The Cripps Family Emigrates

Charles and Elizabeth Cripps emigrated to Utah in 1863 and 1861. Five of their children died at a young age and were buried in England. Four of their children emigrated to Utah (although it's not clear whether Frederick stayed there). Four of their children stayed in England, but at least one of them visited Utah many years later.

Here are some notes about each family member.

Father: Charles Cripps (1863)

Ship: Amazon

Wagon Company: unidentified

Charles Cripps' entry in the Pioneer Overland Trail database says that, "Evidence from emigration and church (Perpetual Emigrating Fund) records proves he traveled to Utah in 1863."

His biography by Ida Thayle Cripps DeWitt Smith says:

It was yet two years before Charles could get enough money to join [his family] in America. He sailed on the ship Amazon a capacity of 1600 tons, 4 June 1863, and arrived in New York City 18 July 1863. Destination: Florence, Nebraska. The ship was a church-chartered vessel sailed by Mr. Hovey, Capt. There were 882 persons aboard. William Bramall was president of the company. Charles was 68 years old. He was issued ticket #96 and he used 420 (some form of currency) from London account of the church’s emigration fund. The group he was with were from “Coventry.”

Charles Dickens, the great English novelist, was on that ship, the Amazon. Dickens described the ship at Liverpool Harbor, England. “A Mormon emigrant ship with more than 800 Mormon converts…in their degree, the pick and flower of England” and concluded with these comments:

What is in store for this poor people on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are laboring under now, on what miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then, I do not pretend to say. But I went aboard their ship to bear testimony against them if they deserved it, as I believed they would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness. I went over the Amazon’s side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known influences have often missed.

Here is another biography of Charles Cripps. Here is an article about the sailing of the Amazon.

Mother: Elizabeth Baker Cripps (1861)

Ship: Underwriter

Wagon Company: unidentified

Traveled with: daughter Emma Hodges and her family

Here is what her biography says about her trip:

She left from Liverpool, England, on April 8, 1861 at the age of 60 on the ship the "Underwriter" with her daughter Emma Godbe Cripps Hodges, her husband William Augustus Hodges and their oldest son. She left her husband Charles behind. It would be two long years later until she would be reunited with him in Utah.

Elizabeth was skilled as a nurse. This was a profession that the pioneers were thankful for many times. She was the nurse who delivered her daughter's baby in the wilderness outside Florence, Nebraska in July of 1861. The baby was named Florence because they were approaching Florence, Nebraska where they were to meet the wagons on the "Down and Back" teams from Salt Lake.

The trip to Keokuk, Iowa, was a very difficult journey for them. They had no wagon team so day by day; they walked by the side of someone else's wagon. Elizabeth had a vase that meant very much to her. It was her only possession from England. She refused to leave it behind. As a result, she carried this vase in the folds of her apron as she walked along with her pregnant daughter, Emma. The wagon master had told them that each person could only bring 20 pounds. This consisted only of food and clothing.

Child #1: Elizabeth Mary Cripps Spicer (1856)

Born: 7 May 1826

Died: 25 April 1898

Ship: Horizon

Wagon Company: Dan Jones/John A. Hunt

Traveled with: husband William Spicer

Their wagon company entered the Salt Lake Valley several weeks after the Martin and Willie Handcart Pioneers. Here is Elizabeth's obituary.

Child #2: Henry Charles Cripps

Born: 16 November 1827

Died: 9 Dec 1827

Died as an infant.

Child #3: Caroline Cripps Billings

Born: 6 April 1829

Died: after 1910

Remained in England with her husband, Henry Billings, and five children.

Child #4: Sarah Ann Cripps Hayward (1853)

Born: 1 August 1830

Died: 15 February 1932

Ship: International

Wagon Company: Jacob Gates

Traveled with: husband Gammon, daughter Sarah, and son Henry

Here is Sarah Ann Hayward's biography.

Child #5: Frederick George Cripps (1880)

Born: 11 April 1832

Died: 21 July 1916

Ship: Wisconsin

Traveled with: his five children, Ada (11), Charles (8), Henry (5), Frederick (3), and Alice (infant). 

Frederick's wife, Eliza Hamblin, died about 1879, so Frederick was taking his children to be raised by his elderly mother in Utah. The youngest was an infant. That must have been quite a trip across the ocean! Ada shows up in the genealogy as Ada Cripps Spicer, married to Daniel Spencer Wallace, so she was probably adopted by her aunt Elizabeth Spicer.

