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 south, 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, Surrey. 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, leaving London on 23 May. They arrived in New York City on 4 July and then embarked on a mammoth and demanding two-month cross-country journey, probably by train and then down the Missouri River to a small settlement in Nebraska called Wyoming.
The Greens joined the Daniel Thompson Company and left Wyoming on 24 July, walking and in wagon trains in the days for about 15-20 miles a day. They followed the route of the Platte River through Nebraska, and waded across it sometimes up to their necks in water.
The party stopped at the trading post and military base at Fort Laramie in the state of Wyoming, before turning for Salt Lake City in Utah, where they arrived on 28 September. Find out more about their journey on Willoughby’s page.
Young Susanna married Henry Gillins (sometimes Gillings and Gillens) 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 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) was born in Parowan, Beaver County, Utah. Records and a newspaper obituary (The Beaver County News 12 Jul 1951) noted that he had worked as a freight train driver as a young man but later worked as a miner in Utah. He raised a large family with his wife Isabelle Jeanette Rollins, who he married in 1894. They lived in Beaver County all their lives, but Isabelle died in 1919. They were members of the LDS Church.
- Susan Willoughby Gillins (1869-1932) was born in Parowan, Beaver County, Utah. She married labourer Joseph Wood and lived in Beaver County for the rest of her life. He later became a farmer according to his obituary, published in the Minersville News of 14 December 1950. This noted that he was the oldest man in the town at the time of his death and that the couple had had no children. They were members of the LDS Church.
- Frederick William Gillins (1872-1935) was born in Parowan, Beaver County, Utah. Frederick moved around – living and working in Utah as a miner, farm labourer and farmer, but then moving on to Nevada, Arizona, and, latterly, California. In later years he worked as a salesman. He married Sarah Ellen Eyre in Utah in 1895 and had a family with her. He died in Los Angeles in 1935, Sarah in 1959.
- Eliza Gillins (1874-1876) was born and buried in Parowan, Beaver County, Utah.
- Thomas Edward Gillins (1880-1953) was born in Parowan, Beaver County, Utah. He worked variously as a labourer, farmer and a miner at silver and lead mines. He married Lucretia Jones in 1909, raised a family and spent his life in Beaver County. Lucretia died there in 1925, Thomas in 1953.
- Elizabeth Sadie Gillins (1882-1949) was born in Minersville, Beaver County, Utah, and married Odin Gressman in 1901. He worked in various jobs in the mining industry. They 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. She had been living in California for several years according to The Beaver County News of 22 December 1949.
- Rosella Lavina Gillins (1884-1926) was born in Parowan, Beaver County, Utah. She married farmer George Ellis Bentley in 1904 and had children with him, living in and around Parowan. She died young of cancer. George died in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1963 but was buried back in Parowan alongside his wife.
Sources. Birth, marriage, death and burial records, census returns and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society. The Saints by Sea website (includes autobiographies of various members of the 1866 voyage) and the LDS church (Church History Biographical Database). Accounts of the journey across the USA in 1866 are in various biographies and autobiographies published on the LDS site and referenced on the Daniel Thompson Company pages. History of the LDS Church in GB. Eyre-Walker Genealogy and Pioneer Histories by Geraldine Hamblin Bangerter (published in 1990). Newspaper titles referenced in the text.