ACHSAH SARNS EARL COLE
From a large old family bible, owned by Jedidiah Grant and Chastina Heninger, we have some of the record of Achsah Sarns Earl Cole who was the mother of Chastina. A great great grandchild of Achsah’s (Ruth Heninger Goodwin) has the bible now, 1962[1].
There is also another, smaller bible that was given to Achsah when she was married. In this bible it is written – “Rufus Patrick, the son of William Patrick, and Achsah S. E. Cole were married on the 4th day of July in the year of our Lord 1839 – by Daniel F. Remington, who presented this bible at the time of marriage”. A great grandchild of Achsah’s (Marguerite Heninger Anderson) has this bible now, 1962[2].
This small bible also has the names of the children of Achsah, and the marriage date and children of Achsah’s daughter Chastina.
Children of Rufus and Achsah Cole Patrick: NAME BORN
Jaroam Patrick 25 May 1844
Elestina Patrick 1Mar 1846
Osker Patrick 2 Nov 1846
Chastina Patrick 18 Nov 1852
The marriage of Chastina, in this smaller bible, it is written that “J. G. Heninger, the son of Phillip Heninger was married to Chastina Almina Farr on the 18th of October 1867 by George Q. Cannon.” The writing in the bible also states that Chastina’s mother’s name was Achsah Farr, and her father’s name was Winslow Farr.
Children of Jedediah and Chastina Heninger – (Achsah’s grandchildren)
Name Born Where Died
Winslow Phillip Heninger 22 Aug 1868 S.L.C., Salt Lake, Utah 22 Aug 1868
Lorin Grant Heninger 11 Mar 1870 S.L.C., Salt Lake, Utah 26 Sep 1930
Achsah Elizabeth Heninger 12 Sep 1872 S.L.C., Salt Lake, Utah 16 Oct 1888
Ida May Heninger 25 Oct 1875 Ogden, Weber, Utah 8 Oct 1915
Oscar Heninger 9 Jan 1878 Ogden, Weber, Utah 17 Jan 1878
Thomas Harold Heninger 16 Jun 1879 Ogden, Weber, Utah
Rufus Patrick Heninger 24 Mar 1885 Ogden, Weber, Utah 24 Mar 1885
Hortensia Heninger 3 Feb 1887 Ogden, Weber, Utah 27 Mar 1887
Only the record of birth of the first four children of Chastina are in the small bible and not the death dates except for Winslow Philip who died the same day. The large bible contains the names and dates for all the children.
Only three of Chastina’s children lived to adulthood and married. They were Lorin Grant, Ida May, and Thomas Harold.
Through Lorin Grant Heninger’s family we were given the information that when Achsah heard the gospel of the L.D.S. Church in Massachusetts, that she joined the church and wanted to come to Utah, as all converts to the church were advised to do in those days. She tried to get her husband Rufus to join the church too, but he wouldn’t. So Achsah left her husband Rufus Patrick and came to Utah for the love of her church. She was an early pioneer.
We were given the information that Achsah’s daughter Chastina was born in Massachusetts, but in the Weber Co. Utah census of 1880 it states that Chastina was born in Utah and her parents were born in Massachusetts.
After Achsah came to Utah she married again. She married Winslow Farr and was sealed to him, and her daughter Chastina was sealed (see note by Tim Farr below) to Winslow Farr as his daughter and given the middle name of Almina. Almina was a loved name of the Farr family. This explains the two marriages of Achsah Sarns Earl Cole Patrick Farr, and explains why it is written in the bible that Chastina was the daughter of Winslow Farr when she was actually the daughter of Rufus Patrick.
In the records of Marguerite Heninger Anderson (the great granddaughter of Achsah) is the patriarchal blessing given to Achsah in Salt Lake City, Utah, 9 Feb 1868. The blessing was given by John Young, Patriarch, to Achsah Sarns Earl Farr, daughter of Burdin and Sarah Cole; born in the town of Leveritt, Franklin County, Mass. 20 Dec 1818.
Achsah died 26 Jan 1883 in Ogden, Utah.
