JAMES McCLELLAN (son of Hugh McClellan and Polly McCall) was born in 1804, the second of 8 children. He was born in South Carolina, but moved with the family to Tennessee when he was about 3. He lived there until after his marriage to CYNTHIA STEWART and the birth of 4 of their children. Then in 1836 the family moved to Shelby Co., Illinois, another wilderness frontier. It was here in 1839 that missionaries from the LDS Church made contact with the McClellans. Not only James' family, but also his parents Hugh and Polly, accepted the teachings and were baptized by Dominicus Carter, missionary. By 1841 both couples had packed up their belongings and joined the Saints in Nauvoo.
Their home in Nauvoo was located not far from the Mansion House where Joseph and Emma Smith lived. Consequently, they saw the Smiths occasionally as Joseph and Emma passed by in their carriage on the way to their farm. They also lived within a half mile or so of the temple block, where both James and his father spent many hours working on the construction of the temple.
When mob violence in Nauvoo increased, James was one of the men who stood guard at night. His daughter records that she remembers him coming home from his shift and making bullets by the fireplace. When the prophet was murdered James and his son, William Carroll, were out working in the field hoeing com. William records, "Suddenly the leaves on the corn drooped as if they had been in a blast of extreme heat. The leaves on the trees wilted and hung as if in deepest sorrow. Father looked at me and said, 'Will, something has happened to the prophet." They later learned that it was at that exact time that the prophet had been killed. It was faith promoting to Will to think that even the plants were close enough to the prophet to mourn the passing of his spirit.
The following year when part of the temple was completed both James and Cynthia and Hugh and Polly went there to do ordinance work. Finally on June 6, 1846, the McClellans left Nauvoo along with the general exodus. They arrived at Kanesville (Council Bluffs) on July 14th or 15th. At the camp was an army officer recruiting for the Mexican War. At the encouragement of Church leaders some 500 men enlisted, among them was 18 year old William Carroll. James remained at Kanesville to care for three families whose heads of household would be gone.
It wasn't until four years later in June of 1850 that the McClellans finally made the trek to Salt Lake Valley. They traveled in the 6th Company presided over by Pres. Joseph Young with William Snow as the Captain over 100 and James as Captain over 50. In his group there were 11 persons, 3 wagons and 18 cattle.
Only 70 miles out of Kanesville there was an outbreak of cholera which took a number of lives, including that of two year old Jimmie, William's baby brother. The following month his mother Cynthia gave birth to their 11th child. Possibly due to the stress and grief of having just lost a child, she was unable to nurse the baby. So her daughter-in-law, Almeda, who also had a young baby of her own, nursed not only these two children but also her step-brother.
They arrived in the valley Oct 1, 1850. They lived in a stable the first winter and then in response to a Church call the family settled in Payson. James set up a blacksmith shop and had a stock farm. Indians were troublesome, which eventually resulted in a war in which the McClellans survived some harrowing experiences.
James became a polygamist in 1858, marrying a widow, Ann Shaw Mattinson. But the marriage was dissolved within a few months. Cynthia died in 1862 at 52 years of age, and then in 1864 James married Lydia Knight, widow of Newell Knight. He was called on a colonizing mission to Beaver Dams in Arizona when 62 years old. It only lasted a short time due to floods so then he and Lydia moved to Santa Clara, Utah, where they had friends and relatives. James lived there most of the rest of his life except for about 6 months when he served on a proselyting mission, primarily in Texas. In his last years he became a polygamist again when he married a Swiss immigrant named Mary Gabler. James with his two wives, Lydia and Mary, spent much of their time at the St. George Temple doing ordinance work.
James held the office of Seventy in Nauvoo, was made a High Priest, a Bishop and a Member of the High Council in Kanesville. Later in Payson he also served as a Bishop.
CYNTHIA STEWART joined the church along with her husband in 1839. About the same time Cynthia's mother, ANNE WALLACE and her stepfather, James McCall, also joined as well as her two sisters and one brother. (Her father Samuel Stewart had died in the War of 1812). In 1848 Anne died at the age of 61, probably at or near Kanesville. HUGH MCCLELLAN and MARY ANN (POLLY) MCCALL were the parents of James McClellan. They accepted the gospel at the same time as James and Cynthia while living in Shelby Co., Ill. in 1839. They were both in their 60s by then. When James' family moved to Nauvoo the next year, they also went, bringing with them their youngest daughter, Mary Ann, who apparently was afflicted with some kind of mental or physical disability. She lived with them in Nauvoo and died there at the age of 28.
Hugh, although getting on in years, was a blacksmith and farmer by trade. He and Polly lived near their son, James, in Nauvoo and spent many hours with him helping to complete the temple, where they also had the opportunity to do ordinance work before the exodus. When all the Saints were expelled from Nauvoo Hugh and Polly were in their seventies. With the help of their grandson, William, they endured the 150 mile wagon trip across Iowa to Winter Quarters. Although some 300 died there that first winter, both Hugh and Polly survived, but then Hugh died the next summer of old age and a month later Polly also died, having been bitten by a snake while gathering eggs from a hen's nest.
