Married Samuel William Mackelprang in Salt Lake City
Adelia-Mary Ann-Dixie
Died 7 January 1930 in Huntington
Buried in Huntington
1860 Census
1870 Census
1880 Census
1900 Census
1910 Census
1920 Census
The following are memories from two of her daughters.
Written up April 20, 1932
by Minerva M. Guymon
In this history I will tell of incidents that happened in my Mother’s life, and which she related to me.
I was born on the 14th day of March, 1879, in Cedar City, Iron County, Utah, in a two-roomed adobe house, situated on the same lot on which my grandparents on my father’s side lived. To me, as yet, that is one of the most sacred places on earth.
My grandparents, Peter Matterson Mackleprang and Margret Sofie Sorensen, emigrated from Rodby, Maribow County, Denmark in 1855. My Grandfather became a farmer and bee keeper. He had a farm twenty miles away from Cedar City.
In the spring when the flowers were out in bloom he noticed swarms of bees on the blossoms and wondered where they had come from, not knowing of anyone else having bees. So the next time he went home he opened his bee hives and sprinkled flour on the bees wings. The next day he drove to Cedar City, and was very much surprised to find the bees with flour on their wings there gathering sweets from the flowers. It was very interesting in those days to find out that bees would travel so far to gather honey.
Later on, grandfather went into the pig business. Men from all over the State came to buy his beautiful fat pork. One day an agriculturist from Salt Lake City came to look at them. Grandfather said, “Well, there’s the pigs. Come with me and I’ll show you the breed.” Of course the agriculturist thought he was going to see a written pedigree, but instead he was shown a bin of corn.
My father, Samuel William Mackelprang, was a carpenter by trade. He was doing fine in supporting his family, which consisted at that time of my mother, Adelia Estella Terry and my brother, Samuel, and my sisters, Estella, Margret, and Lydia. They settled in Cedar City in the year 1877, just prior to my birth. All the Priesthood in Iron County were called together to discuss an order which had been sent out from the heads of the Church to the people of Cedar City. It was called the United Order.
At that time the people did not understand the law and were not prepared to live it. Mother, being in such poor condition, was very much in sorrow. But she and father were obedient to the authority over them. They pledged themselves to give everything along with their talents to their beloved church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just before the United Order was affected, another call was sent out by the presiding elder, John Taylor, who later became President of the Church.
This second call counteracted or superseded the first one in the case of these people of whom I am speaking. Mother always bore testimony that the Lord knew the hearts of the people were not prepared to live the law of consecration at that time. But I have often heard her say in her later life that the time would come when the people would be glad to be numbered with those worthy to live the law of consecration, “Because,” she said, “Only the faithful will be ready for that law.” It was also a testimony to Mother that the people who were willing at that time to honor the call made of them were the ones to receive the other call, which was to perform a mission by going and settling the Indian reservation called Bluff of San Juan Mission. The purpose of the mission was to educate and tame the Indians.
In 1879, October 24th, sixty families left Iron County to settle that waste country where no white man had been. Being the first to travel that direction, the men of the vanguard had to make the road all the way. My father and his family were of that company which was led by Brother Jessie N. Smith, President of Iron County, Platt Lyman and Silas N. Smith.
That winter was the hardest the company had ever seen. Some of the small calves froze to death on the way. Many of the people in the company got entirely without flour and food stuff. Father had been fortunate enough to trade our home in Cedar City for the necessary grain we would need to plant the following Spring. We had two large wagons, one was loaded with food, grain and some of grandfather Mackleprang’s corn. Father nailed an old style grinder on the side of the wagon and everyone who was out of flour came and ground corn to make into bread.
Those were trying days for Mother as she was sick with neuralgia and toothache all the way. I was but two years of age, but it seems that I can see that company of Pioneers, consisting of over two hundred, making their way over that rugged desert.
