William Daybell
2nd Great-Grandfather
This is post 2 of William Daybell's Life History, continuing from the first post
Now here we were, a family of five more, for my one sister
Sarah had remained in Salt Lake City. We
were all crowded into that one little house.
My mother had left a good home in England, a good cook oven to cook her
food, had chairs and tables and furniture, but when she came to this little
home, it seemed dreary and dark. There
was no window, if I remember right, in that little house. But what were we to do? How were we to sleep? There was no room for all of us in the house
as there were already one man and two women.
And I will say before going further that one woman left the home and got
away to go to Salt Lake, I think by the team that brought us that night,
leaving then only two of them in the house.
But, there was a dugout made close to the house and my mother made a bed
for us three children in the dugout and there we slept all that long dreary
winter. There was a big government wagon
bed that sat back of the cow shed out by the corral, and my father got bundles
of willows and built them up around that wagon bed, put a straw covering over
the top and they made their bed in that wagon bed, and there they slept all
winter, getting out some mornings and finding that a foot of fresh snow had
fallen. We would get out and get the
wood and get into the house where we could have something to eat. The snow fell so deep that winter, that by
spring it was said to be six feet deep.
It was a trying time; our health was pretty fair considering the state
of the country. Our nearest neighbor was
about a fourth or a half a mile away, a family by the name of Noakes. There was the father and the mother and four
sons and one daughter in that house. We
saw those children that winter without shoes upon their feet. They would travel through the snow or on top
of the snow and would visit our home and we would visit theirs. And oh, as we went along towards the spring
of the year, we could run upon the top of the snow and go to the Noakes home,
and as a boy I got many a piece of corn bread and molasses, for it seemed that
I was always hungry. My sister and I
were growing children and were always hungry.
The food that we had to live on in our home that winter was made from
flour that was black from smut, but my mother would bake it in the big kettle
by the side of the fire place and we would eat of the food that was on the
ranch. There were two or three cows and
a few sheep, and I think we had some milk and some butter. We made a living of it some way or another,
as I can’t remember just all the details, But I do remember along in the first
of March my father hitched up a yoke of oxen that was on the place, hitched
them to the running gears of the wagon and he drove them down in the river
bottom on the top of the snow. It was
frozen so hard it would hold up the oxen and the wagon and a load of willows,
dry and green, which he brought up to burn.
Spring came and the man and the woman that were in the house were taken
to Salt Lake. He had lain all winter
with this sore leg. When they took him
to Salt Lake he had his leg cut off twice, pieces of it, and at last it had to
be uncoupled from the joint, but yet he lived on for several years after
that. His wife died first; he made such
a trouble of the death of his wife that one day he went to her grave, took
poison and died lying across her grave. That was the end of that family.
So, in the spring of 1865 it was a late spring, the snow was
so deep it was along the latter part of May before my father could put in the
grain, and being put in so late in the spring it caused it to be quite late in
getting ripe in the fall. The little
that we had just as it was getting nice and ripe and ready to cut a snow storm
came and smashed it all down, but the snow melted away and my father cut the
wheat with a scythe and put it in bundles the best he could. That fall of 1865 we had a small stack of
wheat to thrash and we got it thrashed by a machine that was brought from Heber
City. They came to thrash it along at Christmas
time, Brother Reynolds and a man by the name of Jim Nash ran that machine. We had to take a few yoke of oxen that could
be got together from the ranches and break a road through the snow from Heber
City to get that machine. And when we
got the machine it only separated the wheat and the chaff from the straw. The chaff had to be lifted up and run through
a hand worked fanning mill. It took a
long time to thrash that bit of wheat, but we got it thrashed. And so ended the first year of our life in
Charleston. My father made a broom for
my mother to sweep the floor from the top limbs of sage brush; he used to call
it a besom. And so the time went
on. As a boy I spent my time in summer
herding the cows and the sheep, I have herded my cows and sheep on the ground
where the Charleston city now stands, great sage brush, splendid feed; I did
not have to herd them far from home to get all the feed they needed. My older
brother and father tilled the ground again, and while living in that condition,
and as a boy, clothing was scarce, everything was scarce. I wore trousers that were patched, patch upon
patch, until they were so heavy I could hardly carry them around. I never had a pair of shoes that would fit my
feet until I was practically a grown young man.
