Called By Death
Juliaett Phelps Pratt—Mrs. Juliaett Phelps Pratt, aged 80, last surviving widow of the late Apostle Orson Pratt and daughter of Alva and Margaret Phelps, died Wednesday. She was a pioneer of 1851. Funeral services will be held in the Seventeenth ward, this city, the date to be announced later.
[Deseret News, Mar. 14, 1919, 2]
[transcribed and proofread by David Grow, Jan. 2006]
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High Tribute Paid to Pioneer Woman
Funeral services for Mrs. Juliaett Phelps Pratt were held at the Seventeenth ward chapel, Wednesday, March 19. Bishop George Arbuckle, of Emerson ward, where Mrs. Pratt resided at the residence of her son, O.P. Pratt, presided. The opening hymn, “O My Father,” was sung by the Seventeenth ward quartet. Invocation by Elder Joseph S. Kimball. A solo, entitled “Slumbering,” was rendered by James R. Neilson. Prof. Willard E. Weihe gave a violin solo entitled, “The Slumber Song,” accompanied on the organ by Bishop Alvin Beesley, of the Twenty-second ward.
President Charles W. Penrose was the first speaker. He discussed the question of relationships, the spirituality of existence and the experiences necessarily preceding the immortal. Prest. Penrose spoke of the exemplary life of the deceased and that of her husband, the late Apostle Orson Pratt, in both of whom and their children he paid glowing tribute.
Bishop Frank S. Tingey of the Seventeenth ward and Bishop George Arbuckle of the Emerson ward followed with appropriate remarks, bearing testimony to the truthfulness of the words spoken by President Penrose.
A duet was rendered entitled, “Wanted on the Other Side,” after which Bishop Alvin A. Beesley offered the benediction. Burial was in the Pratt lot, city cemetery, where Elder Milando Pratt offered the dedicatory prayer.
Friend Offers Tribute
The following tribute to Mrs. Pratt is submitted by Milando Pratt, a relative of the deceased:
The passing of this noble woman and pioneer of 1851, whose demise took place on Thursday, March 13, is deserving of mention in reminiscence with early pioneer life.
She was daughter of Alva and Margaret Phelps and was born April 19, 1838 (?), in the town of York, Steuben county, Indiana. In connection with her parents and their family, who experienced many mobocratic persecutions which were inflicted upon the Latter-day Saints by their enemies in Missouri and Illinois, which resulted in their exodus from those states, she was among the thousands of migrating exiles who in the mid-winter of 1846 crossed the frozen waters of the great Mississippi and fled into the wilderness of the then so called “Great American Deseret,” with their faces toward the setting sun.
When she was seven years of age, Mrs. Pratt’s father, Alva Phelps, on the 16th day of July, 1846, enlisted in the “Mormon Battalion,” and left his family at the mercy of savages, wild beasts and hardships to which the exiled pioneers of the plains were subjected. He and others of the battalion, including Captain James Allen, “whose brave and generous spirit had from the first endeared him to every soul in the battalion,” died as martyrs in their country’s call.
The late James Ferguson, sergeant-major of the Mormon Battalion, appeared in behalf of this comrades, and delivered a most eloquent oration at a celebration of the anniversary of the Fourth of July, 1857, in (Great) Salt Lake City, in which he pathetically related the bravery, hardships and cruelties endured by his comrades of that memorable march of over 2,000 miles and in which he briefly referred to young Alva Phelps. He said, “Have you ever experienced a dirge of nature? Could I but place before you our camp on the Arkansas, and then could I sound in your ears the dread requiem, such ass was there chanted by a choir of wolves when poor Phelps retired. Then would you feel what we have felt, and how much more dreadfully sublime the passage home of an immortal spirit away from the abodes of humanity.”
“Aunt” Juliaett, as she was more familiarly known, crossed the plains by ox-team travel in company with her widowed mother, a brother and sister and others and landed in the valley in the fall of 1851. At the founding of the settlement of Fillmore, Millard county, they moved there, where they resided until Fillmore was made the capital where the Territorial legislator was held when the late Apostle Orson Pratt was a member thereof, and it was during that time that he became acquainted with Miss Juliaett Phelps and she became his wife. President Brigham Young, who was the first governor of Utah Territory, performed the ceremony of marriage December 14, 1855, at Fillmore, since which time she had been a resident of the latter places Tooele and Salt Lake City, respectively. She has borne seven children, all of whom, except the eldest son, the late Alva Phelps Pratt, whose widow and four children reside at Escalante, Utah, survive her, vis.: Mrs. Clomenia P. Larson of New York City, who came here to attend the funeral services; Ortherus P. Pratt of this city, Mrs. Margaret P. Armstrong of Beloit, Wis., Mrs. Rella P. Farrington of Portland, Ore., Mrs. Neva P. Shiverick of this city, and Julius P. Pratt of Los Angeles, Cal.; also 15 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.
Sister Juliaett P. Pratt was truly a pioneer in every sense that the word implies, she being the daughter of pioneer parentage, and of Mormon Battalion fame and a veritable pioneer herself. By her frugality and industry, and willingness to yield to sacrifices when necessity required, she supported with needle in hand and raised and educated her large family of children to maturity while her husband performed many missions abroad preaching and writing for the salvation of the souls of men.
[Deseret News, Mar. 20, 1919, 3]
[transcribed and proofread by David Grow, Jan. 2006]
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Juliette Pratt, 80, is Dead at Provo
Provo, March 12–Juliette Pratt, 80 years of age and a resident of Salt Lake for many years, died here today. She is survived by seven children, most of whom live in Salt Lake, and the bod will be sent to that city for burial.
[Mar. 12, 1919]
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