History of Daniel Justett, Jr.

History of Daniel Justett, Jr.

HISTORY OF DANIEL JUSTETT, JR.

By Dora Clove

Daniel Justett was born on August 10, 1843 in Pinache, Italy, in the Piedmont Valley. He was a son of Daniel Justet, Sr. and Jane Rostan. He was the fourth child in a family of ten children; three boys and seven girls. Two children, a boy John and a girl, Naomi, died in infancy. Daniel’s older brother James died while serving in the French Army. He was secretary to his Captain. Daniel seemed to be very proud of his brother James as he mentioned him and his service to France quite often. His sisters were Mary, Antoinette, Margaret, Susan, Madeline, and Catherine.

Daniel Justet’s ancestors were French, having moved from France to San (Saint) Germaine, Italy; and later on down to the valley of the Piedmont where there were other Protestants. These people moved from France down into Italy (Piedmont Valley) in order to escape persecution by the Catholic Church; persecution that has been going on ever since the great religious upheaval in the 16th century which resulted in the formation of various Protestant Churches throughout Europe. These churches were led by great leaders such as Luther of Germany, Calvin and Zwingli of Switzerland, Cranmer of England, and Knox of Scotland. Daniel’s people believed in the Holy Scriptures, especially the ones containing the principles and ordinances as taught by Christ. The Roman Catholic Church at that time did not teach these things, but taught man made laws such as the selling of indulgences and many other things that were contrary to the scriptures.

Along about the time between the year 1850 to 1853, Apostle Lorenzo Snow, Elders Jabee Woodard, T.B.H. Stenhouse and Joseph Toronto opened the first mission in Italy. They didn’t have much success at first except in the Piedmont Valley where they found descendants of the people called Waldenses who dated back to the 12th century. Elder Jabee Woodard was the elder who first came to the Justet home. He told them of the church of Jesus Christ which had been restored in these later days with all the laws and ordinances as taught by Christ while he was on the earth. Daniel’s father and mother readily accepted the teachings of the Elders and were in due time baptized. Daniel was baptized while in Italy by his father and was re-baptized on the Muddy (later called the St. Thomas) in October 1868 by A.S. Gibons.

The Justet home was always open to the missionaries in Italy. Many made it their headquarters while in the vicinity. Daniel talked many times of the two young missionaries who stayed with the family. One was a young man who was so homesick that when he would come home from work at night, he would start to cry. Daniel’s mother would put her arms around him and cry too because she felt so sorry for him. The other young man was just the opposite. He was always singing or whistling.

The Justet family, like all the other converts to the Church wanted to come to Utah to be with the other Saints where they could worship without being molested. Daniel often said that the family was quite well to do. They had a large farm which they sold in order to get the money to come to Utah. However, the Church leaders advised them to wait until later when transportation across the plains would be better, and so they did not leave Italy until a few years later. By the time the Church leaders sent word that the railroad had reached Fort Laramie, they had spent most of the funds from the sale of their property to live on, and so hired out to wealthy landlords; every one of the family working in the fields and vineyards. Daniel said that they always took a jug of wine with which to quench their thirst as water was seldom used for drinking purposes in Italy at that time.

The family had very little time for recreation, yet they enjoyed entertaining themselves. Everyone was good at imitating others, so they put on their own shows sometimes by mimicking anyone who seemed ridiculous to them. Christian Moosman, one of the missionaries who stayed at the Justet home, fell in love with the older sister, Mary. After he came back home, he sent money for her to come to Utah. She came seven years before the other members of the family, and was married in the old endowment house in Salt Lake City. In the Spring of 1868 the rest of the family, with the help of the Church was able to come to Utah. They worked their way to Liverpool, England, where they took passage on a ship that was so crowded that they had to leave part of their belongings, including their bedding, behind. They had to take second class passage on the vessel and were very crowded, like sardines in a can. People of all nationalities were on the ship with them. They suffered terribly with sea-sickness and undernourishment, yet they never complained because they were coming to America and Utah where they could be with the Saints.

Daniel and his family left Italy on June 1 and arrived in Salt Lake on September 1, 1868. They came by train to Fort Laramie where they had to wait for a week or so until another company came in. They came on to Utah in the Company of Captain Thomas Smart. Daniel walked all the way. Captain Smart fell in love with one of the girls, Margaret, and they were married after arriving in Utah. Two other sisters were married while in Salt Lake City. Antionette and Susan.

