William Cornwell PATTEN

                   Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, page 2366:  Ann Patten was a pioneer arriving 3 Oct 1850 with the Whipple Wagon Train.
       Ann's mother died when she was very young.  Her grandmother Cornwell, came to help her father raise the children.
       The the fall of 1841, her father accepted the gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was baptized as a member.  He took his family and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.
       Ann became the second wife of Charles Shreeve Peterson.  Her sister, Mary Ann, was his first wife.  He took his first family to the Salt Lake Valley in 1849.  Ann came the following year with her father's family with the Edson Whipple Wagon Company.  They arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 3, 1850.
      Ann's husband moved his families from place to place for years and in each place, houses were built for them.  Everything was crude those early pioneering days, and it made life dreadfully hard for a mother with a large family.  There were times when they lived on sego lily roots and other greens.
       Ann was a good natured mother.  She had a great deal of sewing to do by hand and stockings to knit.  She washed the wool, carded it into rolls, spun itinto yarn, wove it into cloth, and formed it into clothing.  She became anurse in hundreds of cases and learned midwifery by practice.
       After the railroad came, Charles built a six-room house and ran a blacksmith shop and a small store.  Ann and her daughter, Sarah, boarded the railroad workers.  She was the mother of thirteen children and also raised some children of Charles' other wives.
       Ann was President of the Relief Society of the Weber City Ward in Morgan Stake for ten years.  They moved again to Bear River Flat (Fielding) where they homesteaded for a short time and then moved back to Peterson.  In the summer of 1883, they moved to Mesa, Arizona where they homesteaded 160 acres.  Charles later moved his young wife and family to Mexico leaving Ann and her family to work the homestead.
       Charles passed away on September 26, 1889.  Not long after his death, Ann's house burned and nothing was saved.  She sold her land to provide shelter for herself and her single daughter.
       As soon as Ann could earn money to pay for transportation, she took her daughter to Utah to do temple work in Utah several times.  The altitude of Utah bothered her a great deal, so she continued living in Mesa and nursed people until just a few weeks before her death on January 28, 1909.
                  

                   Died in early infancy.