Much has been written about Shadrack (also Shedrick, Shadrach) Holdaway, one of my husband's 3rd Great-Grandfathers and a Mormon pioneer who helped to establish the city of Provo, Utah. Today is his birthday, 196 years ago.
Shadrack was born on 15 October 1822 in Hawkins County, Tennessee to Timothy and Mary (Trent) Holdaway. The family moved from Tennessee to Indiana and later to Illinois, a common migration path of the period. On 30 April 1843, he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and, a few months later, went to
Nauvoo, Illinois, a town established by Joseph Smith for Mormon followers to escape conflict. After Joseph's death in 1844, violence against the Mormons became increasingly worse, until they were driven out of Nauvoo. Eventually, most of those that fled would settle in the Great Salt Lake region of Utah, but along the way, the church leaders were asked by President Polk to provide a volunteer battalion to fight in the Mexican-American War. They were offered compensation for each soldier, and it was decided that the volunteer's wages would go into a general church fund to finance the trip west. Shadrack was one of more than 500 men to volunteer when he enlisted on 16 July 1846 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. A member of Company C of the
Mormon Battalion, he marched almost 2000 miles to San Diego, California where he was discharged a year after enlisting.
 |
From the Mormon Battalion Memorial
in San Diego, California. |
Gold fever struck in California at about the same time and Shadrack didn't miss his opportunity to do a little mining on his way to join the saints in Utah. He left the American River with three thousand dollars worth of gold dust, and arrived in Salt Lake Valley on 24 October 1848. He was the first man to pay his tithings to the church in gold dust. Two months later he married Lucinda Haws, the daughter of Gilberth and Hannah (Whitcomb) Haws.
"The following March, 1849, my father and family, together with thirty other families, were called to go south to Utah Valley to settle up that part of the country. I did not go as I intended going back to the States with my husband in May to get some machinery for making woolen goods. We left Salt Lake City in company with thirteen others, among them Brother Lorenzo D. Young and wife and Doctor Bernhisel who was going to Washington, D.C., on business. Ten men of the company intended to stay at the upper crossing of the Platte River to run a ferry to help the emigrants across the river. Brother Young and wife went with us. One day our little company stopped for noon at a place called Independence Rock east of Fort Bridger."
"We journeyed on to Green River. Previous to leaving Salt Lake City we had prepared a watertight wagon box. We ferried ourselves across the Green River with oars in the wagon box. It served a very good purpose. We reached Platte River which we had to cross on a raft. Here ten men of the company stopped to help ferry Saints across the river. Brother Young and wife, Doctor Bernhisel, my husband and myself went on to Fort Laramie which was then an old government station. The second day after we left the company we began to meet train after train of gold seekers going to California."
"We traveled along alright, until my husband and I took sick with cholera. I came very nearly dying; but he was able to drive."
They made stops in Missouri and Illinois (with family for the birth of their first baby - a son who lived only four months), and finally Kanesville, Iowa where they purchased the woolen mill machinery before heading back to the Salt Lake Valley.
"After the cholera died out, we got along real well without an accident for several hundred miles. We had all the buffalo and antelope meat we wanted and some deer meat, which we got in the Black Hills. The Company dried a lot of it and it came in very well, for we needed it when we got out of the buffalo country."
"My husband was on guard at night and during the day he walked ahead and drove the stock. He shod the horses and was looked to as a kind of overseer of the Company."
"We were now getting into the mountains on this side of the Sweetwater River. Our wagons were loaded with machinery and our horses were just about given out. Our bread stuff was all used up except some whole corn which I made hominy of and we lived on this until we reached the Salt Lake Vally in September 1850. Here and there in the little city were patches of grain and vegetables. We lived in our wagon until my husband managed to get the walls of a small adobe house up. We put a portion of our things in the little house and stretched a domestic wagon cover over the place where the bed stood which would shelter us for awhile until my husband had time to put a roof on it. He had to get the wagons unloaded and haul hay and wood for the winter. We were living in Big Cottonwood Creek at this time. There was no floor, no roof and no door in the house. It had been raining for three days - was still raining - and in the midst of this, on November 4, 1850, my second baby was born. Everything in the house was wet through and streams of water poured through the wagon cover onto my bed. We set pans to catch the water. The baby, which we name Timothy, loved but a few minutes and I came nearly dying also."
"On the 28th of December we left for Provo. I drove in an open wagon all the way. It was just about the coldest weather I ever experienced. We camped out two nights and reached the Fort on the last day of December, 1850. We could not get a house to live in, except an old log cabin with just the walls and a dirt floor. It wasn't very good for winter use but we fixed a roof on it and stayed there until March, 1851. We then built us a log cabin on the other side of Provo River. It was neither chinked nor plastered, but it was a paradise compared with the ones we had lived in before. Next, my husband built a machine shop and set up the first carding machinery brought into this country. Bishop David Evans helped to put it up and in October it was ready to begin work. Brother Evans first took charge of running it and then my husband. Soon after, he built a blacksmith shop."
In December of 1851, their son William Shadrack Holdaway was born. This child lived and was the beginning of a large family.
Lucinda had a sister, Eliza Haws, who was married to George Pickup. They had a son, George Pickup, Jr. Eliza claimed that George was intolerable to live with and divorced him on 3 September 1852. She claimed that he thought she was entertaining other men in their home and would hide outside behind trees at all hours of the day and night watching the house. When she became so scared that she couldn't stand it any longer, she divorced him. In November, she married Shadrack as his second wife in a plural marriage. Shadrack and Eliza had two children, a daughter that died in infancy and a son, Marion Haws Holdaway. Marion was born on 28 February 1855 and Eliza died just 5 days after his birth. Marion was my husband's second Great-Grandfather.
Shadrack and Lucinda had added to their family during that time. Amos David was born in January 1853 and John Madison came in April 1854. When Eliza died, there were four children under four years old in the household. The Indians were becoming more hostile and Shadrack feared for his families safety when he wasn't there, so he built a little house in town where he his family felt more protected. Shadrack was always busy doing what he could to provide not only for his family but for the community. He and his brother made a threshing machine from scrap iron, he helped lay out and build a logging road in Provo Canyon, and in the Spring of 1859, he built a sawmill. The children continued to come - five daughters and four more sons were born by 1870. In all, he fathered 16 children. Of those children, ten lived past infancy and are pictured in the photo below.
In 1873, Shadrack settled a piece of land near Vineyard, Utah and established a ranch. He laid out an irrigation canal that was used for several generations, maybe still today. This was remarkable for a man with very little formal education. He was always off building roads, canals, ditches or working in the sawmill. When home, he developed an orchard and raised cattle. His motto was, "I never expect more out of this old world than I put into it."
Shadrack was also a man of deep religious conviction. He read his Bible diligently, was a member of the 31st
Quorum of Seventies and a High Priest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
A week before his death, he is said to have cut down twelve big apple trees on his property before catching a cold. That cold developed into pneumonia and he died on his 54th wedding anniversary, 24 December 1902. The funeral was held in the Provo Tabernacle and he is buried in the Provo City Cemetery.
My husband has done an Ancestry DNA test and we are amazed by the number of matches he has descending from Shadrack and from the Haws family. Prolific Mormons, right? Anyway, Happy Birthday, Shadrack. Thank you for your contribution to the world.
