Notes |
- HISTORY:
Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, Vol 4, p 2861
BIRTH, MARRIAGE, DEATH: Ancestral File. Parents are John Rogers and Jennette Reese.
BIRTH VARIANT: East Lake Farm, Amroth, Pembroke, Wales
MARRIAGE: Valiant in the Faith, p. 642.
See also The SNOW Book page 107-117
ANN ROGERS SNOW
Just how much does your religious faith mean to you? What sacrifices would you be willing to make for it? Would you abandon a comfortable home and take a long tedious journey to a foreign land for it? Would you forsake a youthful dream of love and leave behind your sweetheart at its promptings? Would you trudge footsore and weary a thousand miles across a trackless plain at its call? Could you in your forlorn condition face with courage the loss of loved ones snatched from the family circle? Could you bear the toil, the exposure, the privations encountered in pioneering a dry and barren country? Enduring all these trials, could you still keep sweet, trusting, amiable?
Some of our pioneer ancestors did this very thing. Among them was Ann Rogers Snow.
She was born December 30, 1834 at East Lake Farm on a gently sloping upland overlooking the sea, in the southern part of Wales. The old-fashioned farm house, surrounded by beautiful flower beds and walks was inclosed by a hedge fence and shaded by great elms, venerable with age. There was an orchard containing fruit and hazelnut trees. Not far away were blackberry bushes where the children delighted to go "berrying" on warm summer days. She was christened Jan 6, 1835.
The family was well-to-do. Its members enjoyed a home furnished with the comforts and conveniences of that day. A maid and hired men were kept to do the work on the farm.
Ann was the ninth child and the youngest of her mother's children. Her mother died when Ann was two years old. A few years later her father married again.
In the year 1842, the family at East Lake Farm accepted the Gospel message, and soon the spirit of "gathering" came upon them. John Rogers, the father, made arrangements to go to Zion. His oldest son, who was a school teacher and the parish minister, tried to dissuade him, telling him he was not strong enough to withstand the North American Climate. But his mind was made up. Passage was obtained Jan.12, 1850 on the ship "Josiah Bradlee" and it sailed on Feb. 18, 1850 , with a group of saints for America. There is no record of an "Osprey" over the ocean. The "Osprey" was a river boat on the Mississippi River only.
They spent ten weeks at sea, arriving in New Orleans about the first of April. Here they began to see strange sights and peculiar customs of the new land and to suffer minor disappointments.
On April fourth the Rogers family took passage on a steamboat up the Mississippi River, bound for Council Bluffs. When they reached St. Louis, Ann's brother Thomas and wife and her sister Sarah and husband, who had just been married, decided to stay and get work. The remainder of the family went on up the river.
Some miles beyond St. Louis, Ann's sister Elizabeth died very suddenly. This was a terrible blow to Ann, for the two girls had been inseparable companions. The captain, a kindhearted man, said to the sailors, "Boys, if you are with me, we will give this girl a decent burial." So they stopped at a plantation, dug a grave in a lovely spot, and buried her by the riverside. With only one brother left to continue the journey and a stepmother, Ann was lonely indeed. But the cup of her sorrow was not yet filled to the brim.
Acting upon the advice of church leaders, John Rogers decided to rent a farm and stay at the Bluffs awhile. He was not strong, and about a year later he fell ill and died in August, 1850.
Ann and Henry were anxious to get away upon their own resources. Before long Henry had an opportunity to hire out to a man going to California. With a sad heart Ann bade him goodbye. That was the last time she ever saw or heard of him.
The stepmother now decided to go to the "Valley." Accordingly she bought a covered wagon, a yoke of oxen and a cow and started with a company that was ready to go. There were only three of the family left: the stepmother, her little daughter Mary, and Ann. Ann walked and drove the oxen most of the way.
After weeks of plodding over rough and dusty roads, exposed to all kinds of weather, the company neared the promised land. The Rogers' wagon was the last of the train, and when it was miles from Salt Lake, one wheel collapsed. The stepmother and little sister stayed with the wagon while Ann walked into Salt Lake on foot and alone, the only one of her mother's children to get to the valley at this time. Her patriarchal blessing told her she had been preserved for a purpose, her life being spared that she might be the means of connecting the link that would seal the family to their ancestors.