When the Company arrived in Salt Lake City, they were sent to the tithing offices. President Young gave them food and clothing and bedding. While they were in Salt Lake, they met with friends from Italy; the Bardens, and Beuses. They had been neighbors in Italy. After resting a few weeks, they were sent down to St. Thomas ( the “Muddy”) along with families of other nationalities; to name a few, there were Ipsons, Keats, Gublers, Staleys, Wilsons, Frys, Eatons, and Leitheads. The Keats family were Italians and were their neighbors in St. Thomas. President Young knew that they had come from a very mild climate and so sent them down to Utah’s Dixie. They arrived in St. Thomas on the first of October and found the country quite barren and burned, very different from the fertile valley of the Piedmont. They did not know the language or customs of most of the other pioneers, and although they suffered greatly from sickness and hunger, they did not complain. The people lived in dugouts until they could make “doubies” to build houses with.

It was in St. Thomas that Daniel met and married Nellie Leithead, an adopted daughter of James Leithead and Deborah Lameroux. The Leitheads had another daughter, Ann, who married Tom Smith. Nellie’s adopted parents gave both her and Ann a good education and they were brought up with the same advantages. She received a Bible for good conduct at Sunday School. She was baptized by David Miller in 1852 and re-baptized by Bishop Hess of Farmington in the year of reformation.

Daniel and Nellie were married on January 6, 1870. Their first child, Deborah was born on October 8, of the same year. The family later moved to Santa Clara due to the excessive taxation levied on them by the new state of Nevada which had been created from parts of the Western portion of the territory of Utah. Here again they found the country quite hot and barren; but in the spring of 1871 they planted crops that consisted mostly of sugar cane, melons, and small garden stuff, which supplied them with their necessary food.

There was much sickness among the people that year. Daniel’s father died that summer, leaving him with his mother and sister Catherine to care for along with his own family. He said that when his father died there was so much sickness that his mother had to make the clothes and prepare her husband for burial, and with the help of a few neighbors dig a grave to bury him in.

In the Spring of 1872, the family was again called on to move. This time to Panguitch, a little town on the Sevier River in Garfield County. So Daniel with his wife and baby, mother, and sister, Catherine, moved again. At Panguitch they found the climate as extremely cold as Santa Clara was hot. There were not very many families in Panguitch although the town had been settled once before. The families that were there were, to name a few, Lewises, Heaps, Alveys, Delongs, Worthens, Sevys, Butlers, and Henries. Daniel obtained a field one mile East of where the town was located. They could raise very good crops of grain and potatoes, the only crops that were very successful owing to the high altitude.

The family went through all of the hardships that go with pioneering in a new country with faith never wavering. On September 27, 1873, a son was born, Sister Emily, the wife of John Emily acted as midwife. They named their son, John. In 1875, their second son, James, was born. By this time Daniel’s sister, Catherine, had married David Stevenson.

In the Spring of 1876, Daniel with a few other men went over the mountains and down to what is now known as Escalante Creek, sixty miles east of Panguitch. They had a very difficult time getting over the mountains because they were so rugged and steep. About twenty miles from the top of the mountain through a canyon, the country opens into a valley. At that time it looked like a real paradise to them. They found the valley very fertile, being of a rich sandy loam. They called it “tater valley” owing to the wild potatoes growing there. With a little labor a fair size stream could be taken out for irrigation purposes. There were about fifty families living there at this time. They divided the land on the North side of the Creek into twenty acre farms and laid out a town site on the south side into ten acres lots. The men then drew to see which lots they would take. Daniel cleared the sagebrush from a portion of this land in preparation for farming and building the next spring. He also made a dugout so that his family would have a place to live when he moved them there.

The next spring after planting a crop of grain in Panguitch, he went to Escalante and planted corn, potatoes, beans and melons. That fall after harvesting his crop of grain in Panguitch, he moved his family, consisting of his mother and widowed sister Madeline and her three children along with his wife and children, to Escalante. His sister had lost her husband while living n Panguitch. The women helped him drive the cattle while his mother drove the ox teams. They found the crops in Escalante ready for harvesting. This was indeed a very prosperous year for them, having raised a good crop in to places There were others who had no done so well, but all shared alike. They helped each other clear their farms and build log houses. After living for a year or so in dugouts, the logs houses seemed wonderful.

