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HISTORY OF SARAH CECILIA SMITH
SABIN
As written by herself before she died:
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In the year of our Lord 29 May 1866 there was a little girl born at St. Thomas, Nevada and her parents were Charles Pears Smith and Mary Wilkinson Smith. They named her Sarah Cecilia. She was four year and ten months old when her parents moved to Glendale, Utah, called Longvalley, in 1872.
We lived here until May 1875, then my parents went to Weber, Utah and stayed there until summer, then went to Sucker Springs, Wyoming. There my Father took charge of A Co-op, or a company herd of cattle. There I spent my time in fishing and just wandering around with my brother, Charles, just older than myself.
Mother kept an Inn and people that traveled from one settlement to another always stopped there to get a good meal of fresh fish and bread and milk. As my father and brother older than myself were busy through the summer, I was the one to keep the fresh fish on hand, so I spent a great deal of my time fishing. Besides fishing, I caught minnows for men from the Twin Creek Coal Mine. They always depended on me for their bait, so two to three times a week I caught all the way from a three pound lard bucket to a five pound bucket of minnows. I was kept pretty busy for a little nine-year-old girl, and many a dollar I earned catching minnows for fish bait.
My oldest sister went to Evanston to live, as it was too lonesome for her, as she was a young lady and we had no neighbors, only cattlemen nearer than Randolph, Utah, and that was fifteen miles away.
My father was always on the frontiers, so we children didn’t have much chance to get an education, and as it cost so much to send the children to school, the older ones are the ones to go. So, me, being the third one, I didn’t get a chance to go to school, that is, when we lived where there was a school, as we were most of the time in some country place where there were no schools.
When in Wyoming we lived on a ranch. We went from there to Henry’s Fork, Utah and lived there about two years. Then I went to school from the last of May until the 2nd of August. That ended my schooling. That fall we moved to Vernal, Utah. We stayed there four years, then went to New Mexico in 1882. We lived there four years and I worked for other people most of the time, as there wasn’t enough for my mother and a sister who was fourteen years old, to keep us all busy.
While there my father was very sick so my sister just younger than myself, and I, did the irrigating. Finally some of the neighbor boys took pity and did it for us. The Bishop finally got boys to do the irrigating for us until father was well.
Then we moved to the Gila Valley and stayed there about three years. We all came down with chills and fever, so father moved to the Sulfur Springs Valley. While in Curtis I married Parley Pratt Sabin, the best looking man in the town, and my sister Mary married Charles Riley Plumb. We lived in Sulfur Springs Valley from 1881 until 1890 then went to the San Pedro Valley to live.
We lived in St. David, Arizona until 1912. My husband and family, moved to Pomerene, or Robinson, as it was called. The name change occurred by the government when we got a Post Office. My husband died there 12 August 1924.
I then went to California as my children were all gone and I couldn’t stand to live alone. I went to live with my son, Joseph, who had two small children and no mother to take care of them. I stayed there from the 27th of March 1925 until the 18 August 1926. Then my darling boy died with appendicitis, and I came home to Arizona to bury him by his father in St. David. My first boy is buried there also, he died as an infant, 16 months old at the time.
I first went to Gilbert, Arizona to my son David’s as I had no place in St. David to live. I had my two little girls that my son left and it was too hot, so I moved to Prescott, Arizona to my daughter’s, Theresa Scott. We stayed there until the girls’ mother came and took them away from me. Then I went back to Phoenix and stayed there until 29th of June when I came to stay with my mother, who was very sick. I stayed with her until she passed away on the 11th of November. She suffered a great deal the last month but she was very staunch until the last.
I then came back to Mesa and bought my home the first of April 1929 and have stayed here ever since. I went to St. David this summer with Dewey and Roger, also to Prescott to see the Indian Snake Dance. Roger went to El Paso, Texas to work for the government as Immigration Inspector. He went on August 2nd and started work on August 3rd.
STATE RESIDENT 66 YEARS DIES – (Arizona Republic, Aug. 2nd, 1940)
MESA, Aug. 1 – Mrs. Sarah C. Sabin, 74 years old, died this afternoon at her home on Mahoney Street after a short illness.
An Arizona resident 66 years and a Mesan 20 years, Mrs. Sabin and her parents were early pioneers of Gila Valley. She was Relief Society president of the Latter-Day Saints Church for many years in St. David, former home of the family.
Surviving are six children, Mrs. Alice Nivens, Los Angeles: Mrs. Ben Johnson and Mr. J. F. Scott, Prescott; David H, Dewey W. and Roger Sabin, Mesa; two sisters and four brothers in the Gila Valley.
