Life Sketch of Daniel Duane Harris
Daniel Duane Harris was born in San Bernardino, San Bernardino County, California on October 8, 1854. He was the oldest child of Daniel and Lydia Harris Harris who three years earlier (1851) with their respective families had settled in the San Bernardino area as part of an expedition headed by Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman. This Mormon Church venture was part of a planned "colonization" expansion effort in the Western United States. Up to this time, San Bernardino was probably the most distant of all Latter-day Saint settlements from Utah's Salt Lake Valley. Daniel and Lydia were married in San Bernardino on October 5, 1853. In 1857, this Southern California colony was abandoned rather hastily, as direction came from Salt Lake City for all colonists to return to Utah to protect the more central communities from an "invasion" by the "Johnston's Army", which was enroute from the East to put down the "so-called" Mormon rebellion. By this time, Daniel Duane had a sister, Frances Lovina, born to Daniel and Lydia on November 6, 1856.
As the San Bernardino residents returned, they stopped first at Utah's southern most settlement of Washington in Washington County, where some families established permanent homes. However, most families gradually dispersed throughout the various settlements of the Territory. Lydia's parents, Moses and Fanny Harris moved about ten miles north of Washington to found the new settlement of Harrisburg, named in honor of Moses. Daniel and Lydia with their children Daniel Duane and Frances Lovina soon followed Lydia's parents to Harrisburg.
Very shortly, the young Harris family moved to Parowan in Iron County, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and after a brief stay continued northward to Fillmore in Millard County, where Daniel Duane's younger brother Charles Franklin was born, on April 23, 1859. The next move took the family to Deseret about 30 miles west of Fillmore where they intended to farm desert land using water from the Sevier River. In Deseret the fourth child was born to Lydia and Daniel, a daughter, on March 31, 1861, and given the name of Cynthia Orissa.
Some time in 1861, Daniel Duane's father Daniel, as part of a group of former San Bernardino colonists, returned to California attempting to recover livestock which had been left behind four years earlier. The mission did not go as planned for Daniel. Apparently, difficulties ensued and Daniel was arrested for stealing horses, perhaps his own, resulting in having to serve a two-year jail term.
This incident and perhaps other disagreements caused a rift to come between Daniel and Lydia. Having to care for her four children alone, Lydia returned to Southern Utah to live with her parents in Harrisburg and later in Glendale in Kane County for a period of five years.
Lydia's parents encouraged her to divorce Daniel, which she did. Years later, Daniel Duane related to his own children of herding cows near Leeds and Harrisburg and through the Gap (where Quail Creek leaves the Harrisburg area and flows into the recently created Quail Lake about one mile above the Virgin River). He said that the weather was so extreme that his feet became blistered by the hot earth and rocks.
Following his period of incarceration in California, Daniel returned to Utah. Daniel Duane recalls that his father came once a year and gave money to his mother Lydia, from wages he had earned while working in the mines (perhaps at the iron mines near Cedar City or somewhere in Nevada where mining was just beginning).
In 1866, Daniel Duane's mother Lydia married Samuel Dennis White, a resident of Beaver in Beaver County, located about one hundred miles north of Harrisburg. Samuel was a freighter by trade in the Beaver area and also was one of the agents who met wagon trains on the plains of Wyoming to assist immigrants in completing their journey to Utah. On November 21, 1867, Lydia gave birth to her fifth child, Amelia Abigail White. However, Lydia's marriage to Samuel White lasted for just two years. He died in 1868.
Daniel Duane's mother Lydia, now age thirty-five would not marry again. Beaver was to be the permanent home for Lydia and her five children. Many years later Daniel Duane recalled that at age fourteen he was required to be the "man of the house" and also had to do a "man's work from now on". Therefore, as a young man he was involved in the freighting business, driving a team and wagon to support his mother and family.
On June 15, 1881, at the age of twenty-seven, Daniel Duane Harris married Francis Elizabeth Tolton, a local school teacher, twenty-two years of age. Francis was the daughter of Edward and Mary Ann Tomlinson Tolton. The families of both of these individuals were immigrants to the United States from England after having joined the Mormon Church in the mid 1840's. Francis was born in Ephraim, San Pete County, Utah on September 14, 1859, and had come to Beaver with her parents about 1866.
Daniel Duane and Francis' first home in Beaver was a two-room log cabin with dirt floors and a dirt-covered roof. A single fireplace was used for cooking and for heating. Water for the home was obtained from an irrigation ditch several blocks away, which had been diverted from the Beaver River, which flowed from the snow-covered peaks of the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver. Some fifteen years later, a well was dug to provide water for the home.
Through the years, eight children were born to Daniel Duane and Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris: Walter Smith, 1882; Clara, 1884; Orville Duane 1887; Earl Tolton, 1889; Ambrose, 1892; Edward Daniel, 1894; Frank 1897; and, Lafayette, 1902.
In 1902, Daniel Duane constructed a new home for his large family, a four room log house, at which time the original home was razed. Some time later two more rooms, made of concrete, were added to the back of the house.
