plums of several varieties, but the golden sweets just north of the house were the best. The south half of the lot was all alfalfa. The general authorities of the church
visited regularly with the members in the outlying communities, offering them encouragement and counsel. One time Apostle George Albert Smith visited in Warm Creek and counseled the settlers to divide the land into ten-acre lots, and building lots enough to accommodate twenty more families. He promised them if they would do this the water from Warm Creek would be increased to a sufficient amount to provide for that many families. In faith and obedience they made the division and other families moved in. One day, about non, they heard the sound of rushing water and discovered that the stream from the spring had increased and was flooding over the banks. The promise of the apostle had been fulfilled.
Apostle Orson Hyde had been a friend of the Bartholomew’s when they lived in Nauvoo. On one of his trips south he came to visit them. He suggested that the name of the community be changed from “‘Warm Creek” to “Fayette” after Fayette, New-York, where the Church had been organize. The people readily accepted his suggestion.
On March 24,1870, fames journeyed to Gunnison where be ordained a High Priest.
A Sunday
school, was organized in ‘1873 and James Mellor, Sr. was the first Superintendent.
As the families in the community began to grow up there were marriages between the Mellor and Bartholomew families. In April 1871 James Mellor, Jr., was married to Eliza Elvira Bartholomew, one of the twins. On November 27, that same year, Emma Marintha, the dark-eyed Mellor twin was married to Joseph Bartholomew, Jr. thus was begun the tendency for these two prominent families to inter-marry as the years went by.
William Charles Mellor loved music and wanted an instrument to play. Guard Doxford helped him make a fiddle out of an old dry goods box. Charles took his lessons from James Fjeldsted of Gunnison. Charles played for the community dances on his home-made fiddle for over two years. He usually charged a dollar fee for his playing for a dance. However, if the dance lasted all night he sometimes
received two dollars. Finally, he saved up the sixty dollars to send to Philadelphia for a violin. When it arrived at last it was winter, and William had to go to Juab
with the ox team to bring the new instrument home. He loved his violin, and it
gave considerable pleasure to the entire community. His family treasure ‘it as an heirloom today.
On March 13, 1875, James Mellor received a letter from the office of the President of the Church as follows:
Dear Brother: I am instructed by President Brigham Young to learn at your earliest convenience by letter how it will suit your circumstances and feelings to go on a mission to the British Isles this season to start soon after the next April Conference. Your early attention to the foregoing. Much oblige. Your Brother in the Gospel, Albert Carrington.
James wrote the following day of his willingness to ‘Comply with this request: “I answered that I did not know that my circumstances would ever be any better than at present, and as for my feelings, if I was called I would try and obey.”
On May 8,1875, James set out, driving his own team into Salt Lake City. He was the first missionary to be called from the community of Fayette. His wife, Mary Ann, and James Jr., accompanied him as far as Salt Lake City. They stopped in Santaquin at their daughter Louisa’s place. Here they were joined by Brother Clark who had also been called to serve in the British mission.
The ship arrived at the mouth of Queenstown Harbor on the morning of May 28, 1875. James was favorably impressed with the beautiful landscape along the Irish seacoast. After arriving in Liverpool, James was assigned to labor in the Liverpool Conference under the presidency of Elder W. B. Barton. He availed himself of the opportunity to renew acquaintances among relatives and friends for a few days before resuming his missionary responsibilities. That afternoon he took a train for Leicester to see his brother, Samuel. While visiting in Blaby, he baptized his wife’s sister, Maria Mathews, whose husband had died ‘in 1861. A few days later he placed her on board the “Wisconsin” to sail for America.
While James was on his mission, Sister Dorthy Knowles’s home in Darwin was the headquarters for the Elders. She also washed and kept their clothes in order for them. On April 2, 1877, James was appointed president of the Liverpool Conference, and was released to return home on September 10 of that same year. He sailed on the “Wisconsin” September 19, 1877, accompanied by his brother, John, and family, and eighteen -year-old Mary Knowles. He arrived back home in Fayette in November.
Several of the Fayette “old-timers” have told about James’s return home. When Mary Ann stepped to the door to welcome her husband back home again, James and a beautiful brown-eyed girl were standing there on the stoop. James introduced Mary Ann to Mary “Polly” Knowles, saying he’d brought Polly from England to be his polygamous wife. Mary Ann was too stunned to make any comment. She stood staring at them for a few moments, then turning, picked up a pan that contained some milk which she was clabbering for cheese, and quickly dumped the contents over the surprised couple, before slamming the door ‘in their faces.
Polly and James went to St. George the next day and were married in the endowment house there. Thus, in the autumn of his life, this quiet, loveable 58 year-old man, with “eyes as black and bright as beads” and hair snow-white, thick and wavy, married the dark-eyed little English girl who was only in her springtime.
