Great-Great-Great Grandfather of Keith M. Chandler
Utah Pioneer of 1848/49
Written by Crystal Potter Lewis
Historian of Camp Vernal 1957; Vernal D.U.P.
Jerome Bonaparte Kempton was born 13 October 1820 at Fort Ann, Washington County, New York to Sergeant and Susan Kempton. He was apprenticed early in his boyhood to a stone mason and carpenter. He became very skillful with his hands. He learned to be a blacksmith, gunsmith, stone and brick mason, carpenter, and could also carve in marble, granite, etc. very artistically. He was blonde; having blue eyes, blond hair and fair complexion. I have no record of when he joined the L.D.S. Church but know that he was one of Joseph Smith’s bodyguards and a member of the Nauvoo legion. I have no record of his first wife’s name or when they were married but they separated when Jerome wanted to cross the plains with the Saints after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom. She refused to come with him and left the Church in Nauvoo.Jerome was a Captain of one of the groups of Mormon pioneers and crossed the plains either in 1848 or 1849. There is no record of when he got acquainted with the Welcome Chapman family whether it was while he was crossing the plains or after he reached the Salt Lake Valley. At any rate he married their oldest daughter Rosetta Anice September 20, 1850 when she was sixteen years old and their second daughter Amelia a few months later when she was fifteen years old. He was thirty years old at the time.
This was probably in Manti for Chapman’s were called to help settle there in 1850.
In 1851 their first child Jerome B. Jr. was born. He was always called “Dome.”
In 1853 Rosetta’s Second son Teacum Russel was born. His nickname was Tan. I have no record of Amelia’s children, only heard that she had six or seven children and that she lived near her sister part of the time at least.
Welcome, Rosetta’s third son was born in 1855, he died while still a baby. Harriot Susan [mother of Harriot Elva Potter, noted in title] was the first daughter of Jerome and Rosetta and was born March 21, 1856 in Salt Lake city. She had dark eyes and hair just like her Mother and Grandmother before her. I don’t know where the name Harriot came from but both of her grandmother’s were named Susan.
During this time Jerome worked as a blacksmith, gunsmith, stone mason and carpenter. He moved his family up Big Cottonwood Canyon in the spring of 1858 where he did both black smithing and gun smithing for the teamsters and hunters.
Their fifth child George E. was born in the canyon in 1858.
Jerome could understand and talk quite a bit of the Indian language. He was offered the position of Indian Agent and interpreter at Fort Bridger and moved there about 1859. He remained there two years. He was adept at trailing and tracking both men and animals and this skill helped him many times.
He was able to negotiate between the Indians and white settlers many time. While he was at Fort Bridger he also did blacksmithing and gunsmithing.
Their child, James, was born at Fort Bridger [in] 1860.
They moved back to Manti about 1862 where Rosetta’s and Amelia’s parents lived. Here their seventh child, Eugene, was born. When he was ten years old he was accidentally shot by a boy companion while they were out hunting, and died a few days later in 1872.
The Kempton’s eighth child was born in 1864. He was named Hyrum and died while still a baby.
Their ninth child was a pretty little blonde girl, born in 1868, whom they named Sylvia. She was the second daughter and they’d had seven sons although two had died while still babies.
Hattie [Harriet Susan] has told how much they loved this little sister, and how they tried to take care of her. However she died at the age of two.
Eden the third daughter was born in 1869. She was dark like Hattie.
They moved back to Salt Lake city about 1870 where Jerome contracted and built several homes and business houses among them were Hyrum Clawson’s home, and the Godbe ‑Pitt drug store.
He also helped out [hauling or cutting?] stone for the Salt Lake temple [This was the occupation of his wife’s father Welcome Chapman, perhaps he helped or learned from him. See Welcome Chapman History Page 185]. Among the men he hired to help him was a young man Wallace Edwin Potter who married Jerome’s oldest daughter Harriet Susan on August 21, 1871.
In March 1871 the Kempton’s were blessed with a fourth daughter Annie. She married Cal Allen. She died at the age of twenty-eight near American Falls, Idaho leaving her husband and six children (1899). [This is noted by Millie in her history, of her mothers Sister and Fathers death see Page 148]
The Kempton’s twelfth child, Edwin, was born in 1878, probably in Idaho where they moved when they left Slat Lake city.
Osborne, called “Ob” was born in 1880 when Jerome was sixty years of age and Rosetta was forty-six.
The Kempton’s spent their last days in Idaho. They had a small farm near American Falls. Jerome died in a Blackfoot, Idaho hospital in May 1899 after being ill for many years, seventy-nine years old. Rosetta died in 1914 at the age of eighty near Malad, Idaho.