William Hart Laws by Wayne Laws

Submitted by Kaye Laws Manhart. Thanks, Kaye!

Wayne Laws school song

Wayne and Jean Laws wedding anniversary

Thanks, Kaye, for submitting these about your parents.

Wayne Laws Obituary and Funeral Program

Submitted by Kaye, Wayne's daughter.

Where we are from

The following map records where those of us are from who click on this site. It'll be fun to see how far flung we who are interested in the Laws Family have become.

Fern and quilts

Jane Cadwallader Brown Johnson photo

This photo was reproduced from a pedigree chart belonging to Fern Laws Palmer. 

Cadwallader name origins

This is a page from Fern Laws' Book of Remembrance concerning the origin of the Cadwallader name. 

Johnson brothers photo needs identification

I have tried so hard to list the sources of photos and documents - yet I have this photo in my files with no identification but "Johnson brothers."  Anyone know anything else?

Emma James photo

This photo is from one of Fern's pedigree charts. 

History of James Parley Johnson

Written by his daughter, Eva Johnson Fillerup

  

Born: September 2, 1860 in Springville, Utah

Parents: Lorenzo and Emma James Johnson

Died: 1924

James Parley Johnson was the son of Lorenzo and Emma James Johnson whose ancestors were from England. He was born in Springville, Utah on September 2^nd, 1860 . . . . that was 100 years ago yesterday.*  (September 3, 1960)

When he was about eleven years old his father died leaving his mother with seven children. There was Ozelle, then himself, Orissa, Martha, Sarah, Viola, and George.  His mother later remarried and two more girls were added to the family, Rose and Lilly.

When he was 22 years old he was married to my mother, Eliza Jane Rowley in the St. George Temple. They traveled there by team and wagon and then back to Nephi, Utah where they made there home until after the birth of their first two children. Then they moved to Central, Arizona.

At the time of this, their first move, the people were being troubled by the warring Apache Indians and Father and Mother had many frightening experiences. They noticed as they were traveling from Nephi to Central that the Indians kept following them day after day. Finally one day they came into camp to do some bartering. They had some colored glass beads they tried to give mother to buy me. Of course she refused, they left but came back the next day and tried again but finally they gave up and left.  My mother was very frightened and was worried that the Indians would return and try to take me by force, but no further incidence happened at that time.

           

In Central, Arizona my father worked in the freighting business.  In 1887 he married my mother’s sister, Zina Cordelia Rowley. They took up a homestead there and he acted as 2^nd Counselor in the Bishopric. After working the homestead for some time he had it taken from him by claim jumpers and shortly thereafter they were forced to move to Old Mexico because of the law against polygamy.

The trip to Diaz, Old Mexico was a hard one.  On route the whole company came down with an epidemic of measles.  We were not allowed into the town of Diaz until it was certain that the epidemic was over.  Two days after reaching Mexico my father’s second wife died leaving two children, Etta and Eliza Ann, whom my mother took and cared for as her own. By this time father’s children numbered six.  There was myself Eva, John, Delbert, Etta, Suzy, who died at the age of 4, and Eliza Ann.

Little Eliza Ann, the baby of the second wife, died on her first birthday.

           

Father worked early and late until he had cleared land and built a home for his family.  About this time he contracted chills and fever which hung on for months.  After he recovered from this he leased a herd of sheep and we moved into the mountains for two years.  When these two years were up we moved again to Diaz and my father built a beautiful house.  He owned a shoe and harness shop.  He made all our shoes, it was years before we ever owned a pair of shoes our father had not made.

There were many happy times spent here in Diaz at this time. The family had grown even larger with the births of Lucy, Bertha, LeRoy, Nellie, Glen, Jesse, Gladys and Arthur. The family took an active part in the ward, father being 2^nd Assistant in the Sunday School Superintendency and also a member of the old folks committee for many years. Father loved the old songs and was very fond of singing them either alone or with his family.  His favorite meal was cheese and crackers, and he was fond of hard tack candy.  The whole family enjoyed a watermelon bust. He loved to chase we children around and wash our faces with watermelon rinds. Also there was a ditch of water running down the sidewalk all summer and he loved to water fight with us and many a time we were soaking wet before he quit.

           

The happy times in Diaz were ended late one Saturday night when the old bell rang to waken the town with word from the Stake leaders that the Mexican Rebels had gotten out of hand and the people in Diaz were to leave at once. They were told to take only enough food and clothes for a few days and to leave as quickly as possible.  The Stake Leaders felt sure that in a few days they would be able to return to their homes.

           

By Sunday at noon the town was deserted and soon the rebels came through destroying everything in their path.  Beds were ripped apart with feathers and corn husks flying in all directions; the large storage cans the food was kept in were punctured and the food either taken or ruined and the rebels took a special delight in shooting out the eyes in all the family pictures and portraits we had hanging on our walls.

The United States government gave us tend [sic] shelter and food just over the border for three months. During these three months groups of men would return to Diaz to salvage anything they could from our homes as we finally realized that we would never be able to go back to them.

From this government shelter my father took his family and went to Thatcher, Arizona, where they spent the winter.  My brother John had previously left Mexico and had married and settled in Blanding, Utah (Grayson). He urged us to come there.  So after a long and hard journey of six weeks we reached Blanding where my father secured work and soon with the united efforts of the family he had a very comfortable home.

Here he spent the remainder of his life performing faithfully every duty required of him in the Church.  In 1921 his health began to fail and after years of suffering he died in 1924. Mother followed him four years later.

