life sketch

CHARACTER SKETCH OF BENJAMIN F. JOHNSON
by Norma G. Nix
Granddaughter and descendant of Susan A. Holman
Read at Johnson Family Reunion March 31, 1956
Mesa, Arizona


Benjamin Franklin Johnson was my grandfather, and until the past few years, he was just my mother's father. Someone to be revered and thought of in a rather distant way as though -- well -- I did not really know him. He was a name on my mother's lips, a picture I had seen; an ancestor. Someone I would someday be interested in for the sake of genealogy, but right now, there were so many other things.

Then, one day I was asked to buy copies of the book, "My Life's Review." Very quietly, I began to read it, and suddenly found I could not lay the book aside. Here was a most unique character. Here was a very interesting story of a truly great man, and he was my grandfather. Very anxiously then I wanted to know all about him.

He says of himself and education: "Especially do I feel the want of learning; my writing must betray to you my poverty in classical education" --(formal)-- "At seventeen, I attended the winter term of the grammar school in Kirtland, Ohio, presided over by the Prophet at the same time attending night lectures in geography. -- and if I have acquired anything further of worth, it has been snatched from the wayside while on the run as a missionary, a pioneer, or while in nature's great laboratory with axe, plow, spade or garden implements." Again he said: "I have always believed the Lord was as able to give one kind of intelligence as another and will do so according to the faith of those who desire it."

Perhaps, then, it should not be surprising to read of the many accomplishments of a man so full of faith and trust as this, and yet, I do each day continue to be amazed at the things I learn of him, and the things he learned for himself.

Benjamin F. Johnson was a deeply religious man, sometimes "stern and austere," oftentimes misunderstood, oftentimes failing to understand those whom he loved most dearly. You have only to read his book to know how devotedly he loved his large family; how anxious he was to provide for them; how industriously he labored to give them the best comforts of that day. I could not imagine my grandfather with a sense of humor, but my mother says that he was often full of fun and play. He was fair and just - he was patient and kind, and there were many evenings, especially in Spring Lake, Utah, spent in social amusement, fun and laughter.

There are so many things to admire about B.F. Johnson. His great faith and courage. His pride in learning and self-education; his humility, his forgiveness of those who wronged him; his trust in his Heavenly Father to help him through every trial; his trust in his guardian angel, a very real person to him, to prompt, to guide, or save him from harm.

He would not have us believe he was a perfect man -- There were many instances when pride overcame him, or faults, weaknesses or failures to give obedience to someone in authority, caused him sorrow, and he speaks often of bitter lessons learned, of blessings denied, But he always repented and leaves us with the feeling that, if only others, especially his children or their children might profit -- the mistakes were not without meaning.

There is a certain charm about some people - a gift or attraction, an elusive quality a magnetism - that cannot be denied. This was true of Benjamin F. Johnson. He says of himself, "At 20 years of age, six feet tall, reticent, genteel in dress and deportment (though not robust in health in habit or appearance), I could feel that where there was a culture and refinement, my presence commanded respect."

His book is full of evidences of such respect and admiration: His friendship with the Prophet, Joseph Smith, and the high regard in which he was held by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Elder Widstoe and other leaders of the church (are notable examples).

While on his mission to the Islands, he was sought out to give advice to the King. When colonizing in Arizona, Benjamin became acquainted with Judge Hayden who often came to the Johnson home to discuss religion - who many times invited B.F.J. to his home to exchange ideas on problems of the day. He was a great friend of Judge and Mary Hayden and their family. He was in intimate, friendly association with many outstanding and prominent people not only in Tempe and Mesa, but in Salt Lake City, Mexico, and Canada, or wherever his travels and duties took him.

He had a deep love for the Gospel. He said to his children, "Pray to God just as you would talk to me and He will hear your prayers." He was fearless before his enemies. Only once did he ever raise his fist to strike another man in anger.

He was sympathetic to women and children and all those whom he felt downtrodden. He was generous, almost to a fault, giving away food, shoes, guns, and such supplies as were often needed to sustain his own life and loved ones. He was always a great friend to the Indians.

His love of beauty is seen in the trees, shrubs, gardens and flowers he planted wherever he went. But woe to the child who pulled his turnips for a turnip fight, or picked the flowers without his consent.

His love of animals is shown in his attachment to his horse "Ranger", and his dog "Ring" who were faithfully buried in the family garden beside his departed children.

