Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 5

With David and Cynthia Brown and their family in Grass Valley, to complete our understanding of my mother's ancestry, we need to add some additional places and Saints, as Nauvoo was not the only place where important events for our story were occurring.

Peter Rasmussen, along with his parents Rasmus and Katrina Petersen Rasmussen, were baptized in Denmark on March 19, 1852, and in December of that year left Denmark for America, eventually arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in September 1853. Peter was sent to Spring City, Utah, arriving in October in the midst of what was known as the “Walker War” with some Ute Indians. Peter was about 18 years old at the time. He settled in Spring City with other Scandinavian saints and married Annie Margaret Sorensen in 1855.[1]

Meanwhile, back in Denmark the Lord’s missionary work continued. A young Danish girl, named Ane Helena Andersen, heard the Mormon missionaries and became interested in their message. She began to attend meetings as often as it was possible to do so, much to the displeasure of her stepfather, who was strongly opposed to this new religion. She gained a testimony of this gospel and desired to be baptized. While she obtained her mother’s consent, her stepfather strongly objected and told her that if she joined this church she was “never to darken their door again.” Nevertheless, upon reaching the age of 18 years she sought baptism. On November 21, 1860, without the consent or knowledge of her mother or stepfather, she was baptized at night due to the persecutions. She and others later spoke of seeing dark objects all around her as she went into the water, which she and others understood to be evil spirits trying to keep them from baptism. She joined a group of Saints going to America and in April 1861. Leaving her family and all that was near and dear to her in Denmark, Ane set sail for America. She would never see her family again or receive any correspondence from any of them. Her mother would be forbidden to write to her. 

The group arrived in the United States, where incidentally the Civil War had just started, in New York City on May 22, 1861. They then traveled by rail to St. Joseph, Missouri, and by steamship to Florence, Nebraska. She crossed the plains in the John Murdock Company, an ox team wagon company, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley on September 12, 1861. She continued on to Sanpete County where she was welcomed by the group of Scandinavian Saints who had previously settled there and taken in by the Peter Rasmussen family in Spring City.

It would seem a dangerous and perilous act for a young single girl, alone and without any resources and protection, to embark on a trip across the ocean to a foreign land where she didn’t even speak the language in order to join a group of strangers in the desert of the American West. There would, of course, be the hazards of a voyage across the Atlantic, the risks of sickness and accident, and the perils of the overland journey across the plains. There would also be the dangers from the unscrupulous preying on the naïve and vulnerable immigrants, and surely Ane would have been an easy mark. However, and without diminishing the perils of the journey, it was in fact a relatively safe and secure trip for Ane. At that time traveling as part of a Mormon immigrant company was likely the most secure and safest way for anyone to travel to the America and the American West.

Ane was not alone on the ship, but was part of group of fellow Danish saints, Christians committed to looking out for each other, and lead by caring and experienced missionary leaders. Mormon ship companies were famous for their orderliness and mutual support. Upon arrival in New York they were met by church agents, experienced people they could trust. Unlike other agents, these church agents were not interested in their money or taking advantage of them for their own profit, but were fellow Saints on a mission to serve their God by guiding them safely to Zion. They would assist them on the trains and steamboats to Florence, Nebraska, where the wagon trek across the plains began. 

The church had used different ways over the years to bring Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, learning from experience and always looking for the best strategy for the times. At the time of Ane’s crossing, the church was using “down and back” trips where church wagon trains would leave early in the Spring, loaded with goods and livestock to sell in the East and caching supplies along the way for the return trip. Arriving in Florence in mid summer, they would sell the goods and livestock and purchase goods and equipment unavailable in Salt Lake and then take those supplies and the immigrants back up to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in the early Fall.[2]

