Hyrum Judd Whitmer
THE STORY OF HYRUM JUDD
Mormon Pioneer, 1824-1894
by Ileen Judd Johnson & Hilga Judd Frier, 1991
The Mormon Battalion
Representatives of the Church had been in Washington seeking assistance from the government to move the Mormons to the Rocky Mountains. Help came when President Polk reluctantly agreed to allow the enlistment of a 500-man Battalion of Mormons to aid in the Mexican War.
Word from Washington did not reach Church leaders in Iowa until after Captain Allen of the U.S Army issued the call for enlistment. Unaware of the efforts in Washington on their behalf, this came as a complete surprise to the exiled saints at Council Bluffs. Indeed it seemed preposterous to ask a people so destitute to furnish so many men. But this was just the help Brigham Young was looking for to move his people west.”
Losing 500 of their most able men would alter their plans for departure to the West, but it would so provide needed revenue to assist the saints in their move. The advantages out weighed the disadvantages: 1) The soldiers were each paid $3.50 per month in advance for clothing and then allowed to wear the clothing they already had. This money they received was then sent back to their families. 2) The government secured the rights of the Mormons to settle in the
West and provided protection to them while they remained in lowa and Nebraska. It also helped to calm the Missourians who were getting nervous with the Mormons being so near their borders again. 3) The soldiers would have their way West paid and could act as advance scouts for the main body of the Church.
Hyrum and his brother Zadock traveled to Sharpee’s Point (later called Winter Quarters) where they enlisted in Mormon Battalion. The main company had been enrolled July 16, 1846 but their company did not catch up with the rest until July 20th. Hyrum was a teamster in Company E and took one of first wagons across the continent. Cousin Arza Erastus Hinckley also enlisted in the Battalion.
Lisania stayed in Council Bluffs (Kanesville) through the winter where she suffered greatly from cold, hunger and sickness, often without shelter. Just seven months after Hyrum left, a son, Hyrum Jerome, was born in a wagon box in February.
The hardships she endured were almost past believing. She made buckskin gloves and men’s pants to help sustain herself and child. From Council Bluffs, Lisania, the baby, and her younger brother Lucius Hubbard Fuller made their way back to their parents’ home in Warsaw where they stayed until Hyrum returned for them.
The Battalion was a long and difficult march. Often the men marched through bad weather and without much food. In places they found themselves cutting new roads. They were required to march long hours in order to make the trip as scheduled and before supplies ran out.
The soldiers were frequently sick, but reporting in sick, was avoided if at all possible because Doctor Saunders’ treatment was considered worse than any sickness. He had but one medicine which he administered to all from the same old spoon. A sick man was compelled to take the medicine, have it forced down him, or be left on the plains.
They saved the beef for work animals and were not allowed to use them for food unless they “gave out.”
As tough as the animals must have been, they were eagerly devoured, even to the hides, tripe and entrails.
At first they had no cooking utensils, so they mixed dough by hollowing a place in the flour (still in the sack) and pouring water into it. Once the dough was mixed, they cooked it on a stick over the open fire.
Someone managed to stow away a violin, and there were several good fiddlers in the battalion; so when they could, they refreshed themselves by dancing. There were no girls, but that didn’t matter. Some would take the girls’ part and a lively dance would begin and continue into the evening.
The men were half -starved when they arrived at the Pacific in January. They were housed at the San Luis Rey Mission where they contracted body lice. Daily rations were five pounds of “good fat beef ” for each man.
When the Battalion disbanded July 16, 1847, Hyrum acquired some ponies and he, along with Zadock and forty to one-hundred other men, went north to Sutter’s Fort east of San Francisco and started over the mountains to the Salt Lake Valley. At the Truckee River near Donner Pass, they met Samuel Brannan with word from the Council of the Twelve that provisions were scarce in the Valley. Unless they had supplies to last until the next harvest or were traveling through to Winter Quarters, they were encouraged to return to California.
Hyrum continued on to Salt Lake and got there in time to go back with a company to Winter Quarters. Zadock stayed in California and found work in a tailor shop in Monterey. Some of the others stopped at Sutter’s to help dig a mill race. Battalion members were at Sutter’s Mill January 24, 1848 when gold was discovered. Zadock later quit his tailor job in Monterey and worked panning gold at Sutter’s Mill.
During the gold rush, wages were high. A man was paid $100 per day, because that was the value of gold which could be collected in a day. Even those not panning gold were paid this wage. Zadock Judd describes the activities at Sutter’s Mill:
would take his little Indian basket or common milk pan, go to the place where gold was found, fil i with dirt containing gold, take it to the river, sink it up until the dirt was all washed away, then empty the contents of the pan onto a plate, or any tight dish, fill his pan with dirt and gold again and go through the same process of washing the dirt away, and emptying it onto the pile in the plate. When a quantity of this kind had accumulated, it was put into a smaller dish and a spoonful or two of quicksilver added to it. The quicksilver would gather all the gold and the refuse was then thrown away. Quicksilver and gold were then put into a little buckskin sack, the sack was twisted up and wrung and the quicksilver would run through like water through cloth leaving all the gold in the buckskin sack, and the quicksilver could be used again for an indefinite number of times.
The Gold Rush of 1849 brought a steady stream of wagon trains through the Salt Lake Valley. By the time they reached the Valley they found that their loads were too heavy and their teams worn out. Consequently they sold tools, clothing and other merchandise to the Saints in exchange for horses, so they could continue on to California.
Hyrum’s younger sister Lois married Beniamin Trotter Mitchell at Winter Quarters on New Year’s Day 1848. According to Zadock Judd, Benjamin T, Mitchell was already living in the Salt Lake Valley in the spring of 1849.
Hyrum’s sister, Rachel married the famous Jacob Hamblin, missionary to the Lamanites. This story is told by Marlene Bateman Sullivan:
When word came from Church leaders to move west, [lacob’s] wife refused to go. But she told him to go and take the three children with him.
