- SHORT HISTORIES OF MARY VERENA BRYNER REDD
(Longer histories of the Bryners and Redds are recorded in “Redd Review”, prepared and distributed to the William A. Redd siblings and some of their children in 1999.)
Corrected 11 October 2017
Mary Verena Bryner was born 3 February 1866 at New Harmony, Washington County, Utah Territory to Hans Ulrich Bryner 1827-1893 and Anna Maria Dorothea Mathys 1825-1905. Her parents were married in Ulna, Zurich, Switzerland. They were among the first families in Switzerland to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Because of political unrest, they left Switzerland secretly to join the Saints in America.
In 1856, they left Florence, Nebraska in a covered-wagon company, headed for Salt Lake City. Hans Ulrich, blinded in an accident while butchering a pig, held onto the back of the wagon, walking in the dust and dirt thrown up by the wheels. Delayed and freezing, they caught up with the Martin Handcart Company at Devil’s Gate, where they were rescued.
Her parents first settled in Spanish Fork, later were called to help settlement of the south part of Utah. Here Verena was born and grew up in New Harmony, Utah, where they reared their family of eight. Until some of the children were older, Maria went with her husband to guide him with the farming, and the freight business he had started. He also wove hundreds of basket to sell, and reeds had to be gathered by the family and Hans.
As a child, Verena or Franey, as she was called, would lead her blind father, Hans Ulrich Bryner, around. They had their furniture in the same place all the time. They had to be very careful about that. No shoes or litter of any kind could be left about for him to stumble. Her father needed someone with him all the time, and her mother was his best help, so she left the housework to the girls, as soon as they were big enough.
At five or six, Verena would sit at her mother’s knee piecing quilt blocks. That was the way they learned to sew. As he was blind, their father liked someone to read the Bible to him in the evenings, so Verena and other family members read.
(Pamela Redd Craig, a grandchild, has an unfinished quilt top made by Verena. One-inch-by-one-inch pieces put together with stitches, tiny as machine stitches. Many pieces were from the corners of men’s handkerchiefs, nothing was wasted in that isolated pioneer community.)
Life in the pioneer era was hard. No stores. So much of what they needed they grew or made. Men took turns each spring and fall, going to Salt Lake to buy supplies. A sweet story of Verena: When she was about twelve, she made and sold products to earn money for a new dress. Verena gave her money to the shopper with her order for a summery cloth, printed with flowers.
All he could find was some dark, heavy fabric. Poor, disappointed Verena sewed her own dress, experiencing much grief in using a community pattern - a sort of one-size-fits-all. When a traveling photographer arrived at New Harmony, Verena wanted a photo in her new dress, but she yearned to have pantaloons showing below the hem. Her dear mom understood her daughter’s yearning and pinned and stitched her own bed jacket so the ruffled lace-edged sleeves became the legs of pantaloons. Verena’s photo is displayed in this history.
Verena played with her neighbor friend, Caroline Redd, much of the time, and they both learned many homemaking skills from Caroline’s mother. Eventually, Verna married William Alexander Redd, Caroline’s brother, in the St. George Temple 27 February 1884. After their first two children, William and Grace were born, this faithful wife supported their decision to send her husband to spend a three-year-mission in the Southern States.
After William’s return, they had triplet girls who died soon after birth, followed in death by little Grace. In these tragic deaths, Verena and William A. were comforted by their faith in the sealing power of their temple marriage, a sure belief that these little girls will be waiting for them on the other side of the veil.
Memories by family members:
-a born teacher, Verena taught all of her children, and many neighbor children, her skills. Her home was a gathering place for useful activities, as well as parties and celebrations.
-comfort for an ailing child: Mother warmed a cup of milk and poured it over a beaten egg with a little sugar and salt added. Some pretended sick in order to have this treat. -Fern Redd Laycock
- homemade rag dolls: legs, arms,d bodies stuffed with chopped up rags
-carpet rags: rags torn into strips, strips sewn together and wound into balls, and sent to a place where the strips were woven into rug strips. These mother (Verna) sewed the strips together to make a carpet for our front room. Rag bees and “quiltings” were the social functions of that time. -Jessie Redd Ursenbach
- Verena hand crocheted lace doilies and curtains and decorative edgings for lingerie, dress ruffles, baby clothes, pillow covers, table covers and sheets. (At her death, each grandchild received a lace doily, crocheted by their grandmother. Many of the linen doily centers were cut from the good parts of worn, linen temple sashes. I still have mine. ---Barbara Redd MacPhee)
-she was artistic, and furnished her home with colorful hooked rugs and chair covers in flower and geometric patterns. At first dyes were made from local plants.
