank thee for this world and that we have the privilege of coming here and gaining our bodies, of learning faith and love, and of thy Savior, thy Son, and all that he has given for us, and thy love.
We thank thee for Ross Andra — his example, his good parents, and his family. We thank thee for his wit, his grit, his stature, his faithfulness, and his example. He had thy Son’s countenance with him in work and in sadness and in joy. We are grateful for him. We’re grateful for Adeli and their sweet family.
We ask thee this day that thy Spirit will continue with us. Help us to continue to feel the joy and the balm of thy Spirit, even in our sadness. We thank thee for the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the knowledge of the eternal realms that come for all of us, and what still lies in store for us. But until then, that we can have peace and serve in thy name.
And that of thy Son, dismiss us this day with safety to the cemetery and love and adoration for one another and for thee. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Amen.
[Pallbearers assemble; congregation rises; body is escorted to Valley View Memorial Park, West Valley City, Utah for interment]
In September 2020, Amanda and I took our family out to Golden Spike National Historic Park at Promontory Summit, Utah. I have written about that visit previously. What drew us there, in part, was the knowledge that Amanda’s 3rd great-grandfather Joseph Wayment had been present on 10 May 1869 when the last spike was driven completing the transcontinental railroad — and that Andrew J. Russell’s famous photograph had captured him standing in the crowd. I promised in that post to tell more of Joseph and Ann Reed Wayment’s story another time. This is that time.
Hiram, Amanda, Aliza, and Paul Ross, Bryan Hemsley, Lillian and James Ross, and Jill Hemsley at Golden Spike National Historic Park, 7 September 2020.East and West Shaking Hands at the Laying of the Last Rail, Promontory Summit, Utah, 10 May 1869. Photograph by Andrew J. Russell. Joseph Wayment stands in the crowd on the left side of the image. Find the man standing below the Union Pacific’s No. 119 locomotive light with his jacket open and white shirt, then find the man whose head is in front of that man’s right thigh, behind the fellow with the partially raised hat. That is Joseph Wayment, age 25.
Andrew J. Russell, the official photographer of the Union Pacific Railroad who took this photograph, wrote of that moment: “The continental iron band now permanently unites the distant portions of the Republic, and opens up to Commerce, Navigation, and Enterprise the vast unpeopled plains and lofty mountain ranges that now divide the East from the West. Standing amid ‘The Antres vast and Desert wild,’ surrounded with the representative men of the nation, an epoch in the march of civilization was recorded, and a new era in human progress was ushered in.”
Joseph Wayment was one of the men in that crowd — a twenty-five-year-old English convert who had crossed the Atlantic seasick on the Amazon, walked the plains behind an ox team, survived Montana winters so cold the dishwater froze before it hit the snow, and was now building a life in a patch of Utah desert he would spend the next six decades transforming into a home, a farm, and a community. Would he have fathomed that 151 years later his great-great-great-granddaughter, and her children, would stand at that same spot.
Origins in Whaddon
Joseph Wayment, circa 1874.
I used AI to colorize and sharpen the images. If you click on them, you should be able to see the original black and white. AI took a bit of liberty on the photos regarding clothes.
Ann Reed, circa 1874.
Joseph Wayment was born 7 February 1844 in Whaddon, Cambridgeshire, England, the second son of William and Martha Brown Wayment. His older brother Aaron had lived only one day, so as far as the family was concerned, Joseph was the eldest. I have written previously about his parents in my post on William and Martha Wayment.
Ann Reed was born 1 January 1852 in the same small village — the fifth child and second daughter of James and Sarah East Reed. Whaddon was a tight community, a small village in the district of Royston, County of Cambridge, gathered around the ancient stone church of St. Mary the Virgin. Whaddon appears to have been somewhere around 400-500 people. The Wayments and the Reeds were neighbors in every sense of the word. Their children attended the same meetings, worked the same fields, and children would be baptized in the same river/brook.
Ann’s early life was marked by tragedy. When she was two years old, she slipped into a deep ditch near their home. No one else was nearby. Her mother, Sarah East Reed, then heavy with child, jumped in after her. Ann was saved, but the ordeal brought on labor. The baby girl was born 13 July 1854 and died the same day. Three days later, Sarah also died from complications, and mother and infant were buried together in the same casket. Ann’s father James Reed did his best to keep the family together, but he too died on 2 February 1858, leaving five orphans — the oldest fourteen, Ann just five years old.