Needing help with his motherless family, Jacob relied on the Lord. In a dream he saw a widow and two children in a log cabin. At the same time a widow, Rachel Judd, had a feeling that her future husband would soon call at her cabin. Jacob went to her home, introduced himself, and explained that he had been impressed to ask her to be his wife. She agreed; they were married on September 30, 1849, came to Utah the next year, and were later sealed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.
Jacob Hamblin and Rachel came West in Aaron Johnson’s Company leaving in the spring of 1850 arriving in the Salt Lake Valley September 1, 1850. A marriage record for a Rachel Judd and a James M. Henderson, February 13, 1841, is found in Hancock County, Illinois. They were later divorced and Henderson re-married in Hancock County. In the above quote Rachel is referred to as a widow. In those days a divorced woman was referred to as a “grass widow” (one whose husband was still living). If the husband were dead, she was called a “sod widow.”
Farmington, Utah
The first six families in North Cottonwood (now Farmington) came in the summer and fall of 1848 headed by Daniel C. Davis, a captain of Company E of the Mormon Battalion and uncle to Lisania Fuller Judd, Hyrum’s wife. The present Davis County, Utah, is named after Captain Davis. Others came in 1849 (including Hyrum and his family) making a total of about 25 families in the little community.
At the time of the 1850 Federal census Hyrum was living in Farmington with his wife Lisania and four children–Clara, Hyrum J., Jane According to family sources, Clara died as an infant long before Hyrum and Lisania ever reached the Valley. We have no explanation as to why she is listed as a six-year-old child on the census, except the fact that this census was taken just prior to application for statehood, and everyone possible was counted, including many who were still crossing the plains or who died on the way.
arrived back in Sunset about the first of December.
What a family reunion they had! Thev hadn’t been together for three years. Ira and Nancy were there, Frank and Nan with a couple of kids, Joe Craig and Sis with two or three kids, Hom (Lucius Hubbard) and the younger boys Perry and Lafe.”
Ira’s wife Nancy gave birth to her second child, Ethel, May 9, 1880 somewhere between Panguitch and Sunset. Besides losing the baby, she almost lost her life.
Hyrum pulled out of the Order about the 15th of December 1880, taking out only what he had put into it, nothing more, not even the increase of the cows. Ira and Nancy returned to Panguitch where she could be with her family.
The Gila Valley
The family left Sunset in 1881 and went to the Gila Valley to a town called Smithville twelve miles from Fort Thomas. Don Carlos was already there, and Jerome came a couple of years later.
The first thing they did was build a house which was made from cottonwood logs standing up stockade fashion. The roof and floor were both dirt. A big shed in front of the house covered with willows and brush provided shade. The town had only one well, so water was a problem. They hauled their water from the well on ‘lizards’ made from forked mesquite with a place fixed for the barrell. They would hitch up a horse to this and drag it to the well and back.
There was a heavy growth of mesquite brush in the town when the Judds arrived and no streets. Ammon Frank Judd, Hyrum’s son describes the area:
It was sure a wild country, horse thieves and renegades from everywhere. Father had his only pair of horses stolen and left him without a team. There were ten thousand Apache Indians on one reservation 20 miles from where we lived and every little while a little band would break out and kill and plunder until they were run down by the soldiers.
Smithville was started in April of 1879. The Judd family helped dig the first Mormon canal in the Gila Valley. Hyrum and his son Don Carlos were the first owners of the Indian Hot Springs across and northwest of the town of Pima. Here they raised a garden and much grain. It was a fine place to live with the hot water running constantly, but the Indians were bad. They were finally driven off by these red men, nearly lost their own lives and some of their best mules.
As soon as a ditch was made and a small crop of corn and cane planted, the men went looking for work. They were able to find jobs hauling freight to Globe, Wilcox, Bowie, Grant, St. Thomas, and Douglas. This was during the time that Geronimo and his band of Indians were terrorizing the southern part of the state Ida Dee, daughter of Don Carlos, remembers the Indians peeking in the window and one time while her father was away on a freighting trip, the Indians came and her mother had to give them the last bit of flour and the last piece of bread she had in the house to get them to go and leave them alone.
The third child of Don and Mary Judd (Edna Idella) was the first white child born in Smithville.
A child named Alonzo Judd was born to Hyrum and Mary near Woodruff, Arizona, and a stillborn daughter was born at Pima. On one of the trips to Pima, Ammon Frank’s wife Annie served as a midwife to Hyrum’s second wife, Mary. The child was born in a wagon in which they were traveling. The team stopped at House Rock and a lantern lighted. Both mother and child lived. There was no town near, no.
Call to Settle Dixie
Zadock received a call from the Church late in 1849 to help settle the Little Salt Lake Valley.Some of the volunteers left Salt Lake City on December 7. Zadock’s group arrived at what is now Parowan, January 2, 1850.
Late in 1855, Jacob Hamblin and others were sent to Santa Clara near St. George in Washington County to help settle that area. Zadock Judd agreed to go with him, along with another group from Cedar City and Pinto creek. They spent the winter quarrying rock and building a stone wall. The fort was 100 feet square with a wall two feet thick and eight feet high. Several stone houses were built inside the fort.
Hyrum Judd was called by the Church to help settle Santa Clara in 1857. He must have left his family in Farmington for a time and then returned for them later, because the entire family, including Hyrum, is listed in the 1860 census in Parmington, Davis County, Utah. The ward records in View Idaho give the birthplace of Lucius Hubbard, a son born February 9, 1858, as Farmington. There is some question also whether the next child Lisania, born January 21, 1860, was born in Farmington or Santa Clara. Family tradition indicates that they stayed in Farmington until the approach of Johnson’s Army in 1858.
