As far as I’m aware, this is the only extant likeness of our great-great-great-grandfather Isaac Decker. It appears on page 56 of Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, next to those of Isaac’s sons by Harriet Page Wheeler, our uncles Perry (Isaac Perry Decker) and Charlie (Charles Franklin Decker), and Perry’s son Franklin (Charles Franklin Decker). The caption, alas, is mostly wrong. The best data I’ve seen show him coming into the world on 29 November 1799 at Taghkanic (also spelled Taconic), Columbia County, New York. By some accounts, his immigrant ancestor in the Decker line may have arrived as many as five generations earlier. He came to Utah in 1850, not in 1847. The 1847 pioneer was Isaac’s six-year-old son Perry. In later life, he farmed in the vicinity of Heber City. I guess that’s close enough to “Provo Valley” that we shouldn’t be picky.

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Of the three women in the first company of Mormon pioneers who traveled from Winter Quarters to what is now the State of Utah, two were my kin. They are shown on a panel of the “This Is The Place” monument at the north of Emigration Canyon, together with the third lady of the party and the two boys, Lorenzo Sobieski Young and my grandfather Isaac Perry Decker.

The two Decker women were my great grandmother, Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young and her daughter, my great aunt, Clara (Clarrisa) Decker Young. At the time of their arrival, Clara was the sixth wife of Brigham Young and Harriet was the second wife of Brigham’s brother Lorenzo Dow Young.

Clara’s nineteenth birthday was July 22 1847, while they were entering the Valley. She had been married three years and three months. It would be two and a half years before she became a mother. She was born in 1828 of a 24-year-old mother and a 28-year-old father who already had three children-Lucy Ann 6, Charles Franklin 4, and Harriet Amelia 2.

Clara’s parents were intelligent, hard-working frontier people who were wholeheartedly “taming the west”. Land was comparatively cheap the further west you went. If you were a hard expierced worker, you could clear the land, build a house. raise some crops, some stock. and some children. When the “spread” was complete, you could sell it as a going concern, pack up your family and go further west with sufficient capital to take on a larger project.

Her father, Isaac Decker had been successful by the time he married the village school teacher in Phelps, Ontario, N.Y. about 150 miles northwest of his birthplace, Taghkanic, Columbia N.Y. which is about 50 miles south of the present Albany. How many stops he made between his birth place and Phelps, I don’t know, but a few months before Clara’s birth he moved to Freedom, Cattaraugus, N.Y. about 80 miles southwest of Phelps. Here he lived for about 6 years during which the youngest daughter, Fanny Maria, was born April 24 1830, before moving on to Portage County Ohio. Because no town is mentioned, I surmise he had taken a considerable ranch project by this time.

It was here in 1833 that the Deckers joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All though I have no proof of it I think Lorenzo Dow Young may have been the missionary in the case, which may explain the tremendous friendship that lasted between these two men. The records do show that Dow was doing missionary work in New York State at that time.

Clara’s father continued to acquire and develop property, after 1833 but the vicissitudes and movement of the Church dictated his direction. I presume that the Deckers had been somewhat exposed to Mormonism for ten years or so having lived within a very few miles of the Hill Cumorah, Joseph Smith. Brigham Young and other names and places associated with the early church.

Historian-Biographer Orson F. Whitney says of Clara: “She was always a delicate child, being afflicted with asthma from her earliest years. Until she reached the age of ten, her fond parents had scarcely any hope of rearing her.” He continues, “When she was not quite three years old, (a month before her sister Fanny was born), she met with a fearful and well nigh fatal accident, the painful details of which can scarcely be read without a shudder. It was a day in March. Her father was busy chopping wood in the woodshed, when little Clara, who was nearly always at his heels, toddled out to where he was working. She drew near unobserved, as he was bending over, intent on the task, and as he raised the ax to strike, ran right under it. Before he could prevent it the blow descended, and terrible to tell, almost cleft the skull of the little innocent, who fell to the ground, as the horrified parent supposed, dead. Half - insane with grief, he bore her to the house, where the startled and stricken mother and family shared his sorrow and despair.

