Charles Albert Dalton

The History of Charles Albert Dalton:

Source: Taken from the Dalton Family History Book, by Donald C. Whittaker.

“Charles Albert Dalton was born on the banks of the Sweetwater River at Devil's Gate, Wyoming 26 August 1849. His family was migrating to Utah. His parents were Charles Wakeman and Juliet Bowen Dalton. Sarah Jane was born 23 June l953, when Cedar City was just two years old and shortly after the settlers had moved into the new fort. Her parents were Robert and Sarah Darling Wiley. She was the 8th in a family of 9. She was the first child born after her family came to Utah. Robert Wiley was baptized in England in 1842.

Charles Albert and Sarah Jane Wiley were married 9 October 1870 in Beaver County, Utah, and were the second settlers to move to Circleville in 1875. They homesteaded 640 acres of the prime grassland pasture. They also owned 40 acres of city property, described as beginning at 450 North 100 East, thence easterly to 400 East, thence south to 100 North, thence west to 100 East, thence North to 450 North. It was the Northwest 2 acres of this land that Charles A. donated for a school & church building site.

Note: Read the history of Sarah Jane Wiley’s father, Robert Wiley at the end of this Chapter.

Charles A. liked to smoke a clay pipe. It is rumored that he traded a large tract of land for this pipe, which he smoked until he died in 1936.

Charles Albert also liked alcohol, and this habit ruled his life. He freighted lumber from the Oak Basin Sawmill that was owned and operated by Bishop James E. Peterson to

the mining camps in Milford. His son Charles Robert often had to make the trips with him and sometimes for him driving the "8 up" span of mules.

Charles Albert ran the Mail Route from the railroad in Marysvale to Thompsonville, Alunite, Junction, Kingston, Antimony, Angle, Circleville, and Panguitch. It is reported that he had a very reliable team that knew the route well enough to make the trip unassisted. Charles A. would sometimes wake up long enough to deliver the mail, or the postmaster would come out and get his pouch and the buggy would roll on with the driver passed out.

Charles Albert was one of the first to own a Model T Ford. He parked it by the post office one day and was promptly told that he had better move it because the horse tied there would kick. Sure enough, the horse did kick the side of his car and the car wore the dent the rest of its useful life.

Sarah Jane Wiley Dalton (her mother's name was "Darling" and it fit Sarah Jane) a special personality that everyone loved and enjoyed being around. She had an excellent memory and could, with computer accuracy, remember events and dates and recall any lost bit of information. The children even enjoyed visiting with "Grandma Great" Dalton. She made them feel very comfortable and conversed with them on their level. She was a devout Latter-day Saint and set an example for her posterity.

When John Darling died, Sarah Jane (age 10) went to England with her mother Sarah Darling Wiley for the reading of the will. John Darling was supposed to be quite wealthy, but he only left Sarah an old trunk filled with letters. It was too heavy to take back to Utah.

By Robert Elwood Dalton:

My grandparents on my father's side were Charles Albert Dalton and Sarah Jane Wiley. They were married in the Beaver area and they came as married people from Beaver over to Circleville in 1887. They were among the early settlers in Circleville. My grandfather homestead a hundred and sixty-acre plot in what became, in later years, the center part of Circleville. In those days it was all sagebrush and they had to grub the sagebrush off in order to make farming land or pasture out of the land. Some of the land was unimproved even as I was a young boy. We sure did like to go to that part that was still in sagebrush and willows and bull berry bushes for Easter. I remember that quite a few times we were there for Easter, some of our friends came and we had a really good Easter party together.

We would play "Run My Sheep Run", "Hide and Seek", and "Search For The Missing Articles" in that part of the wasteland of grandpa's farm. Sometimes other people would come in and of course we were a little bashful and sometimes we left when they came to spend their Easter in that area. We sure had a lot of fun there because it was out where no one disturbed us, we could do al I the things we wanted to, and make all the noise we wanted to.

My grandparents on my mother's side were James Ephraim Peterson and Caroline Gottfredson. They were married in St. George Temple. They came to what was called then Spring Creek (later known as Angle). My grandfather tried to engage in farming in that area but the water was quite short in the summer time, It was really hard to get enough water to mature their crops. Then he was called by the church authorities to come to Circleville and become the Bishop of Circleville Ward. He came to Circleville in the early part of its settlement. He also had a farm here but in the north and western part of Circleville. There was where he raised his family. He also had a store that he had there near his home. He and some of his children run the store and as his children grew up he turned over the management of the store to the children while he did other things. He was also Postmaster for many years in Circleville. He had his children run the post office as well as operated the store.