Being young and healthy, Ane would likely have walked the entire distance to Utah, as the wagons would have been loaded with immigrants less able to walk that distance and needed supplies for Utah. They would again be lead by fellow saints and disciples whom they could trust. Not only were the company leaders and teamsters with them trustworthy and faithful Saints, they also were among the most experienced and trail savvy frontiersmen in the West. For example, John Murdock, the captain of the Ane’s company, while only 34 years old at the time, had been part of the Mormon Battalion march across the West to California and then traveled back through Northern California and Idaho to Salt Lake Valley in 1847, was among the rescuers sent to aid the Martin and Willey handcart companies in the winter of 1856, and captained “down and back” companies across the plains in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 and 1868.[3] Once in the valley, Ane was not left on her own to find her way in this new and strange environment, but welcomed by fellow Scandinavians and taken into their homes, where she would learn the new skills needed to make her way in the desert West, including English, and learn to be a Mormon and an American. This is how the Mormons did immigration. It is how the Lord gathered his Saints to Zion in the 19^th century.

Ane worked in the Rasmussen house and eventually became Peter’s plural wife. They were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. She had eight children, including Anna Helena Rasmussen, born on June 17, 1867, in Spring City, Utah.[4]  In 1874 Peter Rasmussen was called to settle in Grass Valley. That is how it came to be that Peter Rasmussen and his family, including his daughter Anna Helena Rasmussen, were living in Grass Valley in 1883 when David and Cynthia Brown and their family arrived and needed someone to help around the house.

At the time the Brown family moved to Grass Valley Cynthia was having a difficult pregnancy. They hired a young 18-year-old Danish girl, named Ana Helena Rasmussen, to help with the household chores and the children. She was known as “Lena,” and the daughter of Peter and Ane Rasmussen. In June 1883 a baby boy was born, but Cynthia died a few days later. The baby was taken in and cared for by Cynthia’s older sister, but with five small children to care for and a farm to run Lena stayed on to help with the children and the house. The arrangement seemed to have worked out well. In February 1885 David and Lena were married in the Logan Temple. George was born on September 4, 1886, the first child of David and Lena.

The family moved to Sanford in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, where the Peter Rasmussen family, Lena’s family, had moved. Not finding much success and not liking the colder winters, the family worked their way down the Rio Grande into New Mexico, stopping in Deming where they ran livery stable and sort of a guest house for travelers. It became something of a “half way” house for those living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico. Church leaders would often stay there on their visits to and from those colonies. In 1894 the family moved south to Mexico, first in Colonia Diaz, then Colonia Juarez and finally in Colonia Chuichupa, a small, and the most remote, Mormon settlement high in the Sierras Madre Mountains of northern Mexico.[5] That would be their home. “Chupie,” as it was called, was where George would grow up as a ranch boy in this small, close-knit, Mormon community in the mountains. 

That is also how it came to be that George was in the right place at the right time to meet, court and marry Ruby and have a daughter named Fern Vilate.

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[1] Mary Elizabeth Rasmussen Christensen, “A Short History of Peter Rasmussen,”(Undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Peder Rasmussen KV5W-Z6H); “Bishop Peter Rasmussen St. – History compiled for a YMYW Trek for the Manassas, Colorado Stake” (Undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Peder Rasmussen KV5W-Z6H);

[2] Arrington, 206-207. See Allen and Leonard, 281-286, for a general overview of the immigration system.

[3] Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel 1947-1868, “John Riggs Murdock,” https://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/pioneers/43282/john-riggs-murdock.

[4] A.H. Rasmussen, “All born in Svenborg Amt.” 1916 (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Ane Helena Andersen KWJ8-5S4); Clara Johnson, “A Sketch of the Life of My Grandmother Ane Helena Andersen Rasmussen,” (undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Ane Helena Andersen KWJ8-5S4)

[5] Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “David Brigham Brown,” Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol 4, P 227 (available at Family Search. Org in stories page of David Brigham Brown (KWCH-B3B); Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “I Am Just So Wearied – the Story of Anna Helena Rasmussen Brown,” (unpublished manuscript 1936), 2.

Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 4 Browns

With Ruby growing up in the Mormon colonies in Mexico, we return back again to Nauvoo in 1846 and the Browns.

