Mystery Solved - Susannah is found!

In this blog in the spring of 2010 I presented the mystery of the disappearance of Susannah Wagstaff in 1883. This is a report on the solution of that mystery. On October 20, 2010 and again on the 27th John Earle of Portland, Oregon responded to my blog by saying that my story sounded familiar, that he was a descendant of her half sister Margaret Carlin, and that Susannah had moved from Utah to Helena, Montana. A little later we posted a public tree in Ancestry.com and Christopher Mentrum, an avid genelaogist, also of Portland Emailed me that he was a descendant of Susannah.

Let me here correct an error. The sexton’s records in the American Fork, Utah Cemetery said Margaret Carlin was buried in that cemetery beside her mother. There was confusion with another Margaret and the cemetery records no longer state that Margaret Carlin was buried there.

The story started with the employment of Susannah’s half sister Mary Carlin in the luxurious home on South Temple Street in Salt Lake City of the railroad magnate John Sharp. He wanted to build a line from Salt Lake City to the gold fields at Helena. Documentation has not been found but it is reasonable to assume that he took his household servants to Helena while scouting out the railroad prospects. What is certain is that Mary Carlin married Benjamin Malben on 6 Mar 1877 in Lewis and Clark County, Montana. He was a Civil War veteran who served at Gettysburg, was under the command of General Custer as a sargent and was at Lee's surrender at Appomattox. It has been said that he wrote newspaper articles about that war but we have not located them thus far. After working as a gold miner and engaging in various occupations he became the sexton of the Forestville Cemetery in Helena where he and his wife were buried. After Mary and Benjamin were married, Benjamin wrote to his friend Robert Barnes arranging a blind date with Mary's sister Margaret Carlin who had brought the train up from Utah. The date must have been successful because Margaret Carlin and Robert Barnes were married on 1 May 1878 in Park City, Montana. They had a large family. Their house in Helena especially after Robert's death became hotel central for the family. Several members of the extended family roomed there for extensive periods.

We have found no records to tell us when or why Susannah Wagstaff moved from Utah to Montana. It is likely that her half sisters already living there encouraged her to move after her divorce from Jacob Israel Ovard. The divorce record if it even exists has not been located. He lived out his old age in the old folks home in Provo, Utah and was buried in an unmarked paupers grave in the American Fork City Cemetery (Utah). Susannah's mother Ann Mclachlan Carlin Wagstaff was said to have desired that her daughters not marry into polygamy. Thus she may have agreed with Susannah's move to Montana. The first documentation found thus far is the marriage of Susannah Wagstaff to John Mentrum on 1 Nov 1880 in Helena, Montana. John was a tinsmith who probably built ornamentation for the millionaire houses still standing in Helena. They had three children. John Mentrum was born Oct 1890 in Helena and died on 22 May 1905 in Helena and is buried in the Forestvale Cemetery. Leonard Mentrum was born 20 Sep 1891 in Helena. He moved to Spokane, Washington following the trade of his father working in the sheet metal business. From there he moved to Portland, Oregon where some of his posterity still reside. He married Jennie Bowers on 6 Aug 1913 in Helena. He had a son also named Leonard Mentrum in Portland. In turn he had a son Christopher Mentrum. The youngest child of John Mentrum and Susannah was Clarence Cameron Mentrum born on 11 Apr 1894 in Clark, Fallon County, Montana. He joined the US Marines and was stationed in Brooklyn, New York. Later he was employed by an insurance company in Manhattan. He married Ethel (Surname unknown). No children for this couple are recorded in the census. Clarence died on 21 Jan 1970 in Hyde Park, New York and was buried in the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York.

Susannah died on 29 June 1897 in Helena and was buried in the Forestville Cemetery. John Mentrum died on 17 May 1913 in Helena and is buried in the Forestville Cemetery.

Susannah died the same year as her father Samuel Wagstaff. It is not known what contact there was between the Montana families and the Utah family. But there must have been some contact because the oldest Carlin girl Ann did proxy temple work for her sisters Mary and Margaret after their deaths.

More details with some pictures will be posted on our Carlin public tree in Ancestry.com.

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.