History of Charles Layton

! Military: From the Book Kaysville our Town by Carol Ivins Collette learn about the Black Hawk War 1865- 1868. This was a very serious and destructive conflict, especially in the Sanpete and Sevier Valley, where Fort Deseret and Cove Forts were built. More than twenty-five smaller settlements were abandoned or merged with larger villages for protection. The federal Troops refused to help, so the local militia under Daniel H. Wells took over the responsibility. One of those from Kaysville was Charles Layton. A treaty of peace was signed 19 Aug. 1868.

! Church; Served as a Seventy

! Biography; found in Pioneers and Prominent Men page 1001

!1900 Census He was 68 years old and listed his occupation as landlord.

Charles Layton was born April 6, 1832 at North Hills, Stanford, Bedfordshire, England the son of William Martin and Bathsheba Layton. He took his mother’s maiden name since his parents were not married. His mother afterwards was married and they were sealed to Nathanial Denton. Because he lived in a rural district he, like other boys, helped to tend the flocks of sheep and do other chores incident to their everyday life.

As he became a young man Mormon missionaries arrived in the community and he with tow of his companions, William Stewart and William Foxley attended the meeting with the idea of creating a disturbance and possibly breaking up the meeting. The Elder who was in charge of the meeting was Thomas Smith; better know as “Rough Tom” Smith. But so great was the belief and testimony of the Elder that all three who had come to ridicule wee soon converted and baptized into the Church.

Charles, at the age of 18, decided to go to America so on Wednesday October 2, 1850, the ship “James Pennell” sailed from Liverpool England, with two hundred and fifty-four Saints on board, under the direction of Christopher Layton (Charles’s uncle) who had been in England on a visit. After an ordinary passage, the ship arrived near the mouth of the Mississippi River and the passengers were jubilant at the prospect of soon landing on the shores of the promised land, when a terrible storm met the ship and drove her far back into the gulf, breaking her main and mizzen masts and washing part of her rigging overboard. In this disabled condition the emigrants exposed to wave and wind drifted about for several days until the provisions on board were nearly all consumed and starvation commenced to stare them in the face but finally the crippled vessel was found by a  pilot boat and conducted to the mouth of the river where on the 12^th of November she sailed up along side of the Joseph Badger which had sailed from Liverpool with another company of Saints over two weeks later than the James Pennell. The two ships were now towed up together to New Orleans where they arrived the 22^nd of November. The next day the emigrants from the James Pennell boarded the River Steamer, “Amarantle” and continued the journey up the river to St Louis, Missouri.

There and in the surrounding country Charles along with the others found employment for the winter. At that time the great cholera plague was at its worst. Because there weren’t any factories, stores or other businesses open he took the job of picking up the dead from the streets. The people were dying so fast they were unable to bury them all. When he asked for the job the man doing the hiring was reluctant to give it to him, saying “you are too young to die”. Charles answered saying “I know I won’t die” and he got the job. He worked that job for five months and in spite of his many exposures and privations he never was afflicted with the plague. The following year a part of the emigrants left for the Salt Lake valley but others remained for awhile longer before continuing their journey to Utah. Charles was one those that stayed until the spring of 1852 as a member of the Horton D. Heights Company, a company of fifty-two wagons. After a journey beset with hardships and heartaches, the company was met by Brigham Young on September 3, 1852. He remarked that it was one of the best outfits to arrive in Utah.

Charles went to live with the Hector Height family in Farmington. Betty Bowler moved into the household a year later and they were married on January 26, 1854. They made their home in the southwest corner of Kaysville near the Great Salt Lake about a half a mile north of the Height farm. It was an adobe home with two small bedrooms and a large living room. Years later they enlarged the bedrooms and added an upstairs.

Money was scarce at this time of their lives. They were in their home a year before they saw a dollar. The winter of 1855 was a terribly hard one. Charles had bought a cow, and to save her life he carried a bundle of straw on his back from Hooper. Afterwards things got so bad he had to feed the cow straw from his mattress to keep her from starving. Once Charles went to the canyon to get wood and while there he tore his trousers and had to come home after dark. He had no other trousers so Betty used the ticking off the straw mattress and made him a new pair. She also had to use the thread from the mattress to sew the trousers.

Charles and John R. Barnes spaded by hand one of the first acres of land cultivated in Kaysville and raised some of the first alfalfa. The seed cost $2.00 per pound and was brought in by Bishop Christopher Layton who imported it from Australia.

In her early married life Betty experienced the hardships of Pioneer women. Many times she gathered saleratus from the lake shore and combined it with fat to make soup. She made her own tallow candles and sugar from pumpkins.

In 1857 Charles was a member of the company of men who met Johnson’s Army and escorted them across the valley.


NOTE: In July of 1857, U.S. President James Buchanan sent an army of 2.500 men to Salt Lake City to "restore order and forcibly install a new governor to replace Brigham Young." Apparently, President Buchanan had received biased reports regarding the early Saints from federal officials who had deserted their posts. However, the army was delayed and chose to winter at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, waiting until spring to resume their journey.


