As the town boomed and the fertility of the soil became recognized, newcomers entered, one of the most prominent being a convert from England, Arthur Stayner, a polished gentleman of considerable education, who became one of the first school teachers, along with Joseph E. Robinson. It was at this time that he enticed Grandmother, Mary E. Clark, to be one of his plural wives. It is probable that he was her school teacher at one time and a strong influence at an impressive period of her life. Flattered by his attentions, but hypnotized, as she later described it, she yielded to his romantic wooing, and was married to him on Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1869, less than three months after her nineteenth birthday.

Why this union was so temporary, aside from the considerable difference in age, we can only surmise. Mary E., like her father, was not given to much chit-chat, and naturally was reticent about this episode in her personal life. She told her daughter she never lived with her first husband. She found she.could not tolerate the situation, and was granted a divorce on June 12, 1869. 

It was probably during this awesome period that she recognized her true love for Joseph E. Robinson, to whom she was married that eventful year, on the 6th of September. Unfortunately, the stain of her early mistake played a role in the tragedy, which unfolded later, or it might have been overlooked and forgotten.

After this handsome couple, Joseph E. Robinson and Mary E. Clark was well established with two fine sons, Joseph E. Jr. ("Jody") and Ezra Clark and a few days before the third, Albert Carlos, was born, Joseph E. took his second wife, Dorothy Henderson Watson, then only fifteen years old but mature for her age. A pretty and capable girl, she was probably welcomed into the household as a helper and co mother of the new baby boy. Things must have been going well in that home when on July 10, 1874 the three of them, dressed in their finery, set out in a carriage for Salt Lake City to have their photographs taken

together. As they reached the outskirts of the metropolis at Mill Creek, they paused to water the thirsty team, Joseph E. tight roping the tongue as was his custom, to reach both horses and unbridle them. While they were drinking, one of the animals became frightened, lurched forward unexpectedly, and before the bewildered, terrified women could bring them under control both horses had trampled upon the body of their husband, and he had been run over by the front wheels of the buggy. 

Of course, there was not a visit to the photographer that fateful day when the mangled body was taken, more dead than alive, for the best care then available, but saved only by Priesthood administrations as he hovered for weeks between life and death, cared for by the two faithful wives. He was always crippled thereafter, and never the same again. Nevertheless he became the father of one more child by his first wife, and fourteen sons and daughters by Dorothy, or "Aunt Dora" as she was known to the other family.