Excerpt from “Daniel Allen, Pioneer Tanner” by Kenneth Allen, Genealogical Journal, 2003 No. 1, based on a biographical sketch by Ila Lowe Bauer, revised with information from original sources

[The Death of Mary Ann Morris Allen]

Mary Ann (born 11 June 1813, Hamburgh, Niagara County, New York) gave birth to her sixth and last child, Daniel Allen III, on 20 Feb 1846 in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois. At the time of the baby’s birth, Daniel left his wife and family in care of friends to head a committee of three (with Nelson Higgins and Samuel Shepherd) to try to sell all properties belonging to the Saints in the Bear Creek area (Camp Creek, Hancock County). Despite the opportunism and efforts to drive away the Saints, the committee worked hard to fulfill their assignment and had more success than they had then expected.

The Nauvoo exodus began 4 February 1846, as more than 1000 families crossed the frozen Mississippi River before it thawed, and a camp was set up a few miles west of the bank at Sugar Creek in Iowa Territory. After the frozen river began to slush, the wagons were ferried across as quickly as people could prepare them. Their goal was to cross Iowa Territory to the Missouri River banks of the Omaha Nation in Nebraska.

Daniel and his committee completed their assignment and returned to Nauvoo to the shocking scene of the dismantling of a city. The streets were cluttered, confusion abounded, and homes were abandoned. Families left their homes and camped along the river awaiting an opportunity to cross. Daniel learned that his family was at home, warm and uninjured. The baby was nearly six weeks old and although Mary Ann was ill, she was well enough to travel. 

Daniel and Mary Ann left their deceased son Leroy (born  28 March 1833 in Montville, Ohio) in the old graveyard in Nauvoo (died 20 November 1842)  and join a company of only two other wagons to depart from Nauvoo. It was 1 April 1846, six years to the day after their arrival and long after the main body of the Saints had begun the arduous journey through the mud created by the Iowa spring rains. The three wagons traveled together for a time, but the weather was not cooperative, and the going was slow and rough, so they could not keep pace with other wagons on the trail. When they came to Bonaparte, over thirty miles as the crow flies from Nauvoo where the trail crossed the Des Moines River, Mary Ann, ill and still weak from the childbirth, took cold and began to fail rapidly. A little more than fifty miles and several days later, as they camped at the head of Soap Creek, Mary Ann is reported to have said to Daniel before she died, “We’ll meet again dear love in a better world and I shall wait your coming.” By that time only one wagon remained to travel with them. Daniel begged his companion to wait while he went back to a town [possibly where they crossed the river at Bonaparte] to get boards to make a coffin, but he refused to wait. Poor Daniel had no choice but to dig a grave by the trailside, 80 miles from Nauvoo. While he dug, his children gathered spring leaves to line the grave. Daniel then wrapped her in a sheet and consigned her to a lonely grave by the side of the road to the sobs of the broken-hearted young family.

Mary Ann Morris Allen passed away at age 32, leaving Daniel with five young children, including a two-month old infant. Of Mary Ann, Daniel wrote: “She received the gospel in Geauga County. Ohio, and [was] Babtised [sic] by the hands of Elier [sic] Joel H. Johnson in June  1834. from that time to her Death She was a faithful member of the Church. She never murmured noor [sic] complaind [sic] in all the purcicutions [sic] She had to pass through for She had a testamany [sic] of this work for her Self. She Died as she lived full of faith of a Glours [sic] Resurreccion [sic] withe [sic] the Saints.” It was 10 May 1846, as Daniel Allen later reported to the Church Historian in Salt Lake City.

The days were long and the miles were hard without a mother. One can envision stopping to milk the cow each time the baby became hungry and spoon-feeding the infant while the milk was still warm. As the eldest daughter, nine-year-old Mary Ann had care of the infant and her younger sisters, who were only four and six years old. Alma was eleven years old, then the eldest. It would have been his chore to help care for the loose stock.

The small party eventually reached Mt. Pisgah, which, along with Garden Grove, was one of the two large encampments of Saints along the trail. Infant Daniel struggled without his mother’s care, passing away 24 August 1846 and buried in the cemetery at Mt. Pisgah, as Daniel later reported to the Church Historian. It was here that Daniel encountered Dr. Priddy Meeks who had briefly followed Brigham Young’s company from Garden Grove to Pisgah, where he was visiting the Saints:

“At Pisgah I met Daniel Allen whose wife had died on the road and left him with some little children. He was shoe making in his wagon bed to get sustenance for himself and his family. I was truly sorry for him. I turned in and helped him shoe make. I do not know how long but charged him nothing. I said to him one day, ‘You should get you a step mother for your children, you cannot live this way.” He replied, ‘I do not know who would come into such a family as I have got.’ Instantly an idea struck me, and said, ‘I know who you can get. She will make a good step mother too and she is right here in Pisgah.’ ‘Who is it?’ says he. ‘It is Eliza Berry, John Berry’s sister.’ ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘she would not have me.’ I asked him if he would be willing for me to tell her if she would be willing for him to come and see her on the subject. ‘Yes!’ he said. So I went, and she said she had no objections and so he did get her for a wife and step mother too and I believe she made a genuine good step mother too. At any rate he made a good living with her help and had quite a posterity by her too.”