The Faceby Saints left today

It's 14 February and so it's Valentine's Day – and on this day in 1855 a party of 28 people left the little North Yorkshire hamlet of Faceby.  

They didn't expect to see their old homes again.  They didn't expect to see their loved ones again.  They were "gathering to Zion".  They were Mormons – the members of the Faceby Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They would travel by steam train, sailing ship, river steamboat, prairie waggon and on foot and they were going all the way from Yorkshire to Utah.

For the remarkable story of the Faceby Saints, how they came to be Mormons, their gruelling journey and what happened to them in Utah, begin here with my blogpost of 2 November 2012.  It's called Mormons in Faceby: 1852-55.

Chapter 24. Epilogue

Three years after Mr Barlow's death, the Revd George Sanger's ministry came to an abrupt and unexpected end.

The new church at Carlton was opened by the Archdeacon in March 1879.  George Sanger had done much of the work himself – it was a magnificent undertaking.  Unfortunately, his relations with his parishioners were growing increasingly difficult. 

At three o'clock in the morning on 19 October 1881, the new church was destroyed by fire.

Soon it became apparent that some of his parishioners fervently believed that their vicar had destroyed his own church.  A long history of petty grievances and village gossip had apparently combined to produce a combustible mixture.

Mr Sanger was arrested in London on a charge of arson soon after his marriage to his young and allegedly pregnant housekeeper (who seems to have been the niece of James Stanger's wife).  The case was dismissed by the Stokesley magistrates in January 1882, but the public opinion in Carlton remained unrelenting. 

Nevertheless Mr Sanger entreated his parishioners to build a new church:

Money is not wanting in the parish, where one parishioner can boast of being able to command £70,000, and the united income of the wealthy landowners is not much less than £1m a year. 

Perhaps the distinct lack of tact may explain some of his past difficulties in dealing with his parishioners.

He was inhibited by the church authorities from taking services for five years on an ecclesiastical offence, but for many years afterwards much of the parish continued to ostracise the poor man.  While parishioners attended services at Faceby, Mr Sanger lived on in the vicarage, spending his time walking on the moors.  A reconciliation took place as he came to his deathbed in 1894.  According to Major Fairfax-Blakeborough,

some of those who have had time to hear all the evidence, and every insinuation, are confirmed in the certain opinion that the Rev Geo. Sangar had no part in the burning of his Church.  The mystery will probably never now be solved, though it is said the late Vicar himself could have explained it and that spleen was the motive. 

The case inspired the Middlesbrough-born writer, E W Hornung, creator of Raffles, the gentleman thief, to write a fictionalised version in his novel Peccavi  [1]. 

Chapter 18. The early 1850s

In 1851, some months after her marriage, Marian Digby Beste and her new family left the country.  They sailed for the United States in a large party consisting of eleven children (Beste's eldest son remained behind), several canary birds, a lapdog and a dormouse.  They hoped to find a better future for the boys in the new world. 

Back in Yorkshire, some of Mr Barlow's activities at this time can be traced in his notebooks, and particularly in the one that survived amongst the logbooks for the Hutton Rudby school.  In it he recorded
the beginning of what was to be a long-running boundary dispute with his neighbour, the tailor William Jackson, who lived in the cottage where Drumrauch Hall now stands:

The time when the hedge at the foot of Jackson paddock Jacque Barn was cut by my order and in my presence
after harvest    1850    by Ramshaw
after harvest    1851    by Thos Brown

Some jottings show his open-handedness in giving and lending money to his parishioners, as for example:

Teddy has paid towards his boots    0 – 6 – 7   Decr 27th 1851

Other entries include notes of the number of days worked for him by the Meynells, Hebron, "Joe" and Pat Cannon and details of the substantial sum of £309-19s he had made in 1854 on sales of crops grown on his glebe land.

The 1851 census found Robert Barlow and all his family together in the vicarage: his wife, his three sisters and his nephew Hector.

They had a very suitable complement of servants – cook, housemaid and groom – indicating a well-to-do middle-class household.  The cook and maid were two Hutton Rudby girls aged 20 and 17, Catherine and Elizabeth Bainbridge, and the groom was an Irish lad, John McLaughlin, aged 18.

Hector Vaughan was then 18 years old and must soon afterwards have begun his career in the army, entering the 1st Battalion 20th Foot (East Devonshire) Regiment [1].  At this time an army officer was generally expected to have a private income in addition to his pay.  Hector may have inherited money from his father's family, or possibly his mother passed on to him some of the income from his father's Will and her own marriage settlement.

