EVER-READY DRY CLEANER ~~~ O.D. YOUNG (BOB YOUNG) Operated the busainess ~~~(from our archves)

 

O.D (aka Bob Young) operated the business.  Peter (my husband) remembers it being in business in the 1940s.  It was located  on the north side of Pleasant Creek and 1st west, on the west side of the road.  It was just across the road from Ursenbach (now Rasmussen) Mortuary.  Later on, Eldon Beck had an appliance repair business located in the same building.  The building is still there and has become a housing unit.

The building address is 100 W, and across the creek from the Post Office. 

NORTH SANPETE HIGH SCHOOL 1956 REUNION ~~~ HELD 2016

 

HOME OF EDWARD CLIFF AND ELIZA CRESSWELL (from our archives)

 

MOUNT PLEASANT HISTORY (pages 54 - 58)

 

THE SYNOPSIS OF THE THIRTY SIXTH ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF THE MT. PLEASANT PIONEER HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

This Synopsis was read at the thirty sixth Annual Celebration of the

 Mt. Pleasant Pioneer Historical Association.

Read by Hilda Madsen Longsdorf

Exercises held in Mt. Pleasant North Ward Chapel

James Larsen presided.

Guests of Honor seated on the stand:

Oldest Lady:  Mrs Mary Willcox aged 95 years 9 months (a pioneer of Utah 1847, a pioneer of Hambleton in 1852, and Mt. Pleasant in 1860)

Oldest Man:  Rudolph N. Bennett age 83 years and 5 months (a pioneer of 1859 the only man still living whose name is on the Pioneer Monument.

The program:

Selection: North Sanpete High School Band led by Henry Terry

Prayer:  R. N. Bennett (a beautiful impressive prayer)

Vocal Solo with orchestra accompaniment:  "Calm is the Night" by Wilma Hafen

Talk:  James Monsen "Caring for our relics" (made in the Danish language and interpreted by C. W. Sorensen.

He extended thanks of the Association to J.H. Stansfield, a Norman, Amelia Jensen and Hilda Longsdorf for the part played by them in reconstructing the Fort Wall in miniature for the Association.

A paper prepared by Mrs Melvina Crane "Fun in the Good Old Days" was read by her.

A paper "Memories of Freighting Days" was read by N.S. Nielson.

Address:  Judge Ferdinand Ericksen of Salt Lake City.  Judge Ericksen was a former member of the Board of Directors and the Treasurer during construction of the Pioneer Monument.  He also read a sketch of schools as he knew them to 1890.

Vocal Solo:  Floyd Young of Fairview with piano accompaniment by Ernest Staker

Talks:  Dr. Samuel H. Allen and Amasa Aldrich both former residents; now of Salt Lake.  The spoke reminiscently of school days, dance days, and wash days, etc. in Mt. Pleasant.  (Dr. Allen died the following September)

Overture:  North Sanpete High School Orchestra 

Benediction:  Pres. S. M. Nielsen of North Sanpete Stake

The meeting adjourned to Mt. Pleasant Carnegie Library where relics were displayed and old-time refreshments served.

The days activities were concluded by a dance in the Hansen Armory Hall where the receipts of the dance were $77.50, expenses were $71.70 with cookies donated by member of the committee.

Members who had passed to the beyond during the year 1925-26:

Mr. Hazzard Willcox

Mr. Washington Averett

Mrs. Hannah Anderson

Mr. John Knudson

Mrs Isaac Phipps Smith

Mr. William H. Seely

Mrs Peter Micklesen

Mrs. Dorothy Bramstead Swensen

During 1926 Mrs Annie Peel Candland, a board member died and James Borg, a board member removed to Salt Lake City.

signed:  Hilda M. Longsdorf, Secretary

 

The Lives of Six Pioneer Girls

 

Becky Bartholomew:
History Blazer, September 1996

The life stories of six cousins--Clarissa Wilcox, Martha Wilcox, Mabel Wilcox, Luella Hurst, Ida Hurst, and Mary Young--born in three Utah towns between 1863 and 1893 reveal what it was like to be a girl growing up in pioneer Utah.

First memories: Martha was only five years old when someone came to the house to tell her mother that Mormon President Brigham Young had died. Martha remembered that moment all her life.