The foregoing was written my Maguerite Chestina Heninger Anderson in 1962
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What follows was written in 2012 Dean R. Anderson (Marguerite’s son and Achsah’s great great grandson)
ACHSAH, RUFUS AND WINSLOW
I should have listened closer to my mother, but here in a sentence or two is what was passed on to me (family tradition – misinterpretations and misunderstanding are entirely my own). Achsah S. E. Cole and Rufus Patrick were both born and raised in Massachusetts. Achsah met Rufus. They fell in love, were married and had four children the youngest being Chastina. There was an encounter with Mormon missionaries. Achsah was converted, joined the church and migrated west with the Mormons carrying Rufus’s yet to be born youngest daughter, and leaving the unconverted Rufus behind. Rufus, wanting to reconcile with Achsah, subsequently followed her west, only to find that she had married a polygamist by the name of Winslow Farr. Rufus, heartbroken, moved on to California and was never heard from again. So the story goes…
Here is what I have learned since (not surprisingly there is some conflict between the facts and family lore)
Achsah Sarns Earl Cole was born to Burdin and Sarah Cole in Leveritt, Franklin MA on 20 Dec 1818.
Rufus Patrick was born to William and Polly Phipps Patrick in Holliston, MA on 4 Sep 1808 according to the Holliston town vital records. Subsequent records show his date of birth as 4 Sep 1818. I believe 1808 to be the correct year, especially since his sister Delana was listed as the second child of the couple and she was born in 1816.
How Rufus and Achsah met and anything else they might have done between 1818 and 1839 is lost to history. They were married on 4 July 1839. The following is recorded in Achsah’s bible (which is now, 2012, in my possession). “Rufus Patrick the son of William Patrick and Achsah S. E. Cole were married the 4th day of July in the year of our Lord 1839 by Daniel F Remington who presented this Bible at the time of marriage.”.
Recorded in the bible are the births of four children.
Jaroam Patrick 25 May 1844
Elestina Patrick 21 Mar 1846
Osker Patrick 2 Nov 1849
Chastina Patrick 18 Nov 1852
Apparently both Rufus an Achsah were converted to the Mormon faith and joined the saints in Nauvoo, Il. The Nauvoo endowment records show that on 22 Jan 1846 Rufus Patrick and Achsah S. E. Cole received their endowments. Coincidentally on that same date, 22 Jan 1846, and at the same place, Winslow Farr Sr. was sealed to two of his wives, Almena Randall and Adelia Maria Clemens.
Rufus appears on the list of those serving on the quorum of Seventies while in Nauvoo.
On January 31, 1847 Rufus and Achash were attendees at the St Louis LDS conference.
Not all Nauvoo families were able to make the 1846 pilgrimage across Iowa. Many families “went south” to St. Louis, where they found employment to pay their passage to Zion. This was just one way in which St. Louis played a vital role during the early “gathering” years of the Church. There were an estimated fifteen hundred Latter-day Saints in St. Louis during the winter of 1846–47. According to the federal census, in 1840, St. Louis had a population of 16,469 (History of the Church, 4:xxiv). During this important period of Church history, Latter-day Saints comprised nearly 10 per- cent of the population of St. Louis.
St. Louis Branch Members at the 31 January 1847 St. Louis Conference included PATRICK, Rufus; at Conference in St. Louis on 31 Jan 1847; member 2nd Quorum of Seventies; with wife Achvah[3]
At this conference, the clerks calculated the LDS membership population at 1,478. The list of members present at this conference is a good indication of which members went from Nauvoo to St. Louis in the 1846 exodus. An actual count of the names written by the clerk at the conference is about 599 (includ- ing unnamed children), so obviously many names were not recorded or many are members who did not attend the conference.
St. Louis Branch Death Records 1849–62 This record contains approximately 350 deaths. The years “1849–1862” on the book heading are deceiving, as there are only two deaths listed for the year 1849 when the huge cholera epidemic began. From 1 January to 30 July 1849, 4,547 people in the city died of the dreaded disease.8 Certainly hundreds of Latter-day Saints must have died during the year 1849, and those deaths were not recorded. Likewise, only a few deaths were recorded in the years 1850 and 1851, as deaths from cholera continued to plague the city. It appears that the record was kept more consistently starting in the summer of 1852. However, even during that period, not all members’ deaths were recorded.[4]
Jaroam, Elestina and Osker apparently did not survive -- indications are that they passed away sometime early in 1852.
The 1852 Iowa special census shows the Rufus Patrick household consisting of 4 members (3 males and 1 female).
The tragedy of their children’s deaths and the accompanying trauma no doubt led to the splitting up of Rufus and Achsah.
Achsah departed Kanesville, Iowa with the Wimmer Party in July of 1852 and arrived in Salt Lake on 15 Sep 1852. None of her first three children were on that wagon train, but she was pregnant with her fourth child Chastina Patrick who was born in Salt Lake City on 18 Nov 1852.
