William Halls Sr.

Life of William and Louisa Enderby Halls

By Florence Hall Bell, Granddaughter, Daughter of George Halls

My paternal grandfather, William Halls, was born in the parish of Orsett, County of Essex, England, on May 25, 1834. His parents were John Halls and Susanna Selstone. He described himself as a farm laborer. Whether his father owned his own farm on which Grandfather worked, or whether they both worked for someone else is not clear. The family were members of the Episcopalian church.

At the age of fifteen, he heard the gospel as taught of the Latter-day Saints. He believed it was true, and in answer to earnest prayer received a positive testimony of the divine mission of Joseph Smith. On January 26, 1851, at the age of seventeen, he was baptized. Through his testimony, his mother, his sister Mary Ann, and his three brothers, Thomas, James, and George were also baptized. At eighteen, he was ordained a priest and baptized his father. At nineteen, he was ordained an elder and called to preside over the Orsett branch of the Church. In October 1854 when he was twenty, he was called on a mission and labored in his own conference of Essex until 1858, when he was called to preside over the Lincolnshire conference.

Now my Grandmother, Louisa Carritt Enderby, was living in Lincolnshire. She was a dainty young lady of considerable refinement and culture, and her family was much more affluent than was Grandfather’s. She made the fatal mistake of happening by one day as he was preaching on the street. She fell in love with him at first sight, or so the story goes. I find it rather hard to believe, but then, of course, I didn’t know Grandfather when he was young. I have always questioned whether Grandma was converted to the gospel or just to Grandpa. There was no question that she was converted to him. It was her good fortune that she stayed in love with him to the end of her days, or possibly, in the light of future events, it may not have been good fortune, who can say? However, in the spring of 1861, he was released from his mission, and they were married on April 15, 1861 by Elder Joseph F. Smith, then on a mission to England. Grandma was twenty-one, Grandpa almost twenty-seven at the time of their marriage. Immediately, they set out for America and Zion. They crossed the sea on the Underwriter, and upon arriving in America, crossed the plains in Ira Eldredge’s company, arriving in Salt Lake City, September 15, 1861. In his autobiography, Grandfather made no mention whatever of the hazards and hardships of crossing either the sea or the plains, only that these events occurred.

They settled in Kaysville, where that first winter of 1861-62 Grandfather taught school. On July 12, 1862, they received their endowments and were sealed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. It was in Kaysville that they met and were befriended by my mother’s family, the Grandison Raymonds, who had emigrated to Utah in 1852.

With considerable difficulty, they managed to build a nice, warm cabin. Grandma had brought with her from England, lovely clothing–nice woolens and other fine materials. One day just before the birth of her first child in March 1862, she had hung some washed clothes to dry by the fireplace. Her little dog dragged the clothes into the fire and he made short work of the cabin and its contents, and even singed himself. So up in smoke had gone all Grandmother’s beautiful things. It broke her heart. But Grandfather–bless him–comforted her with the healing thought that she had been too worldly. I have heard her say: “Poor little Mosiah, ‘e came into the world with noothin’ to coover ‘im.”

They remained only a short time in Kaysville, for in the fall of 1862 they moved to Huntsville, Weber County. It was there that we children knew them. When we first knew Grandpa, he looked a lot like Moses. He wore a great, fluffy, flowing beard. If he had a mouth, we never saw it. My husband’s grandfather washed his beard every morning with homemade soap and kept it snow white; but my Grandfather’s beard was tattletale gray. I recall that his hair was heavy and his eyebrows, too, grew out of all proportion. In his later years in Colorado in his capacity as Patriarch, he went on long trips with horse and buggy over his vast district. When his hair and eyebrows grew until he could no longer see out, he came home for a trimming. There’s no place like home to get trimmed! On his visits to Huntsville, he usually arrived in this same hairy disguise, and before Papa could get him trimmed he always felt called upon to kiss Mother and us children. Kissing Grandpa was more of a privilege than a pleasure. It was like nothing else you’ve ever known. You went into the beard flying blind, and came out with the firm conviction that now you had seen everything. Mother and we kids always held it against Papa that he didn’t have to kiss Grandpa.

But I must get back to his history. In 1864, he again crossed the plains with ox teams for emigrants.

For several years, he taught school in the winter and worked as a carpenter in the summer. He acted as Postmaster of Huntsville for several years. For nine years, which was its entire existence, he was Secretary of the Huntsville Co-op. I have heard numerous references to the Co-op Farm. It is my impression that it was a dairy business. It may have included other cattle and farming–I am not sure. But if my memory serves, my youthful father got his first experience in the school of hard knocks working on the old co-op Farm. I think it must have been there, too, that he first learned the “value of a dollar.” He spent his life trying to teach that essential lesson to his children, but we were slow to learn.