Samuel and Lydia Brown were among the last group to leave Nauvoo in 1846. They settled in Des Moines, Iowa, where a son David Brigham Brown was born on January 21, 1847. There Samuel likely worked as a wheelwright helping Saints preparing to go West. In 1849 they moved further west to a small settlement called Council Point, Iowa, which is near Kanesville or Council Bluff. In July 1852, the Browns and others in that area left for Zion in the Allen Weeks Company. On the plains of Nebraska tragedy struck the Brown family. Lydia died from cholera and was buried in small grave along the trail.[1] David who was five years old at the time and walked the entire way across the plains, told the following story years later, as related by his son Delbert:

“ Father [David Brigham Brown] did a lot of freighting between Chuhuichupa and Dublan. He took me with him whenever possible. He used to tell me stories as we rode along in the wagon and after we’d gone to bed at night. … [T]he story which impressed me most was when his mother died while they were crossing the plains when he was very small. He painted the picture so vividly in my mind that I can see it yet. The newly made grave where they had just put his mother. His sister Emily taking his hand saying, “Come on boys, we must go now. Mama has gone to sleep,’ and seeing that long wagon train go down the hill leaving his mother behind. He was five years old at this time, his twin brothers were three.” [2]

Samuel and his family arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in October 12, 1852, and were sent by Brigham Young to settle in Fillmore in Millard County, Utah. In Fillmore David spent his youth in that tight knit pioneer community. He was Pony Express Rider for several months and worked as a construction foreman for a smelter and a charcoal burner in a mining district. In 1870 the family moved to Payson, Utah, where David became acquainted with Cynthia Selena McClellan. Two years later they were married and moved to Gentile Valley in Idaho. In 1882 David and Cynthia returned to Payson, Utah, to care for his aged father Samuel. Samuel died that winter and in 1883 David and Cynthia and their five children moved to Box Creek in Piute County in an area in southern Utah known as Grass Valley. Cynthia had some family in that area.

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[1] [1] Irene Brown Martineau, “Samuel Webster Brown 1801 & Lydia Maria Lathrop 1815,” undated history available at familysearch.com under the entry for Samuel Brown (KWJX-SDP);

[2] Delbert B. Brown, “David B. and Anna Helena Rasmussen Brown,” unpublished and undated manuscript written by David Brigham Brown’s son, 2.

[3] Mary Elizabeth Rasmussen Christensen, “A Short History of Peter Rasmussen,”(Undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Peder Rasmussen KV5W-Z6H); “Bishop Peter Rasmussen St. – History compiled for a YMYW Trek for the Manassas, Colorado Stake” (Undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Peder Rasmussen KV5W-Z6H);

[4] Arrington, 206-207. See Allen and Leonard, 281-286, for a general overview of the immigration system.

[5] Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel 1947-1868, “John Riggs Murdock,” https://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/pioneers/43282/john-riggs-murdock.

[6] A.H. Rasmussen, “All born in Svenborg Amt.” 1916 (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Ane Helena Andersen KWJ8-5S4); Clara Johnson, “A Sketch of the Life of My Grandmother Ane Helena Andersen Rasmussen,” (undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Ane Helena Andersen KWJ8-5S4)

[7] Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “David Brigham Brown,” Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol 4, P 227 (available at Family Search. Org in stories page of David Brigham Brown (KWCH-B3B); Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “I Am Just So Wearied – the Story of Anna Helena Rasmussen Brown,” (unpublished manuscript 1936), 2.

Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 3 Spilsburys

In 1846 most of the Saints began leaving Nauvoo to start the first part of the long journey west to the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. George and Fanny Spilsbury did not have enough money to buy a wagon, oxen, food and the other things needed for the trip west. So instead they went to St Louis. While rural Missouri generally and western Missouri in particular, had proved to be no friend of the Mormons, St. Louis was then a large cosmopolitan, relatively tolerant, sophisticated city that was a refuge for many Mormons. There George was able to find work as a bricklayer.

While they were living in St. Louis, a daughter, Clarinda, was born on September 10, 1847. In the late 1840s a cholera epidemic struck St. Louis. George was fine, but Fanny became sick and nearly died. Fanny survived, but Clarinda, their little and nearly two year old daughter, did not She died of cholera on August 9, 1849. Another daughter, Sarah died at birth (still born) on August 3, 1849. By this time Fanny had given birth to four children, and they all had died.

