HISTORY OF SAMUEL AND CLARISSA HANCOCK ALGER

HISTORY OF SAMUEL AND CLARISSA HANCOCK ALGER

HISTORY OF SAMUEL AND CLARISSA HANCOCK ALGER

PIONEERS TO THE SALT LAKE VALLEY - 22 SEPT 1848

AND AMONG THE FOUNDERS OF PAROWAN UTAH - 13 JANUARY 1851

(original text was passed down to Florence McMullin Jensen & contributed to this web page by Carol Easterbrook Wolf))

Samuel Alger was born 14 February 1786 in Uxbridge, Worcester, Massachusetts. He was the son of John Alger and Elizabeth Hume Alger.

Clarissa Hancock Alger was born 03 September 1790 in Old Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Thomas Hancock, Jr. and Amy Ward Hancock.

This couple was among the earliest converts to the Church, being baptized 16 Nov 1830, and came to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in Brigham Young’s Company on 22 September 1848. Clarissa Hancock’s parents and eight brothers and sisters joined the church on the same day, as did her husband, Samuel Alger. He was baptized by John Murdock (later of Beaver Co., Utah).

We have few facts relating to the life of Clarissa Hancock Alger, but her blessing given by Patriarch John Smith is found in the Church Historian’s Office in Book II, page 286. Her family was ardent members of the Church and passed through all the trials and hardships of the early days in Ohio, Nauvoo, Winter Quarters and crossing the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. Her mother, Amy Ward Hancock, born 28 February 1769 was buried in Council Bluffs (now the old Mormon Cemetery in Florence, Nebraska). One of her brothers was a boyhood friend of Joseph Smith and two of her brothers were given special revelations by Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants Sections 52 and 124. (For further information about them see history of her daughter Clarissa Alger Whitney, wife of Francis Tuft Whitney.)

Samuel Alger was a convert to the Church on 16 November 1830. He, too, experienced all the history-making events of the expulsion of the Saints from Ohio, Nauvoo, and the trek across the stretches of Western America. And because he was one of the older members of the Church, he was given many offices of responsibility. He was an expert cabinetmaker and joiner by trade, and followed this profession all his life. He built a house for the father of Heber C. Kimball in New York when Heber was nine years old.

We read in the diary of his brother-in-law, Levi Ward Hancock, that Samuel Alger was a Lieutenant in the Ohio Militia in Chagrin, Ohio and in Bloomfield, New York. In feats of strength he was a log-roller. He could lay out his strength on an elm log without apparent effort and could throw a strong man as easily as a child.

He was a member of the 34th Quorum of Seventies (Book B.P. 259) and was ordained a High Priest 10 April 1853 by G.Y. Wallace and S.S. Sprague (H.P. Book A Page 1). He left Ohio in 1836 with his wife and family and resided in Randolph Co., Missouri for one year until the Mormons were driven out of the state. They then lived in Quincy, Illinois for eight months then settled in Deer Creek then in Nauvoo on the way west to Winter Quarters, Nebraska Territory.

In Nauvoo, at noon 12 September 1845, Samuel Alger was one of a committee of four writing to Brigham Young for aid for the Morley and Hancock settlements against the anti-Mormon mob. His wife was of this Hancock family. They wished to sell all deeded lands and receive wagons, horses, cattle, harnesses, stores, etc., to travel west. On 20 January 1848 a few months before starting to the Great Salt Lake Valley, Samuel Alger was one of the petitioners for a U.S. Post Office in the Pottawattamie Lands in the State of Iowa.

The Alger and Hancock families with many others left Council Bluffs under the leadership of Brigham Young for the Salt Lake Valley and arrived there 22 September 1848. This was Brigham Young’s second and last crossing of the pioneer trail. He remained to his death in the Zion he loved.

Samuel and Clarissa together with their children, John and Claris, lived in Salt Lake City from 22 September 1848 to 07 December 1850 when they left on a mission to explore and settle what in now Southern Utah. By now their daughter Clarissa had been married for some time to Francis Tuft Whitney, he having arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley with members of the Mormon Battalion on 29 July 1847. The call to settle Parowan came 27 October 1850.

The Algers and Whitneys, with 28 other families went to Center Creek or what is now called Parowan, Iron, Utah. They arrived at Center Creek on 13 January 1851 under the leadership of George A. Smith. It was only a few weeks after their arrival that New Samuel Whitney, the first white child born in Iron County, was born to Francis T. and Clarissa Alger Whitney.

After being released from this mission, Samuel and Clarissa Alger returned to Salt Lake City to reside for the next seventeen years. On 08 October 1853 Samuel Alger was sustained as a Patriarch in the October General Conference of that year and for the last twelve years of his life in Salt Lake, Samuel acted in that capacity. He was called “Father Alger” by all who knew him.

He had a burning testimony of the Gospel. We have a newspaper account dated 24 May 1868 of a speech he made in a meeting in Parowan. He stated that at the age of 81 years he quit chewing tobacco, after using it for 59 years and testified that he felt better for this abstinence. He lived to be 88 years old and was hearty to the end.

About 1865 he and his wife moved from Salt Lake to Parowan to be near their daughter Clarissa and family, and son John. They lived in Parowan for eight years. On 22 July 1870 Clarissa died. They had been married for 62 years. Samuel remained in Parowan until the summer of 1873 then went to St. George to live with his son John. Samuel died there after a stay of one year and three months. He died at the age of 88 years on 24 September 1874.

Samuel was an expert cabinetmaker and joiner and also made hundreds of coffins for his deceased friends. He made his own coffin and kept it under his bed for years. He had several of these, but always gave them away in an emergency. He finally died and was buried in a coffin not of his own making.

Heber C. Kimball said of Father Samuel Alger, “Father Alger through his life was a useful man and for the last 44 years of his life a faithful Latter Day Saint.”

Upon his death it was said, “There passed away one of th