Author Archives: Lisa Barr

Jacob Hamblin (#21), Fort Kanab (#151)

Published April 24, 2017 / by Lisa Barr / 5 Comments on Jacob Hamblin (#21), Fort Kanab (#151)
5 Replies

Written by Lisa Barr, US History/ Public History MA Student, University of Utah

Jacob Hamblin (#21)

Placed by: Utah Pioneer Trails and Landmark Association and citizens of Kanab Stake

GPS Coordinates:  37° 02.967’ N, -112° 32.114’ W

Located at the Levi Stewart Memorial in Kanab

Photograph by Lisa Barr, February 18, 2017

Historical Text: 

No. 21 Erected Sept. 2, 1933

Jacob Hamblin

Born April 2, 1819    Died August 21, 1886

The great Mormon frontiersman and Indian missionary settled in Tooele Valley, Utah in 1850 and began preaching negotiations with the red men. He was so successful that the officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent him to establish residence among the Indians at Santa Clara, Utah in 1854.

Frank Asahel Beckwith, Kanab Markers (2). February 1, 1941, Courtesy Willard Marriott Library

A fort was erected on this site in 1865 into which he moved in 1869. He assisted Maj. J.W. Powell and party 1869-72. He was transferred in 1878 to Arizona and later to New Mexico. He is buried in Alpine, Arizona. His friendship with the Indians saved many lives.

Extended Research:

Jacob Hamblin was born in 1819 in Salem, Ohio and baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1842. He helped to settled Tooele, Utah in 1850 before Brigham Young sent him on a mission to the Native Americans in southern Utah in 1854. Hamblin first came to the Kanab area in 1867 to form alliances with members of the Hopi, Southern Paiute, and Navajo tribes. Hamblin hoped to teach them to farm, and convert them to Mormonism.

Eventually, Hamblin and his family moved from Santa Clara to Kanab in 1869 so that he could try to improve Mormon-Navajo relations in northern Arizona. In 1870, Brigham Young assigned Levi Stewart to lead Kanab’s resettlement which freed Hamblin to accompany John Wesley Powell on his second Colorado River expedition in 1871 and 1872. Hamblin and his family moved to Milligan’s Fort in Northern Arizona in 1878, and then to Pleasanton, New Mexico in 1883. He died of malaria in 1886 and is buried in Alpine, Arizona.

Fort Kanab (#151)

Placed by: The descendants of Levi Stewart and Pioneer Trails and Landmarks Association

GPS Coordinates:  37° 02.967’ N,  -112° 32.114’ W

Historical Marker Text:

Photograph by Lisa Barr, February 18, 2017

No. 115 Erected April 11, 1950

Fort Kanab

On June, 14, 1870 Levi Stewart, who had been called from Salt Lake County by President Brigham Young to head a group of pioneers in settling this area, brought a party with seven wagons from Pipe Spring, where they had camped temporarily to Fort Kanab which had been built a year before by Jacob Hamblin and Indian missionaries.

Located at the Levi Stewart Memorial, Kanab, Utah Photograph by Lisa Barr, February 18, 2017

Kanab Ward was organized September 11, 1870 with Elder Stewart as bishop. Other settlers arrived, homes were built and plans were made for a permanent community. A fire in the fort on December 14, took the lives of Mrs. Margery Wilkerson Stewart and five sons.

Extended Research:

Kanab’s first settlers built Fort Kanab in stages between 1865 and 1869. The fort was vacated in 1866 due to increased Navajo and Southern Paiute raids that resulted from the Black Hawk War. In 1867, Jacob Hamblin traveled to the area to establish peace with Hopis and Southern Paiute Indians, however, Navajos continued to carryout raids throughout the region. Hamblin moved to Kanab from Santa Clara in 1869 and began to rebuild the fort which lasted until Brigham Young sent Levi Stewart to resettle the town of Kanab in 1870. The new settlers, including Stewart’s family, lived in the fort while they built homes in town. Southern Paiutes were also a part of Fort Kanab’s community and some lived in the fort and helped to farm the land in exchange for food.

Frank Asahel Beckwith, Kanab Markers (2). February 1, 1941, Courtesy Willard Marriott Library

Fort Kanab caught fire the night of December 14, 1870. Kerosene and turpentine that were stored in the fort exploded and collapsed the roof, killing Stewart’s wife Margery and five of their sons. Jacob Hamblin recalled the fire in his journal, stating that the fort was “in a moment enveloped in an intense flame which burst out from the only entrance, and that the scene could never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.”[1]

[1] Jacob Hamblin, Jacob Hamblin: His Life in His Own Words (New York: Paramount Books, 1995), 95.