My father would get on a little pony that we had on that farm and ride
into Salt Lake City, and then he would go to the hotels all around where the
old shoes and the clothing were thrown away and pick the shoes up, all sizes of
them, put them in a sack and bring them home, so that he kept my brother and me
and himself in shoes for several years that way, as we had no means of buying
shoes, in fact no stores around that sold shoes nearer than Heber City. And we pulled along that way until the spring
of 1866, and then the Black Hawk Indians declared war upon the people, and
through the counsel of Brigham Young, all the little settlements on the outside
were told to gather into one place. So
we had to move the little house that we had and take it to Heber, a distance of
five miles. That yoke of oxen pulled
that house, my father took it to pieces and hauled it to Heber and put it on a
lot in that city, built it up again, put the dirt roof back on it and there we
lived in that little home again in Heber City, the summer of 1866. We remained in that house until the fall of
1867.
Now I will go back with my story to the boy that we had left
in England, he who said to his father, “I will remain father and come another
year. I will earn money for my own
emigration and will follow you next spring.”
But circumstances changed with him, for we got word in the
fall of 1865 that he had married a wife and he could not come until the spring
of 1866. He would have to earn more
money that they two could emigrate. So,
in the spring of 1866, he and his wife and their first born, a little girl, set
sail for Zion to come to his parents.
They crossed the ocean about the same as we did, on a sailing vessel,
some five weeks on the water. They
crossed the plains in that spring of 1866, but instead of coming in ox train as
we had, he had the privilege of coming in a mule train which had been sent
back, and the wagon that he came in was driven by the name of Robert Duke,
whose home was in Heber City.
They got nicely located and on their way, and his wife did
not have very good health, and as a young man in England he was the one that
loved the gun. He liked to hunt and
shoot the game, and he had bought a beautiful gun in England, which we called a
double barreled gun, one barrel a rifle, the other barrel a shot gun. And in crossing the plains he, with others,
would go out to hunt the game by the wayside that he might have food for his
wife to eat and enjoy, as her health was poor.
So, as they got a long way on their journey, one afternoon he and a
companion that used to hunt with him, set out from the train to hunt the wild
rabbit. They started out to go, not
going in the direction that the train was going, but off into the low foot
hills that they were passing at the time, and as they came to a little mountain
one said to the other, “you go on that side of the hill and I will go on this
side of the hill and we will meet around on the other side,” which they did. They took their guns and they separated. When they got to the other end of the hill,
the young man that was with him in telling his story, said instead of my
brother coming around the hill to meet him, he saw him go up another hill a
little farther ahead, and at that time the young man looked in the direction of
the train and he saw that it was going in an opposite direction to which they
thought it would, so he shouted to my brother and told him to come, that the
train had changed its course. But not
waiting until my brother came to him, he started to catch the train, leaving my
brother behind. That was the last that
was ever seen of my brother, for he never came to the train that night. They waited and watched, building big fires
that he might be able to see his way back, but he never arrived at the train
that night. The train traveled on the
next day all day, but my brother never overtook the train, so they camped again
that night, then got on mules, some of the teamsters, and went back and
searched all night to see if they could get any trace of my brother, but they
never got any trace of him. He was lost
and lost for good. His wife came on to
Utah, my father and mother and brother-in-law went to meet the train at Echo
Canyon, found my sister-in-law and her baby, got them into their wagon and
brought them to our little home in Heber City, that one little house with
us. It was a sorrowful time for my
mother and for the Daybell family. We
sorrowed very much at the loss of our oldest son; he had given his life for the
gospel’s sake, trying to get to Zion.
His wife was still in poor health and there was weeping and sorrowing in
that home for many a day and many a night.
