Children of Mahonri and Rachel Decker (Florence's Half-Siblings)

Back: Virgil and Rachel; Front: Alvin and Gertrude

In 1890, Mahonri Moriancumer Decker married Rachel Munford in the St. George LDS temple. Together they had seven children: a set of twins (who died on the day of their birth), Virgil, Alvin, Gertrude, Earl, and Rachel. Rachel (the mother) died in early 1902, just days after the birth of their seventh child. When Mahonri married Harriet Norris a few years later, his children called her "Aunt Hattie" and came to love their stepmother. Harriet had six children of her own, and the two families seemed to blend well.

The twins (Rachel Ann and Twin Boy)
In 1891 Rachel and MM had a set of twins, their firstborn. In the life history MM dictated in 1941, he indicated that the children were born dead. Fae Decker Dix tells of riding down the lane on top of a load of hay after a summer afternoon in the fields with Papa. MM would stop at a turn in the road by a bank of wild roses and gesture toward a nearby hedge where the twins were buried. According to genealogy, the girl was given the name Rachel Ann. No name is listed for the boy.

Virgil Mahonri
Rachel must have gotten pregnant shortly after losing the twins, because the following summer, on July 3, 1892 she gave birth to Virgil Mahonri.

Virgil was 19 when Florence was born. He had his own life by that time, attending college in Cedar City and Logan and even trying his hand at real estate for a time. Still, like the rest of the family, he doted on his little sister. Florence remembers sewing buttons on Virgil’s shirts when she was five and having him whisk her off to the town photographer about that same time to have her picture taken in her pretty white play dress and ugly black shoes.

By May 1917, Virgil was back home from school and getting ready to marry Edith Pearl Kjar of Manti. They were married on September 26, 1917 in the Manti Temple.

Just a few months later, Uncle Sam called Virgil into the Army. He left in May 1918 to serve with the 88th Squadron Air Service. Edith, pregnant with their first child at the time, gave birth just two months after he left. In January 1919, Virgil returned from the war. He and Edith moved around a bit, but eventually settled in Edith’s hometown of Manti. They had another son, Curtis, in 1921. He was followed by their daughter, Carol, and finally by their son, Lee.

In 1935 Virgil’s son Boyd was riding his bicycle in the middle of the night on the highway south of Ephraim when he was struck by a car and critically injured. After spending a month in the hospital in Salina, he returned home to convalesce. He recovered, but the accident served to foreshadow things to come.

Over the next 12 years Virgil worked in farm insurance, coached baseball, served a stake mission, and participated actively in the American Legion. Boyd, Curtis, and Carol all married well. In April 1947, Virgil and Edith celebrated the birth of their first grandchild, a daughter. Only Lee, still in high school, remained at home.
That July, Edith threw a party for Virgil’s 55th birthday, little knowing it would be his last. Just a few weeks later, on July 31, Virgil drove toward home along the road from Ephraim to Manti. A 15-year old boy without a license swerved his borrowed pickup truck and struck Virgil’s car. Virgil was badly injured and never regained consciousness, dying on August 3 at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, the same hospital where just a few months earlier he had welcomed his first grandbaby.

Relationship with Florence: Virgil doted on Florence when she was a young child and he was in his early 20s. He would have been in and out of her life while she was growing up, as he was in Cedar and Logan for school and then living most of his adult life away from Parowan. MM stayed with Virgil for a couple of summers in the last years of his life, and at least in 1941 Florence and Elwood took him to Manti for the visit. When Virgil was killed, Florence was 35 years old. He was the third of her siblings to die during her lifetime.

Notes
1. Articles from Manti Messenger and Parowan Times give details of the family’s whereabouts over the years, as well as the story of Boyd’s accident and Virgil’s death.
2. “Veterans with Federal Service Buried in Utah, Territorial to 1966” details Virgil’s military service.

Thomas Alvin (known as “Alvin”)
On April 29, 1894, Rachel gave birth to Thomas Alvin (generally known as Alvin). He was just seven years old when his mother died and 11 when his father married “Aunt Hattie.” The families seemed to blend well, and like Virgil, Alvin adored his little sister Florence.

When Parowan finally formed a high school in 1916, Alvin (age 22 at the time) was elected the first student body president. Prior to that time, Parowan teens had to go off to Cedar or elsewhere if they wanted to complete high school. Before Parowan High School had a chance to graduate its first class, the Great War intervened. Alvin received notice in January 1918 that he had been drafted. In February, he married Natine Benson, a Parowan girl, in the St. George Temple. The newspaper account of their marriage describes Alvin as “a young man of sterling qualities, sincere, earnest, and progressive.” The young couple was well-respected in the community.

After a few short months of marriage, Alvin followed his brother Virgil into the War, serving in the 145th regiment. He returned home in January 1919, just in time for the birth of his first son (Veron) on February 15. Natine suffered from heart trouble and at times was seriously ill, but she had always pulled through. In September 1922, she gave birth to a second son, Udell. Six months later, she passed away.

Alvin remained in Parowan and raised his boys for a few years with help from extended family. During that time, he stayed active in community life. In the summer of 1928, Miss Verena Stevens came to town from Salt Lake City to visit her aunt and teach kindergarten. She and Alvin married the following June in the Salt Lake Temple. According to the 1940 census, the couple had three children: Janice (born about 1931), Laurence (born about 1934) and David (born about 1936). They remained in Parowan for several years, although they had moved to Provo by the time Florence died in 1954. Alvin died in Provo in 1975.

Relationship with Florence: Verena said that Florence was always special to Alvin. Florence was living at home with MM and her younger brothers when Alvin and Verena were married in 1929. Verena was 7 years older than Florence, but she was happy to have a sister in Parowan. While they were waiting to go into the hospital for their son David’s birth, Verena and Alvin stayed in Cedar at Florence and Elwood’s overnight. When MM died, he had been living at Florence’s house. Florence was upset because she hadn’t forced him to take his medicine, and she felt if she had insisted, he might not have died. Alvin reassured her. Florence and Alvin would have had fairly close association during the years Alvin lived in Parowan, but by the time Florence passed away, Alvin had moved to Provo.

Elizabeth Gertrude (known as "Gertrude")
Gertrude Elizabeth was born January 24, 1897, while her father was serving a mission in Pennsylvania. Mahonri was writing his wife one evening and said it came suddenly to him that Rachel had given birth to a daughter. He suggested she name the baby Gertrude, which she did. He arrived home about the time of her second birthday. It is logical to assume that Mahonri suggested the name in honor of his sister, who died as a toddler, and his Grandmother Decker.

Gertrude was only 5 when her mother died and still quite young when her father married Aunt Hattie. She was 14 when Florence was born, and she took her half-sister under her wing. Florence tells of sharing a bedroom with Gertrude—“the lovely east bedroom with lavender flowers in the wallpaper.” They remained close throughout Florence’s life. Gertrude married Ancel Adams on January 10, 1919, just two months before MM took his family to Delta. Florence hated to leave her sister behind.

Gertrude and Ancel lived in Parowan for the rest of their lives and raised 11 children. She was the only one of Mahonri’s children who remained in Parowan long term. Her family and Florence’s family used to get together frequently.

Relationship with Florence: They enjoyed a close relationship throughout Florence’s life, and their families got together frequently through the years.

Earl Munford
Earl was born on September 23, 1899 (almost exactly nine months after his father returned from his mission), and was just two years old when his mother died. He was 19 years old when the family moved to Delta, and Fae says he went with them. Shortly after the Delta debacle, Earl must have left home for a while, as a newspaper account from November 1921 indicates that he was back in Parowan after an absence of a year or two.

In July 1923, Earl surprised his friends by announcing one Monday morning that he believed he would get married before going to the next day’s 24th of July celebration up the canyon. His girlfriend, Ethel Frisby of Payson, was in town for the holiday weekend. They managed to procure a marriage license and were married that day. They were later sealed in the temple on October 25, 1925. Various accounts show the couple living in Payson and Parowan at various points. By the time Florence died in 1954, Earl and Ethel were living in Payson.

Relationship with Florence: Although records do not mention any discord between the two, it does not seem that Florence was as close with Earl as she was with the rest of her brothers. Earl did go to Delta with the family, apparently. He married when Florence was 11 and lived away from Parowan for much of his marriage. On at least one occasion, Florence traveled to Payson with Earl and his wife for a visit.

Rachel Loretta
Rachel was born on Christmas Day 1901, just two weeks before her mother’s death. Whatever her parents originally intended to name her, when his wife died Mahonri chose to name his daughter after her mother. Rachel was the youngest of five children at the time (the oldest being 9-year old Virgil), and for a time Mahonri gave her into the care of her Munford grandparents, although he stayed close by and kept an eye on her. Some time after Mahonri married Aunt Hattie, they brought Rachel into their home.

Rachel was 10 when Florence was born, and she went with the family to Delta when she was 18. On May 31, 1923, she married Woodruff Pendleton of Parowan in the St. George Temple. They had four children (Elsa, Alton, Aleda, and Dona). Like her mother before her, Rachel died young. Around 1935 she contracted an illness that lingered for many weeks and seemed to include pneumonia and heart trouble. She died in January 1936 at the age of 34 after living in Parowan all her life.

Relationship with Florence: I know little about their relationship. Rachel was just 10 when Florence was born, so they did grow up together. She and Woodruff settled in Parowan, so she and Florence must have seen each other fairly frequently. Florence was newly married when Rachel died, and I imagine Rachel’s death must have reminded her of Harriet. She was the second of Florence’s siblings to die (not counting the twins).

Christmas Eve 1954

I have decided to write a biography of my grandmother, Florence. What follows will likely become the Epilogue of the book (or perhaps the Prologue). I did not write this piece, but for me it embodies so much of what I am learning about my grandmother.

The author of this particular post is my mother, Kristine, a rather amazing woman in her own right.

