Frances Lovina Harris History

 Information was gathered from this site

Frances Lovina Harris

I was born in San Bernardino, California, November 6, 1856. I was the second child of of Daniel and Lydia H. Harris. I was named for my two grandmothers, Frances Harris, and Lovina Harris.

My Mother's maiden name was Harris, but she was not related to my father.

When I was a year and a half old my parents moved from California to Southern Utah. They settled in the town of Washington, Washington County. Mother's health was poor because of the bad water so they moved from there to Parowan, Iron County. My father's people had settled in Fillmore, Millard County, so our family soon moved there. My brother, Charles Franklin, was born in Fillmore, May 24, 1869. Soon after this, our family and that of my grand-parents, moved to the western part of Millard county to near the Sevier River. The place was called Deseret, because of the desert looking valley.

My father was a farmer, also raised horses and cattle. It was at this place that I remember first seeing Indians. I remember an Indian coming to our house and asking for bread. Mother told him she didn't have any bread. The Indian said, "You lie," and went to the fire place, where Mother had some bread baking in a bake over. He arted to take the lid off, when mother picked up a stick of wood and hit the Indian with it. He quickly drew his gun and pointed it at her. We children were terrified, and all screamed and clung to Mother, but she just stood and looked him in the eye. When he saw she was not afraid, he turned and walked out of the house. He later said that Mother was a brave squaw and that was the reason he didn't shoot. I also remember going for a boat ride on a canal, with my parents and how seasick I got.

Later my father and his brother, Jake, were asked to return to California along with some other men to gather up some horses they left there. While they were doing this, they were arrested for stealing horses. My father and two other men were tried and sentenced to serve two years in prison. Mother was left with four small children to care for. Sister Orissa was born a few months after my father left.
Mother's people wrote and urged her to come to Dixie and they would help her if she would apply for a divorce, which she did. Mother's brother, Silas Harris, came after us and we moved to Harrisburg, Washington County. This was in the fall of 1862. I remember the first night out - the howling of the coyotes frightened me so much I couldn't eat or sleep.

One Day we all had to get out of the wagon and walk up a long steep hill. This was the first time I had ever seen acorns. They grew on scrub oak all along the road. My uncle stopped while we gathered some. We put them in a small tin churn and in the evening when we camped, we would roast the acorns over the camp fire and eat them. Mother told us after we moved to Beaver that the place where we gathered our acorns was North Creek Hill, north of Beaver.

My grandfather Harris and family, along with a few other families had settled on Cottonwood Creek and it was later called Harrisburg. We lived there about two years. When grandfather and his family and his two sons, John and Silas and their families moved to Glendale, Kane County.
We have lived here about a year when the Indians began to make trouble. The people moved their log houses close together and made a fort for protection. Between the houses cedar poles were set close together in an upright position to form a wall. The corrals were on the outside of the fort.
The now fell very deep that winter. I remember seeing uncle John Harris breaking a road with four oxen, hitched to the wagon, going up and down the street. The animals were afraid of Indians. There was a span of mules which would give the alarm in the night by a peculiar whistle when they smelled Indians. The people lived under a great strain at this time because of the Indians. Still they enjoyed themselves and had good times.

I was baptized there by Bishop John Berry. I remember on Sunday mother and others coming home from church very much excited. A friendly Indian had ridden up to the church building and told Bishop Berry that two of his brothers and the wife of one of them had been killed by the Indians as they were returning home from Salt Lake City. A rancher had found the bodies and sent word by the indian. They had been dead about three days when found. The Indians had taken their horses, bedding and animals away. Their faithful dog had stayed by the bodies and kept wild animals away. The Indians were making trouble in other small towns at the time, so President Brigham Young advised them to move to larger towns for protection.

Everyone began to prepare to move by fixing the wagons, mending harnesses and making boxes to pack clothing and other articles. They boys who were old enough were sent to the range to gather cattle. Some beavers were killed and divided up. Part of this was dried, or jerked, and part of it was cooked. The women were just as busy as the men.

The company traveled together and were led by John D.L. Pearce of Washington County who had been sent to bring them out. One day at noon while we were camped by a deserted ranch house, several Indians rode up to the camp, an done of them was wearing a shirt that had been taken from the body of one of the Berry brothers. Bishop John Berry drew his gun and would have shot the Indian, but the men prevented it. However, he did grab the Indian's arrows and broke them over this knee.

