JOURNAL OF PRIDDY MEEKS[1]
Harrisburg, Washington County, Utah Territory, October 22, 1879.
(and other dates in other years)
Record of Priddy Meeks and his family, progenitors and posterity, up to this date made from items of record and memory of P. Meeks and wife Sarah M. Meeks and their children.
My first wife was Mary Bartlett, being married in 1815. We had four children; Lovin, Eliza, Athe and Elizabeth. My wife Mary, died in Spencer Co., Indiana. Some three years afterward, I married Sarah Mahurin Smith, widow of Anthony Smith, on the 24th of December, 1826, by whom I had five children, Mary Jane, Stephen Mahurin, Huldah, Margaret Jane and Sarah Angeline. My wife Sarah had one child by her first husband, Anthony Smith, (Susann). (Later Entry): Lucy Meeks, an Indian girl bought of the Indians by P. Meeks of Parowan in 1851, about 3 or 4 years old, and died May the 4, 1874 in Harrisburg. Lucy was 26 or 27, when she died.
I removed with my family from Indiana to Illinois in the fall of 1833 and received the gospel in 1840 as also did most of my family. I moved to Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, in April, 1842, and lived there till the spring of 1846, then moved with the Saints in their great exodus to the Rocky Mountains, which journey lasted till the first of October, 1847, on which day I entered the Salt Lake Valley with my family and remained there till the spring of 1851.
I then moved to Parowan, as a call was made for volunteers to strengthen that place. I volunteered and went with my family to Parowan, Iron County, and remained there till the fall of 1861, when by permission of President George A. Smith, our then President, I moved to Harrisburg, Washington County, Ut., and lived there till August, 1876. I then moved to Orderville, Kane County, with my family, at which place I am now living (in the United Order),[2] in the year 1879, being in my 85th year of age.
In 1856 I married Mary Jane McCleave, going on seventeen years old, by whom I have had ten children: Joseph, Nancy, Hiram, John P., Sarah Deseret, Mary Ellen, Heber Jesse, Charles Mason, Elizabeth D. and Alfred Randall.
I and my family have mostly lived a pioneer life, and for thirty-nine years have been connected with them in all things and enjoying the blessings of the Gospel with them, also; and can testify knowingly of its truth and of its saving ordinances as revealed to Joseph Smith, having enjoyed them myself in the house of the Lord with my family to the fullest extent.
My father, Athe Meeks, being inclined to new countries, left South Carolina and moved to what is now called Grayson County, Kentucky, on the Spring Fork of Shortcreek. I was then about two or three years old. He had a great range to hunt in, not knowing the distance to any inhabitants West. He lived there twelve years, then moved to Indiana, four years after the country was surveyed by the Government. He passed the inhabitants ten miles before he located, at the mouth of Lake Drain, where it emptied into Little Pigeon Creek, where he intended to build a grist mill. There in the month of April, 1812, the Indians killed him; shot him in his own door, and wounded my brother, Athe, through the arm and knee, but he got well.
(Another version: Written in later life, on the front fly leaves of the Journal.)
(In) the year 1812, I, Priddy Meeks, was 16 years old. My father was then living on the frontiers of Indian Territory ten miles from the inhabitants, aiming to build a mill for the future benefit of emigration. Some months precious my oldest brother, William, had moved up to where father lived and settled about 20 rods of father’s house.
I think about the 20th of April three Indians early in the morning crept up behind a fodder stack ten or twelve rods in front of the door, and when my brother Athe got out of bed and passed out of the house and turned the corner with his back towards them, they all fired at him. One ball passed through his knee cap, another ball passed through his arm, about half way from his elbow to his wrist. Another ball passed through the leg of his pants doing no injury. The ball tore out a bunch of leaders out of his arm as long as my finger. They cut it off with a case knife. Meanwhile father jumped out of bed, ran to the door to see what was up, and met an Indian right at the door who shot him right through the heart. He turned on his heels and tried to say something and fell dead under the edge of the bedstead.
One Indian tried to kill Athe by flinging his tomahawk at him. It seemed like he was practicing by his not holding to the handle. He seemed to miss and the hatchet would go past and the Indian would run ahead to pick it up and brother would run out of the way, and the Indian would try it again, and they played that game for some time. Mother seeing what was going on outdoors and they shut up and Athe could not get in, and the Indian trying to tomahawk him, she broke out of the house to help Athe; and Indian drew an axe on her and as she hurried back, she picked up one of the loaded shot guns that was lying in the yard and told brother William, “Run up to the yard fence and knock the Indian down,” which drew the attention of the one who was trying to tomahawk Athe, while the one who was trying to burst open the door to get in where mother and the two girls were, who had snapped an empty gun at the Indian several times but it happened to be empty.
