Brought
to you by Ewing
Family Association.
John Fredrick Ewing's Family History (So Far)
John Fredrick Ewing (WestCoBoy49 at
sbcglobal dot net)
This is a
summary of information on my ancestors gathered primarily from
Internet sources. Especially useful were data from the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS Church), the Ewing Family
Association (previously Clan Ewing in America), and web
sites of the Carlsen, Raymond, Olney and Sam (Susanne) Behling
families. The lines investigated were those of my paternal
grandparents, Samuel Preston Ewing and Lana Marie Hansen, and my
maternal grandparents, Moroni Mac Olney and Eliza Beatrice Smith. My
personal recollections and photographs, correspondence with a few
relatives, and a handful of documents and photographs handed down
from my parents are my only original contributions to this history. I
am not a professional genealogist; all information on ancestors prior
to my grandparents is the work of others. For easy reading, this
history is told in narrative form. Sources are listed at the end of
the narrative.
Hansen
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I
never met my grandmother, Lana (Hansen) Ewing, because she died
seven years before I was born. I knew from my parents that she was
born in Denmark, but could not locate the town from information
provided by my cousin, Gordon J. 'Buck' Ewing. From the Raymond
family tree, I learned that she was known as Lana or Lena, but her
given name was Abelone Marie Hansen and she was born March 7,
1864, in Hatting, Vejle, Denmark. Her mother was Bertha Marie
Jorgensen and her father was Lars Hansen. Among my parents' papers
I found four yellowed pages from the Smithfield (Utah) Sentinel
datelined January 9, 1931, containing a front-page article: Lana
Ewing Laid to Rest. From it I learned that she suffered a
stroke on New Year's Day 1931 and died the next day. According to
this news story, she was born in Brakenborg, Denmark, and came to
America with her mother, sister and younger brother in 1872. An
older brother, Hans Hansen, had come to America a year or two
earlier. Her father remained in Denmark. The family settled in
Hyde Park, Utah, and later moved to Smithfield, Utah. Beginning at
age fifteen, she worked as a clerk and then a bookkeeper for
seventeen years. She married Samuel Preston Ewing in November
1897, at the age of thirty-three. Sam Ewing was thirty-one at the
time.
Grandmother Lana was a devout Mormon, as
verified by testimony of my late uncle Scott Preston Ewing. He
said she would spend the entire summer preaching Mormonism to him,
and, as a consequence, he acquired a lifelong disinterest in the
Church.
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Lana
Hansen about the time of her marriage to Samuel Preston Ewing in
1897
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Ewing
The farthest back I
could get with our Ewing line is a possible succession of three
William Ewings who lived in the vicinity of Stirling Castle,
Scotland, in the period 1580-1700. It is difficult to go further back
because of variant surname spellings (MacEwen, Ewen, Eweine, Yoeman,
Young etc.) and the choice of given names seems to have been very
narrow. There are simply too many Ewings named Robert, William,
Alexander, Thomas, James and John to be certain to any degree of
accuracy.
At the end of the
17th century many Scots could not write, and even if they could, most
records about them were made by clerks and other professionals.
Spelling, in any case, was not fixed. The plague struck Stirling in
the summer of 1606, wiping out 20-30% of the population. Disease, war
and famine took their toll on the continuity of life. Many written
records have been lost. So, in many respects, these earliest family
connections are very speculative.
A likely progenitor
is 'William Ewing in Raploch' as discussed in John Harrison's
Scotland research for Clan Ewing in America (1992). On
November 14, 1612, this William (who I subsequently refer to as
William1) and his wife Jonet Henderson (or Henryson) were
given formal legal title to some land in the Castlehill area of
Stirling. From this and other records, I speculate that William1
was probably born around 1570-80. Other records indicate William1
had a son Thomas, a son William2 and a daughter Jane who
married Andrew Jaffray in 1622. In 1629, William2, the
"eldest lawful son of William Ewing in Raploch," is heir to
the lands which his late father acquired in 1612. On October 9, 1629,
William2 signed this property over to Thomas. Nothing more
is known of William2 from the local records. After signing
over the Castlehill property to his brother, did he move out of the
area? Is he the father of the William3 Ewing who married
about 1648 and subsequently emigrated to Coleraine, Northern Ireland?
William3 was among the multitude of Protestant Scots,
including other Ewings, who went to Ireland to escape religious
persecution. Some records show he had three sons: Robert, Francis and
William4. The latter may have been born May 27, 1655, or
later, in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. William3 died
there in 1717. He had two wives, one of whom, Agnes Anderson, he
married in 1683. There were eight children total. One son, Nathaniel,
born 1692/93 of William3's first wife, married Rachel
Porter, a cousin born about 1706 in Ulster, Ireland. They were
married in Templemore, Londonderry, on March 2, 1721. Sometime
between 1723 and 1727, Nathaniel and Rachel, and their children then
born, emigrated to America accompanied by Nathaniel's half-brother
Joshua and Joshua's wife Jane Gillespie (born about 1700), members of
the Porter family, and William's half-sister Anne. Anne may have been
born on shipboard.
The Scots-Irish
descent of many Ewings did not involve intermarriage with the Irish.