Their mother’s sister, Hannah East, came to Whaddon to keep house for the children. Hannah was herself from Whaddon — born there on 24 August 1828, the sister of Sarah East Reed and of George East Sr., who would later become a familiar figure in Warren, Utah. Hannah was baptized LDS 3 June 1848. She stayed with the Reed orphans for several years before emigrating to Zion, where she eventually settled in Lehi, Utah, married Thomas Karren in 1865, and lived until 2 May 1907. It is a quiet thread of continuity that Hannah — who held Ann’s orphaned family together in Whaddon — ended her days in the same territory where Ann built her life, just a day’s journey away in Lehi.
After Hannah left England, the children were kept by the Parish until they could earn their own living. Ann went out to service at age eleven. She endured difficult conditions in several positions before finally working David and Mary Hide Grieg (the histories state it was Grigg), where she stayed nearly five years and carefully saved her wages toward passage to America. The Grieg family lived in nearby Melbourn, a family that was not LDS.
The Gospel Comes to Whaddon
I wrote in the William and Martha Wayment post about how the Wayment home had become a gathering place for LDS missionaries since William’s baptism in March 1850 — how despite community hostility, meetings were held in different houses and baptisms conducted at night to avoid mobs. The gospel took hold in Whaddon. On the night of 7 May 1860, Joseph Wayment, age sixteen, was baptized in Whaddon Brook along with his brother Samuel and sister Emily. Ann Reed, age eight, was baptized and confirmed the same night.
They shared the same waters. They would share a life.
Joseph worked in the peat bogs with his father from his early teens, fossil digging to earn enough for his passage to Zion. He had one more memorable appearance in Whaddon before he left: shortly before his departure, he sang a solo at a church meeting that deeply impressed those present. His voice was described as a clear and beautiful bass. Ann Reed, then twelve years old, was in that congregation. Decades later she would tell her grandchildren with deep feeling how thrilled she had been sitting in that meeting listening to Joseph sing.
The Voyage of the Amazon, 1863
On 1 June 1863, Joseph left Whaddon for Liverpool. Three days later, on 4 June, he booked passage on the sailing vessel Amazon — listed on the manifest as “Joseph Waymound,” age 19 — and sailed from Liverpool with 881 fellow Saints bound for Zion. As I wrote in my Stoker family post, the Amazon was a famous voyage. It was this crossing that Charles Dickens observed and wrote about, describing the Mormon emigrants not as misfits and scoundrels but as the “pick and flower” of England. Future U.S. Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland was also aboard (whose family was LDS). George Q. Cannon dedicated the ship. My own Stoker ancestors were on this same vessel — an extraordinary coincidence that ties our two family lines together. Since Warren and Plain City were small communities, they likely knew each other.
Joseph was seasick nearly the entire six-week crossing. The Amazon landed in New York around the middle of July 1863. He traveled by train to a point on the Missouri River, then by boat up to Florence, Nebraska. From there he walked and drove an ox team across the plains in Captain Dan McCarty’s company — a new experience for him, as he later told his grandsons, having learned to handle horses in England but never oxen. He arrived in Salt Lake City on 3 October 1863, four months and two days after leaving his father’s home.
The very next day the October General Conference of the Church began, held in the Bowery. Joseph stood near the speakers’ platform. Brigham Young was one of the speakers, and Joseph later said it was one of the most inspiring sermons he ever heard — that Brigham Young seemed to be surrounded by a bright light. Part of that sermon Joseph remembered all his life.
The Freighting Years, 1864–1866
After a winter in Lehi, Joseph went to work in the spring of 1864 for a freighting company — probably the Toponce Freighting Company — hauling goods to Montana. He stayed with the outfit until the fall of 1866. Those were hard and consequential years.
The winter of 1864 was brutal. The freighters were snowbound on a Montana river for several weeks. Joseph served as camp cook. He later told his family that when he threw out the dishwater, it froze to ice before it hit the snow. Some of the cattle froze to death. One day the lot fell to Joseph to fetch wood. His hands were tender from cooking and dishwashing, but he went out and cut an armful. As he was picking up the last piece of wood, he felt his whole body beginning to freeze. He stumbled back toward the cabin, but before he reached it his whole body had gone numb. The men rubbed him with coal oil and did everything they could to revive him. One of them said, “Joe Wayment gets no more wood this winter — I’ll get it for him.”
