Mission to Texas

The year 1856 was an eventful one for James, beginning with the birth of two babies.  Maria’s fourth child, James, was born on February 14, and Hannah Jane’s third child, Francelia, was born on May 13.  The Utah territorial census of 1856 indicates that James, his two wives, and seven children were living in the Salt Lake 19th Ward.(1)

On Sunday morning, February 24, 1856, James Gammell heard his name read from the pulpit of the Old Tabernacle(2) in Great Salt Lake City.  He was called to go on a mission.  In the early days of the Mormon Church most missionaries were called in this same way.  They often had no notice until they heard their names and their assigned missions announced.  If a man didn’t happen to be in attendance on the morning his name was called, we can assume that his neighbors or family members relayed the message in a hurry!  James Gammell, along with other men from Great Salt Lake City, was assigned “To the North.”(3)   Other missionaries called on that Sunday morning were assigned to Green River, Las Vegas, Europe, Australia, and the East Indies.(4)   When the announcement was printed in the Deseret News a few days later, it included these instructions: “The brethren who cannot go without leaving their families upon the hands of the Bishops, had better stay and provide for their families before they leave—By order of the First Presidency.”(5)

Heber C. Kimball gave specific instructions to those missionaries called to go to the North.  He asked them “not to take their families, but gather up their teams, seeds, etc., and go as soon as practicable.”(6)  It is possible that James left immediately and spent a few months in Montana, a region that he knew well.(7)   But if he did actually go north, he had definitely returned by August, when he was assigned to go to Texas.  Years later a business associate, Joseph C. Walker, wrote that James “suspicioned [sic] that Brigham Young was down on him when he appointed him to go to Texas and remain there ‘till he brought all of the Mormons from there to Utah.”(8)

A letter to George A. Smith, one that James was not privy to, reveals a possible reason for the rift that James detected in the relationship between himself and Brigham Young.  In July Brigham wrote to Smith concerning an application to Congress for statehood, “…we have recently learned that some of our very good friends have gotten up and signed remonstrances, affidavits, and other documents designed to be used against us …Enclosed you will find the names of those said to have signed such documents.”(9)  James Gammell’s name was on that list, giving Brigham reason to question James’ loyalty.  Surely James must have anticipated that his signature on a public document such as the one described would not have gone unnoticed by Brigham Young.

James began to worry about his standing with Brigham, ”for upon that knowledge his future actions and efforts depended, and he brooded over the matter ‘till he decided he would know.”  He went to Brigham’s office and had a long talk with him, and “on his part he endeavored to make it the sweetest talk of his life…”(10)  The respectful and submissive tone of his letter to Brigham Young, dated August 20, 1856, seems to reveal James’ eagerness to repair his tarnished image in the eyes of the Prophet.  Addressing President Young as “Honored Sir,” he requested counsel and advice about traveling to Michigan on business and to see his son Orlin, who was living there with his grandparents.  He wrote that he planned to visit his relatives in Texas, and then mentioned that he hoped to rid himself of some of his questionable associates.  James concluded, “But in all this I place myself entirely in your hands, for it is very far from my feelings to stir a foot without your blessing and faith.”(11)  Coincidently or not, James was called to go to Texas, where he most likely visited his sister, his brothers, and maybe even his mother, who moved from Michigan to Texas sometime in the late 1850’s.

James left Great Salt Lake City on September 10, 1856, in a wagon company of more than twenty missionaries traveling to the United States(12) and to England.  The company included Elder Parley P. Pratt, called to the States, and assistant Church Historian Thomas Bullock, called to England.(13)  As they traveled slowly eastward, they met many companies of Saints, some from England, Wales, Denmark, and St. Louis, and returning missionaries and supply wagons, all headed for the Salt Lake Valley.  On October 2 they passed the Willie handcart company encampment, and then on October 4, they spotted wagon tracks along the Platte River trail that were made by Elder Edward Martin’s handcart company of 700 Saints, but they missed seeing them.  The next day (Oct. 5) they camped while James Gammell and Thomas Pierce set out to find them and to deliver letters to Elder Martin.  Gammell and Pierce, unable to find the Martin Company, returned to their wagon train.(14)  (Two weeks later the Willie and Martin companies encountered an unexpected blizzard in mountains of Wyoming. Halted by the deep snow and bitter cold, nearly seventy of the emigrants died of exposure and starvation. If the rescue party and supply wagons from Salt Lake City had not reached them, they all would have perished.)

By October 17, James’ company had reached Fort Kearney, Nebraska.  From there they “pursued [the] long and wearisome journey through Iowa and Illinois.  On the way [they] saw Nauvoo and the ruins of the Temple in the distance.”(15)  In late November they arrived in St. Louis, where James and the other missionaries dispersed to their various destinations.

