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All four daughters were well married, and Charles Franklin was recognized as Brigham Young’s “right hand man”. (He helped the oncoming saints, rode pony express, freighted, and drove stage. He crossed the plains 53 times. Many exciting and interesting adventures were told of him. It was seven years before all the Saints were evacuated from Missouri.) Now Harriet could settle down to watching her family grow and blossom. And so she did for twenty years more. She died in Salt Lake City September 22 1871. Her best epitaph was sounded by her second husband Lorenzo Dow Young: She was a splendid housekeeper, a helpmate financially, a lady of education and intelligence, a hard worker withthe grace and dignity of a queen, and above all a beloved and loving wife. Peace be to her remains.” As a great grandson may I add that she was a really a great “take charge” woman, who did just that with great success. She was an ancestor of whom we can be genuinely Proud.

Clara outlived her mother seventeen years. She bore Brigham Young two sons and three daughters. The daughters survived her. She raised at least one other child, an Indian girl she called Sally. Orson F. Whitney in his “Popular of Utah” footnote page 47 says, “it was the 		custom with the savages to torture and kill if they could not sell their prisoners of war. Several Indian children were ransomed by persons at the fort to save them from being shot or more cruelly put to death by their captors. One of these children, Sally, was purchased by Charles Decker, who gave her to his sister, Mrs. Clara D. Young, by whom she was reared to womanhood. Sally, after becoming civilized, went back to her people from a pure sense of duty. Hoping to benifit her race by living among them, she became the wife of Kanosh, a pauvant chief, but was unable to endure the hardships of savage life, and soon passed away.

As to my grandfather, Isaac Perry Decker, he grew up as one of the last real wild westers. A lot of years ago an old gentleman with a long white beard told me, “That Perry Decker, he could ride the meanest horse, and rope the wildest cow, drunker than any other man in Utah.” But that’s another story.

[Note by Alfa Jean Carter Carter, who transcribed Wayne Decker’s manuscript: This history was copied as written with the exception of the correction of a few misspelled names.]
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