Daughter of Ezra Thompson Clark and Susan Leggett

Married Benjamin Franklin Knowlton, 14 Apr 1886, Logan, Cache, Utah

Children - Stewart Hood Knowlton, Viola Knowlton, Ezra Clark Knowlton, Horace John Knowlton, Hazel Knowlton, Alta Knowlton, Franklin Richards Knowlton, Melva Knowlton, Mabel Knowlton

Sarah, at the age of 17, enrolled at Brigham Young Academy, Provo, Utah, leaving her family for the first time. She attended the school from 1883 to 1884. Besides enjoying the stimulating intellectual and social life at the academy, she met and fell in love with a fellow student, Benjamin Franklin Knowlton Jr. who came from quite a different social environment.

Although the Benjamin Franklin Knowltons were living in Farmington at this time, they had recently moved from the ranch known as Delle in Skull Valley. Frank, having lost his mother Rhoda Richards Knowlton at the age of 16, grew up among cowmen and frontiersmen whose moral codes and personal behavior patterns differed sharply from those of the Mormon people in Farmington. Frank's father, Benjamin Franklin Knowlton, spent most of his life in the saddle as a rancher, scout and frontiersman. He played an active and courageous role in the Mormon Militia during the Utah War. Settling in Skull Valley to ranch with his older brothers George Washington and John Quincy Knowlton, his family experienced the harsh, primitive, frontier conditions of life on the isolated Skull Valley frontier with few of the cultural, religious or social opportunities common to Farmington.

Benjamin and Rhoda and their older children (including Frank) were subject to more strenuous living conditions accompanied by fewer opportunities for cultural development than any of the generations of the family.

For many years the Knowltons prospered as ranchers until the 1880's when blizzards, depressions, over grazing, and unscrupulous businessmen brought the family to near poverty. Benjamin Franklin Knowlton, although continuing on a diminishing scale his ranching operations in Skull Valley, moved his family to a small farm on Burke Lane, Farmington, in 1880. In spite of the move, the economic conditions of the Knowlton family did not prosper. As Frank violated the Word of Wisdom and was not active in the Church, considerable tension developed between him and his father.

For the first few years of their married life, they lived in Grantsville, Utah. As the ranching business did not prosper, they moved back to Farmington, taking up residence in a house north of the Knowlton farm. Frank farmed and worked at various jobs in and around Farmington without much success. Discouraged by his economic difficulties and the continued deterioration of his relationship with his father, he concluded in 1900 to leave his wife and seven children and try his luck in the Philippine Islands. The American Government was then recruiting American workers for construction projects in the newly-acquired islands.

Until 1902, Frank regularly sent home money to support his family. Then without any explanation, the money ceased to arrive. The family was thrown suddenly upon its own resources. After the sudden death of her mother in 1902, Sarah moved her family into her mother's home to live with Laura and Horace, who had not yet married. By taking in boarders and through the labor of family members and some assistance from relatives, the Knowlton family managed to survive. My father and his brother Richard often worked on farms far from home during the summer months, often receiving harsh treatment and minimal wages. As each of the children matured, they were forced to seek employment to sustain the family.

Those years were difficult ones for Sarah Clark Knowlton and her family. Although Sarah and her children were active in the Farmington Ward, rumors of Frank's misconduct in the Philippine Islands spread through Farmington in the 1900's, damaging the family's social position in the community. Not hearing from her husband, Sarah secured an uncontested divorce in 1905.

Because of her indomitable will, her pride, her faith, and her courage, Sarah's family, enduring the poverty, the malicious rumors, the social rejection, and an uncertain future, grew close together. Sarah dressed her children well. She took them to church with her every Sunday. She did what she could with little money to keep them in school. With little assistance from the outside, the family survived. She developed in her children strong testimonies, self-pride, and a strong drive to move up the socio-economic ladder. Poor they might be, looked down upon they might be, but they did not have to stay that way forever.

Sarah's love and faith in her children turned their home into a refuge from the dangerous uncertain world outside their doors. The mother and her children formed a tight family unit. But the older children paid a heavy price. Deprived of a normal childhood and adolescence by assuming the burdens of adulthood too early, their social and emotional development suffered.

As their economic and social prospects did not seem good in Farmington, Sarah in 1907 moved her family to Salt Lake City where the two oldest daughters, Hazel and Viola, had found employment. My father enrolled as a freshman at the University of Utah in the fall of 1908. But the greatest event that happened that year was when Frank Knowlton unexpectedly rejoined his family. He and Sarah remarried. Moving them back to Farmington, he tried to support his family by farming marginal dry land south of Burke Lane that Sarah had inherited from her father.

In 1909, the youngest child, Stewart Hood Knowlton, was born. In spite of heavy financial investment in horses and equipment, the farming enterprise failed. Discouraged and uncertain what to do, Frank began to drink heavily. Finally he left home again to work as a practical civil engineer on the railroads in California in the Northwest. He tried to persuade his wife to join him in California with the younger children. Sarah was not willing to move to a state that at that time contained no organized wards or any church activity.

Finally in 1917, Sarah divorced her husband again and moved permanently to Salt Lake City. She bought a home on Hampton Avenue in which she lived until her death in 1955.

By the 1920's, the family had basically won its struggle to survive in spite of recurring economic problems. Sarah's children were now reaching maturity and establishing lives of their own. At the cost of painful sacrifice, two daughters and three sons among eight children served missions, and three of the four boys graduated from the university. All four boys have had long honorable roles in the state. Two of the four girls married happily. Unfortunately the tenacious---never-ending---economic struggle affected the lives of two of the girls who were not able to escape unhappiness and tragedy. Most of her children and grandchildren were and are active in the Church. It is due to her tenacity, her faith, and to her indomitable spirit that her family has succeeded as well as it did. Her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren owe her an enormous debt that can only be repaid by loyalty to all that she stood for. And if dark days should ever afflict us, her example should give us courage to struggle and to persevere.