His children were instructed to "plant trees, and make homes, and pray always with your children, then they will never leave you."

Benjamin F. Johnson had so many interests and achieved success in so many lines, it might be said of him-- as indeed it was said by a prominent government official from Washington D.C. who was visiting the Tempe Normal School when Aunt Cassandra J. Pomeroy was a student there, as she was introduced to him after the program in his honor: "Your father, is he B. F. Johnson? He was a walking encyclopedia, a self-made man. But never in my life have I met one better informed. He can talk intelligently on any subject, from the soil to the stars. Young lady, you should be proud of your heritage."

Indeed, he was more than an intelligent talker, he was an industrious doer in many fields of endeavor, and achieved remarkable success. He was a doctor, drugist, lawyer, gunsmith, missionary, brick-maker, home-builder, colonizer, explorer, pioneer, legislator, lumberman, bee-keeper, horticulturist, an industrialist, he engaged in commercial canning in sheep raising, in silt worm culture; for his large family, he made shoes and had a broom factory and a molasses mill. He was an author, a Bishop and a Patriarch. He was beloved by all who knew him. He had the pure love of God in his heart, which was abundantly manifest in his love for his fellowman.

Birth:

Jul. 28, 1818Chautauqua CountyNew York, USA
Death:

Nov. 18, 1905MesaMaricopa CountyArizona, USA
LDS Pioneer- Colonizer- Church Leader- PatriarchA native of Pomfret, New York, Benjamin moved with his family to Kirtland,OH. in 1833, although he wasn't baptized into the LDS Church until 1835. He moved with the Kirtland Camp to Missouri in 1838. He settled in Adam-Ondi-Ahman, but was soon driven out and arrested. Later, in Nauvoo, he was chosen as a member of the Council of Fifty. Arrived in Salt Lake Valley October 22, 1848.Served mission to Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands 1853-55.Ordained as a Patriarch 1883.Colonizer of several settlements in Intermountain Region.Patriarch Benjamin F. Johnson died November 18, 1905 and his funeral was held November 20th in Mesa, Arizona in the Latter-day Saints' Tabernacle with Bishop James M. Horne presiding. The speakers were F. T. Pomeroy, Noah Brimhall and President Isaac Dana, all eulogizing the noble, upright life of the departed. There was a large concourse of people in attendance to do honor to his name and his remains were followed to the Mesa cemetery by a cortege a mile long.
SUSAN ADELINE HOLMAN
Compiled by Eileen Guthrie Black

Many of us, when we think of Susan Adeline Holman Johnson, have a mental picture of the profile of a woman in middle age with pleasant, regular features and slightly graying hair in a sort of French twist at the back of her head. Her daughter, Winnie Fredericka Guthrie, kept a large picture of Susan in an oval frame on the wall above her bed. This is our only known picture of her.

Susan Adeline Holman was born October 7, 1841 at Nauvoo, Illinois. She was the fifth child of James Sawyer and Naomi Roxana LeBaron Holman.

Her parents were New Englanders and early day members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her father was born September 17, 1805 at Templeton, Worcester, Massachusetts and her mother October 7, 1816 at LeRoy, Genesee, New York. They were married March 24, 1833. Six children were born to them before the exodus from Nauvoo and one child in Iowa. Five more children were born after coming to Utah.

The Holman family suffered persecution as did other faithful Latter-day Saints of that day. They experienced mob violence and were driven from place to place. They were living in Nauvoo at the time the Prophet was martyred. To escape further trouble, they moved to Mt. Pisgah in Iowa where the father stayed long enough to put together a log house, get his family settled, and then he left the wife and six children and started in the summer of 1847 with the first herd of sheep, to cross the desert and reach Salt Lake. He walked the entire way, and was assisted by a young boy who rode a horse.

During that summer Naomi Roxana and some of the children were sick with chills and fever. In the summer of 1848, with the help of the good brethren and sisters, she prepared to start with the Saints to cross the plains. They left the Elkhorn 1 June, 1848, in the first division in charge of President Brigham Young. This division included 1229 souls, 397 wagons, an assortment of animals including 411 sheep and one crow. Think of a six year old girl walking barefoot beside the wagon, playing with brothers and sisters, listening at night to the stories told by the campfires, and probably joining in at the edges of the dances. I can't help wondering if she knew about the crow.

Her father met them, and they arrived in Salt Lake between the 20th and 24th of September, 1848.

