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Walton Home in Monticello, Utah
Born: 6 July 1846 in Edinburgh, Mid-Lothian, Scotland
Parents: John McKechnie and Jane Tinto Bee
Married: Charles Eugene Walton, 16 February 1867 at Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah
Died: 24 July 1891 in Monticello, San Juan County, Utah
JANE MCKECHNIE WALTON -- A LIFE SKETCH
Jane McKechnie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland 6 July 1846. Her father, John, died when she was
young and she, with her widowed mother and two brothers, were living in Jane's grandmother's
home in Edinburgh. Jane’a mother told of her conversion to Mormonism, but, she said,
"I kept it a secret in my heart from my parents." In time she made it known to her mother.
Grandma Janet Aitkinson Bee raised stern opposition, as did her aunts and uncles, and even
her minister (whom she felt kindly toward and tried to get to meet the Mormon elders,) she
did not falter in her decision.
Another opposing force was that of Jane’s mother's employers. They were spinster ladies
who had given her work since her husband's death and promised to endow her with their
wealth if she would remain with them. However, the light of the Gospel burned deep in her
heart and beckoned her on. Her desire even strengthened by the refusal of her minister to
meet the elders, which also helped Jane to convince her mother and the Bee family that what
she believed was true. Grandma Janet Bee joined the Church 21 March 1849.
Grandma, uncle Richard Bee, aunt Joanna Bee, Jane Bee McKechnie, and Jane's three young children
left Scotland for America on board the ship North Atlantic. They left Liverpool 4 September
1850 and arrived in New Orleans 1 November. They did not have sufficient funds to continue
past New Orleans. So, the adults found work, and took turns caring for the children, until
they earned steamboat passage up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, a distance of 1,200
miles. It appears that Janet Aitkinson Bee remarried to Joseph Dobson, and in the spring of
1851, Joseph, Janet, Richard, and Joanna, moved on to Council Bluffs and thence to Utah. It
was their hope that a home in Salt Lake City could be secured for Jane and the children.
Hardships at St. Louis were enough to make strong hearts turn back, but not Jane Bee McKechnie.
She worked and struggled; she made shoes for her children from worn out coats discarded by
the soldiers. The food she had to divide among them was scarcely enough for one person.
In the spring of 1851 she, too, went to Council Bluffs where in the nearby town of Little
Pigeon converts were assembling, working, and saving to join Captain Thomas Howell's
Company, which was to start west on 9 June 1852. This courageous and unfaltering widow
finally obtained a team and wagon. The wagon was so packed with supplies that she and her
three children walked the entire thousand miles to Utah. Corn was their only food, except
a small ration of buffalo meat when it could be obtained.
This, in part, is the background of six-year-old Jane McKechnie, who grew up in Bountiful
and later became the wife of Charles Eugene Walton 16 February 1863 in Salt Lake City. The
Walton family lived in Woodruff a small town on the northern border of Utah and Wyoming.
Jane and Charles E. Walton Sr. had three children were given instructions to travel along
the southern boundary, arriving near the eastern line of the state, and there build their
homes anew. Great preparations had been made by the family to travel by wagon and ox teams.
The first six weeks were occupied in journeying from Woodruff to Forty-Mile Spring on the
Escalante Desert, where they were to find the main company of more than eighty wagons and
200 or more people encamped. Jane’s young son Charles, age eleven, rode on horseback,
driving the livestock, which consisted of a yoke of wild bulls, a yoke of wild steers,
five horses and a colt, and eleven head of cattle.
From Forty-mile Spring, a scouting party had been sent ahead to find the best route to take.
They returned on December 2, 1879, with a bleak report, one of the men said with discouragement,
“A bird couldn’t fly over the route, to say nothing of getting wagons through.” Deeply
discouraged a council was held and their leader Jim Neilson, after much prayer, promised
the party if they would only continue their journey, a road would be built and crops
raised the next season. It was mid-winter at that time.
In Charles E. Walton Sr. diary it says that the wagons began pouring out of Forty-Mile
Spring toward the Hole-in-the-Rock itself some seventeen miles away. They left Forty-Mile
Springs, and after weeks of hard travel, battling storms, cold and hot winds, mud and dust,
they reached the great Colorado River, or rather reached the edge of the plateau above the
river chasm. On the Slick rocks at the top of the chasm the people danced to the fiddles of
Samuel Cox and Charles E. Walton Sr. They sang their inspired songs and discussed the new
country they would soon be colonizing. They spent the “coldest Friday in history” at the
Hole, according to Mary Jane Wilson, one of the youngsters there. There, on the windy desert
near the edge of the canyon wall, these weary pioneers camped six weeks with only the shelter
of tents and wagon covers to protect them. They gathered the desert brush to keep their
campfires burning. Water was scarce as evidenced by the notation in the journal of Kuman
Jones: “We rejoiced when the early wet snow fell. As it melted it filled the holes in the
rocks and furnished culinary water for at least a day.” On December 13, the traveling
organization was organized and Charles E. Walton Sr. was called as Clerk.
Hole in the Rock consisted of a formation of cliffs, pierced by a very narrow crack, far
too narrow to accommodate a horse. The cliff then dropped forty feet to a slanting shelf-like
formation from which there was a steep descent to the canyon below. Somehow a road had to
be made through that place. To accomplish the task it was necessary to blast the rock,
widen the small crack, and filling in the crevices to make a passable road to the shelf below.
