Bennion Livestock and Families Move to the "West Desert"

 Bennion livestock and families move to the “west desert”

[This is a compilation of two hand-written documents found among the papers of Beatrice Cannon Evans by her son, Wayne C. Evans. She is writing in first person.]

By 1863 the livestock had so increased near Taylorsville that cattle were dying for lack of food.  It became evident that some permanent move must be made.  Therefore, on July 8, 1863 a group of very prominent men including Samuel and John Bennion, Adam Sharp, Joseph Harker, A. O. Smoot, Orin Porter Rockwell and others determined to “spy out the land.”

Following the overland stage road part of the way, they explored Cedar Valley, East Valley, Rush Valley, Tintic and Skull Valley and divided the land among those who decided to make the move.

The Bennions acted immediately.  On August 14, 1863 they moved their own cattle, and many of the others which had been entrusted to them, from Taylorsville to the very spot where the Bennion Monument[1] stands.  Those who came first were Samuel and his son Hiram, John and his son Samuel R.  John immediately went back to Taylorsville for his wife, Mary Turpin, and her three small children, Heber, four years old, Alfred, three years, and William, four months old.

When the family arrived at the Bennion Creek, they found that Samuel and the two boys, in addition to handling the cattle, had prepared a home for them, just about one 100 yards south of the monument.  Alfred, three years old, tired by the long trip by wagon, cried and said, “Let’s go home!  I wanted a house.”

Hyrum, rugged, muddy and laughing, said, “Well, here’s a house!” and what a house it was!  Part dugout and part rock with a dirt floor and dirt roof.  It was the only habitation south of Faust Ranch.  No neighbors, no conveniences, and mighty few of the necessities.

I wonder what the twenty-two-year old Mary thought as she looked at Hiram’s “house.” The records do not say.  But they do show that she pitched right in and made a real home of this dugout in the desert.

Later on, a two-room, story-and-a-half log house was built, just west of the dugout.  Still later at this monument, Samuel Bennion built a similar dugout and log house.  The next year a very fine garden and orchard were planted below the buildings

 For an entire year Mary Turpin Bennion, a wife of John Bennion “the immigrant” was the only white woman out there with just the two teenage boys who cared for the cattle, and her young children for company.  But I never heard her, complain of the loneliness or inconveniences which seemed so terrible to me.  She only told us adventure stories with the Indians, such things as would entertain children.  She told of squaws sometimes coming around begging.

Once an Indian mother intently watched grandma bathe her baby in a basin then proceeded to wash her papoose in her (Mary’s) frying pan.

Kenneth Bennion, who spent much time in his youth in Rush Valley, stated that Indians were quite numerous during the years that Mountain Home was first occupied and were a constant source of real danger and alarm for the settlers.  However, the Bennions had little serious trouble because of their policy of fairness and generosity with them.

In September of 1864, a year after Mary’s more, Esther Ann Bennion and her three small children, Enoch, Israel and Harden, moved here from Taylorsville to help with the increasing work, and to be company for Mary T.  Esther Ann was also a polygamous wife of John Bennion.

Mary told of quite a troupe of Indians calling on her and Aunt Esther Ann when they were alone with their children.  The Indians boldly came into the house and seated themselves in a semicircle facing the brightly blazing fireplace.

Presently they motioned for the two women to step between them and the fireplace. The women tried not to show fear, knowing how Indians despise cowardice, but hesitated thinking they might be pushed into the blaze.  There upon one of the Indians stepped to the fire place and extended a long stick up the chimney knocking down burning soot showing that the chimney was on fire.  The unwelcome guests then proceeded to extinguish the blaze.

Samuel A. Bennion quotes Hyram Bennion, son of Samuel Bennion, as saying that the reason Samuel and John Bennion build their fortress home, including rock corrals for their animals where they did, though it was colder in the wind there than in the hollows, was that from this particular spot they could look some distance down a hollow extending toward where Vernon now is.  He described how the Indians, when they were bent on mischief, never rode lower reaches but came up the hollows so they could approach without being observed.

Grandma (Mary) spoke of one Indian who was reputed to have killed several white men.

