A Brief History of the Life of Hyrum Weech
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I was born October 6, 1845, in the city of Hereford, Herefordshire, England. I came to America with my parents in the year 1847 or 1848, landing at New Orleans. From there my father and mother went up the Mississippi River to the city of Alton, Illinois. There were eight children of us in the family—four boys and four girls. We made our home in Alton until we could get means enough to immigrate to the city of Salt Lake, in the then territory of Utah, as this was the destination of my father and mother when they left England. They were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Salt Lake was the place of gathering after the expulsion of the church from the city of Nauvoo, Illinois.
My sister next to me died May 16, 1849, and my father died the 20 of October 1852, leaving my mother a widow. My oldest brother had married two years later and also my oldest sister, leaving six of us with mother who were to work and earn a small amount. I worked in a newspaper office and was paid $1.50 a week delivering newspapers and acting as errand boy when I was ten years old. From the wages of my older brothers and my two sisters who were living with families doing housework and tending children, mother saved enough to prepare for going to Salt Lake City, Utah. A younger sister born in Alton, Illinois in 1850 had hardly become six years old.
Mother bargained for one yoke of oxen and my oldest brother, who had married and had decided to go to Salt Lake also, had bargained for one yoke and was to have had the use of a wagon for taking it to Salt Lake City. The oxen and wagons were to be shipped to Florence, Nebraska on the Missouri River, the place where we were to start to cross the plains one thousand miles with ox teams. We left Alton in June 1856, went to St. Louis, Missouri, and there joined the company with whom we were to travel crossing the plains. From there we were to go by steamboat to Nebraska. The frontier town of Florence was the starting point.
We arrived there about the middle of June but the oxen and wagons had not arrived so we camped in our tent. There were nine of us—mother and her six children and my oldest brother and his wife. We had to wait some time but I spent the time in fishing in the river and picking wild blackberries as there were many berries in the hills around Florence. During our waiting for the oxen and wagons my married brother and wife became dissatisfied and decided that they would go no farther. They left us with only one yoke of oxen to pull the wagon. Our supply of cattle was unbroken to work. They were merely steers which had been bought on the farms of Missouri and Iowa. The immigrants like us were not used to driving oxen. The wagons were placed one behind the other forming two sides and tapering from the middle to the back and front making a corral which was almost a circle. The cattle were driven in the corral and the people picked those which they wanted. The people put yokes on them and then herded them around for a few days getting them used to the yokes before hitching them to the wagon.
On the 4th day of July, 1856, the train left Florence on its journey of one thousand miles to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Because we had only one yoke of oxen to haul supplies for seven which made a heavy load, we boys had to walk unless there was down hill road. We had to ferry the wagons over some of the rivers that were too deep to ford and make the cattle swim over them.
We soon came into the Indian country where buffalo roamed. Our road ran on the north side of the north fork of the Platt River. The buffalo were very numerous and the cattle were frightened of them. We had to have the men go out with the cattle to keep them from stampeding when they were turned out to feed noons and nights. The Indians had to be kept from driving them off. Wood was scarce in some places on the plains. We had to gather the dried dung of the buffalo to make fires. The buffalo would come in droves of hundreds to the river to drink. Sometimes we had to stop the train to let them pass. One day a large buffalo was coming from drink straight towards the train. It was the character of the buffalo bulls to not turn aside for anything. The men got out their guns and shot at him many times but he would not turn. He ran between the oxen and a wagon and the cattle on the wagon stampeded, left the road, and followed the buffalo. A young boy about fifteen years old who was riding on the front part of the wagon was thrown off, run over and killed. The men in the train wanted to stop one day and hunt buffalo. When the captain came to a place where there was good grass we stopped and the men went out to try to kill some for the train. Two men who saw some grazing were crawling through the grass to get close enough to shoot. One was crawling behind the other. The gun of the hindermost man was discharged, the ball passing through the thick part of the foremost man’s thigh. This was in July. The weather was hot and nothing could be done to save the man’s life. He died and was buried on the banks of the river.