Rather, in the period 1608-1618 perhaps thirty to forty thousand
Scottish protestants (mainly Covenanter Presbyterians) were induced
by the English crown to emigrate to the Ulster area in a bold
social-engineering plan designed to supplant (diffuse) the native
Catholic Irish. The leases granted by the crown were subject to
renewal. During the reign of James II, who joined the Roman Church
about 1670 and whose second wife Mary of Modena was a devout
Catholic, sentiments turned against the Presbyterian Scots in
Northern Ireland. The costs of renewing leases became exorbitant, and
many began emigrating to the colonies in the New World. In England,
James made enemies of the Anglican hierarchy, and in 1688 a group of
leading Englishmen invited William of Orange to bring an army and
assert the rights of his wife to succession. Within weeks, the army
and the public deserted James, and he fled to France. In 1688, he
joined with the Irish Catholics, but was soundly defeated in the
Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Many Scottish Protestants joined with
William in this battle, including a number of Ewings. Captain Findley
Ewing, born about 1650, was a decorated veteran and father of Thomas
Ewing Sr., who became the first American immigrant of a prominent
Ewing line in New Jersey. Some list Findley as the son of William
Ewing and Elizabeth Milford; others maintain he was the son of James
Ewing of Glasgow, Scotland, who was born about 1630, placing him
outside the direct line of my family.
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The
northern part of Little Britain Township in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, is shown in the second figure
(from
an atlas dated 1863). The residences of numerous Ewings and
Pattersons are highlighted.
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The Nathaniel Ewing
and his family mentioned above settled first in northern Maryland, on
the east side of the Susquehanna River in Cecil County, East
Nottingham Township, near the Pennsylvania border. They were pioneer
farmers. The area was afterward called Ewingville. The name is now
only historical; there is another community named Ewingville in
Maryland, on the east side of Chesapeake Bay.
Nathaniel and Rachel
Ewing had been married in Templemore (an Anglican parish) in
Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on March 2, 1721. They had a total of
nine children, including another William born about 1723 in Cecil
County, Maryland, or Little Britain, Pennsylvania. Nathaniel died in
Cecil County on September 6, 1748, but at least two children were
born in Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
which is about sixteen miles northwest of the historic Ewingville.
Rachel died December 30, 1771.
Joshua Ewing and his
wife Jane had six children, the first of which was Catherine 'Kitty'
Ewing, born about 1723 or 1725 in Cecil County, Maryland, or Little
Britain, Pennsylvania. Joshua died on August 16, 1753. About 1741,
Kitty married her half-brother William. There is evidence that
Nathaniel and Joshua had purchased 600 acres in 1728, and that 300
acres came down to William and Kitty. This land was on the north side
of Octoraro Creek, which puts it in Little Britain Township. The date
is not unreasonable since the area had been first surveyed in 1704.
The Ewings were now
firmly established in southeastern Pennsylvania. The line traced here
was present in Little Britain Township for four generations.
Historically, there were two public churches in the township, one
Quaker and one Presbyterian, the latter founded in 1732. The Ewings
were of course Presbyterians. William served as an officer in the
Revolutionary War and died intestate in 1785. William and Kitty
produced a child named – you guessed it – William Jr. on April
17, 1749. In 1777, he married Margaret Patterson, who was born on
July 18, 1746, in Little Britain. They had eight children, all but
one born in Little Britain.
The Patterson line
is also Scots-Irish and fits nicely into the historical outline of
Scottish emigration to Ireland in the 1600s and subsequently to the
colonies in the 1700s due to the persecutions by the Church of
England. The father of Margaret Patterson was James Patterson, born
in February 1720 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His father was
Arthur Patterson who died in 1763 or 1765 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
and was born in 1640 in Hillsborough, County Down, Ulster, Ireland.
Arthur's mother, Ann Knox, was born about 1640 in Scotland. Arthur
married Ann Scott in 1706 in County Antrim, Ireland.
William Ewing Jr.
died May 3, 1814, in Little Britain. His seventh child, Samuel Ewing
(born August 12, 1789) was a farmer and a blacksmith. On April 17,
1828, Samuel married Esther Shaffer who was born on September 8,
1804, also in Little Britain. Esther's ancestors can be traced back
to at least 1385 in Switzerland via the Bowman (or Buman) line.
Samuel and Esther
had ten children, all born in Little Britain. The last was James
Clark Ewing, born March 2, 1845. The seventh was my
great-grandfather, John Jackson Ewing, born on May 12, 1835.
The LDS Church had
been officially organized in New York state and the Book of Mormon
published in 1830. In the same year, missionaries were sent to other
states and to Indian reservations, and a movement to Kirtland, Ohio,
was planned. By 1833, members who had settled in Jackson County,
Missouri (a slave state), came into conflict with earlier settlers
because of their abolitionist views and were run out of the county.
About 1,200 died of exposure. Membership continued to grow in spite
of the opposition and the financial panic of 1837. Missions spread to
Canada and England. Missouri members were able to form their own
county in 1836, but there were further clashes and bloodshed. The
Mormons were forced out in 1838, and a new settlement was created in
Hancock County, Illinois. In 1840, the first of many groups of
converts began to arrive from Great Britain and Europe. Leaders
Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered in June 1844. The church did not
disintegrate, but additional mob violence led to a wintry exodus from
Illinois in 1846, and the trek to Utah began under the leadership of
Brigham Young.
