Ezra Mead
It was sometimes said among his often distressed and mystified descendants, "You don't know any good reason why you are odd until you know your Grandpa Ezra." In another place, at a different time, our Ezra Mead may not have seemed so, but in the early nineteenth century on the American continent, where everyone was anxiously engaged in a more or less desperate struggle to exist in a new nation, and where what we now call the "American work ethic" existed in every division of American society (and had existed for more than one hundred years by the time Ezra Mead appeared on the scene) he may indeed have seemed odd. He was a man who could not stay put for very long, who preferred to wander about the wilderness country instead of living in a more or less civilized place. While the people around him were hard working, responsible, and respectable, he spent his time in his own way and refused to be tied down by any sort of responsibility. Grandpa Ezra might have felt quite at home with the young American generation of the 1960s, for instance, and he would not have seemed at all odd to them.
Ezra Mead was born on 27 August 1787 in Dutchess County, New York. Very little is known of his parents—not even their names as yet—but we know that he had two brothers and three sisters: Hezekiah (born in 1785), Sally, Ruth, Loretta, and Joseph. Included in the 1790 Census of Dutchess County, New York, in Fishkill Town, is an Ezra Mead, who had in his family one male over sixteen, two males under sixteen, four females, no servants or slaves. Whether or not this is Ezra's father is not known. Our Ezra would have been between two and three years old at this time.
A little background material for the Mead family follows:
"Mead - a meadow, a tract of low land. The family is of Norman descent, their common ancestor being Hervey de Plato (From.an Italian Language Dictionary - Piatto = plate, Prato = meadow) in the year 1200. The earliest Meads to be found in America are two brothers: Gabriel, born in Eng-land in 1587, freeman, Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1638; and William, came from England in 1635, settled at Wethersfield, Connecticut. In 1641 he removed to Stamford, Connecticut.
"The Massachusetts Mead family is descended from Gabriel Mead (called Goodman Mead), who was born in 1587, died in December, 1666, aged 79 years. He was probably married twice, his second wife being Johanna, the daughter of James Bates. The latter (Bates) was born in 1582, died 1655, and sailed from England in the ship Elizabeth, Captain Stagg, in April 1635. It is said his son-in-law, Gabriel Mead, was in the same vessel. Richard Bates (son) lived at Lydd, in Kent, England, from whence the family is supposed to have come. Surviving Gabriel were his widow, Johanna, and the following children: Israel (born 1637), David, Lydia, Experience, Sarah, and Patience. (Source: History of Dorchester, Massachusetts.)
"The Connecticut family is descended from William Mead, who is said to have been a brother of Gabriel Mead, the ances-tor of the Massachusetts family. It is supposed that these two brothers with their families sailed from Lydd, County Kent, England, in the ship Elizabeth, Captain Stagg, April, 1635, for the Massachusetts Colony, where they ar-rived in the summer of that year. William seems first to have settled at Wethersfield, Connecticut, but the exodus from there took place and a company of planters from Wethers-field settled at Stamford, Connecticut, in 1641. William Mead, on 7 December 1641, was assigned a home lot and five acres of land at the latter place, as appears from the Stamford town records. This William was the ancestor of the Meads of Fairfield County, Connecticut, (although family tradition declares that John was) as also of Dutchess, Westchester, St. Lawrence, Chenango, Saratoga, and Warren Counties, New York; Rutland and Bennington Counties, Vermont; Meadville, Pennsylvania, and many of the Meads in the Central, Western and Pacific States."
There was a Hezekiah Mead who was a captain in the Continental Line and New York forces during the Revolutionary War. This could be a relative of our Ezra, since his older brother was named Hezekiah, too. After all, who would name a baby Hezekiah unless it was for a father, grandfather, brother, or some other relative?
Since our Ezra Mead was born in Dutchess County, New York, we assume that he was descended from William Mead (above) and this seems very likely, since Dutchess County is very near to Stamford, Connecticut. His parents were said to be "quality folks," and Ezra was well educated. He was also skilled in the making of stringed instruments, which seemed to have been not only his hobby but his passion as well. It was said that "he was proud, highstrung, impatient, impractical, artistic and generous to a fault." The fact that he was a maker of violins may have bean another facet of his "oddness." Because he needed particular kinds of wood— spruce, curly maple, and others—properly aged for as long as twenty years, and specially treated, he may have found it necessary to go and look for them himself. It was perhaps this that led him to wander about the country, finding adventurous times with cronies as odd as himself. (This is borne out by the fact that one of his cronies was Daniel Weymouth, who owned sawmills in New York State.)
This man with the "proud, artistic nature," with the "love of beauty and the beautiful finer things of life" fell in love with a girl called Sophia Burnham, who eventually jilted him and married another man. So Ezra did something foolish, as many men and women have done under simi-lar circumstances; while on the rebound, he married Elizabeth Wilcox in 1811. Saying that these two people were perhaps not ideally mated was putting it mildly. Elizabeth was born on 17 January 1784 in Halifax, Windham County, Vermont. Her parents were Nathan Wilcox and Rebecca Moon. (We find a Nathan Wilcox in the 1790 Census as the head of a family of two
males over sixteen, four males under sixteen, four females, no servants or in those days slaves.)
