J. Neale Logan
Alison Richey
Nick
Our project was a combination of a history report and a lesson plan. The original concept was to gather as much information as possible on John Pidding Jones and the old iron brick furnace and coal chamber located in Enoch, Utah. We were also to gather together a short history of the town of Enoch to put together with this other information. There really was no title to the project but it was to be associated with Iron County Volunteer Center and Southern Utah University. The purpose of this project was to put together a history of the iron works because the site of the brick furnace was/is to become a historical site/park/outdoor science center.
The project was started in order to help school children learn more about the area in which they live. Currently, little is taught to the children about the area and how the town of Enoch was developed. Little is taught about the reasons Enoch was founded and for what reasons the town grew. In addition, since the brick furnace is located just off Old Enoch Road and is a large part of the community, it was thought that having a history of the furnace and the company might be a useful tool for the proposed activity center.
A Mrs. Cindy Pearson who is a fourth grade teacher at Enoch Elementary requested the project. She has been active in the project of getting the historical marker and activity center together since the family of John Pidding Smith, who was the original blacksmith who started the brick furnace, donated the site to the town of Enoch. The family of John Pidding Jones because of the interest shown in having the activity center donated the furnace site.
Over the coarse of the semester, we spent roughly 80 to 85 hours on this project. For the majority of the time we were in both the Cedar City Public Library and the Gerald R. Sharratt Library (approximately 30-35 hours). Information was difficult to find on such a small subject in Utah history but we were able to find several sources on the furnace and John Jones. The main problem was discounting false information from the facts. History written by individuals from the Church of Latter Day Saints tends to give more detail about people who were or are influential within the church. Since John Pidding Jones was the son of John Lee Jones, the man credited for making Enoch into a town instead of just a fort, his own father has overshadowed Pidding Jones’s history.
Another problem we came across was the lack of factual dates and time for events. Some books listed the events as having taken place in the 1850’s while other said the dates were in the 1880’s. Some claimed some individuals were involved while others were left out that were involved. By going through each book and comparing, we feel we were able to come up with a historically correct account of the history of both Enoch and of the brick furnace.
Other problems developed throughout the semester that had little to do with the research. Our contact person, Cindy Pearson, because of her job as a teacher and other outside reasons was difficult and sometimes impossible to arrange meetings. Getting a hold of her on the phone sometimes proved even more difficult because she would forget to call back or not receive our messages. Overall, Mrs. Pearson was less knowledgeable about the project than we would have liked but she was a good person who truly appreciated any help that we could give her.
The final difficulty we came across was the fact that within the last three weeks Mrs. Pearson asked us to change what we were looking for and preparing for her on this project. The decision was made that she would not need very much information about the brick furnace and instead wanted more information about John Pidding Jones and the town of Enoch. Since prior to this we had been concentrating on the furnace and the company that built it, the Deseret Iron Company, this set our project back. Our project changed from a detailed history of Enoch and the iron works to the story of Enoch and one man involved in a company that built the iron works.
The other change she made was that instead of just a report of Enoch and John Pidding Jones, she also wanted a lesson plan situated for forth graders. Mrs. Pearson had decided to add this lesson plan to put to use the information that we were gathering. Both Alison, Nick, or myself knew anything of lesson plans and we now had to learn how to create, organize, and develop a lesson plan for teaching this subject. This is the main reason we’ve run under such a time crunch for this project.
For the research, we spent most of our time in the libraries. In both libraries, we found several sources for information about John Pidding Jones and his family. Getting through all the sources was difficult, but not as difficult as the reading. Some sources, like the biography of John Lee Jones, Pidding’s father, read similar to morman scriptures. Like scriptures, separating the differences between the religious meanings and the historical facts was somewhat difficult. Another problem with looking for John Pidding Jones was the fact that his family was so large and contained so many John Jones narrowing the information to the proper Jones took a considerable amount of time. His family is still in the area and there have been several John Jones throughout the years that have done something of importance in Enoch.
For the most part our best sources of information came out of three books. One book was on the life of John Lee Jones, the biography of Henry Lunt, and a biography of John Pidding Jones and his ancestors. In each book, the references to Pidding’s life had the same timeframe, information, and similar readings on the facts of his life in Enoch.
