Susanna Green (1844-1920) and Henry Gillins (1840-1919).
My 3rd great-grand aunt and uncle.
Susanna Green was born on 10 May 1844 and baptised at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on 9 June. Her parents were William Green and Willoughby Staff.
She spent her childhood in the town but after the death of her father she moved to London, where the 1861 census recorded her living with her widowed mother Willoughby, her fish salesman brother Robert and sister Eliza in St James’s Place, Bermondsey, now in south east London. Both Willoughby and Susanna (and potentially other members of the family) became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons – and together they emigrated to Utah in the United States on the ship American Congress in 1866. Find out more about their journey on Willoughby’s page. After a mammoth and demanding two-month cross-country journey, which included crossing a river up to their necks in water, they arrived in the state capital Salt Lake City.
Young Susanna married Henry Gillins (sometimes Gillings) in 1867. He’d been born in Osbournby in Lincolnshire, England, on 28 February 1840 but emigrated to the USA from Liverpool on the ship Marshfield with his mother Elizabeth and sister Sarah Ann, arriving in New Orleans on 29 May 1854.
Sarah Ann wrote about their journey, which was published in Eyre-Walker Genealogy and Pioneer Histories by Geraldine Hamblin Bangerter. I imagine they travelled north, perhaps on the Mississippi, before following the western route undertaken later by Willoughby and Susanna. Sarah Ann recalled: “There were Indians and one day some Indians of the Seiou [Sioux] tribe – one of them asked my mother if she would give me to him. She said he would give her seven ponies and heaps and heaps of money. But of course they could not buy me. I was afraid. Then we traveled on to the Platte River. Oh the herds of buffalos! There were hundreds of them. When we got to Laramie the soldiers and Indians had been fighting. The Indians had killed 13 soldiers. The wagon train had stopped. I went to picking up beads. The wagon train went on and left me quite far behind. To catch up I took a short cut and saw the hole that they had buried the soldiers in… That was the year of 1854 – the grasshopper year. In crossing the plains the grasshoppers flew over us and shaded the sun. They flew to the Salt Lake Valley and laid their eggs. The summer after when they hatched out we could hardly step. They flew in our faces. We got to Salt Lake and camped on Arsnell [Arsenal] Hill.”
Susanna Green and Henry met on her journey west to Utah with the Daniel Thompson Company, on which he worked as a teamster. After marrying they settled at Parowan in Iron County, south east Utah, and then in Adamsville, where they were joined for a while by her widowed mother Willoughby. They then moved to Minersville, Beaver County. Census records listed them as farmers. They also had several children. Henry and Susanna returned to Parowan in 1817 for the Home-Coming Festival, reported in the Cedar City Iron County Record of 17 September 1915. The event included concerts, dancing, a fruit festival and tours of the area that highlighted the pump wells that had helped make farming so much easier for the locals. Henry died on 18 November 1919 and was buried at Minersville Cemetery. Susanna died on 4 November 1920 and the certificate records her name as Susanna Staff Gillins. The cause of death was given as old age.
Their children were:
- Henry Robert Gillins (1867-1951), a miner who lived in Beaver County, Utah, and raised a large family with his wife Isabelle Jeanette Rollins.
- Susan Willoughby Gillins (1869-1932). She married labourer Joseph Wood and also lived in Beaver County. He later became a farmer according to his obituary, published in 1950. They had no children.
- Frederick William Gillins (1872-1935). Frederick moved around – living and working in Utah, Nevada and, latterly, California. He worked as a miner and a farm labourer during the course of his life, married Sarah Ellen Eyre in Utah and had a family with her. She lived until 1959.
- Eliza Gillins (1874-1876).
- Thomas Edward Gillins (1880-1953), worked variously as a labourer, farmer and a miner at silver and lead mines. He married Lucretia Jones in 1909, raised a family and lived in Beaver County for many years. She died in 1925.
- Elizabeth Sadie Gillins (1882-1949) married Odin Gressman, who worked in various jobs in the mining industry. They too had a family and lived their lives in Utah. Odin died in 1940. Elizabeth died in San Bernadino in California in 1949 but was buried back with her family in Beaver County.
- Rosella Lavina Gillins (1884-1926). She married farmer George Ellis Bentley and had children with him, living in Iron County. She died young of cancer. George lived on until 1963.
Sources. All data has been gathered from Ancestry.co.uk, Familysearch.org, FindMyPast.co.uk, the British Newspaper Archive, Norfolk Family History Society, the Saints by Sea website and the LDS church. Eyre-Walker Genealogy and Pioneer Histories by Geraldine Hamblin Bangerter.