A Bad Christmas

Before I tell this part of the story, it's time to bring you up-to-date on one of our supporting characters. Isaac Binns had been left in England to finish his apprenticeship. He became a journeyman stone-mason and set out to make his own way in the world.

His travels took him to Australia and Africa. It is said that he crossed the ocean five times. Eventuially his travels took him to San Francisco via Cape Horn. He purchased a horse and rode to Utah where his father and sisters had taken up residence.

While visiting his sister Hannah, he met her husband's daughter, Ellen Singleton. She apparently made a great impression on him, even though she was just 14 years old at the time.

Isaac wasn't quite ready to settle down yet. He returned by horseback to California. There he plied his trade as stone-mason to help build San Quentin prison.

After two years, in 1865, he returned to Utah with some money and intentions of marrying Ellen Singleton. They planned to marry December 25, Christmas day.

There begins the following tale, taken verbatim from The Lives and Times of Our Singletons.

A Christmas Remembered

The younger children slept, but Ellen and her mother, Catherine, kept vigil with Aunt Hannah. The heavy snowfall alone would not matter so much if the wild wind would subside. The barn had long since been obliterated from their view under the drifting snow, and it was a blessing for the livestock that the women of the Singleton household knew the precautionary steps necessary to their well-being. Extra feed they could provide, but it would require a keen thirst to drive the animals to lick their thirst away at the frozen water barrell. Bessie's milk supply would reflect this lack on the morrow.

The John and Hannah Binns Singleton family. Thomas was born July 12, 1858, Samuel 9 November, 1859, Sarah, my great-grandmother, 28 October, 1861, Mary Ellen, 14 September, 1864 and Phoebe, 17 August, 1865 making her just 4 months old when her father died.

Four of the sleeping youngsters were Hannah's, snuggled into their own warm beds: Thomas, 7; Samuel, 6; Sarah, 4; Mary Ellen, 1-1/2; and infant Phebe, four months. Tucked in with them head to feet, and feet to head, and in extra make-shift beds throughout the house, were Catherine's five. The makings of a joyous Christmas, one might say. Ellen, fifteen [Dennis' note: Actually she was 16], waited up with the women.

The festivities were not the complete reason for this merging of the two families, although admittedly, Christmas and a wedding could be considered ample cause. An acknowledged added fact was that one house would use but half the amount of firewood as would two, and it might even be said that the warmth of their mutual affection did, in fact, stretch the dwindling remaining fuel supply.

The women judged that the wind had subsided at about three in the morning. It was hard after this to control Ellen and it took but the slightest touch of daylight to amplify the nucleus of white shrouding the landscape into a state of visibility at an extremely early hour.

''I'm going to find them, Mamma. I'll ride Old Bill"

The two women offered no argument and helped Ellen into the warmest clothes their collective wardrobes could provide. The long night had lent them ample opportunity to discuss the serious aspects of the situation. On Christmas Eve, of all nights, the men would have pushed on through had they been able. The families' need for the firewood had been dire even before the men had departed to replenish the supply. Infant daughter, Phoebe, could be kept warm in her sturdy cradle, but Mary Ellen, Sarah and Robert as toddlers were no small handful when being persuaded for the sake of warmth to stay under the covers day and night. Though still quite young, 7 and 6, Hannah's two boys helped their half sister, Ellen, with the chores but were glad to cozy into their beds under the covers upon returning to the house. Of companionable ages and of reasonable disposition, Catherine's three girls, Ann Eliza, Mary Jane and Catherine, simply_ enjoyed themselves and played games under the covers and laughed and giggled and teased. Well into her sixteenth year and with plans laid for her wedding on the morrow, Ellen took her place waiting up with the women with no questions asked. It was freely admitted and without jealousy that Ellen was the apple of her father's eye. All of these children were awaiting the return of the same father, and the women shared the anxiety of waiting the return of their husband, John - John Singleton, the head of this congenial polygamist family.

Hannah was hostess to the whole clan at their modest farm home in The Bottoms. All gathered together for the Christmas holidays. Following the festivities, Catherine and her family would return to their home near the State Road, nearer to the township of this small Utah community, American Fork. Bordering on the west was the small community called Lehi, titled as were several Utah communities, from The Book of Mormon. Could one's vision curve with the road, one could see Battle Creek (since renamed Pleasant Grove) to the east. Ellen would ride west in her search for her father and his brother, Uncle Alma; their quest for wood having directed them to West Canyon across the River Jordan and down by Utah Lake.