The first book is around 600 pages and covers the life of Henry Lunt, who was the first bishop of the township of Enoch appointed by Brigham Young. His interaction with Pidding was that of friend and boss. Lunt was the first Bishop for the Mormon church assigned to the area of Enoch by Brigham Young. He was also put in charge of getting the materials together to help John Pidding and his father John Lee put together the ironworks. Lunt was ordered to help get the raw material needed for the Jones family as well as to get men to mine iron to use in the ironworks.
Lunt’s biography also gave us a large resource for information on the town of Enoch. Since he was one of the first prominent men in the town and figured considerably in its change from Johnson’s Fort to the town of Enoch. The church directed his dicisions but he was, in essence, the first mayor of the town. He was fundamental in the development of the southern Utah area and helped set up the first real and permanent settlements.
The second book that really helped in finding the history of John Pidding was a biography written by the Jones family about John Lee, John Pidding’s father. This book was of real interest for the simple fact that it not only discussed the living conditions of the time but the life of a polygamist in early rural Utah. It describes how hard it was to make a living for oneself and his entire family. Finding food, fighting off and on again with the local native-American population and still trying to develop industries. It is a perfect example of how the LDS community was such incredible settlers in a barren and inhospitable condition as southern Utah. It is also a good example of how even when squeaking out a living in the area there was still a lot of motivation and pressure to complete projects like the ironworks as a way of becoming more financially independent.
The final book was on the life of John Pidding and his family. This book was basically a short biography of Pidding followed by a long description of his father. The rest of the book covered the Jones family from the time of John Lee to the current Jones’s. The information on Pidding was extensive and covered his life from birth to death.
He was born in England and spent his formative years working there in the iron industry. He converted along with his father to the LDS faith while there and moved to America with his family to help set up the ironworks company. The company was started in 1856 by order of Brigham Young who believed that there was going to be a massive migration of people west and there would be a strong need to iron. The idea was to produce iron for the railway lines as well as for use in family households. The idea grew into production with the successful mining operation in iron county. John Pidding was called upon to help design and build the ironworks because of his previous experience in the iron smelting operations in England. This iron works became the first operation west of the Mississippi and became fully operational by 1856.
Unfortunately, the iron brick furnace was poorly constructed with bricks that would melt before the iron would and caused the production and quality to be undesirable. The foundry tried for around four years to produce iron of good working quality but the conditions were against them from the start. The bricks were bad, the design was poor, and the amount of quality iron was hard to find for the refining technology that they were attempting to use at the time. Brigham Young ordered the foundry closed in 1859 saying that the Deseret Iron Company should be closed for now, everything should be stored as well as possible, and the men should go onto other things to help the community.
To follow up on this information we also made several trips out to the old brick furnace site. We took a few trips to Enoch to maybe find someone who might remember John Pidding as he did not pass away until 1945. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate anybody who could remember the man. We also made a few trips out to the old Enoch cemetery and tried to find were John Pidding is interned as well as some of his family members. We took pictures of everything in order to help us with the lesson plan we made. Finally, we also tried to locate any homestead sites or important sites like the old locations for Johnson’s Fort or Elk Horn Springs (the first name given to the area).
For information about the history of Enoch, the process was more complicated. Enoch has had several histories written about the town, even a few from history professors at S.U.U. Going through these histories took a large amount of time. Each book or article had to read and compared with each other. The best sources were from a series of books written covering the history of each of the Utah counties. The book on Iron County seemed to have more information about the timeframe of how Enoch became a town. It was light on the who’s who on the people involved in the history of the town. For the history of the towns people who developed and worked the area into the town of Enoch we went through books that had to deal with important people, like the Johnson family who started the area with Johnson’s Fort. This was the first large cattle and farming set up in the area. We also looked at the histories written about the native-American populations at the time of the towns founding.
Once we had all of the information together, we then went to work at setting up a lesson plan for Mrs. Pearson. That seems to the main object that Mrs. Pearson wanted from our group and it is also the last thing that she told us that she wanted. So for the last few weeks we have been trying to teach ourselves how to prepare a lesson plan for a group of fourth graders while at the same time preparing a report for fourth graders to read to go along with the lesson plan.