A young surgeon chanced to be living with the family, so that immediate care was at hand, although life was then deemed extinct. Seizing upon the forlorn hope that possibly the child might not be dead, but only stunned, it being discovered that the thick matting of the little woolen hood she wore had partly broken the force of the blow, and prevented the axe from penetrating to the brain, the surgeon experimentally put a spoonful of liquor between her lips, whereupon she moved one of her fingers. Finding that she was alive, every possible effort was to restore her and with eventual success, though for six months the little sufferer hovered between life and death, and was anxiously watched, night and day, the house meanwhile being kept almost deathly still. It was nearly a year before little Clara spoke a loud word. The wound, which was a long gash running back near the middle of the head, was stitched and finally it healed, though leaving a deep scar which remained to her dying day.

Clara was about five years old when the family moved to Ohio and joined the church. I guess that it was here that her practical education began. Her older sister Lucy Ann, years later, told how she Lucy, stood on a chair to wash the dishes and all the family would arise in the morning at five, dress by candle light, have the work all done by seven, ready to sit down and begin the real work of the day…. spinning, weaving, and sewing. At night, the candles were never lighted only long enough to see them all to bed. During the summer months the hour for rising was four o’clock. The candles, soap, carpets and clothing for the whole family were all made within the home.

Clara’s biographers tell nothing of any formal education. I suppose her ex-schoolteacher mother took good care of that department. Quoting from Orson F. Whitney again, “Isaac Decker was a well to do farmer, and the family at this time was in comfortable circumstances 1836-1837). A test now came to prove them, whether as Saints they stood ready to sacrifice their all upon the altar of duty and devotion or like many professing to be Saints, when weighed in the balance of trial they would be found wanting.

One evening in the winter of 1836-7, or early in the spring of the latter year, the Prophet Joseph came to the house of Isaac Decker in Franklin. He confided to him some of the affairs of the church in Kirtland. more especially its financial status, which was then in precarious condition. The Kirtland Bank, established for the purpose of controlling the spirit of speculation, then sweeping over the church, threatening its spiritual existence, was owing to the dishonesty of some of its officials and the schemes of outside combinations, on the verge of bankruptcy. Thousands of dollars were needed to tide over the critical time, save the financial credit of the church, and prevent the bank from breaking. Isaac Decker was asked to supply a large portion of this amount, to replace stolen money and “break” the run being made on the institution. The response was immediate and heroic. The Deckers sacrificed everything, house, farm, livestock, even their household furniture was sold to raise the sum required to buy up the bank’s floating paper. But, all was in vain. The opposing combinations were too strong. Counterfeits of the Kirtland bills were put in circulation and in spite of every effort to prevent it, the ruin of the bank was accomplished. In common with many similar institutions throughout the country, for it was a year of general financial disaster, it went down in the ruinous crash of 1837.

The Decker family was now penniless, without a dollar in the world save in the bushels of worthless paper they had sacrificed their all to redeem. In this sorry plight they came to Kirtland in the summer of 1837. Just as the Church, or the main body of it was preparing to abandon that region and migrate to Missouri. It was the desire of the Deckers to go also, but they were without means to undertake such a journey, which was one thousand miles over rivers and through forests to the nation’s frontier.

In this hour of extremity they found a staunch friend in Lorenzo D. Young, brother of Apostle Brigham Young, who sold his farm and with the proceeds outfitted several teams to convey himself, his family and friends to Missouri. With characteristic generosity, Brother Lorenzo gave one of the teams to Isaac Decker and otherwise helped to prepare him for the journey, which they performed in company.

They left Kirtland in October 1837 and traveled slowly to the southwest. At Dublin, Indiana they were joined by the Prophet Joseph, his brother Hyrum and Brigham Young who had all fled from the fury of the Kirtland mobs.

