Pipkin Family Association

Mary Lafentie Pipkin, 1869-1909


Mary Lafentie is our connection to the Pipkin family. She had a Pipkin father and a Pipkin mother. This remarkable woman began her life in the settled, mannered, civilized South. She spent most of her adult life pioneering in the raw West. She befriended Indians, cowboys, and children who needed help. She brought music and social life to an otherwise empty area. She started a large family of honest, true, citizens. She mothered others who needed her help at special times. Those who follow her love and sustain each other to this day from her example.

Our Mary Lafentie died seventeen years before my birth. Her life was detailed before our family by my father, who adored her. Her character, especially her faith in the Savior, were impressed upon us from childhood.

The short story of her life I add here will be primarily taken from her life story as written by Paris I. Ashcroft. I would place his entire story here, but some facts which were not available to him are now before us.

The story of Paris Pipkin meeting Nancy Julia has been previously told. They were married in Hickory Plains, Arkansas in 1863 and left almost immediately for Missouri.

Mary Lafentie Pipkin was born November 7, 1869 at Steelville, Crawford Co., Missouri. She was the third child born of this marriage. At the time of her birth, her father, Paris Pipkin, was County Attorney of Crawford County. Paris had recovered somewhat from the effects of the Civil War and had happy prospects.

Paris wrote his daughter, Mattie, on April 10, 1870 that he had "consumption" and didn't expect to live long. He passed away on 12 May, 1870 at Steelville, Mo. Mary Lafentie was just six months old. Trajedy had just begun for this family. Mary Lafenties brother Paris died on 27 May and her sister Lottie (Lillie?) Morris died on 20 June of that same year. Nancy Julia took Mary Lafentie and moved back to Hickory Plains to live again with Aser Pipkin. They arrived in Arkansas shortly after August, 1870.

Over thirty years of history of Pipkin's is in Hickory Plains. I always wondered about the place. About ten years ago we passed through Hickory Plains. Still a rural farming area with black rich soil and the capability of growing many crops. This is beautiful farming country.

Nancy Julia married "Judge" William Louis Kirk of Hickory Plains on 24 December, 1873. Mary Lafentie became a step sister to four Kirk children by a previous marriage. Two girls, Lelia and Minnie, and a boy, Louis Ambrose came to grace this home. The boy Louis was born a month after the father's death on December 13, 1879.

Mary Lafentie's grandfather Aser and family had joined the LDS Church in 1876, and had left almost immediately for the West by ox teams. Nancy Julia had contact with the LDS Church since 1876, however, she did not join until 1 February, 1882 in Hickory Plains. She was taught by Elders James H. Wells and Elder Harden. Mary LaFentie was old enough but did not accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ at this time.

Shortly after this baptism, Nancy Julia took Mary Lafentie, the three Kirk children, and her widowed sister Margaret, and traveled by train to Sunset, Arizona where Aser Pipkin was living. Mary Lafentie was now thirteen years old. I'm sure she enjoyed that train ride to the wild West. In a copy of the old Fort Sunset layout, I note that the Pipkin quarters were just across the corner of the Fort from the Bloomfield-Ashcroft home. This is where my grandparents became aquainted.

Sunset was a "Mormon" settlement on the lower Little Colorado river. The settlers lived under what was called the United Order. They donated all their property to the common fund when entering. They ate at a common table and shared reponsibility for the work to be done. My father Paris Ashcroft stated "People have been misinformed to quite an extent, and have called the United Order at Sunset a failure, but the Order was only established for mutual protection from outlaws and Indians etc, until permanent settlements could be located and made. The venture was ultimately profitable, as the flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and horses increased rapidly." They also had a good manager in autocratic Lot Smith.

Soon after the Nancy Julia family arrived in Sunset, Nancy met Ira Hatch, a stalwart mormon pioneer, who was a widower with four children at home. Mary Lafentie joined the families as a trip was made to George, Utah, where Nancy Julia and Ira were united in Eternal Marriage in the holy Temple. We know that Mary Lafentie was baptized in the LDS church in May 1882 by Israel Call and confirmed a member by Ira Hatch. I believe this was done at Sunset before the trip. In other records we find that the young woman who was to later share Mary Lafentie's husband was baptized at Sunset and it was done by Israel Call. A Call home is located in the Fort.

Shortly after returning to Sunset from St. George, the Hatch family was called to settle in New Mexico at what is now Ramah. They moved there in the fall of 1882. In my Fathers words as we pick up his story......

