History of Mary Lovenia Moss Boam

Darrin & Andrea Lythgoe's Genealogy Pages

Mary Lovenia Moss Boam

By Katie Boam Fairbanks
March 4, 1941

The history of my grandmother on my mother’s side, Fanny Elizabeth Goodman Moss, has been written and given in this, the organization of the Emerson Camp of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, by her daughter, Matilda Ellen Moss Webley.

I should like now to give the history of my mother, who was the third child in a family of ten, born to Thomas Moss and Fanny Elizabeth Goodman Moss.

Mary Lovenia Moss Boam was born October 2, 1866, in a dugout on the corner of M Street and South Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah¾ in the original old 21^st Ward and on what they called the Dry Bench. My mother’s parents were very poor like many other pioneers, so under these conditions, they truly knew and felt the hardships of pioneer life.

South Temple Street being the main thoroughfare to Fort Douglas, my grandparents’ family, as well as many other families were bothered a great deal by the soldiers. The parents, especially the mothers, were ever guarding their daughters.

On one occasion when my mother was a very small baby, sleeping in her cradle, my grandmother was impressed very strongly to move the cradle from where it was standing. She did so and a few minutes later a large rock came through the roof of the dugout and fell where the cradle had been standing. A solder had done this.

One evening when it was raining quite hard, Brother Will Tuddenham called to see the Moss family. When he went in he didn’t see the children about¾ upon inquiring was told they were under the table trying to keep out of the rain, because it was coming through the dugout roof real freely. Grandmother and Brother Tuddenham had a good laugh about it.

Grandmother was such a lovable, good-natured, resourceful soul¾ everyone loved her.

When my mother was as young as five years of age, she would stand on a box and wash dishes for folks and tend children smaller than herself, to help earn a little money to buy necessities for the family. She was privileged to attend school, but very little.

In 1875, when she was nine years of age, President Brigham Young called the Moss family along with others, to go down to Grass Valley in Piute County and build up that part of Utah.

Grandfather put their few household belongings into a wagon, hitched his oxen, Buck and Berry, to it and the family started off with the others.

They settled where Koocherum is today and lived in a one-room log cabin. Mother and her sister, Jane, who was just older, would grub sage brush on the tract of land taken up by their father, so that the land could be tilled. Farming was a great hardship on Grandfather, as he had been taught the "harness-maker" trade in England when a small boy and had worked at nothing else. With this background and the crops freezing, the family truly suffered on the farm¾ and had it not been for these Saints living the "United Order," things would have been much harder for the Moss family.

William, the oldest child, did not got to Grass Valley with the family as he had learned the butcher’s trade and was employed at Popperton, near Fort Douglas. [William did go to Grass Valley with the family. See page 11 in the book "Jimmy Moss."] Grandmother would always try to come to Salt Lake every fall, with someone from down there to get a little money from William to buy shoes.

The Piute Indians were in that country so it was necessary that the Saints make friends with them.

My mother was considered a very pretty girl¾ she was full of life¾ a good sport¾ lovable and kind. For entertainment in Grass Valley, they would have huge bonfires at night out of the sage brush. She especially loved to ride horses and would have many a race with the fellows. She loved Fish Lake and would often tell us as children of its grandeur and beauty. It had fascinated her so much as a young girl living in Grass Valley.

The family came back to Salt Lake in 1881. They settled at N Street and 1^st Avenue. My mother didn’t live at home. She worked in the family of Orson Woolley, at Murray. Mr. Wooley ran a country store and the family lived in a house at the rear. The original store building is still standing and is used by the Twin Peaks Cold Storage Locker Service, and is located at 5049 South State Street.

The Woolleys were very fine people and treated my mother very well, but she had to work very hard and long hours.

There was a young man working for Mr. Woolley in his store by the name of Orson Sanders. His sister, Annie Matilda, had married a young man by the name of Wm. McGhie Boam. She died at the time one of her babies was born. Her two children, twin girls, preceded her in death, and her baby followed soon after.

Orson introduced William to Mary, my mother, and March 25, 1885, they were married in the Logan Temple by President M.W. Merrill. She made a beautiful bride¾ blue eyes¾ dark curly hair¾ a countenance that radiated sunshine¾ slender of stature¾ until in her later years, she became quite plump.

Her husband took her to live in two rooms that had been added onto the back of the original four room log house built by his parents. The Boam farm was located on 48^th South, between 13^th and 15^th East, in Salt Lake County, Utah.

She was one of those brides that felt that when she was married her duty was to work hard to help her husband accumulate some of this world’s goods, establish themselves as good citizens and rear a family. Her first child was a son and they named him William Thomas Boam¾ two little girls came to bless this home while they lived at the rear of the log house. Their names were Annie Matilda Boam Neilson and Mary Lovenia Boam Brinton. Then my father built a four room, white brick house, with pantry, about 300 yards east of the log house which house is still standing and the address is 1467 East 28^th South, Salt Lake City, UT

Being a farmer’s wife my mother truly worked hard, she didn’t enjoy the best of health but she struggled and carried her load. I can see her now milking, caring for milk, making 30 to 40 pounds of butter a week and bringing it in to Salt Lake on Saturdays to sell.

I was their first child born in the new home¾ she lost two little boys after I was born¾ then came Fanny Goodman Boam Sorensen¾ Gladys Perl Boam Sorensen¾ and Steward Boam to bless their home. Often times when our mother would go to town on a Saturday, one of the children would go with her. My recollection of such trips would be hearing the old horse pull his feet out of the mud as he struggled to pull the buggy along¾ 9^th East was the road we took and when I saw mud, I mean deep, sticky mud, and on our way home stopping at the old rock bakery and buying some doughnuts or other goodies. This baker is now owned by Clayton Love Dunford, and is located at 668 South 9^th East, Salt Lake City, Utah. Of course, we would always go to Grandmother Moss’ house on these trips.

My mother’s and father’s home on the farm was always a gathering place for large family parties. Well do I remember our Christmases with loads of good things to eat, a few simple gifts, much merry-making and the thought of what we really celebrated Christmas for.

My mother enjoyed spiritual things¾ she was not a public woman but was every faithful in doing her Relief Society Block Teaching and attending all church meetings that she possibly could. She did much Temple work against odds. She was like "honest Abe" in her dealings with everyone and always set the example and always set the example for good, both in word and deed for her children.

Her children have all married in the Temples of our Heavenly Father, have splendid companions and are faithful to their church. Her youngest child, Stewart, a beautiful child with blue eyes and golden hair was stricken with a pus case of appendicitis because of a lack of an early diagnosis and died when he was three years and eleven months old. My mother was very sad after this experience and grieved very much, so much so that she undermined her health.

My father sold his farm and in the fall of 1917 moved his wife and three daughters to a new home in Murray, Utah, located at 4873 Wasatch Avenue. He also made a home with us for his blind and deaf aunt. Mother took very good care of Aunt Agness and we loved her.

I loved my mother dearly, and she loved and depended upon me very much. My greatest joy was in doing for her, and trying to make her happy.

She died March 7, 1922, at her home in Murray of a bad heart and pneumonia, and was buried in what is now the Elysian Burial Grounds¾ in ground that was given by my Grandfather Boam to the Mill Creek Ward for burial purposes.