We reached a place on the Colorado River called “The Hole in the Rock” a few days before Christmas. It seemed as though there was no way of getting thru the cliffs of solid rock. Where we stopped the Colorado River was roaring and booming forty-two feet below. The company prayed for guidance as they had done all the way.
The Captain of the camp ordered some of the men to drive the cattle and horses on thru the rocky way down to the river, where they were herded until a ferry-boat was finished. Some men proceeded to make a road down to the river. The way was so steep and rough that in getting the wagons down it was necessary to hold them from tipping over by fastening a chain to the back of the wagon and hooking a team onto it. Men held to the upper side of the wagons as they passed down the rugged mountain. Father and Charley Hall, both being carpenters, were let down by a rope (one end was tied to their bodies and the other to a wagon wheel) over the cliff to the bank of the Colorado River where they built a ferry boat to cross the River. Not being prepared with materials, men had to go back to the nearest settlement for lumber, nails, cables, ropes and things to use. The boat which Father and Brother Hall made was large enough to ferry two wagons at a time.
The river was very deep and the ice was breaking and rolling in large boulders. Those were trying days and the women did all they could to help. Sister Sarah Cox, who later settled in Price, Utah and mother made glue by boiling the hoofs of cows that had died on the way. This was used to glue the boat.
The women tried to make merriment in the camp. On Christmas day we all ate dinner together. At night the men who had instruments played and the grown people danced on a large flat sand rock, with bonfires for light.
When the ferry-boat was completed and everything let down to the bank of the river, we proceeded to cross the fierce stream of water. Brother Smith warned the people not to ride in or hold to the wagons for fear the boat would tip and the wagons slide off.
We spent six weeks at this stop, but the Lord was with us in spirit, and after this length of time we proceeded on over a rugged, unbroken trail. In places the timber was so dense that a road had to be chipped thru for miles at a stretch.
We landed in Bluff on the 6th day of April, 1880. Hundreds of Indians were there to greet us with whoops and yells. They surrounded our wagons. Children screamed and women cried and hid in the wagons. We were fortunate to have with us Brother William Hyde and Thales Haskel who could talk the Indian language. They tried to quiet the Indians, and finally did by giving them what they asked–that was ten dollars from each man in our camp.
The men proceeded to make camp. It was father’s greatest desire after such a hard journey to make as comfortable a bed room for mother as he could. So he set the wagon box off on the ground under a large greasewood bush. There is where my brother Peter was born eight weeks later on the 9th of June, 1880. We always told Peter that mother found him under a greasewood bush.
A Fort was built by every man building his house joining his neighbors to form a circle of houses. We had a willow shed in front of our house, and in the summer we put our stove out under this shed. It was like one grand large family in the Fort.
After the Indians had been sufficiently civilized that the people were safe in leaving the Fort, a town site was laid out, and each lot was numbered. The men drew lots by lining up and having a number handed to each man in his turn by a little boy. It happened that our lot was joining the land that had previously been allotted to us. We lived in the Fort the greater part of the time we stayed in Bluff. A meeting and school house were built so we might have a place to educate the children and gather together to worship the Lord.
While we lived in the Fort, six of us children took the measles. We were all in bed in one room. Mother was away sewing as was a common thing for her to do. While we were there alone, an Indian, whom we called Sleepy Jack, came and tried to take the small window out of the back of the room. We never got over that scare while we were there.
Mother made friends with the Indians, especially with Old Charley, who was a white man who had been stolen from his parents while asleep in a wagon when but a child. He knew no other life than that of an Indian. He had blue eyes and light hair and was perfectly content with his Indian life. He would bring velvet of all the bright colors for Mother to make suits for the Indians to wear in their war dances. She made three hundred suits. They paid her mostly in beef and mutton.
That helped us to live during the time father was laid up with a mashed foot which he received when his team ran away while he was freighting from Bluff to Durango. We had no doctor, and in case of sickness or trouble we had to rely on the help of Sister Walton, who later was shot and killed in a gun fight between some ruffians one night in a dance. (Her blood stains will always remain on the dance hall floor.)