Lafentie (Mother, I shall cell her) was thirteen years of age or nearly that when they moved to Ramah. Ramah is a beautiful little Mormon settle- ment near the head waters of the Zuna River some twenty miles east of the Zuni Village and near the Zuni Mountains. The elevation is something over 6,000 feet. It is a natural livestock country.

As soon as the settlers landed at Ramah, a council was held and a town site was laid out with streets running at right angles and a public square for a church and school. The Hatches must have landed there before the town had been laid out, as the letters I have, and other date show that the Hatches first home near Ramah was about a mile north and East of the town, near where the reservoir is now located. It was at the mouth of what is called Pasture Hollow.

The Hatch family soon moved to a ranch some four or five miles east of Ramah near a ranch that Aser Pipkin had located and taken up. However, they moved back to Ramah so they could get the benefit of the Church and school. Ramah is outside the Navajo Reservation and just about three miles from the Zuni Reservation, but hundreds of Navajo Indians are settled on all sides of Ramah.

It is really Navajo country. No doubt Ira Hatch was called there to help settle the country because of his long experience as an Indian Missionary. Ira was truly a peacemaker among the Indians. From what mother told me, dozens of Indians seemed to gather at the Hatch home most all the time. Nearly all the family learned to speak the Navaho language and mother could speak it very well.

Note: It might be of interest to some if I told a short story about an Indian chief trying to get mother to marry him when she was a girl in her teens.

Jose Pino (the chief) was very friendly to the Hatch people and a very frequent visitor. He decided to ask Ira Hatch for mother (Mary Lafenttie) to be his wife. He had several wives already, but that was the custom. It was also their custom to make this proposal directly through the parents of the girl, instead of making the proposal to the object of their affection.

Ira Hatch told Jose Pino that it wasn't our custom to sell our girls or make a deal of this kind, but that if he could get the girl's consent that was the white mans way. Ira knew Mary Lafentie would not consent to any such deal.

At this time mother was keeping company with my father, Josiah Emer Ashcroft, although both of them were quite young. The chief didn't waste much time in asking mother to marry him. He said he would give her lots of jewelry and nice clothes. He would give her lots of sheep and horses and she would be looked up to by all the other wives and other Indians. Of course Mother answered and told him she appreciated his friendship, but that she already had a sweetheart and would have to refuse the offer of the great chief.

Jose Pine did not take this refusal with any degree of relish. He left quite angry. Mother thought this would end the matter. One day at the ranch, Mother was alone, the family had all gone somewhere for a short while. Jose Pino must have known Mother was alone, because be came to the house dressed in his finest clothes. He told Mother he had come again to ask her to marry him, that he was not used to having women refuse him, and would she have him without waiting any longer.

She told him again that she already had her lover and had promised to marry him, and for him to go away now and not bother her any more, as she had made up her mind. He jumped and grabbed Mother and told her he would kill her unless she consented to marry him. He forced her to sit in a chair and held her heed over the back of it with his left hand. Taking his hunting knife in his right hand, told her if she still refused he would cut her throat. Mother was very frightened, but she still refused. She knew she could not show fear. She looked him square in the eye and said "go ahead and kill me if you dare, I am not afraid of you and would rather die than consent to be your wife. If you kill me, my young man will know it and will hunt you down and kill you as he would a dog. Now go ahead if you dare." This bravery of Mothers was too much for Jose and he released her saving "I can not kill you, you are too brave a squaw to be killed. I am sorry I acted this way. I'll bother you no more."

He made good his word. He still was very friendly to the family and in a few years was converted to the LDS Church and was baptized. To the day of his death he was alawys friendly to our family. I might add here that many times he came to our home and many times he carried me on his back to his camp or 'hogan' and I have spent days at their 'hogan' playing with his boys and staying with them at night. One of his boys who was my age and we grew up just like brothers. He learned to speak English and I did pretty well talking the Navajo language.

It did not take the Ramah settlers long to have a thriving little community. A reservoir was soon built so they could irrigate farms and gardens. A sawmill was set up and lumber provided to put floors in their houses and sheeting for roofs. Shingles were cut for covering roofs instead of dirt. In four or five years time nearly every family had quite a comfortable home with barns and corrals.

Mary Lafentie and Josiah Emer Ashcrofft were married May 6, 1885. They made the long trip by team and wagon to St. George, Utah some five or six hundred miles distant. It was important for this couple to be married for Eternity in a Temple of the Lord, six hundred miles each way by team and wagon was not too high a price to pay. Another couple, Jim Hatch and Bertha Nielson made the trip with them and were married in the Temple at the same time. It was a long hard trip, but a happy honeymoon for these couples.