For Further Reference:

Primary Sources:

Adams, John Q. Pioneer Personal History of John Q. Adams, Kanab, Utah. July, 16, 1938.  https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=700963&q=fort+kanab&page

Beckwith, Frank Asahel.  Kanab Markers (2). February 1, 1941, Willard Marriott Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.  https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=12525     https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=442803&q=jacob+hamblin&page

https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=442804&q=jacob+hamblin&page

Hamblin, Jacob. Jacob Hamblin: Life in His Own Words. New York: Paramount Books, 1995.

Secondary Sources:

Bradley, Martha Sonntag. A History of Kane County. Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical         Society, Kane County Commission, 1999.

Brooks, Juanita. Jacob Hamblin: Mormon Apostle to the Indians. Salt Lake City: Westwater       Press, 1980.

Compton, Todd. A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2013.

 

 

 

United Order Industries

Published April 24, 2017 / by Lisa Barr / 2 Comments on United Order Industries
2 Replies

Written by Lisa Barr, US History/Public History MA Student, University of Utah

Placed By: Daughter of Utah Pioneers

GPS Coordinates: 37° 16.555’ N, -112° 38.346’ W

Historical Marker Text:

Located on S Highway 89 in front of the Orderville LDS Church building. Photograph by Lisa Barr, February 18, 2017

No. 290 Erected 193

United Order Industries

Photograph by Lisa Barr, February 18, 2017

On March 20, 1874, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints organized a modern Order of Enoch, called The United Order, Israel Hoyt, First President. A community dining hall with bakery was first constructed, also a garden house for seeds and tools.
They built a carpenter, blacksmith and shoe shop, tannery, gristmill, sawmill, molasses mill, bucket factory, a woolen and cotton factory: engaged in the silk industry, dairying, broom and hat making. The people planted farms, orchards and gardens, raised sheep and cattle. Cooperative ended in 1886.

Orderville Camp Kane County, Utah (This area is partially damaged. Two words are illegible.)

Extended Research:

In 1875, some residents of Mt. Carmel, Utah led an effort to organized a new town in a new location and to call their new settlement Orderville. Their vision for the new community centered on Mormon ideals of unity, order, and economic equality and were the result of their leader, Brigham Young’s recent encouragement to establish self-sustaining cooperatives throughout the Utah Territory. The movement was known as the United Order or the United Order of Enoch. Brigham Young hoped that such efforts would prod Mormons toward greater equality through shared labor, resources, and property as well as limit the negative repercussions from the cyclical economic downturns associated with capitalism.

Orderville, Utah p.1. Classified Photograph Collection, Courtesy Utah State History, Willard Marriott Library

Many Orderville  residents were originally from settlements along the Muddy River in Nevada, where they had previously attempted and failed to develop a cotton industry based on cooperative principles. Fortunately, Orderville’s fertile soil proved more conducive to farming and timber resources were also readily available. Order members built a tannery, dairy farm, sawmill, wool and cotton factory, molasses mill, bakery, school, ZCMI cooperative, and community dining hall. Emma Carroll Seegmiller, who was a child of the United Order, recalls how “everyone would eat at three large tables, pour molasses over bread and eat it like bread and milk, and that three-hundred pounds of flour was made into bread every day.”[1 Families lived in one and two room apartments called “shanties” that were joined together at the center of town. The Order also had a board of directors who assigned labor roles and determined how resources were used. Seegmiller and other children were in charge of distributing the divided goods to families and said that “it was a delightful priveledge to help the United Order.”[2]

United Orderville Woolen Mill p.1. Unknown date. Classified Photograph Collection, Courtesy Utah State History, Willard Marriott Library

Orderville began to decline in 1880 as southern Utah’s economy expanded and became more competitive. The United Order also started to use the wage labor and to divide cooperative property into private half acre lots. These factors hindered cooperation and Orderville’s United Order dissolved in 1885. Even still, the Order retained and leased out its wool factory and sheep company for another fifteen years. Although Orderville’s experiment in cooperation did not survive economic competition, it was the LDS Church’s most successful United Order effort and its most complete attempt at economic withdrawal.

[1] Emma Carroll Seegmiller, “Personal Memories of the United Order of Orderville, Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly, v. 7 (1939): 177, 184.

[2] Seegmiller, 174.

For Further Reference:

Primary Sources:

Seegmiller, Emma Carroll. “Personal Memories of the United Order of Orderville, Utah.” Utah Historical Quarterly, v. 7 (1939): 160-200.

Orderville, Utah p.1. Classified Photograph Collection, Utah State History, Willard Marriott     Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

United Orderville Woolen Mill p.1. Unknown date. Classified Photograph Collection, Utah State History, Willard Marriott Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.   https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=444049&q=orderville&page

Secondary Sources:

Arrington, J. Leonard, Feramorz Y. Fox and Dean L. May. Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among Mormons. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Bradley, Martha Sonntag. A History of Kane County. Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical         Society, Kane County Commission, 1999.