Corn and cane were our main crop. The flume in the canal would break nearly every year and our crops would nearly burn up. The people got very discouraged and having done much good in educating the Indians to farm and do many other things, they felt that they wanted to move. On hearing the trouble the people were having with the canal, President John Taylor sent Apostle Joseph F. Smith down to release all those who were called on that mission. Most of the people moved away, but the Apostle promised those who would stay that they would get rich, and they did.
We were among those who left. We arrived in Huntington, Emery County, Utah, on the 24th day of October, 1885.
One week after we landed in Huntington, the Bishop, Elias H. Cox, invited us to join the ward and asked mother to join the Relief Society and be a Relief Society teacher and help sew for and lay out the dead. This office she held for forty-eight years. She also went out nursing the sick.
We built a log house on the west side of block 21, where we lived when my sister Ada was born. Having but one log room we made a willow kitchen. Then we got word that Uncle Oliver Harmon in Provo was sick with rheumatism and wanted help. Father sent my brother Sam with a team and wagon to move Uncle Oliver and family to our house. When they arrived, Uncle Oliver was so sick that we children had to live in the willow shanty. We lived that way until he got well enough to work.
Those were hard times in the early days of Huntington, but father was always jolly and we enjoyed his company on many trips in the canyon gathering wild berries for fruit. Sugar was hardly known in those days, but we raised our own honey. Father made the first extractor that was in Huntington and the near-by towns. Mother would go all over Emery County extracting for different people. It was my job to go with her and operate the smoker. One day I received twenty-five stings on the back of my hands.
All I can remember of father in the twelve years he lived after I was born is of the very best character. He built for a furniture store, the long frame, Ed. Mangum home that stands across the road south of the Huntington High School building. It was a privilege to go with him every morning to the store. I took great pleasure in waiting on him, varnishing furniture and cleaning up after him.
When I was nine years old, father and mother took the family down to Hebron to a Terry reunion, forty-five miles west of Cedar City.
Grandfather Terry had four wives. The third one he married was very young, after having one child, which died at birth, she decided she could not live in polygamy and left. His fourth wife, Aunt Hannah, had one of the largest fruit orchards in Southern Utah. His second wife, Aunt Eliza, was a sister to Grandmother Terry and lived in Hebron. She had a desire to educate her children and her desires were granted for she always lived in a school district. Her oldest son, Zera, taught school in Huntington for some years.
Grandfather’s first wife, Mary Ann Pulsipher, my mother’s mother, lived on the Ranch five miles west of Hebron. Grandmother had a large family and some hired men to do for. She made cheese to ship. It was an astonishing sight to me to walk into her large rock cellar and see the large round cheese, row upon row until the shelves reached the ceiling. I can remember so well some Indians sitting around on the ground eating pieces of cheese that Grandmother had given them. One Indian was one hundred and fifteen years old.
Father had our large house that stood on Main street on lot 1, block 21, built and two rooms finished when he took sick and died on the 22nd of March, 1889. He was 39 years, 6 months and 17 days old. Mother sold the furniture store to pay his doctor bill and finish the home. She was left a widow with ten children. The oldest, 16 years old, and the youngest 3 months. She took in washings at 50 cents a wash to support her family. I well remember the cow we were milking of J. B. Meeks. It died of bloat and we did eighty large washings to pay for that cow.
Mother carded and spun yarn and knit stockings for us all. But as soon as were old enough we girls all helped. Many a time I have run a race with mother, she at the spinning wheel and I carding the rolls for her to spin.
We saw hard times and poverty for a long time after Father died. One time we were without flour and without money to buy, and we all knelt and prayed for work that we might get flour. That night the spirit appeared to Brother Dan Washburn, and told him to take flour to us. Brother Washburn, for fear he would think it just a dream got up, dressed and put a full sack of flour on his old gray horse and set it on our door step. Mother was visited by Father many times in her dreams, which was a great comfort to her. One night I was sleeping with her and she said, “Minerva, get up quick and write what your Father has just told me.”
