Ninian Neilson-Life Story Part Four

Ninian Neilson

1821- 1889

A History by Ray L Nelson
Pictures and documents added by Lois C. Berrett

John Nelson and family, William Morgan / Martha Nelson family, Andrew Patterson / Jane Neilson families immigrated about 1851-52. Finding work in St. Louis they prepared and came to Utah by wagon train.  Those were early years.  Arriving in Salt Lake ( not necessarily at the same time) they were all sent to southern Utah in what was called the Iron Mission.  It is a difficult story that is not well known.  Suffering deprivation and starvation they returned to Nephi, Utah and / or Utah County to winter through.  By 1857 the Iron Mission was done.  They produced a few tons of iron but could not sustain the endeavor.  Their experience at Shotts with both coal mining and iron smelter production was no doubt invaluable in Parawan and Cedar City.

Martha Nelson Morgan

William Morgan

John Neilson pioneered both Smithfield Utah and Logan, Utah with the same party in 1859.  William and Martha Morgan were in the original pioneers of Chicken Creek, now Levan, Utah, and Andrew and Jane Patterson were in the original party of settlers for Beaver, Utah.  By 1870 John Neilson was successful in Cache County, Utah with several business ventures including, lumbering,  a sawmill on the island in Logan, a milling business, and farming and freighting goods to the gold rush miners in Virginia City, Montana.  Arriving in 1868 it is likely that Ninian and Edward could obtain employment in one of Johns enterprises. They settled in Hyde Park, just north of Logan and near Smithfield.  To this resort they brought Christina and the others in 1870.

John Nelson

In 1873 Edward married Janet Blair Sneddon, born in Clackmannon, Scotland.  They were married and sealed in the Endownment House in Salt Lake City. 

Edward Neilson son of Ninian

Ellen Married Nels Christinsen, of Smithfield, an immigrant from Denmark. 

Nels and Ellen Christensen and Sam Nelson

In 1879 John Alfred Married Rosella Seamons of Hyde Park. 

John and Rosella Neilson

And in 1880 James Douglas married Margaret Ann Reid of Smithfield.  Her father came to Smithfield to be a cobbler in the United Order Store during the 1870s. When that failed it became a private business which has remained there the same business through this writing.  Smithfield Implement. 

Both John Alfred and James Douglas also worked in the leather shop, learning how to work leather and make shoes under the tutelage of James Reid.  Then James married Reid's daughter and.... that's another story.

First home of James Douglas and Margaret Ann Nelson.  It was located near Lorenzo, Idaho, just east of the railroad track.

Ninian and Christina spent a decade and more in Hyde Park watching their surviving children grow up and marry.  There is scant record of them.  They seem to be there but they are retiring people who never sought public attention and never make public records. They were strangers in a far country.  Could it be that they were old enough that they found the changes from Scotland to the wild west a bit of a challenge?  Did they miss the green of Scotland when facing the seasons of the arid west?  Did they feel lost in the dynamic changing culture of America so used to the crushing traditions in Scotland that so limited ones opportunities?  Were they still mourning the immense losses of their daughter's lives so far away?

In Scotland, the Nelsons would never have had the opportunity to be landowners.  From feudal time, only the Baronial families had held property.  For Ninian and Christina, having struggled so many years to pay their rents and live in miner's row houses on miner's wages and having seen their own children's live wasted on this system, it must have been something like becoming a titled nobleman when they bought their first property.  In 1882 they sold a piece of property which they had obtained in Clifton, Oneida, Idaho.  It's their first land transaction for which we have record.  There are other deeds and deed transfers in both Christina and Ninian's name. 

Some of these properties produced enough capital to have lived several years on the proceeds or purchase fine horses for breeding stock.  In 1886 Ninian filed on a homestead near Dayton, Oneida, Idaho and was granted the patent in 1892.  In 1890 Ninian became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Living in Dayton Ninian became a breeder of horses.  Something that area (Clifton and Dayton) became known for.  Ninian was raised around horses, used to operate the lifts and derricks at the mines in Scotland.  He had become a carter in Dunfermline.  He may have been a teamster on the Virginia City gold route, for his brother John.  And now he became a landed gentleman who bred and traded horses. Could it be that this pursuit of horses was the fulfillment of a dream?  No matter how you read the facts, to have gone from the slavery of coal mining to being a landed horse breeder in one lifetime is a story with a great deal of awe.

On the 29 December 1894 Christina Campbell Nelson passed away. Three and a half years later on 30 June 1898, Ninian Nelson died at the age of 76.  They are both buried in the Dayton Cemetery, Dayton (now Franklin), Idaho.