Josiah Emer and Mary Lafentie came back to Ramah and probably lived in the John Bloomfield home. The Bloomfields had moved to Mexico and Josiah purchased their home.

Mary Lafentie was active in church and community affairs. At a meeting of the Church dated Aug. 10, 1890, she was sustained as a Sunday school teacher. At a still earlier date she is mentioned as being sustained in the Presidency of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Assoc. At the August 10, 1890 meeting, she reported the condtion of the Young Womens Association. She was sustained 1st Counselor in the Primary on Jan. 9, 1898. On Jan. 8, 1899, Mary Lafentie was sustained president of the Primary and reported the condition of the Primary at that meeting. On Oct. 19, 1902, she again reported the condition of the Primary organization. She must have served in that organization several years.

Mary Lafentie seemed to have unbounded energy. She came from a very athletic family. She was a small person, only weighing 98 pounds at marriage. She never weighted over 120 pounds. Her eyes were a deep blue, her complexion very white and fair, her hair was a very beautiful dark brown. In the words of her son Paris, "She might not be called the most beautiful, but had poise and intelligence that made her very outstanding. She had a very beautiful form. No one could ever forget her after having known her."

She was kind to everybody and was lovingly celled "Aunt Finta". She, especially loved children, and nearly every week the children of the community would gather in her home, usually Thursday evening, where she would lead them in games, then in songs and wind up the evening by reading or telling them a beautiful story. Usually at these parties she would serve popcorn or cookies. At these occasions she taught the children how to read music, how to sing and play musical instruments.

Mary Lafentie had a continual urge for education. She made the sacrafice herself to get a little better education than most people could obtain in those early days. After she had two children, she went by team and wagon a distance of eighty miles to go to the Academy at St. Johns, Arizona. She went to school there for two winters, taking her babies and leaving her husband at his work. One of the winters was spent in St. Johns after the birth of her third child, Paris.

Again from Paris Ashcroft records, "As I look back over past years, I do not see how mother found time to do all the things she seemed to get done. Father worked away from home most of the time, so mother at times managed the farm and cattle. We would raise a very large garden and she would put away lots of it for winter. In the summer time we would milk around twenty cows, and mother would make hundreds of large cheese, and put up gallons of butter. The butter would be salted down in huge crock jars. Meat was cured in large barrels of salt brine. She managed to make about fifty gallons of sauerkraut each fall. Each October she would sell tons and tons of cabbage. These were hauled to Gallup, New Mexico and sold to the people who worked in the coal mines. With this money, the clothing needed for the family, the flour and other staples could be purchased in quantity to last a year."

In the winter, mother would get wool from the Indians, wash and card it, and spin it into yarn. It was then dyed and knit into clothing. I do not remember Mother going to bed before eleven or twelve in the evening.

Continuing Fathers Story, "Of all the faithful fine people I have known in my life, I don't think I have ever known anyone with more faith than Mother. Each Sabbath day she would take all her children to Sunday School and Church with her. She taught us how to pray. Each morning and evening the family kneeled together in family prayer. Before we ate any meal a prayer of thanks for the good was given. Nearly every evening, we gathered together and sang hymns. Some way, even in that pioneer country, she managed to get an organ. We had the violin and guitar. Mother took only thirteen music lessons as a girl, but she became a wonderful musician. She composed many pieces of music.

I mentioned Mother having great faith. I will tell a short story to illustrate: Father had been called as a missionary for the Church and was in Colorado. The snow had fallen deep in the winter of 1904. That next spring in 1905, rains came in great abundance. When the weather got warm, rains on top of the snow pack brought down large sheets of water. The dam on the reservoir washed out. It was a hard blow to the settlers, as they had experienced a long period of drought. It looked as though we could raise no crops at all. Most of the men decided not to plant. Not so with Mother, she went ahead just as if we had all the water we needed.

After the garden and fields were planted, she gathered all her family together and took us down to the field. We all knelt in a circle, holding hands, then Mother led in prayer. I have never heard such a prayer before or since. She talked to the Lord just as she would a person face to face.

She told him of our condition; that our Father was out as one of his missioraries, that we didn't have him to depend on, and that we would need to send him money each month for his support. Also that we as a family had to live and eat. She said among other things that we would live as righteously as we knew how, and that we had done all we could toward a crop.