We can imagine that any baby born in January in Vermont had to be tough to survive, and so it was with Elizabeth. She was the youngest child in a very large family of sixteen children. Nathan Wilcox and Rebecca Moon were both born in Washington County, Rhode Island. Both their families had been in Rhode Island since early colonial days. The Wilcoxes had come from Massachusetts with Roger Williams at the time he was expelled from that colony for not conforming to its established re-ligion, and the Moons had come from Boston sometime in the early days of the eighteenth century.. Both Elizabeth's parents were thorough (fifth and sixth-generation) New Englanders used to thin, rocky soil, a harsh climate and hard work. They were very poor. Toil and hardship were Elizabeth's lot in life from the beginning. At seven she was bound out to a farmer's wife for a few years and had to work very hard. She did not always have enough food for her growing body; and when, in the absence of her mistress one day she found a nest of eggs hidden away, she cooked and ate them all, then buried the shells. For once she had all the food she wanted to eat, but she was very sick afterwards. Later she was apprenticed to a tailoress and learned to make men's clothing. She was described as "small, thin and wiry, and plain of face, also trained to hard work and frugality," and "very practical, industrious, plodding,
and over-cautious." She had a very difficult life, but she traveled from Vermont to Utah during her lifetime and lived to the age of ninety-seven.
Elizabeth was twenty-six years old and Ezra was twenty-four when they were married in 1811. Why did she marry him? Perhaps she was in love with his handsome face and charmed by his gay, carefree manner. Or perhaps, learning that his family was financially quite well off and thinking that she might not have another chance—after all, she was twenty-six—and longing for an end to the difficulties of her life, she consented. A wandering-musician was better than nothing, she may have reasoned. Why did he marry her? Because Sophia, the girl he had set his heart on, had married someone else.
No sooner were they married than the troubles began. Ezra's parents, feeling that he had married beneath their social status, turned him away. Perhaps he had not been on very good terms with them for some time past, and his marriage was the last straw. At any rate, he was forced to depend upon his own resources from that time. Never having been trained to make his own way, he had a difficult time. He tried to do it by making violins, the thing he knew best. Unfortunately, it takes a long tine to make a violin, and in the meantime they must have food and shelter, as well as preparing for the baby which was coming. So it fell to Elizabeth to help them over the hard time. Due to her reputation as an excellent seamstress, it was easy for her to get work. This did not suit Ezra, who felt unhappy and disgraced to have his wife supporting him. He wanted her to stop working. She tried this, but times were very hard, and she considered that Ezra was not trying hard enough and was only working when the spirit moved him to do so (which may have been true). However, if one considers the delicate and precise work needed to make a fine violin—and Ezra was apparently a very conscientious craftsman—one can sympathize with him. Perhaps he had never been obliged to turn out any quantity of work in a short time and was not pre-pared to compromise the quality of his work. The making of a violin is a very fussy business, and should never be hurried, and could perhaps only be done successfully "when the spirit moved him." At least we know it requires a quiet and peaceful atmosphere to preserve the concentrated effort needed to accomplish the task. Be that as it may, "he was making a violin for a wealthy woman, a beautiful instrument, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and was to receive a very good price for it when it was completed. But the days went by and Elizabeth's urging only served to infuriate him. The day came when there was nothing to eat. Elizabeth tried an old housewife's trick. She set the table in front of the huge fireplace, spread with her best cloth, her prized flower-sprigged dishes and all. In the center of a large platter she placed the unfinished violin. When Ezra came in to dinner, he took one look, and in a rage swept cloth, dishes, violin and all into the fireplace, and left home. Two years later he returned as casually as though he had just stepped out but a minute before."
We get another version of this story from another source. Jeanette Pecora, a great-granddaughter of Ezra and Elizabeth, remembered her grand-mother Sophia telling her that her father made violins to sell but could not make enough money to support the family. His wife wanted him to get other work and not spend all his time frivolously (she probably thought, as it was not profitable enough) making violins. "But he loved his vio-lins and he was making one to sell to a very rich woman. He had it all made, and was sanding it down for the finish when his wife became angry at having to work to support the family, so she took his violin and smashed it to pieces. He then left home and never returned."
However, it is apparent that he did return from time to time from his wandering trips, as the family group sheet of Ezra and Elizabeth Wilcox Mead lists seven children: Sophia Burnham, James Parish, Ezra William, Henrietta, Sally Ann, Minor Moss, and Charles Clark Mead, all born between 1812 and 1825, at which time Elizabeth was forty-one years old and nearing the end of her child-bearing years. It is apparent also that Ezra and Elizabeth, to give them credit, tried for several years to make a success-ful marriage. We see that they lived in several different areas during the time the children were born.