Every night there had to be three beds made upon the floor of that little
cabin. My father and mother had one bed,
and set upon that mother had three or four straw beds, she used to take them
off and put them on the floor to make a bed for her daughter-in-law and child
and beds for the three children. That
good sister would lie and cry every night till twelve o’clock and after, until
sleep caused her to close her eyes, waiting every day thinking he would come,
but he never came. My father went to
Brigham Young to get advice from him what to do, whether to take men and go back
upon the plains and try to find him amongst the Indians, but Brigham Young
counseled my father, he said, “No, don’t go back to try to find him for if the
Indians find that you are trying to get your son they will likely take his life. If he is alive he will sooner or later come
back to you.”
So it was settled in our minds at that time that nothing
more could be done. So time went on to
the last of November, and then came a man to Heber City by the name of Saunders
from Springville, and a good Latter-day Saint, but we had been told that he
could tell where our son was and brother, that he used a peep stone and that if
my father could get him to come, he would tell us what became of my
brother. So, my father went and found
him and made arrangements with him that he would come to our house the next
morning and see what he could do. The
time was set for him to come and he came the next morning on time, and he said
to my folks that he had faith that he could tell what had become of my
brother. He was a good Latter-day Saint
and before he started to do anything, he had them all kneel down and have
prayer, and when the prayer was over he said to my mother, “Now, Sister
Daybell, tell me as near as you can the year, the month of the year, the day of
the month and as near the hour as you can when your boy was born.” Which she did. He sat with pencil and paper and he was a man
who understood some little of astrology, he wanted to figure out and find the
planet under which my brother was born, which he did. And as he write and figured he told my mother
the life of her boy from his infancy up to the day he was lost. He told her, “Your son nearly lost his life
in a fire.” She said, “Yes, he and his
father barely escaped from a burning coal mine.” “And another time” he said, “Your son nearly
lost his life by drowning.” She said, “Yes, they took him out a pond for dead,
but he was revived, although his life had been very nearly taken.
He even told her of the scars that were upon his body, where
they were, and all about it, causing my mother to believe everything that this good
brother said to her. So then he got the
peep stone that he had and he selected my youngest sister, next to me in age,
she at that time was about eleven years old.
He said, “I will give this to her as she is the youngest and you will
believe all she says.” He wrapped the
stone in a red handkerchief and put it in both of her hands, and she sat with
that between her two hands, one end of the stone bare so she could look into
it. She sat down by his right side and
he sat down at her left side, and he would ask her if she could see anything in
the stone. She said, “No, I don’t see
anything.” Then he reached over and
touched the end of the stone with his finger, he said, “Now do you see
anything?” She said “Yes”. “Whom do you
see?” he asked. “I see my brother,” “And what is he doing?” She said, “He is walking along an Indian trail
on the side of the mountain.” He then touched it again and asked her, “Now what
do you see?” She said, “I see my
brother, he is on the side of a beautiful hill.
He has his gun on his shoulder but he has no hat on his head.” And then he touched it again and he said, “Now
what do you see?” She said, “I still see
my brother, he is on a beautiful hill, the moon is shining, he is kneeling down
to pray.” By that means my sister
commenced to cry and he told her she mustn’t cry if she did he would have to
take the stone away from her, so she dried her tears and looked again. He said, “Now what do you see?” “Oh!” she said, “I see my brother, he is in a
big river, he is in the water.” He said,
“Ask your brother why he doesn’t come home.”
And she said, “Brother, why don’t you come home?” and then she said that
he went down under the water. Mr.
Saunders then took the stone away from her hands and he said, “Your son drowned
in the Platt River. When she saw him
without his hat he was then bewildered, he was lost, and that is how he came to
undertake to cross the river.” He couldn’t
swim, had never that privilege to learn while a boy, and so he said that was
the end of my brother’s life, but he said he would figure more on it and later
on would send us more word, but he was convinced that my brother was drowned
and not killed by the Indians. My father
saw him later on and he said he had written us a letter but we had never
received the letter, but we had never received the letter, but he said, “The
conclusions that we came to that day were true.” So, to make his words more convincing, while in
our home, he then turned his attention to my brother’s wife who sat there
crying as though her heart would break.