During the freighting years two confrontations became family legend. In the first, a stranger from another company approached the camp and asked if there were any Mormons present. He was directed to Joseph. The man told him he had helped mob the Saints in Missouri and Illinois, then pulled open his shirt to his chest and said, “Now shoot me.” He had lived such a miserable life since helping the mob, he said, that he wanted a Mormon to shoot him. Joseph replied: “No Mormon will ever stain his hands with your blood.”
In the second, the freighters encountered soldiers who had been in Johnston’s Army making their way north into Washington. Learning that some of the freighters were from Utah, they asked to hear the song that had been made up about Johnston’s Army coming to Utah. Joseph was the best singer in camp. He refused at first, knowing it would anger them. When they promised not to get angry, he relented and sang. One soldier became so furious he drew his pistol and threatened to kill the singer. The captain of the soldiers, quick as a flash, drew his own pistol on the angry man and said he would kill him if he harmed the singer. The other soldiers took the man away.
A third incident, at a freighters’ stop near Oxford, Idaho, demonstrated that Joseph was a man of both faith and action. He and his longtime friend and fellow teamster William Butler had pulled in for the night after a long drive. Other freighters already there greeted them with jeers — “There’s those Mormons” — and tried to force them to move on. Joseph and Butler had weary teams and held their ground. When words grew heated, Joseph walked briskly to his wagon, took the green willow switch he used to urge his team, walked thirty paces to some soft ground, and with one swing left it standing upright. Then he walked back, drew his pistol, turned, and split the willow with one shot. The heckling stopped immediately.
In the fall of 1866 Joseph had a strong feeling come over him that he should return to Utah. The company he was working with was a rough and irreligious crowd. He found a secluded spot in the timber, knelt, and asked the Lord for guidance. The next morning his mind was made up. He saddled his horse, gathered his belongings — three buffalo robes and his working clothes — and started for Utah.
Settling Salt Creek
He came first to Layton or Kaysville, then went to Call’s Fort near present Honeyville where he worked for a man named Barnard and helped build the first schoolhouse there. He bought a piece of land at Call’s Fort but eventually sold it. In 1872 he moved to what was then called Salt Creek, southwest of Plain City, and bought the land he would own until his death — purchasing it from H. H. Wadman, making him the second family to settle on Salt Creek. He kept “Bachelor’s Hall” there for about two years. His brother John B. Wayment, who arrived from England in July 1873, lived with him for part of that time.
The home of Bishop William Thomas Wayment and his wife Maud at 662 N. 5900 W. in Warren. Joseph Wayment appears at far right with a horse.
About 1872, Joseph began writing letters to a young woman of his boyhood acquaintance back in Whaddon — Ann Reed. She had grown up, gone out to service, endured difficult years, and was now working for the Greig family, carefully saving her wages. She accepted his invitation to come to Utah and be his wife.
Ann Comes to America, 1874
Ann left her place of work on 2 June 1874 and sailed from Liverpool on 24 June 1874 aboard the steamship Idaho. The Idaho carried 903 passengers on that voyage, arriving in New York on 6 July 1874. Ann traveled overland by rail and arrived in Ogden about the middle of July.
Joseph met her in Ogden — likely taking her to his brother Samuel’s home. On the way they crossed a stream of clear running water. Joseph stopped the horses to let them drink, cupped his hat, dipped it in, and offered Ann the first drink. She couldn’t bring herself to drink water out of a hat from a river like that. Joseph enjoyed the cool drink regardless.
On 7 August 1874, Joseph Wayment and Ann Reed were married by Louis Warren Shurtliff at Joseph’s home in Salt Creek — ending, as Alma Hansen later wrote, the era of “Bachelor’s Hall.” On 29 June 1876, Joseph and Ann traveled to the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, where they were endowed and sealed to each other for time and all eternity. Joseph had been ordained an Elder by Alonzo Knight ten days earlier, on 19 June 1876, in preparation for that ordinance.
