Sunday, January 27, 2013

Nancy Arilla Herring

Nancy Arilla Herring


  • Born March 4, 1848 in Winter Quarters, Pottawattamie, Iowa
  • Died March 22,1897 in Gunnison, Utah
  • crossed the plains to Salt Lake City in the Robert Wimmer Company at the age of 4










Life Sketch of the Life of Nancy A. Herring Wasden

Nancy Arilla Herring Wasden was the daughter of Isaac Herring and Harriet L. Adams Herring.  She was born in Pottawattamie County, Iowa March 4, 1848.
In the summer of the 1852 she with her parents and three brothers arrived in Salt Lake City.
The family came across the plains with a hand cart company and suffered the hardships incident to that mode of traveling.  The family first settled in Big Cottonwood, Slat Lake County, where another daughter was born to those pioneer parents.  Soon after they moved to Manti, where they made their home.  Other children were born in all 5 sons and 4 daughters
My mother was educated in the primitive schools of that time, but her greatest education was acquired in domestic arts, which she learned from her mother.  She learned to card the wool, spin yarn, and weave cloth, which was valuable knowledge and helped her in a splendid way to provide clothing for her large family when she became a wife and mother.
She has often related to her children, how in the early pioneer days they were forced to gather segos and other roots to sustain life.  When the crops were gathered women and children would go into the fields to glean, and as a small child my mother would carry home her gleanings of wheat heads, empty them on a canvas, and bear out the kernels of wheat with a large stick; the wheat being sold at the stores to purchase necessities for family use.
She learned the art of coloring with rabbit brush, the bark of walnut trees, and various colorings to brighten the home made cloth, carpet rags, etc.
On the 22nd day of May 1864, she became the wife of John Brooks Wasden, from which union thirteen children were born.
Mother was an expert seamstress and often went out to sew by the day as also she did dress making in her home. 
When her fourth child was six months old, father’s second wife died leaving an infant son, Mother took this child and reared him as her own, and the love and devotion she received from this son as he grew to manhood was ample proof that her work had been well done.
Mother never neglected her home or her family.  It was her shrine, to which all her best life and efforts were devoted.
She passed the barriers of this life March 22, 1897, at Gunnison, Utah.

There was a death notice published in the Manti Messenger, Saturday 3 April 1897:

“A gloom spread over our town on March 22, at the death of Mrs. Aurilla Wasden, one of our most highly respected and much loved citizens. Her faithfulness as a mother is well known. She leaves eight children, her husband and many relatives and friends to mourn her departure.”
 

She was the mother of five sons and eight daughters: Alice Arilla, John Thomas, Mary Lucinda, Alta Arvilla, Margret Ellen, Anna Sophia, Rosella May, Willard Washington, Isaac Ransom, Fredrick Orson, Nancy Caroline, Joseph F., Olive Mayble, and her adopted son, James Brooks.

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