___________________________

1. Hannah Jane’s children, Hannah and Isaac Brown, are listed. Maria’s son Samuel has probably died, and Francelia was not born until May.
2. The building known as the Old Tabernacle was "erected [on Temple Square] in 1852 to replace the first boweries. This south-facing, all-weather, rectangular building with a half-dome apse at its north end was built of adobe. It was razed in 1877 to make way for the present Assembly Hall."  (C. Mark Hamilton, The Salt Lake Temple: A Monument to a People, 1983.)
3. “North” probably refers to northern Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.
4. On this same day two of my Crandall ancestors were called on missions: Myron Crandall to Green River and Martin Crandall to the East Indies. EGH
5. Deseret News, February 27, 1856.
6. Ibid.
7. “The Pioneers”, author unknown. This article relates the history of James Gammell in Montana. It states that James, with a party of five men, came into the Ruby Valley with pack horses in the summer of 1856, and traded with the Indians.
8. Joseph C. Walker, History of the Mormons in the Early Days of Utah, pp.62-64.
9. Brigham Young, Letter to George A. Smith, July 1856.
10. Walker, pp. 62-64.
11. James Gemmell, Letter to Brigham Young, Aug. 20, 1856, from Brigham Young Papers, Church Archives.
12. In 1856 there were thirty-one states in the United States. Utah was only a territory.
13. The Mormon, November 15, 1856:2.  See also Parley P. Pratt Autobiography, pp. 400,419.
14. Ibid.   (My gr. gr. grandmother Mary Lawson Kirkman was part of the Martin Handcart Company. Her husband and baby are buried in Wyoming. EGH)
15. Parley P. Pratt Autobiography, p.401.

Making a Living and Rearing a Family

Drusilla Hendricks with her granddaughter Elizabeth Gammell
and Elizabeth's husband, Eli Harris
c. 1868

After the death of his wife Elizabeth in October 1851, James Gammell left his daughter Elizabeth (Libby), just three months old, in the care of her grandparents, James and Drusilla Hendricks.  Drusilla reared her daughter’s two children, James Bainbridge and Elizabeth Gammell, as her own.(1)  The Hendricks moved to Springville in 1858 when Johnston’s army arrived in the valley, then later returned to Salt Lake.  In 1860, when Libby was nine years old, they moved to Richmond, Cache Valley, Utah.  James Hendricks died July 8, 1870, and Drusilla on May 20, 1881.  Both are buried in Richmond.

James Gammell continued to be involved in various business pursuits in order to support his growing family.  Seven children were born within the next five years - four to his wife Maria and three to Hannah Jane.  James often left home for months at a time on trading expeditions, not leaving much time for family matters.  But a letter written to his sister, Jane, gives us a rare glimpse of his tender feelings for his children: 

When this old hulk is layed away, there will be a lot [of children] left to laugh or cry as they may feel…  Jane, I am proud of them.  They are all smart and will pass in a crowd.   My oldest daughter. whose mother died in Salt Lake is married and got one child.   She has done well… My other children with their mother home I left in Utah are all well.   I have not saw [sic] them for seven years but hear oft from them. [During an 1869 expedition in Cache County, Utah,] I made my home at Liby’s [sic] and had a great time with my Grand daughter.(2)

Earning a living in the Salt Lake Valley during the early 1850’s was a challenge for James, as it was for most Mormon families in those early years.  Most were dependent on their own labor and ingenuity for food, clothing, soap, and other supplies, which they had to produce at home.  Ready-to-wear clothing, like men’s pants and broadcloth coats, was simply not available.  Products shipped overland from St. Louis were too expensive for most families, who had little or no money.  In this cashless economy, commodities and labor were the typical currency.  Farming was another challenge in this arid climate.  Some years the agricultural surplus wasn’t sufficient to yield a profit.  The harvest of 1855 was especially poor.  Another grasshopper infestation, like the one in 1849, plus a late season drought, reduced the harvest by one-third and even by two-thirds in some counties—all this in a year when the influx of new emigrants was more than 4,000.(3)

When he first settled in the Salt Lake Valley, James found employment as a contractor on public works projects like roads and bridges.  Fortunately he had useful skills that were desperately needed, and he made a good living, reportedly as much as $10,000 a year.(4)  In between working on public projects, he was involved in freighting and Indian trading.  He regularly traveled beyond the Salt Lake Valley on business ventures, bringing back supplies to sell or trade. Despite his considerable entrepreneurial skills, James had financial struggles.  Early Salt Lake County Court records reveal that at times he found himself at the mercy of his creditors, his customers, and even the tax assessor.  A summary of the next five years includes several lawsuits connected with his business dealings, as well as the births of seven children.

