Alicia Kay Burk - Linda Kay Flake - Horace Henry Flake - Osmer Dennis Flake - William Jordan Flake
William Jordan Flake, the oldest son of James Madison and Agnes Love Flake,
was born in Anson County, N.C., July 3, 1839, and now past the age of 82, lives
at Snowflake, Arizona. Although only three years old when the journey was made,
he has not forgotten the old time "Schooner" and the two mares and a
horse which drew it when they left Anson County and settled on a small branch
of the Tom Bigbee River in Kemper county, Mississippi. There his parents having
embraced the faith of the Latter-Day Saints, or "Mormon" as often
designated by others, they preferred to move to Nauvoo, where they could mingle
with those of their religion. There he saw his first temple, was taken to the
top where he could see all over the surrounding country. It was beautiful sight.
Here he first learned how quickly powder burns, when he took some in his
hands from his father’s powder keg, and threw it in the fire. The flash so
burned his face that all the skin came off and for months he had to wear over
it a black cloth, with holes cut in it to see through. Mobs often in that day
came and looted Nauvoo and when he saw them on the street he would run and
hide. He saw the people driven from Nauvoo and he shared in the exodus. The
trip across the frontier was slow and full of tribulation. A youth of but 8
years, he walked the entire distance to Utah. First to Council Bluff for winter
quarters. Here he received his first schooling of two months. Then on to Salt
Lake. With three other small boys and a negro girl, he drove cattle from Nauvoo,
Ill., to Salt Lake, Utah. The plains were then covered with the buffalo and he
saw many thousand of them. Again in 1851, he went with his mother to California
and he was put behind the cows with an Indian pony his mother had bought for
him. This pony carried him the most of the way but was too poor to ride all the
time. At one time on this journey they were five days and nights on the desert
without water for the stock and very little for themselves. When at length he
reached a small, bitter seepage, he drank three cans of water and was reaching
for the fourth, when a man caught him and took the can from him. He wasn’t too
strong and he was then allowed to eat, after which he was allowed to have more
water. This no doubt saved his life. His first stop was in Cahoon Pass, near
San Bernardino, where he was able to get another month of schooling.
While driving cows up the Mojave River, one got away out in the brush and as
he went out to drive her back into the herd, an arrow whizzed by him and hit
the cow, a trick of the Indians to kill the cow and have a feast. His youthful
days were busy ones in assisting and helping his widowed mother. He did quite a
bit of freighting, helped to build a home, worked on the roads and did manual
work of all character. An orphan at fifteen, he felt he was almost alone in the
world. For nearly fifty years he never heard of any of his relatives, although
he inquired of hundreds of people from all parts of the country, he was never
able to hear of any one by the name of Flake, until the writer happened to meet
John J. Flake from DeKalp, Kemper County, Miss. This was in Dec., 1897, on a
train near Meridian, Miss.
While bathing in 1856, he dived from a stump about eight feet high and
struck the ground in shallow water. He was dragged out for dead but finally was
able to breathe. His head was knocked back so he could only look upwards, not
being able to see the ground without getting down on his hands and knees. The
physician informed him that he would never be able to get it down again. He
said he would get it down or break his neck trying. He also found that he was
quite numb on one side. Later one day he was asked why one leg was shorter than
the other one and found that he had but one shoe on. For months he worked with
his neck, rubbing it, using liniment and would lie with the head on the chair
and weight of the body suspended on the back of his head in this way for hours.
At length it yielded and in time he got it so corrected that no one could tell
that anything was ever the matter with it. It now does not bother him unless he
undertakes to do some writing or work that requires the head to be held down.
The numbness has never left him, but while he uses that side as well as the
other, he has little feeling in it.
In 1857, when Johnson’s army was sent to Utah to "bring the Mormons
into subjection" and it was reported that the Mormons were all to be
killed, William Jordan Flake returned to Utah, to live or die with his people.
He knew they were honest, honorable people, that their loyalty was second to no
other people who lived. Evil-disposed men had gained the ear of the United
States authorities and the army had been sent. When things were represented by
honorable men, the army was recalled. He however now decided to remain in Utah.
