Essentials
Born: 26 October 1860, Lehi, Utah
Son of: Lorenzo Hill HATCH and Alice HANSON
Married: Mary Jane Standifird, 21 October 1885; St. George, Washington County, Utah
Died: 16 August 1946, Taylor, Arizona

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BY DARYL JAMES
FROM 'JAMES/HATCH ONE MINUTE HISTORIES' (1994)
     John Hatch was born into a Mormon polygamist family Oct. 26, 1860, in Lehi, Utah. His mother was Alice Hanson, the fourth wife of Lorenzo Hill Hatch. When John was about 3, the Church called his father to serve as bishop in Franklin, Idaho, and John moved with his parents to the town. He spent the early part of his life working on the family farm there.
     By age 6 he was employed as a regular hand. One day while working with a pair of mules and a peg tooth harrow, he caught the line under one of the mule's tails. The harrow turned over and pinned little Johnny under. The mule then dragged him around the field until he fell into a ditch. Friendly neighbors found him unconscious in the ditch and carried him home.
     John's education in Franklin was limited because school lasted only three months per year. At 17 he came to Arizona. He and his brother Ezra took turns driving a team and 30 head of cattle. They crossed the Colorado River on ice and arrived in Woodruff, Ariz., on Feb. 8, 1878, where John's parents had resettled.
     In 1879 John moved to nearby Taylor, Ariz., where he worked as a guide for companies moving through the area. He occasionally had problems with Apaches. One time he was riding through a grove of cedars looking for lost cattle when he found t he bodies of three prospectors killed by Apaches several days earlier.
     John met Mary Jane Standifird in Taylor and married her in the St. George Temple Oct. 21, 1885. Like John, Mary came from a Mormon polygamist family. She was the second of 23 children.
     John served in the Northern States Mission of the Church from June 1898 to April 1900. During this time Mary supported him by doing various chores in Taylor. She husked corn, boarded school teachers, did janitorial work, and sold fruit from the family orchard.
     Together John and Mary had nine children--six sons and three daughters. On July 16, 1905, they lost their seven-year-old daughter, Katie, on a camping trip in the White Mountains. Teams searched the area for 20 days before finding Katie's body across a river and several miles from the original campsite. This was the great sorrow of John's and Mary's lives.
     In the spring of 1910 John loaded freight with his father-in-law in Holbrook, Ariz. While he was carrying a heavy block of salt down a slippery flight of stairs, he slipped and fell on his back, and the block fell on his stomach. He was sick for the next 11 days, and finally his family gathered to pray for him.
     ``While they were praying around my bed,'' says John, ``my spirit left my body. A black hole opened up through the ceiling of my room. Up I went and entered into a space. In that space it was light as noon day sun as far as I could see.''
     John saw his deceased father beckoning him, but an angelic guardian stopped him from going. ``You can't go,'' the guardian said. ``If there is faith enough here in this prayer to keep you on this earth, you'll have to stay.''
     John and the guardian waited while John's family took turns praying over his body. Finally John's 8-year-old son, Sterling, took a turn. ``You'll have to go back,'' the guardian said. ``That boy has more faith than the rest put together.''
     This incident took place when John was 49; he lived 36 more years and died at 85. In 1916 when he was 55, the Church sent President Joseph F. Smith to the Snowflake Stake to call a new Patriarch. ``They had conferred through Saturday and Sunday morning but had not made a decision,'' says John's son, George. ``As President Smith was sitting on the stand waiting for time to start the meeting, Daddy Hatch came in the door. President Smith looked at him and then tapped the stake president on the leg and said, `There is your Patriarch.'''
     John was ordained after the meeting by President Smith on Aug. 13, 1916. He traveled all over the stake the rest of his life giving blessings. According to one record, he gave 1,696 Patriarchal Blessings. John and Mary enjoyed 61 years together before John died Aug. 16, 1946, in Taylor. Mary died early the next year.

-- Sources: 1. Typed history by Afton HATCH Flake (printed below). 2. Descendants of George Palmer and Phoebe Draper, pps. 445-461 (On record at Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah).

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Pioneer, Family Man and Stake Patriarch

FIRST-PERSON PORTIONS RECORDED SHORTHAND BY AFTON HATCH FLAKE (9 APRIL 1942)
OTHER PORTIONS TAKEN FROM EARLIER HISTORIES
     John Hanson Hatch was born in Lehi, Utah, October 26, 1860. He was the son of Lorenzo Hill Hatch and Alice Hanson Hatch.