It was probably here at Dublin that Clara was transferred to the Prophet’s outfit. She traveled the balance of the way to Far West with the Prophet’s family, further cementing the close ties that existed between the two families. Lorenzo and Isaac, by the counsel of the Prophet settled in Daviess County through the summer including Clara’s tenth birthday. From then on she was right in the middle of all the Church troubles.

Lorenzo had bought a farm (March 1838) and Isaac rented one. They diligently set to work to build homes in this new country. But it was not to be. August 6, 1838, at the town of Gallatin, just eight miles from their farms, began in earnest the war between the mobsters and the Saints. The battle of Crooked River [Little’s Biography of Lorenzo Dow Young says (p. 56) that Lucy’s first husband William Seely was wounded there] followed October 25 and the Haun’s Mill Massacre on the 29th. The main portion of the local manpower of the Saints was chased through the snow clear up to the Des Moines River in lowa under near starvation conditions before the pursuers gave up. The Mormons had left their families in a desperate condition. The mob returned and proceeded to burn up everything burnable and killed their animals including their milk cows, and destroyed or stole everything else the Mormons might use.

Clara’s father had in some way evaded Clark’s army and the Des Moines River action. He gathered up the two families and escaped clear across the state to Morgan County, Illinois. The Missouri Exodus was on.

This period also marked the breaking up of the Decker family. As mentioned before, Clara had been temporarily absorbed by the Prophet Joseph’s family. Charles Franklin, according to the obituary in the Deseret News, March 25 1901, though only 14 years of age had tried to help the family fortunes by riding “Pony Express” out of Dublin, Indiana. This was followed by three years working on river boats. He did not rejoin his family until the unhappy days at Nauvoo.

Sometime in 1839, the record doesn’t say where or when, but probably in or near Far West, Clara’s older sister Lucy Ann married William Seely. This left Harriet Amelia, Clara and Fanny Maria with their parents.

The Lorenzo Young and Isaac Decker families continued to be very closely associated. They farmed in Scott and Morgan counties through 1839-40. It was here in Winchester, Scott, Illinois that my grandfather Isaac Perry Decker was born. Nauvoo had now definitely become the rallying place of the Saints. Isaac headed out in the Fall of 1840 stopping over in Warsaw for the winter and arrived in Nauvoo in 1841. Lorenzo spent the summer of 1841, in Warsaw and in the Spring of 1842 he moved to Macedonia and bought a house about four miles from the town of Carthage.

The biographers say that it was in 1841 that Isaac and Harriet separated on amicable terms.

Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young was born 7 September 1803 at Hillsboro, New Hampshire. Oliver Wheeler and Hannah Ashby were her parents. She was reared in Salem, Massachusetts. From age five to ten she attended school and then went to work in a local mill where she learned spinning of flax and wool. Her mother taught her weaving, millinery and cooking. At age 17 she was sufficiently self confident, to take a job school teaching in Phelps, Ontario, N.Y. For a girl who had no more than five years’ formal education this looks to me like she had plenty of intestinal fortitude. She married Isaac Decker sometime in 1820. He was nearly four years older than she was, and already a successful bright young farmer. A right good “catch”. They set about raising a family without too much delay - a baby about every two years through 1830. Then Harriet took an unexplained vacation of ten years and then bore her last child by Isaac, named after his father, August 7, 1840. My grandfather was in his first year apparently at the time the historians claim Harriet and Isaac broke up.

