Joseph Barker and Mary Ann Doidge Barker Dunton
(Continued)

After reaching Salt Lake City, Joseph and Mary Ann were sent to help settle southern Utah. Their second daughter was born on January 30, 1864 in a little town called Washington. She was named Mary Ann after her mother.

Not long after that they moved to Parowan, Utah where Joseph was ordained an Elder in the church on February 9, 1866. It was here that Emma Amelia was born on July 22, 1866. Catharine Maria, called Kate or Cassie was born on April 2, 1869, and Ellen Melissa, sometimes called Ella, was born on June 4, 1871.

Theirs was a difficult life living under pioneer conditions. Both parents worked at anything they could find to do. Joseph couldn’t find work as a tailor, so he herded sheep and hauled freight to the mining camps near Pioche, Nevada. Mary Ann would do a day’s washing on the wash board for a quart of molasses or a pan full of flour. In the fall, she would take the girls to pick up potatoes and to the grain fields to glean the heads of grain left by the harvesters. Dora wrote, "I have heard my older sisters tell that when they would go with Mother to glean, they would each pick their hands full of wheat, then Mother would call, ‘Bundle,’ and they would all run with what they had and she would tie it all together. Thus, she made play of it. She had a good sense of humor, making jokes many times." This grain was made into flour for their bread. She also spun and wove the cloth for their clothes.

Stories were told of Joseph and Mary Ann’s daughter, Mary. Granddaughter Jeanie Weston Dawson wrote down some of those stories. One story about her said, "I was a sickly child and could eat very little. Once I felt a great craving for milk, but we had no cows. I prayed hard for some cows and sure enough, we got cows. But we didn’t keep them long. Pa had a chance to trade them for horses and that’s what he did. It made me mad. I just told him that he needn’t expect me to get him any more cows to trade off."

Another story that Jeanie wrote, quoting Mary, said, "Once Emma and I were playing in a deep, dry ditch. All at once a shaft of light shot by our faces. Emma said, in an awed voice, ‘That’s a sign!’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘It’s a sign we’d better get out of here fast.’ We had hardly scrambled up the bank when a great head of water, enough to drown us, came down." Jeannie added, "In speaking of this in later years, Emma always regarded it as a sign from Heaven. Mary held that it was the reflection of light on the advancing water. How right they both were!"]

Again quoting Mary, "Mother loved to go out in the evenings to social affairs. Pa usually preferred to stay at home with the baby. The rest of us would go with Mother. When we came home, we would find Pa reading by candle light. The book he read most was Shakespeare’s Complete Works in One Volume." Jeanie adds, "What a strong man Joseph Barker must have been!" Mary said, "Mother was a great reader, too, but she preferred something of a lighter nature than the plays of Shakespeare."

One of Mary’s most pleasant recollections was of her trips to Pioche, Nevada with her father. He would take a wagon load of supplies - chickens, eggs, butter, and other produce that he purchased in Parowan - and sell it to the miners. "Once a tire came loose," she said. "It was miles to the nearest blacksmith’s shop. Pa didn’t want to leave me alone in the wagon, so he rolled the wagon wheel and carried me on his back all that way and back again."

Another of Mary’s pleasant memories of this time was "Mother’s flowers. She had about every variety that was grown at that time. She had an arch over the front gate with morning glories trained over it." Morning glories were always one of Mary’s favorites in memory of the ones that gave her such pleasure as a child.

When Ella was a baby, in 1872, they went to Salt Lake City to go through the endowment house and receive their sealings. While in the city, they bought their first stove and a Howe sewing machine. Until this time the cooking was done over the fireplace and the sewing was done by hand.

On June 19, 1873, Georgina Madora, called Dora, was born.

Sometime before 1874, Joseph’s mother, Sarah Pickersgill Barker, came to Utah. She died in Parowan on September 3, 1874.

One man who herded sheep with Joseph said that he had never known him to lose his temper, but he was always kind and patient. Another man who had hauled freight with him said that he was "a good man." A later newspaper article describing his death said, "Joe was a quiet, kindly man, who made no enemies." Dora recalled that she had "never heard my mother speak unkindly of him, so I am sure she loved him."

