Autobiography of Samuel Rowley
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I Samuel Rowley, son of William and Ann Jewell Rowley, was born in the Parish of Buckley, Worchestershire, England, on the 29th of October 1842. My father and mother were among the first converts to the faith of the Latter-day Saints, in Worchestershire, England. I was born in the church and blessed by Elder Wilford Woodruff.
After we arrived in Utah, we were sent to Nephi, Juab County, where I remained until 1858, working for David Udall, who had married my sister Elizabeth. Bishop Bigler (of the Nephi ward) learned that a man in Provo needed a boy and I went there. I was given sleeping quarters in the corral. In a few days I began to think that I was not receiving the kindness I was entitled to, so one morning in January, with 10 inches of snow on the ground and without food or bedding, I started for Nephi. In crossing Payson Bottoms, I met a man from Santiquin. After asking some questions he told me that when I got to Santiquin, to inquire for Webb's place and they would care for me. The next day I rode to Nephi.
In the Spring of 1857, a man named Andrew Bastian came to Nephi and inquired of Bishop Bigler if there was a woman in his ward that would make him a good wife. The bishop recommended my mother and in a few days, they were married. She went to Parowan, Iron County, to live. Andrew died within a year from that time.
In the Spring of 1858, I went to Iron County. After visiting with my mother and the two younger children, who were with her, I went to work for a man named Thomas P. Smith, who lived at Fort Johnson (now known as Enoch.) The agricultural resources were so limited, the people moved to Summit Creek, in a body. I continued to work for Brother Smith until1862. Then I went to Parowan, to take charge of mother's affairs. When Panguitch was settled, I was one of the pioneers of that place. In the summer of 1864, I returned to Parowan and on the 23rd of April 1865, I married Ann Taylor, daughter of George and Mary Franks Taylor of Nottingham, England, pioneers of 1864. Ann was born 24 April1846.
I was ordained an Elder in the regular quorum meeting in Parowan, by Thomas P. Smith, the man I had worked for at Fort Johnson.
In October 1866, I took my wife to Salt Lake City and we were married in the Endowment House. The weather was stormy on the return trip. When we were ascending the divide, between Scipio and Holden, the axle was dragging in the snow.
In 1874, President Brigham Young tried to get the people to work in the "United Order." I laid all I had on the Alter; my team, wagon, farm, myself and all. I worked all summer and in the fall, we found it to be a failure. All I got, was 14 bushels of potatoes and had to work other places, for my bread. That was but one experience. A short time later, a tumor made its appearance on my father-in-law's face. His wife had died and his youngest daughter (who is my wife) and being married, the old gentleman was lonesome and had asked if he could have a home with us. He lived and died in our home. That has always been a sad, yet pleasant memory.
At the quarterly Conference held in Parowan in 1879, I was called on a mission, to San Juan county. At this time, I had a family of 6 children. I had followed the vocation of farming and had a comfortable home in Parowan. I was called to settle that country. Not being able to go in the spring, we went in the fall, leaving Parowan 23 Oct.1879. Going by way of Little Creek Canyon, over the divide, into Bear Valley, down Bear Creek to the Sevier River, up Sweetwater Creek and over the mountains to Escalante Canyon. We found part of our company from beaver there among whom was our present townsman (of Huntington,) George Westwood. Our party from Parowan, also waited for the others from Cedar City.
The people in Escalante, having heard or our coming, held a meeting and decided to raise the price of everything we'd need, to almost double what it was before. Prior to leaving home, we were told the country had been explored, that the road was passable, but now we found that someone had been mistaken.
Moving out 10 miles into the Escalante Desert, we camped near a spring. The water in this spring was so hard that peas and beans wouldn't cook in it. In looking around, some of the women found water in a packet along the wash that could be used for cooking.
Unable to move our wagons until the road was built, we provisioned some pack outfits and laid out the road to the west bank of the Colorado River. From where we stood, the river appeared to be from 5 to 7 feet wide. The only place between the Navajo Mountains on the south and the mouth of the Grand Gulch on the north, where we could make a road, was down a chasm, which led down to the river and terminated abruptly in a cliff of sandstone. Here we let a man down by means of a rope, and by measuring the rope, found it to be 50 feet. Understanding the situation, we returned to camp at Ten Mile Spring.
