Meet pioneer women in walking history tour of Ogden cemetery
Louisa Harris, an Ogden pioneer who raised silkworms at her home, is one of five women to be spotlighted on the annual Ogden City Cemetery Walking History Tour June 11 and 13.
Belinda Burch Clark, a pioneer midwife, is one of five women whose stories will be featured during the June 11 and 13 Ogden City Cemetery Walking History Tour.
Pomona Goodyear, the wife of Miles Goodyear, who built the first permanent non-Native American structure in Utah, shown here, is one of five women whose stories are featured on the June 11 and 13 Ogden City Cemetery Walking History Tour.
OGDEN — In a cemetery or not, everyone loves a good story.
That’s why Joanne Hanson organizes trips to gravesites every summer for the annual Ogden City Cemetery Walking History Tour.
The storytelling is the appeal of the event, whether folks know those buried there or not, said Hanson, who works with the Ogden Family Search Library to conduct the tours on Saturday, June 11, and Monday, June 13.
• RELATED: Memorial Day tour brings history of cemetery to life
This year’s event focuses on early pioneer women of Ogden because Hanson said she wants their lives to be remembered.
“I could have done their husbands … but I just wanted to highlight the women because I really wanted to let people know they just weren’t sitting around home milking the cow or tending the garden,” she said.
The women did do those things and more, of course, to take care of their families, Hanson said, but those spotlighted on the tour also raised silkworms, served as midwives, nursed the sick and even told stories themselves.
PREVIEW
• WHAT: Ogden City Cemetery Walking History Tour
• WHEN: 5 p.m. June 11 and 13. Tours begin every 15 minutes and last 1 ½ hours. Final tour of the day starts at 6:30 p.m.
• WHERE: Ogden City Cemetery; enter at 20th Street and Jefferson Avenue. Tours begin on south end of cemetery’s First Avenue.
• ADMISSION: Free but donations accepted to repair old or abandoned markers. Information, 801-644-3234.
The walking tours, which last about 1 ½ hours, will stop at five sites along First Avenue in the cemetery. Hanson has enlisted descendants of several of the women to relate their stories.
The first stop is not an actual grave but a place to remember Pomona Goodyear, a Ute Indian and the wife of Miles Goodyear, a mountain man and fur trader who built the first permanent non-Native American house in Utah in 1845 — two years before the first Mormon pioneers arrived.
Although Pomona — a daughter of Ute chief Peteetneet — isn’t buried in the Ogden City Cemetery, she is a woman many Utahns don’t know much about, Hanson said.
“This was her home before anyone else. She and her husband were here first and then the white people started to come,” she said of the couple who founded Ogden’s Fort Buenaventura.
Pomona Goodyear, who came from what is now the Payson area, will be portrayed by Becky Syme of Marriott-Slaterville.
Louisa Sargent Harris’ tale will be told by a great-great-great granddaughter, Elizabeth Earl of Salt Lake City, on the Monday tour. Cindy Ericksen, a spouse of a Harris descendant and co-director of the Ogden Family Search Library, will present the story on June 11.
Harris raised silkworms — “She had her house almost literally full of worms,” Hanson said. A full-length silk dress that she made by hand from the silk produced by the worms is displayed at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City.
Belinda Burch Clark arrived in Utah with her family in 1848, when she was just 8 years old. She grew up to be a midwife and delivered babies for many in the early settlement, Hanson said.
The other women on the tour are Sarah Coats Prunty Shupe, who joined the Mormon Battalion with her husband and became a nurse to the ill soldiers, and Emily Jane Covington, known for the stories she told of animals, American Indians and adventures on the plains.
The walking tour, now in its 16th year, remains popular with folks who enjoy history, Hanson said.
“People like this because in just a short time they will hear the stories of all these people and they don’t have to sit down and read a book,” she said.
Some who attend the event are not local residents but visitors in town, Hanson said.
“They enjoy hearing about the early days of Ogden,” she said.
The stories are always the draw, Hanson said: “Every story has a message to it; it can be a sad one, it can be a happy one,” she said.
Contact reporter Becky Cairns at 801-625-4276 or bcairns@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @bccairns or like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SEbeckycairns.