SARAH DIANTHA GARDNER
Sarah Diantha Gardner was born Sept 9, 1852 at Payson, Utah to Elias Gardner and Diantha Hanchett. She was named Sarah after Abraham's wife in the Bible and Diantha after her mother. From the first, she was called Sadie or Sade.
Sarah had many interesting adventures as a child in Payson, which was constantly threatened by the Ute indians. When she was thirteen her family moved south to Richfield, Sevier County, Utah, where her father established a little store and ran a sawmill. They were there when the Black Hawk War broke out with the Uintah indians.
Sarah matured into a caring woman, and was called as first counselor in the Relief Society when she was only fifteen, a position she held for over twelve years. At sixteen Sadie became a school teacher, one of the first school teachers in Payson.
It was in nearby Pondtown (later named Salem) that the Lyman Curtis family lived and Sadie met his son, Joseph Nahum, called Dode, Curtis. They enjoyed parties and dances, dancing the popular round dances (waltzes) of the day, which her father frowned upon. They dated each other for over two years and when Dode asked Elias for her hand in marriage, he at first said no. But he finally consented when he felt they would run off and get married. They were married in the Endowment House in St. George on January 17, 1870, Sadie was eighteen and Dode was 24.
Dode built a fine adobe house in Salem, Utah, and they settled down. Sadie took her place among the women of the town and was sustained as the first Primary President of the Salem Ward, being selected by Sister Eliza R. Snow, who came to introduce the newest church auxiliary, the Primary Association.
Sadie delivered her first child, who they named Sarah Diantha, on April 1, 1871. Three more little girls came, Charlotte Iris in 1873, Lillie in 1874, and Florence in 1876. In 1877 a diphtheria epidemic struck Salem and six year old Sarah was stricken, she died in her mother's arms.
In July 1877, President Brigham Young called Dode and his family to move to St. David on the San Pedro River in Southern Arizona. They accepted the call from the aged prophet, as that is what they were taught to do. Sadie's younger sister, Marilla, wanted to become a pioneer with them, but her father wouldn't let her go unless she was married. Polygamy was being practiced by the faithful men, so Dode took Marilla as his second wife and they moved to Arizona.
The day before leaving Utah for Arizona, Sarah's now oldest daughter, Iris, was baptized by Dode in the Salem pond. Travel to Arizona was dangerous and difficult, they crossed the Colorado at Lee's Ferry, and they had many encounters with the Navajos and the Apaches. They traveled with their covered wagon, walking most of the way, through Joseph City, Flagstaff, Concho, Fort Apache, down the Gila River to Rice and San Carlos and to Pima, then south through the Graham Mountains to Fort Grant, Willcox and then, finally, to St. David on the San Pedro. It was near this place that the Mormon Battalion had its famous fight with the wild bulls.
Sarah's family lived in their covered wagon for a few months, and during the heat of summer, on August 5, 1881, she gave birth to her sixth child, their first son, who they named Jody. They established a ranch south of St. David, where at first they lived in a tent-like shelter. Many more children came into their family, she gave birth to twelve, and some they just took in and raised as their own. Their ranch was six miles north of Tombstone, Arizona and they hauled produce from their gardens, along with cheeses that Sadie made, to sell to the miners of Tombstone.
Sadie was well acquainted with most of the historic people of this rough town, including Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday and others. They made the Curtis ranch a place of beauty, peace and industry. Sadie obtained a cutting from a Lady Banksia rose bush, sent from Scotland to Tombstone for the wife of the banker, Mrs. Gee, and planted it in front of her ranch house. It grew large and beautiful. (It's parent is still alive in Tombstone, the largest rose bush in the world according to the Guiness Book of World Records.)
Sadie and Dode were very active in the Church. Sadie was sustained as the first Relief Society President of her ward. The Edmunds-Tucker Law was passed and the federal officials were out looking for polygamists, which made life for Sadie, her sister, Mil, and their husband, difficult. Marilla had her little girls and they all lived together on the Curtis ranch. Marilla became ill after the birth of her fifth baby and never recovered, passing away during 1891. Sadie took Mill's five children as her own.
Sadie and Mill's children served full time missions and attended the Church college in Thatcher. One of Sarah's daughters, Clara, married a son of the new stake president, Andrew Kimball, who lived in Thatcher and whose younger son, Spencer, later became the prophet.
The Curtis family had many exciting adventures on the ranch*. Dode passed away in 1925 and Sadie went on to live until she was almost 90. When she became frail, she went to Tucson to live with a daughter and died there on April 2, 1942. Her body was taken back to the little St. David graveyard, where she was laid to rest beside Dode and Marilla.
*The book "Life is a Fulfilling...The Story of a Mormon Pioneer Woman--Sarah Diantha Gardner Curtis," a 267 page book, tells many exciting stores about life on the Curtis Ranch. It was written by Olive Kimball Mitchell, a BYU English Professor and a grand daughter and was published by the Brigham Young University Press in 1967. It is now out of print, but may be checked out from libraries and permission has been given by the author to copy the book for personal use.