Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young

Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young, one of the three original pioneer women of Utah, was in a sense the matriarch of the three, as she was the actual mother of one of them, Clara, President Brigham Young’s wife. She was born of Welsh ancestry on September 7, 1803, at Hillsboro, New Hampshire, a daughter of Oliver Wheeler and Hannah Ashby, was reared in Salem, Massachusetts, her mother’s home, and after a brief schooling, was employed in one of the local mills, where she became an expert spinner of flax and wool. When she was seventeen, she moved to Ontario County, New York, where she taught school in the vicinity of the Hill Cumorah. Here she met Isaac Decker, to whom she was married in 1821. She bore him six children, four girls and two boys, Harriet Amelia Decker, Fannie Maria Decker, Lucy Ann Decker, Charles Franklin Decker, Clarissa Clara Decker, and Isaac Perry Decker. For a time, she lived with her first husband at Freedom, N. Y., and in 1833 removed to Portage County, Ohio, where they became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Subsequently, the Deckers took up land near Kirtland, Ohio, and acquired considerable prosperity, only to lose everything in the catastrophe that overtook the Saints in 1837.

For the journey to Missouri, they were furnished a team by Lorenzo Dow Young. Still hounded by disaster, they fled from the new Zion to Quincy, Illinois, and ultimately settled in Nauvoo. In Nauvoo, Harriet separated from Isaac Decker and married Lorenzo Young, on March 9, 1843. Two children were issued from this union. After sharing in the expulsion from Nauvoo, Harriet was permitted to remain with Lorenzo when he was chosen as one of the original pioneers in the spring of 1847 because she was in delicate health and her husband was afraid she would die if he left her in the Missouri bottoms.

After she came to Utah Harriet became indispensable to the life of Lorenzo Young, seeing after his business, keeping his books, and otherwise aiding him, in addition to her duties as a housewife. After living a noble and useful life, she died in Salt Lake City, on December 22, 1871.

(Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. 2, p. 481)

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Before the journey was over there was a great deal of sickness and the women nursed and cared for the sick; they were truly ministering angels. They were greatly blessed for not one soul died on the journey. As they entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake, try and imagine, if you can, the feeling of these three women. Harriet gazed at the desolate wilderness and cried. She said to her husband, “Weak and weary as I am, I would rather go one thousand miles farther than stay in such a forsaken place as this. “Ellen Kimball said nothing but looked heartbroken. Clara, the pretty young wife of Brigham Young, said, “Things do not look dreary to me. I am satisfied to abide by my husband’s decision that ‘This is the Place’. There aren’t any trees, but they can be planted.”

The first winter in the valley the saints lived in the old fort for protection against the Indians and wild animals. The entrances to the fort were carefully guarded by heavy gates and were kept locked at night.

Lorenzo Young was the first to move his family out of the fort. He and Harriet moved into their first real home in December of that first winter. This was a risky thing to do, as they were without the protection of the fort. Their friends feared for their safety. One day Harriet was alone with her three-month-old baby boy when a fierce-looking Indian came to her door and demanded bread. She gave him all she had, three small biscuits But this didn’t satisfy him, he wanted more. When she refused him he drew his bow and aimed his arrow at her heart. She feared her last moment had come, as well as that of her baby, and then she remembered that in the other room was a large dog, a powerful mastiff her husband had given her for her protection. She quickly made signs to the Indian as if she would get more bread. She stepped into the next room and released the dog with a command to seize the Indian. The dog bounded through the door and bore the Indian to the ground. He begged for his life. After Harriet had relieved him of his bow and arrow, she called off the dog, and after washing and binding up the wounds of the Indian, she set him free.

With her husband Lorenzo Young, Harriet bore two more children, John Brigham Young, and little Lorenzo S. Young It has been said that in planting a colony of people in the wilderness and establishing a civilized community, it is the women who play the most heroic part. Their dangers are great; their anxieties are greater. The women here in the valley were drawn closely together. Around that great prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread”, centered most of their activities, and, as the poem says, they “cut desire into short lengths and fed it to the hungry fires of courage.” Long after, when the flames had died, molten gold gleamed in the ashes where they gathered it into bruised palms and handed it to their children and their children’s children. Soon they began to see the fulfillment of that wonderful prophecy, “and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

“Descendants of George Edwin Little & Martha Taylor” by Teton Jackman & Mattie Hanks printed by Copy Cat Print Shop, Provo, Utah, pp. 11-12.

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ISAAC DECKER

In answer to questions about Harriet’s first husband with whom she bore six children, we must include information about Harriet’s life with Isaac Decker. He remained faithful to his commitments to the Lord his entire life.

Isaac Decker was a prosperous farmer and gathered considerable means around him, but when the call was made, he freely placed everything upon the altar to relieve the financial distress of the Church. In the fall of 1837, the family went to Kirtland, penniless, and at the time the saints were leaving that town under the stress of dire persecution, Lorenzo D. Young gave Isaac Decker a team and otherwise assisted him on his journey to Missouri, whither the Decker’s went in 1837.