After the three arrived in Salt Lake, the stepmother married again. Ann went to work in the family of William Snow, whom she afterward married on March 12, 1852. (the records show March 13, 1853 by President Brigham Young in the Presi dents Office. Not the "12th".) Before Ann left her native land, she had been courted by a young man whom she thought a great deal of and whom she promised to marry. When the family sailed to America, she had to leave her fiance behind, but she agreed to wait for him three years. The three years had passed, and not a single message had she received. Then one day about three months after she had married William Snow, she got a whole bundle of letters written by her old lover at various times. He had written faithfully every month after she left Wales, but the letters had been delayed somewhere. "How did you feel when you received those letters?" I asked grandma.
"Oh, I didn't exactly feel sorry," she said. "Your grandfather was a good, kind husband. But just the same I shed a few tears when I thought what a comfort the letters would have been to me on the dreary journey. Later, however, I received some news which made me feel that the hand of Providnce had intervened to give me a pearl of great price instead of a bauble."
When conditions began to promise a reasonable comfort for Ann in Salt Lake, her husband was called to Fort Supply. Maria accompanied William on this call. While they were away news came to Ann that Johnston's army was nearing Utah, and rumors were that the army intended to take control of the state.
This was a grave situation for Ann and her young son, Willard. Preside Young advised the Saints to move from Salt Lake and go south before the army entered the Valley. From early morning to late at night, wagons on every street were being loaded with household goods and provisions for the exodus.
Early in the fall William returned to Salt Lake and moved the anxious family to Lehi. The first winter Ann lived in a log house within the fort. The house had been hurriedly built and many cracks let the cold wind whistle through. When her second son Jeter was born the cold December winds blew the snow over the floor. The kind midwife had warm blankets at the big pine fire and wrapped the around the sick woman to keep her warm. When morning came and the wind had gone down, Mrs. Jacobs, the midwife, swept a tub of snow from the board floor.
Ann lived within the mud fort for six years; two more children, Celestia and Charles were born there. At that time she moved into a large log house with four apartments where the four wives lived comfortably until they were called to go Southern Utah in 1865, to help build up that part of the state.
To leave these newly acquired comforts and cross the entire length of big state over which roamed many bands of Indians must have required great faith and courage. But they willingly obeyed the call, and in November, 1865, they started south. After traveling through snow storms and cold weather, they arrived in Pine Valley on Christmas Eve.
In this little village Ann maintained her home during the rest of her life. Here as a bishop's wife and a Relief Society worker she served her neighbors and he friends for sixty years.
In recalling my association with Grandmother, said her grandchild, and the incidents related by her children, I have tried to decide what her most outstanding; traits were, what attributes enabled her to sacrifice and serve as she did. The incidents related above constitute sufficient proof that she possessed in a high degre courage, patience and fortitude.
A visit to her home would immediately suggest that neatness was one of he qualities. Not a speck of dust could be found anywhere. There were no flies, no unpleasant odors. Her dishes and stove were shining. Beds were without a wrinkle Everything was in perfect order.
An atmosphere of refinement would also be in evidence: simple furniture some homemade articles, tastefully draped and decorated; a few cherished old pictures and ornaments. Not a stately mansion, but a cozy, restful home, obviously presided over by a woman of dignity and refinement.
Real pioneers learn to be resourceful, and Ann was not lacking either in resourcefulness or industry. She was always alert to ways and means of improving the conditions of her home and family. While she was living in Lehi, some easterners on their way to California stopped near her place to overhaul their wagons and make repairs. On the evening of their arrival, the leader knocked at her door and explained, "We are traveling to California, madam, and our wagon covers have become badly damaged. We should like to have them mended. Would you be willing to fix them for us?"
Being an excellent seamstress, grandma said, "Yes, I can mend them tomorrow"
"We have three heavy covers," the man continued, "also a lightweight one which we cannot use. You, may have the light one for repairing the others if you want it.'
Grandma told him she would be glad to take the light one for her pay. That night her prayer was one of thankfulness to God for opening up the way whereby her family might be clothed for the winter. Some of the cloth was used for under-clothing; the remainder was dyed and made into shirts and dresses.
When the Snow families moved to Pine Valley, there was no store. Supplies of every kind were hard to get. A few of the men decided to start a tannery and make their own leather. Grandma used this crude leather and bits of jeans left over from the men's clothing to make shoes for the members of her household.