My father, Fera Decker, told me that the family tradition was that the split was over polygamy. Harriet had picked out a second wife for Isaac and he wouldn’t take her. At the request of Joseph Smith, he had converted his substantial property into funds with which he had redeemed Kirtland Bank paper and made himself destitute. This had been done under secrecy from Harriet. She felt he was failing away from the church and under well meaning, and I suspect fanatical advisors (who knew nothing of his financial situation) she was talked into repudiating Isaac and marrying Lorenzo as a plural wife. My Dad said that this tradition was supported by Orson F. Whitney as a speaker at the funeral of Clara Decker Young (My father’s Aunt Clara). “Now it can be told’ he said and proceeded to give his version of the meeting between Isaac and the Prophet Joseph at which the request was made and the secrecy agreed to. At any rate Isaac apparently considered himself unqualified to take on the responsibilities of polygamy at that time. He did not go West with the first companies, but stayed back to recoup his fortune, which he did. Eventually he came to Utah a successful rancher up Heber-Charleston way where he did finally embrace polygamy.

In my own mind I wonder along another line of thought. When Harriet finally realized their destitution, followed by more of the same through the mobocrat days of Missouri and Illinois, might she have become so frustrated at the loss of the family security she had helped build up for twenty years, that she decided to do something about it while there was still a chance? What would be more effective than an even closer affiliation with the Young family? Polygamy had been secretly experimented with by the inner circle of the church for some years. Could this be the door to her ambitions?

Kate B. Carter, in her “Our Pioneer Heritage” page 384, writing of “Heber C. Kimball-His Wives and Family” said: “Heber is credited with having 45 wives and 65 children, but research has shown that several of the women were sealed to him who did not actually live with him as wives. (These women received a special scaling for spiritual reasons that did not constitute a husband and wife relationship in this life.) The history student might wonder why a man would encumber himself with so great a responsibility at a time when there was so little money, often so little food, and a general lack of other family necessities. But a vow had been made by the Church leaders when the Saints were driven from their beloved Nauvoo that none of the old, the widowed, the single women, or orphaned children would be abandoned, that somehow they must be cared for and brought to the valley of the mountains.”

The record shows that in 1842, William Seely abandoned Harriet’s oldest daughter, Lucy Ann and her two children. Nothing is said of any mother-in-law trouble, but I wonder. Brigham Young took the distressed family under his wing by marrying Lucy June 14, 1842, as his first polygamist wife. March 9, 1843. Harriet married Brigham Young’s younger brother Lorenzo Dow as his first polygamous wife. She was four years older than Lorenzo. May 8, 1843 Brigham took Lucy’s younger sister Clara as his fifth polygamous wife. Subsequently, as the Pioneers were starting out for the west, Harriet’s older son Charles Franklin was married Feb. 4, 1847 to Brigham Young’s daughter, Vilate, from her father’s house in Winter Quarters. In the meantime the other two daughters, Harriet Amelia and Fanny Maria had married nephews of Brigham Young (two of the Little brothers).

If Harriet had had such an ambition, she certainly had accomplished it magnificently.

To pick up the confused records-we left Harriet and Isaac separated in Nauvoo in 1841. They apparently had acquired a home there as page 174 of Vol. 14 of the Utah Historical Quarterly says, Clara “was married from her father’s house in Nauvoo”. Lorenzo and his family continued living in Macedonia through 1842-3, then moved into Nauvoo. Isaac seems to have been on very good terms with both Brigham and Lorenzo. Nibley writes on page 44, quoting Brigham Young “I was suddenly attacked (Nov. 1-6, 1842) with a slight fit of apoplexy. I laid on my back and was not turned upon my side for eighteen days. I laid in a log house which was rather open: it was so very cold during my sickness that Brother Isaac Decker, my attendant, froze his fingers and toes while fanning me. According to the biography of Lorenzo as reported in the above mentioned Vol. 14 page 70, on June 1 1844, Lorenzo, his son William, and Isaac Decker took off for a mission to Ohio. Arriving in Springfield, Illinois on the 28th day they learned of the assassination in Carthage.

