{History of Mapleton} Edwin Marion (1859-1928) and Frances Evaline Perry Snow (1864-1945)

This is from The History of Mapleton, by Ralph K. Harmer and Wendell B. Johnson, on page 170-171.

Edwin Marion Snow was born November 21, 1859, at Manti, Utah. He was the son of Warren Stone Snow and Sarah Elizabeth Whiting Snow. He lived at Manti until he was twelve years old and then his parents moved to Springville, Utah. During his early life he helped build roads to the Schofield coal camp, worked at a saw mill in Hobble Creek Canyon, and by 1881 he had acquired 3 yoke of oxen and was chopping railroad ties at White River in Spanish Fork Canyon.

Edwin married Frances Evaline Perry on April 9, 1883 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. During that summer he worked in Park City and hauled card wood to his home site in Mapleton. He later worked at the saw mills in the nearby canyons to get the lumber for his home and he hauled the brick from Provo with his ox team and wagon. In the Spring of 1884 Edwin and his wife moved onto their eight acre farm and began to build their house. They lived in a tent on the north end of the farm until the house was nearly completed, and then in November they moved in. It had four large rooms and two nice porches and was the first brick home built in Mapleton. It was in this home that four children were born to Edwin and Frances. Ruby was born November 29, 1884. Edwin Marion, Jr., was born February 23, 1887, and a daughter, Luella, was born September 10, 1890. A fourth child, Perry, was born on April 6, 1896, but he died a short time later.

It was in 1895 that Edwin and his wife decided to build a large brick home nearer to the center of town. They bought a five acre tract from her brother, Lewis R. Perry, and completed the home in the fall of 1896. Most of the work was done by them and their family. They hauled the sand and gravel that they needed. They slacked their own lime and cut much of their own wood. Before the house was ready to move in to, however, Frances came down with typhoid fever and the doctor suggested that she not move in until the Spring of 1896. During the winter Frances and the family saved enough carpet rags to make a carpet for three rooms in the new house. The home had six rooms and a bathroom, and although there was not running water in the house, it was a very elaborate home for the time, and the neighbors referred to it as Eddy’s mansion.

The family worked hard, as most Mapleton families had to at this time, to make a living, but there was still time for parties and family outings. The Snow home was large so it became one of the enjoyable gathering places for the young people of the town. In 1900 an organ was purchased and the young folks gathered more than ever.

Edwin served his community in many ways. He was a class instructor in the first organized Sunday school on the bench. He was then chosen as first counselor in the teacher’s quorum, and later served as its president. When Bishop William T. Tew was called Edwin became his first counselor and served at that position for twenty-one years. In 1919 he was the parent’s class teacher, and in 1924 he was chosen as second counselor to G. Ray Maycock in the new Kolob Stake presidency. In 1890 Edwin became Mapleton’s first road supervisor. He served two terms as a town board member and was president of the board for six years. He actively worked to get Strawberry water for Mapleton and was on the Mapleton Irrigation Board for many years.

During the many years Edwin served in his church jobs his wife helped in many ways. She fed the countless visiting authorities and made them feel welcome. Brother John A. Widtsoe of the Council of Twelve Apostles and George Albert Smith, who later became President of the L.D.S. Church were visitors at the Snow home. Frances also served at several jobs in the Relief Society.

Edwin Marion Snow died on December 11, 1928 after an operation in Salt Lake City. This left Frances a widow for seventeen years, but she had her son Eddie to help her. She enjoyed good health until the last three years of her life when her legs became paralyzed. She died at the age of eighty-one in Mapleton on September 19, 1945 and was buried by the side of her husband in the Evergreen Cemetery.

Frances Evaline Perry Snow (1864-1945), Part 3

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Excursion to the St. George Temple, December, 1880

We left Springville 15 December, 1880 to work in the temple. In our company was my Father, Aunt Ann, her son, Charles, and I, and Edwin Whiting, Aunt Elizabeth Whiting, or Grandma, as we usually called her, Uncle Lucious and Aunt Clara were with them.

