There are more twists and turns in All the BROWN tree than in my spanx on a good day. I have over 600 pages of the twisted tree. Here is the simplest form of history of BROWN genealogy.
It is complicated, so we will start slow. Yes, there are, many more wives and tree branches but let's get started with some facts. Grody announced on the show that there was no guidebook to polygamist marriages. (Insert confused face here) These are just the simple facts, albeit, very important to KODY'S history. Not decided what all I will disclose otherwise. They act so dang stupid it amazes me. Sometimes I wonder if just by studying, we all know more than they do. Remember when he acted so.... DUMB like, oh, we didn't know a thing about polygamy until my dad and mom decided to go into it? Never-mind his grandmother was an ALLRED, let alone even ALL their histories lead to polygamy. Now,let's just leave the good ole ALLRED tree for the season break.... don't give out any spoilers there folks! It's a bit dryer than most posts, but fascinating. since they took the trip, you'd think they'd be bursting with this info.
KODY WINN BROWN
*Dad: WILLIAM WINN BROWN and GENIELLE TEW (Whose mother was an Allred)
Has been revealed on the show they are Fundamental Mormons, with other wives.
*Grandfather" ALMA TAYLOR BROWN and EDITH WINN
*Gr Grandfather: EBENEZER BROWN and CLARA ANN LITTLE
*Gr Gr Grandfather: JOSEPH GURNSEY BROWN and HARRIET MARIA YOUNG.
Here's an interesting tidbit: they were polygamists, and HARRIET MARIA YOUNG was the Dtr. of BRIGHAM YOUNG'S youngest brother, LORENZO. that would make BRIGHAM YOUNG - KODY BROWN's gr gr gr Uncle, and BRIGHAM'S Parents KODY'S gr gr gr gr (another story)
JOSEPH GURNSEY BROWN, eldest son of EBENEZER and ANN WEAVER, was born November 8, 1824, at Dryden, Tompkins Co, New York. His father's family became members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints soon after it was organized....They were forced to endure the persecutions of the early saints and were driven from Nauvoo. EBENEZER joined the Mormon Battalion on June 26, 1846....On December 31. 1851, GURNSEY married 16 year old HARRIET MARIA YOUNG, the only daughter of LORENZO DOW YOUNG. (BRIGHAM'S BROTHER) About five years later, in 1856, GURNSEY along with others was asked to take provisions and meet the belated handcart companies of English saints who were struggling to reach the Valley before winter. These rescuers themselves had nothing easy. A forced drive of 300 to 400 miles across wintry mountains. They crowded their teams day after day looking ahead for the vanguard of walkers but the mountain valleys reached on, snowy and empty, past Echo Canyon on until they saw the shinning Uintah Mountains, and then the Wyoming plains. At Fort Bridger a new storm stopped them. That night of October 20th, Capt Willie and one companion, frostbitten, exhausted and riding two worn out animals, appeared out of the blizzard at fort Bridger. They told the men from Utah, storm or not, if they did not come at once there was no use to come at all.
They broke camp at once and started again. They did not stop again until they reached the Willie Company. The night before the rescuers reached them, nine more had died. The rest had not eaten for 48 hours.
Among those GURNSEY brought back to the Valley were two young ladies, ESTHER BROWN and ELIZABETH WHITE. BRIGHAM YOUNG had asked the settlers to open their homes and care for these Saints. So to his home he brought ESTHER. His wife, HARRIET took her in with her warm friendly way, caring for her until she again blossomed out in all her loveliness. On January 18, 1857, GURNSEY married ESTHER BROWN. On March 22, 1857, JOSEPH GURNSEY took his third wife, LOVINA MANHARD.
GURNSEY was called on a mission to England in 1864 where he served for nearly three years without purse or script, leaving three wives with children. Soon after his return, President BRIGHAM YOUNG called GURNSEY and his family to assist with the colonization of Moapa Valley, Nevada, known as the "Muddy Mission". In the fall of 1867 GURNSEY and HARRIET and their eight children ranging in age from 14 years to 8 months, made the journey to help settle the town of St. Joseph. Here they lost their baby daughter, Julliet, May 20, 1868.