His first job was following some Indians who had stolen a bunch of horses which
they took with them. He was ten days on the trail and most of that time without
food. He took the horses he brought from California to Salt Lake and traded
them for five yoke of oxen and two big wagons. While returning to his home a
snow storm came one night and he lost his oxen. For ten days in eighteen inches
of snow he hunted for them, and finally found them in a small cove up in the
mountains. A little further on he got his oxen into Salt Creek, had to drag
them out, got wet and nearly froze before he got a fire to warm by. Two
deserting soldiers came up, warmed by his fire but dared not stop for fear of
being captured. They both froze to death before morning. He reached home
without further trouble except the freezing of his feet. This kept him in for a
short time and while not being able to do work, he made use of his time in
courting Lucy White of Cedar City, Utah. Later he married her. Later in the
winter, while on the Sevier River, an officer tried to take from him a
Government overcoat. He refused to give it up, saying that it would mean death
by freezing and he would rather die fighting. Finding that he well knew the
roads and the officer having a detachment of soldiers on their way to
California, they obtained from him all the information they could as to the
roads and went on their journey, leaving him the coat.
For several years he herded stock most of the time, generally to protect
them from the Indians and sometimes from the white outlaws. He joined the
Minute men, an organization whose members were always to have, in easy reach, a
good horse and saddle, to be ever ready on the trail of the outlaw at once day
or night. He often went on these missions. In 1859, he moved to Beaver, Utah.
In 1860, while the mountain road was covered with snow, with a load of logs he
was hauling with which to build a house, he was coming down the mountain when
the wagon slid from the dug-way, his feet were caught in the logs and he fell
under the load. The snow was ten feet deep and this saved his life. His
brother, Charles, dug in the snow from the lower side and got him out unhurt.
He shortly afterwards traded two horses for two houses and lots, and of a
generous nature, he gave one of them to his boyhood chum, Marion Lyman, and
with his young wife, lived in the other one.
The house furnishings were more crude than the younger generation can well
imagine; a tin plate or two, one case knife that he found without a handle and
for which he whittled a handle, a wooden spoon, the work of his hands, a
bedstead made with an axe, a couple of log stools, and yet he lived in the
fashion, as nothing more could be bought within a thousand miles. He must wait
until he could make a trip to the "store" for something better and
that trip meant a summer’s journey.
That same year he took up a farm and fenced it. He has been owning farms
ever since that time but has done little farming as you cannot farm well while
in the saddle and riding a horse. The following year he took a herd of sheep to
keep on the share and kept them for several years under this arrangement. He
employed men to look after them in the summer time while he went off
freighting, one summer on the Pony Express and two summers he went to
California.
In 1854 at the call of his Church, he took a six horse team and went to the
Missouri River to bring out immigrants who were then constantly coming to Utah.
He was to bring 2000 pounds for the Church, and any additional matter he chose
to bring, he could bring for himself. He brought things most needed, of which
were two stoves.
Most of the year of 1866 was spent in the Indian War, known as the Black
Hawk War.
In 1868, he married Prudence Kartchner. He now spent his time working with
cattle, taking all the cattle of the community to look after and was helping to
open up new places on the frontier. In 1875-76 he was employed by the United
Order, at $1000.00 per year, to look after their cattle and also opened up a
farm in Escalante, southeastern Utah. In 1873, having been sent with a few
others to look up the prospects for settlements in Arizona, he was called by
the Church authorities in 1877 to take all he had and go to Arizona to help
develop that country. To him the call was a command; a duty that could not be
shirked. He sold his home, his lands and everything he could not move and on
Nov. 19, 1877, started for a new home 500 miles distant, in an unsettled and
wild country. He had six wagons loaded with provisions. Nine yoke of oxen and
seven span of horses pulled them. With him he carried 200 head of loose cattle
and some 30 or 40 horses. A cold winter, snow in places on the road from 12 to
15 inches deep, they did not reach the valley of the Little Colorado until
about the middle of January, 1878. Here they settled, the whole of the winter
being spent in wagon boxes for homes. Because of numerous floods which took out
the dams needed for irrigation purposes, this location proved very
unsatisfactory and in June he started to look for another home.
There were few settlers in that country, some small towns, and a few
ranchers. Those in the towns were principally Mexicans. We were compelled to
get along on what we brought with us as the nearest trading post was 250 miles
away. After a two week trip, during which he went as far East as new Mexico, he
returned having found only one place that suited him and as the owner wanted
$12,000.00 for it, he did not buy it as that was more than he then was worth.
His family wished to move so badly that he went back and purchased it, and got
three years in which to pay for it. It was necessary to go back to his friends
in Utah to get stock on credit. He went and traded sheep for cattle, telling
them that he had no sheep but that the Mexicans did and he could trade for
them. He promised them that he would deliver them twice the number he sold
them, the delivery to be made in three years. They knew him and did not
hesitate to trust him. The following year he did the same thing again and got
more cattle.
