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| Samuel Israel Burgess (1826-1875) |
Samuel I Burgess and his parents, Thomas and Mary Ann, joined The Church in their native land and in 1836 they migrated together to be with the Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. Surely they were involved in the building of the temple there and what joy, on February 7, 1846 Thomas and family were endowed in the Nauvoo Temple. What a blessing this must have been for the Burgess family! Samuel and his parents owned property in Nauvoo and after his father's property was damaged by the mobs, they fled Nauvoo in 1846 to Iowa.
Samuel married Marinda Hartwell June 2, 1850 by Lyman Stoddard at Springville, Pottawattamie, Iowa. Marinda was the only one of the Hartwell family to accept the gospel that we know of. Then in the summer of 1850 the new couple traveled with Sam's parents to Salt Lake City, Utah in an unknown company. They lived in Salt Lake City, Cottonwood, Lehi and Springville, Utah. These respective places are where their five children were born.
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| Marinda Hartwell Burgess Hughes (1831-1870) |
Marinda had sought another man and was remarried to John Hughes, Jr about 1859 in Utah. Marinda appears on the October 1860 census living in Camp Floyd, Fairfield, Cedar, Utah. Marinda is enumerated as twenty eight years old from her birth state of New York living with her husband John Hughes a twenty four year old blacksmith from New York.
I wanted to raise my voice as a direct descendant of Marinda in love and concern for her. Whatever circumstance drove her to abandon her infant child and four other small children must have been unbearable to endure even a moment longer. I know in my heart that she did what she had to do to survive. We know that Marinda went on to have at least three more children with John Hughes. With that in mind, we know the children weren't the problem. I believe she did everything she could in what must have been a very difficult situation to push her to her breaking point, to her final straw...to her leaving.
Who would be able to help raise these very young children? Samuel's own mother, widow Mary Ann Nullis Burgess, would be the saving grace for the now motherless Burgess children. What a blessing she must have been to the children. However, Grandmother Burgess would die just four years later leaving them alone again. It is said the oldest daughter, Laura then only ten years old would be relied upon to take care of her younger siblings.
By this time, Samuel received a call from Brigham Young to the cotton mission in Southern Utah's St. George and Washington area.
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| DIXIE COTTON MISSION of 1860's |
On November 7, 1861, Sam Burgess left Salt Lake City in the company of Hugh Moon, John Ludd, Richard Hawkins, John Filling and William McMellon to go south to raise cotton and tobacco and the first night they camped at Cottonwood, at Thomas Bullock's farm. Samuel's mother came too, as she was one of the first to be buried in the St. George cemetery.
Samuel is noted among the Original St George Pioneers of 1861. In that same year, we have record that Samuel donated $25 to have the first town hall built. He also drew lot 42A Plat at 4th West and 4th North.
These cotton mission families endured the summer's blistering heat and were forced to continually rebuild their washed out dams on the Virgin River. As cotton growers they were successful, but they quickly found that to survive they had to grow their own food and "make do." Many were beset with chills and fever and were unaware that they had contracted malaria from the mosquitoes that bred in the seeping springs and along the streams' edges. This robbed them of much productive energy.
Many quit the mission. By June 1861 only twenty families remained in Washington. Late that year, the community received quite a number of new settlers, most of them from Sanpete County. Their spirits rose. One historian said, "Just to have a few fresh arrivals to share their miseries must have made the burden lighter." In 1862 the arriving cotton missionaries settled in what is now St. George.
Due to the alkali soil, the cotton crops did not completely germinate as expected, resulting in a limited harvest. A spirit of frustration and hopelessness overcame many of the early settlers. And by the time the Civil War ended, the economics no longer justified growing cotton in Utah's Dixie.
