Summary of Histories
of Moroni Shirts and Sarah Ann Gates Shirts
Written by their
daughter, Meleta S. Cottam
Sarah Ann Shirts was
the daughter of Charles Henry Gates and Elizabeth Butler Gates and was born
September 27, 1861, in Providence, Utah. When she was twenty-three months old
her father was killed by a grizzly bear while hunting in the nearby mountains
with Ira Rice, his wife’s step-father. Ira had previously killed twenty bears,
thus helping to reduce the numbers of the marauders that devoured young cattle
and even took pigs out of their pens. The trappers, of course, used the bear
skins as robes and covers.
This is the story as it was told by Sarah Ann Shirts and is still told in
Escalante to descendents of Henry Gates. Ira and
Henry had tracked a large bear but could not find him. So they set a trap. The
next day they went to see if their victim was caught. Surprisingly, he had got
into the trap, broken the chain, and was roaming among the trees in anger, the
trap still on one foot. Ira, Henry, and others treed themselves to wait for his
appearance. One inexperienced young fellow climbed down his tree to look for
the bear. Just as he reached the ground, out of the bushes rushed the grizzly
and sprang upon the man. When Henry saw this, he dropped to the ground to shoot
the beast, but it rushed at him, grabbed him by the left side near his waist
and shook him like a small kitten, then threw Henry on his back and jumped on
him tearing the flesh from his left side. The bear would turn first to Henry’s
face then his feet. Unable to use his gun, the mangled man at first tried to thrust
the gunstock into the bear’s mouth, did succeed in putting his arm into the
huge mouth and thus saved his face from being chewed. He begged the men to give
him a knife but none dared come near. A man in a nearby field who had a gun
with him ran to the rescue, jumped on the bear’s back and shot him in the head.
Mangled as he was, Henry lived for ten days. His gun with the teeth marks of
the bear on the stock is still in possession of the family.
Sometime after Henry’s death Elizabeth married Dave Campbell, and they and her
parents, the Rice’s, and her brother, William Butler, were called to go south
and help settle Beaver Dam in Washington County. Like others in that county,
they suffered hardships. A cloudburst and the ensuing flood washed away their
house and their belongings. They lived in a wagon box with the sides boarded up
and a canvass cover over it. Food was so scarce they boiled greasewood for
greens. Then the whole company came down with chills and fever (Malaria) from
which Sarah Ann suffered for two and a half years.
Brother Erastus Snow released them to go back to their home in Cache Valley, but
when they got as far as Washington, just north of St. George, Ira Rice, in his
eightieth year, died. The family stayed there for two years.
In Sarah Ann’s ninth year, 1870, her mother and step-father, David C. Campbell,
their children including Sarah Ann and her brothers, William Henry and Hyrum
Gates moved to Panguitch, though Sarah Ann would have
preferred to remain in Washington with her grandmother. In Panguitch
they lived in a fort to be protected from the Indians who had driven all the settlers
out five years previous. Only a few daring ones were now beginning to venture
back.
Sarah Ann lived with her family in Panguitch until
she was sixteen. She and her brothers would wade the
creek to glean the barley in the fields beyond after the owners were through
harvesting. From early morning until dark they would glean the fields, with
only a little bread and molasses for their lunch. On Saturdays they would
winnow their grain and take it to the store to trade it for shoes and other clothing
for themselves and the smaller children. Sarah Ann also did housework for
various women, scrubbing floors and washing clothes.
In the fall of 1877 she went to Orderville to live
with her grandma Rice and her Uncle William Butler and his family as a member
of the United Order. Here she took her turn with the rest of the girls of the
community in rotation from the kitchen to the dining room to the bakery of the
establishment. The girls kept the pine tables scrubbed clean. They put sand on
the floor to cut the grease and dirt, then scrubbed it with loose root,
sometimes called soap root. In the bakery she helped mould
the loaves from the great vats of dough. Some of the bread was made with yeast;
some with “salt-risen”. It was all mixed by a man named Charlie Carl. The girls
would work a week then go to school a week.
While she was at Orderville her family moved to
Escalante, where she joined them in 1878. She went out washing and doing
housework for women when they were having their babies, the first being Jane
Ellen Spencer. She received a dollar and a half a week. She learned to milk
cows.