Clarissa received her first pair of buttoned shoes at age five. Her father, a shoemaker, cut them out of the bootlegs of a man's discarded hightops because leather was so scarce.

As a young girl Luella was afraid of the Indians who went house to house begging. Actually, Utah Indians by that time were friendly, but Luella had heard stories from male relatives about the Indian wars of previous decades, and they filled her with imaginary terrors.

Play: When not helping their mothers, the girls played games they called nip-cat, pomp pomp pull-away, Sister Parute, and rounders (a ball game). They also played hide-and-seek in the sagebrush.

Treats: For treats the girls ate parched field corn and homemade molasses candy. As an old woman Clarissa confessed, "I couldn't stand to eat another bit [of molasses candy] to this day." They also gathered grass and shrubs on which honeydew had condensed during the night and then boiled it down into a sweet syrup. As they grew older and went to community dances; the girls sometimes went at intermission to buy crackers, cheese, and tinned salmon for refreshments.

Clothing: In warm weather small pioneer children mostly went barefoot, especially in towns like Moab where they could not have kept the sand out of their shoes anyway when they went to fetch a bucket of water.

Their mothers made all the families' clothing. In summer the girls wore calico dresses (not slacks or shorts) and in winter dresses made of a homespun material they called "lindsey" (actually linsey-woolsey). One girl's mother would get up early on winter mornings and warm the children's clothes on the stove.

Clarissa somehow got the idea that the only dress appropriate for special occasions was black satin. One year her mother made her a black satin dress, and for the rest of Clarissa's life she always owned such a dress. The year before she died her granddaughter made her a maroon satin dress. It took some persuading before Clarissa agreed to wear non-black.

Work: Martha, when eight years old, was sent on an urgent errand. But on the way she met a friend, and they lallygagged until Martha's mother finally sent someone else. When Martha got home, fully expecting to be punished, her mother just told her to go and play. Martha felt so bad she told her mother she needed "a good licking." So her mother sent her to cut a fresh willow stick. Martha brought back a green one, and her mother gave her several stinging lashes. When Martha yelped, her mother asked, "What's the matter? Didn't I give you enough?" Martha answered, "I didn't think you would whip me so hard." "Well," said her mother, "you asked for it."

At age nine or 10 the girls got their introduction to serious work. Mabel, as the oldest daughter in her family, and Ida, because her mother was a midwife and gone frequently, took over most of their families' household duties: cooking, cleaning, scrubbing clothes on a washboard, milking cows, and tending the younger children. Early morning and late evening work was done by the light of coal-oil lamps.

By age 10, especially if there were few boys in the family, the girls began to help in the fields. At first they weeded or dug potatoes, then (for 25 cents a day) gleaned the wheat after the harvesters had gone through. By age 14 they were able to help shock bundles of grain or hire out in other peoples' homes. Since her mother died when Martha was 13, she spent her teenage years cooking and keeping house for her father and older brothers.

Schooling: School was held only a few months a year in one-room, log schoolhouses. The girls started at about age seven and usually quit by 13 or 14 to work. Most did not go past the eighth grade, but they learned the skills needed to survive in their day.

By today's standards these six cousins had hard lives. They could not even go to the store and buy material to make their own clothes. But they had loving families, lots of friends, and games and dances to enjoy.

Source: Histories of Clarissa Jane Wilcox Meiling, Martha Anna Wilcox Westwood Foy, Mabel Wilcox Johnson, Alice Luella Hurst Nielson, Ida Susannah Hurst Patten, and Mary Ethel Young George; in Montel and Kathryn Seely, Seely History, vol. 2 (Provo: Community Press, 1996).

Mabel Wilcox - From The Lives of Six Pioneer Girls

·  

Sunday School Class 1889 (from our archves)

 

Pedigree Chart of MCARTHUR, WASHINGTON PERRY

 

MARY YOUNG WILCOX ~~~1847 PIONEER TO UTAH - 1852 PIONEER TO HAMBLETON - 1860 PIONEER TO MT. PLEASANT By Annie Carlson Bills

 

Mary Young Wilcox 

 

       Mary Young Wilcox was born June 6, 1831, in Upper Canada, the daughter of James and Elizabeth Seely Young.