Christmas Eve 1953

"We're inviting a new couple in the neighborhood over for Christmas Eve, and we told them to have something for the program." These words in a letter from my brother a few years ago reminded me just what  Christmas Eve had come to mean to our family, and it brought back memories, too, of the influence behind those evenings.

Mother decided long ago that Christmas Day should be enjoyable and relaxing for her as well as the rest of us. So the traditional Christmas dinner with all its time-consuming work went out, to be replaced by what we simply called "Christmas Eve." Preparations actually began the day after Thanksgiving when the fruitcakes were baked and set in the basement to age. The week before Christmas, Dad made root beer and we kids capped the bottles. Candy was made somewhere along the way, and on the afternoon of Christmas Eve the ham went in the oven. After the traditional service at the church, we came back to the house along with relatives and one or two other families whom the folks always invited. After the meal came the impromptu program. I managed a piano solo. There would be poems, songs, maybe a story or two, and my slightly wacky aunt and uncle would always come up with something that would leave our sides aching from laughter. We ended with Christmas carols, and I was sure each year as I went to bed that it had been absolutely the best Christmas Eve ever.

Florence and Kristine

I suppose the one that I'll always particularly remember is the Christmas Eve of 1954, simply because we did spend it just as we had spent all the others. In May of that year Mother went into surgery for what proved to be a malignant brain tumor. The doctors took out what they could, but they couldn't get it all. For a few months after the operation she was much the same as she had always been. By the time school started, though, her arm and leg were becoming paralyzed--a consequence of the growing tumor--and she was spending most of her time in bed. Mother knew, of course, what was happening, though she never said much about it.

She called me to her room one afternoon in early November. She had just ordered Dad an electric shaver for Christmas. The store would call sometime in December, she said, and I was to go down and pick it up. She had asked Dad to get a record player for two of the younger kids, but since, as she said, he had a tendency to be a little forgetful, I was to remind him about it.

Two days before Thanksgiving she went into a coma, and four days later she died.

A day or so after the funeral, one of my brothers asked Dad if we would have Christmas Eve like always. Dad said we would. I personally thought he was out of his mind but went along with the plans anyway. Someone had made the fruitcakes, probably one of my aunts. Dad helped us with the root beer, and the ham was bought. The afternoon of Christmas Eve I got a call asking if we still wanted the electric shaver. I had completely forgotten about it. Dad had done a little better and remembered the record player.

Christmas Eve was more subdued that year, but it was lovely. There was a void, of course, but also an extra closeness that I don't think we've had any other time. We had only relatives that year, but people were dropping by all evening just to leave "a little something" for the kids. The living room was overflowing, and we were all a little overwhelmed. We'd finished singing carols and everyone had gone home, when I noticed a huge package in back of the tree and asked Dad who "that monstrosity" was for. He just laughed, but next morning a note was taped to the package saying, "Kris, this monstrosity is for you." Mother, remembering that I would be leaving for college the next fall, had told Dad to get me some luggage. She had seen that we were all taken care of. I don't remember what everyone got, but my sister and I still have pillowcases with tatted edges that she had asked a lady in town to do.

We've all left home now, and it's rare that we get together at Christmas time. But "Christmas Eve" still happens in our individual homes. There are variations: my brother and his family go out Christmas caroling--a tradition from his wife's family--and I've given up on fruitcakes which none of my family likes and now bake Christmas cookies which I don't like. We all, though, make it a point to invite someone over, just as Mother always did.

The Christmas of 1954 will always stand out in my mind, and the memory of what Mother did for us that year gives special meaning to the scripture: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these...ye have done it unto me."

Nuclear Families

On May 19, 1953 the United States detonated a 32-kiloton atomic bomb (later nicknamed "Dirty Harry") at its nuclear testing facility in Nevada. With a blast three times the size of the Hiroshima bomb, Harry sent fallout drifting over a wide area, including Southern Utah. This was just one of over 100 bombs detonated above ground at the Nevada facility between 1951 and 1962 and one of five atomic bombs that had a fallout pattern covering Cedar City, Utah.

Isaac Nelson, a resident of Cedar City, describes taking his wife out to see the first explosion. It was dark, he says, just before daylight, "and we were chattering like chipmunks, so excited! Pretty soon, why, the whole sky just flared up in an orange-red flash, and it was so brilliant that you could easily see the trees ten miles across the valley, and if you had a newspaper you could have easily read it, it was so bright. . . ." Later, he says, town residents stood outside to watch the fallout clouds drifting up through Cedar. Isaac's wife died of brain cancer that developed shortly after one of those evenings spent watching the fallout cloud float by.



Grandma, with Aunt Judy and Mother

 In a way, I grew up in the shadow of a nuclear cloud. A native of Cedar City, my mother was five years old when the nuclear testing began, and she tells stories similar to Mr. Nelson's. Thanks to cancer, she later donated both a breast and her thyroid to the American quest for adequate weaponry. My grandmother died of brain cancer just three years after the explosions began, leaving behind her a husband and six children. Though I have no proof that Harry or any of his atomic friends caused her cancer, medical reports of the period show brain tumors among the classes of cancer occurring in excess in the early period after nuclear testing.

My mother developed breast cancer about the time of my earliest memories, and she often spoke of her own mother's death from cancer. As children tend to color the world based on their own limited set of experiences and family stories, I then logically assumed that everyone contracts cancer at some point and saw that eventuality as a simple, if sad, fact of life. I accepted death with similar logic, aided by a religious perspective that emphasizes eternity. I never quite grew out of those assumptions.

Consequently, when my husband's brain tumor returned from vacation with a vengeance, I recognized a pre-established pattern and quietly began planning for the inevitable. I know to some that view rings fatalistic, even regrettably morbid, and I suppose that if I saw death as an end--to self, to relationships, to progress--I would have to agree. As it happens, I see death more as a transition. With that in mind, our little family, each of us in our own time and fashion, began to plan for life on the other side of the approaching metamorphosis. Our son, just a toddler when his father died, absorbed and reflected his insulated world, blithely oblivious to the shock of innocent bystanders when he announced matter-of-factly that his daddy had died and was now in heaven.

I think of these patterns as the crisis unfolds in Japan. My Asian contemporaries grew up in a more striking nuclear shadow than I did. In August 1945, the United States dropped "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two generations later, the nuclear pattern renews unexpectedly in the wake of an earthquake, once again fundamentally altering families with the fallout of power run amok.

Sources include:

* Nuclear Testing and the Downwinders (from Utah History on the Go)
* Fallout Effects: Impacts of Radiation from Aboveground Nuclear Tests on Southern Utah (from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality)
* Cancer Incidence in an Area of Radioactive Fallout Downwind From the Nevada Test Site (from the Journal of American Medicine)
* Compensating Life Downwind of Nevada (from National Geographic)
* A Utah Resident Remembers Atomic Testing in 1950s Nevada (from the American Social History Project)
* Radioactive Fallout to St. George, Utah (from Washington Nuclear Museum and Educational Center)

Romance, Corry Style

Elwood

Like many love stories, the story of Florence and Elwood begins with a date, Elwood’s first. To be more precise, the story begins with basketball, hometown rivalry, and the wager of a box of candy. It was a Saturday night in January 1930. Cedar City’s high school basketball team opened its season with a game against rival Parowan High School. Coach Linford’s boys needed to prove themselves, and a win against a strong team like Parowan would set them on solid footing in their quest for the division championship. They had the home court advantage, and Elwood joined his friends to cheer on his team.

Elwood was a senior in high school and, despite a self-professed admiration for girls from about the third grade on, he had always felt too bashful to ask a girl on a date. As luck would have it, he found himself standing next to a Parowan girl during the game. They bantered about whose team would win, and Elwood jokingly said, “Well, I’ll bet you a box of candy that Cedar wins.” Cedar did win. Elwood forgot all about the bet.

A few days later, a box of candy arrived in the mail for Elwood with no return address. He puzzled over the origin of the candy for a few days before the light dawned. All of a sudden, he remembered the bet. He called the Parowan girl and asked her to go to a show and help him eat the box of candy. And that is the story of Elwood’s first date with …Lillian Adams.

Wait! Lillian, you say? I thought this was a love story about Elwood and Florence. Ah, yes. Well, you see, Lillian and Florence were good friends, had been ever since they met in Miss Parry’s 1st grade class. Lillian graduated a year early from high school and went to Cedar to start college while Florence finished her senior year at Parowan High. In Cedar, Lillian ran into Elwood at the aforementioned basketball game. They dated for a while until Elwood decided that perhaps he should avoid going too steady with any one girl before his mission.

In May of 1930, Elwood and Florence graduated from their respective high schools, and Florence joined her friend Lillian at the Branch Agricultural College (BAC) in Cedar City. Elwood knew her briefly before he left on his mission to England that October. In fact, he remembers seeing her one day as she walked toward campus and thinking, “I would like to ask that girl for a date sometime.” Then missionary work filled his mind, and he forgot about Florence until he returned home from England.

Florence in 1932

The Christmas holidays of 1932 found Florence graduated from BAC, still living in Cedar City and still working at Cedar Mercantile.

Far from Florence’s thoughts, Elwood sailed home from England at the close of his mission, arriving home on Christmas Day 1932. Lillian, still rather enamored with Elwood, dragged Florence to church to hear Elwood’s homecoming talk. Elwood makes no note of seeing her at his homecoming, but then the returned missionary’s social calendar filled up pretty quickly in those first few weeks home.

In mid-January 1933, Elwood and Florence both found themselves at a party at the home of Bertha Seaman. Elwood arrived alone and saw Florence enter the room. She must have looked particularly striking that evening, because he remembers thinking “here comes the bride” as he watched her. Not realizing that Florence had come to the party as the date of Waldo Adams, Elwood intended to ask her if he could take her home. Either bashfulness or wisdom prevailed. In any event, Elwood left the party alone.

