Cox-Shomaker-Parry House

This house, built about 1858, is a significant example of one of the traditional building designs found in early Utah Vernacular architecture. Three of Manti’s most prominent families lived here. Orville Southerland Cox, the builder, was a leading Mormon colonizer. Jezreel Shoemaker who took over the house in 1861, was three times mayor of Manti. In 1879, Edward Parry, a stone mason from Wales, moved into the house to supervise the masonry work on the Manti Temple.

Related:

• Edward Lloyd Parry
• EDWARD LLOYD PARRY (1818-1906)

Located at 50 North 100 West in Manti, Utah – this home was added to the National Historic Register (#82004157) on August 4, 1982.

The Cox-Shoemaker-Parry house is an excellent example of early vernacular architecture in Utah. Constructed around 1858, the six-bay, double-pen plan is representative of the range of traditional building designs found in the state during the second half of the nineteenth century. The house also demonstrates the process by which older houses were remodeled to meet the demands of changing architectural fashion. The home is also significant as the residence of three of Manti’s most prominent families. The builder was Orville Southerland Cox, a leading colonizer of the Mormon West who personally figured in founding and settling a dozen towns. When Cox was called in 1861 by Church authorities to colonize the Big Muddy in Nevada, the home became the property of Jezreel Shoemaker. Shoemaker was a wealthy convert to the LDS Church who arrived in Manti in 1849 with the first contingent of pioneers. He participated on the first city council and later, in addition to his many ecclesiastical duties as a member of the local church hierarchy, served three terms as mayor of the city. Shoemaker died in 1879, just as work was commencing on the monumental temple which the Mormons were planning to build in Manti. Edward Parry, a stone mason from Wales, was called to Sanpete County to supervise the masonry work on the massive limestone edifice. In local tradition, the home is primarily associated with Edward Parry, the master mason of the Manti Temple.

Manti was settled by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, the Mormons, in 1849 as part of their larger colonization of much of
the Intermountain West. Although the town was surveyed in 1850, tension
between the newcomers and the native Utahns, the Sanpitch (Shoshone) Indians, confined most families to the protective forts which were constructed in the town during the first decade of settlement. 2 A large fort, enclosing nine city blocks was completed in 1854 and several families began building private residences within its stone walls. Orville Southerland Cox, one of the members of the first company to reach Manti, began hauling oolite limestone from the nearby quarry in 1858 for his two-story home.

Orville S. Cox was born in 1815 in Plymouth, New York. 4 A blacksmith by
trade, Cox followed the westward moving frontier, landing by 1837 in the
Mormon settlement near Lima, Illinois. Here he met and married a Mormon girl, Elvira P. Mills. In 1839, the young couple visited Nauvoo, where Orville was converted and baptized by the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith. After the martyrdom of Smith and the expulsion of the Saints from Illinois, the Coxes followed the general exodus to Utah in 1847. Orville served two years as the presiding bishop of Bountiful, a town several miles north of Salt Lake City, before being sent in the pioneer party to Sanpete County in 1849. In the new community of Manti, Cox was primarily engaged as a blacksmith and lumber dealer as well as serving as counselor to Bishop John Lowery, Sr. By 1860, Orville Cox had entered into Mormon sanctioned polygamy and had three families. In 1861-1862, he moved his first wife, Elvira Mills, to the town of Fairview, Sanpete County. In 1864, Cox moved with his two other wives, Mary Alien and Eliza J. Losee, to the LDS settlement on the Big Muddy, in Nevada.5 In later years, the Coxes also participated in the cooperative, Utopian experiment at Orderville. Orville S. Cox died in 1888 at Fairview. When Orville Cox pulled out of Manti for Nevada, the big stone house was purchased by Jezreel Shoemaker.

Jezreel Shoemaker was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1796. Brought
up along the frontier, Shoemaker was involved in farming and lumbering when he moved to Adams County, Illinois in 1828. Near Quincy, along the Mississippi, he homesteaded 160 acres and eventually built up the largest farm in the county. When he joined the LDS Church in the early 1840’s, he was one of the wealthiest men to affiliate with the young religious movement. When the church was forced from Illinois in 1846-1847, he sold or gave away his lands and migrated west to Salt Lake City. In 1849 he was called by Brigham Young to settle Manti in Sanpete County. Here he continued to prosper in the accumulation of material wealth as well as spiritual favor. Shoemaker served on the High Council of the local ecclesiastical ward and carried out three terms as mayor of Manti City. He died in 1879.

As the principal city in Sanpete County, Manti was selected in the late 1870’s
as the site of a Mormon temple.8 Brigham Young, the church president,
dedicated the land in 1877, shortly before his death. William Folsom from
Salt Lake City was selected as temple architect in 1875 and work commenced in 1879. Since the monumental building was to be constructed of the local oolite limestone, a mason of considerable talent was required to supervise the work. Edward L. Parry, an immigrant from Wales, was brought into the project in the spring of 1877 as chief mason. Parry had been born in 1818 in Denbigshire, Wales, where he learned the mason’s trade from his father. He joined the LDS Church in 1853 and emigrated to Utah. During the late 1850’s he was instrumental in laying the foundations of the Salt Lake City Temple (not completed until 1893), but in 1862 he was sent south to St. George in Washington County. Here he built the city hall and courthouse and served as master mason on the St. George Tabernacle and temple. In 1877, Parry moved on, well-qualified, for his role in raising the Manti temple, a building considered by many to be the finest example of nineteenth century Mormon architecture. The temple was dedicated in 1888 and Parry then formed the company, E. L. Parry and Sons, specializing in stonework and marble cutting. Edward L. Parry died in 1902. The house remained in the Parry family until 1961.

