Marianne Catherine Dalton

Marianne Catherine Gardiol: The sixth wife of John Dalton Jr.

Marrianne Gardiol was born March 28, 1834, at St. Germain, Piedmont, Italy. Her father was Jaques Gardiol and her mother was Catherine Marguerite Durand. She had eleven brothers and sisters but she was the only one of the family as far as she knows that came to America. Marianne was five feet tall, weighed ninety to one hundred and ten pounds, black hair, brown eyes and fair skin.

Marrianne's ancestors were some of the French Huguenots, the Vaudois or Waldoness, a group that settled in Northern Italy, then Southern France. Here they lived for centuries being isolated from the Italian people by the religion and their Romanish language.

The history of the small group of Vaudois who became converts to the Latter-day Saints Church and migrated to Utah, furnishes one of the most fascinating and unusual stories in Church annals. The ancestors of this group were fugitives who came principally from France, with the great Vaudois movement, driven by persecution to search for a new home. They found refuge in the Piedmont Valleys of Italy, high in the Alps which border France and Switzerland.

The Vaudois or Waldenses, through whom all Protestant Churches proudly trace their origin, had for eight centuries suffered persecution because of their religious convictions. Just as Mormons have undergone oppression, so had this small group of mountain Christians endured exile, imprisonment and unnamable cruelties because of their earnest desire to worship God in the best light and knowledge they possessed.

On February 17, 1848, a decree was issued, granting freedom to these people. It is recorded that they received the news with simple gratitude. The following year the Latter-day Saints Church, for the first time, sent its missionaries into nations where the English language was not spoken.

The first group of emigrants left the Piedmont Valley on February 7, 1854. The party consisted of 8 members from the Philippe Cardon family, 5 from the Pons family and 5 from the Bertoch. The Cardons had been able to dispose of their property for enough money to bring themselves and 5 others to Utah. Later groups from this section were helped by the Latter-day Saints perpetual immigration fund, since persecutions against Mormon converts had increased to such an extent that they were unable to dispose of their property. The first group spent two weeks in London, waiting for the Saints there to prepare for emigration. At Liverpool they were delayed 17 days while the ship "John M. Wood," then under construction, was completed. The ship, whose several hundred passengers were Latter-day Saints, sailed March 12, 1854, and arrived at New Orleans May 1, after a passage of 51 days.

Members of this company, under the supervision of Robert Campbell, did not go through Florence, Nebraska. From St. Louis they went to Kansas City Mission where they procured outfits for the overland journey, and from there proceeded directly to Salt Lake City, where they arrived October 28, 1854. They spoke a combination of French and Italian and found difficulty in making their wants known. They settled in Ogden and vicinity, where they constructed homes of whatever material was available. The radical change in diet was one obstacle these people had to overcome. Especially they missed their fruit. In their former homes, each family had its cellar of labeled and dated unfermented wine. A little was served with each meal just as we might serve milk or water, and Paul Cardon said that he had never seen anyone intoxicated from it. Source: Heart Throbs of the West, Kate B. Carter, Vol. 4.

"Sun. 12. [Mar. 1854] -- The ship John M. Wood sailed from Liverpool, with 393 saints, including 58 from Switzerland and Italy, under the direction of Robert L. Campbell. It arrived at New Orleans May 2nd."

She immigrated to America by the perpetual emigration fund in 1854. Marianne gave up everything for her religion. She came with a "Cardon" family and as she had to learn a new language, which she did not master too well and never learned to read and write the new language.

Marianne, then a young lady, married John Dalton Jr. on February 1, 1857 in Salt Lake City and she was his and last sixth wife. They were the parents of seven children.

You can pretty well tell where Marianne lived by where her children were born; Jared,

1858, John, 1859 and Melvina, 1861, all in Salt Lake City; Brigham, 1863 in Parowan, Iron County; Lorenzo, 1865 and Alonzo, 1867 in Virgin City, Washington Co. Utah; and Vilate, 1872 in Rockville, Washington Co. Melvina lived less than 3 years. Lorenzo lived only one month.

John Dalton Jr. moved to Rockville, Washington County and built a home for we think the three wives who stayed with him. There may have been separate houses, but we don’t know how well off he was. Washington County in the southwest corner of the state includes a large area around St. George in the valley of the Virgin River and its tributaries; it has the highest average temperatures in the state and very mild winters. The eastern third of the county, including spectacular Zion National Park, is part of the Colorado Plateau province.

In 1861, Mormon Church President Brigham Young called hundreds of families to relocate to southwestern Utah to help establish a Cotton Mission. The principle objective was to produce enough cotton to supply church members' needs and thereby end reliance upon eastern markets for that product. The influx of settlers strengthened existing communities in the Virgin River Basin and gave rise to new ones such as St. George, the mission's capital.

The early settlers of Virgin City, Grafton, Rockville, Springdale, Duncan's Retreat, and Shunesburg quickly learned that the Virgin River was generally untamable. They needed water, yet it often betrayed them with angry tantrums that left their dams, ditches, and crops in chaos. The farmlands in these small villages lay in very narrow strips along either side of the Virgin River and its tributaries and were highly susceptible to erosion from flooding. Families inhabited "tiny plots of soil" and struggled to farm small garden spots called "dinner baskets." In the end, half of the upper basin communities lost the battle with the river and became ghost towns.

She was very clean and a hard worker. All her life religion meant more to her than any other possession and she tried to teach it to her children and those about her. She died October 14, 1923, and was buried in Rockville, Washington County, Utah.

Father: Jaques GARDIOL Mother: Catherine Marguerite DURAND

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 14 2017, 21:42:39 UTC