1852 – James’ wife Maria bore her first child, Jeannette, on September 25, 1852. Jeannette was James’ third child, but she was the first one that he would raise to maturity.  (Their maternal grandparents raised his first two children.)  The family was living in the Salt Lake 17th Ward, where records show that the baby was blessed on December 28, 1852.

On April 21, 1853, James Gammell, plaintiff, filed a lawsuit against James Bridger for trespassing and for seizing “upon the above named goods ($500) without due process of law.  Settled by the Partys [sic] May 2, 1853.  The plaintiff is to pay the cost to Sheriff.”(5)  This case was most likely related to the animosity between Bridger and the Mormons that festered in the summer of 1853.  (At that time the Mormons had jurisdiction over Fort Bridger, which was a part of the Territory of Utah.)  “Mormon leaders were convinced that Bridger was engaged in illicit trade with the Indians, especially guns and ammunition, and that he had stirred hostility among the Native Americans against the Mormons.  Mormon leaders revoked Bridger's license to trade and issued a warrant for his arrest; however, before the posse's arrival Bridger had fled.”(6)

1853 – William Andrew was born to Hannah Jane on July 25, 1853 according to Salt Lake 19th Ward records.  (At this time James was also stepfather to Hannah Jane's two children, Isaac Davis Brown, age five, and Hannah Jane Brown, age three.)  Maria’s second child, Samuel, was born on September 26,1853.(7)

Notice in the Deseret News, December 22, 1853

On July 4, 1854, James Gammell sued John H. Bleazard for $424 worth of beer at seventy-five cents per gallon.  James demanded per written agreement $364 and the costs of the suit.  Bleazard paid for eighty gallons ($60), but refused to pay the rest of the money.  On February 21, 1855, the two men appeared in court again. This time James Gammell was the defendant, and John H. Bleazard the plaintiff.  Bleazard demanded $366 “for goods sold and delivered and labor performed.”(8)  Finally on September 29, 1855, James Gammell, plaintiff, demanded payment from John H. Bleazard, who still owed $368 for the beer from July 1854.  (Sorry, I don’t know what happened to the money or the beer!)

1854 - Maria’s third child, Avis Josephine, was born on April 17,1854, and blessed in the Salt Lake 19th Ward on April 19, 1855.  James and Hannah Jane’s second child, Mary Edith, was born on October 11, 1854, and blessed on Nov 11, 1854.(9)

In the fall of 1854, James must have been gone on a trading expedition.  From Hosea Stout’s diary entry of January 23, 1855, we learn that James had just returned to Salt Lake: “Mr. James M (sic) Gammell returning from a trading tour some 600 miles S.E. reports that a small party of Whites have been killed by the Indians near the Devil’s Gate [Wyoming], as he learns from the Indians.”

Another lawsuit was filed on May 25, 1855, by Plaintiff , C.A. Perry of C.A. and E.H. Perry, merchants, vs. James Gammell, Benjamin Simms, and James Simms, demanding $2,035.54 for goods delivered.  The list of goods included whiskey, eggs, shoes, socks, brandy, matches, tin buckets, four guns, four yards of red flannel, tea, a bushel of oats, sugar, shoeing horses, flour, bullets, lead, coffee, blankets, robes, and tobacco.

1856 – Maria’s fourth child was born on February 14, 1856. He was named James after his father. Francelia, third child of James and Hannah Jane, was born on May 13, 1856.

Several years later on June 6, 1859, James Gammell was named as the defendant in another lawsuit brought by the County Assessor for delinquent taxes.(10)  In August of that same year James was named in another court case, which will be discussed later.

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1. 1860 U. S. Census, Cache, Utah Territory, Post Office – Brigham. Jas. Hendricks, age 52, Drucilla Hendricks, age 50, Jas. W. Bainbrage, age 11, Elizabeth Bainbrage, age 9.
2. James Gammell, letter to his sister, Jane, January 1, 1870. (James refers to his granddaughter, Drusilla Elizabeth Harris, one year old.)
3. Arrington, Leonard J., Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 148-150.
4. Walker, Joseph C., manuscript “History of the Mormons,” p. 42.
5. Salt Lake County Court records, 1853.
6. Despain, S. Matthew and Gowans, Fred R., “Jim Bridger”, Utah History Encyclopedia.
7. Salt Lake 19th Ward Records, pp. 9 and 11, FHL film #0026706. Samuel apparently died in early childhood. He did not appear in the 1860 Census.
8. Salt Lake County, Utah, Probate Court, civil and criminal case files, series 373, entries 623, 828, 482.
9. For both births see Salt Lake 19th Ward records, p.11, film #0026706.
10. Salt Lake County Probate Court, civil and criminal case files, series 373, entry 1741.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

The Hedquist family
Descendants of James Gammell and Hannah Jane Davis
taken June 2010 at Bear Lake, Utah

It has been an amazing and productive year of research on the life of James Gammell.   I thank those of you who have been so helpful with your contributions of information and photos. 