This area was at that time a part of the territory of Deseret as mapped out by the early church leaders and was a part of Kane County, later Rio Virgin Co. A warehouse had been built on the Colorado River at a point known as Call's Landing. It was intended that the church would bring converts from Europe by steamships through the Gulf of Mexico and up the Colorado River and unload them at this point to continue the journey overland. The towns on the Muddy would serve as way stations where emigrants could rest and procure provisions for the rest of the journey.
The Muddy Mission proved to be unsuccessful, so far as colonization of that area at that time was concerned, and due to excessive taxes, extreme heat, shortage of water and other problems, the saints were released from the mission and were free to return to their former homes if they wished to. However, President YOUNG strongly urged them to remain in the southern Utah area and help re-settle the townsites that had been abandoned during the Indian troubles in the 1860's. GURNSEY brought LOVINA and her children, John, Delia and Will, to St. Joseph in the fall of 1870 while ESTHER and her children remained in Draper.
LOVINA'S son JOHN gives an interesting account of their experiences while in St. Joseph. He said when they arrived Aunt HARRIET and her seven children were living in a two-room adobe house with a dirt floor and a flag roof. The roof was made from cattails, ten to twelve feet tall, cut down in the swamps, tied in bundles about six inches in diameter and tied to the stringers and weighted down, making a water-tight roof. They had a chicken coop made of mesquite roots dug from the farm land. They used these roots for fuel also, as there was no timber closer than seventy miles and no willows for thirty miles. Flour was hauled from Draper; but the "muddy" soil was rich and the climate so mild that good gardens could be grown; sweet potatoes as large as small pumpkins and his father said in jest that the watermelons grew so fast they wore the vines out dragging them along.
When the settlers were released from their missions, the BROWNS along with other Muddyites, started for Long Valley. GURNSEY left LOVINA in the town of Washington, Washington County, and he and HARRIET and their family moved on. Along the way they met HARRIET'S brother, JOHN R. YOUNG. He persuaded GURNSEY to go to Kanab, and they arrived there in 1871 and lived in a tent bought from Johnson's Army. LOVINA and family were brought out later in the spring.
In Kanab the BROWNS secured two lots by squatting on them and they cultivated another 30 acres of land and built a two-room house with a room for each wife. Getting goods into the Kanab area was very difficult because of geographical difficulties and consequently most of the food and dry goods had to be produced by themselves. Sugar was almost unknown to them for several years; but good molasses was made from sugar cane that grew well here. GURNSEY set up the first sorgum mill in the northeast part of town. He planted orchards with all kinds of fruit trees, vines, berries, and shrubbery, etc. The first year he lived in Kanab he planted one acre of alfalfa and it made pig and chicken feed. He also raised garden vegetables of all kinds and raised potatoes in the Kanab Canyon and at what he called Cottonwood Canyon, a nice little tract of land about twelve miles west of Kanab. He had a few acres of meadow land in the Kanab Canyon he could mow several tons of wild hay and the country was just a mat of all kinds of wild grasses and herbs, so much so it was not necessary to have but a few-tons of hay.
It was necessary to built not only dams and canals, but roads and trails in order to get in and out of the country. The people would arrange what they called road gangs and ditch gangs and go out and build roads leading to Long Valley where hundreds of people who left the Muddy Mission had settled. The only grist mill was at Glendale, some twenty-seven miles over a set of rolling hills and washes, with sand so deep for a distance of thirteen miles that it would take four horses of good quality to move one ton of anything as the wagon wheels would sink into the sand from four to eight inches.
He managed to get along well for several years. President BRIGHAM YOUNG paid us a visit and he told the people to come out of the Kanab Canyon and farm the Valley just south of the town. It was a large fertile valley of very choice land. He told us to open the canyon and turn out cattle in it and let them tramp the water out of the meadows and swamps. He predicted that in a short time we would have a flood that would come down the canyon and wash it down to bedrock. We would build a canal around the town and have water to irrigate the town and to reservoir the water. We would be able to irrigate all the land in the valley and raise plenty of everything we would need in the shape of vegetables and cereals and hay.