       In the spring of 1846 they started from Kainsville, Iowa, on their westward journey across the plains to Utah.

After traveling about three hundred miles, the call came from the government for five hundred of their young men to go to Mexico. This was the choosing of the "Mormon Battalion."

       The Battalion was packed with their packs, which weighed about thirty-five pounds.

The scene which followed, Mrs. Wilcox says, she can never forget. Widowed mothers parting with, sometimes, their only son, sweethearts, husbands and wives, a scene which only the ones who witnessed can realize the sadness of.

After the Battalion marched away, they resumed their journey, traveling as far as Winter Quarters, where they camped for the winter.

They built log cabins, with no windows, and taking their wagon boxes off the wagons, placed them inside of the houses, replacing the bows and covers. There they slept in. They had no stoves so a hole was dug in the center of the house and a fire was made in it. A hole in the center of the roof served as a place for the smoke to escape and light to enter. Thus they lived during the winter, suffering with cold and hunger. Many died from disease, through being so poorly nourished and clothed. Wher­ever a grove of timber and trees could be found, as many as could made cabins and stayed there through the winter.

Mary left Winter Quarters in May 1847. Traveling on the plains from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake Valley, she yoked and unyoked her oxen and drove them every step of the way, and was only sixteen years old. Suffering with the rest on the journey, she reached the valley on September 29, 1847. After resting a couple of weeks, they began making preparations for winter. She went with her father to get logs for their cabin. She also made the adobes that made the chimney for their cabin. She says, "No kings could be happier than we, when we reached the valley and had built our first log cabin."

The houses were so built as to form a fort, it being two blocks long and one block wide when completed. Two gates, one at the north and one at the south, were made. It being located about where the Seventh ward is.  About Christmas of 1847, their cabins were ready to move into.

On March 14, 1848, she was married to John Henry Wilcox. Spring came and they began to survey the land and let each couple have a chance to draw for the land. They drew the land where the Sugarhouse Ward is.

They made a brush "shanty" and began to work on their land. Her husband grubbed the brush and she piled and burned it, and prepared the land for plowing. They sowed a nice piece of the land and had a nice garden planted, having brought the seed across the plains with them. The seeds took root and grew and looked very prosperous. But by this time the crickets had hatched out and they soon consumed the whole crop. Then came the blessed "Sea Gulls." They came in great Hocks and devoured the crickets. They would stay a few hours at a time, then fly away

 with a squawk, and after a while return for more crickets. It was not too late to replant, but no more seed could be had.

After the crickets had destroyed their crops, the people went back to the fort for the rest of the summer.

After the people of the northern sections had harvested their crops, they allowed them to go and glean. Her husband grubbed oak brush for a peck of corn a day and boarded himself out of what little they had. In this way they saved a little for winter. Later her husband went to the canyon and got a big load of poles. A man offered him forty pounds of wheat and he sold the poles to him for the wheat. He sowed one and one-fourth acres of ground where the crickets had eaten his crop the spring before. The next summer they threshed seventy bushels of wheat from the forty pounds of seed.

The first potatoes were brought from California on pack animals and sold to the people for twenty five cents a piece and only four being allowed to each man.

       In the spring of 1849 they planted a peck of potatoes; when they dug them they got thirty bushels.

       In the fall of 1850 they were called to settle Manti. They stayed there three years. Built homes and raised a crop.

In the spring of 1853 her husband went to Hambleton. The Indians killed all his cattle and oxen and burned the wagons, saw. mill. and all the lumber, and they were left once more without anything. They moved to the fort at Manti.

In 1853 they gave all they had for one yoke of oxen and wagon, and moved to Pleasant Grove. In 1860 they moved to Mt. Pleasant. They lived in Mt. Pleasant ever after. 