Looking forward to another year of research on James Gammell/Gemmell and his siblings......

Have a Happy New Year!

Maria and Hannah Jane Brown

James Gammell was married five times.  His first wife, Harriet Fitzgerald, died in Michigan in 1848.  His very short marriage to Mrs. Editha Clark of Michigan in November 1849 ended in early 1850.  In October 1851 his third wife, Elizabeth Hendricks, died.  His fourth wife was Susan Maria Brown, and the fifth was Maria's sister-in-law Hannah Jane Davis Brown.


Susan Maria Brown

Maria and her family lived for a time in the Ambrosia Branch of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near Montrose in Lee County, Iowa, where she was baptized in the Mississippi River.  At age nineteen (1850) she crossed the plains with her widowed mother, Avis Hill Brown,(1) and her two brothers, George Washington Brown, age twenty-three, and Sidney William Brown, age thirteen.  Her oldest brother, Isaac Hill Brown, and his wife, Hannah Jane Davis, had entered the Salt Lake Valley three years earlier on September 25, 1847, as part of the Daniel Spencer/Perrigrine Sessions Company.(2)



Hannah Jane Davis

Hannah Jane and her family became members of the Mormon Church while living in West Township, Columbiana, Ohio.  A few years later her father, Isaac Davis, moved the family to Lee County, Iowa, about four miles from Nauvoo, where he bought nine hundred acres of farmland.  At this time many members of the Church had fled the persecutions in Missouri to settle in Illinois and Iowa. Although Nauvoo, located across the Mississippi River in Hancock County, Illinois, became the center of Church, there were also several Mormon congregations organized in Lee County, Iowa, under the direction of Stake President John Smith, the uncle of Joseph Smith.



At the time of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith in June 1844, nineteen-year-old Hannah Jane was living in close proximity to Nauvoo.  Here she met Isaac Brown, and they were married in the Nauvoo Temple in spring 1846, before being driven out of their beloved city by intense persecution.  They made the 300-mile journey across Iowa along with hundreds of other Latter-day Saints.  The following spring, while they were camped at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, Hannah Jane gave birth to her first child, Emily Jane.  On May 20, two days after the birth, Hannah Jane’s father, Isaac Davis, died of bilious fever.(3)  Emily Jane died six days later and was buried in a tiny grave next to her grandfather and her aunt Sabina Ann Davis Harrison, who had also died in Winter Quarters in February 1847.(4)



Leaving behind the graves of loved ones, Hannah Jane and Isaac Brown began the trek across the plains with the Spencer/Sessions Company consisting of 185 individuals and 75 wagons.  Although Perrigrine Sessions was a captain of fifty, his company was called “Parley's Company” after Parley P. Pratt of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, who was a member of the company.  Parley was traveling to the Great Salt Lake Valley for the first time, having just returned from a mission in England.  An excerpt from one of the trail journals recorded this incident, “I recollect one day that a large heavily loaded wagon ran over one of Bro. Pratt's little boys, about two years old; he took up the child and laid hands on him, and the child never complained, and soon was as well as before to all appearance.”(5)

For the most part the company followed the trail on the north bank of the Platte River, “sometimes leaving the river some miles, crossing streams and sand hills and passing long reaches without a single tree to relieve the sameness of the river valley.”  Along the way they had access to plenty of buffalo meat and other game.  As the journal stated, “…one Isaac Brown [husband of Hannah Jane Davis Brown] of our fifty was an excellent hunter and kept the camp supplied with fresh antelope meat.”  On the trail they met Willard Richards and other Church leaders from the Salt Lake Valley who were headed back to Winter Quarters to give support to the continuing exodus of Mormon pioneers.  Richards assured them that “they had found the place for the gathering of the saints, that they had laid off a city and named it Great Salt Lake City, Great Basin, North America."  The company arrived in the valley on September 25, 1847.(6)

By 1851 the Browns were settled in Utah County.  The widow Avis Brown was living with her children, Maria, Sydney, and George, and according to the census, her son Isaac H. Brown’s family was living in the house next door.  Hannah Jane Davis Brown, twenty-five years old, is listed, along with her three-year-old son, Isaac, and year-old daughter Hannah Jane.(7)  Isaac Brown, who worked as a freighter and could have been traveling at the time of the census, was not listed.  The more logical explanation is that he had already died or was missing.  Isaac was reportedly killed by Indians while building railroads in Nevada.  Another version of the story claims that Isaac was actually killed by his partner, and it was blamed on the Indians.  It is estimated that Isaac died sometime between 1850 and 1852.  The actual date and specific circumstances of his death are unknown. Even his wife didn’t know the full story. Hannah wrote that she “lost her husband sometime in the 50's.”(8)

