WILLIAM WHITEHEAD
"A HANDCART PIONEER"
FATHER OF MARGARET ELIZABETH WHITEHEAD
William Whitehead was born on the 23rd of November 1839, at Calfley, Friarmere, Saddleworth, Yorkshire, England. He was the son of Martha Whitehead and Robert Wright, who was a machine printer at the Denshaw Print Works. According to family history, he grew up in the home of his grandparents, James Whitehead and Hannah Hepworth Whitehead in Oldham.
It is said that he received a fine education in England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the date of his baptism seems uncertain. According to the Franklin ward records, he was baptized by James Gledhill in November 1852, and was confirmed the same month by William Scofield. This would have made him about thirteen years old at the time. However, according to the temple index bureau record card, he was baptized November 2O, l854. This would have made him just a few days short of fifteen years old.
William immigrated to Utah in 1859. He sailed on the William Tapscott, a ship of 1,750 tons register. The ship had been chartered by the church and sailed from England (probably Liverpool) for New York on April 1, 1859. His age is given in the immigration records as twenty, though he would not have reached the full age of twenty until November of that year. According to the emigration records, he gave his address as Manchester, and his occupation as factory worker. The price of his ticket, steerage class, was 4.60 Pounds. There were 601 adult passengers, 92 children, and 32 infants, making a total of 725 emigrants from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. Also included were some missionaries returning to the United States. One of the returning missionaries, according to family history, was an Elder William Taylor, with whom he later stayed in Lehi, Utah.
The William Tapscott arrived in New York after a pleasant voyage of 31 days. According to the book, Handcarts to Zion, the party of emigrants left New York on May 14,1859, on the steamer " Isaac Newton" for Albany. From Albany, they took the Hannibal and St. Joseph railway to St. Joseph, Missouri. From there, they took riverboats on the Missouri River to Florence, Nebraska. Florence was the staging and departure point for the handcart companies. William Whitehead was a member of the Eighth Handcart Company. According to the book, Handcarts to Zion, the company was made up of 235 persons. There were 60 handcarts, and six ox-drawn wagons to haul provisions and the sick. George Rowley was Captain of the company, and there was a sub-captain for each ten carts. The carts each had a cover made from bed-ticking and stretched over three bows. The company started from Florence on June 9,1859 and traveled four miles. On the tenth, they laid over to get organized. On the eleventh, they started out in earnest and traveled sixteen miles. On the twelfth, the group traveled twenty-two miles and ran into swarms of big mosquitoes. Provisions for ten days for one person included ten pounds of flour, one pound of bacon, a little sugar and some salt.
The company met a large band of Sioux Indians on July 3rd. They were the first Indians most the emigrants had ever seen, and it was a terrifying experience for them. The Indians demanded food, and were given three sacks of flour and some bacon. That night, the Indians staged a dance. Next morning, the company left early hoping to elude the Indians, but some of the Indians followed them and tried to make a deal for a "white squaw." There was another encounter with Indians in the Devil's Gate area, which frightened the emigrants. There had just been a battle between two tribes. The victorious tribe had a number of prisoners, and they invited a number of the men in the handcart company to visit their camp to watch the prisoners be tortured to death. The men respectfully declined the invitation. The main company ran low on food and many were suffering from starvation when a supply wagon train from Salt Lake City reached them after traveling night and day to come to their aid. The company arrived in Salt Lake City on the afternoon of Sunday, September 4, 1859. They were met, on their arrival, by a large crowd, including two or three bands. For a more complete account of the trek of the Eighth Handcart Company, the book Handcarts to Zion is highly recommended.
According to family history, due to the extreme heat and exposure during the trek, and the strain of pulling a cart, William ruptured a blood vessel in his head and was in serious condition for some time. It is said that as a hardship of the handcart journey, he was never a very strong man.
William located at Lehi, Utah, living with Elder William Taylor, until his Aunt Mary brought him to Ogden. Mary had promised to look after William until the Ramsbottom family could immigrate. William's mother, Martha Whitehead, married Henry Ramsbottom in August of 1853. In the early spring of 1862, William along with his two cousins, Ben and James Chadwick, moved to Franklin, Idaho. He helped Ben and James bring logs out of the canyon and helped them build a house for their mother (i.e. Williams' Aunt Mary).
