Archives West Finding Aid

JOHN AND SAMUEL BENNION

Samuel was born December 11, 1818 and John was born July 9, 1820 to devout Methodist parents in the County of Flint, North Wales, England. At the age of eleven Samuel went to Liverpool as an apprentice to his uncle, a baker and flour dealer. Later he worked as a journeyman baker. At sixteen years of age John was accused of poaching in the game preserves of a wealthy nobleman. To avoid prosecution he left home for Liverpool where he apprenticed as an iron moulder and boiler maker.

In January 1840 two elders from the Mormon Church came to Liverpool seeking new converts. John was baptized in May 1841 and Samuel in September 1842. In February of 1842 John married Ester Wainwright a fellow convert and eight days later they set sail for America, arriving at Nauvoo, Illinois in May of the same year. He was ordained a Seventy and united with the Fourteenth Quorum at the time of its organization around 1844. Samuel and John's father, John senior, a widower nearly sixty years of age, was baptized in 1841 and joined John in Nauvoo in the spring of 1844.

Samuel married Mary Bushell in April of 1839 and in November of 1844 he closed out his business and prepared to join his father and brother in Nauvoo. Mary continued her allegiance to the Methodist faith until 1848 when she was baptized in Salt Lake Valley.

In 1846 the Bennions were driven from Nauvoo to Garden Grove, Iowa, along with many others and John senior died there of the ague and fever. John and Samuel were not included in the original pioneer company, but arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in September of 1847. They began their trek to Utah with a few oxen, cows and seven sheep, six of which died on the way.

After arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Samuel and John began building their flocks and herds. They bought sheep, cattle, and horses when they could; traded in various ways and ran other people's stock with their own, frequently on shares. Their flocks increased rapidly with the help of their wives and children. Others prospered as well, resulting in overcrowded conditions on the limited range available.

John and Samuel had been members of the Nauvoo Legion in Illinois and continued their involvement for several years in Utah. When the United States government sent an army to Utah to subdue a supposed rebellion in 1857, John and Samuel were among the first who were ordered into service, John being elected a captain of fifty. There was no confrontation with the United States army and the brothers returned to the work of ranching and farming.

In 1856 John entered into polygamy. His second wife Esther had joined the Mormon Church in England and migrated to America with several of her family. She was a strong woman who walked the entire distance from Missouri to Utah, wading rivers and climbing mountains. She was twenty-three when she married John, thirteen years her senior, and she bore him nine children. John took Mary Turpin as his third plural wife when he was thirty-seven and she was a pretty child of sixteen. She gave birth to eight children, the last of which was born four months after John's death and died at six months of age. After this at the age of thirty-six, Mary suffered a nervous breakdown from which she never fully recovered. She died in 1913 at the age of seventy-two.

John's first wife Esther gave birth to twelve children and died at the age of eighty-five. What she felt about John's additional wives is revealed perhaps, in the first journal found in the Bennion Family of Utah Volume III, but missing from the Bennion Family Papers Collection. John writes five months after his marriage to Esther Ann: "Esther by giving way to an evil spirit caused a wrong feeling in the family. I fasted and prayed to God about it" and on March 25, 1856 - "in the evening went over to Sam'l to see if Esther Ann could live there a short time until I got her house apart from Esther who was disposed to oppress her & disregard my council".

Samuel took only one plural wife, Rhoda Jones. They were married in 1868 when he was fifty and she was twenty-eight. She had only one child by a previous marriage, and six children by Samuel, four of which died in infancy. Samuel and his first wife Mary produced eleven children. Samuel wrote very little except to keep account books, while John seemed to have enjoyed writing daily entries in his journal plus numerous letters. He frequently reported Samuel's activities that were intertwined with his own, revealing a close almost daily association between the brothers; so although the journals were written by John they tell Samuel's story too.

In August of 1863 the Bennions moved the herds from their Taylorsville homes to Rush Valley. Shortly there after John brought his third wife Mary and her three young children to this desolate spot to live in a part dug-out and part rock dwelling. A month later John brought his second wife and her three children to join Mary's family. Eventually a more permanent structure was built.