At Devil’s Gate on the Sweetwater River we were caught in a snowstorm and several of the oxen were frozen to death. A day or two after leaving the Sweetwater a train of hand cart immigrants passed us on their journey to the Valley of the Great Sat Lake. Men and women were pushing their carts and some were pulling with their scant supplies of bedding and cooking utensils piled on the carts. They had some oxen to haul their provisions. We were getting short of flour. We met some teams from Salt Lake City with loads of provisions that had been sent out to meet other hand cart trains which were on the road to Salt Lake City. My brother persuaded them to let us have some flour for which he gave them his gun.
We had passed many Indians. Thousands of them were at Ft. Laramie getting annuities from the Government soldier post. We passed many places where immigrants had been killed. Where their wagons had broken down, wheels, tires and other parts were scattered along the road. The Indians stopped our train several times, and spread their blankets on the road in front of us which was a demand that we give them something for passing through their country. We gave them sugar, flour, coffee, and some trinkets. After that we were not molested.
We were now nearing the Rocky Mountains. At Ft. Bridger there were many more Indians and some Indian traders, white men who had married Indian women. Going down Echo Canyon another hand cart company passed us.
We arrived in Salt Lake City on the 3rd of October 1856. Mother had only three cents left. We gave up the wagon which we had brought across the plains to the owner. We moved to a Mr. Chaple’s farm on Mill Creek, four miles south of Salt Lake City. Mother, my young sister and I went into the wheat fields where the wheat had been grown and picked up the heads of wheat one by one which had been left. We gathered until our hands were full and then tied the bundles with straw. In the evenings we stacked up in the corner what we had picked during the day. We were living in a little one room log cabin.
My two older sisters had places to work in the homes of families in Salt Lake City. My brothers were working for the neighboring farmers for which they were paid in potatoes, squash and molasses made from beets which was the only sweetening we had. The squash was cut in rings and dried. We couldn’t get flour on pay for work as the grasshoppers had eaten so much of the crops the year before and the farmers were so afraid that they would come again that they would not part with wheat or flour. We thrashed the wheat we had gleaned by hand as we needed it and ground it in a coffee mill. This was made into cakes baked in a frying pan over a fire in a fireplace. These were very sparing. The most of our meals were potatoes.
The winter came on early and we had no wood. My older brother borrowed a wagon and he and I went to Mill Creek Canyon to get a load of wood. The snow was quite deep. We got a small load of wood and started back about sundown. We had about eight miles to go and it was getting very cold. My brother walked and drove the oxen while I rode on the load of wood. When we got home, my brother’s feet were frozen and he was laid up all winter.
As soon as spring opened we planted a garden. We had rented a few acres of ground from Mr. Chapple. We had to keep a part of the wheat for seed so that this left us but little to grind and make bread. As soon as the snow went off of the meadows and the thistles appeared above the ground we dug up the roots and lived on them until the peas got large enough to pick. Then the new potatoes came on. The old ones had all been used for living and seed. We planted the few acres we had rented in wheat and when harvested, it was about one third smut. When ground into flour, the bread made from it was very dark and the flavor not very good. Still it was better than thistle roots, green peas, potatoes or barley bread made from barley flour. As barley ripened earlier than wheat we went and gleaned the barley that was left on the ground and thrashed it by hand. We took it to the mill, got the flour and made bread of it before our wheat was ripe.
The winter of 1857 and the spring of 1858, my brother went to Goshen which was just then settled. It was about sixty miles south of Salt Lake City in Utah County. He worked on a dam which was being built to take out water from a creek to irrigate the land. They were also building houses in a fort to protect themselves from the Indians. The fort walls were made of sod dug from the meadows. The houses were made of the same material. The back part of the houses formed part of the fort wall. The houses all faced the inside of the fort.
