Welcome to Las Colonias
Welcome to Las Colonias magazine. Las Colonias believes that the same pioneer spirit that first settled the Mormon Colonies still lives in the descendants of the original colonists. Sadly, with each passing generation. the biographies, the stories, and the principles that they teach become lost to time.
Las Colonias Pioneer Day edition
The Mormons first settled Colonia Juarez in 1885. From the year 1885 here are some technology and modern advancements of note contemporary readers will recognize:
- American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) incorporates
- Good Housekeeping magazine is first published.
- The first successful appendectomy is performed by Dr. William W. Grant
- A 10-story weight-bearing metal frame building was constructed in Chicago. It is considered to be the first skyscraper.
- Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Two years later in 1887 Salt Lake City becomes the fifth city in America to have electric street lights.
During the 1880’s the big cities of the east and Salt Lake City in the west were becoming the modern industrialized cities of today. But for the Mormon Colonists arriving in Mexico, it was 1847 all over again.
The Mormon Colonists in Mexico arrived to a frontier where very little had changed since the Jesuits set up a string of missions 300 years earlier. Remember that while the burgeoning middle class housewives of New York City were spending their leisure time reading Good Housekeeping magazine, the Mormon Colonist housewives were keeping house in dugouts burrowed into the side of a hill.
In the histories of Lemuel Hardison Redd and George Washington Sevey. These two men blazed the trail for the Hole-in-the Rock pioneers and then when the remote outpost of Bluff wasn't remote enough, they moved to even more remote Mexico. Many of the Mormon Colonists were brothers-law, friends, or neighbors who decided that if one of them was going try to make-a-go of it in Mexico, then they all may as well make-a-go of it together.
Most of the histories are taken from Stalwarts South of the Border compiled by Nelle Spilsbury Hatch and Carmon Hardy. As far as possible, in order to preserve the author's voice, all spelling and syntax have been kept as the original text. Most numbers have been changed to numerals rather than the original text.
Las Colonias tells the amazing stories of the Mormon colonists, and introduces generations new and old to the incredible history and landscapes that act as a backdrop on which the colonists lived their lives.
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Lemuel Hardison Redd
1836 - 1910
Lemuel Hardison Redd, eldest son and fifth child of John Hardison and Elizabeth Hancock Redd, was born at Sneeds Ferry, Onslow County, North Carolina, July 31, 1836.
In 1839 his parents moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where his father acquired a huge tobacco plantation and purchase slaves to operated it. In 1842, converted to the Gospel by John D. Lee, he was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Becoming convinced that one man should not be in bondage to another, he freed his slaves, sold his plantation, invested the proceeds in wagons and ox teams and prepared to migrate to Zion. While these negotiations were in progress, he and his wife made a trip to Nauvoo to become acquainted with Joseph Smith. There they were given Patriarchal Blessings by Hyrum Smith.
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Lemuel Hardison Redd |
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Redd home Colonia Juarez, Mexico
Photo courtesy of www.brimhallkerby.com
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Heaton Lunt of Colonia Pacheco
book review
Marian L Lunt’s book, Heaton Lunt of Colonia Pacheco, was a lot of fun to read. The biography was written from audiotapes recorded by her father-in-law, Heaton Lunt.
I don’t think that Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey could have written better stories than the life Heaton lived. It's like a Hollywood screenwriter had John Wayne or Clint Eastwood in mind as he created a script filled with banditos, hermits, army scouts, wild animals, and gunplay.
Heaton Lunt cont.
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