William Daybell- last post 3/3

William Daybell

2nd Great-Grandfather

 

This is the 3rd and last post of William Daybell's life history.

 

 

 

Now coming back in those early days to the religious training that we got.  We had no organized district the first summer that we were here, they organized the first people that were here together and called it a branch; for people that had left their homes and went into the cities for the winter came back in the spring onto their farms and we held some cottage meetings, going from one home to another in their turn.  I used to go with my mother; she would take me with her to meetings on Sunday morning.  They used to have some good testimony meetings.  The name of the gentleman that was president was David Walker.  He presided over the branch for two years, then he left another man by the name of George Noakes presided until the time later on when he had a ward organized, which was in about 1872.  Then we were presided over by John Watkins of Midway who was called to be the bishop of the Charleston Ward.  Then he was a man who desired to push things forward and to build up this branch of the church, which he did.  He was the means of having us a little brick meeting house built and we had nice seats put in it with backs on them, a nice stand put in it, and had it all painted, and it was a comfortable home for the Saints.  We enjoyed ourselves very much under the leadership and the guiding power of John Watkins.

 During this time my brother and I worked with my father.  We fenced the farm.  We got it paid for; I remember going to Payson with my brother driving seven head of cows that we turned on for pay on that farm, so you may know cows were not worth very much in those days.  My father bought for this man Davis a brand new wagon, bows and covering, and a brand new harness in Salt Lake City and let him have it and father paid the balance later on for the wagon and harness.  That is how we paid for the place.  But as we improved it, we raised some good crops; we commenced to prosper in the country.  We got a nice bunch of cows and a nice bunch of sheep.  Then in the fall of 1869 or the spring 1870 we moved our home again and came down onto what is now known as the Daybell corner, close to where I now live.  That tree that stands on that corner today is sixty-two years of age.  I remember my father planting that tree and making the ditch that now runs by the side of the road, which carried our water from what is known as Dry Creek above.  He built again on the corner of the land which was to be his one roomed house.  We then got up a shingle roof; we had been living for years under a dirt roof.  I have seen it rain so hard and so long that my mother would put milk pans all over the bed and on the floor to catch the water, but when we got under the shingle roof, it was much more comfortable.  In a few more years my father built another room adding it to the one that we had, then we thought how well off we were to have two rooms in one house to live in.

And so the time went on.  I grew to be a man, or at least I thought I was, and we two boys desired to take a wife, which we did.  My brother George marrying one year before myself.  He built a little house which we thought was very nice in that day and time, the house that he built was fourteen by eighteen feet, a little lumber building boarded up on the outside, nice windows and a door, and a porch over the front.  He worked hard to put up that little house, but he got it built, married his wife and brought her to the cage which he had made.  That winter I still went on working in the canyon.  I hauled out logs from Daniels Canyon, load after load, brought them down to my father’s home, piled them up, and in the spring I laded them on wagons.  I used to drive two yoke of oxen, I pulled those logs over to Wallsburg, pulled them over the hill by John Allen’s and up to a saw mill, and load after load I had them sawed, and during that summer I build a little home.  I was scarcely nineteen years of age, but I prepared and worked all summer, drove a team to Park City, hauled timber to Salt Lake City and got the money part of the while, which put in windows and doors, and I built a nice home.  It was a little larger than the one my brother built a year before. I got all ready for the wife which I was going to take.

 I married a girl by the name of Annie Price, the oldest daughter of James and Ann Price, who were residents of Charleston at that time.  I married her on the 12^th day of November 1877.  We lived with my mother one week, then I took her to the little home which was close by.  I had my furniture made by a man who made furniture, my brother-in-law, the little light complexioned man, who was a furniture maker by trade.  He made me six chairs, a table and a bedstead and I paid him in wheat for making that furniture.  I put them in that house and then I had the cage prepared for my wife where we lived.  We lived in that little one room house for seven years.  We had children born unto us; the first was a boy.  And as he got a little older I went back to the same man who had made my chairs and table and he made me a cradle for the baby and a high chair I have in my house today, it is fifty-four years old.

So that is how time went along.  There came a scourge of diphtheria into our village, it was very severe.  My two children, I had a boy and a girl then, and a little baby nine weeks old; they all took the disease and then we had to have help.  The mother took the diphtheria and I myself took it, and the little baby took the same disease.  The neighbors had told me a nursing child would not take diphtheria, but it took the diphtheria, and there we were with three sick children.  One of my wife’s sisters, nine or ten years of age, that lived with us took it, then we got another of my wife’s sisters to come down and wait upon us  And we were there in that little one room house with all that sickness.  One morning we found that the little baby had the disease, white was in its throat.  It was too small to do anything with, there was not doctor closer than Provo City.  We fought the disease with a rank poison that we put into the mouths of our children to gargle to kill the germs in the throat.  It was very trying, but from one week to the day that the baby came down with the disease, it died.  The sister-in-law that lived with us lay for days and weeks, but finally got better, without any roof to her mouth and nostril to her nose scarcely.  It was a long time before we could understand what she said, but she got better and grew to be a fine young woman.  And so that trial continued for three months.  My wife remained in that home, not going farther than the gate.  We could not get the disease cleared up.  The neighbors told us that it would not leave the children’s throats until my wife took the curtains and all the hangings from the wall of that house and burnt them, which she did, and then the disease left our home.  It had been so bad in our ward that we lost during that month twenty-three children, one a partly grown young man.

