2018 - Veterans Day!

My gratitude for our service men and women could never be adequately expressed. In 2011 I gathered together all VETERANS I'd posted about here.

May we NEVER forget!

Sarah Jane Smith Sanborn gravestone.

Looking east towards the Wasatch Mountains from the George Benjamin and Sarah Jane Smith Sanborn grave sites,  in the Ogden, Utah City Cemetery.

George Benjamin and Sarah Jane Sanborn 

biographies are posted here; Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

On January 15, 1940 Sarah Jane Smith Sanborn passed away and was buried here in the Ogden City Cemetery next to her husband, George Benjamin Sanborn. Her two sons are buried on the far side of the plot (shown in this 2009 picture). I hate to think Sarah Jane was forgotten afterwards, but it appears she was. There may not have been enough money to order a gravestone at the time of her burial. And if ever there was, Sarah Jane was no longer there to see that it was done. 

Sanborn family descendants have added this gravestone to mark her grave near her husband's.

It's not quite the same as those of her husband and sons. There are new cemetery requirements, that require it be placed in cement.

Marlene Sanborn Silotti

November 22, 1931 – July 12, 2009.

Sanborn family descendants had the gravestone set for Memorial Day this year. 

And as a tribute to great grand daughter, Marlene Sanborn Silotti, who would have wanted it done.

Henry Sanborn's death. 1914-15 Newspaper account.

Henry Sanborn's gravestone in the Ogden, Utah Cemetery.

A few years ago I met one of Henry Sanborn’s descendants at a DUP convention because I introduced myself to a woman whose last name was Sanborn. She led me to some of my husband’s never-before-met relatives.

Recently Henry Sanborn’s great grandson wrote me and sent me newspaper clippings that cleared up some misinformation I was perpetuating in my post here.

For anyone interested in reading through the following newspaper accounts, they clarify several things. The tale is every person’s fear and heartache; it only draws me nearer to Henry’s mother, Sarah Jane Rawlings Smith Sanborn.

The dates handwritten onto the newspaper articles are incorrect. Henry Sanborn’s Utah Death Certificate states he died January 12, 1915.

December 18, 1912 [sic 1914] – Two Husbands File Suits for Divorce

SL Tribune Jan 12 1913 [sic 1915] -- Wounds his wife; attempts suicide, Henry Sanborn, Estranged Husband is in Jail, Spouse in Hospital

The Ogden Examiner, Jan 13 1913 [sic 1915] -- Bullet Taken From Mrs. Sanborn

SL Tribune Jan 13, 1913 [sic 1915] -- Takes own life in presence of niece; Henry Sanborn Drinks Poison; Child Attempts to Stop Him.

SL Tribune Jan 14, 1915 -- Funeral Notices; Henry Sanborn funeral notice

Thank you so very much to this Henry Sanborn descendant for sharing these clippings with us.

Veterans Day!

John Morgan Rex marker 2009 in Memory Grove,

Salt Lake City, Utah

Family Veterans Remembered here.

John Morgan Rex, and here, and here

John Hamilton Morgan, and here

John Hamilton Morgan II

Joseph Smith Morgan

D. W. Hamilton

William Harrison Morgan, and here

Asa Frazier

Dale Brough Rex, Nov 10, 2011 Deseret News

George Benjamin Sanborn

These Gold Star Mothers markers

are across the road from the veterans markers

in Memory Grove.

Agnes Rufi Frazier is my grandmother [Emily Rufi Frazier's] sister.

Agnes' son Stephen Frazier was killed in World War II.

Sanborn: #8 George Benjamin Sanborn and #9 Sarah Jane Smith. Part 4 of 4.

George Benjamin Sanborn, on the left, 1935, after retiring from the Union Pacific Railroad, at the time he was working for the Salt Lake City Streets Department.

Daughter Mary Ann Sanborn was married in 1904 to George Francis Hovey. And daughter Ella married John Kellerher in1910. Son Jennings married Iona Cushing. Bill married his sister Sarah’s widowed niece, Mary Schilling. They had a daughter known as “little Mary.” Joseph traveled to the Philippines. He married and settled there. In 1932 he returned home for a visit.

After retirement from the railroad, George Benjamin went to work for the Salt lake City Streets Department, where he swept streets. He was ninety-one years old when he died on November 7, 1936. He was buried in the Ogden City Cemetery.

At that time Sarah Jane moved to Washington and lived with her daughter, Mary Ann. When she was eighty-four she returned to Salt Lake City to visit her son and daughter-in-law, George Benjamin and Amy Haywood Sanborn. Sarah Jane passed away in their care on January 15, 1940. She too was buried in the Ogden City Cemetery, beside her husband, and sons, John and Henry.

It appears the family never placed a marker on their mother/grandmother's grave. We are going to do that in the Spring. All interested in contributing are invited to contact me at my e-mail address on this blog.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

From Marlene Sanborn Silotti histories. I took the picture in the Ogden Cemetery this year.

Sanborn: #8 George Benjamin Sanborn and Sarah Jane Smith. Part 3 of 4

View Sanborns, George Benjamin and Sarah Jane homes in a larger map

Seven additional children were born to George Benjamin and Sarah Jane Smith Sanborn after they moved from Paradise, Utah to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1885.

Eva, March 15, 1885 (died from pneumonia, November 14, 1885). Mary Ann, 1886. Henry, 1888. John William, 1890. Ella, 1892. Gladise, 1894 (died after being ill for four months, October 28, 1895). Jennings Bryan, 1896.

Their first year in Salt Lake City they lived at 549 Post Street. In 1896 they moved to 520 South 8th West, where they lived until their move to Pocatello, Idaho in 1903.