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John
Jackson Ewing
Rebecca
Florence Smith
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It is not clear
when word reached the Presbyterians of Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, but Ewings from this region were among the very
earliest to cross the plains and arrive in Utah. In his personal
history, my great-grandfather John Jackson Ewing states that his
parents joined the LDS Church in 1844. The family left Little
Britain in 1846. His mother died sixteen miles south of Ft.
Laramie, Wyoming, on the Platte River on August 2, 1847. John
Jackson was twelve years old at the time. Brigham Young's Company
had entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847.
The Ewings arrived in Salt Lake on October 2, 1847, with the
Jededia M. Grant Company and were among the first to settle in
Provo and Lehi. John Jackson's father, Samuel, married Ann
Whitfield in 1852 and Susanna Behunin Smith in 1853, but neither
apparently produced children of their own. Samuel died on December
1, 1882, and is buried in the Old Provo City Cemetery.
John Jackson Ewing married Rebecca Florence
Smith on November 30, 1861, at Salt Lake City. Rebecca was born in
Selma, Alabama, on February 25, 1842. Her ancestors on the side of
her father, John Mitchell Smith, can be traced to North Carolina,
Texas and Tennessee; those of her mother, Maria Amanda Foscue, to
Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and England. The John
Mitchell Smith family had moved to San Antonio, Texas, and in 1849
joined the LDS Church. They set out for Utah in 1850, but father
John died en route at the Platte River Camp in Nebraska.
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In 1861, John and
Rebecca (Smith) Ewing came to Smithfield, Utah. Samuel Preston Ewing,
my grandfather, was born in Smithfield on November 4, 1866, the
fourth of fourteen children (the first three died at birth).
John and Rebecca had
each lost a parent on the trek west. John made two return trips part
way across the Plains to rescue stranded Companies and had some
harrowing encounters with hostile Indians. After settling down in
Smithfield, he helped build irrigation canals and canyon roads and
improved streets. He also served as City Marshal. As a farmer, he was
adept at caring for livestock and horses. During the 1880s and 1890s,
he developed a community salt enterprise. He died on August 22, 1914,
and Rebecca died on March 17, 1920.
My
middle name, 'Fredrick,' does not appear in the Ewing line until the
third child of John and Rebecca: Frederick Miles Ewing, born August
15, 1865. The name probably comes from the Smith side: Rebecca's
brother was Frederick Wickliff Smith, born March 11, 1846, in
Guadaloupe, Texas. He died on May 13, 1881, and may be buried in
Blackfoot, Idaho.
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I remember my
grandfather Samuel Preston Ewing from my parents' annual summer
trips from California to Utah. I remember attending his funeral in
1950. I have no memory of his character, but I do remember that he
was quite rotund in old age and wore his khaki trousers with
suspenders and the top button undone. This image was preserved in
a group photo (shown below) I found in the family album. Sam was a
farmer and dog breeder. After their marriage in 1897, Sam and Lana
had three children, all boys:
Scott Preston Ewing, born May 26, 1898, and
died January 20, 1973
Gordon Jackson Ewing, born May 4, 1902, and
died April 23, 1941
Matt Elmo Ewing (my father), born September
25, 1905, and died April 4, 1980
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Samuel
Preston Ewing, 1888
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The
three sons of Samuel Preston and Lana Ewing – (L to R) Scott
Preston, Gordon Jackson and Matt Elmo – in front of the family
home in Smithfield, Utah.
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Top
right, in the suspenders, is Sam Ewing. To his right are my
father and mother, Matt and Frances Ewing. To their right is
Scott Preston Ewing, my father's older brother, then Gwen Ewing,
mother of Buck Ewing. Next is Ireta Raymond, very short in the
rimmed hat. She is the wife of Clayton Raymond, the son of
Cordelia Ewing, one of Sam's sisters. (I suspect that Clayton was
the photographer.) Last to the left on the back row is Gordon
Jackson Ewing, my father's other brother, husband of Gwen and
father of Buck. In the front row, right to left, are: Buck Ewing,
Cleve Raymond, Samuel Paul Ewing (my brother), Rhonda Raymond,
Bud Raymond, and Barbara Raymond. All of the Raymonds in the
front row are children of Clayton and Ireta Raymond.
My
cousin, Gordon J. 'Buck' Ewing, was able to identify everyone in
this photo. He was born in the Samuel Ewing residence and his
parents built a home less than a block away after they married.
Buck spent a lot of time at Grandpa Ewing's house especially
after his father died.
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The 1900 census
lists Sam's occupation as bartender. I have not been able to confirm
this; I find it unlikely considering his wife's zealous Mormonism.
On the Cleve and
Anita Raymond family web site, which contains a biography of John
Jackson Ewing, it is stated that the oldest son, Samuel, attended
Brigham Young College and became a school teacher. The next son,
Jackson Elmer, went to the Butte, Montana, mines as a young man and
never returned to Smithfield. The next son, Wickliff Anderson, became
well-to-do in the cattle business and horse trading. Samuel died on
May 19, 1950, at Smithfield, Utah.
