(Great granduncle of the contributor, Richard N. Heywood)
William Coleman Sr.
(See also entry on Find A Grave)
William
Coleman Sr.
As told
by Mrs. George A. (Edith Fern Coleman) Bowden, Granddaughter
As
a boy, Grandfather knew the sacrifices required of a convert family whose
comfort and security in England were traded for sacrifice and toil in
America. He had been born December 9,
1836, in a handsome, two-story home on the large farm his parents owned in
Thorncote[3],
England. The first seven years, which he
shared with his two brothers and three sisters in England, (a sister was born
in Nauvoo in 1842) anticipated a life of security and comfort. There was money enough for plenty of hired
help both inside and outside the house, for splendid household furnishings, and
enough left over for the tiny luxuries that make life pleasant.
But
the life to which Grandfather was born was not the life he was to lead. At the age of seven he set sail with his
family from Liverpool, England. His
parents had sold their comfortable way of life for the opportunity to practice
their newly adopted Mormon religion among the saints in Nauvoo,
Illinois. They arrived at the Port of
New Orleans and traveled by river steamer up the Mississippi to their
destination. Upon their arrival at
Nauvoo they stayed at the home of Hyrum Smith, brother of the prophet Joseph
Smith. After a short time, they made
permanent residence at a place called Peck’s Farm.
Grandfather’s
eighth year saw the cruel martyrdom of the prophet Joseph and his brother
Hyrum. The same year confronted him with
two more deaths of an even more personal nature, the death from typhoid of his
father and his eldest sister, Sarah.
Gove was the comfortable security of the life in England. It had been exchanged for the hard life of
the Mormon Pioneer, a life that introduced hate, death, and poverty to
Grandfather in quick succession.
The
six years to follow were spent in avoiding, with his family, the mob
persecutions that drove the “saints” ever westward. Through these years Grandfather and his two
older brothers, George and Prime Jr., worked at odd jobs to hold the family
together and outfit it for the long trek across the prairie and over the
mountains to The Valley of the Great Salt Lake.
In
1850, when Grandfather was yet a youth of fourteen years, the fatherless family
set out on the final exodus to Salt Lake City.
They arrived in June of the next year and made their home in Lehi[4]
where the three young brothers shared the tasks of building a new life in the
wilderness. They cleared the land,
planted crops, and built with their own hands one of the first permanent stone
homes in Lehi, a home that still stands today.
Grandfather
has said that at the time of his marriage, in 1856, he owned only one pair of
pants, and they were made of buckskin.
He was married at the age of twenty in those buckskin pants to Amy
Gibson, a girl of eighteen. Grandfather
has said many times that he could never understand what his young bride had seen
in him, for, as he expressed it, “I was ill-educated, poor as a “church mouse,”
and not too darn much to look at.
It
was about 1861 that Grandfather moved his family, which now consisted of a boy,
William, Jr. and a girl, Phebe, to the tiny settlement of Smithfield[5], a
move of more than one hundred miles north.
So for the third time in a quarter of a century Grandfather was setting
out to shape a new life for himself in a strange land.
He
arrived in Smithfield with no home in which to place his wife, who as now
almost ready to bear their third child.
With the ingenuity of the true pioneer, he set up a temporary household
in a cave near Smithfield. It was in
this cave that his son, Benjamin, was born.
It was only a short time before he found permanent quarters for his
family.
A
second home soon had to be provided, however, for in 1864, under the sanction
of the Church laws of polygamy, Grandfather took a second wife, Edith Weeks,
the woman who was to become my Grandmother.
He built a one-room frame house for her about eight blocks west of the
Smithfield’s Main Street. Years later,
father built a second room on the house when he was only a boy. It was in this room, on a table by the back
door, that Grandmother kept a jar of pickled onions which was never empty in
spite of the many short visits made to it by her grandchildren throughout the
day. You might say the doorknob never
got dry.
I
remember this little house so vividly as a girl, for Grandfather and
Grandmother Coleman were our nearest neighbors.
Only an irrigation ditch separated the two properties. As we stepped west, to their side, an old log
granary, shared by Father and Grandfather, stood on the right. Attached to each side of this building were
the buggy shed and the work shops where tools were kept in perfect order. When these tools were borrowed, as they often
were, it was the rule that they be promptly returned in good condition and hung
in their proper place. Back of these
buildings stood a number of fruit trees in tall orchard grass. Standing among the group was a favorite apple
tree with branches that hung close to the tin roof of grandfather’s coal
shed. We children of the neighborhood
would climb atop this shed to fill our aprons with the sweet apples that grew
on that particular tree. The noise of
the falling apples and the hurrying feet on the tin roof would soon bringing
Grandfather out with his dire threats of consequences that would follow if we
should cause the roof of the shed to leak.
But as he attacked from the rear of the shed, we hellions retreated from
the front, leaving him and his shouts far behind.
Anxious
to gain security for his family, Grandfather had homesteaded two sections of
land shortly after his arrival in Smithfield.
One had been taken out in his own name, the other in the name of his
eldest son, William, Jr. It was this
property, located southwest of Smithfield, that became known as the Coleman
Ranch.
We
youngsters used to enjoy the occasional
rides to the ranch with Grandfather in his little buckboard. It is with great pleasure that I recall the
musical rumble of the planks as we crossed the bridges that spanned the many
sloughs, for much of the countryside that now has been drained and planted to
crops was then traversed by meandering streams that kept the acres of
pastureland green. These streams were
fed by several fresh water springs.
Grandfather would often stop the buggy on these trips and encourage us
to drink the cool spring water. Though
it was sparkling clear, it carried a definite mineral taste. “It’s good for you,” Grandfather persistently
claimed.
Grandfather,
having enriched my childhood with his love and understanding, passed away when
I was in my early teens. He died of a
heart attack the evening of February 12, 1910, at the age of seventy-four years
in the little house in which he and Grandmother had live so many years.
[1] "NORTHILL, a parish in the hundred of Wixamtree,
county Bedford, 3 miles N.W. of Biggleswade, its post town. The village, which
is small, is situated on the road from Biggleswade to Bedford, and near the
river Ivel. It is chiefly agricultural, but straw-plaiting and lace-making are
carried on to a small extent. . . “ http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/BDF/Northill/
[2]
See also “History of William Clayton” in Family
Search Family Tree https://familysearch.org/photos/stories/2677849
[3] “Thorncote Green (often known only as Thorncote) is a hamlet located in the Central
Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England. The settlement is located to ...” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorncote_Green
[4] LEHI “ A group of Mormon pioneers settled the area now known as Lehi in
the fall of 1850, at a place called Dry Creek, in the northernmost part of Utah Valley, near the
head of Utah Lake. It was renamed Evansville in 1851, after
David Evans, a local bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi,_Utah#History
[5] SMITHFIELD is a city in Cache County,
Utah. Originally known as Summit Creek,
Smithfield was founded in 1857 by Robert Thornley and his cousin Seth Langdon
who were sent north from Salt Lake City by Brigham Young to found a settlement
on Summit Creek. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield,_Utah#History
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