He was absent at the time of the arrival of his first child. She was born on 12 July 1812 in the little town of Homer, Cortland County, New York. Evidently he arrived in time for the christening, as she received the name of Sophia Burnham Mead, after her father's lost love, which must have been a blow for Elizabeth. The country at this time was in turmoil. The war of 1812 had begun just one month before Sophia was born. (Perhaps Ezra saw some action in this war. We find listed under Vermont Volunteers, Commissioned Officers: Ezra Mead, Ensign. Our Ezra was twenty-five years old in 1812, but it is not known whether this is he, and there is record of others of that name.)
Little Sophia had inherited good qualities from both her parents. "She had her father's proud, artistic nature and his love of beauty and beautiful things; also her mother's ambition, fortitude and resourceful-ness. She seemed to be her father's favorite, and he took great pleasure in teaching her, as opportunities for schooling were meager. He instilled in her a love of good literature, which has been handed down to a great many of her descendants. Sophia was twelve years old when the great Lafayette made his second visit to the United States in August 1824. It was a time of celebration, and her father took Sophia to see the great man - an event which she remembered throughout her life, as did all of America. Although Ezra did teach Sophia and spend some time with her, he did not become a model parent. He continued to leave home periodically for wandering trips, coming home to see his family at intervals.
"When Sophia was about twelve years old, her parents moved to Cincin-nati, Ohio. Her father had a very good friend his own age who owned a sawmill on the Allegheny River in the town of Clean, New York. When her parents moved away, this friend, Daniel Weymouth, asked permission to marry Sophia when she became old enough, and her father consented. Weymouth shipped his lumber down the Allegheny River into the Ohio and down to Cincinnati. So, when Sophia was fifteen years of age, Weymouth took a shipment of lumber down to Cincinnati (he owned three sawmills by this time), married Sophia, and took her back up the rivers with him to New York state. He was thirty years older than Sophia. They had two little girls, one of whom died when a child. The other was named Drusilla. When Drusilla was two years old, her mother was very homesick to go back and visit her family. She had never been back since her marriage."
From another source 'we read that when Sophia was twenty years old she developed a troublesome cough, which the doctor consulted called consump-tion. Thinking that she might have only a short time to live and knowing her wish to visit her family, her husband had some of his next shipment of lumber bound together into a raft and built a little shelter on it for his wife and daughter, and they floated down the rivers, one thousand miles, to her father's home. The rivers were the main, and often the only, means of transportation at that time.
During the river trip, probably due to the fresh air and sunshine and the opportunity to take more rest than she could at home, Sophia's cough disappeared and her health improved. When she reached Cincinnati, the Latter-day Saints were in Ohio, the Kirtland temple was being built, and the work was going forward. To her sorrow, her father was away on one of his periodical trips, and it is said that he never returned from this one. About a year after he left, they heard in a roundabout way that he was dead. This was in 1834. Another source has Ezra's death date to be 26 September 1861. It is not known which date is correct. The same source which gives Ezra's death date as 1861 also says that Elizabeth was sealed to her second husband Thomas Noakes, in 1852, which leaves us a small mystery as to what happened; but it is apparent that in 1852 Ezra was either dead or perhaps divorced from Elizabeth at last.
In spite of her father's absence, Sophia's reunion with her family was a happy one. She found that her family had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was taught the principles of the gospel, and she also believed and was baptized. When she wrote to her husband in New York, he was very angry and told her that if she had joined "Joe Smith's church" he did not want her to come back to him unless she gave up her religion entirely. Refusing to do this, she stayed in Cincinnati, and she and her mother ran a tailoring business to support themselves and their families.
About three years later, after they had moved with the Saints to Independence, Missouri, Daniel Weymouth visited his wife and daughter. The apparent reason for his trip was to try to get Sophia to leave the Church and go back to him again. All went well with them until they had retired for the night—then Weymouth asked his wife how many other men she had been with since she left him. When she indignantly told him that she had been with no other man, he said, "You can't make me believe you have gone three years without having another man." So she said something like, "Well, then, I will prove it to you by showing that I can even resist you." Having said this, she got out of bed and spent the remainder of the night in her mother's room. The next morning he said nothing further about it but gave their little daughter, Drusilla, a five-dollar gold piece and went away. They later received news of his death by accident in one of his sawmills. He left no provision for them.
During the 1830s the Ohio Saints were making their move to the Center Stake of Zion in Jackson County, Missouri. Elizabeth and Sophia and their children, with the aid of friends in the Church, made the trip by river as far as possible, then overland to Independence. They were greatly blessed on the trip, but when they reached the end of-their jour-ney, Sophia's brother James, aged sixteen, who had always been in delicate health, died, and it is said that he was buried on the temple lot. How-ever, there is no marker at his grave at the time of this writing. Elizabeth had by now lost her husband—apparently—and two more of her children.
When the Saints were driven out of Jackson County, Elizabeth and Sophia settled first in Clay County, near Liberty. Through all these troublesome times they worked together doing tailoring and were able to help themselves and others also. They were living at Liberty, Missouri, when the Prophet Joseph rebuked the guards in Liberty Jail.