George Washington Patten History

George Washington Patten

George Washington Patten was born 14 January 1853 in Alpine, Utah County, Utah.  He was the son of George Patten and Mary Jane Nelson, who were pioneers of 1850.  They lived in Alpine, Utah until 1854 when they moved to Payson, Utah.

George W. Patten was the second child in a family of eight children--five boys, and three girls.

He married Lillian Sophia Beckstead 24 July 1871 in Payson, Utah.  she was born 7 September 1855 in Weber, Weber county, Utah, the daughter of Sidney Marcus Beckstead, and Ann Sophia Rollins.  They were pioneers of 1852.

George w. and Lillian became the parents of fourteen children--nine boys, and five girls.  Ten of them grew to adulthood.  Nine of them married and 8 had families.  The children were: George Edward, Joseph Washington, Charles Henry, Lillian Maude, John Sidney, Ray Cluellan, Francis LeRoy, Zelma Ann, Marcus Deloss, Ella Venita, Lachoneus “A”, Thomas Edwin, Mary Jane and Georgetta.  Ten of the children were born in Payson, Utah and four in Dublan, Chihuahua, Mexico.

After their marriage, George W. and Lillian lived with his parents part of the time.  He world for his father most of the time up to 1890.

In 1875, they moved from Payson to Chicken Creek, which is 25 south of Nephi, Juab County, Utah.  Lillian’s folks lived there.  They next moved back to Payson.

George Patten bought a house in Thistle Valley at the mouth of Nebo.  George w. moved his family there in 1877.  The house was a one room log house.  Their household goods consisted of a small cook stove, boards nailed together for a table, a bed, a trundle bed, which was put under the bed during daytime.  Their nearest neighbor was an Indian family, two blocks away.  the Indian town was six miles south.  It was called Graball then, and now is Indianola.  There were twelve white families in the valley at the time.  When Lillian went visiting, she carried Maude, and Joe and Charles rode the donkey.

One day while they were at the Ed Simon’s house, Charles fell head first into a tub of hot water, which had been left on the floor, and was badly burned.  He was taken to Payson to Grandmother Patten’s home, where they stayed for more than four months.  One day, he ran into his grandmother, who was carrying a pan of hot water, and it spilled on his already burned head.  The burn was a long time in healing, and Charles carried the scars to his grave, (6 September 1957) at age 82.

When Charles was able to travel, they moved to Annabella where Lillian’s mother, and four sisters lived.  They returned to Payson where another son, John, was born 8 March 1879.  When Lillian was about to travel, the family went back to Annabella.  It must have been in May 1879 when they arrived at Lillian’s mother’s place, because while they were there, George W. went with Henry Elmer to mend a foot bridge over the Sevier River.  It was high water time, so that would make it about May 1879.

They stayed in Annabella about a year, and then went to Koosharem in the spring of 1880.  John Sidney could walk by then, and Lillian and her sister Sabra cut willows by the creek, carried them up the hill to make a pen to keep John Sidney in while they miled (milked) cows..

Ray Cluellan was born 12 January 1881 in Payson.  The family returned to Thistle in the spring of 1881.  Charles remembers going from Payson to Thistle in the spring of 1881, because they stopped at Castalia to get a jug of spring water to wash his burned head, which had not healed from the burns he got in 1877.

Ray Cluellan died 6 November 1881.  When he took sick, his parents took him to the home of Ed Simons, where they stayed until he died.  They took him to Payson to be buried.  His mother held him on her lap going down the canyon.  He was buried in the Payson cemetery.

Right after Cluellan’s death, the family moved back to Payson.  George W. had an old light wagon and four horses.  Their household goods consisted of a small stove, and some bedding.  They stayed with George’s parents until they could find a house.

In the spring of 1882, George W. went to the Cheney Ranch in Juab County to work for his father.  Later on, the ranch was called the Starr Ranch.  George Patten had traded for the ranch.  Lillian and the children stayed in Payson for the summer.  LeRoy was born 14 September 1882.  When Lillian was well enough to travel, they moved to the Starr Ranch, and lived in a one room house.

In 1883, George Patten built a four roomed house on the ranch, and his wife move out from Payson.  George W. built a one room log house on a homestead west of his father’s and move his family there in the spring of 1883.

One day in August 1883, George W. was cutting wheat, and Lillian walked a mile carrying LeRoy to take dinner to him.  The baby had a sun stroke, so his mother took him back to Payson.  She was gone for two months.

The next seven years, up to 1890, the family just camped here and there.  Mary Jane Patten would go to the Payson home, and then Lillian would look after the house on the ranch while she was gone.  The Lillian would go to town and Grandmother Mary Jane would look after the children.  The kids never knew where they were going to stay.

They had a small herd of sheep.  Joe and Charles had to look after them in the summer and feed them in the winter.  The children had very little schooling.  Some of them never saw the inside of a school.

Joe, Charles, and Maud, would take the team, and go upon the West Mountain and drag wood down to the wagon, and then they would gather all the sage brush they could find.  The wood and sage brush was all they had to burn in the stoves.

The ranch had been covered with sagebrush.  At the end of two years, George W. and others had cleared about thirty acres.