According to family history, in 1862, William went to Salt Lake City to meet his sweetheart whom he had left in England in 1859. He expected to bring her back to Franklin with him. However, when he arrived, he found her already married. On the way back from Salt Lake City, he married Margaret Green whom he had previously known in England. Family records give the marriage date as March 28, 1862. However, there seems reason to believe that the marriage may have actually taken place a year later, in 1863.
William met his mother and family in Ogden and brought them to Franklin in a covered wagon in the fall of 1869. It is likely that the family arrived in Ogden by train, as the transcontinental railway had been completed in May of that year.
In 1872, with his first wife's consent William married Alice Butterworth and they all lived together in the same house. Alice died soon after the birth of her first child, Alice Whitehead.
According to the records of district court of the third judicial district of the territory of Idaho, in and for the county of Oneida, William Whitehead made application for and was granted United States citizenship on July 8, 1873.
According to family history, William was one of the first city councilmen chosen when Franklin was organized a city in 1878. After his day's work, William would read and study by candlelight until very late. He was eager to learn and he attended the night school of William Wright. He also attended the Elders' School. He was a bookkeeper for Merrick and Duffin, also for the first co-op store. He was ward clerk and choir leader, and was active in dramatics. He was a member of the militia, and was a minute-man. He was also a good mason and farmer (according to the 1880 census records, he gave his occupation as stone mason). William was always noted for his cleanliness and neatness of person. It was said of him, "every hair and thread must be laid just right at all times."
William had eleven children by his first wife, Margaret. He loved his family dearly, but they were very poor. He was a small man of medium complexion with blue eyes. He died of a ruptured appendix, but the date of his death does not seem certain. The archives of the Genealogical Society in Salt Lake City gives the date as April l2, 1881. Family records submitted to the Genealogical Society by the Ramsbottom family give the date as April 2, 1882. If 1881 is the correct date, he would have been forty-one years old at the time of his death.
The following experience was told to Sarah Eppich by an unidentified son of William Whitehead on February 21, 1940 at Cornish, Utah. "I left Monday morning to go up Maple Creek to chop logs. When I left, father was not feeling very well. Monday night, a strange woman came into my cabin and woke me. She told me I was needed at home. I woke the other men and asked them if they had seen her, but none of them had. Then I got up and looked for tracks in the snow, but although it was three feet deep, there were no tracks. The next morning I had just felled one tree and started on another when the same woman I had seen came and told me that I was needed at home. Then, in a flash, I saw my brother, Peter G., coming on a horse to meet me. I told my friends, and we locked the cabin and started down the canyon. We met Peter, six years old at the time, at the bottom of Lowe's hill. He was coming on a horse to meet us. When I reached home, my father was sitting in a big chair with a quilt wrapped around him. I talked to him for a little while, and then my mother came into the room and told me the cows had broken through the willow fence and got out. I left to fix the fence, and when I returned, they told me my father had just passed away. He had died of appendicitis while sitting in the chair."
A note about Saddleworth
There seems to be some confusion in the family records about Saddleworth. It is in the County of York, but because of historical circumstances, the Church of England there was a part of the parish of Rochdale, which was in Lancashire. A book published in 1795, written by John Aiken gives the following information about Saddleworth. "Saddleworth is a large valley, about seven miles long, and five across in the broadest part, situated in an angle of Yorkshire between Lancashire and northeastern projection of Cheshire. It is a wild bleak region of which a very small part is under cultivation; but industry has accumulated in it a large number of inhabitants, who gain the comfortable subsistence by the manufactory of woolen cloth for which the place is peculiarly famous. The district is divided into four quarters, called meres, Quick-mere; Lord's mere, Shaw-mere, and Friar-mere. The latter was once an estate belonging to the Black Friars, who had a house or grange there, near Delph. The houses are all built of stone, which is in great plenty; but timber comes high, being brought from Hull or Liverpool, and undergoing an expensive land carriage; hence house-rents are dear. This hinderance to improvement, it is hoped, will be removed in a great measure by the new Huddersfield and Ashton Canal, which will pass through the midst of Saddleworth." Another book, published in 1825, names Calfhey as one of the places in the Saddleworth area. Calfhey could not have been a very prominent place, as we have not been able to locate it on any map. It was probably a very small village or settlement; and was probably somewhere in the area near Delph and Denshaw, as William Whitehead's birth was registered in Delph.
.... Take from the
Whitehead Family Magazine
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