Description

Frary Peak New Years

If there are any of you out there wondering, after what you’ve been through with 2020 “How are we going to handle 2021, this new year?” Well, this is a lesson that my two lovely daughters, Annie and Dawni Jo showed me. Here’s the story.

George Isaac Frary was born in 1854 in Wisconsin territory. In 1879, he married Alice Elizabeth Phillips. It is said that George was an experienced sailor on the Great Lakes. In time, he and Alice joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and after coming through Colorado, they moved to Utah. This was in the early 1890’s. Around that same time when they arrived here it was thought by some that Antelope Island was rich in mineral wealth, gold, silver, later on oil and other things like that.

George and Alice decided to move out onto Antelope Island with, at that time, their four children and establish a claim and start prospecting. They knew what that island was like. They knew it was, deservedly, called a desert island and that life would be difficult. I can see George going but Alice and the four children, they went too. The Frarys built a three-room log cabin on Antelope island on the east side of the island, about south central. It was there that they raised their family. Life on that island was at best, a lonely, hard-scrabble existence. When the prospecting didn’t pan out as hoped they turned to ranching. At one time George and John Dooley were the men instrumental in the introduction of the first buffalo on Antelope island. The herd that is there now are remnants of those original ones brought out there by George Frary. On the homefront, it is said that Alice was an experienced teacher and taught her children in a home filled with love, music, and books. They would take whatever books they could get, and Alice had a small pump organ that filled that home.

On September 21, 1897, two months after the birth of their daughter, Florence Hope Frary, Alice became ill. George got into a boat and set out across the Salt Lake to get medicine and help around Ogden, or somewhere along the Wasatch Front. Accounts vary as to where he went exactly or what happened, but all agree that Alice passed away before George could get back to her. Her dying request to her children was to be buried on the island. Today a stone monument marks her grave on the island’s east side. She was only thirty-eight years old.

The family left the island in 1902, but fanciful imaginations say that if you stand by Alice’s lonely wilderness grave on a calm day you can hear the strains of her small pump organ carrying on the breeze.

Part 2 of the story:

January 1, 2021, I set out with two of my beloved daughters, Dawni Jo and Annie (the youngest) to climb Frary Peak, which is named for the Frary family and lies immediately to the west of their homestead. Frary Peak is, as far as I know, the highest point on Antelope Island. We left in the mid-morning with sub-freezing temperatures. We walked 4.1 miles up the ridge and across the range to reach the top of Frary Peak and climbed 2500 feet in elevation. From the top we could see the Frary Homestead site down below us, though not very well. A weather system set in and obscured most of the valley in beautiful rolling fog. The fog and the clouds obscured most of the Wasatch Range, except for moments when the peaks, snow covered and glistening, would rise above the fog. The fog came up over Antelope island’s summit and moved on out across the lake. At one point on the summit there was only one small patch of blue sky and clear water in 360 degrees, and that was to the North. It was gorgeous!

Well, we took pictures, did the Instagram thing, etc, etc. We were off the mountain in good time celebrating our victory. Why did we go at such an unlikely time of the year? My daughter Annie expressed it for all three of us. She said, “I want to start 2021 on top of a mountain!” Just the way she said that, Jo and I said, “Amen sister! We are there!” And so we did. After all that all of us have been through in 2020, I hope that we are as tough and resourceful as George and Alice Frary, that we can stand the wildernesses of affliction and difficulty and that we have, by the grace of God, and hard work, I pray for you many victories small and large in 2021.

Sources:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/27S4-J66

https://www.deseret.com/1999/10/29/19472863/homestead-family-left-lasting-legacy-on-island