John and Mary Christina Jensen Graham

History of John Graham
PROMINENT CITIZENS OF MILBURN UTAH p. 583
"John Graham, farmer, son of Richard and Mary, was born in Yorkshire, England 6 Aug 1850. The family joined the Mormon Church and in 62 came to Utah traveling the plains in Capt. Harmon's train, and located that year in Fairview, where father died. John was brought up a farmer, took up some land in Milburn, and in the spring of 89 removed to the place where they now reside (1898). Was married in Fairview, 14 Aug 1873 to Mary C., daughter of Peter C. and Mary Jensen, born in Salt Lake City, 5 Sep 1855. They had 12 children, John R., Mary E., Wilford M., Velinda, George A., Rebecca, Tilman, Geneva R., Maitland, and Ellis E., living, Peter and an unnamed infant deceased." (Note child #13 was born 11 Sep 1898 after this account was written)

History of Mary Elnora Graham Jenkins

My name is Mary Elnora Graham Jenkins. I was born in Fairview, Sanpete County, Utah on January 30, 1876. My father was John Graham, born August 6, 1849 in Yorkshire, England. His Father’s name was Richard Graham and his mother Mary Woodcock Graham. When he was eleven years old his parents joined the Latter-Day Saints Church and migrated to Utah. He had two brothers, Richard and George Graham, making three boys and two girls, Elizabeth and Rebecca. His mother died when they got to the Rocky Mountains leaving his father alone with his children. He came on to Utah and finally married a Mrs. Peterson who had two or three children. His father lived to be 71 years old and died in the place they had made their home called Fairview, Utah. Aunt Lizzie done for the children till Grandpa Graham married again.

My mother was Mary Christen Jensen Graham, born September 5, 1855 in Salt Lake City, Utah. My brothers are John Richard Graham, born December 1, 1873, Fairview, Utah. Peter Graham born December 31, 1878, Fairview, Utah, died April 1880. Wilford Moroni Graham, born May 14, 1880, Fairview, Utah. George Alma Graham born July 3rd, 1884, Fairview, Utah, died 8 April 1903. Tilman Rivers Graham, born September 9, 1889, Milburn, Utah. Maitland Graham, born March 31, 1894, Milburn, Utah. Ellis Earl Graham, born March 30, 1896 Milburn, Utah. Loyal Graham, born September 10, 1898, Milburn, Utah. My sisters are Elizabeth Velinda Graham Shand, born June 21, 1882, Fairview, Utah. Martha Lovina Rebecca Graham Tucker, born June 11, 1887, Fairview, Utah, died December 16, 1934. Geneva Romania Graham Sutton, born March 24, 1892, Milburn, Utah.

My father homesteaded some land in a place that was known as Herd House, receiving its name from the sheep that were herded there and a little old house in the valley. We used to move out on this land in the summer time and back to town in the winter. My mother always sent us to Sunday School and Primary when we were in town. I will never forget how happy we were.

My first position of responsibility in the Church was Secretary in the Primary Association. Sister Euphrasia Day was President. I was so proud and happy. Sister Day is still living and it gives me a thrill of joy whenever I see her. She was my first teacher in the District School. I have the greatest reverence for her.

After we moved back and forth a few times, on the farm, my parents became tired, and they sold our home in Fairview and moved-to Milburn to stay when I was thirteen years old. In the meantime people wanted homes and they came to the Herd House to get land to settle on. It became a branch of the Fairview Ward. We had a presiding elder, Peter C. Jensen, who was my Grandfather, and after a few years the Stake Authorities organized a Ward and set apart as Bishop, James W. Stewart, First Counselor, William E. Mower, Second Counselor Peter C. Jensen, Ward Clerk George A. Zabriskie, Mary C. Graham President of the Relief Society. I was chosen Secretary of the Primary. Mother held the position until her death. They named the Ward, Milburn.

