William Daybell
2nd Great Grandfather
Birth Date: 24 Feb 1858
Birth Place: Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England
Parents: Finity and Mary Draper Daybell
Death Date: 29 Nov 1945
Death Place: Heber, Utah
Spouse: Annie Price
Marriage Date: 12 Nov 1877
Marriage Place: Utah
Life History of
Patriarch William Daybell
I, William Daybell having a desire for some years to write a
biographical sketch or history of my life and of my parents and of my brothers
and sisters, I am writing this for the benefit of my children, my
grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, my great-great grandchildren, and of all
who may read it, that it may be a benefit unto them, as I have passed through
quite a number of years. And I shall
give this sketch from memory, asking the Lord to bless me that I may speak
words of truth, that my mind may be opened up and my intellect quickened for
this purpose.
Now, I am William Daybell, the son of Finity and Mary Draper
Daybell, born February 24, 1858, the youngest son. I was born of poor parents who never had more
than the necessary comforts of life, and at times not that. My father was born in 1815, March 14; my
mother was born in 1820, on the 9th day of January.
They struggled along in life, bringing forth their
posterity, and as my father had been raised on a farm, he had to work for his
own living from a mere boy, whereby he was called a farmer’s boy. He worked on the farm the early part of his
life, and he had the privilege of working on the first railroad that was built
in England. He married my mother and
they kept house, rented, struggled along.
Times were hard, labor was scarce, it was hard to get money. At one time they got so poor that they had to
go to the Poor House, but they didn’t remain there very long, for it was a very
great trial for my mother. She had two
children at that time, and when they went into that institution, they took the
older child away from her and put him in a room with other children. He cried very much, and my mother could hear
him crying and she wanted them to bring him to her, but they would not. But he got so fretful and so bad that they
had to bring him to his mother, which was a comfort to my mother to get him
back. My father worked in the Poor House
at a mill with other men; they ground corn and worked very hard. And circumstances were such that they had to
put up with those things. But through
the trials that they had and the work they did they went out of the Poor House again
and endeavored to keep their family.
They left the Poor House and kept house again, and during the time of
1841 and 1842, there were great trials that came upon them.
But the Mormon elders came through that part of the country
and they listened to the gospel as it was taught by those elders. My father was the first one to believe in their
teachings; my mother couldn’t believe the gospel for a long time, it didn’t
sound so plain to her as it did to my father.
The elders taught that they must gather to Zion, and she had great dread
of crossing the ocean. But, they finally
received the gospel at the time when they had one child, the oldest boy, whose
name was Robert, and in 1844 they embraced the gospel. And then they had another child born unto
them, a girl who was born after they had received the gospel. And the testimony that was given to my mother
when she was baptized caused them to have a desire to emigrate to Zion. When she came up from the waters of baptism;
fear of the ocean, of leaving her home, had all left her. She, from that time on, had a desire to go to
Zion. When she came up from the waters
of baptism, fear of the ocean, of leaving her home had all left her. She, from that time on, had a desire to go to
Zion. So, from then on, they labored
diligently to try to get means and money to take their family to America.
And after years of toil the time came when they thought that
they could send some of their family in advance. And so, in the spring of 1863, the two oldest
daughters made up their minds that they would leave their home and parents and
go to Zion, as my father then had money enough to send two of them in
advance. But, when the time came for
them to depart, after both of them getting ready, the elder sister concluded
she would not go. She was going with a young
man who persuaded her to stay with him, which she did. But the younger of the two left her home with
a company of saints to cross and come to America, which she did. She landed in America alright; with neither
father, mother, nor brothers, nor sisters, but she thought she could find
friends when she got to Utah. As she got
to the Camping Grounds in Salt Lake City, she was asked if she had any friends
or relatives to go to and she told them no, but there were some friends of her
parents in American that had emigrated to Utah, and she thought if she could
find them that she would have friends.
And so they asked her where she could find her friend and she told them
that they lived in Provo. So they made
arrangements and she got on a load of grain behind a team and went to Provo, a
distance of forty miles, and she found one family of the saints whom she had
known. She went to them, but they came
up by way of Provo Canyon at a time when there was scarcely any road, and came
up to Wasatch County and visited with a family that were neighbors of her
parents back in England. They had
settled in what is now known as Charleston.