This took six weeks and everyone was involved in the task, even eleven year old Charles Jr.
It was his assignment to be lowered over the cliffs with a rope around his waist to place
blasting powder in the crevices, thus preparing for the explosion. Some nights they danced
in the moonlight, with happier hearts than they had had for a long time. Charles and a few
others in the company tuned their violins and played. The next morning at sunrise the camp
was bustling with preparations for the crossing of the Colorado. In their hazardous zigzag
down the steep incline, nine horses were lost but the feat was accomplished without the loss
of one human life.
In January of 1880, the wagons were lowered over the cliffs with a ropes tied to the rear
of each wagon, and then six to seven men pulled back with all their strength to keep from
gaining too much speed in going down the incline. Once they were down at the edge of the
Colorado River they ferried the wagons across. The cattle were first forced to swim, and
then the wagons and people were taken across on a raft constructed at the moment for that
purpose.
In January, 1880 they crossed the Colorado River. About 15 miles further they camped again.
They were in slick rock country, which a scouting party had earlier found to be the worst
impediment of the trip. Once more the pioneers were in deep despair, quite ready to give
up. A mountain goat trying to elude capture by one of the men led the men straight down a
trail on which a road could be built. Thus to company slowly traveled, built the necessary
roads finally reached their destination.
They arrived at their destination on April 6, 1880 at a place they called Bluff. The
journey had taken six months, and although made in winter, no lives were lost. After
all these difficulties had met and conquered, Jane was over-wrought. She prayed that
this might be the last move they were asked to make.
After the Waltons arrived in Bluff, a most unusual dream came to Jane: Alone one night with
her three sleeping children, she suddenly heard a noise as if someone were entering the house.
On looking up, she beheld her grandfather, long dead. “I have come for you, my dear,” murmured
he. “Oh no, grandfather, not now,” hurriedly exclaimed Jane. “The children are so young, and
need a mother’s care.” The grandfather hesitated a moment, and then answered, “Very well,
have it as your wish now, but I shall return for you when you are forty-five.”
Charles Eugene wrote in his diary: “We raised the crop that year that Bishop Nielson
promised we would raise.” The next project was building the fort in which they lived
during 1880 and 1881. In the book, Saga of San Juan, It says on December 13, 1880,
Charles E. Walton, Sr. was appointed the first postmaster of Bluff. On May 31, 1881,
the post office was discontinued and mail was sent to McElmo. (Pg 63) Less than three weeks
after they had settled in Bluff, the governor and legislature of Utah Territory designated
Bluff as the seat of San Juan County, and a selectman, superintendent of schools, and other
officers were chose. Charles Eugene Walton was appointed as county clerk, and he was also
sustained as stake clerk when the first LDS organization was effected. He was one of the
directors (vice president) in the San Juan Co-operative Company organized in 1882, which
paid an annual dividend of forty percent and continued in business until January of 1920.
(Andrew Jensen, Church Historian) It was indicated in “Saga or San Juan that C.E. Walton,
Sr. hauled freight from the Blue Mountain, it talks about freighting over the roads from
Colorado and camping with other freighters at Fiddler’s Grove. He taught school for several
years presented many home dramatic plays, and played the violin for numerous dances and
parties. C.E. Walton, Sr. records in his diary that he “directed plays, built the scenery,
helped gather costumes and cleaned the hall before many of the plays were produced.
Jane served there as president of the stake Relief Society since its first organization.
Her work carried her all over San Juan County to Moab and part of New Mexico and to Mancos
and Cortez in Colorado. In buggy or wagon, in heat or cold, she seldom, if ever, failed in
the duties of her assignment. That was the integrity of Jane, who as a young girl walked
all the way across the plains as her mother said, "on a diet of corn and a small ration of
buffalo meat when it could be had."
Jane had a joyous disposition and loved dancing. A letter written by her to "Dear Sarah"
told of good times at a bow dance and picnic, a cap dance and picnic, an oyster supper and
a dance when a glittering Christmas tree was the focal point of the festivities. The picnic
was always a favorite on such occasions. Sometimes dances were broken up by rough cowboys
who drove cattle over Utah, Arizona, and the Mexican border. Drunken fights and "shootin'
up the town" were not uncommon.
Strange, that on a 24th of July celebration when flags were flying and streets festooned
red, white, and blue bunting, that the dance was 'crashed' by a rowdy group, and a stray
bullet, fired from the gun of a drunken cowboy struck Jane. They rushed her to her home
where she died in the presence of her broken-hearted husband and son. A blood-stained floor
bore mute testimony of a noble life wiped out on a rugged frontier. Her death was the
fulfillment of her own father's statement when he appeared to her and said, "I will leave
you now, but will come again when you are forty-five years old." Her death on the 24th of
July, 1891, was eight days after her forty-fifth birthday.
Another account from History of the Church states: In the early days of the Monticello
Ward the pioneer settlers were very much annoyed by outlaw cowboys getting drunk and
disturbing the social conditions generally, breaking up dances, etc. On one of these
occasions, Sister Walton, president of the Relief Society, was killed, and one of the
cowboys, a peaceable fellow, also lost his life.
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Walton Home in Monticello, Utah