In the early days it was really hard to make a living and Grandfather Peterson tried a number of things before he decided he would leave Circleville and go to Idaho. When he went to Idaho he lived in the vicinity of Leadore, Idaho on a ranch in the higher mountains. The winters got so cold that he had to move his family in the wintertime, from the high mountain area where his ranch was, down into Leadore Idaho. As he grew older and was unable to farm any longer, he moved down into Leadore and lived there. He was unable to pay for his farm and lost the farm. But he spent the rest of his life in Leadore Idaho. He had a young daughter that stayed and lived there after he passed away. Her name was Leda Peterson Dalby, and she is the one that kept and collected the genealogy of my grandfather Peterson's family.

My grandfather Charles Albert Dalton, in the early part of his life in Circleville, carried the mail from Marysvale to Panquitch. One day he would go from Circleville to Marysvale and get the mail and then come back to Circleville. He did his mail carrying in a small buggy pulled by two horses, then he would make the trip to Panquitch and deliver the mail in Panguitch the day after he had gotten it in Marysvale. So every other day he got the mail delivered to Panguitch, every other day he got the mail from Marysvale. That kept him occupied almost all the time. Even though it was really hard and difficult in the wintertime, it was the best means he had found to provide the necessary things for his family.

He did this until he grew quite old and was unable to carry the mail any longer. Then he came and worked with the farm and a few cows and a few sheep, and made his living as best he could without as much exposure to the cold weather. He grew quite old before he passed away. He became somewhat crippled up in his hands and his legs and we always kinda felt sorry for him as he tried to walk and do the things that were difficult for him.

My father's name is Charles Robert Dalton. He is the oldest living son of my grandparents because the two older children (boys) died while small infants. He grew up as a boy on the estate that grandfather had built his home on. My father as a boy rode a pony to get to school. In those days the school was in the lower part of Circleville, so he would ride the pony down to school and at the end of the day ride the pony back. My mother, Virginia Peterson, was close enough to school so she was able to walk to school. They were educated in a one-room school (at the time they were growing up that was all that they had)

All the boys and girls went into that one room whether they were little or big and one teacher taught all the classes. My father said that it was quite hard sometimes to keep your mind on what you were studying because sometimes you were listening to what went on in the other grades of the school. But they learned a great deal while in that school and it helped him to meet his obligations and do the things that were necessary in his later life. They got by in those schools and learned the fundamentals of the rudiments of math, english, geography, and history so that they had a pretty good country education when they got out and graduated from what was then the eight grade. That gave them about eight years in school in their younger years. There wasn't any high school in our area at that time and our parents were not given the opportunity to gain a high school education.

Their education largely came as they grew up, and with their experiences in life, they learned a lot of things that they didn't learn in school. It has been said that experience keeps a dear school and in our day a great many lessons are learned in the school of experience. Experience is a good teacher because it helps you to be able to adjust to new circumstances and new conditions and appreciate your blessings as they came along.

My mother and her younger brother were assigned the responsibility of taking the cows up to what was called the bench, out west of town. They had to drive the cows about a mile and half through the lanes to get up to the land that wasn't a part peoples farms. One day while they were driving the cows, the cows found a gap in the fence and got into an alfalfa field. It was the spring of the year, the cows were hungry, and the alfalfa was just high enough for the cows to get a right good bite of it. They tried as best they could but there was just no way they could get those hungry cows out of that alfalfa field until one of them had keeled over and was dead. This broke the hearts of the children to such a degree (the cow was so essential for them to get the food they needed and a means of providing for the family) that they felt like the loss was just overwhelming. So mother and her younger brother knelt down and ask the Lord to bring the cow back to life. The Lord rewarded the faith of those little children. The cow started to breath again and after a few minutes it got up, walked out of the gap where they couldn't force it to go out of before, and joined the other cows. They took the cows up to the bench and that cow lived for several years after that. Mother always bore a testimony that she knew her prayer was answered by our Father in Heaven and he raised that cow back to life in response to that prayer they had offered.

My Mother was the person that really had a lot of faith. She was really the spiritual leader in our home. Lots of time she would get up early in the morning when we needed to go to Sunday School and she would get all of the children ready and we would drive to Sunday School in the little black topped buggy.

In those days that buggy was pulled by one horse, in what we called a par of shafts. The horse was placed in those shafts and that was what, as we guided the horse, guided the buggy. One day the wind was blowing awfully hard and that horse got scared of something and ran away. Delbert, my older brother, and my mother were trying to hold the horse. But it kept going and running, in order to follow the course it was going on: it had to cross a ruff ditch. When it crossed that ruff ditch Mother and Delbert were thrown out of the buggy, and that left the rest of us kids still riding the buggy. The horse kept running and since I was the oldest child there I kept trying to get the younger kids to jump out of the buggy so they wouldn't get more seriously hurt. Every time one would climb out it would fall down because of the speed that the buggy was going and when they hit the ground they couldn't keep their balance. I had them all out but two by the time that the horse was stopped. A man by the name of Billy Mansor saw that the horse was running away and that there was no one in the buggy to drive it, so he jumped over the fence, stopped the horse and tied it up to the fence. I was sure thankful that he was able to get it stopped because i didn't know exactly what was going to happen to the rest of us that hadn't got out of the buggy. When I saw that everything was all right, I got the other two children out of the buggy and walked back to see what had happened to mother. She had been quite badly bruised but she hadn't had any broken bones. Grandmother Peterson took her into her home and she was laying on the bed. It took a day or two before she was able to come home but we were sure thankful that she hadn't been more seriously hurt.

