Show life story of mary jane stockton pioneer friend of many compiled and written by edna hickman day a granddaughter from the tooele thoele county chapter daughters of utah pioneers read at a meeting of the emma J atkin camp of the daughters of the utah pioneers january 22 1938 mary jane hick man was born in county new york march 20 1840 her par ants were joseph and rachel heth erington she was the youngest of four children her brothers and sis were hartiett Hatt iett lett newkirk of baustin wisconsin smith and henry who died in california and winne bucca nevada respectively har net riet and smith were married and left children but henry never mar ned ried grandmother grandmothers s mother died when she was five months old the child ren lived with ith their father in the woods and many a time has grandmother entertained us child ren with ith tales of their life there how they gathered sugar maple sap in little pails palls how it was boil boll ed in a huge kettle and made into sugar and how one day she burn ed her poor little mouth because she just could rit wait ait until the sugar wa wa ready to eat when she was a small child her father married again a widow car oline who had a number of child ren and the family later moved to dodge county near neat M news of the gold strike in cal penetrated to their home and finally her father decided to try his luck in this fascinating and dangerous adventure and in 1852 he took his family and started to california at first the party travel led alone with three families of neighbors who also were bent on striking it rich but when they crossed the missouri river and ar rived at winter quarters they trav belled with the mormon emigrants notes which were taken by father at one time say camp divided and part came on one captain was named winters and a fur ther note we all came with emi grants from garden grove the journey across the plains was harrowing in the extreme at one time my cousin and me a note book which we were to recount some her adventures as she told them careless and thoughtless child that I 1 was I 1 let that book get away from me As I 1 look back I 1 wonder how I 1 could have been so stupid but I 1 was only eleven and never thought of grandmother passing on now I 1 cal can only recount fr from in memory some of the ethl it things she e told me 1 I 4 fl 0 w she said her t the e plains from cholera and was s bm r led along te trail and the step mother with the three step child ren harriett had grown upland been left behind in wisconsin and with her family journeyed on one time a huge dust was seen in the distance and the experienced men knowing what was in the distance hastily formed the wagons into a ring and placed the cattle inside the dust storms grew and a dark moving mass of buffalo engulfed them I 1 remember in writing the incident I 1 put in a fanciful touch of my own I 1 said the people were so frightened they waved their tents at the buffalo but grand mother laughed and said that was a little far fetched she said the people were beset with fear of indians and once when they feared an attack was cimmin ent her stepmother took the feath er beds and placed them on the sides of the wagons thinking that the arrows of the indians would not penetrate the feathers death that year was rampaging among the people they died by the score with the dread cholera and it was a common sight to see dead bodies partly dug up and de doured by coyotes one night they made camp after dark and al though the ground was very un even and bumpy they had to make the best of it in the morning they found they had camped in a grave yard bard and the unevenness of the ground was due to hastily made graves where lay loved ones of those who had passed that way when they arrived at the platte river they were compelled to sv saim im their animals and float their wag ons across one boy by the name of hun saker boasted that he was not a f fraid raid of indians and that he would kill the first indian he saw the older men tried to reason with him but he had made his boast and was determined to carry it out so tie he killed the first indian he saw a squaw as it happened to be the ind ans immediately demanded that the boy be surrendered and abd to save the whole party from an the wretched fellow had to be sacrificed he was never seen alive again but a scouting party found his body tied to a tree his finger and toe nails had been pul led out his skin cut in shreds and pine splinters were stuck in his body and set on fire grandmother had an acute sense of humor and when our eyes would glow with horror at some tale of atrocity she would tell us some thing funny to make us smile I 1 remember once she said after she came to utah she made her a pair of drawers out of some cloth that was so rotten it split the first time she wore them and the thread was so course and thick that it nearly cut her legs off her party came to bingham port fort between ogden and weber here they lived in a log cabin all win ter in the spring the stepmother determined to push on to califor nia along with their friends but she did not wish to be bothered with grandmother and her younger brother so they were botand out to work for their board and keep and the arty resumed its wa A few dayl days later her brother smith ran away and made his way to bocal cal aso grandmother was left alone orphaned a stranger in a strange lard land how she grew up to beso sweet and coving and jolly pas aas always been a mystery we af 1 1 0 I 1 must nottage not take time jo tell the incidents of how they gathered segos for food how she made her a ball dress out of a piece of rag carpet how she had mountain bev er and lay for weeks in an old wa gon bed with little care save from a child of the family who would bring her a little food and some water in an old wooden butter bowl the water would soak the salt out of the wood and when she placed the drink to her fevered lips it was like brine to her taste she told also an interesting story about how bow one time some men sk irined the horses of a dead in dian than chief and were compelled to sew them back on these I 1 have merely touched on but I 1 would like to relate one more incident of her early life which is character istle it will tell more about her than I 1 could tell in many pages the woman with whom she was staying was ill and grandmother was left alone with her A couple of indian bucks came to the door and asked for food the family was scant on rations and did not have any food to give so grandmother told the indians to go away but upon learning that there was no po one in the house except a child and and a sick woman they brushed her aside came in and began to rummage in the cupboard grand mother had heard that if she dis played no fear of the indians they would not hurt her so seizing the broom she turned on the indians and began to beat them now ac cording to all rules of fiction these two indian bucks should have turn ed and fled ned and that was what grandmother confidently expected them to do but instead one s seized her by the arms and shook her un til her teeth rattled and shoved