Birth also reported at Spring Point Township, Poles, Illinois
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VICTORIA ADELAIDE BROWER BATES 1842-1872, Written by Joe Liddell.
Victoria Adelaide Brower Bates was an older half-sister of my Great-Great-Grandma Hannah Brower Bates Liddell. That makes her my Great-Great Aunt Victoria. My Grandpa Joseph Thomas Liddell looked in his family history biographies and records to tell me about Aunt Victoria. Her life sounds exciting and important. Way back 161 years ago she was a pioneer child. She had hardships in her life. Also, she became a mother of 2 girls and 3 boys. She died June 13, 1872, during a fatal smallpox quarantine of Bates Ranch. She lived only 30 years. She was born March 28, 1842, at Spring Point, Coles, Illinois. Little Victoria started her life by toddling around in a house 16 miles from Nauvoo, Ill. When she was only 16 months old she bumped into a bucket of scalding water and fell in. Critical burns made her have to be carried around on a soft pillow for three months near death. She also took sick with burning fever and running bowels. Her parents had strong faith and gave her tender care. They truly loved her. Everybody else felt they wouldn't be able to raise her but she lived. The accident happened a few days before her father Great-Great-Great-Grand- father Ariah Coats Brower got a job. He was hired to be the foreman printer of the Times and Seasons newspaper of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Nauvoo on the east shore of the Mississippi River. Before the new job the Brower's had nothing but the clothes on their backs, little to change into to wash, nothing to eat or any money. Once, Victoria's dad had to leave the family to work grubbing in the country prairie. He earned 50 cents a day for a week. He got paid in pork meat. He carried it on his back for miles back home. Grandpa Brower found his wife Margaret Elizabeth Hussey Brower and little girls Ann Elizabeth 3, and baby Victoria living on some dried bread. They joyfully cooked and ate up all the pork in a few days but didn't know where they could find any more food. Then Grandpa Brower got the newspaper job. Ariah had to be the best speller because the printing in the 1840s had to be done the old way of hand typesetting. He had to pick out of a rack of the alphabet each letter of each word in each line of each sentence to print. He wrote about these family things in his autobiography. It and the story about Aunt Victoria have never been compiled or published in pioneer history. A baby brother was born when Victoria turned two years old. Dad Brower bought a Nauvoo home lot for $50 on Partridge Street. Their house was 1-1/2 stories high. It had four rooms and a well outside to drink. It was by a lot of Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith who was shot to death before then. The murder story and obituaries of the prophet and his brother Hyrum when they were martyred were the biggest and saddest news Grandpa Brower printed in 1844. Then he had to print the obituary of their brother Samuel Smith two months later. Aunt Victoria Adelaide Brower was too little to share her dad's and mom's sadness then. She got to see her dad print the last paper (No. 131) for the Times and Seasons in 1846 when she was four. Little Victoria turned four just in time for the Brower family of four to be forced to cross the wide Mississippi River by hate-mobs of people in 1846. Her sick little two-year-old brother William Henry died in this persecution. They buried him in Nauvoo and fled west 300 miles across Iowa. Ariah and Margaret, the parents, had to sell their Nauvoo place to buyers from Hancock and Fulton counties of Illinois. When they got across the Missouri River into Nebraska, Victoria's second baby brother, Ariah H. was born. This happened in their tent or covered wagon. The winter was very hard on them. They got to leave Winter Quarters, Neb. the next June for Great Salt Lake Valley. The Brower's walked sometimes and then rode their wagon over a thousand miles to Salt Lake. Grandpa Brower was captain of the first 10 covered wagons in the second caravan of 72. Apostle John Taylor and his family rode in the wagons that carried 197 pioneers westward. He was shot four times with Joseph the prophet when he was killed in Carthage Jail three years before in Illinois. Thirty years later Apostle Taylor became the third prophet of the Mormon Church.

Five-year-old Victoria was the 328th pioneer in more than 2,000 of the first ones to come to Salt Lake that year. The Brower's got there Oct. 7, 1847. Their Salt Lake home lot was on the east side of Second West about where the Salt Palace's rear door is now. Two years later the Brower's had moved on west 800 more miles to California. Seven-year-old Victoria's second sister Margaret Eliza was born at Sacramento in 1849. Their father built the Brower House in Salmon Falls for travelers in the California gold rush. The Brower's came back to Utah in 1850. When the Deseret News started up that year at Main Street and South Temple, publisher Willard Richards quickly hired Grandpa Brower for the Salt Lake newspaper. The family moved to a Grantsville farm four years later. They lived on West Clark Street where historic J. Reuben Clark ranch is now.

Soon two teenage brothers rode their horses 10 miles to flirt with Victoria and her older sister Ann Elizabeth. Grandpa Brower told the boys to come back when they were old enough to date. Their names were Orson Parley Bates and his younger brother Erin Lafayette. They came back again later and married the Brower girls on the same June day 1856. Victoria became Erin's bride on Bates Ranch 10 miles east of Grantsville. Her older sister married his older brother. Erin and Victoria had 5 children. She died in 1872. She is buried on a little low hill on the ranch Grandma Liddell inherited much later from her own husband Cyrus James Bates, already dead. He was half-brother to the Brower sisters' husbands. His first wife Adelaide Bates was also dead. She was Victoria and Erin Bates' first daughter, a young mother. Aunt Victoria, her baby grandson Cyrus, Jr., his mom (her daughter) Adelaide, and Cyrus her son-in-law (Grandma Liddell's first husband), all are together, buried on the ranch hill. This pioneer cemetery is on the one-time Liddell farm in Erda. It was called Bates Ranch of Batesville before the Erda name. Fourteen other pioneer child and baby relatives of Victoria are buried there too. Grandma Liddell's 33-day-old son Warren LeRoy Bates by her first marriage also is one of these children buried there. None of the 18 graves that are there have any headstones. All of their names and dates have been put together since 2006. Family researchers did this to find some missing names and correct the list in the county history book. Not even the cemetery is marked. It's not protected from anyone digging into these graves. Grandpa Liddell is nearly 85. He is the only one alive now who can tell closely where these graves are. My great-great-aunt's life story also needs to have one thing more added. She and everyone else buried there in Erda should be respected and honored at last. Aunt Victoria suffered hardships and she kept on bravely. She devoted herself to her family and helped settle the valley from the beginning.
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Phoebe Bates
1871-1871 • L8PG-TWJ​
Roy Bates
1883-Deceased • KZQT-33F​
Arthur L Bates
1882-1920 • L8Q8-RS5​
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