Silas Sanford Smith

Born: 13 January 1853 at Tinsley Bongs, Lancashire, England
Parents: James Williamson and Ann Allred
Married: Silas Sanford Smith, Jr. 3 November 1873 at Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Died: 28 March 1925 at Richfield, Conejos, Colorado

History

After joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, James Williamson came to America to prepare a home for his family. When Betsy was about three years old, he sent for them. On 25 May 1856 Ann Allred Williamson and her six living children sailed from Liverpool, England, together with nine hundred others, and landed in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 28th day of June having spent five weeks on the ocean. They all proceeded to Iowa City where, in late July, they joined the handcart company led by Edward Martin.

It was an error of judgment to send this company over the plains so late in the season. Early in the journey many of the handcarts broke down, causing additional delay. The story of this handcart company is a very sad and pitiful one of men and women pushing and pulling the handcarts and carrying little children, and helping the aged and the feeble travel on day after day in hunger and misery. Betsy sometimes rode on the handcarts, and she was sometimes carried by her uncomplaining brothers and sisters, for she was only a little over three and one-half years of age.

Provisions became low, and they had to be put on rations which gradually became less and less as the days went by until they were allowed only one spoonful of flour per person per day. The immigrants grew hungrier and weaker day by day.

Unable at last to pull their loads, they were compelled to lighten them by throwing away some of their bedding and clothes that would be needed so badly before long, as it was getting colder every day. The captain would come and throw away things that he thought they could get along without. Betsy’s mother was bringing a few things that were relics from her old home: a metal lion and some cups and saucers. These highly prized items the captain threw away. That night after dark one of the girls retrieved them and hid them in her clothing she kept them the rest of the way. The china cups and saucers can now be seen in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers’ Museum in Salt Lake City.

Death after death occurred, so that the trail of Ole company could almost be traced by the new graves. The snow fell, and the bitter, cold winds blew on the worn and weary travelers, but they dared not stop lest their fate be even worse. They had crossed the river wading in the ice-cold water, and were trying to set up camp in a driving snow storm between the Sweetwater and the Platte rivers. They were so weak and cold that they had trouble in trying to drive the stakes into the frozen ground to pitch their tents. They had just about give up all hopes and had settled down in their bleak surroundings, which they called Martin’s Ravine; it became a cemetery before they left it. It was here that the relief party sent out by Brigham Young found them late in October. They reached Salt Lake City a month later, having lost one-fourth of their number, who had died and been buried on the plains. Betsy’s family was very fortunate, for they all arrived safely and gave thanks unto God.

In Salt Lake they were met by her father, James Williamson, who had already paid for their transportation across the plains by ox team. He took them to Paragonah, in the southern part of Utah, to make their home. Here Betsy grew to womanhood, and she told many stories of how the Indians would come to their home begging for food, and how careful they would have to be to clean up after Ute Indians had been in the house, on account of the lice which the Indians carried.

Betsy was married to Silas Sanford Smith, Jr., son of Silas Sanford Smith and Clarinda Ricks, in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, 3 November 1873. They carne a distance of 250 miles by ox team, accompanied by her mother, and returned the same way. In Paragonah, they built their first home, a two-room adobe house which was used by several different families for over eight years. Then it was torn down and replaced by a modern brick home.

While they lived in Paragonah, their first two children were born: Clarinda Ann, born 2 May 1876; and Silas Sanford (Ill), born 4 October 1878.

During the late 1870’s one or the projects closest to Brigham Young’s heart was the colonization or southeastern Utah. It was fast becoming a hangout for outlaws, unfriendly Indians and non-Mormon stockmen. The Mormon leader was justifiably concerned about his neighbors across the Colorado River to the southeast. Many of them lived by raiding and pillaging the Mormon settlements west or the Colorado, One writer stated that losses to the raiders in sheep, cattle and horses were established in more than a million dollars in one year. Mormon leaders knew that taming the southwest corner would be difficult.

San Juan Mission Begins
In 1877 the Church leaders called a conference in St. George to discuss the problem various exploration plans were discussed, but action was delayed because of the death of Brigham Young 29 August 1877. Later President John Taylor authorized the colonization. Church leaders activated the project December 28 and 29, 1878, at Stake Conference held in Parowan and in Cedar City on March 22 and 23, 1879. The Church issued mission calls at these conferences to fifty families by reading their names and having them sustained. It carne us a surprise to many of those who were involved. Most of them faithfully accepted. They were later set apart us LDS missionaries. They were to leave their homes, farms, friends and relatives to go on a full-time permanent mission to an unspecified area in the heart of the Navajo territory; It was later called the San Juan Mission.

Most of the missionaries who were called were healthy and young. The average age of the entire group, including children, was eighteen years. Among adults the average age was twenty-eight, the oldest being fifty-nine year old Jens Nielson.

A thirty-man exploring party (also accompanied by two women and eight children) set out to determine the best route into the area. By the end of this journey the group had traveled over 1,000miles on an expedition that took them through northern Arizona to southeastern Utah and then on a return loop over the Spanish Trail and back to the southwestern part of Utah. In June 1879 the exploring party built Fort Montezuma on the San Juan River about two miles above its junction with Montezuma Creek.

The Harrison H. Harriman and James L. Davis families remained each had a log room in the fort for their protection. They were dependent on food brought in from the markets of Colorado until the main body of settlers arrived a year later. These two families worked hard to grow their own crops but met with little success.

For two months the exploring party along with a substantial group of non-Mormons from Colorado who had already settled in the area, constructed 11 dams to channel the river’s water into irrigation ditches near the present town of Aneth. Many of them labored strenuously before they abandoned the project. Only a little corn was successfully planted at the mouth of McElmo Creek, and even that burned from lack of water, By the lime the explorers left on 13 August 1879, some members of the party were already disgruntled about the prospects of living along the Sun Juan River.

Source:
Originally written in the 1940’s by Don Samuel Smith, son of Betsy Williamson and Silas Sanford Smith, Jr.; revised in 1963 by Kathryn Pincock Seely, granddaughter of James Albert Smith. (paragraphs about the Hole in the Rock Expedition added in 1997 by Kathryn.) .

Source:
1 FamilySearch Memories Amos Hyrum Fielding
2 FamilySearch Memories Jane Benson
3 FamilySearch Memories Ellen Hobbs

Family Search:
Betsy Williamson Smith on FamilySearch