In 1885, Lillian had received word that her mother was very sick, and for her to come immediately.  She and her husband went to Annabella, where they stayed until Ann Sophia Rollins Beckstead Roberts passed away.

In November 1888, George W. left for Mexico with his brother Charles, and their father.  This changed everything at the ranch.  Lillian moved into Uncle Charles’ house, where they stayed until 1890.  George W. came back from Mexico in April 1890.  He was going to move his family to Mexico as soon as he could sell the homestead, and log house.  Their son Charles was already in Mexico.  He was fifteen when he traveled there with three others.  They left from the D. and R. G. Railroad Station at Mapleton 5 May 1890.  George W. and Lillian and their children were to arrive in Deming, N. M. 1 January 1891.  The children with them, and their ages were-- Joseph (18), Maude (13), John (11), Leroy (8), Zelma (6), Deloss (4), Ella (2).

They had to have Mexican papers made out on the horses, and wagons.  They were allowed to take just so much free of duty.  They arrived in Dublan, Mexico, 9 January 1891.  They came without a stove, so Lillian had to cook over a fireplace for over a year before she got a stove.  They had left Payson the 1st of November 1890, with two women, eight horses, seven children, one cousin (Cora Jackson) Tiley Lant Haymore, and baby, and George Elmer.  He drove the other team.  They had two wagons and teams, but they stopped in Arizona.  George W. and his family traveled 1400 miles, and were on the road ten weeks.

They had a hard time making ends meet the first four yeas.  There were 12 in the family, and they all had to work where they could to make extra money.

Lachoneus “A” was born 24 January 1891.

The Mexican house they lived in had two rooms.  George and Mary Jane came to live in on of the rooms.  The boys had to sleep out under the stars.  George had built a large adobe house, but he had let the Ward use it for a meeting house and a school until they could get one built.  It was used until 1891.

They lived in the two roomed house for twenty years.  Additions to the house were made on the south end and the back.

In the Summer of 1891, it was learned that there was work to help build a grade out south of Deming, New Mexico.  George W. and others from Dublan, took their teams, and went 100 miles north to meet the contractor.  It was Gilbert Webb, who had lived in Payson in the early days.    The men were put to work with their teams.  They worked for three months without any pay except their board.  Word had been received that there was not money to finish the railroad.  It is not known if the railroad was ever finished.  The last heard about it, it was just a wagon road.
In December 1891, when Joe Patten’s family sold out and went back to Utah, Lillian got their stove.

In the spring of 1892, George w. and four other men bought a new thrasher and a reaper to cut grain.  He worked all summer on the thrasher, and his son Charles cut grain with the reaper.

August 1895, he had a chance to haul fruit from Sabinal to Ahumada on the Mexican Central Railroad.  He made up a four horse fruit wagon, and went to Sabinal, which was about fifty miles northeast of Dublan.  The fruit haul didn’t work out, so then he got a job to haul ore from the Cape Lene Mountains to Sabinal.  This was about a ten mile haul.  He had four horses, and two wagons.

George W. took sick while on a hauling trip, and had to be taken.  He had been kicked in the head by a horse.  His health kept failing until he died 22 February 1896, in Dublan, Chihuahua, Mexico.  He was buried in Mexico.

Other children born to the couple in Mexico were, Thomas Edwin--15 January 1893; Mary Jane--19 August 1894, Georgetta--3 June 1896 (born after her father’s death)

July 1896, brought two more deaths to Lillian Patten and her family.  Her mother-in-law Mary Jane Patten died in Payson, Utah 6 July 1896, and on July 20, 1896 her three year old son fell off the bake (back) of a wagon when it tipped over in the river, and was drowned.  His body was found about a week later, three miles from where he drowned, where it had caught on a willow.  His name was Thomas Edwin Patten.

Most of the information for this history was taken from the personal history of the life of his son, Charles Henry Patten.  It was compiled and typed by a granddaughter Margaret Patten Gasparac.

Notes:  I, Kari Crook Mitchell, added these notes as I typed this history.  I thought they might be of interest to others.  The blog processor would not foot note, so I bolded the text to give the reader additional information.

• Chicken Creek was settled in 1860.  It was renamed Levan in 1867.  http://www.juabtravel.com/kids.htm
•  “The first two families to settle Annabella in 1871 were those of Harry Dalton, a member of the Mormon Battalion, and Joseph Powell.  The first name given to the settlement was Omni Point, and Richfield was called Omni.  The “Point” was a high rise in the terrain, five miles directly south of Richfield.  The town name was later changed to Annabella, after two of the first two children born in the area: Ann S. Roberts and Isabella Dalton.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabella,_Utah
• Death of Ann Sophia Rollins Beckstead Roberts: 13 May 1885, in Annabella, Sevier, Utah.  Burial:  17 May 1885 in Annabella, Sevier, Utah
•  Colonia Dublan began as a Mormon colony, located in the state of Chihuahua,  Mexico.  It is now a part of Nuevo Casas Grandes.  It is one of the few surviving Mormon colonies in Mexico (the other being Colonia Juarez).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Dubl%C3%A1n