Essentials
Born: 7 February 1867; Bountiful, Davis County, Utah
Daughter of: John Henry STANDIFIRD and Mary Ann ARGYLE
Married: John HATCH, 21 October 1885; St. George, Washington County, Utah
Died: 7 February 1947; Taylor, Navajo County, Arizona

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One-minute history
An experience of Mary Jane Standifird when she was 14
Arizona pioneer

BY DARYL JAMES
FROM 'JAMES/HATCH ONE MINUTE HISTORIES' (1994)
     Mary Jane Standifird was born Feb. 7, 1866, in Bountiful, Utah, in a Mormon polygamist family. Her mother, Mary Ann Argyle, was the first wife of John Henry Standifird. When Mary Jane was 13 months old, her father married her mother's sister, Fanney. Mary Jane ended up with 10 brothers and sisters and 12 half brothers and sisters; of the 23 children, she was second oldest.
     Mary Jane lived in Bountiful until she was about 8, when she moved with her mother and four sisters to Kanab, Utah, near the Utah-Arizona border. Her father and Aunt Fanney had already moved to Kanab about one year earlier. Mary Jane lived in Kanab until she was 14. During this time her father worked as a carpenter on the St. George Temple.
     After the dedication of the St. George Temple in January 1877, the Church called Mary Jane's father to help settle Arizona. He waited in Kanab until 1879 when the Church deemed it safe for him to move.
     Because Mary Jane's mother and Aunt Fanney never got along well, and because persecution against polygamists was increasing in the United States, Mary Jane's father decided to separate his two families in Arizona. According to Merle Kartchner Shumway, a great-granddaughter of John Standifird, Mary Ann was the stronger of the two wives and told John to take Fanney and live with her. In 1879 John settled with Fanney and her children in Alpine, Ariz. He returned to Kanab in 1880 and helped Mary Ann move with her children to Taylor, Ariz., near Alpine. Mary Jane experienced many hardships during this time. For a while she lived with her family in an 18-by-30-foot dugout in northern Arizona. Bread had to be ground on a small hand mill, and this was often Mary Jane's task.
     For a while she worked away from home for $1 per week. At the Robinson home in Lone Pine, a group of Apaches killed her employer, Mr. Robinson. Mary Jane and the other women and children were put in a barn while men from the area kept watch.
     Mary Jane lived near Taylor the rest of her life. Her father occasionally visited her mother in Taylor and was a friend to Lorenzo Hill Hatch, Mary Jane's eventual father-in-law. Lorenzo was a counselor in the Snowflake Stake Presidency while Mary Jane's father was a Bishop in one of its wards. Mary Jane attended school in Taylor during the winter months and became skilled at all types of sewing and crafts. She met John Hatch, a son of Lorenzo, in Taylor and married him Oct. 21, 1885, in the St. George Temple. Mary Jane was 18 and John was 24. Together they had six sons and three daughters. In 1898 the Church called John to the Northern States Mission, and Mary Jane supported him until he returned in 1900. She husked corn, boarded school teachers, did janitorial work, and sold fruit from the family orchard.
     In July 1905, their seven-year-old daughter, Katie, was lost in the White Mountains while the family was on a camping trip. After 20 days of searching, a party of men eventually found Katie's body under a tree several miles from the original campsite. "They were riding in line and Andrew found a lock of her hair,'' says one witness. "He passed it to the one next to him, and told him to pass it on to her father (John Hatch). When the father received this lock of hair, he spurred up and rode ahead of the others as if he knew where she was, for he rode straight to her, bared his head, dismounted and kneeled beside his deceased child.''
     Mary Jane was always active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At one time or another she served as a teacher, officer, or president of every auxiliary organization of the Church in Taylor, and was a member of the Taylor choir for 40 years. She and John lived happy together for 61 years. For the final 30 years, John served the Church as Stake Patriarch.
     John preceded Mary Jane in death by only a few months. The Holbrook Tribune wrote after Mary Jane's death: "Funeral services were held Sunday in the Taylor Ward LDS Chapel for Mrs. Mary Jane S. Hatch, northern Arizona pioneer, who died on her 81st birthday Friday, Feb. 7, after a lingering illness.''

