Tobler Brothers

Jacob Tobler and his wife, Anna Catherine Preseig, were baptized in the Swiss village Schönengrund, Apenzell, August 10, 1856. Their faith strong, they joined the first Swiss convert immigrant company and arrived in America in 1861. On the journey west, Anna Catherine died from cholera. Widowed and childless Jacob continued to the Salt Lake Valley. He was immediately assigned to join a company of Swiss saints called to settle Santa Clara. Brigham Young counseled unmarried men to find wives before departure. Accordingly, Jacob proposed to young Anna Barbara Staheli, who had crossed in the same company as he. They were married in the newly completed Endowment House. Daniel Bonneli led the band of Swiss immigrants into the red rock country of the Southern Territory where they found the terrain shocking in its harsh welcome.

Anna Barbara bore 11 children to Jacob Tobler and accepted 2 more wives into the family under the prevailing practice of polygamy. One at a time, he married two widows. Barbara Hafen, with whom he had four children, and Rosina Reber who bore six children.

In this narrative we focus on 2 of the 21 Tobler children whose lives intersect in the Virgin Valley. Half brothers, Harmon Christian Tobler, son of Barbara Staheli, and John Alfred Tobler, son of Rosina Reber. They were stalwarts in the settlement and development of the valley. The influence of their posterity echoes there today.

Harmon Christian and his young wife, Lillian Graff, found pioneering the untamed town of Bunkerville a challenge that tested their limits. Nevertheless, they became mainstays in the community. Harmon served in many capacities with his keen mind and devotion to community. Among his service was Justice of the Peace and in the Nevada State Assembly. Seven children were born to them in 20 years, and Lillian’s death in 1923 left the young family mourning. In a little more than a year, Harmon married Leah Leavitt and added three more children.

John Alfred Tobler and Delma Knight married in 1904 and a year later made their home in Mesquite, where they and much of their posterity would remain for the rest of their lives. At first they struggled to grow food for sustenance, but as they became more skilled gardeners, they helped to develop vineyards that produced a cash crop of raisins which was productive for many years. Always involved in community building, Alfred was instrumental in building the first grist mill in the area, a sorely needed addition. Ten children were born to John Alfred Tobler and Delma Knight Tobler.

The Tobler brothers imprinted their hard-working Swiss industriousness upon their families and were exemplary members of their adopted society.

Jonathan Hunt

The family Hunt in this country began with Lieutenant Ralph Hunt Sr, born in London in 1613. Believed to have immigrated in 1652. A colonist in Long Island, New York, he was an early leader in Middleburgh where he served as a magistrate, freeholder, and later a lieutenant. The Nanney family descends through Wheelwrights, early Puritan immigrants.

Six generations later, their descendants Jonathan Hunt and Susan Charlotte Nanney married. Both were born in Muhlenbery County, Kentucky, in the 1840s. The Nanney family of 12 children were orphaned when Susan was in her early teens. The Hunt family had accepted the restored gospel, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and migrated to Utah. 

Jonathan remained in Kentucky, having suffered the death of his first wife and two infant children, and was himself afflicted with Tuberculosis. In 1865, he married Susan Charlotte Nanney. When their first three children were ages nine, seven and five, they headed west, where Jon’s parents and siblings were eager to help them. 

After a brief sojourn in Ogden, family members came and helped move them south to Hebron. From Hebron they moved to Gunlock where in 1881, Jonathan Hunt died, leaving his wife and six children. Hardships drove the family from place to place until at last they were settled in Bunkerville. One by one, the children married and formed families of their own. Susan suffered the deaths of children and grandchildren, and worked wherever she could find a path to sustenance. 

Parley, who had been 13 at his father’s death, assumed responsibility for his mother and siblings. While the others married, he did not. He served two missions and served in the valley where there was need. In his later years, he was known as Uncle Parley to many. Succeeding generations of Hunt descendants continue to build the valley to the present day.

Johan & Anna Marie Stucki Hafen

Was born in Rotenbeck, Switzerland in 1854 to Samuel Stucki and Magdalena Stettlar. When missionaries brought the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ to their midst, they embraced it wholeheartedly. They sold their property, left their beautiful green valley and boarded a ship bound for America. Upon reaching Florence, Nebraska, they paused while their carpenter father helped build handcarts to ease the company passage across the great plains.

Mary was six when she walked alongside the cart her father and mother pulled. They trekked across 1,000 miles, facing all types of challenges, and arrived in Salt Lake in September 1860. Along the way, her name was Americanized and became Mary Ann.

In 1861, their company was assigned to settle in Santa Clara. Taming the wild land took all their strength. At age 19, Mary Ann married John Reber. Life was glorious for four days until John was tragically killed in an accident. Though still mourning his loss, her parents urged her to marry again. Three months later she married John George Hafen as his second wife. 

The 20 years that followed brought 6 children and much experience in overcoming the unexpected challenges of being a pioneer. It included long absences of John as he served missions as well as two more wives added to the family.

As time went on, more and more people came to Santa Clara, making farming ground ever more scarce. For people practicing polygamy, there was an ever-present threat from federal marshals. It was decided that Mary Ann and her six children should move downriver to Bunkerville and begin again. She wrote of her feelings leaving Santa Clara, her siblings, her parents and her neighbors, “I knew I was going to the same kind of hardship I had known as a child. That my children were going to grow up in a strange land with scarcely a relative near.”

