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The following history of Mary Ann Barton Allen was found among the things of Molly Farrow
Grimshaw after she died.  Molly was a granddaughter of Mary Ann, and from the use of the first
person in the history, it seems that she is the person who wrote this history.  This history was
collected by Margaret E. Spendlove Pratt and reported by Jacqueline Spendlove Leatham.

               Life History of Mary Ann Barton Allen

Mary Ann Barton Allen was born January 13, 1842 (or 1841) in Southport, Lancashire, England.
She was the daughter of William and Jeanette Carr Barton.  Her mother died when she was two
years old, leaving motherless this little girl, four older girls, Ann, Leah, Margaret, and Ellen, and
two older brother, William and Thomas.

Mary Ann’s father was a plasterer and paperhanger by trade.  Business was good and the family
prospered.  He later married again, leaving the raising of little Mary Ann largely to her older
sisters.  By this second marriage he had two little boys and a daughter, Frances.

He was converted to the Mormon Church and, like many of the converts, was anxious to come to
Utah.  He left England in the early spring of 1856, taking with him his wife and three little
children and his fourteen-year old daughter Mary Ann.  They were the only ones in the family
who had joined the Church.  They were made very miserable by the taunts and jibes of their
friends and the six older children, who were by that time grown and some of them married.
Even after Mary Ann came to America she was made very unhappy many times by the unkind
things said to her in letters from her relatives in England.

Sailing from Liverpool, they were blown back and forth on the water for sixteen weeks, many
days going back farther than they went forward.

They finally reached the quarters on the Missouri River, and there they camped for about three
months.  Much of this delay was due to waiting for handcarts to be made in Iowa City.  The two
little boys died of mountain fever, and Mary Ann’s father contracted the disease.  When they
finally started their long trek late in July in Edward Martin’s company, Mary’s father was sick
and weak.  The company consisted of about five hundred souls, one hundred forty-six handcarts,
seven wagons, thirty oxen and fifty beef cattle and cows.  Unfortunately an early winter set in,
and they braved storms, forded  rivers, and often had to sleep all night soaked through and
through.

When they were camped at the Platte River, a little girl seven years old in the tent next to theirs
would cry all night for a piece of bread, and they had none to give her.

As they dragged slowly across the plains, Mary Ann’s little half sister, one and one-half years
old, rode in the handcart.  The stepmother and young Mary Ann pulled the cart, while the sick
father held onto the back of it, dragging his weary and swollen feet.  He gave his portion of their
food to his wife and the two girls, going without himself.  He ate grass with the oxen, and wild
berries he found along the way.  These made him have some kind of dropsy, swelling his legs
and feet and making it very difficult for him to even follow the others.  After dragging on the
rear of their handcart for days, one night came when he could only creep around.  A captain
came along and gave him a push with his foot, telling him to get up and not to give up that way,
to be brave about it.  The night, late in September, just as the guard was calling out the twelve
o’clock shift, Mary Ann Barton’s father died.  She was lying by him, as her stepmother was
caring for the sick baby girl.  He could not be buried, but was wrapped in a blanket and laid on
the ground under a tree.  He had money in his pockets when he died, but no food could they buy,
even from the company headquarters.

The people in the company had of necessity given many things to the Indians to pacify them and
to keep them from making worse their wearisome travels.  Mary Ann had a beautiful wool
shawl, white and black plaid.  This she had to give up to save them from being molested by
Indians.

The night the rescue party come to relieve this starving and freezing handcart company, Mary
Ann was sleeping in their little tent.  The next morning she was awakened by someone sawing.
She tried to raise up to see what it was, thinking it might be another coffin being made.  She
found she could not raise her head and put her hand up to see why.  Her hair had frozen in a pool
of water.  The man who was doing the sawing, Joseph A. Young, saw her lying there and said,
“Well, here is another dead girl.”  She opened her eyes.  This startled him, but not so that he
could not chop the block of ice holding her hair and permit her to go near the fire to thaw it out.
No need to say now glad all of them were to find he was sawing meat that he had brought ahead
of the main rescue party.

Two young men from Utah carried most of the women and children across the Green River,
which was floating with thick ice.  They later died from the exposure.

When the company finally reached Salt Lake City the last of November, they camped in the
Tithing Yard.  Help was given by all and soon everyone was housed with some family.

Mary Ann stayed with a woman whose husband was a spiritualist.  He saw so many faces on the
walls and heard so many noises that she became frightened.  She confided in a neighbor, Sarah
Allen, and was allowed to go there to sleep.

In this way she met John Allen.  They were married the next spring and were called to help settle
Spanish Fork.  One child, Martha, was born there, and then they were called to Parowan in 1859.

Mary Ann Barton Allen had  twelve children, seven girls and five boys.  One grown girl died,
and also four small boys.  The first wife, Sarah, had no children and sometimes made it very
hard for Mary Ann when she was raising her family.  About 1865 Mary Ann, with four small
children, moved onto a farm two miles out of Summit.  Later, because of Indians, she moved
into Summit.

One night when they were living out this far, she and the little children were alone.  They had
only one small room and piled everything in the way of furniture against the door.  About twelve
o’clock a knock came.  It was persistent.  Finally she answered.  A man said, “I am not an
Indian.  I want rest and sleep.”  To get quiet, Mary Ann at last let him in.  The children were all
awake and all holding their breath.  The man lay down before the fireplace and slept and snored
for about two hours.  Then he got up and asked Mary Ann if she would have a fine buffalo robe
which was too heavy for him to carry.  He said he was going South over the mountains.
Hesitatingly she took it and gave him some boiled meat and a loaf of bread in a little sack.  She
was afraid he would hang around the house.  So in the moonlight she watched through the
window to see him go South to the foothills.  The next day he was tracked in the snow over the
mountains but could not be found.  Officers said he was a horse thief and cattle rustler.

Another time when she was along, two Indians came.  To get rid of them she had to give almost
all the food she had in the house.

One evening a squaw raised by white people walked out from Parowan.  She said she was going
to Arizona.  She sat before the fire telling her troubles.  In through the door, unannounced, came
another squaw who had ridden a horse from Parowan.  She started beating the first squaw over
the head with a raw-hide rope.  How the feather and flowers did fly from a fancy red hat!  Her
chair was tipped over.  At this point grand-father Allen interfered and put the intruder outside.  It
seems the first squaw had stolen some much coveted beads from a suitcase belonging to Julia,
the second Indian squaw.

When one of Mary Ann Barton Allen’s babies was only four days old, she walked the five miles
to Parowan, carried her baby, did a washing, and carried a brass bucket home for pay.

As her husband and first wife lived in Parowan for years, she had to depend a lot on her own
resources.  She derived a lot of pleasure from her singing, and for years led the choir in Summit.
As her neighbors remember her, she was very ambitious.  Up early in the morning, the water
barrel filled,  pies made, house all cleaned, hair combed, and all ready to set down to sewing by
eight o’clock!  Her handiwork became a blessing to her as she was confined to her sickroom for
years.  She once won a prize of $12.00 for describing the proper furnishings for a sick room.

As I remember her in that room, I spent many evenings sitting with her, listening to stories of her
early life.  I regret that I did not then appreciate their human value as I would today.  She often
sang to me, and one of her favorites was the “Handcart Song.”  She seemed proud to have lived
through such harrowing experiences and that she had been strong enough to surmount so many
difficulties, but in later years she would not talk of these things.  She died of a sudden stroke in
her seventy-first year.