WILLIAM CARROLL , the oldest son of James and Cynthia McClellan, was born in Tennessee. He was only twelve when his parents joined the church in 1839 in Shelby, Ill. Records show that he was baptized in 1840 and the following year moved with his parents and grandparents to Nauvoo. He was friends with the Prophet's son, Joseph, and spent a lot of time playing with him. As he got older he became skilled at rafting and ferrying others across the Missouri River, a skill that was put to much use during the exodus.
After escorting his grandparents to Winter Quarters, being eighteen, he enlisted in the Mormon Battalion, Company E: the same company that Henry Standage was a member of. Over the next year as part of that company he traveled by foot through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and back to Iowa. He records that during part of this time he traveled with a detachment of sick, all of them suffering, and four of whom died, from untold hardships, being half-starved, half clad. After a year's time, he finally returned to his family in Council Bluffs, where he was sad to learn that his grandparents had died shortly before his return.
He spent the next two years working in Missouri and Iowa to raise money. And then at the age of 21 in 1849, there in Council Bluffs, he married ALMEDA DAY , who was 17. The following year they had their first child and just 5 weeks later they joined the William Snow Co. along with his father's family and members of Almeda's family on the historic trek to Salt Lake Valley.
Like his father's family, William also settled early on in Payson, remaining there for 26 years. During these years they had 11 more children, William was involved in both civic and church responsibilities, as well as farming, carpentry and millwright work. His military background qualified him to be Colonel of the Second Brigade of the Nauvoo Legion during the Indian uprisings. In 1873 William entered into plural marriage with his marriage to Elsie Jane Richardson, twenty years his junior, at the Endowment House. She had previously worked in the McClellan home, helping with the children and household chores. When they married Almeda accompanied them and placed her hand in his. She later stated, "I never regretted the fact that they were married and I told Elsie so." Over the next 20 years eight children were born to William and Elsie. In 1877 he accepted a mission call to practice the United Order in northern Arizona. He faithfully entered the Order and practiced it until 1881 at which time he became so completely disillusioned with it, that he asked to be released from it. Following a brief period in Pleasanton, Arizona, where he was a bishop, the family was obliged to move to Mexico to avoid his being arrested for his involvement in polygamy. This was the beginning of approximately 30 years of struggling to survive in yet another frontier. William died in 1916 at the age of 88 and is buried in Colonia Juarez, Mexico. Almeda lived until 1933, dying at the age of 101 and is buried in Salt Lake City cemetery by her father, Hugh Day.
HUGH DAY AND RHODA ANN NICHOLS were the parents of Almeda. In 1836 when Almeda was five years old her father joined the church in Bastard, Leeds, Canada. The family moved the following year to the state of New York, where they lived with an uncle who was also a member of the church.. Before their baptism Hugh had been a Baptist and Rhoda Ann a Methodist. Since there were not enough Latter-day Saints in the area to hold church services, Almeda attended the Methodist church. When she was twelve years old, in 1843, the family moved to Wisconsin to live with her grandparents, Sheldon and Susannah Chipman Nichols Her mother had been wanting to go to Nauvoo to see the Prophet and took his death in June, 1844, very hard. That fall the family finally made it to Nauvoo, only to have Rhoda Ann die the following month after childbirth at the age of 31. The infant had died the previous day, leaving her father with 3 children, Almeda the oldest at age 14. Almeda attended her first LDS church services in Nauvoo. Although only 14, being a skillful seamstress, she was allowed to help make temple clothing.
After the death of her mother, the family moved out of Nauvoo proper and lived on a farm with her mother's cousin. The next spring, Mar. 1845, they moved in with Almeda's uncle near Montrose, Iowa. By Sept. the Day family moved to Little Pigeon Creek, Iowa, about 7 miles from Council Bluffs. Almeda's father married the widow Susannah Judd Boyce that fall in Florence, Nebraska and then they moved back to the farm in Iowa in 1847. It was while living in this area that Almeda met and was wooed and wed in 1849 by William McClellan.
From our Family Records Data we know that several members of the NICHOLS family resided in Upper Canada when they joined the church: SUSANNAH CHIPMAN NICHOLS, the mother, was baptized in 1836 at 44 years of age; her daughter, Rhoda Ann, (who had married Hugh Day in 1830) was baptized in 1838 when she was 25; also, Susannah's son Alvin was baptized in Canada in 1834 by Lyman Stoddard. Our records indicate that the father, SHELDON NICHOLS , was baptized Apr. 11, 1872, in Utah (apparently by proxy since he died in 1871) on the same day Susannah took out her endowments in the Endowment House. With no information showing that he joined the church at an earlier time, we are left to assume that he must have traveled with the rest of the family without ever joining the church. We know that his son, Alvin, crossed the plains in 1852 and perhaps that is when he and Susannah came as well. Both Alvin and his parents settled in Brigham City, Utah, where their son was a bishop from 1857-1876. Since Sheldon died in Brigham City in 1871, might we suppose that it was probably Alvin who did the temple work for his father? This is all speculation and needs to be researched further.