A week or so later, the Cedar Second Ward planned an M.I.A. party. As he hurried out the door to go somewhere with his friend C. J. Parry, Elwood followed an impulse. “Wait,” he called to C.J. “I have to go back in the house for something.” Back inside, he called Florence at her job at Cedar Mercantile and made a date to take her to the party. Thus began a lengthy courtship.

Planning a life together in the midst of the Great Depression often meant delaying marriage for more practical matters. Elwood completed his schooling at BAC and worked the family farm while Florence continued working at Cedar Mercantile. He played tennis, competed on the debate team, and served a term as Student Body President. She kept up with her sorority, continued doing readings, and became involved with the newly formed Business and Professional Women’s Club.

While they waited to build sufficient finances for their marriage, Elwood and Florence watched close friends get married. One of those friends was Lillian Adams. In a speech she gave just months before her death, Florence shared her admiration for Lillian for not letting the love triangle interrupt their friendship.

As two years passed, day-to-day life and increasing responsibilities crowded in. Florence and Elwood each supposed the other had begun to lose interest in the relationship. In the summer of 1934, Elwood accepted a call to serve as Leland Perry’s counselor in the Second Ward bishopric. His bishopric duties sometimes overshadowed romance. Florence recalled sitting in the living room at the Corry home one evening, listening to cries of “horsler” from the kitchen. Elwood had a bishopric meeting and needed someone to take Florence home. In time-honored Corry tradition, the last one to yell “horsler” pulled the short straw and played chauffeur.

But Elwood got a wake-up call one day from his friend Demoin, who announced that Florence was dating someone else. As the story goes, she even kissed the competition. Perhaps that was just the motivation Elwood needed.

Elwood’s personal history mentions nothing about their courtship after the first date until an incident that occurred shortly before the wedding. It was June 1935, and Elwood was putting up hay on the farm with Rex Maxwell. Rex had no idea about the quickly approaching wedding until Elwood casually mentioned that he would be gone for a few days as he “had a little detail to take care of.”

“What detail?” asked Rex.

“Oh, I’m getting married.”

A bit put off by Elwood’s casual approach, Rex raised his voice. “Man, you call that a little detail?” Elwood said Rex went on to lecture him about the importance of the step he was about to take. Apparently, he took the lecture to heart. In any case, the two married on June 21, 1935 in the St. George LDS Temple.

For Florence and Elwood, the real love story played out over the next 19 years of marriage. Together they weathered the financial devastation of the Great Depression, Elwood’s service in World War II, and the deaths of their remaining parents. Together they raised a family of six children and built an insurance and real estate business. They supported one another in demanding church callings and community activities. And finally, after two decades of laughter and disappointment, hard work and good memories, they supported one another through Florence’s final illness. While perhaps a little short on traditional romance, their romance, Corry style, has inspired generations of their posterity.

(Many thanks to family members for contributing their memories, to the Utah Digital Newspaper project for its online archive of old newspapers, and to Grandpa Corry for recording personal history.)

Making Friends

Florence

I have been making new friends these past few months. Charming people, really. Genuine, complex, lots of fun, inspirational. There's Florence, of course. I would love to grow up to be like her, if that's still possible at my age. I think most of all, I admire her ability to connect with people. Everyone gravitated to Florence, it seems. Her siblings returned to her home again and again to sit at her kitchen table and talk for hours. Her troubled nephew flagged her down on the highway once because he knew she would listen with compassion. The mentally handicapped man who sold spudnuts felt like he lost his best friend when she died. She held lawn parties and pajama parties. She inspired the youth that she taught. And she left a little of herself in each of her children.

Fae

Florence grew up in a trio of sisters along with  Fae and Blanche, wonderful women in their own right. I knew Fae as an older woman but have enjoyed making the acquaintance of her younger self. She grew to womanhood in the 1920s, the granddaughter of pioneers. Her determination to write her own story inspires me, and I find myself indebted to her again and again for the volumes of history she left behind. She brought her parents and grandparents to life for me. We share an affinity for the national parks, it seems, and a tendency toward rebellion tempered by an overactive conscience.

Blanche

Of the three sisters, I find Blanche's story the most poignant. As a young girl, she held her baby brother while he died and then grew up watching her mother fade away with tuberculosis. She pinned her life somewhere between the fragility of her mother and the stubborn strength of a father who both exasperated and enthralled her. Somewhere in that netherworld between the two, she lost herself. A fine writer with a soul that reached toward lofty heights, she often stumbled but still found beauty along the way.

Nancy

The sisters shared a pioneer grandmother known for her spunk and formidable nature. Nancy Bean married and divorced twice before leaving one daughter behind and crossing the plains with her second daughter. She met my great-great grandfather upon his return from the gold fields of California, and the two joined the original settlers of Parowan, Utah. Nancy helped the women of the town birth their babies and clothed the men with her homespun suits, all while raising a dozen children. I'm not sure her pioneer spirit filtered down through the gene pool to me, but I love having this powerful woman in my ancestral line nonetheless.

I can't pretend that I know exactly how this next life will shake out. I trust that the common vision of insipid angels singing endlessly with golden harps holds little semblance to reality. At least, I hope we have fashion choices in the eternities that reach beyond the formless white robe and unwieldy halo. I prefer to envision myself trading stories with Nancy while she teaches me how to weave or hiking with the trio of sisters through the mountains. Perhaps along the way we will encounter their father, Mahonri, with his beloved horses or Grandfather Zachariah target shooting with the pistol he called his "second wife." Until then,  I will content myself with the joy of discovering my new friends through the memories of others and the shadows their lives left on my path.

The Delta Adventure

Downtown Delta, Utah around 1920

The early 1900s brought a new town to Utah. Unlike most Utah towns, Delta was founded not by the Latter-Day Saints but rather by a group of businessmen looking to promote the unique agricultural advantages of the region. They began to heavily promote the area with brochures and newspaper ads in Utah and throughout the Midwest. One brochure from the Delta Land and Water Company promised the good life: “Farmers who drove out onto their land in prairie schooners two years ago are today living in modest houses, their stock well covered. While around them fields of rye, wheat, alfalfa, barley and oats are waving a promise of a third crop that will put money in the bank for every man who has properly farmed!”

By 1919, the Commercial Club of Delta, with significant donations from the Sevier River Land and Water Company and the Delta Beet Sugar Corporation, continued the ambitious advertising campaign. As one reporter reported in the Millard County Chronicle in November of 1919, “Such a campaign…has never been reached before in this country; that it will bring results is beyond dispute.”

Word of the land rush in Delta certainly reached Parowan and seemed to generate significant excitement. The Parowan Times reports that by November of 1919, several local families were contemplating a move to Delta, and sugar beets seemed to be a big draw. As the holidays approached, Mahonri Decker purchased 80 acres in Delta, saying it was "the coming section of Utah.” He immediately started building a new home and prepared to relocate his family.

The Decker home in Delta

By early March of 1920, the house was completed, and the Decker family had made the 125-mile move. The new home was a 5-room affair in town, with a full lot and a bathroom. While Mahonri’s three oldest children had married and started their own families, he and Harriet took the remaining eight children with them, ranging in age from Earl, at 20, to baby Homer, just six months old. Florence was eight at the time and hated to move to Delta. Among other things, she missed her sister Gertrude terribly. Gertrude married Ancil Adams just prior to the Delta move. Florence had wonderful memories of the “lovely east bedroom with the lavender flowers in the wallpaper” that they shared in the family home back in Parowan. A few years previous to the move, Mahonri had built a spacious frame house with two stained glass windows and broad verandas overlooking the lawn and fruit trees. Harriet, in particular, loved the home, and it must have been difficult to leave it behind. Fae reports that Harriet often wept bitterly, “but always in her room.”

While family history offers little detail of the time in Delta, the first few months apparently passed agreeably. Fae reports that the family bought a new car, and Mahonri seems to have continued his singing. In July the Millard County Chronicle mentions a prize-winning quartet that included a Mr. Decker. In August, things began to fall apart. Homer died on August 2nd, either from diarrhea or convulsions, and the family buried him in Delta, apparently still intending to remain in the area. Steven Decker says the bank foreclosed on the land. It seems that those who sold Mahonri the land sold it with a prior lien attached. Mahonri could not afford to pay the lien, so he had to give up the land, sell his home, and return to Parowan. Woodrow reported that his father went to Delta with $25,000 and returned with only $1200. The family was back in Parowan before September 8, 1920.

Fae, Blanche, and Florence 1920

For the family, the return to Parowan was devastating. Instead of the fine home they had left, the family relocated to an old 4-room home that they bought from Harriet's sister Anna. Gone were the new car, as well as the family fortune and reputation. Fae reports that Mahonri was a broken man. He was never quite able to get his finances in order after that, despite working quite a variety of jobs. Fae also indicates that Homer's death dealt a blow to Harriet from which she never quite recovered. The girls themselves remember the time as painful, although they seemed to move back into school and social life with relative ease.

Mahonri reported to the Parowan Times that the family returned to Parowan for Harriet's health. To an extent that was a face-saving excuse. Still, Harriet's health was indeed failing. As one small benefit of the time in Delta, she had gained a more correct diagnosis of her condition. After thinking for some time that she suffered from a poisoned goiter, she now dealt with the reality of tuberculosis.

Notes
1. “The Delta Project: Utah’s Successful Carey Act Project,” Roger Walker, page 8.
2. Millard County Chronicle 1919-11-20
3. A newspaper account from Delta indicates that 80 acres were sold to Joseph Decker of Parowan during the same time that MM was in Delta buying the same amount of land. I'm not sure if there's a connection there.
4. I would love to know more about the land transaction: whether Joseph (I assume that is Joseph Oscar Decker, MM's brother) was involved, who sold the land, how the error was discovered, whether the house in Delta ever sold, etc.
5. Steve Decker’s report on Mahonri Moriancumer Decker from the 1999 Decker family reunion.