After a store had been opened in the village, she sewed overalls and jumpers the merchant's customers in exchange for "storepay". By this means she was with articles they needed.
For soap, in those early pioneer days, she used the roots of a plant (oose, I called). Later, like many other pioneer women, she learned the art of wood ashes.
In preparing meals for the household, she often resorted to substitutions, such sugar, corn meal for flour, and salt rising for yeast.
Perhaps honesty was Ann's strongest quality. In fact, it is a characteristic of the family. Being convinced that the Gospel was true, they had to be honest though it required great sacrifice.
"I wish I were as good a man as my father," grandma's nephew (her brother's son remarked to me. "Talk about honesty and charity, well, he was it personified. boy we worked together on a rented farm. Always the biggest loads of the finest shocks of grain, the best of everything went to the owner for his share.
Grandma was like that. If she borrowed anything, she paid it back with interest even to a needleful of thread.
All of the children were thoroughly taught the lesson of honesty. One son recalls that as a small boy he was taken to task for eating a biscuit stolen by an older boy from a farmer's dinner pail.
Another son refused to sell his neighbor a certain horse he owned because he would be cheated by the trade.
"I wouldn't sell Jede Hill a horse like that," he said. "It wouldn't serve his purpose, and he's too poor a man to throw away his money."
Ann R. Snow saw many changes take place in the world during her lifetime. be ninety-three years of age at death. When people asked to what she to my mode of living. work and regular in my habits. Our food was simple,
and much of the time it was too scarce to tempt us to over eat. Then, too, we always got plenty of exercise in the open air."
"Didn't you worry in those early days when you didn't have much to live upon?" I asked her one day.
"We learned to trust in the Lord," she replied, "and it is wonderful how the wa was opened up, miraculously at times, that we might get the necessities of ]if( These were the happiest days of my life because of the sustaining power of th Lord's Spirit."
If she had any difficult or distasteful task to perform, she went quietly ahead and did it without complaints. "Don't like to have my peace of mind disturbed b; thinking of disagreeable tasks to be performed," was her comment.
She had her share of disagreeable tasks to perform. Since there were no doc tors in Pine Valley at that time much of the care of the sick rested upon the Relie Society. Ann was especially called to assist the midwives. In this calling she helper to bring a hundred babies into the world. Since babies do not choose their time o coming, she was often called out from a warm bed to cross the town in deep snow or in a blinding storm, then await the birth of a child. At another time she might be called to sit at the bed of the dying father and comfort and care for the fatherless children. But there is joy in doing a good deed.
Ann was the president of the Relief Society for thirty years during that period when this association assumed the most arduous tasks from gleaning wheat to laying out the dead. One of their meetings each month was for testimony; the other three were for work. Sometimes they wove carpets, sometimes made clothing for the poor, and sometimes made straw hats for sale. At other times they gleaned wheat to store for the famine. There were frequent calls upon the settlements for men and teams to go and meet emigrant trains. One time the Relief Society was given the task of making the clothing and bedding for the man in the ward who was leaving to meet the emigrant train.
Her patriarchal blessing told her that her life had been spared for a wise purpose, that she might be the means of connecting the link of her ancestors. Of many of her people who left Wales to come to Utah, she and her brother were the only ones to reach Utah. By the time of her death, the families of these two had gathered almost three thousand names and had the temple work done for them. In searching the records of her ancestors, she found that she was a descendant on her mother's side from kings and queens of the British Isles.
"I like to think," said her granddaughter, "of her now as a queen among righteous spirits in our Father's Kingdom. Truly, she deserves the reward promised by the Savior where he says: `And every one that forsakes houses, or brothers, or sis ters, or father, or mother. . . for my sake shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life."'
Ann Rogers Snow was born at Amroth, Pembrokeshire, Wales on December 30, 1834 and christened January 6, 1835. She traveled over land and sea, much of it on foot or in primitive ships, slow and unsafe over those turbulant seas, to Pine Valley. She died in this sheltered and peaceful little town on March 11, 1928.
- Family Group Record by Nauvoo Land and Records
HISTORY:
Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, Vol 4, p 2861
OTHER SOURCES:
Internet Research:
lds.org: Church History, Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1 page
MOTHER: Jennet Rees
FATHER: John Rogers
|