“Elder Isaac Decker was sent back to Nauvoo with instructions, leaving his wife and daughter to go on with Lorenzo”. This daughter must have been Fanny, as all the other girls were married before now. The missionary party continued on to Waynesville, Ohio where Lorenzo rented a house. Here on Sept. 5, 1844, Harriet gave birth to a baby boy (John Brigham) which Lorenzo claimed was his. The boy died at birth. The biographer, (James A Little, nephew of Lorenzo) continues “Lorenzo traveled and preached the gospel during the summer. Mr. Isaac Decker had come out to Ohio during the summer and with his wife and daughter returned to Nauvoo with Lorenzo in the autum.” On the bottom of this same page (72) the editor explains: “Prior to this mission to Ohio, on March 9,1843, Harriet Page Wheeler Decker, wife of Isaac Decker was married to Lorenzo as a plural wife. Presumably an amicable separation had been arranged between Harriet and her first husband, though the record is blank. As for Persis Goodall Young, (Lorenzo’s first wife) about all that can be said is that she gradually fades from the picture. There is no further mention of her in the biography, but in the journal she is mentioned twice. Persis subsequently became the wife of Dr. Levi Richards, and came to Utah in Bishop Edward Hunter’s Company, Sept. 29, 1850, with her daughter Harriet. She died Sept. 16, 1894 in Salt Lake City, age 83.”

Until July 12, 1843, polygamy was practiced secretly. It is possible that Harriet resided in Isaac’s home until polygamy was announced, leading the biographer to think she was still Isaac’s wife.

Harriet became pregnant in December 1843 and Persis became pregnant in September 1844, indicating that they all lived as a polygamous family beginning soon after the announcement by the church. The two children died in infancy. The two women and their husbands had lived very intimately for nearly ten years, through trials and tribulations of those days. They must have been very congenial to have done so. The separation of Persis and Harriet is difficult to explain. It just could he that in her maturity Harriet felt herself best able to dominate the family. She was three years older than Persis and four years older than Lorenzo.

Lorenzo’s diary starts with the date Feb. 1,1846 when the family was starting out for Winter Quarters from Nauvoo. It is in his handwriting. He lists his family at that time as W.C. (William) and Susan, Joseph, John, Perry Decker. No wife is mentioned at all, but on April 12 1846 the handwriting in the diary changes from Lorenzo to Harriet. Answering that question.

There is still a strange question involved. Polly Sessions, midwife, says on page 85 of Vol. 10 Historical Quarterly: “February 10, 1846 In the afternoon put Sister Harriet Young to bed with son.” This birth is not mentioned in the biography or the diary or the Lorenzo Dow Young family statistics. It is true that at the possible time of conception, Lorenzo and Harriet were living together in Nauvoo. At birth time, the family was moving out from Nauvoo. No wife being mentioned in the removal, it is possible Harriet was temporarily absent from the family and returned to it in April.

Brigham’s wagons arrived a( or near Council Bluffs June 14, 1846. Lorenzo was a couple of weeks or so later, due to the almost constant illness of Harriet. July 7 the diary says:, “Crossed the river in a buggy. Went to Bro. Kimball’s. My wife and I took dinner there then proceeded to camp on the hill. Visited Persis and the children”. (Probably Harriet, Lorenzo and Franklin). Lorenzo built a home in Winter Quarters and under date of Dec. 11, the diary says: &dlquo;Sister Fanny and Persis took dinner with us.”

So it would seem that Persis left Lorenzo to Harriet sometime before the first of 1846 and taken refuge with Lorenzo’s sister Fanny, widow of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Under the kind responsibility of Brigham. That December 1846, Harriet became pregnant again at age 46. All the hustle and bustle around Winter Quarters the spring of 1847, preparing to start out an exploring company to find a place of refuge in the “Rocky Mountains”. There was to be a carefully selected group of 144 men with detailed responsibilities with full equipment and supplies.

