Life History of Margaret Ann Boyce

Children: Isadore, Hyrum, Mansfield, Horace, Margaret Ann (Jorgensen), Joseph, Benjamin, Eveline (Brower)

Margaret Ann Boyce, who became Milo’s ninth wife, was born at Bedford, Wayne County, Michigan. She was the daughter of George and Ann Geldard Boyes. Margaret Ann was a little girl when the Boyes family accepted the Mormon missionaries. Her mother died on 15 February 1846. In the summer of 1847, George brought his four children to Utah in the Parley P. Pratt Company. In July, while on the journey west, George married Elizabeth Taylor Arrowsmith (a sister of John Taylor). She raised his children, along with the nine children she bore. The company arrived in Salt Lake Valley on 19 September 1847.

The Boyes family lived for two years in the pioneer Salt Lake City. Father Boyes then purchased a forty-acre in Big Cottonwood. There he built a small adobe house -was later used as a granary after a larger home was They were neighbors to the Milo Andrus family. The members of the two families became the best of friends.

Milo and Margaret Ann were married 15 February 1857. Several of their nine children were born at Cottonwood. Later Margaret accompanied Milo to Utah’s Dixie, where he had been asked by Church authorities to go and aid in the establishment of Mormon settlements that would use the economic program known as the United Order. They lived in what later called the Price Ward, in the county thereafter named Washington. This settlement was first given the name Heberville, in honor of President Heber C. Kimball. Its members lived in two small villages, Price and Bloomington, were located on opposite sides of the Rio Virgin River. and Margaret Ann lived there when the United Order was set up in 1877; Milo was the presiding elder of the settlement at that time. In January of 1879, the Price Ward was organized. Robert Gardner, a faithful and dedicated man, was bishop. Margaret Ann, then age thirty-nine, was sustained as the first president of the ward Relief Society. She was an excellent choice, for she was intelligent, gentle, kind, peace-loving, and active in nursing the sick.

Milo and Margaret Ann left Dixie in 1881. At that time, was called to take charge of building a new town at Green River, in Emery County; he was not successful in this assignment, however. Having then returned to Salt Lake Valley, they went to Cache Valley, and finally settled at Oxford, Idaho, in 1884. In Oxford, their sons farmed the land they acquired the area. In 1893, after Milo died, Margaret Ann was engaged for a time in another pioneering venture in Idaho’s Upper Snake River Valley, in a little town called Ora. In this located about twelve miles north of St. Anthony, members her family had been early settlers. Years earlier, Milo, Jr., had married Elizabeth Boyes, a daughter of Margaret Ann’s father and Elizabeth Taylor. Milo, Jr., and Elizabeth resided in a beautiful, large home in Holladay. When Margaret Ann became ill in cold Idaho weather, her son Mansfield, took her to Holladay where she spent her final days. She died in the home of Milo, Jr. on 01 October 1901 at the age of sixty-one. She was buried beside Milo in the Holladay cemetery.

Comments

2 Responses to “Life History of Margaret Ann Boyce”

  1. Jami Reed Mangum on April 5th, 2007 4:14 pm

    Thanks for the email of this website. Let’s see, my mother is the late Shirley Andrus Reed 1/10/86 and married to James Roland Reed 9/21/69. Her parents(temple divorced)are the late Henry Telford Andrus and Leona Howard Andrus. My great grandfather is Manfield Andrus; so therefore that makes me the great great grand daughter of Milo and Margaret Boyce Andrus. I don’t have written genelogy, this is what I was told growing up. I knew my great great great grandparents names were Ruluf and Azuba from somewhere in Vermont area. My mom could never find any other information or where they were from. She told me she thought that Andrus may not have been the orignal family name. She also told me that she was told by her grandfather that Ruluf and Azuba disowned Milo for becoming Mormon. Don’t really know if all these are exactly truth, but I thought I would share anyway. I have 7 children and 8 grandchildren (3 of the children are of Andrus desent and no grandchildren yet!)

  2. Laura Anderson on September 2nd, 2008 1:36 pm

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