On her first sight of "The Place" Susan Adeline later wrote, "I was only seven years old the fall we arrived in Salt Lake and how well I remember as we came over the mountains, what a barren looking place it was with the little Fort down in the valley and perhaps a few houses." Then came the real test for Susan as she and her young brother herded their father's sheep over the hills in their bare feet, glad to have a bucket of Sego Lilly bulbs for their supper when they got home. She never forgot seeing her father go off to work in the morning to be gone all day, with nothing to eat but a drink of milk to do him until he returned at night. She vividly remembered seeing her mother trudging up and down on her spinning wheel all day and often into the night with the tears streaming down her cheeks because of her fatigue and hunger.

Around the year 1850, Susan's father built a house on a city lot in the Sixteenth Ward belonging to Benjamin F. Johnson. The two men joined their interests and labors together. This was the beginning of a close association of the Holman and Johnson families as three of the Holman daughters became the wives of B. F. Johnson. In the summer of 1852 the Holman family moved to Summit, (later called Santaquin), along with Benjamin F. Johnson, his brother George W. Johnson, and others, to colonize that place.

In the summer, Santaquin was like a paradise. The landscape included broad smooth lands sloping away to the West mountains, with rose and willow patches here and there; morning sun upon a clear sky, air fragrant with spring odors, and trees alive with singing birds. It was a place of beauty where the air was pure. There was plenty of firewood close at hand.

Here in this lovely situation, Susan Adeline grew and developed into a capable and beautiful young woman, making herself very useful among older members of the family whenever the occasion arose. Susan's father, James Sawyer Holman, was the first Bishop of Santaquin. Susan spent a lot of time with her two married sisters, Harriet Naomi and Sarah Melissa, and the rest of the Johnson family.

Life was not easy, but there were pleasant times too. Picture a pretty teenager riding into the nearby canyons for wild berries and choke cherries, enjoying family outings, and dances and parties with friends. Of course, we also need to picture her learning the household duties of those days. Besides knowing how to make clothing -- from the wool of the sheep to completed dresses and shirts, she also learned to knit, cook, keep a clean house, make butter and cheese, and candles from tallow. Think of the way laundry was done: stirring the white clothes with a stick in a tub of boiling water, scrubbing on a washboard, ironing with flatirons heated on the wood-burning stove, starched shirts, dresses and petticoats. Orchards were beginning to be productive and there was the drying and preserving of fruit to be done.

On February 8, 1857, she was married to Benjamin F. Johnson in Salt Lake City. She was just four months past her fifteenth birthday when she was sealed to Benjamin in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. He was 38 years old and two months after their wedding, he married his seventh wife, Sarah Jane Spooner.

They lived at Santaquin and on 9 January, 1858, their first child was born. They named her Susan Celestia. She truly must have been a Celestial spirit, though she was crippled from birth and had to be fed, washed, and carried from her bed to a chair and back every day of her life. What a trial this must have been to the young mother, Susan, who herself, was only 16 years old, even with the support of a loving husband, the other wives and her own parents. A second daughter, Zina Susetta was born the following year, 3 August, 1860.

In 1865, her husband sold his Santaquin property and bought land in Spring Lake. He also bought property in Fountain Green in partnership with Susan's father and Susan and her sister Harriet, with their children, went there to live with their parents until homes could be built for them in Spring Lake.

Things didn't go well and the Holmans sold their home in Fountain Green and moved back to Spring Lake. Benjamin purchased a two story, adobe brick, whitewashed house in Spring Lake in 1866 and here, each of the Holman sisters and Sarah Jane had her own apartment. This home was surrounded by orchards, vineyards, gardens, fields and pastures.

Life in Springlake was eventful and filled with joy as well as sorrow. Here, Susan's children -- Frank Carlton, Winnie Fredrica, Leofwin, Adeline Estella, and Nancy Lillian -- were born. Jestus would have been born here, except for unusual circumstances. Susan was expecting her 6th child and decided to visit her mother. She took Winnie and Lee with her and they had a pleasant visit at their grandparents' home, but before they got back to Spring Lake, they stopped at a home in Chicken Creek where the woman who lived there assisted in the birth of a baby boy on 6 January 1873. This lady had a little boy about two years old and during the few days they stayed in her home, Winnie and Lee had a good time playing with him. Their own new brother wasn't much good for playing with so they tried to get the woman to trade babies so that they could take their new playmate home with them. Of course, the trade wasn't made, and when they returned to Spring Lake their father named the newcomer Jestus Wanderous because his mother had been wandering in the wilderness when he was born.