     When John was about three years old his father was called to be Bishop at Franklin, Idaho. The earlier part of his life was spent working on his fathers farm. His education was very limited as school at that time was only in session about three months of every year.
     At the age of five, he says he can remember well, his mother took him and the younger children to the old school house for the purpose of being guarded from the Indians, who had become very hostile. Here with the women and children inside, the men stood guard. Lorenzo Hill Hatch was one of the two men sent to the Indian camp to offer them some of their cattle for terms of peace that they might feel more content to go about their work. This was accomplished.
     He was put to work as a regular hand on the farm at the age of six.
     “My father was a very energetic man, a pusher. Anything to do he wanted it done right now. He put a lot of confidence in me as a boy. He seemed to think that I was capable in my young years of almost being a man. He thought I could do anything he asked, and I always tried my best not to disappoint him. He had me harrow with an old ox team when six years old. They were spirited and hard to make move. We were on a ten acre field two and a half miles from home. Father went home after awhile leaving me to harrow. Everything was fine for a long time. Finally one ox came unyoked and the bow dropped to the ground, letting the yoke fall. The ox left. I caught the ox and led him back to his place. By pulling the ox’s head down I managed to get the yoke back on but I couldn’t get the key in. The ox was so tall, or I was small, I climbed the animal’s leg, and put the key in, slid down to the ground. Just as I hit the dirt, the ox planted his hoof on my foot. He would not move again and I could do nothing but wait for father to return. The ox was on my foot for half an hour.”
     “Next year, on the same field, I used a pair of mules to harrow. After dinner father left to plant another piece of land. We went around the field two or three times then up at the far end we went to turn around. One of the mules flipped his tail over the line. The line was held tight and I couldn’t get it. The line pulled the mule the wrong way and the harrow flipped up and turned on me and the mules went back the way the came and drug me around a ten acre field. They crossed a ditch and left me in it. Here I was found unconscious, and carried home by some neighbors. That was the first time I remember ever being administered too. They thought that I was dead. For years I had the prints of the peg tooth harrow in my back.”
     “The next spring, when I was eight, father sent me up on the Bear River, ten or twelve miles with a wagon and team. Two of my sisters were cooking for a road camp and I was to get them and bring them home. The road was being made from Bear River Canyon to Soda Springs. I went with John Biggs to get my sisters. I followed him with my team. Father asked him to tie down the bolster to the axle and not to forget when we went to cross the river. When we came to it he was ahead of my team. He didn’t stop but went on across, and I started to follow; but the horses insisted on stopping to drink. When they were through drinking, I started on across the river, but my horses wanted to turn around. Mr. Biggs was motioning me up river a little, but my head got dizzy from watching him and the water. I don’t know whether I pulled on the wrong line or what, but first thing I knew I was in the water in the wagon box. I let the lines go and held on to the wagon box. The box sank and I was in a very swift stream of water. I was in the middle of the river; I swam to the edge of the side but the current was so swift it whipped my hands back and forth so hard that I lost my hold. The current took me back to the middle of the stream. I went back to the side again and got some more willows and got out. By this time I was half a mile down the river. Mr. Biggs had run along the side of the river as best he could for the willows were thick. He was not far from me when I got out. He grabbed me and cried. He took me to his wagon and covered me up good, then got my horses. We never did find the two front wheels on my wagon. It was three miles to camp; then my sisters took care of me. They took my clothes off and brought me a pair of pants that were way too big, they were the shortest in camp, but it made me feel bad and I went to bed crying. Later father gave Mr. Biggs a sharp reprimand but I wished he hadn’t for he saved my life by being there.”
     “November 15, 1877, we started from our home for Arizona. Father and Mother had a light wagon and the children with them. Father hitched up for me a good horse and a colt only half broke, and loaded the wagon pretty heavy with such things as the stove, meat, flour, and other food stuffs. I had twenty miles to make with that team. About four o’clock in the afternoon I was five miles from Logan. Some one had been irrigating grain, and water had run across the road. We drove into a little ditch but the team bogged down and the wagon was stuck in a mud hole. We stayed there alone all night. My brother Ezra was with me. In the morning we tried again but our team would not pull it out. We took the front off the wagon and was taking the stove out when a man came along with a team. ‘Hello, boys, having a time.’ ‘We’re having a time all right.’ ‘Got any money.’ ‘Yes, I have lots of money, and I’ll give you all I have if you’ll help us out.’ He pulled us out and asked for the money. I gave him a half dollar. He took it and asked if that was all I had, I said yes, so he went on--we went to Logan. At Provo, father took the team I had and drove into Arizona. He left me a team of ox to drive. He told me when I wanted them to turn left to holler ‘Haw’ to turn right holler ‘gee’.”
