Oh Susannah

To counter the widely held belief that "it has all been done" I present here a mystery. Susannah Wagstaff was born 28 June 1866 in American Fork, Utah to Samuel Wagstaff (1820-1897) and Ann McLachlan (1824 -1884). Her mother Ann married John Carlin in Inverness, Scotland on 16 Mar 1846. They moved around Scotland some but much of the time they were in the Glasgow area where he worked as a calker in the shipyards. They had 10 children of whom 5 died in Scotland. They joined the LDS church and emigrated to the United States in 1864 with 4 children. One child died on the trail on 10 Sep 1864 perhaps near the present site of Casper, Wyoming. Two child are unaccounted for. Then on 29 Sep 1864 John Carlin died while the wagon train was camped at the crossing of the Bear River south of present-day Evanston, Wyoming. There was no time to bury him in the morning so they carried the body 10 miles to Yellow Creek near the present Utah state line where they buried him during the lunch break. Their oldest daughter, Ann, married Andrew Young Smith and did temple work for some family members who had died.


The following year in 1865 Ann McLachlan was sealed to John Carlin with Samuel Wagstaff acting as proxy. Samuel married Ann McLachlan 29 Jul 1865 in polygamy. Margaret Carlin, daughter of John Carlin and Ann McLaclan, lived with her mother in American Fork. Ann and her youngest children Margaret and Susannah appear in the 1870 and 1880 census living northwest of American Fork between Isaac Wagstaff and George Jacklin. Perhaps they lived in a house that has long since disappeared on the farm where I grew up near the site of the Wagstaff molasses mill. Margaret never married or had children and is buried beside her mother in the American Fork Cemetery.


Susannah was baptized 15 Aug 1875 in the American Fork Ward. At age 17 on 13 Dec 1883 she married Jacob Israel Ovard of American Fork in the Endowment House. That is the last record that has been found of her. There are some indications that she divorced Ovard. Samuel kept a journal and mentioned all of his family members except the 3 polygamous families he had.


Susannah is not in the American Fork Sexton’s records nor is there a monument for her in either the Samuel Wagstaff plot or in any Ovard plot of that cemetery. New FamilySearch (NFS) has 3 LDS Church Membership records for her under different spellings of her given name. I have not found the sources for these 3 records. None of these 3 records in NFS state whether she had children and do not say when and where she died and was buried. Jacob Israel Ovard appears in the 1914 LDS Census of the American Fork First Ward as widowed. There is a note on the census index card that there is no record probably meaning that the ward had no membership record for him. We can not be sure that it was Susannah who died or whether he had another wife. He has not been found in the 1900 or 1910 federal census. In the 1920 census he is listed as divorced but in the 1930 census it says single. Neither Jacob Ovard or Susannah are listed in either the 1891 or the 1904-05 Directory for American Fork although other people known to be there at the time also were not listed. On the Temple Index Bureau (TIB) card of Jacob Israel Ovard in a very faint typescript is recorded that he married Parle. It is uncertain whether this is a given name, surname, or something else. Jacob was buried in an unmarked paupers grave in the American Fork Cemetery just a few years before my birth. It is possible that Jacob and Susannah moved from American Fork and that she died and was buried elsewhere and that he later returned to American Fork.


Any information about Susannah Wagstaff would be appreciated.