By 1850 George had made enough money to buy a wagon, oxen and other supplies needed for the journey for the west. They joined other saints in Bishop Edward Hunter’s Company and left St. Joseph, Missouri, a town just west of St. Louis, for the Salt Lake Valley on July 3, 1850. While out on the prairie, Fanny gave birth on August 5, 1850 to a healthy baby boy. After the baby’s birth the company traveled for several days away from the Platte River and away from water. The trail then took a turn back to the river. Fanny was riding in the wagon holding the baby with George walking along side. The oxen pulling the wagon, being very thirsty and smelling the water, suddenly took off running down the riverbank to the river. The oxen stopped at the river to drink, but the wagon did not, tumbling into the river with Fanny and the eight-day-old baby boy. George and the other men jumped in and pulled Fanny from underneath the overturned wagon, but the baby was not in her arms. With Fanny crying “Save my baby, save my baby!” the men jumped back in the river searching for the baby but couldn’t find him. Edward Hunter, who was the leader of the wagon train, walked up and down the bank looking for the baby when he saw something red caught against a log in the river. It was the baby wrapped in a red blanket. Hunter waded out and grabbed the baby. As he carried the baby out of the river, he quietly announced to those waiting on the bank “His heart is still beating.” They held him up by his feet and water drained out of his lungs; he was alive. They decided to give the baby a priesthood blessing. Since the infant had not yet been given a name and blessing by that priesthood ordinance, the brethren took the opportunity to bless the baby with a name, along with a blessing for health. The brethren pronounced upon him the name “Alma,” after George’s favorite Book of Mormon prophet, “Platte,” after the river that nearly did him in, and of course “Spilsbury,” and that is how Alma Platte Spilsbury got his name.

George and Fanny and baby Alma arrived with their company in the Salt Lake valley on October 3, 1850. They settled in Salt Lake, but in 1859 moved to Draper. In 1862 the Spilsburys were called to settle in the southern part of Utah known as “Dixie.”  They temporarily settled at several locations before finally settling in Toquerville, Utah. While living there Alma married Sarah Ann Higbee. The couple had five children, only three of whom survived childhood. In 1879 Sarah died of typhoid fever, leaving Alma with three young children. Leaving the children in the care of his parents, Alma accepted a mission call to the Northern States Mission. However, in the cold damp climate Alma became ill and was given an honorable release and returned home after three months. On return from his mission Alma and his father stayed at the Redd home in New Harmony. There he met Mary Jane Redd. After a courtship Alma and Mary Jane were married in the St. George Temple on October 6, 1880.

On the advise of church leaders, Alma married a second, plural wife, Margaret Jane Klingensmith, in the St. George temple in 1883.[1] However, this was also the time when, with polygamy having been outlawed by federal laws directed at the Mormons, federal agents were actively hunting for and jailing Mormon polygamists in Utah. To avoid this growing threat, Spilsbury took his two wives and families and settled in the Salt River Valley in Mesa, Arizona in 1883. This is where Ruby Vilate Spilsbury was born on November 10, 1890, as a child of Mary Jane.

The farm in Mesa was good, productive and the foundation for a future prosperous life. However, as a strategy to avoid federal agents, the move to Arizona was not successful. Federal agents tracked Alma down and arrested him for polygamy in April 1885. He was sentenced to six months in prison in the Yuma Territorial Prison. That prison and its cells were infamous as a miserably and unbearably hot hellhole. In the oppressive heat and confined in wool uniforms some would go mad. Alma, however, was not confined to a cell long, as he was able to persuade the warden that a sloping area between the prison and the river could be turned into a productive garden to the benefit of the warden, the warden’s family, as well as the other prisoners. Alma spent his days sleeping and his nights tending what turned out to be a very productive garden. At the end of his sentence, he in effect had the choice of leaving one of his families or leaving the country. Not willing to abandon a family, Alma took both wives and families and moved to Mexico in 1891 to settle with other Saints in the colonies in northern Chihuahua, Mexico.

