Hannah Daphne Dalton

Mother Will Be Honored At Eighty: Mrs. Hannah Daphne Dalton will be honored by her sons, daughter and friends at a birthday reception Monday in the Lion House from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Mrs. Dalton will be eighty years of age. Mrs. Dalton will welcome her sons, Mark A. Dalton, Los Angeles; B.W. Dalton, also of Los Angeles; Edward Dalton, Pleasant Grove; Mr. and Mrs.F. W. Olsen of Salt Lake, and Don Mack Dalton, also of Salt Lake. All friends are invited to attend the reception. Hannah Daphne Smith Dalton was born in Parowan, Utah, March 22, 1857. She was the daughter of Jesse Nathaniel Smith and Emma Seraphine West. Incidents in her life are related by her as follows: (Heart Throbs of the West: Volume 9. "I Was A Pioneer Child, The Childhood of Hannah Daphne Smith Dalton" by Hannah Daphne Smith Dalton.)....Our home was a two-story adobe house with two rooms below and two upstairs. The walls were not plastered, just old adobe walls. We had a two-roomed cellar where we kept the potatoes and all vegetables. In the winter the windows were filled with straw and boarded up in order to keep the vegetables from freezing, and one of the greatest horrors of my life was "when my turn came" to go down in that dark cellar and get potatoes for the old cow.

We did not have a cook stove, and mother just baked the bread and cooked over the open fire. We had one good outfit of two plates, bowls, knives, forks and spoons, that we always called father's and mother's. The rest of our dishes were what we called Davenportware, as Brother Davenport made them at his home. These dishes were molded in the shape of plates, bowls and cups, and were burnt in some kind of an oven. For seats we had a rough slab with two holes in each end, and big pegs put in to hold it up.

My brother, Jesse Nathaniel, was born May 16, 1861. He was mother's first son and we were all so proud and happy because of him. When he was seven months old, mother was preparing to wash and had a big brass kettle of water on the fire. I was tending Jesse and was lying on a quilt in front of the fire. He had on a yellow flannel dress. I had picked the yellow flowers from the sagebrush to color his dress, and it was very pretty. Mother was getting her tubs ready and the water was boiling. The log that was holding the kettle broke and the boiling water came down on us. I screamed, and Grandmother Smith came running to us. As she took the clothes off the baby, the skin came off with them. Grandmother had some linen sheets in which they wrapped the baby. We got the Elders, Edward Dalton, Samuel H. Rogers, and Dr. Pendleton, to come and administer to him. For weeks Edward Dalton came twice a day and administered to him and he would always say, "Cheer up, Sister Emma, your son will live." Dr. Pendleton made a salve of sweet cream and flour and mother would put in on with a feather. My knee was badly burned and in the excitement with Jesse I was almost forgotten, and the cords in my knee were drawn so that my knee was never very strong, but after awhile I was able to take my little cup and go for the cream that our good neighbors gave us to make the salve for little Jesse. With the faith and prayers of these good men, and the constant care of mother and grandmother, he lived and was married and raised a large family.

I remember how the wolves would howl and how they would come and get our chickens at night, and mother would wake me up so that I could go out with her and scare them away; and how Uncle came and stayed one night and shot the wolves. I remember going out early one morning with mother and there was a big rattle snake in our back yard. We got some big, long sticks, and killed it. The next morning there was another and we did the same.

My grandmother West gave me a very pretty little Indian basket to put my work in. Calico was very scarce and very precious; it then cost fifty cents a yard, and everything was cut very sparingly, but mother would give me the tiny scraps to put in my quilt blocks that Grandmother Smith was showing me how to make. I was making a nine-patch block and sometimes I had to piece the pieces in order to get a little block one inch square. One day we had been playing down by the shed where we kept old Lina, the cow. I forgot to take my basket in the house with me and when I went to get it, it was gone. Mother said she was afraid Lina had eaten it. I think that was the greatest loss I ever had in my life. and to this day I remember how badly I felt. My little heart was nearly broken.

Grandmother Smith taught school in the old fort at Red Creek. I did not have any shoes to wear. Mother would fix me a little piece of bread and molasses, and Allen Miller would carry me to school on his back, through the snow, and come and get me at night. I read the McGuffey First Reader through several times. During this time we did not have much to eat. Our breakfast was porridge with a little piece of bread. It was made of, boiling water, salt, a little thickening, and about a pint of milk. For dinner we would have potato soup. We would slice and cook a few potatoes, thicken it a little and put some milk in it, and it was very good. But one night our cow, poor old Lina, failed to come home. We hunted and hunted for her, but to no avail. The next morning Allen got up early and went to hunt for her, and found her in the old Hollow, dead. She had fallen and broken her neck. How we did mourn and cry. When mother made the porridge and there was no milk to go into it, she cried like her heart would break. Allen said, "Don't cry, Aunt Emma. the porridge is just as good without the milk as it was with it."