     “Nearing Spanish Fork we had to cross a ditch of water and the oxen wanted to get a drink. I yelled ‘gee’ but we went into the ditch anyway. They broke the wagon tongue and left me in the ditch. Father came back to see what was the matter. He put on an old log that he got out of someone’s fence. We got to the Colorado river just about dusk and ferried my wagon and team across on the ferry in January 1878. Mother and father slept across the river on the ferry side in January and Ezra and I and another brother on the other side. We turned out the oxen that night and went to bed. It was too cold for me to sleep so I got up two or three times in the night to make a fire to keep warm. That night the river froze over so we moved the rest of the outfit and animals across on the ice. We had thirty head of stock, fifteen of it ours, two pair of mules and a wagon, a pair of horses and a wagon. Lee’s Backbone was a very narrow and dangerous place, but we made it all right.”
     “Worked pretty hard in Arizona to make a living. We got in Woodruff February 8, 1878. Then I went to work on the dam. I hauled cedar and brush and quarried stones. At night I would take the stock out on the prairie to graze, sleep there and bring them back in the morning. In three or four months the dam went out.”
     “Nat Greer had 700 or 800 horses and lots of cattle. We were looking for some of them and he told me about seeing the petrified forest while hunting. So about the 18th of March, I took a horse and went for a ride to see it myself. He was the only white man to see it before me.”
     “While in Woodruff, a bunch of boys went swimming. They had a contest to see who could go the farthest without getting out of the river. All had to get out and walk part of the way but me. Once the river ran over its banks and Nat Greer wanted to get married. The day was set but the river was up and he couldn’t get across. He wanted me to take a rope and swim a horse across and tie it on the other side so that he could tow a raft over. I was afraid a horse would drown so I took the rope across. I held the rope up out of the water on the way across. I tied it and came back and helped him across the river on the raft with his buggy and his mother. Shortly after that a man by the name of Curtiss with six horses and two wagons drove into the river. One got under the tongue and couldn’t swim. I could see the horse was going to drown so I got off my horse and dove under the horse and tongue of the wagon and got him out and calmed the others.”
     We stayed at Woodruff until the dam went out then we came to Taylor. There was only one home here when I came, which was Jim Pearce’s. Now, 1942, I am the oldest settler here, for Mrs. Pearce died last year. After the dam went out I had to get a job.”
     When John was about eighteen years old he was a roving cowboy. His father and mother lived in Taylor, Arizona. One day he went to the little store which was kept by Brother Solomon. Here he noticed a young girl of eleven or twelve years of age; she was bare footed and had long curly hair. He gave her the look-over. When he got home, he said to his mother, “I’ve just seen my future wife.” His mother said, “Who?” “I don’t know, only they called her Jane.” “Oh, that was one of the Standifird girls.” His mother replied.
     “The hardest day's work I ever did, I did for one dollar. I worked for a Mexican. He had some horses and mules he wanted one hundred miles from where we were. We left Holbrook and went to Meteor Mountain. Then we rode to Beaver Dam on the Verde River. On the trail we saw where the Indians had killed a man. After the Mexican saw that, we rode pretty fast, and made one hundred miles that day. The next day we hunted for horses. I found Montuzuma Wells. They are eighteen feet across and round. There from the top of one and close to the top of the other--clear, cool, good water. It was flat rock all around and no growth near.”
     “Later I drove cattle for the same Mexican from Holbrook to Globe 1881. The Mexican, Supular, was one of the best ropers I have seen and a good cattle man. When we got to Black River it was up and we had to swim them across. I would catch a cows tail and swim her across and come back for more. Joe Thompson and his wife were with us and they were amused at me and got quite a time out of it. I turned to go home for this was as far as the Mexican had hired me. Thompson asked me to drive his wagon across. Then he couldn’t make them pull the hill for he had very little experience in driving. He raised my wages if I would work for him and take the wagon up the hill. So I did, after that his wife refused to let him drive, so I drove the wagon most of the way and he drove the cattle. I worked for him three weeks there, hauling lumber to make him a house. When I left to come home he paid me and gave me an old saddle horse.”
