HISTORY OF CHARLES ALFRED HARPER1817 - 1900
(written by grand-daughter Vera White Pohlman)
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Charles Alfred Harper was born January 27, 1817, in Upper Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the second of three sons born to Quaker parents, Jesse and Eleanor Evans Harper of Philadelphia and Montgomery counties, respectively. When Charles Alfred was about six years of age, his father died and about three years later his mother married John Barnett, a widower of Upper Providence Township, on December 8, 1826, at Providence Meetinghouse, with her three sons present.
Eleanor’s father, Jacob Evans, was born in Montgomery County; her grandfather, Samuel Evans, and his father and grandfather, were born in Dolgelle, Montgomeryshire, Wales. Jesse Harper’s parents, Robert and Hannah Thomas Harper, were both of Philadelphia. Robert was the son of Robert and Sarah Buzby Harper who were married in 1734, not in Friends Meeting but in the office of His Majesty’s Justice of the Peace. The marriage could not be performed in Meeting for Robert Harper was not then a Quaker and Sarah’s people were not permitted to attend the wedding. Robert and Sarah became parents of six sons and daughters and great-grandparents of Charles Alfred Harper.
At the time Robert Harper married Sarah Buzby, he was an indentured servant of her father, John Buzby. As a penniless young Scotch-Irishman, he had obtained passage from his home in Belfast, Ireland, by binding himself out as a servant for seven years upon his arrival in Pennsylvania. His time was about up when he married his employer’s daughter, Sarah. He was a skilled iron and steel worker and after his marriage he set up a small factory for the manufacture of augers and gimlets along the bank of Tacony Creek near his home in Philadelphia County. He died in 1765 quite well-to-do, and the business was taken over by his eldest son, Samuel. The iron and steel tradition remained in this branch of the family for many generations, until about 1900 when forced out of business by the steel trust.
Sarah Buzby Harper’s father, John Buzby, was a well-to-do Quaker who lived near the town of Frankford, a part of Philadelphia. Her grandfather, William Buzby of the same place, was the first of that family in America. William’s wife, Sarah, was the widow of Thomas Seary, one of the very first settlers in Oxford Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Her house was the meeting place of the Oxford Friends before completion of their first log meeting house in 1684.
Charles Alfred Harper, when nearly 23 years of age, married Lovina Wollerton Dilworth on December 19, 1839. She was born November 5, 1818, the fifth daughter in a family of twelve daughters and one son born to Caleb and Eliza Wollerton Dilworth, of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Later the "Minutes of The Society of Friends, Plymouth Meeting", recorded on June 3, 1841, that “Charles Alfred Harper laid down a paper of acknowledgment wherein he admits the accomplishment of his marriage with a woman not in membership with Friends; without the consent of his parents and in which he states his regrets for deviation and a desire to retain his right of membership.”
Similar entries pertaining to his parents, Jesse and Eleanor Evans Harper, also appear in minutes of Quaker meetings. Minutes of the Gwynedd Monthly Meeting of December 30, 1806 (page 36 in the volume for the 1801-1897 period) state: “Providence informs that Jesse Harper and Eleanor, his wife hath accomplished their marriage before a magistrate. (Committee to visit her.)” The Providence group, of which Jesse Harper was a member, evidently reported to the Gwynedd Monthly Meeting which set it up in 1788.
Providence minutes (page 109 of Volume 1, 1801-1812) record that on February 22, 1807, Jesse Harper and wife now attending this meeting laid down a paper condemning their outgoing marriage for which they express sorrow, the Women’s Meeting appearing easy, and no obstruction in this, their acknowledgment is received.
Much of the foregoing information was received from Charles Harper Smith in 1942, then vice president of the Historical Society of Montgomery County in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He was a great-great-grandson of Samuel Harper who took over Robert Harper’s steel business. Mr. Smith added this comment:
“When Robert Harper (father of Jesse and grandfather of Charles Alfred) married Hannah Thomas, he married into two families that went back to the earliest Quaker arrivals I America, since none came before 1682. They were devout, industrious, prosperous Quakers. While the Harpers were sometimes in and sometimes out of the Quaker congregation, they seemed to marry girls from staunch Quaker families with generous dowries.”
The first children of Charles Alfred and Lovina Dilworth Harper were twin daughters, born in Montgomery County on July 28, 1841, who died the same day.