The First Years in Salt Creek
The Joseph and Ann Reed Wayment home in Warren, photographed June 1928. Joseph is likely the seated figure visible on the front porch.
Their first child, Sarah, was born 29 October 1875 — one of the first white children born in the Salt Creek area. In the spring of 1876 the Weber River overflowed its banks and covered much of the country where Warren now stands. The first time it came up, it stayed two weeks. The crops survived. But the river flooded again, higher than before, and stayed six weeks. The crops were completely destroyed. Joseph’s house was just high enough to keep the water from running under it — but it came right to the doorstep. He kept a rowboat in which he and Ann traveled to the sandhill in Plain City to do business. His horses broke loose just before the flood and were later found on meadows west of Brigham City. The other cattle and horses in the area lived on the high knolls until the water subsided.
Joseph planted the first fruit and shade trees in the Warren area. He watered them by hand from a well he dug himself, using a long pole with a hook and a bucket because he didn’t have a rope. Later he had a windmill built over the well and irrigated some of his crops with it. About 1880 the residents of Salt Creek organized together and built a ditch up to Four-Mile in the southern part of Plain City to run water to their crops. Part of that original ditch can still be seen near the north side of the bench in Warren.
In March 1881 Joseph was appointed secretary and assistant superintendent of the Salt Creek Sunday School, offices he held for many years. In 1883 he was chairman of the board of trustees for the first schoolhouse built in Warren — a one-room brick building on the bench. His sister Martha Wayment, now Mrs. David East, was the first teacher.
About 1877 Joseph was appointed the first road supervisor in the Warren district, a position he held for ten years. The road supervisor received no pay for his services other than to apply his labor toward his poll taxes, as did all the other men. About the first work done was to fill up some of the creek crossings. He also hauled salt from the creek banks west of Plain City up to the Hot Springs — a full day’s work per load for which he received fifty cents. The salt was used in the smelting of silver ore in Montana.
Six more children followed Sarah: Martha Ann (2 June 1877), Leonard Joseph (12 September 1878), Mary Jane (8 May 1880), Walter Hyrum (14 November 1881), Hannah Alberta (23 August 1883), and Amelia Brown (29 July 1890).
Back row, left to right: Sarah Wayment, Martha Ann Wayment, Leonard Joseph Wayment, Mary Jane Wayment. Middle row: Hannah Alberta Wayment, Joseph Wayment, Ann Reed Wayment holding Amelia Brown Wayment, Martha Brown Wayment (Joseph’s mother). Seated in front: Walter Hyrum Wayment. Photograph circa 1890–1891.
The family portrait above, taken around 1890–1891 when Amelia was an infant, captures all seven children in a single frame. Four generations are present — including Joseph’s mother Martha Brown Wayment at far right, who had herself made the journey from Whaddon in 1878. I wrote about her in the William and Martha Wayment post.
The Flood of 1884 and Ann’s Heroism
In the spring of 1884 the Weber River flooded again — not as severe as 1876, but severe enough to kill all the crops, many fruit trees, and berry bushes. Joseph moved his family into his brother John’s house on the brow of the hill north of the Arthur Marriott home — a one-room house, not large enough for all the family to sleep in. Some of the children slept in a wagon under the shed.
A day or two after they moved, a heavy rain set in. The children’s bedding became soaked. In trying to provide for his family, Joseph was exposed to the rain, cold, and mosquitoes, and he took down with malaria fever. The house was too small for any comfort, and some of the men of the locality moved the family back into their own house — even though it was surrounded by water.
For six weeks Joseph lay near death. Many did not expect him to recover. During this time Ann would walk — and sometimes wade, in water up to her knees — a quarter to half a mile west on the bench to where their cow was pastured. She milked the cow and carried the milk back to feed her husband. For a while he was so weak he could not feed himself, and Ann would have to feed him by hand. He sent for elders from Plain City to administer to him. While they were visiting, he asked to be propped up in bed and talked with them at length. From that time he continued to improve, though he was not entirely well for several years. That fall he was well enough to work on the threshing machine.
Of all the incidents in the long life of Joseph and Ann Wayment, this one — Ann wading flood water to milk the cow and hand-feed her dying husband — speaks most directly to the character of their partnership. The memorial card at their graves in West Warren says it plainly: “Ann Reed Wayment gave loyal and loving support to her husband. No problem arose that they did not find a place of adjustment and agreement.”