Child #6: Eliza Jane Cripps

Born: 26 July 1833

Died: 10 May 1935

Did not emigrate. I have no record of a marriage. This daughter is not listed in the 1841 census although she would have been seven or eight years old at the time, and she is also not listed in the 1851 census.

Child #7: John William Cripps

Born: 17 December 1834

Died: 27 February 1917

Stayed in England. Married to Mary Jane Woodward. They had 12 children. His great-granddaughter Ida Smith wrote a biography of Charles Cripps which I quote above in the section about Charles Cripps. She notes that John Cripps visited Utah, and his grandson Percy Charles Cripps moved to America.

Here is the record of John's 1898 Utah visit.

And here is Percy's Declaration of Intention to become a U.S. citizen. Note the statement that he had to sign.

I also recently received a kind email from one of John's great-great-great grandsons, who lives in England. It's wonderful to think that there is still some contact between different branches of the Cripps family, 149 years after Elizabeth left England. Their family was very important to Charles and Elizabeth, and I imagine they would be pleased.

Child #8: Ellen Cripps

Born: 9 April 1835

Died: as a child

The name of this child is from the family records. There is no record of her in New Family Search. Should she be added? Does anyone have a source for her birth?

Child #9: Daughter

Born: 9 May 1836

Died: stillborn

Child #10: James Alfred Cripps

Born: 13 April 1837

Died: 30 August 1846

Child #11: Emma Goadbey Cripps Hodges (1861)

Born: 1 February 1839

Died: 14 February 1924

Ship: Underwriter

Wagon Company: unindentified

Traveled with: mother Elizabeth, husband William Hodges, son William (2), and starting in Nebraska, her newborn daughter Florence.

Child #12: Stephen Baker Cripps

Born: 9 May 1840

Died: 4 August 1881

Stayed in England. Married to Ann Dredge George. I don't have a record of any children.

Child #13: Donald Edwin Cripps

Born: 4 October 1844

Died: 1845

Coming soon ...  census records about the Cripps family

Elizabeth Cripps Spicer

Elizabeth Cripps Spicer was the oldest child in the Cripps family. Her obituary notes that she emigrated in 1856, five years earlier than her mother.

From the Deseret News, May 14, 1898.

Thank you for sending this obituary, Toni!

Wessman 27: Elizabeth Baker Cripps

Birth date: 5 February 1801 Exton, Rutland, England

Died: 8 March 1891 Salt Lake City, Utah

Parents: Henry Baker and Mary Turner Baker

Spouse: Charles Cripps (a ropemaker)

Born: 17 May 1795 Coventry, Warwickshire, England

Died: 1 June 1870 Salt Lake City, Utah

Married: 13 Nov 1825 St. Giles, Camberwell, Surrey, England

The life of Elizabeth is a history of decisions. Elizabeth felt that christening of children was important. Because of this, she had her children christened at St. Mary, Rotherhithe, Surrey, England. Elizabeth and her family moved to Bermondsey, Surrey, England when their last child Donald Edwin Cripps died at about the age of one.

In 1850, she listened to the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Soon she, her husband (Charles), and two of her daughters Sarah Ann and husband, then Elizabeth Mary and husband, were converted and baptized. Elizabeth was baptized in the "Old Kent Road" branch March 25, 1850. Her daughter Sarah Ann Cripps Hayward, Gammon Hayward, Caroline Cripps Billings and Henry Billings, after their baptism went to America in 1851 and 1853 with their children.

In 1851, the census of England showed that Elizabeth was living at #1 Silver Street, Rotherhithe, Surrey, England with her husband.

Elizabeth decided to leave England and follow her daughters and other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to America. She wanted to come to a more productive country and leave the rampant poverty. She had also had five children die (Henry, Ellen, a stillbirth daughter, James and Donald) there.

She left from Liverpool, England, on April 8, 1861 at the age of 60 on the ship the "Underwriter" with her daughter Emma Godbe Cripps Hodges, her husband William Augustus Hodges and their oldest son. She left her husband Charles behind. It would be two long years later until she would be reunited with him in Utah.