A Moment Captured

I have a favorite picture of my grandmother, Florence. In the picture, a little girl with serious dark eyes and loose brown curls perches on a wrought iron chair. She looks slightly unsure, but not frightened, with perhaps the hint of a smile. Those same eyes, searching yet steady, show in photos of Florence as a teenager and a woman. Here, they gaze out over the chubby cheeks of a five-year old.

She clasps her hands lightly on the skirt of her white embroidery dress, a matching ribbon tied in a bow around her left wrist. She loved that dress, although looking back as an adult she thought the heavy black play shoes and dark stockings made for a hideous picture. Virgil loved the Sunday curls in her hair. Even moreso, he adored his half sister. Everyone loved Florence, from Virgil--home from college and about to get married--on down to the toddler, Woodrow.

Perhaps Florence, with her winning combination of determination and sweetness, reminded the family of all that was still good in a world gone wrong. With World War I in full swing, and brothers Virgil and Alvin waiting to be called up, even the sheltered Southern Utah town of Parowan needed the innocence of a cherub in white embroidery and black stockings.

And so Virgil whisked Florence to the town photographer to capture the beauty of Sunday curls and dainty dresses. Never mind the clunky shoes. Parowan finally boasted a town photographer, and children grew up all too soon in those days.

Florence herself met the world in short order. Three years passed in the warmth of summer rides on the hay wagon, evenings spent listening to Mamma (Harriet) reading poetry, and family singalongs at the organ. Then came what Florence later referred to, rather euphemistically, as "the Delta adventure." Father (Mahonri) sold their beautiful home and uprooted the family to Delta to seek their fortune. The business venture failed, and before the year was out, they returned to Parowan, penniless.

Delta claimed not only the family's pride but also the life of baby brother Homer. His death dealt a blow to Harriet's already frail health. Diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis while still in Delta, she willed her way through another eight years, finally dying in the middle of Florence's sophomore year of high school. The oldest child at home by this time, Florence shouldered much of the burden of those last years with her mother and essentially raised her younger brothers after Harriet's death.

The loss of her mother and the heaviness of the years after Delta left its mark on Florence and all of the children. But the warmth of those dark eyes prevailed. Inheriting her father's tenacity and her mother's grace, infused with her own remarkable compassion and capacity for joy, Florence never quite lost sight of the little girl in white with the steady gaze.

The Parents: Mahonri Moriancumer and Harriet Norris Decker

Mahonri Moriancumer Decker

Mahonri Moriancumer Decker

The youngest child of a large pioneer family, Mahonri nonetheless made his presence known. Townspeople who watched him win the grand prize for hauling 28 loads of gravel in less than 8 hours on Parowan’s “Gravel Day” of 1916 would attest to his massive strength. Standing 6’2” and weighing 250 pounds, Mahonri demanded attention, and he had a voice and a personality to match his size.

Fae Decker Dix said of her father, “He was tender-hearted yet bombastic, and even though he had a gruff voice, he possessed a lot of compassion, especially for people in trouble. Mahonri taught his children the virtues of honesty and respect for church authority. He was always preaching against fashion and worldliness. He put women on a pedestal and he demanded that the children honor their mother. Sassiness particularly irked him, yet he did not believe in spanking his children.”

For Fae’s sister Blanche, their father was more difficult to define. “It used to puzzle me that his praying sounded so much like his swearing,” she said once. “I think it was because he did them both with equal fervor and sincerity.”

Woodrow summed up their father quite simply: “Father was always a gentleman but never, never a gentle man.”

Born to parents who crossed the plains and tamed the wilderness, Mahonri lived his life in a small town in rural Southern Utah and raised children in a new century. In a lifetime that began in the aftermath of the Civil War and ended in the midst of World War II, he watched a dizzying procession of advances in science, technology, transportation and women’s rights. While at times he fought the changes around him, he developed a character as complex as the times in which he lived.

Mahonri Moriancumer Decker needed a strong personality to equal his name. His parents gave him the mouthful of a name perhaps in the hope that their infant son would live up to the legacy of the Book of Mormon prophet whose name they borrowed. Ironically, when her son was born, Nancy incorrectly spelled his first name “Mahouri,” resulting in the nickname “Huri” (pronounced Hoo-ri, with a long I). Although Mahonri disliked that nickname, it followed him throughout his life, since the misspelling was not discovered until years later when he went to the temple, and someone informed him of the correct spelling. In addition to “Huri,” many simply called him “MM” for short.

MM was born on August 7, 1868 in Parowan, Utah to Zachariah and Nancy Bean Decker. He grew up helping his father farm and raise cattle and inherited Zachariah’s love of horses. When just 12 years old, he gained his first horse by riding out into the desert and separating her from a band of wild horses. That love of horses continued throughout his life, and he once said that “Some of the horses I’ve owned had more sense than some men I know.”

In 1879, when MM was just 11, his father and many of his siblings joined the Hole in the Rock expedition to settle the San Juan River Valley. Although Zachariah, Sr. returned to Parowan 18 months later, most of his children stayed in San Juan County or pressed on to Colorado and Arizona. Only MM and his brothers George and Oscar remained at home.

As Parowan did not have its own high school until the 1920s, MM only attended school through the eighth grade. Despite his lack of extensive schooling, he remained dedicated to education and pushed his children to learn. Outside of school, he studied spelling at the demand of his mother and elocution of his own volition. Nancy was severe but also intelligent and well-read, and she taught her children to value education. To balance out his spelling and arithmetic, MM herded cows for his father and weeded gardens for his mother. The latter chore led to a lifelong hatred of gardening. As a teenager, he graduated to the more enjoyable chore of working on his father’s farm.

MM owned his own farm by the age of 17 and intended to join his brother-in-law, Lars Mortensen, in Colorado. He longed to be a cowboy but gave in to the pleading of his mother to stay in Parowan. Apparently, one did not say “no” to Nancy Decker. Still, Mahonri maintained that he always enjoyed farming and stock-raising in Parowan.

Mahonri Marries Rachel Ann Munford
On December 11, 1891 Mahonri married Rachel Ann Munford in the St. George Temple. He was 23 at the time, and she was just a month shy of 17. He later described the wedding to his daughters: “We went down to St. George in a covered wagon with her sister Maggie accompanying us. It took three days each way for the journey from Parowan. On our return to Parowan we had a big reception at my father’s home. Four tables of guests were seated at supper, and we told stories and sang together. Sometimes I played the organ and sometimes Alfred M. Durham played it. Everyone sang and then we would all dance.”

Music echoed throughout their marriage. Son Alvin wrote about his parents in his history. “Mother was so small that she could stand under father’s arm. She was a good mother…She had a beautiful voice. I remember after father returned from his mission how beautiful it was to hear father and mother singing together….Both had good voices. The love they had for each other made my childhood home a happy one….My parents were kind and loving to each other and with us children.”

In 1891, Rachel gave birth to twins. Fae remembers that, years later, her father would drive past a turn in the road marked by a huge bank of wild roses. “Papa often stopped and gestured toward the hedge just over the roses and said the first babies he and Aunt Rachel had, a pair of twins, were buried there. I never dared to ask why they were not buried in the cemetery,” she wrote, “although I knew they had died the day of their birth.”

Following the twins, Rachel bore five more children: Virgil (July 3, 1892), Alvin (April 2, 1894), Gertrude (January 24, 1897), Earl (September 23, 1899) and Rachel (December 25, 1901). All of these children lived to adulthood.

Mahonri’s Mission
In 1896, When Virgil and Alvin were just young boys, Mahonri accepted a call to serve a mission for the Mormon Church. He left for Salt Lake City on October 2, 1896, where Apostle George Teasdale set him apart for missionary service in the Northern States Mission. While in Salt Lake City, Mahonri also received his patriarchal blessing at the hand of Patriarch John Smith on October 8. Brother Smith at that time pronounced blessings on his head that he would preside among the people, that he would have power over the adversary, and that “many shall wonder at thy wisdom, many shall rejoice in thy teachings.”

The Lord apparently honored that blessing. Mahonri was proud of the fact that he earned the nickname “the walking Bible” on his mission, and he felt blessed to be able to teach the gospel to 84 people who accepted baptism either during or immediately following his mission. From his oft-repeated mission stories, his daughters grew up certain that Mahonri had converted the entire state of Pennsylvania during the more than two years that he served in the mission field.

From Salt Lake City, the new missionary traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, arriving on November 15, 1896. There he was paired with Elder John Y. Barlow of Bountiful, Utah with an initial assignment to work in Butler County. He preached the gospel in Pennsylvania until the summer of 1897.

Just weeks after arriving in the mission field, Mahonri had a premonition about life back home. In his words: “In January (1897) I was writing a letter to my wife and it came suddenly to me that there had been a little girl born to us. I wrote this in my letter and suggested that she be named Gertrude. The answer to this letter confirmed my premonition.” Gertrude would be walking and talking before she met her father.

Pennsylvania provided the backdrop for one of the most striking spiritual experiences of Mahonri’s life. “The greatest testimony I ever received,” he said, “was in Ribold, Pennsylvania in a little schoolhouse where we were holding a meeting one night. I had been fasting three days and nights for a testimony. I had prayed for this testimony and when I arose to speak that night words were forced through my lips to declare the truth of the gospel I was teaching. That was my first reception of the Holy Ghost. I felt that I stood in space while bearing that testimony.”

In the spring of 1897, Mahonri received a new missionary companion named Samuel S. Florence, who had just arrived in the mission field from Porterville, Utah. Mahonri later referred to Elder Florence as his favorite missionary companion and, in fact, later named his youngest daughter after this man he loved as a brother. They served together in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania for a time. Later that spring, church authorities rearranged the mission boundaries. Several elders, including Elders Decker and Florence, were assigned to serve in the Maryland Conference of the Eastern States Mission. Mahonri would now be serving in essentially the same mission in which his father served some thirty years earlier.

