ELLEN LEE SIMS JAKEMAN SANDERS
7 Mar 1859 – 5 Feb 1937

Ellen, my second great grandmother on my mother’s mother’s side, was born in Beaver, Utah, the daughter of John Percival Lee and Eliza Foscue Lee.

In 1876, at the age of 17, Ellen married Elias Sims. The couple had one daughter, Ivy Pearl Sims, before divorcing.

Ellen then married James Thomas Jakeman in 1878 and became the mother of three daughters and two sons.

In 1888, Ellen began writing and publishing short stories and poems in various literary journals in Utah, including Western Galaxy Magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal and the Juvenile Instructor. Her work also appeared in The Relief Society Magazine as well as in Provo and Salt Lake newspapers. Her published works include a serialized novel and a book-length poem. She also appears in the Local and National Poets of America, published out of Chicago in 1892.

Ellen was a member of the Utah Women’s Press Club and president of the Sanpete County Woman’s Suffrage Association.

A strong advocate of suffrage and equal pay for women, she became, in 1896, the first female to be elected to the office of Utah County Treasurer. Ellen was an excellent speaker and a peripatetic traveler; she received invitations throughout Utah County to relate her experiences traveling in both California and Mexico.

Ellen and James eventually divorced and, on 15 Oct 1909, at age 50, Ellen married one last time to Martin Franklin Sanders in Fairview, Sanpete, Utah. Martin was her son-in-law, Joseph LeRoy Sanders’, younger brother. Ellen and Joseph ran a cattle business in Arizona, a business she chronicled in one of her published pieces.

Martin was a businessman whose work took him to Mexico, where Ellen often traveled with him. The couple eventually separated but never divorced. Ellen eventually moved back to Beaver so she could look after her aged and infirm mother, Eliza.

Ellen died in Salt Lake at the age of 77 on 5 Feb 1937.

JAMES THOMAS JAKEMAN
28 Aug 1853 – 14 May 1921

James, my second great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s side, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, one of ten children born to James and Ann Field Jakeman.

James’ father owned a needle factory. When his mother, Ann, was just nineteen, she married her first husband, Joseph Such. They became the parents of two children, the first, passing away soon after birth and the second they named Joseph Field. In 1829, her husband passed away and Joseph Jr. tells how, at age four, he started working in a needle factory, at the side of his mother, who taught him to sort the different-sized needles. The boss evidently liked her work: Ann married the factory owner, James Jakeman on 13 Nov 1833.

In 1856, Ann was baptized by Mormon missionaries in Britain and, on 4 Jun 1863, she and her family boarded the Amazon for passage to America. The Amazon arrived in New York City on 18 Jul 1863 and the family set out from there to Florence, Kansas, where they joined the Daniel D. McArthur Company, which consisted of 500 individuals and 75 wagons. The company arrived in Utah on 3 Oct 1863. James was just nine years old when he made the journey and walked across the plains.

James became a newspaperman. He printed and published some of the first newspapers in Juab, Sevier and Sanpete Counties, including the weekly Nephi Ensign, The Home Sentinel and The Sevier Valley Echo. James also wrote and published a book entitled “Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and their Mothers”.

James met Ellen Lee, a Mormon suffragist and writer and my second great grandmother, and the two were married in 1878. The couple had four children: Howard Lee, Cora Ellen and Gladys Annette, my great grandmother, who was born on 2 Jun 1886. They divorced and James remarried in 1900.

At the age of 67, on Saturday, May 7 1921, James was struck and killed by an automobile at the intersection of second south and main in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.