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Cordelia
Jane Ewing, daughter of John Jackson and Rebecca Florence (Smith)
Ewing. She married Alma Raymond in 1892 and was the mother of six
children.
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Rose
Ellen Phillipa Pitcher. She married Erle Ewing in 1900 and was the
mother of six of his children. She later married Alma Raymond in
1918 and was the mother of three of his children.
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Samuel Preston Ewing's sister, Cordelia Jane
Ewing (born August 14, 1873, in Smithfield) married Alma Raymond
on April 14, 1892. A younger brother, Erle Ewing (born February
18, 1877) married Rose Ellen Phillipa Pitcher on January 16, 1900.
After Cordelia died in 1913, Alma Raymond married Rose Ellen
Phillipa Pitcher Ewing on May 2, 1918. As shown in the following
discussion of my mother's ancestors, this was not an uncommon
practice.[1]
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Olney
The Olneys beat the
Ewings to America by almost a hundred years. Like the Smiths, the
Olney side of the family came from England.
Thomas Olney was
born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1600. On September 16, 1629, he
married Marie Ashton, daughter of John Ashton, at St. Albans Abbey,
Hertfordshire. His wife was baptized on August 25, 1605, at St.
Albans. Thomas was a shoemaker by trade. In April 1635, he and his
wife and their two sons (Thomas, age three, and Epenetus, age one)
set sail for the New World on the ship Planter and arrived in
Boston on June 7, 1635. They settled in Salem, Massachusetts, where
their third son, Nebediah, was baptized on August 27, 1637. In that
same year, Thomas was appointed to serve as a juror to hear cases
before the Essex Quarterly Courts. He was also appointed Surveyor and
was made a freeman and granted three acres of land from the town of
Salem. In 1638, the family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where
Thomas was a signer of the first compact. He was one of twelve
persons to whom Roger Williams deeded land which had been purchased
from the Indians. Thomas was the first Treasurer for the town of
Providence and also served as Court Assistant, Town Councilman, and
Clerk. He served as Commissioner of Providence in 1656 and 1662 and
was named Justice of the Peace and Tax Collector several times. He
was also a land surveyor and a major player in the controversy over
the boundaries between Rhode Island and her sister colonies,
Connecticut and Massachusetts. He was one of the original members of
the first Baptist church in America which was founded in Providence
with the assistance of Roger Williams in 1639. About 1653, a second
congregation was formed, and Thomas became a lay pastor for this
smaller group until his death in 1682.
The original
settlement of Providence by Roger Williams and his companions in 1637
was founded upon the basis of complete religious toleration. Like the
Olneys, Williams had first settled in Salem. As a theologian, he soon
fell out of favor with the ecclesiastical authorities and the
authorities of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for asserting, among
other things, that the civil power of a state could properly have no
jurisdiction over the consciences of men and that the crown could not
convey just title to the lands of the colonists, which should be
purchased from the rightful owners, the American Indians. For such
views he was tried and banished. He fled to Rhode Island. In 1638,
the Olneys were asked to leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony because
of their sympathies with the views of Roger Williams.
Thomas and Marie had
a total of seven children. Epenetus, one of the two sons born in
England, was appointed with others in 1662 to select the timber and
frame a bridge which was built over the Mashassuck River. He married
Mary Whipple of Dorchester, Massachusetts, on March 9, 1666. Though
not as prominent in public matters as his older brother, Epenetus
served as a member of the Colonial Assembly and the Town Council. He
resided in Providence all his life and also kept a tavern there. He
died on June 3, 1698.
The fifth child of
Epenetus and Mary was John Olney, born on October 24, 1678. John
married Rachel Coggeshall of Providence on August 11, 1699. He was a
blacksmith. They had nine children, some born in Providence and some
born in Smithfield, Rhode Island. Smithfield is about three miles
northwest of North Providence. The sixth child was another Nebediah,
born on February 10, 1714. About 1745, this Nebediah married Nancy or
Marcy Davis who was born about 1718 in Smithfield, Rhode Island. A
single child, Nebediah Jr., was born in 1744 or 1746 in Smithfield,
Rhode Island. While still a teenager, Nebediah Jr. went with his
father to New York state. In 1762-63, he was captured with forty-two
others by Indians and carried to the border of the Ohio River. All
were subjected to torture and all perished except young Nebediah
Olney Jr. and one other, who were adopted by the chief's wife. After
several years of captivity, they made their escape and found their
way back through the wilderness to their homes.
In 1773, Nebediah
Jr. married Susanna Mann, born in 1736 in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
Four children resulted from this marriage, all born in Smithfield,
Rhode Island. Nebediah Olney Jr. died on March 6, 1832, in Henrietta,
New York. Henrietta is just south of Rochester, which is situated on
the south shore of Lake Ontario, about 300 miles west of Rhode
Island.
The second son of
Nebediah Jr. and Susanna was Daniel Olney, born on July 2, 1776, in
Smithfield, Rhode Island. His first wife was Hannah Luce, but no
marriage date or children are shown in various records. His second
wife was Phebe Negus, born in 1777 in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
They were married about 1796 and had six children, the first being
Davis (or David) Mack Olney, who was born on February 24, 1797. In
one source, all six children are shown as born in Rutland, Jefferson
County, New York. In another, Davis is shown as born in Fairhaven,
Rutland County, Vermont. If you follow the shore of Lake Ontario east
and north, you come to Watertown, New York. Rutland is near
Watertown. There was a third wife, Sarah Smiley, born in Rutland
about 1774, by whom Daniel fathered another son, James B. Olney, born
in 1812. Daniel died August 7, 1845. in Henrietta, New York. Phebe
died in 1848. Daniel's occupation is unknown.