But the people of Bunkerville were captivated by the pretty young mother with the bright spirit, alone with six children. Her eldest son, Albert was 16 and her greatest supporter. Her husband, John visited when he could, but of necessity, rarely. One more child was born to Mary and John in Bunkerville. Mary lived the rest of her life in Bunkerville. She was a community stalwart, loved and admired by all her fellow residents. Her children grew, noted as generous contributors. Community children loved to sit in a circle around her and hear her tell the stories of her life when she was their age.

Her later years were spent joyously working in the temple. Mary Ann Stucki Reber Hafen died January 16, 1946, age 92. She left this earth revered, loved, respected by all who knew her. Her small autobiography, Recollections of A Handcart Pioneer, is a treasured record of courage and faith.

James Richie Mcknight

In 1856, James Richie McKnight’s parents, James McKnight and his wife, Sarah Ann Howell, made their perilous way from Australia to San Bernardino, California. As converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they were barely settled when the call came for all saints to gather to Utah. Along the trail their first son, James Richie McKnight, was born October 30, 1856 on the banks of the Mohave River.

By May, they had reached Cedar City where they stopped for the summer. Their next call was to go south to Washington to join the Cotton Mission.

Disappointed in the climate, James moved his family to Minersville, where eight more children were born to them.

James Richie McKnight grew up in the large family home, one of eleven children, in Minersville, Utah. Learning sacrifice from church service and responsibilities, he was virtually self-educated with only three weeks of formal schooling. In 1880, he married Sarah Ann Zabriskie. They were parents of seven children.

Their lives were filled with adventures and misadventures, rich in experience and devotion. 

Challenged by ill health, James fought battles with drought and flood. He endured the measure of failures and successes indigenous to the place and the time. 

James Richie McKnight died at his home in Beaver Dam, Arizona, on November 10, 1927. Sarah Ann passed in Beaver Dam on April 9, 1939. James left a legacy of hard work, sacrifice and service. 

Today, a road named McKnight Boulevard passes through Beaver Dam, lined with apricot trees that survived the big flood of March 1906. A reminder of a man both courageous and tenacious who left his mark on the land.

Ithamer Thomas Sprague Sr.

In April 1629, nine years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, seven members of the family Sprague came aboard a small ship at Gravesend Harbor bound for a new life. They sailed down the Thames, out onto the Atlanic Ocean bound for Massachusetts Bay, with no inkling that they formed a nucleus that would become instruments in the settling of America, ultimately in conquering the great American West.

William Sprague was 19. He married Millicent Eames and found his way to Hingham Mass., where he became prominent in church and civic affairs. William, is the forebear of Hezakiah Sprague, who with his family, including Ithamer Thomas, embraced their new faith and endured the persecutions attendant to budding sainthood. 

Ithamer Thomas Sprague was born September 18, 1807, at Oxford, New York. He and his wife, Elizabeth Goodner, with their five little ones endured the forced exodus from Nauvoo, only to have Elizabeth and five children die as they suffered through the winter of 1846, at Mt. Pisgah. Sorrowing, Ithamer continued west with Brigham Young, using his blacksmith skill to keep the company’s oxen shod and wagons repaired. 

Ithamer married Sarah Steadwell and they became among the first settlers of Ogden. Five children were born to them. They later moved into Echo Canyon, where he took up farming and built a blacksmith shop. In 1863, Ithamer Sprague answered the call of Brigham Young to the Cotton Mission. Sarah Sally Steadman Sprague refused to go, leaving only two of their five children to accompany their father; Ithamer Smith Sprague and Rebecca Sprague.

In St. George, cotton became secondary to the building of a temple. Again, his skills were needed and applied as he lent his strength to building the St. George Temple. He helped to establish a community. At age 70, still vital and devoted, he was called once again to create a new settlement along the Virgin River, still further south. So, in 1878 with his third wife, Mary Prince and two of his five children, he moved to Mesquite Flats. It was perhaps his hardest challenge. He gave the remainder of his strength and died there April 13, 1879. His was the first burial in the newly established Bunkerville Cemetery. 

Asahel james Barnum

The first American Barnham was Thomas Barnham who came to Connecticut about 1650. He became one of the first eight settlers of Danbury, Connecticut. From that time, the name was shortened to Barnum in America. 

In the Revolutionary War found Barnum soldiers and supporters on both sides of the conflict. After the war, many British loyalists fled to Ontario, Canada, including Nathan Bunnell Barnum. His suffering placed his descendants on a greatly altered path.

Nathan’s son, James Russell Barnum, embraced the doctrine of the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but died in Michigan in 1842, before he could join the main body of the saints. His widow, Anna Maria Truman continued the journey with three little children, braving the rigors of Kirtland and Nauvoo. At Winter Quarters, she married Lyman Stoddard. With her sons, John Bunnell Barnum and Henry James Barnum, she completed the arduous trek across the great plains into the Salt Lake Valley.

By 1868, John Bunnell Barnum had taken a wife, Esther Minerva Murray. They were living in Peoa, Summit County Utah with their three young sons, Asahel James, Charles Henry and John Almus. Tragedy struck and John Bunnell Barnum drowned helping a wagon train across the Green River. Esther Minerva Barnum, widowed at 33, struggled for four years with three little boys. 

John Pulsipher took Minerva as his wife. They moved to the far southern reaches of the territory as the Pulsipher family were leaders in the Indian Mission then centered in Hebron, Utah.

Ashel James Barnum, married Martha Ann Pusipher. Their destiny became conquering the harsh, resistant desert into a home for hundreds of their own posterity and multitudes more.