Daniel provided a living for his family mainly by farming and by raising both dairy and beef cattle. Francis had received fifteen acres of land north of Beaver as part of her inheritance from her parents' estate, which was being farmed. Daniel purchased additional acreage from Charles White which greatly enlarged the family farm. Edward recalls that his father had a total of approximately eighty acres of land along North Creek. In conjunction with other Beaver area cattlemen, Daniel shared a summer range on the high meadow land in the mountains to the east, where he developed the Wiregrass Springs area as part of his own pastureland.
Besides his farming and cattle enterprises, Daniel had a freighting business, hauling goods by team and wagon between various communities in the Beaver area. The largest town at the time was Frisco, a booming mining town near Milford, some twenty-five miles to the west. With a population of some 1600, its Horn Silver Mine was producing extremely high grade ore. Daniel, with his oldest son Walt, would cut timbers from the mountains near Beaver, strip them of bark, cut them to various lengths and deliver them to the mines, to be used in shoring up the extensive underground shafts and tunnels to prevent cave ins.
For many years, Daniel hauled freight from the Milford rail yard to Beaver for his brother-in-law John Franklin Tolton, who operated a mercantile store in Beaver. During wintertime, when the snow was deep, timber was cut by broad-axe to be used for ties in constructing the railroad as it extended throughout Southern Utah from Milford.
Daniel was known as a "skilled lime-burner" as he assisted Frank White in building lime kilns in the mountains for the making of lime. It was critical that fires in the kilns be kept extremely hot for up to three days in order to produce lime from the heated limestone. When finished, the lime was sold for fifty cents a bushel. Together with some of his older sons, Daniel would stay in the mountains for as long as two weeks in order to produce enough lime to be sold to local craftsman for as much as one hundred dollars.
Faithful in religious matters, Daniel enjoyed attending his church meetings. For several years he was a member of the Beaver Stake High Council of the LDS Church which required him to be a regular speaker at the various churches in the area. Having had less than a year of formal education, his son Edward recalls that his father would occasionally ask him for assistance in preparing his sermons.
Most of the children of Daniel Duane Harris recall that their father was very strict and stern in relating to them, that he required them to work long and hard in the fields, that there was not much time for play. He was not one to display his emotions, but he did have a sense of humor. This strictness caused conflict with some of his sons, resulting in them leaving home for several years. One son, Ambrose, spent several years working on ranches and doing mining and trapping in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While away from home, ‘Brose died during the world-wide influenza epidemic in 1918.
This must have been a rather tense time for Daniel Duane Harris, both emotionally and financially. His son Earl was a soldier on the battlefield in France. Another son, Edward was serving in New Zealand on a church mission which required sending him about fifteen dollars a month. To have Ambrose's body returned in a sealed casket (due to the strict health code imposed) cost $1500. Just a year earlier the family home had burned, with most of the household furnishings and personal possessions being lost. To rebuild the home, another $3300 needed to be borrowed, even with friends in the community helping.
In later years, Daniel Duane told his son Edward that his approach at rearing children, in being strict and trying to conquer them, was incorrect. In their adult lives, most of Daniel's sons were able to make peace with their father.
Earl recalls that at one time his father suffered from an abscessed hip, and in order to find relief, spent weeks at a time bathing in mineral hot springs, requiring Earl to work throughout the summer for High White for seventy-five cents a day to support the family.
Francis Elizabeth had a temperament which was just opposite that of her husband, Daniel. She was a very gracious and loving individual. She had attended school in Beaver through the ninth grade, an exceptional feat for the time. She was a good speller, had an extensive vocabulary, and had taught school for several years.
Frequently, she entertained audiences by giving dramatic readings. Her son Earl recalls that during his childhood years in their two-room cabin, "there were pleasant nights with the family around the hot stove while the temperature outside was zero", and that on these occasions the "tradition of learning poems and sayings, acting, telling stories and speaking decisively was promoted." Several of her sons, especially Orville, Earl and Edward must have been greatly influenced by their mother, since they were also good story tellers.
Francis participated in the local LDS Church activities and fulfilled assignments in various organizations. For many years she was President of the Women's Relief organization where she gave much compassionate service to the members of her ward. As a youth she and her brother John always won the foot races on the annual Fourth of July celebrations.
The Harris Family home still stands in Beaver today. After the fire of 1917, only two of the rooms remained, those constructed of concrete. In reconstruction, the two rooms became the front part of the house, and for many years it was the family home of Orville and Hester Neal Harris and their three daughters.
Daniel Duane Harris died in Beaver on July 4, 1930 at age seventy-five. Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris died in Beaver shortly thereafter on December 7, 1930 at age sixty-six. Both are buried in the Beaver City Cemetery.
Information in this sketch has been obtained from Earl T. and Edward D. Harris as recorded by Shirley Harris DeLapp from the Silas Harris, Jr. record published by the Silas Harris, Jr. Family Organization and from various family members.