At another time the Indians were going to ambush the wagon train, but this was prevented by our scout, Mr. Pearce, who rode ahead and was awarned of the nearness of the Indians by his horse putting back its ears. This ambush was led by an Indians called Charlie Howd, who had been raised by Simeon Howd of Beaver, an dhe had gone back to live with the Indians.

Out family went back to their old home in Harrisburg. It was here that I attended my first school.
My oldest brother, Duayne, with other boys herded cows in the summer. They had to go bare-footed and the red sand became very hot during the day. We stayed here until 1866 when mother married Samuel D. White, of Beaver. They were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake. The morning they started for Dixie to move the family to Beaver, they were stopped at Jackson County and told of the raid at Lee's Ranch up South Creek that morning by Indians and advised to return to town, which they did and waited until the next day.

Samuel White built a lumber room for mother on the lot occupied by his other family.

The first school I attended in beaver was taught by Daniel Tyler at his home. When I was in the third reader, Julia P. Murdock (now Julia M. Farnsworth) was my teacher. Tihs school was held in a new brick building, called the Central School Building. This school building was also used as an amusement hall and the first mutual meetings were held there. Lucinda Lee Dalton was my teacher for one year.

The last school I attended was taught by Richard Horn. This was the fifth reader. At that time the schools were graded by the reader - first reader, second reader and so on. I went to work in the Beaver Woolen Mills before I was sixteen and worked here for four years. The factory would shut down about Christmas and open again in the late spring.

I was eleven years old when my sister Amelia White was born and my stepfather died when she was a few months old.

A few years after this we moved to the place where I am now living.

I was married to Wm. Henry Jones, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Simons Jones, from North Wales. We were married in the St. George Temple, March 14, 1877.

The summer before I was married I spent in Leeds, Washington County, with my grandparents. I got a lot of pleasure out of that visit. They were such dear old people.

The summer after we were married, we lived on President John R. Murdock's farm. In the fall we moved to town and lived in two rooms of father Jones' house. My oldest child Della was born here on February 4, 1878.

My next two children were born to us while living in this house, Lydia Lovina and William. The latter died when a year and a half old. Two more children were born to us, Franklin and Ernest. Franklin died when he was six weeks old and Ernest lived but seven months.

My husband died December 18, 1886 and I thought no on had ever had as much trouble as I. My mother and brother Frank brought me home to live with them.