At the age of eighteen, I married Oliver James Jenkins in the Manti Temple on the 10th of January 1894. He was born in Nephi, Juab County, December 27, 1870, died in Canada August 21, 1899. We had three boys born to us, Oliver Monte born November 14, 1894, Milburn, Utah, John Richard born December 6, 1896, and Ernest Leon born May 6, 1899. My husband, Mr. Jenkins, went to Canada to make a home, was there a year or nearly so; when he was herding sheep and was struck by lightning and killed in the month of August and was buried in Cardston, Canada. Mother’s brother Alma came up from Piute County. He lived in a place called Kingston. He had lost his wife, she died and left him with four girls. He wanted me to go home with him. He would help me and I could help him. I thought that was the best thing to do. This I did. I was there seven months and received word that Mother was dead. I returned home and have lived with my father and brothers and sisters. We were 13 in family with my boys and me. Finally my father died October 2, 1914, at the age of 63. I still stayed until my boys and my brothers and sisters are all married. One of my boys, Oliver Monte is living in Los Angeles, California, the other one, Ernest Leon in Salt Lake City. Oliver Monte Jenkins has three girls and four boys, and Ernest Leon has three girls.

After my mother died I was chosen as second counselor to President Levea J. Stewart in the Relief Society in the year 1900. After a few years President Stewart moved to Fairview and I was chosen to be President in 1919 and served till 1926. I served a few years and resigned for I was alone so much I couldn't stand to be home. It was impossible to do the work that a President of the Relief Society must do. I served as President of the Young Ladies Mutual a short time. I am still teacher of Gleaner Girls and in Relief Society am Teachers Trainer.

My father was born August 6, 1850, near Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. When he was eleven years old his parents joined the Latter-Day Saints Church and migrated to Utah. He had two brothers, Richard and George Graham, making three boys and two girls, Elizabeth and Rebecca. His mother died when they got to the rocky mountains leaving his father alone with his children. He came on to Utah and finally married a Mrs. Peterson who had two or three children. His father lived to be 71 years old and died in the place they had made their home called Fairview, Utah. Aunt Lizzie done for the children till Grandpa Graham married again.

Excerpts from Maitland Graham's history

As I stated my name is Maitland Graham, born on the 31st day of March 1894 in Milburn, Sanpete County, Utah. My father was John Graham and my mother was Mary Christina Jensen of Danish lineage. As Grandfather and his people were Mormon converts and immigrants from Denmark. It seems a little strange to me that two people of entirely different descent--English and Danish--would marry living in countries so widely separated in every way; countries foreign to each others; so different in language, customs, economic development government and many other ways. I see I have inferred a fallacy in my mother's origin. While her father's folks were Danish in descent and lived in Denmark before coming to America, Mother herself was native to the United States being born after the family arrived in America. But on second consideration of the people of Northern and Western Europe and by going back a little into the history of Europe we find the people especially of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and of the British were principally of Scandinavian origin.

Well, strange as it may seem John Graham and Mary Christina Jensen married and gave birth to thirteen children some dying in infancy and early childhood but from the time of my recollection there were ten who lived to maturity six boys and four girls. List them as they were born they were: John R. Graham, Mary Elnora Graham, Peter Graham, Wilford Moroni Graham, Elizabeth Vilinda Graham, George Alma Graham, Martha Lavina Rebecca Graham, Tilman Rivers Graham, Geneva Romania Graham, Maitland Graham, Ellis Earl Graham, and Loyal Graham. There was an infant girl whose name was Christina making a total of thirteen in all. After Alma and Christina passing on early in life leaving the ten mentioned before.

History of John Graham
(Taken from the "The History of Sanpete and Emery Counties")

John Graham, farmer, son of Richard and Mary, was born in Yorkshire, England, August 6, 1850. The family joined the Mormon Church, and set sail from Liverpool, England in 1862 and came to Utah, crossing the plains in Captain Ansel Harmon's train, which consisted of 60 wagons and 500 souls, and located in Fairview. John was brought up a farmer, took up some land in Milburn and in the spring of 1889, removed his family to the place where they now reside. John was married in Fairview, August 14, 1873 to Mary Christina Jensen, daughter of Peter C. and Mary Jensen, born in Salt Lake City, September 5, 1855. They have twelve children, John R. Graham, Mary Elnora, Peter, Wilford Moroni, Elizabeth Vilinda, George Alma, Martha Lavina Rebecca, Tilman Rivers, Geneva Romania, Maitland, Ellis Earl, and Loyal. There was an infant girl whose name was Christina, making a total of thirteen in all. Peter, Alma and Christina passed on early in life, leaving ten.