After he had a house of this class made, he came for us and we moved to our new home. He had taken up a small piece of land. It was covered with the grease brush which had to be grubbed by the roots with the grubbing how, gathered up and burned. We all set to work and cleared a few acres and planted it to wheat and harvested a good crop. We were now settled in a home of our own and gathered around us the usual things needed on a farm. We got a cow, pig, a few chickens and began to live a little better.
My brother next to me, two years oplder, had stopped on Mill Creek and worked for a man who made trips to California in the winter after freight for merchants. Then one of my sisters had married and was living in Salt Lake City. Another sister was living at Provo. There were only four of us making our new home in Goshen.
A mail line had been established from the Missouri River through Utah to California which was run by horses. They had to have stations short distances apart where changes of horses were kept. These stations had to be supplied with grain by ox teams. This was in 1861. My brother who was at home and I hired out to them. They were going west into Nevada and would be gone all summer. My work was to drive the three yoke of oxen, cook for the wagonmaster, his assistant, and a night herder. We delivered grain to these stations almost all the way to California. On coming back, we hauled wood to the stations along the road. At Shell Creek most of the teamsters went on a strike and were discharged but I stayed with them until September. Then I got a ride on the stage to Camp Floyd. I had been out about five months.
In 1862 another man and I went to Austin, Nevada, a mining camp and took a contract to haul hay from a ranch about twenty-five miles away to Austin. We both had our own teams. Mine consisted of three oxen and a cow. We hauled there all summer and then went home.
I went farming, having bought some land with my brother who had stayed on Mill Creek but had now come to Goshen. We raised a crop or two then the grasshoppers came in the fall and lad their eggs there.
A few years before this I had gone with a party with mule teams to deliver telegraph poles from Salt Lake City to Denver, Colorado. We went as far est as the Black Hills in Wyoming and then came back to Salt Lake City. My work with them was to night herd the mules and bring them in in the morning. After coming back to Salt Lake City we went north to deliver telegraph poles from Bear River in Utah to the mouth of the Portnuf on the Snake River, Idaho.
On the twelfth of November, 1866, I was married to Sarah Dall. It was then I went to farming. As stated before, the grasshoppers had come that fall and laid their eggs. I had planted a crop of wheat and it was up and looking fine. The hopper eggs hatched out and the young hoppers cleaned the crop, leaving the ground as bare as though no crop had ever come up.
Therefore, my brother and I who was farming with me got a chance to hire out to a man to drive two six-mule teams to Cheyenne, the then terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad, to get freight for Salt Lake City. After we got back we heard that we might sell some stone coal at Austin, Nevada. We rigged out two four horse teams, went to Sanpeat Valley, Utah, and bought a four horse load of coal. The other team we loaded with eggs. When we got to Austin the eggs sold very well but we could not sell the coal. We threw it away and started for home. When we got to Ruby Valley, Nevada, we heard that we could get to haul grain from there to the R.R. camps of the Central Pacific R.R., now called the Southern Pacific which was building from Ogden, Utah, to California. We went down the valley to the ranches and loaded barley for the camps east of Humboldt Wells, Nevada. We delivered our barley and drove back to Austin where we loaded our teams with tea for Salt Lake City. Before we got there winter set in and we had snow to travel through.
I had written for my wife to meet me there which she did. We bought our first cooking stove, costing us $110.00. Before this we had done all of our cooking over a fireplace.
In 1865, Blackhawk of the Ute tribe of Indians commenced war on the settlers of the territory of Utah and the militia was called out to hunt him and his band and guard the settlements. I belonged to a company and we were called out to take part and were ordered to an Indian camp of peaceable Indians camped in our valley where some of the Blackhawks had come to persuade them to go on the warpath with them. We captured two of them. While I was on active duty in the militia I was granted a pension by the Government.
When the Tintic mines were opening in Utah, I moved from Goshen to Homansville for about a year. I took my cows with me and sold milk and butter. I sold my claim to the Springs together with the milk house and all my improvements and moved back to Goshen.
