.JPG)
These are Oden Flanders children at the time of his death. Ralph b. 1899, Sarah Ella b. 1901, Oden b. 1897, and Emma b 1895.
Kimberly, Sept. 5.--Swiftly following the death of Alvias Smith another fatal accident has deeply stirred Gold mountain residents. Yesterday, soon after lunch, W. Sylvester was "catching up" some dangerous ground on the 7th level up from No. 2 tunnel in the Annie Laurie mine. Needing assistance Mr. Sylvester called to aid Oden Flanders of Junction, this county. Mr. Flanders had one knee on the floor of level, and with out stretched arms was holding two posts upon which Sylvester was in the act of placing a cap. Without notice the ground began running in from roof. Flanders arose but not in time to save himself from the avalanche of stones and dirt that buried him. Assistance was obtained, an opening made to Flanders' face, and every effort was made to furnish the imprisoned man with air.
The accident occurred at 1:30, and during the succeeding two hours Flanders frequently talked to those who were working heroically to save his life. His last words, at 3:30, were addressed to Supt. Highland: "For God's sake, hurry. I can't stand this any longer." Although the most desperate efforts were made to release their companion, the dirt came running in from the surface in such masses that it was 8 o'clock before the body was recovered. James W. Cook of Circleville, and who was employed in the Annie Laurie mine, and T.W. Cook of Junction, brothers-in-law of the deceased accompanied the remains on the sad journey to the dead man's home.
Later--Marysvale, Sept. 5th--Mrs. Emma Flanders, wife of the deceased accompanied by her mother and brother, Benjamin Cook, came down from Junction to meet the remains. Collins F. Flanders and Mr. and Mrs. Hyrum Flanders arrived from Tintic on the evening train. It was nearly eleven o'clock at night before the remains arrived from Gold Mountain. The heart broken wife tore herself from kindly restraining arms rushed out into the darkness, lighted only by flickering lanterns, to meet the still form of her husband. It were sacrilege to describe the heart-rending scene which followed. It was midnight when the mournful cortege started on its sixteen mile drive to Junction.
Oden Flanders was born at Payson, Utah, May 1st, 1886, and was married to Emma Cook on Sept. 5th, 1894. Mrs. Flanders, in poor health with four children, two girls and two boys, the oldest being seven years and the youngest nine months, is forced to enter the struggle for existence by one of those accidents that are even more terrible because of their suddenness.
(The Free Lance, 5 September 1902)
Oden Goodman Flanders - Mining Accident
Oden Goodman Flanders was born in Payson, Utah on 1 May 1866 to Collins Eastman Flanders and Ellen Sophia Jacobs. Oden married Emma Cook on 5 September 1894. The marriage was performed by John H. Chidester at Panguitch, Utah.
They had four children:
(1) Emma Flanders (Gates) born 26 July 1895 in Milford, Utah. Emma was baptized by John Morrill 8 November 1902 by John Morrill. She married Charles Gates in the Salt Lake Temple on 23 June 1915.
(2) Oden Raymond Flanders born 8 July 1897 in Cove, Sevier, Utah. Raymond was baptized 30 June 1906 by John Morrill and confirmed by John Stoney. He married Rosetta Rudd on 23 December 1919.
(3) Frederick Ralph Flanders born 10 June 1899 in Diamond, Juab, Utah. Baptized 3 October 1908 by John T. Luke and confirmed 4 October 1908 by Horace Morrill. Ralph married Maggie Rolena Ackerman on 12 June 1923 and they were endowed and sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on 3 June 1964. They had two children: Arden and Ireta Flanders. Ralph was 2 ½ years old when his father (Oden) died.