-- Sources: 1. The Journal of John Henry Standifird. (On record at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.); 2. Descendants of George Palmer and Phoeb Draper, pps. 445-461. (On record at Harold B. Lee Library, BYU, Provo, Utah.)

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An experience of Mary Jane Standifird when 14 years old

SOURCE UNKNOWN
     It was in the early settlement of Taylor when the old pioneers were looking for best land and places for farms. Mr. Robinson and several other families had located near what is now the Lone Pine Dam. He had built a little log cabin and was feeling quite at home with his cows and horses and everything it takes to make a nice ranch.
     The horses and cows were turned out on the hills around to graze. This particular day, while Mrs. Robinson was preparing dinner, Mr. Robinson went out to get his horse preparatory to going after the cows. After dinner he went down the creek for his cows. The children together with Mary Jane Standifird, who had been hired to come up to help Mrs. Robinson who was expecting a baby, all went up the creek gathering wild flowers. The hills were covered with a large variety of flowers and Mary Jane started young to love flowers. They gathered their arms full of flowers and came back to place them all around the log cabin to perfume and cheer the inhabitants of the humble home.
     It became late in the day and Mr. Robinson did not return so the nearby neighbors were informed and a search began. Darkness came on and they still had not located him nor the horse he was riding. As it drew darker a neighbor, Mr. Reidhead was seen coming past the window which made them wonder as he had left that morning for the salt bed about eighty miles away, over east of St. Johns. They were mighty glad to see him; however, and soon told him of the disappearance of his friend Mr. Robinson. Mr. Reidhead had learned that the Indians were on the war path so had returned to prepare for them. After hearing the story they had to tell, he said maybe they would all be killed by morning. At this news, preparations were made to stand all night watch. Mr. Reidhead unhitched his team and put his little twelve year old boy on one of them and started him for town, Taylor, for help. Bishop John Henry Standifird, Mary Jane’s father, gathered all that could leave town with him and started out to help them.
     The ranchers all gathered into the big community barn near the Robinson home with a collection of all the guns and ammunition they had among them. They made peep holes in the barn to put their guns through. Among those with big shot guns was Mrs. Robinson who stood watch all night and trusted her two year old baby to Mary Jane to watch. Just as it was breaking day they saw a group of horsemen coming and they were so afraid it was the Indians. Mary Jane rushed to a peep hole to see and immediately recognized her father on the old brown horse and spread the glad news. There he was with a posse of men to help protect them and make a search for Mr. Robinson.
     They learned from an old blind lady that lived near the barn that Indians had passed by during the night. Her sight being gone seemed to make her hearing and smelling much better. She told them just how many horses and how many on foot had passed behind her house instead of going by the barn. (They had decided her home was just as safe as the barn.)
     A runner from Pinedale told of the raid the Indians had made there. A man named Lyman Hancock saw them coming so taking his wife by the hand ran as fast as they could for some nearby trees and managed to stay hidden and so saved their lives; but the Indians burned their home and all their belongings.
     With all this news the men left the women and children there with a few man to stand guard while they continued to search for Mr. Robinson. It was late afternoon that they decided to go along the river for any signs. Then it was they saw a man’s bare foot sticking up out of the water. On investigating they found Mr. Robinson covered with rocks to hold him down. One foot had slipped out. The Indians had taken his clothes all off until they came to the garments. There they stopped; so that was how they found him. The Indians had taken his horse and saddle.
     Bishop Standifird was a carpenter by trade and the one to always make the caskets for the dead so he hurried back to Taylor and by the next night had the coffin ready to start back on his wagon. Joseph McCleve volunteered to go with him as it seemed dangerous to go alone even though the Indians seemed to have quieted down.
     Just as sunup next morning they reached the Robinson ranch and by the time they had him ready to bring back there were wagons and teams enough from town and neighbors to load everything the Robinson’s owned in household goods and farm machinery and they were moved to Snowflake.