And she visited their home late in the season—the latter part of
November. And they couldn’t take care of
her, the man lay sick in bed and he had two women, so that there was no room
for her there, and so she passed on again, started to walk to Salt Lake City by
way of Parley’s Canyon. A neighbor, a
man by the name of Isaac Decker, who lived in Charleston, was going to Salt
Lake City and overtook her on the road and picked her up and took her into Salt
Lake City. She tried again to get a home
amongst friends whom she knew, but she couldn’t get a place to stay for a
considerable length of time. At last,
she got a home with a brother and sister who belonged to the Church, who took
good care of her, for she had a good home and remained with them till the next
fall when her parents came.
I now will go back to England at the time that she had left,
which was in the spring of 1863. My
father and my two brothers still worked on for money that the rest of the
family might emigrate in the next spring, which we did. In the spring of 1864, preparations were made
for the family to leave, but in figuring up the money that they had, they found
that they did not have enough for all of the family to emigrate to Zion. So, the oldest boy, Robert, said to his
father, “Father, I will remain and the other children go. I will remain and earn money and come a year
later.” And that was the agreement. So that the family consisting of father and
mother and three children left England on the 21st day of May, 1864,
going to Liverpool, then to the sailing vessel to cross the ocean. The name of the vessel was General McClellen.
It was a long voyage, traveling from the 21st of
May till the 23rd of June, making one month and two days on the
ocean. The voyage was a dreary one. We were put down in what they called the hold
of the vessel; our berths were down in the bottom of the ship. We took that part because it was cheaper to
come third class than to come first class, as money was scarce.
My youngest sister and I were great chums together; in fact,
we were together all the time. One day
my father came to my mother and said, “I will go and get some of those biscuits
which they have on deck for the children to eat.” They called them sea biscuits, and he went to
get some of them. My sister and I
thought we were going to get something good to eat, like gingersnaps, but when
they came it was a great drawback to us to find that they were a very hard
cracker made of flour and water backed hard, with a little dent on the
top. We could not sink our teeth into
them they were so hard. Mother used to
put some sugar on them and give them to us to eat, but we couldn’t eat them,
and we used to go up on deck of the vessel, eat the sugar off and throw the
crackers into the ocean.
And so we journeyed along.
There was one very exciting time, the sail that hung over the cook house
took fire, and it was thought that the vessel would burn. The saints got very
excited, they cried and shouted and ran about the vessel saying that salt water
would not put out the fire. But when the
sailors got the hose and pumps to working the blaze was soon put out and no damage
done, but the loss of the sail. At another
time, we were in a great storm that came up in the ocean, and as we were in the
bottom of the vessel we were tossed about.
Mother came to us children in the morning, the ship had been tossing all
night, and she wanted to give us something to eat. She had a large box which she had brought
from England and in it was food for us to eat.
She got to where we were, we had got out of our berths in the morning,
and she came to the box to get us some food, and as she got to the box a great
wave came and tossed the vessel and she threw herself onto the box and it took
her across the bottom of the vessel to the other side, through the slush and
water that was on the bottom of the boat, and as the waves rose again they
brought her back to where we were. She
had had a ride across the bottom of the vessel, and then she gave us our
food. And they kept us fastened down in
the bottom of the boat for twenty-four hours, the storm was so bad. We pulled through that all right, but later
on the winds did not blow in the right direction. As we had to go by sail, we had to go by the
way the wind would take us, and it took us off from our path into the northern
seas many miles out of our course. While
there, the vessel was amongst the icebergs, and the captain called the people
on deck to look at them, and while the people were looking at the icebergs which
were like mountains floating in the water, a great whale came up and we saw the
whale, which was a grand sight, as we had not seen anything of this kind.
But fortune turned again and the wind turned in the right
directions and took us on our journey.
There was nothing of much consequence happened from then on, only
through the death of a child that was buried in the ocean. As I was a little boy, I knelt down by the
side of the sailor who was to put the child into the ocean. After the sermon, the child was placed on the
end of a plank, weights put to its feet, and then the plank was shoved over the
side of the vessel, the baby on one end, the sailor holding onto the other end,
and after the prayer was said and the minister said amen, the sailor tipped u
the board and the child slipped off into the ocean. I happened to be a little boy and was by the
side and saw it go, while the people in general rushed to the side of the
vessel to see it go into the ocean, but it had vanished sometime before that.