On August 11, 1851, James Gammell married Susan Maria Brown as a plural wife.  (In the early days of the Mormon Church men who had the financial means to support more than one wife were sometimes asked by Brigham Young or other Church leaders to enter into plural marriage.  The practice was formally discontinued in 1890.)   On this same day James was also sealed to Elizabeth Hendricks, his third wife, and to his deceased wife, Harriet Fitzgerald.  One year after the death of Elizabeth Hendricks, James married Hannah Jane Davis Brown as a plural wife on October 7, 1852.(9)

____________________________

1. Avis Brown was converted to Mormonism and baptized in 1838 in Chautauqua County, New York. Maria was baptized in 1840 in Ambrosia.  (See “Ambrosia Iowa Branch Register”, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.)
2. See lds.org , Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel (1847-1868). Avis Brown and her children traveled in an unidentified wagon company (1850).
3. Bilious fever is an archaic medical term that could refer to malaria or typhoid.
4. “Biography of Elisha Hildebrand Davis”. (Elisha is the brother of Hannah Jane Davis.)
5. Source of Trail Excerpt: Smith, Jesse Nathaniel, Journal of Jesse Nathaniel Smith, The Life Story of a Mormon Pioneer, 1834-1906 [1953], 11-12.
6. Ibid.
7. U.S. 1850 Census, p. 127, image 256. (This is actually an April /May 1851 enumeration.)
8. Hannah Jane Brown, letter to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers.
9. IGI Extracted Marriage Records.

Funeral at the Bowery

Less than one year later the same guests who attended her marriage at the Bath House gathered on Sunday morning, October 19, 1851, in the Bowery for the funeral of Elizabeth Hendricks Gammell.  The mother of a three-year-old son and an infant daughter, she was just twenty-three years old.  Orson Pratt preached the funeral sermon.(1)



The Old Tabernacle and Bowery
as it appeared in the heart of Salt Lake City between 1847-54
Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
In public domain



In the above photograph the Bowery is the crudely built structure on the right.  The street in the foreground is South Temple Street.  On the square now known as Temple Square “an immense shed had been erected upon posts, which was capable of containing three thousand persons.”  It served as a temporary place for religious worship and public gatherings.(2)  The Old Bowery, as it came to be known, measured one hundred feet by sixty feet:

It consisted of posts set up at convenient intervals around the sides of a quadrangle, the tops of the [one hundred and four] posts being joined by poles held in place by wooden pegs or lashed in position by rawhide thongs, and upon this skeleton-roof, willows, evergreens, sagebrush, and other shrubs were piled, resulting in a covering which was a partial protection from the sun, though but a poor barrier against wind and rain.(3)

That first winter (1847-48) in the Salt Lake valley, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Hendricks married Frederick Nantz Bainbridge, age twenty-three, who had crossed the plains at  the same time in the Edward Hunter/Jacob Foutz Company.(4)  Not long after their marriage, Bainbridge grew disenchanted with the hard labor required to survive in the Salt Lake Valley.  As Drusilla Hendricks wrote, he had his heart set on greener pastures:

When hard times came on and he had to irrigate, he could not stand it so he wanted his wife to go back to the States with him or to California.  But she knew too much to do either.  He did not think that the Lord required him to stay here (Salt Lake Valley) without bread or to irrigate and he would not stand it.  I told him we would have to stand up to our rack, hay or no hay, and if he could not do it, he would have to start and take himself off, but that he could not take my daughter, so he left.(5)

Frederick Bainbridge went to California at the time of the Gold Rush (1849), and for the next twenty years he moved from mining town to mining town.  He was never heard from again.  Some sources say that he died in 1877.(6)

In contrast, four discharged veterans of the Mormon Battalion who were already in the Sacramento area and were working at Sutter’s Mill when gold was discovered on January 24, 1848,(7) ignored the chance to make a fortune and returned to their destitute families in the Salt Lake Valley.  However, they did take home with them $17,000 in gold dust, which they freely contributed to the economy of the State of Deseret.  Instead of being circulated as coin, most of the gold was kept in a reserve fund and paper currency was issued.(8)

It is interesting to note that James Gammell, as far as we know, never ventured to the gold fields of California.  Instead, he seemed content to stay in the Salt Lake Valley to carve out a life for himself and his family there, in spite of the lure of gold just eight hundred miles away.  In 1849 and 1850 an estimated ten to fifteen thousand gold seekers passed through Salt Lake City and provided an economic windfall for the Saints.

