From Death Valley in ’49 –
by WILLIAM LEWIS MANLY. 1894.
CHAPTER XII. … –Eating Wolf Meat.–After much Suffering they reach Salt Lake.–John Taylor’s Pretty Wife.–Field falls in Love with her.–They Separate.–Incidents of Wonderful Escapes from Death.
Taylor was a large man, highly intellectual, and rather unsocial. Kimble was my favorite notwithstanding the fact that he had fifteen wives, mostly young and handsome, all in one house, and my impression is that none of them had any children. I think it was conceded that his was the finest harem in Utah. He called me his young Gentile, was very kind and affable, but he never invited me to inspect his harem.
About the first of December, 1849, Field arrived in Salt Lake City, and I will allude to a little matter in which he was concerned, after which I will give you a short account of his trip from the time we parted company until he arrived in Salt Lake as he afterwards gave it to me. Soon after he arrived in the City of the Saints he heard of another who had recently arrived from the south and that he was located in the fifth ward on Mill creek at the house of one Gardner, and at which house he soon arrived.
After staying with me for two or three days he found employment in the family of the Apostle John Taylor. The family consisted of seven wives living in seven different houses. How many children there were I never knew, but there was one wife who did not have any. She was a fine specimen of English beauty. Taylor’s women were nearly all English. It was the business of my friend to cut wood, and do chores generally for the Taylor family living in seven different places at the same time. Taylor was in Europe that winter looking after the interest of the church, and possibly after a few more wives, and consequently could not, in person, attend to all of the necessities of the seven branches of his family. In his daily rounds looking after the seven wood-piles and other little matters appertaining to the comfort of the family in so many places Field happened to come in contact with the English beauty, and the result was, mutual love at first sight, notwithstanding the fact that this woman had passed, and taken all of the solemn vows of the Lym house with the Apostle and his six other wives.
I do not think that my English friend had lost one iota of the fond recollection of his long since dead English wife, the picture of whom he still carried near his heart; but, nevertheless, he and this seventh wife of the noted Apostle fell heels over head in love. Field, as you know, was a well developed, good-looking, intelligent man of forty. The woman was well developed, good-looking, and as smart as a steel-trap, and both being English I was not at all surprised at their mutual admiration and infatuation, nor did I blame them much. I was entrusted with many closely-sealed envelopes which I carried from one to the other. With my feeble assistance they tried to devise some method by which they might escape from the city before the Apostle should return home; but the Danites were always on the alert, and they well knew that detection by the Danites of an attempt to get away together would lead to certain death to him, and if not to her she would certainly have been returned to her polygamous state of bondage. Spring came with little hope of escape, and they reluctantly parted with the mutual understanding that, if possible, she would make her escape and go to Sacramento where he promised to keep his address. Ten months after the parting they had not met yet, and if they ever did it was after I had lost all further knowledge of him.