{History of Mapleton} Edwin Whiting (1809-1890)

This is from The History of Mapleton, by Ralph K. Harmer and Wendell B. Johnson, on page 174.

Edwin Whiting was born September 9, 1809 in Massachusetts to Elisha and Sally Hulett Whiting. He was the third of twelve children. His brothers and sisters were: Charles, William, Charles, Katherine Louisa, Harriet, Sally Emaline, Chauncey, Almond, Jane, Sylvester, and Lewis.

When Edwin was six years old, his family moved to Nelson, Portage County, Ohio, which was, at that time, the Western frontier of the U. S. A. Edwin’s chance for an education was limited, but he was taught the “3 R’s”. He wrote in a legible handwriting, and, at an early age, wrote credible verse.

In 1833 Edwin married Elizabeth Partridge Tillotson. She was a highly educated school teacher, quite an accomplishment for those days. In 1837 Edwin, his wife, parents, and some of his brothers and sisters joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were among the early members and soon moved to Kirtland, Ohio. They moved around with the saints, suffering much persecution. While in Nauvoo, Edwin, under direction of those in authority, married Almira Meacham in 1845, and, in 1846, he married Mary Elizabeth Cox. In 1846 he was also called on a mission to Pennsylvania. He was in Pennsylvania when he heard of the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. He returned home at once to Nauvoo. Edwin and his family were soon forced to move to Mt. Pisgah, Iowa, where they prepared for their journey across the plains. Cholera took the lives of his father and mother, his little brother, and his own little daughter Emily Jane while they were in Mt. Pisgah.

In April 1849, Edwin and his family started westward. They suffered from Indians, stampedes, lack of food, etc. They reached Salt Lake City, Utah on October 28, 1849. After just a few days of rest, Edwin and his family were called, with others, to settle the San Pitch River, now known as Manti. They arrived in Sanpete County December 1, 1849. They made “dug-outs” on the South side of the hill where the Manti Temple now stands. It was a severe winter and they were ill equipped. They sent to Salt Lake City for help, but it was a long time in coming. Almost all of their cattle died. Edwin’s family now numbered fourteen.

In 1854 Edwin was called on a mission to Ohio. He was gone for two years. On October 8, 1856, Edwin married Hannah Haines Brown. On April 14, 1857, he married Mary Ann Washburn.

After finding the climate of Manti unfavorable for raising fruit trees, Edwin and his family moved to Springville in the year 1861. He was able to plant and grow all kinds and varieties of fruit trees, vegetables and flowers. He built a large home where the Springville Second Ward church now stands.

Edwin moved to Mapleton in approximately 1878. He died in Mapleton on December 9, 1890 at the age of 81. His descendants are numerous and found in Idaho, Arizona, Mexico, California, New York, and Utah. 

Autobiography of Elizabeth Partridge Tillotson Whiting (1814-1892)

The incidents in this story are true and are taken from papers and letters in the possession of Teressa Fullmer Johnson, great granddaughter of Elizabeth P. Tillotson Whiting. Some of the letters are more than 100 years old.

My name is Elizabeth Partridge Tillotson. I was born on April 15, 1814, in Tyringham, Berkshire county, Massachusetts. I was one of fourteen children born to Sarah Partridge and Samuel Tillotson. They were humble, average new England people. While I was still a child, my parents and the rest of the family, including myself, moved to Nelson, Ohio. I was extremely interested in education and received all the education available to me in those frontier days. This education served me well when I later became a school teacher, teaching frontier children the fundamentals of learning.

One day while still living in Ohio, I met Edwin Whiting. We fell in love and were married September 21, 1833. Shortly after we were married, we learned of a new religion, fathered by Joseph smith. We were so impressed by the principles and teachings set forth by the Prophet Joseph Smith, we joined the Latter Day Saint Church and received a testimony of its truthfullness. So strong was our faith, we left our home and moved to Kirtland, Ohio.

During my early church association, I received numerous letters from my family, particularly from my sister Polly, who criticized me for accepting the Gospel and joining the Church. If only I could impress upon them the truthfulness of the gospel. Polly wrote that the Book of Mormon had originally been written as a novel but that certain men had felt that it would have greater sales as a religious work.