Later, Grandfather took up land under the Homestead Act to the south of Huntsville, which he pretty much turned over to his sons to clear and develop. This enterprise in time resulted in a thriving farm, producing cattle and farm crops of exceptional quality. It remained in our family for many years but is now owned and operated by the Ogden Stake of the Latter-day Saints Church as a cattle-producing welfare farm project. Sometime in the late 1800’s, Grandfather also acquired excellent ranching property in Bear Lake County, Idaho, at Thomas’s Fork, east of Montpelier. He was no doubt influenced in this endeavor by the fact that my Grandfather Raymond had taken up land in that vicinity and had established a cattle business there, and was most enthusiastic about its possibilities. This, too, Grandfather turned over to his boys to develop. The boys formed a partnership to operate the farm in Huntsville and the ranch in Raymond, Idaho, this town having been named for my Grandfather Raymond. Some years later, when the partnership was dissolved, my father took the ranch in Idaho and Uncle John Halls took the farm in Huntsville.

On June 26, 1871, just a little more than 10 years after Grandfather’s marriage to my Grandmother, an event occurred which shattered Grandma’s life: Grandfather took a second wife, Johanna Maria Frandsen. Grandma was not converted to polygamy, nor was she converted in the slightest degree to sharing her beautiful William Halls with anyone. I don’t like to ponder in my own mind what her feelings may have been on this occasion. I can only judge by outward appearances. From this time on, she became sad, embittered, critical. At thirty-one, it was obvious to those around her that her happiness had taken flight. Johanna was 21 years Grandpa’s junior. She was not quite sixteen years of age and he was thirty-seven at the time of their marriage. Rumor has it that Johanna had a boy friend of whom she was very fond, and wasn’t sold on marrying a friend of her father’s, no matter how solid a citizen. But Johanna’s father knew what was best for her. To marry her to a fine, upstanding Latter-day Saint, a pillar of the community and already well established, was surely an improvement on taking a chance on a callow youth who had not yet proven himself. In those days, girls were not encouraged to do their own thinking, and certainly not to defy the good judgment of their fathers, and so the marriage took place. Johanna gave Grandfather twelve children, Grandmother only six, and she had no intention of giving him any more after he made his decision to board and bed with another woman. Others might bear him children if they wished, but not she. In the years that followed, after he had left Huntsville and came back on visits, it was observed that she made him a bed on the couch in the living room, while she herself kept to her own bedroom. She could never quite conquer her English pride, nor the deep hurt of his divided love.

In June 1877, Grandfather became First Counselor to Bishop Francis A. Hammond of the Huntsville ward.

On the 8th of January 1880, eight and one-half years after his second marriage, Grandfather married his third wife, Eleanor Howard, an attractive school teacher from Salt Lake City. I think she was about thirty-two years old. She has been referred to as an old maid. Eleanor came to live very near Grandma, and she became even a sharper thorn in Grandma’s side than Johanna. I think, in spite of everything, Grandma had a certain sympathy for Johanna (she thought of her as an ignorant young thing), but not for Eleanor. In April 1881, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, and in March 1884, conveniently died and cleared the air for all concerned, not the least of whom may have been herself. Grandmother took Eleanor’s child to rear. In all of this, while my sympathies are naturally with my own sex, still, I cannot quite dispel a rather tender feeling of appreciation of my poor Grandfather’s untenable position. He was so thoroughly imbued with a desire to serve the Lord and to support the authorities, without reservation, that when they urged the brethren to accept the God-given law of polygamy, to him there could be no alternative. The unfortunate repercussions were scarcely to be laid at his door.

Early in 1885, the Church organized the San Juan Stake of Zion in southeastern Utah and Grandfather was called on a mission to help build up San Juan County. He was set apart as the First Counselor in the new Stake Presidency and former Bishop of Huntsville, Francis A. Hammond, became the Stake President. Grandfather had a long and rewarding association with President Hammond, whom he loved and respected as possibly no other man, and his years of serving with him were among the happiest of Grandfather’s life. Grandpa took with him to San Juan, his second wife and the eight children who had been born to them in Huntsville. They helped build up the little town of Bluff, Utah. However, they remained in Bluff only a year and then moved on to Mancos, Colorado. In Mancos, Grandpa engaged in farming and stock-raising, which, here again, he turned over mostly to his boys, so that he might spend his time in the ministry. For eight years, he acted as Stake Tithing Clerk. He was a Director in the District Schools of Mancos for nine years, and was Superintendent of Schools for Montezuma County for two terms. He also acted as Justice of the Peace for several years in the Mancos precinct.

Grandfather never again returned to Huntsville to live. He came on fairly frequent visits and was enthusiastically received by his first family, even by Grandma herself, for she couldn’t get over loving him–and I’m sure she must have tried. It was at this stage of his life–on his visits to Huntsville when I was a child–that my mother and we children became acquainted with Grandpa. My father and his brothers built for their mother a neat little blue frame house (or was it gray?) on the same lot with our town house. In the summer we lived at the farm. A well-kept garden with rhubarb that poked bright pink noses out of the ground in the spring, and gooseberry bushes, separated our house from Grandma’s. There was a well-worn path connecting our houses. Father and his brothers took care of Grandma and supported her, just as Grandfather expected them to do.

