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| Mahonri Moriancumer Decker |
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
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| Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker |
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.
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