About this time, the young couple became converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with many others in Chester county Pennsylvania. Mormon missionaries first entered this area in 1839 and held meetings in West Nantmeal Seminary which was open to “all persons and persuasions to meet and worship in it.” The locality became known as Mormon Valley when, despite a storm of local protests, many inhabitants were converted and baptized in Brandywine Cree of Revolutionary War fame.
Charles was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1841, his wife, Lovina, in 1840. (Church records show that he was re-baptized at Nauvoo on May 10, 1842, recorded on a Seventies record, on May 10, 1845 on a High Priest record, and on August 7, 1847 after arrival in the Salt Lake Valley when all members of the first migration were re-baptized “for the remission of our sins and the restoration of health” according to his diary). After becoming a member of the Church, the Providence Meeting later recorded in its minutes of March 3, 1843, (volume 4, page 100) that “Charles Alfred Harper has left Society of Friends and joined the Mormon Society and is no longer a member amongst us.”
The date of arrival of the Harpers in Nauvoo, IL to join the main body of the Church is not known. They were not listed in the Nauvoo census of February 1842, but their next two children were born there, Harvey John on November 10, 1842, and Ellen on April 25, 1846 after exodus of most Mormons from Nauvoo the preceding February. According to Dr. T. Edgar Lyon of Nauvoo Restoration, Inc., the tax records of Hancock County show that Charles Alfred Harper was located from 1843 to 1846 on Lot 2 Block 6 of Hibbard’s Second Addition to Nauvoo. Dr. Lyon added, “Judging from the assessor’s evaluation of the property for tax purposes, he had a very substantial home, and a wheelwright or carriage shop, as well as very good house furnishings.” Listed as living on his lot also was a tenant named Aaron Smith.
Levi E. Riter, who married Lovina’s sister, Rebecca Wollerton Dilworth, lived on Lot 3 of the same block. Eliza Dilworth, mother of Rebecca and Lavina, is believed to have also lived on one or the other of these two lots with her unmarried daughters and her only son. One of these girls, Mary Jane, later taught the first school in the Salt Lake Valley, which began in October 1847 in a military tent with log seats. Upon joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Eliza had been required by her husband to either leave him or denounce Mormonism.
Charles and Lovina Harper received their endowments in the Nauvoo Temple on December 31, 1845. During that winter various rooms had been completed and dedicated for ordinance work. The entire building was completed and dedicated on May 1, 1846, after most of the Church members had been forced to flee.
The Harpers were among the thousands who established Winter Quarters (now Florence, NE) on the west side of the Missouri River, preliminary to the westward migration across the Great Plains. The winter of 1846-47 was severe, the impoverished housing inadequate, and there was much suffering from cold, lack of food, and sickness. Of approximately 6000 people in this temporary settlement, 600 were buried, mostly the very young and the elderly and young mothers and babies.
Because of his trade as carriage maker and wheelwright, Charles was almost indispensable to the leaders of the Church in their preparations for the westward trek, according to Kate B. Carter in “Our Pioneer Heritage,”…volume 2, page 613. He worked diligently, making and repairing wagons for the journey. His record book lists work done for many of the leaders and others, the kind of work done, and the prices charged. It was doubtless because of this skill that he was included in the first pioneering migration to the Salt Lake Valley. He was at that time 31 years of age.
The travelers were organized into hundreds, fifties, and tens. Charles was assigned to the Twelfth Ten and left Winter Quarters April 7th “in a wagon with Norton Jacob (captain of this ten) belonging to the H. C. Kimball division…”. His diary contains a day-by-day account during the ensuing four months, including arrival into the Salt Lake Valley on July 22nd after a journey of more than one thousand miles and ends with an entry on August 8th, prior to his return to his family at Winter Quarters. His name, along with those of the 143 men, 3 women and 2 children in this first migration, are in bronze on the Brigham Young Monument erected in Salt Lake City at South Temple and Main Street on the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the pioneers into the valley. This area is now the area in-between the Temple and the Joseph Smith Building. It is not a street anymore and has been beautifully landscaped. The monument still stands there.
The diary refers only occasionally to wheel and other wagon repairs made by Charles during the trek, but he maintained a list of them on a preceding page. Two examples are quoted:
April 17th…Traveled a short distance and camped about noon. I started out to look for a piece of timber to make a houn(d)…found a good ash and made one … put it in H. C. Kimball’s wagon.
