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Samuel Leigh’s first wife was Ann David. His journal identified her parents as Henry David and Mary Francis David, which was confirmed in the Welsh censuses of 1841 and 1851 by Samuel's great-granddaughter Amy Leigh Vancott. Amy’s work in the hard period before microfilms, photocopies, or computers, deserves the gratitude of all later Leigh family historians. She found that Ann was the daughter of a butcher in a strongly Baptist family in Llanelli. In the census of April 1841, Ann was listed as a dressmaker, as were her sisters Margaret (age 30) and Elizabeth (age 15). Their father, Henry David, had apparently died, and their mother Mary Francis must have taken his trade as she was listed as butcher herself. In the 1851 census Mary was listed as retired butcher, and her unmarried daughter Margaret was no longer a dressmaker but assistant butcher.
Samuel and Ann married in December 1841, when both were 26 years old. They had three sons and a daughter in Llanelli before they emigrated. Samuel’s journal lists them as William David Leigh born 25 August 1842, Henry Leigh born 31 December 1843, Sophia Leigh born 10 September 1845, and John Leigh born in June 1847 (p.10 original pagination). Then another son, named Samuel, was born after their arrival in New Orleans when they changed to a river boat for their trip up the Missouri River to St. Louis (p.12).
We have no photo of Ann David, nor even a description of her appearance, coloring and features. However, the five young daughters of Ann’s cousin Morgan David, who also emigrated from Llanelli with the Leigh family, may show us a David likeness. In the photo of the five sisters together taken later in life when they were grown women they show a startling resemblance to each other. With identical hair styles, dark wavy hair parted in the middle, similar large dark eyes, and a relaxed direct gaze, do they show the DAVID family genes? Can we see Ann David here? Without Ann’s photo, we don’t know, but surely these cousins’ pleasant faces may help to give our Ann David more of a face than she otherwise could have for us now.
| The daughters of Morgan David |
Samuel wrote nothing of Ann’s nature or personality, but we know she must have been an independent spirit, because she was baptized as a Mormon in Llanelli in December 1847 before her husband joined the church in January 1848 (Film no.104169, item 10). We also know she had enough courage to undertake a long ocean voyage when she was already seven months pregnant and would be traveling with a one-year-old toddler and three other children under seven years old with only a young nursemaid to help her. Ann’s short life and her new baby’s life ended in the horrific cholera epidemic that struck the river boat as they traveled from St. Louis to St. Joseph and eventually to Council Bluffs, Iowa. These plain facts are all we know, but they were part of a great panorama of misery at that time.
The emigrants in the Welsh contingent lost over a fifth of their number as they suffered the devastating effect of the cholera epidemic, summarized here by Ronald Dennis:
… the reality was that in a twenty-three-day period between 28 April and 21 May, forty-four of the original 249 Buena Vista passengers fell victim to the cholera epidemic. One by one their names were recorded by Thomas Jeremy in his pocket-sized journal. …on 6 and 7 May the ink spelled out the names of his three young daughters, two of them buried in the same small coffin. … David and Mary Phillips had begun their journey with four children; part way up the Missouri River they were left with just one child after burying the other three in a three-day period. And so it was with Margaret Francis, who was widowed on 30 April; on 8 May she stood at the shallow, hastily dug grave of her third child to be buried in as many days. Samuel Leigh, whose wife had presented him with a new son just before reaching St. Louis, looked on helpless nine days later as both were taken from him. Very few families were left intact as the cholera swept along its path of devastation, claiming one-fifth of the Welsh Mormons aboard the ill-fated Highland Mary. Age was no factor in the selection process—-victims ranged from newborn infants to ninety-two-year-old Evan Jones. The otherwise uncomplicated journey from St. Louis to Council Bluffs was lengthened by several days to allow time nearly every day for graves to be dug along the shore. Only on three days of the fifteen-day passage did Thomas Jeremy not have to record new names in his journal. (Call of Zion, p.44)Ann with her infant son Samuel was buried near St Joseph, Missouri on 6 May 1849 at age 34. Samuel wrote only that he buried his wife and son, then in three days he was taken with the cholera himself and fell very low (p.2). A more detailed and vivid description of the emigrants’ desperate situation during the epidemic was written in the journal of another young man traveling with Samuel. He was David D. Bowen, husband of Ann David’s second cousin Mary, whose mother-in-law, Elizabeth Bowen David, was also struck down by cholera and died in a St Louis hospital, as Bowen describes:
Dated 12 May 1849 On the same morning as we landed in St Louis, my mother-in-law was attacked with cholera very severely, so that we were obliged to send her to the hospital. I took her and my [sick] wife. They would not take my wife into the hospital because she had not got the cholera. I left my mother-in-law in the Charity Hospital with her youngest daughter (Rachel). My mother-in-law was unconscious when she was put in. After leaving her there, I took my wife to the City Hospital about three miles farther. I left her there with a lot of strangers she had never seen before and went back to the boat, where my children were and my father-in-law and his family were. There I had to nurse my little babe eight months old all night without her mother. We had a very miserable night of it. The next morning, the 13th and also Sunday, I started for the Charity Hospital to see how my mother-in-law was getting along. When I arrived there, to my astonishment she was dead and buried before I got there. I did not see her at all, and the little girl Rachel was there like a little stranger. I then went to the other hospital where my wife was. There I found her very weak and feeble. She said that she had nothing to take while she was there but water, and she begged me to move her out of such a miserable place. I complied with her desire. I took her out. I had to carry her on my back most of the way from the hospital to the boat through the city of St. Louis, for we had yet to move from the boat. It was Sunday. By the time I and my wife reached the boat, it was very near dark, and there two of my sisters-in-law were attacked by the cholera. Ann and Rachel were very bad. I spent another miserable night with the sick and with my own little children, but Monday morning came.Within only a month later, David Bowen’s wife Mary David herself died with her infant daughter (Journal of David D. Bowen).
Both men, Samuel Leigh and David D. Bowen, were now widowers with dependent children (Bowen had a young son), and neither was able to continue to Salt Lake until they had recovered physically, psychologically, and financially. They stayed in the area from St Louis to Council Bluffs for three years until 1852. Samuel writes few details of his experience other than that he bought a house and farm in Council Bluffs from an emigrant headed to Utah. There he took care of his four children. His bout with cholera left him weak for ”eight or nine months,” and they suffered a fire that drove them out of their house while he was still bedridden (p.13). The children wrapped blankets around their father’s sick body and dragged him out of the house. They stood on the banks of the Missouri River and watched their home burn up.
Samuel’s family were not entirely alone. Numerous other Welsh emigrants remained in this area before moving on to Utah. Bowen’s long detailed journal gives a fascinating picture of the hardships of that time and of the Welsh attempts to secure work in a new land. Unlike the Leigh family but like the David family, Bowen came from a long line of coal miners. His grandfather was killed by falling into a coal pit about 1825. His brother as a collier went to the West Indies in 1841 and returning home died of fever. Another brother John and David himself were sinking a big coal pit in 1847. But David did not remain a miner, and in 1848 he "concluded to abandon the coal pits forever and try the sea again, in consequence of so much hard work and so little pay and the oppression and tyranny of the masters of the works" (dated 1 January 1848). Bowen remained a seaman until his emigration. In America he worked at numerous jobs including mining.
Though we have fewer details of Ann David’s family, we know it belonged to that same mine-working class. Ann’s own parents had a butcher shop (perhaps from her mother’s Francis family), but her grandfather Morgan David, her uncle Thomas “Twm,” and his son Morgan were all coal miners or colliers. This Morgan was Ann’s cousin, who had also become a Mormon in Llanelli and emigrated with his large family, sailing on the S.S. Hartley and meeting up with Ann and Samuel’s family in New Orleans. Morgan sometimes worked with his son-in-law David Bowen, while presumably Samuel worked at his trade of carpentry and cabinetmaking.
