Morgan Pioneer History Binds Us Together Charles Boyden E Charles Boyden was bom December 2, 1817, in Milford, Staffordshire, England, to John Boyden and Mary Lindop Boyden. He married Sarah Corns on March 4, 1841. He learned the trade of wheelwright and carpenter. They came in contact with missionaries of the Latter Day Saint church and were bap- Charles Boyden .. , - , . r., J tized - Sarah on April 16,1850, and Charles five days later on April 21,1850. By this time, they had five children - John, Fanny, twin girls Mary Ann and Louisa, and William Henry. When William Henry was one year old, he died. The teaching of the church they were learning about gave them new hope about a purpose in life. They made friends with other members of the church. One of these families was John and Elizabeth Lees; also a young woman named Mary Horsefield. They soon developed the desire to "gather to Zion." They began saving for this move and on March 30,1860, the family boarded the ship Underwriter. This ship had been chartered by the church so that the emigrants could travel under church supervision. They arrived in the harbor at New York City on May 1,1860. They traveled by train to St. Joseph, Missouri. There, they boarded a steamboat and traveled up the Missouri River to Council Bluffs, Iowa. They had known that they would be traveling from Iowa to Utah in a handcart company. The Underwriter Company was too large to travel as one handcart company, so the group was divided and the Boyden family traveled in the company led by James S. Ross. They were ferried across the Missouri to Florence, Nebraska. The Ross company left Florence on June 17, 1860. There were 140 saints going by handcart and 106 by ox teams and wagons. The company arrived in Great Salt Lake City on Monday, September 3.1860. They were greeted by their friends from England, John and Elizabeth Lees. The Lees had emigrated seven years earlier and had a home on the corner of Fifth West and Fourth North. The Lees took the Boyden family and Mary Horsefield to their home to rest and help them find work. Mary had also traveled with the Ross Handcart Company. Brigham Young had encouraged the new emigrants to settle in one of the other valleys near Salt Lake. Charles and Sarah decided to take President Young's advice and go to Weber Valley to start their new home. At that time, Morgan Valley was referred to as Weber Valley. He rode horseback through Davis County and up through Weber Canyon. There was really no road into the valley. Most of it had been washed out by high water. Two families that the Boydens had traveled with across the plains had already moved to Morgan. They were the Richard Fry and George Simons families. When they had traveled through the canyon earlier in September, it had taken them over a week just to get through the canyon. They had had to take their wagons apart and haul the pieces by oxen over parts of the canyon wall. Charles decided it would be best to wait until spring the following year before moving to the valley. The Boyden children, John, age nineteen, Fanny, age sixteen, and the twin girls, Mary Ann and Louisa, age fourteen, all found work. John began to teach school. The girls all found work helping as domestic servants in homes. Mary Horsefield, who was thirty- nine years old, went to live with the family of Bishop William Thorn to help with his family. Charles found work as a carpenter. By the next spring, Charles and his wife Sarah decided to become involved with plural marriage, and on March 30, 1861, Charles, who was forty-one, took Mary Horsefield as a plural wife. That same spring, Charles left for the Weber Valley to build a cabin for his wives and family. He had previously staked out his squatter's rights, taking up four acres of land in the north end of the valley in an area called Weber City. This land was located in what later became known as Peterson. He felled and hauled nearby trees to the cabin site, and he built a large, one room, dirt-floor cabin, with no windows. He built on a hillside away from the occasionally high water from the Weber River and Peterson Creek. When the cabin was finished, he returned to Salt Lake for Sarah and Man/ Horsefieht Boyden