Stirred by bitter men, the feelings of the townspeople of Kirtland turned against us Mormons. Angry mobs forced us to flee our home, escaping only with our clothing, bedding and our lives. And while we were living in Lima, Illinois a group of hateful men forced their way into our homes. They had waited until the men of the Mormon families were away helping to guard the Prophet Joseph Smith. On that horror-filled night, the only Mormon home that was spared was that of father Elisha Whiting, who was so ill that he could not be moved from his bed. Fires were set to all the homes and buildings. The brightest flame in the night was that of the Whiting chair shop. Valuable lumber and expensive machinery shot showers of sparks into the air. My daughter, Sarah, who was three years old at the time, clapped her hands and danced about as if at a party at seeing the great number of enormous bonfires. Great was the fear in my heart, as I spent the night huddled on a pile of blankets we managed to save, trying every way to keep the baby Emily, who was sick, comforted and warm.

The next morning, teams came from Nauvoo. We loaded our meager possessions on to wagons and moved to a new home in Nauvoo. Edwin helped to erect the temple there. Great was our joy to enjoy the teachings and companionship of the Prophet Joseph.

"A group of crazed and angry men have killed the Prophet Joseph Smith, breaking their way into the Carthage jail where Joseph and others were being held. They shot him."

Once more we were forced to flee from our homes by angry mobs. After leaving Nauvoo, we settled for awhile at Mt. Pisgah, Union county, Iowa. While we were there, Edwin was president of the branch for a few seasons. Sorrow came to us at Mt. Pisgah where my darling daughter Emily, who was six years old at the time, passed away. Added sorrow came to us when father Elisha Whiting and his wife Sally contacted Malarial fever during an epidemic and also passed away. Their names are inscribed on the monument there. This monument was erected by the church, honoring the many Saints who rest there in unmarked graves.

So great was our faith that we heeded the call of our leaders -- in 1849. We undertook the task of crossing the plains to Utah. Day after dreary day crept slowly by as we trudged our way onward. My five children and I walked most of the way. We braved numerous hardships and suffered many trials. My wagon was next to that of George A. Smith. His wife, Bathsheba, and I became fond friends. Elder Smith was in charge of 50 wagons in Ezra T. Benson's train of 100 wagons.

Finally our goal was almost in sight as we slowly fought our way up the slopes of what is known as South pass. As we started to assent [sic], snow began to fall. As we neared the summit, the storm had grown into a raging blizzard. For three days we were beaten by the falling snow and the howling winds. Numerous cattle and other live stock were lost in the deep snow and bitter cold. At last, tired and weary, we worked our way through the pass and into the safety of the valley below. We arrived in Salt Lake Valley in November, 1849. But upon our arrival, Brigham Young asked us to go with Morley's company to start a  new settlement in the area which was later to be known as Manti in Sanpete County. With our foot-sore oxen, it took us three weeks to travel from Salt Lake City to the sight [sic] of our new settlement. After leaving Provo it was necessary to make our own trails and to build several dugways and bridges in order to continue our journey, which ended the latter part of November.

A large band of Indians, numbering about 500, were already living in the area. We made dug-outs in the hillsides where we spent the winter. We shared our meager possessions with the Indian band.

Snow fell very deep and all our cattle and oxen perished of starvation. The Indians were constantly begging for food. When spring finally came the Indians left to go to their hunting grounds in southern Utah. But they left behind the aged mother of the chief, who was too feeble and weak to make the trip. They placed her in a hole in the ground, left her a jug of water to drink and a piece of dried venison to eat. They covered her with brush and left her to die. Some children found her there before she died so she was taken to the home of Bishop Aaron Johnson for special care. She lived for several years, unknown to the chief, though he would have been very angry if he had found out the whole story.

I was very shocked at the treatment the Indians gave to their old people. When one became old and feeble, they would tie his feet to a horse with a rope and drag him over the rough rocky ground to their burial place which was on the south side of what is now temple hill.

Edwin went to Salt Lake to sell the chairs which he had made during the winter. These chairs were made out of timber which he had pulled down by hand from the canyon himself. He had fashioned the seats out of rawhide. With the money he received, we were able to buy food and supplies for the family.

My daughters, Caroline and Louisa were born in our primitave [sic], humble dug-out home. The city which we had settled was named Manti, and it was decided by the Church authorities to build a temple there.

Our dug-out was located at the bottom of temple hill. One spring a great multitude of rattlesnakes crawled from the rocks of temple hill and invaded our homes, causing great fear and terror among us. However, thanks to God, no one was ever bitten.

In 1855, Edwin was called to go on a mission to the East. While he was gone, a plague of grasshoppers descended upon the valley and destroyed all our crops. I spun wool, made straw hats and knit socks for my neighbors to procure food for my children. In the fall, my son William and I drove by ox team to Springville where William tearfully allowed me to exchange his pet colt for a wagon load of corn.