Emma related that when she went to Pioche with her father on one of his trips, he told her that the reason that he took one of the children with him was to help him resist going down into the basements where the bright lights shone, which were the gambling dens. Dora says that "No doubt he had learned to play cards in England." She said that their mother used to play cards, too, and told the neighbors fortunes with cards for entertainment when they called in to spend the evenings. She said, "Father had endeavored to increase his small earnings by playing cards for money in Pioche. There being expert gamblers there, Father lost everything he had, including his team and wagon during one trip. He felt that he could not come home and face his family under the circumstances, so he stayed in Pioche trying to reimburse his losses. Later he wrote to Mother asking her to come to Pioche to live since he could find work there as a tailor. She consulted with her bishop about this matter and he advised her not to take a family of girls into a mining town to raise, so she was obedient to counsel at the cost of becoming separated from my father."

In 1874, Joseph left the family and went to Nevada to stay, sending money to them when he could. So when Dora was a baby ten months old, Mary Ann was left alone to raise her family. She started a school in her home. She was one of the first teachers in Parowan. Evenings she had a writing school for adults. Mary said that her mother was "a lovely writer and she used to stay up long after the adult pupils had gone home setting copies for the next night’s classes. It was the task of us older girls to clean up the school room between classes." As pay, Mary Ann would take any commodities her pupils could give - wood, foodstuffs, leather for shoes - anything she could use for her family. "She would receive a piece of leather from one patron while another would sew it into shoes in payment for his children attending school."

It was remembered that "one cold Christmas Eve, after the little girls had retired and their stockings were hanging for an expected gift, Mary Ann scraped the last flour from the bin to make some sugar cookies as a surprise. She had made a rag doll for each girl. A knock came on the door and she opened it to see a neighbor lady with small baskets for each girl made from molasses candy. Each one was filled with sweets. The girls remembered this as one of the happiest Christmas they ever had."

Finally she had to let the four older girls go into other homes to work and earn their own living. Sarah, who was fourteen, went to Washington to work in a weaving factory. Mary, twelve, went to Cedar City to work for Mr. and Mrs. Cory. Emma went to Summit to a family named Hullett. Before this she had worked in Parowan for Bishop Dame and his two wives. But they said, "We would like the little fat one." This was Kate. So at eight years of age, Little Cassie went out to earn her own way.

Kate remembered some of her experiences when she was working for the Dames. "Brother Dame was the president of the stake. Many of the officials of the church came to visit. I remember Brigham Young and ‘Young Brig’ as we called his son. I believe my favorite visitor was Wilford Woodruff. He came on a visit once, while I was reading his book, Leaves from my Journal. He took the book and went through it with me, telling me many interesting facts which he had not put in the book." She said, "All the Mormons in our community brought their tithing to President Dames. The times were hard and there was little money, so most of it was in produce. The nearest to a spanking I ever received during my five years at the Dames was on an occasion when I let a ‘tithing rooster’ out of its pen."

Later Emma went to Paragonah to work. She even helped with the farm work. Her wages were fifty cents a week and every week, the money was sent home to her mother. Because of the necessity of working out, these older girls were deprived of much of their education.

About 1878, four years after Joseph left, James Harvey Dunton, who already had a wife, four grown children, and a young, adopted Indian girl asked Mary Ann to marry him. So, after divorcing Joseph, she was remarried, thinking she would have help to raise her children. Mr. Dunton was forty-nine years old at this time and Mary Ann was forty-one.

Kate said that "after Mother married Mr. Dunton, they moved to Paragonah, about six miles from Parowan. Every Saturday, Mother would ride back with Mr. Topham, a butcher, and spend the day with me. I was always homesick, and after Mother left I would go upstairs and cry. The Dames wanted to adopt me, but Mother would not let them. She said I could stay as long as they were satisfied and I was satisfied and she was living close by. The Dames put money into the ‘Co-op’ herd of cattle for me. I drew this money out after I married, and it was three times the amount of the original investment."

Part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8