Married Jerome Jefferson Adams 29 January 1854 in Iowa
Mary Angeline-Mary Frances-Fenly-Clifford
Died 18 March 1919 in Arizona
Buried in Thatcher
1850 Census
1860 Census
1870 Census
1880 Census
This is by Sadie Adams Richardson, 1940
My mother Mary Angeline Frost, was born March 16, 1836 in Hancock County, Illinois. She was the first child of Samuel Buchanan Frost, and Rebecca Foreman. She was born just after her parents had joined the church, and in their enthusiasm, they were very strict with their children.
Mother said that she was about eight years old when they lived in Nauvoo and the Prophet and Patriarch were killed. She said she could remember sitting on the Prophet's lap and holding his hand while they walked around the yard. She well remembered hearing the moans and cries of the saints as they went out to. meet the bodies of their beloved Prophet and Patriarch. She never forgot the impression. Her father was on a mission at the time the saints were driven out and the family did not leave the States for some time later.
Mother began life with a strong physique and a cheerful disposition, thus entering into the struggle of existence with an assurance of success. Her training made her exceedingly frugal and economical so that when she married my father, she began homemaking very understandingly. She took up the responsibility of the home very young. I have heard her telling of cooking for her father's hired help when she was quite young and taking care of her mother while she was sick with her babies.
She was brought up in a home of plenty, but when she married my father, he hadn't anything and never was a very successful provider. But little mother never complained. She was very devoted to my father and did all she could to help provide for the family. She married my father, Jerome Jefferson Adams on January 29, 1854 in Freemont County, Iowa.
They did not go to the valleys of the mountains with the saints, but stayed back until she was married and had four children. They left in 1861 for the goldfields of California. (Florence Allred says it was not gold they were after, but wanted to get away from the Civil war). Pa bought himself a good, strong rope when they left the States and said he would use it to hang Brigham Young with as they went through Utah. When they got as far as Utah, they were forced to stop because they were broke and had no finances to go on. They had to stay and work all winter for the Mormons.
One day that spring, a man Pa was working for said to him cordially, "We are going to hold a cottage meeting at our house tonight. Would you like to come?" When father came home and told Ma that he had been invited to a cottage meeting, she said, "Well, you go, I cannot go.” That was just before Matt was born. When he came back she asked, "Well, what did they tell you?" He answered, "Not anything new, but I just had not thought about it.” They were baptized July 3, 1862, at Draper, Utah, so you see they were not long in Utah before they were baptized.
I know nothing of a home before my parents came to Utah. After they joined the church they were called from place to place until they hadn't much chance to make much of a home. My mother was one of the most industrious women I ever knew. I well remember when I was a child, how she was always the first one up in the morning and the last one to bed at night. They were called to Cache Valley between 1862 and 1863. They endured many hardships. They were very poor. I heard mother say it was so cold and bedding so scarce, she had to put her children under her bed to keep them warm. They suffered very much while living there. At one time, they had nothing to eat but boiled potatoes for six weeks, and they had the old sow and pigs in one corner of the house one winter because of the cold.
In the early days, the people were called to go to the endowment house. They could not go when they pleased. They called my parents when mother was in delicate health, but they thought that they must go. They started out in the cold wintry weather. When they got to Bear River, my brother, Jerome, was born on December 11, 1865. They had to turn back and go home. When they took mother out of the wagon, her bed was frozen. They did not get to go then for about two years.
They were called from there to go to the "Muddy" in Dixon County, Nevada. In 1867 they went to Salt Lake City and stayed for a short time then started for Spring City, Utah, where my Grandfather Frost lived. They must have traveled a week anyway with an ox team to get there. They arrived in Spring City the evening of October 24, 1867, and at 10 o'clock that night I was born. They stayed there ten days then started on their journey.
My father built a one-room adobe house and planted a vineyard and grew grapes, but they were still very poor. In 1870 he took a team of horses, a small wagon loaded with a single bed and grapes, and told my mother he would not come back until he could bring something home.
We were called away from the "Muddy" while he was gone. The settlement was broken up and someone moved my mother to Washington County. She did everything and anything she could to feed her children. I remember hearing her tell that my oldest brother worked in a factory. He would leave early in the morning. She would milk our neighbor Black's cow for half of the milk, then she would make a stack of hotcakes and take it to him with a bottle of milk. What she ever got for dinner, I do not know. It does not seem to me that we ever had any dinner. It was fast day all the time.
My grandfather Frost sent for my mother and she went back to Spring City. Redick Allred came with his little son, Calvert, and moved us back. My mother still worked to provide for her children, but grandfather helped her some. My father was gone for eighteen months at one time. My mother heard all kind of bad reports, and people told her to leave him, but she had faith in him. He came home with teams, wagons and money, bought her clothes, furniture and made her very comfortable. He was faithful to her and everyone praised her for remaining true to him.
