Samuel Reber Sr

Samuel Reber Sr. made some important decisions while he was still a boy living in his Swiss Village. He and his brother Johannes heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached by missionaries and embraced it immediately. From that moment their goal was to immigrate to join the main body of the Church.

 In 1860, Samuel, barely 20 years old, reached Salt Lake City in a company of Swiss saints. They were there less than a year when Brigham Young called them south to Santa Clara. Just as Samuel completed a dugout in the hill of his assigned property, another call came to go east again to help newly arrived European converts to the valley. 

Among the traveling group was pretty and lively Anna Magdalena Wintsch. By the time they reached Santa Clara,  Samuel and “Nettie” were man and wife. In the years that followed, seven children came to them. Then tragedy. In 1880, Nettie died at age 37. Samuel’s brother, Johannes, had died in 1873 and his widow, Anna Catherina Graf, became the wife of Samuel Reber Sr. In addition to caring for Nettie’s seven motherless children. Anna bore 6 more in the next 18 years before her death in 1898.

In 1885, Samuel took Emma Rosina Hofer as a plural wife. Emma had emigrated from Switzerland, as had Samuel, though she was 20 years younger than he. She was 20 at the time of her marriage and bore 13 children. Two factors made life in Santa Clara more difficult. A shortage of property to sustain such a large family and laws enacted forbidding plural marriage. 

Samuel and Emma Reber became early pioneers of Littlefield, Arizona. They tamed land and farmed it, planted gardens, orchards and vineyards, only to have them destroyed by rains and spring floods down the Virgin River. That pattern repeated for many years. They struggled on and Littlefield remained home. 

At his death in March 1926, Samuel Reber Sr. was father of 27 children. For 67 of his 87 years he had worked to make a home in the desert. His home was only vaguely reminiscent of the green mountain valleys from whence he had come. Littlefield was always much beloved by his posterity.

John Amasa Lee

Was a handsome stranger who came into town and married a girl whose family roots intertwine with Virgin Valley. Maud Reber was born in Littlefield to Joseph Hyrum Reber and Amelia Anna Ence, pioneers to Littlefield in 1897.

To understand John Amasa Lee, one needs a glimpse of his lineage and heritage, both dramatic and inspiring. He was the son of Ezra Taft Lee and Ann Eliza Hamblin. His paternal grandparents were John Doyle Lee and Agatha Ann Woolsey. His maternal grandparents were William Haynes Hamblin and Betsy Jane Leavitt. The blood of hardy frontiersmen and pioneers ran in his veins. Betsy Jane Leavitt was a sister to Dudley and Lemuel Sturtevant Leavitt, who were among the first small group of intrepid pioneers who came to make a settlement on Mesquite Flats. 

Nevertheless, Amasa, as he was generally called, elected to settle down in Maud’s home country. One by one their family grew until they had nine children. One sorrow struck the young family when one-year-old Amasa Berdell Lee died. All eight of their remaining children grew to maturity and all remained in the valley where they were born. Together, the Lee family forged a significant impact on the region. The descendants of John Amasa Lee and Maud Reber Lee with their heritage and strength form a force for good.

Heinrich (Henry) Frehner

Fourteen, faithful, and fatherless, Heinrich Frehner left Switzerland for America, the land of his dream. Missionaries who baptized Heinrich, his mother, brother, and sister, planted a vision of the joy awaiting saints who immigrated. He arrived without money, food, or language and survived by the fortunate kindness of strangers. One of whom made a home for him until his mother and siblings arrived a year later. Upon her arrival, Anna Elizabeth Schoch was assigned to go south, where she met and married Christian Wittwer as his second wife. They retrieved Heinrich, now called Henry, and were united in the Wittwer home in Santa Clara.

Henry was adept at managing an oxen team. He was called to work on building the St. George Temple. He hauled timber 70 miles from Mt. Trumbull and hoisted heavy boulders with a team of horses and a cable. The finished temple was a source of joy to him.

In 1877, Henry took up a homestead in the vicinity of Beaver Dam and Littlefield, Arizona. He lived alone in a hillside dugout, while he tamed his land and planted gardens and vineyards, fruit trees, and hay for his animals. When he married Henrietta Reber in 1884, he had built a log cabin with a fireplace. It was a home fit for a bride.

Henrietta proved to be gifted at homemaking and noted for her kind hospitality. Remote as they were, they produced and preserved everything they needed for a good living. Their frequent visitors were always received kindly. As children came, they added adobe rooms to the cabin. Henry and Henrietta had nine children, with four reaching adulthood.

They experienced storms that ate away laboriously cultivated land. They lost homes to floods, crops to drought, and began again and again, resilient, strong, and courageous. Their legacy is a posterity that continues to contribute much to the world and the valleys they pioneered 

The faith that entered the heart of young Heinrich Frehner in Herisau, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland never wavered. He remained vibrant and devoted. Henry died at 68, still admonishing his descendants to maintain their heritage of devotion. Henrietta and Henry Frehner are honored today by their bounteous and illustrious posterity.

Albert Frehner

Was born in 1863 in Herisau, Appenzell, Ausserhoden, Switzerland, the fourth child of Anna Elizabeth Schock and John Jacob Frehner. At age 10 he boarded a ship with his mother, sister and a company of immigrating Latter-day Saints. When they arrived in Salt Lake City, they were assigned and shuttled to the southern end of the territory. 

They were reunited with Heinrich, his name now Americanized to Henry. Shortly, Anna Elizabeth Schock became the second wife of Christian Wittwer and were settled with the Whitwer family in Santa Clara. Albert remembered how kindly they were received by Christian’s first wife, Mary Magdelina Pfister Wittwer. 

While still a boy, Albert joined Henry on his Littlefield homestead. He learned the skills of a homesteader in harsh country of untamed land. With only the efforts of their hands and heads to sustain them, Albert was honed into a man of many talents. At 20 he had begun a colorful freighting career hauling rock salt from St. Thomas to St. George. He combined his freighting with carrying the mail to outposts along the way and became a rider for the Pony Express. 

He married Matilda Reber, Henrietta’s younger sister. They began their lives together in a two-room adobe home on a small plot purchased from Henry. Between freighting trips he worked the land. Then Albert was called to serve a mission for his church. He worked at hauling another year for money to sustain himself in Switzerland where he served for over three years. Four months after he left to serve, Matilda delivered twin girls. In all, 12 children were born to Albert and Matilda, with10 living to maturity. 

He returned to Littlefield to find that friends and family had helped Matilda care for the farm, but life had not resolved with any greater ease. They battled desert drought and suffered sudden gulley-washing rain. Torrential storms came, crumbling the adobe homes, washing away the land, the gardens, the vineyards, the trees, the many years of labor. Rebuilding was required again and again. 

Finally it became clear that they needed a place with more ground. So they cleared 60 acres in St. Thomas and began again. 

Albert Frehner died at age 93, in Logandale, Nevada, after a life legendary for adventure, adversity and repeated colonization. The posterity of Albert and Matilda Frehner spreads abroad in the country that received them more than a century ago and honors the name of these pioneers.