Sant History

SANT HISTORY

Compiled by Alfred C. Sant

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Cheshire History (also known s the County of Chester) England, is the starting point for Grandfather Abel Sant.

Cheshire is a maritime and inland country in the northwest of England. The maritime section from the Wirrall Peninsula that reaches out to the Irish Sea and bordering counties of Lances, York, Derby, Staff, Salop, Denbigh, and Flint. The chief rivers are the Mersy, the Weaver, and the Dee. There are many canals.

Salt has been long worked at Nantwich, Northwich, Middlewich, Sandbach at Macclesfield and Stockport. There are manufactures of cotton, silk, ribbon, linens, chemicals and soap chiefly in the towns of the E division, and shipbuilding on the Mersy. Railway rolling stock is manufactured extensively. It is in the diocease of Chester.¹

Cheshire in the Diocease of Chester, Province of York, forms an Archdeaconry and comprises of seven (7) deaneries of Chester, Fordsham, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Malpas, Middlewich, and Warrall, containing 78 parishes, of which 46 are rectories, 23 vicarages, and 18 perpetual curacies. For civil purposes it is divided into 7 hundreds of Broxton, Bucklow, Eddisburh, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Northwhich, and Wirrall. It contains the market towns of Altrincham, Congleton, Fordshas, Knutafo, Macclesfield, Malpas, Middlewich Nantwich, Northwich, Sandbach, Storckport, and Tarporley.

At Sprostan, Chester, England, lived Abel Sant and his wife Margaret. Surly we can assume that they were a devoted couple, enjoying their home and family, and working to sustain and support their children. Thomas was the eldest of the group with ages ranging between the years of 1799 and 1818. We are fortunate to have the story of the life of Grandfather Abel Sant sometime after the year of 1817, as related by Alfred C. Sant in connection with some of this missionary experiences.

In the year of 1906 my brother Alma came home from the Southern States Mission and upon his return Bishop Hyman said to my father, “Now it’s Fred’s turn to go.”

My father replied: “I’ll be glad for him to go and I will pay his way, but if he is called to the Islands or among the natives, I will rebel.” I was working on the survey line when I received the letter and my call for a mission to New Zealand. I returned home with the news and in due time father (George) asked, “Where are you going.” I replied, “To New Zealand.” Father did not approve and said, “It is impossible for you to go. I won’t let you go among the natives.” Therefore my desire of going where I wanted to stood in the balance. I wanted to go where I was called and my father didn’t want me to go to the Isles of the sea.

As time passed we learned there were two missions in New Zealand– an European and a Moari. At this father consented for me to go and gave me $20.00 and told me if I was sent among the Moaries I was to send a telegram immediately and he would send me a ticket so I could return home. He told me to keep this in mind. I was in quite a ponder. I wanted to go where I was called to serve and I didn’t want to disobey my father. It seemed hard for me to disobey one and obey the other. But anyway I was sent to the New Zealand mission to serve where I was most needed and to do my best.

I left home on the 7^th of July, 1908, and went to Salt Lake City where I was set apart on the 8^th to go to New Zealand. I was alone and perhaps a bit lonely as my brother, Orson, was born the day I left and mother and father were unable to be with me. They were not able to go with me to the mission home or the temple. However, my father, sister, and sweetheart met me at the Oxford depot and father gave me another $20.00, saying, “Be sure to send me a telegram if you get put among the natives and I’ll have you come home.”

In due time I was assigned to the South Island Mission, in the city of Christchurch, a beautiful city and a lot like Salt Lake. The streets were built straight and I was very happy there.

As time passed, I gave a great deal of thought to some of the Sant people. When I left home I visited Uncle Johnny and Aunt Benta and he gave me $10.00 and said, “There are Sant people in that country, I want you to keep your eyes open and ears open and find them.

My Uncle Tom gave me $5.00 and said, “Fred, I hope you find some Sant people there because I know there are some.” My grandfather also gave me $5.00 with the same wish to try and locate some of the Sants in Australia.

I kept my eyes and ears open and was ever alert for something about the Sants. It was not until the 1910 census was taken on the Island of New Zealand that my desires were fulfilled. All the names of the peoples of the Island were published in a large directory. One day when I went into the Post Office I found lying on the desk a copy of this directory. I immediately turned to the ‘S’ section and, to my surprise, I found Alfred C. Sant, Mormon Missionary, and Walter Sant, Patoni, Wellington, New Zealand.

I anxiously took his name and address and upon arriving home (my mission headquarters) wrote a letter to him. I told him that I was searching for Sant people that I knew were there and he was the first one I had found. He was happy to get the letter and sent it on to Australia to his father. His father in return wrote back to him saying he was glad to know there were some Sants there besides his family and he would be very happy to meet me.