     “Where the mines are now in Globe, are thousands of people, but when I was there I herded cattle and was very lonely. On my return trip, two Indians tried to steal my saddle horse but I was sleeping with one eye open, so I got the drop on them. All the Indians got was a nice stroll down the trail ahead of Hatch and a six gun.”
     “The next trip across the mountains, 1903, I was guide for Cook and Bee Bee, driving cattle from Taylor across mountain on to the San Pedro River. I was one of the first to see the Hot Springs close to the Gila River. We lost some mules while there. Three weeks here with Mr. Cook alone. We followed the mules down by Fort Thomas then to an Indian camp. Cook was afraid to get to close for we could see that Indians were driving them by their footprints. We were in a dangerous place but I did not let Cook know I was afraid and urged him to go on. The river was up too, I offered to swim it on my back or with one arm held up out of the water. He laughed and tried to dissuade me when he found I was serious. I swam over, found the fresh tracks, and returned.”
     When on the north of Ft. Apache some soldiers came to their camp with the information that Old Jeronomo had his braves were on the warpath. So they were escorted to Ft. Apache where they stayed for several days. A white man by the name of Hendrix had been killed on seven mile hill and his wagon burned. When they left the fort an escort of soldiers went with them to Greer Hill where they made camp. The next morning they discovered they were short some cattle so Hatch was sent back to see if he could find them. As he was riding through the thick cedars he found three prospectors who had been killed by the Indians several days before. He made the best grave possible and rolling the men in their blanket buried them side by side. After a long hard and exciting trip, he returned to Taylor and started to work on the farm for his father.
     In January, 1884 he, acting as scout, started for Old Mexico with a company of Mormons. They arrived at San Choan, Mexico, the 4th of March, the day Cleveland took the oath of office as President of the United States. On his return trip, he came by Tombstone and Bisbee, working at each place.
     Returning home, he settled on a farm and started to see a girl. He married Mary Jane Standifird at St. George, Utah, on October 21, 1885. They made the trip by team and wagon. He tells of how the only reason she married him was because he said after he was twenty-five he wouldn’t marry her. They were married five days before his birthday.
     In his later years he has been very active in a church capacity. On June 2, 1898, he left for a mission to the Northern States. He returned April 7, 1900. While in the mission field he had his testimony strengthened by the following experience:
     John and his partner, Daniel McKay, received an appointment in a new county. The first Sunday they were there they met an intelligent man, who studied the Bible and believed every word of it. This man had to lie in bed all the time because he was paralyzed from the waist down. He had been this way for five months, never touching a foot to the floor and had no feeling in them at all. He could not tell the difference between not and cold on the paralyzed parts. He asked them to administer to him that first Sunday. They refused, giving him a chance to study the gospel more. They saw him in the middle of the week and he asked them again to bless him. They refused and said they would next Sunday if he still wanted them to. The next Sunday they called early to see this man. It was only nine o’clock but he was waiting for them. The two Elders administered to him. Immediately he got up and walked around the room on the legs that he had not been able to use for five months. Later he came to Utah. His wife went to her parents refusing to come with him. He had to forsake all; wife, friends, and his own people for the gospel’s sake.
     John and Mary Jane had nine children, eight of whom are still alive; six boys and three girls. One boy fought in the first World War. A severe trial and great sorrow came to them on July 15, 1905, when they with others of their relatives went to the White Mountains on a fishing trip. They camped for lunch, and while the women were preparing it the children went around a little hill for water at a spring. After they were out of sight, seven year old Katie started after them and got lost. She was missed in a very few minutes and the search began. Men came from every town and village around and the search was kept up for twenty days, when at almost the same hour of the day she was lost, her remains were found by her father under a pine tree. She was some nine or ten miles from where they had camped. In recent years a monument was erected at the place of her disappearance.
     On August 13, 1916, he was ordained a Patriarch and has given hundreds of blessings to people from many different places. He has been called at all hours of the day or night to administer to the sick and suffering. He was in every deed a minute man and is always on hand when needed.
