HISTORY OF ROXANA LEAVITT FLETCHER HUNTSMAN SNOW 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. She is one of the few remaining granddaughters of William Snow who are still alive. On 4 Jan 2003, I found out that this history of Roxana was originally written by Joy S. Viehweg and was used, with her permission, by Wanda in her book of William Snow. Joy has given me her permission to continue to use this history and I'm very grateful for that.
My own additions to her history are shown as regular print - not bold.
In writing a sketch of the life of her great grandmother, Roxana Leavitt Fletcher Huntsman Snow, Joy S. Viehweg says:
Roxana Leavitt's life is a saga of the American frontier, an epic story of a woman who moved from Vermont and Lower Canada across the United States to the Great Basin of the Rockies, driven by a religious faith which characterized her as truly one of the Mormon pioneers, a people from many varied backgrounds and united by their convictions and a desire to follow their prophet. This is a story which demonstrates the true pioneer spirit, the ability to make the best of a situation when faced with heartbreak, death, and desperate physical conditions.Roxana was born 15 December 1818, in the town of Irasburg, Orleans County, Vermont. This was in the same vicinity where the Snows lived, a land of forests and low rolling hills, not far from the Canadian border. Her parents were Nathaniel and Deborah Delano Leavitt. She was the eldest of six children, Salena, Nathaniel, Caroline, Flavilla and John. The Leavitt ancestry has been traced back to 1608, when the Deacon John Leavitt was born and lived in Massachusetts. When Roxana was only a year old, her parents moved to Hatley, Lower Canada. Roxana’s Aunt Sarah Studevant Leavitt, wife of Jeremiah Leavitt, indicated in her diary that a number of Nathaniel’s brothers and sisters were living there. Roxana’s mother died in 1829 and her father married Betty Bean, who bore him three children.When the Mormon missionaries came into their community, many of the Leavitts believed and were baptized. Influenced by Nathaniel’s mother, Sarah Shannon Leavitt, the family members decided to move to Kirtland to be near the headquarters of the Church. This was a journey of eight hundred miles. The extended family left their homes on 20 July 1835. Roxana’s grandmother and some of her children and their families traveled with Uncle Franklin who lead the group of twenty-three people. Their string of wagons held all their earthly belongings.
Upon reaching Kirtland more of the members of the family were baptized, and they were privileged to meet the Prophet Joseph Smith. He took them into the upper rooms of the meeting house and showed them the Egyptian mummies and the writings of Abraham which he later translated into the book The Pearl of Great Price.
After a week most of the Leavitt families journeyed on to Twelve Mile Grove, not far from Joliet, Illinois. The Jeremiah Leavitt family was forced to remain in Mayfield, Ohio, for a time working to obtain means whereby they might continue their journey. When Jeremiah finally arrived in White Pigeon, Michigan, he found that Roxana’s father, Nathaniel, had died there, and his second wife had taken all his property and her three children and returned to Canada. She had offered to take Nathaniel's children back to Canada also, but they decided to stay and look for their Leavitt relatives. These children were overjoyed to be rescued by their Uncle Jeremiah and taken into his family. This increased the number of members in that family to eleven. Roxana was with the group at Twelve Mile Grove at this time. (It is not known how her father got separated from the rest of the Leavitts.)
An interesting note is that White Pigeon, Michigan, was just over the state line from Elkhart, Indiana, where John Huntsman had built and was operating a gristmill. Later he became Roxana’s second husband.
Again quoting from Joy S. Viehweg:
When Jeremiah and Sarah Leavitt arrived at Twelve Mile Grove after a tedious Journey of eight hundred miles, they found that the other Leavitts had bought ‘noble farms.’ They also learned that Mother Leavitt had died, a great disappointment to them, since they had their hearts set upon seeing her again. There was a great deal of sickness there. Many of the family were very discouraged and had lost much of the faith which had sustained them in the past. They had not seen a Mormon since they had left Kirtland and had not had the benefit of regular meetings with the Saints, although they had held prayer meetings themselves. Roxana was baptized August 18, 1837. This would have been at Twelve Mile Grove or somewhere along the way from Canada.On 12 April 1838 Roxana, then twenty years old, married Benjamin Fletcher, a widower with three children, Jane, Joseph and William Fletcher, all under the age of eight. They were married in Will County, near Twelve Mile Grove. He died two years later, at the age of twenty-nine, leaving her with his three children. She was also caring for her brother John and sister Flavilla.By 1841 the Leavitt families arrived in Nauvoo at which time Roxana’s brothers John and Nathaniel went to live with their Uncle Horace Fish. Also in this group were two more of Roxana’s uncles, Franklin Chamberlain and James Adams. John Huntsman also moved from Indiana to Nauvoo with his children, Jackson, Washington, Charlotte and Sally Anne, all over eight years of age. His wife Deborah had died some time after 1835.