Besides their social difference, the David family was unlike the Leighs in another way. They were strong Baptists, so almost none of their family events appear in the Church of England parish records where our Leighs are usually found. The Davids lived in Felinfoel (now part of Llanelli but then a nearby settlement), and were longtime members of the Baptist church there. Records of the Baptist church of Ty Newydd near Felinfoel give numerous David families from the year 1761, and a few Francis families (Film no.828111, unit 12). They likely include our own ancestors, so further research could be fruitful.
The Welsh emigrants were primarily from South Wales, and they formed a strong community in the Missouri area before they traveled to Utah. In the next three years Bowen’s journal refers to meetings with Samuel Leigh's family, e.g. at Bowen’s wedding to his second wife Phoebe Evans on 18 May 1850 in Council Bluffs. But Bowen’s relation to the Morgan David family cooled with his marriage, because (he wrote) the David girls were "very bitter against Phoebe," dated August 1850. Perhaps the five still unmarried and half-orphaned girls were upset that Phoebe was their successful rival for their widowed brother-in-law. Bowen’s journal ends on 20 July 1853 when he was in Cedar City, but it does not mention Samuel Leigh, so their friendship may have waned. Then Bowen, his son by Mary David, and his second wife moved back to northern Utah where he later died (Dennis p.106).
In southern Utah our Leighs followed their own path, but they must have remained in contact with the family of Ann David’s cousin Morgan who had emigrated from Llanelli together with the Leighs. After Morgan lost his wife Elizabeth and married daughter Mary to cholera, as described above by their son-in-law David Bowen, his remaining five unmarried daughters traveled with him across the plains in the same wagon train that took Samuel Leigh to Utah in June-September 1852. The Morgan David family settled in Spanish Fork, Utah, and all the daughters married and had large families (Dennis p.106). As late as 1888 Morgan was known to Samuel Leigh’s eldest son who visited David relatives during his stay in Wales.
In Cedar City Samuel and Ann’s daughter Sophia died as a young girl in December 1854 (Samuel’s journal p.16), but their three sons grew to adulthood and prospered in the business and government of the town. Two took or were given the middle name David to distinguish them from the sons of Samuel’s second wife, who took the middle name Treharne.
Samuel and Ann’s eldest son William David Leigh (born in 1842) became a school teacher in addition to farming and livestock raising. He married Elizabeth Wood, lived in Cedar City, and four of their children grew to adulthood and have many descendants. William must have remained proficient in the Welsh language, and became a Mormon missionary in South Wales from November 1888 to February 1891. He visited numerous family members in both his father’s and his mother’s family, by which he contributed greatly to our knowledge of the family members who did not emigrate to America. William’s careful handwriting and his observant detail make his mission journal a joy to read.
William’s journal also reveals the good relations between Samuel’s two families, e.g. on 23 September 1889 he wrote a letter to “my brother Samuel T. & family” and on 10 October 1889 to “Broth Dan & family, posting the wife’s in Dan’s.” He apparently referred to Samuel’s later wife, his stepmother, as “Grandma Leigh.” He certainly had no literal Leigh grandmother at that time, and when he used the term mother he clearly referred to his own deceased mother Ann David. He used the term Grandma Leigh repeatedly when he was searching in Swansea for a Mrs Richards, who was “Grandma Leigh’s daughter.” For these references see the note on Ann Richards, mother of Mary Treharne, though the Richards woman may instead have been a daughter of Mary Lewis, Samuel’s fourth wife, because in 1889 Mary Treharne had already died.
Henry Leigh (born in 1843) did not use David as a middle name and was always known as Henry Leigh, presumably because the name Henry was not used in Samuel’s second family. Henry married Amy Elizabeth Webster.
John David Leigh (born in 1847) married Sarah Maria Chaffin and had a large family, but died young at age 49. The descent of his family has been well studied. Email contact: Susan Clegg Biesele at bieseles@mac.com
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