It was a fact, for the flood came and washed out the sand and swamps and cleaned the canyon out so that the water increased in quantity sufficient to successfully irrigate some 1600 acres of land. Afterwards we had another large flood which tore out sand and rocks and mud down to a lower bedrock and increased the water still more. We have taken up all the land available and have plenty of spring water to irrigate all the land. It will produce good crops of hay and some hardy vegetables such as corn and potatoes.
The BROWNS belonged to the United Order in Kanab as long as it lasted. While in Kanab each of the two wives added three more children to the family. Esther passed away April 21, 1881.
In the 1880's during the raid in which the government officials were confiscating church cattle and other property, GURNSEY was appointed to take over the church cattle and sheep at Pipe Springs and run them as his own. So HARRIET and the children lived at Pipe Springs for several years and LOVINA remained in Kanab. The Indians were hostile at this time and even though they lived in the fort, at Pipe Springs, they were in constant danger.
In 1894 GURNSEY bought a large red brick home in the northeast part of town. It had been built by Frank Rider and owned for a few years by Henry Bowman. The BROWN'S ran a hotel in the home with HARRIET and the girls providing meals and taking care of the rooms and the men folk taking care of the teams in the large barn and corral on the lot.
During all the years from 1870, Joseph Gurnsey Brown was a strong factor in leading out with the people and assisting in the general development of the whole country. He held responsible positions, being rather a religious man, not too much so as to hamper or hinder him from leading out in any honorable thing to be done. He was one of the very hardy, and what is called the rough-and-ready hut not the boisterous type. He was a level-headed, good, honest man; a man who did everything possible to assist his neighbor, either in or out of trouble, and to pay his honest obligations. He was an American and believed in giving his undivided support to his country and the President of the United States, whether or not he belonged to his party.
Joseph Gurnsey served in the Bishopric of the ward for several years and was always found willing to serve when the call came from the authorities. He also served well in civic positions as well, and in matters pertaining to colonization. Joseph Gurnsey Brown died of pneumonia, January 17, 1907, at Kanab, Kane County, Utah, at the age of 83. He even has his own wiki spot: http://wiki.hanksplace.net/index.php/Joseph_Gurnsey_Brown
HARRIET MARIA YOUNG
History - HARRIET was the fourth child LORENZO DOW YOUNG and PERSIS GOODALL, both of New York State. LORENZO was the youngest brother of BRIGHAM YOUNG.
From her diary we learn that her parents were among the first to join the Restored Church and gather to Kirtland, Ohio, which was then the Headquarters of the Church. From Kirtland they moved to Missouri (Far West) and were driven from there to Illinois. "I saw the Prophet many times and remember sitting on his knee more than once as a child ... he loved children. When we lived with them in one room in Missouri, I saw him ruffle brother John's hair and give him some glorious promises. They were all fulfilled."
On October 1, 1838, Maria's father was arrested with 29 others and all were sentenced to death for their part in the Battle of Crooked River. Only because their guards softened toward them were they able to escape at night.
The family moved to Quincy, Illinois, then to a place near Carthage and finally, in the fall of 1843 to Nauvoo.
"Mother and we younger children were in Nauvoo when the Prophet and Hyrum were killed in Carthage Jail by the mob. I can still sense and feel the spirit of sadness that was over the whole place at that time. I wanted to take my brother John and go to the Mansion House, about a mile away, to see them while they lay in state, but mother was not able to go and would not let us out of her sight because of the threats of the mobs."
HARRIET crossed the plains in the first emigration company on the Emigration Fund Plan with Bishop Hunter in charge. "Mother, Aunt Fanny, Nancy Green, a cousin, and myself came with the Richards family. We started July 5th . . . and arrived in Salt Lake Valley the 28th of September 1850 with no trouble to speak of enroute."
"When I first saw the Valley it looked grand to me because I saw the whole valley with majestic mountains rising all around and the blue lake in the distance and I knew that here was home and rest."
"When the University of Deseret (called the Parent School) met for its second term in the Council House, I started to School, but after a couple of months, I stopped and went to work for Aunt Fannie Young to help her and learn dressmaking. While there I met JOSEPH GURNSEY BROWN, and we were married on the last day of the year, Dec. 31, 1851 by (President) BRIGHAM YOUNG at the home of Feramorz Little."
