John Darrington's son, Clark, wrote a biography of John. This was a great starting point for researching John's family.
More about his family life was revealed:
"He lived with and was raised by his grandparents, whose family consisted of three children: his mother Ann, Elizabeth and a boy named William (called Bill). Grandparents are Charles Darrington and Sarah Garrett. The family were very poor and all had to work to make a living."
His arrival in America was also documented:
“When he was a lad 15 years old, he came to America in 1866 with a family who had joined the Latter-day Saints Church by the name of Jimmie Chandler. They sailed from Liverpool with a company of Mormon emigrants bound for Utah on a sailing vessel. They were nine weeks on the ocean. They had passage down in the storage of the vessel on the same deck as the stock and cattle on the ship. They had to work to help pay their way across.”
The biography also tells of his various types of employment, beginning when he was young:
 |
| John Darrington as a teenager |
“While a small boy he sold papers, worked in a shoe shop and as a farm hand to an English landlord. When he was about 12 years old, he worked in a brewery. When he was about 12 years old, he also did other odd jobs.”
“In the summer time for a number of years he drove teams--two wagons and 14 mules—in a freight outfit from Corinne, Utah to Butte, Montana and up on Wood River, Idaho before the railroad was built.”
“He also worked on the Union Pacific when it was built. This was a transcontinental line and [he] was present when the Golden Spike was driven on the Promontory, Utah connecting the east and west ends together.”
John’s life wasn’t all about work. While in Willard, Utah, John found his first wife:
“He met a charming young lady by the name of Sarah Jane Lowe, who fell in love with him. They kept company and courted each other against her family’s wishes, because he was not a member of the church, and was alone in the world and a poor man.”
John and Sarah Jane Lowe had four children: John, Clark, Fred and Richard. However, after the birth of Richard, Sarah died of “child bed fever and blood poisoning”.
A few years later, John took another wife, whose name was also Sarah.
“He knew a widow woman by the name of Sarah Maria Stokes living in Three Mile Creek whose husband, William Stokes, had died the summer before. He went and talked it over with her; she had four children by the name of: Hannah, Lillie, Charlie and Henry and no home. So after due consideration they decided to marry and raise their families together.”
 |
| Families of John Darrington & Sarah Mariah Perry Stokes Darrington (seated) |
I went about most of my life thinking that John had joined the church in England, but his biography proved to be a surprise:
“In the spring of 1887 John Darrington was baptized a member of the L.D.S. Church by
Fred O. Beecher and confirmed by bishop Thomas Taylor at Elba, Idaho. He had been a user of tobacco for 35 years but decided he had too many boys for him to continue the habit, so he laid his pipe upon the shelf and quit and never tasted it again from then ‘til the day he died.”
 |
| Elba, Idaho LDS Ward at the rock church building. John and his boys are standing on the stairs. |
The complete biography can be accessed at the following link:
Thanks to Ward Rasmussen for providing this online copy of the biography as well as additional information on the Darrington family. The link to his web page is listed under the links listed below.
