BIRTHDATE: 5 Mar 1837

Little Mill, Old Kilpatrick parish,

Dumbartonshire, Scotland

DEATH: Died: 10 April 1925

West Weber, Weber, Utah

PARENTS: William Mitchell

Isabella Nimlno

PIONEER: 25 Sep 1855

Richard Ballantyne Wagon Company

SPOUSE: Archibald McFarland

MARRIAGE: 3 August 1854

Boness, West Lothian, Scotland

DEATH SP: 14 Dec 1915

West Weber, Weber, Utah

CHILDREN:

William, 25 Jan 1856

Robert, 2 Jan 1858

Jalnes Rankin, 20 Dec 1859

Charles Blair, 8 Apr 1862

Isabella (Hogge), 25 Sep 1864

Archibald, 15 Jan 1867

John, 31 Dec 1868

Albert Rae, 1 May 1871

Margaret Elizabeth (Nelson), 13 Oct 1873 infancy)

Mary Ann, 6 Mar 1877

Janet (Faddis), 29 Jun 1879

Daniel McFarland, 17 May 1882

Isabella Mitchell was born on March 5th, 1837, in Scotland. She wrote, "My first recollections were in the town of Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland, where my father and mother had moved while I was yet a child. I, being the oldest child of my mother, was very much made of by her relations. I attended school in the vicinity of Linlithgow until my mother died, I being then in my fourteenth year. I had then to assume the care of my two younger brothers and a sister five years old."

Belle, as she was called, said she had been trained in "all the seriousness of the Presbyterian faith," yet after hearing the message of the Mormon missionaries, she was converted and was baptized in January of 1853 at the age of fifteen. About a year later, at a Mormon meeting, she met Archibald McFarland, another young Scottish convert. They were married on the 3rd of August 1854, in Boness, Scotland, by Elder William Heaton, president of the LDS Edinburgh Conference or district.

Belle's honeymoon was a long journey across oceans, plains and mountains, in the company of her husband's family, to Zion in the Salt Lake Valley. They sailed from Liverpool on January 17, 1855, with a large company of Mormon Saints, on the ship "Charles Buck." They crossed the plains in the Richard Ballantyne Company, arriving in Salt Lake City September 25, 1855.

Isabella and her husband settled first in Salt Lake City in the old 18th Ward on the Avenues. Her first child, born there, lived only seven months. Belle said they were under very trying circumstances that winter, were at times without any bread in the house, and knew not where to get any. "There were only a few houses there then and women and children from the lower parts of the city would come up in the spring to dig sego bulbs for food. They also boiled the roots of a thistle that grew in the lower parts of the city.

They remained only a year in Salt Lake City and then moved to American Fork where Archie's parents had settled. At the time of the Johnston Army occupation they heard, from Saints who had moved south the spring of 1858, that there was a large expanse of land on the Weber River west of Ogden which had not been settled, so, wishing to secure more land the entire McFarland family moved north in the early spring of 1859 and were among the first group of pioneers to settle West Weber.

Their first winter there was another of great suffering. Because they had spent the summer in feverish effort to get water from the Weber River onto their lands in order to grow food,, their cabin was only partially completed when winter struck. It was very cold. They were without window or door coverings and their clothing and bedding were insufficient to keep them warm. Under those miserable conditions Belle gave birth to another baby son in the month of December. She became the mother of twelve children and raised two grandsons whose mother had died following childbirth while on an LDS mission with her husband in Alberta, Canada.

Belle was very supportive of her husband, an active man in church and civic affairs. Even when he married two other wives in polygamy she shared her home with them unselfishly and took over the responsibility of raising her children alone and operating the family farm when he was absent on two foreign missions.

Archie left for his first mission in 1873 when their ninth child was seven days old. Their oldest surviving son was thirteen. Belle wrote that while he was away "we pursued the even tenor of our ways, making improvements, planting orchards, and raising our family, and did not run him in debt one dollar." Again in 1886 she had the full responsibility at home when he went on another mission and after his return when he was incarcerated in the Utah Territorial Prison for "unlawful cohabitation."

Belle was a rather small woman, dignified, capable, efficient, organized and intelligent. She was a quick, clean housekeeper, a good cook, and punctual in her habits. Her descendants have remarked that "No one could make a better pie," and "There was order and system in her home."

Along with her husband, Belle had a great interest in genealogy. She wrote, "While struggling to obtain a home and wrest from the desert a living I have not forgotten my forefathers who had died without hearing the everlasting Gospel, but through research have obtained many names of my ancestors and have had ordinances done for them in the temples of our God, numbering many hundreds." She was one of the first members of Weber County Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Camp 34 in West Weber.

Isabella Mitchell McFarland died at her home in West Weber on April 10, 1925. She is buried beside her husband in the West Weber Cemetery.