- Someone inverted his middle and last names. Samuel Rose Parkinson is his correct name and his ordinances are completed.
Samuel Rose Parkinson was a native of England, world traveler in his youth, convert to the Church and one of the founders of Franklin, Idaho.
Samuel R. Parkinson was born at Borrowford, Lancashire, England, on April 12, 1831, the son of Willliam and Charlotte Rose Parkinson. When the boy was seven months old, his father died. The widowed mother moved to Stockport, where she found employment as a school teacher. At Stockport in 1835 she met and married Edmund Berry, a coal merchant. Times were hard in England during these years, and in 1839 Edmund Berry decided to take the family and move to Australia. They sailed from Liverpool in April, and five months later arrived at Sidney. Young Samuel Parkinson was now eight years of age.
Edmund Berry found business conditions unfavorable in Australia and after residing there three years decided to move to New Zealand. The family left Sidney in October, 1842, and arrived at Auckland six weeks later. Edmund Berry was restless; he did not like the looks of Auckland and decided to continue on the same ship to Chile. The family arrived at Valparaiso in January, 1843.
Samuel R. Parkinson was now approaching his twelfth birthday and was able to obtain employment on his own. He found work as a gardener. He also attended school and quickly learned the Spanish language.
After three years in Chile, during which time he accumulated several thousand dollars, Edmund Berry decided to leave that country and return to England. The family sailed down the West Coast of South America, rounded Cape Horne and reached England early in 1846. Young Samuel Parkinson, now fifteen years of age had journeyed around the world.
There was one more move for the Berry family to make and that was to the United States. In 1848, two years after their arrival in England, this journey was undertaken. They sailed from Liverpool to New Orleans and thence by steamboat up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, where they arrived in October. They rented a house from a Latter-day Sainte family named Clement.
There was a large branch of the Church in the St. Louis at this time and Samuel R. Parkinson, now seventeen years of age, began to attend the meetings. In December, 1848, he was baptized. He also met a young lady in the branch, a convert from England named Arabella Chandler. They were married on January 1, 1852.
As soon as they were married, Samuel and Arabella began to plan on uniting with the Saints in Utah. By 1854, he had accumulated $700 in money, a wagon, and a yoke of oxen. Samuel was twenty-two years of age, a substantial, hard-working young man. They began the journey to the West with about sixty wagons known as the "St. Louis Company" and arrived in Salt Lake City on the 23rd of September.
Anxious to get permanently located as soon as possible, Samuel went to Kaysville a few weeks after his arrival in the Valley, purchased a piece of land, built a log house, and settled down to the life of a farmer. From the beginning he maintained himself and his family, three children having been born to them.
In 1857 he was requested by President Young to take his team and wagon and accompany a group of men back over the plains to Devil's Gate, and bring in the goods of the handcart immigrants, which had been left there during the disaster of the previous year.
A few months later he was called to go to Echo Canyon and assist in defense of the Saints against the approaching Johnston's Army. Early in 1858 he was requested to go to the Salmon River country and assist the settlers at Fort Lemhi in returning to Utah. Later in 1858, he took his family and moved south with the Saints, who vacated their homes prior to the entrance of Johnston's Army into Salt Lake Valley. After a peaceable settlement of affairs had been made with the army, Samuel Parkinson brought his family back to his farm in Kaysville.
Many settlers flocked to Cache Valley in the spring and summer of 1859, and the fame of the valley spread abroad. Early in the spring of 1860 a group of men in Kaysville decided to investigate the new location for farming possibilities and homesites. Among these men were Samuel R. Parkinson, Alfred Alder, Peter Pool, E. C. Van Orden, William and John Comish, Shem Purnell, George Alder, W. H. Rogers, James Oliver, and Arnold Goodliffe.
This group reached Wellsville about the time snow melted off the ground in the spring. They inquired at each town as they traveled northward to learn if there were available land for settlement. At each place they were informed that all the land had been "taken up." They continued on to Cub River and, finding that no one had located in that vicinity, they decided to stop and build a town. Samuel R. Parkinson thus became one of the original settlers of Franklin, Idaho.
A few days after the group stopped on Cub River, Peter Maughan, "Presiding Bishop" of Cache Valley, called at their camp and appointed Thomas S. Smart, Samuel R. Parkinson, and James Sanderson to divide the land and take charge of the temporal and spiritual affairs of the colony, until a bishop could be appointed.
From the beginning Indians were troublesome to the settlers at Franklin. A large band gathered on the Bear River in the late fall of 1862, about twelve miles north of Franklin. This group had committed many depredations and Colonel Patrick Connor, in command at Fort Douglas, decided to take his troops and "chastise" them. A battle was fought on January 29, 1863, in which several soldiers and approximately three hundred Indians were killed. Samuel R. Parkinson was one of those who took his sleigh and went to the battlefield and brought in the wounded soldiers to the Mormon colony. He also transported a group of them to Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City.
In the summer of 1863 Samuel R. Parkinson and Thomas S. Smart built the first saw mill at Franklin, which was also the first in southeastern Idaho.
Two residents of Franklin, Andrew Morrison and William Howell, were getting out logs in a canyon east of town in May, 1863, when they were attacked by Indians. Morrison was seriously wounded by two arrows shot deeply in his body. Howell escaped and ran to town for help. A posse rescued Andrew Morrison, and Samuel R. Parkinson went for a doctor. He hitched his fast mules to the front wheels of his wagon and started for Salt Lake City; he was back in forty-eight hours with Dr. Anderson, whose skillful work assisted in saving the life of Andrew Morrison. Samuel R. Parkinson always gave his assistance freely to anyone in distress.
In 1868, when the Franklin Cooperative Store was organized, Samuel R. Parkinson became a stockholder and the manager. Later he helped to organize the North Star Woolen Mills, which he also successfully managed for many years. He kept several teams on the road freighting to the Montana mines. He was the owner of a good farm and a large band of sheep. He was diligent and prosperous in his business.
A thorough and devoted Latter-day Saint, Samuel R. Parkinson served thirty years as a member of the Franklin Ward bishopric. He also spent considerable time in his later years doing temple work, which was near to his heart. His greatest success, it might be said, was in the rearing of a large and splendid family. Three of his sons and one grandson became presidents of stakes; other sons and grandsons served as bishops; all of his sons and daughters were devoted to the Church.
Samuel R. Parkinson died in Preston, Idaho, on May 23, 1919, a few weeks past his eighty-eighth birthday. In a written statement he had prepared to be read at his funeral is the following paragraph:
"It is my solemn testimony that Joseph Smith was divinely commissioned to bring forth the Everlasting Gospel, the only true plan of salvation, inaugurated and planned by God himself, with all its wonderful gifts and blessings, for the benefit and final exaltation of the human family . . . Through its power and authority this Gospel is being preached to the inhabitants of the earth, and I bear solemn witness that no power on earth will ever be permitted to disturb or stop its progress."
-- From "Stalwarts of Mormonism," 1954, by Preston Nibley
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1831 - 1919 (88 år)
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