There are five living generations. Her mother also lived to see five generations. Mrs. Wilcox died May 16, 1929.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following additional information comes from:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=139581 

Birth: Jun. 6, 1832
Whitby
Ontario, Canada

Death: May 16, 1929
Mount Pleasant
Sanpete County
Utah, USA
Parents: James Young and Elizabeth Seely
Married John Henry Wilcox
COD: Myocarditis, chronic

Death certificate State of Utah

Records may also be found under Wilcox


Family links:
 Parents:
  James Young (1804 - 1894)
  Elizabeth Seely Young (1807 - 1900)

 Spouse:
  John Henry Owen Willcox (1824 - 1909)

 Children:
  Hazzard Wilcox (1849 - 1925)*
  Sarah Wilcox Bills (1853 - 1936)*
  James Henery Wilcox (1855 - 1939)*
  John Carlos Wilcox (1858 - 1938)*
  Mary H Wilcox Day (1860 - 1946)*
  Clarissa Jane Wilcox Meiling (1863 - 1951)*
  Sabra Ellen Willcox Oliver (1865 - 1914)*
  Hannah Wilcox Carlston (1868 - 1943)*
  Martha Anna Wilcox Westwood Foy (1871 - 1962)*
  Justus Azel Wilcox (1874 - 1945)*

*Calculated relationship
 Burial:
Mount Pleasant City Cemetery
Mount Pleasant
Sanpete County
Utah, USA
Plot: A_128_2_7
Edit Virtual Cemetery info [?]
Maintained by: Penne Magnusson Cartrigh...
Originally Created by: Utah State Historical So...
Record added: Feb 02, 2000
Find A Grave Memorial# 139581

Home of Abram Jarald Burton and his wife Carole Augusta Jones ~~~ Researched, Compiled and Updated by Tudy Barentsen Standlee

 

Pioneer Invitation 1964 -65 ~~~ Pioneer Fete (Taken from Louise Johansen's Scrapbook)

 

Home of Edward Cliff and Eliza Cresswell ~~~~Researched and compiled by Tudy Barentsen Standlee

 

SUNDAY SCHOOL 1889

 

Family Group Sheet of John Henry Wilcox

 

Fiddles and Fiddlers by Mary Louise Seamons ~~~~ Saga of the Sanpitch

North Sanpete Class of '56 ~~~ 60th Reunion

 

Wilcox Family ~~~ Pioneers of the Month ~~~ September 2020 (from our archives and updated)

History Of John Henry Owen Wilcox

History Of John Henry Owen Wilcox

taken from Family Search written by J.O. Meiling

On December 25, 1775, in a little town in Rhode Island, was born Hazard Wilcox. He met and wed Sarah Seeley. In 1824 the resided at Benton, Arkansas, where on 14 Feb. 1824, was born John Henry Owen Wilcox, the youngest and last of a larg family and the subject of this treatise.

Little is known of his early life. Leaving Arkansas the family settled in Missouri, where in 1831 the father died. It was here in Marion County, Missouri that the boy accepted Mormonism. This new religion had aroused such bitter antagonism against its adherents that mob violence was prevalent throughout the Middle west. They lived in Jackson, Clay, and Caldwell counties in Missouri, being driven from place to place with less regard than for so many cattle. On one occasion, Grandfather escaped the wrath of the mob by hiding in a corn field, and another time he was clad in girls clothing to cover his idnentity lest he be taken away by a brother-in-law who was bitterly opposed to his affiliating with the Mormons. He witnessed the transfiguration of Brigham Young when he assumed the likeness of the Prophet Joseph Smith at the time a successor to lead the western trek was being discussed. When it was seen futile to further attempt to maintain the homesteads in the Mississippi valley, and hold their religious convictions, the Mormon converts, in accordance with the advice of the Prophet Joseph, prepared to head west into the unknown Rocky Mountain region. John Henry Owen, with his widowed mother and sister Jane, was among them and early in the summer of 1847, in a slowly moving ox drawn prairie schooner, set out in John Taylor's Company, bound for that unknown, unexplored western wilderness. Jane and Justus Azel Sealey were married 10 March 1842, and were in the same Company. Over the prairie lands, along the North Platte river, up the ridges and valleys, up of the Wasatch Mountains, and down through Emmigration Canyon continued that trek of more than 1000 miles, the like of which is recorded no where else in history. What were the emotions that surged through his being his being when , on September 30, 1847, from a vantage point on the Western Slope of Big Mountain, he gazed over Salt Lake Valley, a cheerless, desolate, uninviting desert wasteland? What did he behold in that panorama to bid him welcome, or to suggest that this is the long sought haven in which to build a home? Somber indeed, was the picture painted by Jim Bridger when he urged the original emigrants not to stop in Salt Lake Valley. Said he, "This is no place for civilized man. Nothing but wild beasts and savages could possibly survive the vigors of the elements and the destitution of this barren land. Nothing can grow and utter starvation will inevitably follow if settlement is attempted." Did Grandfather lament and want to turn back as did the children of Israel? Never. With a burning desire for a home in a land of religious freedom, as the obstacles that beset the way of the o conquer the obstacles that beset the way of the frontiersman, as in the woof there was woven into his being some of the most enduring fabric that ever formed a part of human character.