After working for some time in West Virginia, Mahonri was called in June of 1898 as President of the Maryland Conference, fulfilling the promise in his patriarchal blessing that he would preside among his brethren. In that position he worked closely with his mission president, Elder A.P. Kessler.

Mahonri loved his mission, and his children heard his stories from that time over and over again. Fae remembers the story of Elder Decker killing a copperhead snake that threatened a young mother and her children, or the time that he preached at a cottage meeting until three in the morning. Mahonri had laryngitis that evening and prayed hard to be equal to speaking. The Lord honored that prayer with a miracle. MM regaled his children with stories of a fearsome trip canoe trip down a raging river and mimicked the sea lions the elders saw on their visit to a local zoo.

Just like his modern-day counterparts in the mission field, Mahonri had to prove himself strong against any danger. In Fae’s words, “Once at a house party after a cottage meeting, a young lady suddenly plopped herself on his lap, and he promptly stood up, allowing her to fall on the floor in front of all the people there…who said he did just right.”

At the end of a mission spanning more than two years, Mahonri returned home on January 2, 1899. His brother Oscar took Rachel and the children in a white top buggy and met the returning missionary in Buckhorn Flat. Alvin, just four at the time, was timid of this stranger in the house and took some time to adjust to having his father home. Two-year old Gertrude met her father for the first time.

Rachel Dies
Once home, Mahonri continued to farm and raise cattle. Rachel gave birth to a son, Earl, later in 1899. Then on Christmas Day, 1901 she gave birth to a daughter, Rachel. A few days after Baby Rachel’s birth, Mahonri went up into the hills to gather firewood, confident that his wife was mending nicely. Messengers interrupted his work to tell him of a tragedy back home. Unbelieving, Mahonri nevertheless headed home. Along the way, he met Bishop Morgan Richards by the old Culver farm.

“Is it Rachel, Brother Richards?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Is she dead?”
Bishop Morgan just bowed his head.

Alvin, just six years old, met his father on his return.  He remembers the scene. “As Dad dismounted I was at the gate. He said, ‘Is she dead?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He suddenly broke into crying so hard I never will forget it.” It was January 7, 1902. Rachel had died of a heart attack.

Left with five children under the age of 10, Mahonri needed help. He gave the newborn Rachel to her Grandmother Munford to raise, but always kept a watchful eye on her. For the next three years, he and the other four children muddled on with the help of local girls whom he hired for $3.00 a week to watch over the children. During that time, he lost his father and his mother within a few weeks of each other. MM was just 33 years old.

Mahonri Marries Harriet

Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker

About the time Mahonri was earning his first horse and cursing the weeds in his mother’s garden, Harriet Norris gave birth to her eighth child, a daughter named Harriet Elizabeth. Baby Harriet was born on March 1, 1881 in Parowan, Utah to William and Harriet Norris. Young “Hattie,” as she was called, grew up in a household characterized by English reserve. While well respected in the community, her parents were not prone to mingle much in church or town social life.

When Hattie was just 15 years old, in 1896, her 11-year old brother Irvin took sick. On the day he died, the children spent the day with their mother at their summer cottage on the shore of the Little Salt Lake, north of Parowan. Harriet Norris went in to town to get medicine and left Hattie alone with Irvin. Hattie vividly remembers when Solon Lyman and some other men from the town stopped by for a drink of water. Solon saw Irvin’s condition and told Hattie to “keep a stiff upper lip” until her mother and the doctor returned. As his words sank in, Hattie realized for the first time that her brother could die.

Hattie grew into a beautiful woman, of medium height and quite slender, with luxurious, dark brown hair that she wore in a pompadour. Her beauty and gentle way attracted attention, and she became engaged in turn to two different young men. Her mother apparently objected to both of these men, as well as any others who came calling. Finally, at the age of 24 Hattie became engaged to Mahonri, who was at this time a widowed father of five and fourteen years her senior. Again, Harriet objected. However, this time William Norris interceded on his daughter’s behalf. Harriet became reconciled to the marriage and traveled to the St. George temple with Mahonri and Hattie for their marriage on May 31, 1905. Despite her initial objections, Harriet Norris called son-in-law to her side on her deathbed in 1908 to thank him for being a good husband to her daughter.

Though her children remember her as a fragile, quiet woman, Hattie nonetheless commanded both respect and love. When she married Mahonri, she became “Aunt Hattie” to her husband’s five children. At that time, the children ranged from Virgil, almost a man at nearly 15 years of age, to 11-year old Alvin, 8-year old Gertrude, 5-year old Earl, and 3-year old Rachel.

The new family set up house-keeping in Parowan. According to a version of his will, Zachariah Decker intended to bequeath the bulk of his real property to Mahonri and split his sheep herd between Mahonri and his brother Oscar. Presumably, the brothers continued to farm and raise cattle together, as they had during their father’s lifetime.

In addition to the children of Mahonri and Rachel, Hattie bore six children of her own. The oldest, Fae, was born a year after their marriage, in July 1906. Blanche joined the family on her father’s 40th birthday, August 7, 1908. She was followed by Florence (November 1911), Woodrow (May 1914, on the eve of The Great War), Alpine (June 1917), and Homer (September 1919).

Against the backdrop of small town Southern Utah, “Mamma” and “Papa,” as the children called their parents, raised their large family with a blend of pioneer values, old world dignity, high expectations, and an abundance of love.

Notes
1. Sections on Rachel Ann Munford, Mahonri Moriancumer Decker, and Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker in ?? (mystery document, beginning page 128)
2. “1000 Loads or Bust” Parowan Times 1916-03-15
3. Blanche’s autobiographical essay from 1848.
4. Phone interview with Woodrow’s daughter Sandra Decker Benson.
5. “A Sketch of Father’s Life in His Own Words” dictated by Mahonri to his daughters Fae and Florence in 1941.
6. Marriage date of Mahonri and Rachel comes from the marriage certificate, which differs from Mahonri’s own account by one day.
7. Additional information on Mahonri’s mission from Deseret News reports 1897 – 1898.
8. Patriarchal blessing for Mahonri Moriancumer Decker obtained from the LDS Church History Department.
9. “Mother, Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker” Fae Decker Dix.
10. Notes on Zachariah’s will from an undated, handwritten draft of that will.

Norris Grandparents: William and Harriet

William Norris

William Norris

William Norris was born on September 17, 1835 in Bristol, Gloucester, England to a family of laborers. His parents, William, Sr. and Cecelia, hailed from Gloucester, as well. William, Sr. worked as a shoemaker, and his wife as a shoe binder. William, Jr. was the middle child and only son in a family of five children, including sisters Cecelia, Sarah Ann, Deborah and Charlotte.

Back in the United States, Kirtland, Ohio formed the center of the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like the rest of the country, the saints felt the burden of the widespread financial panic of the late 1830s. The financial situation, combined with religious persecution, taxed the fragile faith of the saints and apostasy began to spread. “In this state of things,” recorded Joseph Smith, “God revealed to me that something new must be done for the salvation of His Church.”

That “something new” involved sending missionaries to Great Britain to open the first overseas mission of the Church. In 1837, Heber C. Kimball and six other missionaries landed in Liverpool, England to begin the work. Thus began a long and fruitful missionary effort. In the 1840s alone, 64 missionaries from the United States, assisted by native-born British missionaries, baptized over 34,000 people.

William Norris, Sr. and his wife were among the early British members of the church, accepting baptism in February and March of 1844. By the mid-1850s at least four of the children had joined their parents in being baptized. The records of the Bristol Conference, British Mission indicate that William, Jr.  was baptized on May 20, 1854 by Elder J. Barker. He would have been 18 years old, having enjoyed close association with the Mormon Church for a decade prior to his baptism.

In fact, family memorabilia includes an early LDS Hymnal from 1850 inscribed to one Mariah Clark as follows, “presented to her by her much beloved friend and companion William Norris as a token of love and friendship.” Family legend suggests that 15-year old William was in love with Mariah, but that she rejected him because of his religious affiliation.

The records show little of the Norris family’s time in Britain. At 16 years of age, William lived with his aunt and uncle in Salisbury and worked as a porter. An obituary for him indicates that he served for a number of years as a traveling elder for the Church in and around Bristol.

Not long after William, Jr. was baptized, his older sisters, Cecelia and Sarah Ann, left for the United States in company with over 700 Mormon immigrants on the ship Thornton. They embarked from Liverpool on May 4, 1856 and arrived in New York six weeks later. The women, aged 26 and 22 at the time, crossed the plains as part of the James G. Willie handcart company. Cecelia’s husband, Theophilus William Cox died on November 7, 1856, just two days before the company reached the Salt Lake Valley. Within a year or so after arriving in Zion, both of the sisters married and settled in Parowan.

While the older sisters gathered to Zion, the rest of the Norris family relocated to Bath, in the county of Somerset, England. The 1861 census shows William, Sr. and his wife working as bookmakers, with Deborah and Charlotte binding books. William, Jr. styled himself less prosaically as a photographic artist. On April 21, 1861, he married Mary Ann Cannings (the widow of James Elkins) in Thomas a Beckett Church in Bath. They had a child named Frederick on January 19, 1862 in Bradford on Avon. Mary Ann presumably died shortly after her son’s birth.

In April 1863 William, Jr. left his young son in the care of his parents and followed his older sisters to Utah. He left Liverpool on April 30, 1863 on the ship John J. Boyd, arriving in New York on May 29 along with 767 LDS immigrants traveling under the direction of William W. Cluff. Unbeknownst to him at the time, exactly one year earlier, the woman who would become his wife traveled to New York on that very same ship.

Harriet Jackson

Harriet Jackson Norris

Harriet Jackson was born on August 13, 1842 in Mattersey, Nottinghamshire, England to William Jackson and Sarah Smith. Her parents and perhaps some of her older siblings joined the Mormon Church in the early 1840s. When Harriet was just 12 years old, her father died in Wakefield, York, England, leaving Sarah a widow with seven children. Harriet was baptized in April 1861 at the age of 18.