On 23 June 1841, Roxana Fletcher married John Huntsman, who was probably twenty years her senior.
Joy S.Viehweg further writes:
Except for Charlotte and Almira, nothing is known about what happened to the Huntsman children and the three Fletcher children. It is claimed that John Huntsman also had a son Jasper. At this point in Roxana’s story, some background information about John Huntsman would help the reader to understand more about the situation. John Huntsman is believed to have been born around 1800 in Washington County, Pennsylvania, the son of James Huntsman and Catherine Wirick. . .The 1830 U.S. Census shows John Huntsman in Elkhart with a wife, two Sons and one daughter. Only the name of the head of the household is given in the census.Probably in the late 1830’s John and his family left Elkhart and migrated to Missouri with the Saints, enduring the terrible injustices and hardships inflicted by mobsters. In the Journal History of the Church, John Huntsman is listed as having suffered a loss valued at two hundred dollars in the Missouri persecutions. He signed an affidavit in Quincy, Illinois on May 11, 1839 attesting to this fact.
Roxana and John Huntsman’s first child, Salena, was born in Nauvoo 17 December 1843. The martydom of the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1844 and the further continued persecutions by the mobs made life there an impossibility, so they prepared to leave with those who fled their homes in 1846. They arrived at Mt. Pisgah, Iowa, where many of the refugees were living. The camp population rose to two thousand, but illness and exposure caused the death of many Saints.
It is not known when or where John Huntsman died. Peter Huntsman who claimed to be his nephew, said in a letter that he was stabbed by an Indian and died on the Mississippi in 1846. [This date is questionable, since his daughter Ellen was born in 1848.] This letter also said that John was the eldest son of James Huntsman and Catherine Wirick. It named his brothers and sisters as Jeremiah, Peter, James, Jacob, William, Samuel, Elizabeth and Safronia.
John and Roxana’s second child, Ellen Olive, was born 18 March 1848 at Mt. Pisgah. (Ellen in later years married Dudley Justin Merrill. His first wife had been Ellen’s alfsister, Almira Huntsman. Almira had died n 1867, the year before Ellen married him.)
By 1850 Roxana, age 31, was living in Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, Iowa with her two little daughters, Salena age six and Ellen Olive age two. Living close to her were her sister Flavilla who had married Orrin D. Farlin. The Farlins had a child Orilla, age five months. Roxana very probably knew William and Sally Snow in Council Bluffs.
Roxana left Council Bluffs on 4 June 1852 in the company with Orrin and Flavilla Farlin. he had a team made up of an ox and a cow, and he drove the wagon herself. They arrived in Salt Lake City on 15 September 1852, after four months of hard travel. Her daughters were then ages eight and four.
In Salt Lake Roxana renewed acquaintance with William Snow and his two wives, Sally and Jane Maria. Sally was a cousin of Roxana, and William had known the Leavitts in Vermont. On 3 March 1853, Roxana was married to William in a ceremony performed by Brigham Young. This was the same day William was married to Ann Rogers. Again, no mention is made of love, but we see William, the true Christian, showing concern for the homeless, offering help and protection to the widows and the fatherless. Roxana always said William was a good husband, a kind and gentle man, a loving father to his children.
By 1854 the Snow families had moved to Lehi where Roxana began teaching in the Snow Family School. 1854 was a year of bounteous harvests in Lehi, followed by a complete crop failure in 1855. Then hard times set in. On 21 January 1855, Roxana bore William a daughter whom she named Melissa Leavitt Snow. It was that spring that the hoard of grasshoppers descended on the farmers’ plants and completely wiped out every green blade of grass, leaving devastation behind. Extremely deep snow and cold weather the following winter made living and finding food a supreme struggle for the families. Their principal food was sego lily bulbs, thistle roots and pigweed greens.