The Indians then took the dead one under their arms and started off with him. William followed them for another shot but the Indians would drop the dead one and flank each way in order to get William between them, so he had to back out to save himself. Athe had hidden himself behind a high bank a few rods from the house where he stayed till the Indians went away. William immediately took his family and started for the settlement bare headed and in his shirt tail and all his family in a similar situation, not knowing the consequences of delaying time.
That morning I had started from the settlements to go home and met William and his family about half way in. He took the horse I had and pushed for the settlement and I took his place with the family. All being still at the time; now Athe came to the house and father was found dead and mother crippled, probably with the axe the Indian drew on her in the yard, but she could not remember it. She and the two girls thought all were killed but they, until Athe came to the house.
He told mother and the girls to take the trail and try to reach the settlement if they could. “I never can get there, I shall have to die here. I will hide if the Indians come. I will kill one before they kill me. I shall have to die anyway.” Mother said, “if you die, I’ll die with you. I will not leave you.” So they all started on the trail and went on a mile or so. Athe wanted to lay down and the rest go on. Mother said, “I will not leave you as long as you are alive.” He thought they might save themselves by going and let him die, for he could not travel. She protested she would stay with him as long as he was alive. “Well,” said he, “there is a nearer way through the forest and we’ll take that way, and if the Indians do follow us they will keep the trail and not notice our trail where we turn off.”
They did so and went a mile or two and came on to two of our horses on the range that were always very hard to get hold of, on the range. He said, “I think I can catch those horses.” Mother said, “go,” and he hobbled along till he got his hands on them, and they never moved out of their tracks. They made bridles of hickory bark, and Athe rode one horse and the youngest girl the other, and carried a gun. The other two women walked and carried each of them a gun and reached the settlement in due time. But not without Athe’s wanting to get off the horse to lay down and die. But mother would not let him get off the horse, believing he never would of got in if he had got off the horse. But he got in and got over his wounds and made a very active man without any show of impediment whatever. All three of the Indians were killed before they got out of the country by the people who were scouring the country in search of them.[3]
The family then moved down to French Island settlement on the Ohio River. At this time I think I was about seventeen years old; here in my twentieth year, 1815, I married Polly Bartlett; who lived to have four children, two boys and two girls, and then she died. I lived single three years, and married Sarah Smith, a widow woman with one child; her maiden name was Mahurin. She is yet living and has had five children by me, four girls and one boy. All died young except one girl, which is a-living. I married Sarah at her father’s—Steven Mahurin, in Grayson County, Kentucky, some fifty miles from where I lived in Indiana. I took her home and brought home my children, and she made a splendid stepmother.
I don’t know the date when we left Indiana, not having kept any records; but we moved to Illinois, and settled in the out-settlements of the country, being sixty miles to the nearest inhabitants west of us, a town called Vandalia. Here I had splendid hunting for honey and wild game. Here I built a horse-mill to grind corn. I owned two farms and was a-doing well. I had plenty of horses, cattle, hogs and sheep.
Polly Peterson, a neighboring young woman, said to me one day, “Mr. Meeks, I wish you would give me that colt.” (It was a choice colt, too.) I said, “If you will give me the next thing I ask for, I will.” In about two or three days after that, the colt laid down and died, and from that time forth my horses, cattle and hogs died so fast I scarcely had time to take the hides off as fast as they died, until I saw that I should be totally broke up, and I had better get away from there while I could; and just one month from that day I started; had the awfulest time I ever saw. I bought a pair of three-year-old bulls; one was spiteful. I had to get help to get them in a ten-foot pen, with a partition to keep them from fighting, with their heads chained in front, and their tails tied to the pen behind; then took out a space of the partition between their necks sufficient to get the yoke on their necks and fastened it so tight that I never took it off until we had traveled some two hundred miles.
I stopped on the Illinois River five or six miles above Meridocia, a town on the river, a sicklier place I never want to see. Here I bought me a nice little farm, and established a wood yard. Here I lost Huldah with the whooping cough; or in other words she was killed by the doctors, whom I was opposed to having anything to do with her, only the folks over-persuaded me, and I am convinced that his medicine killed her.
Here when the sickly season of the year came on I visited many of the sick and was very successful in relieving them with roots and herbs, so much so that the community insisted I should quit work and go to doctering. Such an idea had never entered my mind. I said to them that I knew nothing about doctoring; they said “You beat all the doctors.”
That expression brought me to my studies and I saw that it was a fact, and I could not deny it. I studied much to know what was my duty to God and to mankind and myself and family. I saw my weakness and want of education, being raised in the backwoods, without learning but little only what I learned in the backwoods with my gun on my shoulder, having no correspondence with the bulk of the community and knew nothing of the ways of the world. Here was a trial you may be sure, for me to come in contact with learned doctors; I would not know what to say and would appear as a dunce.
About this time I had a letter from my brother-in-law, stating that he had important business and wanted to see me, and I must come immediately. He lived about a hundred miles off in Macon County, Illinois. I went and left my wife sick, who had been sick for two years. Her case was so complicated that I did not know what to do; neither did the doctors that had exhausted their skill without benefit, know what to do next.
When I saw my brother-in-law, whose name was Priddy Mahurin, he said that he only wanted a visit of me, that was all; but the Lord was in the whole affair, for I met a man there by the name of James Miller, whom I previously knew in Kentucky. He had gotten to be a Thomsonian doctor. He told me I could cure my wife myself if I had Thomson’s “New Guide to Health.”[4]
I traveled thirty miles with him a-going home. I learned more from him that day than I ever knew before about doctoring. Arriving at home I told my wife of the interview I had with Miller, and was a-going to buy the books that he recommended. She replied, “You had better keep the money to raise the children with; for if the skill that has been exhausted by experienced doctors could not cure me, it is not reasonable to think that you could do any better.: But I could not rest satisfied until I got the books; and just two weeks to the day from the day I got the books I put out into the woods to collect the medicine and by following the directions of the books I made a sound woman of her. This gave such an impetus to the anxiety of the people about my success that it seemed like going against wind and tide to withstand their influence, for me to go into doctoring. And from that time henceforth my labors began with the sick.
I lived on the south side of the Illinois River. Shortly after this I bought land at the Bluffs on the north side, half a mile from the river and moved over to it. Three miles west of us a new town was laid off called “Versailles,” right on the public road. I purchased a lot and built on it a good log house under the Bluffs. There was a good sugar orchard on the land. Then I gave $100 for a second lot and moved up there with the prospect of abundance of sickness.
[1] Priddy Meeks was born August 29, 1795, in the Greenville District, South Carolina. He died at Orderville, Utah, October 17, 1886.
This journal, in Priddy Meeks’ own handwriting, complete in one ledger volume, was furnished for publication by Dr. Meeks’ daughter, Mrs. Mary Ellen Hoyt, of Orderville, Utah, through his granddaughter, Mrs. Ida Meeks Balken, of Salt Lake City, Utah.
This manuscript, much of it written in his later, less active years, contains in his own clear handwriting, such words as inhabiutance, Illinoise, Illanois, Illinois, Volenteers, Indianna, mooved, strenthen, whare, empted, Peigon, setlement, maden Name, keped (kept), sed (said), coalt, scarcley, totley, fassened, aposed, sickley, shortley, sucsessful, releaving, doctering, studyed, coraspondence, Sheri, darned, the hole afair, whome, previousley, relyed, rais, Versails, shugar.
To reproduce the misspellings would be inconsistent with the many correct spellings of these same words elsewhere in Dr. Meeks’ manuscript, which shows unmistakable and abundant evidence of the writer’s real skill in spelling and writing good English. Dr. Meeks was very familiar with the spelling and the use of such words as the following selected at random, and correctly spelled in his manuscript: circumstance, dyspepsia, lobelia, noised abroad, sheriff, deprivations, inconveniences, persecutions, particular, Des Moines, murmuring, accident, considerable, prairie, Pisgah, sustenance, impressive, battalion, dispatched, Missouri, frolicking, venerate, diphtheria, phthisic, encumbrance, acquaintance, monitory, Virgil, stigma, impetus, vitiated, acrimonious.
My own father and mother were well educated school teachers, and were prize winning spellers in their prime; but both in their later years, fell into the easy habit of phonetic spelling, frugal with punctuation marks, and spendthrifty with capital letters, just as Priddy Meeks has done.
Tender memories and due respect for them all, prevent exposing these slips of the pen to the ridicule that might be aimed their way by literally following all forms of spelling found. No sentence in Dr. Meeks’ handwriting has been rephrased or omitted from these pages, except to condense the hunting narratives, and a nauseating sick-room description.
Valuable advice and assistance have been rendered by Mrs. Mabel Harmer and Mr. Dale L. Morgan.-J.C.A.
[2] See Utah Historical Quarterly, October, 1939.
[3] Site indicated by a Historical Marker on Indiana State Highway No. 161, near Richland, Spencer County, on the Ohio River. The Indian, Big Bones, who killed Athe Meeks, Sr., was in a few minutes shot to death himself, by William Meeks, according to a recent newspaper history of the fight. Vengeance soon overtook the Indians, and the leader, Chief Settedown (Set-te-tah), arrested and in a log jail awaiting trial, was shot through a chink hole at night. The Indians then vacated the region.
[4] See Addenda E, this issue of the Quarterly, p. 44.
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