Firsts in Warren
The 1902 Portrait, Genealogical and Biographical Record of the State of Utah described Joseph as “one of nature’s noblemen” and enumerated his contributions to the community. He planted the first fruit and shade trees. He was the first road supervisor, serving ten years. When the first schoolhouse was built he served as school board chairman, assessor, and collector. He was one of the first stockholders and directors of the Slaterville Creamery. He raised one hundred tons of sugar beets annually for the Ogden sugar factory.
By 1888 Joseph had shifted his main occupation from general farming to dairying. He kept as many as fourteen milk cows at once. His children did much of the work — milking the cows, putting the milk in cans under cool water until the cream gathered to the top, then skimming and churning it to butter. They sold as many as 2,000 pounds of their own butter in a single year. Later the milk went to the Slaterville creamery, of which Joseph was a founding director.
In November 1910 Joseph was elected Justice of the Peace of the Warren Precinct — a fitting civic capstone for the man who had been among the first to settle Salt Creek and had spent decades building its institutions.
In 1896 Salt Creek was officially named Warren, after Lewis Warren Shurtliff, the stake president who organized the new ward — the same Louis Warren Shurtliff who had married Joseph and Ann in 1874.
Ann in Warren
Ann Reed Wayment.
Ann Reed Wayment at her home in Warren.
Ann Reed Wayment was a woman of quiet and enduring strength. Her daughter Mary Jane wrote of her: “She was an energetic worker in Relief Society, holding and filling many offices in it. She was very useful among the sick, exercising great faith as her best healing art. She was a kind, loving, very thoughtful mother to her family. She lived a useful life, impressing her children and those who mingled with her what a wonderful mother and woman she really was.”
The Warren Ward Relief Society was organized on 30 November 1902. Ann was sustained as its Treasurer — her sister-in-law Castina Wayment, wife of Joseph’s brother Samuel, served as First Counselor. Ann was not present at the organization meeting but was set apart as Treasurer on 5 February 1903. At the first Relief Society meeting held at the home of President Jane Stewart on 18 December 1902, Ann bore her testimony and gave the benediction. She served as Secretary and Treasurer of the Warren Relief Society from 1902 to 1916.
Alma Hansen, who knew both his grandparents personally and compiled their biography from firsthand family accounts, described Ann in a single memorable sentence: “She was short of stature but stood ten feet tall in her loving service.”
In February 1893, Joseph and Ann made an extended trip to the Logan Temple — a journey that had been years in the making. In careful sequence over eight days, they completed ordinance work for ancestors in their lineage and sealed their families together for eternity.
On 16 February 1893, Joseph was sealed to his parents, William and Martha Brown Wayment, in the Logan Utah Temple.
On 21 February, proxy baptism and confirmation were performed for James Reed and Sarah East Reed — Ann’s parents — in the Logan Temple.
On 22 February, the proxy endowment was performed for Sarah East Reed in the Logan Temple. Almost certainly the same was done for James Reed that day, though that record was later lost and the ordinance was repeated at the Manti Temple in 1938.
On 23 February 1893, Ann was sealed to her parents, James and Sarah East Reed, in the Logan Temple.
For a woman who had grown up an orphan at age five — whose mother died saving her life in 1854 and whose father died in 1858 — this February week in the Logan Temple completed a covenant that no earthly circumstance had been able to make. The parents she had barely known were now bound to her forever.
A Mission at Fifty-Six
Joseph Wayment’s handwritten mission acceptance letter to Brother George Reynolds, Warren, 15 January 1900. “It would be agreeable my feelings, and consistent with my circumstances, to take a mission to preach the gospel, if I am considered worthy. I can be ready within 30 days, or less. I remain your Brother, Joseph Wayment.”
On Christmas Day 1899, Joseph was asked to fill a mission for the Church. He was fifty-five years old, a grandfather, and still carrying the kidney effects of a severe malaria attack from fifteen years earlier. His response, written in his own hand on 15 January 1900 to Brother George Reynolds of the First Council of the Seventies, occupies four plain lines: it would be agreeable to his feelings and consistent with his circumstances; he could be ready within thirty days, or less. He remained the reader’s Brother, Joseph Wayment.