We then went on our journey smoothly, landing in New York,
June 23rd. They then unloaded
us from that vessel and put us on a large flat boat which ran up the river by
steam. They took all that load of
emigrants, which were eight hundred, and they took us up the river for miles,
and then, according to my recollection, they unloaded us from the boat and put
us on the railroad, putting us in cattle cars, not in cars of other kinds. Those emigrants were all loaded into cattle
cars, and then they took us up into Nebraska, which was then called the Camping
Ground for the saints. We then had to
remain two weeks waiting for the ox teams to come from Utah to take us across
the plains. It was very disagreeable while
we were camping there. I have heard my
mother say it would rain nearly every day, and they had but little
shelter. They were very uncomfortable,
having scarcely enough to eat.
But the time came when the teamsters with ox teams came, and
the company of saints of eight hundred was divided and put into different
trains. The company was so large it took
two trains to bring them to Utah. They
put us in Captain Warren’s train, a train of eighty wagons, two yoke of oxen at
an average to the wagon, and we started across the plains to Utah, traveling
from about the 25th of July until the 4th day of
October. During that journey we had some
trying times from sickness, but very few deaths. I remember so well as a boy, walking with my
father as far as I could walk each day, which was generally all day, with my
father. Night would come and the train
would be brought into the camp, the wagons all put in a circle, one wagon tongue
run under the other until it mad a corral or a safe place to yoke up the cattle
and handle them when we wanted to depart in the morning. It was a grand sight to see that encampment
of all those saints, four hundred of them and the teamsters. And the fires would be made within that
circle and the younger people would enjoy themselves, sometimes at dancing on
the bare ground, sometimes other amusements.
When the fires were all a burning in that circle it was a grand sight,
and many time would I go with my mother when the train stopped at night to get
fuel to make the fire. My mother would
go and pick up the dry buffalo chips and I would help her and carry them to make
our fire. My father would get some wood
if there was any to be got.
And so the time passed on.
Everything went nicely. We
crossed the plains when Indians were very bad.
In fact, they killed a great many things, those who were called the
gentiles, but they did not molest us, as a general thing, those who were known
to be Mormon emigrants. They used to
visit our train, great numbers of them, and talk with the people. The captain would give counsel to the people
to not be too free with the Indians, for that some of the emigrant children had
been take from some of the trains as they passed through. On one occasion when our train had got on the
road and was starting out in the morning, I remember being with my father who
always used to walk in head of the train, and we saw the overland stage coming. They were not on the road; they were coming
around through the prairie, four horses on the stage coach coming at a fast
speed. They came in front of our train
and warned the captain to be very careful for the Indians were burning a ranch
house on the road ahead and for us to be on the lookout. So we went on and we walked in head of the
train. It wasn’t long till we came in
sight of the burning cabin; the Indians had set it afire. The rancher and his wife had left their home
that morning in care of the hired man.
Just as we go close to the burning wreck the roof of the building fell
in. We went to the burning building
close to where the well stood in front of the building. The Indians had taken the feather beds out of
the house and had emptied them into the well and taken the ticks. Right in front of the well lay the hired man
who had been killed by the Indians. As a
boy, I remember so well of him lying with his head leaning up against the well
curb with a bullet in his forehead. It
struck terror to my soul. Out in the
little corral close by; lay two beautiful cows dead with arrows sticking in
them. And so that is the first adventure
we had with the Indians.
But, there was a gentile train which traveled about
twenty-four hours ahead of our train, keeping close to the Mormons for
safety. They were loaded with freight
going across the country to California.
So, one day, as we traveled we came to the train, the Indians had killed
all the men, set the wagons on fire, took the wagons cover and such things as
were of use to them, and had left. They had strewn the freight over the ground,
boxes of goods of one kind or another, and as we passed by, tires would be falling
from the wheels of the wagons as they were burning, which was a dreadful sight
for the company of saints. But, we were
told by our captain not to touch a thing, as the government would send men and
take care of the boxes and of the remains of the men.