     John records an experiance when he died then came back to life:
     “Sterling was just a little boy. John Standifird and I loaded freight at Holbrook. Our loads consisted of rock salt, some small and some big, none of it sacked. Standifird had four horses and two wagons, I had two horses and one wagon. I had 4,000 pounds on my wagon and he had 4,500 pounds on his two wagons. We got in the mountains and it began to rain and the roads got soft and boggy but there was still a hard bottom. We were headed for a place called Grasshopper Flat. We passed the Blue Lake, Alos Chuckboy Lake. We arrived within a half mile of where we had to unload, when John’s wagon bogged down. We put all our horses on but couldn’t get out so we dropped my team off and I went in with my wagon to the camp, came back, and got the lead wagon with all the horses, then I fetched the trail wagon with my team. It was in the afternoon when I arrived at the station. We unloaded his wagons and then drove mine up and unloaded part of it. While I was packing a block of salt weighing about 140 pounds (It was raining) I slipped and fell on my back and the salt fell across by stomach. I finished unloading and started home.”
     “Camped out and after supper I began to get sick. I didn’t sleep that night. Next morning I didn’t eat, got my team and started on. At noon I camped and couldn’t eat dinner. Drove all afternoon, camped, didn’t eat, and didn’t sleep that night. I got home about noon the next day. Had a little to eat and was sick. In eleven days I had no pass so we had a family prayer and the elders came in and administered to me. There was Grandma Standifird, Viva Shumway, Aunt Ann Shumway, Will Hatch, and several other folks were there. Will and Uncle Lee Shumway administered to me. The family and all knelt down by my bed. They all prayed after the administration and while they were praying around my bed, my spirit left my body. A black hole opened up thru the ceiling of my room. Up I went and entered into a space and in that space it was light as noon day sun, all over as far as I could see there were fine buildings, great homes, as far as the eye could see. The roads were straight and wide and fine homes on each side. To the guardian I said, ‘I see my father, let me go and meet him.’ ‘You can’t go.’ ‘I want to go.’ ‘No, you can’t.’ ‘Why can’t I go, I want to.’ ‘If there is faith enough here in this prayer to keep you on this earth you’ll have to stay.’ ‘But I don’t want to stay. See my father waves to me.’ ‘I know but you can’t go till they get thru with this prayer.’ They all prayed till it came to Sterl, and he offered a prayer. The guardian, who to this day I would know if I saw again, said to me, ‘You’ll have to go back, that boy has more faith than the rest put together.’ ‘Yes, but it is dark.’ ‘Yes, I know, it is a dark and dreary world you’re in, but you see those stars, they are the priesthood of God. There are more that want the priesthood of God. These are the only light in this world.’ The world is dark, but has stars for its light, but the minds of men are dark.
     “So I came back, but the suffering was great. Jim Pearce came to see me; he took some consecrated oil (A bottle of it) and poured it in a tumbler, took a syringe and gave me an enema with that oil. I began to feel easier and better because it let out a pass. I dropped off to sleep and I had a little rest. Oil had done what water hadn’t been able to. I never went thru more misery in all my life as I did when I woke up. My stomach had been cut into and there was a process happening--just like the welding together in my stomach. But from that day on I have never had any bother. I was healed and made well. Quill Standifird can testify that my internals were out; because time after time he put them back in my stomach. Doing everything to keep them in, even tying them down.”
     “In 1941, I was clogged up inside someway. Sent to doctors in California. I went into the hospital. The doctors said that my case was too critical and they refused to handle it at all. They gave me one chance in one hundred. One place recommended by all the doctors as the only place for me so I went there. The doctor refused at first but we knew that he was the only one that could do it. Finally he said he would do it but it would come at a high price because he didn’t think I had any chance at all, besides my age was against me. Ezra told him to do what he could for me. They tried electricity but it was a failure--they sent me home. While on the operating table I stopped breathing for twenty minutes. Sterl took me back for the second operation. I was home six weeks. I had to go back. After the operation I did not breathe for half an hour and the doctors told Sterl to get me out quick, that I was dead. Sterl brushed them aside and said, ‘No, I’m not going to take my father home dead.’ He gave me artificial respiration which he learned from Scouting. Before the operation the elders told me through my faith I would be healed. I knew I would, and I did.”
     John Hanson Hatch passed away at his home in Taylor, Arizona on the 18th of August 1946. His wife passed away just five months later on 7 February 1947.

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Elizabeth HAIGHT
George Phineous HATCH
Hezekiah HATCH
Jeremiah HATCH Sr.
John HATCH
Lorenzo Hill HATCH
Qualo Mae HATCH (living)

CHILDREN WITH MARY JANE STANDIFIRD