At the age of
thirty, Davis Mack Olney married Lucy Sally Downey on April 3, 1826,
in Johnstown, Leeds City District, Ontario, Canada. Lucy was born
March 31, 1804, in Sheldon, Vermont. Their first five children were
born in Ontario, Canada; three others were born in Nauvoo, Illinois,
between 1841 and 1845. The city of Nauvoo, on the east bank of the
Mississippi River, was founded by the Mormons following their 1838-39
mid-winter exodus from Missouri. A temple was built there, and a
university projected. Converts began to arrive from many places,
including all parts of the United Kingdom. For a time, Nauvoo was the
largest city in Illinois. Joseph Smith was Mayor. Internal
dissention, religious opposition, and fear of the growing political
power of the Mormons lead to the murder of Joseph Smith and his
brother Hyrum by an armed mob in 1844. The temple was burned, Mormons
were forced to evacuate Nauvoo in 1846, and the trek west began.
Davis Mack Olney's
life work was as a Mormon Priest, and his family's movements parallel
the Mormon movement at the time. His wife Lucy died on the way west
on August 20, 1846, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Davis married again in
1851-53, but there were no children from this second marriage. He
died on July 1, 1867, at the age of seventy-one in Cottonwood, Utah,
and is buried in Salt Lake City.
The fifth child of
Davis and Lucy Olney was Moroni Downey Olney, my great-grandfather,
who was born on November 15, 1837, in Burgess Township, Leeds,
Ontario, Canada. On June 30, 1861, he married Lovisa Hamilton in
Alpine, Utah. She was born in Mendon, Illinois, on September 25,
1837. She had married previously and had one child; her first husband
died in 1860. Lovisa and Moroni had ten children, all born within a
twenty five-mile radius of Salt Lake City. The third was Moroni Mac
Olney, my grandfather, who was born December 7, 1865, in Midway,
Wasatch County, Utah.
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Beatrice
(Smith) and Moroni 'Rone' Olney – 1906
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My
uncle Moroni Mack Olney in Smithfield, Utah, in 1952. He was the
only full sibling of my mother, Francis Olney Ewing.
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Moroni Mac Olney
married Alice Adelia Merrill on December 19, 1889. Alice was born
in Smithfield, Utah, on February 10, 1870. They had four children:
Ervin, Viva, Melba and Delilah 'Lial.' Alice died on March 9,
1902. On March 29, 1905, Moroni, who was known as 'Rone,' married
Eliza Beatrice Smith Weeks who was born in Brigham City on
September 29, 1874. This marriage produced two additional
children:
Frances Olney (my mother), born January 3,
1907, and died December 21, 1989
Moroni Mack Olney (my uncle), born May 2,
1908, and died September 18, 1956
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Beatrice (Smith) Olney already had three daughters — Venetta
Rae, Beatrice Anna, and Josie Henrietta — by a previous marriage
to Joseph Henry Weeks, who she married on August 15, 1894. Joseph
Henry Weeks was fatally injured in a Logan Canyon snow slide in
February 1899. After the death of Rone Olney on April 11, 1908,
and the birth of Mack in May 1908, Beatrice Olney took on the
responsibility for all the Olney offspring, bringing the total to
nine. On March 29, 1928, her youngest sister, Phosa Larsen, died,
leaving five minor children. Beatrice also took on the
responsibility for these children, and in 1929 she married her
brother-in-law, Rastus M. 'Rast' Larsen. Rast was born in Denmark
on April 18, 1878, and came to the U.S. at the age of six with his
parents Rasmus and Christina Madsen Larsen. In 1901, he married
Phosa Smith. He was a farmer and a carpenter. In 1936, he
developed a heart condition, and in 1943, he had to stop work
entirely. In 1945, he had a stroke which left him paralyzed. He
died on November 19, 1949.
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Beatrice
Larsen in 1953. Seated to her left is her daughter, Venetta Weeks
Bush of Ogden, Utah. They are surrounded by later generations of
the Bush family.
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In
addition to her family responsibilities and church work, Beatrice
appears to have been an astute business woman who also found time to
serve two terms as City Treasurer of Smithfield. She died on March 9,
1956, at the age of eighty-one. I met her at least twice. A quote
from her autobiography hints at her personality:
When beet harvest came and I had the winter
hats well along, the sugar factory sent a man to see if I would weigh
beets at the Rees pile, the largest on the line. Vern would be pile
boss and Jose could tare. We all went to work. Vern and his family
were moving here so Venetta could look after things. Vern's brother
came and was employed at the same pile. This was good pay and such an
easy job. I got along with the farmers so well that it seemed like a
good rest and I was still serving the public, only in a different
way.
