MY GRANDMOTHERS
Henry and Jessie Taggart
Job and Esther Pingree.
Jessie McNiven Taggart was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 7th of than Niven. February, 1853. Her parents were John and Janet McShe had one brother, James, who was five years older than she.
Their mother was converted to the gospel and, in 1861, brought her two small children to America. They traveled with a group in charge of Charles W. Penrose on the ship "Underwriter" and arrived in New York on May 22, 1861.
During the journey, Jessie became very ill, and at one time, there was little hope for her recovery. She was given a blessing by Brother Penrose and promised that she would live to raise a family in Zion
FRANK PINGREE MARRIED PAULINE TAGGART
Ruth Pingree Smith
My Taggart grandparents, Henry and Jessie, went to Wyoming to help colonize the Big Horn where they settled in the town of Cowley, leaving three married children, of their sixteen, in Morgan, Utah. In the spring of 1904, their seventh child, Pauline went to Morgan to help her sister Margaret (Maggie) when she had her third child.
My Pingree grandparents, Job and Esther, had settled in Ogden where grandfather had become prosperous through banking and the Utah Idaho Sugar Company. Their youngest son, Franklin, returned in 1904 from his mission in Germany. He was sent to Morgan to work in a flour mill owned by his brother James.
Thus under these circumstances, Franklin and Pauline met in Morgan. They had a happy courtship there that summer of 1904 and agreed to be married at the end of the year. Frank, as everyone called him, would go to Wyoming to get Pauline at Christmas time.
Pauline returned to Cowley and told her parents of her plans, but they were not happy for her. Grandmother Taggart said she didn't want her daughter to "get mixed up with those Pingrees in Ogden," and it would be "the ruination of her."
I have the last letter my father sent to my mother before he went to Big Horn in December. He said, "I hope your mother will have softened her feelings toward me before I come."
At Christmas time, Frank went to Cowley, and Grandmother wouldn't let him in. He stayed with Aunt Becky Frost and Uncle Orson. (He had gone to Billings by train from Ogden and by train to Worland and then by horse to Cowley.) Finally, Frank and Pauline left without the parents' blessing, returning to Utah in the reverse order Frank had come.
They stopped in Logan and were married in the Logan Temple on January 5, 1905. Years passed until my mother had two children. Grandmother Taggart came to visit her children and grandchildren in Morgan. My father decided he was going to see to it my grandmothers would meet each other.
He drove to Morgan and rather forcibly took Grandmother Taggart to Ogden, with her protesting all the way. These two wonderful ladies met on the porch of the Pingree home on 28th Street and Wall Avenue, now commercial property, and wondered what they had in common.
They had the gospel! They began to tell each other about their homelands (Edinburgh for Jessie, Liverpool for Esther), how they had joined the Church, and about crossing the ocean.
As they talked, they began to realize they were telling the same story. They had been in a company captained by Elder Penrose and had sailed from Liverpool at the same time of year. Then Grandmother Pingree told of a terrible storm at sea that nearly washed her off the deck. She said she had to cling to the cabin door for safety. She had grabbed a little girl and hid her under her skirts to keep her from being washed away.
Grandmother Taggart, with tears in her eyes, stood up and went to Grandmother Pingree and said, "I was that little girl !" (Esther was 18 and Jessie was 8.) From that day till death, my grandmother couldn't be good enough to my father. Grandmother Pingree died in 1912, and I am so grateful for the wonderful women I met before then.
