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Incidents in the life of Welcome Chapman Jr.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a boy in Manti he did not feel well enough to run and play with children of his age. As an adult he ate carefully, always whole wheat and very little greasy food. He had a delicate digestion.
When his child Elizabeth Amelia was born, he was working in a smelter in Murray, Utah. When oldest daughter Mary Ann was born he was farming with his brother Hyrum on Silver Creek, Summit, Utah. Attended church two miles west in Snyderville. Probably moved to Salt Lake City in order to send Mary Ann to school. They moved into 13th Ward near the center of the city and the temple. At about nine years of age Mary Ann remembers taking lunch to her father who was cutting stones for the temple. He helped his father and brother Joseph in cutting stone.
His wife died of blood poison after Elizabeth was born. He remarried in two years to Harriet Zelnora Marsden McDonald, a widow with one daughter, Agnes. They lived in her house in 13th Ward which had two good sized rooms.
At times he worked on the railroad. He lived in at least two different wards, the 22nd and probably the 16th. One summer he worked on the railroad at Kaysville, north of Salt Lake City. Mary Ann was about ten that summer. He was called from the 13th Ward to go help settle St. Johns, Arizona, in 1884. The 13th Ward furnished a span of mules, harness and wagons for this trip. They were two months on the road; left in May, arrived in June.
He hauled lumber for lumber from Richey sawmill to build a two-room house. He built on main street as wife Zelnora was an excellent dressmaker & milliner and wanted a shop. They were on the south side and west end of main street near where Thurber's barber shop was (diagonally across the intersection from the meeting house).
In 1884 Zelnora died from being hooked by a cow. She died and was buried the day before Christmas. After this fine stepmother died, the two daughters, Mary Ann and Elizabeth stayed with different families while their father worked out of town. When he had work in town, he had the girls keep house for him.
He made hearthstones and gravestones for many years, even his own, except for the date which his brother Hyrum carved on. He bought a home west of town and dug a 20-foot well. The girls let him down and he would send up dirt then set a blast and the girls would haul their father up when 14 and 12 years old. They were fearful they would miss and let him fall or let rocks and dirt fall on him.
He was unusually kind to his family and taught his children the gospel. Soon he began to court Harriet Ann Davis. The two girls went home to live but it was not satisfactory and the girls went to live with other families. Agnes McDonald married Thomas Nott in Salt Lake City and had five children before she died.
Welcome traveled to different settlements to cut stones. He was at Bush Valley when he became ill and returned to St. Johns, but was sick for months and finally died in 1900. His illness was thought to be typhoid.
Welcome is #2 on Chart 9
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