Biography of Samuel Holt

[Transcribed from a typewritten copy by Paula Goodfellow August 2005, copy came from Stephanie Barksdull. No date or authors listed. Spelling, wording, grammar, etc. as in original]

            Samuel Holt left Liverpool, England with his sife Salvia and two children on May 1, 1864. Having buried their infant child, Emma, before leaving Liverpool. They sailed on the McCellon, the trip taking 6 weeks to make. They landed in New York in the month of  June. They started their journey Westward with ox teams.

            Their little son Thomas died in Wyoming and his wife died later and he buried her at Sweet Water on the 19th of September. With his own hands he wove willows together and made a casket in which to bury his wife. He landed in Salt Lake in October 1864 with one little girl, Mary. He made a home for himself and daughter  with  Albert Carrington for the winter. He worked for Brother Carrington until 1865.

            In the month of April 1865 he married Rhoda Bowhey, who had travelled from Liverpool in the same company. On the 1st of April, he started to work for Brigham Young as his coachman. In 1867 he  was sent to St. George to assist in putting telegraph poles. In 1868, in company with Willard Young, he took horses for wintering. They  wintered the horses at Cedar Springs for Brigham Young.

            He was overseer of the Forest Farm for four years  and in 1872, he was called to come to Cache Valley to take charge of the Brigham Young Farm. This position he held until the death of  President Young.

            At this time his home for his family was in Logan. In the year of 1883, he built a home at Millville for his family, and engaged in the pursuit of farming for himself.  While in this place, he emigrated nine members of his father’s family.

            In August 1897 he went to his native land, England, in search of genealogy. While there, his health failed  him on account of the damp climate and he was obliged to return to Utah. he returned in January 1878 [sic].

            From this illness he never fully recovered, and in September 1900 he sold his farm and built a home in the Sixth Ward of Logan. He was  appointed Watermaster and Street Supervisor for Logan City, and while in this position the boulevard was laid and the trees were planted under his supervision.

            The remainder of his days were spent in doing work for the dead in the Logan Temple.

            On September 16, 1909 he hauled fifty bushels of wheat from his son, Joseph’s farm at Clarkston, Utah, a distance 28 miles, and unloaded the wheat in the Central Mills at Logan, Utah. After sun down,  and went home and cared for his team.

            The sleep of the Righteous is sweet. He went to bed at 8:30 and fell to sleep,  never to wake again in life.

            He is buried in the Logan Cemetary.

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Notes from Paula Goodfellow:

            Samuel’s first wife was named Selina, not Salvia. The son, Thomas, died in Wyoming, Nebraska, a temporary camp for people preparing to cross the plains.  The date given in old family group sheets for his death was 9 June 1864.  Selina died near the banks of the Sweetwater and was buried in Pacific Springs, Wyoming, according to the journal of another pioneer. He also verified that a child, no name given, died in camp on June 9 or 10 1864, the night that Thomas Holt probably died.
            I don’t have anything to back up the story about being Brigham Young’s coachman right now, but he did work for Brigham Young later, and since he was a coachman in England it doesn’t seem unlikely. Also, Albert Carrington was an early editor of the Deseret News and probably well-connected in Salt Lake City, so could have arranged the job. I wonder if there are account books in the LDS church archives, or the state historical society  for Brigham Young’s households and farms.

            Logan ward records show that Samuel and Rhoda’s second daughter, Francis Rhoda was born in January 1868 in Cedar Springs, Utah, so that backs up the story that Samuel was wintering horses at Cedar Springs then. (I had wondered why on earth she was born down there.) Cedar Springs was the old name for the present day town of Holden Utah, which is near the somewhat larger town of Fillmore (the first capitol city of Utah).

The family members who emigrated were his brother Joseph, Joseph’s wife and daughter, Samuel and Joseph’s mother, Mary Butler Holt and their sister, Emma and several of her children. I cannot find death information for Mary Butler Holt, as of August 2008. She probably died in Cache Valley, but I can't find record of it in any cemetery there.