On the Escalante Desert a meeting was called, to discuss the situation. We were without tools and material for building the road. It was decided, Silas S. Smith should go to the Legislature and get an appropriation for materials to build a road. As Silas had been in charge of the company, Pratt D. Lyman was chosen to take charge, in his absence.
During this interval, we made the road over the remainder of the desert and moved our camp to Fifty Mile Spring. From here we traveled the next day, in 10 inches of snow. My boots, made of leather, were soaking wet and I realized I must take them off, before my feet became frozen in them. I did so and wrapped my feet as best I could and continued the journey.
The next morning, we made a fire. Our bread was so hard, but I remembered something my mother had done on the plains and put it in a frying pan with water and put the pan near the fire, then it was quite palatable.
Before we could reach the Colorado River, we came to a sandstone ledge that stopped the progress of our wagons. On the other side of the ledge there was a little canyon leading to the river, half a mile away. We blasted our way through the ledge, then lowered the wagons, one by one, to the bottom. On our way down this canyon, we found the floor was solid sandstone and so sloping we had to blast a trail for the upper wheels of the wagon and for the lower wheels we drove pegs in the holes and piled brush agains the pegs to keep the wagons level.
We ferried 84 wagons across the river in perfect safety. Meeting with slight obstacles on the other side, we moved up Cottonwood Canyon. The walls at the end of this canyon were not perpendicular, but sloped back at an angle of about 45 degrees. We blasted a road up this wall and reached the top safely. We traveled for about 12 miles on a mesa, on the north side of the San Juan River. Getting up on flat land again, we traveled about a days journey, then we had to halt again for several days, while road work was going on. Some of the company went back to get the stock we had left on the Escalante Desert. The road was built down the sleek rock, so we moved along the mesa to the lake. This was a very romantic scene. The lake is from 5 to 8 rods wide and about 40 rods long. The south end, called the head of the lake, terminates at the base of two solid sandstone bluffs, about a rod and a half apart, back of which is a beautiful strip of meadow in wonderful contrast to the mounds of sandstone, which contributes largely in making up this part of the country. In moving along, our road wound around, between these knolls of sandstone.
We soon came to a divide in this formation, which was very severe on the animals feet. We traveled up Castle Gulch, some 9 miles to Oak Springs, which is up on the side of the hill. Here we made another halt, to build the road down Clay Hill. This work took 3 weeks. When the road was finished, we started down. A snow storm made our progress very miserable. Our company was composed of young married men. We'd come to the top of a hill, then detach the lead horses and the wives would drive them down the hill, while the men brought the wagons down with one pair of horses. My wife had driven one pair of horses all the way, while I drove three yoke of oxen. But here, I had to drive the team down the hill. Coming back up the road, I passed women driving their wagons along the road. One woman, Rachel Perkins, had driven under the shelter of a huge rock and was holding the team with one hand while carrying her baby in the other arm.
When we arrived at the bottom again, our oxen were gone and darkness was upon us and we had to camp for the night. We were at the bottom of the hill without wood and very little water. It was dark and still snowing. My two yoke of oxen were gone and I didn't know where. My wife made a sling and gave each of us a portion and we went to /bed without any supper. The next day our scattered company was brought together and we moved on for the next two days and found ourselves in a box canyon, walled with irregular ledges. Here we wheeled to the left and traveled up the side until we reached a crossing, then went down the other side to within a stones throw of where we had camped the night before.
It was now the month of March, with a foot of snow on the ground. No chance to dodge a mudhole after a few wagons had passed over the road and cut in. It was very difficult, but we traveled on, until we came to Elk Ridge, which was a pine and cedar forest and we had to cut our way through it for about 35 miles. Next we found ourselves in a comb wash, getting mired down in quicksand. We and our animals suffered from thirst and some of our animals were unable to pull their load any further. Eventually, we reached the San Juan.
