Early Days in Payson, Utah
As Told by Sarah Amanda McClellan Manwill
When Mrs. Manwill crossed the plains and came to Utah there were but two
log houses in Payson. Mrs. Manwill with her father and mother camped out
in the open wagons near Walkers Flat, until her father got enough logs from
the canyon to build them a house. The houses were built of logs, with the
spaces between the logs filled with mud and clay. The house consisted of one
room, which was bedroom, kitchen and living room. The floor was the
ground and was kept hard and swept clean with brooms made of branches of
sage brush tied to a long stick. They had no stoves, but used the fireplace to
cook over. They had an iron crane which could be moved back and forth and
had hooks on it to hold the iron kettles. There were also bake skillets which
stood on four legs which were used for baking bread. The skillets were
placed in the hot coals and more hot coals were raked over the top of them.
When they were very hot, the biscuits were placed inside and allowed to bake
until done.
For their beds, they bored holes in the log walls and placed poles in them,
then supported the other ends with poles of the right height driven into the
floor. Across these they laid sticks which supported their "feather ticks" or
"straw ticks". Their windows were bare, for they had no blinds or curtains.
To light their homes at night they burned candles, which they made from
tallow from the sheep. They melted the tallow and poured it into cans, then
wrapped the wicks on a stick and dipped them into the cans. These were
called "dip candles". Their furniture was fashioned from wood by hand and
consisted of a few chairs and a table.
The first farm implements were very crude and were made of wood. They
harrowed the ground with wooden harrows and sometimes had to mash the
large clods by hand. They planted their potatoes, wheat and barley with the
use of oxen. In the fall, the harvest of the wheat was cut with a cythe or
cradle and was threshed by the oxen tramping on it or by using flailes. In the
year 1852, there were thousands of crickets and grasshoppers which
swarmed down on the crops, eating the wheat and barley and leaving only the
stalks standing. They usually ate during the night and in the daytime flew so
thick in the sky that the sun was entirely obscured. The men, women and
children fought the crickets with willows and branches of sagebrush. They
would drive the crickets into trenches which they dug, then cover them with
straw and burn them. It was very hard work and the people were about to
give up, then their prayers were answered. Out of the sky appeared hundreds
of snowy white gulls, which flew down and devoured the crickets. Everyone
considered the coming of the gulls, a blessing from Heaven and the gulls were
protected and a heavy fine was imposed on anyone who killed one of them.
The first three or four years in Utah were ones of hardships and starvation
and the following incident was related by Mrs. Manwill about their crossing
the plains ....
"It was about noon, the wagons were pretty heavily loaded and we stopped to
unhitch and give the oxen a rest. We were all tired out and the hot sand
continued to burn our feet and make us very thirsty. Just as we were
preparing our simple meal, a man by the name of Bridger rode by and asked
us where we were bound for. We told him we were headed for the Salt Lake
Valley. Upon being told this, he laughed and said, "I'll give you five dollars
for the first ear of corn that's raised in that valley. It can't be done because
the country is nothing but barren desert, coyotes, sagebrush and Indians."
With this he rode on and our little party continued on to the new land. It
proved to be as he said, nothing but barren waste filled with sage brush,
coyotes and unfriendly Indians. The first four months were ones of enduring
toil, with not a morsel of bread in the whole country. Segos, thistles,
sunflower seeds, wild artichokes and mushrooms were eagerly consumed. In
the spring of the year, greens and milk and dutch cheese was a favorite
repast. Grain mills were very few at this time, but were not really needed
because there was very little barley raised and not very much wheat."
Mrs. Manwill tells of this in connection with the small amount of grain being
raised. "In 1852, the second year after moving to Payson, my sister fell ill
and mother decided to go to the mill and see if she could get a little meal to
make her a cake. She started out with a teacup and when she got there, Mr.
Searles, the owner of the mill, dipped three times before the teacup was half
full. Mother made a small cake and I looked hungrily on thinking that if she
didn't eat all of it, I could help finish it."
There was no fruit for years in Payson and the first few years the people
lived on dried pumpkins, sarvest berries, choke cherries and currants. at this
time all the cloth was entirely homemade. In the spring the sheep were
sheared, the wool washed and then sent to Provo to a carding mill. Here it
was made into bats, then spun by means of a loom and shuttle into cloth.
There were no Diamond Dyes, they colored the cloth but used peach leaves
and indigo blue, which made green, rabbit brush which made yellow; using
these together they produced browns and coppers. Black was made from oak
bark and red was made from berries.
The laundry was done by carrying the water from the spring and scrubbing
them on wooded wash boards in wooden tubs. They then hung the clothes on
sage brush to dry. They made their hats from straw, pleating it, shaping it and
trimming them with wild flowers. Sometimes they would trade a hat for some
barley. In 1851 there were no dry goods stores in Payson, but sometimes you
could buy calico for a Sunday dress from a peddler as he came through town
from Salt Lake. It usually sold for 50 cents per yard, bleached muslin was
about $1.00 per yard and thread was 25 cents. When a young man wanted to
take his best girl to a dance, he usually took a couple of cedar posts, wheat,
squash or carrots to pay for the ticket.
Although times were hard, we learned to work and play together and made
our lives more pleasant by enjoying our families.
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