Susan shared her nursing skills and helped supplement their income by caring for the sick, and those who needed her services, leaving daughters Zina and Winnie to care for the younger children. Benjamin bought sewing machines for each of his wives when they first became available in Utah and Susan became an accomplished seamstress.

She had the responsibility of looking after her own family. Each wife had her own apartment and her own garden, cows and chickens, as well as a pig for butchering each year. Lush gardens provided ripening fruit in the fall, grapes were harvested from the vine and grain fields furnished their flour for bread. Cattle, mutton, and wool gave the family meat and clothing to wear, and Benjamin F.'s ability to grow anything and everything was amazing. Preparing clothing, canning, spinning, making sorghum, brooms, running a sawmill -- everyday was a busy day and there was work for all, young and old.

In this wonderful atmosphere of family life, Susan Adeline raised her children in close association with her sisters and their children, where there was never a mention of half sister or brother, and all the children played together and learned to share in the work as well as the fun and laughter; loyal to one another, loving each other, even dancing and singing together. There was probably some disagreement at times and disciplinary problems, which is always part of rearing a family. Come evening though, all the day's cares and problems were laid aside and all family members joined in special and fun times together. Nothing was as wonderful as the Home Evenings, when the husband and father gathered his wives and sons and daughters together in the big downstairs room for stories by "Pa" as he was affectionately called. Then there would sometimes be dancing and singing together to their own music.

In the year 1882, the Johnson family received a call from the First Presidency to colonize in Arizona and open up the way for colonization in Mexico and Benjamin moved to Tempe, Arizona. Some of the family traveled to Arizona by team and wagon. With an invalid daughter, Susan came by train. She left Utah with Celestia and her three youngest children on October 17, 1882. They were met at Maricopa by her husband. They lived in tents under the cottonwoods down by the Salt River until her son Carl made adobe bricks and built her a home. Because of the persecution against polygamy at this time, Susan was now on her own, with son Carl to look after her and the other children. Some were married by now, and those who could find work had to go to work, while the others attended school. Celestia died in Mesa 26 December, 1882 after nearly 25 years as a helpless invalid. Susan was 41.

In 1886 she took up a homestead about three miles east of Tempe where she began pioneer life again. She and her youngest daughter Lillian lived at the homestead until about 1888.

One Sunday, daughter Lillian was sitting on the back of the buggy. Due to the roughness of the road, she was bounced off the back. A sudden gust of wind caught her open umbrella and she was deposited in the soft dust of the road which was so deep, she just about smothered. She was barely distinguishable when the others came back to look for her.

In 1888, son Carl bought 40 acres near Mesa. Susan sold the homestead and she and Carl improved the ranch until she had orchard, vineyard, pastures, horses, cows, calves, pigs and chickens. She lived here quite happy until 1894, when drought threatened to ruin the country.

In 1895 Susan went with other family members by team and wagon to Provo, Utah. Here, she ran a boarding house for students of the University and made her living that way. Daughter Lillian attended BYU for two years. The boarding house was run efficiently and Susan had strict house rules. Family prayers were held daily and all residents were expected to kneel and join in. A blessing on the food was always given. She raised a garden to help supply her table. She did temple work with her sister Emma in the Salt Lake Temple.

All who knew her looked on her as a wonderful mother, neighbor and friend. She helped many aspiring youth to find careers and keep straight in their actions and attitudes. Self-sacrificing and unselfish, she reared her children according to the Gospel teachings. Her exemplary influence was for good and she always maintained her personal standards and great qualities of character.

She passed away at Mesa, Arizona after a short illness, February 5, 1919 at age 77. She is buried in the Mesa City Cemetery. [spelling?: Jestus Wanderous or Justus Wanderus, Winnie Fredricka or Fredrica?]

Link for lots of info on B.F. Johnson and Family

http://www.bfjohnsonfamily.byu.edu/bfj/default.htm

Nauvoo Trail of Tears Marker

This marker is in Nauvoo on the trail of tears, the path that the saints walked from their homes down to the Missisippi River where they would leave their homes and belongings and start a trek to the West, in search of a home where they could find peace. Zion. Many would not survive the journey. The path is lined with markers like the one above with quotes from those who were leaving Nauvoo.