JOHN PERCIVAL LEE
26 Apr 1824 – 9 Apr 1907

John, my third great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s side, was born in Lincoln County, Tennessee to John Lee and Margaret Dundey. John’s father was a merchant who sold goods in a market stall which he leased in Fayetteville, Arkansas. John received a good education and became a school teacher, teaching first in the new Mormon settlement of San Bernadino. In 1857, the Mormon prophet Brigham Young called the Mormon colonists back to Utah. The Lee family then chose to settle in Beaver, Utah and purchased a large ranch called Hawthorne Dell, where they raised cattle. The money to buy the ranch and the cattle purportedly came from an inheritance Eliza received from her brother, Frederick, who was involved in the slave trade. John also taught school in Beaver. He was a large, fleshy man and his pupils nicknamed him “Pumkin Lee”, so he was soon called that by everyone. One of his pupils said “He taught by the rule of the hickory stick. He never spared the rod. One first looked around the room each morning was to see how many switches were piled in the corner to help our educational advancement that day. There were always plenty!” In Oct 1866, the family ranch was brazenly attacked by Indians who drove off the family cattle and attempted to burn their house down. One of their ranch hands, Joseph Lillywhite, was injured in an exchange of gunfire and John shot and killed several Indians during the skirmish that ensued. Two of the young children escaped the compound and ran eight miles to town in order to get the help necessary to eventually end the siege. The family never completely recovered financially from the attack. In 1867, John went on a southern states Mormon mission. In 1868, he entered into plural marriage by taking a second wife, Margaret Stuart Pope Hunter, a first cousin of Eliza, his first wife. For a few years thereafter, he lived primarily with Margaret, right next door to Eliza. By 1880, John was estranged from both of his wives and the census shows him living alone. In 1886, John married another woman, Altamiah Sophia Billingsley, and the two moved to Thatcher, Arizona the following year, where John remained until his death at age 82.

ELIZA ANN FOSCUE LEE
23 Sep 1829 – 9 Mar 1920

Eliza Ann Foscue Lee was born in Tallahassee, Florida, the sixth child of Benjamin Foscue and Eliza Skurlock. Her mother died in childbirth while having her. Benjamin named the child Eliza after her dead mother and gave her to the care of Mrs. Harriet Skurlock Pope, one of her mother’s sisters. When she was two, she came back to live with her father and his new wife, but only for a short time. Benjamin was a Primitive Baptist and would travel all over the south as a preacher. Benjamin’s uncle, Amos Foscue, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of William Foscue and Sallie Smith, being childless, begged for the little Eliza and took her home to live with them, where she remained throughout the Seminole war. In 1838, Eliza was separated from her aunt and uncle as her father brought her back to Coosa County, Alabama, to once again live with him. Eliza was just 15, when she met and married John Percival Lee on 18 Feb 1844. Their oldest child, Sara Lucinda Lee (aka Lu Dalton, a famous Mormon feminist writer and poet) was born in Coosa, Alabama on 9 Feb 1847. The family then moved to Texas where they gave birth to their second daughter, Ann Eliza Lee in Dewitt on 11 Jan 1849. In that same year, a Mormon missionary by the name of Preston Thomas was sent from Salt Lake to Texas with orders from Brigham Young to get Lyman Wight and his splinter religious colony known as Zodiac back into the Mormon fold. Lyman and his followers refused to come to Utah but, while in Texas, Preston did bring John and Eliza into the Mormon church. They were baptized on 1 Aug 1849. The winter of 1849 found the Lee family camping in Council Bluffs, Pottawatomie County, Iowa, preparing for the journey to Utah. They left the following summer and traveled to Utah as part of the Benjamin Hawkins Company, which consisted of 150 wagons, arriving on 9 Sept 1850. They didn’t stay in Utah for long, however. In 1851, they joined Amasa Lyman and 500 other early Mormon settlers and traveled further west to California, helping to settle the area that is now known as San Bernadino.

SARAH ANN MILNER ROBERTS
29 May 1862 – 15 Jun 1915
Sarah was born in Provo, Utah, the oldest daughter of John Brewitt Milner and Esther Elizabeth Yardley Milner. Sarah attended school at Dusenbeny’s in the old Lewis Hall, where the famed Doctor Maeser taught. Sarah met Benjamin Morgan Roberts, Jr. and, when she was just eighteen, the two were married in 1880. The young couple bought two city lots from her father on first south and fourth east in the center of Provo for the princely sum of fifty dollars. At the time, it was mostly swamp and willows. They both worked hard to clear and drain the place and then proceeded to build a two-room house on the spot, which is where the couple’s first three children were born. Later, three more rooms were added onto the house to accommodate the needs of their ever-growing family. Sarah had a wonderful artistic talent, which she expressed by making clothes for her family, as well as new carpets and quilts to adorn the floors and beds of their modest home. Sarah also cooked for the city and county prisoners in Provo and Benjamin Jr. would deliver the meals to the prison with his team of horses. Sarah and Benjamin Jr. were the parents of fifteen children, twelve of whom survived infancy, including Charles Milner Roberts, their oldest, my great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s side, who was born on 12 Mar 1885.