And this is what I wrote....
Are you lonely in your cottage,
That little home so dear to you?
Are you lonely as you think
How in love “twas built for two”?
Now in death we two have parted
And have left the cottage here
For one alone to love and cherish,
Thinking of her mate elsewhere.
Lonely Heart, some day you’ll meet him
On a distant silver shore.
Lonely Heart, when you shall meet him
He will greet his love once more,
He will take you to a cottage
He is building there for you,
Built of gold and precious jewels,
Just a cottage built for two.
In the solemn twilight hours
When the lone day’s work is done
Do you sit down by the fireside
Thinking of the days now gone?
How you stood there in the doorway
Holding out your hand to one
Who came home so gay and joyous
When his own day’s work was done?
Lonely Heart, your days of longing
For the tender, thoughtful care
Will be met in fullest measures
When you meet him over there.
He is eagerly a-waiting
For that glorious, happy time
When his arms can close enfold you
In that perfect heavenly clime.
This is true. I wrote it at 2 o’clock in the night and mother was not a poet.
Mother was very lonely for years and years after father left us, and when those spells of heart-ache would come on her she would leave the house and call on a friend or neighbor. This habit grew with her, and to the time of her last days she made her trips to call on her girls who lived close by.
Mother has been dead for two years, but I still look for her sweet face.
Mother took comfort in always having something nice to eat and no one ever went to her house without her having them sample some of her pie or cookies, which were the best I have ever eaten.
Mother held the office of Primary President for twelve years in Huntington, and was always on the sewing committee. At one time the diphtheria was so bad the sewing committee made thirteen suits of burial clothes in one week. These were made at our home. I was the oldest girl home and I got dinner every day for the sewers, who were Ester Grange, Nan Leonard, Martha Marshall and Mother. Mother and Sister Grange would go in the homes of the deceased to take their measurements with a prayer in their hearts, and they did not bring the dreadful disease to their own homes.
Mother loved to quilt, and she helped all her girls with all their quilts. The last time she helped was the day she got her leg broken. That was the cause of her death. She was coming out of the store door and slipped and fell, breaking her leg just below the hip. She lived for eight weeks in the worst misery I ever saw one in. She died on the 7th of January 1930, and was laid away on the 11th of January, 1930.
It was mother’s desire that we help her write her history, and she asked me if I wouldn’t help her. I told her I would, but I neglected to do it while she was alive. But now it gives me great pleasure to write some of the things I know and have heard her relate of her life.
I thank my Heavenly Father for my wonderful parents and that they taught me to love the Lord and be obedient to the Priesthood. Mother always told me to never say “no” when asked to take part, and I have tried to carry out her advice. I am fifty-four years old and I have tried to fill every call that has been made of me up to this time.
After Mother passed away she appeared to me in my dreams every few nights until I finished the above history, but I haven’t seen her in my dreams since; so I think she is satisfied with what I have done for her.
SOME PLEASANT RECOLLECTIONS OF MY MOTHER
by Ada M. Wood
Adelia Terry Mackelprang——She was a good teacher. She taught many valuable lessons by example. We always went to church. Her mind never wearied of receiving advice and imparting the same to others.
She was remarkably self-reliant. Her step never faltered, because of having to walk alone, and she never stopped because others failed. She knew well her own position, she had confidence in her own judgement, and went modestly and firmly forward, and everyone loved and trusted her, for her hearty, generous, and noble actions.
More to her than her meat and drink were her pursuits of the principles of truth. She hated a lie. To her, her religion was a deep and quiet devotion, steady as the morning light, shedding its constant radiance over her family.
Having to be mother, father and bread winner, her life was hard, away from all relatives and parents, she lived her life the hard way.
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