Daniel Mark Burbank, Jr.

(From the Ancestors & Descendants of Lt. Daniel & Mary (Marks) Burbank)

Daniel Mark Burbank, Jr., was born 10 June 1846 at Farmington, Van Buren, Iowa; married (1) Sarah Adeline Lindsay, 20 April 1867 at the Salt Lake Endowment House. (She was born 6 November 1851 at Pottawattamie County, Iowa; daughter of Edwin Reuben and Tabitha (Cragun) Lindsay.) He married (2) Mary Jane Lindsay , 2 January, 1853 at the Salt Lake Endowment House. (She was born 7 August, 1853, Centerville, Davis County, Utah, a younger sister of his first wife.

His parents, due to increasing mob violence against the Saints in Illinois, decided to leave the States and find a home where best they could. We started west into the wilderness amidst rain, snow, and much high water and most excess exposure for men, women and children; leaving our farms, orchards, homes and Temple. Many of our people were poor and destitute of the comforts of life; yet we must go on or be killed; so trusting in God, we arrived at Farmington, Iowa.

Daniel Mark Burbank, Jr., was born at this place 10 June 1846, in a rude frontier home with scarcely the necessities of life. In the fall of the year his parents moved on to a place called Old Agency where they could spend the Winter. In the spring they moved on to the Bluffs, called Hannerville. It was in route to the Bluffs that tragedy struck. One morning the team started up suddenly throwing my older brother, Joseph Smith Burbank, out of the wagon and underneath the wagon wheels and he was run over and killed. He was named after the Prophet Joseph Smith whom his father dearly loved. He was buried along the Platte River.

He was six years old when his parents started west with the Saints for Salt Lake. His father was made a Captain of ten wagons on this trip. As they were crossing the plains in the alkali desert of Wyoming Cholera broke out among the Company. His mother was among the first to die of the plague. She was placed in a shallow grave, wrapped in a quilt for a coffin and covered over. Sage brush was burned over the grave to stop coyotes from digging up the body.

Sarah Zurviah Southworth reports the incident thus; We were traveling along the Platte River when Cholera broke out. Our Captain's wife, Abigail Burbank, died 20 July 1852, near Sweet Water, Nebraska, on the Platte River and was buried with out a coffin, along with many others of the company who died with the disease. A young lady and I were the only ones not afraid to wash and dress her for burial. Her underclothing and night gown were used and then we sewed her up in a sheet and quilt. This was all that could be done for the burial.

This left my father with four small children, Mary Lydia, eight; Daniel M. Jr., six; Abigail, four; and Laura, two years. Soon after this Sarah Zurviah Southworth, rode in the wagon and took care of the children.

While on the plains near the South Pass, his father married Sarah Z. Southworth, 10 September, 1852. Captain Walker of another Company married them. They sounded a bugle and called the camp together to witness the marriage. We used cedar torch lights for candles, it was on the Green River. It was here we all had scarlet fever, but our new mother nursed us back to health. One day my father saw a lone buffalo with his spyglasses and rode out on the prairie to shoot it for meat for the camp. Soon he was surrounded by about one hundred Indians and we feared for his life, but the Indians brought him back to camp and gave him back to us for flour, sugar, ect.

After many trials and privations we arrived in the Great Salt Lake City, 7 October, 1852, and was sent to Springville, in Utah County. The Indians were very bad that winter. In April of 1853 we moved to Grant's Fort (Grantsville) in Tooele County. The settlers had started a Fort and my father helped finish it. They brought in logs from the Oquirrah's and built them a cabin inside the Fort. My father fought in the Utah War in 1856 - 1857 and lived here until June 1863 and then moved to Brigham City, Box Elder, Utah.

When Daniel Mark, Jr., was a very young man he again crossed the plains to assist others who were coming to Utah and arrived back in 1863. In Brigham City he met and married Sarah Adeline Lindsay. They travelled by horse and buggy to Salt Lake City to be married in the Endowment House.

His first home was in Brigham City. He built most of the furniture that was in it. On the 2nd of January, 1871 he married his second wife, Mary Jane Lindsay, a younger sister of his first wife. This was at the Salt Lake Endowment House.

About the year 1874-5 he moved to Deweyville, Utah just north of Brigham City and lived there about twelve years. When the United States Government began hunting and persecuting those who had entered into plural marriage, he took his first wife and moved to Bear Lake County, Idaho and settled at what was later called Bennington. After the persecution had quieted down, his second wife and family were moved to Bennington. His home was built upon a hill near a spring of cold clear water. The town was built below him about two miles. Later he bought a lot in town and built a home there.

