Albert Bailey Griffin's Salt Lake City Lot

So much of the history of the Griffins in Utah takes place in Southern Utah we tend to forget that from October 1848 to the fall of 1865 our history was written in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. When Albert Bailey Griffin entered the valley he arrived in a city that had already been carefully laid out and surveyed. The early settlers were afforded the opportunity of owning a lot within the city where they could settle and begin a new life with the Saints, sheltered in the Rocky Mountains, safe from the persecution that they left behind.  Albert Bailey Griffin moved his family onto Block 82, Lot number 5, in the Sixteenth Ward, as designated on the map of Plat A, for the then called Great Salt Lake City.  So what is the story of Plat A? The idea of building a “City Of Zion” was a concept that was almost as old as the Church itself.  With the move to Missouri in the mid 1830s the idea for the City of Zion reached full bloom. With the revelations concerning the further gathering of the Saints in Missouri and in particular, Independence, Joseph Smith had produced his vision for a detailed city design. When subsequent evens turned the focus of the Church to the west plans were made to implement the design in the new location. When the Saints arrived in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in July, 1847, they brought with them Joseph Smith’s vision for laying out the “City of Zion”. Brigham Young consciously attempted to carry out Joseph’s colonization plans. Joseph’s original city plan called for three 15-acre temple blocks located in the center of a one-mile square plat of city blocks. The Salt Lake City plan contained only one ten acre Temple Block, although the original idea was for a 40-acre block, with blocks radiating out in every direction except where limited by the mountains. By August 1847 Orson Pratt and Henry Sherwood were given the task of laying out the new city. What they produced was Plat A.  It contain 135 blocks of 10 acres each which were subdivided into eight lots, numbered from 1 to 8 starting on the southeast corner, each containing 1.114 acres. By 1850 two more Plats B and C with 63 and 84 new blocks had been surveyed. The original Plat A extended southward to 9^th South.  Serious farming was to occur outside of the city and so the “Big Field” was surveyed. The Big Field had as a basic unit  plots of 10 acres. In addition 5 acres plots were also laid out to accommodate the merchant class who needed some farmland but did not rely on farming for a living, as did the majority of the people. These plats are referenced as 5 acre or 10-acre surveys. In addition a Church Farm, one square mile in size, was laid out.  What was the vision for the city? The answer is given in an early Brigham Young speech, “We purpose to have the temple lot contain 40 acres, to include the ground we are now on what do you say to that? All right? That the streets be 88 feet wide, sidewalks 20 feet, the lots to contain 1 ¼ acres, eight lots in a block, the houses invariably set in the center of the lot, 20 feet back from the street. Neither will they be filled with cattle, horses, and hogs, nor children, for they will have yards and places appropriated for recreation, and we will have a city clean and in order”. “In order “seemed to be the rule of the day.  Brigham Young’s proposals became city ordinances.  The Church leaders who were returning to Winter Quarters were allowed to choose lots for their families that fall.  Most chose lots close to Temple Square. The remainder of the lots were distributed the following summer. Some 1770 plus people had made the journey west in 1847. They probably started selecting lots that spring. In 1848 another 2600 plus Saints arrived.  It seems lots were probably distributed either by choice or assignment. The first saints received these lots free of charge, granted as a spiritual stewardship or inheritance for their faithfulness, “ for the Lord has given it to us without price” preached Brigham Young.  After 1849 lots were assigned by the ward bishops. In the fall of 1848 Albert Bailey, Sylvia and Charles Emerson Griffin entered the Salt Lake Valley as members of the Heber C. Kimball Company.  Albert then made his selection of a city lot. Charles describes it, “ My father took a lot some six or seven blocks West of Temple Block, in the sixteenth Ward, and as soon as he could, he went to the canyon and got logs and put up a cabin about twelve feet square, with poles, brush and dirt for a roof and a dirt floor. BUT WE WERE GLAD TO GET A PLACE AS GOOD AS THAT TO WINTER IN”.  Lot 5 in block 82 was at the corner of North Temple and Fifth West. It sits today bounded by the North Temple Viaduct. In the spring Albert B. Griffin moved his family south some four miles to the Church Farm. His son Charles said they lived on the east side. It seems their lives were associated with the church farm for the next twelve years. Several of Albert's children were born there. The location of the farm can be found on the Kanyon Plat Survey. The Church Farm is on a corner of the survey the remainder is made up of modern day Sugarhouse originally written as two words. The circumstances and arrangements of where and how they lived for those twelve years are a little hard to ascertain. Their situation seemed to vary almost year to year. One of the first volume of deed records covers the years 1850 to 1856. It includes a section that documents the transfer to new owners of the original Plat A city lots.  There is no record of Albert giving up his lot on block 82. Of note is the family friend Joseph F. Smith. He also moved onto the Church Farm and later acquired his own farm property but kept his city lot a block from the Griffins until his death in the 1900’s.To further confuse the situation we have in the history of Sugar House from Andrew Jenson’s Historical Record “Ira Eldredge was the first farmer on Canyon (Kanyon) creek within the limits of Sugar House Ward. In the spring of 1848 we conducted water from the creek onto a piece of land about one-half mile southeast of the site of the territorial Penitentiary (now Sugarhouse Park) and raised a crop of wheat, Indian corn and potatoes. That season among the first settlers were Charles Kennedy, Joseph Fisher, Lorenzo Young, John Eldredge, Norman Bliss, Albert Griffin who located on various places on the creek in 1849 and 1850.” It appears that Albert took up his own personal plot on the land adjoining the Church Farm. It was at least ten acres, that district being part of a ten-acre survey. Sugar House did not coalesce as a community until about 1853. It appears that the Church Farm must have been his source of employment and served as his primary residence. At the same time it seems he was also farming his own private plot in Sugar House. Did he then move back into the city for the Winter? Charles E. Griffin provides us with some insights into the arrangement. Writing of their days on the Church Farm, “some of the time renting some of the time giving the Church all we raised excepting what we needed to live upon. And for two or three of the last years we had done considerable fencing we had the privilege of keeping cows and other stock of our own”.  This arrangement, Church Farm/Sugar House/ Block 82, continued until 1860/61. As part of his description of the move from the Church Farm one-half mile to Sugar House Charles writes, “they gave us one thousand dollars in stock, wagons and farming implements”.  My assumption is that the “us” is Charles and his father Albert and the money was part of an equity agreement for improvements on the Church farm.  From 1860 to 1865 the family was located in Sugar House and Coalville, Utah. Charles writes that the family planned to relocate to Coalville. Although Albert was involved in the Coalville project there is no evidence that he made any type of permanent relocation. Instead Albert remained in Sugar House until he left for Long Valley in Southern Utah in the fall of 1865. What happened to the Salt Lake City and Sugar House property? When his son Charles moved to Southern Utah he notes the sale of his northern properties including a ten-acre plot in Sugar House. I think it is safe to assume that Albert disposed of his property in the north also, ending the Griffin sojourn in Northern Utah.  Any Griffin seeking to walk the tail of his ancestors needs to drive over the North Temple Viaduct on his way to visit modern day Sugarhouse.