For this census Mr Barlow gave his age as 47 and reduced his wife's age from nearly 70 to 45.  His two eldest sisters are described as aged 30 and 28 years old, while their younger sister Nanny has a mere fourteen years taken off her age, which is given as 36. 

Later arrivals join the Faceby Mormons in Utah

Family and friends had been left behind when the Faceby villagers left for America in 1855.  Some of them were able to make the journey themselves much later.

James and Isabella Stanger travel to Utah 1869

The home of James Stanger and his wife Isabella had been the centre of Mormon missionary activity in Faceby, but in 1855 when their three youngest children left for Utah, they stayed behind with their sons James and John.

James Stanger junior(1815-98), a farm labourer, had married Ann Elliott of Hutton Rudby in 1839.  Their eighth child, Henry, was baptised in Faceby in May 1855 - his uncles and aunt had, by then, arrived at Mormon Grove in Kansas Territory.  James and Ann did not become Mormons.  By 1861, James was farming 45 acres at Faceby on his own account, and within a few years he moved his family to Kirby Sigston, where he farmed 75 acres at Sigston Lodge.  From there he went to be at the bedside of the Revd Robert Barlow of Hutton Rudby during his last illness, and registered the death recording his relationship to Mr Barlow as 'cousin'.  He and his wife Ann are buried at Faceby.

By the time the Mormon missionaries arrived in Faceby, John Stanger (1819-98) and his wife Anna Winter were living about ten miles away, at Landmoth-with-Catto near Leake.  They were farming 100 acres at 'Marrigold Hill' (later Marigold Hall, and now Marigold Farm) - this had been Anna's father's farm.

In 1852, their daughter Isabella was born, and in 1854, Anna gave birth to Mary Ann. But within weeks, Anna was dead and John was left with two small children.  It seems very likely that his parents moved to Landmoth to help John after their younger children left for Utah.  Within weeks of the departure of the Faceby Saints, John's baby daughter also died.

The Faceby Mormons settle in Utah

Most of the Faceby villagers settled in Weber County, which lies between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake.  It had been the home of the Ute and the Shoshone, and was well-watered, said to have rich soil, winters not too severe for the area, and plenty of game.  The main settlement was Ogden, where many of the Faceby pioneers are buried. 

They lived through eventful times. 

Faceby Saints in Captain Ballantyne's Company: July to September 1855

The 4th Company was under Captain Richard Ballantyne.  He was 37 years old and Scottish by birth.  He had lived in America for many years and was now returning home from mission in India.

The 4th Company was a train of 46 waggons and 414 people, three horses and a mule.  To each waggon there were ten or eleven people, a yoke of oxen, and a yoke of young steers or cows.  Nearly all the people were funded by the Perpetual Emigration Fund.  They were therefore travelling comparatively light compared with the self-funding 2nd Company, as they were obliged to obey the P.E.F's baggage restrictions.  These were necessary to reduce the burden on the Fund of the expense of transporting goods across the plains.

In this company travelled:

• George Stanger, aged 22 (already secretly married to Mary Etherington)

• Thomas Stanger, aged 25, his wife Jane Wilson, and their toddler

• Jane Wilson’s brother Thomas

• Charles Hogg, aged 24, and his now very pregnant wife Ann Stanger, aged 27, and their son James, aged 2

The Company’s cattle were wild – the “wildest cattle that I had ever seen”, wrote George Mayer, Captain of a Ten.  He had to break them in by having them drag logs round the camp before they set off – and, he remembered,

“the teamsters were as wild and ignorant of oxen and how to yoke cattle as the oxen were, and I found I had my hands full.”

The Etherington family cross the Plains: June to September 1855

John and Elizabeth Etherington, aged 61 and 56, were travelling with four of their children: their two youngest, Thomas (19) and Mary (20); Elizabeth (28) and her husband John Pugh, with their toddler and six month old baby; and Ann (25) with her small son and new baby. 

Ann's husband Thomas Heslop had remained behind in Liverpool and Mary was keeping secret her marriage to George Stanger.

They travelled in the 2nd Company led by Captain Jacob Secrist, a 36 year old who was returning from mission in Germany.  The Captain of the First Ten was Osmyn Merritt Deuel, with whom they had travelled on the Siddons.

There were 368 people in 54 waggons.  More than half of the travellers were Danish. These were self-funding people who had been able to buy up their own supplies for the journey and their new life.  Consequently their problem was not that they were short of provisions, but rather that they were overloaded.

They set out on Thursday 14 June, but they soon encountered difficulties.  There was cholera and measles in the camp and on the 11th day, at Elm Creek on the way to the Big Blue River, they met with disaster.