One year after her baptism, the family boarded the ship John J. Boyd for America. They landed in New York on June 1, 1862 and traveled across the plains with the Homer Duncan Company. By this time, the family included Harriet’s mother Sarah, George and his wife Martha, John, Harriet (age 20), Thomas, Emma, Elizabeth, and 7-year old Sarah.

William and Harriet Build a Family
At some point after William Norris arrived in Utah in 1863, he met Harriet Jackson. Apostle Wilford Woodruff performed the sealing of the two in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City on October 10, 1864. Church leaders assigned William the trade of shoemaking, and Brigham Young sent him to set up the trade in Parowan. The couple arrived in Parowan by 1865, where they raised their family of eleven children.

Their first son, William Thomas, was born on September 14, 1865. He was followed by seven sons and three daughters. Two of the children, Delbert and Eva, died as very young children. Another brother, Irvin Lamont, died in 1896 at the age of 11.

The Norrises led a much more quiet life than the Deckers, and they left a much smaller footprint in Parowan history. Perhaps due to their British heritage, the family was reserved in manner, not mingling much in the community. Fae Decker Dix describes Harriet as “of a melancholy nature, withdrawn but genteel.” Part of that melancholy nature came as the result of burying three of her young children. According to a family story, the Christmas Day after her 11-year old son Irvin died, she wrapped herself in a warm cloak and spent the day grieving at his graveside. Late in the afternoon, William found her and brought her home.

William, a quiet man, held several civil positions in Parowan, acting in turn as justice of the peace, city treasurer, and county treasurer. His obituary indicates that he was also active in church duties and was a kind and indulgent father and a faithful and devoted husband. During his final illness, he lived with his daughter Harriet. Fae, nine at the time, remembers his yellow canary and the afternoon thunderstorms that frightened him. The Parowan Times reported that “he was an upright, unassuming, industrious man, and highly respected by all who were acquainted with him.”

Fae said of the Norrises, “If mother’s family were too fragile for their world, they survived it anyway and kept their peace with grace. They were said to be people who thought of people and could extend understanding sympathy in any human plight.”

Uncle Fred

Frederick and Mary Norris

And what of William’s first son, the man William’s grandchildren referred to as “long lost Uncle Fred”? Frederick William Norris lived in England with his grandparents and aunts until 1872, when they sailed to America on the ship Manhattan. The 10-year old boy and his family then traveled overland to Utah, where he was reunited with his father.

Frederick lived in Parowan with William and Harriet for a time and was baptized there in 1873, although, like many of the Norris children, he eventually left the Mormon faith. By 1880 he was again living with his Aunt Charlotte and her husband John Thomas. Frederick’s passport indicates he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1891 and considered Utah his home from 1872 to 1894, although he went away for school. In 1888 Frederick graduated from St. Stephen’s College, presumably in New York, and in 1890 he married Mary E. Cherry, an accomplished world traveler and Shakespearean scholar.

Returning to Utah, he began his tenure at St. Mark’s in Salt Lake City in 1891, serving first as Assistant Rector and eventually as Dean of the Cathedral. Frederick’s second wife later said that he spoke little of his time in Utah, and that it seemed to be a painful subject for him. The Norrises left Utah in 1894, when Frederick won a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England.

From 1895-1900, Frederick was Rector of Trinity Church in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Following their time in Connecticut, the couple moved back to New York City, where Frederick served as Rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn from 1900 until his retirement in 1929. His wife said that Dr. Norris “read the service better than anyone since had done…that he had a captivating voice and a way of reading scriptures, as if he had a feeling about them, so that they didn’t sound read.”

Mary Cherry Norris died on January 21, 1929, less than a week after her husband resigned from his parish. Frederick married again in November of that year, this time to Margaret Fernie Eaton, the widow of Hugh M. Eaton. Margaret and her first husband were both artists of some note in New York. On November 22, 1931, Frederick died of Bright’s disease (historic term for conditions related to kidney disease) at the age of 69.

Blanche Decker, Frederick’s niece, visited Margaret Norris in 1942 in New York City and found her “most charming…an artist, intelligent in a pleasing, flexible way.” Blanche writes of attending a gallery showing of her watercolors. For Blanche, Frederick Norris and his wives must have represented so much of the cosmopolitan culture and the intellectual and artistic credentials to which she had aspired all of her life.

Notes
1. A Century of “Mormonism” in Great Britain, by Richard L. Evans
2. William Norris, Sr. Family Timeline, compiled by Cindy Norris
3. Baptismal dates for the Jacksons come from Family Search. Note that for Harriet’s parents the record shows confirmation dates two years before their baptismal dates.
4. Church History Library, Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database gives information on the James G. Willie Company and the Homer Duncan Company.
5. Family information from document in possession of Judy Liddle. From Fae Decker, perhaps?
6. Birth and death dates for Delbert, Eva, and Irvin come from the Parowan graveyard on the family marker.
7. “Mother, Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker,” by Fae Decker Dix.
8. Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker, pg. 140 (from where?) gives details of her parents.
9. Further information on Frederick William Norris from “Some Notes on the Norris Family” compiled by Jennifer Dix and from “Who’s Who in New York City and State (1907)”.
10. "An Appeal of Art to the Lovers of Art." by Mrs. Frederic W. Norris [Mrs. Mary E. Cherry Norris], published in Eagle, Mary Kavanaugh Oldham, ed. The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U. S. A., 1893. Chicago, Ill: Monarch Book Company, 1894. pp. 674-678.
11. Letter from Blanche Decker to her father, April 1942.
12. Letter from Blanche Decker to Fae Decker Dix, probably 1942.
13. Obituary for Rev. Dr. F.W. Norris in the New York Times November 1931.

Decker Grandparents: Nancy and Zachariah

Nancy Bean

Nancy Bean Decker

Nancy Bean’s granddaughter once described her grandmother as a woman with jet-black, wavy hair, beautiful gray eyes, abundant energy, and an indomitable spirit. That indomitable spirit carried Nancy through the upheaval of the Nauvoo years, across the plains to Utah Territory, through three marriages and thirteen children.

Nancy was born December 14, 1826 in Troy, Lincoln County, Missouri, the second child born to James and Elizabeth Lewis Bean. By the time she turned two years old, her parents had moved the family 90 miles north to Adams County, Illinois. They settled on a farm near Mendon, a small town not far from Quincy. There James and Elizabeth raised their family of seven children for a time.

George Washington Bean, Nancy’s brother, described his parents in his journal. “My parents were moral, circumspect and strictly religious people, though not of the same creed. My father was a Methodist and my mother a Presbyterian, so the children had the privilege of meeting many ministers, who often enjoyed the hospitality of his home, a stopping place for the Reverend Divines.”

In 1839, the Beans had the opportunity to host a new breed of religionists when the expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri brought a group of exiles to Adams County. One of the refugees, an uneducated Mormon elder named Alexander Williams, intrigued the family with the clarity of his views and his doctrinal explanations. Not surprisingly, local preachers did not share the Beans’ interest in the Mormon preaching. A couple of these ministers challenged Williams to a debate, which was held in the Bean home. Whatever the effect of Williams’ preaching on the gathered neighbors, the Beans responded to his message. In May of 1841 James, Elizabeth, and Nancy Bean joined a number of the local townspeople in affiliating with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to George Bean, Alexander Williams had become a close friend of the family and had the privilege of performing the baptisms. Nancy was fourteen years old.

Just a year after her baptism, Nancy was persuaded to marry Thomas J. Williams (apparently no relation to Alexander), a local school teacher 12 years her senior who boarded in the Bean home. They married on September 4, 1842 and had a daughter named Nancy Elizabeth (Mary Elizabeth according to some accounts) on August 10, 1843. Thomas never did join the Mormon faith, and that religious difference finally became an insurmountable barrier between them. In the spring of 1844, Nancy informed Thomas that there had been a revelation requiring all Mormons to join the body of the Saints in Nauvoo. She intended to go. Thomas refused. The tension increased over the summer and finally, on July 26, 1844 Nancy left Thomas and moved to Nauvoo. In the end, she had to choose between her daughter and her faith. Family stories suggest that Thomas or his father took the baby from Nancy at gunpoint, but no one has been able to substantiate those accounts. Suffice it to say that the break was painful and dramatic for all involved.

For whatever reason, Thomas Williams waited several months before filing for divorce on February 25, 1845. Nancy was served a summons to appear in court, but since she failed to appear, the court granted Thomas all of his demands and severed the marriage on May 8, 1845. Thomas raised Nancy Elizabeth in Warsaw, Illinois, just twenty miles from Nauvoo. Nancy apparently had no contact with her daughter for many years.
Soon after Nancy arrived in Nauvoo she became the second wife of John D. Lee, a man prominent in Nauvoo at the time and later infamous for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Lee wrote in his diary, "My second wife, Nancy Bean was the daughter of wealthy farmers. She saw me on a mission and heard me preach at her father's home. She came to Nauvoo and stayed at my house and grew in favor." They were married in early February 1845 (although some accounts list November of 1844).

Early photograph of Nauvoo Temple

In April 1845, Nancy’s parents and siblings joined her in Nauvoo, eventually building a home two blocks south of the temple. James Bean and two of his sons (George and James) worked on the Nauvoo temple. Anti-Mormon sentiment increased as work on the temple progressed. Finally, in December 1845, the first endowments were given in the temple. The next two months brought a flurry of activity as the saints worked day and night to complete as much temple work as possible before leaving Nauvoo.

Nancy received her endowments on December 22, 1845. On January 14, 1846 Brigham Young performed the sealing of Nancy Bean to John D. Lee. Nancy gave birth to their daughter, Eliza, the very next day. Just three weeks later, she and her baby were among the first wave of saints to leave Nauvoo for Winter Quarters ahead of the mobs. Her parents followed around May 1.