It was a long, cold trip for old people at that time of the year, camping out most every night, nearly freezing. Father and Charles would sleep on the ground, Aunt Ann and I in the wagon. Grandma Whiting and Aunt Clara slept in the wagon. Grandpa Whiting and Uncle Lute on the ground. It was a great sacrifice to make at that time of the year, but we enjoyed the trip.

A young man from Springville was along with us. He was going to St. George to bring his mother home. She had been down there visiting her daughter. He had a stove in his wagon, so us young folks would ride with him part of the time where it was nice and warm. We used to have good times around the camp fire at night, singing and telling stories. Uncle Lute was as young as the rest of us and seemed to enjoy it just as well.

While at St. George we got acquainted with a lot of young folks and went out to parties and had enjoyable times while there.

I went through the temple and did my own work on the 28th of December, 1880, working every day the temple was open for work after that while we were there, working and being baptized for the dead. We were there the last part of 1880 and the first part of 1881.

In May 1882

The summer before I was married Aunt Clara and I went to the canyon to cook for our brothers and some other young men. We first went to Millfork in Spanish Fork Canyon, getting out ties for the railroad. We girls went with Ed on a load of bailed hay, with two yoke of oxen, taking us two days to go a distance of 35 miles, where they go in an hour or two now. It was the year before we were married, but I have always called it our honeymoon, as when Ed and I were married the next April, the crops had to be planted and there was no time for a honeymoon.

Frances Perry Snow

18 January 1938

MY PRAYER

by

Frances E. Snow

For seventy years I've been plodding along

Perhaps not amounting to much; 

But I have tried with a smile

To do something worth while

That will leave a magical touch.

And if I have succeeded in any one thing

That will help my family so dear

I will try to press on as long as I live

To try to comfort and cheer.

May I help my dear children, with their many cares

In raising their children, so dear;

That they will grow up to honor and bless

Their God-given parents, so dear.

My grandchildren, too, with their little ones,

May they protect them from sorrow and sin,

May they grow up to be as the limbs of a tree,

From which their parents have come.

Dear brothers, sisters, friends and relatives dear,

May I help you down life's rugged road;

May you always press on in the work of the Lord,

Holding fast to the Golden rod.

I have tried all my life to be a good wife,

My husband to comfort and cheer

I do hope and pray that I have lived every day

To merit a blessing from God.

Copy of verses written to 

Frances Perry Snow by her Brother

Lewis Rosalvo Perry

while on mission to Pennsylvania - March 20, 1898

O sister, dear sister the words sent to me

Was surely a comfort as I don't feel free.

The people I labor among, some do say,

That we are the outlaws in Pennsylvania.

They think that we should be mobbed out of Town

Because we are distributing our tracts all around.

God being my helper, if this is his will

I hope to be able this mission to fill.

Now since I have been in this rough Town

The families visited I have put down.

This number when told is two hundred or more.

Claiming to be Christians and kind to the poor.

Now in my travels for two weeks around

In the city of Pittston few friends I have found.

I have labored with patience for their own good,

To show them the way to get back to God.

But all seems in vain, the message they won't heed.

They say they have all the gospel they need.

But if they don't repent of the ways they take

God won't receive them when they meet at the gate.

Thirteen months ago today

I left my home and was hurled away

Leaving my friends and relatives dear,

Hopeing [sic] to find some others to cheer.

This I have done and done it with care

For God has heard and answered my prayer.

There is a few souls that have been saved

From the firey furnace by the liquid grave.

Much sickness and trouble we have to endure.

And if we are faithful, Salvation is sure.

There is cares, there is trouble, there is sorrow and pain.

We must endure them all and honor His name.

And now in conclusion I wish to say

May God bless the people and hasten the day

When they will give heed and listen

To what the Mormon Missionaries may say.

Frances Evaline Perry Snow (1864-1945), Part 2

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HISTORY OF THE EARLY LIFE OF

FRANCES EVALINE PERRY

Written 6 April, 1936, by Frances Perry Snow

Copied by Ruby Snow Jensen

History before I was married

History of Frances Perry, daughter of Stephen Chadwick Perry and Mary Boggs Perry.

I was born in Springville, Utah, April 26, 1864. Our home at that time was where Bagley and Huntington Photograph Gallery now stands. My grandfather's (Asael Perry's) house was just east on the same block.

