Jemima Brown Rogers Updated Again

Several years ago I wrote about looking for my husband’s great-great grandmother Jemima Brown. We found several more interesting things about her since that time, and just last week my husband’s sister found a tintype in their grandmother’s papers that we think is Jemima before she went to Utah. My husband’s grandmother is one of Jemima’s granddaughters, named Emily Elizabeth Brown.

We thought we were going to find lots of things when we visited Bath, England, in the summer of 2012, but our search of area records in the Guildhall in Bath did not yield anything we didn’t already know. We have searched microfilms, we have searched on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, as well as Google maps. I’ll show you what we found as I recap Jemima’s life, but we are still left with some questions.

         Jemima’s christening record of April 24, 1803

Born 13 April 1803 in Erlestoke in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge, Jemima was the eldest child of Thomas and Jane Brown. She was christened 24 April 1803, as shown in the record here. Two younger brothers were born in 1805 and 1808, and then Thomas died when Jemima was still a little girl. Jemima’s mother, Jane, had two more sons out of wedlock and was probably struggling to make ends meet and keep her children fed. Then, when Jemima was 20, Jane married a second time. The marriage did not last—Jane kicked him out and resumed her first married name. She died two years later.

Thomas Brown christening record

Jemima, meanwhile, bore a son nine months after her mother’s second marriage, on December 27, 1824. She moved from the village to the nearby “big city” of Bath to have the baby, and then she took him home two months later to be christened Thomas Brown. Here is his christening record. Note that Jemima is a “spinster,” which specified at that time a woman who had never been married. People keep saying (perhaps starting with her grandson Nephi James Brown) that she had been married and had divorced her husband, but that is impossible considering the divorce laws of the time: only men could apply for divorce; divorce cost an enormous amount of money, far beyond what people in Jemima’s class could ever hope to pay, and it required a private Act of Parliament to get it finalized (essentially it was for extremely wealthy men of the nobility and aristocracy only); and a woman lost the legal right to keep her children if she were divorced. Jemima moved back to Bath where she seems to have been employed as a seamstress. Remember in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol how Bob Cratchit’s daughter Martha was home late for Christmas because she was working as a seamstress and they had to get the work done before they could go? It was a hard job, with very, very long hours, bad light, and little pay. If that were her job, Jemima worked extremely hard to be successful.

Jemima married when her boy Thomas was nine years old. She was living in the northern part of Bath, in the Walcot parish, and she married a carpenter named Francis Baker Rogers, who also lived in the same parish, on 2 June 1834. Here is their marriage record.

Jemima Brown and Francis Baker Rogers

Jemima and Frank seemed to have been happy together, based on family tradition. Of course, in this family some incorrect tradition was also passed down, but Jemima herself made sure to have Frank’s records added to hers after she arrived in Utah, to show that they were spouses. That argues for her having been happy with him.

1841 Census: Frank, Jemima, Thomas, and Eliz. Nash

Jemima and Frank had her son Thomas apprenticed to a cabinet maker. In 1841 they had a young woman living with them in Bath, besides Thomas. Notice that Thomas’s last name is given in the census as Browning and that his profession is Chair m—short for chair maker. The young woman listed below Thomas is 20-year-old Elizabeth Nash. Her surname was common in Jemima’s home village of Erlestoke, so perhaps she had arranged to live with somebody her family knew. You have to remember this name ten years later. (One item to explain about the 1841 Census: for some reason the officials decided to round down all the ages of people over 15 to the nearest multiple of 5, so if you were between 15 and 19, you were 15 on the census. This explains why both Jemima and Frank are 35 when actually Jemima would have been 37 or 38. Thomas is 15 instead of 16 or 17.)

They lived on Church Street, a very short street perpendicular to the great Bath Abbey on its south side. We have photographs of it from Google maps street view.


Looking in at Church Street from either end. (I said it was a short street.) On the left you're standing in the square across which is Bath Abbey. This is probably the end of the street where they lived.

Thomas grew up and completed his apprenticeship to become a cabinet maker. We know he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 21 April 1844 in Bath; he was 19 years old. The next autumn, Jemima and Frank also joined the Church. Jemima was baptized on 19 November 1844, and Frank was probably baptized the same day, but the records have become unclear (the online record shows he was baptized during his lifetime, but there is no date shown).

