Abigail Mead (1770-1854)

On 25 June 1833 in Villanova, New York, at least three Mormon missionaries—William Cahoon, John F. Boynton, and Evan Melbourne Greene—oversaw the beginnings of a branch of the Church of Jesus Christ. Greene recorded: “We had a meeting to organize the church and the Lord blessed us and two went forward in the ordinance of baptism whose names were as follows: Abbigail & Roxannah McBride” (EMGJ, 23).

When Abigail was seventeen years old she married Reverend Daniel McBride. Since he was an itinerant Campbellite minister, the family, which would eventually include nine children, moved from place to place in order for Daniel to aid the individual churches over which he had stewardship. On more than one occasion he mentioned to his immediate family, “There is something lacking. I feel that I have not the authority as the Prophets of old. If only I could say to the people, ‘Thus sayeth the Lord’” (VK). Lamentably, Daniel died in 1823, ten years before Abigail was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ.

The day Abigail first listened to Mormon elders is hard to pin down. Missionary Evan Greene noted that it was a “glorious time” as they met with eager listeners in the “McBride schoolhouse” in Villanova, New York, on Sunday, 26 May. Greene “spoke to the [congregation] and testified to them in the gift of tongues and the spirit of God rested down upon us” (EMGJ, 18).

On Tuesday, 9 June Amasa Lyman stayed in the David Crandall home, David being married to Abigail’s oldest daughter, while Greene resided with Reuben McBride’s family, with whom Abigail presumably lived. It was as this point that the families “began to see the need of obeying the commandments” (EMGJ, 21).

The Crandall and McBride households began to be baptized on Thursday, 13 June. The following day at 5 P.M. the missionaries once again held a meeting in the McBride schoolhouse, and part of the McBride family members attended. Several of the listeners “testified to the gospel and rejoiced in the blessing of the Lord in sending his servants into that place.” Still, “others desired us to pray for them that they might be enlightened and come to the knowledge of these things” (EMGJ, 21). Whichever meetings Abigail attended, she was, as mentioned above, baptized on 25 June.

Two years later (1835) many of the McBrides, Crandalls, and Knights—Abigail’s youngest daughter, Martha, married Vinson Knight—traveled to Kirtland, Ohio to gather with the Saints (VK). The following year, on 8 June 1836, at the age of 66, Abigail received her patriarchal blessing under the hands of Joseph Smith Sr. Promised blessings included seeing “angels, and receiv[ing] the communications of the Holy Ghost . . . [and that if she would] “give up thyself to God … thou shalt see thy Redeemer whom thou desireth to know.” While these prophecies were sacred in nature, a more temporal blessing, easily discerned as fulfilled by any individual, was that she would “go to Zion, and be in good health. Thy mind shall be strong and rejoice in thy God” (PB).

Abigail was in good health in body and mind and she traveled to the Great Basin Zion. After Abigail and her family left Kirtland, they homesteaded in Nauvoo, Illinois, and then went to the Great Salt Lake in the Edward Hunter-Jacob Foutz Company from June to October 1847. Abigail, at 77 and the oldest member of her company, traveled with two of her sons, John and Samuel McBride, Samuel's wife Lemira, and her grandchildren, Samuel and Lemira's children, Lydia and Samuel (JH, 21 June 1847, p. 25). During the trip (8 September 1847) the Hunter-Foutz Company and others welcomed Brigham Young and his company as they traveled back to Winter Quarters, Nebraska to oversee trail and sure up Church organization. An impromptu feast was prepared which included “broiled beef, pies, cakes, and biscuits.” Women unpacked good dishes, Edward Hunter provide a “nice fat steer,” and “a dance in the evening completed the festivities.” Eliza R. Snow, who was in attendance, remembered: “I know not as I have set at a table better supplied with the luxuries of life in all my travels for many years than was at this table set at the foot of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains” (WFTP, 274).

Abigail settled down with family in what is now known as Ogden, Utah and died at the age of 84 on 12 March 1854; she was buried in the Ogden City Cemetery. One of her great-grandsons, Gilbert Belnap, remembered her as a “short, rather stout, fine old lady, with a square face and a fair complexion” (SE). Certainly an outward appearance of “stout” would describe her fortitude and righteousness throughout her life.

Sources:

EMGJ, Evan Melbourne Greene, “Evan M. Greene journal, 1833 January–1835 April,” MS 14339, paginated typescript, available through http://churchhistorycatalog.lds.org/.

JH, Journal history of the Church 1896-2001, CR 100 137, available through http://churchhistorycatalog.lds.org/.

PB, “Patriarchal Blessing of Abigail McBride by Jos. Smith Sr.” www.FamilySearch.org>Abigail Mead [KWV9-4Y1​​]>Memories>Documents.

