Newspaper article following the death of Sarah Vail Howell Terry

THE MT. PLEASANT PYRAMID

July 20, 1917

At the age of 99 years and 15 days, Mrs. Sarah H. Terry of Fairview completed her life's work on earth. She died Saturday July 14th, and funeral services were held Monday at the Fairview ward chapel in connection with the services held over the remains of Frederick Christensen.

Genealogy of Sarah Vail Howell Terry (Contributed by the family.)

SARAH VAIL HOWELL TERRY, daughter of John Vail and Elizabeth Edwards, was born June 29, 1818, at River Head, Long Island, New York. Her father and mother were both born in the same place. She spent her early life at Fairview [Riverhead]. Her father, called Capt. John Vail, owned a vessel, a small sailing boat, and started his livelihood transporting people from Long Island to New York for many years. Her mother died when she [Sarah] was about four years of age. Her father lived single several years when he married Deborah Fernium of River Head, who was born March 31, 1796. There were at this time nine children as follows: Fanny, Elizabeth, Charles Edward, Martha, George Washington, Sarah, Mary, Rueben and Pheby. Her mother died at the time these last two (twins) were born, in the year 1822. Sarah went many trips with her father across Long Island Sound, over to New York, many times up the Connecticut River and different places where her father carried passengers. She lived at River Head until she joined the L.D.S. church in the year 1842.

At the age of 18 she was married to Edmond Wheeler Howell of River Head, October 5, 1836. He was a shoemaker and made a living following that trade, and stayed with it all his life.

About five years later she first heard the elders of the Mormon church preaching the gospel in her country, and a year later, after her husband had joined the church, she became a convert. At this time she had been suffering for about a month with neuraligia in her head which had pained her very severly, but when she was going to be baptized, the elder told her to throw off the bandages from her head. She did so and traveled about seven and one-half miles in the wind and was baptized in the ocean water Long Island Sound by Elder Bisbee, and from that very hour the neuraligia left her and she never had another touch of it. This was a great testimony to her.

Shortly after, during the later part of 1844, she and her husband and three children, Willis, Harriet Mariah and George Edward, left River Head and moved over to New York, where Mary was born. They lived there about three years, working in order to get sufficient means to go on their journey westward. Before leaving New York they buried their son, George Edward. While in New York, her husband went in parthership with another shoemaker and after a short time the rogue picked up one night taking the tools and nearly all they had and skipped away with it. It took some time for him to recruit and get more tools before he could finish earning money to go on their journey. They left New York in 1846 and travelled on to St. Louis, where they stayed for about a year. While there another child, Emily Anna, was born, but lived only about nine months and died before they left St. Louis.

They then left St. Louis about the year 1848 and traveled on to Bluffs, Winter Quarters, where they stayed for about four years. Here Sarah Elizabeth and Ophelia Ann were born. During this time her husband worked and earned a yoke of oxen, a yoke of cows, a wagon and provisions with which to continue their journey across the plains.

In May, 1852, they left the Bluffs and started on with the company led by William Miles, later by Capt. Wood. They had only gone a short distance to the Platt river, when the company was attacked with the Cholera, and her husband died. Within three days her daughter, Harriet Mariah, also died. They continued on and later in the fall of the same year landed in Salt Lake valley. After reaching there she was met by a friend, Otis Lysander Terry from Little Cottonwood, whom she married January 27, 1853, she being his fourth wife, the others were Fanny M. Loveridge, Jane Hart, Levy Judd, later marrying Jane Van Valkinberg. They lived at Little Cottonwood about two or three years and then on account of famine caused by circkets, moved to Ogden to get employment. Whle there two of the women, Fanny and Jane, died. They remained for about a year at Ogden and then moved back to Little Cottonwood, and during the time they lived there Fanny Marilla, Edmund and Charles A. were born. While there the Johnson Army invaded Utah and her oldest son, Willis, was called out to go with a company in defense of the Mormon people.