It left me in kind of a critical condition.  While I didn’t have the disease so severely, I used the poison in my throat and it got in my blood, later on in the fall the poison accumulated together in the roots of my tongue.  I suffered and went about my work most of the time for nine weeks while that was accumulating as an abscess in my tongue.  At last it seemed that death would be my doom.  They took me to Park City in a sleigh, on a bed in the bottom of the sleigh.  The snow was not very deep and there were rocks in the road and when the sleigh would strike those rocks, Oh! the pain that I had!  They took me to a doctor, and after examining my tongue with a pair of pinchers and nearly pulling it out of my head, he said he could do nothing for me.  They brought me back home and I remained a week longer.  My tongue swelled until it hung out of my mouth. I lived on just what milk could be got between my teeth, for nine days, then they took me to Provo to Dr. Pike.  He examined me and said at that time he couldn’t do a thing for me until the next morning.  My tongue was swollen so badly that my teeth were all embedded in my tongue.  He told my wife that the swelling must be taken down some and then he would try to operate.  He told us how we would do the operation by running a needle into my tongue until he found where the pus was concealed, and then he would have to operate by cutting the tongue open on one side, stating that there was only one place that the tongue could be cut.  We got the medicine, went to the home of my sister-in-law, and my brother George and my wife sat up with me all night, the doctor saying he would come early the next morning.  We  used the medicine all night, he told them not to take their eyes from me, if one moved the other should watch, for if that broke, I would choke to death.  So it went on until morning, I sat between them and they watched. They kept administering the medicine, the swelling went down some, but not very much.  Instead of the doctor coming at eight o’clock as he had promised to do, he was called from his home to Springville to attend a man with a broken leg, so that it was some eleven o’clock in the morning before he came to me.  But, during that time the gathering in my tongue had broken about half past seven in the morning.  What a happy relief that was to me!  I lay in bed for weeks after that, it left my system in such a broken down and nervous condition.  But, I pulled through and went on the journey of life again.

Now I will state that I was in business then for three or four years with George Smith who peddled to Park City.  I hauled meat and provisions over there for him, and later I became a partner with him in the business, and during that time I labored early and late.  I used to put in from twenty-four to thirty-six hours with my team for $5.00, but $5.00 would go quite a way in those days.  In the fall or 1884, late in November, as I was loading my sleigh with meat, with butter, with eggs and with grain, I had loaded the sleigh and was hitching on two span of horses to take the load to Park City, the counselor Edward Buys, who was the counselor of the bishop of our ward, came to me as I was hitching up that team, he said, “Brother Daybell, a call has come for you to go on a mission.”  I remember it almost frightened me to death.  I didn’t know what I was going to do.  How could I go on a mission?  I was a poor man.  But my mother had taught me from my earliest infancy to pray; she had told me that when I grew to be a man she wanted me to be a missionary, to carry the gospel teachings to the world as other people had brought it to her.  She used to bed of me to prepare myself, but I used to say, “Oh, mother, when that time comes I will soon learn.”  But she used to say, “My dear boy, if you will have faith when you go on a mission the Lord will put the words in your mouth, that you can speak forth the gospel of God.”  Ah, this is very good advice, but I lived to see the day that it was impossible for the Spirit of the Lord to draw from me what wasn’t in my body.  As the old saying is, it is hard to get water from an empty well.

So, I went on trying to hitch up those horses on that sleigh, but I was so excited that when I got one hitched up the other would be unhitched.  So at last I tied three of those horses up, got on the back of the other with his harness on, and I rode back to Charleston, five miles, to tell my father and mother that I was called on a mission.  My father didn’t take it very good.  He said I couldn’t go on a mission.  My mother said I could and that she would do all that she could to help me, for that time had come that she had told me would come that her youngest boy would go as a missionary into the world.  So, I went back to my horses and sleigh, went to Park City and followed up my business the remainder of that fall.

The call came for me to go sometime in January, which date I forget just now.  I made all the arrangements could to get ready to go.  I had no money , I had no means, I had my little home, a wife and three babies, a couple of cows, a yoke of oxen, a wagon, and a little piece of ground, but no income or money.  But, I had faith that I would go on a mission, and when I was getting ready to go, lo and behold a subpoena came from Provo City subpoenaing me to go to Provo to act as a juror as court was going to convene.  That interfered with my going on a mission on the date set, so I tried to get released from the court but they wouldn’t release me, so I had to notify them at headquarters that I couldn’t go until a later date.  So, when the time came I went to Provo, spent thirty one days as a juror in that city.  There was no road through Provo Canyon, when I went, I went by train, I went by Ogden the snow was so deep in Wasatch County and through Provo Canyon, the road being closed all winter long.  But, while I was in Provo as a juror, my father had a birthday, which came on the 14^th of March, in the spring of 1885, and he  desired to have me come to this birthday, which I desired to do.  But, how could I leave that court and come up through that canyon to get to my home?  But, as the court was going to have a recess for two days, I concluded that I would walk up through the canyon to my home.  But, I had a friend in that court, John Turner.  He said, “No, Brother Daybell, you shall not walk up through that canyon.  You cannot make it.  Your mother nursed me back to life in Heber City when I lay at the point of death, she took care of me and brought me through that case of pneumonia.  Now would I let you walk up through that canyon? No, I have a fine horse which will be at your disposal.  He will take you through that canyon as you will have to up the river all the way.”  Which he did.  I left Provo and traveled up the canyon, most of the time in the river and on top of the snow.  When I got up to Deer Creek there was at that time twelve inches of snow over the valley.  I rode that horse on top of the snow on the lope, it was frozen so hard, and I reached home in time to attend my father’s birthday party.