It is told that on the eve of departure Lorenzo Dow came to his brother Brigham and told him that he would have to be (Lorenzo) replaced. Brigham wanted to know why!. “Harriet has put her foot down and told me that if I think the men of this church are going out yonder some place and pick a permanent abode for the women without even giving them the right of consultation, that I’ve got some more guesses coming. She says either she’s going or I am not. After thinking it over for a few minutes, Brigham is alleged to have said, “Well Dow, you know Harriet as well as I do (She was Brigham’s mother-in-law twice over) and if she says she is going -- she’s going. There’s not much we can do about it. But for heavens sake keep it quiet.”

Harriet insisted that she not be the “lone woman” in the company, so her daughter Clara, wife of Brigham Young and Ellen Sanders Kimball, wife of Heber C. Kimball were added to the roster.

The biographer says on page 79 of Vol 14 of the Utah Historical Quarterly “Thus were the family relations represented in this pioneering expedition. Well might the sisters plead for representation in this important move, on the score that had so far shared in all the dangers and hardships that bad fallen to the elders, and had never lacked in fortitude and endurance. Why should they not be represented in this supreme effort of their people to rind shelter from their enemies? The position had been fairly won.”

The two younger women had nothing to hold them back. Harriet was handicapped with my grandfather Isaac Perry, a kid of six, whose father was still in Nauvoo. Lorenzo left his five older children with their mother in Winter Quarters and took only Lorenzo Sobieski with him, probably to keep his stepson company. He was also six years old. Then on April 7 1847 they started off on their great adventure into the wild and wooly West.

Much has been written about the hardships of these three women in their pioneer trip into unknown territory, their deprivations, discomforts, hard work and all. I think it is an unimaginative bunch of literary junk. What could be more fun than a three month vacation, seeing new country every day of ten to twenty miles, riding in a fine carriage, not in a freight wagon, plenty of food and supplies, with 143 men including three black servants to do all the “chores”. It was different for those who followed, but for these first three, I’d say it was strictly de luxe. And those two kids! What a time they must have had.

The company struggled into the Great Salt Lake Valley from July 21-24 1847. Harriet is widely quoted as being very dissatisfied with the location. “We have traveled 1500 miles to get here, and I would willingly travel a thousand more to get where it looked as though a white man could live.” I suppose that in her capacity of self-appointed voice of the women of the church she felt it proper to make some complaint on general principles. It did her no good. The great majority of the people were content with Brigham Young’s “This is the right place.” Harriet had heard Samuel Brannan extol the beauties of California when they had met back along the trail. Maybe she valued that over the opinion of her son-in-law. Or it’s possible she was just out of sorts after riding so far in a pregnant condition. She gave birth to the first male white child in the valley September 26,1847, so she was probably seven months along when she arrived. According to her diary she had been ill a great part of the way. Her afflictions were called variously, Phthises, Pulmonary Tuberculosis, Consumption, and Asthma. Dr, Priddy Meeks on page 213 of Vol 10 Utah Historical Quarterly, says Case 6: In the first settling of the Salt Lake Valley. Lorenzo D. Young’s wife had the phthisic for twelve or fifteen years (Footnote says, consumption). She could not live in a crowded fort and had a house built some rods outside on higher ground. I gave her nothing but bitter root or Indian hemp root, and it cured her entirely. I think she had it no more. Ten or twelve years afterward she said she never had it any more after taking that medicine. That there is the thought that maybe the feelings between the men of the company and these three women may not have been so amicable after all. Just maybe every time they made up their beds, washed the dishes, prepared the food, or darned their socks they were sore at these generally uninvited guests. At least, of all the diaries written on the trip, not one even mentioned any one of these women for good or bad. They completely ignore them.

The dearth of females in the company was broken at about the half-way mark of their trip when the “Crow” party with 6 women joined them on June 4 1847. How they got along is not stated. Then five days after the pioneer entrance, July 29 1847, the Pueblo detachment of the Mormon Battalion came in with the main body of the Mississippi emigrants, about 100 soldiers and about the same number of Mississippians. McGacin in the “Mormon Pioneers” says, “This increased the number in the valley to about 400 souls.” This must have included quite a few women. So the original three need no longer be lonesome for female companionship.

