Life Sketch of Mosiah Lyman Jr. & Marium Dalton Hancock
Contributed By: Dixie H Krauss · 1 August 2013 · on familysearch.org
Mosiah Lyman Hancock (Jr.)
1860 Utah – 1921 Arizona
Marium Dalton
1864 Utah – 1944 Arizona
Lyman’s childhood…
Mosiah Lyman Hancock (Jr.) was born September 12, 1860, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Mosiah Lyman Hancock and Margaret McCleve. He was given his father’s name and was called Lyman. His parents raised twelve of their thirteen children to maturity. Their first baby died, making Lyman the eldest son. Both of his parents were pioneers who had crossed the plains to escape persecution.
When Lyman was one year old, his parents were called to southern Utah, an area referred to as Dixie. They made their home in Harrisburg, Utah—just north of present day Harrisburg Junction. The family received another call, this time to help settle Arizona. They went by covered wagon to Taylor, Arizona, in late 1879 when Lyman was nineteen. It was a bitterly cold and difficult journey.
Marium’s childhood…
Marium Dalton was born in southern Utah, known as Dixie or the Cotton Mission. She came into this world on February 1, 1864, in Virgin City, Kane, Utah¬—now named Virgin, Washington, Utah. Her parents were John Dalton Jr. and Ann Casbourne. There were six children in the family. Marium’s father married her widowed mother and raised her mother’s fatherless baby as his own.
Marium’s father was called by Brigham Young to help settle southern Utah—a calling that was for life. He left the comforts of Salt Lake City, took his four families, and settled just north of Virgin City. Marium was the first child of her parents born there. The first home she remembered was a one room dugout with a dirt floor and dirt roof. It was a harsh wilderness. There the four families of John Dalton Jr. lived side by side until Indian troubles drove them out.
Marium grew up in a very large and happy extended family and learned to work at an early age. When only eight years old, she went to work for a neighbor.
When she was ten years old, her mother had a numb palsy stroke. Marium and her sister Jemima carried their crippled mother, who never weighed more than eighty pounds, in their arms like a baby. In faith, the two of them took her to see Brigham Young on one of his rare visits to southern Utah. He blessed their mother and promised her life and health. She was instantly healed and walked home unassisted.
At fifteen, Marium had a job working away from home. One day she visited her mother and found her with no shoes. Marium took the shoes from her own feet and put them on her mother. Even though Marium was now barefooted, she felt that no sacrifice was too great for her dear little mother.
Marriage and family…
When Marium was sixteen, she traveled with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law to Arizona. Traveling by ox team and covered wagon, they arrived late December 1879. As they passed through Holbrook, Arizona, on their way to Taylor, Lyman saw Marium and said to a friend, “I just saw my future wife.”
Lyman and Marium chose to be married in the St. George Utah Temple—400 miles away in southern Utah. They wanted to be married as they had been taught, and it was the only temple. Lyman herded sheep and earned $30 and enough grain for his horses. His sister Jane and her fiance went along. It took Lyman and Marium nearly a month to reach the temple. They were among the first to travel the trail that became known as the Arizona Honeymoon Trail. They married in the House of the Lord on November 2, 1881.
Marium was a happy wife and mother. She sang hymns out of the window to her husband as he came in from the fields. Besides her own thirteen children, Marium mothered four orphans. Since most of them were boys, she was a strict disciplinarian. She made everything her children wore. She used the suits of the older boys and made clothes for the younger ones. She curled her daughters’ hair with rags. To help feed her family, Marium raised chickens and turkeys, gathered wild honey and grapes, and canned fruit.
Lyman was a hard working active man. He had acres and acres of beautiful wheat fields and did all the planting himself using a horse-drawn plow. He felt it was his job to feed his family as he had no other income save what he provided. He cleared land, sheered sheep, farmed cotton, freighted, worked on the railroad, and raised cattle for beef, milk, butter, and cheese. He always planted a huge garden with beans, squash, potatoes, turnips, and carrots, and put the surplus in the root cellar that he had built.
Lyman and Marium taught their children. They taught them to pray and to ask the blessing on the food and told them about baptism. They set a good example of honesty and encouraged their children to go to Sunday School, Primary, and sacrament meeting. Lyman played with his boys and taught them athletics and horse riding. He also taught them to feed the stock, milk cows, chop wood, and build homes and fences.
Pioneering in Arizona…
Lyman and Marium made their home in Pinedale, Arizona. In June 1882 a neighbor was killed by Indians and another neighbor came to warn Lyman that the Indians were on the warpath. Lyman borrowed the neighbor’s horse to go find his own. When Lyman reached the top of a hill, he heard a voice say, “Go north.” After the third warning, he rode north and saw the Indians riding towards his home. He returned home, turned out his pigs, got his wife Marium and ran on foot to the safety of a log home in the area. The next morning Lyman and Marium returned home to find their cabin ransacked, pillows ripped open, dishes and stove broken, chickens killed, harness cut, and books torn. Everything they possessed was stolen or destroyed except their Book of Mormon. They fled to Taylor and stayed with Lyman’s mother for a while, then returned to Pinedale to start over.
In 1883 after an unsuccessful hunting trip, Lyman was followed to his dugout home by about twenty hostile Indians. They came right into the house. The Indian leader asked to look at his gun. Lyman remembered others who had trusted their weapons to Indian hands and lost their guns and sometimes their lives. Lyman told the Indian he could look, but he would hold the gun. Then as the leader surveyed his next move, he recognized Lyman. Lyman had found him wounded about three years earlier—shot by soldiers and left for dead. Lyman had taken the wounded Indian to the home of his mother, Margaret McCleve, in Taylor, to be tended until he was well enough to travel. When the Indian left, she had divided what food she had with him. The Indian leader spoke to his companions, and they immediately went outside. He had them carry two deer from his saddle and place them on the table for Lyman.
Marium extended hospitality to the Indians. She showed them how to cook and make bread. One day Marium noticed her butcher knife was missing from her kitchen. She went to the chief and told him that one of his squaws had her knife. The chief retrieved the knife and returned it to Marium.
Between 1885 and 1887, Pinedale had severe drought and cold weather. These problems were compounded by outlaw rustling. These outlaws were just south of Pinedale and were very mean. When they stole Lyman’s pigs, he went to their hideout, calmly turned out his pigs, and drove them home. Later one of them met him in town and said, “You’re a brave man, Mr. Hancock. You know I could have killed you for coming on my place.”
The raids of the Apache War Chief Geronimo made these times even more perilous. Numerous settlers were killed in Arizona. In September 1886 while Lyman and Marium were living in Eden, Arizona, the Indians came raiding and killing. Lyman rode his horse ten miles north to Fort Thomas for help. General Miles sent a company of soldiers with Lyman and asked him to show them the trail of the Indians. Lyman led them into the mountains.1 He saw Geronimo surrender to General Miles. Geronimo had the most beautiful pinto horse that Lyman had ever seen.
Lyman and Marium left Pinedale many times through the years to live elsewhere only to return again and again. Lyman built homes for his family with each move using what materials the land offered—a dugout, a slab house, and homes made of adobe, logs, and cobblestones with a dirt floor and roof. On their last return to Pinedale, Lyman worked hard with his teenage sons building yet another home and caring for the animals in the deep snow. His health began to fail, so he moved to Willcox, Arizona, to stay with his eldest son John. There he passed away on July 18, 1921. He was almost sixty-one years old.
Widowhood for Marium…
Marium lived as a widow for twenty-four years. She worked hard to keep her younger children in school after her husband died. In her later years, she worked in the Mesa Arizona Temple and did several hundred names for her kindred dead. She spent a considerable portion of her small means to gather these names. She divided her time among her children where she was appreciated and loved until her death on October 29, 1944. She was eighty years old, and her hair never turned grey.
Tribute to Lyman…
Lyman was a self-educated man and could converse intelligently on many subjects. He was very brave and courageous, yet wrote a tender song about a lost child. He was noted for his honesty. It was said of him, “If every man was as honest as Lyman Hancock, there would be no need to have notes.” Each time that Lyman planted his crops, he knelt down outside and asked Heavenly Father to bless his land so that it would produce for his family. He set an example for his posterity by being married in the House of the Lord.
Tribute to Marium…
“Marium showed unusual interest in every grandchild . . . and had a great influence for good among them. She was very active in mind and body. She loved a baseball game, a rodeo, a dance, and a wrestling match. She read a great deal and had her opinions on present day problems and politics. She was friendly with everyone and made friends wherever she went. . . . Her loyalty to her country was a sermon in itself. . . She had an ever increasing testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and proved her devotion by her works.”
—Lora Lisonbee Hancock, daughter-in-law
Insert in life sketch...
“Some memories of my mother: I remember my mother to be a sweet, loving, attractive mother. She was so kind and friendly to all people, loved and cared for the Indians after they took everything they had two different times. One time the Indians took everything they had, rung the chicken’s neck, scattered books all over. The only book that was not harmed was the Book of Mormon.
“Mother made friends where ever she went or lived. She was a good mother. She knew all about the home. She was a good cook. She loved her children and knew how to take care of them when they were sick. I am so grateful for my dear mother. She lived to be eighty years old. I pray that I will live a good life as my mother did so I can see her and be with her.”
—Oliver Perry Hancock, son
Bibliography...
Clayton, Roberta Flake, Pioneer Women of Arizona, FHL, SLC, 979.1 D3m, 1969, p. 200.
Curtis, Dixie H., History of Oliver Perry Hancock, Told by Perry to scribe and wife Lora, 1966.
Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Utah, Our Pioneer Heritage, SLC, 1996, Ancestry.com.
Hancock, Lora, Marium Dalton Hancock, Mesa, Arizona.
Hancock, Lora L., Life Story of Mosiah Lyman Hancock, Mesa, Arizona.
Hancock, Oliver Perry, Pinedale Memories of Oliver Perry Hancock, O. P. Hancock Family Reunion Cassette Tape, 1979.
Naegel, Amanda Zelpha Hancock, Family Memories of Amanda, Video by Dixie Krauss and Bonnie Peterson, Palm Springs, California, 1991.
Palmer, Arvin, Elijah Was a Valiant Man, Palmer Publications, Peterson Publishing Co., Show Low, Arizona, 1981.
Ricketts, Norma Baldwin, Arizona’s Honeymoon Trail and Mormon Wagon Trails.
1 Probably Peloncillo Mountains rather than Graham Mountain.
Life sketch taken from...
Perry & Lora Their Roots & Branches Volume 2 by Dixie H. Krauss
The author based her conclusions on research and interesting tales passed down in the family. She made a dedicated effort to present accurate information but recommends independent verification before accepting the material as fact or using the data for genealogical purposes.
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