The theme this year at the annual Glenwood Cemetery tribute event featuring ghosts on Saturday, Sept. 28, is “Immigrants: People Who Made Park City Home.”

Since many of the families who are buried at the historic cemetery were from other countries originally, this year we decided to honor some of them and their families. At the event, we will be discussing Thomas Brennan, Peter Martin, Frank Andrew, John Dunsmore, Joseph Zucca, Matilda Wiest, and Sara Pike.

But for the sake of this article, let’s talk about some of the other families who were also immigrants and what we know of their stories.

Francis Trythall immigrated here from the Cornish village of Illogan in England. He was born in 1854 and had four brothers and a sister. His father was a tin miner, and Trythall and his brothers started working in the mines at the age of 12. When mining in England slowed down, Trythall and his brothers moved to America to find mining work here. They settled in Pennsylvania, and Trythall moved west and arrived in Park City in 1885.

He married Annie Rosevear and they had three boys together. After working 30 years in the mines, including 15 at the Ontario Mine, Trythall became ill with miner’s consumption and passed away after a couple of years. 

Some people, like Ancil Johnson, came here for religious reasons.  Johnson’s mother converted to Mormonism and felt it would be better if they lived in the United States, so Johnson immigrated from Sweden when he was just 9 years old. They traveled by cattle boat to America. Then they crossed the plains in an ox team and settled in Salt Lake City.

Since they had no money, Johnson started working at an early age. He drove the ore wagons from Bingham to the smelters and worked a few years later at the Ontario Sawmill.

As time passed, Johnson also worked as a Park City policeman, a boss teamster, a watchman for the Judge Mine, and did some cowpunching (wrangling, herding, and branding cattle). Johnson passed in 1934, at which time he was claimed to be the oldest resident of Park City, both in terms of age and length of residence.

Other people, like Mary Corrigan, came here for new opportunities. She was born in Scotland, but times were tough, so her husband, James, moved to the United States first to find work in 1880. She moved to Pennsylvania eight years later with their seven children. The Corrigan family first lived in Pennsylvania, then moved to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and finally to Park City. Her husband was also a miner who died of miner’s consumption in 1907. 

This article’s final subject is Ann Crowther Willcocks. She was born in England and became a widow at the age of 19. She met her future second husband, Walter Willcocks, and they immigrated here together in 1865. They spent some time in Monroe, New York as he worked in the iron mines for about 12 years before they moved to Park City in 1877. He became the master of Park City’s water system, a job he held for over 16 years. She helped with rental properties and hotel they owned.

There were many reasons people emigrated to the United States, and why they came here to live and work in here in Park City. 

Tickets for the Glenwood Cemetery Tribute Event with Ghosts scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 28, are on sale now! The tours are scheduled from 10:45 a.m. to noon or 12:45 to 2 p.m. Contact Diane Knispel at the Park City Museum 435-574-9554 to reserve spots.  The rain date is Sept. 29. We encourage ages 13 and up to attend. Stories may not be appropriate for younger children. 

If you have information about a family member buried in the Glenwood Cemetery, please call Knispel, as she would love to learn more about your family’s history. 

Diane Knispel is the Park City Museum director of education.

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The Park City Museum is currently hosting The Way We Worked, a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution. Staff has developed a local component called The Way Park City Worked which tells the story of the workers from all walks of life who helped put this town on the map. The exhibit highlights some women workers and asks questions about their lives that aren’t easily answered. The following article is the second in a series that looks to provide context and answers to those questions.

In the late 19th century, most women who worked were either in domestic service or factories. Their transition into white collar work was gradual. Clerical jobs increased after the invention of the typewriter in the 1870s. Typing courses and secretarial schools opened and women took advantage of the new opportunities. Jobs like stenographers, typists and bookkeepers in corporate and government offices were, at the time, more profitable and respectable than factory or domestic work.

Many women also started working in the emerging telephone industry. In towns like Park City, women worked in telephone company offices with big switchboards. Often called “Hello Girls,” switchboard operators were usually women, hired by company managers based on the assumption that they had a better rapport with callers than men did.

According to the 1900 census, only about 3 percent of Park City women worked, a percentage on par with the rest of the country. But things were changing. Women lobbied for expanded education opportunities and more legal rights, including the right to vote. When the US entered World War I in 1917, job opportunities for women opened up as men left to fight. Many women took over men’s jobs in plants, factories, farms, and other local positions. Women did a lot of unpaid work during wartime too, including knitting socks, rolling bandages, selling war bonds, and monitoring their families’ food supplies.

By 1920, about 23 percent of all women over 18 were employed, but women still faced challenges. They found it difficult to get promoted within their companies and their salaries remained low. Annual salaries for clerical work across the country averaged about $1200 for women where men made about $2010. Black women and immigrants faced additional challenges in the workplace due to racism and discrimination. They found their options even more limited than their white colleagues, and often had to work longer hours and in worse conditions.

If you’re interested in learning more about labor history in the twentieth century on both the local and national level, be sure to stop by the Park City Museum. But hurry! The last day to see The Way We Worked and The Way Park City Worked is Jan. 10!

The Way We Worked has been made possible in Utah by Utah Humanities. The exhibition, created by the National Archives, is part of Museum on Main Street, and collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and State Humanities Councils nationwide. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress.

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The Park City Museum is currently hosting The Way We Worked, a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution. Staff has developed a local component called The Way Park City Worked which tells the story of the workers from all walks of life who helped put this town on the map.

Several women workers are highlighted in the exhibit and their histories look at questions about their lives that aren’t easily answered. For example, why did these women choose to work? Why did they choose the work they did? What affected how long they worked over the course of their lives? The following article, the first in a short series, will attempt to provide context and answers to these questions.

Social norms often dictated that women not work outside the home, particularly if married with children. These notions were reinforced in popular media like magazines which usually depicted men as responsible for business and politics with women responsible for the home. There were sometimes exceptions, however. It was usually considered more acceptable for women to work if they were unmarried, widowed, divorced, or abandoned.

Two examples of working women from Park City, both featured in The Way Park City Worked, are Isabel Grant, head nurse at the Miners Hospital, and Agnes Harrington, bookkeeper for the Welsh, Driscoll, and Buck department store. Agnes never married and continued to work for her entire life. Isabel only worked until she married, at which point she resigned her position at the hospital.

When women did work, they usually made less money than their male counterparts in part because companies restricted the number of hours they could work. Management usually assumed their female employees were not the sole wage earners, though unfortunately in many cases this assumption was false.

When not working for wages, women were still involved in the labor force. Women’s groups such as the Women’s Athenaeum Club of Park City were founded to give women a chance to educate themselves and help those in need. Members wrote and read papers at meetings and worked to better conditions in the community. They advocated for causes such as safe milk to drink, compulsory attendance at schools, restricting child labor, and developing a juvenile justice system. They also fought to improve the safety and work conditions of factory workers.

Come back next week for the second article in this series and find out how and why women expanded their working roles.

Time is running out to see The Way We Worked and The Way Park City Worked. Both exhibits close on Jan. 10. Free admission day at the Museum is Tuesday, Jan. 9. There will be a craft for kids in the gallery from 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Join us Monday, January 8 at 5:00 pm for a presentation and writing workshop, “From Miners to Nomads: Park City Work Culture with Writer Richard Ellis.” See our website or Facebook page for more information. Space is limited and RSVP is required. Please contact Mahala Ruddell, at mruddell@parkcityhistory.org or 435-649-7457 x112.

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