In March 1858, upon hearing of the army's threat, Brigham Young ordered the 30,000 Saints residing in the Salt Lake Valley to move south. He also ordered that the foundation of the Salt Lake Temple be completely covered with dirt and then tilled to resemble a freshly plowed field.
When the armies arrived and saw that the Saints were prepared to burn the city to the ground rather than relinquish it to the government, they left the area satisfied that the reports they had received regarding the Saints' disorderly conduct were false. Two months later, the Saints returned to their homes.


Fearing that the troops would return, Brigham Young did not order the uncovering of the temple foundation until the spring of 1860. This took two years to accomplish. When the task was completed it was discovered that there were cracks in the foundation Brigham Young ordered the entire foundation be dug up and replaced with a new, stronger foundation. It then took the Saints' another two years to remove the original foundation stones. It wasn't until 1867 that the temple walls finally rose above the ground for the first time. The army was called Johnson's army after Albert Sidney Johnson.

On June 20, 1860, Betty and Charles were endowed and sealed in the Endowment House. They had six sons and two daughters.

On June 27, 1862 with Betty’s consent, Charles married Sarah Ambrozine Crockett in the Endowment House as his second wife in a plural marrage. They had three sons and three daughters.

Henry Charles, b. June 3, 1863, Kaysville, d. November 17, 1864, Kaysville, Utah

Edith Sarah, b. March 3, 1865, Kaysville, d. April 5, 1934, Kaysville, Utah

Christopher Edward, b. September 6, 1867, Kaysville, d. November 28, 1958, Salt Lake City, Utah

Nettie Isabell, b. February 28, 1869, Kaysville, d. December 6, 1884, Kaysville, Utah

Ermine Rozillah, b. December 22, 1870, Kaysville, d. August 10, 1959, Salt Lake City, Utah

Frank, b. August 18, 1875, Kaysville, d. April 1, 1965, Ogden, Utah

He was a successful stock raiser and farmer and was always willing and ready to give of his produce and help the new arrivals to Zion to feed and comfort until they could help themselves.

Charles also fought in the Black Hawk War which was the longest and most destructive conflict between pioneer immigrants and Native Americans in Utah history. The traditional date of the war’s commencement is April 9, 1845 but tensions had been mounting for years. On that date bad feelings were transformed into violence when a handful of Ute’s and Mormon frontiersmen met in Manti, Sanpete County to settle a dispute over some cattle killed and consumed by starving Indians. Black Hawk and his forces stole over two thousand head of stock and killed as many as 75 whites during the conflict. The years 1865 to 1867 were by far the most intense of the conflict. Latter-day Saints considered themselves in a state of open warfare. They built scores of forts and deserted dozens of settlements while hundreds of Mormon militiamen chased their illusive adversaries through the wilderness with little success. Requests for federal troops went unheeded for eight years. In the fall of 1867 Black Hawk made peace with the Mormons. The war’s intensity decreased and a treaty was signed in 1868.

On the 15^th of February 1883 accompanied by his wife Sarah along with his son Charles and his Uncle Christopher Layton, he moved to Arizona in a successful effort to colonize that part of the country. After six weeks in a very hot and dry climate they returned to Utah.

In 1886 Charles and his two wives returned to England. They were set apart as missionaries. He said he wasn’t a preacher but those in authority told him he could converse at the fireside and probably do much good. Upon their arrival in New York he met a man whose wife had died and left him with three motherless children to care for. Charles sent the children, three girls, back to his home where his family cared for them for more than a year without expense to their father.

Betty went to England especially to visit a brother and sister. When she arrived there she found they had been killed in an accident just six weeks previously. She was so disappointed that she returned home after a month’s stay. Charles and Sarah stayed for a year. When Charles and Sarah returned from England he built a home for each of his wives in the Fort as they called the residential part of Kaysville.

In the spring of 1888 Charles and Sarah journeyed to Canada to take up land, they went by rail and the rest of the family went by teams and wagons. They remained until the fall of that year and returned to Utah. In 1889 Charles went back to Canada with his son Chris and George Hudson and bought a rather large track of land. The following year he went out again with a herd of cattle. On arriving there they found that a fire had burned through the country. Some of the people that had agreed to buy their land refused to take it so Charles sold it the Church and returned to Kaysville.

Betty died on August 21, 1896 and was buried in the Kaysville cemetery. After her death he spent his time in caring for his farm. In 1898 he traded some land in Canada for some farms in Granger and Hunter. Afterwards, his sons Timothy and Christopher obtained the farms. On March 28, 1898 Sarah died in Hunter at the home of their son Christopher and was buried in the Kaysville Cemetery. Soon after Sarah died he married Mary Jarman, the mother of his son Timothy’s wife and they lived in Kaysville. On May 2, 1901 Charles died of stomach cancer and was buried in Kaysville.

One of Charles’ sons Frank wrote was that Charles “never learned to read or write so my mother read to him a lot. He was good at figures (in his head), could measure a stack of hay in his head and get about as near as I could with a pencil”.