Te set up the lesson plan we have been talking with anyone we know that is in the education department, my brother who is a sixth grade teacher, and Mrs. Pearson to coordinate a way to develop a plan. What we came up with is a group project with a small lecture that has the information broken up into three main categories. For the first part of the plan, we would give the students the information about John Pidding and the history of Enoch. The next part would be to have the students break up into groups and go over the report and develop a little group presentation about one aspect of the report like one would take the founding of Enoch while another would take John Pidding’s journey with his family from Salt Lake City to southern Utah. Finally, we would have the students take a field trip to the foundry and the original settlement. We would have the students stay in their groups and have them “find” the important places in the area.
Overall, the project seemed to take up a lot of our time and energy for a project that may or may not get off the ground. The finding of the facts was interesting and learning about the area was remarkable. Putting together the information was less interesting but more time consuming work. Mrs. Pearson was a friendly woman who was eager to help, but because of her schedule, she was sometimes unavailable. The libraries had limited resources on the subject and sometimes we had to rely on Internet information about the subjects that seems like a less reliable way of putting together information.
As for Service Learning Projects, they seem like a good and useful tool for anyone going into the education field. For people just interested in history, these projects seem like less a benefit and take away from other aspects of the class. If the projects were spread out more over a year instead of a semester the benefit would be improved somewhat. Maybe if it was tied together in some way with another class that could be accomplished. The project was fun, the people were interesting, and the idea is good, but I feel that the projects miss the mark for someone who is too busy with all of his/her classes to really give all the time and energy needed to make the project fulfilling.
John Pidding Jones
John Pidding Jones was born June 10, 1819 in Greenberfield, Yorkshire, England to Isaac and Mary Piddding Jones. He was their 12th child of 13. Growing up, John had very little formal education, but gained knowledge form listening to boat crews and their captains who had traveled all over the world. John’s father wanted his son to have the opportunities he had nee r had growing up, so at age 12, John was sent to a journeyman in to learn his trade. His apprenticeship was in the nearby city of Liverpool, where John met Margaret Lee. After receiving his apprenticeship at the age of 20, John married Margaret on September 23, 1839 in the same church where Margaret was employed as a janitor.
John and Margaret lived a happy life early in their marriage, celebrating the birth of their first two sons, John Lee and Joseph William. John was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints August 2, 1846m and Margaret was baptized that same year, on the 23rd of September.
On March 7, 1847 John and Margaret had a third son, Daniel, born to them. Unfortunately, Daniel did not survive past infanthood; he died just seven months past his birth.
John’s brother, Sylvester, had begun to grow resentful of John’s activity in the church and launched a plan to hurt him by dissolving the partnership in an iron foundry which existed between John, Sylvester, and their third brother Joseph. On August 15, 1848, Sylvester managed to successfully get John dismissed from the partnership on the grounds that John happened to be half and hour late on that particular morning.
Although hurt by his brother’s dismissal, John and Margaret saw this set back as the opportunity they had been looking for to pack up and head West with other saints to the Great Salt Lake Valley. John borrowed money from Margaret’s adoptive parents, and on the 7th of September, 1848, set sail with his family for America, on a ship called “Erin’s Queen”. The ship landed in New Orleans six weeks later and immediately John began looking for work. It was necessary to find work so that the family could afford the necessary supplies to continue the journey west. Unfortunately for John, there was no work in New Orleans and the family was forced to move north to St. Louis. The Jones family arrived in St. Louis on the 5th day of November, 1848. John was able to get work at the first establishment at which he inquired.
While living in St. Louis, two more sons were born, Sylvester F. on December 5, 1848, and Frederick Isaac on the 6th of February in 1851.
Finally, John and his family were able to buy their needed supplies, including two yoke of oxen, chains and yokes, and wagons, and started the trip west. Then traveled for several weeks before finally reaching a place Winter Quarters (or Council Bluffs) Nebraska, a stopping place for many saints. By the time they reached Winter Quarters, many of the Jones’s wagon wheels had broken and their felloes had split. They were unable to go and farther on their journey until the damages were repaired, but John had no more money to buy replacement parts. John and some of the other men decided to make the journey back to St. Louis, and work to get money to buy the needed parts. While her husband was in St. Louis, Margaret stayed in Winter Quarters with her young family, living out of the wagon. One of their young sons, Joseph caught a cold while gathering food, and died just a few sort days later. Margaret was forced to bury her son in a shallow grave and grieve for him alone, with no way to get word to her husband of their son’s death.