Once the cotton mission failed, Samuel moved to Pine Valley, Utah, this was about 1862, with his five children. It was a canyon with a beautiful stand of virgin pine trees, these trees were found to be without knots and perfect for the organ pipes of the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The water from Spring Branch was now carried through a longer millrace so more mills could be placed on it. The new millrace was made so that it circled round the old one. It extended east then north to a point just below the bridge above Sell's Grove. Here Robert Gardner, his son William and a brother in law, Bradford put up a mill with the first circular saw in the valley. This was the mill erected in the town. Up to then all the mills had used the old up and down known as "Muleys." The millrace now curved around through the southeast of Sell's Field and crossed back southwest in the Levi Snow's Pasture to run Whipple Mill. The water from the Whipple Mill tail-race ponded across the north in Maggie Calkins' field where Asa Calkins owned a gristmill. The then crossed out to the foot of the Cedar Hill into a field now owned by Effie Beckstrom. At this point Samuel Burgess and Ebenezer Bryce built the fourth sawmill in Pine Valley. It also had a shingle mill attached to it.
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| typical saw mill for that time |
This is the same Ebenezer Bryce that was assigned to build a meeting house in Pine Valley. Bryce was a shipbuilder who had immigrated from Australia. When asked if he thought he could build a church, Bryce said, "If they will be satisfied to have it look like an upside-down ship, I'll be willing to try it." Of course the timbers used to build the church were from the Pine Valley Mountains. In 1868 after the roof was in place and finishing touches complete, Bryce remarked, "If floods come, it will float; if winds blow, it will roll over, but it will never crash." Sam's business partner, Eb Bryce, is also known for his discovery of what he called Bryce Canyon. It is not recorded, but I am certain our Burgess family were involved with the building of this church in some capacity.
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| Pine Valley Church building (still in use) built 1868 |
They must have lived there for about eleven years during which time they harvested much of the timber in the area. Sam hauled many wagon loads into Salt Lake City. A few years later, he married widow Mahala Jane Mathis Thomas, November 18, 1872, in Salt Lake City.
Pine Valley had become a thriving little community with saw mills on a rambling creek, schools, a bar to accommodate the outside workers hired to work at places of labor. In this setting, Samuel Burgess was raising his family.
The opening of mines in Pioche and the discovery of silver at Silver Reef in 1870 caused an increased demand for lumber products. Teamsters from Pine Valley were paid in gold for loads they hauled to Pioche. Marcellus E. "Cell" Bracken recalled, "Pioche, at that time was a wild town-possibly the wildest in the West. One night when I was there with a load of lumber, seventeen men were killed in gunfights, and a murder a day was considered about average." A gang of frontier outlaws learned that the teamsters of Pine Valley were paid in gold. They began preying upon the wagons as they returned to the mountains. Lurking in the brush along the trail, the highwaymen would leap up at an approaching wagon, level guns at the driver, and demand the gold he was carrying. The situation eventually became so serious that Wells Fargo established a local bank so that the freighters could be paid by check. "Pine Valley itself was no nest of angels," recalled Bracken. "As a matter of fact, it was probably one of the wildest of the Mormon towns. With the mills running at capacity, there weren't nearly enough family men to operate them, and many 'drifters' were hired. The town's peak population was about 600 persons, while ward membership never exceeded 275. Many of these drifters were murderers, thieves and army deserters....There were a number of saloons, and among the more worldly element, gambling flourished.
At this time in Samuel's life story, we come to the great tragedy. Samuel's second daughter, Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie", now a young woman, became infatuated with a young man, Ransom William Allphin, (they called him Rance) and they became sufficiently intimate that she became pregnant. Samuel insisted that Rance marry his daughter and even threatened him but Rance refused, saying that he had a wife before coming to Pine Valley from which he never divorced (this was probably not true). With Rance's adamant refusal to marry Lizzie, Samuel threatened to shoot Rance. They both went armed after that. As time went by, Samuel became more upset almost to the point of insanity.
Samuel made Lizzie leave home and she went to live with her married sister, Laura Burgess Nay, until the baby was born. The baby was named George Philip Allphin, born December 1874, and died 3 years later.
Robert Gardner lived in Pine Valley and in October 1875, Robert decided to go to Salt Lake Conference and took his wife LeNora with him. At that period the main traveled road out of Pine Valley went down a very winding road along a deep gorge known as Pinto Canyon. When it reached Pinto the road forked. The fork on the left went out to Pioche, Nevada where the men from Pine Valley took loads of lumber, grain, potatoes and other produce to the mines in Pioche. The fork on the right went east and then north to Salt Lake City.
