Life Sketch -- Harriet Catherine Fausett was born in Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee, on the 8th of March, 1833 to William McKee Fausett and Matilda Caroline Butcher. Her parents became converts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tennessee in 1834, when Harriet was only one year old and afterwards they moved to Missouri. They shared persecutions and hardships with the Saints, suffered there and were later driven out by mobs.
They settled in Nauvoo where they expected to live in peace. This lasted only a few years. She was only 11 years old when the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred, but in those days a girl that age was considered to be quite grown up. She told her children many interesting things about the Prophet Joseph Smith. She worked in the home of the Prophet's mother at the time the Egyptian mummies were being exhibited. The Papyrus that the Book of Abraham was translated from, came with the mummies.
When the Saints had to leave Nauvoo, moving westward, the Fausett family was among them. Her father, William McKee Fausett was chosen as the presiding elder over the Allred Branch and set apart at Winter Quarters, now Florence, Nebraska, by Brigham Young. The Fausett family remained there until 1851, to help direct the moving of the Saints westward. The family then migrated to Utah, arriving in Salt Lake City on the 15th day of September 1851, with the Alexander Stevens Company. The spring of 1852, three years after Provo was settled, the family moved to Provo, and here found a home at last. Harriet Catherine was now 19 years old. She had spent most of her childhood and girl hood traveling and running from mobs and persecutions, and moving along the pioneer trail. Harriet had very little opportunity for the schooling consisting of reading, writing and arithmetic, because of the persecutions of the saints.
Harriet was the fifth child in the family of ten, seven girls and the last three were boys.
The last boy was born in 1853, nine years after the previous child and was the only child born in Utah. Because the older members of the family were girls, who worked outside to help in the support of the family, Harriet Catherine was called upon to be her father's helper on the farm that they were trying so hard to establish. As her younger brothers became old enough she was relieved of these duties, but she loved outdoor work.
Two years after her arrival in Utah, she met and married James Addison Bean, a pioneer of 1848. They were married in Provo on the 10th February 1853 and later they were sealed in the Endowment House on the 27th February 1857.
At one time she and her sister, Rebecca, worked at an Indian School. Harriet worked in the kitchen from early morning until late at night. When she returned home after several weeks work, she slept for weeks. Her mother could hardly awaken her for her meals for days.
She also worked for two weeks for an English lady at one time and received an old crockery pitcher for her pay, since the woman had no money.
Harriet's husband, James Addison, got his start in an economic way as a freighter, first from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, Nevada, later by hauling provisions out and ore back between Salt Lake City, and then in eastern Montana. He would be gone often for three months. During that time, Harriett would care for her young family and did all the work both inside and out, on the home front. Her husband later became a farmer, a stockman and became quite wealthy for those times.
Harriet Catherine was the mother of twelve children, six girls and six boys, ten of these children lived to marry and have large families. She was very quiet and reserved, a woman always lending a helping hand, especially in times of illness. Her training as a nurse was practical, but she was very gifted in handling the sick. She used her pioneer remedies, mostly using herbs as medicines. She made a salve for bone sores that cured cases where doctors had prescribed amputation. Porter Rockwell had taught her to make this salve. She made some pills that were wonderful in helping to cure chills and fever. Some of the best doctors of the time came to ask her what she had used in certain cases of illnesses where patients whom they had given up, were cured under her treatment.
She read the Book of Mormon whenever a moment of leisure presented itself, especially on Sunday afternoon. She always kept her place marked, so she could turn to the place she stopped.
Her favorite hymns were "Do What is Right," and "School Thy Feelings," and she exemplified both in her daily life.
Harriet died of a gall stone attack on the twenty eighth day of November 1912, an ailment from which she had suffered for years. She left posterity of ten living children and ninety one grandchildren. The worthy heritage of faithful devotion to home, family and her God should be held in grateful remembrance by them all.
From a brief history written by Garda G. Adams with help from Goldia Fern Brown 1963.
Compiled & written by Saundra Cox, 2015