Pat's Place

Articles

by Pat Elliott

The Sad Story of Gobo Fango

     I like to visit old cemeteries. The quiet stones and epitaphs tell stories of their own and if you listen carefully, the dead give up their secrets.

     Such was the case when I visited Oakley, Idaho. The man at the ice cream parlor was happy to give directions and tell me to look for the grave of Gobo Fango. I found the stone, which read Gobo Fango, died Feb. 11, 1886, age 30. Not much to build a story on but this is what I learned.

     In 1820, John Stuart Talbot, his wife Priscilla and six children joined a movement by the British Government to colonize South Africa. They settled near the Kaffir African tribe. At that time, the native blacks were much like the American Indian, attacking settlements and unwary travelers. The Kaffir Chief, through bad leadership, caused many of the tribe to starve to death.

     Gobo’s mother was starving. Too weak to carry her three-year-old son, she put him high in the crotch of a tree to protect him from animals. She went to the home of Henry Talbot for help. Henry was the third son of John Stuart Talbot. The Talbot’s found Gobo’s tree and rescued him. His mother dead, Gobo became one of the Talbot family.

     Mormon missionaries converted the Talbots. Henry sold his estate and hired a sailboat to take his family consisting of his wife, fourteen unmarried children and son Henry and his wife and child. Gobo was about seven years old and afraid to be left behind. One account says they rolled him in a rug. Another account said it was a blanket. Whichever, the Talbot’s smuggled Gobo aboard, though it was illegal. The Talbot ship, Racehorse, arrived in Boston in 1861. Only five days earlier shots had been fired on Fort Sumter and the Civil War begun.

     The small group traveled by train from Boston, through New York then on to Chicago bound for Missouri. Confederate soldiers stopped the train to search for escaped Negro slaves. Their orders, “Shoot on sight.” Mrs. Hunter saved Gobo by pushing him beneath her large hooped skirt. At some point, Gobo may have been dressed as a girl with his black face covered by a veil.

     Their railroad experience ended in Joseph, Iowa. The Talbots traveled to Florence, Nebraska where they finished their journey by wagon train, arriving in Salt Lake City in the fall of 1861. In the spring, they settled in Kaysville, Utah, twenty miles north of Salt Lake City. Times were hard on the farm, many times the boys were without shoes in the winter. One winter, Gobo suffered from frostbit toes from walking in the snow with only gunnysacks wrapped around his feet. He limped the rest of his life.

     Gobo’s live changed when Mary Ann Whitesides Hunter wrote her brother in Kaysville, asking him to find a boy to help herd her sheep. Gobo went to work for Mary Ann’s husband Edward. Edward paid the Talbots thirty dollars a month for Gobo’s work.   

     When slavery was abolished, Gobo then received the $30.00 a month salary from Edward Hunter. Several years later, he came to Oakley, Idaho to work as a shepherd, working for Hunter’s sons who were early settlers in Oakley. They contracted with Gobo to  receive some of the lamps in lieu of salary.

     Gobo was herding sheep in the Goose Creek country about four miles north of Oakley when two cattlemen accosted him, ordering him to remove his sheep from the area. Gobo argued with them saying they must show ownership of the land he occupied. One of the men named Frank Bedky dismounted and offered to talk over the matter peacefully. Instead, he shot Gobo three times and beat him about the head. The two men rode off thinking Gobo was dead.

     Gobo was not dead. He was able to crawl three miles to the Walter Matthews farm where they cared for him.

     The next day Gobo dictated his will. In it, he left small amounts of money to friends and acquaintances, and $500.00 to the Grantsville Relief Society. The remainder of his estate he left to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to help build the temple in Salt Lake City. He died a few days later.

Gobo Fango lies in a lonely grave in Oakley, Idaho cemetery. His headstone simply reads, “Gobo Fango, died February 10, 1886, 30 years old.

     Was Gobo Fango’s death murder or self-defense? Frank Bedke was tried twice. Both times he was judged ‘not guilty.” Gobo Fango traveled from South Africa to die in a sheepherders camp in Oakley Idaho. He was a victim of the times of conflict between white and black, cattlemen and sheepherders.

His story is documented in The Negro Pioneer, and in Our Pioneer Heritage, compiled by Kate B. Carter, published in 1965 by Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, History of Gobo Fango by Kldya Wake and The Life of Henry James Talbot of South Africa and many other documents.