Sarah Ann Lazenby

23 March 2009

Sarah Ann Lazenby, 1875-1954
Born: 28 Mar 1875 in Minersville, Beaver, Utah
Married: 26 Jun 1907 in Manti, Sanpete, Utah
Died 1 Sep 1954 in Fillmore, Millard, Utah

Our stake presidency challenged us (among other things) to index one batch of names every week from the family search website. I’d never heard about this program, but was fascinated from the start. It puts things in perspective for me, to spend 30 minutes every Sunday afternoon, looking at families, the parents, the kids, the ages and occupations, of people who lived over a hundred years ago, all in the original script.

After indexing Massachusetts marriage records from the turn of the century, and the 1880 Minnesota census, and a few batches from the New Jersey census, I decided to look up some of our own ancestors, and see the original records marking their lives.

I didn’t get much further than Sarah Ann Lazenby, who was Grandpa Miller’s mother. Here’s the story that I could gather from two U.S. censuses and the information in “Our Pioneer Ancestors” compiled by Mom and Dad.

Sarah’s parents were both from England. They had met before leaving England, when Sarah’s dad was preparing to emigrate and needed a fellow Saint to watch his son, Walter, so that the boy’s anti-Mormon grandmother wouldn’t kidnap him. He left Walter with a young woman, a recent convert, who later became his wife and Sarah’s mother.

Sarah’s mother (Walter’s babysitter) was also leaving England at this time. Her father and siblings were all dead, and her mother was very much against the church.

Sarah’s mother and father were married once they arrived in Salt Lake City in 1868.

The next official record I could find, the 1880 Federal Census, shows Sarah’s family in the Fremont Precinct of Piute County, Utah in 1880. Sarah’s English parents have now been married for 12 years. The father is 46 years old, the mother, 34. Walter is now 15 years old. Besides Walter, there are 6 living children who have been born in Utah: Henry (10 years), Moroni (8), Annettia (7), Sarah Ann (5), John T. (3), and Annie (1).

The Fremont Precinct census recorded 60 white families and 8 Indian families (42 Indian individuals divided into those 8 families). Three plural wives. Approximately half of all adults were born in Europe. It’s incredible to picture a bunch of European emigrants from England, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland, along with the Indians, all raising their families out in the Utah desert. They had emigrated 30 years after the last wild bear had been killed in Europe – to come to a land full of wild bears and more.

Men were mostly farmers, but with a fair number of ranchers and herders, and a few teamsters and miners. All women’s occupations were recorded as “keeping house” except for one elderly women, whose occupation was listed as “knitter.”

Indian women’s occupations were recorded as “keeping wigwam.” Indian men were farmers, laborers, tanners, hunters, and fishermen. None of them had last names or could read or write. Some of their names – indulge me, I think this is fascinating – Jewick, Susan, Pogneal, Bob, Dutch, Wolf, Poor, Emma, Willie, Jim, Lunconuk, Awahtz, Sallie, Wooden Whiskers, and the 25yo Mustache married to the 22yo Maggie. (Mustache had no occupation – beside his name was written and then crossed out, “loafer and beggar.”)

The next official record is the 1900 Census. Twenty years have gone by. Sarah’s four older siblings and her younger sister are out of the home, but Sarah (25) has been left behind. Moroni (28) is married and living close by with his wife and their 10-month old son. But the father (66) and mother (54) still have four children at home: Sarah (25), Phebe (17), Edith (15), and Bertha (13). (The census reports that the mother had given birth to 9 children, only 2 of whom were living. I think the recorder made a mistake, and meant that 2 of them had died.)

Both Moroni and his father were farmers. Sarah and her mother were keeping house, and the teenage girls were in school.

There were 80 families in Loa at the time, and it seems that a third of them were Blackburns – and probably an additional third of the population were related to the Blackburns. Unlike twenty years earlier in the 1880 census, most of the adults in Loa at the time of the 1900 census were born in Utah. Less than 20 adults were born in Europe (about 10% of adults). Three plural wives – two of which were Blackburns. No Indians on the record. Men were all farmers, with a couple of merchants thrown in.

Sarah was married in 1907, which was 7 years after this census was recorded. She would have been 32 at the time. She had 6 children, Clarence, Arthella, LaRue (Grandpa Miller), Lola, Wendell, and Morris.

She died in 1954 at the age of 79.