(4) Sarah Ella Flanders (Gavin/Simpson) was born 22 December 1901 in Junction, Piute, Utah. She was baptized 5 June 1910 by William H. Luke and confirmed 10 June 1910 by R. G. Young. Sarah Ella married Andrew Gavin in 1920 and a daughter, Rae Aunda Gavin was born to them. They divorced 3 years later in 1923 and Sarah Ella married W. Simpson at Ely, Nevada on 10 October 1925. Two daughters were born to this marriage: Venice and Emma LaRue Simpson. (Sarah Ella was 9 months old when her father, Oden, died).
Oden and Emma lived in Junction, Utah, near Emma’s mother, Mary Ann Picton Cook. Due to needing work, Oden left his family (hoping it was only for a little time) to the mines in Kimberly, Utah, a high mountain mining area near Marysvale, Utah.
LETTER TO EMMA FROM ODEN – 12 DAYS PRIOR TO HIS DEATH
Kimberly Piute Company
August the 25, 1902
My dear Wife,
I received your kind and welcome letter today and was glad to hear that you got home
all right. Well Emma, you can tell Ben that I do not want to sell my lot. You did not
say whether the cow is going to ????? in or not. I traded my gun to the ????? for goods
and 14 dollars. I will keep that clothes I want here.
The Blue Bird (mine) shut down last night. I am going to work in the Annie Laurie
(mine) in the morning.
Please find enclosed 18 dollars. If you want the cupboard, buy it. If Ben wants to let
you have a ton of hay for the 5 dollars that he owes me, do so. If you see Jess ??????
find out if he got the pay for the feeding. Look out, there is 5 dollars due me and
get the hay for it.
The dress pattern is for you and have it made nice. It is my choice. Trim it with
black ???? lace and line it all through. Well dear, the old hill seems lonesome.
Now you can order a cupboard from Ha???? And order one that will suit you well.
Dear, give my love to all the folks. Kiss the children for me.
Yours Truly,
O Flanders
Oden was killed in a mining accident at the Annie Laurie Mine (Kimberly, Piute, Utah) on 5 September 1902 – which was 12 days after he wrote the tender letter to Emma
Oden was buried in the old Field Junction, Utah Cemetery in an un-marked grave. Very few people are buried there, due to the underground water table from the nearby reservoir becoming a problem. The new cemetery is across the road and up on a hill.
A HISTORY OF PIUTE COUNTY by Linda King Newell (page 181) tells the story of Oden’s death:
(Utah State Historical Society, Piute County Commission 1999)
“Some 500 people lived in Kimberly in 1902. The Annie Laurie mine employed around 300 miners at 3 dollars a day. That was the same year that Peter Kimberly reportedly had an offer to sell his mining interests for 5 million dollars. With mining at its peak (running 3 shift a day, seven days a week), roads being built, and buildings constructed, it seems inevitable that someone would lose their life working in or on Gold Mountain. This happened twice within a few days in late August 1902.
(The first accident killed Alvias Smith). Another accident, this one in the mines, followed only a few days later. Oden Flanders and W. Sylvester were repairing timbers in tunnel No. 2 of the Annie Lode Mine when dirt began running in from the roof of the tunnel. Sylvester jumped out of the way, but the avalanche of dirt and rock buried Flanders. Sylvester dug an opening to his co-worker’s face and found him still alive. For the next two hours miners worked frantically to rescue Flanders, who could converse with the men. Another hail of dirt from above silenced Flanders, however. His brother-in-law, James W. Cook or Circleville, accompanied the body to Junction where his wife and family lived.”
Clyde Brinkerhoff, Oden’s friend, helped with his burial in an un-marked grave. Clyde told his daughter, Dortha Brinkerhoff Davenport (reported and historian), that he hoped that one day Oden’s family would give Oden’s resting place a proper headstone.