A shorter horse would have bogged down in the deep snow, but save for the drifts, Old Bill's belly dragged a wide swath on the surface of the snow. Nothing stood out in relief against the white expanse, so Ellen, in blind judgement, set a general westerly course and gave Old Bill the reins. There was comfort in the warmth of his body, but Ellen determined early that this must be a short trip if Old Bill were to accomplish their goal.

Ellen's eyes focused on the horizon to discern anything which might break the monotony of the white expanse; or more hopefully, anything that moved. At age sixteen, eyes can be keen and alert, and are [Did the original author mean "not" instead of "are"?] too long in actual time, though to her it seemed interminable, several dots appeared on the horizon. Further scrutiny convinced Ellen they were but several oxen standing dumb and motionless in the deep snow. After all, what would it profit them to forage in such a thick blanket of snow? Ellen's thoughts criticized them: The dumb brutes could at least move enough to keep from freezing to death. She pressed on, taking new focus on the horizon. She was even with the oxen now and their low throaty bellow wrung her gentle heart. She had learned respect for animals, the useful ones, from her father. She could well have been a boy, so well did they communicate about things.

This time something did move in the distance. Ellen was sure of it. So sure that she forgot her concern for "certain useful animals" and urged tired Old Bill to the limit of his strength. The motion was circular, Ellen mused. Someone was consistently walking in a circle. There should be two, she told herself vaguely. Shoulders shrugged and bent, legs unsteady, but moving, moving, moving! Ellen slid from the horse; in fact, she but needed to straighten her knee to reach the snow with her foot, so deep was the snow. She, could no longer tolerate Old Bill's slow pace. The wind which had drifted the snow so mercilessly last night had also crusted it and the surface supported her slight weight. "Papa, Papa!" was all she could say in her winded condition, but her arms spoke the rest of her affection. They both fell exhausted on the trampled path, and Ellen cradled his head to her shoulder.

"Ellen, girlie, do what you can for your father." The figure spoke with his last remaining strength. It was Uncle Alma. And there, forming the hub of the circle. Alma had trodden, was the lifeless, frozen body of John, her father. Impulsively, Ellen flung herself upon the still form. The meager warmth from her slight body did nothing toward reviving him.

Had Ellen looked back at all as she launched on her rescue mission, she would have seen the rescue party assembling behind her, but she still would not have been able to explain the miracle of a scattered community's ability to communicate under such odds.

This Christmas Eve was to go on record as the night of the Big Blizzard, December 24, 1865 ... the night the two Singleton brothers lost their way in the storm enroute back from West Canyon with a load of cedar firewood. Their loaded wagon, pulled by three span of oxen, was too heavy for the ice on Mulner's Pond where they had inadvertently strayed, the road being obliterated under the drifting snow. By unloading the wood, the two brothers had succeeded in getting the wagon and oxen out of the pond, but in so doing, John got wet with the icy water and froze to death before help reached them. Alma's life was spared, but he lost his toes to frostbite.

Mulner's Pond, where John Singleton died.

Could this pond, between Lehi and American Fork, identified as Mill Pond on today's maps, be the spot where John Singleton met his end?

The oxen had been released to find their way home, hopefully as a signal for help, but the poor dumb brutes huddled motionless in the, deep snow where Ellen had observed them as she passed.

Life offered but few buffers in this frontier community. A loving daughter would be the one to find her father frozen to death in the snow. Scattered neighbors would gather to bring the frozen corpse home; to round up the three span of oxen and bring the wagon home with its costly burden of firewood. Family and friends would select the burial plot and clear it of the deep snow and pick into the brittle earth an opening large enough to offer dignified sanctuary for the beloved remains. Loving women would fondle clothing which spoke of a more genteel way of life in the now dimmed past, and a choice must be made as to whether wood for a casket or a blanket or quilt for a shroud could best be spared for the burial. Two women were to be widowed and eleven children made fatherless as a man endeavoring to provide for his loved ones, succumbed to the violence of nature.

Here ends the narration of John Singleton's death.

Ellen and Isaac were married a few days later, in January, 1866. They lived a good life there in American Fork. Their posterity numbered 11 before Ellen died in 1895. A daughter, Agnes died as an infant on May 25, 1884. Edna, four years old, died in a diptheria epidemic in 9 February, 1893 and 23 year-old Ann died three days later and the other eight lived to adulthood.

Catherine never remarried. She was struck and killed by a train in American Fork in August, 1890.

Hannah became Joseph Wild's second wife on 11 January, 1868. They had five children, in addition to the five that Hannah had with John Singleton. Of these last five, three lived to become adults. Hannah unselfishly opened her home to newly arriving immigrants and she also served as a midwife in American Fork. She died of pneumonia on February 1, 1907 at the age of 66.

Read about the origination of the Singleton name. John and Catherine's history is here, and Hannah's story is here.