Laura Ann Hardy Mecham

(1865–1933)

Laura Ann Hardy Mecham, the fourth child of ten children born to Josiah Guile Hardy and his second wife, Ann Denston, was born November 26, 1865 in Mountain Dell Salt Lake County, Utah.

She married February 13, 1881, to G.O. Noble, to whom was born a daughter, Laura Maude. Due to the severe persecution of polygamous families, he chose to abandon Laura, his second wife.  The divorce became effective in 1889.  Then she married Lucian Mormon Mecham in the St. George Temple.  The daughter Maude died at the age of two years and was buried in St. George.

At this period of time many people from Utah were looking south for new fields to colonize as well as for freedom from religious persecution. The Josiah Guile Hardy family joined the stream of pioneers looking to Mexico and new opportunities. Lucian and Lara joined with them and, in 1891, traveling by team and wagon across Arizona and into New Mexico, crossing at Columbus into the land to be their new home. Colonia Pacheco was the birthplace of their last three children. Their first child was born in St. George and, as an infant, endured the difficult trip.

Pioneer life was hard and privations many. Lucian found farming the small acreage in this remote mountainous settlement very difficult with his handicap from birth of club feet, and especially following a freighting accident where his feet were crushed and bones broken. As a couple, they resorted to itinerant merchandising from colony to colony, selling books and dry goods that the colonists could purchase or barter for. This brought but a meager income. Then they tried operating a restaurant in Chihuahua City as a source of income.

Many are the loads of lumber freighted down the San Diego dugway, with Laura accompanying Lucian to help him with his handicap. He was as handy as any of the other freighters in hitching and managing the teams. Her hand was apt around the campfire and with the nosebags and harnesses.  Many children and adults alike delighted at Christmas time to find a new pair of buckskin gloves in their stocking which had been made by Laura’s talented and never tiring fingers. Her children more beautiful homemade dresses, suits and other peril as a result of her talent and ambition.

Finding living difficult and means scarce, Lucian and Laura heard of opportunities for freighting from Cananea to Naco in Sonora, so they, along with others from both the Sonora and Chihuahua colonies, headed that way. Living in tents and freighting with six horse teams and heavy wagons was not an easy life. During all those ventures away from home the children—Theodosia, Lucian, and two adopted children Pearl and Edgar Hallett—were left in Grandmother Hardy’s care.  As a dutiful daughter Laura had assumed much of the responsibility for her mother’s care, along with that of her feeble-minded sister, Mary, her father having passed away in Colonia Pacheco in 1894, three years after their arrival.

After being in Pacheco short time after the Cananea venture they headed for Cos station in Sonora which is halfway between Agua Prieta and Nacozari. Here they freighted between the end of the railroad and Nacozari, carrying merchandise to Nacozari and copper ore on the haul back. This continued until the completion of the railroad when they moved to Nacozari. The money spirit was high and prospecting was tempting, so a claim was taken up in the mine of the Pilares.  This was worked for some time and developed for sale. A fine prospect for a lucrative sale was promoted for $50,000 pesos (the peso was then worth $.50 to the dollar). But the idea of making the terms in American money and doubling the price upset the deal and the sale fell through. The property was never sold. All the labor, time and expense was lost. At that time $50,000 pesos would have been worth a fortune, like $1 million a day. Dame Luck never followed their path.

Lucian turned a stagecoach venture and build up a promising trade and a lucrative stage system, driving a four and six force “Royal Coach” from Nocozari to Moctezuma, adding other stages when needed with higher drivers. This ended in disaster when the many horses use in the stage system were to have been sold and delivered; but through the negligence of the person sent to deliver them, becoming drunk, some of the horses foundered and died and others were turned out of the corral and became lost. The financial loss was heavy.

The greatest event in Laura Mecham’s life came at this critical time when she was asked by a Doctor Keats, the company physician, to help him in the small and poorly equipped hospital which served both the employees and the public. Although she had enjoyed but a third grade education, she had not let her time pass in idleness and had developed greatly her reading ability and talent for learning. Doctor Keats was very willing to train her and give her needed assistance. She, being eager to learn, advanced happily became able to they just technical medical books, as her later years attested. Her training continued under Doctor Ayer, who was a retired army Doctor and very exacting, which was excellent training for her. In all, she served under many doctors and learned from each one during the years from 1903 to 1912. Then she left the hospital and moved to Douglas to be with and provide a home for her family that had been driven out of Mexico during the Revolution.

One great event happened while she was working in the hospital Nacozari when the explosion that nearly wrecked the town occurred. The train headed for the mine at Pilares, loaded with three cars of dynamite, caught fire. To save the town, Jesus Garcia, engineer, conducted it out of town before it exploded, losing his life and killing scores. The town bears the name of Nacozari de Garcia in his honor.  The explosion occurred over a mile from the hospital, but window panes were broken and plaster shaken from the ceiling, leaving the hospital in a disastrous condition to receive the dead and wounded that were rushed in.

In Douglas from 1912 to 1917, Laura operated a rooming house to make a home for the family. It was here that in 1913 Theodosia married Joseph P. Lewis from Colonia Morelos. Lucian married Kate Brown, the daughter of John Wesley Brown and Sarah Elizabeth Styles, converts from Alabama and recently from Colonia Chuhuichupa. After these marriages, Grandmother Hardy went to Orderville, Utah, to be with her son John Hardy. Lucian and Laura then moved back to the colonies as things had settled in Mexico by this time. For the first time Laura could enjoy the Elsie McClellan home, as she had previously stayed in Nacozari to help pay for the property and the family had lived in the home from 1910 to 1912.

Then commenced a number of mercantile ventures in the buying of property, the purchase of the Richardson home adjoining the two Brigham Stowell properties north of the main home, and in being the community doctor.  Laura began restoring properties, making them livable and attractive. She did much of her own freighting for the store from in Dublan and Pearson. She clerked, irrigated and helped in farming. Always her medicine cabinet was filled and hand satchel in readiness for emergencies. Winter or summer, heat or cold, day or night, on foot or horseback, in buggy, wagon, or car, it was all the same to her if someone sick demanded her attention. Many are the times that she went for days only with her “forty winks” for rest and a change of clothes.

During her period of service, she delivered and cared for, including the customary 10 day period following confinement, some 2200 babies. Most of them delivered in homes where often there were the most unsanitary conditions and the most meager and modest of circumstances. Yet, through it all, they were very few serious complications. There are literally thousands who call her blessed. She had a natural gift for healing and although she had no medical schooling or specialized training, her ability to diagnose and expertly treat sickness and emergencies are vouched for by hundreds, and your place in the hearts of the colonists and the Mexican people alike abides as an angel of mercy.

In 1925 she suffered a paralytic stroke, leaving her partially paralyzed and unable to carry on her normal activities. She then spent two years in Salt Lake City working in the temple, doing endowment work for hundreds. Through her life she had been a hard worker, doing the work of several persons, putting in longer hours than was wise, often working as though she were a man. In this she definitely was not observing the Word of Wisdom, as she was taxing her physical strength, and suffered another stroke in 1930, which left her bedridden until her death in 1933.  She spent her last years in Douglas and Chandler with Theodosia and Lucian, passing away January 29, 1933 in Douglas. She was buried in the Douglas cemetery.

Of the five children born to Laura Mecham, three died in infancy, but Theodosia and Lucian where a comfort and joy to their parents. Lucian and Laura’s descendants now number more than 60. Among them are doctors, teachers, artisans, housewives, missionaries, and loyal, good citizens.

Lucian M. Mecham, Jr., son

Stalwarts South of the Border page 477