Anson Call

Located at This Is The Place Heritage Park at 2601 Sunnyside Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah

Related:

• Anson Call Grave
• Anson Call House
• Anson Call
• Call’s Fort

Jane Elizabeth Manning

Jane Elizabeth Manning was born in Wilton, Connecticut, around 1821. Jane and her siblings were unusual in never knowing the bonds of slavery. After embracing the gospel, her family joined a caravan of Saints traveling to Nauvoo in 1843, but were forced off a boat in Buffalo, New York, because of their race.

Determined to gather with others of their faith, Jane said, “We started on foot to travel a distance of over eight hundred miles. We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground. We asked God the Eternal Father to heal our feet and our prayers were answered forthwith.”

After Jane’s arrival in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith’s immediate response was, “Sister Emma, here is a girl that says she has no home. Haven’t you a home for her?” Jane lived with the Smiths and became close, like family.

After Joseph Smith was martyred, Jane and her husband Isaac James, with their sons Sylvester and Silas, joined others and would soon embark on yet another treacherous journey to escape religious persecution.

The groundwork laid by Green Flake, Hark Wales, Oscar Smith, and the rest of the vanguard company helped make it possible for families like Jane’s to survive the hardship of the journey. Jane was expecting her third child Mary Ann, when she and her family entered the Salt Lake Valley in September 1847. Jane remained a faithful and respected Latter-day Saint until her death in 1908.

Located at This Is The Place Heritage Park at 2601 Sunnyside Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah

Related:

• Jane Elizabeth Manning James
• Legacy of the Black Pioneer

Green Flake

Green Flake was born into slavery on January 6, 1828, on the Jordan Flake plantation in Anson County, North Carolina. At the age of ten, Green was separated from his mother and given to James and Agnes Flake. The Flakes moved to Mississippi, where at age sixteen, Green heard the testimony of a Latter-day Saint missionary promising the reunification of families for eternity.

As a new convert to the church, Brigham Young assigned Green to the vanguard company that led the trek west. Green was joined by his future brothers- in-law, Hark Wales and Oscar Smith. The group of forty-two men and twenty-three wagons blazed the trail for tens of thousands to follow. Green is known to have driven the first wagon into Emigration Canyon under the direction of Orson Pratt. They arrived at Parley’s Creek on July 22. The first pioneers of 1847 plowed the land and planted crops for those who came in the following days and months.

Green remained a well-respected saint throughout his life. He spoke at multiple Pioneer Day celebrations alongside church leaders. Brother Flake and many others like him trusted in God’s promise of a reunited family after this life. Many of the enslaved were buried in unmarked graves. Knowing that, Green carved his own headstone which reads, “In my: Father’s house are many mansions.” He was laid to rest next to his wife Martha in the Union Pioneer Cemetery in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, in 1903.

Located at This Is The Place Heritage Park at 2601 Sunnyside Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah

Related:

• Legacy of the Black Pioneer

Hark Wales & Oscar Smith

Brothers Hark and Oscar were born into bondage and lived on John Crosby plantation in Mississippi. While still an adolescent, Hark was separated from his family and gifted to newly married Sytha Crosby and her husband, William Lay.Oscar was inherited by William Crosby. The enslaved brothers then became known as Hark Lay and Oscar Crosby, even though Hark chose Wales as his surname once freed and Oscar chose Smith.

Pioneer John Brown was later assigned to be the chargehand, taking Hark and Oscar to Council Bluffs, lowa, where they were all selected to be part of the advanced team in Brigham Young’s vanguard company. They were tasked with charting a course and improving the trail into the Salt Lake Valley.

As enslaved men, Hark and Oscar were keenly aware of what it felt like to desire freedom, even if the freedom the Saints sought was that of religious worship. The first Pioneers of 1847 consisted of many brave souls including former soldier Lewis Barney, church clerk Thomas Bullock, and the enduring Hark Wales, Oscar Smith and Green Flake. They reached the Salt Lake Valley on July 22, 1847, two days ahead of Brigham Young.

Located at This Is The Place Heritage Park at 2601 Sunnyside Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah

Threshing Machine

The threshing machine is a piece of farm machinery that combines four separate operations in one unit.

1. Threshing
2. Separating
3. Cleaning
4. Stacking the straw

Power for the machine was furnished through a long belt connected to a tractor power take-off pulley.
The threshing machine in front of you is an example of several such machines that served the farmers in southern Utah. The machines were privately owned by individuals or groups who contracted with farmers. As their grain ripened, the machine was moved into their field and operations set up. The thresher would move from one farm to another throughout the summer months until all the wheat, barley, oats, and sugar beet seeds were threshed out and put in gunny sacks.

The manpower for the threshing operation required a crew of five men who usually worked throughout the hot summer at this most strenuous job. Most of the workers were school teachers who, year after year, spent their off-teaching months working on the threshing crew.

Wagon or sled loads of grain or sugar beet shocks would be hauled to the thresher’s loading chute and pitched onto the conveyor belt. The machine did the rest.

The clean grain or seeds poured out of one spout, and under the supervision of a “sacker,” one-hundred-pound capacity sacks were filled. The “sacker” then sewed the tops closed. An acre of land produced up to fifty bushels of cleaned wheat. The chaff, or straw, was ejected from the thresher by a blower sending it through a twenty-foot cylinder to an area where it formed a huge stack. The straw was then used throughout the year as bedding for farm animals.

Eventually these threshing machines gave way to the combines which did a complete harvest in one operation.

This is located at the Heritage House Pioneer Center / Heritage Park / Museum at the Bradshaw House-Hotel at 85 South Main Street in Hurricane, Utah.

