William and Mary Langhorn Nuttall

Genevieve Nuttall Creer's Great Great Grandparents

History of William and Mary Langhorn Nuttall

William Nuttall was a shipbuilder, born at Skerton, a village near the City of Lancaster, Lancashire, England. His trade led him up and down the West Coast of England. He married Mary Langhorn at Skerton, but was living at Carlyle, in the County of Cumberland, when William Ephriam as born. Later he established his home at Liverpool, where the last two sons, Leonard John and Joseph were born. It is not known if his trade led him out to sea, but he did become fairly well fixed while he lived at Liverpool, as they were able to send their two younger sons to school. Tradition has it that the early members of the family were weavers. We think William’s grandfather Richard moved his family north to better their condition and have evidence that his and his wife’s bodies were returned to the City of Bury, after their death, for burial in the Old Church of that city.

William’s wife Mary Langhorn Nuttall, a beautiful lady, kind and good, was descended from some of the finest of Northern England’s families and her lineage traces back to England’s early kings. She was a cousin of John Taylor who later became President of the Church. Her father was killed before she was born and it is thought her mother married again and had other children.

William and Mary, their three sons, William Ephriam, Leonard John, and Joseph, and William Ephriam’s sweetheart, Rosamond Watson were taught the Gospel and baptized in 1850 by John Taylor and other Mormon missionaries. John Taylor was in Europe at the time to purchase machinery for the manufacture of sugar from sugar beets to be grown here in the West. The machinery was purchased in the fall of 1851 and left in charge of Elias Morris and the Nuttalls. On March 6, 1852 they sailed from Liverpool on the ship “Rockaway”. John Taylor had returned to Utah and Captain Philip de la Mare and a Captain Russell and preceded them to the States to purchase special wagons and oxen to haul the heavy machinery. Some of the largest pieces weighed over 16 tons. About the 25th of April they arrived at New Orleans and all was transferred to a river steamer and sent up the Mississippi to St. Louis, there to be loaded on smaller boats that took the machinery and the accompanying Saints up the Missouri to Fort Leavenworth. The first fifty wagons they bought were made in St. Louis after the great fire. The lumber was green and unseasoned and the wagons soon began breaking down under the terrific loads that were placed in them. These were given to Saints with lighter loads and forty-two great Santa Fe Wagons were purchased from Charles H. Perry. Only about thirty Saints has sailed from England on the “Rockaway”, but by the time thy left Fort Leavenworth the company had been joined by many Saints and it became the longest wagon train to cross the plains up to that time.

It was now about the first of July and the real hardship of the journey began. Hauling such loads over the rough prairie trails, across rivers great and small, climbing steep mountain canyons, through all kinds of weather, was an undertaking that tried men’s souls. At the Sweetwater River they experienced their first severe snow storm, two feet of snow and zero weather. During the night of the storm many of the cattle got away, some were never found. Supplies ran low and some of the cattle had to be killed to eat. Farther along the Wyoming trail they were met by Joseph Horne and later at Fort Bridger by Abraham O. Smoot with flour and supplies. At Bear River more storm forced them to leave some of the heaviest wagons, which were brought on to Salt Lake the next spring. They crossed the Bear River, traveled down the Weber, up over the mountains and into Emigration Canyon to Salt Lake, then on to Provo. It was now late in November. It had taken five months to travel over 1200 miles from Fort Leavenworth to Provo.

The pioneer women were no less brave and worked right along with their men. William Ephriam had married Rosamond Watson before they left England. She had been disowned and kicked out by her family because she had joined the hated Mormons. She lost her first baby on board ship on the way over and it was buried at sea. On the trip to Utah she became pregnant again and truly experienced the hardship and inconvenience of those times. We modern folks can hardly conceive of the trials the pioneer women endured, sleeping on the ground with never enough bedding, just a bush or a tree for a toilet, taking the few baths they got in some cold river at night so no one would embarrass them, going days with scarcely enough water to drink, let alone to wash with. The constant chore of meals prepared over camp fires, at times made only of buffalo chips, the everlasting mending of worn out clothing, the cheering of their exhausted men, the consoling of tired and weary children. The ever-present terror of attack by the Indians.
The bearing and caring for babies, tending the ill and laying away of loved ones who could no longer sustain life in those trying days, in shallow, lonely graves by the side of the trail.

William and Mary lived most of the rest of their lives in Provo although they went to Spring Lake, a small community in the south end of Utah County, for a short time. Both were active in Church and Civic affairs. Both died in Provo and were buried in the Provo City Cemetery.

William Nuttall and Mary Langhorn were the parents of the following children:

William Ephriam Nuttall md. Rosamond Watson (11 Children)
William Ephriam Nuttall md. Martha Fenn ( no issue)

Leonard John Nuttall md. Elizabeth Clarkson (12 Children)
Leonard John Nuttall md. Sophia Taylor ( 6 Children)

Joseph Nuttall md. Emily Isabelle Chesley ( no issue)
Joseph Nuttall md. Susan Amelia Saunsosee (3 children)