Malad Valley Pioneers

MRS. JANET DANIELS

(Written by L.D. Jones and contributed by Anna Lou Call)

Your correspondent had a very pleasant visit with one of Malad’s worthy pioneers known as Aunt Janet Daniels.  She is in the eighty-sixth year of her life, being born in Wales in 1837.  She bears evidence of being used to toil and acquainted with care.  Nothing would give her more pleasure than to be able to take up the tasks of life.  But she earned a well merited vacation and at present is under the loving care of Mrs. John S. Williams and family at their home.  She loves to talk of bygone days and her experiences, though her memory of dates and chronological sequence is getting a little faulty.  She has been a sufferer of ill health for some years.

Mrs. Daniels left her native land in company with her parents, William and Ann Thomas, in February 1853, sailing from Liverpool in a sailing vessel for New Orleans, where she landed after a trip of six weeks or more.  From New Orleans they came up the Mississippi river on a steamboat and landed at Montrose, Mo.  There they remained for two months.  From that point they started for Salt Lake and arrived in October of that year.  While remaining in Salt Lake she went to earn a livelihood.  From Salt Lake she came with her parents to Willard and from there to Brigham City.

At Brigham she met Verlum Dives, the father of our well-known townsman of that name.  They were married at Salt Lake in the Endowment house and settled at Brigham.  There were five children born to them when she was called upon to part with her husband by death.  He had been a worthy husband.  Soon after they were married, they took part in the great move south in 1858, which was so general from northern and central Utah owing to the coming to Utah of a great army under General Johnston, who were coming to crush the Mormons, who were reported to be in rebellion against the government, which was an outrageous falsehood.  The people were determined not to submit to cruel treatment by the troops as many of them had experienced in their expulsion from Missouri and Illinois.  Neither would they allow them to loot their homes as they had done there.  So, on the approach of the army, the people moved to the south, leaving men behind in the various towns to burn their homes if the troops came to the Salt Lake valley.

But the truth had reached Washington, the Mormons were not in rebellion and the President sent commissioners to ascertain the true situation.  They came to the Salt Lake Valley ahead of the troops and met President Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders.  It was decided that there was no occasion whatever for the troops, but they would be allowed to come into the valley under the provision that they would not molest any of the property of the people and they would encamp 30 miles from Salt Lake City.  They located at Camp Floyd at a point west of the north end of Utah Lake, where they remained for a short time.

At the breaking of the Civil War in 1861 they were called home to take part in the strife.  General Johnston, their commander, joined the Confederate army in the rebel cause.  So when we hear our old times speaking of the move south, it means the circumstances related here.  Grandma Daniels remembers the episode very well.  She and her husband went as far south as Pond (now Palmyra) some twelve miles south of Provo.  Here they remained some time when President Young sent out a call for all to return to their homes, that the trouble was over.  On returning they found everything as they had left it.  The grain fields were covered with beautiful crops, in fact, the finest they had seen.

Mrs. Daniels also remembers a trip she made with her husband and a company of 12 teams led by President Young to Fort Lemhi on the Salmon River in April 1857 to visit a colony of Mormons, who had formed a settlement there in June 1885.  She said that the company came through the Malad valley on their way.  There were no houses in the valley then.  It was a waving sea of grass.  After a short visit at Lemhi, they returned to their homes.  She remembers the care exercised by President Young for the welfare and safety of the company, both in camp and on the march.  She also recalls being in conference in Salt Lake City in October 1856, when the report came that some of the belated emigrants had been caught in the unusually early snow storms on the plains of Iowa and Wyoming.  A call was made for men to go with teams and supplies to meet them and bring them in.  Her husband volunteered with his team and started at once without returning home.  He was gone six weeks on that trip.  She said President Young shed tears in reporting the sad condition of the emigrants to the conference.  Aunt Janet was called to part with her husband by death, leaving her with five children for which to care.  She remembers gleaning wheat in the fields assisted by her son, Verl.

She was again married to Thomas Daniels, a widower with a family of six children.  By Mr. Daniels, she had eight children, making a total of 19 children she had mothered as follows:  by her first husband, Verlum Dives, there were William, Sarah, Verlum, Joseph, John and Gertrude; by Thomas Daniels the following:  Janet, Elva, Catherine, Henry, George, Theodore, Dora, and Annie.  The children of Thomas Daniels by his first wife were Mary Jane, Thomas D. Daniel M., John D., David, Sarah Ann.  She also cared for her father who lived with her for the last eight years of his life.

She tells with pleasure of how the large family got along together.  In her earlier life she was active in Relief Society being one of the teachers, and she mentioned Mrs. Jesse Dredge as one of her companions.  She had experience in the cricket and grasshopper war that the people endured in the early days, taking an active part in trying to save the crops from being destroyed.  Through thrift and toil, Mrs. Daniels has never suffered from want.

Her pride in the town of Malad which she has seen grow from a little cluster of log cabins with dirt roofs and no schools or meeting houses, to the beautiful city it now is, is very marked.  She speaks in high terms of the people who, she says, always treat her so kindly.  She has witnessed the wonderful transforming of the west from a wilderness, the home of the wild Indians and the trapper and the wild animals, to a thriving commonwealth, enjoying all the advantages of a civilized community.

If any of the boys and girls would enjoy living for an hour in the past and living once again some of the experiences the pioneers passed through, let them visit some of the pioneers who are with us.  When this article was written, Aunt Janet was with us.  She passed away at the home of her daughter on Sept. 2, 1927, at the age of 90 after a very useful life.  She was born in 1837 at a time when there were very few white people living west of the Mississippi.  The headquarters of the church was then at Kirtland, Ohio.

What a wonderful array of important events have happened during her eventful life.  She only lacked seven years of being as old as the church.  Her children, grandchildren, and relatives have just cause to be proud of her.

She is a witness of the predictions made by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 that the Saints would go to the Rocky Mountains and there would become a mighty people.