Daniel Duane Harris was born in San Bernardino, San Bernardino County, California on October 8, 1854. He was the oldest child of Daniel and Lydia Harris Harris who three years earlier (1851) with their respective families had settled in the San Bernardino area as part of an expedition headed by Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman. This Mormon Church venture was part of a planned "colonization" expansion effort in the Western United States. Up to this time, San Bernardino was probably the most distant of all Latter-day Saint settlements from Utah's Salt Lake Valley. Daniel and Lydia were married in San Bernardino on October 5, 1853. In 1857, this Southern California colony was abandoned rather hastily, as direction came from Salt Lake City for all colonists to return to Utah to protect the more central communities from an "invasion" by the "Johnston's Army", which was enroute from the East to put down the "so-called" Mormon rebellion. By this time, Daniel Duane had a sister, Frances Lovina, born to Daniel and Lydia on November 6, 1856.
As the San Bernardino residents returned, they stopped first at Utah's southern most settlement of Washington in Washington County, where some families established permanent homes. However, most families gradually dispersed throughout the various settlements of the Territory. Lydia's parents, Moses and Fanny Harris moved about ten miles north of Washington to found the new settlement of Harrisburg, named in honor of Moses. Daniel and Lydia with their children Daniel Duane and Frances Lovina soon followed Lydia's parents to Harrisburg.
Very shortly, the young Harris family moved to Parowan in Iron County, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and after a brief stay continued northward to Fillmore in Millard County, where Daniel Duane's younger brother Charles Franklin was born, on April 23, 1859. The next move took the family to Deseret about 30 miles west of Fillmore where they intended to farm desert land using water from the Sevier River. In Deseret the fourth child was born to Lydia and Daniel, a daughter, on March 31, 1861, and given the name of Cynthia Orissa.
Some time in 1861, Daniel Duane's father Daniel, as part of a group of former San Bernardino colonists, returned to California attempting to recover livestock which had been left behind four years earlier. The mission did not go as planned for Daniel. Apparently, difficulties ensued and Daniel was arrested for stealing horses, perhaps his own, resulting in having to serve a two-year jail term.
This incident and perhaps other disagreements caused a rift to come between Daniel and Lydia. Having to care for her four children alone, Lydia returned to Southern Utah to live with her parents in Harrisburg and later in Glendale in Kane County for a period of five years.
Lydia's parents encouraged her to divorce Daniel, which she did. Years later, Daniel Duane related to his own children of herding cows near Leeds and Harrisburg and through the Gap (where Quail Creek leaves the Harrisburg area and flows into the recently created Quail Lake about one mile above the Virgin River). He said that the weather was so extreme that his feet became blistered by the hot earth and rocks.
Following his period of incarceration in California, Daniel returned to Utah. Daniel Duane recalls that his father came once a year and gave money to his mother Lydia, from wages he had earned while working in the mines (perhaps at the iron mines near Cedar City or somewhere in Nevada where mining was just beginning).
In 1866, Daniel Duane's mother Lydia married Samuel Dennis White, a resident of Beaver in Beaver County, located about one hundred miles north of Harrisburg. Samuel was a freighter by trade in the Beaver area and also was one of the agents who met wagon trains on the plains of Wyoming to assist immigrants in completing their journey to Utah. On November 21, 1867, Lydia gave birth to her fifth child, Amelia Abigail White. However, Lydia's marriage to Samuel White lasted for just two years. He died in 1868.
Daniel Duane's mother Lydia, now age thirty-five would not marry again. Beaver was to be the permanent home for Lydia and her five children. Many years later Daniel Duane recalled that at age fourteen he was required to be the "man of the house" and also had to do a "man's work from now on". Therefore, as a young man he was involved in the freighting business, driving a team and wagon to support his mother and family.
On June 15, 1881, at the age of twenty-seven, Daniel Duane Harris married Francis Elizabeth Tolton, a local school teacher, twenty-two years of age. Francis was the daughter of Edward and Mary Ann Tomlinson Tolton. The families of both of these individuals were immigrants to the United States from England after having joined the Mormon Church in the mid 1840's. Francis was born in Ephraim, San Pete County, Utah on September 14, 1859, and had come to Beaver with her parents about 1866.
Daniel Duane and Francis' first home in Beaver was a two-room log cabin with dirt floors and a dirt-covered roof. A single fireplace was used for cooking and for heating. Water for the home was obtained from an irrigation ditch several blocks away, which had been diverted from the Beaver River, which flowed from the snow-covered peaks of the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver. Some fifteen years later, a well was dug to provide water for the home.
Through the years, eight children were born to Daniel Duane and Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris: Walter Smith, 1882; Clara, 1884; Orville Duane 1887; Earl Tolton, 1889; Ambrose, 1892; Edward Daniel, 1894; Frank 1897; and, Lafayette, 1902.
In 1902, Daniel Duane constructed a new home for his large family, a four room log house, at which time the original home was razed. Some time later two more rooms, made of concrete, were added to the back of the house.