Robert and LeNora stopped in Pinto and were seated on the ground eating their lunch when our Samuel Burgess came by and stopped to talk with them. Robert asked Sam why he was going down to Pinto, Sam said that Rance had taken a load of produce out to Pioche and his folks expected him back that afternoon; Sam intended to wait for Rance and was going to kill him.
Robert reasoned with Sam and asked him what good would it do and that two wrongs never made a right. Robert thought he had sufficiently calmed Sam down enough for Sam to go back to Pine Valley. Robert said if he had known what was going to happen later, he would have stayed with Sam. Here Robert and Sam parted ways, with Robert going on to Salt Lake City and Sam starting back to Pine Valley. Despite Robert's good advice, as Sam advanced up the canyon, he must have become more and more upset and as Sam was a man of action, more and more resolved. Maybe Sam was taking his ideas from the tactics used by the gold seeking Pioche outlaws and highwaymen of the time. Maybe he even felt justified in his plans; knowing these same strategies and means were used often.
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| Near sight of Samuel Burgess death, "The Dairy" |
Rance was driving his span of mules along the road to the east he glanced up and saw Sam's horse in "The Dairy." He guessed that Sam was hid near by so he laid his gun on the wagon seat beside him and kept a close watch for him as he rounded the clump of oaks and headed south. His mules pricked up their ears and Rance picked up his gun. Sam waited until Rance had passed by then stepped into the middle of the road and fired his gun striking Rance in the back. In the words of Cell Bracken, "Why the old man ought to have knowed better. There wasn't a one of them Allphins that wasn't a perfect shot." Even after having been injured, Rance whirled around, fired his gun and got Sam right in the middle of the heart. Sam dropped dead right in the middle of the road.
Sam's bullet cut Rance's portal vein in two. Rance began to bleed profusely and became so weak that he had to lie down. He watched for the fork in the road that turned toward George Burgess's place in Grass Valley. That was closer than Pine Valley, and he knew he needed help as soon as he could get it.
The Gardner and George Burgess boys were playing down in the field below the house. One of the boys said they saw a wagon with no driver coming up the road. Soon enough, Rance climbed out and crawled over to the fence and called to them. They hurried down. He told them to run up to the house as fast as they could and tell their father that he had been shot and to please come get him.
Upon hearing the story George Burgess rushed down and took Rance up to his house. They all gathered round while Rance told them what had happened; he said they would find Sam dead in the middle of the road down by "The Dairy."
George and the women did everything they could to stop the bleeding, but to no avail. Rance died about three o'clock in the middle of the night October 11, 1875. They took his body to Pine Valley and sent some of the men of the town to get Sam's body.
Ira Joseph Earl and William P. Sargent made the coffins for them. The whole town was understandably upset.
When Cell Bracken was asked about the incident and if the town took sides, Cell responded, "I should say they didn't. Both families were loved and respected by all the town, and they all felt terrible. They all figured that Sam had gone through so much with his first wife leaving him with those children to raise, and then "Lizzie's" problem added to it that he was mentally upset."
Rance and Sam were both buried in the Pine Valley cemetery. Rance lies beside his mother Burnetta who died July 27th the year before. Only a few feet away, Sam lies at the foot of Grandfather William Snow's grave under a Cedar tree that has grown there since he was buried.
Despite this sorrow, the Keele and Burgess families continued to operate separate sawmills near each other on the creek.
The struggles and pursuits of Samuel I Burgess were finished, he passed away October 10, 1875.
This incident left our Cleopatra alone as all her brothers and sisters had started their own lives and moved away. Luckily Cleopatra would only have to wait seven more months to be married to William Augustus Keele. There would be no father or mother for our Cleopatra to celebrate this new couple's happy and blessed event. The Keele's would now be her people. (look for upcoming blog about the Keele's of Wayne county Utah)
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