- Daughter of Archibald and Margaret Ewen Calender
Married Robert Gardner, 25 May 1800, Falkirk Parish, Barony, Lanark, Scotland
History - Margaret Calinder was born at or near Falkirk, Sterlingshire, Scotland, in January 1777, the daughter of Archibald Calinder and Margaret Ewens. In his diary, her grandson Archibald Gardner wrote:
"My maternal grandfather Archibald Calinder was a strong, healthy man with never an ache or pain. When he was about fifty years old, he went out one morning before breakfast to work a bit in his garden. It was a nice garden with a table and chairs hewn out of rock and surrounded by beech trees. The leaves of the beech remain dried on the trees all winter and are pushed off by the swelling buds in the spring. A wind stirred among them, and as they rattled grandfather leaned on his hoe. Grandmother came to call him to his morning meal and, seeing him in this unusual position, asked him what was the matter. 'I do not know,' he said. 'The breeze that rustled the leaves struck my head and sent a shiver though me.' She started with him to the house about 20 rods away, but before they reached there he was delirious. He died the next day."
Robert Gardner, Sr, was born March 12, 1781, at or near Hilston, Renfrewshire, Scotland. His father was William Gardner, his mother Christine Henderson. His people were strong, healthy people. His father measured six feet two inches in his stocking feet and was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. They were strict living people.
Robert was the youngest of thirteen children. He was bound out to learn the carpenter's trade but evidently did not follow that activity for a livelihood.
In his twentieth year he married Margaret in Glasgow sometime in 1800, when she was 23 years of age. The couple made their first home in Glasgow.
Their first child was Margaret, who died at the age of nine months and nine days of smallpox. The second child named William was born in Glasgow on January 31, 1803. Other children included Christine, born in Glasgow about 1805 who died of the dregs of whooping cough, aged 15 months. Mary was born in Kilsythe, Sterlingshire on June 5,1807. Margaret (the second) was born in Kilsythe on January 10, 1810. She died when about thirteen or fourteen months old which would be in March or April 1811. Janet was born in Kilsythe on July 5, 1812. Archibald was born in Kilsythe, which is twenty miles east of Glasgow on September 2, 1814. The next child was stillborn baby girl. The ninth and last child was born October 12, 1819 in Kilsythe. They named him Robert Jr.
When Margaret and Robert were first married, they kept a grocery store and tavern called the Black Bull Inn. They later moved to the outskirts of Kilstythe on the main road to Edinburgh. Their home was a little rock house across the road from the Garril Oat Mill. Robert rented the mill from Canal Co. who owned it. They also had a farm which netted them a fair profit.
Living out of town, the children's education was limited. In 1818 the family moved into town where Archibald, aged 4, was sent to school and then learned to reach the New Testament. No doubt the other children were given educational advantages, as the father was rated a good scholar. In town they ran a tavern again.
Times were poor, business dull, and people became dissatisfied with the government. The women and children shared in the anxiety as well as the men. What a worry it must have been when Robert was carried to prison along with many others after protests, insurrections, and battles erupted against the government.
Soon jails and castles were crowded with prisoners and many honest folk were carried away who had had no hand in the affair. This was the case with Robert. He was taken away from his business, and Margaret was left to care for the family as well as the tavern. He was incarcerated for nine long weeks in Sterling Castle. He was released when no one appeared to testify against him.
It was this incident that caused Robert to leave Scotland for a land of liberty and justice, the land of America. Taking leave of his wife and three younger children, he set sail for Canada in the spring of 1822. William, now nineteen, and Mary, fourteen, accompanied him.
What a decision to make! What a year of anxiety and worry for Margaret! She received no encouraging reports of how her husband fared in the new land. Nevertheless, she sold out all the remaining possessions and took passage aboard the sailing vessel, "Bucking Horn," bound for Quebec, Canada, in the spring of 1823.
On the way to Glasgow she received the one and only letter from her husband in a year's time. There was no information as to where they were or the direction they had taken after landing. Nothing more was heard until Margaret arrived at Prescott, above Montreal, where her husband was waiting to greet her. She had been five weeks and three days crossing the ocean. What a meeting! Robert had heard that the wives of twenty-five Scotch men were following their husbands to America, and he had walked 72 miles to see if his wife was among them.
They left as soon as possible for their home in the woods. Ten miles were traveled that morning to the home of a family named Grey where William had been employed. It was here Margaret mistook Thomas Reed for her son, when asked by Mrs Grey to pick William out as the farm hands came in for dinner. William, not knowing of their arrival, passed her by. When they found out their mistake, they all burst into tears. William had grown so tall, his Scotch plaids were much the worse for wear, his face sunburned and so changed, she could not tell which was her son.
After dinner they left for Brockville, 20 miles away. William quit his job and went with them. They took turns carrying Archibald, nine, and little Robert, two and a half. Mary had remained at home while the father was away.