June 22nd…Lorenzo Young broke an axletree and at night, by request of Brigham, I put another in so we were not detained from traveling as usual in the morning.
The diary notes on April 26th that George Woodard “drives the cannon wagon.” Fifty years later when the Salt Lake Tribune interviewed Charles on May 28, 1897, he stated that he drove the cannon wagon westward from the crossing of the Platte River (which occurred in June). George Woodard’s letter to the Tribune in 1897, in lieu of an interview, said “The artillery consisted of one cannon rigged up like a wagon with a span of horses and a grain box.”
Also, on the morning of April 26th, following Brigham Young’s advice of the previous day that two cooks be appointed for every five wagons to save labor and provisions, the Twelfth Ten elected Charles as head cook and Andrew S. Gibbons as assistant.
An interesting entry on June 16th recorded that “a company of us went down the river a few miles to get timber to make 2 large canoes to lash together to make a ferry boat. We obtained them, dug them out so we loaded them on wagons and brought them to camp. The next two days was spent in finishing the boat and crossing emigrants. We made this boat for the purpose of ferrying our people over when they come up.” The emigrants referred to here apparently were a company bound for Oregon who were assisted in their crossing of the Platte by the Mormons. The boat was left there with ten of the Mormon men to assist those who followed.
By July, many of the pioneers were sick with “mountain fever” and the ailment continued to spread. Charles was afflicted on July 11th and Brigham on the 12th. The diary records that a few of the wagons stopped with Brigham and Heber C. Kimball, and the rest of the camp went on. On the 13th, “they held a council and decided to send on about 20 wagons to seek out a route while the sick recovered, which was done, the balance of us remaining … “
The wagon train stopped on the 17th because of Brigham’s health and some of the wagons were sent on ahead to forge the way. All of the wagons except Brigham's arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on the 22nd and waited for Brigham and the rest to come in on the 24th. While waiting they began planting crops.
He left the Salt Lake Valley in august with one or the other of two groups which returned to their families in Winter Quarters, arriving near the end of October. His little daughter Ellen had died in the meantime on August 27th at the age of 16 months. Her name among many others is engraved on the monument since erected among the pines atop Winter Quarters hill.
The series published by the Salt Lake Tribune in 1897 (Fifty Years Ago Today) review the first migration day by day and featured interviews with as many surviving pioneers as could be located. The following comment regarding Charles appeared with his picture on Sunday morning, May 30, 1897:
“C A Harper is a living pioneer. His home is near Holladay, UT (or Big Cottonwood as it is also known) where he has lived for many years. Mr. Harper made a pleasant call at the Tribune office on Friday and despite his eighty years, is hale and hearty. Mr. Harper remembers many details of the great trip perfectly, and is an entertaining man in his recitals of the incidents of the journey.
He was born in Upper Providence, Montgomery County, PA January 27, 1817. By trade he was a carriage maker and in this work he was a handy member of the band. From the Platte crossing he drove the cannon wagon westward. He says there seems to be some difference of opinion as to where the pioneers camped in the valley. According to his statement, the company he was in arrived on July 22nd and camp was made on the bed of Parley’s Creek (later called Mill Creek) near the side of President Woodruff’s villa. On the 23rd, says Mr. Harper, they moved up to the springs in what is now knows as Liberty Park, and from there moved Norwest to the block afterward known as Emigrant Square in the eighth ward and camped until August 2nd. Mr. Harper says that is was a most desolate country, with only a patch of green here and there along the banks of the creek and the prospect was not inviting. In August he returns to Winter Quarters and came back the next year with his family.”
In June of 1848 Charles left Winter Quarters again, this time with his wife, Lovina, and five year old Harvey, traveling with one of that summer’s companies which brought nearly 2500 more people into the Salt Lake Valley by the end of October. En route while the emigrant train rested at Fort Laramie, WY, another son was born on July 23, 1848 and named Charles Alfred Harper Jr.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune publication of 1897 just referred to, the 1848 migration (along with almost 2000 who followed the first pioneers in 1847 and arrived on different dates until about October 10th) “increased the population in the valley to between 4000 and 5000 people.” How to feed them through the winter was the problem. The harvest of 1848 had been nearly ruined by the devastation of the Rocky Mountain crickets, and would have been a total failure had not gulls from the lake appeared and devoured the crickets. By living on short rations, sharing food one with another, and even eating raw hides, sego lily roots and thistles, the people managed to eke out their existence during the winter which was very severe. Cold weather lasted from December 1st to late in February and on the 5th of the latter month the mercury dropped to 33 degrees below zero. Most of the people remained in the stockade until spring, although a few moved and build upon their city lots.