The young woman living with Jemima and Frank in 1841 was probably the one said by Jemima’s grandson Nephi James Brown to be the servant girl who got into trouble and gave her baby to Jemima and Frank to raise. In 1851 the census shows Jemima and Frank living in James Street, in the north part of Bath in the parish of Walcot where they were married. With them was a little girl named Elizabeth Naish, listed as a visitor. Lizzie wasn’t so much a visitor as a permanent fixture—she and Jemima would be together for over thirty more years. Lizzie had been born in September 1847, and the tintype we found shows her as a child of between 1 and 2 years of age, on Jemima’s lap. The image must have been made in 1848 or 1849 in Bath.

Jemima Brown Rogers and Lizzie Nash Rogers
about 1849

Frank, Jemima, and little Lizzie on the 1851 Census

From Google Maps images, this is the place on James Street
where the building they lived in must have stood in 1851.

Sadly for Jemima, Frank died 8 June 1854. Her son Thomas was probably already making plans to go to Utah, and perhaps she and Frank had been planning to go too. She decided she and Lizzie would go as soon as possible anyway. Thomas left in the late fall of 1854 aboard the Clara Wheeler. He ended up in St. Louis, working as a cabinet maker and sending money for his mother and adopted little sister to join him. He went with a wagon train across the Great Plains in the spring and summer of 1856, arriving in Salt Lake City in September.

During the same time, Jemima and Lizzie left England in the spring of 1856 aboard the Thornton. This record is the ship’s manifest, made upon their arrival in New York. Arriving in Iowa late in the season, they had to wait for handcarts to be built before their company could leave on its arduous journey, and those handcarts didn’t hold up well during the journey, delaying them again and again. They walked the thousands of miles across the Great Plains with the James G. Willie Company, and early in September the weather turned against their company and the ones after it. Frosts came, and then the frosts turned to severe blizzards in the middle of October. Their food ran out, and the delays proved fatal to many people. Jemima used all of their spare clothing to keep Lizzie warm, and she slept with the little girl on top of her to keep her out of the snow.

Jemima and Lizzie, winter 1857

Family members recounted that Jemima’s favorite expression was “Begad,” and during this journey, she told them, when the company was supposed to be singing “Come, Come Ye Saints,” with its chorus, “all is well, all is well,” she would sing under her breath, “Begad, all is bad!” Rescuers arrived in the nick of time, but they still had to slog through deep snow to a resting spot,  where they buried their dead and were fed and strengthened for a day. They still had to go on and get to Salt Lake City after that. With only a sunbonnet on her head, Jemima’s scalp froze, and all her hair eventually fell out, never to grow again. She wore lace caps the rest of her life.

This photograph was made probably within a few months of their arrival in Salt Lake City, judging by Lizzie's age. Jemima is so much more aged looking than she was in that tintype, taken about 8 years earlier, that the extreme hardship of the journey is apparent in what a toll it took on her health.

Jemima Brown Rogers in 1849 and 1857
(with Lizzie on the left)

In the same envelope with the tintype, we found a double negative for these two prints, the second of which was obviously taken the same time as the one above with young Lizzie. The contrast between the two images shows even more clearly how hard that journey must have been.

In Salt Lake City, Jemima and Lizzie lived with Thomas, who worked as a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker. In 1857 Thomas married a woman from a village near Erlestoke in England, Jane White. Jane’s brother, John, married a woman named Eliza Brown (no relation to Thomas) who came from the same group of villages. When John White died a number of years later, Thomas married Eliza Brown White, making her name Eliza Brown White Brown. This was a polygamous marriage for three years until Jane died. Thomas ended up with 19 children: his and Jane’s, Eliza’s and John’s, and his and Eliza’s. The youngest of his children was Nephi James Brown, who wrote about Jemima's life and made up, or passed along, a few traditions about her that have proven incorrect.

1860 U.S. Census, Salt Lake City

In Salt Lake City in 1860 the census taker found Jemima and Lizzie living in Thomas and Jane’s household, with the eldest of Jemima’s grandchildren, Louisa. Thomas was working for a cabinet maker in Salt Lake City and prospering in his profession. But his wife longed to move out of the city and join her brother and other kin in North Ogden, a farming community 40 miles or so to the north. In 1863 Jane prevailed upon Thomas to move to North Ogden. Jemima and Lizzie stayed in Salt Lake City. We do not know whether Jemima was working, whether Lizzie was working, or how exactly they supported themselves after Thomas and his family left.