Elizabeth was skilled as a nurse. This was a profession that the pioneers were thankful for many times. She was the nurse who delivered her daughter's baby in the wilderness outside Florence, Nebraska in July of 1861. The baby was named Florence because they were approaching Florence, Nebraska where they were to meet the wagons on the "Down and Back" teams from Salt Lake.

The trip to Keokuk, Iowa, was a very difficult journey for them. They had no wagon team so day by day; they walked by the side of someone else's wagon. Elizabeth had a vase that meant very much to her. It was her only possession from England. She refused to leave it behind. As a result, she carried this vase in the folds of her apron as she walked along with her pregnant daughter, Emma. The wagon master had told them that each person could only bring 20 pounds. This consisted only of food and clothing.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln had been elected president. This election started a chain of events that would affect emigration to Utah. When the Civil War started, the Saints that were emigrating wondered if the war would block ships that were coming from Europe. Wagons and teams were difficult to get. Most of the Saints were too poor to buy their own wagons and teams. The church did not have the funds either, even if wagons were available.

It was in 1861 that emigration started using the "Down and Back" wagon trains for the hundreds of saints who were coming. On April 23, 1861 (the day after the news arrived that Fort Sumter fell), 200 wagons and 1700 oxen left for Florence from Salt Lake. Every ward in Utah donated a fully outfitted wagon and a yoke of oxen.

In England, while all this was going on in America, George Q. Cannon chartered three ships at Liverpool. One of the ships was the "Underwriter." He filled the ships with supplies, appointed L.D.S. officers for each ship and supervised the emigrants boarding and their departures. Elizabeth spent three weeks on a bumpy ride across England to get on the "Underwriter."

Three thousand saints (including Elizabeth) on the three boats arrived in New York. They were funneled into harbor barges that eventually took them to the Jersey City depot. They went Northwest to Dunkirk, New York by train and went west along Lake Erie to Chicago. From there, they traveled on the Mississippi River to Quincy, Illinois. Nauvoo (which was now deserted) was fifty miles south. Elizabeth said that it was [in] Keokuk, Iowa, that they stayed. When Elizabeth left Jersey City, she saw first hand part of the Civil War that was going on. Troops were guarding a cannon that had been captured from Secessionists. She learned that a rebel officer had been imprisoned in the train depot. Nearly every town and bridge they passed had a guard.

In Missouri, business was stopped and men that were armed patrolled the streets. The city itself gave the aura of being a captured city. Due to the war curtailing the Missouri river traffic, it forced the emigrants to overload the steamboats. No trains were running. If Elizabeth [had] been even one month behind schedule, she would not have reached Florence, Nebraska, in time to meet the wagons. Elizabeth stayed in a camp with a bowery that the Saints had set up for May, June, and July until the wagons came to take them to the Salt Lake valley. After arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley, Elizabeth lived mostly in the homes of her daughters. She lived in the 16th Ward ... on 6th West between First and Second North. She lived for a while also in San Francisco.

[Her husband Charles Cripps emigrated to Utah in 1863 on the ship Amazon. Elizabeth was listed in the passenger records two years earlier as "widow." Perhaps she didn't know if Charles was planning to come to America.]

Her son Frederick George Cripps and his five children (Ada, George Charles, Henry, Frederick and Alice) came on the ship "Wisconsin," on June 5, 1880. Frederick's wife died in 1878 with their last child in childbirth in England, so he brought his children over so that Elizabeth could raise them. Elizabeth at this time was 79 years old and had been a widow approximately ten years. She was a woman of exceptional strength to raise her large family, then in her later years, raise five more.

She had a motto that said, "IF YOU CAN DO...YOU MUST DO...AND SHOULD DO." Some examples of Elizabeth following this motto in her life was when she helped others with her nursing skills, gained a stronger testimony of Jesus Christ and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She also crossed the ocean, plains, mountains and rivers, going on with life while grieving the death of her children and husband, and then raising five grandchildren in her later life.