Walter was very glad to hear from me and was a fine correspondent. We wrote to each other many times before I broke down and told him the man I was looking for had been transported and he began to burn my letter when his wife interceded and said, “Walter, don’t burn the letter, send it on to your father and when you get a reply from him perhaps your feelings will be changed.”

Walter did send my letter on to his father, Isaac Sant, in Australia. When the answer came back the reply was: “Yes, Walter, tell the man the ancestor he is looking for was a transport.” This of course was sad news to them because it had been a secret that had been kept all the days of his life.

I was invited to come to Patoni, New Zealand, to visit with Walter and family. I did and was treated very royally, and we discussed a great deal about the family which he had never heard about. His father, Isaac Sant, was very secretive and was only 13 years old when his father Abel Sant died. In his last words he told his son not to join any church because it was church and religion that had influenced his being transported to Australia. He (Able) knew that his brother-in-laws were Catholic and he was a Protestant and he wouldn’t join the Catholic Church, therefore, they had used their influence in getting him transported to remove the stain of a Protestant being mingled with the family.

Then an invitation was extended to me to visit in Australia with Isaac, the father of Walter and son of Abel, who was getting along in years. This I accomplished after I finished my mission in New Zealand in February 1911. I went over to Australia to spend some time getting to their place way up in the mountains. They seemed to be much like my own folks; wonderful pioneers, they like the pioneering of places. They moved up into Combind Australia, cleared the ground and planted their seed and also had some cattle. They helped in building communities and the family lived there and were some of it’s finest citizens.

It was quite a task to get to their place. After I got to Sydney, Australia, I made arrangements for my ticket to Keelabark which was 180 miles from Sydney. It was necessary for me to take a river boat– a flat bottomed boat that only drew 9 feet of water– but it had to be able to come on shallow water and able to clear the sand bars up the Manning River. The boat was about 120 feet long. As it came into Sydney with a load of cows, pigs, and sheep, it didn’t leave the boat very clean and the stench was terrible. The crew cleaned it off as good as they could, which was probably unnecessary, as we were caught in a bad storm. We left on Thursday, but due to the storm, we didn’t arrive at Keelabark until Sunday night at 7:30 due to sheltering at ports up the coast when it was too stormy to continue the trip.

I’ll never forget the trip up there. It was such a rough one. The captain had sailed 17 years on that water and had never sheltered until that day and night. I never saw a man that was more seasick than he was. He would take a drink, then he would swear, then throw up. The trip was a rough one. We should have arrived Friday morning but didn’t land until Sunday night. By this you can understand how bad the weather was and how it slowed down the trip. I shall always remember that experience.

A funny thing happened to me at the hotel in Keelabark. It was rough and crude and used kerosene lamps for lights, however it didn’t look too bad from the outside. When I went to my room and turned my bed down, I was surprised to find a whole army of fleas on the sheets. They sure liked me, I guess because of my red hair, or red blood, or something. They would bite me, then jump and bite again, and ever place they would bite there would be a lump. I shook the sheets and tried my best to make war on the fleas, to get rid of them, but I no sooner would get back to bed than they would find me again.

The next morning I got a ride with the milkman part way to Keelabark. Owing to the lateness of our boat getting in, the stagecoach which I was booked to go with had left on Friday. I had to bo by milk truck part way and stay all night with a family that kept boarders and roomers. The lady of the boarding house looks like she was tiered and worn out and was really not a well person. After supper was finished, I asked her if I couldn’t help with the dishes and she seemed to appreciate my help. I helped with all the dishes of the day.

When morning came and the milking was done, I went out and found an “Alfalfa” separator. I took hold of it and started to crank it and when I got it up to proper speed I turned the milk on and while the milk was flowing the little boy said, “We never knew a preacher could turn the separator.” It was a wonderful experience. They were very fine people.

Their saddle horse was a fine pony and carried me over the 16 miles of country from Keelabark to Combind, a place that was settled by farmers at that time. It was very mountainous and little streams of water were running down all the gullies. It looked so good I had to get off my horse and drink from many of them as I was going through the canyon and the timber. I neared the ranch and rode in and they seemed to know me. I had notified them that I would visit them sometime that month, but they didn’t know which day.

Isaac Sant was doing some black-smithing and was standing out by the anvil upon my arrival and I took his picture with my camera. When I arrived at my grandmother in Smithfield, Utah, I showed her the picture of Isaac Sant in Australia; this was on her 53^rd wedding anniversary. She looked at it and then looked at my Grandfather George and said, “When did you ever have this garb on?” Isaac Sant looked so much like my Grandfather George that no one could have doubted their mind or their eyes that he was a Sant. Isaac was taller than George and had short pants on and also short sleeves in his shirt because it was 105° in the shade at the time the picture was taken.

I was treated very nice and met all the folks and children that were there. I got the record of where they were born, from Isaac, son of Abel who was transported to Australia from England to his home at Combind, Australia.

I left them photographs of my grandmother, father, mother, and a few more I had with me. They seemed very pleased to have some of the pictures of their relatives. I left all my church books which they seemed to appreciate. I didn’t know whether they ever received any missionaries or whether any ever found them, because it was a long way to their place.

I was impressed with their wonderful statures, their bodies were built tall and straight. They were brilliant and very well thought of by everyone I talked to.

While I was at Isaac’s home I received a first hand account of his father, Abel Sant. Isaac was just a boy of 13 years when his father died. His father, Abel, had told him all about the transporting of himself from England to Australia. He was a top sawyer in a saw pit, and the Australian government wrote to England asking for some good sawyers to be sent over to work in the mills because you couldn’t get people to go there at that time. It was not a nice thing to be called a transport.

This is the Story as Isaac Sant told it to me:

“My father was working in a saw mill when his son Tom and they wanted these sawyers to come over to Australia. The English government sent 67 top sawyers over on the same boat, with the same charge and gave them the same punishment, 7 years in Van Demon’s land. While these men had been at work, files had been placed in each lunch bucket. It so happened that Tom’s bucket had the files in it but his father claimed the bucket and said, “It’s me they want to get rid of, you stay and I’ll go.” So the father took the rap for the boy and was transported to Australia along with 66 other sawyers all on the same ship. It is plain to see it was nothing but a trumped up charge that caused him to be sent to Australia. He left his wife and family of 12 children in England fearing he would probably never see them again.

“After his arrival in Australia he lived under convict rule for 3 months then he was sent to the saw mills at Melbourne and was never under any surveillance after that time. After 3 years he was released entirely. The only thing that was object was he could not go back to England until seven years had passed. He never got any word from any of his folks although he continued to send letters to his family in England.

“The oldest son, Tom (For whom he came to Australia) came to Melbourne in a sailing vessel and tried to find his father, but before the word got to the father at the mill and back again the vessel had set sail to Sydney, then Brisbane. He was never able to catch up with Tom, because the boat always left a couple of days before he got there, so he never got to see any of his kin after he left England. He was years alone, then married Ellen Smith from Australia and they had one son, Isaac.” (End)

I did not try to do missionary work there. To spend the time, we went into the forest and cut some walking stick palms to make canes. I made one for my Grandfather Sant and brought it home and he used it many many days. I also went to the store and Post Office and enjoyed a nice ride. While going down to the store Edith, the daughter said, “Fred, can you canter?” I told her I thought I could if the horse was willing and we started up on the lope. Canter was a new word for me as I had never heard of it before.

Forests are very dense there. You have to cut your way in for anything you want. Animals, cows, horses, or anything couldn’t penetrate it because of the density. The forest had to be cleared before anything else would grow. The “Ironbark”, “Tike”, and “Red Bark” are of the Eucalyptus family and as large as the Eucalyptus in this country. The grapevine chokes them causing them to die. The birds carry the seed up into the trees and the vine grows down circling the tree. When the vine reaches the earth it grows into the ground and chokes the tree to death. The timber is so heavy one tree supports the other. The timber doesn’t make good lumber because it doesn’t last for more than a year of two. Building material is imported for building for its lasting quality.

It was a nice country. The homes didn’t have running water, they had a tank sitting outside the house to catch rain water in; so different from here where we have beautiful streams. We couldn’t consider drinking water out of the rain barrel, but there it was necessary and was boiled for sanitary purposes. It was also used for watering the live stock.

I went about every day with Edith Sant, picking wild flowers and fruit. The fruit was delicious. They had one fruit called Passion Fruit which is very highly flavored. A very small quantity would amply flavor a large salad.

There were flocks of parrots, 150 or more to a flock. The Kookaburra is a big white parrot. It’s call is a laugh that sounds almost human. All the parrots have their own chatter and make a great deal of noise.

When I was ready to come home I planned to go overland, because I was afraid to ride that boat again for fear it would sink. When I checked my purse, I found I didn’t have money enough to go overland, so I had to take the boat. When I left Combind, everyone I met and told I was a Sant asked if I was a relative of the Sants there and of course I was happy to say I have never met nicer people anywhere than the Sant people in Australia.

I have received many very nice letters from Walter Sant over the years, corresponding with him over a period of 30 years. I sure missed him when he passed away. He never had any children of his own, however, his wife Annie had two daughters. They married but I was not well acquainted with them, but Walter and I were close and corresponded and exchanged photographs. At present I do not have any contact with New Zealand.

1Logan Utah Library Reference: Bartholmew Genethur R5A1B. Also, En Ref. R5A2 Lewis Topographical Dist.