Repeatedly they kept asking me to take the
office of City Treasurer. I had had it before, but refused it again
for different reasons. The biggest reason was that the office was in
your home and men felt it ok to come and pay their assessments at
night. One night when we got home from work, Bishop William L. Winn,
who was my brother-in-law, came in and said, "Tomorrow is
election day and at last you are going to be our treasurer."
"Oh, no" I said, "I know nothing about it, so there is
some mistake; for I don't want it." He laughed and said, "I'll
bet you a box of candy you will be." "Alright," I
said, "I'll bet you." The next morning every man who came
in to the beet pile congratulated me. On September 10 Melba, my
daughter, had just married a Hyde Park boy, Harvey Seamons, in the
Logan temple. He was a very nice young man and knowing that the
Benson Ward and Hyde Park families were very friendly and much
related, when Mr Rees came in with his load and congratulated me, I
said, "For being a good beet weigher, or because my daughter
married the Hyde Parker of her choice?" He laughed and said,
"Don't you know? It is election day and Smithfield is sure
pleased that you are to be their treasurer."
When we got home, Mr. Winn came in and
asked if we were not going to the polls. All that were 21 went: Vern,
Venetta and myself. When I went in to vote, I looked on the ballot
and saw my name. I looked to see who was my opponent, and saw my name
again. ...
The next night there were four of us in the
buggy and when we were coming to Depot Street, the Mayor, George
Miles, and City Marshal, John Hadfield, stopped us and said, "Here
are the books. See if you can do anything with them so as to get a
report for New Year's.[2]
Smith
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Perhaps the most prominent and polygamous
member of my Mormon family was Samuel Smith, father of Eliza
Beatrice Smith. Whereas my grandmother seems to have turned the
idea of Mormon polygamy on its head by having three husbands and
fourteen children, her father had five wives and fifty-two
children. In addition to his religious and paternal duties, he was
appointed Postmaster of Brigham City, Utah, in 1855 and served for
seventeen years. He was elected Probate Judge of Box Elder County
in 1859 and served for fifteen years. He was also Notary Public
for Box Elder County and a School Board Member. He was twice
elected Mayor of Brigham City, serving from 1879 to 1883. He was
Superintendent of Construction on the Utah Northern Railroad and
one of the company's Directors after its completion. He was also
involved in many business activities, including a woolen mill,
flour mill and co-op store. He died at the age of seventy-seven on
October 3, 1895, in Smithfield, Utah, at the home of his third
wife, Frances Ann. His funeral was held in the Box Elder
Tabernacle with Lorenzo Snow the principal speaker. He is buried
in the Brigham City Cemetery.
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My
great-grandfather Samuel Smith
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Samuel Smith, the
son of Daniel William Smith and Sarah (Wooding) Smith, was born on
May 22, 1818, in Sherington, Buckinghamshire, England, and was
baptized into the Church of England. He was the second son in a
family of twelve children. He married Mary Ann Line in Hemel
Hempstead, Hertford, England, on October 12, 1837, moved to London in
1838, and was baptized into the LDS Church on December 26, 1841, by a
proselytizing American missionary named Lorenzo Snow. Snow later
became the fifth President of the Mormon Church. Smith sailed from
Liverpool with his parents and family on the ship Swanton on
January 15, 1843, arriving at New Orleans on March 16, 1843. The
Swanton was the nineteenth shipload of LDS Church converts to
leave England for America.
The 212 people
aboard the Swanton included Lorenzo Snow and the Richard
Griffith family, the latter being responsible for bringing the
orphaned Sarah Jane Ingraham and Frances Ann Ingraham to Utah. Sarah
Jane was later to become Samuel's second wife and Frances Ann
his third. They were daughters of Susanna Griffith and her
second husband William Ingraham who sailed for America with other
relatives on March 20, 1843, on the ship Yorkshire.
From New Orleans the
Smith family and others boarded the river boat Amaranth
for the thousand-mile journey up the Mississippi River to Nauvoo,
Illinois, the Mormon colony on the east bank of the Mississippi
River. Richard and Mary Griffith elected to stay in New Orleans to
await the arrival of the Yorkshire carrying
other members of their family. Unfortunately, William and Susannah
contracted black measles and died shortly after reaching America,
leaving five children to the mercy of relatives and friends. The
three smaller children, Richard, Sarah Jane and Frances Ann were
taken in by the Griffiths for about five years. About a year after
arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, Richard Griffith got the
'gold fever' and went to California, leaving the three children
homeless again.
Daniel Smith died in
Nauvoo on the 10th or 16th of September 1845 at
age fifty-three. Two of Samuel's children had died in England and two
more died at Nauvoo. He and his remaining family were driven out of
Nauvoo in the Spring of 1846. They relocated to Iowa where Samuel
found work. His family moved on to Mt. Pisgah (near present-day
Creston, Iowa) with Lorenzo Snow and others. Many died there,
including two more of Samuel's children.
The remaining Smith
family came to Utah in 1850 with the Aaron Johnson Company, arriving
at Salt Lake City in September. In April 1855, Smith was called to
Brigham City, Box Elder County, where he was appointed counselor to
Lorenzo Snow, a position he held for twenty-two years.
