Hannah Austin Wilder (1835-1892)

Hannah was born to Austin and Sally Maria Barber Wilder in Elba, Genesee, New York. She was the only living child born to her parents. Her father died of cholera over seven months before her birth. Hannah and her mother lived with her grandfather Wilder during the first years of her life.
When she was five years old her mother was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Family tradition reported the Wilder family deeply opposed to the church and afterwards disowned them.
Hannah was baptized August 1844 when she was nine years old. The year she was fourteen, she and her mother left New York state and moved west to join other Saints in Iowa. The 1850 census found them living in Pottawattamie county. They were the only two persons in the household. In 1852 they traveled westward again with the sixteenth company under Captain Uriah Curtis.
A cholera epidemic swept through the company. Neither Hannah nor her mother died of the disease though others of the company were taken. The Alfred Bosworth Child family traveled with the same group. Hannah and their son Warren became acquainted during the journey. They arrived in the Salt Lake Valley the second day on October 1852 and eventually settled in the Ogden area.
Hannah married Warren Gould Child 6 January 1853. their first son was born in Ogden more than a year later. In 1854 they went back to Elba, New York to settle an estate left to her and her mother. They were attacked by Indians as they crossed the plains . One friendly man stopped the others from massacring everyone. All of their provisions and valuables were stolen and starvation threatened. They met a wagon train of immigrants who gave them enough food to reach the nearest settlement.
Hannah and Warren remained in the East for two years. They left with with goods to open a store and household items and provisions for the trip. Hannah was expecting their second child. They rode the train to Saint Louis, then went by boat to Council Bluffs. They loaded their cargo into five wagons and started west. They halted the wagons for four hours while Hannah gave birth to a son near Chimney Rock, Nebraska Territory. Warren wrote the following. "This almost proved too much fop my wife and child, being exposed to the broiling sun by day and the cold mountain breezes by night, with only canvas covers to shelter them, but they both survived." They went to Fort Bingham, Utah for a short time but soon settled in Ogdon. Hannah received her Endowments 13 September 1861.
Suddenly Johnston's army threatened. Brigham Young evacuated northern Utah. The Child family moved to Payson "for a time." Hannah's third child was born there. While some of their neighbors decided to stay in the south, Hannah and Warren moved north and finally settled for good on a farm in Riverdale.
Hannah's son, Warren Jr., wrote down his memories. "I was able to realize, dimly, that my mother's work was not all play. Looking backward I wonder that she was able to endure the toil and privations and worries under which her granddaughters would wilt despite all the up-to-date appliances. Yet quietly and efficiently she went about the rearing of her large family, attending to her homemaking, and, after the establishment of the store, the superintendence of the farm."
Warren had other wives in plural marriage who lived in Ogden. He spent the week there tending the store and traveled the few miles to Riverdale when he could. Hannah had nine children. Five of them were born in Riverdale and Nellie in Ogden. When one of warren's other wives died in 1871, she took the three children in and raised them with her own. In 1876 Warren had a big, new house built for her. She planned it and supervised the construction.
Hannah made candles, spun yarn, knitted stockings and socks, made shirts, dresses, coats, and trousers. She braided straw into hats, carded wool for winter caps, milked cows, churned butter, sewed rags into carpets, made quilts, pillows and feather mattresses, dried food, nursed the sick, and helped lay out the dead. "...and with it all maintained her serenity, and found time to attend her church meetings, and enjoy such social life as the community offered." Hers was a lifestyle common to the pioneer woman. Hannah died at her home in Riverdale and Warren buried her in the Ogden City Cemetery. Her marker is made of the same white stone as his parents'.

Sally Maria Barber (1811-1891)

Sally was born in Marcellus, Onondaga, New York, 13th April 1811, the youngest child of Alexander and Rachel Kilburn Barber. Her father died in Skaneateles, Onondaga county, a bit more than a month past her fourth birthday. That same year the Wilder family, her future in-laws, moved to Elba Genesee county. Sally and her mother, sisters, and brother moved to Elba, before 1820. She was seventeen years old when she married Austin Wilder. Austin was born to John Wilder and Hannah Amidon on May 1o 1809. They were married in Elba, New York, 18 January 1829, where they continued to live throughout their life together. A year into their marriage Sally had a stillborn child followed by another two years later. Her husband, Austin died of cholera on 18 September 1834 and she gave birth to a baby girl seven months and twenty-three days later and named her Hannah Austin Wilder. Sally was twenty-four when her child was born

Sally and Hannah lived with her father-in-law, John Wilder, for about six years. Sally was baptized into the LDS church 22 October 1840. Family tradition tells us her in-laws disapproved of her choice and disowned them. She married Charles Thompson less than a year later in a civil ceremony. They were divorced after four years with no children. She took her daughter and traveled west about 1849. They stopped at Council Bluffs for two years where they appeared on the census. They continued westward in the spring of 1852 in the sixteenth company under Captain Uriah Curtis.

Less than a year after her own daughters marriage, she married Erastus Bingham 7 April 1853. Sally received her Endowments 10 October 1855 at the Endowment House and was sealed to Erastus. The couple divorced and the sealing was canceled in 1934. Sally lived in Ogdon near her daughter's family and was known to everyone as Aunt Sally Wilder. She made all the bread and cheese for her daughter and was famous even outside of the community for her rolls and several kinds of cheeses including a brandy cheese for special occasions.

Sally died at Riverdale, Weber, Utah, at seventy-nine years, ten months, and three days. She is buried in the Ogdon City cemetery.

Somthing interesting: Austin Wilder is a 5th cousin once removed to Almonzo Wilder, the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Relation: Sally is Garda Hale's great-great-grandmother through her mother. Sally Barber, Hannah Wilder, Nellie Child, Rachel Dye, Garda Hale.