HARRIET was just seventeen, a small beautiful girl with her hair in ringlets. In Draper, her first child, Homer Achilles, was born on October 25, 1853, followed December 23, 1855 by Persis Ann.
In 1856 GURNSEY was asked along with others to meet the belated handcart and wagon companies of English Saints struggling to get to the Valley before winter. As he neared the company he picked up two English girls walking ahead, LIZZIE WHITE and ESTHER BROWN. Since they had no relatives in America he took them to his home in Draper for the winter. On January 18, 1857 he made ESTHER his second wife. On March 22, 1857 HARRIET'S husband married a third wife, LOVINA MANHARD.
HARRIET was among others celebrating the 24th of July in the Big Cottonwood Canyon in 1857 when word was brought that Johnson's Army was coming. "My what excitement this caused. President YOUNG quieted the people down and told them to go to camp and get ready to start back to the City early next morning. He said he intended to be the last to leave in order to see that all were safely on their way."
JOSEPH GURNSEY served a mission (2 1/2-3 years without purse or script) in England, leaving his wives and a dozen children in the Lord's hands. When he came home in 1867 BRIGHAM YOUNG asked him to take HARRIET and go to the "Muddy Mission" promising that HARRIET'S health would improve. The "Muddy," a desolate area west of Washington County at the mouth of the Muddy River was a test of endurance and strength. It was so hot, HARRIET said, that the milk soured before the cream could rise.
In May of 1870 baby Juliette died. In the fall GURNSEY brought LOVINA down to the Muddy; ESTHERr remained in Draper. In 1871 they were released from the "Muddy Mission" when a survey disclosed the Muddy, an area now known as Moapa Valley, to be in Nevada, and Nevada taxes were impossible to pay.
They were persuaded by Harriet's brother, JOHN R. YOUNG, to settle in Kanab where they arrived in February 1871. LOVINA and her children joined them and the two families lived in a tent until a two-room adobe house could be built, with one room for each wife. Later another house was built for LOVINA. HARRIET gave $300, which she had been willed, to GURNSEY to buy windows and hardware for LOVINA'S home.
In Kanab, HARRIET had three more children. She raised ten of her eleven children to adults, but buried four of her five sons in early manhood. When ESTHER died in Draper in 1881 her oldest married daughter, Lettie (Celestia) cared for her baby sister, Harriet Luetta, until she was 14 years old when she joined the other three children, Isaac O., James Arthur, and Rose Anna. Harriet loved and cared for them as for her own.
Sorrow came to GURNSEY and HARRIET on March 30. 1886. Their oldest son, Homer Achilles, still unmarried, died of pneumonia at the age of 33. The second son, Joseph Gurnsey Jr., died of consumption July 23, 1887, leaving his wife Clara Little, and two children, Joseph Gurnsey III and Curtie. Clara later married his brother, Ebenezer. On February 13, 1893 another son, Lorenzo Young, died after a long illness. He left a wife, Elizabeth Haycock, and four children. Harriet related that after her third son, Lorenzo, died a cloud hung over her and she was constantly apprehensive. Less than a month later her youngest son, Feramorz Little, only 21, was fatally injured during a horse race. She said, "Well it has happened, now I can rest."
In 1894 GURNSEY bought HARRIET a large red brick home built by John Rider. The thing HARRIET said that, attracted her most about the house was the large deep basement with rock walls, white-washed interior, and dirt floors that could be wet down each morning making a cold place to keep milk and butter and other foods.
Persis Ann and her children came to live in the home to care for JOSEPH GURNSEY and HARRIET in their old age. GURNSEY died January 7, 1907 and Persis Ann, after a short siege of pnumonia was buried June 12,1919. Then Harriet's daughter, Angeline, passed away May 24, 1924. This was another hard blow. Her two grandsons, Gurnsey Spencer and Homer Spencer and their wives were still in the home. Harriet moved her things into a large east bedroom where she spent her time sewing, reading, and visiting with friends and relatives, coming out for meals and to visit with her grandchildren and great grandchildren.
HARRIET lived a very busy life. Even in her last years he made her own dresses and ironed them herself. She hemmed Temple veils, made quilts, some when she was 90 and 91 years old. She loved to read and wrote many letters At age 83 Harriet read Redpath's History of the World, volume by volume, and enjoyed it all.