BENJAMIN MORGAN ROBERTS, JR.
12 Aug 1857 – 1 Feb 1938

Benjamin, my second great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s side, was born in a wagon box in Fort Supply, Wyoming, the first child of parents Benjamin Morgan Roberts and Mary Ann “Polly” Bullock Roberts. It is said that he was the first man of Caucasian descent to be born there.

Benjamin was just six weeks old when Johnston’s army came into sight. The family was forced to retreat back to Utah. Their wagons were loaded with whatever they could hold and everything else was burned so as not to leave any provisions for the army, which Brigham Young considered to be an enemy of the Mormon people.

The family then settled in Provo, Utah, and Benjamin Jr. helped his father farm the land. He had many “old west” adventures, including meeting three hundred migrant Chinese workers who had walked all the way to Utah from San Francisco to find work on the railroad. One worker gave Benjamin a teakwood box, saying he was the first white man he had ever seen, and it became a family heirloom and the subject of much family lore.

Later, Benjamin Jr. himself worked for the Utah Southern Railroad to bring it to Provo from Salt Lake City and then on through Sevier Canyon.

On 5 Oct 1882, when he was twenty-five, Benjamin Jr. married Sarah Ann Milner, the oldest daughter of judge John B. Milner.

To support his family, Benjamin Jr. farmed and raised livestock including cows, chickens, horses and pigs. In his spare time, he hauled wood from the canyon or coal from Coalville. At night, he’d make adobe bricks that he could sell to local builders.

Benjamin was a veteran of the Black Hawk War and had many stories about the Indians. He also enjoyed telling people about the time he got to see the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.

He passed away in Los Angeles, following a heart attack, and was buried 6 Feb 1938 in the Provo City Cemetery.

The sons of Benjamin Morgan Roberts and Mary Ann Bullock

Accompany annotation states: “Seated, L-R: Samuel K[imball] age 33 yrs?, Benjamin M[organ] age 34?, Isaac Bullock age 31?; Standing: John Riggs age 27?, Joseph [Bullock] age 20. Grandfather Benjamin M. Roberts died Aug 7 1891 so I imagine this picture was taken at this time. Florence R. Wright [Joseph’s daughter]”.

MARY ANN “POLLY” BULLOCK ROBERTS
19 Sep 1829 – 18 Aug 1901

Mary Ann, my third great grandmother on my mother’s mother’s side, was born in Moira, New York, the daughter of Benjamin and Dorothy Kimball Bullock of Grafton, New Hampshire. Mary Ann’s ancestry can be traced back to two different pilgrims who came to America aboard the Mayflower: Thomas Rogers, b. 1571 in Walford, Northampton and James Chilton, b. 1563 in Canterbury, Kent.

It is said that Mary Ann’s father, Benjamin, took Michael Chandler, the purveyor of the Egyptian mummies and papyruses, to meet Joseph Smith Jr., the first Mormon prophet, who was evidently so enamored with them, he had the Mormon church purchase them for $6,000 and later translated one papyrus into the controversial Book of Abraham, part of the Mormon Pearl of Great Price.

Benjamin was so impressed with Joseph Smith Jr. that he returned to New York and sold his farm and home, taking his wife and family to live with the Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio. There, they met with mob violence and, soon afterward, were forced into Far West, Missouri. In the spring of 1839, directed by a cousin, Heber C. Kimball, they left for the state of Illinois where they helped to build the city of Nauvoo. When the family was forced out of Nauvoo by mobs in 1846, they regrouped in Iowa, in a place that later became known as Bullock Grove.

On June 20, 1852, most of the Bullock clan headed for Utah Valley, including Mary Ann’s brother, Isaac, who was in charge of the company, as well as both of her parents. She would never see her parents alive again. Mary Ann moved to Kansas City. Her father, Benjamin, took ill from cholera on the trail and died and was buried without a coffin on the banks of the Platte River. Her mother, Dorothy, died just short of her first year in Utah before Mary Ann finally arrived there.

In Utah, Mary Ann met and married Jesse Thompson Hartley, a “Gentile” attorney from Oregon. Jesse was evidently denounced by Brigham Young in a conference in Salt Lake. Sometime shortly afterward, he was shot in the back of the head while riding horseback across a stream in East Canyon by the notorious Wild Bill Hickman, Brigham’s so-called “Destroying Angel.” Hickman claims to have murdered Hartley at the behest of Apostle Orson Hyde. Several separate accounts of this incident have been published, including one in Hickman’s own autobiography and one in Fifteen Years Among the Mormons by Mary Ettie V. Smith. At the time of her husband’s death, Mary Ann was pregnant with the couple’s first child, whom she named Jesse Jr., in his honor. He died nine months after he was born.

