Brigham Rees from South Wales

Brigham Rees

            Brigham Rees was born 9 April 1851 on North Crocket Farm, Walton Parish, South 
Wales.  His father was Thomas Rees and his mother was Rebecca Williams.  As a boy 
he worked on the farm learning farming as it was done there.  He also served apprentice 
as a mason, mostly in stone work.  There was a large family of them and all had to work.
Educational opportunities were very limited.  I believe he attended school parts of two 
years when a young boy and learned to read and write.  Later in life he was a student and 
quite an extensive reader of good substantial material, and developed quite a readable 
and pleasing handwriting.

            The family was converted to the doctrine taught by the Latterday Saints and like 
others had a strong desire to "come to Zion."  The way was opened up to send two of the 
family to the United States.  Brigham and his sister, Sariah, two years his senior, were the 
lucky ones.  They sailed the ship     ?           in       ?       and made their way overland over 
the Union Pacific Railroad then being constructed to somewhere in Wyoming. 

From there they walked on to Utah in the year 1869.  Mr. Rees carried his "blankets" across 
Salt Lake Valley to Bingham where he worked in the mines.  They were placer mining then, 
and the writer (his son) has in his possession a gold nugget which his father saved as a 
souvenir.  It is probably worth $30 or more today.  For several years Mr. Rees worked in 
mining camps in Utah and Nevada and at times helped to build houses in various parts of 
Utah.  He went to St. George to help build the Temple.  It was here he met the girl who later 
became his wife.  Her name was Isabella Maria Mansfield, the daughter of Matthew Mansfield, 
a member of the Nauvoo Legion and a Utah pioneer of '47 or '48.  Her mother was Johanna
 Winberg Peterson Mansfield, also an early pioneer.  They were the parents of nine children.

            Brigham Rees helped to build a number of homes in St. George, then when the Silver 
Reef Mining Camp was booming, went there to work for three years, more or less.  From 
here the family moved to Thurber, Rabbit Valley, and then, Piute County, now Wayne County.
There they pioneered for seven years when circumstances brought them to



Salt Lake County following the death of Matthew Mansfield and his wife.  Here they lived until 
it became their turn to go.  Mr. Rees worked at farming in Wayne Co. and in Salt Lake, but 
spent most of his efforts in building.  He helped to build the mental hospital -- this was in the 
80's.  Since moving to Salt Lake he helped build the Deseret News building, the Catholic 
Cathedral, the D.R.G. shops, the Sugar Factory at Sugar City, Idaho, the Smelter at Midvale, 
Utah and numerous other buildings large and small.  When the cement business threatened 
to drive the stone masons out of business, which it finally did, Mr. Rees took a trip looking 
for an opportunity to get a farm.  While on this trip he suffered exposure and caught a cold 
which developed into pneumonia and caused his death on 9 Jul 1914, his wife having 
preceded him eighteen years before. 

            Through his efforts mainly and mostly by money he saved and sent to his folks in the 
old country, the whole family came to Utah -- the last one coming about 1889 or 1890.  They 
were the parents of ten children here at the same time, some children had died in childhood.
They all had families some of them very large families, and the posterity of Thomas Rees, 
the father of Brigham, is quite numerous.

            While Brigham Rees worked hard all his life, he was handicapped by not having the 
opportunity of an education.  He did all he could to help his own family to have the 
opportunities he missed so much.

Excerpts from other story of Brigham Rees by Thomas M. Rees:

            Coming back to father's earlier life.  His parents and the children were early converts 
to Mormonism.  They had the spirit of gathering, but were too poor to emigrate, so two of 
the family - my father as the eldest son and his sister, Sariah, two years his senior, left for 
America.  He was 17, and it was in 1869  when they reached Utah before the U.P.R.R. 
was completed.  They rode by train to somewhere in Wyoming, and from there made their 
way into Utah as best they could walking most or all of the way.

            I went to Paradise two years ago next January to attend the funeral of Aunt Sariah 
(Miles).  She lived to be 95.

            Father went to St. George to work on the Temple.  It was while working there he met 
mother.  She was working at the place where he boarded.  They joined with the young folks 
in their parties, etc.  Father was a good singer and liked to sing in groups and at times alone.

