Biography of Andrew Vinson Gibbons (1849-1932) Part 5—Arizona

Lee's Ferry Crossing with Livestock
National Park Service Photo

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.

ARIZONA 

While this child [Lovina Ella] was still of nursing age, perhaps in the summer of 1883, A.V. and his young family decided to move. Tantalizing stories of the year-round farming afforded by the warm Arizona winters appear to have drifted north and attracted A.V. to the point where he decided to move himself and his family to the Salt River Valley. Several LDS colonies were existent in the area and, besides the extended agricultural year, had the pleasant feature of considerably less difficulty with Indians, water rights, insect hoards, and outlaws. To the average LDS colonizer the Salt River Valley must have appeared as an opportunity too good to miss, and A.V. decided not to let the chance pass to go there. 

Packing all the belongings they would keep into three wagons, two drawn by ox teams and one by horses, the Gibbonses set out with their stock in a caravan with three other families: James W. Watson, Lorenzo Watson, and Jim Blazzard and their wives and children. A.V. drove an ox team, Elizabeth drove the horses, and it is uncertain who drove the second ox team. Perhaps it was Ella, but she was still not far removed from having had a baby. To insure a successful start in Arizona, A.V's wagon contained stores of one and a half to two years of food and clothing. 

The trip to the Salt River Valley offered a pleasant bonus: the opportunity to visit all of the parents and brothers and sisters who had moved to St. Johns. The trip to St. Johns would take three months, and the trip to the Salt River Valley would take only weeks after that. Since there was no time deadline imposed on arriving in the valley because of crop planting, due to the year-round climate, the St. Johns visit could be made in a leisurely fashion. 

The route of the trip was well marked because of the heavy flow of Saints toward Arizona. There was at the time a massive movement of missionaries south to Arizona called in the same way A.V.'s father and father-in-law had been. Though there had been in previous days much difficulty with Indians while travelling through northern Arizona, the practice of travelling in caravans, the large number of travelling caravans, and the pacifying of the Indians by the Mormon missionaries, Andrew Smith Gibbons among them, made the trip less hazardous. 

No report is known of dangers encountered during this trip other than the usual difficulties attendant to transporting numbers of people and animals over desolate and difficult terrain. At Lee's Ferry, A.V. did encounter some difficulty in transporting his cattle across the Colorado River. One cow lost the spirit of rafting and jumped off the ferry into the river. All of the other cows, probably for the same reason, followed and all swam back to the shore from which they had just embarked. The cows did cross the river, but only on the second try. 

Though the Gibbons family was provisioned not only for the trio but for a year or more following the trip, there were some provisions which could not be stored. Fresh milk for the children was one of them. It is told that on the trip Elizabeth pressed the need for milk to A.V. to the point that he agreed to find some and set out to procure the milk. Disappearing one morning, A.V. returned shortly with a pan full of warm, fresh milk. This was a surprise to the women, who knew that none of their cows were at the time giving milk. Nor could they learn from others in the caravan that their cows were supplying the milk. Yet morning after morning, A.V. supplied it as requested. Elizabeth was curious to find the source and spied on A.V. as he made one of his daily runs. She followed him as he left the camp and watched in amazement as he milked one of the caravan's mares and returned to camp with his prize, proud of his resourcefulness. 

The arrival in St. John's was no doubt a great relief after three months on the trail, and the grand parents must have been very pleased to see the growth in children they had not seen for a year and new children they had never seen. Even more significantly, there is little doubt but that the Saints in St. Johns were very pleased to see outsiders arrive, for it meant the chance to persuade them to join the growing, if beleaguered, settlement and add much needed numbers and strength to the yet tender and vulnerable colony. 

A.V. was aware of the desire within the St. John's Saints for comrades to help them in their struggle for settlement. As a youngster in the Muddy Mission and in St. George he had been a witness to the continual visits of outsiders to those villages and the decision made by each of them either to stay and build the area or to move on in search of a more likeable location. Certainly there was a great deal in St. Johns to appeal to A.V., for many of the settlers there were old associates—co-workers with Andrew S. in the missionary labor. The settlement was also a highly progressive one, and there were already organizing efforts underway for irrigation projects, schools, cooperative mercantile establishments, and cultural projects. 

To put proper perspective on the events of A.V.'s visit to St. John's, and to build a better background for understanding the conditions of the times, it is necessary to digress for a historical sketch of St. John's from 1873 to 1883. 

To be continued . . .