So, as we traveled on, we used to come to places where the
Indians had buried their dead in their form of burying, whereby they put up
four poles in the ground about seven feet high and would cover the top with limbs
of trees and then wrap their dead in blankets, mostly red blankets, and lay
them on top of the poles. Sometimes we
would come to where several were buried in that way. On another occasion we saw where they had
buried one in a large cottonwood tree up in the branches. Some of the young men climbed the tree to see
what was in the blanket and there they found the body of the Indian. The Indians had placed with the blanket his
bow and his arrows, a cup of milk and some bread, food for him to go into
eternal life, as they thought.
And so this was our experience as we traveled that dreary
road, day after day, week after week. We
came to large rivers to cross, and I have held onto my father’s hand and I have
waded the streams with him, sometimes stepping in a hold and going in over my
head. He would lift me out again and we
would cross over unto the other side, and so would hundreds of saints, cross
those streams. The weather was generally
nice and warm and no serious results happened from our being in the water, and
we had generally pretty fair health while traveling that long and dreary road.
But the time came that we were nearing Utah, and the word
went ahead that Captain Warren’s train was nearing its destination. My sister, whom I have spoken of who was
already in Utah, learned of our arrival, that the train was coming. The good lady that she lived with hitched up
a yoke of oxen and put it on the little wagon they had with a wagon bed on it,
and she and my sister came to meet the train.
They came by the way of Parley’s Canyon down through Silver Creek
Canyon, down through Coalville, and met our train at the mouth of Echo
Canyon. They then transferred us from
the wagons we had been in so long into their wagon, and as they had both food
and bedding they loaded all our things into their wagon and we left the train
to go on its way, coming back the way that they had come through Silver Creek
and by way of Parley’s Canyon. We had to
camp one night of on the road, and I shall never forget that night. We stopped in a log house by the side of the
road. The people who lived there were
great friends of this lady who had us in her wagon. They took good care of us that night, and my sister
had food prepared and we had our first meal of good solid food, the first that
we had since leaving England. We used to
fry our cakes and bacon by the camp fires by the road side, but this food was
put on a table, and was well prepared, and we had a very choice supper. As a little fellow, I enjoyed the meal so
much that I was quite ill for a time after.
My mother doctored me through, and I got well.
The next day we reached the home in Salt Lake City, where my
sister lived. They took care of us for a
time. We reached there, I will say, on
the 4th of October. The
gentleman of the house then helped my father to get a little house to put his
family in, which they found located in a big wheat field. It was just a shack, a little log place,
cracks all around, a dirt roof, no window, but a door it had. We then lived in that little house from that
time in October until the 24th day of December. My mother would go out in the field and glean
wheat, and I would be by her side and my sister with me, and we would help her
pull the sack along and pick up the heads of wheat. She labored in that way, day after day, until
she gleaned enough wheat that when it was thrashed she had gleaned twelve
bushels of wheat, which was of great benefit to us as a family, for food was
hard to get. In the little cabin where we were, we had no furniture, the table
that we had to use was that big box my mother brought across the ocean. We sat on little boxes and stools around that
big box to eat our meals, and so we continue that way for two months and twenty
days.
During this time my father found a Mormon elder by the name
of Joseph E. Taylor who had been to my home in England as a missionary. He had been in Utah a considerable length of
time and he had property. He had a farm
out in Wasatch County, and he wanted to get a farmed to go on to that
farm. And so the arrangements were made
with my father that he should come into Wasatch County and take charge of
Joseph E. Taylor’s farm, which was located in what is now Charleston, but had
no name at that time whatever. It was
called Stringtown or a little branch of the Church. So friends came from Wasatch County and brought
us from Salt Lake City and landed us at this little home in Charleston on
Christmas Eve of 1864, the 24th day of December. When we arrived at that little home; it was a
log house about fourteen by sixteen feet, the walls I would judge, were seven
feet high, it had a dirt roof and a big chimney and a fireplace at the south
end of the building, the floor was poor.
When we got there that evening there was about twelve inches of snow on
the ground. We found a man and his two
wives living in that house. The husband
was sick in bed; he had a sore leg that confined him to his bed all the
time. The two women could not chip the
wood very well, so they would go out to the fence and get poles and bring them
in through the door and into the fire place, leaving the door open while they burned
the pieces off of the end of the poles piece by piece until they could shut the
door, and that was the way they kept warm.
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