Hyrum joined Hamblin, brother Zadock and others in Santa Clara where he built another home and started another good orchard. They planted cotton the first few years from seed. It was difficult to separate the cotton from the seed until Zadock invented a crude cotton gin. After that they grew more cotton. The area was also well adapted to growing fruit.
They raised good crops of corn, which was the mainstay of their diet, and sugar cane [aorgo or sweet sorghum] from which they made molasses[syrup Hyrum’s son Ira remarked “we sure did get tired of bread and molasses.” Wheat flour was a luxury, and sugar was too expensive for poor people to buy. 108 Squash vines would climb the trees, and it was not uncommon to see squash growing 10-15 feet up in the trees.
Hyrum, along with his brother-in-law Jacob Hamblin were often called upon to help settle differences with the Indians. The Indians knew and respected these men because they always dealt fairly with them.
One day Hyrum’s son Ira and friend Eff Weston came upon a freshly-made mound of dirt covered with branches and leaves. Their curiosity led them to investigate, and they found some Indian’s winter cache of pine nuts. Both knew they should leave them alone, but the pine nut season was over; they wondered if they could take just a few without being caught.
Hurriedly they took as many as they dared, carefully replaced the covering and rushed home. No one would ever know. Ira’s mouth was fairly watering for a pine nut, but he did not dare crack one His father or mother would surely hear and say “Ira, where did you get your pine nuts?” and he dared not lie to them.
The old Indian, upon discovering his loss, quietly walked into town and passed the school just in time to see the children enjoying his nuts. He went on by without being seen and reported to the boys’ fathers. Were they ever surprised when their fathers told them what they had done! Of course they had to return the nuts that were left and pay for the ones they had eaten.
The older boys were needed to help with the farm work, and Ira resented having to help his mother with the housework. His daughter, Sarah Judd Jackson tells about one of the worst “whippings” he ever got:
It was wash day, and both he and his mother were very tired. His mother, an immaculate housekeeper and not well herself, insisted on him scrubbing the floor in the suds left from washing to save water and soap, As he was on his knees beside the tub scrubbing and grumbling about having to do everything, he happened to lookup and saw his mother crying.”
Life in communities along the Virgin River centered around water or the lack of it. Water was precious and must be used with care. Household water had to be carried in barrels daily, usually before 7 a.m. when the cattle were brought to the river to drink, After the cows had been in the river, the water would be muddy and hardly fit for household use until it had settled. One must never dip a full cup of water from the barrel, but only what he could drink. Waste water was carefully collected to be given to the chickens or water plants in the yard. The Saturday bath water graciously served more than one person and was later used to wash out sox or overalls before wiping up the floor.
The first task in the settlement of a new community was to build a dam and dig a canal. Hereafter constant attention must be given to the dam and canal to keep the water flowing. Despite the desert climate, flash floods were frequent and damaging, destroying crops, ditches, cattle, and even homes.
The rains began in Santa Clara on Christmas Eve 1861, the day the dam and canal were finished, and continued for more than a month. It was impossible to keep bedding and clothing dry. Even with all the pots and pans used to catch the dripping water, dugouts and other shelters gave poor protection. Food spoiled, fires were hard to keep burning and harder to start if they went out. It was a month of misery and suffering for all.
Then came the big flood; in the dark of night in January, 1862. Families were forced to flee to higher ground with what belongings they could carry with them, while their homes and land were washed away.
In the spring of 1864, the Church leaders suggested that some of the families leave the overcrowded Santa Clara settlement and go to some valleys seventy-five miles northwest where it was suitable for dairy farms. This time Hyrum settled in Meadow Valley (now Panaca near Pioche), established a dairy business, and built another house. He received another call in 1865 to help settle the community of Eagle Valley about 20 miles north (Lincoln County).
Once again, we see the extended family moving together-Hyrum Judd and family, his brother Zadock Knapp Judd and family and Hyrum’s married sons and daughters. They built another home and raised two or three good crops. The men and older boys hauled lumber and mining timbers into Pioche 24 miles from Eagle Valley. The houses of Eagle Valley were built close together in the shape of a fort with the school house occupying most of one end. The families lived in the fort for three years as protection against the Indians who continued to be troublesome. In the fall of 1866, a community was surveyed and city lots were laid off and assigned to the families.
Hyrum and his family are listed in the 1870 census at Eagle Valley. His family is listed as “Liza” his wife and children: Junior age 16, Ira age 15, Frank 12, Lyman 10, Eliza 9, Diana 6, Daniel 4, all born in Utah.
When the Mormon families first settled in Eagle Valley, it was thought to be in Utah, but when a later survey showed the area to be a part of Nevada and problems arose over high tax levies, President Young advised the families to move back to Utah settlements. So in the spring of 1871, the Judds moved 200 miles to Kanab, Kane County, Utah.
There were problems with the Indians in Kanab. Settlers who tried to build homes were harassed to the point that Brigham Young directed a fort be built.
Most of the wild game the Indians depended on for food had been killed or driven off. They were starving, so they had determined to drive off the white man. It was Brigham Young’s plan to feed the Indian and teach him how to grow crops and trade their blankets for food. This project was started in the year 1865-66 under the direction of Jacob Hamblin.
When they arrived in Kanab, Hyrum and Zadock cach bought one-half a block where they built homes. Hyrum thought he would like to live in the Panguitch area better than in Kanab, so he sold his property to Zadock and moved to Panguitch in the fall of 1871.
Their first home was in the old fort, When land was plotted the Judds acquired a full block. With the help of his boys, Hyrum built a home on one corner, and as the boys married, they built homes on the other corners. They helped dig the first canal in Panguitch. He purchased farmland in the North Field and land in the South Field across the river and meadow land on the river.” Instead of fencing individual property, a fence was built around all the farmland making one big field. After the crops were harvested, it made a fine pasture for the cows and horses. Hyrum also had meadow land at Panguitch Lake.
In the winter the men worked at the saw mill and fished in Panguitch Lake. They would break the ice and fish through the hole catching barrels of fish and selling them to the people in town.