The original encampment of July 22-3-4 was on what is now State Street between first South and the City and County building Square. City Creek divided near the mouth of the canyon, one branch trending South and the other West. Early Monday morning the 26th, Harriet and Lorenzo, not liking their present situation, removed their outfit to a point on the West Fork about half a mile away. “Opposite the northeast corner of Temple Block” says Orson F. Whitney History of Utah, “There stood a solitary scrub oak, one of the few trees first visible in the valley. Beneath the scant shade of this exile of the forest he placed his covered wagon box and did all in his power to make a comfortable cozy little nook for his dejected wife, so badly dispirited over the treeless and desolate aspect of their new home. Later in the day Brigham Young and his party, passing on his way to the mountain decided that this was a better camping ground than the one occupied on the other fork, other wagons were therefore directed to remove to this vicinity, which, being done, it was thereforth known as the Upper Camp. In the neighborhood, a spot for a garden was selected and its cultivation immediately begun. Thus was Harriet’s effort for privacy thwarted.

The first order of activities after getting into the valley was to get food planted and roofs over their heads for next Winter. The first plowing and planting was on the 23rd and 24th. Building was a little later getting started, Whitney’s popular History of Utah page 42 says: “These Battalion men (who came on the 29th built the first structure in the valley. It was a bowery in which to hold public meetings.” The footnote on this page reads: “The day the bowery was built two small camps of Indians, Utes and Shoshones, were trading at the camps on City Creek. A young Ute stole a horse from the Sboshones and traded it to one of the settlers for a rifle. When detected he refused to give up the gun, and a fight ensued between him and a Shoshone youth. They were separated, but not until the father of one of them had lashed both of the young fellows with a heavy thong of rawhide. The Ute then tried to steal another horse belonging to the Shoshones, but while driving the animal toward the mountains he was pursued by four of the band and shot dead. The two tribes had long been at enmity, but now there was additional bad blood between them, caused by the coming of the Utes to trade with the settlers. The Shoshones claimed Salt Lake Valley and the country north, while the Utes held Utah Valley and the region South. It angered the Shoshones to find any of the settlers trading with the Utes.

This was a warning to the Saints of the potential Indian trouble they were in. They decided to get out of their wagons and tents and into better protection as quickly as possible. They started hauling in material immediately and August 10 they started in on what they ultimately called “The Fort”. They progressed rapidly. Preston Nibley in his “Brigham Young, The Man and His Work” page 104 says, “By the 26” of August, the four adobe houses being sufficently completed to form a crude shelter, Brigham moved in some of the members of his family, his few effects that he had brought with him, mounted his horse in front of his dooryard, called out “Goodbye to all who tarry. I feel well” and rode away toward Emigration Canyon. beginning the thousand mile return to Winter Quarters.” From the list of the Pioneers, I’d say that Brigham’s family at this time were his wife Clara, his mother-in-law Harriet, his two brothers Lorenzo and Phineas, and the two boys Lorenzo Dow Jr. and Perry Decker. These must have been the first inhabitants of the fort.

Beginning at the northeast corner of the structure, Brigham had four houses and Lorenzo two. They were multiplex in design with 9 foot walls 27 inches thick on the outside with a door and a window facing inside the fort. The roof slanted to the middle and was made of brush covered with earth. The record doesn’t say but in as much as it was regarded as temporary, I suppose the floors were dirt. Also I presume that the wagon boxes were used for bedrooms and storage. The houses themselves were 14 X 17 feet. During the summer it wasn’t too bad, but when it started to rain and snow it was a terrible mess. The roofs leaked mud all over the place.