The Faceby Mormons make ready for the Plains: May & June 1855

Atchison in Kansas Territory was a new town, still under construction.  The people of Atchison were glad to welcome the Mormon emigrants because they provided a workforce while they waited to set off for the west, and because they bought supplies in the town for their journey.

Camping at Mormon Grove

Charles Hogg remembered:

"We moved out on to camp ground May 14; about ten had to occupy one tent. The one we got was not finished. The first night came up a very heavy storm of wind, thunder, lightning, and rain. It blew many of the tents to the ground. The screams of women and children were painful to hear. We passed through three such nights in succession. We had never witnessed such awful storms as were so common in this country. We moved camp (after staying here a few days) to Mormon Grove, about eight miles west of Atchinson."

There was an old Mormon campground near the levée, and they had bought 150 acres on the high prairie some five miles off.  It was well watered and had a grove of hickory trees, and had been named Mormon Grove.  There were high hopes for Mormon Grove – but unfortunately it had to be abandoned after 1855 because of the cholera.

The emigrants, arriving there with ox-drawn waggons from the levee, were surprised by the appearance of this vast tent city, set out in orderly rows.  There they were to spend May and June 1855 planting crops and making preparations for the journey across the Plains.

The Faceby Mormons leave Philadelphia for Kansas Territory

More than half the Mormon emigrants on board the Siddons were stopping in the eastern states, to earn money to make the rest of the journey later – the Wake family from Faceby among them – but the rest of the Faceby Saints were going through to the Valley that season.

President Fullmer took the advice of the Elders in Philadelphia and arranged for the travellers to go by train on the Pennsylvania Central route to Pittsburgh, intending to take a packet ship from there.  They were able to negotiate a price for the travellers, of $4.50 per adult, with 80lb baggage free.

So on Monday 23 April, the emigrants got up at 5 am to get their baggage ready for the Customs inspectors and at last reached the railway station at 11 o'clock.

They would be travelling throughout Monday and Tuesday, arriving at Pittsburgh at 4.15 in the morning.

Henry Stocks wrote:

“I may say that we are nearly all the time traveling through woods, thousands & thousands of acres of timber… I viewed the engine … Not so neat as the English engines, they seem great & clumsy.  Carriages is about 18 yards long, same width as English … Inside there is a passage from one end of the train to the other & seats with backs two feet high.  A stove & potty (or necessary) & a water barrel …”

The Faceby Mormons cross the Atlantic: February to April 1855

1855: Faceby to Liverpool

In the bitter cold of early February 1855, the Faceby Saints made ready to leave.  Charles Hogg

"delivered up books with Branch record to Elder Smith, traveling elder in that part.  Left this part of the world Feb 14, 1855, with a conscience void of offence toward God and all men, free from debt to anyone.  I visited father, mother, and what family there were at home here at Deighton … I could not stay with my beloved father and mother but a few minutes, bid them goodbye, off to catch the train." 

Ann Stanger Hogg's descendants record that,

"it was extremely difficult for them to leave their home and bid their loved ones goodbye, never to see them again, and depart for a strange new land.  It was only their firm belief in the Gospel that gave them such strength."

At the Mission Office in Liverpool the Faceby Saints registered to travel on the Siddons, a sailing ship bound for Philadelphia.

Mormons in Faceby: 1852-55

With Mitt Romney in the final days of his campaign to be President of the USA, this seems the ideal time for the story of the villagers of Faceby who became Mormons and left Yorkshire for America in 1855.

I came across the Faceby Saints when researching my book on the 1832 cholera epidemic in Hutton Rudby and the vicar, Robert Barlow.  When I realised that the Revd Barlow was related to Mormons in Utah, I couldn’t resist finding out more.

View from near Mr Barlow's vicarage towards the hills & Faceby

Luckily the internet provided me with Charles Hogg's account of his own life and the biography of Ann Stanger Hogg written by her granddaughter Katheryn Hart Conger, which enabled me to begin to piece the story together.  I've just looked up those links again for this post, and was delighted to find they now include photographs of Charles and Ann.

More information came from descendants.  After I gave a talk on the subject to the Swainby History Society, I was put in touch with Mrs Dorothy Jewitt, a descendant of William Wilson, and posting an article about the Faceby Saints on my (now defunct) website www.jakesbarn.co.uk brought me contacts from descendants in the USA and the UK.  Each time I've given a talk on the subject it has prompted me to do a bit more research, so I have revised and expanded the original article for this blog.

Faceby, North Yorkshire

In February 1855 a large party of people left the small Yorkshire village of Faceby.  It was the beginning of a long journey to America.  They were Mormons – the members of the Faceby Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and most of them belonged to two extended families, the Etheringtons and the Stangers.