Hyrum was on the school board in Panguitch and served as the first Justice of the Peace. He performed the marriages of several of his children. At one time he was captain of the Minute Men and worked for two years with Captain Dutton of the Major Powell Surveying crew. Hyrum drove the horsepower with the first threshing company in that part of the state. They went to all the towns around Panguitch and would be gone for months.
Lisania had one of the first sewing machines in Panguitch. An agent from Salt Lake City came selling sewing machines. He had a light spring wagon and team, and one of his horses got sick and died. Hyrum had some nice horses, so he traded one of them for a machine. The ladies from all around came to see and try it out.
Indians were always a worry. While they were not hostile, they were not exactly civilized either. Nancy Norton, first wife of Ira “M” Judd, tells this story.
Nancy’s parents needed to go out of town, so they invited a friend to stay with her while they were gone. It was late in the afternoon after the horses were done but before it was dark enough to light the lamp. The girls were scuffling and rolling on the floor when Nancy glanced toward the bed. To her horror she saw an Indian under the bed stretched out against the wall! She was too frightened to scream, but jumped to her feet and said “let’s get the clothes in. They literally flew out the door and ran all the way to her friend’s home.
Little Colorado Mission
In those days mission calls were usually issued from the pulpit at either general or stake conference. Calls to colonize new areas were given in the same manner. In January, 1876, calls to settle the Little Colorado country were issued. Families usually took no more than a month to get underway and during that time they had to dispose of all their property. This really created a buyer’s market, and the seller almost always lost.
The first parties left Salt Lake City in February 3, 1876 taking two to three months on the road. Advance settlers arrived at Sunset Crossing March 23, 1876.
The route was through Panguitch to Kanab where they generally formed into parties of ten or more families before moving on south. From Kanab the route was over Paria Plateau to Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado. From there they followed Jacob Hamblin’s road south.
Hyrum Judd and his married sons — Hyrum Jerome, Arza “S”, Ira “M”, and Ammon Frank — received their calls to the Little Colorado Mission at the stake conference held in the St. George Temple at the time of its dedication April 6, 1877. Also called was daughter, Jane Lucinda and her husband Joseph Knight. How hard it must have been to give up their comfortable homes in Panguitch and go back to the frontier again.
The boys gathered up some stock and horses on the East Fork near Johnson while Hyrum and Lisania went to Kanab to visit Zadock and family. They brought back grape cuttings and seeds of all kinds that grew in a warm climate. “I [Daniel] remember we had a chicken box fastened on behind one wagon and a plow tied underneath, some harrow teeth in a box, some shovels and axes and that was the size of our farming tools.”
Their departure was some time in October 1877. Jane and Joe Knight took their children to the St. George Temple to be sealed to them on October 12, 1877, and they left soon after that time. Hyrum and Lisania and the younger boys and others left first. Jerome and Joe Knight followed a little later, because they didn’t think it wise to have so many animals together, because of water being scarce.
Daniel Judd, Hyrum’s son, remembers that he and his friend Eph Craig had the job to drive the cattle and loose horses. They had small calves too and had to travel slowly for them. “The calves got sore footed, and we got a rawhide from somewhere. We soaked a piece until it was soft and laced it on over their hoofs for shoes, and they would do fine until it wore out, then we would make another pair.
Grass for the horses along the way was scarce, and without grain they soon became weak making travel slow. At the Big Colorado they made a fine crossing and then up over Lee’s Back Bone, “the worst piece of road that a wagon ever went over.” They laid over at Navajo Springs.
When they reached Black Falls on the Little Colorado, Hyrum wrote a big letter and left it in a split stick for Jerome. They continued on up river arriving at Sunset shortly before Christmas, “a desolate, forbidding- looking place. “
When they left in the fall of 1877, they were headed for the Gila Valley. When they first arrived at Sunset they all talked over joining the United Order, but they did not come to any decision. They all went to work to help finish the fort and moved into some of the houses.
Later when Jerome and Joe Knight arrived (before January 9, 1880 when Jerome’s son, Wilford Woodruff, was born), they talked about it again. Hyrum and Jerome joined the Order in Sunset in Lot Smith’s company. Some went on to Bush Valley (now called Alpine) and then on to the Gila and started the town of Smithville (now Pima). A ward was organized in Sunset, and Hyrum Judd was sustained as a counselor to Bishop Levi M. Savage in 1879.
Joe Knight and others settled Taylor (not the present Taylor) three miles below Joseph City and Obed. It was established in January 1878 and abandoned July 1878 shortly after Joe Knight’s death. He and his family were taken to Sunset on June 26, 1878, and he died there the following night.
The site of Sunset was a little below Sunset Crossing, about four miles below the mouth of Cottonwood Wash on the north side of the river. This was about one mile below and across the river from Ballinger’s Camp.
People were coming and going all the time. Sometimes the houses in the fort were full and at other times half empty. Lisania went back to Panguitch with her sons Frank, Hom (Lucius Hubbard), daughter Jane, and the two younger boys Perry and Lafe.
The first months in Sunset were spent making ditches and planting crops–corn, wheat, sugarcane and squash.
We raised lots of squash, big hard-shell Hubbards. They were mealy and when baked in the ashes were darn good. The young married people would take turns putting in big squash in the coals just before they started to Thursday night meeting.
When meeting was out they would all gather there and have a blowout eating squash, parching corn, singing songs, speaking pieces and playing games. We kids would try to do just as they did, but we had ours in the school house, and about the time the eating was over we would just happen around where they were and listen to them. They would try to get us to sing for them, but we were afraid to try. We could sing when we were out in the shed but not when we were around women folks.
During the summer they got a machine for grinding sugar cane [sorghum.] This was set up in the field along with some vats for boiling. A furnace was built out in the field and they made their own molasses. Once they started making molasses [syrup], they had to work around the clock. There weren’t enough barrels to store it in that year, so they made a big wooden tank. As luck would have it, the molasses in the tank crystallized, and the baker later had to stand on a board on top the molasses and dig it out with a shovel!