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[1] Margaret Jane Klingensmith has a family connection to an unfortunate piece of Mormon History. Her father, Philip Klingensmith, was one of the first settlers in Iron County and the bishop of Cedar City. He was, however, also one of the leaders and participants in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. He was later excommunicated from the church and in the early 1860’s left Utah for Nevada, where he worked at various mines and ranches. He was the first of the participants to provide evidence on the names of those involved in the massacres. In the 1875 murder trial of John D. Lee arising out of this incident, Kingensmith, having negotiated plea agreement with the prosecutors where charges against him were dropped in exchange for his testimony, was the prosecution’s principal witness. The trial resulted in a hung jury. Lee was re-tried in 1876 and convicted by Mormon jury and executed. After the Lee trials, Kingensmith’s wandering life continued. He died in Sonora, Mexico in 1881. “Philip Kingensmith,” personal history available at familysearch.org under the stories page for Philip KIngensmith(MBNC-SBJ).

Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 2, Redds and Butlers

The Move West to Zion

In 1846 the Spilsburys, the Browns, the Butlers and the Redds were all in or near Nauvoo at the time when the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred and the main body of the Saints, lead by Brigham Young, fled the continued the persecution in Nauvoo and moved west to the Salt Lake Valley by way of Winter Quarters in Nebraska. The Spilsburys, the Browns, the Bulters and the Redds each joined the Saints in moving to the Salt Lake Valley, although at different times and by different routes.

The Redd family, consisting of John and Elizabeth and their six children, Moriah, Libby, Lemuel Hardison, John Holt, Mary Katherine, Benjamin, along with the two African American former slaves and their children, crossed the plains in 1850 in the James Pace Company.[1] They spent the first winter in Provo, Utah. The next they spring moved to Spanish Fork and were among its first settlers. They built the first sawmill, which was then promptly burned by hostile Indians. This was the beginning of what was called the “Walker War.” Lemuel, now a teenager, was assigned to the group charged with defense against the Indians. His father John assisted in erecting a fort that the community families lived in the many years for protection.[2]

In 1852 the Butlers came across the plains as members of the Kelsey Company. The company was largely composed of Danish Saints and John was put in charge of leading that Danish group. These Danish Saints knew absolutely nothing about handling an ox team and the other basic pioneering skills required in this journey across the plains. Although he knew no Danish and the effort was not without frequent challenges, Butler managed to turn them into seasoned ox drivers and Mormon pioneers. They arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1852. Butlers went south and settled in the Spanish Fork area, where the Redds had already settled a couple of years earlier. As they would all live in the same fort for protection from hostile Indians. The families would become well-acquainted and also good friends.

John Lowe Butler was a remarkable man. Most early converts to the church lacked experience in wilderness survival and dealing with Indians and hostile people and environments. But the church was also blessed with a few tough, seasoned frontiersmen, but who were also religiously devote, whom it could call upon to handle the dangerous and primitive situations in the West. Butler was one of those.[3] He lived through some of the most challenging times of the Church and served as Bishop of the Spanish Fork ward for many years. He was also a writer and his lengthy and detailed autobiography is one of the few of that era and of significant historical benefit today.[4]

John’s wife, Caroline Skeen Butler, was also a woman to be reckoned with. While by birth she may have been destined to be a pampered southern belle, she would become a Mormon woman of substance, a faithful member of the church, a good friend to Emma Smith while Joseph was imprisoned at Liberty Jail, faithful and devoted to John and a resourceful and clever pioneer. Because John was away for long periods of time on various church assignments, Caroline ran the farm. This was not unusual for Mormon pioneer women at that time, but also not an easy thing to do in a frontier pioneer environment. She was known as a very skillful, clever woman. For instance, a neighbor cut off his thumb while shearing sheep. Holding the thumb on with his other hand, he came to Caroline and asked her if she could sew it back on. She said she didn’t know anything about that, but she would try. She boiled some thread and with a three-cornered buckskin needle sewed the thumb in place. She covered it with turpentine, pine gum and mutton tallow (this was before antiseptics) and bound the thumb with scorched strips of cotton cloth. It worked; the neighbor’s thumb healed and knitted itself back to the hand. It is a telling incident, not only because it demonstrates her cleverness and skill, but also because it says something about the reputation she had earned in that community; the neighbor had asked her genuinely thinking she could do it.[5]