At another time when a group of Indians appeared to be approaching up the hollow, the young teenage boys who were in charge of the cattle sent Mary T to the attic in care of the small children while the Esther Ann was enlisted to make bullets and load guns, then a laborious process, not simple as at present.

The alarm proved to be a false one as it was only a bunch of cattle being herded up the hollow.

It was here, on February 1, 1865, that David was born to Esther; on June 10. On the same year, Mark was born to Mary.  Both children arrived without benefit of doctor, nurse, ether, or any of the present-day necessities.  When men go down to the sea, poets sing of their daring; and when soldiers march away to battle, trumpets blow and banners are unfurled.  How, then can we pay fitting tribute to the infinite courage of these two young mothers who calmly faced suffering and possible death in this lonely wilderness?

These lovely lines were written by Israel Bennion’s son, the late Kenneth Bennion, and printed in volume three of the Bennion History.

These two women and their families lived there in love and harmony.  The life-long companionship and love of these two women, wives of one man, is a great story.

Dated “Bennion Canyon 1866,” Esther Ann wrote a poem called “To Mary”  I include it here not for its literary excellence but for the love it shows for Mary, her husband’s other wife, and for its description of the life these two shared while they lived together in the desert.

To Mary

In the old log cabin in the hills, Mary

we’ve spent many happy hours,

Our children playing about the door,

Bright as the summer flowers;

 And though we may sigh for the social life,

 And the joy that friendship brings,

We have found many pleasures in dutie’s path,

Pleasures which leave no strings

Sometimes we feel we are banished, Mary.

As the days and weeks roll by,

We look at the eastern mountains

With longing, wistful eye.

We sometimes feel we are shut out

From friends and kindred dear,

Yet this is but a moment’s thought

Our duty calls us here.

May memory turn with pleasure, Mary,

To the happy days we’ve spent,

In our old log cabin in the hills,

Our every day duties intent.

How we may spend our future years,

Or where our lot may be cast,

We know not, but we’ll never regret

That unforgetable past.

Considering the lack of formal education Esther Ann had, with only nine months of schooling, and that before she was old enough to recall it, this is a most commendable verse.

How scarce reading material was for her is indicated by the fact that when she was a girl in domestic service in England, she read the newspapers which papered the walls of the “necessary” where she worked.  When the lady of the house discovered how she was spending valuable time, she had the paper put on upside down.  Esther taught herself to read it thus.  This was told me by Grandma Mary as illustration of the spirit of Esther Ann, grandma’s closest companion; so it may not be amiss to include her lines so true of her spirit.

Be it mine

If any round me shout and play

And dance and sing in glad array,

And laugh and cheer,

May it Be mine to see and hear.

If any toil at noble things

And strive the higher levelings

 To reach and win,

May it be mine to join therein.

If any grieve and suffered pain,

Shouldn’t tears fall like summer rain

From troubled skies,

May it be mine to sympathize.

In all that makes the round of life’

Be it pleasure, peace or strife,

Joy or despair,

May I my proper burden share.

She had the natural facility with words and writing which was inherited by her grandsons: Glynn, who wrote two novels besides many published articles and stories, and Kenneth from whom I have quoted freely in this manuscript.  He and his brother Glynn both grew up in the Rush Valley country with their father, Israel, who was an authority on the history on the Bennion family and the country out there.  John and Esther Ann were the grandparents of Commander Mervyn Bennion who refuse to leave his ship at the time of the tragedy in Pearl Harbor, choosing to go down with it rather than leave it for the evening as he had been invited to do.

His Brother Howard was graduated with highest scholastic honors from the U. S.  Military academy at West Point, also number one at the army engineer school,.  Later he became managing director Edison Electric Institute, and other assignments both military and in business of national importance.  He was president of New York Stake and an early advocate of microfilming all genealogical records for the church.  He also received an honorary doctorate from the Brigham young university.

In 1867 Mary and Esther Ann, together with their families, were driven back to Taylorsville because of danger from the Indians.  And there, they lived together in two rooms adjoining the old family farm house until the fall of 1868 when Esther Ann and her family were moved “Down on the Muddy” in south eastern Nevada where her husband John Bennion had been called on a five year pioneering mission.

30+

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[1] Later the Rush Valley monument was built that coming generations of

Bennions might know where their fathers established their Rush
Valley Homes.