He was at one time a body guard of President Brigham Young. He did a great deal of missionary work among the Indians and learned their language and could speak as fluently as they themselves. He was well acquainted with Brother Walker, the Indian. When living in Brigham City, he served as policeman for some time. He served in many capacities in the Church, especially Sunday School and as Ward Teacher. His last days were spent doing Temple work for his departed ancestors. He had the courage to accept any calling that came to him and do it well.

He lost his second wife, Mary Jane, 5 January, 1918, Bennington, Idaho, and she was buried there 8 January, 1918; his first wife died soon after, 16 November, 1919, at the same place and also was buried there. He died 12 February, 1931, Bennington, Bear Lake, Idaho and was buried there 15 February, 1931. He lived to be nearly 85 years old.

Following is a history of Sarah Adeline and Mary Jane (Lindsay) Burbank. Both these sisters married Daniel Mark Burbank, Jr., and this added history enhances the life of all. Thanks to Mavin Sparks, a grandson, here is a poem as well as the history.

Grandfather's House

How do you write the story
Of a house upon the hill?
A house that has disappeared
And the land is silent and still.

Whence came the logs that made its wall?
Of mountain fir and pine,
Chopped with axe, shaped with adz
And hewn to the line.

Did they come from Red Canyon
Or Maple Canyon's wall?
We have lost their story;
Gone, and beyond recall.

All that's left of this house
is a memory fond and dear.
Of all the love, struggle and strife;
Happiness, hope and fear.

But still we have the heritage
of this builder's told,
Passed down through the family
He raised on this virgin soil.

by Mavin Sparks.

The village of Bennington, Idaho was settled in about 1864 - 5 by a group of Mormons called by President Young and he named it for his native home of Bennington, Vermont. He planned that it would be the central town on the east side of Bear Lake Valley but it has never worked out that way. Bishop Moore was the first Bishop of this Ward and the Priesthood groups from Twin Creeks, now Georgetown, Idaho came to attend their functions here at Bennington.

Grandfather Burbank, Daniel Mark Burbank, Jr., came to Bennington in 1886 and built a one room house on a plot of ground just north of the mouth of Red Canyon about three miles east of Bennington. With him came his wife, Sarah Adeline, and eight children; there were nine children in the family at that time but the oldest one was married by this time. With a family of this size, it was rather hard to find a place for all of them to sleep in a one room house. There was a big bed in each corner of the room and a trundle bed under each one of the big ones. Each bed had a curtain of bleach; a light cotton material around it and these curtains had to be washed each week.

There was a spring just above the house that has a spout or trough in the stream and their culinary water was taken from this. This was probably quite an asset at that time to have water so close that you could just step out the door and get a bucket full at any time you wanted it; practically as good as having running water piped into the house.

Four or five years later, they built another room addition onto the west end of the original house and this served as a kitchen and the boys also used it for a bedroom. The first room was used as bedroom for the parents and the girls. Grandfather probably moved his other family, Mary Jane (Lindsay) Burbank, up to Bear Lake from Deweyville, Utah; and settled them on a plot of ground about a mile and a half west of this cabin. This place is about half way between Red Canyon and Bennington. Before moving this family to Bennington, they became ill. When Grandfather got word about it, he strapped on his snowshoes, (it being the dead of winter) and walked over the mountains to Deweyville, Utah. He told of staying at nights under pine trees by a big fire.Grandmother was worried that he would freeze to death and had no way of knowing whether he ever made it or not for a long time.

After the time that the twins were born, Grandfather was seated by the cook stove in the kitchen. He was just rolling a cigarette when the midwife, Hannah McGowen, yelled out to him; "Come quick and help, there's another one " Grandpa vowed that if he could have twin sons, he would never smoke again. So far as is known, he kept that vow.

The family used to have a big long table with benches made of log slabs with pole legs. Each child had a special place to sit at this table. Dave had to sit on one end because he was left-handed and it wouldn't interfere with the others so much. Grandpa and Great- grandfather made most of furniture. They built cupboards, beds, and so on.

There were a lot of water snakes that stayed around the little stream that ran from their spring and these snakes would crawl onto the doorstep and would often crawl up on a shelf in the kitchen where Grandma kept her home made soap. If you were not careful when you reached for a bar of soap, you might get hold of a snake.