On 19 January 1900 he received his formal call from President Lorenzo Snow to labor in the Southwestern States. He was set apart on 14 February 1900 by Apostle George Teasdale in the Temple Annex in Salt Lake City — the same day his Seventy’s License was formally issued, signed by Seymour B. Young, President of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventies.
Joseph Wayment’s Seventy’s License Certificate, issued 14 February 1900, certifying his ordination as a Seventy by Jacob Gates on 7 November 1889. Signed by Seymour B. Young.
His Missionary Certificate bore the signatures of the entire First Presidency: President Lorenzo Snow, First Counselor George Q. Cannon, and Second Counselor Joseph F. Smith. That Joseph’s mission call passed through the hands of George Reynolds — historically notable as the defendant in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Reynolds v. United States (1879) — places it squarely in the living history of the Church.
He left the next day for Kansas, laboring first in Elk County under Elder H. E. Harrison, then for nearly four months in Greenwood County, until he was taken very sick with malaria again. In his own words: “I left my field of labor on the 4th of July for St. John and arrived home on the 7th, three days later. I was sick for three or four months.” The malaria affected his kidneys, an effect he felt until his death.
While Joseph was away on his mission and then ill at home, Ann kept the farm, the animals, and the household organized. When he returned, she nursed him back to health.
The Children
Of their seven children, three preceded them in death. Martha Ann, their firstborn daughter, married Louis Alma Hansen on 23 November 1898. She died on 19 October 1908 at age 31 of acute nephritis, leaving four children and her husband. Her loss was a grief Joseph and Ann carried quietly for the rest of their lives. Leonard Joseph married Sarah Naomi Hodson in 1902, was called to the British Mission in November 1915, labored in Belfast, Ireland, took sick, and arrived home 19 July 1916. He passed away the next morning, leaving a wife and three children.
The four who outlived their parents were Sarah (married Joseph Emelius Hansen), Mary Jane (married Samuel Bagley Willis, later Orson Francis Waldram), Walter Hyrum (married Iva Dell Wade), Hannah Alberta (married Thomas LeRoy White), and Amelia Brown (married George James Lythgoe).
The 70th Birthday, 1914
Family portrait honoring Joseph Wayment’s 70th birthday, 7 February 1914, Warren, Weber, Utah. Third row center: Ann Reed Wayment and Joseph Wayment, flanked by siblings John Brown Wayment and William Thomas Wayment and sister Martha East.
On 7 February 1914 the extended Wayment family gathered at the Warren home for Joseph’s 70th birthday — a family portrait captured four rows of family: children, grandchildren, siblings, their spouses and children, and young Alma Wayment Hansen himself, visible as a boy in the second row, who would later compile a biography of his grandparents. At the center of the third row sit Joseph and Ann, flanked by his brothers John Brown and William Thomas Wayment and his sister Martha East. By this gathering all the children had married.
The Grasshoppers
One incident from Joseph’s later years became a touchstone story in the family, attested to by his daughter Sarah. A summer or two after his first malaria attack, he had planted wheat in the field north of the house. The crop grew abundantly, had headed out full, and was beginning to turn yellow when the children noticed one evening that a great horde of grasshoppers had descended on the grain. They went in and told their father. He was not well, still weakened from the malaria. He arose, took his cane, and walked out into the field.
The grasshoppers were large and so thick they were bending the stalks almost to the ground. What once looked like a bounteous harvest now seemed doomed. Then right there in the midst of the grain and the grasshoppers, Joseph knelt and made a most fervent appeal to his Heavenly Father for aid. Night came on. The family retired — but not without family prayer. The next morning not a grasshopper could be found on the grain. There were no traces of where they had been.
The Golden Wedding, 1924
Salt Lake Tribune, 12 August 1924. Joseph Wayment and Wife Honored on Their Golden Wedding Day.
Left to right: Walter Hyrum Wayment, Amelia Brown Wayment Lythgoe, Joseph Wayment, Ann Reed Wayment, Sarah Wayment. Photograph taken at the Warren home, circa 1924.
On Thursday, 7 August 1924, Joseph and Ann celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with elaborate festivities at their Warren home. The Salt Lake Tribune reported the occasion. By remarkable coincidence, a great-grandson was born that same day at nearly the identical hour that Joseph and Ann had married fifty years before — a son born to Mr. and Mrs. William Bennington Jr. of Ogden. The event, as the paper noted, cheered the aged couple considerably.