Leaving the subject for a few moments I will drop back to the spring of 1882.  You will remember at the first part of this history where I had a sister that was left in England, the one that should have come with the one who  came alone.  Instead of coming to Utah at that time, she married the young man who persuaded her to remain with him; so that when my brother left, he that was lost, it left her the only one of the family in England.  So in later years as the time went on and as we had been in America for eighteen years, we had a neighbor friend of ours by the name of William Brumbey who went to England on a mission, and he went in the district of his old home where he had lived years ago, and who was a neighbor to my parents in England.  And as he went into that district of county, he went and found my sister and her husband and family of Websters.  He talked with them, he taught them the gospel, as my brother-in-law did not belong to the Mormon church.  My sister was baptized a member when a child but had nothing to do whatever with our religion up to the time of his going back there.  He taught my brother-in-law the gospel; told them of the conditions of my parents in Utah.  I presume he told them how well to do my father was, how well we boys were fixed, how that there were great possibilities in Utah, making them feel that they would like to be in America where wages were higher, not thinking so much of religion.  Whereby, his talk with them caused them to send a letter to my father stating that they would like to come to Zion, but that they had no way of coming, no means, they were in poverty and had a family, but asked if they could get help to be brought from that country.  My father, of course, as all fathers would, desired to have her near him.  Money was hard to get here, we had property, we had houses and land and cows and sheep, but we didn’t have the ready cash.  I was a young man, had only been married three years, my brother George only four years, and we were endeavoring to make a living the best we could.  But my father said to us boys, “If each of you will put up $100, I will put up $125.00,”  which was needed to bring them to this country.  Today, I could raise one thousand dollars easier than I could raise fifty dollars in those days; money was hard to get.  It was a trial. We had to borrow the money and pay interest on it—which we did.  But, we emigrated them to this country, the father and the mother and four children.  They landed here in Salt Lake City sometime in the first part of June 1882.  They had just been fourteen days from leaving their home to landing in Salt Lake City, while we crossing that same part of the country were around five months.  The difference, they came too easily, they didn’t have trials enough.  But we met them in Salt Lake City, put them in the wagons and we brought them to Charleston.  We worked with them, they worked for us in the hay field that fall.  Not being used to the work on the farm, my brother-in-law had been a coal miner or tailor practically all the days of his life, and when it came to handling the pitch forks in the hot sun, it was a task.  But, when the crops were up I took my horses and wagon and took him along with me and went into the canyons and we cut down the trees.  We brought home the logs and with my father’s help we built them a nice log house, put shingles on it and made them a home.  My sisters placed in that home some of their furniture, my father provided them with flour that winter, gave them half of a pig, and took care of them.  My brother-in-law was quite handy as a carpenter, and he repaired shoes and turned his hand to do whatever he could to make a living.  But, after all this, they got dissatisfied, they felt that they would like to go back to England.  Oh, they did not find Zion the place they thought it was.  They missed the Saturday nights, they missed the beer halls, they missed the week’s wages which they got every Saturday night and which they didn’t get in this country.  It was a trying time for my father and my mother and in fact for the whole family, for we felt discourage in  all that we had done to help them, but it was a sacrifice on our part which means blessings for us.  But later on, in about eighteen months, they got on to the same farm that my father came to eighteen years before that, and they tilled the ground, they learned to be farmers, they milked the cows, they sold the fatted calves, and they got along very nicely.  The oldest son was a natural born carpenter, he took the trade up as a boy fourteen years of age and today is a great mechanic.  He is still living, he did well, married a wife and raised a family of children.  My brother-in-law died eighteen or nineteen years ago; my sister, his wife, died five years ago come February.  They lived and prospered, they worked in the church, they received their endowments in the temple of our God; they were sealed together for time and for all eternity, they did work for their dead, so that I feel that their reward is sure.

 I will just drop back again to the spring of 1888.  I had returned from my mission, and while on that mission I had learned considerable of the ways that people lived where I had been.  And I was the means of getting my father and mother and their family all to go to the temple, for we had never been sealed to our parents, and in the spring of 1888 we went to the Manti temple and there did work for the dead.  We were sealed to our parents and a great deal of work was done; father was sealed to his parents.  Later on, we went to the Salt Lake Temple and did a great deal of work, and at that time my sister, Annie Webster, was sealed to her father and mother in the temple.

