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Sarah Ann Gates Shirts

27 Sep 1861 – 16 Sep 1944

Birth27 Sep 1861
Death16 Sep 1944
CemeteryEscalante Cemetery
Escalante , Garfield County , Utah , USA
Added bySMS on 18 Sep 2009
FaGhttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/118100

Bio

Daughter of Charles Henry Gates and Elizabeth Ann Butler Married Moroni Shirts, 23 Dec 1879, Escalante, Garfield, Utah Children - Meleta Shirts, Sarah May Shirts, Charles Henry Shirts, Elizabeth Ann Shirts, Jane Shirts, William Moroni Shirts, Morris Shirts, Ersell Shirts, Margaret Shirts Biography - Sarah Ann Gates was the daughter of Charles Henry Gates and Elizabeth Butler Gates and the wife of Moroni Shirts. She was born 17 September 1861 in Providence, Cache County, Utah. The first great and also dreadful ting in her life that she remembered was when 23 months old her father was killed by a large grizzly bear in 1863, making her step-grandfather, Ira Rice's 21st bear that he had killed. Her mother then being left a widow with 3 children two years later her mother married Dave Campbell. It was at this time they were called to Dixie to settle Beaver Dam, Washington County, Utah. They lived there from fall until the next Dec.1865. Food was scarce and hard to get, so for their greens they would gather greasewood greens to eat. While there in Beaver Dam they had a large cloudburst that washed their homes and everything away with the flood. Then they had to move up into the hills and live in a wagon box boarded up for 2 feet and a wagon-cover for a roof, which answered the purpose of a home. Next, the Company came down with chills and fever. We had them for 2 1/2 years, which left her very weak and delicate. Brother Erastus Snow released them to go back to their homes in Cache Valley, but her 80 year old grandfather died when they reached Washington, Utah and he was buried in 1867. They lived there for two years. In her 9th year, 1870, her mother and stepfather, with the rest of the children moved to Panguitch, Utah. She had always preferred living with he grandmother, but was taken with them and lived in a fort so to be protected from the tribe of Indians led by Black Hawk Chief for they had so much trouble with them year after year. She lived there until she was 16 in 1877. She waded the Panguitch River to get to the field to glean (to gather the useful remnants of (a crop) after harvesting) Barley. She and her 2 brothers, William Henry and Hyrum Gates would go early in the morning and glean until sundown, having a lunch, no cookies or sandwiches, but a little bread and molasses. They'd wade back across again to get home. This would be there daily job, but Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday they'd wind their Barley and take it to the store to sell for shoes and material for clothes to wear to school and also to help to clothe the smaller children. She also spent her young life scrubbing floors and tending babies to help get clothes. She taught the Testaments class in Sunday school in 1876 and 1877. In the fall after her birthday she went to Orderville in 1877 to live with her Grandmother Butler Rice and Uncle William Butler again. Here she took her turn with the rest of the girls of Orderville working in the United Order. She worked in the dining room a week keeping the tables scrubbed for they had no table linen of floor covering, so they had to put sand on the floor to cut the grease then scrub it with oose root (also known as "Soap Root" Looks like a Yucca plant) scrubbing brushes. Then for a week she could go to school. After a week in school she'd work a week in the kitchen, then to school again, then a week at the Bakery, molding large vats of bread into loaves of yeast, salt risen. A man mixed all the bread by the name of Charlie Carl. The group consisted of 6 girls. Then the cooking utensils were washed for the next group. She'd also help with the family knitting and piece quilt blocks. While working in Orderville her parents moved to Escalante, Utah. The next spring she again came to live with her mother in 1878. After they had lived from fall until spring again the first year in Escalante, Utah, she did washings and worked for women who couldn't do it for themselves. First she worked for Jane Ellen Spencer when her 6th child was born (Jane's) for a $1.50 per week. Here she learned to milk cows. When her job was finished she'd go with the town girls and women over to Pine Creek to burn cottonwood trees to get ashes to use for Lye to cleanse their wash water and make soft soap. They'd burn all day then when the ashes got cold they'd sack them and carry them home and put a double handful in a little water the night before wash day then drain the water off to use as Lye. She stripped sugar cane to make molasses and picked up potatoes. It was in this year her first courting was done. The young Man, Will Stokes, was very attentive to her and