He said, “Will you tell me when you were born, as near as you can to the
hour, and let me figure on the planet under which you were born.” Which he did;
he figured a while and at last he said to her, “My good sister, this is a great
trial to you, but in about four and a half or five years, you will marry again.” “No!” she said, “I won’t.” “Yes,” he said, “You will, you will marry a
little light complexioned man.” Of
course, she became a little more cheerful then, and he said, “You will bring
forth posterity by this little light complexioned man, the first children that
you will have will be a pair of twin boys.”
Then she laughed and said it could not be. He told her other things that would happen in
the future.
But the time went on, we took care of her, she lived with us
for three or four more years until her own parents came from England, then she
lived with them part of the time and part of the time with us. But at the end of four years and a half,
there came a little widowed man into Heber City whose name was George Moore,
and lo and behold, at the end of the four and a half years, she married the
little light complexioned man. Mr.
Saunders words came true, and the first children she had were a fine pair of
twin boys. One of them is living to this
day and the other is dead. They were so
much alike that we, as their relations, couldn’t tell one from the other, although
the mother could. She bore this man a
large family and many years later died.
But in going back, after the time of the talk with Saunders,
she lived with us, and on the 11th day of January of the New Year,
she brought forth another girl baby, only a year and four days between the two
children. That made two beautiful girls
that had to be reared and taken care of.
The one, the baby remained with its mother after she married and left
our household, but the one, the older one, was raised by my mother and was a
constant companion of mine, although I was nine years older than she. But she was raised in our household, her name
was Mary Hannah Daybell; she grew to be a fine young woman and she married from
my mother’s home, a man by the name of George Price, who was at that time my
brother-in-law. She has raised posterity
to him, and today they are living in Phoenix, Arizona. She is the mother of his children; four sons
have been on a mission and one daughter.
The two oldest sons today are financially well off, the oldest one is
the president of the Maricopa Stake of Arizona; the second boy is the bishop of
the second ward of Phoenix. The father
and the mother of those boys are busy working in the temple at Mesa, Arizona,
this being the fourth year that they have worked there. The other little girl that stayed with her
mother grew up to be a fine young woman.
She married a man by the name of Levi Snow of Provo, Utah, bore him
seven children, and then she died.
Now I will leave that part of the family and return back in
1866 when I was still a boy of nine years of age. I helped my father. We hauled the crops from Charleston to Heber
for two summers and one winter. We didn’t
have to fight Indians, although my father obeyed the command of Brigham Young
for each man to secure to himself a gun with seventy-five rounds of ammunition
that he might be able to protect his home and property, but my father never
used the gun for that purpose. He
trained with it under the direction of John Witt, the leading soldier of Heber
at that time. One of my brothers-in-law
used to go with him and train with a straight stick instead of a gun. While coming to the farm in that summer of
1866 it was very dangerous. We didn’t
know when the Indians would come upon us, but they never molested us in the
least while coming to Heber. One night
the Indians stole some horses and went by the way of Provo Canyon into Skull
Valley, and while passing our ranch I think my father said they shot an arrow
into one of the pigs on the ranch. I
remember the Indians coming into Heber and stealing cattle and horses but nobody
was killed. The Black Hawk veterans as
we call them now would go out to hunt the Indians, but they never did get to
return any of the stock that was stolen.
And so in the fall of 1867, we moved back into the town of
Charleston, building our home in a different place, in one corner of which is
now called the Charleston Town site, but there was no town there then, the
whole county was nothing but sagebrush.
The people that lived in Charleston built their homes down on the banks
of the river or close by a spring, that they might get water, and the county
road or the main thorofare that passed through the river bottom past the little
home where we first lived. My father
remained upon this farm of Joseph E. Taylor for five years, and what with the
frosts and the grasshoppers destroying the crops, and the hardships that we had
to pass through, he left that farm owing Joseph Taylor eighty bushels of wheat,
which I think he paid back to him later on.