After the marriage of my daughter Amelia to Archibald Buchanan, and my daughter Sarah to Bishop Warren Snow of Manti, and my son William to Rebecca Losee, Edwin and I and our four children, Lucious, Oscar, Louisa, and Caroline, moved to Springville.

I was delighted and pleased to hear from my sister Polly, to learn that she had joined the L. D. S. Church. I was very happy to receive each one of her letters. We have kept in touch through the years even though it takes great lengths of time for our letters to be delivered. I knew in my heart that she had made the right decision. Her daughter, Sarah, later married Lorenzo Snow, who was later to become the President of the L. D. S. Church.

I had the privilege of serving as counselor in the first Primary in Springville along with Zabonia Alleman and Mary Crandall.

The twilight years of my life were spent in a comfortable home surrounded by an abundance of fruits and flowers. I have lived a full life, have had a wonderful husband and family. I truly have been blessed by the Lord.

Elisabeth Partridge Tillotson Whiting died February 4, and was buried beside her beloved husband in the Springville Cemetry [sic]. She was a kind and gentle home-loving person. She was loved by all.

Compiled in May, 1955 by William S. Johnson
Son of Teressa Fullmer Johnson
Spanish Fork, Utah

Elizabeth P. Tillotson Whiting (1814-1892)

History of

Elizabeth P. Tillotson Whiting

from a history

compiled by her granddaughter

Isabell Whiting Manwaring

copied by

Ruby Snow Jensen

great granddaughter

Biography of

Elizabeth Partridge Tillotson Whiting

Elizabeth Partridge Tillotson Whiting was born in Ohio April 15, 1814. She was a descendant of French parents and the youngest in a family of fourteen children. She lived near Cleveland, Ohio, and received a good education for those frontier days, and taught school in her girlhood. After settling in Springville, she was one of the first school teachers there.

A few years after her marriage to Edwin Whiting, they became members of the Latter-day Saints Church and moved to Kirtland. All her people turned against her and felt that they would rather see he dead than be a follower of that deluded Joseph Smith. Some of her people, however, joined the church a few years later. One of her nieces, a beautiful, refined girl, married Lorenzo Snow, one of the Twelve Apostles and later President of the Church, and lived in Brigham City.

[The niece was Sarah Ann Prichard, daughter of Polly Tillotson, who was Elizabeth's sister, and John Pritchard.]

Grandmother, along with Grandfather, passed through the mobbings and drivings of the Saints. They were driven from their comfortable home near Kirtland, leaving all their find furniture, homes and lands, taking only their clothes and bedding. Later, in Missouri, in the Morley settlement, while Grandfather and all the able bodied men were away guarding Joseph Smith, an angry and profane mob came, burning their homes and also grandfather's chair factory, including much seasoned wood ready for chairs. Every home in the village was burned except that of Great Grandfather Elisha Whiting, and he was too ill to be moved out.

However, the mob carried all the furniture and things that were in the houses before burning the homes. Then the mob emptied the straw from a bad tick in one room and set it afire. Soon the whole place was lit up by a great bonfire. The chair factory made the highest fire of all and little Sarah, who was about four years old, danced and clapped her hands over the big fire, while Grandmother sat in the long hours of the night on her bedding, holding her little baby girl, Emily Jane, who was very sick. This sister did not live to come to Utah, but died and was buried at Mt. Pisgah, this side of the Mississippi River during the exodus of the Saints from Illinois.

Along with all the Saints whose homes were burned, my grandparents traveled on to Nauvoo where they again built comfortable homes and enjoyed the privileges of that lovely city and the Temple. They had their Temple work done and were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple. Grandfather was a member of the Nauvoo Legion. They were there at the time of Joseph's martyrdom and when all were exiled, they lost their homes once more, living for a few years at Mt. Pisgah, then crossing the plains in 1849 in Ezra T. Benson's company. They traveled with ox team--grandmother with her five small children, walking most of the way.

Early in November they reached Salt Lake City, where they were asked to go on South to the present site of Manti by Brigham Young to live by Chief Walker and his band of 500 Indians. They were to help these Indians to learn the work of farming and raising crops. There was only one settlement at that time south of Salt Lake City. It was Provo and consisted of a dozen log houses. From there they had to make their roads, crossing over Hobble Creek, where Grandfather remarked that he would like to stop there.

On, on they went, crossing the Spanish fork River, through the tall sage beyond the summit where Santaquin now stands, cutting trees and making roads in Salt Creek Canyon. Through the Sanpete Valley, over the sluggish San Pitch River. Three long weeks it took to reach the stone quarry where Manti now stands and where they dug dug-outs in the south side of the hill where the Manti Temple now stands. This hill was near the Indian camp which swarmed with savages.

