True Tales of Pioneers and Early Settlers by Mary Ann Shill Edgworth Ovard

True Tales of Pioneers and Early Settlers

By Mary Ann Shill Edgeworth Ovard

Editor's Note: This is the true story of the life of Mary Ann Shill Edgeworth Ovard, Henefer, written by her and submitted upon request to the "Bee" for publication.

My parents came to this country in the fall of 1866 coming across the ocean in a sailing vessel and going where ever the wind would take them. Mother told me that they were on the water for six weeks. She said Father became so sea sick he asked the captain to throw him overboard and let the sharks eat him.

Upon reaching this country, Father secured a span of mules and crossed the plains, arriving in Salt Lake City in the all of 1866.


Mother crossed the plains with her brother, Robert Jones, and his three motherless children. When her brother married Marian Richins, Mother went to work for Charles Richins on his farm, where she met father, who was also employed there.

They were married and lived in a one room log house, with a dirt roof and floor. Three of their children were born in that house, which stood on the spot where the Henefer meeting house now is.

They had to build their houses close together in those days because of the Indians.

I remember Mother telling of how she would go out and milk cows "on shares" in order to obtain food for her children. Father chopped ties for the railroad down Echo Canyon and later got a job watching the bridges across the river.

When I was born, 69 years ago, on the day Brigham Young was buried, there wasn't a doctor any closer than Ogden. But in those days, people had faith and didn't depend so much on a doctor.

Looking back on my life, I realized there were rough spots as well as smooth. I can remember having to help clean the sage brush off Father's farm, the same farm land upon which I now live. Indians used to camp all around the river banks in the fall of each year. The squaws and papooses would come over to the house two or three times a day for food. I remember in numerous occasions my mother gave them the last biscuit flour she had in the house. She told us children to go into the garden and eat a raw turnip or carrot. We had to be good to the Indians so they would not set fire to our homes.

My sisters, Jane and Martha, and I would visit the Indians and watch them make gloves and moccasins. One old Indian squaw gave me a strand of beads, but I was afraid to wear them because I thought the Indians would steal me.

There was only one boy in my father's family, and as I was the youngest girl, I had to milk the cows and take them into the hills to pasture. I would take them up the main canyon to the place they call Jack Beard's spring on the old Mormon Trail before school, and then walk over the hills after them after school.

In the fall of 1899, I was married to Thomas Ovard.

In the spring of 1905, when my brother was called on a mission, my parents were hard pressed to raise the $45 a month necessary for his keep. The Relief Society gave a farewell dinner for him and presented him with a purse of $75. I helped them all I could by taking my two tiny children, Joseph and George, in the baby carriage into the field with me while I helped harvest hay and grain. For two summers, I loaded and stacked every load of hay and grain that was hauled in.

My husband used to get a few days work here and there. I remember he worked for John Paskett for two days digging post holes for $1.50 per day. The day he came home and handed me the money, I had received a letter from my brother stating that he needed money.

I told my husband, "Will needs money and our two children need shoes. What shall we do?" He said, "Send it to your brother. We will get shoes for our children somehow."

That night I had a dream, a vision or some wonderful thing. I dreamed that my husband and I went down in the narrows along the railroad tracks to pick up coal. We had to go by Croyden then, because there was no road through the narrows. It was told in my dream that we would find plenty of coal and shoes for our children, if we would go to a certain little sage brush, by the side of the tracks.

So, the next morning I got up and told my dream to my husband. We hitched our old black horse to our wagon and went to see what we could find. I walked down the track to the spot I had seen in my dream. There was a shoe lace sticking out of the cinders. I started to dig the dirt and cinders away with my hands. There in the dirt, were 13 pairs of shoes all in men's and boy's sizes. I called to my husband and he helped my gather them and take them to the wagon.

We also got so much coal we could not carry it.

When we got home we checked with the local stores to see if any shoes had been stolen. None had, so we sold five pairs and my husband had enough shoes to last for years.

"I learned through that vision, or whatever it may have been, that by doing good to others and not being selfish, we are blessed."

This history was written in memory of two of Utah's pioneers, my parents, Joseph and Prudence Jones Edgeworth.

Mrs. Ovard, born September 3, 1877, at Henefer, is the mother of four sons and one daughter: Joseph W, George T., and Lawrence Ovard and Mrs. Mary Ovard Wilde, all of Henefer, and Roy E. Ovard of Cheyenne, Wyoming.