HISTORY OF MILBURN
(Taken from "History of Sanpete County")
Milburn is a most picturesque mountain village, situated five miles north of Fairview and occupying the nicest little cove in the county. The village was first located about 1875, when Richard Graham, the present postmaster, took up a farm. He was followed by others, chiefly from Fairview and the present agricultural community was formed. The cooperative plan of constructing irrigation canals and forming financial companies was adopted, and a colonial farming town completed. A co-op store was run for a time, but the town being small, it was closed.
The Rio Grande Western Railroad was completed through the settlement in 1890 and a flag station established, giving a daily mail service connecting the colony with the markets of the world. The people are engaged in farming, stock raising and wool growing, and have erected some neat homes. One of the most noticeable buildings in Milburn is the elegant schoolhouse erected a few years ago. The schools are equal to any in the county, being presided over by Professor Eli A. Day, the oldest teacher in Sanpete County. The district has eighty eight pupils and the school property is valued at $2,528.45.
A Latter-Day Saints Ward was organized in 1890, with James W Stewart as bishop. The several societies are all in a flourishing condition and peace, happiness and prosperity prevail throughout this rural settlement. The location is one of the best natural reservoir sites in the state, and with capital and business management, could be made of inestimable value to the county as a source of water supply for the reclamation of thousands of acres of now desert land, and creating here one of the most delightful pleasure resorts in the West.