Daniel provided a living for his family mainly by farming and by raising both dairy and beef cattle. Francis had received fifteen acres of land north of Beaver as part of her inheritance from her parents' estate, which was being farmed. Daniel purchased additional acreage from Charles White which greatly enlarged the family farm. Edward recalls that his father had a total of approximately eighty acres of land along North Creek. In conjunction with other Beaver area cattlemen, Daniel shared a summer range on the high meadow land in the mountains to the east, where he developed the Wiregrass Springs area as part of his own pastureland.
Besides his farming and cattle enterprises, Daniel had a freighting business, hauling goods by team and wagon between various communities in the Beaver area. The largest town at the time was Frisco, a booming mining town near Milford, some twenty-five miles to the west. With a population of some 1600, its Horn Silver Mine was producing extremely high grade ore. Daniel, with his oldest son Walt, would cut timbers from the mountains near Beaver, strip them of bark, cut them to various lengths and deliver them to the mines, to be used in shoring up the extensive underground shafts and tunnels to prevent cave ins.
For many years, Daniel hauled freight from the Milford rail yard to Beaver for his brother-in-law John Franklin Tolton, who operated a mercantile store in Beaver. During wintertime, when the snow was deep, timber was cut by broad-axe to be used for ties in constructing the railroad as it extended throughout Southern Utah from Milford.
Daniel was known as a "skilled lime-burner" as he assisted Frank White in building lime kilns in the mountains for the making of lime. It was critical that fires in the kilns be kept extremely hot for up to three days in order to produce lime from the heated limestone. When finished, the lime was sold for fifty cents a bushel. Together with some of his older sons, Daniel would stay in the mountains for as long as two weeks in order to produce enough lime to be sold to local craftsman for as much as one hundred dollars.
Faithful in religious matters, Daniel enjoyed attending his church meetings. For several years he was a member of the Beaver Stake High Council of the LDS Church which required him to be a regular speaker at the various churches in the area. Having had less than a year of formal education, his son Edward recalls that his father would occasionally ask him for assistance in preparing his sermons.
Most of the children of Daniel Duane Harris recall that their father was very strict and stern in relating to them, that he required them to work long and hard in the fields, that there was not much time for play. He was not one to display his emotions, but he did have a sense of humor. This strictness caused conflict with some of his sons, resulting in them leaving home for several years. One son, Ambrose, spent several years working on ranches and doing mining and trapping in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While away from home, ‘Brose died during the world-wide influenza epidemic in 1918.
This must have been a rather tense time for Daniel Duane Harris, both emotionally and financially. His son Earl was a soldier on the battlefield in France. Another son, Edward was serving in New Zealand on a church mission which required sending him about fifteen dollars a month. To have Ambrose's body returned in a sealed casket (due to the strict health code imposed) cost $1500. Just a year earlier the family home had burned, with most of the household furnishings and personal possessions being lost. To rebuild the home, another $3300 needed to be borrowed, even with friends in the community helping.
In later years, Daniel Duane told his son Edward that his approach at rearing children, in being strict and trying to conquer them, was incorrect. In their adult lives, most of Daniel's sons were able to make peace with their father.
Earl recalls that at one time his father suffered from an abscessed hip, and in order to find relief, spent weeks at a time bathing in mineral hot springs, requiring Earl to work throughout the summer for High White for seventy-five cents a day to support the family.
Francis Elizabeth had a temperament which was just opposite that of her husband, Daniel. She was a very gracious and loving individual. She had attended school in Beaver through the ninth grade, an exceptional feat for the time. She was a good speller, had an extensive vocabulary, and had taught school for several years.
Frequently, she entertained audiences by giving dramatic readings. Her son Earl recalls that during his childhood years in their two-room cabin, "there were pleasant nights with the family around the hot stove while the temperature outside was zero", and that on these occasions the "tradition of learning poems and sayings, acting, telling stories and speaking decisively was promoted." Several of her sons, especially Orville, Earl and Edward must have been greatly influenced by their mother, since they were also good story tellers.
Francis participated in the local LDS Church activities and fulfilled assignments in various organizations. For many years she was President of the Women's Relief organization where she gave much compassionate service to the members of her ward. As a youth she and her brother John always won the foot races on the annual Fourth of July celebrations.
The Harris Family home still stands in Beaver today. After the fire of 1917, only two of the rooms remained, those constructed of concrete. In reconstruction, the two rooms became the front part of the house, and for many years it was the family home of Orville and Hester Neal Harris and their three daughters.
Daniel Duane Harris died in Beaver on July 4, 1930 at age seventy-five. Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris died in Beaver shortly thereafter on December 7, 1930 at age sixty-six. Both are buried in the Beaver City Cemetery.
Information in this sketch has been obtained from Earl T. and Edward D. Harris as recorded by Shirley Harris DeLapp from the Silas Harris, Jr. record published by the Silas Harris, Jr. Family Organization and from various family members.