When I was six weeks old, my mother moved out with Father's first wife, Aunt Ann. She was a wonderful woman. She was just like a mother to my mother and us three children, Hyrum, George and myself, she having five of her own.

We lived there until my grandfather died, then mother moved into his house, it being on the same lot. Their home was on the lot where Brother Hide and Mrs. Ellis now live adjoining the Second Ward Church.

I lived there the early part of my life. When I was 13 years old, my parents moved to Mapleton in April 1877 with their family, Father, Mother and ten children, when all at home, living in a two-room house as long as I was at home. We first lived in one room. It was not finished, only had the sheeting on the roof. There came a heavy snow storm on the 12 of May. When we got up the next morning, the sun came out, the snow began to melt, and you can imagine what shape things were in with the water pouring down on everything. We had to load our few things in the wagon and go back to Springville. They put on two span of horses and it was about all they could do to pull us back to town. Our peas were up and in blossom when this snow storm came. My brother Hyrum was bringing our cows out the night before and it was snowing. There were no roads then, only one or two running zig-zag across the bench, and it being covered with sagebrush and the blinding snow, he lost his way. But he hollered and was close enough to make us hear, so we answered. He was not far from home, but didn't know just where he was.

We returned to Mapleton as soon as the weather would permit. They shingled the house and built another room later. I often wonder how we got along, but we enjoyed ourselves working and trying to help each other. I have helped to pile and burn sage brush, to help to clear off the ground, to put in crops, to raise food stuff. I have helped to drive the grasshoppers into trenches. Father and boys would dig long trenches, put in some straw, then we would drive the hoppers in and burn them.

There was very little water for crops in those days. We would have to carry our water for the house from Mrs. Streeper's well and some times from Oak Springs until our folks dug a well.

My Father and Mother were sturdy pioneers or they never would have stayed out here and worked so hard for years to raise their family and to help to make the desert blossom as the rose. My Mother was an original pioneer of 1847, coming with the second company, in Daniel Spencer's company, her father coming with the first company of pioneers and her mother and her with the second. It has all been pioneer life to her, and she was a woman that never complained of her circumstances and tried to make the best of things as they came along. She used to say the happiest time of her life was when she got the children in bed and could sit down and mend their clothes.

Before we moved to Mapleton, my Mother and I had gone down in the fields and gleaned wheat. We would break the heads off and put them in sacks and carry them home. And we gathered ground cherries, would bring them home, scald and dry them to sell.

We washed and ironed for people to try to earn a little money to get things with. I used to work out most of the time. I first got 25 cents a week, then 50. As I grew older, I got a little more. I worked for one woman for six weeks and did all the work, washing and ironing, took care of the family while the mother went to work with the father, making men's clothing. When I got through, she paid me $2.00 a week. I was surprised to have 12 dollars all at once. With my money, I bought Mother cloth for a dress and a set of goblets which I have now. They have been in the family over fifth [sic--fifty?] years. (Three of the goblets I have [Ruby Snow?]. Ella had the others.)

I have worked in a lot of the best homes in Springville and was always treated fine. I used to help my sister-in-law wash when I would have to stand on a piece of plank so I could rub on the board. I helped to do the knitting for the family, and wove the first carpet my mother ever had.

I never had much chance to go to school, having to work for my clothes and help the others. My first teachers were my sister, Coliste Boyer, Aunt Caroline Bromley, and later Aunt Mary Whiting and Mary Crandall, and they were all wonderful women. We used to move back to Springville for winter so the children could go to school. Father and Mother moved down the first fall, taking the little children with them, leaving us older ones to look after the place and take care of things until they got things moved for winter. We had some corn and some hay fenced in a little stake yard. There was loose stock running around. We used to have to get up in the night and get the cattle out of the stacks. One night when we went to drive them out, we heard such an awful whooping and yelling, it nearly frightened us to death. We thought it was Indians. We knew they were camped up on the table near the mouth of Maple Canyon. We found out they were drunk. My brothers Hyrum and George, my sisters Luella, Lucy and I were there. Father found out about it the next day and came out and took us to town. There used to be lots of Indians camped up there and at the big hollow in those days.