When the little Colorado Stake was formed January 27, 1878, Hyrum Judd was sustained as a member of the High Council.
In September 1878 or the spring of 1879, the three camps–Sunset, Brigham City, and St. Joseph-pooled their resources and established a dairy at a place called Pleasant Valley about seven miles north of the sawmill (or Millville as it was called). The site of the dairy, about 24 miles south of Flagstaff, is now covered by the waters of Mormon Lake.17 Since Hyrum understood cheese making, he was appointed as presiding elder. This was the first cheese-making operation in Arizona.
At the dairy, in addition to the usual dairy products of milk, butter, and cheese, potatoes and other vegetables were grown. A number of pigs were also kept to provide pork and lard for the communities. They even tanned some leather and made shoes. In the fall they moved back to Sunset.
It was the job of the younger members of the family to teach the calves how to drink milk from a bucket. Here is how Daniel described it:
Then what was done was to get straddle of their neck, put your left fingers in his mouth and push his head down in the milk. He would start sucking your fingers and would draw the milk into his mouth. After a few times you could draw your fingers out and he would keep on drinking. After a day or two, you just stuck his head in the bucket and he would do the rest.
In 1879 Hyrum went back to Panguitch and took Mary Bowman (Maria Bauman) as a plural wife. According to St. George temple records, they were sealed May 30, 1879. She was a very small woman and younger than some of Hyrum’s children. She was a very happy person. She had a beautiful voice and would sit out on the porch in the evening and sing to her children. The 1880 census of Sunset, Arizona, dwelling 63, family 64 lists Hiram and wife Mary” along with Hyrum’s boys Daniel and Perry.
The 400-mile trip by wagon back to St. George took as long as six weeks round trip, but couples gladly went, so they could be married or sealed in the temple. So many couples followed this pattern that this route became known as the Honeymoon Trail.
Della Judd, granddaughter of Hyrum Jerome Judd and daughter of Wilford Woodruff Judd, describes her parent’s experience traveling this Honeymoon Trail.
My parents wanted to be married in the Temple for time and eternity, so in August 1900, they sold what little they had accumulated, bought one-half interest in a team and wagon with my mother’s brother, Harlow Carlton, and started for St. George, Utah. Another couple joined them, making three couples, two teams and two wagons. I was the only child along, and Mother has told me that I never lacked for attention. They passed through St. David on Christmas Day 1900.
They had many hardships and setbacks on this journey, but never lost sight of their goals. They were snowed in in the mountains near St. George for several days; food gave out, and they were starved. The last half loaf of bread was kept for me, and my Dad (a very fussy eater) was so hungry he would eat the crumbs I dropped. Finally they decided to leave the wagons. The men walked single file to break a trail for the horses on which the women were riding. I was tied on as my mother was too weak to hold me. We arrive in St. George in the middle of February, 1901 and were taken care of in the home of an uncle of my mother’s. My parents were sealed for time and eternity February 19, 1901, and I was sealed to them.
Growing discontent arose among the people in the United Order settlements, especially in Sunset. Lot Smith, the leader there, ruled with an iron hand. He did not have much patience with opinions other than his own and managed the business affairs of the company completely on his own turning all the profits of the company back into livestock. The people under him lived in very poor circumstances because of this. Families in Sunset ate their meals at one large table with Lot Smith seated at the head. He frequently took this time to lecture and discipline his subjects.
In the Order the women and their husbands took turns with the cooking and the dish washing. If there was any complaining by anyone, they had to do double the work. Hyrum was very careful about saying anything wrong, so he wouldn’t have to do the dishes more than his share, as this was a task he disliked very much. One day the biscuits were badly burned. Hyrum said, “Burned on both sides and dough in the middle; just the way I like them.”
Because of poor crops, floods, and other hardships of frontier life, the majority of the families in nearby Brigham City abandoned that settlement the summer of 1880. In 1881 the remaining settlers were released from their missions. The situation must have been much the same in Sunset, and the colonists were eventually forced to abandon Sunset and move on to other localities less hostile. Most of the migrants moved down to the upper Gila River country.
Hyrum went back to Panguitch in the fall of 1880 and got outfitted for another trip to Arizona. This time he brought Lisania his wife and the rest of his family with him. Hyrum Jerome must have accompanied his father on this trip, because he married his second wife in the St. George Temple October 13, 1880. They all hot water, no doctor.
When the polygamy issue came to a head in the mid-1880s, Church authorities advised polygamists to move their families to Mexico. Some went ahead to look for a place to settle and purchase land in Chihuahua about 250 miles from El Paso, Texas.”
Lisania stayed in Pima, Arizona with her two younger sons, and when Lafe moved to Burley, Idaho in 1911 she went with him. The Pima ward records record their move as August 30, 1911. She had a hard life but never complained. Many times she washed clothes on a washboard after her family had gone to bed, because they didn’t have a change.
January 8, 1895 she submitted an application for a Mexican War widow’s pension. Beginning May 21, 1906 she received the sum of $12 per month until she was dropped from the pension rolls September 4, 1917, “because of death, Oct, 14, 1917. (Cassia Stake Records, Burley Second Ward Deaths, give her death as 17 October 1917 and her burial October 20, 1917.)