Spencer and Helen Isom “Home”
36 North 100 West Hurricane, Utah

This “home,” built in 1915, is typical of the construction of homes in Hurricane during that period of
time. Maurice Hinton, a carpenter, built the home for the Thomas Isom family. The building was built on the back of the lot and used as a storage building and granary. A small home, which had been moved from the fields by Spencer, the son of Thomas Isom, was located on the front of the lot. Later, when more space was needed, the boys slept in the rear storage building.

About 1945, the small house in the front was torn down and a brick home was built. Spencer moved some of the old kitchen cupboards into this house where they lived during the construction. When their new home was completed at the front of the lot, this building was again used for storage. A basement under this building was used for food storage and was an ideal place to hang a beef or pig when one was butchered. The foundation of this building was formed by pouring cement over and around river rock, making it very strong, probably earthquake proof.

This building was moved from its former location and donated by the children of Spencer and Helen Isom to the Heritage Park Museum on July 18, 2007.

This is Sons of Utah Pioneers historic marker #157 (see other S.U.P. markers here) located at the Heritage House Pioneer Center / Heritage Park / Museum at the Bradshaw House-Hotel at 85 South Main Street in Hurricane, Utah.

Pioneer Hay Barn, Manger, and Corral

The pioneer hay barn, manger, and corral you see before you were reconstructed using material from three earlier pioneer barns, primarily the Sheldon Wright barn. Some posts and boards for these structures came from the Rulan Isom and Bernard Hinton barns. Members of the Hurricane Chapter of the Sons of Utah Pioneers were the primary builders of this reconstructed pioneer barn. The cement water trough came from the original Lafe Hall town lot at 65 North Main Street. A date inscribed on one side of the cement shows that it was made August 28, 1918.

Originally, most blocks in town, and some fields, had barns and corrals to store hay and provide shelter for farm animals. It was not unusual to have up to four barns and corrals, each on separate one-and-one-fourth acre lots, back to back or side by side. A team of well-trained work horses, a riding horse, one to three milk cows, and a couple of calves would be kept in the corrals. Harnesses and bridles for the horses, small tools, and farm equipment would be hung in the loft. Nearby would be a pig pen and a chicken coop.

At the end of each summer, these barns throughout the town would be filled to the roof with fresh alfalfa hay. The hay was hauled loose by a team and wagon. Each fall, a full- grown hog would be butchered and made into bacon and hams, and the fat rendered into lard for cooking needs. The chickens supplied extra meat and eggs for the family.

A nearby vegetable garden and orchard would help each family be virtually self-reliant for all of their food needs. Hundreds of quarts of fruits and vegetables would be bottled during the summer months and stored in the cellar for winter use. A typical, authentic cellar can be seen as part of the Bradshaw house.

This is located at the Heritage House Pioneer Center / Heritage Park / Museum at the Bradshaw House-Hotel at 85 South Main Street in Hurricane, Utah.

Grain Reaper

This early-day grain reaper, in front of you, is a machine that farmers once used in this area to harvest grain. These horse-drawn reapers replaced sickles and cradle scythes which farmers had used for centuries. Reapers made it possible to harvest larger crops, with fewer workers, than ever before.

This machine has a sickle-bar cutter linked to gears connected to a drive wheel. As the wheel turned, the scissor-like blades moved back and forth and sheared off the stems of the wheat being harvested.

The stalks of grain fell onto a platform. A water-wheel type rake then swept across the platform to deposit the stalks of grain into piles. Workers would follow to bind the sheaves into bundles. The bound sheaves would then be loaded on a wagon and stacked in a central area where a threshing machine could be set up nearby to complete the grain harvesting operation.

Several farmers in Hurricane owned a machine such as this, or an advanced model which further cut down on manpower by binding the grain automatically before it dropped to the ground. These machines eventually gave way to combines which cut and threshed in one operation.

This is located at the Heritage House Pioneer Center / Heritage Park / Museum at the Bradshaw House-Hotel at 85 South Main Street in Hurricane, Utah.

Early Pioneer Granary and Home

This twelve by fourteen foot granary This been used by three families as a home for over 40 years. It was built by George and Annie Isom around the same time Hurricane was settled, in 1906.

Located on the Isom lot at 83 North State Street and initially intended as a granary to store feed for farm animals, it originally served as “home” to Lewis and Mary Crawford. Their first child, a girl, was born here. Lewis worked for the Canal Company as a “ditch” rider to watch for breaks in the canal or other potential problems.

The Isom family moved into their “home” in 1911. After their new brick home was built on the same lot, they began using this building as a storage unit. Their daughters used it as a play house for several years. Its interior walls had been papered with the Washington County newspapers, needle craft pages, and Farm Journal pages.

Years later, 1936, this granary was sold to Sheldon and Blanche Wright, a newly married couple. They moved the granary five blocks to 274 West and 100 North, by team and a flatbed wagon. A lean-to, which would be their kitchen and pantry, was added to this new site. The house was wired for electricity, papered, painted, and floor coverings laid. The cupboards and most of the furniture in the house were made by Sheldon.

The original front room was used as a combination bedroom and living room. In the summer, their two daughters would sleep outside under the grape arbor which was connected to the house. The kitchen stove is the original used by the Wright family.

The Wright’s two last children, a boy and a girl, were also born in this house.

The Wright family continued to live in the house until July of 1948. They then moved into their newly constructed home on the same lot. This building was again used for storage and remained as a granary until 1994. It was then donated by the Wright family to the Hurricane Valley Pioneer Heritage Park Foundation. Now on display at “Pioneer Corner,” it is an authentic example of early pioneer life in the Hurricane Valley.

This is located at the Heritage House Pioneer Center / Heritage Park / Museum at the Bradshaw House-Hotel at 85 South Main Street in Hurricane, Utah.