William Bond & Wife Mary Ann Barker Bond

Collegiate & Parish Church

William Bond

            William Bond was nineteen days old when his father died. Two weeks later, William’s mother Mary Ann took baby William to the Collegiate and Parish Church, located in Manchester, England (now Manchester Cathedral) to be baptized. William was almost three years old when his mother married a man named John Ramsbottom. William's step brother George was born to them.

John Ramsbottom
Locomotive engineer

 A few days before William Bond had his seventh birthday, his mother died.  William's step faher, John Ramsbottom, placed him in the Chetham’s Hospital, a Bluecoat school, where he remained for five years.  Chetham’s Hospital was able to board William, educate him, and pay for his learning trade due to the gracious endowment left in the will of its founder Humphrey Cheetham, who established the hospital and a school for needy boys.  Through the years, the number of boys varied, depending on endowments from other interested patrons.

Humphrey Chetham

The will of Humphrey Chetham did not mention an orphanage, but many of the boys had only one parent or none at all. There is no evidence that William’s half brother, George Ramsbottom, was a student at Chetham’s Hospital. He was too young to enter at the time that William was admitted.

Marry Ann Barker Bond

William Bond was evidently a good student. The information was handed down that he learned the multiplication tables in half a day.  Joseph Barker, tailor, of White Smithy Bar, Crumpsall, took William from Chetham’s Hospital School on Easter Monday, 1830, to be his apprentice. At the conclusion of the seven-year training period with Joseph Barker, William Bond worked a year as a tailor and then married Joseph Barker’s daughter, Mary Ann. He was twenty-one and she not quite seventeen years old.

Parley P. Pratt

In 1840, William and Mary Ann Barker Bond heard Elder Parley P. Pratt preach the restored Gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and were converted. Their daughter Sarah was two years old and their daughter Ann was a tiny baby when William was baptized by Elder William Blakely and Mary Ann by Elder James Williams at Blackley, Lancashire, England.

Their first son, named John for William’s father, and their daughter Margaret, named for Ann’s only sister, were born before enough money could be saved for the family’s journey to the headquarters of their Church, the Great Salt Lake Basin.

Margaret Bond

The first two children, Sarah and Ann, had been baptized at St Mark’s Cheetham. Although William and Mary Ann had left the Church of England and had joined another church, they also had John and Margaret baptized at St Mark’s, Cheetham. They did this so that if either of them died, they could be buried with the other relatives at St Mark’s.

John Bond

Though their son John was not yet four years old when William and his family (all but daughter Sarah) left England for the United States, we are indebted to him for details of the journey. He was twelve years old when the family left Fall River, Massachusetts, for the western trek. He must have learned details of crossing the ocean and the dates from his parents when he was older. He wrote in his diary, which was published after his death, entitled “Hand Carts West in ‘56”, that the family left Liverpool, England in the latter part of May of 1848, on the Ark Wright sailing vessel and arrived in Boston Harbor on 15 July, 1848. It was a rough six or seven weeks at sea. Most of the Latter-Day Saint converts at this date arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana, and then made their way on steamboats to St Louis, Missouri, to join wagon trains going west.

After 1854, because of illness, blamed on mosquitoes and other river insects, converts wishing to join the main body of the Church in the Great Salt Lake Basin arrived in Boston, New York City, or Philadelphia. They then traveled by trains to join the wagons going west. The fact that William Bond and family arrived at the Boston Harbor instead of the usual New Orleans seems to indicate that they traveled independently and not with a group. It also may mean that William Bond, being a tailor, felt his opportunity for work would be better in a textile area. There could still be another reason - Mary Ann’s brother, Joseph Barker, crossed the Atlantic with the Bond family. He was a joiner (wood carpenter) by trade and maybe opportunity for him was thought to be better in New England. He was still a member of the Church of England so he did not have religious reasons for the journey.

The William Bond family rented a seven-room house on Columbia Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, and operated a successful tailoring business. William was able to keep three tailors busy working for him.

William Bond’s obituary published in the Deseret Evening News for 9 June, 1893 said he became the presiding elder of the Fall River Branch in 1852, and held this position until he and his family left Fall River in the year 1856.  John Bond’s account said they left Fall River by steamboat to New York Harbor and then took a train to Iowa City, which was the end of the railroad then. They were taken by wagon two miles to Iowa Camp on 18 March, 1856.