The snow fell three feet deep, covering the abundant wild hay on the banks of the San Pitch River. It was so deep that the oxen and cows could not get it for food. Most of the oxen and cows died and the continuous begging for food of the hungry Indians reduced their scanty supplies to just a meager amount of corn, which they ground in hand mills for flour or parched it to eat.

Brigham Young had promised to send them supplies--two loads of corn meal, which did not come; therefore, Grandfather and Uncle Orville Cox, with a hand sled with their bedding on and some parched corn on, started, on snow shoes, in February, over the deep crusted snow for Salt Lake City for help and to inform President Young of the lack of food in the camp. In Salt Creek Canyon, east of what is now known as Nephi, they found Dan or Dace Henry and his young wife, also her brother, a Mr. Dodge, and an Indian, where they had been snowbound all winter with the two loads of corn meal that Brigham Young had sent. Their oxen had all died and Mrs. Henry was very ill, so Grandfather gave them the little sled, which her husband and brother placed her on and pulled her to Manti. Grandfather and Uncle Orville proceeded on to Salt Lake carrying their bedding on their backs, but there was scant snow from there on to Salt Lake City. As soon as possible, teams were sent and the belated corn meal reached the destitute people.

In May, rattlesnakes came out of the rocks, invading their humble dug-outs, coiling on their beds, in their cupboards, by the fireplace--yet no one was harmed. Then on the 17th of May, 1850, a daughter, Louisa, was born, (She married Aaron Johnson) in a dug-out just beneath where the beautiful Temple now stands, while the Indians were howling day and night over their dead, many of them dying of hunger. When any of their aged became too old for further use, or to follow in the hunt or go on the warpath, their feet were tied together and a young buck on a pony would tie a rope to their feet and go galloping over the sage and rocks behind the hill until they were dead. Then they would be left for the wolves to finish.

During the Walker War, all the settlers lived in a fort built of rocks with high bastians at each corner with loopholes in to fire on the Indians if there should be an attack. A high, strong gate on the east was kept locked and the men working in the fields carried their guns. A few years later after the death of the powerful Chief Walker, who was called "The Napoleon of the Desert", his brother, Arapeen, was chief of all the utes and peace was declared. The Walker War had lasted about three years.

Grandfather now moved to the outskirts of the town across from the field. One morning they found all of their oxen and cows being driven across the San Pitch River, two miles distant, by the Indians, and rushed into the cedars of the low mountains. It was useless to follow or try to recover them, for it meant sure death to anyone entering that dense cedar forest. No other stock of the town was molested. One fat wild steer, named "Star" broke away and came bellowing home. As long as old Star lived, he would run away, dragging the load of hay or grain and the other ox every time he saw an Indian. With lowered head, he would chase any Indian he saw on the street or in the field.

While Grandfather was on a mission for two years to his native state, Ohio, they had the grasshopper war. They came by thousands, obscuring the sun and eating every green leaf. Then there was a miracle. After the hoppers left, a long and wide patch of pigweeds grew at the foot of the stone quarry and the settlers lived on them until they could get ripe corn from Springville and Provo. The Indians said the pigweeds never grew there before and they never have since.

Finding Sanpete unfavorable for fruit culture, Grandfather moved his three families to Springville in 1862, where from his nursery that he started with plants brought back with him from his mission to Ohio, many thousand fruit trees, small fruit, roses, lilacs, and other choice plants were sold and grew in the orchards of nearby towns, making the desert to bloom with beautiful blossoms, both useful and ornamental. The first transplanted pine in the state he brought from the hills in his dinner bucket and planted on his lot southwest of the Manti Temple. You can trace the Whiting homes on the Mapleton bench by the native pine trees that were brought from the mountains east of Mapleton. One large tree stands in front of the Second Ward Church in Springville. This was near the Whiting home where some of Edwin's nursery was. One also stands north of the Seminary building on the corner of Second East and Fourth South. This one was planted by Edwin Snow of Mapleton, a grandson of Edwin Whiting. It was on the land owned by Sarah Elizabeth Whiting Snow.

Both Grandmother and Grandfather were earnest workers in the Church, with a firm belief and testimony to the divinity of Joseph Smith. They ever lived in unison with his teachings. They were moral, upright members of the Church.

Grandmother was first counselor in the Primary Association in Springville, with the other counselor being Sabina Alleman, with Mary Crandall as President.

Grandmother died February 4, 1892, age seventy-eight years.