Our mother was really the person that taught us great many of the lessons that we valued in life. She taught us how to work and how to do the things that needed to be done in the home. Each one of us as a child had a responsibility that we had to do every morning and every night. We knew that was ours and we accepted that responsibility and did that thing without any one having to ask or prod us to do the job. That was a great experience. As young people we learned patience, we learned industry, and we learned to cope with difficulties. Every once in a while something would go wrong and we had to find our own solution for solving the problem. It has been a great help to us all our lives.

We can credit our mother for the religious training of our family. Our father didn't feel he had the time, at that time, to take much time with the members of the family. He was a good worker and a good provider but we received a great deal more of the training from our mother than we did from our father.

One of the saddest things in my life was the passing of my mother when I was 16 years old. When Arthur, the youngest son, was born, she bled to death and died during the night. Father came and woke me up to go and get Olive Norton, who was a midwife, to come at that time, and when I got back I was released from my errand and I went up and went to bed. I didn't know that Mother had died until I got up that next morning. Most of my heart died with my mother. It was years and years before I really felt like I could go on and face life alone because I missed her so much. She was my ideal and she was really the one who gave me encouragement when things got tough, she gave me counsel and guidance. I never will be able to fully replace her and I am looking forward to a time when we will be together again.

My father was a farmer in the early period of my life. He tells a story about the time when I was born. I was born at two o’clock in the afternoon. He had been working preparing so he would be with mother during that time. She took sick during the night, but it was two o'clock before I came into the world. I came in on the 11th of July in 1901. I have always regretted that I was born in July because I have always faced either a water turn or harvesting a hay crop on my birthday. I have really celebrated a lot of birthdays tromping hay in the field, or tending water with a water turn during my life time. If I had my choice again I would be born in October or November, and not in July. But sometimes we don't have our choice. Father always use to tell me that it had cost him a very important water turn to get me into the world, and now I owed a quite a responsibility to him to help him take care of the water turns because he had missed that one to get me into the world.”

Sarah Jane Dalton’s Obituary:

Circleville .... under the direction of the Ward Bishopric ... services were held here Wednesday afternoon for another of Circleville's pioneers. Mrs. Sarah Jane Wiley Dalton, 85, who died at her home Sunday evening after an illness of only 36 hours. Bishop James L. Whittaker presided. The speakers were former Bishop, Henry Sudweeks, Elwood Dalton, a grandson of the deceased, and Oscar Wiltshire, another grandson who gave a sketch of her life. A tribute written by another relative, Mrs. Lola Smoot, was read by Nellie Fullmer and a tribute was given by Mrs. Ida Johnson.

The opening prayer was offered by James O. Meeks and the benediction by Ray Westwood. The grave at the Circleville Cemetery was dedicated by Irvin Allen.

Sarah Jane Dalton was a daughter of Robert and Sarah Darling Wiley and was born 23 June 1853 at Cedar City, Utah. While a small child she moved with her parents to Beaver, Utah. When she was ten years old she and her mother traveled to Liverpool, England, traveling by ox team to Salt Lake City and from there by stage coach to New York City, where they took a steamer for Liverpool. They remained in Liverpool for two years. While there Sarah attended school.

On their return trip, while awaiting a stage coach to start the long journey back to Salt Lake City, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and his body passed through New York to its final resting place.

They finally returned to their home in Beaver where Sarah later married Charles Albert Dalton on Oct. 9, 1870. About 1875 the young couple moved to Circleville where they spent the remainder of their lives and endured the hardships of those early days and helping to build up the community.

They were the parents of 11 children, 7 daughters and 4 sons. The members of the family have been active in Church and other public activities and have always been good citizens.

Mr. Dalton preceded his wife in death on Oct. 14, 1936. She is survived by three sons and four daughters ... Robert Dalton, Wiley Dalton, Roy Dalton .... Carolyne Wiltshire Edna Poulson, Sarah Neilsong Edna Peterson. 33 Grandchildren and 40 great-grandchildren.

(Newspaper clipping, April 8, 1938.

The below articles are about some early Circleville, Piute County, Utah history an was copied from the CD: Ancestry. Com. LDS Family History Suite 2. Pioneer Heritage Library. There is also other sources listed at the end.

Of note to the reader is that some histories of my hometown of Circleville, Utah, are long and there are many duplications from various sources. The reason I have chose to do this is because I am a history buff and I believe that the many difference sources will tell a more complete story of Circleville and its people..

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jun 26 2017, 13:41:32 UTC

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