William’s tailoring business at Fall River had made a living for his family and enough more to give $600.00 to a committee, which included John Taylor, Erastus Snow and others, who were to have, waiting for them at Iowa Camp, two yokes of oxen, a wagon, and other supplies needed for the thousand-mile western journey to Zion. Within a few weeks, more than 2,000 mormon converts had arrived from Europe, all needing supplies for the journey to the Rocky Mountains. The William Bond family lived in a tent at Iowa Camp while they waited four months for their wagon, oxen, etc. William supported his family by tailoring in nearby Iowa City, Iowa. By this time, they were a family of nine. Sarah, their first child, had joined them after the deaths of her Barker grandparents. Besides the four children born before they left England, there were three more born while the family resided at Fall River, Massachusetts.

Moses Cluff

Ann Bond

Their supplies finally arrived, but they were advised by some of the church leaders, including Moses Cluff who later married Ann Bond, William’s second daughter, that it was too late in the year to begin such a journey. They were advised by others to go on and the Lord would take care of them. “Where is your faith?” they were asked. In the list of members of the Hodgetts Wagon Train at the Church Historian’s office in Salt Lake City, the name of William Bond and family can be found.

The ill-fated Martin Handcart Company had left for the West on 28 July, 1856. Two days later, the company that included the William Bond family left under the leadership of William Benjamin Hodgetts. There were thirty wagons in this group. Mary Ann had brought precious souvenirs with her from England to Fall River and from Fall River to Iowa Camp, including a large oil painting of her mother, Sarah Hammond Barker. The souvenirs had been loaded with care into the wagon. They had managed to save enough to buy a new beautiful No. 8 Charter Oak kitchen cooking stove of which Mary Ann was very proud. The matching oil painting of her father, Joseph Barker, had been left in England as the property of her brother Joseph Barker who had left Fall River and returned to England just before the Bonds left for the West.

            The painting of Mary Ann’s mother had to be left along the way to lighten the load so children with sore, bleeding, and freezing feet could ride. The new cooking stove was also left by the wayside along with other much needed equipment. The journey became one of survival rather than one of bringing a bit of the old home to the new home. A heavy, early snowstorm on 20 October caused death and much suffering among the travelers. The available food was insufficient for those in the wagons, but they shared what they had with those in the handcart company. There were burials almost daily - sometimes two or three in the same shallow grave. The survivors were too weak from hunger to dig into the hard frozen earth, so sometimes they had to bury their dead with heaps of rocks and many tears.

Children were continually begging for food. Mary Jane Bond, who was only six years old, walked most of the 1,000-mile journey, as did her older brothers and sisters. When the ration was limited to a biscuit a day, William feared for his children’s lives. Mary Ann cut up an empty cloth sugar sack and gave a small piece to each child, each day, to hold in his mouth. It was hoped that there was enough sugar among the threads to give the children some energy.

Joseph Young

A son of President Brigham Young, Joseph Young, came with other scouts to break a trail in the snow for relief wagons from Great Salt Lake Valley, bringing food and warm, dry clothing to the suffering Saints. He told them that his father had said the death and suffering of the companies leaving too late would be on the heads of those who had urged the companies to leave for the West, knowing that reaching the Valley before the snow came was impossible for them.

At Greasewood Creek on 31 Oct. 1856, cattle came from the Valley to help pull the stranded wagons, left motionless because the original teams could no longer find enough food to build the necessary strength to carry on. On 10 Nov 1856, relief wagons brought more food, warm clothing and medicines (From Hand Carts West in ‘56).

William’s son John Bond, who belonged to the Hodgetts Wagon Train, wrote in his diary of Captains Martin (of the Martin handcart company), Hodgetts, and Porter: “Three more noble men could not have been chosen to aid and comfort the Saints.”  John Bond told one story of himself. Remember he was a twelve-year-old boy. He said his hunger got the better of him one day, and instead of going to prayer meeting, he stole and ate all of the dumplings a Sister Scott was cooking for her family. He said he thought the dumplings would do him more good than the prayers, but it was spoiled, for he felt so sorry for Sister Scott without her dumplings.

