The Maxwell GenealogyForum

Title: Re:looking for connections
Posted by: Kathleen Brewer
Date: 30 October 2015

Charlotte Maxwell Webb ("Aunt Lottie") was born February 15, 1862. Growing up surrounded by brothers and sisters from three families, Charlotte was the daughter of first wife Lucretia Charlotte Bracken and William Bailey Maxwell. Her father, one of Brigham Young's selected saints, was tasked during his life time with helping to establish a network of colonies in Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Mexico which ultimately numbered thirteen new communities including Alpine and Springerville. Charlotte's father was the first Mormon to settle in the territory of Arizona and Charlotte spent her first years from 1862 to 1866 on the Arizona strip at Short Creek and Pipe Springs on a family cattle ranch. In addition to their own herds, the family also raised cattle for the church.

At fifteen Charlotte helped herd cattle on horseback from Spring Valley, Nevada to a new home in Orderville, Utah.

Charlotte was married at the age of sixteen in St George, Utah, to Edward Milo Webb, a church leader and teacher who at the age of five had walked crossed the plains to Utah following the death of his father along the Platte River. She became his third and youngest wife. Charlotte met her husband while teaching in Orderville as part of the Mormon United Order, an experimental self sustaining communal colony where all property was pooled.

In 1886 as a result of the Edmunds law outlawing polygamy, the entire family left Utah for the newly formed Mormon colonies in Chihuahua, Mexico. Originally asked by Church leaders to establish a school system in Mexico, Charlotte, and her family first stopped and wintered over in Woodruff, Arizona on the Little Colorado River. Instead, on the advise of the Church, Charlotte and Edward were called to establish a school in Snowflake, Arizona. Snowflake Academy was one of the very first high schools in Northern Arizona. Charlotte never taught just the three R's, in addition, she organized clubs and concerts , wrote and directed plays and put on entertainment that the entire community enjoyed. Known as a dramatic reader, Charlotte instituted her Sunday evenings for all the unmarried, reading aloud from the classics. She had a theory that if children read nothing but the best until they were 15, their reading habits would be set and trash would have no appeal for them. Charlotte lived in Woodruff for 12 years. During that time she raised four children on the family farm working as a teacher.

In June1898 the family resumed their journey to Mexico traveling seven weeks in a caravan of five covered wagons through frontier towns and Arizona desert. Charlotte drove the first wagon. She spent 14 years living in Mexico teaching in six communities previously without educational benefit. School was a one room log construction .One school was constructed of Ocatillos planted like stakes with a packed earthen floor and a flat sod roof. In the spring the walls turned a vivid lacquered green and a wreath of bright red blossoms bordered it's flat roof.

In 1912, at the onset of the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa, Charlotte and family were forced to flee their large farms leaving everything behind . Bringing only what they could carry, they arrived by wagon and horseback over the border into Douglas Az finding shelter first in a pup tent, then later at Stanton Station out side Tucson, in a temporary camp for refugees where she shared a two room lumber cabin supplemented by tents.

Forced to start over, she became a nurse known as Aunt Lottie and traveled by foot, horseback and wagon to rural outreaches in Northern Arizona for forty years. Charlotte specialized in midwifery but treated all ailments. Edward eventually built her a stone way station between Pinedale and Clay Springs on a piece of land she was homesteading. There she lived and set up shop. Among her many jobs, she also served as Justice of the Peace. In this capacity she held several trials and married at least one cowboy. At the time of her death, she was living on the Navaho Reservation serving as a nurse. She literally died in the harness as she had always lived. Charlotte lived to be 81 and was buried May 9th 1943 in Pinedale, Az.

Donor: Tom Guice, great grandson
May 2007
From the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives


Family links:
Parents:
  William Bailey Maxwell (1821 - 1895)
  Lucretia Charlotte Bracken Maxwell (1823 - 1893)

Spouse:
  Edward Milo Webb (1847 - 1921)

Children:
  Lucretia Annetta Webb Brewer (1880 - 1970)*
  William M. Webb (1882 - 1882)*
  James Levi Webb (1884 - 1926)*
  Estelle Webb Thomas (1889 - 1982)*
  Julia Isabel Webb Brewer (1891 - 1980)*

Siblings:
  Levi William Maxwell (1841 - 1905)*
  James Bailey Maxwell (1843 - 1876)*
  Ruth Maxwell (1845 - 1845)*
  Lucretia Jane Maxwell Black (1859 - 1926)**
  Julia Ann Maxwell Adair (1860 - 1915)**
  Imogene Maxwell (1861 - 1868)*
  Charlotte Martha Maxwell Webb (1862 - 1943)
  William Thomas Maxwell (1863 - 1901)**
  Elizabeth Luella Maxwell (1865 - 1868)**
  Archibald Hodge Maxwell (1868 - 1935)**
  Charles Collier Maxwell (1871 - 1949)*
  Lemira Mae Maxwell Stayner (1874 - 1947)**
  Erastus Curtis Maxwell (1877 - 1944)**
  Sarah Daphney Maxwell Baird (1879 - 1957)**
  Lorenzo Bailey Maxwell (1881 - 1955)**
  Ida Burl Maxwell Eaton (1883 - 1950)**
  Leo Millett Maxwell (1888 - 1962)**
  John Maxwell (1891 - 1899)*

*Calculated relationship
**Half-sibling


Replies

Title:Date:Posted By:
looking for connections14 May 2015Sarah Webb (maiden name Maxwell)
     Re:looking for connections15 May 2015Jmaxwell580
          Re:Re:looking for connections15 May 2015Sarah Maxwell Webb
               Re:Re:Re:looking for connections18 May 2015Jmaxwell580
                    Re:Re:Re:Re:looking for connections10 June 2015David Scott Maxwell
                         Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:looking for connections10 June 2015David Scott Maxwell
                              Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:looking for connections10 June 2015Sarah Maxwell
     Re:looking for connections30 October 2015Kathleen Brewer

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