On 6 April 1880, we found some tillable land and decided to stay and make a settlement. We took the wagon boxes off the wagons, dug a trench a few feet parallel to the boxes, stuck some cottonwood poles into the trench, then we unfastened the wagon covers on one side and fastened them to the poles to make a temporary room and shelter. This being done, we set out to find out if water could be brought out of the river. A canal route was surveyed and we set about in earnest to build the canal. When it was finished, we went to turn the water in,, but the water in the river had gone down and left the head of the canal above the surface of the water. We tried to raise the water level by means of a dam. We failed in this, so we extended the canal up to a perpendicular cliff which formed the north bank of the river. We tried again to tap the river with the same results as before. By this time it was too late in the season and we abandoned work on the canal for this year. We then built log houses, in a square close together for protection from the Indians who roamed the area. Finding it impossible to raise even a late crop, we began building a meeting house.
During the summer of 1880, we held our church services under the shade of a tree that stood on the land allotted to me. We managed to finish the church house by Christmas that year. The lumber for the pulpit and floor, we cut with a ship saw. But, it was under the shade of my tree that the Bluff Ward was organized, with Jens Neilson (this is not the Jens Neilson of Huntington) as bishop. I furnished the bread and with Joseph A. Lyman, officiated at the first sacrament served in San Juan County.
I raised a patch of wheat and cut it with a hand sickle, and threshed it with a stick and ground it in a coffee mill. Out of this bread was made to feed 9 people. When the supplies we had brought from Parowan gave out, we paid $9.00 a hundred for our flour, purchased in Alamosa, Colorado.
After two years at Bluff, it was necessary to work, to get means to feed our families, so Samuel became the first constable of Bluff, Utah.
One of my best horses had been stolen by the Indians and I had to pay $25.00 to get him back.
We ran out of provisions, so we started back over the road we had traveled two years before. We had to return to Iron County to work for more supplies. On this journey we suffered from lack of water. My dog died from the heat and a mare belonging to George Epson, fell dead in the harness, overcome with heat and thirst.
Our next problem was, how to cross the Colorado River. We didn't go to the crossing we had used before, but went up river to a place called "Dandy Crossing," where we had been told was a ferryboat. When we got there the ferry was on the other side of the river and the ferryman was gone. Now we were faced with the task of getting the boat to our side. We took the wagon box sides off a wagon and cleated them together and fastened an empty 10 gallon barrel, which was tightly plugged at each end, to the wagon box sides. Then Zachariah Decker, who had been a Mormon Battalion Soldier, volunteered to sit astride the barrel and using a spade as an oar, rowed himself across to the ferryboat. On his way, he had to use the oar with all his strength to keep from going too far downstream. Taking the ferry from its moorings, he brought it across, with our help, pulling on the rope tied to the ferry. With the ferryboat on our side, we were all able to cross safely.
We traveled up the "Grand Gulch" and at noon the 2nd day, we stopped by a pool of highly colored water which was so full of minerals, we couldn't use it. V), Christensen and myself mounted our horses and went in search of water. We soon found a pool of rain water, which was full of polliwogs. However, it served our purpose.
That night we reached a place called the Grand Tank, we took the left fork of this gulch, traveling between tow mountain walls, which were just far enough apart for our wagons to get through. For about 2 miles this gulch was like a tunnel. We stopped here for about 4 hours and we didn't see the sun until eleven in the morning, because of the towering cliffs. Moving on, we went across a divide and down Silver Falls Canyon. Reaching Escalante Creek, we found it necessary to rest our animals. Our provisions were almost exhausted.
V Christensen and I started on horseback for Escalante for supplies. We hadn't gone more than a quarter of a mile, when we met the ferry boat man on his way back to the river. He was trailing a burro loaded with supplies for us.
Now I must tell you how this came to be--Edward Dalton, a former member of the Mormon Battalion, was a candidate for the State Legislature and had visited our company for the purpose of getting our support in the coming election. On his return to Iron County, he had passed us in the early part of our journey and knowing the condition of the route we had to travel and that our supplies were all but gone. He bought some supplies, enough to get us to Escalante and had sent them to us by the ferryman. Now, I couldn't pass over this kindness without mention.
Wending our way over the mountains, that separated us from our former homes, we arrived in Parowan in due time and found our people in good health and glad to see us. Our people were very kind to us in our homeless condition. I rented a place (which was called a house) where my family stayed during the winter of 1882-1883, while I freighted from Milford to Silver Reef and so we passed the winter. In this so-called home, my daughter Elizabeth was born 27 Dec 1882.
