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Growing Up Years of Frank Nelson Harmon
The Growing Up Years of Lillie Esplin
Because Lillie Esplin's ancestors
John Esplin,
Henry and Ann Rigby Webster
James
and Beulah Sabin Hoyt, and
Josiah and Amanda Morgan Miller joined the
Church they made the trek to Utah.
Because Lillie Esplin's grandparents
John and Margaret Webster Esplin, and
Israel and
Clarissa Amanda Miller Hoyt continued to follow the Church, they answered the
call to colonize the southern Utah territory,
Lillie Esplin's parents
John James Esplin and
Emily Alvira Hoyt met,
married and started their family in Orderville, Utah.
| Seventy miles away from St. George
where Frank lived, Lillie Esplin was growing up in Orderville. |
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Unlike Frank Harmon, one of the
oldest children in his family, Lillie was one of the youngest. Because of this
she did not know either of her grandfathers. On her father's side John Esplin
died in 1895 three years before she was born. |
| On her mother's side her grandfather, Israel Hoyt
died in 1883, fifteen years before Lillie was born in 1898. On the right is his
picture. |
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To the left is a picture of Israel Hoyt's
gravestone in the Orderville Cemetery. |
Lillie's parents and John James Esplin's
other wife, Harriet Leonora Allen Esplin all lived together at first. According
to Lillie Esplin, her mother, Emily Alvira Hoyt Esplin. was a quiet undemanding
hard worker. Harriet Leonora (known as Aunt Nora) liked to visit and talk but
not to work as hard as Emily. Emily tired of being the one who did a larger
share of the work so she told her husband he needed to provide separate houses
for the two families. Other accounts said that John James moved his families to
two houses because of raids by US marshals to punish polygamists. Both versions
could be true.
| To the right is an old picture of the home
occupied by Emily Alvira Hoyt Esplin and her family. This is the house where
Lillie Esplin grew up. |
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Below are pictures of the same house and
cellar behind it, taken the first of August 2002. The cellar was a surprise
because it appears to be above ground. Nan Esplin Johnson (granddaughter of
John James Esplin) told us it was the cellar.
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On the main street a couple of blocks to the
north John James built a home for Harriet Leonora Esplin. He traded that house
to his brother David for the house on the right just across the street. The
house John James built has since been torn down. |
| To the right is a picture of Harriet Leonora's
house with the motel added to it as it appears in Orderville now. The original
house is on the far right of the picture (taken in 2002). |
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Lillie's parents, John James Esplin and
Emily Alvira Hoyt Esplin had their first child, Margaret in January 1879.
Margaret Esplin's Birth
Record
That same year John James and his other wife Harriet Leonora
Allen Esplin had their second child, a son named Ether.
John James and
Emily Alvira's second child, Lucy was born inf 1881 but died at the age of 15
before Lillie was born.
Lucy
Esplin's Birth Record
.To the left below is a painting of Lucy and to
the right is her tombstone in the Orderville Cemetery.
The third child, Lillie's brother Israel
was born in 1883.Israel Esplin's Birth
Record
Here is a picture of Israel (taken about 1895) with Lillie's
sister Margaret and half brothers and sisters, Marion, Diantha, Ether and
Arminnie. Israel was about 12 when the picture was taken and Margaret was about
16.
| Here is the gravestone in the Orderville Cemetery
for the five children who died in infancy. |
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Then in 1894 Lawrence Esplin was born to John
James and Emily Alvir Esplin.
Birth
Record for Lawrence Esplin
Four years later on the 21st of February
1898, Lillie was born, her mother's 11th child. Here she is as a baby in her
mother's arms with four year old Lawrence standing beside them. |
| Lillie's father was 41 when Lillie was born. He
is reported to have said of his 20th child (remember, he had two wives - Emily
Alvira Hoyt Esplin and Harriet Leonora Allen Esplin) "if she hadn't been a
girl, she wouldn't have been welcome." |
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| Actually, Lillie was blessed and baptized as
Lillian Esplin. When she changed her name to Lillie or whether that was the
only name she knew because the family called her that, I do not know. Below is
a copy of the ward record listing her as Lillian and a copy of a birth
certificate listing her as Lillian because that was what was in the ward
record. |
| When Lillie was two months old her
oldest sister Margaret married Myron Holgate. This looks like it must be their
wedding picture. |
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To the left is a picture of Margaret
and Myron's house in Orderville, Utah. It has since been torn down and another
house built in its place. |
| When Lillie was 1
1/2 she became an aunt to Lucy Holgate (daughter to her sister Margaret
Holgate). The two girls were pals. To the right is a picture of Lucy. |
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Her other pal was her half sister Vera Esplin
shown in this picture. |
| The picture on the right is the home
Lillie remembered because she was only two when it was built. |
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| When Lillie was about four, she and
her brother Lawrence were dressed up for this picture. |
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When Lillie was five, her brother
Israel married Chastie Stolworthy. This picture was probably taken at the time
of their wedding in 1903. |
| This is a picture of their home in
Orderville. IIt has been remodeled and doesn't look the same as when Israel and
Chastie and their family lived in it. |
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In September 1904 Lillie's
grandmother Clarissa Amanda Hoyt died at the age of 75. |
| Clarissa Amanda Miller Hoyt and Hannah Cook Hoyt,
the two wives of Israel Hoyt, were buried together. The two wives were close
friends and lived in the same household. Lillie Esplin Harmon reported that
many did not know which child belonged to which mother.