SE, “Stories of Utah Pioneers: Abigail Mead McBride Was Born In New York in 1770 and Died in Ogden in 1854, After Varied Experiences,” Ogden Standard Examiner [newspaper], 12 February 1933, available at http://www.belnapfamily.org/Ogden_Standard_Examiner_1933-02-12_Stories_of_Utah_Pioneers_(top).jpg.

VK, Lola Almira Belknap Coolbear, “Vinson Knight biographical sketch,” available at www.FamilySearch.org>Vinson Knight [LCRS-2QF​​]>Memories>Stories, “Sketch of the Life of Vinson Knight by Lola Belnap Coolbear.”

WFTP, Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846–1848 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997).

Melvin "M.G." Crawford (1889-1979)

Melvin was the oldest child in his farming family and “quite large” in height as a boy (2 [refers to page number; see below for source]). Though born in Manti, Utah, he and his family moved away when he was four, only to return as Melvin entered his teens. They returned to Manti from a town called Koosharem—over fifty miles to the south. While Melvin was charged with herding the “cows and horses back to Manti on the … ordinary wagon roads” (1), his father (Gardner), and mother (Sophie), along with two siblings, bustled ahead in a horse-drawn wagon and a team of horses. What took the majority of the family a single day to travel, took Melvin three. Among the mixed herd he led north were “two of the milking cows and whenever it would come night, [he] had to milk the cows on the road, [and] just put on the ground what [he] didn’t want” (1). Both cows and horses grazed on the road side at night when Melvin curled up and went “to sleep with a blanket over [him]” (1). By mid-afternoon on the third day, the tired boy and animals were still some distance from Manti; his “mother got worried about [him],” brought sandwiches, and, Melvin recalled, “she walked along … for quite a little ways” (2). Later, she hurried on ahead to care for the rest of the children and prepare supper. The weary Melvin, who remembered that he “walked the soles off my shoes” on that trip, arrived after dark with the herd (2). Though he does not remember why his dad did not greet him like his mother, this was not the last time his father volunteered the young Melvin for a herding position.

Melvin  (in front of the doorway) and others on a sheep sheering day

Before arriving at the age of sixteen, Melvin remembered, “My dad hired me out to go herd sheep one time” (11). Melvin and his father regularly sheered sheep for a resident in Ephraim—a town less than ten miles from Manti. After the sheering was done, the resident “fellow wanted me to go out on the lambing ground” (11). Melvin protested, “Dad, I can’t go out there, I don’t know anything about herding sheep” (11). Gardner dismissed his son’s inexperience: “All you have to do is drive them [and] go around them just like everybody else. He will be with you” (11).

Soon, with Melvin on a horse, and the experienced sheep herder driving a wagon, they drove the flock from Ephraim to the grazing/lambing ground, which was somewhere between a three to four day ride. Each day started and end the same: drive the herd three to five miles a day, camp, eat and sleep. Once they arrived at their destination, which included a cabin, the man from Ephraim surprised Melvin with these instructions: “I have got to go home now. You stay here and just go around these sheep twice a day. You get up in the morning and go around them, about five o’clock, or just as soon as it comes daylight. You set your clock to get up. Go clear down around the sheep and herd them all back in the middle. Then go back to camp and eat your [lunch]. Then start out again and go clear around them” (11). With that, the sheep herder left. Melvin arose the next day and sought to be obedient to the directions. He found that he traveled about six to seven miles in the morning and then another six or seven in the afternoon. This monotonous schedule continued for ten days.

For a week and a half Melvin was all alone with his horse and the flock of sheep. He found himself afraid and unable to sleep with the sound of howling coyotes. Toward the end of the ten days foodstuff began to run short. He ate everything that was in the cabin: a little bread, pieces of mutton, peas, and a few canned goods—he was willing to kill one of the sheep to survive but he had no idea how to gut and quarter a lamb. Finally, when he was down to “one can of tomatoes left and nobody was there … he came in” (11).  The man laughed and blurted, “I didn’t mean to leave you that long. I got on a big drunk, and I forgot to come” (12). Though the man offered Melvin an evening meal, the boy just wanted to go him. The man counseled Melvin to wait until morning, but the boy “was so homesick that [he] was just about crazy” (12).

Astride a horse, Melvin guided the animal in the direction he thought was south, toward Manti. At one point he was so sleepy that he dismounted and “sat down by a tree and went to sleep” (12). In the morning, Melvin was surprised to see that he was not very far from the lambing ground. The sheep herder observed, “If you had have let that horse go, he would have gone right home” (12). “But I wouldn’t,” Melvin lamented. “I guided him and I just went around in a great big circle” (12). After eating breakfast the herder again instructed, “Just let the horse go and he will take you home” (12). Doing as instructed, Melvin soon arrived in Ephraim at the man’s house—the wife “hooked another horse up to a buckboard and took [Melvin] home” (12). Following this experience Melvin quipped, “That was the experience I had herding sheep. That is all I wanted” (12).

