Essentials
Born: 16 February 1846; Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Daughter of: Joseph ARGYLE and Rebecca Jane FINCH
Married: John Henry STANDIFIRD; 16 January 1864; Salt Lake City, Utah
Died: 5 April 1922; Taylor, Navajo County, Arizona

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One-minute history
Ghost story

BY DARYL JAMES
FROM 'JAMES/HATCH ONE MINUTE HISTORIES' (1994)
     Mary Ann Argyle was born Feb. 16, 1846, in Birmingham, England, to Joseph Argyle, Jr. and Rebecca Jane Finch. She joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England with her family and immigrated with them to Utah when she was 10.
     On Jan. 16, 1864, a month before her 18th birthday, she married John Henry Standifird in Salt Lake City, Utah. John, 32, had joined the Church in Missouri seven years earlier. The couple lived in Bountiful, Utah, where John worked as a carpenter on the Bountiful Tabernacle. Mary and John had five daughters in Bountiful over the next seven years: Ann, Mary Jane, Catherine, Mariah and Rebecca.
     On Feb. 22, 1868, John entered plural marriage with Mary's 16-year-old sister, Francis (called Fanney). The sisters lived together in Bountiful until about 1872, when John moved Fanney to nearby Ogden Valley.
     In spring 1873, Brigham Young asked John to visit the Saints in northern Arizona. After touring the area, John moved Fanney and her five children with him to Kanab, Utah, near the Utah-Arizona border. He planned to bring Mary to Kanab after Fanney was settled. "I bid Mary and her children good day and commended them to the Lord of Hosts and took Fanney and her children with me and started out to make a home in the South country," writes John. Mary and Fanney's father, Joseph Argyle, thought John was crazy for moving to the desert and called him a "damn fool."
     Mary and John exchanged frequent letters over the next year, and soon John brought her and her children to Kanab. On Dec. 30, 1875, Mary, Fanney and John were re-baptized in Kanab for a renewal of their covenants and for "observance of the rules of the United Order." From 1876 to 1877, John worked on the St. George Temple. It was a three-day journey from St. George to Kanab, so Mary and Fanney rarely saw John during this time. After the Temple was dedicated, John took Mary to St. George on Feb. 15, 1877, to do ordinances for his parents and grand-parents. Mary and John went a second time in April.
     Mary had her sixth daughter in Kanab on April 15, 1876, and then finally a son on Oct. 10, 1878. In 1879 the Church asked John to move to Arizona. Because Mary and Fanney never got along well, and because persecution against polygamists was increasing in the United States, John decided to separate his two families in Arizona. He moved with Fanney and her children to Alpine, Ariz., in 1879, and established Mary and her children in nearby Taylor in 1880.
     According to Merle Kartchner Shumway, a great-grandchild of John and Mary Standifird, Mary was the stronger of the two wives and told John to live with Fanney. Merle says Joseph Argyle knew his daughter Fanney was jealous of Mary from the beginning and warned John not to marry Fanney.
     Mary worked in Taylor as a midwife while John and Fanney farmed in Alpine. When John came to see Mary, he would usually spend the night at her house. She had two more sons and two more daughters in Taylor until her older children told John to stop spending the night with her. They thought it was unfair that John would leave their mother to raise the children alone. After that John would spend the night at his son's home when he visited Taylor.
     On June 25, 1883, Mary became president of the Taylor Ward Relief Society. John was there to see her set apart. In 1895, Mary traveled to Salt Lake to visit friends and do temple work for her father's dead. She remained in Taylor after that the rest of her life and died there April 5, 1922, at age 76. John lived two more years and died at 93 in Moab, Utah, on Nov. 26, 1924. Fanney lived until May 17, 1938, and died in Fruita, Colo., at age 87.
-- Sources: 1. The Journal of John Henry Standifird. (On record at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.); 2. 1992 interview with Merle Kartchner Shumway, a great-granddaughter of Mary Ann Argyle who helped publish John Henry Standifird's journal (interview too place in Provo, Utah); 3. Handcarts to Zion, pp. 63 (at Harold B. Lee Library, BYU, Provo, Utah).

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Ghost story

BY MARY SHUMWAY
GRANDDAUGHTER OF MARY ANN ARGYLE
     One dark night while going after water she heard girlish voices coming from the deep wash that used to run just South of where A.J.Freeman now lives (1978). She always liked to play pranks, so she pulled her dress over her head and with her white petticoats showing, she made funny spooky sounds to frighten the girls. They thought a ghost had them for sure.
     A few days later Mary heard a knock on the door and went to see who was there. There were three petticoat ghosts back to repay her prank. Mary was not to be outdone. She had suspected who her visitors might be and had taken a bucket of water with her to the door and threw it on the ghosts. The girls were outwitted again. “We just can’t get the best of you, Mary,” they said.
     Mary Ann had hop vines growing around her porch and used them to make yeast. She exchanged this yeast with her neighbors for a little flour, which they brought in a 5 or 10 pound lard pail. This helped her to earn her living for herself and her family. She did many compassionate thing for the communities. She served as a midwife for years delivering babies locally and as far away as Payson.

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