When Fred Bainbridge and Elizabeth Hendricks (or Libby, as she was called) separated, Libby returned to live with her family and helped them run the Warm Springs Bath House.  She and her son, James Wesley Bainbridge, lived there until she met and married James Gammell.


James Wesley Bainbridge, born October 21, 1848,
son of Frederick Nantz Bainbridge and Elizabeth Hendricks
Courtesy of Karen Bainbridge DeBow



Elizabeth Gammell, born July 23, 1851,
daughter of James Gammell and Elizabeth Hendricks



In April 1851,(9) James Gammell, living with his wife, Elizabeth, and two-year-old stepson, James Bainbridge, was the supervisor of roads and actively employed in the building of the new city.  On July 23, 1851, one day before the fourth anniversary of entry of the first group of the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley, Elizabeth Harriet Mahala Gammell was born.  Apparently Libby, whose health was fragile, did not recover from the birth of her daughter, and she died three months later.  She was likely buried in Block 49, the first pioneer cemetery in the Salt Lake Valley.(10)  The remains of nine adults and adolescents and twenty-three infants were unearthed during the excavation for an apartment complex on this site in summer 1986.  Plans were to re-inter the remains in the Pioneer Trails State Park at the mouth of Emigration Canyon and to reconstruct the old pioneer cemetery faithful to the original configuration.(11)

___________________________

1. Journal History of the Church, October 19, 1851.
2. Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, pp. 56, 59, 737.
3. James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord, pp. 201-2.
4. Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868. No other members of Fred Bainbridge’s family were traveling with this company, which arrived on October 1, 1847.
5. Robert Raymond, ed., Historical Sketch of James Hendricks and Drusilla Dorris, chapter 9.
6. See Karen Bainbridge DeBow’s website: http://www.karensarchives.com   Frederick Bainbridge married Elizabeth Almira Pond on 25 Feb 1849. She was possibly a plural wife, but this marriage ended as well when he left Salt Lake City.
7. One of the men was Henry Bigler, who recorded the discovery of gold in his diary on that day. The diary is now on display at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
8. Jean S. Greenwood, The State of Deseret, pp. 67-71.
9. Utah became a territory in September 1850. Its federal census began in April 1851, taking two months. The 1850 census, therefore, is actually an 1851 enumeration.
10. The cemetery was located between Third and Fourth South and Second and Third West.
11. Deseret News, Section B, page 1, Sunday, March 8, 1987.

The Warm Springs Bath House

Four days after his arrival in the valley, Brigham Young designated the location for the temple and initiated a project to map the newly established “Great Salt Lake City”.  On August 3, 1847, Orson Pratt fixed the baseline (east-west) and principal meridian (north-south) coordinates at the temple site.  All of the streets were laid out in a grid pattern from that point.  In general, all neighborhoods in Salt Lake City are named and numbered by how far distant they are from Temple Square.

(Click on this link to see a short video about the Base Meridian Marker:
http://www.deseretnews.com/video/1,5143,620,00.html  )

The city was divided into nineteen sections or wards.  Each ward, originally made up of nine ten-acre blocks, was presided over by an ordained bishop.  In this early period, before the regular incorporation of the city, each bishop acted as a chief magistrate or mayor of his ward, as well as the ecclesiastical leader:

Under their temporal administration all over Utah, as well as in Salt Lake, cities were built, lands divided off to the people, roads and bridges made, water-ditches cut, the land irrigated, and society governed.  In fact, under them [the bishops] all the revenue was produced and the work done of founding Great Salt Lake City.(1)

Plat of Salt Lake City, Utah
photograph produced in the late 1860's by E. Martin, photographer
Courtesy of Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
in public domain
(The location of Temple Square is designated by No. 1.)

Bishop Newel K. Whitney was called as the Presiding Bishop over all the bishops, and at the same time he served as bishop of the Eighteenth Ward.  James Hendricks was ordained and set apart as bishop of the Nineteenth Ward, located in the northwest corner of the city. (See Plat.)   He served as bishop from 1849 to 1856. 

