Identity

European Immigrants at the Docks, undated. From View of Salt Lake City and Utah, circa 1885-1900. Courtesy of the Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Early convert settlers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came from a wide variety of locations and cultures. Each individual’s culture and experience were important factors in shaping Southern Utah’s identity. Missionary efforts by the Church, both within and outside the United States, brought many settlers to the Intermountain West. In addition, the Church established the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company that helped an estimated 26,000 people immigrate from Europe from 1852 to 1887. Historian Richard L. Jensen wrote that “the decade with the greatest influx of immigrants to Utah was the 1860s, with the result that in 1870 more than 35 percent of all Utah residents had been born in foreign countries.”[1]

This period of high immigration occurred right as Southern Utah settlements were being established. Immigration at this time resulted in settlements with unique languages and cultures living close together and mingling.[2] Each contributed to the Southern Utah identity.

Some groups settled together into specific areas, such as the Swiss in Santa Clara and many American Southerners in Washington City.[3] Other individuals came from places distinct from their neighbors. Despite differences, local settlers were tied to St. George, religiously through the Temple and Tabernacle, and civilly through public gatherings, entertainment, and education. Latter-day Saint communities in Arizona were also connected to St. George through the temple and many took an arduous trip along the "Honeymoon Trail" into St. George for marriage and other temple ceremonies.[4]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 19th century incorporated polygamy as key part of its doctrine. Many settlers to Washington County actively practiced polygamy and it greatly influenced regional demographics and culture. The practice also contributed to conflict and misunderstandings with the federal government and the wider United States.[5]

Section of Santa Clara, Utah, undated. From the 1939 Dixie Yearbook. Utah Tech University Library Digital Collections.

Zadok was asked by his brother-in-law, Jacob Hamblin, to move to Santa Clara, Utah. He chose to go for "the love of a warm climate."[10] Zadok helped to build the community in Santa Clara and was one of the earliest cotton planters in Southern Utah. He hated picking out the seeds, but after talking with settlers hailing from United States South, he created his own version of a cotton gin built similar to a ”clothes wringer.”[11] This was used regularly until a more permanent horse-powered gin was built in St. George.[12]

Whether from persecution, church service, or seeking a better situation for his family, Zadok spent much of his life moving from place to place. He did, however, contribute to the establishment of more permanent communities for those who followed.

People of Santa Clara, undated. Utah State Historical Society. Mary Ann Stucki Hafen is pictured center left with a lace collar, with a young child on her lap.

After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Stucki family began a handcart journey across the North American plains.[15] They arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1860. In the autumn of 1861, the family was “called” to settle in Southern Utah, which Mary referred to as a “Dixieland where grapes and cotton could be raised.”[16] She remarked that many Swiss immigrants were asked to go to Southern Utah because of their experience growing grapes.[17] Mary’s family and other Swiss settlers gathered in the area around present-day Santa Clara and recorded very difficult early years. The settlers experienced a lack of resources, heat, flooding, and starvation, yet persevered. They learned to use native resources and plants, such as “Oose,” a soap made from yucca root.[18] They did not have much money and often bartered for their goods.[19] She wrote about various farming endeavors by early Swiss settlers, including failed attempts at silk production and more successful efforts with grapes, peaches, and apples.[20]

Mary felt that the other settlers were kind to the Swiss immigrants.[21] She recorded that in the early years, the Swiss settlers:

continued to speak the German language. But the children, mixing with the English, soon learned to speak English. And finally, most of the grown people learned English too. Preaching at the church meetings was sometimes in German and sometimes in English. Our family prayers were always in German until after we moved to Bunkerville.[22]

Santa Clara residents continue to honor their Swiss ancestry every September with their annual “Swiss Days” celebrations.[23]

Path to Pontypool Folly Tower, 2010. Photo by WelshDave. Wikimedia Commons. Representative of the green meadows of Martha's youth.

Washington Ward Chapel, 1940, erected 1877. Photo by Delos H. Smith, Library of Congress. Representative of Martha's later religious and frontier desert life.

Martha Rees Alexander was born in Pontypool, South Wales, on July 8^th, 1844.[24] Her family converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales. They emigrated to the United States and Utah in 1863. She met a young man named Woodruff Alexander on the journey across the North American plains. He was sent as a teamster by Brigham Young to help aid those crossing the Great Plains. She promised to marry him “as soon as I got to Dixie.”[25] She promptly made her way south after arriving in Salt Lake City. She described "delighting" in her trip across the Great Plains but struggled initially as a Southern Utah settler.[26] She remarked ”I sure did suffer with chills and fever, and I wasn’t used to the coarse foods, such as corn bread and milk. I got so poor that when my first baby was born I was not able to carry it.”[27]

She would later reminisce to her children about her childhood in Wales and painted a very rosy picture of her homeland, despite having had to work to help support her family at a young age.[28] Martha's daughter, Clara A. Nisson, wrote

Though many times she looked toward the East with homesick eyes, and wept for a cup of English tea or a glimpse of a cowslip meadow, or some such dear lost comfort, yet she took to pioneering like a duck to water, and in no time could cure meat and dye cloth, make soap out of cottonwood ashes, card and spin and weave wool or cotton into homespun, and turn it into clothing for her family and carry on with skill and thoroughness the manifold activities of a pioneer household.[29]