-she was the one who started out the singing in Relief Society with her lovely alto voice. Though, most of her life, she was secretary of Relief Society, she was called on as if a counselor, to help care for the sick and prepare the dead for burial.
-her cellar shelves were loaded with fruit of every kind, jellies, jams, preserves, pickles, crocks of home-made butter, whole cheeses from her sister, Lucette’s ranch. The flour bin full, and crocks of home rendered lard, sometimes covering fried sausages, and plenty of fresh and cured meats. We even made our own soap.
- Each fall, Grandfather Bryner came to help with curing of pork and making of a huge barrel of sauerkraut. There was always cream and milk, a cellar full of vegetables. Long shelves, like trays, full of winter apples from our own orchards, sacks of pine-nuts, boxes of figs, raisins of our own making, and almonds. Stores of dried corn, beans, fruit of our own drying. Mother always made, or had us make, great batches of bread.
- Mother was a good cook. Our big table was always surrounded. There was always a bed in the parlour for guests, and many of the general authorities were guests at Bishop Redd’s home while in New Harmony and in President Redd’s home when he was Counselor to President Heber S. Allen in Raymond, Alberta, Canada.
Rudger Clawson, came, as a young man, Amassa Lyman loved mother’s tomato soup. Mathias F. Cowley came frequently. Father said mother could make a great meal with only a bacon rind and an onion.
“Mother found time to drive with father wherever he wanted her to go, and we children slept much on the floor, where she made good beds with the many quilts she made from wool of her own sheep, covered mostly with flannel from wool taken from those same sheep, and made into flannel by the Provo Woolen Mills”, and filled with sheep’s wool batts, she had washed and carded herself.
William and Verena’s plan was to leave New Harmony and find a place with greater opportunities for their ten living children. However, William was called as bishop, this calling lasted for about 20 years. After William was released, he made the decision to move to Raymond, Northwest Territories, Canada.
Once again, Verena was a pioneer in a remote, unsettled country. This time, as a mother of ten. Skills learned in New Harmony were essential in order to provide her family with food, clothing and a home of love and beauty.
In the area of the Northwest Territories of western Canada, in 1905, where the Redds were going, there was just a wide, flat, grass prairie. Just a group of pioneers who lived in a town site, and traveled out to farms. A plan adopted so families would be close to schools and neighbors and the church house.
When he heard the Redds were coming to join them in Canada, a friend wrote, advising, “There is nothing here, bring everything, even your swill bucket.” (In a swill bucket was collected organic waste, as feed for the animals.)
As soon as Redds arrived at Raymond, William immediately began to build a home for his large family. Some of his siblings came to Canada to help, and they built a beautiful ten-room home of large moulded-concrete blocks. Of course water was purchased by the barrel; and a house at the end of a path was the toilet. Baths were in the large tin tub they had used in New Harmony. Water was heated on the wood stove, and reused by several family members.
Franey and William enjoyed almost five happy, busy years in that home, and also the birth of their fourteenth child, a son, Kay Bryner. However, during bitter cold weather in January of 1911, William worked in the cold to feed and care for his suffering cattle and other stock. Weakened from this exposure, he contracted pneumonia, and passed away after only a few days’ illness.
After her beloved William’s death, grief stricken Verena “took to her bed” prepared to go to be with her husband. But when William appeared to her in a dream and told her she must stay, she rose from her sick bed, began to take charge of her household, and lived until 1934.
Verena struggled against much adversity to rear her ten children. There were almost total crop failures for the first seven years after William’s death. Also, William had invested in a real estate company which sold land to farmers. Because of the crop failures and other complications, there were serious financial problems.
He oldest son, Will, gave up his dream to finish a degree in medicine, and came from attending University of Utah, to help his sorrowing mother rear the children and settle th
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