The next year, in October 1864, 17-year-old Lizzie married James Sharp, a railroad man. The 1880 Census shows Jemima living with the Sharp family, which consisted of James and Lizzie and six of their children: Lizzie, Katie, Celia, Aggie, John, and Heber. On the day of the Census, little Celia had the measles. You have to wonder how difficult it was for Lizzie to do all the work of the household with that many small children—there was no maid living with them. With Jemima growing older and perhaps less able to do a lot of helpful work, Lizzie might have been feeling extremely pressured.

1880 U.S. Census, Salt Lake City

The Sharps had a family of ten children in all, and James became the Mayor of Salt Lake City in 1885. They were prosperous by then, living in a large house on Brigham Street (later called South Temple Street). At that time, Lizzie sent Jemima north to Thomas and his second wife, Eliza. Jemima never got over it. To her grandchildren she often recounted the blow, saying, “And then the beezum turned me out!” She blamed Lizzie for valuing the high life of important society more than her adoptive mother. It was a sad division.

Through a long life of incredible hardships, Jemima was strong-willed, courageous, determined to come out on top, and completely faithful to her chosen religion and to her family. She died 25 January 1890 in North Ogden and was buried in the Ben Lomond Cemetery in that community.

Jemima Brown Rogers gravestone
 (her birth year is wrong)

Report on a Very Distant Cousin

Cousin Clark figures in the first part of my ancestor John Andrews’ memoirs, four years older than John, who was adopted into the family when John was around five years old. From John’s descriptions of him, he seemed to be an agreeable companion, nice to his cousin, obedient to his aunt and uncle and very intelligent. I couldn’t find him on our family tree—but because John’s mother was a Butler and Clark was her nephew, he had to be Clark Butler. We don’t have much detail about her siblings, and I wondered where he fit in, so I jumped on Ancestry.com and looked up all the records I could find about him and his family.

Clark Allyn Butler was born in Posey County, Indiana, either the latter part of 1826 or the early part of 1827 (John says Clark is four years older, and the various censuses that record his age support a birth in the latter months of 1826 through early 1827). His parents were Marcus Butler, younger brother of Elizabeth (John’s mother), and Anna Allyn. Marcus Butler had been born in May 1794 in Heath, Franklin County, Massachusetts, one of the younger children of a very large family. Anna was the daughter of a couple who had moved to Indiana Territory, where Anna had been born about 1797. Anna and Marcus met in Posey County, Indiana, and married there on 20 December 1820. Their only child seems to have been Clark. Maybe there were miscarriages or other children who died young, but we don’t know. According to one researcher, Marcus wrote a will that was probated starting in February 1827, so he had died some time not too long before that. We don’t know if he lived to see Clark’s birth or not. Anna died about three years later, according to unconfirmed records, leaving little Clark an orphan.

John Andrews wrote about his cousin: “In my sixth year Father became guardian to a cousin, Clark Butler, 4 years my senior, and after a few years we pursued the same studies together.” This would have been about 1836; if Clark’s mother passed away some years previously, Clark must have been living with other relatives. Anna Allyn Butler may have lived longer than reported; perhaps Clark was orphaned at age 8 or 9 instead of age 3. They were in the same neighborhood, and as Clark’s aunt was Elizabeth Butler Andrews, and her husband, Anson Seeley Andrews, was known to be a generous man, it seems natural that Clark would have found a home with these close relatives. [Quotes and all specific descriptions come from Memoirs of John Andrews pp 3–6.]

Clark went to school with John at the neighborhood school in Farmersville. He seems to have been a good scholar; at least he got into no trouble that John recounted. The school burned down one night after a troubled meeting that had been called on account of a severe thrashing a boy had received at the hands of the schoolteacher. The teacher was fined, the school burned, and school after that was held in an empty house on the Andrews farm, and then in the church across the lane from the farm for a time. Mr Andrews, disapproving of the teacher’s methods, withdrew his nephew and son and sent them to the seminary in Mt Vernon, 3½ miles to the south, where they learned not only English grammar and rhetoric, but algebra, geometry, and Latin.

The boys started for school before 7 a.m. in good weather, and earlier on the days when it was their turn to sweep and make fires, which all the male students took turns doing. On those days Clark and John took turns going the extra half mile to get the key. In December they would find the stars shining still when they left for school, and if either of them had to stay late to finish schoolwork, the other would wait and they would get home after dark. Back at home they often found that Mother Andrews had hot, fresh cornbread waiting for them for a treat.

