Sarah Ellison Sutton Durney

Sarah Ellison Sutton Durney was born in St. Helens, Parr, Lancashire, England 23 September 1830 into an upper middle class family the second daughter and child of John and Mary Ellison Sutton.

Her father, John Sutton was a grocer and tea dealer in Parr. The Sutton name may have been long-lived in the county as the town of Sutton was very close to Parr.

As a young adult, Sarah employed herself making straw hats.  She and her family became acquainted with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1850 and she, her parents, John and Mary Sutton and all but their youngest son joined the Church in January of 1851.

Mary Sutton’s brother, James Ellison, and his wife Alice also joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1851.

James Ellison

Both of these families desired to join the Saints in America. But James did not have the means to pay for the trip. James and Alice prayed for a way to be prepared for them to make the trip. Finally Mary and John, who were doing well, offered to pay their way. After the arrival of these two families in Utah, they both settled in Nephi, Juab, Utah.

John, Mary, their seven living children along with James his wife Alice and their five children traveled to Liverpool and boarded the ship Elvira Owen on 15 February 1853. Joseph W. Young was the presiding Church leader for the 345 British Saints traveling on the ship.

Joseph W. Young

Within a short time smallpox broke out onboard. Captain Owen was very compassionate and helpful in arranging a makeshift hospital/quarantine tent on the deck of the ship. The captain and Elder Young were fearful the disease might affect and kill half of the people on board.

Elder Young asked the Saints for a day of fasting and prayer to petition the Lord to remove the disease and let the sick become healed. Miraculously, only two more were affected and all but one of the original sick quickly recovered.

The ship Elvira Owen arrived in New Orleans on 31 March 1853. The captain said it was the quickest trip on record for a ship of that kind. The Saints proceeded by boat up the Mississippi River reaching Keokuk, Iowa on 13 April 1853.

The Suttons and Ellison’s joined Elder Young’s company, which he named the ten pound company, to cross the plains. They departed between June 1^st and 7^th, 1853.

Indians would often frighten the Saints by riding up to their wagons wearing war paint. They were appeased by accepting sacks of the traveler’s much-needed flour. Close to the end of the trek, their food ran out.

When the group came within ten days of Salt Lake City, teams sent by the Church with provisions met them and helped them along their way into the valley—arriving in Salt Lake City on 10 October 1853.

As stated previously, the Suttons and Ellisons helped settle Nephi, Juab, Utah. Sarah’s father, John, was 65 years of age at his arrival in the United States. His wife, Mary was about a decade his junior. He purchased a small amount of property in Nephi for farming. But because of his age, and the fact he had been a grocer in England and not a farmer, he probably was not interested in owning a lot of land.

A fort had been built in Nephi around 1851 to help protect its residents which numbered 229 when the Suttons and Ellisons arrived in Utah in 1853.

John Sutton continued in Nephi until his death on 4 March 1865.

Mary Ellison Sutton died in Provo, Utah, Utah on 24 November 1869.

The Sutton family must have been acquainted with a young man from Scotland named James Durney who also sailed on the Elvira Owen. It does not appear he traveled across the plains with their group, but he also arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1853.

James Holiday Durney

James settled in the Grantsville, Tooele, Utah area, bought a farm and raised sheep. This association surely led him back to the Suttons, because he married Sarah on 13 April 1855 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.  Sarah and James returned to Grantsville where they would continue until 1864.

While in Grantsville, James was asked by the Church to help bring immigrants to the Salt Lake Valley. Sarah also wanted to do her part. Family lore says she walked six miles from her home to help harvest grain, and she sewed buckskin pants and gloves to earn money to by a team of oxen calves. 

She had no milk to feed them so she made hay and grass tea until they could graze. Feeding calves tea made from hay, grass and grains was a common practice in England.

James used this team to make a trip back east to bring immigrants west.

On 19 October 1861, James married in polygamy Jane Grant Gordon. She and her family had arrived just the month previous from Montrose, Scotland—the same area in which James had previously lived. Family lore states that James knew Jane in Scotland. If this is the case, he probably knew her and her family. One would not suspect a romantic relationship between the two in Scotland as Jane would only have been 12 when James emigrated. But the marriage must have been arranged perhaps through correspondence before the Gordons left Scotland.

Jane and Sarah likely had a good relationship with one another as Jane named her second child and first son Peter Sutton Durney.

James took Jane in the spring of 1864 to Richmond, Cache, Utah where he purchased land northwest of town. He divided the land with one half separate for each wife. James worked in Richmond sawing wood and plowing farms with his own oxen until August of 1864 when he went back to Grantsville to move Sarah and their children to Richmond.

Sarah and James had the following children together:

1. Alice Ann, 1857
2. James Holiday, 1859
3. John Sutton, 1861
4. Mary, 1864
5. Joanna, 1867

In the late 1860s, LDS ward relief societies began coordinated health programs. President Brigham Young assigned two of his plural wives, Eliza R. Snow and Zina D. H. Young, to promote health-care education among the Saints and to train midwives. In 1873 he asked each ward relief society to appoint three women to study nursing and midwifery, and a nursing school was opened for their training.

It was in 1873 that Sarah was called to be one of the midwives for Richmond. Sarah Jane Lewis wrote, "Eliza R. Snow came to Richmond to find two women to be sent to Salt Lake to study midwifery. I, Sarah Jane Lewis and Mrs. Sarah Durney were chosen.” 

Because midwives were called by priesthood authority, they were accorded trust and respect similar to that given ecclesiastical leaders. They often dispensed herb treatments, passed on by experimentation and word of mouth, and sometimes administered health blessings.

James died shortly after Sarah's calling on 29 December 1873 and is buried in Richmond. This untimely death left Sarah with a young family; Alice Ann was sixteen and their youngest child, Joanna, was just six years old.

The following  year, James’ second wife, Jane, married Edmund Buckley again in polygamy and moved to Franklin, Franklin, Idaho.

It is not known how Sarah continued to support herself and her children after the death of her husband. Perhaps her calling as a midwife brought in money and other goods.

 In the year 1878, the Cache Valley Stake President Moses Thatcher, urged the people to get legal titles for their land and make arrangements among themselves for the property lines.

In the early days of the settlement of Cache Valley, settlers were basically squatters on public lands since there were no federal laws or surveys taken at that time. The Mormon church took full responsibility to assign land to settlers.

To receive a land patent, the potential owner must at least construct a house on the land. Sarah received patent rights to her property in Richmond in 1879.

Sarah’s son John was living with her in the year 1900. She also spent the late winter of 1901 with her daughter Alice Ann and her husband Joseph A. Careswell in Ogden, Utah.

Sarah died on 10 November 1901 in Richmond, Cache, Utah and is buried there.