386 West 2nd Street
386 West 2nd Street
James and Mary Ellen Stone House
Two-Part House:
1866 Cabin
William (1797-1868) & Mary Cruise (1810-1886) Stone
The cabin was built for William Stone. William Stone and his wife Mary Cruse immigrated from England with their five children in 1849; in 1866 William and Mary lived in this cabin on the NW corner of 2nd St and 1200 West with their two unmarried sons, Moroni and James (“Rone” and “Jimmy”). Having worked in England as a gardener for nobility, William was a consummate farmer with a flair for landscaping. Mary was the daughter of a squire with a twenty-room house; she kept a meticulous cabin.
About thirteen years later James “teamed up” the cabin (put it on wooden skids) to his new house at 386 W 2nd Street and abutted the cabin to the west wall of his adobe house for the convenience of his widowed mother.
1875 Adobe House
James (1853-1884) & Mary Ellen Melling (1855-1940) Stone
In 1871 at age eighteen, James eloped with his sixteen-year-old sweetheart, Mary Ellen Melling. For the first year of their marriage, they lived in this cabin with James’ mother on the corner of 2nd Street and 1200 West.
At age 19 James bought some farm land on West 2nd Street from Sam Gates and built a cabin by the large pond for their home; soon the pond was known as Stone’s Pond. He and his brothers learned agriculture from their father and were excellent farmers who could build a haystack without a fault and a live fence around their pastures.
To earn extra money James worked part time for David M. Moore as a horse-back mail carrier to Huntsville. The mail weighed about forty pounds and was carried in saddlebags on each side of the saddle. James had a wonderful little bay mare that carried him on the hazardous trail in the winter when he had to travel on the side of the mountain to avoid the snow slides in the canyon. He prized this special mare as most horses could not make such a trip. On these difficult trips James would be very late getting home, and his family would anxiously await his safe return. As he approached home, the family would hear James whistling in the dark, and the horses at home would start whinnying, and the family would breath a great sigh of relief for they knew then that James had made it safely through the canyon and would be in the cabin soon.
There were two or three trips to Huntsville a week, and each trip paid $3. As David M. Moore said, “Those dollars were as large as cartwheels!” [1]
Sam Gates and his son George Gates ran an adobe mill on W 2nd Street. George built and sold several adobe houses, and in about 1877 he built this one for his good friend, James Stone.
At age 24 James bought this new adobe house at 386 W 2nd Street, and within a year he “teamed up” the cabin ( meaning he put it on wooden skids) of his elderly, widowed mother and a butted it to the adobe house. Thinking forward, James built two more rooms on the rear of the cabin and the adobe, enlarging the house to four rooms. [2] James and Mary Ellen had five children. Some of the children slept in the attic loft of the adobe house.
James farmed twenty acres. He loved horses and loved training them. In 1882 at age 29 James got in a fight while riding a young colt that he was breaking. Some drunken boys from Slaterville drove alongside him on the roadway in a lumber wagon and with a whip slashed a blow across the rump of the colt that James was riding. This was perhaps due to past rivalry. It was all James could do to get the colt under control again. They repeated the whipping several times so James pulled his horse off the road. This infuriated one of the boys named Dick, and he got out of the wagon and ran over to James and tried to pull him off the horse to fight him. Before James could tie up his horse Dick struck him knocking him under his colt and the fight was on. The noise and confusion caused quite a scene, and people rushed over to see what was taking place. The horse was prancing over their heads as they fought until a young man who was a bystander took the horse away.
When it was over, Dick had two black eyes and was missing ½ of his left ear. James’ face was covered with blood. Dick accused James of biting off his ear and took him to court, threatening James with life in prison. The case was sensational and people came to view the court proceedings with their lunch as they anticipated being there most of the day. Three witnesses testified in behalf of James. The trial came to an end with Dick losing the case. There was no way of proving whether James had bitten off the ear or whether the ear had been torn off by the colt’s hoofs.as she pranced over them while they were fighting. After the verdict was given, Dick came over to James and apologized for the trouble he had caused and asked to shake hands and be friends again, and they shook hands. [3]
It was in James’ blood to love horses and horse races. In 1884 at age 31 James left home on a day in November with two friends in a lumber wagon to go to a horse race. All three men were sitting on the spring seat in a happy mood. Before they reached town, one of the clevises gave way and dropped the single tree on the horses’ hooves; they became unmanageable and ran away. All the men sitting on the spring seat were thrown, seat and all out of the wagon. Two were thrown clear, but James’ boot caught on the front standard of the wagon and he was dragged for over a half mile before they could stop the runaway. It was not more than thirty minutes after he left home until they brought him back again unconscious.
He regained consciousness for over a month but was not able to recover. As he was about to pass on his brother would call, “Oh Jimmie, don’t leave us!” and he would reply, “Oh, let me go, Rone. They are waiting for me with carriages and horses.” This he said to his brother several times as he was called back. It was a fatal blow to his beloved Mary Ellen and the family, for he died December 24, 1884, and was buried on Christmas Day. [4]
For the story of James’ wife, Mary Ellen Melling, see Melling Way.
John (1874-1945) & Jesse Mills (1881-1935) Stone
James and Mary Ellen’s son John Melling Stone was born in 1874 and married Jessie Mills in 1899; they continued to live in the Stone family home where they raised five children. John was a mainstream Utah farmer who grew Timothy grass, Lucerne, sugar beets and garden crops such as beans and peas. Jesse served as president of the Lynne Ward primary for many years.
Jesse died in 1935 and John married Ila Bodily in 1938 and adopted her two children.
The house was passed on to one of John and Jesse’s daughters and remained in the Stone family until about 1990.
[1] - Milton R. Hunter, editor, Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak’s, p.262,263; Sarah Stone Crowther, Biography of Pioneer James Hyrum Stone, manuscript, 1949.
[2] - Note: The cabin is 14 x 14 and the walls are 12 inches thick. The adobe house is 15 x 13 and the walls are 18 inches thick.
[3] - Sarah Stone Crowther, Biography of Pioneer James Hyrum Stone, p. 13, 14.. Note: Standard Examiner, May 31, 1982, has an account of the conflict from Dick’s point of view.
[4] - Sarah Stone Crowther, Biography of Pioneer James Hyrum Stone, p. 14, 15.