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| Joseph Howard |
The Howards and Lowes
The call to gather to Zion was for
all saints. All would need the blessings
of the temple. However, some were given
the call to remain where they were for a while in order to build up the
Church. The Joseph Howard family
received just such a call. Joseph was
taught the trade of farming by his father on the family farm near Birmingham,
England.
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| Canal towpath with heron near Gravelly Hill, Birmingham |
Joseph met his wife to be, Ann Shelton, who worked as a clerk in a grocery store. After their marriage, they farmed near his
father. In addition to farming, Joseph
became a successful coal merchant. They
had eleven children. Joseph was the
first in the family to be converted to the Church. He was baptized in a font that was built on
his farm that was fed by a spring by William Griffin on November 27, 1851. He was then ordained an Elder by Charles
Jones. Ann was baptized on December 16,
1851. The children were baptized as they
reached the appropriate age.
Joseph was appointed to be the
president of the Allison Street Branch of the Church. Church singing in that area often attracted
the unwanted attention of rough men who hung-out in the neighborhood. Joseph was a strong man and had to stay near
the door at the top of the stairs to keep ruffians out of the meeting place and
to prevent them from not letting members and investigators get past. Not withstanding of these hardships,
membership in the branch grew. Joseph
secured a larger meeting place and was able obtain a lease for 99 years. The Chapel became known as the Hockley
Chapel.
The very day that Joseph made the
lease of the new chapel, on the way home he was attacked by a mob of Mormon
haters and was nearly beaten to death.
His clothing was ruined. His silk
hat was smashed. He received deep cuts
and was left unconscious in the mud. His
own neighbors would not come to his aid because the hate was so great towards
members of the Church. Joseph continued
to preside over that branch for another ten to eleven years. Members of the branch made sure that Joseph
had bodyguards to see him safely home after his meetings.
Economically, things went from bad
to worse for the Howards. People refused
to buy coal from a Mormon. Coal mine
owners refused to sell their coal to him.
The family decided to sent two of the older sons ahead to America to see
if they could earn enough money to help pay the passage for the rest of the
family. Eighteen year old Thomas and
seventeen year old William were agreeable to do this for the family. They set sail on April 23, 1861. America was a different place for these
teenagers with different customs and manners of speech. This was also the beginning of the American
Civil War.
The two brothers hired on as
teamsters driving ox teams across the plains to Utah walking all the way. They survived by eating only bread and bacon
grease as their main source of food. The
people of Utah were very poor and could not give them to much help. The first winter they cut wood in the
mountains for the right to have a place to stay and have a little food to
eat. During that winter in the mountains,
Thomas had his feet frozen and had to walk back home to the family with whom he
was staying. With his feet wrapped in
burlap, he chopped wood for the family for the rest of the winter.
Thomas was able to find work with
William Muir. He saved his money and
send it to England to help pay the passage of the rest of his family and his
bride to be. It would not be until 1864
that the rest of the family would be able to sail to America.
Joseph was able to find work at a
smelting and refining company. It was
hard work but he was glad to be able to have some work. They had to sell five acres of their farm to
also help make ends meet.
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| Mary Lowe Howard |
The year before Thomas and William
left for America, a young woman by the name of Mary Lowe started attending some
of the church meetings that were held in the Hockley branch. Joseph and Ann made her feel welcome. Mary had to walk six miles to attend the
meetings and six miles back to the home where she was staying. Some times she stayed over with the Howard
family rather than walk back late at night.
Thomas started walking Mary to her home because the distance was a
hardship on his father and they did not want her walking home in the dark. The family for whom Mary worked as head cook
were very rich and had a strong liking for Mary. When some of the other servants told them
that Mary was going to Mormon meetings, they tried to talk her out of going any
more. They even had the minister come
and meet with here to try and convince her of the error of her ways. The more he talked, the more she was
convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ was true. She had the opportunity in that small branch
of hearing Apostle Penrose speak.
Mary was released from her
employment and had a hard time finding work.
No one wanted to hire a Mormon or friend of the Mormons. At last she was able to work for a family who
said that they too belonged to a strange church and that Mary=s religion did not bother them. She had to work longer hours and for less
pay. Mary was baptized by Joseph Howard
on September 11, 1860. This was before
Thomas left for America. The two had
been seeing each other and agreed that if neither of them found anyone better,
that they would be married when she got to Utah. Mary had several opportunities for marriage,
but waited for her reunion with Thomas.