In Missouri, the family was exposed to the bitter storm of persecution which descended upon the saints there. Under the exterminating order of Gov. Boggs, they fled to Quincy, Illinois, and subsequently resided at Winchester, where Harriet’s son Isaac Perry was born. In 1841 the family removed to Nauvoo, where the husband and wife separated and Harriet became the wife of Lorenzo Dow Young, on March 9, 1843. Bro. Young had been a true friend to the Decker family in Ohio and Missouri.

(From: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19358065/isaac_decker)

Mormon Pioneer Remembered. By Deseret News. Nov 24, 2006, 12:00 am MDT, Larry Weist – On a cold, cloudy morning under a threatening sky, 40 descendants and friends of Isaac Decker gathered Nov. 11 in Salt Lake City Cemetery to rededicate his grave and unveil a new headstone to the early Mormon pioneer whose first wife and two of his daughters became polygamous wives in the Young family.

Decker was born Nov. 29, 1799, at Taghkanic, Columbia County, N.Y. He married Harriet Page Wheeler and they settled in 1820 in Phelps, Ontario County, N.Y., and had their first three children there: Lucy, Charles, and Harriet. Although Phelps is only a few miles from the Hill Cumorah, the birthplace of the LDS Church Restoration, there are no records connecting the Deckers with church founder Joseph Smith and his associates during those years.

Stevens Call Nelson, a great-great-grandson of Decker, dressed in period costume, gave a short life history of Decker. Richard B. “Andy” Anderson, a great-great-great-grandson, arranged the proceedings and gave the dedicatory prayer.

Anderson said the Decker family moved in 1827 to Freedom, Cattaraugus County, some 100 miles west, where Clara and Fanny were born. Here they were neighbors to Warren Cowdery, who presided over the local Latter-day Saints. When Cowdery took his flock to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1836, the Deckers joined the exodus and settled in New Portage, Ohio, although there is no record that they then were church members.

Apparently, the Deckers joined the church in New Portage, Anderson said. Subsequently, they moved to Franklin, Ohio, where the fairly well-to-do Decker gave all of the family’s assets to Joseph Smith in a vain attempt to save the Kirtland Safety Society, an unchartered bank founded by Smith. The failure of the bank caused great consternation among the Saints, with a large number leaving the church and speaking out against Smith.

The newly impoverished Deckers stayed true to the faith, and, with the help of friend and neighbor Lorenzo Dow Young, Brigham Young’s brother, they moved in 1837 to Missouri. “They bore a share in all Zion’s trials and persecutions there and were eventually driven out, penniless, again, with the homeless Saints, settling in Winchester, Scott County, Ill., where Isaac Perry, their last child, was born in 1840,” Anderson said.

By 1843, Isaac and Harriet had separated, most likely because of poverty, Anderson said, and Harriet became Lorenzo Dow Young’s first polygamous wife. “There are competing stories on why they separated, and a story that comes from Orson Whitney said the split was amicable,” Anderson said. “One story that comes down through the family is that when Joseph Smith asked Isaac for a contribution to the bank and he gave everything he had, Joseph told him not to tell anyone, including Harriet.

“Later, when Harriet found out about the practice of polygamy, she brought a teenage girl to Isaac and said she should be his second wife. She found out about the family’s impoverishment when Isaac said he couldn’t afford a second wife,” Anderson said. “It’s a plausible story, given Harriet’s personality. There is evidence that she was grossly embarrassed by her father’s lack of material success, and when it looked like her husband was going to be a failure, too, after being well off, she went next door and married Young.” As Mrs. Lorenzo Dow Young, Harriet became the senior member of the first group of three white women to arrive in Utah.

Decker stayed in the East, taking care of church business until he came to Utah in 1850. He prospered as a rancher in West Jordan and later settled in the Heber Valley and took five plural wives. He died in 1873 and was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery the next day. If his grave was marked then, the marker did not survive, Anderson said.

Two more bits of history. The two six-year-old boys that also accompanied the Vanguard Company.

Decker, Isaac Perry – One of two children in the first company, he was born Aug. 7, 1840, in Winchester, Scott Co., Ill., to Isaac and Harriet Page Wheeler Decker. His mother and father divorced in March 1843, and she later married Lorenzo Dow Young, changing her name to Harriet Decker Young. His father remained a faithful member and came to Salt Lake City in a later company, where he died in 1873. After arriving, Isaac and his mother lived in the Old Fort until Lorenzo built a cabin near the Eagle Gate in Salt Lake City. The boy saw the struggles of the members during the exodus, the trek west, the meager first years including the miracle of the gulls, and the growth of Salt Lake City. In mid-life he made his home in Provo, Utah, where his son, C.F. Decker, was mayor for a time. He died Jan. 24, 1916, among the last of the original pioneer company, at age 75.

Young, Lorenzo Sobieski – Born March 9, 1841, in Winchester, Morgan Co., Ill., to Lorenzo Dow and Persis Goodall Young. He was 6 years of age when taken on the pioneer trek from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City. He was given his second name in honor of his mother’s first husband, Edwin Sobieski Little, who died in Iowa during the exodus. After arriving in the valley, Lorenzo learned horticulture from his father and became a father. He lived in Huntington, Emery Co., Utah, where he farmed. He died in Shelley, Bingham Co., Idaho, on March 28, 1904, at age 63.