Life Story of Ellen Carter Bone

Ellen Carter Bone, daughter of Mary Ann Stockdale and Edwin Carter, was born 24 June 1837 at Prince rock, Plymouth, Devonshire, England, and was the fourth of six children. When she was four years old, her father, who was a stone mason, was killed in a stone quarry on 10 June 1841, leaving five small children in the family.
They were as follows:

Ellen Born 28 September 1831    Died 10 October 1831
Edwin John Born 28 September 1833
William James Born 29 June 1835
Ellen Born 24 June 1837      Died 22 November 1915
Jane Born 16 January 1839  Died 1 August 1933
Mary Ann Born 31 July 1840   Died 19 November 1884
After the father's death, Mary Ann did all she could do to support the family, washing, ironing, mending for hire, even having her long black, wavy hair cut to sell for women's switches, to get food for her children. In March of 1845 Mary married James Martin and conditions improved for a time. To Mary and James was born a son, James 7 June 1846. The father, James Martin, died a few years later and again hardships came although the older children were able to help a little.

Mormon missionaries brought the gospel to the family which Mary Ann accepted and was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ in 1851.

Ellen met William Henry Bone and on August 13th or 14th they were married and in October of the same year, 1854, they were both baptized and confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They were anxious, as were other members of the family to go to America and to Zion, and worked to that end. In the meantime the two boys, Edwin and William, had left home and had gone either to America or Australia, returning home once after the family had left for America and were never heard from.

In 1856, a daughter Ellen Mary was born to them and soon afterwards, they set sail for America, landing at Castle Gardens, New York. In New York City and Brooklyn, William followed his trade and while there, Rhoda Jane and William James were born.

In 1861, they with their three children, Ellen's Mother, Mary Ann, and her son James Martin, started on their three thousand-mile journey to Utah. They traveled by train as far as Florence, Nebraska, where they bought two yoke of oxen, a wagon, and a handcart and joined a company led by Milo Andrus. William Henry, due to an accident suffered as a child, was unable to walk all the way so he and the two little girls alternated walking and riding. Ellen and her mother with James helped push the handcart with eighty pounds of provisions into Salt Lake City, arriving 12 September 1861. Ellen's two sisters, Jane and Mary Ann, had preceded them and settled in Kaysville where Ellen and William also made their home. They had all accomplished their fondest hope, they had reached Zion.

Ellen and William moved into their first house in Utah, a log cabin with dirt floor and sod and bough roof, but for just a short time until they could find something better. In 1865 they purchased some lots on Main and first North from Jesse Dredge where they built a story and one-half brick home. In 1976 it is stilt occupied and in good repair, one hundred and eleven years later. (Note: the home was demolished about the year 2000).

William built a small shop on the southeast comer of the property. Here he continued his trade of maker of fine shoes and boots. During the next few years they homesteaded a section of land on Gentile Street in Layton Utah, acquired a farm in East Kaysville, also some land west and north from Farmington. The wall built as a protection from the Indians ran along the front of their home in Kaysville. However, the Indians did not molest them. Ellen had a small mirror and many times the Indians walked in and used the mirror to paint their faces. Sometimes one or two of the younger children hid under the voluminous skirts of their mother until the Indians were gone. A fireplace was built in one end of the living room where Ellen baked bread in a Dutch oven by heaping hot embers over and around it. She preserved potawatomi plums in molasses, gathered service berries (pronounced sarvice), wild currants, greens, (Iambs tongue), sego roots, and in the spring made a tonic of various herbs to cleanse the blood from winter. A small bag of asafetida was worn around the neck to ward off disease. All clothes were made by hand, tiny stitches made by her nimble fingers, a work of art. All were washed on a washboard, a wooden frame around corrugated metal, that stood in the tub. Soap was rubbed on the clothes and the clothes rubbed up and down on the corrugated metal.

Large ticks were made of denim and filled with straw or cornhusks for mattresses.

She tore inch wide strips of cloth from worn out clothing, sewed the ends together, wound them into one pound balls, had them woven into yard wide strips which she sewed together making a carpet for the floors. She, as nearly all pioneer women, was very industrious, making their homes as pleasant as their means and provisions could provide.

Ellen loved flowers and beautiful things and until the time of her death, she surrounded their home with flowers and shrubs from early spring until the frosts came.

In the rear of the house was an orchard with many varieties of fruits, gooseberry bushes, red English currants, black native currants, bedbug currants. Raspberries and grapes were planted between the trees and in the Spring, purple and white violets with an occasional daffodil bloomed everywhere. Near the back door, two crabapple trees grew shading a well which had a small square roof with a concave wheel under it, which held the rope with buckets on each end, and buckets of cold, clear water were drawn up for culinary use. The buckets were made of oak with wide metal bands around them. As one bucket was pulled up full of water, the other went down into the water. A long handled dipper hung by the side of the well and many travelers of the road (tramps) came to refresh themselves with the sweet cold water. The garden was irrigated from a small stream which ran in front of the house. Two black walnut trees and two locust trees shaded the front of the house and the walnuts were gathered for winter use. In the crotch of one tree a currant bush grew, blossomed and bore fruit. Grandmother's garden was always peaceful and beautiful but in an invasion of grasshoppers in the early time, she tied her beautiful dresses that she had brought with her around and over some tiny trees to protect them but trees and dresses were destroyed.

Ellen was a moderately tall woman with a strong frame. She had brown hair, blue eyes, fair complexion and was a beautiful woman, quiet but capable, a fine example of pioneer womanhood, able to cope with hardships and remain calm. She was a good mother and faithful wife and the mother of twelve children, two of whom died as babies. They were Mary Ellen Barnett and Rhoda Jane Blamires of Kaysville, William James and Francis of Layton, Emma Egbert of Fairview, Idaho, Thomas Henry and Richard Edwin of Kaysville, Florence, Clara, and Anna of Salt Lake City, and Clarence, a twin to Florence, and Alice, both of whom died in infancy.

At the age of seventy-eight, she still planted a small vegetable garden and kept her yard clean and attractive. William, her husband, passed away suddenly of a heart attack in 1900, leaving her a widow for fifteen years. In November of 1915, she became ill with pneumonia and passed away at her home with most of her family around her. Nine of her twelve children survived her, also forty-two grandchildren and twenty-six great grandchildren, her sister Jane Robbins and half brother James Martin. She was buried by the side of her husband in the Kaysville City cemetery, 24 November 1915.

I remember Grandmother best, sitting in her little rocking chair, a black, elbow length corticelo silk cape threaded with black satin ribbon around her shoulders, at the farther side of her brightly polished combination cooking and heating stove, her book, glasses and needle work on the deep ledged window beside her. She always had a chocolate for me.

Written in loving remembrance of deep gratitude for her fine example to me and to all her descendants.