Archives West Finding Aid

Betsy Jane Tenney was born December 1, 1824 in Hanover, New York to William and Eliza Webb Tenney. In 1834 the Tenney family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and moved to Quincy, Illinois where they remained during the 1840s. During this period Betsy married Robert Loose, a non-Mormon, and moved to Shreveport, Louisiana where Robert managed a general store. Betsy had three children with Robert; Warren, William, and Edwin. Betsy also managed the store when Robert left on business trips to Quincy every eighteen months. Tragedy struck in 1854 when Robert died from cholera while away on business in St. Louis.

After Robert's death, Betsy and her children moved to Quincy where they remained until 1860. That year Betsy and her children immigrated to the Utah Territory and settled in Payson and she worked as a teacher. On August 24, 1861 Betsy married Payson resident Orawell Simons in Salt Lake City and became his second polygamous wife. They later had two children, Ema Eliza (1862) and Grant (1864).

In November 1864 Brigham Young called members of the church to settle the thirty-mile long Muddy River Valley, in southern Nevada; among those called was Betsy's husband. Brigham Young's goals for Muddy River Valley were to secure a landing point for future Mormon immigrants traveling up the Colorado River enroute to Salt Lake City, to raise cotton in cooperation with the cotton farms in St. George, Utah, and to ensure Mormon control of the area's economic resources. Orawell was entrusted with the duty to establish a grist mill in Muddy River Valley, which later came to be known as Simonsville, Nevada (now St. Joseph, Nevada). During the winter of 1864-1865 the Simons family moved to Muddy River Valley and began work on the grist mill. In January 1865 Orawell returned to Payson, leaving Betsy and her children in Nevada. A census taken of Simonsville in 1866 lists 167 settlers, thirty-five of whom were recorded as men, with the remainder presumably being women and children. In the fall of 1866 Betsy and her children returned to Payson where Betsy continued to work as a teacher. By 1867 many of those called to Muddy River Valley had abandoned the settlement due to extreme conditions, crop failure, lack of supplies, and malaria from the nearby mosquito ridden swamps. In 1870 Brigham Young ordered the settlers to abandon the settlement and return to Salt Lake City.

Once back in the Utah Territory, Betsy's children from her first marriage moved to California to mine gold. Orawell never lived with Betsy after her return from Muddy River Valley and rarely visited her; he instead chose to live with his first and younger wife. On May 24, 1899 Betsy divorced Orawell. Betsy lived in Payson until her death on January 14, 1904.