            When our parents were married they came all the way to Salt Lake City by wagon to 
get married in the "Old Endowment House."  Returning to St. George they bought a little 
home of a Mr. Miles - not far from the Temple.  I was born in it April 5, 1880.  Father worked 
in St. George some time, and then went to Leeds, or rather Silver Reef - the new mining camp. 

He was working at the "babylon" Mill down on the Virgin about 3 miles SE of Leeds, and it 
was here I nearly lost my life through drowning.  I fell into the mill rach (above the mill).
Father was off shift (night shift) and was sleeping in one room of the small house.  Mother 
and a neighbor were visiting in another room when Mother felt impressed to get up and look 
out the front door.  She noticed something floating down the stream which passed just in front 
of the house.  She was startled and screamed, and father jumped out of bed and got me out 
of the water.  They put me on the table and worked over me until I came to life again.  I just 
remember playing up and down the banks of the stream, probably threw something in and 
slipped in.  All the rest I remember from hearing it told a number of times.

(The family had spent at least 7 years in Thurber (Bicknell) and had just moved to Salt Lake after Grandfather and his wife died within a few days of each other.)

            Father very soon went on a mission to the Southern States.  He was depending on the 
money Uncle Matthew and others owed him to keep us and him in the mission field.  Very little 
money came, and he went very close at times.  I remember one letter he said he had only 
five cents left in his pocket.  It was a struggle to keep him out even the four months he stayed 
before he was released because of Mother's being sick.  My Mother had been in ill health as 
long as I knew her, even before I was born.  I was then eleven years of age.  Mother lost her
eldest child, my brother, when he was a baby.  The family record says Brigham Parley Rees 
was born 14 May 1878 and died the 6th of June following - being 22 days old.  It seems she 
never could get over it, and as long as she lived afterwards always had stomach trouble.  It 
must have been from nerve shock such as I have had since my wife died last May.

           

            Father had many missionary experiences during the four months or so he was out.  I 
remember his telling many of them from time to time.  He often mentioned Elder Gray, Clark 
and others in connection with them.  He was fond of singing and with some of these other 
missionaries enjoyed singing when they got together.  They had a quartet at times.  He often 
mentioned the long walks, tired and footsore, and shoes about gone.  I remember his 
describing a walk of forty miles one day.  He would describe the cooking at the houses 
where they were invited to eat.  Sometimes it was a colored woman who was cook.  The 
people were very poor and had but few dishes to use, sometimes only one pan which was 
used for dishpan, breadpan, to wash hands in, wash the baby and all.  Once a woman was 
mixing biscuits with her hands; the baby needed its diaper changed.  She quit right in the 
middle of mixing the bread, tended the baby and went back to mixing.  One of the elders 
tried to eat his meal of potatoes and avoided the bread, but finally gave in and ate some 
biscuits.  He said he never tasted better biscuits in his life.  Some of these women could 
spit tobacco juice clear across the room into the fireplace.  They were expert shots and 
scored a high percentage of hits.  One time one of them was mixing bread with the tobacco 
juice running down from both corners of her mouth and dripping into the dough.

           

(In 1914  Father (Brigham) went on a trip - overdid and caught a severe cold.)  While he was 
away I bought my first automobile--in 1914; they weren't too plentiful or too good.  While 
uptown I was surprised to meet him on the street.  He rode home with me and it literally 
fulfilled a dream in which I had seen him coming home with me in a car and getting out at the 
back of the house.  This was about the 2nd of July.  A crowd of us young people had planned 
a party to go up the canyon for the day, and I asked father to milk the cows for me not 
realizing how sick he was, and he never complained of being sick.  In fact his health had 
been excellent all his life.  I do remember when a boy, before we came up here, he had 
frozen his feet on a trip freighting over the mountain in the winter time.  Then when he was 
in his early 50's, he suffered sunstroke while working in the hot sun all day during the hottest 
summer days.  It took him some time to get over it so he could work again, and he never was 
quite the strong robust man he had always been before, but he went on working hard as soon 
as he was able.  The last few years of his life I heard him complain a little of rheumatism in 
his arms or shoulders.  He didn't mention it often, however.  Just now I don't remember of 
his having any other sickness.