We had plowed and harrowed and cultivated and planted, even though we had no water in the reservoir. We had done all this on faith that God would come to our rescue. Now that we had done our full part, would He, Our Heavenly Father, hear and answer our prayer. She then dedicated our lives and all we had, and the seeds we had planted to whatever the Lord wanted us to do. After the prayer, she told us not to worry anymore, that God had heard our prayer, and would send the rain.

I will never forget that prayer, nor that sweet experience. It seemed to lift me right out of this world into some bodily experience or spiritual place that is not common to mortals. I asked my brother Rulon if he had seen any heavenly beings. He said no, but he had opened his eyes once to see, as Mother seemed to be speaking directly to someone present, I told him I had done the same thing.

What became of the seeds we planted? The rains did come and we raised a bumper crop. I just wanted you decendents of Mary Lafentie to know a little more about her great faith. She was not born in the Church. Her people back in the States turned their backs on those who joined. If she ever had a doubt regarding what she had accepted, she never showed it.

She accepted the truth that God is a personal being, that He is our Heavenly Father, and that He loves all His children. That Jesus Christ was the Son of God in the spirit world before He came here on the earth, and that He was the Only Begotten of the Father here in the flesh. That Christ was resurrected from the grave and became an Immortal Being. She knew that through faith and prayer she could get in touch with this Heavenly power and receive any deserved blessing. There was no wavering or question in her mind. May I state as a grandson that these beliefs of Mary Lafentie have been dutifully and fully transnitted to you through the voice of our Father Paris and that we treasure them as our most precious possession.

In the early days of the LDS church the principle of plural wifes was given to the Prophet Joseph Smith by revelation. For the next sixty years a small percentage of the church members lived this principle.

Josiah Emer Ashcroft married as a plural wife, Aunt Agnes Nielsen in 1889. As with other marriages in this family, the long trip was made to St George Utah. On July 4, 1907, Aunt Agnes Ashcroft passed away leaving four living children; Agnes Albertha, Olive Myrtle, Lafentie, and Emer LeRoy. Josiah was serving in the mission field at the time. He came home for a week and arranged for these wonderful children to be taken into Mary Lafentie's home and raised and loved just like her own. At this time Mary Lafentie had seven children of her own. Her eight child, Lanora, was born just a little over a month after she had taken the four into her home.

Shortly after Josiah Emer returned from his mission he was called as Bishop of the Ramah Ward in the LDS Church. This responsibility of her husband placed more demands on Mary Lafentie. In the summer of 1908, a typhoid epidemic broke out in Ramah which took several lives. Among those stricken with the disease were three children in her family; Emer, Paris, and Bertha. The typoid caused Emer's death. You can imagine the sorrow of this little mother when her oldest, promising, handsome son was taken in death just as he was preparing for marriage.

Mary Lafentie was never very well after the long hard spell of sickness in 1908. She had a premonition that she would not live much longer. A quote from the Paris Ashcroft story, "Just a few months before her twins were born, she came down to the Zuni Village in a carriage. I was working there in a trading store. She told me she had come to have a good talk with me, and for me to believe and understand her; that she would not live after the baby came. She told me many other things which would happen, at that time, and that this should be a matter just between her and myself. I made her a few promises at that time which I have tried to keep. I tried hard to make her think that perhaps she had just dreamed these things and was a little worried and upset."

Twins were born to Mary Lafentie on Sept. 12 and 13, 1909. Walter was born on the 12th and Wallace on the 13th. The strain of that long labor and blood loss was too much. All the family available were called home. My Father, Paris, arrived home a few minutes before her death and was able to receive a smile. Uncle Rulon was away driving cattle end arrived too late to see her.

Living children of Mary Lafentie who survived her are:

Joseph Rulon - born 9 March 1889
Paris Ira - born 1 June 1891
Ida - born 22 May 1894
James Wilford - born 20 June 1897
Minnie - born 20 Feb. 1901
Lelia - born 7 March 1904
Lenora - born 31 Aug. 1907
Walter - born 12 Sept 1909
Wallace - born 13 Sept 1909

Preceeding her in death was:

Henry Emer - born 19 Aug. 1886

Again quoting her son Paris, "This ends the short story of one of the finest women that ever lived. She had only lived forty years as far as time is measured, but had accomplished more than most people could who had lived a hundred. She lived beautifully and she died beautifully. She did her part in life nobly and well. Her lot in life was hard at times, but never a murmur came from her lips. All who knew her love and respect her. Whoever came in contact with her was made a better person."

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