from http://www.onlineutah.com/milburnhistory.shtml January 3, 2005
Milburn (Sanpete) is an outgrowth of Fairview on the upper San Pitch River. The community had several early names such as Milborn and Millburn, all of which were related to the early sawmills built at the mouth of the nearby canyons. Today it is primarily an agricultural region.
By John W. Van Cott
Deseret News 1 Nov 1890
LETTER FROM MILBURN, ANDREW JENSON, MILBURN, Sanpete County, Utah
The reader may ask, What and where is Milburn? It is a small village, a precinct of Sanpete County, and a ward of the Sanpete Stake of Zion, organized on the 20th of April 1890, with James W. Stewart as Bishop and William E. Mower as his First and P. C. Jensen as his Second Counselor. The ward contains twenty-three families, and the village of Milburn has a most beautiful and romantic location on rising ground near the mouth of Dry Creek Canyon, about a mile east of the Sanpete River, five miles northeast of Fairview and seven miles northeast of Indianola, to Thistle Valley. The Sevier branch of the Rio Grande Western Railway is being built through the farming land below the village, the track being laid already to the summit dividing the waters falling into the Spanish Fork from those falling into the Sanpitch.
The rich farming land belonging to the village extends several miles up or down the Sanpitch—on both sides of the stream—and is irrigated from it and a number of small tributaries rising in the mountains east, such as Lone Pine Creek, Crooked Creek, and Dry Creek. The village is located on the latter stream. This place was originally known as the “Herd House,” and is sadly remembered by many as the scene of a lamentable tragedy during the late Blackhawk war, in which a sheepherder was cruelly murdered by the Indians, May 25, 1865. He was the first man killed in the north end of Sanpete County during that war. Subsequently scores of others shared a similar fate.
After the lapse of a few more weeks the popular road of travel from the more northern settlements of Utah to Sanpete Valley will undoubtedly lie over the Rio Grande Western Railway to Thistle Station, in Spanish Fork Canyon, thence after changing cars, over the Sevier branch of the same road up Thistle Creek sixteen miles to Indianola station in Thistle Valley, thence up over the summit already mentioned to Sanpete Valley, in which the first settlement reached is Milburn, the next Fairview, 12 miles from Indianola, the third Mt. Pleasant, etc. The track was laid to Indianola, about three weeks ago, and the first passenger train run on the road between that point and Thistle station on the 2nd last, the occasion being the transportation of conference visitors. After that daily trains were run until the 12th, and will run again when the road shall have been completed to Fairview, probably by the 1st of November next.
Thistle Valley is situated high up in the Wasatch Mountains, having an elevation of 5,900 feet above sea level, and was a quarter of a century ago the scene of some of the most barbarous murders ever committed by the Ute Indians. At a place known as the Point, which is passed on the left as the traveler enters the valley from the north, is the old Given homestead. John Given settled there with his family early in the spring of 1865, built a little cabin and made preparations for farming. Soon afterwards the Blackhawk war broke out and a number of men were killed by the savages in Sanpete and Sevier valleys south. Mr. Given was warned of the danger of his situation by friends in Fairview who sent a delegation to him for the purpose, but he left unheeded the timely advice to move into the settlement, replying that he considered himself and two other men who stayed with the family quite able to defend themselves in case of an attack. The consequence was that on May 26, 1865, a large band of Indians on the warpath swooped down upon the cabin in the night and murdered and scalped John Given, his wife and their four children after which the bloodthirsty savages mutilated the bodies of their victims in a most frightful manner. While this inhuman work was going on in the cabin a young man who slept in a wagon box standing nearby, cautiously crawled out of his bed and managed to slide, unnoticed by the Indians, into an adjacent willow patch. Following the bed of the creek southward he finally succeeded in getting away from the scene of murder and ran on foot to Fairview where he gave the alarm. A posse of men immediately volunteered to go out after the remains of the murdered family, which were brought in and interred in Fairview. And this was only the beginning of the tragedies enacted in the Thistle valley. June 24, 1866, when Capt. Dewey with a company of Salt Lake militias encamped near the base of the mountains east of where Indianola now stands, the Indians killed a young man by the name of Charles Brown and wounded Thomas Snarr, after which they tried to capture the camp of the militia by surrounding it and shooting into it from the surrounding heights. For several hours the situation of the boys was exceedingly perilous, and had it not been for the timely arrival of a company of Sanpete militia from Fairview the whole camp would perhaps have been butchered, but while the savages were firing on the camp a messenger escaped on horseback and brought word to the settlements. The Fairview boys helped Captain Dewey’s men to remove their camp to a more central point in the valley, where they were not afterwards molested. These Indian troubles, of course, broke up the little settlements that had been commenced on Thistle Creek in 1864 and 1865, and not until 1874 were any important steps made toward settling the valley permanently.

The present population of Thistle Valley proper consists of about 40 Indian families and about 15 white families, besides quite a number of others located on the creek between the valley and Thistle Creek Station. At one point there is a little village known as Clinton belonging to Utah County. Indianola is situated in the east part of Thistle Valley, about a mile east of the railway station, but only a small portion of the people live on the town site, the majority, and among them nearly all the Indians, preferring, so far, to live on their respective quarter sections. Elder John Spencer presides over the Indians, and Hyrum Seeley has temporary charge of the ward as presiding Priest since Elder Spencer tendered his resignation as Bishop a few months ago. Elder Spencer states that the Indians in his care are generally comfortable, although most of them still occupy the same old log cabins which the Church purchased of the white settlers for them in 1877. Besides the cabin each family has an Indian tent pitched in the front or rear, without which none of them seems to be satisfied. The Indians make their own living by farming and hunting. In times past they were diligent in attending meetings and Sunday schools, but there has been a falling off in this respect of late. A number of them, after harvesting their crops, are in the habit of spending part of the autumn in the mountains hunting, and a large percentage is off for this purpose. The white settlers are pretty well off as a rule, having good farms and being owners of considerable stock. Indianola has an unfinished meeting house, a brick building 40x 26 feet, two stores and a number of comfortable dwellings. I have gleaned a number of important historical facts in visiting Thistle Valley and Milburn, and shall go from there to Fairview today, thence to all the other settlements in the Sanpete Stake of Zion, in the interest of Church history.

Friday, May 15, 2009

John and Mary Graham group sheet

Friday, May 1, 2009

Mary Christine Jensen

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