Life Sketch of Daniel Duane Harris
Daniel Duane Harris was born in San Bernardino, San Bernardino County, California on October 8, 1854. He was the oldest child of Daniel and Lydia Harris Harris who three years earlier (1851) with their respective families had settled in the San Bernardino area as part of an expedition headed by Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman. This Mormon Church venture was part of a planned "colonization" expansion effort in the Western United States. Up to this time, San Bernardino was probably the most distant of all Latter-day Saint settlements from Utah's Salt Lake Valley. Daniel and Lydia were married in San Bernardino on October 5, 1853. In 1857, this Southern California colony was abandoned rather hastily, as direction came from Salt Lake City for all colonists to return to Utah to protect the more central communities from an "invasion" by the "Johnston's Army", which was enroute from the East to put down the "so-called" Mormon rebellion. By this time, Daniel Duane had a sister, Frances Lovina, born to Daniel and Lydia on November 6, 1856.
As the San Bernardino residents returned, they stopped first at Utah's southern most settlement of Washington in Washington County, where some families established permanent homes. However, most families gradually dispersed throughout the various settlements of the Territory. Lydia's parents, Moses and Fanny Harris moved about ten miles north of Washington to found the new settlement of Harrisburg, named in honor of Moses. Daniel and Lydia with their children Daniel Duane and Frances Lovina soon followed Lydia's parents to Harrisburg.
Very shortly, the young Harris family moved to Parowan in Iron County, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and after a brief stay continued northward to Fillmore in Millard County, where Daniel Duane's younger brother Charles Franklin was born, on April 23, 1859. The next move took the family to Deseret about 30 miles west of Fillmore where they intended to farm desert land using water from the Sevier River. In Deseret the fourth child was born to Lydia and Daniel, a daughter, on March 31, 1861, and given the name of Cynthia Orissa.
Some time in 1861, Daniel Duane's father Daniel, as part of a group of former San Bernardino colonists, returned to California attempting to recover livestock which had been left behind four years earlier. The mission did not go as planned for Daniel. Apparently, difficulties ensued and Daniel was arrested for stealing horses, perhaps his own, resulting in having to serve a two-year jail term.
This incident and perhaps other disagreements caused a rift to come between Daniel and Lydia. Having to care for her four children alone, Lydia returned to Southern Utah to live with her parents in Harrisburg and later in Glendale in Kane County for a period of five years.
Lydia's parents encouraged her to divorce Daniel, which she did. Years later, Daniel Duane related to his own children of herding cows near Leeds and Harrisburg and through the Gap (where Quail Creek leaves the Harrisburg area and flows into the recently created Quail Lake about one mile above the Virgin River). He said that the weather was so extreme that his feet became blistered by the hot earth and rocks.
Following his period of incarceration in California, Daniel returned to Utah. Daniel Duane recalls that his father came once a year and gave money to his mother Lydia, from wages he had earned while working in the mines (perhaps at the iron mines near Cedar City or somewhere in Nevada where mining was just beginning).
In 1866, Daniel Duane's mother Lydia married Samuel Dennis White, a resident of Beaver in Beaver County, located about one hundred miles north of Harrisburg. Samuel was a freighter by trade in the Beaver area and also was one of the agents who met wagon trains on the plains of Wyoming to assist immigrants in completing their journey to Utah. On November 21, 1867, Lydia gave birth to her fifth child, Amelia Abigail White. However, Lydia's marriage to Samuel White lasted for just two years. He died in 1868.
Daniel Duane's mother Lydia, now age thirty-five would not marry again. Beaver was to be the permanent home for Lydia and her five children. Many years later Daniel Duane recalled that at age fourteen he was required to be the "man of the house" and also had to do a "man's work from now on". Therefore, as a young man he was involved in the freighting business, driving a team and wagon to support his mother and family.
On June 15, 1881, at the age of twenty-seven, Daniel Duane Harris married Francis Elizabeth Tolton, a local school teacher, twenty-two years of age. Francis was the daughter of Edward and Mary Ann Tomlinson Tolton. The families of both of these individuals were immigrants to the United States from England after having joined the Mormon Church in the mid 1840's. Francis was born in Ephraim, San Pete County, Utah on September 14, 1859, and had come to Beaver with her parents about 1866.
Daniel Duane and Francis' first home in Beaver was a two-room log cabin with dirt floors and a dirt-covered roof. A single fireplace was used for cooking and for heating. Water for the home was obtained from an irrigation ditch several blocks away, which had been diverted from the Beaver River, which flowed from the snow-covered peaks of the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver. Some fifteen years later, a well was dug to provide water for the home.
Through the years, eight children were born to Daniel Duane and Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris: Walter Smith, 1882; Clara, 1884; Orville Duane 1887; Earl Tolton, 1889; Ambrose, 1892; Edward Daniel, 1894; Frank 1897; and, Lafayette, 1902.
In 1902, Daniel Duane constructed a new home for his large family, a four room log house, at which time the original home was razed. Some time later two more rooms, made of concrete, were added to the back of the house.