(Source: M.G. Crawford Interview, MSS OH 138, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, paginated typescript of oral interview.)

John Crawford (1828-1923)

John Crawford, farmer, of Manti, is one of a family of four and was born in Wickston, Peebleshire, Scotland, September 30, 1828 [or 1829]. His parents were James and Elizabeth (Brown) Crawford.

His father was a flax weaver, making fancy linen cloth. John spent the early years of his life on a farm till he was 16 years of age, and when 14 joined the Mormon Church.

He worked at track-laying on the railroad till the fall of 1849, when he immigrated to the United States, coming across from Liverpool in the sailing vessel Zetlin. The voyage took six weeks and two days and he landed in New Orleans on Christmas day, 1849. He journeyed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, where he remained the balance of that winter.

In the spring he continued up the river to Kanesville, where himself and [his] brother James rented a farm and put in ten acres of wheat and twenty-five acres of corn. In July Kinkade and Livingston fitted up a train of thirty-five wagons drawn by ox teams to haul merchandise to Salt Lake and John hired out to them to drive one of the teams of four yoke of oxen. They left old Fort Kearney on the Missouri August 3rd., A. O. Smoot, late of Prove, being their captain, and arrived in Salt Lake City September 28th. That winter he worked in Mill Creek canyon at the lower sawmill for Barney Adams.

In the spring of 1851 himself and Alex Cowan took a contract of Bishop Hunter and made the adobes for the old Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, which was the first church built in Utah. It was constructed on the ground where the Assembly Hall now stands. In the spring of 1852 himself and brother James rented the farm of Apostle C. C Rich at Centerville, which they worked for two seasons.

When the Walker Indian war broke out in the summer of 1853 he was one of a com- pany of about thirty-five called by Governor [Brigham] Young to go to Manti to strengthen and support the settlement. They were instructed to sell all their possessions so they would have nothing to return to. This company was gathered from the towns near Salt Lake and our subject made captain. They arrived in Manti the latter part of December, 1853, and found the snow eighteen inches deep. They spent the balance of that winter in standing guard and building a fort.

In May of 1855 he was called with about fifty others upon a mission to the Elk mountains to live among the Indians to try and civilize them. September 23rd the settlement was broken up and they were driven out by the Indians, who killed James W. Hunt, William Behunnin and Edward Edwards and wounded A. N. Billings, the president of the mission. The Indians burned all their hay and stole their cattle.

In 1857 he with Harmon T. Christensen, N. Beach and B. Hall received a charter from the city to construct and maintain a toll road up City Creek canyon. This road they constructed about eight miles and the following year they built a. sawmill in the canyon with a gig saw. They cut from 2000 to 3000 feet of lumber per day, Mr. Crawford being the sawyer. They owned and operated this mill nearly ten years.

When the Temple was being built he ran a lime kiln five miles west of town, burning all the lime used for the Temple for nearly five years. During all these years his family looked after the farm and carried it on successfully. He has been engaged in the cattle and sheep industry and has now a band of about 1500 head of sheep. He is a stockholder in the new Union Roller Mills, was a member of the City Council three terms, Justice of the Peace two terms. . Mr. Crawford has been prominent in the church, being president of the Forty-eighth quorum of Seventies about thirty years and a ward teacher many years. He was married April 6, 1853, to Cecelia, daughter of Nathaniel and Cecelia. Sharp. Their children are Elizabeth J., John, Jr., deceased, Cecelia, James B., Nathaniel, William W., Margaret C, Mary E., Quincy G., Delphia, deceased, and Catherine.

In February, 1856, he married a second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Gardner and Sarah (Hastings) Snow. Their children are: Sarah M., Mary, deceased, Martha M., Gardner J., George, deceased, Charles C., Ida, deceased, Adelbert D., Nora A., Frank, Grace and Rayfield, deceased.

It may truly be said of Mr. Crawford he has made a success of life, having no capital to start with, he had nothing but his individual effort to depend on. By steady hard work and honorable means he has accumulated a fair stock of this world's goods and has always retained the respect and good will of his neighbors.

(Source: W. H. Lever, History of Sanpete and Emery Counties, Utah: with Sketches of Cities, Towns and Villages, Chronology of Important Events, Records of Indian Wars, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens [Salt Lake City: Tribune Job Printing Company, 1898], 118–120, spelling and paragraphing modernized).