Dr. T. Edgar Lyon, in “Some Uncommon Aspects of the Mormon Migration” in the Improvement Era, September 1969 pp 33-40, emphasized among several factors that: Utah is the only western state settled by Americans in which religion was the primary motivating force for migration.
There is no known record of any other such large company of pioneers starting for the West in which no one in the company had previously traversed the road.
The Saints who left Nauvoo were not in the main rugged frontiersmen … the majority had come either from the settled communities of refinement along the Atlantic Seaboard or from the British Isles … Relative few had grown up accustomed to dealing with livestock, farming, building houses from the raw materials of the countryside.... within a few months the Saints had been transformed into a people who handled heavily loaded wagons drawn by oxen, horses and mules and traversed a variety of climatic belts into the arid West … they became pioneers in irrigation processes in America and formed the basis of irrigation law
The Mormon migration to the Great Basin in the early years was essentially the migration of the city of Nauvoo.. its people, its crafts, and its religious conviction … The community was the largest between the Missouri river and the West Coast … the only supply station in more than two thousand miles where a true city could be found.”
On Saturday, August 7, 1847, within two weeks of the arrival of the first pioneers, the Church leaders, for and in behalf of the people and themselves and without compensation, commenced the distribution of city blocks and lots equitably amount the people. At a general meeting on August 14, 1847, the city was named “The City of the Great Salt Lake, Great Basin, North America.” When the new city was incorporated on March 26, 1851, the name was changed to Great Salt Lake City. The pioneer map, “Plat ‘A’ of Great Salt Lake City” based upon the Pratt-Sherwood survey of August 1847 shows Charles to have been the original owner of Lot 7 on the South side of Second North Street between West Temple and First West streets.
However, soon after the winter of 1848-1849, he settled in Holladay (then known as Big Cottonwood), acquired a large acreage and built an adobe home now no longer in existence. The site is still marked by a big old pine tree which he and his two small sons, Edwin and George planted on the west side of what is now Cottonwood Lane, near its north end on the brow of the hill. At the time of his death 50 years later, he still held his home and a farm of 36 acres. Today a nearby lane bears his name…”Harper Lane”.
He and Abraham Hunsaker started the first public school in Big Cottonwood with Layman Woods as the first teacher in 1849, ten years before the organization of a public school system in 1859. It then became known as the 28th District and he, with Isaac Harrison and Duncan Casper, were elected trustees and held office for eight years.
Six more children were born to Charles and Lovina Dilworth Harper. The last two being twins born in 1864, as were the first born 23 years earlier in 1841. Of the six Utah children, five were born in Holladay and one near Park City.
In 1852, Charles was called by the Church to a mission in England where in 1853 he converted Harriet Taylor, born August 28, 1836 to John and Elizabeth Pummel Taylor of Norwich, Norfolk, England. She immigrated to Utah with a group of converts crossing the plains in October 1855 with those who accompanied the returning missionary. She became his 2nd wife at age 19 on December 2, 1855, in the Salt Lake Endowment House. The following year they went to Carson City, Nevada, having been called by the Church to help colonize that area and their first child, Harriet, was born there January 1, 1857. They with others involved in this mission endured much hardship and return to Big Cottonwood in 1857 when the undertaking was abandoned. Two more daughters were born in Holladay and five other children in Summit County near Park City, the youngest in 1877 when his father was 60 years of age.
In 1860, Charles and William Henry Kimball both purchased property in Summit County in the Silver Creek area also known as Kamas Meadows and Parley’s Park, where they engaged in the sheep and cattle industry. Both Harper families lived there. The men agreed that their first babies born there would be named in commemoration of the new location. The Kimball child was named Ranch Stanley and Lovina’s son was named Park. The agreement was applied also to Harriet’s first child born there years later, a daughter named Parkarette. Lovina, by 1864 when her twins were born or earlier, had returned to the home in Big Cottonwood, but Harriet and her family remained for 18 years. This home was a stopping place for travelers, being then a day’s journey east of Salt Lake City. The proceeds realized from the lodgings and meals which Harriet provided helped to sustain her family and enabler her to bring to Utah her mother, her sister Rachel, and her brother John. Two other brothers remained in England.