There was in her life a perfect blending of all the graces and virtues. Complete honesty and sincerity, coupled with a charming manner - a good companion for a quiet chat; the life of the party in a social gathering; a gracious manner that made people love to do things for her and with her; pride, which kept her always well dressed, perfectly groomed, and as she would tell you in confidence, kept her from putting on weight. She was a small woman with a head of beautiful wavy hair.
There was a great love between Harriet and Joseph Gurnsey. Joseph E. Robinson, her son-in-law, wrote, "How Grandmother loved Grandfather Brown. To her he was the Beau Brummell among men. One day she came to the store and asked, "Joseph have you any good men's shirts?" I thought to tease her and said, "You mean men's good shirts, don't you, Mother?" I'll never forget how she replied. "No! I mean GOOD MEN'S shirts, for I want one for Gurnsey and he is the best man I know."
Harriet said in closing her record, "I have had the honor of knowing all the Presidents of the Church from Joseph Smith to Heber J. Grant, and many other leading men and women, and now that I have lived to a good old age and feel that my work is about done, I look back and think that I would not care to live it over for I might not do so well as I have done."
*Gr Gr Gr grandfather EBENEZER BROWN and ANN WEAVER.
Poligamists. fought in the Battalion with Allreds.
*Helped build the Kirtland Temple and experienced the Far West War.
EBENEZER BROWN was born 6 December 1802 in Herkimer County, New York, the son of WILLIAM BROWN and HANNAH SWEET. We do not know anything of his early life, but on 23 July 1823 he married ANN WEAVER, and they had four children. Joseph Guernsey born 8 November 1824 in New York, Harriet born 6 February 1827, Norman born 6 February 1830, and John Weaver born 17 June 1837 at Peru, LaSalle County, Illinois. We find the family living in Illinois at the time their youngest child was born. The next August they moved to Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri, arriving in September. The saints who reached Missouri were so brutally treated and suffered privation, hardships and some of them sickness and death. Ann Weaver Brown, the mother in this family, died 24 June 1842 at Quincey, Illinois, and Ebenezer was left a widower with four young children.
When the dispossessed saints returned from Missouri to Illinois, most of them crossing the river went northward to Commerce (later Nauvoo), but the Brown and Draper families went south and settled near Pleasantville, Illinois, in the wide Mississippi River bottom. It was a place of beauty and great fertility. The surrounding country lush with corn and fruit and timber and one can hardly suppress regret that they ever had to leave there. They were fast becoming economically independent, and they enjoyed the full measure of religious liberty. Their Non-Mormon neighbors were impressed with their industry, character and religion.
Ebenezer was good friends with William Draper and his sister Phoebe Draper Palmer, a widow with six or seven (6)children. Phoebe had received a patriarchal blessing from Joseph Smith Sr., and had been promised if she was faithful and wise she would be blessed with a companion who would be a man of God and that she would be able to bring up her family right, that she would have good happy days. She kept the faith and was wise and the blessing and promise was fulfilled in Ebenezer Brown, a righteous and kindly man who gave her much and to whom she returned the full measure of her devotion. Ebenezer and Phoebe were married 1842, and she, no doubt, felt her patriarchal blessing had been fulfilled. There were now ten children in this combined family, her youngest child was eight while his youngest was five.
What their lives would have been had they been permitted to remain in Pleasantville can only be surmised, but it is almost certain that they would not have been subjected to the trials and hardships that beset them and their children for more than a century. In the very year that Ebenezer and Phoebe joined forces the church found itself in deep difficulties in Hancock County, Illinois, where Nauvoo was located. Mob hostility had grown so fierce that Joseph Smith sent out a call to all saints in outlying counties to break up their settlements and move in to Hancock County. The Draper and Brown families were in Pike County, where hostility had not yet developed, but they could not ignore the call to their leader. Ebenezer and Phoebe moved directly tn Nauvoo where they lived until about 1844. There they had two more years enjoying the good will of the Non-Mormons in the neighborhood, but tensions built up at Nauvoo to an alarming extent. Hostility against the leaders of the church grew until it culminated in the assassination of the founder of the church and his brother Hyrum.