 As I stated further back, I had a call for the mission and I had to remain at home because of court in Provo, but I got ready to go, to leave my home on the 5^th of May.  I was to leave Salt Lake City. It seemed like all kinds of trials came up before me, that it was almost impossible for me to leave on that mission.  But, the bishop of the ward told me everything would turn out alright and that I would go.  So, two Sundays before I left for my mission I went to our meeting and they called me up to preach, something that I couldn’t do very well, although I had been an elder in the church from the age of seventeen years.  I had been a worker in the ward, tending to the Sunday School.  I had labored in the Mutual and all of those different organizations, but yet my learning in the scriptures was very poor.  But, at this meeting, I told them my condition; I didn’t see how I could leave to go on a mission, I was in debt, I owed so and so, so much money, but before I left that meeting every debt was paid, for the one who was the bishop came to me and told me, “Brother Daybell, I will give you every dollar that you owe me and set you free.”  My other companion that I owed money to was Brother George Smith.  He told me the same thing, “Brother Daybell, I will give all that you owe me in the business in which we are now engaged.”  And he said, “I will do more than that, I will handle your cows, your hogs, your salable property that has to be sold.  I will sell it and turn the amount to your wife, not taking any profits for my labor.”

 So, there the way was cleared so far as that was concerned, and means came in from the ward as I was about to leave that paid my way into the mission field.  I filled a wonderful mission in the Southern States.  I left my father and my mother, my wife and three babies, I left them in Salt Lake City on the 5^th day of May, 1885, spending two years and seven months in the middle Tennessee Mission.  But, oh, what an experience it was to me! Oh, I was a green young man.  I had never traveled, I had never been out of the State of Utah, scarcely out of the County of Wasatch, but they sent me abroad to fill a mission and made me great promises.

There was another young man called from Spanish Fork by the name of Don C. Markham.  He and I were to be companions to go into the mission together.  He was a boy who had never been in the habit of wearing a white shirt, he had never worn suspenders, he had never worn a white collar, and this change was a great one for him as well as for myself.  But, we traveled together into the Southern states.  When leaving Salt Lake City, there was an aged woman from the state of Tennessee, a member of our church who had come to Salt Lake City to be with the Mormons, and she desired to return home to her native country, and they put this aged lady in our care to take her back to her home—which we did to the best of our ability.  We waited upon her hand and foot, we had to stop at Kansas City then and to a hotel and remain for about sixteen hours waiting for other missionaries to join us who came on the D.&R.G., as we went out on the Union Pacific.  And the time that we had in Kansas City!  Two strange boys, we went to the hotel where we had directions to go, we got our room, we got one for the old lady that was with us and took care of her.  After we got ourselves located we thought we would go out and take in the city.  Green as we were we had never been in a big city.  We had four or five hours of daylight, in the afternoon we went from the hotel and down the street, and all at once we looked up and saw so many of the doors that we were passing were just alike, and I said to my companion, “Do you know the number of the door that we came out of?”  And he said that he didn’t.  Well, we had to return to find the hotel and the door that we had come out of, and we were looking for the number when a gentleman standing close by asked us if we were looking for the door that we had just come out of and we told him yes, so he showed us the number and we kept that in mind.  We went out in the streets, we walked around, and as I was walking along with him my hands in my pockets, the buttons on the back of my trousers which held my suspenders up, both came off at once.  I was then in a terrible position, for we wanted to take in more of the sights of the town—which we did, and I kept my hands in my pockets to hold my trousers up.  But we made the rounds and we returned to the hotel.  I am giving this as the experience of a couple of green Mormon elders.  We went back to our room, which was in the third story of the building.  We had to go upstairs, there were no elevators in those days, and I told my companion, “Now I must put the buttons on my trousers.”  My wife had provided me with needle and thread so that I could mend my own clothes, which I had to do a great deal all during the next two years.  Brother Markham said, “I will go to bed and you can sew on the buttons.”  So he went to bed, I sat on the side of the bed and got my buttons and needle and thread and started to sew on the buttons.  As he lay in the bed, he said, “I wonder what that is there on the side of the doorway.”  I looked up and saw what appeared to be a pivot fastened on the door casing, so I told him, “When I get these buttons sewed on I will investigate,” which I did.  I went to the side of the door and I found that there was a little button, a black button set in a light colored frame, and in touching the button I found it was loose, so I gave it a punch and I thought I heard a bell.  My companion said, “I thought I heard a bell ring when you touched that button.”  I said, “I will touch it again to make sure.”  And I touched it again and the bell rang, and the two rings of that bell were enough to bring up the butler.  I heard him coming up one flight of stairs after the other.  He came to our door and wanted to know what we wanted.  Well, we had made a grand mistake.  We told him we saw that bell and didn’t know what it was for and we punched it.  He didn’t like that, he said, “Don’t do that anymore gentlemen, for it is a long way for me to come up here.”  And so the mistakes we made, but we got wiser.