Back in Fayette again, Polly and James lived in a little log house on a lot north of the one belonging to James Mellor Jr. James Jr’s., wife Delila taught Polly how to cook and to wash and keep house. James and Polly lived there until the red rock house was built for them. Polly became an excellent housekeeper and a wonderful cook. She loved to entertain and have parties. She had much more of the English brogue than did either her husband or Mary Ann.
Polly and James had six children, three of whom, Robert Edward, Minnie Knowles and Hyrum Melvin all died a short time after they were born. Will James, Joseph Ervin and Emily Maud grew to adulthood.
Mary Ann’s and Polly’s children got along well together and apparently esteemed each other very much. The two mothers were always congenial to each other’s children. This friendly rapport among the children in the tow families
served to lessen James’s problem. However, he was always concerned over Mary Ann’s welfare. He frequently walked over to attend to her orchard and chores. Many times, when Belle and her brother Charles went to take their Grandma Mellor the firewood which their father had chopped, they would find their grandfather sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of bread and milk.
In 1879 William Charles and his father, James started making adobes and firing them into bricks to be used in building a home for William. These were the first bricks made in Fayette. In 1881 James Jr., was called on a mission and by 1884 William Charles and John Carlos Mellor were also called to the mission field.
The Relief Society in 1884 decided to build a house of its own. The sisters paid for most of the work by making and selling quilts, knitting, sewing, and gathering “Sunday eggs.” The Relief Society officers took turns boarding the masons and the carpenters. When the walls were built to the square they
decided to make a two-story building, so the building activities were stalemated a few years, and the building wasn’t completed until 1895. Mary Ann Mellor donated a considerable amount of time to the sewing and cooking in order to further this project. Living alone, she had ample time to donate to the cause. Mary Knowles Mellor made her contributions by making butter and selling it. It was James who did the churning for her.
In the eighties there appeared to be a united effort on the part of the press and the denomination ministers to force legislation against the Latter-day Saints for their practice of plural marriage. James Mellor, Sr., was arrested and sent to prison because he was guilty of “unlawful cohabitation,”” as the polygamous marriages were termed.
The indignant Latter-day Saints contested the anti-polygamy legislation which they felt violated their religious rights under the United States Bill of Rights. But the United States Supreme Court upheld the laws and the Saints were forced either to comply, or leave the country, or be persecuted as violators of the law.
After this, many plural families were broken up. Polly Mellor moved to Salt Lake where she obtained employment and in 1900 was married to William Allen Hamlin. They had one son, Nathaniel, who died when he was less than two years of age.
When he was released from prison, James Mellor, Sr., returned to Fayette to live with Mary Ann. However, their renewed happiness together was short-lived, for Mary Ann died in 1895. James continued to live there and tend the orchard, one of the finest in Fayette. He raised some grain and alfalfa and had some fine livestock.
life had been good to James a rid his family; they had all prospered and were rearing fine Mormon families. Many of them held responsible positions in the communities where they lived, and all of them were interested in furthering the development of those communities.
The youngsters in the quaint little town which he helped to found used to gather at his home in the sunset of the balmy, peaceful summer evenings and -,it at his feet while he recounted events in the history of Fayette. This quiet-spoken, peace-abiding little Englishman would slowly move his head, with the long, wavy, snow-white hair brushing his shoulders as he turned to survey his children , and they were his children, for practically the entire community had descended from him and his two little English Mary’s. He counseled his children to live dignified, righteous lives. He admonished them to be honest, to work hard, and never permit themselves to be duped or led astray by associating with -I evil-doers,” or by seeking an “easier way to accomplish their aims.” He stressed the importance of acquiring an adequate education, of developing their inherent talents and abilities to their optimum potential. He told them to enjoy one another, to be generous with encouragement and assistance whenever it was needed. He wanted them, also, to honor and respect their parents and their leaders, and always to obey and comply with the laws of God and of the land.
The small-framed English convert, and survivor of the Martin handcart ordeal, spent his waning years surveying his fine orchard and fields from a little round, old-fashioned chair in which he sat. Whenever he felt lonely, and desired to chat about the old times in far-off England, James would go to the home of his niece, Sarah Foss, for an enjoyable talk and a “bit-o’-tea.”
He slept peacefully away on December 19, 1903, in the little back bedroom of that first brick home he had built, just fifty-seven years after making his march to the Mormon Zion. He was 84 years of age.
This history was taken from the book The Mellors Through the Years, by Edna J. Gregerson. A copy can be found in the Special Collections in the J. Reuben Clark Library on the Brigham Young University Campus.
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