Life Sketch Daniel Duane Harris

History of Daniel Duane Harris Link

/t/

Birth:  Oct. 8, 1854 San Bernardino San Bernardino County California, USA Death:  Jul. 4, 1930 Beaver Beaver County Utah, USA Life Sketch of Daniel Duane Harrris Daniel Duane Harris was born in San Bernardino, San Bernardino County, California on October 8, 1854. He was the oldest child of Daniel and Lydia Harris Harris who three years earlier (1851) with their respective families had settled in the San Bernardino area as part of an expedition headed by Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman. This Mormon Church venture was part of a planned "colonization" expansion effort in the Western United States. Up to this time, San Bernardino was probably the most distant of all Latter-day Saint settlements from Utah's Salt Lake Valley. Daniel and Lydia were married in San Bernardino on October 5, 1853. In 1857, this Southern California colony was abandoned rather hastily, as direction came from Salt Lake City for all colonists to return to Utah to protect the more central communities from an "invasion" by the "Johnston's Army", which was enroute from the East to put down the "so-called" Mormon rebellion. By this time, Daniel Duane had a sister, Frances Lovina, born to Daniel and Lydia on November 6, 1856. As the San Bernardino residents returned, they stopped first at Utah's southern most settlement of Washington in Washington County, where some families established permanent homes. However, most families gradually dispersed throughout the various settlements of the Territory. Lydia's parents, Moses and Fanny Harris moved about ten miles north of Washington to found the new settlement of Harrisburg, named in honor of Moses. Daniel and Lydia with their children Daniel Duane and Frances Lovina soon followed Lydia's parents to Harrisburg. Very shortly, the young Harris family moved to Parowan in Iron County, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and after a brief stay continued northward to Fillmore in Millard County, where Daniel Duane's younger brother Charles Franklin was born, on April 23, 1859. The next move took the family to Deseret about 30 miles west of Fillmore where they intended to farm desert land using water from the Sevier River. In Deseret the fourth child was born to Lydia and Daniel, a daughter, on March 31, 1861, and given the name of Cynthia Orissa. Some time in 1861, Daniel Duane's father Daniel, as part of a group of former San Bernardino colonists, returned to California attempting to recover livestock which had been left behind four years earlier. The mission did not go as planned for Daniel. Apparently, difficulties ensued and Daniel was arrested for stealing horses, perhaps his own, resulting in having to serve a two-year jail term. This incident and perhaps other disagreements caused a rift to come between Daniel and Lydia. Having to care for her four children alone, Lydia returned to Southern Utah to live with her parents in Harrisburg and later in Glendale in Kane County for a period of five years. Lydia's parents encouraged her to divorce Daniel, which she did. Years later, Daniel Duane related to his own children of herding cows near Leeds and Harrisburg and through the Gap (where Quail Creek leaves the Harrisburg area and flows into the recently created Quail Lake about one mile above the Virgin River). He said that the weather was so extreme that his feet became blistered by the hot earth and rocks. Following his period of incarceration in California, Daniel returned to Utah. Daniel Duane recalls that his father came once a year and gave money to his mother Lydia, from wages he had earned while working in the mines (perhaps at the iron mines near Cedar City or somewhere in Nevada where mining was just beginning ). In 1866, Daniel Duane's mother Lydia married Samuel Dennis White, a resident of Beaver in Beaver County, located about one hundred miles north of Harrisburg. Samuel was a freighter by trade in the Beaver area and also was one of the agents who met wagon trains on the plains of Wyoming to assist immigrants in completing their journey to Utah. On November 21, 1867, Lydia gave birth to her fifth child, Amelia Abigail White. However, Lydia's marriage to Samuel White lasted for just two years. He died in 1868. Daniel Duane's mother Lydia, now age thirty-five would not marry again. Beaver was to be the permanent home for Lydia and her five children. Many years later Daniel Duane recalled that at age fourteen he was required to be the "man of the house" and also had to do a "man's work from now on". Therefore, as a young man he was involved in the freighting business, driving a team and wagon to support his mother and family. On June 15, 1881, at the age of twenty-seven, Daniel Duane Harris married Francis Elizabeth Tolton, a local school teacher, twenty-two years of age. Francis was the daughter of Edward and Mary Ann Tomlinson Tolton. The families of both of these individuals were immigrants to the United States from England after having joined the Mormon Church in the mid 1840's. Francis was born in Ephraim, San Pete County, Utah on September 14, 1859, and had come to Beaver with her parents about 1866. Daniel Duane and Francis' first home in Beaver was a two-room log cabin with dirt floors and a dirt-covered roof. A single fireplace was used for cooking and for heating. Water for the home was obtained from an irrigation ditch several blocks away, which had been diverted from the Beaver River, which flowed from the snow-covered peaks of the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver. Some fifteen years later, a well was dug to provide water for the home. Through the years, eight children were born to Daniel Duane and Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris: Walter Smith, 1882; Clara, 1884; Orville Duane 1887; Earl Tolton, 1889; Ambrose, 1892; Edward Daniel, 1894; Frank 1897; and, Lafayette, 1902. In 1902, Daniel Duane constructed a new home for his large family, a four room log house, at which time the original home was razed. Some time later two more rooms, made of concrete, were added to the back of the house. Daniel provided a living for his family