We had to go to Springville to meeting and Sunday School as there was none here for years. I have walked down in the morning for Sunday School many times. I belonged to the Young Ladies' Improvement Association, as it was called then, first being called Young Ladies' Retrenchment Society. I belonged to Brother George Harrison's choir for years with Aunt Clara, Tryphena and Julia Crandall, Liza, Isabell and Christabell Johnson, Kate Houtz, Celia Oakley, Drucie Harrison, all of them being gone; Kate Miller, Susie Bird, Anna Kindred, Orvilla Harrison and David Wheeler. I think he is the only man living that belonged to the choir.

Well we moved back to Mapleton in the spring and went to work again on the farm. We were among the early families of Mapleton, then called the Union Bench. It was completely covered with sagebrush. There were very few families when we moved out. Olive Fullmer and Family, William and Don Fullmer and families, Charles Malmstrom and family, Teinaman and Family, but in a year or two a few more families began to come out here and then it didn't seem so lonesome. Uncle Charles and Aunt Abbie Bird moved out in their little one-room house. They were our nearest neighbors and we used to have a good time with them. They were always full of fun. I have lived with them a lot when their first children were small. Then the Williams family moved out with their young folks and we used to enjoy ourselves visiting together.

Frances Evaline Perry Snow (1864-1945), Part 1

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FRANCES EVALINE PERRY SNOW

Written by her Daughter

Ruby Snow Jensen

Edwin Marion Snow and Frances Evaline Perry were married 9 April, 1883 (61 years ago today) by Daniel H. Wells in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Father worked the summer of 1883 in Park City. He owned eight acres of land on the Union Bench, now Mapleton, and in the spring of 1884, Father and Mother moved out on this land and lived in a tent on the north end of the tract of land. They started to build a home. This was the first brick home built in Mapleton. Father worked at the saw mills to get the lumber for the home. He hauled the brick from Provo. This must have been quite a job with oxen for horse power. They lived by a big ditch that had water in it all the year round, but they built the house about 40 rods south on the road. Water for culinary use was always a problem. This house had four large rooms in and was finished by fall. I was born in this new home 29 November, 1884.

This home is now owned by Bessie Thorn and is much the same as when built, except they filled in the two porches and made more rooms. My Brother Eddie was born 23 February 1887 and my sister Ella on 10 September 1900. When she was two years old, she had inflamatory [sic] rheumatism. Her joints were swollen so badly that she was laid on a pillow and when she had to be moved, they moved her on this pillow. My Grandfather Snow was up from Manti and he and Father administered to her and she soon became better. All our family believed in the administration by the Elders.

Mother must have been very happy with all this room in her home, as her Mother and their ten children had lived in two rooms. Aunt Ann, Grandfather's first wife, died in July, 1884, so my grandmother and the children moved back to Springville and lived in the home there which had four rooms in it. The spring of 1884 Mother's brothers Hyrum and George and her sister Luella were all married, so that only left six in the Perry family to move back to Springville. Mother had rag carpets on the floors, a table that father had made, and a good cook stove. She had a very nice walnut bedstead and a bureau. When we children got older, they had another nice bedstead.

Although I was small, I remember riding to Springville in the back of the wagon with Mother and Father, but we did not go often as the horses were always tired from the farm work.

Father had a high pile of lumber in the yard near the house and of course we children played on it, but one day it tipped over and Eddie was pinned under some of the lumber. Of course I was screaming and Mother came out of the house and held some of the lumber up and sent me to get some help over to Uncle Lewis Perry's as Father was away. I ran as fast as I could and the men came and got Eddie out. He wasn't hurt very bad.

There was a ditch across the road that had water in about once a week, so when the water came down, Mother always filled up some barrels. One of the barrels had wood ashes in and by keeping this filled, there was always soft water for laundry. We had to carry our drinking water from Aunt Phene Whitney's home.

