Our Pioneer Ancestry - Samuel and Helen Mar Cutler Henderson

Janet's and my trip to Utah included a stop at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City. Having previously researched via their website which of our Utah Pioneers had pictures and/or personal histories, we came prepared to find things - and we did. These pictures are from their collection and the brief biographies are from biographies I previously had, from those I found there and from websites I have recently discovered. This is my first installment.

These are photos of Samuel Henderson Jr. and his 3rd wife Helen Mar Cutler.

Samuel Henderson joined the church in Missouri and with his father's family moved to Nauvoo in the fall of 1839. Shortly after his arrival there he married Maryetta Coray. They had 3 children - the first died at birth and two others who had died by the time Maryetta left Samuel seven years after their marriage. He left Nauvoo in 1846, reaching Mt. Pisgah where he stayed for apparently two years. He was among the last to leave Nauvoo, probably staying to help harvest the crops and help his father and stepmother. When the mob forced them out of Nauvoo they apparently lost much of their belongings and benefited from the miracle of the quails. In the spring of 1849 he moved on to Council Bluffs. There he met Harriet Hawkins and married her in 1850 before they joined a company going to SLC. They first settled in Kaysville. On May 5, 1855 he married Helen Mar Cutler and Harriet received her endowments. They moved to Brigham City in 1862. In September of 1865 he married Mary Jane Chivers. In the fall of 1886 he went to Star Valley, Wyoming and eventually settled in Dry Creek. He was president of the 70s quorum in Star Valley. He died in 1904 and was taken to Clifton, Idaho for burial.

Helen and Samuel had 10 children together before they were divorced. Helen later married a William Marley.


Helen Mar Cutler was living in Clymer, New York when her family joined the church in 1843. She was 5 years old. They shortly thereafter moved to Nauvoo. Her father, Perley Cutler, died in in October of 1846 in Iowa a couple of months after her younger brother died. A month later, November 30th, another brother, Perley Pratt Cutler was born. In 1850, Helen (12), her mother, Caroline , and brother (3 1/2) left with the Milo Andrus Wagon Company for the Salt Lake Valley. To pay for their food and transportation Caroline and Helen knit socks by firelight and Helen drove an ox team. They first settled in the Sugar House area. Because her mother's health had suffered from the trek west, Helen assumed much of the work to care for the family. Her mother had remarried twice before Helen married Samuel Henderson in 1855. Samuel and Helen lived in Kaysville then the Brigham City area. She lived in Brigham City until she moved to Clifton, Idaho. She died there in March of 1904 and was buried there. (This information was culled from biographies of Samuel Henderson, Jr. and Caroline Sophia Freeman Cutler Van Valkenburgh Thompson Hawkins. The DUP has a personal history for Helen that we didn't have time to get.)

Websites for Samuel Henderson Sr. which include information on Samuel Henderson Jr. :
http://www.hendersonfamily.us/
http://www.carrollscorner.net/HendersonSamuel1785.htm