John finally returned, and he and his family were finally able to leave on June the 20th, 1852. They had to endure many hardships on the long road west. There were harsh storms, flooded streams and swamps to cross.
The company entered the Salt Lake Valley just in time for the October, 1852, conference. However, the Jones’ did not long remain in Salt Lake. Just a week after their arrival they were answering a call from the prophet Brigham and heading to Cedar City, Iron County, where an iron works was in the process of being developed. They were forced to stay the winter in Nephi, Juab County, where they built a log room and waited out the snows. But by March 15, 1853, they were packed and again on their way. At last they reached Cedar on the 2nd of April. At the time of their arrival, the iron works were receiving a great deal of attention, and John’s time was spent helping to construct a larger furnace. This furnace caved in and was replaced in 1855by one made of quarried rock. This furnace helped make the many household supplies needed by the growing town, as well as the old community bell. Shortly after the forging of the bell, when unsettled conditions in the community stopped interest in iron production, the organized company dispersed.
John and his family were not ready to give up though, and after the big company stopped working their furnace, John and two other men built a smaller furnace for themselves. On May 2nd 1856, Margaret gave birth to another son, Isaac Charles. The baby died of croup 2 ½ years later.
The first few years in Cedar were extremely hard for the Jones family. They were out of supplies and clothing by the time they reached Cedar, and because John so busy working on iron production, he never had the chance to any crops. In addition to these hardships, there was also the constant threat of Indian warfare. In December of their first year in Cedar, they welcomed their first daughter, Elizabeth, into the family. The family purchased a few acres on which they planted crops and rejoiced that they finally had enough to eat.
After two years in the old fort, the location of Cedar City was moved closer to the east hills on the advice of Brigham Young. It was in this new location that the Jones’ built a log home of cottonwood logs, cut down and squared by John and his son John Lee. No sooner had the house been completed then the town of Cedar was moved again, this time to its current location. The house was disassembled and then put back together at the new location. Just one day after the house was completed, another son was born. They named him Hyrum.
After Cedar moved for the 3rd and final time, John built a blacksmithing shop close to the family’s home, and also an adobe brick house close to the shop. Later, John and two of the townsmen built and adobe cabinet shop and began making furniture and John built a small furnace for making iron. It was in the next four years that two more daughters joined the family, Margaretta Jane and Mary Crosby.
By 1871, the cabinet company dissolved. John received the grinding burs that had been part of the company and took these with him when the family moved to Johnston’s springs, now known as Enoch. Once again, the house was taken down and went with them. John and his four sons formed a company called John P. Jones and Sons Co. and were in the business of agriculture and stock raising until 1892.
Soon, another furnace was built in Enoch, as well as a blacksmith shop and a foundry and coke oven. The structures were found nearby and were plentiful. Son John Lee had already built a lime kiln to make quick-lime for mortar to hold the bricks together when building their houses. John P. Jones was the foreman and organizer of the crew working at the iron works, while son Sylvester fed the furnace from a platform and another son, Hyrum carried the ladle and John Lee worked in the foundry as the molder The largest thing ever casted in the Enoch furnace was operated on and off for the next 20 years, and parts of the furnace still stand today.
John entered into plural marriage with 2nd wife Fanny Eliza Ridsadale Chapman in 1882, much to the grief of his first wife Margaret. The couple had one child together, a daughter named Fanny Lee. At the age of 63, John was arrested for polygamy, tried and convicted in Beaver. He had to pay a fine of $300.00 and spent the next six months in jai with son John Lee, convicted of the same crime.
John Pidding Jones continued to farm the rest of his life, as well as working his trade with iron. As John grew older, more and more of the responsibility of running the farm was given to his sons. In 1890, John was run down and trampled by an untamed horse and died as a result of his injuries. He was 71 years old. His family had him buried in the Cedar cemetery. John left behind two grieving wives, 4 sons and 4 daughters, and an incredible legacy.