After this, it became manifest that the Mormons would have to leave the state of Illinois.. In 1846 Nauvoo was abandoned under bloody and miserable circumstances know to all. The whole Church membership began to move wet-ward. On their way through Iowa they learned through BRIGHAM YOUNG and HEBER C. KIMBALL who were returning to Nauvoo after establishing camps on the Missouri River that Captain JAMES ALLEN of the United States Army had requested the saints to furnish 500 able-bodied men to march against Mexico with an army under the command of Colonel STEPHEN L. KEARNY. This call seems to have been resented until advice was given that the formation of a battalion for service in Mexico which at the same time would help to get the saints to their destination on pay from the government.
To fully understand the heroism and suffering of the battalion, they had just been forcibly ejected from their homes in Illinois and were plunging into the wilderness almost empty handed. They were short both on clothing and food and were poorly prepared for military service. After the recruiting and enlistment, a gala farewell party was held for the departing recruits in a large bowery at Council Point, a trading post on the river, and the next morning 16 July 1846 a march began which made history. EBENEZER and PHOEBE were part of the enlisted personnel. EBENEZER was given the rank of sergeant in Company A., and PHOEBE was given the title of laundress. The first leg of their march was between Council Bluffs in Iowa and Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. They marched southward along the river in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for about 200 miles. It took them 11 days to reach Fort Leavenworth where they were uniformed, armed, and given a 12 day rest. Already the ordeal had began to tell. Many of the men were sick with chills and fever and even the officers did not escape. Captain ALLEN died 23 July 1846.
On 12 August 1846 the first attachment left Fort Leavenworth headed for the Arkansas River which flows southeasterly through Kansas. They reached the river 11 September 1846 and by this time it was obvious that the sick soldiers would have to be dropped. The battalion then left the river and struck Out southwesterly toward Santa Fe. Food supplies were almost exhausted and the soldiers were put on two-thirds ration. Good water was almost non-existent over this stretch and they were reduced to drinking brackish water in whatever slough or mud hole they could find it. Hunger and dysentery began to enfeeble the men until they could hardly respond to call for guard duty at night. The drugs administered to them often within abuse seemed to have a worse effect than the disease and exhaustion from which they suffered. It was, therefore, a great relief when they reached Santa Fe 9 October 1846 where they were given a ten day rest. They were allowed to rest and recuperate at Santa Fe until the 19 October when the battalion began the last and worst 1,100 miles of its appalling march. The terrain was entirely unfamiliar even to the officers. Forage was scarce for the animals and food was just as lacking for the men. By November some of the teams died from pure exhaustion and poor and skinny as they were they were eaten by the men. There were 56 who were sent back to Pueblo more than 300 miles away.
The main body of the battalion marched on. Their objective was Tucson in southern Arizona. After crossing the Rio Grande River, they entered barren and rough terrain. Their food supplies were exhausted. If an oxen died, they ate it including the hide which they diced and boiled for soup. They also took the sheep pelts from under their saddles and roasted them for food. They often marched all day without water, and some of them died of thirst. Sometimes they sunk wells as much as 300 feet in search of water.
Finally they reached the Gila River which they followed to its confluence with the San Pedro flowing into it from the south. In this area there were extensive mesquite thickets full of wild cattle. Here at last was food in abundance (meat that is) if they could get it. The bulls, however, charged the men on sight and sent them scattering. Not until they devised some strategy could they get meat. Even then it took volleys of musket balls to stop a ferocious bull. In due time they had meat in quantity, but they had nothing to go with it not even salt. Even so this fare enabled them to reach Tucson where they had a brush (mostly conversational) with a Mexican garrison which was subdued without difficulty. Here they rested, got fresh supplies and hobbled on into the western desert. All the way from Tucson to the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers the going was especially rough. Water holes were as much as 75 miles apart. It was cactus country. Their uniforms were in tatters and their shoes were worn out, so marching was something less than pleasant.
When the battalion reached the neighborhood of present day Yuma, they encountered large numbers of Pima Indians whom the Mexicans had sought to incite to attack the battalion without avail. On the contrary they had in their possession a store of goods and several mules. They gladly turned the goods and animals over and also sold the soldiers some of their own supplies. Refreshed again they began their last adventure through the desert of the Imperial Valley. Lack of shoes was their greatest handicap which they tried to overcome by making them from rawhide, but they were not skillful as shoemakers and the hides drying wrinkled in hard convolutions that were harder on the feet than cactus so they hobbled on as best they could until 29 January 1847 when they reached San Diego on the Pacific Ocean.