The Howard family and Mary Lowe set
sail for America on the ship Hudson in 1864.
This was the very ship that Margaretta Clark Call sailed on in 1856 as
one of the handcart pioneers. They
arrived at the port of New York. The
Civil war was still going on. England
had taken sides with the South. English
emigrants were suspect and not made welcome.
Joseph and his son James were sick most of the way from New York to
Nebraska where they joined a wagon company of 170 wagons. Two of the sons, James and Joseph then hired
out with a freight company as drivers.
This separation was hard on their mother Ann.
The family had to walk. It was hot and dry. There was very little clean water for them to
drink along the way. In their weakened
condition, two of the little girls became ill.
The baby, Tamar died just before they got to the South Platt River and
was buried along the way. Two weeks
later one the six year old twins, Matilda, died and was also buried. The stress of losing her children, weakened
Ann even more. She became to weak to
walk but there was no room in the wagons to ride. Finally Joseph was able to get permission for
his wife to ride in one of the wagons.
Ann=s
daughter Emma rode with her and comforted her as much as she could. Emma could see her mother growing weaker as
she held her in her lap. That night, Ann
Shelton Howard died and was buried the next morning in two sheets in a shallow
grave never to see her four sons again in this life.
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| Ann Shelton Howard was buried on Bitter Creek, Wyoming. |
Thomas and William were waiting at
Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City for their family when they arrived on October
26, 1864. Their joy soon changed to
sorrow for the loss o their mother and two of their sisters.
Thomas and Mary Lowe were married
by Bishop William Muir on Christmas day in 1864 just two months after Mary got
into the valley. Love knows no distance
that can be separated by ocean and plains and desert. Love also knows no distance of time
either. In June 1882, Joseph with his
son James and daughter Emmy, made the journey from Bountiful to St. George
where for the first time in this dispensation, work could be done for the dead
other than baptisms. Emma became proxy
for her mother Ann and was endowed for her and sealed for her to Joseph. The purpose for the gathering is
evident. Through the temples which are
the product of the gathering, it makes families eternal families. Families can be forever.
Of interest also is the story of
the husband to be of Emma Howard. Edward
and Alice Parker Corbridge were some of the early converts to the Church in
England. They came to the United States
in 1850 and crossed the plains in 1852 and settled in Bountiful. Edward would take his young son William Henry
with him into the mountains to get logs that could be used in the construction
of barns and houses. William learned to
work hard at an early age. In 1862 at
the age of eighteen, William Henry drove a mule team for David Sessions back to
Council Bluffs, Iowa to bring aid and to help immigrants into the valley of the
Great Salt Lake. He made a second trip
back to the Missouri River to help another group of immigrants to the
valley. He made a third trip to bring
wagon loads of telegraph wire to the valley to aid the saints in being able to
communicate faster. Back in Bountiful,
William continued to do logging east of Bountiful. He brought much of the timber that was used
in the construction of the Bountiful Tabernacle. He joined the U.S. Army for a short time and
fought in the Black Hawk Indian War. He
received a bullet in the calf of one leg in one of the skirmishes. He was sealed to Emma Howard in the Endowment
House on Valentine=s Day
in1870 by Daniel Wells.
Of further interest, another family
, the Henry Barrett family joined the Church in 1861. They too needed to send their family to Utah
a few at a time. They sent their
youngest son, Thomas, with a family that was coming to Utah. He settled in Farmington with the Manning
family. They then sent their sixteen
year old daughter Mary Ann and their twelve year old son, John next. They sailed on the Hudson at the same time
the Howard family sailed and were in the same company that crossed the plains. Mary Ann Barrett would go on to marry Alfred
Burningham one of our handcart pioneer ancestors.
Note: Leslie Tuttle Foy wrote Our Brass Plates, of which this was but one chapter. Thanks, Uncle Les! Picture of Gravelly Hill area near where the Howards farmed was taken by © Copyright Roger Kidd and
licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence and is found on the Geograph website http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3164074 The picture of Bitter Creek was first published in the Ensign in 1984 and is now found on http://www.lds.org/ensign/1984/06/another-route-to-zion-rediscovering-the-overland-trail
.
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