THE NAY FAMILY IN UTAH AND THE WEST
Noah Packard, Orren’s father, wrote, “I have been called to mourn the loss of my second son Orren by being run over with a loaded wagon. He died on the 3rd day of November 1852.” However difficult that circumstance may have been for Noah, it must have also been even more difficult for Orren’s young second wife, Lucy, who was not quite 21, and her baby son.
What happened to Dudley’s two Packard half brothers is unknown at this time. They may have been returned to other family members for their care. A census search of Packards in Springville reveals a 10 year old, Orin E. Packard, living with Milan Packard in 1860. This may be Dudley’s half brother Orin, since he does not seem to be a child of the family and is gone in 1870.
Lucy’s mother, Delia, was also a widow, and two of Lucy’s brothers were living in California. It is not known how Lucy supported herself and her son during the first years of Dudley’s life. However on March 14, 1856, Lucy married Joseph Kelly as a plural wife, his fifth. Joseph Kelly was another prominent Springville man, who had distinguished himself as a messenger between the small towns during the Indian skirmishes. The sealing between Kelly and Dudley’s mother was later cancelled before she became the wife of John Nay, Jr. (See Chapter 10 on Thankful Lucy Pine for a more detailed account of this marriage.) According to the census Lucy, 29, and her son Joseph, 8, were living with her brother John and mother Delia in Springville on September 4, 1860. They are listed as living next door to John Nay and his four youngest boys.
During the years of his boyhood, it is likely that Dudley went to school during the winter and did the work most boys of his age in Springville did during the summer, that of herding cows. By this time, the soldiers had made it less dangerous to be out in the herding grounds because of Indian troubles, and the cows were taken into the canyon each day to graze. Johnson gives us a colorful picture of this occupation:
The boys were generally paid 2 cents a head per day for herding. If the cows were left out a night the boys were docked 4 cents per cow, which made them more diligent. . . . The tow pants and shirt, in which he could roll in the dust and not change the color, and his cap, made out of what had served his father many years as a coat or vest: the visor made of a piece of boot top. He was always barefooted and with the bottoms of his feet so calloused that he could prance like a wild horse of the pampas, over the flinty ground without getting a bruise. His greasy dinner sack, containing his noonday lunch, hung around his neck: in his hand he carried a sling with which to throw stones at the roving stock and thrust into his belt was the indispensible “sego digger”-and there you have the plucky herd boy of 1858. Their only method of making fires, was by carrying slow-burning “buffalo chips” to the herd ground, and there the fire was kept burning for weeks, by keeping it covered at night. Sometimes the boys took roasting ears, potatoes and eggs to cook in the embers and sometimes a luckless bird or rabbit which fell a victim to their slings added their appetizing qualities to the meal.
Lucy’s motherly instincts seemed to again stand her in good stead, as her heart was turned to John Nay’s children, who were in need of a mother’s care. The date of her marriage to John is a question, but the first son of John and Lucy, Myron, was born in 1860. (See Chapter 12 on Myron Windslo Nay for details surrounding this marriage and Myron’s birth.) A lot of shifting and moving and change of family had already occurred in Dudley’s young life when he joined the Nay family. It seems likely that the emotional trauma that his mother endured, as well as the inevitable lack of stability occasioned by his own life affected this young boy in some way. Likewise, the effect of living with his step-father, John Nay, known to be very strict in his discipline, can only be imagined.
Dudley was not listed in the 1870 federal censuses of Utah, Nevada or California. As a young man of 17 or 18, he was probably on the move somewhere, working. On March 19, 1875, 22 year old Dudley seemed ready to settle down as he married 15 year old Frances Amelia Messenger in Springville, Utah. Frances was born in New Avon, Connecticut on September 6, 1859 to Barnum Blake Messenger and Sarah Jane Worsley. Their first child, also named Joseph Dudley Packard, was born two years later, on March 1, 1877 in Springville. Ada Eliza was also born in Springville on December 7, 1878.
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