Biography of Andrew Vinson Gibbons, (1849-1932) Part 3—St. George and the Muddy Mission

Pah-Ute County, Arizona, with Mormon pioneer communities of
Callville, St. Thomas and St. Joseph
Showing original extent of County, and Portion ceded to Nevada in 1869-1870

Biography of Andrew Vinson Gibbons (1849-1932)

Part 1—Childhood

Part 2—Santa Clara
Part 3—St. George and the Muddy Mission
Part 4--Glendale and Marriage
Part 5--Arizona
Part 6--St. Johns

By Andrew Smith Gibbons, III, Ph.D.

ST. GEORGE

The flood had further effects upon A.V.'s family. It occasioned a move of the entire family from Santa Clara to St. George, where the one-year-old Cotton Mission had begun to assemble a city. The move came quickly upon the heels of the flood, and by May 9, 1862, it was complete, a house had been built, and a baby, Joshua Smith Gibbons, had been born in it. 

The work load A. V, and his growing band of brothers and sisters must have born in setting up a new home and beginning to produce food must have been heavy, but by now familiar. In addition to their share of the work in getting established, it is possible that some amount of extra work fell to A.V. and the other children as their father assumed the duties of Sherriff of Washington County, which involved duties of keeping the peace among white men and dealing with Indians as well. 

By March of 1863 the conditions of the Gibbons-Dart marriage had arrived at a state where divorce was the only solution. The problems of plural marriage must have been considerable, and those pressures now returned the Gibbons family to almost its former size. A.V., by now 14 years old, no doubt had some experiences during this period as he tried to understand the complexities of the adult world. Also during this period, he was acting head of the house again as his father accompanied Jacob Hamblin for three months to visit the Hopi villages and the Colorado River country. The anxiety and work brought on by these trips must have been considerable but the rewards in and interest must have been great as the Elder Gibbons returned home with stories of unbelievable adventures. Also, the knowledge of having done well in their father's absence must have inspired confidence and pride in the Gibbons children. 

MUDDY MISSION 

The children of Andrew and Rizpah Gibbons
Standing: William, Richard, Joshua, Leroy
Seated: Martha, Andrew Vinson, Eliza

Nearly a year of hard work turned the Gibbons family fortunes to the good. At the end of it, in March 1864, A.S. Gibbons resigned his duties as Sheriff, as if to free more time. It was short-lived freedom, however, because in October he was called to be President of the Muddy Indian Mission. For the Gibbons family, which contained by now six children (Martha Sarah, 18, and married; A.V., one month short of 15; William, almost 13; Eliza, 11; Richard, 6; and Joshua, 2) it was a characteristically timed call, since Rizpah was eight months pregnant when it came. Of course, the call was accepted. 

The call took A.S. Gibbons from home on January 1, 1865 for a period of perhaps nine or ten months. As their mother was incapacitated, a good deal of the family responsibilities fell to them once again, particularly A.V., who was now not just the oldest boy but the oldest child in the home. In the autumn of 1865, the family was reunited in St. Thomas, buried today under Lake Mead, a town to which their father had led the citizens and helped to locate, design, and build. In St. Thomas the family, along with a small number of other families, was living in an arid desert somewhat different from their St. George home. St. Thomas, at first the sole town in this desert, was soon joined by other towns, St. Joseph and Simonville, as new settler-missionaries arrived in the area. 

For A.V. Gibbons and his brothers and sisters, none of them quite adults yet, the experience of living in the Muddy Mission must have been a memorable experience. Not only were there relations with sometimes angry Indians to be observed, but there was the necessity of making acquaintances with new hosts of young people. Years after he had lived in St. Thomas, Richard Gibbons related in his journal the meeting of an old friend whom he has known as a youth in St. Thomas. The entry carries with it the feeling of enjoyment Richard experienced: ". . . I met Mary McFate who was the wife of F. Burke. We were children together in St. Thomas on the Muddy. We had a good talk about old times." Behind the entry can be imagined an absorbing story of the two childhood friends, pioneers in a forbidding land, who had had many experiences to recall and share together. 

For A.V., now nearly the age of a man, there must have been interest not only in making friends, but in courting as well. The St. Thomas population was by no means stable or stale. It consisted of a core of permanent citizens and a continuing flow of prospective citizens, as new arrivals came and either were assimilated into the community or moved on. 

This ebb and flow of settlers continued for the years that the Gibbonses were in the Muddy Mission—1865 to 1870. A.V.’s important late adolescent years were passed in St. Thomas, and it was there that he grew to be a man in years and stature. He also at this time began to accumulate goods of his own, looking toward a dav of marriage. We can expect from his breadth of experience at he had reached manhood in other ways long before this time. 

Andrew Smith Gibbons (b. 1825)
Arizona Territorial Legislator
From Pah-Ute County

During the St. Thomas years, A.V.'s mother bore three more children: Charles Rudolphus on June 15, 1866, and twin girls, Evaline and Adeline on May 4, 1869. Between these two events, in November 1868, the Gibbons children must have been proud to see their father elected to the Arizona Territorial Legislature in Tucson. A.V. and his brother William drove their father and the other Pah-Ute County legislator, Octavius D. Gass, south to the junction of the Virgin and Colorado Rivers to launch a boat into the rapids on a trip that would take Gibbons and Gass to Yuma, from which point they would travel nearly three hundred miles to Tucson cross-country. It was the best Gass mileage Gibbons ever got. 

The river trip was only one of several encounters the Elder Gibbons had with the river. It was a part of his daily environment, and no doubt the Gibbons boys received a liberal education in boatmanship from their father in St. Thomas as well as learning the other necessary lessons in farming, herding, Indian pacifying, and desert survival. We may be tempted to pity youngsters pressed into such demanding experiences as the Gibbons children encountered—far from the refinements of the larger society—but we should keep in mind that their education was by no means lacking. Their tutors were of the highest and proven quality. They rubbed shoulders with great names out of history: apostles and prophets, Indian chiefs, politicians and explorers. Most importantly, they daily associated with pioneers of the caliber to tame wildernesses and thank God for the opportunity. 


To be continued . . .

NOTES

To read more about the fascinating history of the Muddy Mission and the families who lived there, see:

Monique Elaine Kimball's Master's Thesis, "A Matter of Faith: A Study of the Muddy Mission," (University of Nevada-Las Vegas, 1988);

Susan Lyman-Whitney's archived Deseret News article on the Muddy Mission;
The "Muddy Mission" entry in O.N.E., the Online Nevada Encyclopedia;
The 1991 unattributed, archived Church News article, "Muddy Mission Settled in a Forbidding, Lonely Area"; and
Helaman Pratt's notes on the Muddy Mission.

Also, listen to the 2000 Sunstone Symposium presentation by Lois F. Worlton, Jack Worlton and Melvin T. Smith, "The Muddy: A Mission Too Far?"