Joy Viehweg comments on Roxana’s problems with food scarcities:
It is not difficult to imagine the concern which Roxana must have felt in trying to nourish an infant under these circumstances.On 3 November 1855, Roxana received her endowments in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. That seems an unusual procedure, but many endowments were then administered after the marriage took place. A second child, John Leavitt Snow, was born to Roxana on 6 September 1857.In 1865 Roxana’s husband William Snow was called to go to the Dixie Country in Southern Utah to help establish communities there. William set out with two of his wives, Sally and Ann. He expected to return for his other two wives and their children in about two years as soon as he had homes for them.
Roxana’s daughter Salena who had married James Chipman in American Fork on 1 August 1863. invited her mother and two young children to live with them. The children who were ages 9 and 11, made themselves useful by helping with housework and outside chores. Salena’s husband was engaged in a mercantile business, and he soon hired John to help out with the duties in the store. John worked there about six years until his father came from Dixie to move Roxana to St. George.
American Fork was a growing, progressive community, and in the year 1868 the citizens there voted to tax themselves for free public schools. An interesting event took place at that time. Mayor Leonard E. Harrington, who was also Bishop of the American Fork Ward, called people together to discuss the matter. After a long debate, some of it acrimonious, Mayor Harrington called for a vote. All of those in favor of taxing themselves lined up against one wall, and those opposed stood against the opposite wall. A count showed a tie so Mayor Harrington cast the vote in favor of free schools. American Fork thus became the first community in Utah where the citizens voted to tax themselves in favor of free schools.
Roxana was hired as one of the first four teachers in that American Fork free school. The other teachers were Eugene A. Henroid, Joseph B. Forbes and Elizabeth Griffiths. Roxana’s children became students in their mother’s school.
Roxana was a dignified lady with a deep sense of responsibility. Out of necessity she dressed simply, but she liked and wore hooped earrings. Her best dress was of a plain dark colored material, with a white lace collar to frame her face. Her eyes were blue and her hair brown.
Viehweg says:
When one looks at her face and thinks of the tribulations which she experienced through the years, many character traits seem to shine forth through that serious, almost stern countenance. An indication of her personality is given in a description of her daughter, Melissa. ‘She . . . exhibited those qualities of keen intellect, courage, patience and devotion that so characterized her mother.”~It was actually six years before William moved Roxana and her children to St. George. He was then the Bishop of Pine Valley, a town thirty miles north of St. George, where his other wives, Sally and Ann, lived. Jane Maria also moved to Pine Valley at this time. William built a home for Roxana in St. George. Melissa was sixteen then and John fourteen. They had been attending school in American Fork. William lived at various times with his four wives, and when he had business in St. George, he always stayed with Roxana.It is not known for sure whether Roxana taught school in St. George, but it would seem reasonable that she would have since she was a trained and superior teacher.
After Jacob and Melissa went back to American Fork, Roxana lived alone in her home in St. George. It must have been a lonesome time for her there without any family, and Seeing William only when he had business in St. George. Roxana never lived in Pine Valley.
It was some time before 1875 when Roxana decided to leave St. George and move back to American Fork. There is no record as to whether she ever saw William again or whether he visited her. It is not known in particular what she did with her home in St. George or whether William kept it or sold it.
Roxana spent the rest of her days with her daughter Melissa and son-in-law Jacob Greenwood. Melissa commented occasionally that she had heard about the efforts of the Saints in the south who were doing quite well living the United Order, but the people in her town never did much with it.
Melissa and Roxana were rebaptized while living in American Fork, following the common practice. . . Many Saints had the ordinance performed after settling in Utah. Roxana and Melissa were rebaptized on 2 September 1875, by William Greenwood.
Roxana Leavitt Fletcher Huntsman Snow enjoyed her life in American Fork near her children. She died on 16 June 1881, of diphtheria after a long illness. She was buried in the American Fork Cemetery. Her grave is in the next plot south of that of her daughter Ellen. Nearby are the graves of Salena, Melissa and John. On Roxana’s grave there is an old weather-beaten marker with the inscription:
OUR MOTHER ROXANA SNOW
JUNE 16, 1881
AGED 63 YEARS 6 MOS AND 24 DYS
DEAR MOTHER, GOD HATH TAKEN THEE
FROM A WORLD OF SIN AND CARE
TO DWELL AMONG THE ANGELS
WHO THY BRIGHT COMPANIONS ARE
Joy S. Viehweg wrote in concluding her history of her grandmother:
Roxana left her numerous descendants a heritage which cannot be easily forgotten. The debt which we, with our lives of comparative ease, owe to those who gave so much, cannot adequately be expressed. We can, however, emulate their sterling qualities and think of the yet unborn generations while conducting our lives in the present day.