The last 113 miles were the hardest, but they were aided by the rescue wagons and the Valley Boys! There was six feet of snow in Echo Canyon and more than that on Big Mountain.  At 4 p.m. on 30 Nov 1856, the Bond family, “all alive, but some with frosted and bleeding feet” reached Eighth Ward Square, Great Salt Lake Valley. Those established in the Valley offered homes to the new arrivals until they could provide for themselves. The Bond family was taken to Provo, Utah (another two days’ journey) by Isaac Cooper of American Fork, Utah. John Bond related that they traveled with a spirited team. They spent the night in American Fork at Mr. Cooper’s home where they had plenty to eat and were warm. The Coopers cried when they saw the pitiful condition of the Bond family. Next morning they continued the journey to Provo (1,000 inhabitants) which they reached on 5 Dec 1856. There they lived in the seminary until a home could be provided for them. Many Saints came to render them assistance, love and comfort.

John T. Cain

Brigham Young

William worked odd jobs to support his family. With his teams he pulled sage brush and dragged logs to build homes and barns. William Henry Bond was born while the family lived in Provo. After a few years, the Bond family returned to Salt Lake Valley so William could accept a tailoring job offered to him by Mr. Claude Clive who had a contract to make costumes for the Salt Lake Theater. William also made curtains for President Brigham Young and for manager John T. Caine of the theater, said his obituary. William not only made the costumes but helped to dress the actors in them. If an actor was ill, or for some other reason unable to perform, William was always ready and able to substitute. He was especially nimble on his feet and often filled in with some fancy step-dancing.

William was of medium height, slender build, had blue eyes and dark hair. John said he was a stern man who carried himself very erect with his arms folded behind him. He kept guard in Echo Canyon in 1860 during the invasion of Johnston’s Army.

Bond Family

The Bond family then moved about fifty miles back along the Pioneer Trail to a small farming community then called Henneferville. William had driven twenty-five or thirty sheep from Salt Lake to Henefer (present name of town). He there started with twenty-five acres purchased from Col. Curtis Applebe. He built a log home for his family and for the tailoring he could do in his spare time. One relative remembered him sitting cross-legged on the table stitching away. The children became too noisy and he shouted, “County road, county road, you kids!” He meant for them to go out in the road that ran in front of his cabin to play so he could work in peace and quiet. That “county road,” later a busy highway, is again quiet since an interstate freeway has taken the through traffic.

The feet of William Bond walked these old, well-worn stones, and later the 1,000 miles to his new home in the Rocky Mountains.  William’s education, received at Chetham Hospital, was passed on to the children of Henefer, for he was one of the town’s first school teachers. He also had the town Post Office in his log cabin and took care of all the incoming and outgoing mail. His son, Joseph William Bond, at age 15, carried the mail on horseback from Heber City to Henefer. He slept overnight in Henefer and then traveled on to Ogden Utah, there staying overnight, and back to Henefer, 180 miles round trip (Henefer Our Valley Home by Maxine R. Wright).

William was the bookkeeper for the Thomas Stephens butcher shop. He held the position of Justice of the Peace so long he became known as “squire bond.” His obituary said he was always noted for his integrity and honesty. His funeral on 27 May 1898 “was conducted by Alma Eldredge and T. A. Allen of Coalville, and was largely attended, he having many relatives and friends in that State,” concluded the obituary.

William & Mary Ann

Mary Ann, William’s wife, died two and a half years before William Bond’s death. She had been faithful during all the troubles and trials. Her knowledge of the use of herbs for medicines was unselfishly offered wherever needed. She was also a midwife and was even known to set broken bones.

She was never sorry she came to Utah, but she longed to see her brother and sister in England. She felt a great loss when her sister Margaret died. She wanted news of friends and relatives she had left behind. She encouraged her brother to send his sons to her. She would give them a home and find work for them. She was very proud of her large family and her many grandchildren.

Mary Ann was short, of heavy build, had fair skin and black eyes. She parted her coal black hair in the center and combed it back from her round happy face. She was a good-natured, friendly person, with a word of greeting and encouragement for her friends and neighbors. The small grocery store she kept in one room of their log home became a gathering place for the young who loved to laugh and joke with “mother Bond,” as she was lovingly called. She loved music and enjoyed singing in the choir. Mary Ann’s obituary said she had 71 grandchildren and 26 great grandchildren.

Headstone of Mary Ann & William Bond

Hennefer Cemetery where their headstone is found

References

Original notes by Ina Harris Day.  Retrieved and edited by Ryan Spanos on January 1, 2012 from: http://www.myfamilyhistoryjj.com/TNG/getperson.php?personID=I124367&tree=1

Photos retrieved from findagrave.com