The next day their commander addressed them and congratulated the battalion on its safe arrival on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and the conclusion of its march of over 2,000 miles. History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry; nine-tenths of it through a wilderness where nothing but savages and wild beasts were found, or deserts where for want of water there is no living creature. There with almost hopeless labor we have dug deep walls which the future travelers will enjoy. With crowbar and pickax we have worked our way over mountains and hewed a passage through a chasm of living rock. Thus marching half naked and half fed and living upon wild animals (without salt to season your substance of fresh meat) we have discovered and made a road of value to our country.
He ended his speech by saying that there was work yet to be done and as EBENEZER and PHOEBE had yet more than 1,000 miles of mountain and desert terrain to travel before they could rejoin their families in Utah and as they had no money with which to buy outfits or supplies to travel, they re-enlisted and served in the Army until 14 March 1848 when they were mustered out with renewed courage and a little money to start them on their way to Utah. They traveled northward over an inland route until they reached Sutter's Fort held by a German-Swiss citizen eager to make improvements on his Spanish land grant so that he could qualify to hold it under his new sovereign the United States of America. To develop it, he needed laborers and they were grateful for the opportunity to earn some money so they went to work. Early in 1848 Sutter sent a group of whites and Indians to construct a sawmill on the American River 24 January 1848. EBENEZER and PHOEBE were among the first to enjoy its fruits. They might have become wealthy Californians had they not been bound to the cause of establishing a homeland for the Church to which they were so strongly attached. BRIGHAM YOUNG feared the disintegration of his people if they followed the lure of gold so in 1849 he called the battalion members home. They obeyed. PHOEBE and EBENEZER reached Salt Lake in the fall of the year, and though they crossed the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains, the forbidding Carson Sinks, and the Great American Desert over which but few white men had ever passed and where the bones of some who had tried to pass lay bleached in the sun,..they left no record of their ordeal. They had made it to Zion and that was enough. They had a happy reunion with their children in the fall of 1849.
Salt Lake City was then about two and a half years old, but it was filled with immigrants seeking places to build their homes. EBENEZER and PHOEBE, no doubt, had an advantage; they were fresh from the gold fields and, no doubt, had gold in their pockets. Their children whom they had left on the Missouri River with Ebenezer's oldest daughter: Harriet, and her husband had now reached the valley and together they began to plan a new life. Ebenezer with his three sons, Joseph, Norman, and John set out to find a new and unclaimed land because the land around the city had already been distributed among the first pioneers. Together they discovered unoccupied land and water in a large cove in the south-east corner of the Salt Lake valley through which the water from four springs ran which they forthwith appropriated and began immediately to build a cabin and to prepare for crops to be planted in the spring. The waters of the springs were joined and thereafter were known as South Willow Creek.
Later they set to work building log cabins preparatory to bringing other members of the family in. By the spring of 1850, Ebenezer was ready to bring Phoebe down from Salt Lake to help build a permanent home. He felt too that there was ample room for more people at South Willow Creek than his and Phoebe's immediate families, so it appears they asked all the Drapers they knew to join them. Other people were soon attracted to this settlement. By 1852, the community on South Willow Creek had grown to the extent that the church provided it with ecclesiastical government and the name of the community was changed to Draper. Phoebe was the first mistress and also conducted a day nursery for young children.
In the meantime Ebenezer and his sons had been profitably employed. Be-ginning in 1849 they began establishing a cattle business. They cannily foresaw a good market for meat among the saints and particularly a cash market in the hordes of immigrants beginning to pass through Utah on the way to California.
By 1853 Ebenezer was a man of substance and as such was able to care for some of the many unmarried women in the church. At any rate in that year he married Samantha Pulsipher, and in 1854 he married Mary Elizabeth Wright, and had a sizeable family by each.