            When we came back from the canyon he was not well but didn't complain.  He had 
taken down with pneumonia and fought the usual battle the next few days until he lost as so 
many do.  I remember well those days.  The last two nights we had a trained nurse and not 
realizing the danger of the crisis I went home to get a little sleep but was called in the early 
morning hours.  Father left us and we were alone with new adjustments to make and new 
problems to solve.  Our oldest sister had left us something over a year before, and our other 
two sisters were still girls in school.  Mary had gone to high school a little, Ellen was just about 
to finish the eighth grade.  I well remember father's funeral and how my car wouldn't run, a 
puncture or something, and Bishop Eldredge had to give us boys a ride in his little buggy as 
we were the pall bearers.  As we lose our loved ones and the members of our family we are 
left deep feelings and memories that stay with us all our days and they greatly modify our way 
of thinking and our outlook on life as long as we live.  I know now father took sister's death 
very hard.  He didn't say much, and I didn't know then how hard it was for him.  I do now after 
losing my own dear wife last May (now Feb. 25).  I now realize the battle father fought when 
Mother died.  Children seldom feel those things so deeply as parents do.  Oh, yes, we missed 
mother and sister too, and I remember missing my other sister whom we lost just before we 
moved from Rabbit Valley up here.  I realized the responsibility that came to me and I tried to 
carry it in each of these losses.  I tried to help sister, then fourteen, be "mother" to the rest of 
the family, and in some respects be father, not so much in trying to support them as in trying to 
teach and lead them in their lives, in their church work, school work, etc.  Father had received a
hard jolt from the bishop when he refused to pay all the assessment made on grandfather to 
build and support a seminary.  He offered to pay a third of it as we received a third of 
grandfather's property.  But the Bishop said he wouldn't give him a recommend to the Temple 
unless he did.  This hurt.  It was unjust and left a wound that never healed, and it didn't help 
father to do with his family many things he could and would have done had it not occurred.  I 
tried to make up for the loss.  I know I did much.  I also know I couldn't do it all, and in John's 
case--well I just couldn't do what I tried so much to do.  John respects me very well and looks 
to me for leadership, but his companions pulled harder in too many ways in opposite 
directions.  I was always "old headed" took things very seriously, and older people liked 
to talk with me and admired me for my thinking and acting beyond my years.  I was always 
quite a philosopher.

            Father taught us to be honest.  He said, "If you owe a debt, or have borrowed some 
money, the first money you earn, use it to pay that debt or that borrowed money.  Then get 
out and earn a dollar for yourself.  The money  you earn doesn't belong to you, it belongs to 
the man you owe."

            Father would never go in debt if he could avoid doing so.  He lost many chances to 
invest with good possibilities of "making good" because of his timidity and strict sense and 
policy of being honest.  On the other hand he lost a large part of what should have been his 
(his property) because others were not honest with him.  He always helped anyone in need - 
would take the last dollar he had and give it to those who needed it more than he.  He didn't 
publish it to the housetop either.  Many is the time that no one knew but those he helped.  We 
found it out from other sources later.  Occasionally he would mention helping out someone 
in very hard circumstances, but we never did know of but a small percentage of such cases.

            Father had almost no schooling, perhaps five months, no more in his whole life and 
that during two or three years of his early boyhood.  He learned to write a good hand readily 
readable and became a great reader of good books.  He liked history and subjects that deal 
with people and their rights and betterment.  And he liked to discuss these things.  He could 
flash into eloquence in defense of right and the rights of those being deprived or 
mistreated.  He liked right and justice and was intollerant of dishonesty, greed, deception 
and trickery.  He builded well whatever he built; there was no slighting or covering up of 
defects, and he taught us to do the same.           