In 1856 Lemuel Hardison Redd, the son of John and Elizabeth Hancock Redd married Keziah Jane Butler, the daughter of John Lowe and Caroline Skeen Butler. Having lived together in Spanish Fork for many years, the families knew each other well. Shortly after their marriage, Lemuel and Keziah were called by church leaders to help settle Las Vegas, Nevada, something referred to as the “Muddy”. The purpose of this mission was to help open the lead mines in the area to local settlers and learn more about and make peace with the local Indians. The whole endeavor was a failure for a number of reasons, including difficulty in building roads in the rocky terrain and intense summer heat, the fact that the mines in the end were not successful, and finally that they were also never able to make contact with the Indians. The mission was abandoned and the Redds returned to Spanish Fork, Utah.

Then, in 1862, President Brigham Young asked Lemuel and Keziah to again settle in southern Utah. The Seveys and Paces from Spanish Fork were also called to this mission. By that time the couple had four children, including Mary Jane Redd, born on April 27, 1858, in Spanish Fork. That spring the family moved to Harmony, where the Seveys and Paces had already settled. That settlement, however, had been washed out by a storm earlier in the year and the settlers were then moving to a new, higher area known as “New Harmony.” This was where the Redds would live for the next eight years. In New Harmony Lemuel again met John D. Lee, who was one of the missionaries who had originally taught the Redds the gospel in Tennessee. In New Harmony Lemuel also marred a second wife, Sarah Louisa Chamberlain in 1866. Keziah and Sarah got along well and in fact Keziah may have had a hand in picking Sarah as the plural wife. Needing a larger house, Lemuel purchased from John D. Lee a large partially finished two-story home located in the foothills of the Pine Mountains.[6] It was in New Harmony on this large farm and among nine brothers and sisters of Keziah and 12 from Sarah Louisa that Mary Jane Redd, Fern’s grandmother, would grow up. She remembered it as a very happy time.[7]

Like John Butler, Lemuel was a true Mormon frontiersman. When he crossed the plains with his family in 1850 he was fourteen and drove an ox team, and in fact was one of the better ox team drivers teaching others how to do it. He was a soldier in what was known as the Walker War with the Utes in 1853 and in the Black Hawk War in 1863, and was part of an army commissioned to track the Indians in southern Utah and make peace with them, or at least discourage them from attacking the Mormon settlements. [8]

He was among the scouts for the famous “Hole in the Rock” trail through Glen Canyon for the settlement in San Juan. In 1879 eighty families were called to colonize the valley of the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. They left in early October on the roughly 300-mile journey over rough, unsettled country. The party reached the western rim of the canyon above the Colorado River without much difficulty, but could not identify a suitable place to cross and could not even find the San Juan River among the endless twisting canyons. A scouting party consisting of Lemuel Redd, Sr. and three other men were sent on a scouting party to find the San Juan River valley and locate the most suitable places for building a road and crossing. On December 17, 1879, they took off on what they expected to be a 60-mile journey with food and provisions for eight days.  It was snowing and the weather had turned bitterly cold. They ended up traveling in three feet of snow through trees so dense they were often not sure which direction they were going. By Christmas Day they were almost out of food, cold, tired, discouraged, utterly lost and with no idea how to find the San Juan River canyon among the many leading off from the Colorado River. The next morning Lemuel awoke refreshed, revived and hopeful. He told the others that if they would follow him up to the top of a nearby knoll, he would show them the San Juan River. They did and he did; from the top of that knoll they could see in the distance the waters of the San Juan River. Lemuel had been shown that spot and the direction they should travel in a dream the night before. They made it back to the company on January 10, 1890. Their planned eight-day trip had turned into a 28-day journey, the last four without food, but they had blazed the trail that would later become the road and the means to the settlement of what we know today as Bluff, Utah.[9]

With Mary Jane Redd growing up as a young woman in New Harmony, Utah, we return back to Nauvoo in 1846 and the Spilsburys.