In 1900 Father and Mother bought an organ. They always liked young folks around them and the young people came for an evening's entertainment and enjoyed the music. There was always corn to pop and molasses to make candy. I can remember they all had so much fun at these parties. They were all much older than I was, but I remember some of them. Gertie and Erma Perry, Fan and Hattie Jensen, Bessie Bird, Lula Perry and Jessie Whitney, Ardilla Gallup, Mary Curtis, and of course their boy friends, Hite and Les Manwaring, the Robinson boys who were all musicians and had just come from England as converts to the Church, Francis and Lester Ashcraft, and some of Mother's brothers who were all good singers. Father and Mother enjoyed the parties too. Sometimes they sewed carpet rags at these parties.

There was a ward organized in Mapleton and so there was Sunday Schools and meetings held in Mapleton.

On April 6, 1896, Mother had a baby boy, but there was something wrong with him and he only lived a week, dying April 13.

When Uncle Lute Whiting died in February, 1896, they had to reorganize the Bishopric and Uncle Will Tew was made the Bishop and he chose Father for his first counselor and William P. Fullmer as second counselor. This was on April 19, 1896, and Father was set apart for this position by Joseph F. Smithh, the President of the Church at that time. Father bought a black top buggie [sic] so we had a better means of travelling and when they went to conference to Provo, they always took all the people they could load in with them.

By now they had bought a piece of land closer to the church and school house and they began in the spring of 1896 to build a new home on this land. Father was again away part of the time at the saw mills getting lumber for the new house. Of course this left Mother with the chores to see to with what us children could do to help. They hauled the rick for the foundation from the slide in Maple Canyon, got the sand and slacked the lime to make the mortar (it did not come in bags) to lay up the walls, again hauled the brick from Provo and the adobes from Uncle Lew's brick yard. The Whitney brothers and their father did the carpenter work.

Father's brother, Wells, helped him a lot with this building and the home was finished by the fall of 1896, but Mother had been in bed with typhoid fever most of the summer and the doctor did not want her to move into the new home until spring.

Mother had saved and cut and sewed enough carpet rags to make a carpet for three rooms in this new home. There were six rooms and a bath room, although no running water, but there was still a room where we could bath in privacy. They had saved money enough to buy an ingrain carpet for the dining room, a table and six chairs and a bedroom set. The furniture from the old home furnished the two bedrooms and they bought a new maple bedroom set. The kitchen range that they had only had about two years nearly filled the kitchen. I think it was the biggest and blackest range I ever saw. The organ and a nice small table went in the parlor. All their life they only added two good rockers and a couch to this furniture.

Mother was a Relief Society Teacher for many years and was Treasurer in the Relief Society and was first counselor in the Relief Society when Eugenia Roundy was president, in 1808-1814. She was always with Father in any of the Priesthood work he was called to do. When Father was made second counselor in the Kolob Stake Presidency at the organization November, 1924, Mother was by his side to help in any way she could. When the quarterly conferences were held in Mapleton in the summer time, Mother had the presidency and their wives and the visiting authorities at her home for dinner. At one conference Brother John A. Widstoe of the Council of the Twelve and his wife were there and another time Apostle George Albert Smith was there. Mother was very happy that she could entertain these people.

It was a very happy home for all of us. Some of mine and Ella's and Eddie's friends were always there and very welcome and when my husband died, I came back home with my little children and was made very welcome again. By now the children and grandchildren were going home to see Mother and Grandmother, but on December 11, 1928, Father died after an operation in Salt Lake City. This was very hard on Mother, but she still had Eddie at home to help her. We went as often as we could and some of the grandchildren stayed with her much of the time. She was a widow seventeen years, but I don't think she was ever alone at night during that time. Her health was very good until the last three years of her life when she had trouble with her legs and was unable to walk. She died on the 19th of September, 1945. She now has a posterity of four children, 17 grandchildren, 65 great grand children and 47 great great grandchildren.

Mother was a very good seamstress, making all of our clothes. She was a very good cook and homemaker.

Father and Mother were very good pioneers. They built two of the best homes in Mapleton, also helped to build the two churches, and Eddie and Mother helped with the building of our present meeting house. Mother attended the dedication. Mother lived to see the ward grow from a few homes to a large community. She was 81 years old at the time of her death. Mother's birthday is on April 26 and she would have been 100 years old this year. My Grandmother Perry's birthday is April 12.

Mapleton, Utah

April 9, 1964