Following is a transcription of a patriarchal blessing she received a few months before her death:
A Patriarchal Blessing
Given by James England, May 4, 1917
Upon the head of Lisiana Fuller Judd
Daughter of Lucius Hubbard Fuller and Experience Case,
Born at Concord New York on Jan. 25, 1827
Dear Sister Judd; In the name of Jesus Christ, I place my hands upon your head and give unto you a father’s blessing and say unto you, be of good cheer, for God is your Father, he has seen you before you came here and every moment since, and he does this day accept your labors, for you are of Ephraim, a true born daughter of Israel, and have
earned all the blessings pronounced upon Sarah your mother, and now no blessing shall be withheld from you, for you shall go to your loved ones in heaven, who there are waiting with joy to meet you and there you shall be blessed to look down upon earth and see your posterity grow up to serve the Lord, and the adversary shall have no power to take any of them away from the path of duty against their will, and the spirit of the Lord shall work with them, so that they shall be great and powerful in the work of the Lord both with the living and for the dead, so that your name shall be handed down in honorable remembrance until the end of time, and until that time you shall have a posterity to work on the earth. And now dear Sister I seal upon you the blessings of life everlasting and the increasé of eternity, and bless and dedicate you unto the Lord, to go in peace and without pain, and only joy and anticipation of glory and power shall be in your mind until the Lord shall relieve you. And I seal you up to come forth in the morning of the first resurrection, together with your loved ones on the other side to meet those who shall remain on earth, and to be in perfect possession of the power of mind and body which belongs to Eternity. Amen
During his lifetime, Hyrum Judd wore many hats. He was a farmer, teamster, soldier, dairyman, justice of the peace, member of the school board, surveyor, father and husband. Most of all, however he was a pioneer, one who goes ahead and prepares the way. He lived his entire life on America’s frontiers. His pioneering activities began at age thirteen when his family left Ontario and continued for fifty years as he moved again and again throughout his life.
After his marriage he colonized at least nine different locations; each time the process was the same-lay out the town, get the water in (irrigation ditches and dams), build a home, plant crops, and establish orchards.
When he grew to manhood, Hyrum was 5 feet ten inches tall, and weighed 150 pounds. He had a light complexion and brown hair.
He died October 7, 1894 in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and is buried there. According to family sources, he preached a wonderful sermon in church and died at home later that day while Mary was handing him a glass of milk.
Hyrum Judd and his son Hyrum Jerome are buried side by side in the old cemetary plot which is now on the land of a great grandson, Bill Judd. Grave markers were placed several years ago by Helaman Judd, Dave Judd and Bill Judd. The family in the area takes great pleasure in caring for these grave sites.
On May 4, 1991, three members of the National Committee of the U.S. Mormon Battalion went to Colonia Juarez to place a bronze plaque by the graves of three great and noble men who served as members of the Mormon Battalion. Hyrum Judd was one of those so honored. A short service was held at each grave site. An American flag and a beautiful red rose was placed by each marker.
The service for Hyrum Judd consisted of: a prayer offered by John Jerome Whetten (5th gen.); remarks by Col. Paul Madison; a short sketch of Hyrum Judd’s life given by Bill Judd, a great grandson; and a dedicatory prayer given by Executive Com. Russel Madison. There were seven generations represented at the service.
Don Carlos Judd married Mary Ellen Lewis, daughter of Samuel Lewis and Sarah Jane Huntsman, 3 May 1874, in Panguitch, Garfield, Utah.
Obituary of Mary Ellen Lewis Judd, daughter of Samuel Lewis and Sarah Jane Huntsman.
Mary Ellen Judd, prominent pioneer woman of Apache county and also one of the early settlers of the Gila Valley of Arizona, died at one o’clock Monday morning, 31 December 1928 at the home of her daughter Mrs. Eugene Neagle in st. Johns, Arizona. Mrs. Judd had been in bad health for some time due to a hernia, but the day before her death she managed to be up and around.
At the urgent request of her children, who believed a change would do her good, she left home and went to live with her daughter where she died just three weeks later. She was one of the real pioneers of Arizona having lived in Utah 80me years, then moving to Pima, Arizona where she with her husband Don C. Judd lived some fifty years, then they and their children moved in 1903, selling all they had in Pima and buying a new home in Alpine, Arizona.
When a very young girl, Mary married Don C. Judd and was the mother of fourteen children, five boys and nine girls. She was a sister to Keturah Lewis Baker, Laura Lewis McBride and Lula Lewis Layton, all living at this time. The deceased was born at Parowan, Utah 9 May 1859. She would have been seventy years-old. She was the daughter of Samuel Lewis and Sarah Jane Huntsman Lewis, now deceased. They first resided in Pima, Arizona and then moved to Thatcher where Samuel took up a quarter section of farmland.
Coming from Utah to Arizona in 1880 the Judd family brought with them several fine horses, driving them across the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry. It was a long hard journey to a strange land, but they made it to the new town of Pma where they settled down in the west end of town. Here they built a log home. While here Don Judd and his father-in-aw were the first owners of the Indian Hot spring across and northwest of the town of Pima. Here they raised garden and much grain. It was a fine place to live with the hot water running constantly, but the Indiana were bad. They were finally driven off by these red men, nearly lost their own lives and some of their beet mules. After the war was over and the Indiane subdued, they never tried to establish themselves at the springs.
After this Mr. Judd moved to the east end of Pima where the rest of their family was born and several died in infancy.
A quote from a family history: The third child of Mary Judd and husband was called Edna Idella, she wa the first white child born in Pima Smithville, 7 Dec 1879. The town had only been started in April of that year Their log house was built on the lot where Pima’s first church house was built later. Mary tells of her and her sisters going to parties, half of them would go the first half then hurry home and let their sisters take their shoes and finish up the dance. Alford Baker lived just west of the Judd home. His wife Keturah and Mary were sisters. There families both moved to the eastern part of Pima where they built substantial a home. Mary’ husband took up a farm down on the river and later the Baker family moved to old Mexico.
Don Judd was a school trustee in Pima for many year, helped build the new red brick church there. This family lived in this good adobe home for many years, Several of their girls married while living there. Maude the oldest living girl married John Allred and lived just across the street from her childhood home. Her sister Edna married Rudolph Young, she and her husband lived in Safford, Arizona. He was a grandson of Brigham Young. They lived in Safford many years where seven children were born. They later moved to Port Angeles, Washington where they resided the rest of their lives. Sarah Jane Judd, commonly known as “Jennie” was the last child to marry in Pima. She married Angus Whitmer of Central, Arizona, The fathers of both Don and Mary were members of the Mormon Battalion.