FINDING ODEN’S GRAVESITE (2003) AND PLACING A HEADSTONE (2004)
In 2003 Ireta Flanders Gurney (Oden’s grandaughter), her husband Donald Gurney, their son Rick, Jacque (Rick’s wife), Richard and Jonique (Rick’s youngest children), got to experience a miracle in regards to finding Oden’s grave and placing a headstone on it. Jacque Bluth Gurney’s journal entry from that experience:
“2003 – This summer we went from Arizona to Utah to go fishing at Otter Creek Resevoir with Kent, Carolyn and Lena Gean. Riley was coming from Arizona driving alone, and was a day late in arriving, so we went out looking for him. He was driving alone from Arizona in the work van that we used for painting and we knew he would be easy to spot. We drove towards the road junction, hoping to get a cell phone connection to find out where he was, and when he answered we learned that he was still about an hour or more away - - so we decided to drive into the town of Junction.
I remembered the area from the time I had lived with Grandma Rolena Flanders and we came to a family reunion. Grandma Flanders showed me a graveyard in a field where her father-in-law, Oden Goodman Flanders, was buried. I remembered the huge cottonwood trees on the east side of highway 89 just one mile south of Junction, Utah and a newer cemetery on the opposite side of the highway, up on a hill. I learned that the old cemetery is called Field Cemetery, where only a few people were buried in mostly unmarked graves - - and that the water table in the soil was too high so the town stopped burying people there and created a new cemetery across Highway 89 on a hill the west.
We decided to drive into Junction town to take pictures of the beautiful old brick Town Hall building that Great Grandpa Ackerman and his sons had helped to build, and also to see the newly constructed Piute County building. It was a Saturday, but the door to the County building was open, so we went inside. We found a woman behind the desk (she said she had some work to catch up on so had come in for a bit) and we asked her if there were records of where people were buried in the old Field Cemetery. She pulled out the plot plan of the cemetery but it didn’t show where Oden Goodman Flanders was buried. The woman showed us a new book on the history of Piute County that had just been printed in 1999, and we purchased a copy. In it we found the stories of John and Nettie Ackerman (Akkerman) land dispute and Oden Goodman Flanders’ mining accident where he lost his life.
MIRACULOUS! Since the cemetery plot plan did not have Oden’s gravesite, the woman suggested that we go to the home of Dortha Brinkerhoff Davenport, who was in her late 80’s, and who had been a news reporter and historian for the area. We called Dortha on the phone, and she answered and kindly invited us to her home (just down the street – 195 S 100 W). She was nearly blind, but so very gracious! She had rooms filled with books and histories that she had both written and gathered, and she had catalogued every person in Piute County in hundreds of binders. She took Donald and me to an out-building where she pulled a binder with histories of our ancestors and a plot plan. She personally knew about the burial site of Oden Goodman Flanders, because her father, Clyde Brinkerhoff, had helped bury Oden in plot #42, just south of Mary Ann Cook Robinson (his sister-in-law), under the big cottonwood trees. Dortha’s father’s dying wish was that Oden’s family would not forget him, and that his family would give him a proper grave marking.
Clyde Brinkerhoff’s wife (Dortha’s mother) died shortly thereafter, and Emma Cook Flanders took care of the Brinkerhoff children. Thus Dortha had a deep connection with and expressed gratitude to our family. We felt blessed and recognized this miracle that we were experiencing! We knew that we were being guided and that none of this was happening by coincidence! The family of Oden Goodman Flanders and Emma Cook needs much healing – and this was a piece of the puzzle and a miracle that we were given! I am so connected to this side of the family, and feel a great love for them.”
(Dortha Davenport died the next year. We were so very blessed to meet her!)
Ireta and Donald contracted for a headstone to be made, and in 2004 they, along with Rick, Jacque, Richard, Jonique and Lyndsey (Phelps) went to Oden’s gravesite, cleared the area, and cemented the headstone to honor him. We sat in the weedy cemetery, under the huge cottonwood trees, grateful for our family and for this man who lived a short and honorable life, loving his wife and children, trying his best to provide for them - - and knowing that we were led to this moment by our Father in Heaven. Thank you, God, for your plan for eternal families!
