Mary Turpin Bennion by BCE

Mary Turpin Bennion’s later life As written by Beatrice C. Evans

Including Zina B. and John M’s wedding and Beatrice Cannon’s birth

 Mary and her family continued to live in the same place for a time.  Just when they moved from there is not clear to me, but when father and mother used to take us young children on the summer evening drives to Taylorsville, mother (Zina

B. Cannon) pointed out a brick cottage across the street north from the old John Bennion home as her birthplace on July 2, 1873. 

Mother lived there until they moved to Salt Lake for her to attend what was then called the L. D. S. College but later known as LDS High School and for her older Brother Milton to attend the University of Utah.

There was in a small log cabin near the cottage which had been known to accommodate convert families which were brought into that church by Bennion missionaries.  Tradition has it that a spiritualist family once occupied this cabin and that, after their departure, furniture could be heard moving about.

Grandma, Effie and mother lived at 137 Oak Street from where mother was married on July 18, 1893.  This building still stands on Capitol Hill across the street west from the State Capitol.  I have an engraved invitation to their wedding supper held there.

 After their marriage, mother and father lived in the second story apartment of this house and it was there that I was born on May 8, 1894.  When I was six weeks old father and mother moved to a home they had already built at 2381 South Seventh East in Forest Dale.

When I was a few years old, grandma and her adopted niece, Effie Turpin Cooper, later the wife of Frank Russell who was about 12 years younger than mother, followed us to a cottage built for them immediately south of our place in Forest Dale.  Their house was later enlarged and occupied by mother’s older Brother, Milton and family.

Grandma had been a semi invalid for many years, due to strains of her hard pioneering life. Effie Was young and not physically strong.  Keeping house alone proved too much for them.  It was then that my father, John M. Cannon, insisted that grandma and Effie live in our very large house.  This they did near the time of the birth of mother’s third child, John, until after father’s death.  Mother always had hired household help and grandma and Effie became great baby sitters.

When mother’s fourth child, Paul, was born, Milton, our third child, was only 14 months old and grandma practically took him over.  Grandma and Effie were a blessing in our home in more ways than one.

Grandma’s  educator philosopher son, Milton, wrote of his Mother Mary: “My mother’s disposition was firm, but very gentle, kind, and well balance.  Because of this, she had great influence with her sons and daughters throughout her life.  I say “daughters” because when I was 15 years old, her sister Hannah Turpin Cooper died, leaving a large family which included a very young infant, Effie Lenore Cooper.  Hannah’s deathbed request was that her Sister Mary “take the baby.” And she did.