Lucinda Curtis

• Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees via brother Franklin Henry Stewart by SmartCopy: Nov 4 2015, 17:28:28 UTC

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Linda Stewart was born 6 Jun 1851 to Benjamin Franklin Stewart and Rachel Hunter Davis, widow of Henry Davis. Lucinda was the only child born to Benjamin and Rachel.

When Samuel Bent Curtis was courting Lucinda in Springville, Utah, he dropped a primer, or cap, on the hot stove. The cap exploded, hit Lucinda in the eye and embedded there. The pain was terrible and there were no doctors around to treat the wound. Sam wanted to take his sweetheart to Salt Lake City, a two-day trip, to see a doctor and try to save her eyesight.

They married in Springville and the trip to the doctor was their honeymoon. Lucinda was just sixteen then. The doctor could not save the eye nor could he remove the brass cap. Years later, when she was in St. David, Arizona, the cap worked itself out, relieving a lot of pain that had never stopped.

Towards the end of 1878, Lucinda moved with with her family and husband's family (Charles, Joseph Nahum, Asa Lyman, and Moses Curtis) to Arizona. Her brother, Orson Davis, helped drive the team of oxen. Her sons (Fredrick, Lyman, and Ammon) walked most of the way, driving the cattle. Arriving at Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River on New Year's Day, the river was swollen and too high to ford. The next morning the river had frozen over night. The cattle would not cross on the ice, so Charlie put a strip of sand across the ice. Then he put a new calf in a wagon and began crossing the ice. When the calf bawled, the mother followed, then everything and everybody moved across the ice on the sand strip. It took all day to get the job done. That night they thanked their Heavenly Father and went to bed. The next morning, the river was flowing again.

Charlie stayed in Luna Valley, New Mexico. The rest traveled to Eden, Arizona. Moses Curtis' family remained in Eden, first called Curtis, and the rest moved on. They camped on Cottonwood Wash in Pima for a while. It was there that Lucinda mixed her last batch of cornmeal and made bread for supper. Just as she started to feed her family, an Apache warrior stuck his head into the wagon. She put some warm cornbread and molasses into his hand. He stepped back and another brave put his head into the wagon. She also gave him some cornbread and molasses. Then another until all the cornbread and molasses was gone and the family went to bed hungry - but alive. They left Pima by way of the Aravaipi Canyon on the west end of Graham Mountains and on to St. David.

Upon arriving at St. David, the grass was belly-high to the cattle and the boys could jump the San Pedro River. Lucinda lived in St. David until her 10th child, Ada, was born. She died at this time. They called it child-bed fever. She was only thirty-two years old. Eliza was only seven when her mother died and can remember her father crying and the tear drops falling into the ashes on the stove hearth.

Susan cared for baby Ada who died nine months later from croup. This was the third child Lucinda lost from croup. They tell how Jasper, then two years old, would get his mother's shawl and go looking for her. A fourth child also died at an early age.

Lucinda had beautiful features and dark, curly hair. Her mother, Rachel, was also a very beautiful woman with heavy red hair. Six of Lucinda and Samuel's 10 children lived to adulthood, married, and had families of their own: Fredrick, Jasper, Lyman, Ammon, Eliza, and Lucinda Viola.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jul 27 2017, 13:35:20 UTC