From John W. Brown's Diary we read: In May 1856 Ebenezer and family was called on a mission to Carson Valley. We traveled 16 miles and stopped at Mill Creek for the night. Tuesday we spent most of the day in Salt Lake ate dinner with our aged brother Kimball and left the city that night. We started each morning about 8 or 9 o'clock and traveled between 15 and 20 miles a day. The weather was fairly good and feed and water were good most of the way. We made stops at the Hot Springs, Kaysville, Weber, Ogden Hole, North Willow Creek and Box Elder City, where we found a small company waiting for us. On May 11th the camp was organized with Ebenezer Brown as Captain. We mustered 23 able-bodied men and 13 wagons. May 12th the camp took up the line of march. We have passed all the settlements, our mountain homes have passed from our view, and we are wending our way towards a lovelier country, a milder climate, but to a colder-hearted people.
We started each day between 8 or 9 o'clock and made about 15 miles a day; some days we made better time, other days travel was slower as the roads were in poor conditions, being sandy, rough and hilly. We were blessed in many ways; our teams were strengthened, and we met with few accidents worthy of notice. We met a few Indians at the Pilot Springs and after friendly greetings and exchanges made we continued on our way making stops at Blue Springs, Stoney Canyon, Decesher Creek, Goose Creek, Canyon Creek and Humboldt River. The weather was fair except for a few days of wind and bluster. We found feed and water supplies to be fair most of the way. On June 24th we arrived at Carson and pitched our tents in Washeow Valley where a town is located and a number of saints have taken up farms and commenced improvements. It is not known how long Ebenezer remained here, but he probably was back in Utah in 1858 as he wrote his son, John, to go to Carson Valley and collect the money owing him for his improvements. He did not collect it, and had to work to earn money to come home with. John had been on a mission to the Hawaiian Islands.
When Ebenezer took his other two wives Samantha Pulsipher and Mary Elizabeth Wright. Phoebe seems not to have minded this. But Samantha died in 1870 leaving a family of minor children, whereupon Phoebe at the age of seventy-three took the responsibility of raising a third family in addition to discharging her duties as an officer in the Relief Society. She brought them all to maturity, and in the process earned the love and devotion not only of these children, but all of Ebenezer's children.
Ebenezer was the husband of four women and the father of 22 children, 13 sons and 9 daughters. He died 26 January 1878, and was buried 29 January 1878 at Draper, Salt Lake County, Utah. He had fought a good fight, and with thousands of other people like him had lived that calumny and bitter prejudice once so manifest against them died away and in its place came admiration and praised not only for themselves, but for the Church which guided them through.
No road map for being a polygamist family? While I'm a bit feisty, might I add that even Janelle's "no clue" doesn't hold water, considering LDS is based on Joseph Smith. When watching "Big Love"... when Alby started getting messages from the hat...well, let's say it put this mess into perspective for me, and mad me spit my Pepsi out louder than Robyn can slurp.So, just as a quickie to add to yesterday's show, we know that Kody was kin to the Browns, Youngs, and Allreds, some of the most historical families in the roots of the religion.
Since my Family Tree Maker is on my other computer and I threw this together in a few short minutes. Thinking to myself, wouldn't of been wise to have more of a story to tell the kids along the way? How they relate? Makes more sense to fly east then drive west to experience the trails, but, then again, we are talking about the Browns. Seems if Kody had all this information, he serendipitously would be expediting its disclosure to us and of his importance and potential. They actually could of made it interesting.
Talk of Browns for now, we will save the others for later!
OTHER Brown Posts:
http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Brown-Descendants-10879
http://www.orsonprattbrown.com/murphy-draper/ebenezer-brown1802-1878.html.
http://www.ourlittlecircle.com/journals/pdf/Joseph-Gurnsey-Brown-and-Harriet-Maria-Young.pdf http://historypreserved.com/draper_photos%201.htm
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(Source: Find a Grave, From the Mormon Pioneers by Delbert M. Draper, genealogy work done privately Top Picture: ,Little crooked Christmas tree by Michael Cutting. http://wiki.hanksplace.net/index.php/Harriet_Maria_Young )
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(Source: Find a Grave, From the Mormon Pioneers by Delbert M. Draper, genealogy work done privately Top Picture: ,Little crooked Christmas tree by Michael Cutting. http://wiki.hanksplace.net/index.php/Harriet_Maria_Young )
