HISTORY OF ANN ROGERS Note: I am indebted to Wanda Snow Peterson for her permission to use excerpts from her book, William Snow, The first Bishop of Pine Valley. Wanda is one of the few remaining granddaughters of William Snow who are still alive.
My own additions to her history are shown as regular print - not bold.
Ann Rogers was born, according to the account of her granddaughter Bess Snow, on 30 December 1835, at East Lake Farm, Amroth, Pembrokeshire, South Wales. Her parents were John Rogers and Janette Reese. They had a large farm house on a gently sloping piece of land overlooking the St. George’s Channel of the lower Irish Sea. Their home was surrounded with flower beds, large elm trees and a hedge fence. Her father was well-to-do and he hired help on both his farm and in the house. Ann was the youngest of nine children. She went with her brothers and sisters to gather fruits and hazelnuts. She helped gather blackberries from the vines that grew over the sod fences surrounding their farmland. She played at the seashore with the children and caught delicious shell fish to bake at home for her father.
When Ann was two years old, her mother died and her sister Elizabeth took over her care. Ihe father married again, but the children never got along very well with the stepmother. Ann’s brother John was a school teacher as well as the parish minister. She walked to school holding onto his hand, but when they neared the building he insisted she walk alone so that he would look dignified before the other children.
At the age of twelve Ann was sent to a neighboring town of Tenby to learn the tailoring trade. She became efficient at this work, later using her skills to help provide beautiful and sturdy clothing for her family.
When missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to their village, the Rogers family was converted, and all joined the church except Ann’s two brothers, John and William, and her sister Janette. Ann’s father soon decided to move his family to America, but his son John tried to dissuade him. He feared his father was not strong enough to withstand the cold climate he would find in the new country. A few years before they left for America, Ann’s fifteen year-old sister Martha drowned in the sea.
Before Ann left for America, her friend John Thaine asked her to marry him, but she told him that since she was only thirteen that was too young. She told him she would wait for him in America for three years. He promised to write and said he would join her later.
All the family members who had joined the Church set sail from Liverpool on 12 January 1849. They headed for New Orleans with a company of one hundred converts. They were ten weeks at sea and arrived at New Orleans on the Fourth of March. The family took passage on the Steamboat Osprey going up the Missouri River to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Ann’s sister Sarah married while they were on the ship coming over. When they reached St. Louis, Sarah and her husband, also her brother Thomas and his wife, decided to stay there and get work so that they could come on later. Sarah had a baby, and she and the infant both died, but Thomas later came to Utah. Back in Wales, Ann’s other sister Janette also died.
On the way up the river, a young man fell in love with Ann’s eldest sister Elizabeth and asked her to marry him but she refused. A night or two later she met him on the deck again, and when she still refused to marry him, he strangled her to death. Ann said this was one of the most tragic events of her life, for until that time Elizabeth had been like a mother to her. The captain had the ship stop while the girl was given a Christian burial. No information is given about the fate of that man.
The Rogers family arrived at Council Bluffs just at the time William Snow was preparing to leave for the West. Mr. Rogers bought William’s farm and home since he had been advised by Elder Hyde to remain there for at least two years and raise food to take with him to Utah. Ann’s father was not very strong, and the harsh conditions there caused him to take chills and fever, from which he died in August 1850. Ann suffered from that illness too but she soon recovered.
Now the only ones left from her big family were Ann and Henry, except the stepmother and her daughter Mary. The stepmother was overbearing and hard to satisfy. Shortly, Henry got a chance to hire out with a man, and so he headed for California. After he reached that state, he wrote to Ann, but she soon found herself with no money to buy stamps and so she stopped writing. She never heard from Henry again.
The stepmother now decided to go on to Utah. She and a man who had a wife and no children bought a covered wagon, a yoke of oxen and a cow and started out together for Utah with a company of Saints. They hadn’t gone very far when the stepmother quarreled with the man. She made him cut the wagon in two so that each had a two-wheeled cart and one ox. The stepmother and her daughter rode in the cart, while Ann walked and drove that ox the rest of the way to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.
After weeks of plodding along, they neared the city. Theirs was the last cart in the company, and when one wheel of their cart collapsed, they were left alone. She left her stepmother and sister Mary, and later said, “I walked afoot and alone in a snow storm, after dark into Salt Lake to get help." When Ann got into the city she met a man on the street and told him their plight. He asked her if she knew anyone in the town and she said she had met the William Snow family in Council Bluffs. He took her to William’s home and then sent some men out to help the stepmother. Out of the family of eight that left Wales, Ann was the first to reach Salt Lake City. Her brother Thomas came later.
In Salt Lake City the stepmother married again, and since Ann didn’t want to go with her and the new husband, she looked for work elsewhere. At this time William had two wives, and since Jane Maria was in bed with a new baby, Ann took care of her. When she told William and his wife of her unhappiness with the stepmother, he said she could live with them as long as she desired. He also said that if she wished, he would marry her. Here again we see William’s reticence about expressing personal feelings. He gives no mention of desire for affection, or of the yearnings of a young girl. Just the practical attitude of how to meet and solve life’s problems seems to be uppermost in their minds.
The man Ann met the first day she arrived in the city also asked her to marry him, but she told them both she was waiting for her lover from across the ocean. Here at last is mention made of love and romance.
After Ann left Wales, she never heard from John Thaine. Then when three years were up, she decided to marry William
Snow, which she did on 13 March 1853.Bess Snow comments on further events:
Some weeks later her stepmother brought her a bundle of letters that her former Welch lover had written to her. The mother had kept them from her. It sounds like a pitiful tragedy, but many years later when one of her granddaughters asked her how she felt, she had an amazing reply. She said, ‘I shed a few tears when I thought of what a comfort they would have been to me as I was left alone after my father died, but,’ she said, ‘as the years went by your grandfather proved to be such a kindly husband and father to the children and they all turned out so well, I felt that the Lord had given me a pearl of great price in lieu of a gaudy bubble.Alter three of Ann’s children were born, John Thaine came to America and visited her in Utah. He was married by then and had children as well. Ann said she was never sorry she had married William Snow because he was so kind to her, and in addition, her lovely children were worth all the world. She never called her husband “William” before the children or grandchildren but always referred to him as “Brother Snow” or ‘Your Father” or “Your Grandfather.”Bess Snow further comments:
Many years later, one of her daughters moved to Logan where she came into contact with the family of the man from Wales. . . The daughter said, ‘Mother, I don’t think you quite realize how fortunate you were to marry Father instead of him. . . . His family are far from the class that Father’s family falls into.