Elizabeth died 8 March 1891 and is buried ... next to her husband Charles in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Children of Charles and Elizabeth Baker Cripps

1. Elizabeth Mary Cripps

Born: 7 May 1826

Married: William Spicer

Died: 25 April 1898

2. Henry Charles Cripps

Born: 16 Nov. 1827

Died: 9 Dec. 1827

3. Caroline Cripps

Born: 6 April 1829

Married: Henry Billings

Death:

4. Sarah Ann Cripps

Born: 1 August 1830

Married: Gammon Hayward

Died: 15 February 1932

5. Frederick Cripps

Born: 11 April 1832

Married: Mary Ann Eliz. Hamblin

Died: 21 July 1916

6. Eliza Jane Cripps

Born: 26 July 1833

Died: 10 May 1935

7. John William Cripps

Born: 17 December 1834

Married: Mary Jane Woodward

Died: 27 February 1917

8. Ellen Cripps

Born: 9 April 1835

Died: as a child

9. Daughter Cripps

Born: 9 May 1836

Died: stillbirth

10. James Alfred Cripps

Born: 13 April 1837

Died: 30 August 1846

11. Emma Godby Cripps

Born: 1 February 1839

Married: William Augustus Hodges

Died: 14 February 1924

12. Stephen Baker Cripps

Born: 9 May 1840

Married: Ann Dredge George

Died: 4 August 1881

13. Donald Edwin Cripps

Born: 4 October 1844

Died: 1845 

Many thanks to Toni for sending this history by an unidentified author.

 

Photo of flowers on a vase from www.flickr.com/photos/nicmcphee/29238021/. Photo of the sunset over Rotherhithe, England, from www.flickr.com/photos/45375656@N00/802460787/. Photo of the prairie outside Keokuk, Iowa, from www.flickr.com/photos/davidburn/2885269649/. Photo of the Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja rhexifolia) in Albion Basin, Utah, from www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/3777934592/.

Wessman 13: Sarah Ann Cripps Hayward

13 Sarah Ann Cripps Hayward
b. 1 August 1830 Rotherhithe, Surrey, England
d. 15 February 1932 Chula Vista, San Diego, California
b. Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
Husband: Gammon Hayward
Father: Charles Cripps
Mother: Elizabeth Baker

Sarah Ann Cripps Hayward was the daughter of Charles Cripps and Elizabeth Baker. She was born on August 1, 1830 [in Rotherhithe, Surrey, England, a district of London on the south bank of the Thames. Here is an interesting video about St. Mary's Church in Rotherhithe where the Cripps and Hayward families worshiped until joining the Mormon church.]



She was married to Gammon Hayward on June 1, 1850. They joined the church in 1850, and left for Utah in 1853, with their two children, Elizabeth and John Henry. They had not anticipated being able to come right through, expecting to have to stay in the States and work, but through the kindness of a man whom they befriended, they were able to come on the same year, arriving in September 1853.

She with the other pioneers of the day, suffered many hardships and privations. During the grasshopper war she knew what it was to suffer hunger. At one time they had nothing to eat and her husband walked to Farmington to try and get some flour that was promised him for work, but not finding the man at home, he walked home again empty handed. At that time President Young assisted them.

She moved to Provo at the time of the Johnston [Utah] War and her fourth child was born there. As was usual at that time, the men were called to assist in public service of all kinds which took them away from their homes a great deal and the mother had to be father and mother to the children. She was the mother of eleven children, had thirty-three grandchildren and 63 great grandchildren (in 1928).

She moved to Seattle and then to San Diego, California, twenty-five years before her death (1910) making her home with her three daughters. She had a marvelous memory, was a great reader, liked to sew and knit and had wonderful eye sight up to within the last few years of her life. She always said that she attributed her long life to the fact that she knew when to quit and she added that was a thing her own daughters had never learned. Had she lived six months longer she would have attained the age on one-hundred and two years.

She died at Chula Vista near San Diego in February 1932. She was brought to Salt Lake City for burial. Her husband and five children had preceded her in death. She was survived by: Miss Kezia Hayward of San Diego; Arthur G. Hayward, San Diego; Charles E. Hayward of Spanish Fork; Ernest M. Hayward of Auburn, Washington and Mrs. E.B. Porter of San Francisco.

Anonymous. “Biography of Sarah Ann Cripps Hayward.”


Tomorrow... a newspaper article about Sarah Hayward.

Thursday... some letters written by Sarah Hayward.


The picture of the Wasatch Mountains is from www.flickr.com/photos/aidanmorgan/3941684491/. The photo of Chula Vista looking toward Coronado is from www.flickr.com/photos/zefdelgadillo/2082295867/.