Bradford K. Bird ~ Index
Bradford Kennedy Bird was Born 26 January 1840, In Clayton, Adams County, Illinois. He died 21 May 1918 in Mesa, Maricopa County, Mesa, Arizona. He was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 1849. He was the son of Charles Bird Sr. and Mary Ann Kennedy. He went through persecutions while a child. The family had to stay in Council Bluffs to help the immigrants as they made their way across the plains. The family came later with the Milo Andrus Company. Bradford arrived in Salt Lake City in 1850, at the age of ten.
The family lived in Springville and Salt Lake City. In the fall of 1859, Brigham Young asked Charles Bird Sr. to go up to Mendon, Utah to help settle that area. The family were good farmers, clothiers and wool carders. So Bradford knew how to take responsibility very well.
Bradford took his fathers team and wagon across the plains five times to help bring some of the poor immigrants to Great Salt Lake City. He also was a farmer and served as the sergeant in the "A Platoon, Company E. 3rd Battalion, Cache Military District, 1865."
On 22 July 1860, the Indians made a drive this year, taking quite a number of cows. Some lost their only cow. They took them up to Malad Valley. Some of minute company went to rescue the stolen property, Bradford and two other men made up the posse. They found the Indians among the cedars on the side of the mountains. They (the boys) exchanged a number of shots with them. The Indians had every advantage behind trees and firing. Bradford was shot in the leg, but he rode his horse home. Still, it laid him up for sometime. The stock was not recovered; they had hidden them among the cedars.
When his father, Charles Bird, Sr., married a young wife, Bradford and another brother cared for their mother and provided for her. Bradford married a neighbor girl a year later, after his mother died. His father's two families lived in separate houses and were the best of friends.
Bradford married Sarah Brice Hill on 30 Nov 1868. The sealing was in the Endowment House on 30 Nov 1868 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the daughter of John C. Hill and Margaret Gardner Bryce. Sarah was born 9 Oct 1851, in Great Salt Lake City, Utah, after the family arrived in Utah. They had four sons and one daughter, as follows:
- George Bradford Born 10 Nov 1869 Mendon, Cache, Utah.
- John Albert Born 11 May 1872 Mendon, Cache, Utah.
- Margaret Lusina Born 29 Aug 1874 Mendon. Cache. Utah.
- Charles Hill Born 03 Jul 1876 Lewiston, Cache, Utah.
- Reaves Alexander Born 13 Oct 1880 Vernal, Uintah, Utah.
Bradford was an Indian War Veteran and took part in the Echo Canyon trouble.
Early in the spring of 1879, a company of pioneers left the Salt Lake valley and headed east across the Uintah Indian Reservation and arrived in what is today known as Vernal, Utah. The only settler who lived in the valley was an Indian trader by the name of Ashley and the post office was given that name. The settlers built a fort and a town was built. They named it Vernal. The county was named Uintah after the Uintah Indians, whose reservation bordered the valley.
Their first home was one room, with a dirt roof and a dirt floor, built of logs in a sagebrush clearing. This cabin was where they spent their winter.
They had never spent a winter in the valley, and did not know what to expect. They brought grain and seeds to plant the next season on as much land as they could get cleared and water onto it. They came with thirteen head of cows and heifers. In the spring of 1880, they had only one heifer alive.
During the winter of 1879-1880, the people of the valley went through some of the most trying circumstances of the pioneer days. People actually went hungry and lived on daily rations. There were no vegetables nor fruit. There were deer, but they were so poor that not a globule of grease would rise in the pot when cooked. There was no way out, or in to get supplies so they lived on graham bread, water and prayers. Many of the cattle were lost-frozen to death. By spring, milk was really a luxury of high order.
The winter of 1879-1880, was indeed a hard winter and several things occurred to make it hard. The snow was deep; the temperatures dropped down. There were no stacks of hay to feed the cattle. There were no structures or trees for windbreaks. There was no barns or sheds for shelter and so consequently, the cattle became thin and perished. The crops of 1879, had diminished by the grasshopper menace. The fort houses were sometimes jovially spoken of as "Jericho" and sometimes "Hatchtown."
Life in those days was full of excitement, happiness, dullness and dreariness. It had its ups and downs, as life ever does. The Indian problem died down and so the settlers were asked to move from the fort. Bradford and Sarah moved out to Naples, Uintah, Utah, with one more child now. They built a log cabin home with a dirt roof and dirt floor, but it was two rooms -much larger- with a shanty behind it.
Many of the tools were homemade, such as ____ and rakes. Bradford purchased a reaper. It was modern, time saving piece of equipment at that time. Everyone knew how to work hard and play hard when they were finished.
The kinds of medicine used were interesting. Honey and lobelia cooked to a syrup for cramps and colds. Fat bacon with lots of salt and pepper, was put in a flannel cloth bound around the necks at night for sore throats. Carters sugar coated pills for elimination. Senna tea for diseases and ailments. Glycerine for chapped hands and feet. Chewing tobacco for bad cuts and sores. Many of these things were remembered by the early pioneers.
Sarah died on 15 Jan 1892, and was buried in Vernal, Uintah, Utah. She was forty-one years of age. Sarah was the first Primary President in the Naples Ward.
Bradford loved fine horses. He finished raising the children and with the assistance of helpful neighbors and friends. Bradford was a High Priest in the Church and Superintendent of the Sunday School in the Naples Ward for six years in the Naples Ward.
After the youngest son married and moved to Arizona, Bradford went there to live in his later years because the climate was better for him. Bradford joined his beloved eternal wife and friend 21 May 1918, and was buried in Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona. They were very religious people all their lives and endured to the end.1