Daughter of Thomas Griffin Winn and Elizabeth Nielsen (Nelson)

Married William Andrew Peirce, 19 Dec 1878, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

Children - Hugh A. Peirce, Junius Madison Peirce, Parley William Peirce, Wallace Griffin Peirce, Hezzie Eugene Peirce, Martha Elizabeth Peirce, Myrtle Peirce

Married David Patten Noakes, 19 Apr 1905, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

History - (As told by Marian Price Phillips in, “Family Sketches and Your Pioneer Ancestors,” a booklet given to family members in 2000)

Julia Winn was born in November 1860 in Smithfield, Utah. She had a very harsh life, which made her a tough woman. She disciplined herself and expected others to do likewise. Those of her household knew that work came first and play later, or the sky fell. One never argued with Grandma Julia.

Her mother was Thomas Griffin Winn’s second wife, Elizabeth Andrea Hanson Nielson. His first wife had remained in Springville, Utah when they were called by Brigham Young to settle in Cache Valley.

Julia was one of the first children born in Smithfield, Utah in Cache County. There were four more children that were born to her parents in the years to follow. Julia, being the oldest, helped her mother, who was not strong. Elizabeth Andrea died when Julia was fifteen years old. Julia had been earning money in the cheese factory, but now had to take her mother’s place in the home.

Her father had married another wife and Julia felt unappreciated and unnoticed with more work than she could do and little hope for change. This difficult time lasted 1 ½ years and may have been part of what made her so tough.

When she was 17, her father’s first wife, Lizzie, with her other daughters came to Smithfield from Moab in the wagon of William A Peirce. William was a good-looking fellow with wavy auburn hair and had been to college. He was fourteen years older than Julia, and had a left hand that he couldn’t use, but Julia liked his shy ways.

Lizzie recommended William as a good catch for Julia, who married him in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. They traveled to the San Juan area where William had been working and found an abandoned log cabin for their first home. Julia cleaned and made it comfortable. While they were living in that home and others like it, William and Julia had five sons.

She was an excellent seamstress and was soon making shirts and doing laundry for the wild cowboys who lived in the area. They paid well for her services, but she was afraid of them, too. Sometimes they would ride into the yard on their prancing ponies and pull one of her little boys up onto the horse and ride off with him, whooping as they went. She was always quite nervous until the child was returned.

The two youngest boys, Wallace and Heze, died of diphtheria during Christmas time in Moab. Julia, felling that if they had lived near medical help the boys would have lived, could no longer stay in a place so far away from civilization. They moved to Springville in 1891, where two girls were added to their family. The last child, Myrtle (my mother), was born on June 1, 1894.

William, who had been schoolteacher, postmaster, and one of the earliest settlers in Moab, always had his heart in mining and was seldom at home. He and Julia slowly grew apart and were divorced when their girls were in grade school. Divorce was a disgrace in that day and must have taken great courage. It caused herself and her family much embarrassment.

Later she married David Noakes, who had five children. Four girls came with David by the youngest, Oakley, stayed on with his grandmother. Julia sewed, now for six girls. Her beautiful sewing gained her girls the reputation as the best dressed in the school.

David was a sweet-spirited patient man who appreciated Julia’s industry and did his part with the yard and family. He had a large brick house where there was more space for their combined families. Their yard was always a show place with flowers and shrubs in pleasing array.

Julia was a meticulous housekeeper. Meals were nourishing and prepared on time. She was always dressed neatly, with a clean apron. I can remember supper in her kitchen-fresh bread with radishes and onions from her garden, and cold milk.

After the girls married, she and David moved to Phoenix, Arizona where her two girls, Martha (Mattie) and Myrtle, had settled with their families. David, who was a carpenter, built a home for them there, but when Mattie moved her family back to Utah, David sold the home to my father (Frank) and also moved back to Utah.

Julia and David settled into a small home in Logan, across from where Mattie and Otto lived. Later in her life, Julia lived alternately with her daughters until she died on January 11, 1953.