These good parents had only three sons grow to manhood. Arza died a tragic death when seventeen years of age. He was out in the meadow on his favorite horse and when he did not come home they went to hunt him. He was found lying on his back in the meadow, he was unconscious and died soon after. No one knew just what happened. This happened in Alpine where the family moved in 1903. They had exchanged places with the McFates. The winters in Alpine were long and cold but they didn’t mind. It was here they spent the rest of their lives.
Richard, another son, was in the service in world war I. He died of the flu in 1918 and his body was shipped home for burial in Alpine. Ernest lived to marry and raise a family.
Mary Judd died at the home of her daughter, Cubah Neagle in St. Johns, Arizona. The funeral services were held here in the LDs church at eleven o’clock on New Year’s Day. She was buried in the Alpine cemetery beside her husband and two sons, Arza and Richard.
Ira was three years old when his father Hyrum Judd was called by the Church to help colonize the Dixie country. They moved a few miles north of St. George, now known as Santa Clara. They lived for a time in Eagle Valley, Nevada, the Muddy Mission and Mountain Meadows over the next twelve or fifteen years.
He said he would never forget the cornbread and molasses, their sole diet when the wheat crop was short or was destroyed by the flood. When the food supply was more plentiful, he told about the young fellows taking a squash to pay their dance ticket. Squash must have been one of their staple products and used extensively, as he told another story about the youngsters roasting a large squash on hot coals and after a dance they would gather and have a squash bust or a “real treat” as he called it.
One day he asked a pretty girl if he could take her to the dance, and she said she needed to have her shoes repaired before she could dance, so he proceeded to put half soles on her shoes and off they went to the dance. He said some of them danced in their bare feet.
When the family left Nevada, they moved to Panguitch, Grandfather Hyrum’ s old home town where he had lived for many years.
A copy from the Journal of Arza Judd
A brief chapter on the life of my mother, Lisania Fuller, born January 25, 1827, Town of Cambridge, County of Niagara, State of New York. Her father was Lucius Hubbard Fuller, born 1800 in the state of New York. His wife was Experience Case born 1805 in state of Michigan. Her grandfather was Jabez Fuller. His wife name of Lois Hubbard. Bother were born in New York, date not known.
Lisania Fuller was married to Hyrum Judd June 27, 1844. They lived in Nauvoo and vicinity. Her father’s people were of the old Puritan stock from Hartford Conn. and along the Atlantic seaboard. She was of the direct line of Samuel J. Fuller, Ship Surgeon and physician of the Mayflower. Here mother’s people were from Michigan and accounted wealthy for those times.
Her parents lived in Warsaw at the time of her marriage to Hyrum Judd. Warsaw was about fourteen miles from Carthage Jail, where the prophet Joseph was killed. The morning after the massacre they returned to Nauvoo.
Soon after her marriage, Lisania Filler Judd was baptized and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Her husband was a member prior to that time. From then on they cast their lot with the Saints, sharing their hardships and drivings. They were camped at Council Bluffs, Iowa when the call was made for volunteers to recruit the Mormon Battalion. Her husband was among the first to enlist, and join in the great march across the desert continent. Many times had the writer sat and listened to her tell of trials and sufferings from cold, hunger and sickness, often without shelter, during the cold bleak winter she was left to [shi…] for herself. In that critical time of her life her first child (first son, Hyrum Jerome) was born in February. The hardships she endured were almost past believing.
The next spring she managed to get back to her parents where she remained until the return of her husband a year later. They emigrated to Salt Lake Valley in 19850 and settled in Farmington, where she lived until the approach of Johnson’s army in 1858. At that time the call came to settle Southern Utah, and they were called to help settle Santa Clara.
Some years later they were called to Meadow Valley, (now Panaca) near Pioche. Later they moved to Eagle Valley about 20 miles north. Later a wide strip on the west side of Utah was cut off, and the new line moved east. They remained there until 1871 when they moved to Panguitch at the headwaters of the Sevier river. Here they built a comfortable home.
Her sons alsop built homes and acquired land and were getting comfortably situated. They were not rest for long. Her husband was soon called to help settle Arizona, also asked to bring his family. They settled Sunset and he joined the United Order. During her life on the frontier she had given birth to 14 children.
She with some of her sons moved the Gila river where she lived with her youngest son Lafayette for many years. He was still single. After his marriage some years later in 1910 she moved with him to Idaho, where she lived until October 17, 1917. She died at the home of her son Arza, at the advanced age of ninety years. She left a posterity of about 400 souls. She died as she had lived, “True to the Faith”. Her life was spent in service to humanity. A typical pioneer–unafraid of hardships and dangers of frontier life. As wife, mother and homebuilder she had few equals, and there were none better. Her name is held in fond remembrance, and honored by a host of friends,both living and dead. Through the sacrifice and fortitude of such women was it possible to settle the frontier.
HIRAM JUDD LETTER TO ZADOK KNAPP JUDD
[ MS 21598, Pages 60-63, Panguitch, Utah 7 May 1876 ]
Dear brother,
My excuse for not writing to you before has been the same as yours and now I cannot say half that I wish to for I am not gifted in sharing my thoughts on paper but I will tell a little of what I have done in Salt Lake City. Aunt and I were baptized and sealed for the list of names that I will send you—18 people. Wee had Lois, Sabra and Rachel Knap sealed to grandfather Knap and his wife elizabeth turner, and also for his sons and sons-in-law, and, and their wives. Gti(?) Knap and wife,Dan Knap and wife, luke knap and wife, David Knap and wife, Bebe Pangborn and wife, Job Holisington and wife. I have done nothing for father. sister lois was snowed in at home and could not come tomy aid, but I shall now rest easy until I have accomplished a work for him.
