Family Activities in the 1870’s in the Eleventh Ward

On April 12, 1870, not long after the family moved into the new home, another son was born to Eliza and Charles. He was John Henry West, but only lived a few hours. This was a great disappointment but Caroline West Wright, their oldest daughter, gave birth to a son about the same time and their new grandson, Charlie, was a comforting and joyous compensation.

There were important activities in the family during the early 1870's. Charles found time to work on the Tabernacle and the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. This paid the debt he owed to the Perpetual Emigration Fund. Meanwhile he had joined the Tabernacle Choir. Brother Sanders was the leader. Because grandfather's clothes were a little shabby, he stayed away several Sundays. Finally he made up his mind to go because he said, “It was not my clothes but my voice that was needed.” It was a good thing he finally gained

courage to go back, otherwise he would not have heard of an opening for a clerk in the Knowlden Grain Company on Main Street. He applied for the position and obtained it at a salary of forty dollars a month. He worked for this company several years and enjoyed it very much.

About this time, Thomas went to work for a Salt Lake butcher named George Chandler as teamster. His work came to an end when he was kicked by a mule. The doctor said he could not recover. Once more through the faith and prayers of a family and after a long illness he got better. Thomas now however, turned his attention to other kinds of work and finally became a plasterer. While Thomas was working for George Chandler, Jabez went along to see the slaughterhouse. He became so fascinated watching the men at work with the meat that he returned again and again, doing odd jobs to make himself useful as an errand boy. The

men would reward him by giving him left over pieces of meat to take home. Jabez was so well liked that he was finally given employment in the meat market. (For Jabez this was the beginning of a very successful and prosperous career in the meat business.)

On June 7,1872 another daughter was born to the West family. How happy Eliza and Charles were to have a little daughter after having lost two other little girls. She was named Fannie Elizabeth. When about five months old she developed a swelling in her neck. The doctor looked at it and said it should be lanced. He did this but she got no better and died November 29,1872.

A few months previous to little Fannie's death, Charles and Eliza welcomed Eliza's sister Mary Ann, Charles Denny, her husband and four of their thirteen children to the valley. They had come on the Emigration train. Some of the older children in this family were already in Utah. Some had died and were buried in England. However, one son remained in England. It being a holiday, July 24, when the newcomers arrived Grandfather took them to the nearest saloon to have a glass of beer. This quite astonished Eliza's sister,

Mary Ann, because she thought that in Salt Lake City (Zion) there could be nothing of this kind. Grandfather told her that it was only done out of good feeling and that they did not make a practice of visiting such places. They then took the streetcar to the home of Mary Ann's son, Charlie, who lived in the Eleventh Ward. The reunited family had a good time chatting over days gone by.

Not long before Charles' and Eliza's youngest child was born, brown eyed, vivacious Annie became the bride of Joseph Neville, a tall, handsome cornet player. They were married in the Endowment House May 5, 1873.

On August 29, 1873 Eliza gave birth to her eleventh and last child, William Joseph. He was such a frail baby and his mother in such a weakened condition because of childbirth, that she couldn't nurse him. Caroline came to her mother's rescue. She had had a son born to her about the same time but he had died soon after birth, so she nursed her own tiny brother to health.

Mary Ann Denny, Eliza's sister, had been having some unfortunate marital troubles. In England she and her husband, Charles, had been having difficulty but it became intensified in Utah. She wanted to take her to the Endowment House to be married to him for time and eternity, but he would not listen to her. Instead of living an upright life he took to drinking. Finally Mary Ann got a divorce. Later, with the consent and advise of

her sister Eliza, Mary Ann was married and sealed to Charles Henry John West the 23rd. of August 1874.

On a lot east of the city that Mary Ann's son Charles had given his mother, Brother Leaker, Jabez Dangerfield and Grandfather built a home for Mary Ann. Referring to the house Charles said, “We went to work and dug out a building spot and got up one good room, one half dug out also.” Later Charles rented a place for them on the same block on which he had his own home. It was a time of great adjustment for both families, what with the added strain of more people to feed and clothe, but Charles said, “I did the best I could with my means in looking after the family, -- also I divided up my time according to what I thought was

right.”

Eliza was helpful and understanding and did her best to help. One fall she dried nearly three hundred pounds of apricots and peaches, which she sold to buy Charles a new suit. Mary Ann worked at the Holy Cross hospital and with her savings bought a lot from her son-in-law, Joseph Taylor, near the hospital on Eleventh East between First South and South Temple. Charles with some assistance from Mary Ann's son, Charles, built her a home.

Another marriage occurred in the West family in the very late fall. Thomas was married to lovely young Margaret Felt, the eldest daughter of N. H. Felt, the 10th of November 1874 in the Endowment House. Thomas already had a home for her, which he had built on a portion of his father’s, land which the latter had given him. Mary Ann's youngest child Arthur, who was fond of Charles, died the 29th of August 1875. This caused them great unhappiness because they loved the boy so. An important event occurred on the 27th of October 1875. Charles became a citizen of the United States and received his final papers.

During the next five years, the family of Charles Henry John were growing up and scattering in many directions. In the year 1880, ten years after the family had moved to the Eleventh Ward, we find them engaged in the following pursuits. Charles was still working in the grain business, only now his employer's name was Thomas C. Armstrong. Caroline, now a widow with several children, had moved to Peoa, Summit County. Thomas, who had followed the business of plasterer, sold his home in Salt Lake and with

his wife and family moved to Round Valley, Morgan, Utah where he took charge of a piece of his father-in-law's land. Annie was a happy and contented wife and mother sharing her husband's interests wherever his work of making bricks and building houses led him, such as to Woodruff, Bountiful and Ogden. Eliza Alice, a baby in her mother's arms when they left England, was now a lovely young woman of eighteen. She married

her sweetheart, George H. Draper, in the Endowment House before the year was over, November 25, 1880. Jabez worked for William Peterson, a butcher on Market Row. But at the time of his marriage to beautiful Jessie Hoggan of the Eleventh Ward on the 20th of January 1881, he was working for Mr. Chandler.