We went on and our companions joined us there at Kansas City.  We went on into the State of Tennessee to Chattanooga, the headquarters for the Tennessee mission.  Our president was John Morgan.  We remained with him, and that night after we got off the train he went with us to our room at the hotel and he talked with us elders, four of us altogether, and he looked at Brother Markham, he didn’t have a collar on or a white shirt or suspenders, and President Morgan turned to Brother Hendricks, who had been more used to traveling than we, and says, “Brother Hendricks, tomorrow morning is Sunday, but if you will take Brother Markham and go around the corner to a certain store, they’ll let you in and you buy him a pair of suspenders, a collar and a neck tie, and he must have a white shirt or he can’t go with us on Lookout Mountain tomorrow.”  All of that had to be tended to, and we were about to go to bed that night, the hotel was full, there wasn’t much room, and it so occurred that Brother Hendricks had to sleep in the same bed with us elders, making three in a bed, that Brother Hendricks had to sleep in the same bed with us elders, making three in a bed.  When we retired that night Brother Hendricks got into the bed, I got into bed and Brother Markham was the last one to get in bed.  The light wasn’t an electric light, it was a gas light, and Brother Markham blew it out instead of turning it off.  Oh, how fatal that would have been to us two elder that night if we had been alone!  I always took it to be a testimony unto me that the hotel was so full, because Brother Hendricks saw what had been done, he jumped out of bed and turned off the gas, which would have continued to come into that room if he hadn’t turned it off.  So we see that providence was with us upon that occasion, as it was on many occasions.

We visited Lookout Mountain the next day, took in the sights of the country.  That was on Sunday, that night at eleven o’clock President John Morgan put four of us elders on the train in the dead of night, started us out to go in different directions to our fields of labor.  We would come to a certain station and one would get off alone, till at last they all got off the train and left me alone, which was the most lonesome hour of my life.  I rode in the train, no other passenger, till it came to the station where I had to get off.  That was at a town called Murfreesboro.  It was just breaking daylight when the train stopped at the station, I stepped out of the train, the only one to get off of the train and the only one to get on to the station platform.  By that means the bus owner came to me and asked me if I wanted a bus, and I told him that I was a stranger and that I was directed to a certain place to go from Murfreesboro.  “Alright,” He said, “I can take you.  We will go to the stables, and as it is quite a ride, I will change vehicles.”  And he got one horse and buggy and he took me about twelve miles along the Murfreesboro and Lebanon road.  That was one of the most beautiful rides, I thought, I ever had in my life.  The sun was shining brightly, the trees were all in blossom, the dogwood trees were beautiful.  The pike was a beautiful road, and every four and a half miles we came to a toll gate.  He would pay the fare, then raise the pole and we would pass on, till we went through three of those gates, making a distance of about twelve miles.  He took me from the highway down a narrow lane in the woods and there put me off at the ranch home of a man by the name of Doc Perkins.  This man didn’t belong to our church, but his wife did and his hired girl.  The occupation of this man was breeding and raising fine chickens, which he made a business and a living.  The received me kindly, and the good sister told me when she got acquainted with me that I was the forty-ninth elder to come and stop at her home.  I had a good time while I was with them.  I had to remain in that vicinity of the country two weeks waiting for my companion, which was a long two weeks.  The next morning at the home I was awakened by the crowing of roosters and one rooster in each pen, and when it came daylight they all crowed, which was quite a noise for me.

I had quite an experience with that man and his family.  There were quite a few saints in that district of the country.  I went into the fields of labor where B.H. Roberts had just left in February and I got there in May.  He had gone home taking most of the saints in that district into Colorado.  So, I found my way from home to home amongst the trees and the forest.  Sometimes I would be lost for some time before I could find my way until I got used to the paths that went through woods from one house to another.  After I had been there about one week, I was stopping with a family of saints, a man and his wife, they were good friends to me, but they put me to sleep in a little room at the back of the house, and in the middle of the night that night he came and knocked at the door shouting my name.  I asked him what was the matter.  He said, “Elder Daybell, you must get up for there is a mob coming. They have fired the shot that calls them together.”  For the last elder that had been in the vicinity before I came had been driven out at the point of a gun, over the line into Revelt County.  So I got out of my bed and went with  him into the woods, we hid among the large trees.  It was a beautiful moonlit night, but oh! I was so sleepy!  I could hardly keep awake for months after I got into that count, so as we sat there waiting for the mob I would keep going to sleep, but he would wake me up.  But as  it happened it was a false alarm for no mob came, and we went back to the house and I slept the rest of the night.