as lovers for two years spent many happy hours together horseback ridding. She was never allowed to go to a big dance until she was 17. Her stepfather lived in Panguitch then again with her mother and his second wife. That made life not so pleasant for her and her brothers. He was unkind and selfish to them and finally deserted her mother, and then they had to work to get clothes for themselves and the new baby that was coming. They were then living in the little one room rock house near the bank of the creek. She met her next sweetheart in 1879 while visiting a girl friend on a Sunday in August. Her friend's brother, Moroni Shirts ask if he…. David B. Adams performed the ceremony. No license was required, just the couple, a bishop or one of his counselors and two witnesses. They were married on December 23, 1879, Moroni's twenty-first birthday. He had worked all autumn to get money to be married on, but his sister Margaret Ann was being married and needed a wedding dress. So he gave her most of his money. He had no shoes; he danced barefoot. The day of his wedding his good friend Rile Porter loaned him his boots so that he would feel properly dressed for the occasion. All the town, young and old, were invited to the wedding dinner which consisted of potatoes and gravy, white bread, which was a treat it itself, squash, and a suet pudding the bride had cooked in a black kettle hanging in the fireplace. Rone's suit was a pair of trousers made from dark linsey clothe, with a black and white striped hickory shirt. His suspenders were made of buckskin he had tanned himself. Their first bedroom was a covered wagon box near his parents' home. By March, Moroni had made a dugout on the lot where Lane Liston now lives, formerly the John Shirts place. Sarah Ann's cellar home was neat. They had a four-holed stove, a bed with white spread and white foot-curtains. She had a shuck tick, two pillows, two sheets and a few quilts. There was a cupboard made from rough timber, two home-made chairs, a few dishes, and a chest. In the spring Moroni rented Joseph Spencer's farm north of town and raised wheat and cane and potatoes. Sarah Ann helped with the harvesting. She did knitting for different people for milk and butter. When the crops were harvested, the wheat was taken to Panguitch to be ground. That winter they had white bread instead of corn dodger. She had dried squash and a little dried fruit that had come from the Dixie country. Orchards had not yet started bearing in Escalante. That fall they took up a lot south of town which now belongs to Blake Robinson. Rone went to the mountains and cut and hewed the logs to build a house. Unable to get enough lumber for the roof, he used willows, straw and dirt. Before their first child was born they went to St. George with three other couple for a temple marriage ceremony. The next year they decided to move to Teasdale along with other members of Rone's family. They sold their home to Edward Wilcock. After crops froze for two years in succession at Teasdale and their second child had been born, they moved back to Escalante, bought the lot where Randal Lyman now lives which had on it a two-row log house with a lumber floor in one room, dirt floor in the other. When they built a new log house, Sarah Ann sewed rags on shares to get enough rag carpet to cover the large floor, 15 by 24 feet. She knit lace to pay for the weaving. Through she had four children; she took part in ward plays, dances, and other activities. For the next period of their lives they spent the summers at the Hog Ranch on North creek along with her mother Elizabeth Butler Gates Campbell and children. As was usual at these summer dairies, the women and children did most of the labor of milking thirty or forty cows and making cheese and butter. Rone rented farms near town and was finally able in 1907 to buy most of the Hall farm three miles north-west of town. Rone also headed sheep and carried mail. They lived at the farm from April to November where they produced butter and cheese as well as field crops and livestock. Sarah Ann would bring a bucket of butter to town wrapped in wet white cloths and covered with fresh alfalfa to keep it cool. Generally she came on Sunday morning so that the children could go to Sunday School. A new baby arrived every two years until there were nine. One little boy was killed by being run over by a wagon. In 1909 they traded lots with Riley Woolsey. Rone had a herd of sheep by this time and so was able to build a brick house with attractive grounds including a stone wall on two sides. After their oldest daughter Lizzie Lay, became a widow, they bought a home in Richfield to be near her. When they celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary they had 53 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren. Rone died in 1932 at age 74, Sarah Ann eleven years later aged 83.

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