Watching and waiting, she heard them approaching. With her little dog Snap, she ran through the woods to meet them, but was so overcome on seeing them, she burst into tears and ran back to the shanty without speaking. Poor little Mary! What heartaches, loneliness and hardship she had borne since she last saw her dear mother and sister and brothers. How they must have thanked their Heavenly Father that they were permitted to be together again in family reunion.
Life in Canada was not easy. In the biography of Robert their hardships are told. Yet I picture Margaret grinding their flour for over a year in a two dollar pepper mill, with the help of the family at times or trying to cook meals when all they had to eat one winter was bitter or winded potatoes and what game they could kill.
I imagine her anguish when Janet, twelve years old, became ill with typhus. Archibald wrote: "She complained for months of pains in her side. She grew worse, sank into unconsciousness and never rallied. The night before her passing, those attending her were pouring cold water from a teakettle onto her head when she said, 'Let me rest. By the middle of the night I will be at the top of the hill.' As she said, at midnight that night in October, 1824, her spirit took its flight.
During all the time she was sick, we could get no flour or meal, but procured a little coarse shorts or fine bran and prepared it the best we could. When we tried to get her to eat some, she said, 'Is that for me? Such stuff!' But she had no other while she lived." What a trial for a mother to bear!
For the next ten years, the family struggled along in Dalhousie. Margaret's eldest son William had married Ann Lackie in January, 1919, at the age of 26.
The fall of 1835, Robert and Margaret decided to move to Warwick, 500 miles farther west to join their sons William and Archibald who had gone the year before to try their fortunes in a more favorable part of Canada. This location was thirty miles east of Port Sarnia and thirty five miles west of New London, near the lower end of Lake Huron. Archibald, now 21 years of age, had procured five hundred acres of timberland at soldier's rights for fifty cents per acre. He gave 100 acres to his brother William, 200 to his father, and kept 200 for himself.
The two brothers had worked very hard the previous summer clearing the land of the heavy hardwood timber and raised enough corn for foodstuffs for the coming winter. The next two years were spent clearing the land and farming. Life was "one of pioneering. With settlements so far away, we had no stores to go to. The clothes which we wore came from the backs of the sheep in our own pastures. After being clipped, the wool was cleaned and carded by the women. The nearest carding machines were from 30 to 50 miles away. The carded wool was spun into yarn on the old spinning wheel and then woven into cloth on hand looms. The wives and mothers made this cloth into clothes for men, women and children in their own kitchens."
The homes in that "locality were build of logs; the better ones hewn, the humbler ones of rough logs. Floors were made of split logs, flat side up. Glass windows were unknown. A little slide was thrown back admitting light when the weather would permit. Doors were of split and hewn logs."
No mills were available, so the people ground their grain in little stones set in the hearth. This condition prompted their son Archibald, not much more than a boy, to undertake building a mill. This he accomplished and later built a saw mill and got along well, having custom for thirty miles around.
And so life went on in Warwick. March 29, 1836, their daughter Mary married George Sweeten, a farmer. Several children were born to the couple, but all died except their daughter Margaret and son Robert. Then Christmas Eve, 1842, George died, leaving his wife Mary a widow with her two children, a great grief for the parents.
Some time in the year 1843, a Latter-day Saint, Elder John Borrowman, preached the gospel to the Gardner family. Son William was the first to be converted, but soon the whole family received baptism, except father Robert. He was baptized after he reached Utah. Margaret his wife "believed the Gospel at once and wholeheartedly. She had belonged to the Methodist Church and had always taught her children faith in God and Jesus Christ and to search the Scriptures. They taught their children to read the Bible, and they devoted much time to it."
William's daughter Jane wrote: "We could repeat all the books of the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and many passages of Scripture besides a good many hymns. When father went away, I was sent to Grandmother Gardner to be cared for. I did not go to school, there was none near where we lived. How I longed to read before I was able to! But I mastered the art while still quite young.
"Grandfather Gardner had a bookcase full of books up in the garret. My brother used to bring them home. One after another was diligently studied. We became the best readers in all the country round."
No long after contacting the new faith, Margaret became very ill. Archibald recorded: "Her life was despaired of. She insisted on being baptized. The neighbors said that if we put her in the water they would have us tried for murder as she would surely die.
Nevertheless, well bundled up, and tucked into a sleigh, we drove her two miles to the place appointed. Here a hole was cut in the ice, and she was baptized in the presence of a crowd of doubters who had come to witness her demise. She was taken home. Her bed was prepared but she said, 'No, I do not need to go to bed. I am quite well.' And she was.
"One man declared that if she did not die the night of her baptism he would become a Mormon next day, but next day she met him near the place where he had made the statement. He looked at her as if he had seen a ghost, nodded but did not speak. She was on her way, afoot, to her daughter's. He never joined the Church."
It was three years after they joined the Church that the family decided to gather with the Saints. On the last day of March 1846, they left Warwick, their destination Nauvoo. It took a month to reach that city, but they found it deserted. The trip across the state of Iowa was slow and trying.