During the time the Saints lived at Winter Quarters, Lee recorded in his journal that tension was mounting in his household, “especially with Nancy Bean.” She alternated between living with Lee and living with her parents. While she lived with her parents during the fall of 1846, sickness swept through the community and struck the Bean household. Nancy escaped the illness, but in October or November her seven year old sister, Cornelia, died. Nancy later changed the name of her daughter Eliza to Cornelia, presumably in honor of her sister.

In the summer of 1847 Nancy said a temporary “good-bye” to two more of her siblings. Sarah Ann’s husband, William Casper, had enlisted with the Mormon Battalion the previous summer, and church leaders felt it wise to take the families of the Battalion members to the Rocky Mountains so that the men would not have to return to Winter Quarters at the end of their tour of duty. George Bean, only 16 years old at the time, offered to accompany his sister Sarah and her baby across the plains. They left in June 1847, travelling with the Jedediah M. Grant-Willard Snow Company.

John D. Lee

According to Lee’s journal, around the time Sarah and George left for the Rockies, Nancy was living exclusively with her parents. In December of 1847, she gave a statement detailing instances of physical and emotional abuse she suffered at Lee’s hands. “He threatened to cut my throat,” she said. “I have heard him often say that if he managed to keep his actions secreted from Brigham and the Twelve, he did not care for any other persons—as nobody else had a right to say anything about him.” Lee denied the charges. However, President Young believed them to the extent that he reproved Lee and granted Nancy a release from her marriage on February 28, 1848.

On June 5, 1848, newly divorced Nancy Bean left Winter Quarters along with her parents as part of the Brigham Young Company. This company of 1220 people was divided up into various smaller groups. Nancy and her parents traveled as part of the second company, under Captain William Perkins. William Perkins was a captain of 100, with two “counselors”: John D. Lee and Eleazer Miller. The company experienced the usual round of river crossings, baby births, illness, miracles, and occasional bickering common to most of the wagon trains.

On July 11, 1848, as the company camped along the Platte River, a group of men traveling east from the Salt Lake Valley arrived in camp. Much to the joy of Elizabeth Bean, her son George was among them. He was weak from hunger and fatigue but happy to be reunited with the rest of his family after seeing his sister safely to the Salt Lake Valley.

Just a week after this reunion, a man named Daniel Miller determined to take his wagons and as many as wanted to join him and split off from the larger wagon train in hopes of traveling faster and more efficiently. John D. Lee tried in vain to persuade Miller to stay with the group. Perhaps James Bean found Miller’s arguments persuasive, or perhaps the Beans hoped for some distance from Nancy’s former husband. In any event, the family joined the twenty or so wagons traveling with Daniel Miller and forged on ahead. They arrived in Salt Lake City on September 4, 1848, more than two weeks ahead of the rest of Captain Perkin’s company. According to Lee’s journal, the split angered Brigham Young, who felt that Miller and Bean and their company should have stayed around to share the burden with the larger group.

Once in the Salt Lake valley, the Bean family settled in the Millcreek area for the winter of 1848-49, probably living with Nancy’s sister Sarah Ann. It was in Millcreek that Nancy met Zachariah Bruyn Decker upon his return from California and the Mormon Battalion. Sarah Ann’s husband, William Wallace Casper, served with Zachariah in Company A of the Battalion and may have been instrumental in bringing the two together.
The following spring, James and Elizabeth Bean moved to Provo along with thirty families called to settle the area. Nancy stayed and married Zachariah, probably on October 4, 1849 (although some accounts list March 6, 1849). She was 22, and he was 32. Zachariah raised Cornelia Lee, age three at the time of their wedding, as his own daughter.

Zachariah Bruyn Decker

Zachariah was born in Sha-wan’gunk, Ulster County, New York on June 22, 1817 to Cornelius J. and Gertrude Bruyn Decker. He was part of the sixth generation of Deckers to live in Ulster County. One biographer explains that by the time of Zachariah’s birth, the once large family estates had been subdivided to the point where most of the children could no longer hope to raise their own families on the Decker properties. Consequently, at an early age Zachariah began to hire out on neighboring farms.

One account of Zachariah indicates that he and his two brothers, Johannis and Asa, made their way to Illinois to find their fortunes. The compiled “History of McDonough County” provides some insight into the movements of Zachariah’s brothers in Illinois in the 1830s. Apparently, Johannis Decker (and, if the family account is correct, Zachariah and Asa with him) moved to Chicago around 1836, probably after their father’s death in that same year. There, Johannis worked as a teamster for a few months before removing to Augusta, Illinois. He lived in Augusta, roughly 25 miles southeast of Carthage, until 1839, when he moved to nearby Macomb. Johannis married in Macomb in 1839, and both he and Asa settled in the area. Their mother joined them there and lived in Illinois for the rest of her life.

Marcus de Lafayette Shepherd

While Johannis and Asa settled on neighboring farms, Zachariah hired out as a laborer. It was probably during this time that he met Lafayette Shepherd, a young man from Ohio who had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1837. The two were lifelong friends from that point, and several family stories credit Lafayette with introducing Zachariah to the church. Another family story states that one of Zachariah’s employers, a Mr. Yates, gave Zachariah a Book of Mormon. Whether due to Lafayette or Mr. Yates or a combination thereof, Zachariah converted to the LDS church and was baptized around April 8, 1840 by Simeon Carter. Zachariah was 22 at the time.

Neither Zachariah’s brothers nor his mother ever joined the Mormons, and existing history tells little about the family’s reaction to his baptism. A compiled “History of McDonough County” does list Zachariah’s younger brother Asa among the citizens who fought in what was commonly known as the “Mormon War” around September 1846, during which the Mormons were expelled from Nauvoo. Although Zachariah had left Nauvoo by that point, Asa’s participation in the fight against the Mormons does suggest an environment ripe for family tension.

Not long after his baptism, Zachariah relocated to the Nauvoo area. He owned property near Nauvoo and Carthage and is listed among the residents of Nauvoo in 1844, where he was a member of the 27th Quorum of the 70. He was given his first patriarchal blessing in September of 1845 just a few months prior to leaving Nauvoo with the Saints and relocating to Council Bluffs, Iowa. While in Council Bluffs he enlisted in the Mormon Battalion on July 16, 1846. Susan Easton Black, in her biographies of Mormon Battalion members, describes Zachariah. “At the time of his enlistment he was 5’7”, having a dark complexion, brown hair, and gray eyes.” Zachariah, his friend Lafayette Shepherd, and his future brother-in-law William Wallace Casper were all assigned to Company A of the Battalion.

Zachariah liked to tell the following story from his time with the Mormon Battalion (quoted from “Life Sketch,” Zachariah Decker). “At one time the men had been rationed down so much they were always hungry. One day they came on to a bunch of buffalo and some of them were shot. The men dressed the meat and each man was preparing to cook some when their commanding officer, at the point of the bayonet, commanded them to throw the meat away. One by one they did as they were told, but when he came to Zachariah B. Decker, Zachariah said, ‘Shoot if you want to, but I’m not throwing my meat away. We are all starving.’ It rather cowed the officer, who just did it to show his authority. One by one the men got their meat and were filled.”

Zachariah was discharged along with the rest of the Battalion from Fort Moore in Los Angeles on April 16, 1847. Upon discharge, 223 of the men took leave of Los Angeles in what they called “groups of 50” and wound their way up California, gathering supplies in Sacramento and then heading East across the Sierra Nevadas to meet the main body of the Mormon pioneers. Along the way, they encountered a messenger from Brigham Young, who recommended that those men who had adequate supplies should continue on to the Salt Lake Valley, but that the others should remain in California to labor until spring. 105 of the men returned to California to work, Zachariah among them. Sutter’s Diary places Zachariah at Sutter’s Fort when gold was discovered on January 24, 1848.

Church records indicate that Zachariah brought gold to Utah and deposited that gold with Brigham Young in the Salt Lake Valley on January 7, 1849. He probably traveled to Utah in company with his friend Lafayette Shepherd and a company of twelve men who left California in October 1848. Zachariah met and married Nancy Bean not long after his arrival in Salt Lake.

And they begin the happily ever after…
Zachariah and Nancy lived in the Salt Lake valley for only a short time. Nancy’s daughter Cornelia remembered that the family built a one-room adobe cabin in Salt Lake City and lived there for a few months, during which time Nancy gave birth to her first son, Zachariah, on March 3, 1850. After a time, they moved back to Millcreek, but their stay there was short-lived.

In July of 1850, Brigham Young called for men “full of faith and good works; who have been blessed with means; who want more means and are willing to labor and toil to obtain those means” to establish the first Mormon colony in Southern Utah. The company formed under the direction of George A. Smith and Ezra T. Benson and left for what they called “Little Salt Lake” in December 1850. The roster of the Iron County Mission, as it was called, includes Zachariah Decker and John D. Lee among the 120 men, 31 women, and 18 children who made the journey. Nancy, newly pregnant, stayed behind with Cornelia (age five) and baby Zachariah, apparently living with her parents in Provo.

The colonizers reached Center Creek (located in between modern-day Parowan and Brian Head Ski Resort) in Iron County on January 15, 1851 and immediately formed a town government. Zachariah was elected constable of the new community. Among other duties, he had responsibility for protecting the five hundred head of cattle and horses that belonged to the citizens of the town.

In April of 1851, George A. Smith gave a favorable report on the new colony of Parowan. Crops looked good, and there were few problems with the Indians. Zachariah sent a team up to Provo to retrieve Nancy and the children, who arrived sometime before the middle of May. True pioneers, Zachariah and Nancy brought their considerable skills and penchant for hard work to the growing colony. Nancy became the town midwife and was, for a time, the only medical aid available in town. She was also an expert tailor and weaver. In addition to serving as constable, Zachariah occasionally taught school in the community. He also purchased a ranch near Chimney Meadow (north of Parowan and west of modern-day I-15). He was quite a frontiersman and handy with a gun. In fact, Zachariah’s son George said he referred to his gun as his “second wife.”