On the eve of his departure, Brigham had urged everyone to stick inside the fort until his return, but Harriet couldn’t see it that way. She was too unhappy. Her baby was born within a month and in anticipation she made Lorenzo build her a decent home on his alloted lot on the south fork of City Creek where the Beehive House now stands. He built two of them there, moving into the first one the 23rd of November the second one December 23. His was the first house built outside the fort, but others followed rapidly. Harriet had successfully gained her privacy.

The influx of pioneers during September and October 1847 brought in nearly two thousand more people. The fort had to be enlarged to care for them. Among these arrivals were family, relatives and friends. Eliza R. Snow, with whom Clara lived through the Winter in the fort, Lorenzo’s two sons John and Franklin, Harriet’s widowed daughter, Harriet Amelia Decker Little, Harriet’s older son Charles and his wife Vilate, Mary Ann Angel Young, and many many more of their intimates.

Lorenzo had no trouble selling his two houses in the fort and putting all his building efforts on the new home. Here on Christmas day Harriet entertained with dinner served on the fine china she had in some way saved from the depredations of the mobs in Illinois and Missouri. What might be called the ecclesiastical aristocracy was off to a good start.

During 1848 Lorenzo’s two sons William and Joseph came to Utah, as did Lucy Ann Decker Seeley Young and her children. Lucy reigned as hostess of the Bee Hive House for twenty years (1860-1880). Also in September 1848 Harriet Amelia married Ephraim K. Hanks. a returned member of the Mormon Battalion destined to be a leading business man of the valley.

In 1850, after marrying Dr. Levi Richards, Persis and her daughter Harriet Maria came to the Valley as did Isaac Decker Sr.

In 1851 the pilgrimage of Isaac Perry and Harriet and their family was complete. The youngest daughter Fanny Maria arrived. Her marriage to Feramorz Little (nephew of Brigham Young) was just four days after Lorenzo and Harriet left Nauvoo on their first lap to the Rocky Mountains. Feramorz Little was mayor of Salt Lake City 1878-1882. To many of the present crop of Deckers this little family is most noted as founders of Holiday Park, our summer home area on the headwaters of the Weber River.

All four daughters were well married, and Charles Franklin was recognized as Brigham Young’s “right hand man”. (He helped the oncoming saints, rode pony express, freighted, and drove stage. He crossed the plains 53 times. Many exciting and interesting adventures were told of him. It was seven years before all the Saints were evacuated from Missouri.) Now Harriet could settle down to watching her family grow and blossom. And so she did for twenty years more. She died in Salt Lake City September 22 1871. Her best epitaph was sounded by her second husband Lorenzo Dow Young: She was a splendid housekeeper, a helpmate financially, a lady of education and intelligence, a hard worker with the grace and dignity of a queen, and above all a beloved and loving wife. Peace be to her remains.”

As a great grandson may I add that she was a really a great “take charge” woman, who did just that with great success. She was an ancestor of whom we can be genuinely Proud.

Clara outlived her mother seventeen years. She bore Brigham Young two sons and three daughters. The daughters survived her. She raised at least one other child, an Indian girl she called Sally. Orson F. Whitney in his “Popular of Utah” footnote page 47 says, “it was the custom with the savages to torture and kill if they could not sell their prisoners of war. Several Indian children were ransomed by persons at the fort to save them from being shot or more cruelly put to death by their captors. One of these children, Sally, was purchased by Charles Decker, who gave her to his sister, Mrs. Clara D. Young, by whom she was reared to womanhood. Sally, after becoming civilized, went back to her people from a pure sense of duty. Hoping to benefit her race by living among them, she became the wife of Kanosh, a pauvant chief, but was unable to endure the hardships of savage life, and soon passed away.

As to my grandfather, Isaac Perry Decker, he grew up as one of the last real wild westers. A lot of years ago an old gentleman with a long white beard told me, “That Perry Decker, he could ride the meanest horse, and rope the wildest cow, drunker than any other man in Utah.” But that’s another story.

This history was copied [by Alfa Jean Carter] as written with the exception of the correction of a few misspelled names.

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