Searching for the pioneers in my family's past

Part 4: The Maxfields reach South Cottonwood-- my great-grandfather, George Spaulding Maxfield, is born

In my recent postings, I have explored the immigrant ancestors of my parents, who arrived in the United States from England, Canada, and Denmark in the 18th and 19th centuries. I conclude my look into their pioneer lives with a final look at the Maxfields, my maternal grandmother’s family, who came to Utah from Canada’s Prince Edward Island in 1851.

Richard Dunwell Maxfield (1831-1916) came to Utah in 1851, as one of many children in the household of his parents, John Ellison Maxfield and Sarah Baker. He soon devoted himself to building homes for his wives and children—all 16 of them—in the South Cottonwood section of Salt Lake County. He was my Grandma Ba’s grandfather, and thus my great-great-grandfather.

He loved his new home, where he prospered as a lumberman. Yet in his mind, I think, he remembered nostalgically the comfortable life they had left behind in Prince Edward Island’s South Wilmot Valley, near Bedeque. “We left a beautiful home, my grandfather (John Maxfield) having land four miles around, making lumber and rafting it into the river,” he wrote in his 80s, just before his death, in short articles saved by his family.

Also farming, the timber being so thick they made slow progress, mostly with the hoe. The winters were extremely cold. The snow fell so deep it would cover the houses. It was the custom to take the shovel in the house at night so we could shovel our way out in the morning. The spring
weather was lovely, and one of the most beautiful places in summer.

Snow of a different sort—just as deep, but in mountainous surroundings—would greet him in his new home. By 1860, Richard Maxfield was already married with three children, living in Salt Lake County, south of the city, in a village the U.S. census taker labeled somewhat cryptically as “Mormon,” most likely within or very near the walls of (Fort) Union, which was the next settlement listed in the 1860 territorial census. Besides his immediate family, his household included seven others, among them two younger brothers—John and William, also lumbermen—and a cousin, John Ellis Maxfield; another brother, Elijah Maxfield, and a married sister, Sarah Maxfield Stager, lived in nearby homes.

According to A Union, Utah, History by Steven K. Madsen, “Jehu Cox, the first settler of Union, donated ten acres of his farming land for the establishment of [a] fort,” and “by 1854, a total of 23 homes had been built inside the fort –- the population stood at 273.” The town itself grew slowly, numbering just 483 settlers by the 1880 census.

But by 1870, Richard’s holdings and indeed, his family, had grown much larger. From the $100 in land listed a decade earlier, he now owned real estate in the South Cottonwood Precinct of Union Fort worth $4,000, and was described as a farmer by occupation. He and his first wife, Artemisa A. Harris of Maine, whom he married in 1854, now had six children, with two more yet to be born by 1880.

But since the 1860 census, he had also taken on the responsibility of a second wife, Ellen Diadamia Thompson, born in New York in 1838, with whom he would go on to have nine more children—five of them born between their plural marriage in April 1862 and 1870. This included their first son, George Spaulding Maxfield, my great-grandfather, born in 1864. And that meant more polygamy … on both sides of my Daddy’s family. My Mother was doubly mortified …

Apparently, both families initially resided in separate apartments in a large house built by Richard Maxfield. Ellen’s daughter Edah recalls their childhood: “Father built a seven- room house and each wife and children lived in an apartment until mother's sixth child was born. Her father [George Vaughn Thompson, died 1863] had been a successful farmer in Cottonwood and when his estate was divided [after mother’s death in 1878] she inherited a home; two children were born here. Both families were congenial and when night came, either place was home to the children.”

Ellen Diadamia Thompson Maxfield, my great-great-grandmother (1838-1909). Family photo

By the time of the 1880 census, Ellen’s mother, Lucia Spaulding Thompson (1796-1878), had also died, apparently allowing her husband’s estate to be passed on. Ellen and her children continued to reside for a time in South Cottonwood Precinct, but in a separate house, blocks from Artemisa’s family. Little else is known of George Maxfield’s youth or formal education—reportedly somewhat limited by expense and their rural surroundings—except that his family lived for a time in the 1880s in nearby Butlerville. He presumably took up a position in the family businesses of lumbering and mining.

Around 1890, George Maxfield had established a residence in Spring City, where he and his younger brother, Lewis Bedeque Maxfield, had recently purchased a sawmill owned by their father. In June 1893, George was married to Anna Louisia Larsen (1864-1920), the Utah-born daughter of Danish immigrants Johannes Larsen [1823-1895], a tailor, and Ane Jorgensdatter [1825-1900], one of their 11 children.

George and Anna soon became the parents of three daughters: Blanche, born in July 1895, Lydia (born 1897), and Anna Georgia (born February 1900). There are no details about the circumstances of his sudden death in May 1900, at age 35—probably of pneumonia, according to his sister’s account.