Dad’s posterity at the present time, and they are still coming, is 14 children, 62 grand-children, and 223 great grand children, 93 great great grand children.  Making a total of 378.

Source: Genealogy book of Fern Laws Palmer, copy of typed manuscript.  Transferred to computer on October 26, 2005 by Deniane Kartchner.

James Parley Johnson photo

Source: Fern Laws Palmer pedigree chart.

I would like to find someone who has original photos, especially the photo of the Emma James Johnson and her daughters.  (This page is a "copy of a copy of a copy" that I found in Fern Laws Palmer's Book of Remembrance.)

James Parley Johnson family

Mary Jane, can you help me with the photo identification?  You can email me and I'll post it.  Thanks!

Eliza Jane Rowley Johnson

Written by her daughter,

Nellie J. Harvey

Eliza Jane Rowley was born April 18, 1865 in Nephi, Utah, to John Rowley and Mary Ann Gadd Rowley.  She was their first child out of 12 children; 5 girls and 7 boys.  Her sisters’ names were Sarah Ann (who died as an infant), Zina Cordelia, Amy Elizabeth and Mary Luella.  Her brothers were, John Sylvester, Jesse Noah, Heber Charles, James Albert, Samuel Issac, Leslie Jacob and Wilford Marion. They were a happy united family, living in harmony with the father's other wives and their children.

They were farmers and many are the stories they would tell about the father having to hide in a fake room under a bin of wheat in their store room when the marshalls would come to arrest him for living in pologomy [sic].  At one time they tried to take Eliza Jane away thinking she was one of the wives.  My mother was Eliza Jane.

Mother spent a lot of her time during the winters after she turned 13 years old in going to the St. George Temple with her father and doing endowment work for the dead.  She did hundreds of names for the dead.  She also helped her father with his farming errands and at his gypsum mine on Mt. Nebo where he mined and made gypsum. Some of it was shipped to Manti and used in the Manti Temple.

Mother was baptized in 1875.  She married James Parley Johnson from Springville, and was sealed to him the 12th of February 1882.  He later married mother's sister Zina Cordelia.

About 1884 Mother and Father and family moved to Central in Arizona where they lived for four or five years. While in Central, Arizona two brothers John and Delbert and a sister Susan Emma were born.

They were always active in church work.

I am not sure about dates, I have no way of checking, only from family group sheets.  About 1890 the family moved on into old Mexico, and stopped at Colonia Diaz.  Here my sister Lucy was born and little Susan died of Mack measles, which made my mother very sad, off in a strange and lonely land.

    

They moved up to Colonia Pacheco in the mountains for a year or so and my sister Bertha was born there.  They then came back to Diaz where the rest of us kids were all born.

Mother was a hard working woman, taking loving and wonderful care of her large family and teaching us the gospel, as well as to work and get along with each other.  She loved fun too.  One Valentine’s night, this was after we came to Blanding (Grayson it was then) it had been raining and us kids wanted to send some valentines.  There were no sidewalks or roads, just mud.  We were in our night clothes. Mother went with us, we waded in mud over our shoe tops. She giggled and laughed and got just as muddy as the rest of us   She loved picnic's and was always willing to fix lunches.  She kept home made beer in a keg nearly all the time without any ice to even cool it.  One night she went to a dance with her dress on wrong side out.  When she found it out, she was so embarrassed she came home and wouldn't go back to the dance.

It really hurt mother when we had to leave our new home, a lovely red brick home with 12 rooms, and as modern as it could be made at that time.  She made wonderful cheese and we left about a dozen nice big cheese in our screen cupboard besides all her jams, fruit, etc.  She made the best of everything that came to us.  She could make a home in a tent or a covered wagon   Where ever mother was, was home.  When we came to Grayson (Blanding) her 10 year old son Jesse drove the big sheep wagon with mother to tend the brakes for him, loaded with us kids and about all we possessed in it.  Dad drove a light buggy with a good team.

Roy my older brother, drove a wagon with my sister Eva and her little daughter in it and while in Hatchita Mother was doctor, nurse and comforter when Eva got her new baby boy. Eva was a second wife and her husband abandoned her at this time.

When we left Hatchita to come to Thatcher, Arizona, mother was riding in a header box with Douglas Harvey and Bertha and it tipped over on some rough road.  It threw mother out and a big heavy trunk came down on her and really gave her a hard bump on her head. It knocked her out  and left bad effects.  It affected her mind.

About 1925 mother had a stroke.  She was living alone at the time, her husband having passed on before.   She lost her power of speech and her memory.  She just walked the streets. We tried to take care of her but decided about 1926 to take her to the hospital in Provo for treatments. We left her there. She never got better and she died there on the 8th of June 1928.  We went up to get her.   Her brothers and a sister wanted a funeral for her in Provo, so we had a service for her there, then brought her home to Blanding where we had another funeral on June 12, 1928 and buried her by her husband in the Blanding City cemetary.

She was a wonderful wife and mother.  So patient, sweet, gentle and kind. A "gentle woman" all her life is what a wonderful friend said of her to me.  And she was.

We loved her dearly but certainly didn't tell her so often enough.

                      

Written by her daughter,

                       Nellie J. Harvey

Lorenzo Johnson photo link

The following link provides a picture/drawing of Lorenzo Johnson.  http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/USHS_Class&CISOPTR=1998&CISOBOX=1&REC=2

It appears to be from the same photograph I have in my files: