Lathrope

The children of William LATHROPE and Elizabeth BENDY were:

1...William LATHROPE. Born 5 Nov 1800, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.

2... Sarah LATHROPE. Born 4 Jan 1805, Ottery St. Mary.

3... Elizabeth LATHROPE. Chr. 19 Nov 1806 , at St. Mary, Rotherhithe,  Surrey.

4... Jane LATHROPE. Born 1 Aug 1808 in London, she was Chr on 18 Sep 1808 at Rotherhithe in Surrey (now absorbed into London) where her parents had moved from their native West Country in 1806. However she moved back with them to Ottery St Mary, Devon, where her father came from, in 1809 at the age of just one. In the mid 1820s she moved north with her parents to the textile city of Bradford, Yorkshire, where she married, on 24 Nov 1828 Allen LANE, one of the first Mormons, (born 2 Mar 1804 in Astley, Worcestershire), although she did not join the Mormon church herself until 1852. At some point prior to 1843 she then moved with her husband to Leicester in the Midlands, where she worked as a bonnet maker and where they lived at 43 Oxford Street.  Her retired parents lived next door at number 41. But then her father died in 1862 followed by her mother in 1866, and in the intervening period (1864) her son Henry LANE emigrated to Mormon Utah with his wife and daughter. So when her husband Allen LANE predeceased her in 1868 (he was buried on 29 May in Leicester) she contacted her brother Robert LATHROPE whose life was also in some turmoil at that time, and through the Mormon church programme to "Gather to Zion" (Utah) they emigrated there in July 1868, together with Robert's youngest daughter Elizabeth, then aged just 14, to join Henry and his family in Ogden near Salt Lake City.  Jane LATHROPE died  Jan 1,1877, and is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery, Ogden, Weber County, Utah. Her Church Baptism Record.  Her Mormon Church Membership Card.  Photo of her grave . Her children by Allen LANE.

5... Robert LATHROPE. Born 1812, Ottery St. Mary. Buried 24 Jan 1813 in Ottery St.Mary, aged just a few months.

6... James LATHROPE. Born Jun 1814, Ottery St. Mary, Devon. Chr 3 Jul 1814.

7... Robert LATHROPE (My Great Great Great Grandfather). Born 25 Sep 1815 in Wellington, Somerset, (Chr on Christmas Day 1816), he moved north to Bradford ,Yorkshire with his parents and siblings in the mid 1820s. However he must have returned at some point, as he married, on 29 Oct 1837, in Totnes, Devon, Harriet BULLEY (Chr 9 Jan 1814 at Ashprington, Devon). He was a woolcomber by trade, and finally left the West Country for Leicester about 1843 with his wife and his baby daughter Harriet, to join his parents, and his sister Jane who had moved there from Bradford. He then moved into Yorkshire and worked in various factories and on various farms, all connected with the wool business, in such places as Clayton West near Hoyland, the Calder Valley SW of Wakefield and Slack End, North Bierley which is now part of the City of Bradford. He then moved to Stocksbridge, Yorkshire, where a large steelworks (Fox's) was expanding and there was work for the makers of hackle-pins for woolcombing. But in 1861 he was put to general labouring as his employer, Samuel  Fox, had ordered an end to hackle pin making and turned instead to steelmaking, using the latest Bessemer furnaces which he installed at that time, to cut costs in his manufacture of umbrella frames at the same works. Then Robert's father died in Leicester in 1862 followed by his mother in 1866, and when his own wife died the very next year, 1867,(at Deepcar, Yorkshire; she was buried at Bolsterstone, Yorkshire, on 12 Mar 1867)  he emigrated to America in July 1868. On 14 July he, his youngest daughter Elizabeth and his widowed Mormon sister Jane, with $300 between them (probably from the sale of the houses at 41 and 43 Oxford Street, Leicester where his late parents had lived), left Liverpool on the ship "Colorado" bound for New York, where they arrived on the 28th and were detained one hour at the Castle Garden immigrant receiving station before progressing to the Hudson River railroad station where they remained all night. They then took the Mormon "Church Train" towards Albany, New York, before travelling on, together with about 300 other Mormon immigrants, as far as Benton, Wyoming, the furthest the railroad then ran and where the railroad workers were based. They arrived there on 7 Aug 1868 and camped with the Mormon company about a mile and a half outside the town. During its lifetime of just 3 months (July-September 1868), before the tracklayers moved further on and the place became a ghost town, Benton was described as the most iniquitous place in America,  with 23 saloons and men being shot to death in gunfights at the average rate of 1 a day. From there on 13 August Robert, Elizabeth and Jane joined a Mormon wagon train bound 400 miles across open Indian country (the 61 ox-drawn wagons, Captained by Simpson M. Molen, were loaded with supplies (from Omaha) and so the great majority of people had to walk, with their luggage) to Salt lake City in Utah, where they arrived on 2 Sep 1868. He bought land in nearby Ogden City, comprising part of an old disused fort on 12th Street.. He worked at the wool processing mill in Ogden, which had opened in 1867 and of which he had almost certainly heard (through Jane and her son Henry LANE) before he had emigrated, but he also purchased just over 2 acres of land in Brigham City where he grew peaches. He finally joined the Mormon church in 1872. His daughter Elizabeth LATHROPE  married and has descendants in America. However their emigration to Utah was not the family's first: 4 years previously, on 21 May 1864 Jane LATHROPE's son Henry LANE, together with his wife Bridget (nee LYLES) and their young daughter Ann LANE had sailed from Liverpool aboard the General McClellan. The Voyage of the General McClellan. A third emigration then took place, when in 1885  Robert LATHROPE loaned his granddaughter Alice MARSH $100 for she and her husband Edward BARRETT together with their baby daughter Mary Jane to leave England and join him in Utah, on what proved to be a tragic voyage.  Robert LATHROPE died 22 Feb 1891 at Uintah Flat. He was buried in Ogden City Cemetery, Utah, on the 27 Feb 1891.His Church Baptism Record. His children by Harriet BULLEY. Their Marriage Certificate.

Benton, Wyoming at the time Robert , Elizabeth and Jane passed through. The town only lived for 3 months (1868) and was described as the most iniquitous place in America.

  The "Colorado"'s Passenger List         Documentary Accounts of  the Voyage     The 1870 Utah Census

                         His grave in Utah.                 His Obituary in an American Newspaper 

Map Showing His Land in Ogden                    His Mormon Church  Membership Card.

Back to the Earliest Lathropes                       Genealogy Home Page