In 1895 George Benjamin began working for the D. & R. G. (Denver and Rio Grande) Railroad as a machinist. Five years later he was working as a blacksmith at the Fort Douglas Shops, and in 1893 he was working for the Union Pacific Railroad as a blacksmith.

According to his granddaughter, Marlene Sanborn Silotti, George Benjamin worked for the Union Pacific Railroad for 36 years. In 1903 his sons began appearing in the Polk Directories, also working for the railroad; George B., Jr., Joseph, William, Henry, John and Jennings.

Marlene traced the family through their ward records, and every other record she had access to. In 1885 they moved into the 6th Ward in Salt Lake City, which became the 25th ward in 1902. George Benjamin was listed as an Elder there. They moved to the Pocatello, Idaho 1st Ward in 1903. In 1909 the family moved to Ogden, Utah where they resided in the Ogden 2nd Ward. And in 1913 the family moved back to Salt Lake City. All of the children were blessed, baptized, and confirmed in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Their oldest daughter, Sarah Jane, married William Mikesell in 1895. George Benjamin Jr., married Amy LaVena Haywood on June 23, 1898. And the following February 1, 1899, Amy’s brother, George Mark Haywood , married daughter Laura Ellen Sanborn. Two younger sons, Henry and John William were both baptized three days later, on February 4, 1899. John was baptized by Hyrum Groesbeck. [An unexpected early tie.]

John married Henrietta Gall in 1911. They remained in Ogden, after his parents moved back to Salt Lake City. He was still living there in 1914, when he contracted pneumonia and died. He is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery.

The following year, in 1915, George and his sons were playing poker together in their Salt Lake home. “Henry suddenly threw down his cards and without saying a word walked out of the room. Suddenly there was a terrible scream and they found Henry on the back screened-porch. He had drank carbolic acid.” Henry had been discouraged and separated from his wife. His death was called a suicide. Nearly a hundred years later, drinking carbolic acid sounds more like an accident to me. What kind of a bottle was the acid stored in? Could it have looked like a liquor bottle, or anything else?

John Sanborn (1890-1914) and Henry Sanborn (1888-1915) are buried in the Ogden City Cemetery. (Picture taken October, 2009)

In 1924 George and Sarah Jane moved to Winnemucca, Nevada. Sarah received her Patriarchal Blessing while they lived there. Five years later George retired from the railroad, and they moved back to Salt Lake City. They bought a home at 349 Bothwell Court, and lived in the 25th Ward.

(To be continued.)

Family history from Marlene Sanborn Silotti.

Sanborn: #8 George Benjamin and #9 Sarah Jane Smith Sanborn. Part 1 of 4.

George Benjamin Sanborn
b. 10 Aug 1845, Brooklin, Maine
p. Isaac Sanborn, Sarah Cobb
m. Sarah Jane Smith, 16 Nov 1874, Endowment House
d. 7 Nov 1936, Salt Lake City, Ut
b. Ogden City Cemetery, Ogden, Utah

Sarah Jane Smith
b. 1 Apr 1856, Keokuck, Lee, Iowa
p. William Smith, Jane Rawlings
d. 15 Jan 1940, Salt Lake City, Utah
b. Ogden City Cemetery, Ogden, Utah

Sarah Jane was born in Keokuck, Iowa on route to the Salt Lake Valley, with her parents and three older brothers. They arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on August 14, 1856.

By 1860 her family was settled in Paradise, Utah, having first lived in Draper, Utah. Her family’s history is posted here.

They washed and corded wool, spun yarn, knit stockings, and spun the yarn for their family’s clothing. Sarah was too small to reach the wheel so her father made a bench for her to walk on while she worked. Her mother dyed the yarn for the children’s stockings. The dye was made from indigo and chamber lye. “They knit comforters for the men and boys and also for the quilts.”

“They were happy in those days.” Saturday night dances were held every week and entrance tickets were purchased with squash, potatoes, cabbage and other products. One man had a checkered shirt he saved for the dance by wearing a shirt made out of a gunny-sack to work in during the week.

The first hat Sarah Jane ever made was from some straw she and her sister gleaned—it was white leghorn.

“When they started raising sheep and stock, the girls [Sarah had four sisters] sheered as many as twenty-eight head of sheep in one day.”

When their father would bring the corn in, and they wanted cornmeal, they would take a tin pan and hammer holes in the bottom of it, then use that as a grater and rub the corn on it. For three years Sarah Jane never had shoes on her feet. She tied rags on them to save them from being cut by rocks. She gathered rose leaves for her mother’s tea, which she made after the leaves were dried.

In 1875 Sarah Jane married George B. Sanborn in the old Endowment house. “We came all the way from Paradise by horse and wagon. That was seventy years ago last November. We had twelve children; six sons and six daughters. Four sons and two daughters are living and married. Two of my sons are living in Salt Lake. Two sons have been in the World War; one served eighteen months in France, the other served two terms as coast guard and is now in Honolulu working for the Government Air-Line. One of my daughters lives in Washington. I haven’t seen her for 22 years and she is coming in April to see us.”

Record of Ward Members to 1940 in Paradise Ward, lists George Benjamin Sanborn as being baptized, 21 February 1864. Where, or by whom, is not indicated.

(To be continued.)

DUP History, Sarah Jane Smith, A Utah Pioneer of 1856, submitted 1936 by Dau. Fla Barton. Family History records and picture belonging to Marlene Sanborn Silotti. This picture was sent to Marlene by an unknown man she met at the Family History Library many years ago. When the man saw the family name marlene was researching, he said he had a picture of her grandparents standing on the back porch of their home in Ogden that he would mail to her. He and his family lived next door to George Benjamin and Sarah Jane Smith Sanborn.