This "mountain home" continued to be the headquarters of the Bennion stockraising activities for several years. At first, grass was plentiful everywhere, but with year-round grazing the grass began to die out and be replaced by sagebrush in this arid climate of little rainfall. The ecological balance of the region had been permanently altered.

In 1875 the herds were moved to Castle Valley. At that time the Bennion brothers livestock holdings had increased to 1600 cattle, 100 horses and 7000 sheep. Indians were quite numerous during the years that mountain home was occupied and were a source of danger and uncertainty for the wives who were left alone in charge with their children for long periods of time. The pioneers proved ultimately to be an even greater danger to the Indians and the ecology of the region. The Bennions tried to co-exist peacefully with the Indians and Chief Green Jacket, leader of the local tribe, became a friend, urging John to move his family down into the cedars with the Indians where the winter winds were less severe.

In 1868 because of his success in the sheep business, John was sent on a mission to southern Utah, to take charge of and coordinate many small bands of sheep belonging to settlers throughout that region, totaling 3000 head. He took Esther Ann and her children with him, and they led a nomadic existence, sometimes in a canvas tent, for the next five years. The primitive conditions in which Esther Ann lived coupled with the fact that she gave birth to three children during this period and was left to cope alone much of the time, caused the undermining of her once rugged constitution. She and the other wives led lives of hardships and constant struggle equal if not greater to those of John's and Samuel's.

In November of 1872 John and his first wife Esther returned to England on a mission for three months which also served as a visit to their families and homeland. John died in 1877 from internal injuries suffered when he fell from his horse, leaving his three wives and twenty-two living children to carry on. Samuel died in 1889 of a kidney disorder leaving two wives and eight children.

HEBER BENNION

Heber was born November 28, 1858 in Taylorsville, Utah. He was the first child of John Bennion and Mary Turpin. At the age of four and a half his family moved to Rush Valley in Tooele County which became the family's headquarters for their livestock interests. He spent the major part of his youth there. Heber was picked by his father as the shepherd to care for the family sheep with a financial interest in them. He changed the grazing territory from Rush Valley to Chalk Creek in Summit County for the summer and the Wyoming desert for the winter.

In the fall of 1882 he was sent on a mission to Wisconisn and later to Minnesota. While in the Midwest he took two tours of the East coast, visiting New York and Washington, D. C. He and Susie Winters were married in 1885. They had ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Heber also married Emma Jane Webster and Mayme Bringhurst sometime later, around the turn of the century, much to the displeasure of his first family. Mayme gave birth to eight children.

Heber was elected a member of the Territorial Legislature and served in that capacity during its session in 1890. He was made bishop of his ward at about the same time and remained in that position for seventeen years. He became financially prosperous during that period, and was one of the leading livestock men of the state. Because of a series of set backs he grew poorer every year, and spent the end of his life with no settled occupation or home. He died January 21, 1932 of pernicious anemia.

MARY BENNION POWELL

Mary was the third child born to Susie Winters and Heber Bennion, on January 11, 1890. She grew up in a large and closely-knit family on a farm in Taylorsville where she was given her share of responsibility from an early age. She milked cows, herded stock, fed chickens, tended the younger children and then did "her chores". Her pets were baby lambs and occasionally a duckling. When the family couldn't find hired help to stay with them, one of the older children had to remain at home to help with the cooking and housework, and Mary took her turn at this, missing a year of school at a time.

Her early years were happy, for the most part, and her family lived in comfortable circumstances for that time. Mary attended the University of Utah and Utah State University, obtaining a liberal education and also acquiring some nursing training. She taught school before her marriage to Charles Powell in January of 1918. They had their first four of six children in rapid succession creating financial hardships for themselves.

Mary remained bitter towards her father's polygamous activities throughout her life, and blamed much of her unhappiness on this fact. The subject of polygamy runs throughout her journals and fictional histories.

Her six children were her greatest source of satisfaction in life. She viewed Mormonism with a certain skepticism and spoke out on issues that concerned her. She remained intellectually active in later years, returning to the University of Utah at the age of 59, while her youngest son was attending.