Mary Turpin Bennion Table and Chair

The Mary Turpin Bennion, her parents and her historic table and chair:

Mary Turpin was born January 25, 1841 in Birkenshaw, Yourkshire, England of William Turpin and Elisabeth Tidwell Turpin.

William was a skilled carpenter and wheelwright.

While Elizabeth had no formal schooling, she was educated by her father. At age 16 she went out to domestic service and lived for seven years in the cultured and wealthy family of Edward Acroid.

William earned a good living, building a home and had several cottages to rent.  He married Elizabeth May 14, 1838.

During the early years of this marriage, the Mormon Elders brought the gospel to the family which was baptized in May or 1842.

While they had a comfortable living, the call to “Gather to Zion” put the family on the ship, Norfolk the fall of 1844 on the way to the mouth of the Mississippi River.  Mary was just three and a half years of age.

That fall, a steamboat took them up the Mississippi  to Nauvoo.

With the Prophet Joseph already dead and the Saints being driven from Nauvoo, the family was asked to stay in Nauvoo so the father could help fix wagons for those fleeing the area. 

The fall of 1846, with nothing to show for his most productive years, the family set out to cross Iowa to rejoin the Saints.  In later years, Mary said her five-year-old memories of those days are the first to stick in her mind. 

Through sickness, birth and family death, they traveled to Bonaparte, not being able to make it to Winter Quarters arriving at Winter Quarters late the next spring.  They stayed in the general area of Winter Quarters for three years.

Their four month journey across the plains to Salt Lake City started in June 1851 when Mary was ten years old.  With family sickness, Mary was practically the only one to help drive the wagons, the extra teams and keep track of loose cows that traveled with them for the four month journey.

They reached the Salt Lake Valley in October 1852 and settled “over Jordan” about ten miles south of the city.

On April 19, 1857, at age 16, Mary became the third wife of John Bennion. 

For the next ten years, she lived “Over Jordan” in the area where Taylorsville now is, and 1861 she lived in a dugout in Rush Valley, west of the Oquirrh mountains.  She returned once from Rush Valley because of problems with the Indians.

During her life, she had seven sons and one daughter, Zina with whom she chose to live beginning in 1897 for the last 16 years of her life after the death of her husband and the university graduation of her sons.

A table and chair that travelled with Mary and her family across the plains and found their way into her daughter Zina Bennion Cannon’s home.

Beatrice Cannon Evans, the eldest of eleven children of Zina Bennion and lived 16 years with her grandmother and her table and chairs.

If the table could speak, what stories it could tell.

I now have the table and chairs to be passed on in the family.

For more detail consult Bennion Family History Volume 1.