At this time there were many going to Arizona and my wife’s brother and I concluded to go and see the country and take our cows and young cattle with us. He was living at Richfield, Utah, on the Sevier River which I would pass through on my way to Arizona. I hired a boy to go with me to help drive the cattle. On November 12, 1878, I left the family. My brother-in-law joined me at Richfield.
We crossed the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry on the ferryboat and made the cattle swim the river. The roads were very bad. We arrived at settlements on the Little Colorado River about the first of January, 1879. We met two snowstorms and decided to leave our cattle here. Another man [and] I went to look at a valley in New Mexico but found it too wintry to want to live there. We returned to the camp on the river and moved on to Sholo Creek. Here we found a number of families who were looking for places to settle. Some of them had been over to the Gila River but did not like it. One man did and said that he would go over again if others wanted to go.
Two others and I went over with him and took pack animals and riding horses. We got over a trail that came to the Gila River opposite Fort Thomas. The river was high from the melting snow in the mountains and our horses had to swim, carrying us across. We found that the Gila Valley suited us for settlement but went on up the river through several valleys but none suited us as well. We went back over another trail from where we were in New Mexico via Fort Apache to the camp on Sholo Creek.
A little company of twenty-five souls organized and in March moved over to the Gila Valley over mountains without dugways, straight up and down hills. We arrived on the townsite of Pima where we decided to make our homes, April 8th, 1879. We cut logs to build a log house on the river bank.
In July, my brother-in-law and I started back to Utah. We had freighted to the Globe mines and had built a pit of charcoal which was being used at the Clifton Smelter to get the copper out of the ore. We had done this to get money to pay our expenses back to our homes in Utah. We arrived there and found all well.
We began preparing for the trip to Arizona. I traded for two yoke of oxen tohaul our equipment and a light spring wagon for my wife and the children to ride in. On this I put a pair of horses which my wife drove while I drove the oxen on the supply wagon. There were three families of us who traveled together.
We arrived at the town of Pima, December 13, 1879. We built the logs into a house and went to work on a canal to bring the water from the river to irrigate our lands. We got the water through by April and planted some grain.
I had left my cattle with a man to take care of while I went back after the family. He had moved to the San Pedro River in May taking a riding horse for me to drive the cattle over. He had also taken a horse team of one pair and a wagon for me to haul some goods in from Tucson to start a little store. My wife went with me to drive the team while I drove the cattle. In Tucson they were greatly excited. The Indians were reported to have left the reservation and murdered all the settlers in the Gila Valley. The people insisted on our not returning for we would surely be murdered. However, we thought that if all of our children whom we had left at home were killed we did not have much for which to live and perhaps some of them had escaped and needed us. We bought our goods and started home. When we arrived we found all safe and well at home.
The Indians in bands were continually breaking away from the reservation and murdering freighters and ranchers. We found it necessary to organize a militia company to protect our homes and families. We were also being robbed of our horses by an organized band of thieves. They would leave us without our teams. A sheriff’s posse was called and a small party volunteered to go with a deputy sheriff to the rendezvous of the thieves about forty miles away. I was one of the party. We found a man driving a large pair of mules that had been stolen, which we took in charge. We then scouted the range for horses and found seventeen head and returned them to their owners. However, I did not get mine which had been stolen from me, near my home within seeing distance.
About 1890 I built a two-story brick store with a dance hall and theatre on the top floor.
In 1903 I moved to Oregon, bought a farm and went to farming. I stayed there until 1911. I turned the farm over to one of the boys on conditional payments which he was to have kept up until 1916. I then moved to Salt Lake City and engaged in doing temple ordinances for the dead. I returned to Oregon in 1916 and put the farm in another son’s hands to sell, which he did. My health was failing andmost of the children were in Arizona, so I sold my home which I had bought in Salt Lake City, and in 1918 bought a car which I drove to Pima, Arizona, where I again made my home.
Hyrum Weech
(This sketch of my life was written after passing my 85th birthday at Pima, Arizona, November 1930.)