In the Spring off 1883, we returned to San Juan. When we came to the mouth of Silver Falls Canyon, we camped in a cave. As we proceeded on our journey, nothing out of the ordinary happened and we reached Bluff in good time.
We did our share of work, building up the town and developing our resources, which were quite limited. Stock raising was the only industry from which we could derive benefit. Of course, we tried to farm, but our water supply was so uncertain, we could scarcely realize anything from it. Cane and corn did fine and we planted enough potatoes and wheat, to learn that the climate wasn't suited for that kind of crop.
In the Spring of 1884, because of the abundant amount of snow which had fallen in Colorado, the preceding winter, the waters of the San Juan were exceedingly high and my herd of cattle had grown pitifully small. I had sold some cows for supplies, the Indians had stolen some and some had just strayed away.
During the summer of 1883, the Indians had brought the measles to our town. Our little son, John Taylor Rowley, died of a relapse.
On learning that the head of the canal was in danger of being washed away, we rallied all our forces and proceeded to protect our headgate. We found it was like pitching straw against the wind. We could do nothing. We were camped some distance back from the river and in the morning, we could see our headgate partly tangled up in the trees that had fallen during the night, teetering up and down to the tune of the waves of the stream. I was by now, thoroughly discouraged.
In my condition, with a large family to support, I must go where I could produce something. In talking things over with President Pratt Lyman, he said; "Go, Brother Rowley and God bless you."
My brother Thomas (who had been with us all along) and H. H. Harrison and myself, made arrangements to leave at the same time. We traveled together, and when we reached Mancos, Colorado, we found work at a sawmill and were able to support our families, pay our expenses and have a little left, while waiting for the waters of the Grand River to fall, near Moab, which didn't occur until sometime in August, because of the unusually heavy snow which had fallen in Western Colorado, the preceding winter. When we heard that the waters were going down, we prepared our wagons for the journey to Huntington, Emery County, Utah.
We left the 1st of September, but found the river was not fordable by any means. So, out of necessity, we unloaded our wagons, taking them apart and making a raft, taking part of the family and part of the wagon across in one trip and returning for another cargo, using a rowboat to pull the raft, we finally got everything on the other side of the river and put back together.
The next day we reached Courthouse Rock, where we camped the first night out from the Grand, which we later learned, consisted of a large wash, a section house and a railroad. There was no water, except flood water, so thick it could barely flow. We went on and on, night came and still we traveled on, until the moon came up. Finally the wagon road crossed the railroad tracks where we halted, beside a pool of water in an excavation hole, made by the grader of the railroad tracks.
Next morning, we hadn't gone more than a mile, crossed a small ridge and found ourselves almost on the banks of the Green River.
The next day, the wind blew harder than I had ever experienced and kept it up all day.
We reached Wilsonville, on the banks of Huntington creek 9 Sept 1884, and Huntington the following day.
I purchased a lot on 1st North and 4th West Streets. It was difficult to secure logs enough to build a place of shelter for my family. That winter it was necessary to bring logs from any part of the hills, next to the canyon road, as the road itself didn't reach good timber.
Later in the Fall, I did give a weeks work on the main canyon road, under the direction of former Bishop Elias Cox and John L. Brasher. The object of the road was to connect Sanpete to Huntington, rather than to reach the timber. In the hut I was able to build, our daughter Ida was born 23 Feb 1885.
I purchased some land, now known as Rowley Flat. there in a cabin made of logs,next to the canal, our son Thomas Jewell was born. I and his mother were the only ones present to welcome him into this world 2 May 1886. His brother Richard Edwin was born 22 Aug 1889, under more favorable conditions, but died when he was a little over 7 years of age. His mother died four years later, 14 Jan 1901.
I will relate a remarkable dream that my wife had. She dreamed that she had lost her little son and found him after four years. Well! Richard Edwin died 14 Feb 1897 and she died 14 Jan 1901, we believe she found her son after four years.
After the death of my wife, I was not left entirely alone as I still had some unmarried children, but to comply with the last request of my wife and after 3 years of loneliness, I married Julia Ann Westover 17 dec 1903, Manti, Utah, daughter of Charles and Mary E. Shumway Westover, (Huntington Pioneers of 1887.) Our home was a happy one, until 22 Dec 1922, when Julia passed away.