The celebration drew family from across Weber County. Among those present were Joseph’s siblings — his sisters Mrs. Martha East of Warren and Mrs. Emily Mullen of Ogden, and his brother Bishop William T. Wayment of Warren — along with four daughters, one son, and twenty-six grandchildren.
The photograph captures something of what fifty years in Warren had built. Joseph stands center-rear, his great white beard the same beard his doctor had prescribed after the 1884 malaria — protection for his throat and chest from the cold. Ann stands center-front, hands folded, short of stature. Sarah, their eldest — the first white child born in Warren — stands at the right. Walter Hyrum, their only surviving son, is at the far left with his wife Amelia Lythgoe beside him.
Final Years
Ann Reed and Joseph Wayment.
Left to right: Verlan Hansen, Ann Reed Wayment holding Donald Peterson, Eulail Peterson (back), Robert Hansen (front), Joseph Wayment holding Elaine Hansen, Irene Hansen. Joseph and Ann were the great-grandparents of the children in this picture.
Joseph bought his first automobile in 1912, just past his 68th birthday. About 1922 his eyesight became too poor to read. From that time until his death, someone had to read all news to him. He lived at his own home in Warren until the very end, cared for by his daughter Sarah. He delighted in bearing his testimony and seemed never to tire of talking about and explaining the principles of the gospel. His last public appearance was at a fast and testimony meeting on 11 October 1931, where he bore a strong testimony to the truthfulness of the Gospel and to the fact that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God.
Ann did not live to see it. She died on the morning of 14 June 1931, at 8:10 a.m., at their Warren home after a three months’ illness — her cause of death recorded on her death certificate as chronic myocarditis with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. She had lived in Warren for 57 years without interruption. Her brother-in-law Bishop William T. Wayment was among the speakers at her funeral. A sextet of nephews and nieces sang. Mrs. Jessie Wayment sang a solo. Grandsons served as pallbearers. Granddaughters took charge of the flowers. She was buried in the Warren Cemetery on 17 June 1931.
Joseph took sick on the afternoon of Thursday, 17 December 1931. He passed away very peacefully on Sunday evening, 20 December 1931, at Dee Hospital in Ogden, of bronchopneumonia — the chronic malaria that had plagued him since 1884 listed as a contributing condition. He was 87 years old.
Obituary of Joseph Wayment, Ogden Standard Examiner, 21 December 1931.
He was buried on 23 December 1931 in the Warren Cemetery, beside Ann, who had preceded him six months and six days. They had been married 56 years, 10 months, and 7 days.
Legacy
Sarah Ann Wayment Hansen and her father Joseph Wayment in his final years. Sarah cared for Joseph at home until his death in December 1931.
When Joseph and Ann Wayment arrived in Salt Creek in the early 1870s, there was almost nothing there. When they died in 1931, Warren was a community with a church, a school, a creamery, roads, canals, orchards — many of the first of each having been planted, built, or organized by Joseph himself. They lived to see 32 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren. Two of their children served missions; one granddaughter and five grandsons also served missions, all returning safely.
Amanda and I visited their graves in the West Warren Cemetery on 24 May 2020. The memorial card at their headstones — the laminated display that prompted much of this research — was photographed that day. Amanda is their 3rd great-granddaughter through the line: Joseph and Ann Wayment → Martha Ann Wayment Hansen → Walter Wayment Hansen → Bryan Hemsley → Amanda Ross.
Bryan Hemsley, Amanda, Aliza, and Hiram Ross with the tombstones of Ann Reed (1852–1931) and Joseph Wayment (1844–1931), West Warren Cemetery, 24 May 2020.
The memorial card displayed at the graves of Joseph and Ann Reed Wayment, West Warren Cemetery.
Source Documents
The following family histories are available for download:
Life Sketch of Joseph Wayment – copied from a record belonging to Ida H. Johnson (granddaughter), transcribed by Hollis R. Johnson, 1956
Emily Wayment and William Negus – compiled by Alma W. and Martha M. Hansen, 1979
John Brown Wayment and Sarah East – compiled by Alma W. Hansen, 1980
Sagacity 