The first winter at this new home, some fifteen families from the South who
had been West about a year, came to him for help. They had neither food nor
clothing and begged him to provide for them, saying they would work early and
late for just enough to keep them until they could get something to do for
themselves. There was no work to be had and they were destitute. They were
taken in, every room in the ranch house sheltered a family, and the adobe
stables were pressed into service. He thus furnished shelter of some kind for
all. His wife Lucy cut up the seamless sacks for pants for the boys. I have
worn them myself, and the wagon covers were used to make dresses for the women
and girls. We ate anything we could get to eat. When the flour was gone, all
ate Graham bread, and the Graham had been ground in a coffee mill. We had
barley bread.
This benefactor bought grain from ranchers for seventy-five miles distant
and then went to Utah and purchased $500.00 of cloth with which to clothe them.
The most of those who came were poor. He purchased farms or ranches and
turned them over to the people to pay for when able to do so, reselling to them
without a profit. He never collected one cent of interest from any man,
although some did not pay him for years. His home was the camping place for
travelers passing through and for fifteen years, he fed more to the travelers
passing through than it took to keep his large family. He fed their horses for
days sometimes, never turned any man from his door empty handed nor did he charge
a cent for the accommodation he gave. Twenty and as many as thirty strangers at
a time sat at his table in a single day and during these days, it was rare that
the family ate a meal with no other one present.
I remember an old miner who came to our home and being sick, asked to be
allowed to stop a day or two until he was able to go on to Colorado. Father
unpacked his burro, took the man into a room, and placed him in bed where he
remained for weeks. Several days later this old miner called mother, and handing
her a belt containing several hundred dollars, asked that she take care of it,
informing her at the same time that he had not stated the truth when he came
and told us he had no money. He said that he had feared the Mormons would kill
him, if they learned he had the money, as he had been told they were that kind
of people and had never met one before. He said he knew different now for it
was her kind nursing that had saved his life. Three months passed, before he
was able to go on his journey and when his belt was handed back to him as given
to mother, he offered to pay for his keeping and the feeding of his two
animals, but father refused to accept anything. Used to roughing it, this old
miner cried like a child and said it was not right to refuse to accept pay, and
opening his belt, he dropped several pieces of gold upon the table and walked
out and went on his journey.
The first year after William Jordan Flake bought the valley, he raised 2100
bushels of grain. There were those who were ready to buy it, but he kept it,
used and gave it to the poor for food, as they needed it. More land was now
needed for those coming in to settle, he gave forty cows for the Concho ranch
and then he gave three hundred cattle for the Nutriose ranch. Then he helped to
purchase Springerville, which was a part of the valley purchased from the
Mexicans and finally purchased the Nutriose. Most every settlement made in
Navajo and Apache Counties, Arizona, by the Latter-Day Saints, after he came
into that section was purchased first by him and they are the beneficiaries of
his exertion.
His word had ever been his bond. He was never required to give security and
has purchased property running up into the thousands without any security other
than his oral promise to pay. He was never sued in court nor has he ever
entered suit against any one. He was often the instrument of breaking up gangs
of thieves, who infested the West in an early day and he has looked down the
barrel of a gun of an outlaw on several occasions. He never used a gun in
defense of himself or his property, although he always carried it as a
protection against the Indians at times.
Two wives have been buried and for twenty-one years he has been without a
companion, living with his children, all of whom are now married. Until eighty
years old, he rode the range in all kinds of weather, thought nothing of lying
out all night on a quilt, or being out in the rain or snow, or having missed a
meal or two in order to accomplish a task undertaken. For exercise, he often,
yet, goes out for a day’s ride among the cattle he sold some years ago. He has
good teeth, reads without glasses, enjoys a good appetite, eats any kind of
food and hardly knows what a days sickness is. He has become somewhat deaf and
for that reason does not mingle or go out much where he will meet strangers. He
has more and truer friends than any man in Arizona and has in his lifetime done
more to build up that State than any man ever has or can do. In his dealing
with mankind, he has never considered a man’s politics or his religion. He has
treated all men as brothers until proven unworthy. Uncompromising with evil, he
has ever stood for clean and honest living. No scandal has ever been attached
to his name and when he passes from this sphere, it can be well said of him:
"There lies an honest man."
--By his son, Osmer D. Flake
(photo on right)
William Flake here appears in prison garb during his six-month sentence at the Yuma Territorial Prison for illegal cohabitation (polygamy).
Osmer as the President of the Mississippi Conference, 1899