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Arizona pioneer

SOURCE UNKNOWN
     Mary Jane Standifird, came to Arizona with her parents in the winter of 1879 when her father brought his family. The year previously, her father and sister, Ann had come. She lived with the family in their dugout, where the Bert Solomon Ranch is today. This dugout was 18 by 30 feet and was very crowded. The windows were small excavations covered with cloth. This family consisted of four grown people and twelve children. Their diet consisted largely of ground barley, which had long whiskers that were hard to swallow, and the milk of wild cows. How this was obtained is a story in itself. The girls herded the wild cows into the corral and their mother roped them and snubbed them to a post while the daughters reached through a fence to milk them. The milk was so strong that it had to be diluted. The girls began to hire out to help make room for the rest of the family and also to help out the finances. The prevailing wage was $1.00 per week. Jane had gone to live with the Nathan Robinson family for awhile at Lonepine, or Reidhead’s Crossing, as it was known then. Mrs. Robinson was expecting a baby and Jane was a good hand at housework at such times. Their bread had to be ground on a small hand mill, and Jane being the second child had much of this particular task.
     Jane had a bad scare when she was a young girl. She had taken her little half-brother John out with her to look for cows. He was barefooted so they couldn’t go very fast. They quickened their pace considerably, though, when they saw Indians coming in the distance. Jane grabbed John's hand and they ran as fast as they possibly could and had just slipped under the fence when the Indians caught up with them. One of the Indians said, “We not bad Indians. We good Indians.” Then they rode away.
     This family farmed a ranch and ran a dairy and then moved to Taylor for the three month school year, then back to the Solomon Ranch to farm. Jane didn’t have much formal school, but was trained in the things that make for noble womanhood. Even though there were no luxuries in her life, her girlhood days were happy ones and a time of real pleasure and enjoyment with plenty of thrill and excitement.
     The Standifird family were destitute at the Solomon Ranch. Things were even more difficult than before. Mother Standifird had been fasting and praying that they would get relief. One day, soon after, the creek was full of fish and they caught them by the tubful. They always thought this was a miracle because of the faith they had exercised. This phenomenon only happened this one time. The fish were well taken care of and used for the benefit of many people.
     Here is a little verse that she learned when she was a little girl:
          Give me a kiss and a pansy smile,
          Pass it along and after awhile
          There’ll be a million miles of
          Lovely little pansy smiles.
     Mary Jane Standifird, married John Hanson Hatch at St. George, Utah, on October 21, 1885.
     Jane was doing the family washing on a windy day and finally had clothes all on the line and then the line broke. She very calmly rewashed the clothes and got them on the line again. This wasn’t an easy thing to do in those days. Water had to be carried; a fire had to be built in under a wash tub out back; wood had to be carried; lye had to be put in the water and then skimmed to remove the residue that formed on top, so the water would be soft. There was a scrub board to use again; and that took a lot of time and energy. Finally, the clothes were on the line a third time, and the wind blew, the line still broke; and, Jane’s patience broke, too, “D--- you, stay there.”
     She was a devoted church worker, holding various positions of trust and responsibility. She served in many capacities in the different auxiliary organizations. She was an officer in the Y.W.M.I.A. She was president of the Primary for several years, a Sunday School teacher, president of the Relief Society and a choir member for about forty years. All her life she was ready to take care of those who were sick or in distress.
     The greatest sorrow of her life came to them when they went on a fishing trip to the White Mountains on July 15, 1905. When they camped for lunch, the children went to get water at a spring, and the little seven year old Katie became separated from the others, and was lost. She was missed in a very few minutes and search began...(the complete story is told elsewhere.)

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