She would go with other girls and women over to Pine Creek and burn cottonwood
trees to get ashes to use for lye in cleansing the water for washing and for
making soft soap. They would keep the fires going all day, and then when the
ashes got cold, they would sack them and carry them home. The night before wash
day they would put a double handful of ashes in a little water. Next morning
they would drain off the water and use it for lye.
Sarah Ann also stripped sugar cane to make molasses and picked up potatoes. Her
life was not all hard work though. She was pretty, dark eyed, and full of fun.
She went to some dances, some parties, and horse-back riding with her beau. In
August, 1879, she met Moroni (Rone)
Shirts, and in December they were married.
David B. Adams performed the ceremony. No license was required, just the
couple, a bishop or one of his counselors and two witnesses. They were married
on December 23, 1879, Moroni’s twenty-first birthday.
He had worked all autumn to get money to be married on, but his sister Margaret
Ann was being married and needed a wedding dress. So he gave her most of his
money. He had no shoes; he danced barefoot. The day of his wedding his good
friend Rile Porter loaned him his boots so that he would feel properly dressed
for the occasion.
All the town, young and old, were invited to the wedding dinner which consisted
of potatoes and gravy, white bread, which was a treat it itself, squash, and a
suet pudding the bride had cooked in a black kettle hanging in the fireplace. Rone’s suit was a pair of trousers made from dark linsey clothe, with a black and white striped hickory
shirt. His suspenders were made of buckskin he had tanned himself.
Their first bedroom
was a covered wagon box near his parents’ home. By March, Moroni
had made a dugout on the lot where Lane Liston now lives, formerly the John
Shirts place. Sarah Ann’s cellar home was neat. They had a four-holed stove, a
bed with white spread and white foot-curtains. She had a shuck tick, two
pillows, two sheets and a few quilts. There was a cupboard made from rough
timber, two home-made chairs, a few dishes, and a chest.
In the spring Moroni rented Joseph Spencer’s farm
north of town and raised wheat and cane and potatoes. Sarah Ann helped with the
harvesting. She did knitting for different people for milk and butter. When the
crops were harvested, the wheat was taken to Panguitch
to be ground. That winter they had white bread instead of corn dodger. She had
dried squash and a little dried fruit that had come from the Dixie country.
Orchards had not yet started bearing in Escalante.
That fall they took up a lot south of town which now belongs to Blake Robinson.
Rone went to the mountains and cut and hewed the logs
to build a house. Unable to get enough lumber for the roof, he used willows,
straw and dirt.
Before their first child was born they went to St. George with three other
couple for a temple marriage ceremony. The next year they decided to move to
Teasdale along with other members of Rone’s family.
They sold their home to Edward Wilcock. After crops
froze for two years in succession at Teasdale and their second child had been
born, they moved back to Escalante, bought the lot where Randal Lyman now lives
which had on it a two-row log house with a lumber floor in one room, dirt floor
in the other. When they built a new log house, Sarah Ann sewed rags on shares
to get enough rag carpet to cover the large floor, 15 by 24 feet. She knit lace
to pay for the weaving. Through she had four children; she took part in ward
plays, dances, and other activities.
For the next period of their lives they spent the summers at the Hog Ranch on
North creek along with her mother Elizabeth Butler Gates Campbell and children.
As was usual at these summer dairies, the women and children did most of the
labor of milking thirty or forty cows and making cheese and butter. Rone rented farms near town and was finally able in 1907 to
buy most of the Hall farm three miles north-west of town. Rone
also headed sheep and carried mail.
They lived at the farm from April to November where they produced butter and
cheese as well as field crops and livestock. Sarah Ann would bring a bucket of
butter to town wrapped in wet white cloths and covered with fresh alfalfa to
keep it cool. Generally she came on Sunday morning so that the children could
go to Sunday School. A new baby arrived every two
years until there were nine. One little boy was killed by being run over by a
wagon.
In 1909 they traded lots with Riley Woolsey. Rone had
a herd of sheep by this time and so was able to build a brick house with
attractive grounds including a stone wall on two sides.
After their oldest daughter Lizzie Lay, became a widow, they bought a home in
Richfield to be near her. When they celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary
they had 53 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren. Rone
died in 1932 at age 74, Sarah Ann eleven years later aged 83.