Father and John freighted until my father and mother were called to work on the St. George temple about 1873-4.
My mother always worked hard. During her experiences of giving birth to her twelve children and rearing nine of them, not one of us was ever neglected in any way. She believed in caring for her children. We were always kept clean and had clean beds and our sheets and pillowcases were white and our underclothes were always made of white material and were kept that way.
She was a good housekeeper and could set better meals on a table than anyone I ever knew. She raised her large family and would get up in the morning and go to Sunday School with the rest of us. She had to economize all of her life, but in her later years she had more. I never heard her complain or knew that she did, about her poverty. I remember only once of my mother having a hired girl. She used to make nice quilts. She surely did nice work. She would take scraps to piece on share for she never was idle.
She was always willing that father should take another wife, and rather urged it, but he never did.
In 1876, they called father and mother to settle in Arizona. They left Utah about the 7th of February and arrived in Ballenger's Camp on the Little Colorado about the 15th of April. She endured many hardships on that journey. Our wagons were loaded so heavily that we could not get in them, so we stayed back for a week and a friend took us all to overtake the teams. I remember my mother walking many miles day after day in the rain and shine. I remember we traveled all day in the snow until after dark, which was very unusual for my father to do. We camped at one of Little's ranches. When we were awakened in the morning, the snow was over our wagon hubs. It was quite a little way to the ranch house, but they had broken a sort of a trail with the horses. When we got to the house, they had a fire and mother was cooking breakfast. They had the horses in one side of the house. The smell of the horses and the warm fire made my sister, Fan, faint.
Father and my brother took one of the wagons and mother, and some of the children, leaving three of us at the ranch with the wagon that was left. We were very hungry. My brother went to the wagon that had been left with us and found a small cabbage and a handful of dried peaches. We traveled until late that night to get to the other wagon. Before we got there, we could see a little flickering fire, and when we reached it, our little mother was sitting in the snow frying hot cakes for her hungry children
It seems to me, as I look back on our lives as children, that my mother took the brunt of everything. I am sure that her children did not always share much of the responsibility, and I remember so well after one hard day when we had come through Circle Valley Canyon, it snowed and sleeted all day. My father carried a shovel to dig us out of the chuck holes. My mother walked all day. We traveled slowly, so that she got ahead about two miles. My father traveled until dark, then camped. She walked those two miles back to her nursing baby with her clothes frozen to her knees. I remember father emptied the last straw bed to feed the horses that night. He made a big fire of pine limbs and raised the cover of the wagon to make it light inside. Then he made supper. He handed a dish of something to me to feed the baby, Georgia. "What is this stuff?" I asked, and he answered, "Molasses and mush." I had never seen that combination before. We had nothing else to give the hungry baby.
We used to stop when we would come to water. We would feed the stock and mother would wash our clothes, bathe us, and comb our hair in what she called a night cap to keep the short hairs in the braid. Today it is called a very fashionable french plait.
When we were called into Arizona, my mother was set apart as midwife and nurse and practiced for many years. I do not recall one instance of a woman dying under her care. She would deliver her patient and bring home her washing, take care of her and cook for her family if she happened to have one. Many times she did this.
We lived the United Order. We ate at one big table. The milk was strained and stored into large barrels. The men divided the milk for their own families. My mother kept the barrels clean. We had public prayers in those days, and it was held at our tent. Sunday meeting was also held at our place until the dining room and big kitchen were finished. Then mother, two women and a man cooked the first meal. Afterwards, she took her turn with the other women and looked after them. She also took care of the sick just the same. She and Uncle Mose Curtis used to clean the hogs and beef heads and entrails for making soap.
The first year we were in Arizona, we were short of clothes and she took a tent and wagon cover and made clothes for my father and the boys then washed them until they were beautifully white. She made shoes for the children of the same material and they would last for just one week. Sometimes she put soles on the old ones. We got short of flour one time before we got the grist mill in. We were put on rations and it frightened some of the people so much they would sit up half the night grinding wheat on a small mill and boiling the whole wheat. Mother made her light bread as she always did and gave her children all they wanted to eat. We never ran short- our rations always lasted. My mother used to set "rising" for all the folks.
She made cheese for the neighbors too. They would bring their little amount of milk that they had and she would keep track of it and divide out their cheese according to the amount of milk they turned in. She did all of the work in the milk house that season except making and caring for the cheese along with her nursing duties to the sick.
