Life Sketch of Adelia Robison Lyman (1848 – 1909) [by son Albert Robison Lyman] In the early summer of 1844 the big Joseph Robison family with their slow moving teams and wagons, were moving westward along the road from the State of New York. They had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were headed for Nauvoo, Illinois. As they traveled near the shore of Lake Michigan, word came to them that the Prophet Joseph Smith had been martyred and it would not be safe for them to go on. So they stopped for a time at a place called Crete, about thirty miles from Chicago and is now in the suburbs of that city. It was here in Crete, four years later on the 21st of December 1848 that Adelia Robison was born, the twelfth child in a family of thirteen children. This was the happy place of her early childhood and she carried the sanctified memories through all the years of her life. She often told how she loved to hear the bells of the cows as they went slowly to and from the pastures morning and evening in Crete. When she was between five and six years old, her parents sold their farm for $2,200.00. This was sewed up in the lining of her mother’s petticoat and carried safely to Utah. They were fitted out with strong teams of horses and oxen, and they loaded their equipment into three or four wagons and headed off across the wide plains. Little Adelia watched the sun sink from sight ahead of them every night and cried in fear for the time when they would surely come to the edge of the earth and drop off where the sun had gone. When they reached Salt Lake City they paid tithing on the money they had received and were advised by President Brigham Young to go south to Fillmore where fifteen families had built a fort, for Fillmore was in the heart of the wild Indian country. The wild people and the perils of the hills where they hid beyond the sheltering walls of the little fort, became a positive feature in the thoughts and fancies of the little girl. Adelia, as she grew, learned to talk with the Indians (Pahvants) and to see the good in them and to hope for the time when they would awaken from their degradation and become a clean and beautiful people. Her father was the first to build a rock house outside of the fort, a strong house with very thick walls, which is still in use (1948). Industry and hard work were the watchwords of the Robison family and Adelia learned at a tender age to card wool, to spin and to knit; to make candles, soap and sew with needle and thread. When she was little more than a child she was teaching a school to other children in one room of her father’s house. When she was about fifteen she heard her brother Lonnie speak often of a boy called Platte Lyman and her curiosity impelled her to ask which one was Platte. One day they had corralled some horses near her home, Lonnie had come to the house for a drink and he pointed out to his sister which one of the boys at the corral was Platte Lyman. That was when she saw him first, but when they were eighteen and he was called on a Mission to England she went with him as far as Salt Lake City and became his wife, returning to Fillmore to live with her parents until his return. From the frontier of Fillmore where she had spent the latter part of her childhood, she went with her husband to build up a second frontier at Oak City, to be the wife of Oak City’s first Bishop to meet the demands of poverty and want while he filled a second Mission to England. In this new wilderness she began to grasp the precious lessons which are taught only in the school of stern adversity. But the sternest demand of all which the fates made of her in Oak City, was when they tore three of her four children from her arms. Leaving the three little graves behind she was desperate to fly away while she could, lest the fourth one be taken also. This more than anything else reconciled her to the proposition of moving far away to the south and facing the dangers of the unknown San Juan Country. Thus in 1880 she came to her third frontier, more wild, more remote and more thick with peril and hardship than any she had known before. Beyond the frail log barriers of the fort at Bluff, lurked more danger than had ever menaced the comfort and safety of the people in Fillmore. With no trees in the fort for shade, the fierce sun boiled down on the white sand, half blinding anyone who went outside the door. When the wind blew, it beat the sand through a thousand loose chinks in the walls to sift over everything inside. When it rained the muddy water dripped dismally from the dirt roof for hours after the storm had passed. Anything in the way of a refrigerator was unheard of, pure cold water was conspicuous by its absence and their hard-earned food could be kept but a little while. They had nothing but tough cottonwood for fuel, and the limited dooryard space afforded no private reservation, be it ever so small. There was an irregular delivery of mail about once a month with some freight team from Colorado. Prices were painfully high; all kinds of supplies hard to get, and stern necessity had to devise some ways of surviving which had not been known before. But in the cramped log room of the fort, and in all the humble dwellings where she lived with her children after that, she taught them the Gospel by songs, by stories, by precept and by determined example. Her dear voice is not recorded on any phonograph record where it can be reproduced, but it is engraved on the imperishable tablets of memory in the hearts of her children. These undying songs, these impressive teachings accomplished not with the advantage of a school education, but with a heart full of faith and love – these constitute the big work of her life; they are the precious offerings she brought forth from her tribulation to place on the altar of her loved ones. And when she was old and weary and her beloved companion had gone on to his reward, she plodded on still, facing yet another frontier, the fourth frontier of her life when she came and pitched her tent and engaged to do what she could for the establishment of Blanding. She carried on still in the service and her devotion to the Gospel that she loved and that her parents had loved before her. She died in the harness where she had worked from childhood; she was acting as a Relief Society Teacher when on the 25th of February 1909 she fell with pain at the doorstep of the home she had gone to visit, and in a few hours she was dead. Her body rests on the gravel hill above Bluff, and beside her is the body of Platte Lyman, with whom she made her most resolute effort to magnify the calling which had been placed on them by the servants of the Lord.
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Historical Boundaries: 1851: Utah Territory, United States 1851: Millard, Utah Territory, United States 1896: Millard, Utah, United States
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English and Scottish: variant of Robson or else a shortened form of Robertson or Robinson .
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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