 |
Born July 31, 1809, Bastard Township, Leeds, ON, Canada Died January 19, 1886, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, UT |
HUGH DAY
History by Irene Day Feulner, from DUP files
Hugh Day was born 31 July 1809 at Elizabethtown, Leeds, Ontario, Canada, to William Day and Elizabeth “Betsy” Johns. He died in Salt Lake City, Utah, January 19, 1886.
William Day was born in the United States and was killed in battle in the War of 1812.
Hugh Day was married to Rhoda Ann Nichols, December 13, 1830. She was born February 18, 1813. They had four children: Almeda (1831), Mariah (1833), William (1835), and John who died at birth. Almeda married William McClellan and lived to the age of nearly 102.
Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Day joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Canada. He was baptized December 30, 1836. About 1837, the family moved into New York. The British were drafting men into the service and he hurried across the border. They lived in different placed in New York for several years. Hugh Day was a mechanic.
Almeda told the following:
In 1843 when I was twelve years old, the family embarked at Sacket Harbor on Lake Ontario near Watertown, New York. We were going to Grandmother Nickols at Sun Prairie which is by way of the Great Lakes. On the Erie Canal there was a sort of house boat, house on a raft, which was towed up the canal by cattle.
Mother wouldn’t ride until we got to Buffalo, and father had to get a team and wagon and drive along the bank of the canal with her.
Father was a poor man and didn’t have enough money to be able to command the best boat in the workd, in fact, he got a poor one called the “Brig.” The devil was in the bottom of Lake Huron. There was a big storn threatened the lives of all of us. Mother was fearful and when we got down in the boat she began to cry. The tavern keeper, a Mr. Wheeler, said to father, “Take her off, go back to the tavern and I’ll find you a boat tomorrow.” He was very kind to us and we stayed there that night. He procured one for us the next day, the Cleveland, I believe it was called–a more seaworthy boat than the other. That day we saw boards and parts of the Brig floating about. It was torn to pieces in the storm which was so terrific that there were some pieces torn off the boat we were in.
Later on, in the course of the journey we missed seeing a light house and ran into a sand bar. The storm was still raging and the beam could not penetrate. Water poured into the holes. Carpenters hastily went to work. They set the pumps going and set the barrels rolling until the boat gradually worked out of the sane. The life boats were lowered and kept in readiness to take us to shore.
They arrived at Milwaukee at four o’clock in the morning. They went from there the ninety miles to Sun Prairie which was about ten miles from Madison, Wisconsin.
Hugh Day secured a small plot of ground and farmed and worked for others in the community and built a log house.
When the Prophet [Joseph Smith] was killed June 27, 1844, Hugh Day’s wife cried and cried and begged to go to Nauvoo. In the fall of the year they moved, part of the way by boat, and arrived at Nauvoo, October 8, 1844. By then the health of Rhoda Nichols Day was poor; her heart was weak but her faith was strong. She died November 9, 1844, 31 years old, and was one of the first to be buried in the graveyard at Nauvoo.
Heber C. Kimball told Hugh Day that he would live to do his temple work in the Valleys of the Mountains.
In March 1845, he moved his family to live with the Steve Chipmans at Keokuk, Iowa, across the river from Nauvoo. He fixed wagons in the summer months, but the family was poor. In September, the two families moved to Little Pigeon (east of Council Bluffs, Iowa), Pottawattamie County, Illinois. There he build a log house and made a garden the following spring, 1846.
At Florence, Nebraska, September 7, 1847, Hugh Day married Susannah Content Judd Boyce, a widow with two children, a son John and a daughter Susan. They lived at Florence that winter and went back to the farm in the spring.
Susannah Judd was born February 25, 1815 to Arza and Lois Knapp Judd in Leeds, Ontario, Canada.
Hugh Day was a wheel-wright and helped many people outfit themselves for coming west. He came to Utah in William Snow’s company arriving in October 1850. [Son Arza Boyce Day born in Salt Lake in April 1850, and Hugh Day is enumerated in 1850 Salt Lake City census enumerated in June 1850.]
