SARAH SLUSSER NISONGER

 

 

SARAH  SLUSSER  NISONGER

     Sarah Slusser was born in Clear Creek, Warren County, Ohio, near Dayton, on April 26, 1812.  Her father’s name was Peter and her mother’s name was Mary Deam (Diehm) .  The Slusser family was large and included nine children.  They lived on a farm about seven miles from Dayton.  They had many cows, chickens, horses and were considered prosperous.  
    Near their home, was in a thick wood with many kinds of nuts.  There were walnuts and almonds that were gathered in for the winter.  They also raised popcorn and enjoyed apples and popcorn around the fireplace during the wintertime.  When they wanted turkey, they went into the woods and killed them, as they were wild.
    Sarah married Henry Nisonger on March 3, 1836 and from that time on she led an unsettled life.  When they were first married,  she went with her husband into the woods where he cut wood.  She cooked  for workers while they were thus employed.  It was about this time they met the Mormon Elders and immediately joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and where faithful members from that time forward.    
     Sarah and Henry had  nine children: David, born in 1837, Mary, born in 1840, Chester, born in 1841, Carmen, born in 1842, Airon, born in 1845, Sarah Jane, born in1846, Lydia Ellen, born in 1849, Phoebe, born in 1851 and Elisie, born in 1854.
    They moved to Saint Louis, Missouri where they were forced to live in a log house with several other families.  The children of the other families tormented her children all the time because they were Mormons.  Her husband couldn’t get work, so Sarah went to work at a shirt factory to help support the family.  They were planning to go to Utah so her husband took a contract to cut wood for the railroad.  This job lasted for two years.   She cooked for the men and cared for her family.  In this way they earned enough money to be able to travel to Utah.  Their outfit included two wagons and eight head of oxen.  One wagon was without a box and was loaned to a man by the name of Knox.  They got along with just the one wagon.
    They came west with the Milo Andrew’s Company and arrived in Ogden, Utah in the fall of 1856.  They rented their first home.  It was only one room which they shared with another family as it was hard to find a place to live.  The winter was long and cold.  It was very inconvenient as the children had whooping cough and one little girl died.  Henry was away working in the canyon a good part of the winter.
    Sarah joined the Relief Society while they were in Ogden.  On one occasion a neighbor had a baby and she had no pins for the baby’s clothing, so Sarah went to Relief Society and asked for pins which the sisters took from their own clothing and sent them to be used for the new baby.
    The next spring they moved to the bench where they rented a house for several years.  They bought a lot and started to build a dugout, but before it was finished her husband, Henry, was called to go to Echo Canyon to help keep the United States Army out of Utah.  Sarah and the children were left in an unfinished dugout.  Henry was gone all winter and the dugout was cold and leaked everywhere.  They were forced to sleep in wet beds a lot of the time.
    When Henry returned, they moved to Payson, Utah, where they lived in a brush shack in the southeast part of the city, for a short time.  They then moved to Camp Floyd where they lived for eighteen months.  Here Sarah washed clothes for the soldiers and baked pies and sold them.  They then moved to a ranch located at Pelican Point on the west side of Utah Lake.
    When Sarah wasn’t cooking, she cored wool, spun the yarn, and wove the thread into cloth to make clothes for her family.   She was alone with her two girls a lot of the time and it was ten miles from the nearest neighbor.  
    On one occasion, ten to fifteen Indians came along the road.  There were no Squaws or Papooses with them and Sarah was very frightened.  She put on a brave front and got out a large flint lock gun and put it on the loom where she was weaving.  The Indians came and saw the gun and started laughing and slapping their legs and talked in their own language.  Presently, her daughters came down off the hill where they had been tending sheep.  As they came near the house their dogs and the Indian’s dogs began to fight.   Sarah got up from her loom got a bucket of water and threw it at on the dogs causing the Indians to really laugh.  To the great relief of the family they soon left.  Sarah and her family went up into the hills that night and took the bedding from the dugout so if the Indians came back they wouldn’t find them.
    From the ranch at Pelican Point,  they moved to Goshen and from there to Santaquin.  Their first home in Santaquin was in the southeast end of town.   It was a one room log house.  Two of her children, Chester and Sarah Jane, were married there.  She continued to cord, spin, and weave.  A few years later Phoebe was married.   They moved to Diamond in the Tintic District.
    Sarah lived with her daughter Phoebe in Santaquin for the last two years of her life.  She passed away on April 2, 1900 at the age of 88.  She is buried in the Santaquin Cemetery.  Her husband Henry died November 27, 1872 in Salt Lake City, Utah where he is buried.