Daniel provided a living for his family mainly by farming and by raising both dairy and beef cattle. Francis had received fifteen acres of land north of Beaver as part of her inheritance from her parents' estate, which was being farmed. Daniel purchased additional acreage from Charles White which greatly enlarged the family farm. Edward recalls that his father had a total of approximately eighty acres of land along North Creek. In conjunction with other Beaver area cattlemen, Daniel shared a summer range on the high meadow land in the mountains to the east, where he developed the Wiregrass Springs area as part of his own pastureland.
Besides his farming and cattle enterprises, Daniel had a freighting business, hauling goods by team and wagon between various communities in the Beaver area. The largest town at the time was Frisco, a booming mining town near Milford, some twenty-five miles to the west. With a population of some 1600, its Horn Silver Mine was producing extremely high grade ore. Daniel, with his oldest son Walt, would cut timbers from the mountains near Beaver, strip them of bark, cut them to various lengths and deliver them to the mines, to be used in shoring up the extensive underground shafts and tunnels to prevent cave ins.
For many years, Daniel hauled freight from the Milford rail yard to Beaver for his brother-in-law John Franklin Tolton, who operated a mercantile store in Beaver. During wintertime, when the snow was deep, timber was cut by broad-axe to be used for ties in constructing the railroad as it extended throughout Southern Utah from Milford.
Daniel was known as a "skilled lime-burner" as he assisted Frank White in building lime kilns in the mountains for the making of lime. It was critical that fires in the kilns be kept extremely hot for up to three days in order to produce lime from the heated limestone. When finished, the lime was sold for fifty cents a bushel. Together with some of his older sons, Daniel would stay in the mountains for as long as two weeks in order to produce enough lime to be sold to local craftsman for as much as one hundred dollars.
Faithful in religious matters, Daniel enjoyed attending his church meetings. For several years he was a member of the Beaver Stake High Council of the LDS Church which required him to be a regular speaker at the various churches in the area. Having had less than a year of formal education, his son Edward recalls that his father would occasionally ask him for assistance in preparing his sermons.
Most of the children of Daniel Duane Harris recall that their father was very strict and stern in relating to them, that he required them to work long and hard in the fields, that there was not much time for play. He was not one to display his emotions, but he did have a sense of humor. This strictness caused conflict with some of his sons, resulting in them leaving home for several years. One son, Ambrose, spent several years working on ranches and doing mining and trapping in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While away from home, ‘Brose died during the world-wide influenza epidemic in 1918.
This must have been a rather tense time for Daniel Duane Harris, both emotionally and financially. His son Earl was a soldier on the battlefield in France. Another son, Edward was serving in New Zealand on a church mission which required sending him about fifteen dollars a month. To have Ambrose's body returned in a sealed casket (due to the strict health code imposed) cost $1500. Just a year earlier the family home had burned, with most of the household furnishings and personal possessions being lost. To rebuild the home, another $3300 needed to be borrowed, even with friends in the community helping.
In later years, Daniel Duane told his son Edward that his approach at rearing children, in being strict and trying to conquer them, was incorrect. In their adult lives, most of Daniel's sons were able to make peace with their father.
Earl recalls that at one time his father suffered from an abscessed hip, and in order to find relief, spent weeks at a time bathing in mineral hot springs, requiring Earl to work throughout the summer for High White for seventy-five cents a day to support the family.
Francis Elizabeth had a temperament which was just opposite that of her husband, Daniel. She was a very gracious and loving individual. She had attended school in Beaver through the ninth grade, an exceptional feat for the time. She was a good speller, had an extensive vocabulary, and had taught school for several years.
Frequently, she entertained audiences by giving dramatic readings. Her son Earl recalls that during his childhood years in their two-room cabin, "there were pleasant nights with the family around the hot stove while the temperature outside was zero", and that on these occasions the "tradition of learning poems and sayings, acting, telling stories and speaking decisively was promoted." Several of her sons, especially Orville, Earl and Edward must have been greatly influenced by their mother, since they were also good story tellers.
Francis participated in the local LDS Church activities and fulfilled assignments in various organizations. For many years she was President of the Women's Relief organization where she gave much compassionate service to the members of her ward. As a youth she and her brother John always won the foot races on the annual Fourth of July celebrations.
The Harris Family home still stands in Beaver today. After the fire of 1917, only two of the rooms remained, those constructed of concrete. In reconstruction, the two rooms became the front part of the house, and for many years it was the family home of Orville and Hester Neal Harris and their three daughters.
Daniel Duane Harris died in Beaver on July 4, 1930 at age seventy-five. Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris died in Beaver shortly thereafter on December 7, 1930 at age sixty-six. Both are buried in the Beaver City Cemetery.
Information in this sketch has been obtained from Earl T. and Edward D. Harris as recorded by Shirley Harris DeLapp from the Silas Harris, Jr. record published by the Silas Harris, Jr. Family Organization and from various family members.