Rufus went back to Massachusetts and nine years later answered the call to serve the Union in the Civil War. Note that in 1861, Rufus would have been 53 years old (born in 1808). 45 was the upper age limit in the Union Army. This probably explains why all of the later records show Rufus’s birth year as 1818.
On 3 Feb 1856, four years after her arrival in Salt Lake, Achsah S. E. Cole Patrick was sealed to Winslow Farr, Sr. as his 6th wife. Chastina (now age 4) was at the same time sealed as a child to Winslow (I have no evidence of Chastina’s sealing, only family tradition, but according to my mother this was when Chastina recieved her middle name of “Almina” which name Winslow loved and was the name of his second wife Almina Randall).
During her lifetime, Chastina never used the surname Patrick but was known as Chastina Almina Farr and after her marriage as Chastina Almina Heninger.
In Achsah’s bible, referenced above, is recorded the following “J. G. Heninger the son of Phillip Heninger was married to Chastina Almina Farr on the 18th of October 1867 by George Q. Cannon. Chastina Farr’s mother’s name was Achsah Farr. Her father’s name was Winslow Farr”.
On 9 Feb 1868, Achsah S. E. Cole Patrick Farr, her daughter Chastina and son-in-law Jedediah Grant Heninger all received their patriarchal blessings on the same day under the hands of John Young, Patriarch.[5]
Rufus Patrick, whose intent was to go on to California after he found out that Achsah had remarried, apparently got no further than Tooele. Rufus appears in the 1870 Tooele, UT census with his wife Mary Smith Patrick and Mary’s daughter Jane age 13.
On 26 Jan 1883 Achsah died at age 65 in Ogden, Ut. She is buried in the Winslow Farr, Sr. family plot in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
On 14 Nov 1888 Chastina Almina Patrick Farr Heninger died at age 36 and is buried in the Ogden Cemetery.
On 4 Mar1892 Rufus Patrick died at the age of 73 years 6 months and is buried in the Tooele Cemetery.
Finding Rufus in the Tooele Cemetery records was a huge occasion for me. Until I found that record, I assumed that, in fact, he had gone on to California and that he had indeed disappeared and no one would ever know what happened to him. His grave was unmarked, and I have since obtained a headstone honoring him and his service to the Union. His son-in-law, Jedediah, who he never met, fought for the South.
Note: Chastina honored her adoptive family, the Farrs, by naming her first child Winslow and her second child Lorin. (see note by Tim Farr below)
Note also that in the published histories of Winslow Farr Sr. and Lorin Farr that there is no mention of adopted daughter/sister Chastina. Nor will the Winslow Farr Sr. Family Organization recognize her existence. I was told by the president of that organization that none of Winslow’s wives, except Olive, had children. (see note by Tim Farr below)
Written by Dean R. Anderson in 2012
Achsah’s great great grandson
[1] Now in the possession of Richard Heninger (2012)
[2] Now in the possession of Dean Anderson (2012)
[3] St Louis Branch records, members listed at conference 31 Jan 1847 (FHL film 0001945 item 2) name spellings kept as in record
[4] Sheri E. Slaughter: Index of Early LDS in St. Louis, Missouri
[5] Now in the possession of Dean R Anderson (2012)
Note by Tim Farr:
I spent some time at the FHL in Salt Lake last Thursday in Special Collections and found the answer to the question of Chastina the daughter of Achsach and Rufus Patrick being sealed/adopted by Winslow Farr Sr. when he was sealed to Achsach. Winslow’s sealing to Achsach is found on Special Collections Film #183374 and Chastina is not there. The location is the President’s Office. I then looked through all the sealing records for the dates that she could have been sealed after the marriage of her mother and found nothing. I then realized that if Chastina was married and sealed to Jedidiah Grant Heininger, she would had to of used her legal name in the record. I found Chastina’s sealing and marriage on Special Collections Film #1149515, Pg. 70, “Jedadiah Grant Heninger b. 3 Mar 1843, Chastina Patrick b. 18 Nov 1852 Cottonwood, Sealed 19 Oct 1867 by George Q. Cannon”. Chastina’s legal name was “Patrick” not “Farr” and was never sealed or adopted by Winslow Farr Sr. She used the name of Farr because her mother was a Farr but when she had to use her legal name, it was “Patrick”. Further proof of this is found on the death record of her sons Lorin Grant Henniger and Thomas Harold Heninger were they have to list the maiden name of the mother which was listed as "Patrick".
Winslow was simply the stepfather of Chastina. She was obviously known as a Farr but legally a Patrick.
RESIDENCE: Listed as "Axie Farr" widow and as a mother in law in the household of Grant Heninger.