I remember the Christmas of 1862. All of us children hung up our stockings. We jumped up early in the morning to see what Santa had brought, but there was not a thing in them. Mother wept bitterly. She went to her box and got a little apple and cut it in little tiny pieces, and that was our Christmas, but I have never forgotten how I loved her dear hands as she was cutting that apple.

Our playthings were very crude, but we spent many hours making houses, gardens and corrals in the walls of the breakwater or hollow, that was close to our house. We would make our own dolls and some of them were quite nice. When mother could spare a piece of cloth, she would cut a pattern the shape of a doll, and we would sew it up and fill it with saw dust, and then mother would work eyes, nose and mouth on it. But we were always happy and contented, and would dress them up as real dolls.

I was always a great favorite with my Grandmother Smith, and spent many happy hours in her company. She taught me to knit and piece quilts, and I had to knit my own stockings and the stockings for all the children younger than myself. Each day mother would give me a stint of thirty rounds and then I could play. Some days it would take me all day to knit, and on other days I would hurry and do it in a few hours. and then we would have great times playing hide and seek, steal sticks, jump the rope, swinging, and all sorts of games.

I also had to help in the spring with the washing, dyeing and picking the wool. I was then too small to spin, but I would gather the yellow blooms from the rabbit brush to color yellow; the peach leaves to color green; the log wood for black, and it was a great outing for us to go to the mountains and get the madras for red, and in every up-to-date home the blue dye-pot, made of indigo, had a prominent place in the corner by the fire. All these things made pretty colors and we would get copperas from the foot hills to set the dye, so it would not fade.

We always attended the best schools there were, and one of my daily duties was to keep the quills filled for weaving, and it often kept me quite busy for I always wanted to be on time. I was a good student and was well liked by my teachers. At the close of this year's session, they were going to have a big school dance; and Davis Rogers, a boy in my class, and my first beau, asked me to go to the dance with him. I told him I could not, that I did not have any dress to wear, but they were weaving me one. I went home and told my mother about it. Aunt Janet, who was always good to me, said, "If you will wind the quills, I will weave the dress and your mother and grandmother can make it for you in time for the dance." So we all got busy and got my dress made. I will have to explain about my dress. It was what we called linsey, with cotton warp and wool filling. The warp was white and the filling blue and red, three little stripes of blue and two of red, and then one wide stripe of red. It was made with a little tight waist and plain full skirt, with the stripe running or going around. It was pretty and I felt very proud. Davis came for me and I went to the party very happy. We were both barefooted and as we were dancing together, someone more fortunate than we were, tramped on our feet, and laughed and made fun of us, so we went home crying, after all our great anticipations for a good time. But it taught me a lesson that I have never forgotten, and that was never to laugh or critisize or speak unkindly of a person in poor circumstances or less fortunate than I.

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Sun Advocate - Thursday, May 13, 1937, Mother of Former Price Mayor Dies: Mrs. Hannah Daphne Smith Dalton, 80, mother of former Mayor B. W. Dalton of Price, died Monday at her home in Salt Lake City. Mrs. Dalton was a native Utahn and active worker in the L.D.S. church. Funeral services were conducted Wednesday at noon in the seventeenth L.D.S. ward chapel. The body was taken to Manassa, Colorado for burial. Born in Parowan March 22, 1857, she was a daughter of Jesse Nathaniel and Seraphine West Smith, early pioneers. Her father was a cousin of Joseph Smith, founder of the L.D.S. church.

Besides B.W. Dalton, who is now practicing law in Westwood Village, California, she is survived by three sons and a daughter; Don Mack Dalton, Salt Lake City; E. Smith Dalton, Pleasant Grove; Dr. Mark Ardath Dalton, Santa Ana, California, and Mrs. W. F. Olson, former resident of Price and now residing in Salt Lake City.

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After the death of her husband, John Cranmer Dalton, on August 30, 1906, Hannah worked as the proprietor of a hotel in the 1910 census for Manassas, Colorado. Her son Edward was working as a minister, her son Bartlett was working as the deputy assessor, and her daughter, Daphne was working as a housekeeper at home. Living in the home were the following people: Hannah, 53, Edward, 29, Bartlett, 23, Daphne, 21, Emma, 16, Don, 14, Mark, 12, and Mary, 31, Hannah's daughter-in-law, and the wife of Edward. They owned their own home free from a mortgage.

By 1920, Hannah, 62, had moved back to Utah and was living in Salt Lake City, Utah, with two of her children, Don, 24, and daughter-in-law, Geneve , 22. None of them were working at the time. In the 1930 census, Hannah, 73, was living with a "roomer, Mabel Welling, 20, at 128 North Main Street, a home she was renting for $50 per month. Mabel was working as a stenographer in an office. Seven years later, Hannah passed away on May 10, 1937, at the age of 80 years old and was buried in the Old Manassa Cemetery along with her husband.