The story is too long, I will have to cut it shorter.  My companion came at the end of two weeks.  I was very pleased to see him.  We labored together for a little over five months. He had been in the mission field for two years, he understood the ways of the missionaries, he knew what they had to do, he was a good preacher, he could preach for hours at a time on the first principles of the gospel, but he had had two years of experience.  I went with him day after day, we wandered through the country any place where we like to go.  We had no certain district laid off for us, but we would look through a little map that I had of the state of Tennessee and the pick out parts of the country to which we would go.  And thus we wandered to and fro holding meetings whenever we could, and that was very few.  The prejudice against the Mormon elders was very great in 1885 and 1886.  When I left my home in Utah the prisons were filled with polygamous men.  They were having raids upon our people by day and by night when I left my home.  By that means it made the people in the mission field very hard to get along with.  Berry and Gibbs, two of our Mormon elders, had been killed in Tennessee in the fall of 1884 and I came out there in the spring or 1885.  It was dangerous for the elders, we were forbidden to mention such a thing as polygamy, we were forbidden to enter into the cities to preach, we had to remain in the country all of the time, except a few of the little villages that we would be permitted to enter.  So that from day to day as we wandered to and fro we knew not what the morrow would bring.  But we traveled without purse or script, we were dependent upon the people to take care of us by night and by day.  If they refused to give us something to eat, we went without.  If they refused to give us beds, we slept under the trees, for we were amongst a grade of people that when they became a friend they were a friend in very deed, they took care of us, they fed us, we clothed ourselves the best we could.  Many times have I walked for hours after the time that we should have been in a home where we could get protection for the night, but they would pass us on from one home to another until I have asked to stop at as high as twelve homes before we got lodgings.  We took this all in good part for we had learned that the Master, our Savior, went through great persecutions.  He had not place to lay His head, and sometimes we didn’t, so when these trials came upon us we thought we were no better than our Master.  And so it went on, week after week, month after month.  We were out among strangers.  I remember the first time that I was out from where the saints were, with this first companion I remained in the country for over three months, and then we thought we would go back to the saints at headquarters and have a rest.  But oh! the way he had traveled, the way we had lain around in the daytime in the woods and the different home that we had stopped at!  Our clothing and shoes and our hats were getting in a bad fix, so we started, as we called it home to the saints, a distance of forty five miles.  We walked the distance in two days.  And before going into the city of Murfreesboro, we reached that city when it was getting on toward night, our clothes were so shabby that we feared to go in the city, so we sat down on a milestone and waited until it got dark, then we passed through the city, a mile and a half down the pike to a family of saints who took care of us.  The next morning we cleaned up the best we could and went into the city to buy some clothes.  We had no  mail for two or three weeks and when we got to the post office I remember that I got nine letters, some from my wife, some from my friends at home.  My wife sent me some money and every letter that I opened I got money, and I needed it.  I needed new clothes, but I didn’t know how I was going to get the, but there was enough money came in those letters to buy a suit of clothes which cost $12.00.  I got another new hat and a pair of shoes, all from what had come from home; only a small portion of it from my wife, my friends at home had sent me money. I couldn’t mention where the most of it came from, it would take too much time.  The president of the seventies quorum had sent me money and we were well provided for at that time.  As you understand, the time that I went on that mission there were few elders being called from the districts at home.  I was the second elder to leave the Charleston Ward, Joseph R. Murdock being the first.  He filled a mission three or four years before I was called.  By that means there weren’t a great many out from the wards and the one that was out was well thought of by those at home.

It is too long for me to go into detail of that long mission that I had, but I saw many marvelous works by the spirit of the Lord while on that mission.  I have seen the sick raised up, I have seen those in serious pain and illness made well by the administrations of the elders.  I have carried the sick on litters from their home to water and baptized them.  Upon one occasion we visited the home of a sister that was feeble, she had lain in her bed, had no use of the lower part of her body from her waist down.  She had given birth to a beautiful little girl six months before I became acquainted with her.  But when we went to her house she still lay in the bed, able to take the child in her arms and nurse it as she lay in bed, but could not even turn herself over, this had to be done by her husband or her larger children, and she was the mother of seven children.  She believed in the principles of the gospel which we taught.   Both she and her husband rejoiced at the sound of the gospel, they told us that was what they had been waiting for all of their life, for they couldn’t see salvation in any other church.  We kept on visiting them and taught them the gospel time after time.  This was kept up for another six months and she still lay in bed.  At last we went to her home, it was on a Sunday night, she and her husband sat and listened to us talk, and as she lay in bed she said to me, “Brother Daybell, I believe in the doctrine which you teach, I believe every word that you say is true, and I desire to become a member of your church.”  Oh! It was a time of rejoicing with us, with me, I could hardly contain myself on my seat.  The Spirit of the Lord was there, and I raised up on my feet and I said unto her, “Sister, if  you have faith to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and will be baptized, it shall be a testimony unto you that will strengthen your faith and remain with you forever.”  She said she believed and she wanted to be baptized at our hands.  So we appointed the time for the next Tuesday night.  We dared not baptize in daylight for the people were bitter against us.  They had threatened our lives, and they said that if we got any converts in that part of the country that they would not stand for our doctrine to be taught in that part of the country.  So you see we were on dangerous ground.  But we knew the Lord would spare our lives while we were doing our duty, so the time was set for twelve o’clock at night on the following Tuesday.  The time came. Just below their house was a little canal which had been dug to carry the water to a wheel that turned the mill that ground the corn of the people of the neighborhood.  And so we got her up in the bed, her husband and my companion took hold of her, she put her arms around their necks and they locked their hands under her thighs, and thus they carried her from the house to the water, a distance, I would judge of about twenty-five yards, to this little canal that ran around the hill.  We had a plank laid across the canal and we went and stood on the plank.  Her husband and my companion, F.C. Banks, lifted her down into the water, her husband stood by her side to hold her up while Elder Banks performed the ceremony.  He said Amen and put her under the water and brought her forth again.  And at that time, the minute he said Amen, a volley of shots was fired from guns in the hands of our enemies.  But they lifted her up onto the plank where I stood and I took hold of her and she said, “Oh Brother Daybell, I can stand on my feet!”  And they lifter her up and I took hold of her and she stood on her feet on that plank and I held her for a while for she said, “I can stand, I can bear weight on my feet.”  Oh! I could see then the promise that I had made unto her< the lord had heard and he answered that blessing that she should have a testimony.  And no greater testimony could she receive than to be healed instantly.  Her husband stepped down into the water and was baptized, and the minute my companion said Amen another volley of shots was fired, whether they were bullets fired at us, we never knew, for they didn’t hit us.  But we went from that water, that good sister walking up that path all the way to the house, she stepped through the doorway into her own house where she had not been on her feet for more than twelve months.  It was just a one room house, two or three beds in the one room.  She said, “If you brethren will remain outside a few minutes while I change my clothes, then you may come in.”  So we waited, but the mob got closer and closer, she could hear the firing; she said, “come inside or you will be killed.”  We went inside and we turned our faces to the door while she changed her clothes and got back into her bed.  And then we stood guard in that house all that night.  We had no weapons to fight with, the man had a six shooter, but he had no bullets for it, he took that for himself.  I had an axe and Brother Banks had a long handled fire shovel, and he took it and guarded the little hole that was at the end of the house and then we barred the door and made it sold and prepared for the worst.  Toward daylight they went away and did not molest us anymore.  But oh, the rejoicing that there was in that house!  That was one of the greatest testimonies in my mission experience, but I could go on and tell so many more.  I have been persecuted, and I have had poison food set on the table before me to eat, when my companion has said, “Do not eat, Brother Daybell, the food is poisoned.”  I have seen the time in the same district of country while holding a meeting, a mob come on horseback.  They had made lashes to lash our backs with, they tied their horses to a big oak tree and waited their chance to get us when we came out of meeting.  My companion turned to me and said, “What shall we do?”  I had been sitting looking through the window watching all that was going on outside and knew what was in store for us, so I said, “When we dismiss, instead of being the last to go out of this meeting, let us try and be with the first.”—which we did.  When the people got to the door they saw the mob was outside and they rushed out to see what was going to be the outcome.  And through the excitement, we were in the midst of the people, and we were able to pass the mob and get into a wood that was close by, thus we escaped them.  When the mob found that we were gone they raised an awful cry, they hunted for us all night long, but we were in the woods out of their way.  We crossed out of the woods and got into a big corn field, and there we had ourselves till we thought the mob had gone, then we tried to find our way to friends many miles off.  But we got lost and were lost in the woods all night.  We couldn’t escape for the mob had every road watched to see if they could find us.  At last, toward morning, we broke some limbs off a big oak tree and lay down to sleep, but we couldn’t sleep, and it was soon light.  Finally, we got past the mob and found some friends who would give us something to eat.