Dear brother, I long to see you and talk with you. I cannot satisfie my feelings on paper. I wish yourself and family could come and pay us a visit. I shall go and see you as soon as I can. Myself and 4 of my boys have formed an order of our own as there is no order of our own as there is no order here to join. We have in about 30 acres of grain and are sowing in an acre of potatoes. The boys have taken a lot of cutting logs amounting to over five hundred dollars which they finish in July.
The breaking up of the order has been hard on me, but I think with the Blessing of the lord we shall this fall be on our feet again. We are all well at present and fondly hope his will you and yours the same. May the peace and blessing of our kin, father and god be with you, and yours and all that desire to further the cause of our God.
My family send their kind regards to you all. I remain as ever.
Hiram Judd
Hyrum Judd Whitmer Stories
Hyrum Judd is my third Great- Grandfather Hyrum and his brother Zadock traveled to Sharpee’s Point (later call Winter Quarters) where they enlisted in the Mormon Battalion. The main company had been enrolled 16 July 1846 but their company did not catch up with the rest until July 20th•
Hyrum was a teamster in Company E and took one of the first wagons across the continent. Cousin Arza Erastus Hinkley also enlisted in the Battalion.
Lisania stayed in Council Bluffs (Kanesville) through the winter where she suffered greatly from cold hunger and sickness, often without shelter. Just sever months after Hyrum left, a son, Hyrum Jerome, was born in a wagon box In February.
The hardships she endured were almost past believing. She made buckskin gloves and men’s pants to help sustain herself and child. From Council Bluffs, Lisania, the baby, and her younger brother, Lucius Hubbard Fuller, made their way back to their parents’ home in Warsaw where they stayed until Hyrum returned for them.
The Battalion was a long and difficult march. Often the men marched through bad weather and without much food. In places they found themselves cutting new roads, They were required to march long hours in order to make the trip as scheduled and before supplies ran out.
The soldiers were frequently sick, but reporting in sick, was avoided if at all possible, because Doctor Saunder’s treatment was considered worse than any sickness. He administered calomel and Strychnine to all from the same old spoon. (Strychnine is a strong poison; only a small amount is needed to produce severe effects in people. It can cause extremely serious adverse health effects including death.
Today strychnine is used Primarily as a pesticide particularly to kill rats. A sick man was compelled to take the medicine, have it forced down him, or be left: on the plains.)
They saved the beef for work animals and were not allowed to use them for food unless they ‘gave out.’ As tough as the animals must have been, they were eagerly devoured, even to the hides, tripe and entrails.
At first they had no cooking utensils, so they mixed dough by hollowing a place in the flour (still in the sack) and pouring water into it. Once the dough was mixed, they cooked it on a stick over the open fire .
Someone managed to stow away a violin and there were several good fiddlers in the battalion; so when they could, they refreshed themselves by dancing. There were no girts, but that didn’t matter. Some would take the girts’ part and a lively dance would begin and continue into the evening .
The men were half-starved when they arrived at the Pacific in January. They were housed at the San Luis Rey Mission where they contracted body lice. Daily rations were five pounds of “gooo fat beef ’ for each man .
When the Battalion disbanded 16 July 1847, Hyrum acquired some ponies and he, along with Zadodc and forty to one hundred other men, went north to Sutter’s Fort east of San Francisco and started over the mountains to Salt Lake Valley. At the Truckee
River near Donner Pass, they met Samuel Brannan with word from the Council of the Twelve that provisions were scarce in the Valley. Unless they had supplies to last until the next harvet or were traveling through to Winter Quarters, they were encouraged to return to California.
Hyrum continued on to Salt Lake and got there in time to go back with a company to Winter Quarters. Zadock stayed in California and found work in a tailor shop in Monterey. Some of the others stopped at Sutter’s to help dig a mill race. Battalion members were at Sutter’s Mill 24 January 1848 when gold was discovered. Zadock later quit his tailor job in Monterey and worked panning gold at Sutter’s Mill.
Zadock and others made their way up over the mountains the next spring cutting a road across the Sierras and arriving the Salt Lake Valley in September 1848 where he found his step-mother Jane who had arrived in the Valley the year before .
Hyrum went back to Illinois, got his wife and son, and moved to Potawattaml County, Iowa where daughter Jan Lucinda was born 2 May 1849. In the fall of 1849 he brought his wife and two children, a two year-old boy and a baby girl, on to the Salt Lake Valley. They stayed a few days in Salt Lake and then sett1ed fifteen miles north of the City.
Hyrum’s sister Rachel married the famous Jacob Hamblin, missionary to the Lamanites. This story is told by Marlene Bateman Sullivan:
“When word came from Church leaders to move west, Jacob’s wife refused to go but she told him to go and take the three children with him. Jacob needed help with his motherless family and relied on the Lord. In a dream he saw a widow and two children in a log cabin. At the same time a widow, Rachel Judd, had a feeling that her future husband would soon call at her cabin. Jacob went to her home, introduced himself, and explained that he had been impressed
to ask her to be his wife. She agreed and they were married on 30 September 1849, came to Utah the next year, and were later sealed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake Oty.
Jacob Hamlin and Rachel came West in Aaron Johnson’s Company leaving in the spring of 1850. A marriage record for Rachel Judd and a James M. Henderson, 13 February 1841, is found in Hancock County, Illinois. They were later divorced and Henderson remarried in Hancock County. In the above quote Rachel is referred to as a widow. In those days a divorced woman was referred to as a ngrass widow”, one whose husband was still living. If the husband were dead, she was called a nsod .widow.”
This story about Hyrum Judd and the Mormon Battalion came from the book “Hyrum Judd-Ontario to Chihuahua: 1824-1894# written by Ileen Judd Johnson and Hilga Judd Frier.