George PATTEN

                   Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, Page 2316:  Mary Jane Nelson Patten, Pioneer arriving in Salt Lake 9 Sep 1850 with the Thomas Johnson Wagon Train.
       Mary Jane Nelson was born, March 8, 1832 in Jefferson County, Illinois, the eighth child of Edmond Nelson and Jane Taylor.  After her parents were baptized they started for Missouri to join with the Saints.  They suffered many hardships along with the other Church members at that time.
       In the spring of 1850, the family started west with Captain Thomas Johnson Company, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on September 9, 1850.  Theirs was a pleasant journey, no Indian troubles and only three deaths during the trip, although her father contracted mountain fever from which he never fully recovered.
       The family settled in Alpine, Utah.  Here Mary Jane met George Patten, and they were married on February 20, 1851 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.  In 1854 George and Mary Jane moved to Payson, Utah.  She was the mother of nine children, all of them surviving to maturity.
       In 1865 when a call came for them to help build up Southern Utah, they moved to St. Thomas on the Muddy River.  Mary Jane had a great ability to nurse the sick, and lay out the dead.  During their lifetime they built eighteen dwellings for themselves and sons.  She was a wonderful cook and homemaker.  She sewed tiny, fine stitches for hand-tucked shirts, and did beautiful darning.  She made several trips to Old Mexico where one of her sons lived.  Later in her life her husband built her a two-story home in Payson.
       Mary Jane passed away on July 6, 1896 in Payson, Utah County, Utah and is buried there.