Now I must pass on with my story.  I was mobbed at another time, but I had another companion.  I stood preaching in a big log schoolhouse.  We had been threatened that if we preached they would mob us, but the people came out to our meetings and brought their little oil lamps and gave us light.  I had a companion with me, and he was so sick with a lame back that he couldn’t stand up straight.  I had been in the mission then over two years and I was preaching.  I had in front of me a large wood stove which they used for a fireplace in that schoolhouse, but I was using it for my table.  I was preaching the Spirit of the Lord was upon me greatly, I had had a lot of experience and could preach for hours.  All at once we heard the clatter of horses’ feet coming down the road that came right in front of the building.  The door was open, for it was very warm that night.  There were eighteen or twenty of them on horses, they pulled out their six-shooters, which gleamed in the moonlight.  I could see the mob, but the spirit of the Lord was upon me, I did not care, I wasn’t afraid of a mob, and I preached until the people got frightened and ran out of the house, taking their little lamps with them.  And as they went, they took the mob with them and left us in the schoolhouse.  After it became quiet we left the building to see if we could find a place to sleep that night.  But no, it appeared that everyone as they went into their homes put out their lights, so we returned into the schoolhouse and made our bed on the hard benches.  I told my companion if he slept on them all night I thought his back would be better in the morning, for I had tried it before and knew it was a very hard bed.  The next morning his back was much better.  And we got out of that district of country and hunted for another one; he got able to walk.  We got into another district of country where we opened up a new field of labor, where we found many friends to take care of us.  And then my companion got worse in his sickness and I had to leave him with those friends and go thirty-five miles to get a wagon and a horse to haul him to where the saints were.  I walked that distance in one day, it was such a hot day that I often say that I walked a dog to his death, for one followed me and he wanted water so very badly that the first stream that he went into that water and I never saw him anymore.  I made that walk of thirty-five miles in that day, got a vehicle, came back and took my companion to the saints, and went back to my field, which was called Possum Hollow.

I labored there two weeks and made friends and I had many converts who believed in my teaching.  I was alone for two weeks and then word came from my conference president telling me to come to headquarters to hold October conference—which I did, and left those people who had great love and respect for me.  I went to that conference and was released to come home, but I didn’t want to come home.  I told my president I would like to go back to Possum Hollow.  He said, “No Brother Daybell, it is time for you to go home.  As for those people up there, if they are faithful they will have others preach the same gospel that you do. I am afraid, he said if you go back they will be baptized into Brother Daybell instead of the church.”  So, I obeyed his counsel.  I visited the members of the church, they held me there that month, which was almost the longest part of my mission.  But, they released me to come home on the twenty-fourth day of November, 1887, and put me in charge of a company of emigrants that was being taken from Tennessee, so I took care of them.  One of my good neighbors, one who was a mother to me, I brought with me as far as Mason, Colorado.  Oh! I left many friends in that country, such good old sisters that put their arms around my neck and wept as my mother would when I left, they thought so much of me that they didn’t want me to go.  So it was with all my friends that I left in that country, but I had to bid them all goodbye.