For amusement they had house parties, dances and candy pulls. The candy they made from sorgum with which they raised themselves. For their dances, they paid the fiddler with produce. A young man could often be seen going to a dance with his girl on one arm and a squash or other produce on the other.

The first fourth of July held in Escalante was celebrated with the pioneers all marching while Daniel beat on an old bass drum belonging to the Schow boys. They marched to the Old Bowery which had been built for holding Church services. There they sang songs and danced. Some of the people were barefooted, yet they sang songs and danced, and were just as happy as those who had shoes. The people with shoes took them off to keep from stepping on those of the shoeless. At that time they didn’t have an American flag so one pioneer, freshly over from England, wanted to put up the English flag and they almost lynched him for it.

It wasn’t long until many families moved in. Daniel’s sister Antoinette and her husband Edmund Davis, Mary and Chris Moosman, Catherine and David Stevenson, and his sister, Madeline, who married Heber Knight all helped to pioneer that country. Many of the first settlers got to be well-to-do. They could raise good crops and cattle. The cattle thrived in summer on the wild grass that grew on the hills and in the valleys close by, and in winter on the desert that reached for sixty miles south to the Colorado River. Although Daniel was better fixed than some of the others who were first there, he never became wealthy. He had cattle on the range, enough to bring him a very good income, but not being able to look after them properly, many were stolen and smuggled across the Colorado by cattle rustlers who were plentiful in those days.

Daniel and Nellie had nine children born to them, five girls and four boys, one of each having died in infancy. Nellie died on February 4, 1892, when the youngest child was four years old. The oldest daughter married shortly after, yet she helped look after the clothing of the children as she was a good seamstress. Other than this, Daniel looked after his family’s needs himself besides looking after his aged mother who insisted on staying with him against the wishes of his sisters who then lived in Escalante. When she became quite helpless, she was moved to one of her daughter’s homes. She died in December 1897.

Daniel provided well for his family. He worked hard on his twenty acre farm. It was said of him that he raised the best grain and the largest potatoes in the valley. He also raised all kinds of vegetables in the garden at home. In later days he had a fine orchard and sold hundreds of pounds of dried fruit each year. He also had a fine team of Hamiltonian horses. His milk cows were of the best. Whatever he undertook to do he put forth his best efforts. His home, his yard and his workshop were kept clean. Everything had its place.

Daniel was a jack-of-all trades and had learned the hard way to do many things to help himself and his neighbors. He helped his neighbors by sharpening blades on a grind stone he had made himself out of sandstone. I can remember turning the grind stone for him many times while he was sharpening different tools. He also helped the men re-set their wagon wheels, make reaches and wagon tongues, and patched harness. For the women of the town, he would rebuild their wooden tubs. All this he did free of charge unless they would help him with his work. He was a religious man as true religion goes. He was an Elder in the Priesthood of the Church. He paid his tithing and offerings in produce from his farms. Daniel tried hard to teach his children through his own example to be honest and upstanding. He never allowed gossip or even a hint of vulgarity in the home. Each child had his or her job to do and did it without any questions asked.

Daniel became a very good rock mason. He helped to build the old rock church and quarried and dressed the rock and set the foundations for most of the old houses in Escalante. He also helped to lay the foundation of the old brick school house which still stands.

In 1897 Daniel moved to Hatch, Utah. His children had all moved away and most of them had settled in Hatch. He and his youngest child, Dora, were left in Escalante. He sold his farm and humble home where he had lived for 38 years. He bought a small farm in Hatch, but owing to poor health and old age was unable to do much farming.

Daniel made friends wherever he went and was well liked by everyone who knew him. One thing he tried to impress on the minds of his children was to heed the teachings and advice of the authorities of the church. One bit of advice that the Church leaders have always given to its members was not to go into debt. That advice he lived to the letter. He died as he had lived, not owing a penny to anyone. He died at the age of 83 on December 19, 1925. Owing to the fact that he died in mid-winter and the snow was deep on the Escalante mountain, he was buried in the Hatch Cemetery.