Daniel Duane Harris was born in San Bernardino, San Bernardino County, California on October 8, 1854. He was the oldest child of Daniel and Lydia Harris Harris who three years earlier (1851) with their respective families had settled in the San Bernardino area as part of an expedition headed by Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman. This Mormon Church venture was part of a planned "colonization" expansion effort in the Western United States. Up to this time, San Bernardino was probably the most distant of all Latter-day Saint settlements from Utah's Salt Lake Valley. Daniel and Lydia were married in San Bernardino on October 5, 1853. In 1857, this Southern California colony was abandoned rather hastily, as direction came from Salt Lake City for all colonists to return to Utah to protect the more central communities from an "invasion" by the "Johnston's Army", which was enroute from the East to put down the "so-called" Mormon rebellion. By this time, Daniel Duane had a sister, Frances Lovina, born to Daniel and Lydia on November 6, 1856.
As the San Bernardino residents returned, they stopped first at Utah's southern most settlement of Washington in Washington County, where some families established permanent homes. However, most families gradually dispersed throughout the various settlements of the Territory. Lydia's parents, Moses and Fanny Harris moved about ten miles north of Washington to found the new settlement of Harrisburg, named in honor of Moses. Daniel and Lydia with their children Daniel Duane and Frances Lovina soon followed Lydia's parents to Harrisburg.
Very shortly, the young Harris family moved to Parowan in Iron County, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and after a brief stay continued northward to Fillmore in Millard County, where Daniel Duane's younger brother Charles Franklin was born, on April 23, 1859. The next move took the family to Deseret about 30 miles west of Fillmore where they intended to farm desert land using water from the Sevier River. In Deseret the fourth child was born to Lydia and Daniel, a daughter, on March 31, 1861, and given the name of Cynthia Orissa.
Some time in 1861, Daniel Duane's father Daniel, as part of a group of former San Bernardino colonists, returned to California attempting to recover livestock which had been left behind four years earlier. The mission did not go as planned for Daniel. Apparently, difficulties ensued and Daniel was arrested for stealing horses, perhaps his own, resulting in having to serve a two-year jail term.
This incident and perhaps other disagreements caused a rift to come between Daniel and Lydia. Having to care for her four children alone, Lydia returned to Southern Utah to live with her parents in Harrisburg and later in Glendale in Kane County for a period of five years.
Lydia's parents encouraged her to divorce Daniel, which she did. Years later, Daniel Duane related to his own children of herding cows near Leeds and Harrisburg and through the Gap (where Quail Creek leaves the Harrisburg area and flows into the recently created Quail Lake about one mile above the Virgin River). He said that the weather was so extreme that his feet became blistered by the hot earth and rocks.
Following his period of incarceration in California, Daniel returned to Utah. Daniel Duane recalls that his father came once a year and gave money to his mother Lydia, from wages he had earned while working in the mines (perhaps at the iron mines near Cedar City or somewhere in Nevada where mining was just beginning).
In 1866, Daniel Duane's mother Lydia married Samuel Dennis White, a resident of Beaver in Beaver County, located about one hundred miles north of Harrisburg. Samuel was a freighter by trade in the Beaver area and also was one of the agents who met wagon trains on the plains of Wyoming to assist immigrants in completing their journey to Utah. On November 21, 1867, Lydia gave birth to her fifth child, Amelia Abigail White. However, Lydia's marriage to Samuel White lasted for just two years. He died in 1868.
Daniel Duane's mother Lydia, now age thirty-five would not marry again. Beaver was to be the permanent home for Lydia and her five children. Many years later Daniel Duane recalled that at age fourteen he was required to be the "man of the house" and also had to do a "man's work from now on". Therefore, as a young man he was involved in the freighting business, driving a team and wagon to support his mother and family.
On June 15, 1881, at the age of twenty-seven, Daniel Duane Harris married Francis Elizabeth Tolton, a local school teacher, twenty-two years of age. Francis was the daughter of Edward and Mary Ann Tomlinson Tolton. The families of both of these individuals were immigrants to the United States from England after having joined the Mormon Church in the mid 1840's. Francis was born in Ephraim, San Pete County, Utah on September 14, 1859, and had come to Beaver with her parents about 1866.
Daniel Duane and Francis' first home in Beaver was a two-room log cabin with dirt floors and a dirt-covered roof. A single fireplace was used for cooking and for heating. Water for the home was obtained from an irrigation ditch several blocks away, which had been diverted from the Beaver River, which flowed from the snow-covered peaks of the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver. Some fifteen years later, a well was dug to provide water for the home.
Through the years, eight children were born to Daniel Duane and Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris: Walter Smith, 1882; Clara, 1884; Orville Duane 1887; Earl Tolton, 1889; Ambrose, 1892; Edward Daniel, 1894; Frank 1897; and, Lafayette, 1902.
In 1902, Daniel Duane constructed a new home for his large family, a four room log house, at which time the original home was razed. Some time later two more rooms, made of concrete, were added to the back of the house.