mainly by farming and by raising both dairy and beef cattle. Francis had received fifteen acres of land north of Beaver as part of her inheritance from her parents' estate, which was being farmed. Daniel purchased additional acreage from Charles White which greatly enlarged the family farm. Edward recalls that his father had a total of approximately eighty acres of land along North Creek. In conjunction with other Beaver area cattlemen, Daniel shared a summer range on the high meadow land in the mountains to the east, where he developed the Wiregrass Springs area as part of his own pastureland. Besides his farming and cattle enterprises, Daniel had a freighting business, hauling goods by team and wagon between various communities in the Beaver area. The largest town at the time was Frisco, a booming mining town near Milford, some twenty-five miles to the west. With a population of some 1600, its Horn Silver Mine was producing extremely high grade ore. Daniel, with his oldest son Walt, would cut timbers from the mountains near Beaver, strip them of bark, cut them to various lengths and deliver them to the mines, to be used in shoring up the extensive under-ground shafts and tunnels to prevent cave-ins. For many years, Daniel hauled freight from the Milford railyard to Beaver for his brother-in-law John Franklin Tolton, who operated a mercantile store in Beaver. During winter-time, when the snow was deep, timber was cut by broad-axe to be used for ties in constructing the railroad as it extended throughout Southern Utah from Milford. Daniel was known as a "skilled lime-burner" as he assisted Frank White in building lime kilns in the mountains for the making of lime. It was critical that fires in the kilns be kept extremely hot for up to three days in order to produce lime from the heated limestone. When finished, the lime was sold for fifty cents a bushel. Together with some of his older sons, Daniel would stay in the mountains for as long as two weeks in order to produce enough lime to be sold to local craftsman for as much as one hundred dollars. Faithful in religious matters, Daniel enjoyed attending his church meetings. For several years he was a member of the Beaver Stake High Council of the LDS Church which required him to be a regular speaker at the various churches in the area. Having had less than a year of formal education, his son Edward recalls that his father would occasionally ask him for assistance in preparing his sermons. Most of the children of Daniel Duane Harris recall that their father was very strict and stern in relating to them, that he required them to work long and hard in the fields, that there was not much time for play. He was not one to display his emotions, but he did have a sense of humor. This strictness caused conflict with some of his sons, resulting in them leaving home for several years. One son, Ambrose, spent several years working on ranches and doing mining and trapping in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While away from home, ‘Brose died during the world-wide influenza epidemic in 1918. This must have been a rather tense time for Daniel Duane Harris, both emotionally and financially. His son Earl was a soldier on the battlefield in France. Another son, Edward was serving in New Zealand on a church mission which required sending him about fifteen dollars a month. To have Ambrose's body returned in a sealed casket (due to the strict health code imposed) cost $1500. Just a year earlier the family home had burned, with most of the household furnishings and personal possessions being lost. To rebuild the home, another $3300 needed to be borrowed, even with friends in the community helping. In later years, Daniel Duane told his son Edward that his approach at rearing children, in being strict and trying to conquer them, was incorrect. In their adult lives, most of Daniel's sons were able to make peace with their father. Earl recalls that at one time his father suffered from an abscessed hip, and in order to find relief, spent weeks at a time bathing in mineral hot springs, requiring Earl to work throughout the summer for High White for seventy-five cents a day to support the family. Francis Elizabeth had a temperament which was just opposite that of her husband, Daniel. She was a very gracious and loving individual. She had attended school in Beaver through the ninth grade, an exceptional feat for the time. She was a good speller, had an extensive vocabulary, and had taught school for several years. Frequently, she entertained audiences by giving dramatic readings. Her son Earl recalls that during his childhood years in their two-room cabin, "there were pleasant nights with the family around the hot stove while the temperature outside was zero", and that on these occasions the "tradition of learning poems and sayings, acting, telling stories and speaking decisively was promoted." Several of her sons, especially Orville, Earl and Edward must have been greatly influenced by their mother, since they were also good story tellers. Francis participated in the local LDS Church activities and fulfilled assignments in various organizations. For many years she was President of the Women's Relief organization where she gave much compassionate service to the members of her ward. As a youth she and her brother John always won the foot races on the annual Fourth of July celebrations. The Harris Family home still stands in Beaver today. After the fire of 1917, only two of the rooms remained, those constructed of concrete. In reconstruction, the two rooms became the front part of the house, and for many years it was the family home of Orville and Hester Neal Harris and their three daughters. Daniel Duane Harris died in Beaver on July 4, 1930 at age seventy-five. Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris died in Beaver shortly thereafter on December 7, 1930 at age sixty-six. Both are buried in the Beaver City Cemetery. -source: Information in this sketch has been obtained from Earl T. and Edward D. Harris as recorded by Shirley Harris DeLapp from the Silas Harris, Jr. record published by the Silas Harris, Jr. Family Organization and from various family members.