He was among those sent to Echo Canyon at the time that Johnston’s army was sent to Utah. He remained in Salt Lake City while many moved south because of Johnston’s army. He had straw under his house ready to burn if there was trouble with the army, but they marched right by without incident.
During the last years of his life his youngest son, Laronzo, and his wife, Elizabeth, took care of him in his home on Fifth West and South Temple (16th Ward) until his death January 19, 1886.
The following children were born to Hugh Day and Susannah Content Judd Boyce Day:
Rhodazene “Rhoda Jane”, December 19, 1848 to October 17. 1850
Arza Boyce, April 14, 1850 to July 22, 1900
Rozana Content, January 21, 1852 to December 26, 1925
Florena, May 18, 1854 to August 20, 1854
Hugh, October 2, 1855 to October 14, 1855
Laronzo, January 21 1858 to February 17, 1944.
Susannah Content Judd was born to Arza and Lois Knapp Judd February 25, 1858 in Johnstown District, Leeds, Ontario, Canada.
She was married to Benjamen Boyce February 8, 1836. She lived for some time in Nauvoo and was a member of the Relief Society there. After her first husband died she married Hugh Day (a widower with three children: Almeda, Mariah, and William) September 7, 1847, at Florence, Nebraska.
They came to Salt Lake City with the William Snow company arriving in October 1850. She did much weaving of goods, carding and spinning as most pioneer women did. She also made candles and soap.
She lived in the home at Fifth West and South Temple in Salt Lake City until her death April 11, 1880.
Notes from DUP History submitted by Margene N. Stringham, 1987, of Millville, Utah.
In 1857 Hugh Day received an invitation from Brigham Young to attend a special celebration in Brighton on the 24th of July. The saints were celbrating the tenth anniversary of the arrival of the first pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. Many families, only those invited by Brigham Young, came from all around the valley. They came in their wagons and carriages as far as the mouth of the canyon on July 22, 1857. The next day they followed Brigham Young up the canyon to Brighton for the celebration on the 24th. It was while the saints were celebrating there that word was received that Johnston’s Army was on its way to Utah. That evening the saints were told that they must leave early the next morning and return to their homes, to prepare for the arrival of the army.
My great grandfather, Hugh Day, and his family were among those invited guests of Brigham Young [copy of invitation included in history] who spent the day at Brighton and then learned of the coming of the army. Because this year, 1987, was 130 years since that celebration, our annual Laronzo Day famly reunion was held at the Brighton LDS chapel on the 25th of July, exactly 130 years to the day that Hugh Day and the others had to return to their homes. The invitations we received in 1987 were xeroxed copies of the original invitaiton Hugh Day had received from Brigham Young in 1857.
[Pic-Nic Party at the Head Waters of Big Cottonwood. Pres. Brigham Young respectfully invites Hugh Day and family to attend a Pic-Nic Party at the Lake in Big Cottonwood Kanyon on Friday, 24th of July.
Regulations:
You will be required to start so as to pass the first mill, about four miles up the Kanyon, before 12 o’clock, on Thursday, the 23rd, as no person will be allowed to pass that point after 2 o’clock, p.m. of that day.
All persons are forbidden to smoke cigars or pipes, or kindle fires, at any place in the Kanyon, except on the camp ground.
The Bishops are requested to accompany those invited from their respective Wards, and see that each person is well fitted for the trip, with good substantial steady teams, wagons, narness, hold-backs and locks, capable of completing the journey without repair, and a good driver, so as not to endanger the life of any individual.
Bishops will, before passing the first mill, furnish a full and complete list of all persons accopmanying them from their respective Wards, and hand the same to the Guard at the gate.
Great Salt Lake City, July 18, 1857.]
Notes on Benjamin Boyce, first husband of Susannah Content Judd. He moved his family from Canada to Missouri in 1838 then to Illinois where they lived on Madison Island. While there he worked on the Nauvoo Temple. In July 1840, Benjamin, with three others, was kidnapped by a mob and taken to Tulley, Lewis County, Missouri, where they were imprisoned and beaten severely. Benjamin never fully recovered his health. During the exodus from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters in 1846, he died.
No comments:
Post a Comment