#18 Samuel Walton & #19 Susan Walton. The Walton Caravan Divides. Part 3.

View Stephen Vestal & Elizabeth Walton Frazier & Susan Walton in a larger map

Continued from here.

The Walton caravan entered Illinois through Chicago, which, at that time, was “a nest of squat houses in the mud.” They passed through and stayed the night in Joliet, October 2, 1845. By the time they arrived at Rock Island, Illinois, their money was running low. The harvest was in full swing, winter was approaching And though wearied from their journey [102 days from Mexico, Maine], they stayed to work.

Sometime earlier [prior to August 24, 1845], Samuel Walton left his wife Susan, and their children, with his brother-in-law, Arthur, while he went ahead to see if he could find work. Unknown to his family then, he found carpenter work in Nauvoo on the Temple. About a year later Susan went to that place to find him, the exodus from Nauvoo was at its peak, and Samuel could not be found. As his children said, “We never saw Father again.”

While reading Utah Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vl. 29, p. 95, Hattie Walton Heninger, author of Links of Walton History (hereafter LofWH), discovered that Samuel had been baptized in Nauvoo “Week ending 31 August 1840, and his death from typhus fever was recorded 24 Aug 1845, age 43 years.” The sexton’s report signed by W. D. Huntington, was printed in the Nauvoo Neighbor. (LofWH, pgs. 46, 49).

It’s unclear to me how Samuel could have been baptized in Nauvoo in 1840. Samuel’s son, Samuel Augustine Walton, living in Pocatello, Idaho, on 12 Apr 1923, wrote: “Father and Mother and two of her sisters, Martha and Ruth, accepted Mormonism in Maine in 1840.

Susan and her children’s whereabouts are not mentioned further in the “story” of the Walton Caravan West.

Hannah Walton.
From Early Latter-day Saints, A Mormon Pioneer Trail Database, I discovered that daughter, Hannah, was also in Nauvoo. She was endowed on December 20, 1845, and sealed to Daniel M. Repsher on 24 January, 1846.

From New FamilySearch:
Hannah Ann Walton (1825-1848)
Children.
Arthur W. Repsher (1846-1851
Susannah Repsher (1847-1848)

The dates are very telling.

When Susan Walton and her other children appear in the1856 Pleasant Ridge, Iowa, Census, Susan Houghton is widowed, from her 1850 marriage to Lyman Houghton. In 1856, she, and her children, reported they had been living in Iowa for eleven years.

Arthur and Martha Walton, and their children, lived at Montrose, Iowa [about nine miles from Nauvoo] for five years, before resuming their trek west in 1851. They are among the thirty-two Waltons found on the above site; Arthur, Martha, Andrew, and Dana Walton. Also, Samuel, (Mrs.) Susan, and Hannah Walton.

(To be continued.)

From LofWH, pages 49, 51-52, and 131.