.

.

Charles Lowell Walker was a busy man. In 1863 he noted, “This winter I have been attending to the Seventies Meetings, Sunday meeting, ward Meetings, besides a Lyceum and Dramatic association of which I am a Member, so I havnt had Much time to waste.” Besides attending meetings, he needed to provide for his wives Abigail Middlemass and Sarah Smith and a growing family, build a home in the Southern Utah desert, help build irrigation systems, work as a stonecutter for the St. George Tabernacle and Temple, and fulfill other duties.

In addition to all his duties, he wrote what historian Davis Bitton later called “one of the great diaries of pioneer and territorial Utah.”

Walker had immigrated to Salt Lake City from England. In 1862 the Church called him to help settle St. George, Utah, or “Dixie,” as the settlers called their new home in the South.

Walker would often dash off a poem or toast for social or religious events. Here’s an excerpt from his song, “Marching to Dixie” (1867),  sung to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia”:

Some six or seven years ago this country looked forlorn,
A God-forsaken country, as sure as you are born.
The lizards crept around it, and thorns immense had grown,
As we came marching to Dixie.

Chorus

Hurrah! Hurrah! The thorns we have cut down.
Hurrah! Hurrah! We’re building quite a town.
St. George is growing greater, and gaining great renown,
Since we came marching to Dixie.

We’ve battled with the mineral, we’ve battled with our foes,
We’ve battled with the Virgin, that everybody knows;
Our desert homes are pretty and blossom like the rose,
Since we came marching to Dixie. ((Walker later used the same tune to celebrate the completion of the St. George Tabernacle: “Now Boys pray dont get weary, there’s plenty of work ahead./God says build ye a temple, thro Brigham Young our head,/In which we can go forth soon and baptize for our dead./And thus be rewarded in Dixie.”))

Another song on the same topic, written three years before, was set to the tune of “Come, Let Us Anew”:

We are but a few
I’ll own it is true,
Rolled down in the South
And we’ve never stood still,
Or been down in the mouth.
The old chieftain’s will
We’ve endeavored to fill,
And the desert improve
By the patience of Job
And no rain from above.

Our life on the stream,
The old virgin I mean,
Glides swiftly away,
And the old patched-up ditch,
It refuses to stay.

Walker’s poems tended to group into a few distinct categories: religious, celebratory, historical, and political. Watch in the upcoming days for a selection of his poems, many of them written to keep up the spirits of the good people of St. George. ((The picture of Charles Lowell Walker is from FamilySearch Family Tree, courtesy of Walker’s family.))