Located within the boundaries of Bishop Hendricks’ ward was the Warm Springs, one of several mineral water, thermal springs that flowed from the base of the nearby Wasatch Mountains.  The first company of Mormon pioneers discovered the springs within days of their arrival in July 1847.  It didn’t take long for the Warm Springs to become popular for bathing and for the healing qualities of the mineral water.  As a child, Margaret Judd Clawson made frequent visits to the springs:

In those days we could have two free baths a week by taking a walk out to the warm springs.  It was a large pool of warm sulphur water, flowing constantly out of the mountain.  President [Brigham] Young made the rule that Tuesdays and Fridays should be women’s days, and no peeping Toms allowed…. It was great fun for a lot of girls to go out there together to play and splash in the water for hours.(2)

Most early reports called the Warm Springs “very pleasant and refreshing,” but others were not so glowing. William Clayton wrote, “The smell arising from it [the water] is truly nauseating and sickly, though generally supposed to be in no way unhealthy.”  Thomas Bullock wrote just one comment, “It was very warm & smelt very bad.”  But later in 1847 he highly recommended the experience, “Every person who was sick that bathed in it recovered…those who once bathed there want to go again.”  Bullock made the first improvements to the springs by digging the natural basin deeper to accommodate more bathers at one time.(3)  The spot became increasingly popular, especially among visitors.  John Hudson, one of the “forty-niners” headed for the gold fields of California, wrote his impressions:

It is a very strong spring and forms a pool about 20 feet square and 15 inches deep.  The water is as clear as crystal.  The bottom is covered with pebble stones of a delightful greenish hue.  The water is strong of sulfur and is said to be healthful. We nearly all took a bath.  When you first get in the water it is uncomfortably warm, but after a minute or two it is delightful.(4)

Soon after James Hendricks was called as bishop of the Salt Lake Nineteenth Ward, he moved his family to the Warm Springs to help build a public bathhouse (a project initiated by the High Council of Salt Lake City.)  In as much as the proposed bathhouse was within his ward boundaries, Hendricks would act as its proprietor.(5)  The newly constructed Warm Springs bathhouse also served for a time as a meetinghouse for Sunday services of the Nineteenth Ward, and it was here that Bishop Hendricks’ daughter Elizabeth and James Gammell were married.

Warm Springs Bath House
built in 1850
Date of photograph is unknown
 in public domain

For copyrighted photos, see the following links from University of Utah Library:

This first link is another view of the photo above.  It is supposedly a later photo of the original bathhouse built in 1850.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/USHS_Class&CISOPTR=15983&CISOBOX=1&REC=13

The second link is a 1939 photograph of the modern replacement of the old bathhouses and was known as the Wasatch Warm Springs Plunge.  (The Mission style building, erected in 1921, served as a city swimming pool until 1976.  It has been abandoned, but still stands as of 2010.)

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/USHS_Class&CISOPTR=15993&CISOBOX=1&REC=15

This original bathhouse was built a short distance south of the Warm Springs.  The water was diverted to the building by hollow pine logs.  First the Hendricks built a log house to live in while they built a larger adobe cottage and then the bath house, “which contained twelve rooms, six on each side and a large room in front…the warm water [100 degrees] was to be brought about l/3 of a mile in pipes, and they had to be made of logs bored through the center lengthwise (these were called pump logs) which required considerable labor.” (6)

When completed, this “commodious bathhouse” consisted of

…one inner pool for women, an outer one for men and boys, with several private rooms fitted with wooden bathtubs.  They also furnished a winter swimming pool with hot baths for all…In front of this bathhouse was an adobe cottage for the caretaker, and soon an immense dancing hall, also built of substantial adobe, was added, with a roomy dining room equipped with kitchens, all fitted with benches and tables.  Public parties and theatrical entertainments were given here, even after the completion of the Social Hall …this building was probably Salt Lake City's first hotel.(7)



The Warm Springs
photograph by Steve Hedquist
October 20, 2010



Too bad there isn't a way to digitally transmit smells.  Let me personally verify the truth of Thomas Bullock's 1847 assessment of the springs:  "It was very warm and smelt very bad!"   (Just think of rotten eggs.)  Notice the green color of the minerals in the water.  The warm water still flows continuously, but apparently not at the same rate that it did in the early days.



View of the Wasatch Springs Plunge building from Victory Road.
( Site of the original Warm Springs Bath House)
800 North 300 West, Salt Lake City
photograph by Steve Hedquist
October 20, 2010





A plaque commemorating the original Warm Springs Bath House



James Gammell and Elizabeth Hendricks were married in the Bath House on the day of its dedication.



Here is an advertisement printed in the Deseret News in March 1851:

DESERET BATHING HOUSE!!

The Inhabitants of Deseret are hereby respectfully informed, that the Baths are now open, and printed tickets ready for issue to accommodate families by the quarter, half year, or year. The following are the terms for privilege of the Baths, viz:

For single person per quarter,               $0,50
Families of from 2 to 4 persons per qr. $1,00
       “           “    5 to 8       “                    $2,00
       “           “    8 to 16     “                     $3,00
       “           "    16 to 24   "                    $3,50
Families to furnish their own towels.
Tickets for sale at the Tithing Office, and also at the Bath House.

