History of Lucy Loomis (From “The Life and Wives of Milo Andrus”)
“The Life and Wives of Milo Andrus” is a readers’ theater play researched and written by Laura Anderson and DeLane Andrus Hyer in 2007. In the play, the histories of Milo and his wives are presented in first person. This is the part of the play about Lucy Loomis. Go here to read the entire play.
MILO JR.:
This is Lucy Loomis Tuttle. She was the third wife of my father, Milo Andrus. Her story begins with her first husband, Hubbard Tuttle.
LUCY LOOMIS:
I was born in 1822, and married Hubbard Tuttle in 1843; we joined the LDS church in 1844. I thought the saints were going to California, and so I packed all my choicest things and sent them with Sam Brannan on the Ship, Brooklyn. This was a mistake, as I never saw my things again. We stayed in Winters Quarters before traveling to Utah in 1847. While crossing the plains I suffered from black scurvy, a most debilitating form of malnutrition.
While on a “Gold Mission” to California, my husband died of cholera morbis, leaving me with 3 young children. I then married Milo Andrus in 1851. We had five children together. Milo was asked to serve in many capacities for the church; one of these was to help set up a staging area to send wagon trains to Utah. In the spring of 1854 he traveled back to Saint Louis where he was made Stake President on the 22 of November. In 1855 he helped to develop Mormon Grove as the new staging area, in a place called Atchinson, Kansas, 500 miles north of Saint Louis (see footnote 1). After watching Milo, one reporter wrote that “Elder Milo Andrus is still here; he seems to be endowed with superhuman strength of body and mind, and waded into the business with a will; he does more business than any man in or around Atchinson” (see footnote 2).
Milo often had a hard time convincing the pioneers to leave their junk behind, he wrote, “…tons of useless things—that are not worth picking up in the streets, are brought to this country, freight paid on them, the lives of men worn out by lifting them from place to place, only to be thrown away on the frontiers” (see footnote 3). “The men and women cling to me; they cannot consent to leave one of their …old stockings behind them; I consequently proclaimed a wedding, and engaged to marry them to all their old boxes and tin pans!” (see footnote 4). He was only in the East about a year when he was called on short notice to travel back to Utah.
We made plans to build a half-way house for travelers to rest at between Salt Lake City and Provo. And then a call came to serve another mission to England. While Milo was on his second mission to England from the year 1859 to 1861, I built the half-way house in Crescent—just a few miles north of the Point of the Mountain. Later, when the rail road passed our hotel by, removing the need for a half-way house, I moved our inn to Spanish Fork which was the end of the new rail line; thus, building the Spanish Fork House— the first hotel there.
After my death, a ridiculous rumor was spread that Milo had asked Orrin Porter Rockwell to kill me. However, I did not die in such an infamous way; but instead, in a more embarrassing manner, when I was killed by my buggy, which overturned on me. In fact, instead of cruelty, Milo had shown me compassion and understanding for the loss of my first husband, Hubbard Tuttle, when he stood proxy so that I could be sealed to my first love.
Footnotes
- “The Point of Outfit for Our Spring Emigration,” St Louis Luminary. 31 March, 1833, 74.
(http://www.rulufandazuba.org/original_docs/18550320-describing_mormon_grove.pdf) - “From Our Kansas Correspondent,” The Mormon, 28 July 1855, 3.
(http://www.rulufandazuba.org/original_docs/18550708-milo_superhuman.pdf) - Foreign Correspondence. The Millennial Star. Written Feb 25, 1855.
( http://www.rulufandazuba.org/original_docs/18550225-milos_duties_during_migration.pdf) - Published in the St. Louis Luminary May 5th 1855.
(http://www.rulufandazuba.org/original_docs/18550424-wedding_)
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