I had quite a trial on the train with the emigrants to keep from losing them in the cities, but I brought them through to Mason, Colorado, alright.  I reached my home, my wife met me in Provo on the night of the 29^th day of November, 1887, making me absent from my home thirty-one months.  There was much rejoicing at my return. 

So I am going to pass on and say that my labors in the church after coming home were greater than ever before.  I have held nearly all the positions in the church.  I was first ordained deacon in the Charleston Ward, I became an elder at the age of seventeen years, received my endowments in the old endowment house, at that time I was ordained an elder.  I have presided over the Mutual Improvement, I have labored as an assistant in the Sunday School, for several years, then I was the President of the Sunday School for fourteen years.  I was a High Counselor in the Wasatch Stake for twelve years, I was Bishop of the Charleston Ward for four years, and I have labored continuously since I filled that mission, because I received a strong testimony, knowing that Jesus was the Christ.  I have raised a large family of children, my wife died twelve years ago come February; a better helpmate in life no man ever had.  I have a good family of children, I raised five daughters and four sons.  Through their father’s teachings they were all united in the temple of God, they have brought forth a large posterity.  I have at this time eight living sons and daughters, burying one daughter at the age of thirty-eight, leaving a family of eight children living and one dead.  I have forty-five grandchildren that are yet alive.  I have given blessings unto thirty-five of them, I have given blessings unto fifty-five of those of my kin who call me uncle, and up to this present writing I have given blessing since being ordained a patriarch to three hundred twenty-six people.  And I am writing this testimony for my children and for all that may receive it.  I am now nearing my seventy-fourth birthday.  I don’t know when my work will be done, but I feel that I have more to be done, if it is nothing but blessing the people.  I feel to thank the people for their patronage to me, recognizing my labors.  I feel that I will be able to perform more of this labor before my end is come, and I pray the Lord to bless all who shall have the privilege of reading this testimony, that it may be a help unto them as it may be unto my children.

At this writing I am reminded that I have three sisters still living, one in her eighty-fourth year, one in her eighty-second year, and one in her seventy-sixth year.  The sister that I spoke of that came in the early days aged of her parents never was the mother of any children of her own, but she took other children and raised them, was a mother to them.  She raised one little girl to ten or eleven years of age and she died, then my sister took another young boy and raised him to manhood; he went to the war in Germany and was killed.  She then raised another young man up to manhood who is George Durnell, the Sheriff of Utah county.  He knows her today as mother, he thinks as much of her as he ever could of his mother.  He visits her and brings her presents and has all kinds of respect for her.

The other sister in her eighty-second year had been the mother of thirteen children, she raised nine boys and three girls, the three girls are dead and three of the boys are dead.  My other sister, the youngest sister, older than I, has never had any children, she has been barren, but she has raised other children and taken care of them.   She has been a great worker in the church.  

It so happened that I had four sisters living and they all became widows in the short time of six years.

 My brother that was older than I was killed by lightening in 1911 while working on his farm, stacking hay.  He left a wife and three sons, who are all living at the present time.  My father and mother died at a good old age, my father was in his eighty-third year, dying in 1894; my mother lived to the age of seventy-nine years and died in 1899, firm in the gospel all the days of their lives.  Born poor, living in poverty for years, but dying in favorable circumstances with the thought of standing with resurrection of the just, which would be their happy lot.

My first wife died in 1920.  She had been a true and devoted wife to me, a faithful Latter-day Saint.  She was a faithful worker in the church while I was on my mission, she was President of the Primary in the ward, she labored hard to get means for me to fill my mission and she made many sacrifices for me.  She was a member of the Relief Society all her married life, being set apart to sew and make clothes for the dead.  The last eighteen years of her life she took care or helped to take care of sixty-seven who died in the ward in that time.  She was the mother of eleven children, two died as babies, nine grew to be men and women, all faithful in the church.  She went through the joys and sorrows of life with me and never complained.  I feel her reward will be awaiting her when she comes before the great Master.

I  took unto myself another wife, one who had been my neighbor for forty years.  You see, I loved my neighbor as myself.  She had been the wife of two men, who had both died.  She was the mother of ten children to those men, six of whom are living at this time.  She has twenty-five grandchildren living and four dead, and ten living great-grandchildren.  I knew her all through her joys and sorrows, and as she was a widow I asked her to come and help me in my sorrows and troubles.  So, we were sealed together in the temple of our God.  She is a good wife to me.  She took up the same work in the ward where my other wife left them.  She is good to all, and lives the life of a saint, and will be sure in the celestial kingdom of our God.  I am finishing this record on the eve of my seventy-fourth birthday.  I end this record by saying Amen and God bless all who shall read this record.