A SEA OF SAGE
A Biography of Harriet Annah Kidd Banner   

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    Annah Staley Kidd.

  In the middle of the West was the Great Basin. Its arid plains and  valleys, to most Americans and immigrants bent on settling westward, was daunting compared to the accounts of fertile Oregon and California. Thousands passed near or through the Basin on their way elsewhere. The Basin remained an empty territory. In 1847, the Mormons, under the foresighted and able leadership of Brigham Young, established a successful settlement in the Great Basin with headquarters in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Their quest into the West was for religious freedom. Within a few years, Mormons, gathering from the East and from England and Europe, filled the Basin then mushroomed north, south, and east of the Basin establishing well-planned communities. Initially, the Mormon Territory of Deseret, as it was named by Brigham Young, was part of Mexico. The famous Mormon battalion volunteered in the United States’ war with Mexico that terminated with the signing of the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo in 1848. The vast Territory of Deseret then became part of the Western United States. Congress later reduced the size of Deseret and renamed it The Utah Territory.

    Brigham Young’s leadership produced a thriving civilization in the center of a vast uncivilized expanse. As converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gathered into the Salt Lake Valley, they were divided and organized into groups that included men with a diversity of essential trades and skills. The composite of interrelating trades such as carpenter, blacksmith, wheelwright, farmer, school teacher, etc., enabled the group to take virgin land along a previously explored mountain stream and turn the area into a productive farming community.

    Alexander and Fidelia, Thomas Kidd, and the Bickmore family were prepared to join Brigham Young and their fellow Saints in the Salt Lake Valley. They were assigned to a wagon train that would take them from Council Bluffs to the Great Basin in the Utah Territory.

    After arriving in Salt Lake City on September 6, 1852, Thomas went south and settled in Mount Pleasant, Utah. He never remarried. He died there twenty years later in 1873. Alexander and Fidelia were assigned by Brigham Young to assist in founding a new community called Herriman in the southwest corner of the Salt Lake Valley. The Kidd family was once again united with the body of the Latter-Day Saints.

Leroy, Leo, & Verla. Click photo for full image.   

Along the banks of Butterfield Creek, Alexander and Fidelia set up their tent and lived out of it and the covered wagon as they, along with the other members of the group, built log shelters. Brigham’s system provided order in laying out a townsite and drawing for home lots that included room for gardens and animals. Farm plots were surveyed and assigned. They were typically on the outskirts of the town. Though the land was free, it was made dear by the hard work of Alexander and Fidelia to create an irrigated and productive farm.
    Corrals for stock had to be built that first winter. Work on clearing brush and cedars from the virgin land also got underway in preparation for spring. An irrigation system to convey water from the mountain streams to the farms and gardens had to be surveyed and dug. The first years taxed to the limits the strength and endurance of the little group.

    Their first child, Alexander Bickmore, was born the next spring on 30 March 1853. With Alexander’s introduction into the world, family life began for them in earnest. The farm that Alexander and Fidelia developed was at first modest in size. It had to be small enough for Fidelia to manage as Alexander had chosen to establish a freighting business to provide their main income. Family stories passed down provide sketchy information, but the tradition is that he recrossed the plains several times to St. Louis, Missouri freighting goods to Salt Lake merchants.

    Information from C. Leroy Banner sheds some light on Fidelia as a mother. The running of the small farm and the major child rearing responsibility fell upon Fidelia. "The admirable virtues which I came to know in one of her sons, my grandpa, John B. Kidd, tells me much about her. The absolute honesty, the kind disposition, the friendly, neighborly, hardworking habits are all monuments to her great Christian virtues."

    Alexander and Fidelia had been living in Herriman three years when in 1855 it became necessary to build a fort to protect the settlers from Indian raids. Their little community became known as Fort Herriman. Three years later they were warned to move south to the Provo area with most of the other Saints from Salt Lake Valley. Johnston’s Army was coming to put down a supposed Mormon uprising against the United States. Anything of value was loaded and taken south. Straw was placed strategically in all homes and sheds ready for a posted guard to set fire to everything if the word came from Brigham Young. According to this "scorched-earth policy, nothing was to be left for the army to occupy, for their animals to eat, or for the soldiers to use against the Mormons."

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Gilbert Kidd, Harriet's younger brother. Click photo for full image.    

Fortunately, a peace treaty was negotiated before the army entered the Valley. In 1858 the army marched through Salt Lake City, a literal ghost town. Guards were standing by ready to burn all if anything went wrong. The army, by treaty designation, marched across the Jordan River, then south through farms and small communities, past Fort Herriman, also with guards standing watch. They traveled up Rose Canyon through the Oquirrh Mountains, to Cedar Valley. There, near a creek fed by a large spring, they established Camp Floyd.
    A short time after the arrival of Johnston’s army at Camp Floyd, the Church leaders were assured that the military leaders would adhere to the terms of the peace treaty. The displaced families were allowed to return to their homes. Alexander and Fidelia, with their young family, returned to Herriman. Their fourth child was born shortly after that on 17 November 1859. He was named John Bickmore Kidd. He was to become Harriet’s father.

    As the family grew in size, so did the family farm. The process of wresting the native brush, trees, and wild grasses from the virgin land continued through the years. Peace with the Indians and lack of military threat made life in the isolated community pleasant and progressive. However, there also was an undercurrent of fear in the hamlet. The Federal Government had agents that policed the Territory, arresting those men whom they could prove were practicing polygamy. Alexander never personally participated in this widespread practice. Though Alexander and Fidelia saw and felt the pressure of the harassment of neighbors and friends, they never knew the stress of having their own family torn apart by arrests for polygamy.

    Alexander used his freighting profits to acquire sheep. He eventually gave up his freighting business. He had enlarged the farm to make it big enough to provide a winter supply of feed for the sheep. With the low hills and valleys around Herriman, and Rush and Skull Valley to the west for fall, winter, and spring pasture, the sheep project was successful from the onset. Though the sheep herd was wintered in Rush Valley and other valleys to the south and west of Herriman, lush green summer pasture was only available in the higher eastern mountains. For summer feed, a range was acquired far away in the Uinta Mountains. The sheep had to be trailed each spring to summer range and then back again to the deserts for winter. The trail went through Salt Lake City about 21st South, past the old penitentiary, then up Parley’s canyon and onto Trail Creek, ending this one hundred-mile drive in the Uinta Mountains on the summer range.

    Alexander trained his sons well in the care of the sheep. They had always worked with Fidelia running the farm and were mature beyond their years. Their first two sons, Alexander and William, at about 16 and 14, took the main responsibility of herding the sheep on both the winter and summer ranges. With the two oldest sons in charge, Alexander Sr. was able, at last, to spend more time at home with Fidelia and their children. He was able to expand the base farm to provide feed for a larger herd. The herd grew to a manageable two thousand five hundred head.

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