 

 

DAVID CROCKETT

 

 

 DAVID CROCKETT

    David Crockett was born on December 30, 1806 on one of the Fox Islands off the Atlantic coast of Maine.  The place is called Vinalhaven and is in Knox County.   The islands are covered with pine trees and the main industry is fishing.   James was the son of James Crockett and Elizabeth Breckett and the grandson of Isaac Crockett, who was also born on the island in 1746.   David married Lydia Young on December 20, 1830 when he was twenty-three years old.
    David was among the first people on the Eastern seaboard who accepted the gospel as taught by the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   The missionary who taught David and his family was Wilford Woodruff when he was on his first church mission;
    Wilford noted in his missionary journal about the receptiveness of the people and they had been able to convert the entire congregation after preaching to them, The Crocketts had been attending a church where the minister was Baptist.
    In 1847, the Crockett family had a strong desire to be associated with the main body of saints.  ,  So with a team and a wagon, they started for Nauvoo, Illinois.  They arrived there during October of 1841.   They had seven children at that time, the oldest, Alvin, was ten years old and the youngest Wilford Woodruff Crockett was only a few months old at the time.   The baby was three months old when they reached Nauvoo.   They became eye witnesses to and shared in the hardships that were endured prior to the great exodus to the west in 1846.
    During the entire winter during their stay in Nauvoo, the whole Crockett except for Alvin, was confined to their beds with the fever that was probably malaria.   Twelve-year-old Alvin took care of them as best he could.   He chopped wood in the nearby forest and brought t home in a wagon for  fuel to keep the family warm during the cold winter months.
    When the saints were driven from their home in Nauvoo, the Crockett family settled in Dover, Davis County, Iowa. They made their living by farming on shares until April 1849.   They then traveled to the Missouri River where they remained until July 4, 1849.   On that day, they left for the Great Salt Lake Valley with the Williard Richards Wagon Train Company.
    By this time, they had added three more children and they now had a total of ten children.   David William was just fifteen months old.   Lydia, who was now thirty-seven years old was pregnant while crossing the plains in the heat of the summer.
    David Crockett,  arrived in the Salt Lake Valley October 19, 1849, on the 18th birthday of his son, Alvin.  In 1851 he was sent by Brigham Young to help colonize the settlement at Peteetneet.  
    When they arrived, they were told that all of the land had been taken up that could be watered by the creek.  Disappointed, they and the David Fairbank family turned eastward and became the first settlers of Pond Town.
    Later, the people at Fort Peteetneet reconsidered and the Crocketts returned when more land was opened for settlement.  The city was incorporated January 1, 1853, and David Crockett was elected first mayor of Payson.  He served the term of 1853-54, and was reelected for two additional terms, 1855-56 and 1857-58.  He was later elected alderman and served the term of 1859-60.
    David's wife Lydia,  was a midwife.  The family moved to Logan about 1860, where Alvin Crockett became the first mayor of that city.
    The Payson City was incorporated on January 21, 1853 and the first Mayor elected in the new     city was David Crockett.   Payson had been  incorporated, through action of the Territorial Legislature of Utah.  The settlement then included Spring Lake Villa to the south and Summit (Santaquin) to the southwest.   He was elected immediately after the  incorporation of the city.   He served the term of 1853-1854.  Later, he was re-elected and served two additional terms, 1855-56 and 1857-58.  After this he served a term as alderman in 1859-60 and then moved his family to northern Utah.  His son, Alvin, became the first mayor of the City of Logan.  
    The year 1855 was ushered in with all the peace and prospects of a good life that one could expect in a new country with the people surrounded with tribes of Indians, almost shut out from the knowledge of the world, subject to plagues of insects, droughts and so on.
    The "Reformation" was faithfully preached into the first part of 1857, and its constantly burn¬ing fire finally began to make havoc in the ranks of the unbelievers.   The work was so successful that on March 16th of that year some 228 persons went down to Peteetneet Creek and were re-baptized in the icy waters that flowed from the snow banks in the canyon.  Public and private confessions of faults and sins were common and a very happy state of affairs existed.  Every man was inspired with a desire to do right, make restitution for injuries to others, and accept peace offerings from his neighbor.  Meetings were well attended and speakers spoke as men with authority.
    Immense quantities of grain were sown that year and a large harvest was reaped.  It is possible the Lord saw the humbleness of the people and rewarded them accordingly.
    Now word reached the settlers that James Buchanan, president of the United States, was sending an army to quell an uprising of the Mormons in Utah Territory.
    Because of the pressing need for doctors and midwives, a few Payson women went to Salt Lake City to take a course in obstetrics offered by the Relief Society.  Romania Hyde was instructor.  Those attending were Lucinda Patten, Mrs.  John (Sarah) Koonz and Mary Oberhansly
The colonists at Peteetneet (Payson) were among the first to use irrigation as a means of watering their crops.
    Only three years earlier, Brigham Young's pioneers of 1847 had been some of the first Anglo- Saxons to use irrigation in the North American continent.   So it was that when John C.  Searle plowed the first irrigation ditch in Payson, he was among the first in the New World to try this method of turning water onto arid lands.   Within a few months after their arrival, the first seventeen families believed the water supply too low to support additional settlers.  Thus it was that they directed newcomers to the springs three miles east of Peteetneet.
    The situation was serious, more settlers were coming into the colony almost every week, and the people began to look about for means of developing additional water.
    In 1854 Mayor David Crockett  and other city officials caused a dam to be built at the spring where Spring Lake Villa would be established three miles south of Payson.  Water could be stored in this man-made lake and used as needed.  It was channeled through what has always been known as Spring Creek and used to irrigate lands southwest of Payson..
    David married Lucinda Sophronia Ellsowrth Pierce I 1856, who was divorced from her prvious husband.   She was one of Payso’s first school teachers.   David's wife, Lydia, was a midwife.   They family moved to Logan about 1860, where his son, Alvin Crockett, became the first mayor of that city.
    David Crockett died on April 12, 1876, and Lydia died March 11, 1888,   Lucinda died December 11, 1915.  David and both of his wives are buried in the Logan City Cemetery.