William's children Janet and John both had the measles. Robert Jr's wife Janet gave birth to a baby boy during a terrible stormy night which brought water around the wagons up to the mens' boot tops. Next morning the mother was made as comfortable as possible, and the Canadian Company moved on. This was in Lee County in Iowa, May 22, 1846.
By September they reached Winter Quarters where they spent the winter. The season was long and bleak and bitter. They suffered cold and hunger, and most of them were sick. Son William was worst of all. He came near dying. Because of the assistance given to wives of those who had gone with the Mormon Battalion, they did not get into their own houses until New Year's. It was a winter of much sickness.
Margaret's son Archie was the only one of the family who was not confined to bed. Two of her granddaughters, William's daughter Janet and Robert's daughter Janet, both died and were buried in Winter Quarters about October 10, 1846. There was so much sickness at that time that the care of the living left no time for mourning for the dead. But when general health returned, they grieved for the loss of their dear ones and have never ceased to grieve for them.
In the spring of 1847, the Gardner clan prepared to start for the mountains. One of the houses, a good log one, which had been lived in only for three months and had cost about a hundred dollars was traded for a gun valued at 10 dollars. Many other similar sacrifices had to be made. They left Winter Quarters the 21st of June in Bishop Hunter's company of one hundred wagons.
About twenty miles west of Winter Quarters, son Robert's oldest little boy, five and a half years of age, was knocked under the wheel of a wagon. "Both nigh wheels ran over his bowels. He was tenderly cared for for 500 miles, through dust and wind, over rough roads or smooth, before death mercifully ended all. He was buried on the bank of the Platte River."
On Friday October 1, 1847, the second company to reach the valley arrived. "Twenty four Gardners had left Canada in the spring of 1846. Three died and one was born during the journey to the West, making 22 who arrived in Great Salt Lake valley that October."
They camped in their wagons the first winter at the Warm Springs. The morning of Oct 6, another granddaughter was added to the family. Archie's wife Margaret gave birth to a baby in the Old Fort. She had driven the horse team all the way across the plains, through rivers and deep canyons and over the Big Mountain. They said at the finish: "Notwithstanding all we had passed through, the hand of the Lord was over us, and we arrived safely at our destination."
In the spring of 1848, the family moved and settled at Mill Creek, southeast of the Old Fort. Margaret's two sons Archibald and Robert erected a sawmill on that Creek. Later two other sawmills and two shingle mills were built by them with the help of others. Margaret must have been very proud of the achievements of her husband and sons and the good homes they built together.
Among their neighbors who settled at various points on Mill Creek and Big Cottonwood Creeks were a number of their old Canadian friends. John Borrowman, the man who carried the Gospel to them in Canada also located there, as well as Mary Fielding Smith and Apostle Joseph F. Smith, and John Smith, Patriarch, and others.
The year 1848 the bread stuff, mostly corn, had to be rationed and weighed to make it last until harvest. Margaret saw the darkest days when the crickets swarmed down from the mountains and devoured the crops. She saw the miracle of the seagulls which were sent by God to destroy the pests. Ensuing years saw pests of locusts and grasshoppers that made times hard, but never was there a season so serious as the summer of 1848 when the crickets came.
Seven years later, on November 2l, 1855, Margaret was called upon to part with her beloved husband, Robert Gardner Sr. He died at Mill Creek, leaving her to live alone in her little log house on the hill. She was now 79 years of age.
Two years later great grandmother attended the tenth anniversary celebration in Big Cottonwood on July 24, 1857. All the Gardners attended except two. This was an important occasion. Headed by President Brigham Young, a company of 2587 people were conveyed there in 464 carriages and wagons drawn by 228 horses and mules and 332 oxen and cows. It is a steep rugged canyon quite a few miles up. Entertainment consisted of musical numbers from six brass bands, singing, programs, athletic contests, and drills by six companies of militia. Dancing was punctuated by a salute from a brass howitzer. During that time word came that the U.S. government had troops on the way to exterminate the Mormons. That ended the celebration.
Johnston's army came to Utah in 1858. The Gardner clan left all their possessions, joined the migration, and moved south to Spanish Fork. Margaret was among them. Later when the trouble with the government had been adjusted, the people returned to their former homes. Son Robert and family went back to Mill Creek, his mother with them. Margaret, now 81 years of age, made her home with her son's first wife Jane.
Four years later on April 28, 1862, the faithful saint and devoted mother of William, Mary, Archibald, and Robert died at the age of 85 at Mill Creek and was buried beside her beloved husband in the Salt Lake Cemetery.
Her daughter Mary, who had as a girl of fifteen left her native Scotland and accompanied her father into the rugged wilderness, fell a victim of the migration to Spanish Fork, and weary and worn, died in the same year, aged 51. She lies buried in the Upper Grave Yard, restored and rededicated by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers of Spanish Fork.
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1777 - 1862 (~ 85 years)