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That year, 1904, Lillie's family decided she
should start school. Lillie said she was "perfectly content with life as it was
without learning to read and write, but since it seemed what everyone else was
doing she started to school even though it meant lacing every hole in her shoes
instead of missing every other one as she had been in the habit of doing. Right
away she liked school and never wanted to miss a day.
Excerpt from "Lillie Esplin's Life Story
Below is a picture of Lillie in about 1906 when she was 8 years old. |
At the right is a
blowup of the picture of Lillie in her school class.
Autograph books were
popular when Lillie was in grade school. Here is the cover of an autograph book
given to Lillie by her mother Christmas 1908.
Here is one page of the autograph book
signed by her cousin, Minnie.
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Some of Lillie's childhood memories were of
making doll houses and the furniture. She constructed dolls out of hollyhocks
and corn silk.Children used the clay in Orderville to make clay horses that
they played with. She loved to roll down hills, hunt wild flowers and ride
horses. As you can see from the picture on the left of the area south of
Orderville, there was plenty of wide open space to play in. |
Below is the picture of Orderville's main street
and on the right is Orderville Gulch-you can see the hills which are all around
Orderville-places for children to roam and play.
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In 1906 Lillie was baptized at the
age of 8 on the 27th of May 1906 by Alvin T. Porter. She was confirmed by
Edward Carroll. A year later her brother Israel (shown on the left) was called
on a mission to the southern states.
In 1908 Lillie's
grandmother Margaret Webster Esplin died.
At the left is the grave
marker in the Orderville, Utah cemetery for John and Margaret Esplin. |
To the right is a picture of Lillie's
brother, James with his fellow missionaries. |
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In 1910 Lillie's brother James
went on a mission to the Western
States.
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Lillie was put to work early in the
church organization. At age 13 she was the assistant secretary in the Primary
and then became the secretary until she went away to high school in Cedar City.
Below are two pictures of Lillie at about age 16 with her brother Lynn age 10.
Lillie didn't graduate from 8th grade
until she was 16 because some of the Orderville teachers didn't think children
should be pushed through school fast so they kept them for two years in some of
the grades. There were no high schools in Orderville so at age 17 she went to
Cedar City to high school but had to return in November because of illness.
On Lillie's eighteenth
birthday (February 21, 1916), her brother died of pneumonia in Logan, Utah.
I don't remember that Lillie Esplin talked much
about her brother, James, but I knew she was very fond of him.Funeral Service for
James Esplin
Lillie Esplin enjoyed being with friends; some
of them are shown in the picture below.
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In the Fall of 1916,
Lillie went to Cedar and finished the first year of high school. These pictures
may have been taken at that time. At left she is with some of her relatives and
friends. |
Here are two pictures of Lillie Esplin-on
the left she is with her half sister and pal, Vera. And judging from the
dresses and hair style, Lillie's portrait on the right was taken at the same
time (as was the group picture on the preceding page.)
Below Lillie is pictured with her
class on the back row with a band around her head. On the right is an
enlargement showing Lillie so that she is big enough to see. |
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Lillie enjoyed holidays - Valentine's
Day, Easter, May Day, Fourth of July and the twenty-fourth of July.
| On the right is a picture of Lillie with friends
dressed for a patriotic occasion - probably the fourth of July. |
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On the right she is on an outing of some sort
Lillie (the one with the wide brimmed hat) is standing behind the wagon full of
young people. Below is an enlargement of Lillie in the picture.
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| Lillie's brother Lawrence went away
to college in Logan in 1916.
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Her younger brother, Lynn was good
with horses. When he was ten, his father took him to Marysvale to drive a team
(one horse was afraid of cars so Lynn had his hands full.) He came home with a
new rifle and a couple of years later bought a second hand bicycle with which
he drove cows and horses. The picture on the left shows him proudly displaying
the bicycle and rifle. |
| In later years Lynn's physical feats as a
woodsman (mountain man whatever you want to call him) became legendary with his
nephews. In the picture on the left he is much younger and all dressed up for
the picture. On the right he wears his cowboy hat, the kind he wore when he was
out on the range with his sheep. He liked horses that were slightly wild, but
actually didn't use them a lot because he could go faster (with a change of
shoes slung over his shoulder) without them. |
The picture
on the rights shows Lynn on his "slightly wild" horse, Nig. |
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| The next school year (1917-1918) was upset for
Lillie because the U.S, entered the world war. Lillie missed school again. In
April 1918 her brother Lawrence married Lucy Heaton and then left for army
service in May. Here is a picture of Lawrence (he is on the left) and a buddy
cleaning their mess kits.
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Another picture shows him (with
buddies) sitting on the floor reading a book. |
Lawrence went to Camp MIlls, N.Y. before being
sent overseas. The card on the right sent to his folks was written in July of
1918. He was there a little earlier than Frank Harmon.
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In the fall of 1918 Lillie started at
Cedar City again but after a month the flu epidemic swept the country and all
the schools were closed. Lillie and her half sister Vera returned to
Orderville. |
In the fall of 1919 Lillie's niece, Lucy,
who didn't have very good health, wanted to go to school in St. George because
the winters were milder. She talked Lillie and Lillie's half sister Vera into
going to school in St.
George.
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So the three girls planned to move their
schooling away from Orderville to St. George which was 70 miles away, but much
warmer. |
| Lillie said she wasn't enthused about going at
first but it was here that she met Frank Nelson Harmon. |
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