JAMES HENDRICKS, Proprietor
March 24, 1851(8)

At 2:00 pm on Wednesday, November 27, 1850, about one hundred townsfolk, including the First Presidency of the Church and several of the apostles, gathered at the newly built Bath House(9) to celebrate the “Festival” of consecrating it.  Brigham Young called the meeting to order.  He announced, “we intend to solemnize a marriage, and then a dedication prayer by Heber C. Kimball, as we intend to dedicate this room and ourselves unto the Lord – as this is the first meeting in this room.”  Next Brigham Young performed the marriage of James Gemmell and Elizabeth Hendricks.(10)  In his dedicatory prayer Heber C. Kimball mentioned James and Elizabeth: “Bless this couple now married that they may be a comfort to this family [Hendricks family].”  The service was followed by “an afternoon and evening celebration of feasting and dancing, interspersed by songs, fancy dancing and addresses by President Young and his associate brethren.”(11)

For James Gammell his marriage to Elizabeth marked the beginning of a new phase of his life as a member of the Hendricks family, as a husband and father for the second time, and as a newly baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Hendricks family moved from the Warm Springs in 1852.  Drusilla recalled that during those three years they had “six marriages, one death and four births and I could not tell the hardships we passed through while we were there.”(12)

 ___________________________

1. Tullidge, Edward W., History of Salt Lake City, p. 58.
2. Quoted on a plaque in Warm Springs Park, Salt Lake City, Utah. See “Rambling Reminiscences of Margaret Gay Judd Clawson Talking of ‘Those Days’,” microfilm 40, LDS Church History Library.
3. Darrell E. Jones and W. Randall Dixon, “Warm Springs and the First Bath House in Salt Lake City”, Utah Historical Quarterly, Summer 2008, Vol. 76, No. 3., p. 215.
4. Quoted on a plaque in Warm Springs Park, Salt Lake City, Utah. See Jones and Dixon, p. 217.
5. Jones and Dixon, pp. 218-219.
6. Raymond, chapter 9.
7. Raymond, chapter 11. (Suza Gates Young, Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. 20, pp.270-272.)
8. Jones and Dixon, p. 220.
9. The street now known as Reed Avenue (abt. 750 North 300 West) was laid out where the original Hendricks Bath House stood. (Jones and Dixon, pp.219, 225.)
10. Church History Library document: Pre-Endowment House, CR 334/13, folio 2. Thos. Bullock, clerk, recorded that James Gemmell and Elizabeth Hendricks were married by Brigham Young at Hendricks’ Bath House on November 27, 1850 at 4 pm, “one hundred witnesses.” Other marriages listed in this same record mention “sealing by B. Young, time and eternity.” James and Elizabeth’s marriage record does not. They were sealed one year later on August 11, 1851, in Brigham Young’s office. At this same time James was also sealed to Susan Maria Brown, as a plural wife, and to his deceased wife, Harriet Fitzgerald. (End. House #126, Book A1, page 10.) Previous to the completion of the Endowment House (1855), ordinances were performed in other dedicated places. The Salt Lake Temple was not completed until 1889.
11. Thomas Bullock minutes, MS 4357, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
12. Raymond, chapter 9.

Note from a Gemmell/Garrity Cousin

September 25, 2010

Hello Liz,
My name is Catherine Hutchens Hall.  James Gemmell is my great great grandfather.  My grandmother is Lucille Garrity, the daughter of Virginia Gemmell and William Garrity.  Virginia is the daughter of James Gemmell and Susan Mariah Brown.

I found your blog, and I actually started to cry.  I've been wanting to do research on the Gemmells for a long time.  My father was an only child, so we never got to know anyone on this side of the family.  All these years I thought my father came from a small family.  Boy was I wrong!

Love the site and I've sent it on to my father, George Hutchens.  I know he will appreciate it very much.

Looking forward to hearing more about the family.  If there is any information that you would like me to send, let me know.

Thanks for all your hard work.

Sincerely,
Cathy Hall
Cranbrook, BC, Canada

P.S.  I find it interesting that James lived in Canada for a time.  Of course, now my husband's family says I was meant to be Canadian :)

Note by Liz:
Cathy will send some photos.  I'll post them soon.  I was happy to send Cathy a copy of a letter dated February 1955 that was sent to my dad, Raymond W. Gammell, by Cathy's grandmother Lucille Garrity Hutchens of Anaconda, Montana.  Cathy provided a list of Virginia Gemmell's descendants.  (See February 2010 post "The Descendants of James Gammell or Gemmell.)