They learned farming in the summers from Mr Andrews and went to school in the winters, sometimes only for a three-month term if that was all that was available. They each stayed in school until they were past 20 years old, no doubt gaining an extensive and valuable education.

When Clark was 20, gold was discovered in California, and soon the Gold Rush was on, with a number of young men in the immediate vicinity determined to go and seek their fortunes. Clark decided to go too. In 1850 the census taker found him living in Placerville, California, one of the larger mining towns in El Dorado County, working as a miner. He had about $350 worth of real estate, the census reported, so he had apparently been successful enough in finding gold to buy property.

When Clark got home to Posey County, he worked for his relatives again, even though he had made good money in California. After Mr Andrews died in 1854, the farm was divided among John and his two younger siblings, Seth and Harriet. Their mother and Seth decided they wanted to sell and move to Wisconsin, so John and Harriet also sold their portions. Part of the farm was bought by one of Mr Andrews’ nephews, Anson Seeley Osborne, and Clark lived with him and his family and worked as a farm hand until he married.

Clark met Elzina (or Alzina) Black there in Posey County. Alzina was ten years younger than Clark, born in Posey County and probably not noticed by him until he came back from California. They were married 21 February 1861 in Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana. Clark soon bought a farm and they settled down to rearing a family in Black Township.

They had the following children, all born in Black Township, Posey County, Indiana:

• Jessie Belle Butler, born in August 1862; died 20 October 1907, age 45.
• Minnie Grace Butler, born in 1864 and died in 1865.
• Marcus Butler, born 31 August 1866; married Nettie Utley 24 June 1912; died 7 November 1945.
• John Black Butler, born in 1868; died in 1889.
• Margaret W (Maggie), born 21 February 1871; appeared on the 1880 census and died probably before 1890.
• Samuel Arthur Butler, born 3 October 1875; married Ida Bell French 15 January 1910; died 18 March 1932, age 56.

When the census taker came around in 1870, Clark and Elzina were living on their own farm in Posey County. Clark was 43 and Alzina 33. The farm and property’s worth was over $4500, so they were prospering. They had a daughter and two sons living then: Jessie Belle, Marcus, and John Black.

Ten years later the family had grown, but sadly for them all, in 1879 Alzina had died at the age of only 42. Jessie Belle, at age 17, was probably taking care of the younger children and keeping house for them all.

Clark continued to prosper in his farming; his daughter Jessie Belle kept house for him until he died, and his sons helped on the farm until Mark took it over. Sadly, John Black Butler died in 1889 at the age of 20 or 21.

Clark A Butler died on 8 January 1893 at home. His death is recorded in Book H-2 on page 35 of the record compiled by the Indiana Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. He was about 66 years old.

Jessie never married; she kept house for her brothers Mark and Arthur after their father died. The 1900 Census shows the three of them living together in the farmhouse in Black Township in Posey County where they had all been born. The brothers are farmers.

After Jessie Belle died in 1907, Arthur got married in January 1910 to Ida Belle French. The 1910 Census shows that Arthur and Ida Belle were living with Mark in the family farmhouse in Black Township. By 1920 Arthur and Ida Belle had their own home, with their two children, Eileen and Naurice, and Ida’s parents living with them. Their third child, a daughter, died young, and they had another daughter a few years later. Sadly, Arthur developed early-onset dementia, probably Alzheimer’s Disease, and died at age 56. He had done well enough that he and Ida Belle owned their own home free and clear when he died, and she was well provided for.

Marcus, who went by Mark, married Nettie Utley when he was 46 years old, on 24 June 1912. They had no children. He had developed his farm into a dairy farm and was very successful. Mark died when he was 79, of severe lung congestion, on 7th November 1945. Nettie died three years after Mark.

The family continues through the descendants of Samuel Arthur Butler.

Grand Loop Road from Yellowstone Lake to the Canyon

In early September we had just a day and a half to spend in Yellowstone National Park. The first day was our half day. The second day after spending some time exploring Upper Geyser Basin, we took the Grand Loop Road down to Yellowstone Lake. We were running out of daylight and really wanted to see the view from Artist Point before the sunset, so we stopped only very briefly here and there to take pictures, and we made it to Artist Point just in time. Here are some of the pictures we took of our drive.