            Every winter saw a large woodpile enough for the winter, cedar for the cookstove 
and pitch, or pinion pine, for the fireplace or heater, and usually this wood was cut in size 
and lengths for the use intended so it didn't have to be done in the cold winter storms.  Always 
there was plenty of flour for the whole year each fall and a pit full of potatoes.  Then there was 
meat, especially pork, cured or fresh.  But we had but little fruit as none grew in Rabbit Valley 
at that time except what grew wild.  We picked bullberries down on the river bottoms and 
native currants and gooseberries in the canyons.  I remember some of the excursions we 
made - several families spent the day berrying.   These were preserved or made into jelly 
for winter.  The principal of bottling fruit and having it keep by being sealed in from the air and 
germs had not become common even if known.  It was but a short time before this, if not right 
at this time that the knowledge Pasteur gave to the world was becoming known, and all the
methods of preserving food by bottling, canning etc., had yet to be perfected, if not 
discovered.  On one of these excursions up "Government" Canyon, Uncle John's horse 
got sick with colic and we had quite a time getting home.  We were in the farm wagon.  Then 
we got pine nuts either by going after them or from the Indians.  Occasionally some venison 
was to be had.  Few people made any butter or cheese in the winter.  All this had to be taken 
care of in the summer, for most of the cows didn't milk all winter.  We hadn't developed the 
dairy cows, nor had we the feed to produce milk in the winter.  Alfalfa was scarcely known in


Rabbit Valley at that time.

            When we came to Salt Lake in 1891, spring, the country was in the depression (panic) 
of the 1890's.  Work was scarce, wages low, and things not hopeful.  Father had sold out his 
holdings in Thurber, but never did get paid for most of them especially by Uncle Matthew.  He 
went on a mission but could stay only four months because there was no money for him or 
the family at home - it didn't come as anticipated.  Grandfather's estate was settled, each 
child, Mother, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Matthew received about 10 acres, one third of the land 
he had left.  There was also cash so that each received $1200 or more.  With mother's 
money father built a very fine home for the time, never quite completed it.  We lived in it 
not over two years when mother died, but a promise in her blessing was fulfilled, that she 
should have a very good home, though not for long.  I helped to build the house being just 
14 years of age and not very large or husky.  I carried brick and some mortar all the time it 
was building.  Father mixed the mud, carried it and laid the inside brick, and toward the end, 
outside brick too.  The other bricklayer was Chas. Platt.  The carpenters were Swensen and 
Noble, the plasterer was Davis who had helped plaster in the Salt Lake Temple.  The home 
still  stands; it is two storied made of the best brick made in that day from shale hauled by 
team from Parley's Canyon, crushed and ground and made into a deep red brick by the 
presses.  These brick weighed nearly twice what ordinary press brick weighed.  The 
shingles stayed on the roof 37 years or more before the house was roofed again.  This 
lasted only a few years when it was re-shingled. 

            Father and Mother wanted the children to go to school and learn all they could.  Father 

wanted them to get an education so they wouldn't have to "work as hard as he had to."  His 

pioneer hardships earning his own way by the "hard way" in a new rough country had influenced 

his attitude.  His meaning was right.  They should take advantage of all the opportunities 

possible to be able to earn a living, live a life, be of greatest value in terms of service, and 

not have to be limited to hard manual labor under a boss.  We should want to be able to 

work harder and more intelligently, accomplish more, and do the most useful and worthwhile 

things we are capable of doing in the most effective way.

            Father was a very stroping, husky man for his size.  He weighed about 160 to 165 
pounds usually but had no extra auverdupoise as he alway worked hard physically and didn't 
put on extra weight.  I have seen him handle very large stones alone, trim them up and put 
them in the wall, also help others to put in place a heavy window cap or sill, etc.  I remember 
him shouldering and carrying very large cedar posts or poles.  He knew how to do it which 
enabled him to do more than those of us who don't know the knack of it.  Father was a hard 
worker with the shovel too.  He kept at it steadily and did a very great deal of work.  In many 
other kinds of hard work besides building, farming, shoveling, I have seen him do more work, 
much more and better, more conscientious than most other men.  He always perspired 
extremely profusly and his clothes were saturated.  He drank great quantities of water of 
necessity, and because of excessive perspiration and drinking water, he sometimes  became 
weak before the day was over.