He then got in touch with a man that had a small ranch in
Charleston by the name of Stanley Davis.
This man wanted my father to take his farm and run it for a while, which
my father agreed to do, in fact, this man sold him a little portion of his
meadow land down on the river bottom.
And so my father started to work this new piece of ground. There wasn’t much of it and as Mr. Davis was
moving away, he left everything in my father’s care. I may say that at that time there came the
Utah survey. The land was not on the
market until this survey was made. Then,
this Mr. Davis made a bargain with my father to homestead a piece of ground
that he had and that he would give my father a certain part of the land for
homesteading it. So, I was getting quite
a boy at that time and this man Davis went away for a year and then he came
back and he wanted to sell the rest of his property which my father already
owned some part of. So, my father agreed
with him to buy the rest of the farm, father was to give him $1200 for the
remainder of the farm. And he said to
his two boys, myself and my older brother, “We will buy this place boys, and
you shall help me and we will work together and we will pay for it and you boys
shall have a share with me.” Which we
did. We then got a yoke of oxen from
Stanley Davis and an old wagon that he had, I think the wagon came across the
plains for it was very old, it had never had any paint on it, it was made of
very good timber, but the wheels were very much out of shape, but it was a great
blessing to us. And my father told us boys
that we should go to the canyons late in the fall, pulled the poles out through
deep snow. We used to go out while the
ground was bare and cut down great piles and then pull them out with oxen on
sleighs till the snow would get so deep that we could not go any longer. And so we worked, we got the timber, we
fenced the farm.
During this time we had never been to school; we had no
schools in Charleston, no organized district, no place to have a school. But, the time came, I think it was in the
fall or winter of 1869 or 1870, when my parents with the few people that were
there got together and came to the conclusion that they would try and open a
school. So they got a man by the name of
William Chatwin. He had a little two
room house here in Charleston that belonged to N.C. Murdock, as he had rented
the farm and was living there for a time.
He let them have one of the little rooms, their bedroom we used for a
school room, the first school that I went to.
He taught for three months and my father paid him $3.00 each for us
children to go to that school during that three months. We had no school books, we hadn’t much of
anything to learn from, but he was willing to teach us. I learned my ABC’s from the Book of Mormon
and what letters that I learned and reading was from that book the first three
months. And that was kept up one winter after
another for six or seven winters, three months at a time, first going to one
neighbor’s house and then to another. We
had for a teacher a man by the name of William Wright. He taught, if I remember right, three
winters, the months of January, February and March. That would be the end of our school. We sat in those little school rooms, no
chairs, we had benches made out of slabs with holes bored at each end and legs
put in , and they were put all around the house. The teacher sat at a little table in the
center. It got so there was quite a
bunch of us, I can’t remember just how many, but there would be from fifteen to
eighteen students, I suppose, enough to fill the little school house. We used to have to stand up in front of the
teacher as it was a mixed school, there were no grades, and he would teach us
one after another, teaching us to read.
The first two or three winters it was nothing but reading, we had no
writing until we were able to get a little larger place. And then they bored some holes in the log
walls and put in some pegs and put a board along these pegs, the pegs being put
a little slanting so that the board would slant toward us, then we turned our
seats and sat facing the boards, putting our books on the board and our writing
paper—what little we had. The first
writing that we learned to do was on the slate where we could sit and put it on
our knee. I remember as children, we
were mischievous as we all sat close together.
Upon one occasion I remember we got to playing with one another a game
which we called Pass it On, I nudge you and you nudge me until it went on
around the room. The teacher sat in the
middle, he saw what was going on but we thought he didn’t, but after we got it
passed all around he got up with a cane in his hand and said, “Now I will play
Pass it On.” So we each had to stand up
and hold out our hand and he gave us blow across the hand. That is the punishment we got in those
days. So time went on till the people of
the ward built a log school house where there was much more room. I went to that school one winter, the three months
as usual, which was the last of my schooling.
So, I got but very little education.
I was educated in hard work, in going to the canyons, hauling wood, for
we had to burn wood through the winters to keep warm, as there was no coal.
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