Before establishment of the second home in Summit County, Charles was one of a party called by Brigham Young to accompany him on a trip to southern Utah in April 1857. According to the journal of one of the group, George W. Bean, they “fitted up in twenty-four hours and were off on a four weeks journey”. The party camped at O-ah-bah, or Salt Creek - later named Nephi, meeting there some families enroute to Parowan in Little Salt Lake Valley. President Young, realizing that the Sevier River was dangerous to cross, detailed four of the men including Charles to assist these emigrants in crossing the river. The men were then to go upstream 30 or 40 miles through Salt Creek Canyon and into Sanpete Valley, to rejoin the President’s party at Manti, and thence up Sevier River to Parowan.
George Bean’s journal records: “We went by way of Chicken Creek (Levan today) to the ford of Sevier and helped the brethren to block up their wagon beds. We got 5 wagons and all effects across the raging stream and then started eastward on the Indian trail close to the river. About ten miles from the wagon road, we came to a hole in the rocky cliff which hung over the river. The trail ran through this hole, and we led our animals carefully through until it came to old “Assimus” which was Brother Harper’s pack mule, about 18 hands high and large otherwise. She stuck fast in the hold, and we had a serious time to back her out.”
Rejoining President Young’s group at Manti where meetings with members were being held, the group traveled southward, passing over Cedar Divide via Marysvale and Circleville, across Prairie Dog Valley and into Little Salt Lake Valley, moving on in 18 inches of snow in the month of May. They camped on Red Creek seven miles from Fort Parowan with ten inches of snow on the ground and the next day were met by a military escort from Fort Parowan. They made visits to iron and coal deposits near Cedar City to the famed hieroglyphic cliffs northwest of Parowan and returned home by way of Beaver, Levan, Round Valley and the old crossing of the Sevier River.
For several years following his mission to England, Charles made trips across the plains to assist emigrants in reaching Salt Lake. As a result of this aid, he became known as Captain Harper. Most of these trips were by oxen. On his last trip in 1868, the year before the transcontinental railroad was finished at Promontory, UT in 1869, he went east at his own expense furnishing his own mule team to assist emigrating converts. During these journeys, he was regarded as being just and careful, never urging his company on to set records but making good time none the less and with little loss of property or injury. One incident typical of his nature is related as follows:
“On one trip across the plains some Indians on horseback rode up to his wagon and demanded food which the company was unable to spare. The Indian chief threw his buffalo robe on the ground in front of the oxen, signifying that the party would not be allowed to proceed without meeting the demand. Charles picked up the robe and threw it to one side calling to his company “Drive on”. The Indian turned and rode away although many in the party of emigrants had feared that this defiance would result in an Indian attack.”
In 1887 at 70 years of age, Charles purchased a 40-acre farm in Lehi, Maricopa County, Arizona, undeveloped and covered with mesquite which he helped to clear. He built a brick home there in 1888 assisted by his sons, Chester and George. His son, Park, spent several years there with his father and Harvey and his family made their permanent home in Mesa. Charles’ wife Lovina, lived on this farm for eight years and then returned to the home in Big Cottonwood. It was perhaps when traveling from Big Cottonwood to Arizona that Charles and Lovina stopped in St. George and performed temple ordinances in the St. George Temple in April 1888 as they had previously done in December of 1883 on behalf of his two brothers, his parents, his grandparents, and great-great grandparents.
Throughout his nearly 60 years after affiliating with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Charles was a devoted member and held various positions in the Big Cottonwood ward. Although a personal friend of Church leaders Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, he never sought high positions and often said he “felt bigger on the back seat”. His diary is evidence of his innate modesty and humility. He loved music and literature and enjoyed the dances and other socials of his time. He was interested in community and political affairs, and he was a staunch Democrat.
Charles died unexpectedly on April 24, 1900, at age 83, apparently of a heart attack at the home in Big Cottonwood Holladay, which he had built about 50 years earlier. His wife, Lovina, died September 7, 1903, when nearly 85 years old, at the home of a daughter, Lovina Harper Walker, at Rexburg, Idaho. Harriet died April 2, 1907, at age 70 of a heart attack at the home of her youngest son Alma, in Salt Lake City. All three are buried side by side in the Holladay Memorial Park, one of the oldest cemeteries in the Salt Lake Valley, formerly called the Mill Creek Cemetery.