Yellowstone Lake

Yellowstone Lake

Yellowstone Lake

Yellowstone Lake seems huge as you drive along the north shore and gaze out to a distant horizon of wooded shoreline. It is about 15 miles wide and 20 to 30 miles long with more than 100 miles of shoreline. The north shore that we drove along is fairly level for quite a ways after you get around the area known as West Thumb. After that level stretch, the lake extends northward again and the road curves up and along the Yellowstone River, the only outlet for the lake. The south section of the lake consists of two long arms (or fingers?), and the west side has a largish rounded extension that reminded early explorers of a thumb; hence the name West Thumb.

Turning north, we came to a place where we could get down to the banks
of the river. There was a fisherman up the stream a bit.

Yellowstone River, looking north, downstream

Me and my son

My son, looking for things to photograph . . .

. . . such as these flowers

The Yellowstone River flows northward into the Hayden Valley. We saw lots of bison (American buffalo) there.

You can just see Mt Washburn in the far distance

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Bison herd

Lower Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Looking through the trees upstream

Looking downstream into the setting sun

The yellow stone that gives the
Park its name: Yellowstone

The setting sunlight in the trees

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

July 1920

Laura Boedefeld and her prospective
son-in-law Fred Andrews, July 1920

My son, standing in his great-great grandmother's
and great-grandfather's positions of 99 years ago

That yellow stone again

It's a deep canyon!

103 years ago, Bee Boedefeld wrote about the trees stretching away
in the distance looking like a carpet that you could walk over

Late glow of the setting sun

Sunset over the Gibbon River

This is on the rim of the Yellowstone Caldera

The Path from Old Faithful to Geysers Camp

Old Faithful Inn - 1916

In 1916, Bee Boedefeld and her friends working for Wylie Camping Company in Yellowstone National Park walked from their home camp, Geysers, to Old Faithful Inn and back. They spoke of “crossing the formation”—meaning the fragile ground between thermal features—and this past summer I found that the old path they used is the same as the one where the boardwalk is now. I took the paved Continental Divide path, which is the old road that in 1916 the horse-drawn wagons and the few automobiles used, and where the bridge crosses the Firehole River next to Castle Geyser, I joined the path my grandmother traversed.

The Continental Divide path, which was the old road

Castle Geyser (right) and little Tortoise Shell Geyser (left)
The path across the river and along the base of the hills goes off to the left.

The boardwalk follows the same path as was here in 1916.

Crossing the Firehole River, looking back toward Geyser Hill

Crossing the Firehole River, looking forward toward the road

Looking to the left over my shoulder, there's South Scalloped Spring

The path loops around some thermal features next to the forest.
This is Spasmodic Geyser, delightful in its washing-machine rhythm.

Liberty Pool

Across the way and down the path, heading toward Turban Geyser,
right next to Grand Geyser. Turban is erupting.

Belgian Pool. I wonder how it got its name?

Heading toward more geysers.

Turban Geyser

Grand Geyser is very large

Turban slows down

Some brand-new thermal features are forming next to the path in this area

Economic Geyser on the right of the trail

Wave Pool, just beyond Economic Geyser

Beauty Pool

Explanations, naturally, would not have been here in 1916!

Chromatic Pool

Looking toward the location of the Wylie Geysers camp next to Giant

Coming back to the Firehole River on the way toward Geysers

Crossing the Firehole again

Looking upstream

Looking downstream

Oblong Geyser

The path to Giant Geyser

Giant Geyser in the distance

The view toward the hill where Geysers dance pavilion sat, and the
grounds where Daisy, Splendid, Comet, etc. are

That hill is where some of the tents of Geysers Camp sat

Giant Geyser, with Mastiff steaming to our left

I notice Riverside erupting just down the river from Giant

Grotto Geyser, which was just to the side of Geysers Camp

Grotto Geyser and its indicator geyser

Riverside, still erupting

Grotto Fountain, next to Grotto Geyser

A Golden Mantel Ground Squirrel decides to race

Full speed ahead!

Squirrel wins the race!

Spa Geyser, next to Grotto

Riverside Geyser

Riverside, said in 1916 to be very
romantic by moonlight!

View toward Biscuit Basin from Riverside

Back to Grotto Geyser

One of the clearings that used to house the Geysers Camp in 1916

The woods next to Grotto where the Geysers Camp buildings sat in 1916

The view of the path going around Grotto

The path toward Giant from Grotto

A hot pool between Grotto and Giant, looking toward the Firehole River

The field and woods where the Camp would have been

View to the south and west

In 1916, Bee Boedefeld and her friends called their tent the
“Deaux Drop Inn”

This is a three-part post. Click here for the first half day that we were able to spend in the Park. Click here for the final part, after we left Old Faithful Inn the second time.