Daniel provided a living for his family mainly by farming and by raising both dairy and beef cattle. Francis had received fifteen acres of land north of Beaver as part of her inheritance from her parents' estate, which was being farmed. Daniel purchased additional acreage from Charles White which greatly enlarged the family farm. Edward recalls that his father had a total of approximately eighty acres of land along North Creek. In conjunction with other Beaver area cattlemen, Daniel shared a summer range on the high meadow land in the mountains to the east, where he developed the Wiregrass Springs area as part of his own pastureland.
Besides his farming and cattle enterprises, Daniel had a freighting business, hauling goods by team and wagon between various communities in the Beaver area. The largest town at the time was Frisco, a booming mining town near Milford, some twenty-five miles to the west. With a population of some 1600, its Horn Silver Mine was producing extremely high grade ore. Daniel, with his oldest son Walt, would cut timbers from the mountains near Beaver, strip them of bark, cut them to various lengths and deliver them to the mines, to be used in shoring up the extensive underground shafts and tunnels to prevent cave ins.
For many years, Daniel hauled freight from the Milford rail yard to Beaver for his brother-in-law John Franklin Tolton, who operated a mercantile store in Beaver. During wintertime, when the snow was deep, timber was cut by broad-axe to be used for ties in constructing the railroad as it extended throughout Southern Utah from Milford.
Daniel was known as a "skilled lime-burner" as he assisted Frank White in building lime kilns in the mountains for the making of lime. It was critical that fires in the kilns be kept extremely hot for up to three days in order to produce lime from the heated limestone. When finished, the lime was sold for fifty cents a bushel. Together with some of his older sons, Daniel would stay in the mountains for as long as two weeks in order to produce enough lime to be sold to local craftsman for as much as one hundred dollars.
Faithful in religious matters, Daniel enjoyed attending his church meetings. For several years he was a member of the Beaver Stake High Council of the LDS Church which required him to be a regular speaker at the various churches in the area. Having had less than a year of formal education, his son Edward recalls that his father would occasionally ask him for assistance in preparing his sermons.
Most of the children of Daniel Duane Harris recall that their father was very strict and stern in relating to them, that he required them to work long and hard in the fields, that there was not much time for play. He was not one to display his emotions, but he did have a sense of humor. This strictness caused conflict with some of his sons, resulting in them leaving home for several years. One son, Ambrose, spent several years working on ranches and doing mining and trapping in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While away from home, ‘Brose died during the world-wide influenza epidemic in 1918.
This must have been a rather tense time for Daniel Duane Harris, both emotionally and financially. His son Earl was a soldier on the battlefield in France. Another son, Edward was serving in New Zealand on a church mission which required sending him about fifteen dollars a month. To have Ambrose's body returned in a sealed casket (due to the strict health code imposed) cost $1500. Just a year earlier the family home had burned, with most of the household furnishings and personal possessions being lost. To rebuild the home, another $3300 needed to be borrowed, even with friends in the community helping.
In later years, Daniel Duane told his son Edward that his approach at rearing children, in being strict and trying to conquer them, was incorrect. In their adult lives, most of Daniel's sons were able to make peace with their father.
Earl recalls that at one time his father suffered from an abscessed hip, and in order to find relief, spent weeks at a time bathing in mineral hot springs, requiring Earl to work throughout the summer for High White for seventy-five cents a day to support the family.
Francis Elizabeth had a temperament which was just opposite that of her husband, Daniel. She was a very gracious and loving individual. She had attended school in Beaver through the ninth grade, an exceptional feat for the time. She was a good speller, had an extensive vocabulary, and had taught school for several years.
Frequently, she entertained audiences by giving dramatic readings. Her son Earl recalls that during his childhood years in their two-room cabin, "there were pleasant nights with the family around the hot stove while the temperature outside was zero", and that on these occasions the "tradition of learning poems and sayings, acting, telling stories and speaking decisively was promoted." Several of her sons, especially Orville, Earl and Edward must have been greatly influenced by their mother, since they were also good story tellers.
Francis participated in the local LDS Church activities and fulfilled assignments in various organizations. For many years she was President of the Women's Relief organization where she gave much compassionate service to the members of her ward. As a youth she and her brother John always won the foot races on the annual Fourth of July celebrations.
The Harris Family home still stands in Beaver today. After the fire of 1917, only two of the rooms remained, those constructed of concrete. In reconstruction, the two rooms became the front part of the house, and for many years it was the family home of Orville and Hester Neal Harris and their three daughters.
Daniel Duane Harris died in Beaver on July 4, 1930 at age seventy-five. Francis Elizabeth Tolton Harris died in Beaver shortly thereafter on December 7, 1930 at age sixty-six. Both are buried in the Beaver City Cemetery.
Information in this sketch has been obtained from Earl T. and Edward D. Harris as recorded by Shirley Harris DeLapp from the Silas Harris, Jr. record published by the Silas Harris, Jr. Family Organization and from various family members.
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