Give Me Your Poor
Daniel Gilbert is my great-great grandfather. His mother, Sarah Choules Gilbert, heard the Mormon missionaries preaching near her small town of East Grafton, England and after more investigation, decided she had found truth. She was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and began her quest to go to America. This was not easy. The Gilberts were poor and had a large family. Daniel was one of 10 children. Some of his older brothers had already left home to make their way in the world: one as a sailor and another as a dock worker.
Sarah decided they would immigrate one by one. When it became Daniel’s turn, he obediently took his few belongings and headed to Liverpool with a blue ribbon attached to the lapel of his jacket. This helped the other Mormon immigrants leaving for America to identify him as one of their own. Daniel did not enjoy the voyage on the steamship, Wyoming. He had to endure the mostly rotten food and bug infested accommodations of steerage. He did enjoy getting up on deck when the weather was nice. Arriving in America filled Daniel with gratitude for being back on land, and worry because the money he expected to receive from his brother had not arrived. He had no place to go. And no money to get there. He was grateful to follow other immigrants to Castle Garden where he could rest while he decided what to do next. He considered returning to England by working his way back on another ship. However, he was grateful to discover the Perpetual Emigration Fund. The Perpetual Emigration Fund was set up by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to help members come to Zion (what is now mostly Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming in the western United States). A loan from this fund provided him the means to go west as planned. Later in life, Daniel happily remembered the day he repaid his Perpetual Emigration Fund loan in full with three red heifers.
When Daniel arrived in Utah, he traveled north to Richmond, where he found work with his older brother, Elijah. Daniel and Elijah worked for two more years to earn enough money to send to England so that the remainder of the Gilbert Family might come to America.
One of Daniel’s cherished memories is the year of 1876 when Brigham Young (the church president at the time) encouraged all of the members of the church to be re-baptized as a recommitment to their faith and also as a way to rectify missing records of church baptisms that had previously happened and had not been recorded. This was a turning point in Daniel’s life. He had never before considered baptism. He didn’t even know if the church teachings were true or even if God was there. He took this opportunity to find out. And he did. Even at the end of his life, he emphasized to his posterity that getting baptized and being part of the church was one of the best decisions he had ever made.
The other decision he counted as his best, was marrying my great great grandmother, Amelia Johanna Hansen. She had come to America from Denmark with her mother and was living in Richmond when Daniel arrived.
Daniel emphasized that his beloved Amelia was a hard worker and a dedicated partner in life. He marveled at her ability to run a household and a farm—sometimes from very little. She had grown up fairly wealthy and had to learn those skills after she came to America. Together they homesteaded the arid and not very promising area of Fairview, Idaho, which lies north of Richmond, Utah and south of current-day Preston, Idaho. This land, just above the Idaho/Utah border, boasts an arid windswept plain and cold isolating winters. Daniel and Amelia wanted a chance to have their own land and to build their own providence. Together they took on this challenge. It was hard going, but the Gilbert Farm in Fairview, Idaho is still a working family farm today. By the time Daniel and Amelia passed to the great beyond, they left to their posterity a thriving dairy farm and acres of fields producing feed for the cows and other regional crops. Daniel also worked hard to build up the community. He sat on farm boards and the county water district in order to help provide for the land and the people. Daniel and Amelia also helped build up the Fairview Idaho Ward (the church congregation in their community) which met just across State Street from their original frame home.
I never met Daniel Gilbert, but I have been to his farm. As a child, I played with the kittens in the barn loft and have watched his son, my great grandfather, milk the cows. I have ridden the horses and helped move sprinkler pipe along the sugar beet fields which pull water from the irrigation ditches planned and dug by Daniel and his fellow homesteaders.
Times have changed, but Daniel Gilbert’s legacy lives on. I am grateful that this country, the United States of America, gave this poor English boy a chance at a new life. I am grateful for his hard work and dedication. I am grateful that he recognized that he could not have done all the hard work to homestead without his sweetheart, Amelia. I also recognize that he was given this chance to homestead by a government generous enough to let him come to this country, but also prejudiced enough to mistreat the natives who were already here. I hope we can all learn from this legacy: find the strength to continue to be generous to all the poor. The poor who want to come and have their chance at freedom and opportunity. And also the poor among us who may have been hurt for generations before. Let’s open our arms and our hearts. Let’s give them each a chance.