He first settled in Salt Lake, where on the 14th of March, 1848, he was married to Mary Young, a convert from Ontario, Canada, who also came westward in John Taylor's Company. In 1850, they moved to Manti remaining there until 1853, when they settled at Fort Hamilton, a settlement located some distance west of the present site of Mt. Pleasant. That same year, they moved to Pleasant Grove, Then to North Ogden. In 1860, he came to Mt. Pleasant whare they resided the rest of their lives. He homesteaded 20 acres of land Three miles north of the town and tilled this land for nearly 40 years until he became so feeble he could plow but a quarter of an acre per day.

Grandfather participated in the Walker and the Blackhawk Indian Wars. While residing at Fort Hamilton, he was employed at a sawmill in Pleasant Creek Canyon, where on one occasion he was left as a watchman while the other workmen went to town. In the early evening he heard the words, "go home." He paid no attention to this until the warning was repeated three times then he went home. On returning to camp the next day they found it a smoldering mass of ruin. The Indians had set fire to the lumber, the logs, the wagons and every combustible object, and driven off the cattle. This cost Grandfather his wagon and oxen, but did not deter him in his determination to strive on. He traded all his possessions, including a house and lot for another wagon and yoke of cattle.

Though he went hunting occasionally to augment the family food supply, he had little recreation, his first concern was to supply provisions for a wife and eleven children. His life was filled with toil, trials, hardships, privations, sacrifices and heartaches incident to life in that time. He was ambitious and worked at any form of labor available, including farming, logging, mining, building log and adobe dwellings. At one time he worked at a mine near Austin, Nevada, where he was so severely injured that he was weak for years. He was an expert log hewer, even made lumber by this method. His ability in making ox yokes was widely known and many men came to him for his service. On one occasion he exchanged a large load of poles for 40 pounds of wheat, which he planted on an acre and a quarted of land, and with joyousness they gathered from the threshing floor seventy bushels of grain. He grubbed oak brush for a peck of corn per day and thanked God for the opportunity of earning that 14 pounds of corn to help feed his family. In our day, we hear much about the full dinner pail but Grandfather well remembers the days his dinner bucket contained only a pinch of salt, with which he hoped to season a kettle of segas, thistle stocks, pig weed or other edible plants he might find to cook for his noon day meal. Grandmother Wilcox oft repeated, "As I look back on these agonizing times, I wonder how in the world we ever managed to keep body and soul together. I know, However, that it was through the graciousness of the Good Lord on High, we were able to withstand those terrible ordeals." The Mormons made the desert blossom as the rose, but the first "roses to bloom for grandfather were a few potatoes broduced from seed brought from California on pack animals and sold pour to a customer at 25 cents each.

Grandfather never learned to read or write, yet the feat of turning this sagebrush covered wasteland into fields of bounteous harvests, will be emblanzoned on the history of Utah by these early pioneers. It was not the call of wild, the desire for fame or fortune, or adventure that promted him to abondon his friends and posessions, but the hope of finding a place where he could dwell in peace and safety, unbomolested by a bloodthirsty mob determined to annihilate the converts to this newly-born religion. He had morality, truthfulness, and strict adherence to the golden rule worthy of emulation to the end of time.


"Well done, thou good and faithful servant, ... ... ..."

~~~~~

The following is a handwritten history written by a daughter of Mary and John Henry Wilcox .

North Sanpete High School 1956 ~~~~~ Reunion 2016

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND JOURNALS OF CHRISTIAN NIELSEN LUND SR. ~~~ 1917

NAMES OF MT. PLEASANT INDIAN WAR VETRANS WHO HAVE MADE APPLICATION FOR STATE MEDALS