1852 brought both joy and heartache to the Deckers. The community began to thrive, and Nancy became pregnant with her fifth child. But in September, their daughter Gertrude died. She was just a little over one year old. Perhaps Gertrude’s death inspired thoughts of eternity. Just weeks later, Zachariah and Nancy traveled back to Salt Lake where, on November 6, 1852, Zachariah took out his endowments and was sealed to Nancy. Apostle Willard Richards performed the sealing in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.

The next sixteen years brought nine more children to the family: James (1853), Cornelius Isaac (1854), Nathaniel Alvin (1856), Sarah Vilate (1858), Harriet Emily (1861), Mary Ardella (1863), George William (1864), Joseph Oscar (1867), Mahonri Moriancumer (1868). All of the children except Gertrude lived to adulthood, and most had families. Only George, Joseph Oscar, and Mahonri remained in Iron County.
During these years, the Deckers remained active in community and church life. Zachariah served as one of the presidents of the ninth quorum of the 70, helped recover the town’s cattle from the Little Creek Indian raid, assisted in building a military fort along the Sevier River during the Black Hawk Indian War in 1865, and made his way as a farmer. Their daughter Cornelia was sealed to her husband in the Endowment House in Salt Lake in 1865 and eventually settled in Colorado.

In 1869, with ten children at home between the ages of 1 and 19, Zachariah accepted a call to serve a mission to the Eastern States. He was set apart on October 17 at the age of 52. Although details from Zachariah’s mission are scanty, it is clear from contemporary accounts that a number of men were called in the October 1869 General Conference to serve short missions to the Eastern States. 110 of those missionaries arrived in Omaha in late November 1869, a number of them called to serve for a period of six months.

Upon his return home, Zachariah built an adobe home in the center of town and a cabin in the mountains outside of Parowan. When the town practiced the United Order from 1873 to 1876, Nancy served as a tailor and Zachariah acted as superintendent of the West Field.

A little side trip to the San Juan
As more and more saints gathered to the Utah Territory, Brigham Young sent groups on missions to populate the surrounding area. In 1879, in an effort to establish a Mormon presence east of the Colorado River, church leaders organized the San Juan mission. In April 1879, Silas S. Smith led a scouting party to find a suitable place for the saints to build a settlement. Zachariah, Jr. and his brother James formed part of that exploratory mission. The group chose a site at the mouth of the Montezuma Creek on the San Juan River. The difficulty lay in finding a reasonable route for the settlers to travel from what is now Southern Utah to the new settlement. In the end, the expedition chose a shortcut south of Escalante.

Zachariah and James returned to Parowan and packed up their families to make the move. They joined the rest of the expedition—consisting of 250 persons, 83 wagons, and over 1000 head of livestock—at the rendezvous point south of Escalante in November 1879. In addition to Zachariah, Jr. and James and their families, the expedition also included Zachariah, Sr. and three more of his sons: Cornelius Isaac, Nathanial Alvin, and George William. Cornelius and Nathanial brought their families. George, just barely 15 at the time of the trek, traveled with his father. Zachariah Sr.’s daughter Harriet Emily, and perhaps Sarah Vilate as well, also formed part of the group. Nancy remained home in Parowan with the younger children.

Photo from Escalante Heritage Center

The “shortcut” turned out to be anything but short, and the journey the pioneers anticipated would take six weeks turned into a six month ordeal. They spent the winter at 50-Mile Camp and labored to enlarge a narrow crack in the canyon rim to make it big enough to accommodate a wagon. Finally, beginning on January 26, 1880, the expedition made its way through the Hole in the Rock to the Escalante River 2000 feet below. Lizzie Decker, wife of Cornelius, described the scene in a letter she sent to her parents a few weeks after they crossed the Escalante River:

“We crossed the river on the 1st of Feb. all safe; was not half as scared as we thought we'd be, it was the easiest part of our journey. Coming down the hole in the rock to get to the river was ten times as bad. If you ever come this way it will scare you to death to look down it. It is about a mile from the top down to the river and it is almost straight down, the cliffs on each side are five hundred ft. high and there is just room enough for a wagon to go down. It nearly scared me to death. The first wagon I saw go down the put the brake on and rough locked the hind wheels and had a big rope fastened to the wagon and about ten men holding back on it and then they went down like they would smash everything. I'll never forget that day.”

Once across the river, the pioneers made their way through a dangerous wilderness to the San Juan River. Despite the perilous journey and the harsh conditions, no lives were lost along the trek. In fact, two babies were born during the trip, including a daughter born to James and Anna Decker.

The pioneers reached their destination in April 1880. James settled in Bluff, where he and four of his children died in the diphtheria epidemic of 1901-02. Nathanial, Cornelius, and Harriet Emily settled in Bluff for a time but eventually moved with their families to Colorado. Zachariah, Jr. and his father chose land two miles north of Montezuma Fort, where they intended to have a cattle ranch together. They built corrals and two cabins but soon discovered that the area along the Montezuma Wash was a corridor frequently traveled by renegade Indians. Zachariah, Jr. left the area in 1881 and pushed on to Arizona. Zachariah, Sr. returned to Parowan.

George Decker

And George, the boy of fifteen? George had promised his mother that he would be home in time for spring planting, and he had no intention of breaking that promise. Against the arguments of his father and his older brothers, George immediately turned around and began the perilous journey home to Parowan alone, following one of the worst winters in Utah history. Even in the spring, much of the mountainous terrain was still covered in 10 to 20 feet of snow. He took two horses and began his journey. 14 days and many adventures later, he arrived at his mother’s gate, weary and nearly snow-blind but carrying significant bragging rights.

The Hole in the Rock expedition was Zachariah’s last pioneer trek. By the time he returned to Parowan, he was in his mid-60s, with most of his children grown. Only Joseph Oscar and Mahonri remained at home. Zachariah and Nancy continued to farm and garden, attend to their church duties and raise their remaining children. In his waning years, Zachariah used to love to spend time in his cabin in the mountains. He remained in relatively good health until Nancy’s death in March of 1903. She was 76, and the two had shared a life together for 54 years. Zachariah died just a few weeks later, on April 13, 1903 at the age of 86. Both were buried in Parowan, their home of 52 years.

Notes
1. Description of Nancy Bean from Myrtle Decker Janson, granddaughter, 22 October 1941.
2. Diary of George Washington Bean, quoted in “History and Character Sketch of James Bean, Pioneer to Utah in 1848,” by Flora B. Horn. Additional quotes from George Bean’s diary in “Some Descendents of John Doyle Lee,” compiled by Lorraine (Richardson) Mandersheid in 2000.
3. “Biographical Record of Daniel and Mary (Jackson) Williams, Early Kentucky Pioneers” Julielma M. Kelley 1898.
4. Information on marriage and divorce of Nancy Bean and Thomas Williams from Adams County, IL Chancery Cases, Case #389.
5. Bean family history from “Brief Life Sketch of Elizabeth Lewis Bean,” “The Story of Elizabeth Lewis Bean,” and “History and Character Sketch of James Bean, Pioneer to Utah in 1848,” all by Flora Bean Horne.
6. Nauvoo Temple Endowment Register, pg. 47 lists Nancy’s endowment date.
7. Information on divorce of Nancy Bean and John D. Lee from “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” and from Larry Decker’s talk at the 1999 Decker family reunion.
8. Trail notes come from various trail excerpts, including writings of John D. Lee, Jacob Miller, Thomas Bullock. (available in the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database on www.lds.org)
9. Notes on early life of Zachariah from a document called “Notes on the Life of Zachariah Bruyn Decker, Senior.” I only have the first page, with no indication of the author.
10. Additional history from “History of Zachariah Bruyn Decker,” compiled by Luella Dalton.
11. “History of McDonough County Illinois” (1885) gives information on Zachariah’s brothers, Johannis and Asa Decker, who moved to Illinois in 1936.
12. Susan Black and L. Porter, BYU, Biographies, Mormon Battalion, Zachariah Bruyn Decker, Sr. (1817-1903) includes information on Zachariah’s conversion and time with the Battalion, as well as quotes from “Life Sketch, Zachariah Decker”.
13. “Mormon Battalion Trail: San Diego to Sutter’s Fort”  and “New Information on Zachariah’s Gold,” both by Robert Decker Christenson, Report of the 1999 Zachariah Bruyn and Nancy Bean Decker family reunion.
14. Cornelia Lee Decker Mortensen quoted in “Some Descendents of John Doyle Lee,” compiled by Lorraine (Richardson) Mandersheid in 2000. This account also includes information on the move to Parowan.
15. Articles on the mission to Little Salt Lake posted in the Deseret News 27 July 1850, 16 November 1850 and 11 January 1851.
16. Additional information on the move to Parowan found in Susan Black and L. Porter, BYU, Biographies, Mormon Battalion, Zachariah Bruyn Decker, Sr. (1817-1903) and in “History of Zachariah Bruyn Decker,” compiled by Luella Dalton.
17. “Zachariah Bruyn Decker and Nancy Bean Decker, Utah Pioneers,” presentation by Larry Decker at the 1999 Zachariah Bruyn and Nancy Bean Decker family reunion.
18. Birthdates for the Decker children vary between ancestry.com and new.familysearch.org. These dates are from ancestry.com.
19. Accounts of Eastern States missionaries from the Jared Pratt Family Association web site and the Deseret News.
20. Information on the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition from Hole-in-the-Rock Trek Blanding 2010 and  the National Park Service.
21. “George W. Decker’s Hole-in-the-Rock Experience,” from writings of his son, Ivin Decker.
22. “Zachariah Bruyn Decker and Nancy Bean Decker, Utah Pioneers,” presentation by Larry Decker at the 1999 Zachariah Bruyn and Nancy Bean Decker family reunion.
23. “History of Zachariah Bruyn Decker,” compiled by Luella Dalton.