In the spring of 1879, father was sent to the dairy to look after the stock, the young calves, and things in general. Mother went along. We started out with our ox team, and traveled all day. At night, we camped in the timber. My father cut the brush out of a thicket and made a fire inside the circle, warmed the ground, and made the beds in this place. Early the next morning, we were on our way. In the afternoon, Mother took the baby and walked on, not knowing how far it was to the mill where my sister lived. We children did not walk- guess we were without shoes, and it was mountainous country.
She walked on and on and dark came on and we did not see her. She did not reach the mill until nearly twelve o'clock that night. Father camped and we began to cry. We went to bed and cried silently on our pillows. We begged him to go on but he said not a word, and stayed there until the next morning. As we traveled along, we watched each side of the road for signs of her being eaten by some wild animal. When we reached the mill and found her safe, we were overjoyed. We all covered it without any outward expression of our relief and happiness.
In the fall, we went back to Brigham City on the Little Colorado. My mother was a public worker in the “Order". At one time she was Stake Relief Society President. Later the Ward Relief Society President and then head teacher. She was a teacher in the Sunday school for years.
I remember before we left Utah, we received cards of merit in the Sunday School. We hadn't anything like that out there so they called on my mother to make the cards. She used to draw pictures, color theln with different colored inks. She would take the patterns from cloth to make borders on the cards.
The “Order" broke up and my father and his company took over the place and tried to establish themselves but could not. My mother started a boarding house and did fairly well while the railroad was being built but later it did not pay. She kept the post office at the same time. She worked very hard during those years.
We later moved to the mountains south of St. Joseph about 75 miles to a place called Adams Valley. The little town was named Wilford for President Woodruff. Mother was again Relief Society President and took care of the sick. During the time they were in Wilford, she and father went to Utah to do some temple work and they took along a woman he was going to marry.
The woman pouted and sulked all the way. Mother would get out and cook the meals and give her some of it or give it to Pa to hand up into the wagon. She lived up north of Salt Lake, and when they got to Salt Lake she said she wanted to go home and see her mother before she was married. They drove her to her mother's home. She got out and went in the house leaving them in the wagon. Pretty soon she came out with her mother to introduce her mother to them. She said, "You can go on and I will let you know when you can come for me." They went back to Salt Lake City and did some more work in the temple and went back to Arizona. In the spring she sent for him to come back to Utah. This time mother did not go. What happened, we never did know, but he came back without her.
About two years after that, they went back to Utah again to work in the temple. While they were gone, we gathered the cattle and went to Mexico. This was in 1887. Mother went through the trials and hardships of a new country with the same fortitude and faith she always had. At times it seemed we could not get another meal but when meal time came, she would call her family to it. It was almost a miracle the way she could put a meal together out of nothing.
The winter they came to Mexico with Brother Jacobson and family (1889), they lived in my house until spring and father taught Eddie to swear. Eddie was out to the ditch one morning where the children were busy playing, and he was throwing rocks. He would say, "Jesus Christ" every time he threw. One of the children heard him and came running in and said, "Oh, Eddie is out there swearing." When I went out Eddie looked just as innocent and honest and when I asked him what he was saying, he said "I was saying what Grandpa prays." He didn't even know he was swearing.
Mother was a woman of remarkable endurance. I have heard say that when her fifth child was six days old, she did her father's and her own washing and hung it on the line in the rain, barefooted, so she would not get her shoes muddy. I remember hearing her say that she was ashamed to put out a small washing and would hunt through the house and get things that really did not need washing. She seemed to feel that she had a certain amount of work to do and proceeded to do it in the most rapid and painstaking manner.
No husband was ever more devotedly sustained by his helpmate than my father was by my mother. She loved him with all her heart and seemed to find the greatest possible pleasure in doing things that she knew would please him.
When my father was away from home, mother took his place as head of the family and always had our prayers and the blessing on the food, and in case of sickness she called the Elders. She had great faith in the ordinances of the Gospel. I do not believe there was ever a doubt in her soul that the Gospel taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith and all of his successors was true and divine. She always sustained the authorities and we were never allowed to speak against them. She was a strict tithe payer. My mother always looked neat and clean and dressed up no matter how ordinary her clothes were. She retained her youth when she was along in years. When I was fifteen, older people used to say we looked like sisters, and I was her eighth child.
She was a strict disciplinarian and we always knew that when she told us to do anything, she meant it. If an accusation was made against one of her children, she went to the bottom of it before she rendered a decision, and if the child was in the wrong, the child knew it had to make the matter right. I never knew a person who loved to go into a home and clean it up and fix some little nice thing to eat or take from her own home as she did. She would share the last crust or clothes or anything she had they needed. Her strict honesty, her scrupulous truthfulness, and her great care to fill any promise made was always an inspiration to me. Of course, I looked upon her as a wonderful mother, and from the depths of my soul, I thank my Heavenly Father that she is my mother.
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