On the 25th of November 1900, Grandfather and President Hammond met with an accident while riding in a horse-drawn carriage. Grandfather sustained only slight injuries, but President Hammond was mortally hurt. At President Hammond’s death, Grandfather assumed the responsibilities of Acting Stake President until September 1901, at which time Platt D. Lyman was called as President, and Grandfather again became First Counselor. But President Lyman died in a few weeks, leaving Grandfather again in charge, until May 1902. Walter C. Lyman was then chosen president and Grandfather, for the third time, became the First Counselor, which office he held for a good number of years. In 1908, he was ordained a Patriarch by President Lyman, which office it would appear he held in conjunction with that of Counselor to the Stake President. He came to Huntsville when I was about eight and gave Patriarchal blessings to my mother, my older sister Violet, and me. He told me Satan would seek to destroy me, and he about succeeded then and there. However, Grandpa did give me the encouraging word that if I would obey my parents and be “prudent”–and that’s his exact word–I would live to grow up, a worthwhile accomplishment from my point of view, and so I got busy being prudent in a hurry. Grandpa’s Patriarchal blessings were a work of art. Although he had had little formal schooling, having learned to read and spell from his mother. He was a precise, excellent penman; his command of the English language was likewise excellent, although he was largely self-taught. He had a remarkable vocabulary and his use and choice of words was very effective. One summer at the ranch, where at that time we had no indoor plumbing, he came down the stairs one night and poked his head around the door to the dining room where Mother and some of the family were seated and said quietly, “Celia, there is no “vessel” in my room.” That turned out to be one of our family jokes. Imagine calling an ordinary “toidy mug” a “vessel.” In our more refined moments, we called it a “chamber.” I’ve heard it called other names, too, but never a “vessel.”

He had a natural gift for speaking and writing, and a profound knowledge of the gospel. He had an alert, analytical mind, and a priceless sense of humor that often manifested itself in a delightful manner in his speech and writing. He knew when he was being funny and his eyes fairly glittered in a unique manner I have never seen in anyone else, except his daughter by his third wife, my Aunt Lottie, whom we all loved dearly. She was a lot like him and was always great fun to be with because of her humorous point of view, accompanied by what, in a woman, might be described as “roguish” eyes. They danced when he was being her characteristically entertaining self. And so it was with Grandpa. But Mama used to think he was ever so conceited because he knew of and appreciated so well his own engaging personality.

In 1911, he compiled and published in a little volume, some of the gospel articles and poems which he had written. With characteristic modesty, he titled this book “Select Writings.” We had a great number of these books stored in our home, and we gave them out indiscriminately to anyone and to everyone who would carry one off. We children had little appreciation for his literary work–we made all manner of jokes about “Grandpa’s book,” particularly about his poems. He wrote these poems about homely subjects with which he was familiar, which all good authors agree is a smart approach. At one time, when I was at home in Ogden and the folks were at the ranch in Idaho, a letter came from Grandpa, and I told them in forwarding it that I hadn’t opened it for fear of a poem. Sure enough, I found later that there as a poem in it–on the stimulating subject of how many thousand bowls of “mush” he had eaten during his lifetime. I marvel a little now, in retrospect, that Papa took all our joking about Grandpa so good-naturedly. Many a conscientious father, I think, would have reprimanded us for such disrespect of our own grandfather, no less. I suppose Papa knew we would grow up. Now, in this year of our Lord 1970, “Grandfather’s Book” is at a great premium in the family. Everybody wants a copy. The great-grandchildren, in marked contrast to us, clamor for a copy of their very own. I have had numerous calls inquiring if by any possible good chance I have an extra copy. I have managed, through sheer good fortune and certainly no forethought on my part, to keep a copy in my possession. I now guard it as I do my fire insurance policy, just short, that is, of keeping it in my safe deposit box at the bank. Papa lived to be 95, long enough to see some of us shape up a little. What a wise parent he was, not to try to shape us prematurely.

In 1909, our family moved from Huntsville to Ogden. We left Grandma in Uncle John’s care. Her only blood daughter, Elizabeth Wangagard, also lived in Huntsville and watched over her mother as only a daughter can. Two years later, early in 1911, Grandma became very ill. She had suffered all her adult life with asthma. Her house always smelled of tar. Her pantry window sill was perpetually filled with little mugs of various evil-smelling concoctions that fascinated us children. She always had those hard, round old-fashioned peppermints on hand. Perhaps they helped her breathing, but we thought she kept them as a treat for us. After two or three months of gradually growing worse, it became painfully apparent that Grandma was not going to recover. We have since wondered if she may have been suffering from diabetes. Then came a day when she could no longer rise from her bed. The end seemed near. The doctors could do nothing–they didn’t understand her case. She asked for Grandpa. He was sent for immediately and told that she was dying. He came, of course, but he took his own sweet time about it. It took him two weeks. Every day she asked and every day was told that he had not yet arrived. She clung on for another day. She refused to die until she had once more looked into the dear face of the man she had never ceased to love–the man to whom she was sealed for time and for all eternity–the man who had given her such joy and yet such sorrow! He finally arrived, cool and, on the surface at least, emotionally undisturbed. He seemed little moved by her intense devotion to him. But she was overjoyed at the sight of him. She seemed to forget all the unhappiness, all the anguish; she knew only that her beloved William was there. He had come to her in her final hour of need, and nothing else mattered.