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My
great-grandmother Frances Ann (Ingraham) Smith, the third wife of
Samuel Smith
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Smith was a small but energetic man, not over
five feet tall. He is said to have been of a humorous and loving
disposition. He had ten children by his first wife, Mary Ann Line;
nine by his second wife, Sarah Jane Ingraham; thirteen by his
third wife, Frances Ann Ingraham (my great-grandmother); eight by
his fourth, Janett Maria Smith; and twelve by his fifth, Caroline
Smith. Details of these many marriages are shown below. My
grandmother Eliza Beatrice was the ninth child of his third wife,
Frances Ann Ingraham.
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Polygamy had been
practiced by Joseph Smith and others in Illinois and had been
perpetuated by the founders of Utah. Those who did so believed it to
be a religious principle. Congress passed a law prohibiting polygamy
in 1862, and other laws followed. Vigorous prosecutions were carried
out in Utah, Idaho and Arizona. Men and women were fined and
imprisoned, and certain church leaders driven into exile. The laws
were questioned because it was thought they were an infringement upon
religious liberty as guaranteed in the constitution. The Supreme
Court affirmed the constitutionality of the laws in 1890, and the
president of the LDS Church issued a manifesto, which was sustained
by the general conference of the church, and the sanction of plural
marriage was withdrawn. Today, the penalty would be excommunication.
Polygamy had been practiced at certain periods in biblical times,
righteously and with divine sanction, and those who entered into it
in the 19th century did so with a conviction that it was also
sanctioned for them. The church does not apologize for its practice
in the past.
Samuel Smith and his
first wife Mary Ann were fully convinced that plural marriage was a
true principle. Mary Ann helped train the other four wives in the
management of a home and the care of young children, and there was no
marriage relationship until each was installed in her own home. In
1874, the Smiths lost a total of seven children, and Sam contracted
rheumatic fever. He was also arrested under the anti-polygamy laws
and spent a short time in jail. In 1882, the passage of the Edmunds
Act forbade those engaged in plural marriage to hold elective or
appointive office at the federal level. A special Postal Agent was
dispatched to Brigham City to induce Smith to give up polygamy so
that his job as Postmaster would be secure. Smith refused and as a
result lost the job. Upon his death, each wife had a good home and
farm land, as well as cash in the bank equivalent to the price of the
farm; each was also given stock in the woolen mills, flour mill and
co-op. Plural marriage as practiced at that time, openly and with the
sanction of the local community and the church, does not seem to have
much in common with present-day instances that occasionally appear in
the news.
My Parents: Matt Elmo
Ewing and Frances Olney
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Graduation
photos (North Cache High School, Richmond, Utah) of Matt Elmo and
Frances (Olney) Ewing
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Born just fifteen months apart, Matt Elmo
Ewing[3]
and Frances Olney lived in households only a few blocks apart
in Smithfield, Utah. They both graduated from North Cache High
School, and they married on December 23, 1925. My father attended
Utah State Agricultural College (now named Utah State
University) in Logan, Utah, where he received his degree in
Irrigation Engineering (now Civil Engineering) in 1927. During at
least those years (1925-27) they lived in a humble cottage —
shown below — located on the property of Samuel Preston and Lana
Ewing. After graduation, Matt began work with the U.S. Department
of Agriculture and various other federal agencies, including the
Bureau of Public Roads and Biological Survey. It was the Great
Depression and many of those jobs were sub-professional. Work took
him to Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, New Mexico and finally
California. No doubt it was on these trips that he learned to
drink, smoke and swear. Sometimes the family accompanied him,
and sometimes they remained behind. This meant a variety
of schools for the eldest son, Samuel Paul, who was born on March
29, 1927, in Smithfield. In California, Matt worked in King River
Canyon for the U.S. Forest Service, and in 1937, he joined the
U.S. Soil Conservation Service (SCS) at Placerville, California,
and remained there for ten years. SCS at that time was a division
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture providing farmers with sound
advice on land use practices and engineering services for the
construction of drainage, irrigation and water conservation.
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In
the photo on the left, my brother Paul is on the back of the
horse. The Samuel Ewing residence is in the background. In the
shadows to the left is the old house where my parents lived for a
time after Paul was born. The old house is gone, but the main
house remains, little changed as shown on the right in a 2008
photo taken by my grandniece Stacy Lee Green.
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I — John Fredrick
Ewing — was their second son, born in 1938.
Samuel Paul, my
brother, joined the Navy in 1944, and was later recalled during the
Korean conflict. He married Virginia Pimental in 1947 and raised
a family in Placerville, where he still resides. His wife died
July 9, 1993.
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John
Fredrick Ewing(Sebastopol, California) -- ~1958
|
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Samuel
Paul Ewing -- 1944
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Samuel
Paul's Wife, Virginia (Pimental) Ewing, with their first daughter,
Paula Jean -- 1951
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My parents and I
moved to Morgan Hill, California, for nine months, and then to
Sebastopol, California. My father became an SCS Supervising Engineer
for the North Coast counties, specializing in the design of large
farm reservoirs. He retired in 1970 after thirty-five years of
federal service. He died in Sebastopol on April 4, 1980, at the age
of seventy-four.
My mother, Frances
Ewing, was a homemaker. In addition, she had a keen interest in
crafts, particularly ceramics, embroidery, crocheting and other kinds
of needle work. During her youth in Utah, she worked in a movie
theater, accompanying silent films on the piano. She died December
21, 1989, just a few days short of her eight-third birthday.