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[1] The presence of African Americans among the early Mormon pioneers seems surprising, since they were rarely mentioned in pioneer histories, but not as unusual as it my seem. Soon after the Redds settled in Spanish Fork the older of the former slave women, Chaney, died and was buried in the Spanish Fork Cemetery. We have no real information on her daughter Amy. However, the other daughter Miranda, who was described as “slim, happy and very attractive,” married another former slave named Alex Bankhead. They lived in a small adobe home in Spanish Fork and had a son named Billy, who grew up and moved to Salt Lake where he worked in the homes of the wealthy. Marinda, who was known as “Aunt Rindy,” seems to have been well liked in the community. She died in 1902 and was buried in the Spanish Fork Cemetery. Venus was the second of the two African-American women that came west with the Redds. She had been given to Elizabeth Hancock as a wedding gift by her father Zebedee Hancock to be her maid. As noted, she was freed by John Redd in Tennessee, but decided to remain with the family. Apparently, she and the Redd family were devoted to each other. Mary Jane Redd Spilsbury said: “Venus had a beautiful voice and sat in the Spanish Fork choir for many years. My fondest memories of her is seeing her in her seat at church every Sunday dressed in a red velvet gown, her eyes rolling and her mouth opened wide as she sang the gospel songs she loved.” The Redd family was devoted to her. She had a great desire to go to the temple and when told it was closed to African Americans (Negros) she scratched her arm until it bled and said: “See, my blood is as white as anyone’s.” Her son, Luke went with the Lemuel Redd family when they moved to New Harmony and lived there until a grown man. Kate B. Carter, “The Negro Pioneer,” Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Lesson for May, 1965 497, 521-523 (copy available at familysearch.org on the documents page for John Hardison Redd (KWJC-FG5).

[2] Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, “Stalwart” 559.

[3] Hartley Preface ix.

[4] Hartley, Preface x.

[5] “Life Story of John Lowe Butler” available at familysearch.org on the “stories” page for John Lowe Butler (KWJC-HXZ); Hartley, 350.

[6] Lee had been involved, and indeed was then alleged to have been a key leader, in the tragic Mountains Meadows Massacre that occurred not too far from New Harmony in 1857. Federal efforts to prosecute the perpetrators had been interrupted by the Civil War, but with that war now settled, the federal government had renewed those efforts. Lee had decided to make himself scarce by moving from New Harmony to the remote area of Arizona along the Colorado River, establishing what is now known as Lee’s Ferry and Lonely Dell. Lee’s Ferry is now best known as the starting point for boat trips down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

[7] C.S.M. Jones LLC, Family Heritage Consulting, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” written for the Hole in the Rock Foundation and available at familysearch.org in the stories section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Hatch, 1-16 (Chap 1). The happy times at the prosperous and successful farm in New Harmony would not last. Lemuel was not a polygamist and was being sought by federal agents. This would cause him to move to San Juan and then to Colonia Juarez for sanctuary, dividing his time between Keziah and children in New Harmony and Sara and her children in Mexico.  Deprived of proper attention by this hectic and clandestine lifestyle, the New Harmony farm suffered. Keziah died of cancer in 1895, and Lemuel then sold his interests in New Harmony and became a permanent resident in Mexico. Hatch, Stalwarts, 561-562.

[8] C.S.M. Jones LLC, Family Heritage Consulting, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” written for the Hole in the Rock Foundation and available at familysearch.org in the stories section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Hatch, 1-16 (Chap 1)

[9] Hatch, Stalwarts, “Lemuel Haridson Redd (1836-1910) 561-62 (by Nelle Spilslbury Hatch); C.S.M. Jones LLC, Family Heritage Consulting, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” written for the Hole in the Rock Foundation and available at familysearch.org in the stories section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX).