Sarah Lucretia Holbrook was born January 21, 1832 in Wethersfield, Genesee (now Wyoming County), New York, to Joseph Holbrook and Nancy Lampson Holbrook. She was their first child and was named for her two grandmothers, Sarah Bliss and Hannah Lucretia Morton. Her sister, Charlotte, was also born in Wethersfield November 26, 1833.
The information about Sarah Lucretia’s early life came from the journal of her father, Joseph Holbrook. In January of 1833, when she was just a year old, her parents joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Soon after his baptism, her father was instrumental in converting his brother, Chandler, with his wife, Eunice, his sister, Phoebe, with her husband, Dwight Harding, and his mother, Hannah Lucretia Morton, and stepfather, Alvin Owens.
Her father wrote: “In March (1834), Orson Hyde and Orson Pratt from Kirtland visited the Branch and informed us that there was a revelation for the brethern to take a journey to the land of Zion. I put down my name. Chandlier Holbrook and Otis Shumway making three in all and to be in Kirtland the first day of May for to go to the land of Zion with our brethern who should assemble there.” Her father was fully resolved to obey this revelation, even though it meant uprooting and moving his family. Because he was Mormon, he had a difficult time selling his farm, but was finally able to do so, although he only realized one third of its value. He could not sell some of his equipment and just had to abandon it.
The family left Wethersfield April 14, 1834 along with Sarah’s uncle, Chandler, and Solomon Angell and their families. It took about two weeks to travel to Kirtland, Ohio. The first part of May, Zion’s Camp was formed, consisting mostly of men. There were also a few families, including the Holbrook family. The purpose of the Camp was to travel to Missouri and reinstate the saints who had been driven from their homes in Jackson County the previous October and November. When the re-instatement effort failed and the Camp was disbanded, in the latter part of 1834 her parents settled in Clay County, Missouri, with the Mormons who had been driven out of Jackson County. The family was only able to stay in Clay County about two years, and then in the fall of 1836 was forced to move to nearby Caldwell County, Missouri. Her brother Joseph Lamoni was born January 31, 1837 while the family was living on a farm on Plumb Creek, three miles west of Far West.
In the fall of 1838, under the guise of being a militia to restore order in northern Missouri, mobs formed again to harass and intimidate the Mormons. Joseph Holbrook took part in the battle of Crooked River on October 25, 1838, in which he suffered a deep sword wound to his left elbow. Missouri Governor L. W. Boggs issued the exterminating order October 27, 1838 which said in part that the Mormons were to be “exterminated or driven from the state.” In November of 1838, at the same time as the Prophet Joseph Smith and others were imprisoned, the Mormons were driven from their homes in Missouri. Her father wrote:
“The mob or militia burnt my house, stole a valuable horse from me, killed my fat hogs, drove off my stock. I had some 300 bushels of the best of corn in the crib taken out of the crib. They fed our oats in the sack, destroyed my hay, and left everything in a state of desolation from one end of the county to the other, abusing the sisters whenever they thought it best to suit their brutal and hellish desires.”
“My wife had very poor health during the winter and fall by being exposed much to the inclement weather by having to remove from place to place as our house had been burned and we were yet left to seek a home whenever our friends could accomodate us and for my safety but as I cannot write a hundredth part of the suffering and destruction of this people who were in a flourishing condition but a few months before are now destitute. I could have commanded some $2,000 but now I had only one yoke of old oxen and two cows left.”
Fearing for his life, Sarah Lucretia’s father escaped the mob and fled east across Missouri to Illinois, leaving her mother with three small children. Just one week after her father left, her mother gave birth to Nancy Jane, born January 27, 1839. The family probably was helped to travel across Missouri by Sarah’s uncle, Chandler Holbrook. Two months later the family was reunited at the Mississippi river: Her father wrote: “I found my family in good health although in the snow and mud, half a leg deep in the camp. I saw my little daughter Nancy Jane for the first time about two months old. She was carried by her mother and born in the midst of tribulation. Truly, my family had been greatly blessed in my absence as they were enabled to gather up some of the fragments of my destroyed property so that my wife, Nancy, had got about $50 in cash to bear her expenses out of the State of Missouri. They were in good spirits at seeing me in so good health from what I was when I left Far West. They had not heard anything from me during this time, neither dared I write to let them know as the brethren were in constant danger of being pursued if they knew where they could be found so that I had to keep silent, but on the 21st day of March 1839, my family crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois.”
The Holbrook family lived for a time in Ramus, a town south east of Nauvoo, where two stillborn sons were born, one in 1840 and the other in 1841. They also lived for a short period of time just north of the Illinois state line in Wisconsin Territory. The family finally moved to Nauvoo July 6, 1842. Sarah’s mother took sick July 7th and died nine days later July 16, 1842. She was buried near Nauvoo. Sarah’s sister, Nancy Jane, born while her father was separated from the family, died of measles and canker a little over a year later on September 7, 1843 at the age of four years.
Sarah did not have an easy childhood. Undoubtedly she had gone hungry, been exposed to inclement weather without shelter, been frightened by mob violence and then had her mother die when she was just ten years old. In Nauvoo, her father took care of his small family as best he could. He wrote: “I continued in the house with my brother-in-law, Dwight Harding I and my family lived on corn bread with but little else. I got my sister, Phoebe Harding, to look after the children and do my cooking.”1 Sarah helped her Aunt Phoebe care for her younger brother and sisters until her father married Hannah Flint January 1, 1843. Soon after their marriage, the family moved into a house which had been built by Sarah’s father. Hannah had been a school teacher previously and now started a school in one of the rooms of the new house. She was a mild, sweet woman and an excellent school teacher. She never had any children of her own but was an ideal stepmother and loved the young children of Nancy Lampson as if they were her own.
On January 12, 1846, just before her 14th birthday, Sarah Lucretia married 20-year old Judson Tolman in Nauvoo. As a wedding present, her father gave the couple a yoke of three-year old steers worth $40.00 and one cow worth $25.00. In early February, less than a month after their marriage, Judson left her with her father to go as a guard with the Hosea Stout pioneer company. Three months later she left Nauvoo with her father. He recorded: “Having prepared everything according to the best possible chance we bid farewell to the once beautiful but now desolate and forsaken city, Nauvoo, Saturday May 16, 1846, in company with Anson Call, Ranson Shepherd, (brother-in-law) Dwight Harding, and my brother’s wife, Eunice Holbrook, and Sister Davis, and their families, and traveled four miles and camped on the Mississippi River above the city. My family now consisted of my wife, Hannah, my oldest daughter Sarah Lucretia, who is married to Judson Tolman, Charlotte Holbrook, my second daughter, (son) Joseph Lamoni Holbrook and Catherine Barton, who was living with us at this time. I had two wagons with three yoke of oxen, some steers, a few cows and a small buggy. It was taken along for the purpose of trading for oxen.” The buggy was traded for a good yoke of cattle the following day.
The company traveled north for two days and crossed the Mississippi River at Madison Ferry. The group then traveled westward over very muddy prairie. Two weeks later they camped at a small settlement by the name of Eddyville on the Des Moines River in Iowa Territory while waiting to ferry across the river. Here Sarah was reunited with Judson June 2, 1846. She and her husband traveled and lived with her father from that time until they reached the Salt Lake Valley.
Sarah endured the rigors of living out of a wagon for months at a time as they traversed Iowa and then part of Nebraska in the summer of 1846. Their westward journey was halted in August, 1846 when Brigham Young declared it was too late in the season to continue to the Salt Lake Valley. Their pioneer company then went to the northern part of Nebraska, built cabins and spent the winter at the Ponca Indian camp. The Tolman and Holbrook families often went hungry during the winter of 1846/47. This lack of good nutrition might have contributed to the death of Sarah and Judson’s first child, Sarah Margaret, born March 28, 1847. The baby died April 12, 1847, just two weeks old, as the family moved south to relocate near Winter Quarters. Judson traveled back to the Ponca settlement area to bury the baby alongside others who had died there. More details of this period of time are not recounted here as they are found in the history of her husband, Judson Tolman. Sarah shared in all the travels and hardships endured by the saints after leaving Nauvoo.
The Tolman and Holbrook families settled on Mosquito Creek in western Iowa. They delayed building a cabin and the families continued to live out of their wagons while Judson and her father cleared prairie land to plant crops in the spring and summer of 1847. After the crops were planted, Judson and her father left to find employment and were gone two months. Judson left again that winter to find employment. When Sarah had her second baby, Nancy Jane bom February 4, 1848, Judson was in Missouri earning money for their trip to the Salt Lake Valley. Her father recorded: “February 4th, Sarah Tolman, my daughter, had a daughter born at half past nine o’clock in the evening. Present Mrs. Cyril Call, Mary Call, Mrs. Dustin and (Sarah’s aunt) Phoebe Harding. Went for Doctor Browning at half past ten o’clock of the same evening. They named her daughter Nancy Jane Tolman, after her grandmother and aunt who died in Nauvoo. 5th, Sarah more comfortable. Settled with Doctor Browning for his several visits, paid one days work, ten bushels turnips, five and one half bushels buckwheat, one bushel of beans, one quart of whiskey.”
Sarah and her family became part of the Brigham Young pioneer company which left for the final journey across the plains June 1, 1848, a journey of about 3-1/2 months. She must have carried her small baby much of the way. Their first home in the Salt Lake Valley was a dugout, in which they lived for about one year. In September, 1849, she and Judson with daughter Nancy Jane and two other families pioneered the settlement in Tooele, Utah. A short time later, they were joined by other saints, so by Christmas there were 31 people of various ages in the settlement.
During their sojourn in Tooele, Sarah and Judson were blessed with three children: Judson Adonirum (the first white child to be born in Tooele), Joseph Holbrook and Jaren (see list of children in Judson’s history). Sarah and Judson came to Salt Lake and were sealed December 20, 1852 by Brigham Young in his office. According to the custom, they were sealed again March 21, 1860 in the Endowment House. After they moved to Bountiful in 1854, Sarah bore nine more children: Sarah Lucretia, Hannah Ann, Lamoni, Charlotte, Catherine, Alice, Cyrus, Wallace Holbrook and Lucretia (see list of children). The fifteen years she lived in Bountiful were the longest in any one place in all of her 37 years.
In her “History of Jaren Tolman,” Jaren’s daughter Emma Tolman Riley wrote: “It was a real problem and worry to feed a large family. His mother used to make bread from bran and there was not always enough of that. I remember him telling us of a time when he went up to a saw mill owned by a man named Henry, and there was a large pile of sawdust. He filled his hat and ran home to his mother in excitement, telling her they could have all the bread they wanted as there was plenty of bran at the sawmill. His mother began to cry at his disappointment.”
Very little has been written about Sarah’s life during the years 1854 to 1869. She died February 4, 1869 at the age of 37, giving birth to her fourteenth child, who also died. The following is part of the article which appeared in the Deseret Evening News of February 10, 1869: “At Bountiful, Davis County, Feb. 4, 1869, died of jaundice and protracted labor, Sarah Lucretia wife of Judson Tolman She was 37 years and two weeks old at her death. She shared in the sufferings of the Saints both in Missouri and Illinois and through them at the age of nine years (actually ten years) she was left motherless. In the year 1846 at Nauvoo she was married to Judson Tolman unto whom she has born six sons and eight daughters, ten of whom surrounded her dying couch and now survive her, the last living but three hours, now sleeps by her side. Her death spreads a gloom over the ward as she was much esteemed by a large circle of friends and acquaintances who knew her as a loving wife, an affectionate mother, and a faithful saint. Her funeral was attended by a large concourse of sorrowing friends who were addressed by Elder Joseph Holbrook (her father), John Telford and Anson Call who had known the deceased from her infancy. Their united testimony was that she was full of integrity and never had been known to swerve from the truth. She died as she had lived, being sure and certain of a glorious resurrection.”
The foregoing history was compiled by Pauline Hanks Christiansen, a second great granddaughter, in October, 2000.
(Contributed by the Thomas Tolman Family Organization. Excerpt from Judson Tolman: Pioneer, Lumberman, Patriarch by E. Dennis Tolman, Second Edition, 2004, pages 144-148.)
Bibliography
1. Holbrook, Joseph, Journal of Joseph Holbrook, Typed & Edited by Mabel F. Holbrook and Ward C. Holbrook, 1977, copy on file at thomastolmanfamily.org
2. “Tooele, Utah, Stake History, 1847-1900” Published for Stake Centennial Observance, June 1977. Copy on file at the LDS Church Historian’s Office (book area – #M277.9243 T668t 1977), probably originally written in the early 1900’s.
3. “History of Jaren Tolman” written by Emma Tolman Riley, filed February, 1953 by Hattie Tolman of Echo Camp, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Salt Lake City, Utah.
4. Deseret Evening News, February 10, 1869, LDS Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, microfilm #0026901.