His widow Annie never remarried, but lived on in her Spring City home until her own death in 1920. Both are buried in the cemetery at Spring City; their daughters are buried in other states: Aunt Lydia Ranck (died 1980) in California, Aunt Georgia Jeffreys (died 1987) in Nevada, my Ba in North Carolina. I met Aunt Lydia and her husband, Walt, in California in 1975, the same summer I traveled to Utah to see Ba; I never was lucky enough to meet Aunt Georgia, though I did call her on a layover at the Las Vegas airport on that same trip.

The graves of George S. Maxfield (1864-1900) and Annie L. Maxfield (1864-1920), Spring City, Utah. Public domain photo

By the time of their mother’s death, my grandmother Blanche and her sisters had all married and moved out of the family home. In 1918, Ba, now 22, married Spring City rancher and accountant Benjamin Ray Justesen, my beloved Grandpa Ben, who was 35. By 1923, their household had expanded to include two sons—my uncle Craig, born in 1919, followed by my father, Wayne, born in 1921—and infant daughter, Anna Elaine.

My grandparents, Blanche and Ben Justesen (at far left), great-grandmother Sarah S. Justesen (center), great-aunt Edith Justesen Cook (right), ca. 1930. Family photo

Having continued her education, Ba became a dedicated schoolteacher after her children grew up, teaching well into her seventies by discreetly disguising her age. My grandparents were married for 49 years before his death, at age 84, in 1967. He lies today in the Spring City cemetery, although he lies there alone—even if his gravestone bears Grandma Ba’s name. She was a bit younger, and still very active; there was no certainty she would ever be buried there—putting her name there was a quirk, I think, of Mormon tradition, probably engineered, at least in part, by my Aunt Elaine, who doubtless disapproved of Ba’s remarriage in 1972 as much as Daddy did. Ba, of course, was just as resolute—and stubborn!—as they were unhappy.

Grave in Spring City, Utah, of my Grandpa Ben, who died in 1967. Family photo

Several years after Grandpa died, Grandma Ba did remarry, moving briefly to Ogden in 1972 to live with her second husband, Albert Stettler, a widowed Swiss native with eight grown children. Albert was about her own age; his second wife had been her close friend. I think she may have considered being buried there. “Albert promised to take care of me,” Ba told me in her last years, “but then he died [in 1974], after less than three years, and I moved back to Manti.”

Ba was, at heart, an adventurous soul. She had a terrific sense of humor, and loved to have fun. She had traveled the 2,000-plus miles east at least three times before, once with Grandpa Ben in tow—for the birth of my sister Beth in 1956—and even once taking a cross-county bus (!!) rather than fly, to save money. (Of course, she said that was great fun—even the rest stops, or “comfort stations,” as she called them!) After the deaths of Daddy’s brother Craig (1976) and sister Elaine (1980), Ba came east with Daddy and Mother for the last time, in failing health, to live in a nursing home near my North Carolina hometown.

She died there in December 1985, at 90, and is buried in Dunn, next to Daddy, who died just a year later, at 65; my mother, who died in 2019, at age 96; my older brother Wayne Jr., who died in 2016 at age 69; and my dear nephew Jock, my sister’s first son, who was born and died in 1983. I visit them all as often as I can.

My Grandma Ba died in Dunn, NC, in 1985, while I served as an FSO in Denmark. Family photo

In 1985, I now had few close blood relatives left in Utah: just my slightly older cousins Patty McCourt and Richard Justesen, Craig’s children, and Elaine Baxter’s younger sons, Jack Craig and David. (Patty and Richard are still there today; David and Jack Craig, sadly, died recently.) Just before Grandma Ba passed on in 1985, I had completed the family’s global trek, returning to live as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in Copenhagen, Denmark, the port from which more than 130 years earlier, some of my father’s ancestors had begun their long journey from the Old World to the New—to what they saw as the New Zion.

On a personal note, I spent six months in Washington, D.C., painstakingly assimilating the Danish language in preparation for that posting—although it proved far less useful than I had initially hoped. Most Danes under 50, at least, spoke English as well as I did, and many gently switched to English if I tried to strike up a conversation by practicing my hard-won, slow, Southern-accented Danish. So I hardly ever got to use it. (Lord knows how I ever got off language probation in speaking it!)

But in the process of living there for two years, I did learn one curious fact about my own family: Although the Larsens and Justesens had dropped Danish for American English very quickly after arriving, the cadence and speech patterns of their English—especially my Grandma Ba’s—remained intact, mirroring the long-discarded Danish of their own parents and grandparents, almost as if they had never left.

Strangely enough, I finally felt at home, at ease with my Danish-ness. I found no trace of my ancestors—the Justesen surname had all but vanished from Copenhagen’s directories, at least—though there were many Larsens left—and my trip to Maribo, Lolland, where they had once lived, was scenic but inconclusive. But on Danish ground, I was now living proof that the Justesens’ long-ago journey to Utah had finally come full circle, after more than 130 years.

Next time: And now, for something completely different—riding the Death Railway in Thailand