The Anthony W. Bessey Home
415 North 300 West in Manti, Utah

Anthony Bessey probably had this small stone house built shortly after his
arrival in Manti in 1858. The home has a long association with the Bessey
family and certainly construction features indicate an early building date.
The house is historically important because as one of the first group of homes built outside the Manti forts, it represents the initial stage of local
community development. Architecturally the Bessey House is significant as one of a number of typical house types utilized by the early Utah settlers and becomes an important example of Sanpete vernacular building.

The town of Manti, settled in 1849 by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was the first town in the Sanpete Valley Colony. Colonists arrived in the fall of 1849 and after wintering in dugouts and wagon boxes, laid out a city in the spring and summer of 1850.1 By the winter some 20 log homes had been erected and work was beginning on a meetinghouse. One year later travelers to Manti reported seeing “several handsome two-story adobe houses, many one story dwellings, a good grist mill and a sawmill.” Threat of Indian attack caused a general pattern of fort building in the 1852-1854 period. Mormon forts were erected to enclose rows of small dwellings and the Walker War (1853-1855) made the security of protected habitation attractive to Manti residents. Peace in the later years of the decade allowed Manti residents to move out to their city lots and begin again the process of city building It was about this time, in 1858, that Anthony Bessey arrived in Manti.

Anthony Wayne Bessey was born in 1835 in Bethel, Maine. In his early years Bessey followed both the cabinetmaking and shoemaking trades. By the 1850’s Bessey had joined the Mormon church and in 1857 he migrated westward to “Zion” in Utah. At first he made shoes in Salt Lake City but in 1858 he moved his family south to the Sanpete Valley and settled in Manti. Here Bessey farmed and pursued his shoe making trade and by 1870 had a personal value of about $700 in property. For 18 years Bessey occupied a position on the high council of the Sanpete Stake of the Mormon church. In 1873-1875 he served as City Mayor and was elected to the city council in the years 1883-1890. Bessey probably had this small stone house built shortly after his arrival in Manti, c.1860. The house is an excellent example of the sturdy homes the Mormon pioneers built during the early stages of great basin settlement. In selecting a house design, Bessey followed a well-known traditional plan.

Related:

• NRHP #80003947

The Anthony Bessey House, built c.1860, is a 1-1/2 story square cabin
folk/vernacular house type (see plan drawing). Measuring 22’x 17′ on the
exterior, the house is one of the larger single unit square homes to be found
in Utah. The second story is quite spacious and is reached by a boxed
staircase which runs along the south wall. The stairs to the cellar run
underneath those leading to the upper floor. On the north wall is the
fireplace which is extremely large, more than 6′ in width. The interior has
been remodeled to contemporary standards.

Externally the Bessey House is in excellent condition and virtually
unaltered. The wall material is oolite limestone most certainly extracted
from the “Temple Hill Quarry” several blocks to the east. The façade is
coursed ashlar; the mortar is flush with incised lines emphasizing the
geometrical coursing. Other walls are less handsomely treated and while they are cut-stone they lack the even coursing present on the façade.

The house has a simple gable roof with stone fireplace at the north located
internally in the wall. The stone end walls extend up to the ridge of the
roof in the gables. Decoration is minimal with the heavy stone lintels over
the façade openings the only suggestion of ornamentation. The façade itself
is unusually asymmetrical. The front door is placed centrally, but windows
occur only to the right or north side. The upstairs window is a “half”
window, typical of 1-1/2 story structures. To the left of the door the wall
is blank. This fenestration pattern is distinctive in its unabashed asymmetry
but can possibly be partially explained by internal factors. On the south
wall, beginning right at the southeast corner, the staircase extends about 3′
into the room. Windows on this end of the façade would be partially blocked by the staircase so were deleted from the overall design.

Alterations which detract from the home’s historic appearance are few. There is a one story plastered adobe room added to the rear. This west room is gabled with a brick stone flue chimney and is undoubtedly a 19th century addition to the original square house. A modern gabled front door canopy is the only serious alteration of the original house.

The square bay (roughly square) evolved as a folk building unit in England
during middle ages and was employed extensively in cottage construction.
The house appeared as a one-room type (with or without upper loft) as was
utilized extensively throughout the English American Colonies.” Advancing
westward, the “square-cabin” type house is ubiquitous on the American
frontier. Mormon examples have been recorded at Nauvoo, Illinois and
the square cabin house was extensively dispersed throughout the IDS western communities. Anthony Bessey most certainly would have been familiar with such a square house plan in his native Maine and opted for this rather modest design in his new western home.

The Bessey House is one of a number of folk building types employed by Manti residents in the first stages of settlement. The house is typical of smaller, more inexpensive homes built by the pioneers. Despite its rather distinctive façade, this house gains its architectural and historical significance through its unexceptional nature, i.e., its ability to define the capabilities of the average. There are both larger and smaller homes in Manti, built by people who had both more and less than Anthony Bessey. Bessey’s home, taken in the larger context of vernacular building tradition of the area, helps expand the historical record to include the total population, not just a small percentage of exceptional individuals.