In a state of bereavement, Mary Ann agreed to go to Fort Supply, Wyoming with her brother, Captain Isaac Bullock, who had been called by Brigham Young to establish a Mormon trading post and ferry for the purposes of immigration. While there, she met and married Benjamin Morgan Roberts. The couple had their first child, Benjamin Morgan Roberts, Jr., my second great grandfather, while still in Wyoming.

BENJAMIN MORGAN ROBERTS
15 Jan 1827 – 7 Aug 1891

Benjamin is my third great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s side. He was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the sixth of seven children of Samuel Roberts, Jr. and Sarah Lamar. His father, Samuel, died when he was just two years old and his mother, Sarah, died when he was only four. The family was then split up and raised by the Society of Friends or Quakers. From them, young Benjamin learned to read the Bible and to write. He also apprenticed as a wheel-right.

In 1840, when he was just thirteen, young Benjamin came across a pamphlet in Philadelphia about the Mormons. He went to the address listed in the brochure to learn more about this nascent religion. Evidently, he couldn’t tell his Quaker family about his interest in Mormonism so legend has it that he would quietly sneak out of the house to attend Mormon services after everyone had gone to bed.

After learning more about the Mormons, Benjamin decided to travel to Nauvoo, to hear directly from their prophet Joseph Smith Jr. Benjamin was baptized in July of 1840 in Nauvoo on the bank of the Mississippi River.

Benjamin and his adopted family, the Yardsleys, were eventually driven out of Nauvoo by anti-Mormon mobs and on June 30, 1846, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Benjamin joined the U.S. Army and became part of 500 Mormon infantrymen, later known as the Mormon Battalion, who enlisted to help defend America’s southern borders during the U.S.-Mexican War.

Benjamin took sick during the march to Santa Fe and was sent to winter in Pueblo, Colorado. Afterward, he resumed his journey westward and was one of thirteen men who came across Brigham Young and the original pioneers on July 4, 1847, in what is now Green River, Wyoming.

The Battalion men entered Utah Valley on July 29, 1847 and immediately commenced building the Bowery, the first meeting house in Utah, and a fort where Pioneer Park now stands.

In 1855, Benjamin was called on a mission to the Shoshone Indians in Fort Supply, Wyoming. While in Wyoming, he met and married Mary Ann “Polly” Bullock, the sister of Captain Isaac Bullock. Their first son, Benjamin Morgan Roberts Jr., my second great grandfather, was born on 12 Aug 1857.

ESTHER “ELIZABETH” YARDLEY THURMAN MILNER
24 Jan 1825 – 29 Sept 1911

Esther is my third great grandmother on my mother’s mother’s side. She was born in Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwick, England. She was the oldest of thirteen children born to Thomas and Mary Rose Yardley and learned early on how to help her mother with the duties of raising a large family, becoming a good cook and pitching in with the housekeeping. While still a teenager, Esther moved to Birmingham to run her uncle’s household.

In Birmingham, she met Thomas Edward Thurman. The young couple married on 6 Nov 1848. The two had heard of the Mormons through visiting missionaries and agreed to attend their services. Legend has it that when Esther heard the hymn “O My Father”, she immediately formed a testimony for the truthfulness of the Mormon church. Esther and Thomas were both baptized on 7 Mar 1849.

The couple had two children, a boy and a girl, but their daughter died just a few weeks after she was born. Shortly after, Thomas himself died of tuberculosis. Esther, forced to make her own way, opened a pastry shop and ran a boarding house. One of her customers was Charles Dickens, who was said to have later portrayed her as a pleasant and plump matron of an inn in one of his novels.

A few years later, on 5 Feb 1853, Esther and her son left England aboard The Jersey and, six weeks later, they arrived in New Orleans, before making their way north to Keokuk, Iowa, a staging ground for immigrant Mormon pioneers. Here, Esther outfitted herself with a riding horse and a cow for milking. It is said she walked the whole way across the plains so her son and others could ride the horse.

While on the journey toward the Utah Valley, she met John Brewitt Milner. The couple married the following spring and settled in Provo, Utah.

They had seven children, including one daughter who died in infancy. Their fourth daughter, Sarah Ann Milner, my second great grandmother, was born on 29 May 1862 in Provo, Utah.