In Conclusion
When I began working
on this history several years ago, I had a number of questions in
mind. Some have been answered, but of course many new questions arose
along the way. I delayed submitting this article to the Journal
until results came back from my participation in the Ewing Surname
Y-DNA Project on the off chance that I might have been left in a
basket on the hospital steps, or came into this world as the result
of a woodshed liaison. I am pleased to report that nothing I have
learned to date denies my Ewing heritage.
David Neal Ewing,
Administrator of the Ewing Surname Y-DNA Project, after taking a
first look at my results, has suggested that a descendancy from
Nathaniel Ewing and Rachel Porter is possible but unlikely. I have a
high level of confidence that my paternal line as presented here is
correct to the sixth generation (William Ewing and Margaret
Patterson). Beyond that, the lineage presented follows that of the
McNutt Family Association's online charts. The same line occurs in
numerous other online web sites. The extent to which these charts are
grounded in hard-nosed genealogical research is unknown. Perhaps the
similarities are based more on simple borrowing, one from another.
Sources
Ewing Family
Association (formerly
Clan Ewing in
America) web site:
www.EwingFamilyAssociation.org.
Ewing Family History web site
(maintained by Marilyn Price-Mitchell): www.SandCastles.net.
GenCircles search engine:
www.GenCircles.com.
Genealogical records prepared
by my cousin, Gordon J. 'Buck' Ewing of Las Cruces, New Mexico, for
the Genealogical Society of the LDS Church and my correspondence with
him.
Genealogies available at
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
for the Olney, Raymond, Carlsen and Sam (Susanne) Behling families,
the latter providing biographies of Roger Williams and Thomas Olney.
Lancaster County Genealogy web
site: www.pa-roots.com/lancaster
LDS Church Genealogy web site:
www.FamilySearch.com.
Material provided by the
Southern Lancaster County Historical Society, Quarryville,
Pennsylvania
McNutt Family Association
web site:
www.McNuttFamily.org.
– – – – –
–
Bradford, Kathleen.
Mayors of Brigham City,
1867 - 2000;
in particular the section Samuel
Smith, Third Mayor (1879-1883).
Book found in 2008 at the City Hall in Brigham City, Utah, by my
grandniece Stacy Green. Printed copy available at Mesa Arizona
Regional Family History Center (www.mesarfhc.org).
Esshom, Frank. Pioneers
and Prominent Men of Utah,
Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Co., Salt Lake City, Utah, 1913. Used
for information on Samuel Ewing (born 1803), John Jackson Ewing and
Rebecca Smith Ewing. Available for purchase from Archive CD Books USA
at www.ArchiveCDBooksUSA.com.
Ewing, Presley Kittredge and
Mary Ellen Ewing. The
Ewing Genealogy with Cognate Branches,
Self Published, 1919. A PDF electronic copy may be downloaded for
free from American Libraries at
www.archive.org/details/ewinggenealogywi00ewin.
Fife, Margaret Ewing (ed. James
R. McMichael). Ewing
in Early America,
Family History Publishers, Bountiful, Utah, 84101; in particular,
Chapter 12: William
Ewing (1749-1814).
Available online at www.EwingFamilyAssociation.org.
Fosgren, Esther Ann Smith.
History of Frances
Ann Ingraham Smith,
November 1962. Available online at
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rhutch/famhistory/d&ssmith/frances_ingram_history.html.
Harrison, John G. A Web of
Kinship, The Ewing Family In the Sterling Area In the 17th
Century, 1991. (Quoted in James R. McMichael's Origin of the
Ewing Name which is cited below.)
Larsen, Beatrice. The Life
of Beatrice Larsen, An Autobiography. Published privately by Don
O. and Josie Bush Carlsen in 1955. Signed copy in my possession.
Larsen, Elsie May. History
of Samuel Smith.
Available online at http://www.ancestry.com
McMichael, James R. Alexander
Ewing (1676/7-1738) and Descendants,
1999, in particular, Chapter 5: The
Descendants of William Ewing.
Available online at www.EwingFamilyAssociation.org.
McMichael, James R. Out
of Scotland and In Ireland, Some Early Ewing History.
Available online at www.EwingFamilyAssociation.org.
McMichael, James R. Origin
of the Ewing Name.
Available online at www.EwingFamilyAssociation.org.
Sanders-Mylius, Virginia. Ewing
Origins and History.
Available in the Southern Cousins web site:
http://OurSouthernCousins.com/ewing.html
Smith, Calvin N. The
History of Samuel Smith of
Sherington, England, His Five Wives and Their Posterity,
1988. Available online at:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rhutch/famhistory/d&ssmith/samuel_smith_history_long.html
– – – – –
–
Encyclopedia Britannica,
1958. Used for historical information on the Mormon Church and Roger
Williams.
John Jackson Ewing. A
Personal History: An item in Deseret News, Salt Lake City,
Utah, April 14, 1905.
The Scotch-Irish of Northern
Lancaster County, an
extract from H. M. J. Klein's 1926 Ph.D. Thesis posted at
www.horseshoe.cc/pennadutch/people/scotirish/scotrish.htm.