To get clay for plastering the cracks between the logs or chinking as it was called, they had to go to Soda Springs, Idaho; a trip of 27 miles with a team and wagon. It required one day to go down there, then a day to load up and come back to a little spring just north of where the Bear Lake, Caribou County line is now, then on home the next day. This clay was used for white wash for the inside walls also. This was merely a thin mixture of the clay and water brushed onto the walls and it would flake and rub off very easily and get into the food and onto the clothing. Also Grandpa would make at least one or two trips to Soda Springs for the famous soda water that is there. They would take fruit juices and mix it with it and put it in quart fruit jars. This made a drink just like our soda pop of today.

The children used to pick service berries and dry them for fruit in the winter. There used to be two big bushes or trees of this berry near the east end of the house but they didn't have as good a flavor as the berries that grew in the mouth of the canyon. Also they had a patch of strawberries and raspberries which they had to pick. Usually one of the older girls would go to Deweyville and spend the summer with their sister Abbie (Abigail), the one that was married at the time the family moved here. They would put up fruit and dry it; then in the fall, Grandpa would drive down with a wagon and bring the fruit back. Both going and coming, at the hill between Mink Creek and Preston, everyone would have to walk and some one carry a rock to block the wheels of the wagon when the horses stopped to rest. This was a very steep grade and was hard on the horses. Usually they would camp at the bend of Mink Creek just below this hill.

A garden was raised, using water from the spring by the house and from a duck pond in back of the house where a flock of ducks were kept. The cows were pastured up in Red Canyon during the summer. Sometimes they would climb half way up the mountain that rises above the house and the children would have to go after them.

Part of the winters were spent getting out logs for firewood. One time while Grandpa was working in the canyon getting out wood, he reached to hook the tug of one of the horses when the horse jerked and caught the end of one of his fingers in the single-tree hook. It took the end of his finger right off and he tore his underwear off to wrap his hand until he got home.On December 7, 1896, one of the boys, Joseph Burbank, was killed when a gun that he was cleaning accidently fired and shot him in the head. Olive was home at the time and tried to do what she could but there was nothing that could be done. She sent one of the twins down through the snow to ask Aunt Mandy (Amanda Hawkins) to come up to help her. The Lindsay's, with whom Mandy Hawkins stayed, lived about half a mile from Grandfather's house. Someone came into Church at Bennington to tell Grandpa and Grandma of the accident.

Bennington was a ward of the Bear Lake Stake at that time and the members would have to go to Paris, Idaho, a trip of about twenty miles, to go to Conference. Grandfather's family would go in the lumber wagon, cutting across the valley and fording Bear River below Bennington. It would take all day to go these meetings and back. They used to buy sweet crackers, a cracker similar to a graham cracker only thicker and a can of sardines or some cheese for their lunch while there.

Every year or two Grandfather would go over to Crow Creek to a salt spring and get big blocks of rock salt for his stock. For table use, they bought a sack of coarse salt that is usually used for sheep and ground it fine in a coffee-grinder. Grandmother used to put this coarse salt in an earthen bowl, melt it in water, then use this water for making bread and other cooking uses. She used to have to make hot soda biscuits for Grandpa for every meal. She would never let the children make the biscuits because they couldn't make them good enough.

Grandmother took in washings some of the time to help make a living for the family. She would go to Montpelier, five miles south of Bennington, gather up the big bundles of clothes, bring them home to wash them, then deliver them for fifty cents a batch. In the summer she would drive the big lumber wagon this distance; in the winter she would use a kind of toboggan behind the team. This toboggan was made by putting a box on the front bob of the sleigh. Often the snow would be over the fences and sometimes it would freeze a crust so hard on it that a horse could walk on it without breaking through. Henry Hoff, a butcher, was one of her customers. She would have to wash the blood out of his big aprons and then starch them so stiff that the apron would stand alone.

Grandfather and John Dunn had a dancing school where they would teach the young people to dance. Grandfather played the drums, cymbals, and called the dances while John Dunn played the violin. If the young people didn't do the steps right, John Dunn would be right alongside them, doing the steps to show them how and still play his fiddle.

Grandmother was married when she was just a little past fourteen years old; and when she was sixteen, her mother died, leaving two little babies for her to take care of in addition to her own little baby.

When Grandfather was courting Grandmother, he came for her one night to go to a dance. Her father said that she couldn't go because her dress was still in the loom. They were weaving a new dress for her and it was not finished and she did not have a dress to wear to a dance.

The old house on the hill was torn down in 1920-1 and used for firewood the home that was built on a lot on the north end of Bennington. Dave gave this lot to his mother when he went to Canada to live. The youngest child of Daniel and Sarah owns this house now and lives there. Dorothy Lyona (Burbank) Sparks.
(By Mavin Sparks)