The Hunsaker Family. . .

It was July 17, 1856, when Abraham Hunsaker and his family settled on their Carson Valley ranch. If you’ve never heard the Hunsaker name, well, you’re in good company; hardly anyone here today remembers the story. But it’s a fascinating one!
That summer, the extended Hunsaker family had come overland from Salt Lake City. Just how extended was the Hunsaker clan? Well, in addition to Abraham there were three wives and some 14 children. Fellow Mormon Joseph Murdock, too, brought his own large family.
On reaching Carson Valley, Hunsaker and Murdock pooled their money and bought an 897-acre ranch for $5,000 – from none other than Lucky Bill Thorington. This was 1856, mind you, so Lucky Bill was still among the living; just two years later, he would dangle at the end of a hangman’s rope.
The ranch that Hunsaker and Murdock purchased from Lucky Bill was located at the southern end of Carson Valley, an area we know today as Fredericksburg. Murdock took the southern part of the ranch, while the Hunsakers settled at the northern end. In later years, Hunsaker would wistfully recall his time on what he called “the best farm in the [Carson] valley.” And this wouldn’t be the only piece of land the pair acquired; they also bought the former Lute Olds ranch at Fairview.
Abraham Hunsaker was 43 years old that summer, and it had been a long and winding road that brought him here. Born in Illinois in November, 1812, he had met Eliza Collins when he was not quite 18. Though she was just 13 at the time, Abraham was convinced she was meant to be his wife. Sure enough, the pair married just two years later, in December 1832. Abraham had just turned twenty, while Eliza was not quite 16. They spent their first two months of marriage in Abraham’s father’s home, until Abe was able to build his new wife a cabin. Their first son was born the following year, but died at just eight weeks.
In 1839, Abraham heard a Mormon preacher speak. And when his brother recovered from a terrible sickness after receiving prayers by Mormon elders, Abraham was moved to join the church. Abraham and Eliza were baptized in the LDS faith in November, 1840.
It was a time of trial and tribulation for Mormon believers. The young couple soon found themselves fleeing persecution with other exiles. Abraham joined the Mormon Battalion in 1846, reaching Los Angeles the following year. Following his discharge, he rejoined Eliza near Council Bluffs, Iowa, and moved with his family to Salt Lake City in 1848.
Some seventeen years after wedding Eliza, Abraham took a second wife, Harriet Beckstead, in November, 1850. He was 38 at the time; Harriet was half his age, at 19. He married twice more in 1854, adding Margaret Sweeten (then 17) and Mary Luckham (possibly also in her teens) to his family.
Then in April, 1856, Hunsaker was “called to settle in Carson Valley.” Leaving his two most recent wives behind, Abraham set out from Salt Lake on May 11, 1856, with three wives, 13 children, and an assortment of wagons. The group got as far as a father-in-law’s home that first day; a baby was born to second wife Harriet a few minutes after their arrival.
Poor Harriet didn’t get much chance to rest; the family set out again the very next day. Harriet’s mother tagged along for the first sixty miles, most likely to help care for Harriet and her new grandson.
First wife Eliza had a rather traumatic time of it, too. Over the first week of the journey, Eliza was forced to say goodbye to her two oldest daughters. One was already married, and had to stay behind; the second became engaged, and turned back with her intended. That left Eliza “rather down-hearted,” as Abraham wrote in his diary. Abraham, however, was hardly about to cry about the daughters’ departure. “[I]f they were satisfied and could live with their men and do good on earth, I was satisfied,” he told Eliza. They would “meet with them again,” he reminded her – in the next life.
The Hunsakers arrived in Carson Valley roughly six weeks later, settling in on their new ranch on July 17, 1856. “Bread wheat” had already been planted, though it proved to be “very smutty.” But potatoes, turnips, and barley had also been planted, plus “garden stuff, enough to do us plentiful,” Abraham noted in his diary. By late August, the family was threshing wheat and barley.
Anti-Mormon sentiment was brewing in the valley. When a title dispute erupted between Hunsaker and a neighbor named Wade, “Mr. Wade talked very saucy concerning the place and Mormons,” Hunsaker said.
Before long, some of the earlier non-Mormon settlers began holding “considerable many meetings,” as Hunsaker put it, trying to “put down the laws of Utah and establish a mob law into rule.” This group was determined to “drive this Lucky Bill off of his ranch by force, if he would refuse to go when notified to leave,” Hunsaker said in his diary. But by fall of 1856, unable to “raise sufficient force . . . they have stopped their proceedings for the present and are tolerable friendly.”
That fall and winter (1856-57), Hunsaker completed many improvements on his ranch, including fencing a garden and pasture, and building a corral and other buildings. Third wife Margaret taught school for all his children, “and learns them very well.” The family held religious meetings two or three times a week and, with Joseph Murdock’s family joining the congregation, “[h]is family and mine fill [a] considerable sized room,” Hunsaker proudly noted.
One year later, however, the call went out for Mormons to return to Salt Lake. Hunsaker sold his much-beloved ranch to William H. Smith in mid-September, 1857, for $4,000. Smith was operating a store with Ormsby at Mormon Station, an occupation that required him to cross the mountains “almost weekly” to acquire supplies. So Hunsaker was forced to travel to California to collect his purchase price.
On September 26, 1857 Hunsaker, his three wives, and children were among the 450 Mormons – with 123 wagons – who left Carson Valley for Utah.
Not all of the Hunsaker family returned with them, however. Eliza’s sixth child, Sarah Hunsaker, had just turned 15. As a newspaper account put it, Sarah “left her father’s family clandestinely” while the family was preparing to leave. Cupid was apparently to blame; young Sarah married neighboring rancher Robert Trimmer. They would go on to have 13 children together.

As for the rest of the Hunsaker clan, Abraham and his family settled first in Brigham City, then moved to Honeyville, where Hunsaker became a bishop in the church. In November, 1858, the year after their return, Abraham married his fifth and last wife, Ane Catherine Jensen. She was 15 years old; Hunsaker by now was 46. All together, he and his five wives were said to have had an amazing 49 children.
Abraham Hunsaker would live another thirty years, passing away at the age of 76 on January 3, 1889, in Honeyville, Utah. He was buried at the Brigham City Cemetery.
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Abraham Hunsaker’s fascinating diary has been published by his descendants, though copies can be difficult to find.
A Facebook page has been established to collect the family history of Hunsaker and his descendants: Abraham Hunsaker Family History Collection:
https://www.facebook.com/