her into a corner then proceeded to finish their plundering grand mother always laughed the heart est of anyone in the group when she told how frightened she really was for the thought her end had surely come grandmother was married when about 18 years of age to william adams hickman in the endow ment merit house at salt lake city she first lived at west jordan and two sons were born to her hyrum smith hickman who was later tal lul led in a mine and my father 3 B hickman afterwards they lived at camp floyd where the soldiers were encamped her marriage was not a happy one and she left my grandfather and went to live at stockton utah this was a mining camp and there were only about thirty families there although there were many miners who did not have families this gave her the idea of running a boarding house but before she could start such an enterprise she must have means so pluckily sh she 9 went to work over the wash tub to 0 o get her start and I 1 have heard ler her tell how she was her arms ached so that she could hardly sleep from N w ashing the fah flah nel shirts worn by the miners 0 while her days ivere mostly be aupied with washing mosa often oftentimes I 1 the nights were pent at ht the bed side of the sick for she had a nat ura ural dock aptitude ifor nursing and the doctor or berny many mlle and charging an enormous price per trip people soon began tosa to tor Jane or anunti jacq 7 aishe ras As I 1 she clever never 1 charged a cent for her ministrations st and often wa lefther her clothes standing wiped the suds fromherz from her arms 0 and ra ran to help out in an emer emergency geney I 1 then jae I 1 funds grew lowly but she had enough to buy a house and gasn wasn t she proud I 1 it was quite a wonderful house it was made with dirt and no prin cess ever reigned over a palace more graciously than grandmother graced that home then along came general 0 connor claiming that he owned the patent to the land upon which the house was built and she was compelled to pay for it over again meanwhile her boys were grow ing up and there were other child ren needing scholastic attention so grandmother together with a storekeeper james G brown start ed the first school in an old store building when grandmother had procured the means to start her boarding house she did so and she was very successful because she fed and mothered the miners like she would have done her own children she should have grown wealthy had it not been for the fact that she fed all the hungry whether they had the money to pay or not during the time she ran the boarding house she fed and moth ered miners like she would have her own the poor were as welcome as the one who could pay several young w women omen from boele worked for her one of them being libby mckellar russell who is still liv ing ng at one time as an example of her motherly qualities and kind ness dr emil B isgreen then a bay boy of 16 years had been working at louis straberg Stra burg s ranch in rush valley and started walking for his home in tooele thoele it was a ter bibly cold winter night and ar riving at stockton he was vas nearly frozen he had no money and could not possibly make it to tooele thoele so he stopped at aunt janes jane s as the whole county called her sh she e took him in and mothered hini gave him dry clothes and fed him and let him stay there until he was able to go home the doctor docter still talks of her kindness and par ticul arly remembers her delicious pumpkin pie which he says he can still taste he ile always has said that she saved his life and at one time lust just before her death he called on her and brought her a box of at c a n dy she jokingly said to him what did you do this for fora and he said just to try to partly pay you for that wonderful pumpkin pie you gave me at one time she was kind and loving doing good to all mankind she worried about her neighbors and watched that no one was hungry and on many ons gave many pounds of if flour and potatoes and other things to the needy one day after grandmother grandmothers s ba by boy had grown up and married a friend happened to see an item in the newspaper that a man by the name of smith had been killed while carrying dyn amite up a mountain side noting the similarity of names grand mother being convinced that it was her brother whom she had not heard from since he ran away at about 14 years of age communicate ed with the postmaster ot of the city where he lived jived and through him im got in A to touch lall kith the wi widow ow and family shortly after alter thai thai ha she made ade a trip to calif california ornia to vinit the them after she gave up the hotel bus iness ness grandmother went out nua a ing ng she acted as midwife and a practical nurse for many years working in stockton ophir and mercur as well A ell as tooele thoele when a call came for sickness she cheer filly dropped her own work many times riding a work horse for miles in all kinds of weather she worked in homes where the dreaded dis ease and adall pox was raging and sometimes all the members of the family would be ill at one time but she never left them until they were well during all these years grand I 1 mother had never heard from her sister in wisconsin and never ex pecked to hear of her but again a friend brought a newspaper clip ping to her advertising for one mary jane and by this means her sister traced her it that some mormon miss ion lozanes aries had called at the sisters home and she had enlisted their aid in finding her baby sister they had advertised for her and so the two were united after fifty years j grandmother made a trip to wis 1 conom to visit her sister and rela i tives and spent three mon months with them I 1 grandmother spent the remain ing irig years of her life in thoele but her friends in stockton never for got her and on her se enty fifth birthday they gave her a surprise party and all the town turned out one day after her death abe ahe daughters of utah pioneers veld neld a ne beking eting in her honor a 4 a e she was always remembered a an ln industrious aust rious woman and detest ed laziness in anyone feeling that it was a crime to waste time inq on of her bobbies was piecing quilty and quil tings she also had a love ly flower garden always working in it and weeding and arranging her plants on V day after 9 garden arden while fe returning turning her hoe to the shed she fell and broke bro keher hadr hi although a summoned at once orice and the hip set she never recovered from the an esthetic and died at the age of 83 years may 29 1923 although not an extremely re legious woman her entire life was the essence of the true spirit of religion she lived the principle of her brother brothers s keeper giving charity to all with no thought of reward truly the words of the saviour in as much as you do it unto the least of these my children you do it unto me applied to her life she was a true pioneer and the hardships she endured only tended to develop her character until she developed into a woman beloved by all with whom she came in con tact and will be reverently kemem bared by all who knew her |