Ancestors Who Converted to the Gospel 1876-1938

Here are the last of our ancestors who joined the church.

Ann Waldron

Thomas Salt and Ann Waldron (1881)

Ann Waldron was born in Wiltshire, England in 1843 on a prosperous family farm. When she was 14 her father died, and she was sent to live with an aunt and uncle. She worked at her uncle’s store until she married Thomas Salt in 1864. Thomas was a carpenter and joiner and was a religious young man. Soon after the marriage he had an accident and became temporarily disabled.  Anne did sewing to help support the family until he recovered. 

In 1881 they joined the church in England. After they joined the church they ran the mission home for a while until they immigrated to Utah in the 1890s.  Ann had 11 children by Thomas, but six of them died in childhood. They settled in Hooper, Utah.  William died not long after in 1896, and Ann married Charles Singleton in 1904. 

Andries Rogharr and Grietje Kater (1887)

Andries Rogharr and Grietje 

Andries was born in 1849 in Groningen, Netherlands.  He was a skipper by trade and owned his own cargo ship. When he was 28 he married Grietje Kater. Her father was also a skipper, and the couple lived on Andries ship for the first years of their marriage.  They joined the church in 1887 and immigrated to the US in 1895. In 1897 Andries returned to the Netherlands as a missionary.  Later he became disaffected with the church and he and Grietje moved back to the Netherlands in 1912, but most of their children stayed in Utah. 

Pieter Roelofs Zondervan, Grietje Pieters Slot (1889)

I did not find very much information about this couple beyond the very basics.  Pieter was born in Dronrip, Netherlands in 1846. Family search lists his occupation as skipper. His first wife was Aaltje Hendriks Pool.  They married in 1872 and had two children together, but Aaltje died delivering their second child in 1875. He married Grietje Pieters Slot the next year. They had twelve children, all born in the Netherlands, two of which died in infancy. They may have immigrated to the US in 1907, and by 1810 were living in Ogden.  Pieter died in 1916 in Ogden.  Grietje was called Grace in the US and died in 1929. 

Blanche Irene Alsop (1938)

Blanche Irene Alsop

Blanche Irene is our most recent first convert to the church. There is a nice 27-page biography about her on Family Search written by her son, Bartell W. Cardon Jr.. Here are a few basic facts.

Blanche was born in 1900, in Marion Iowa. She grew up on an 80 acre farm with a strict mother and an affectionate father. She went to a one-room school house until high school. During high school she met her first husband, Ralph Collins.  They dated until he left to serve in WWI.  When he returned they were married. They lived happily for a while Ralph had problems with infidelity and after several years they divorced. In 1929 she met Bartell Wilson Cardon, and they were married in Denver in 1931. Within a year, they had their first child, Bartell Junior. It was difficult for Bartell Sr. to make enough money for them to live on, so they moved to Utah in 1933. Bartell’s father introduced her to the church, and she was baptized in 1938. Her marriage to Bartell eventually ended, but she stayed true to her new religion and raised her two sons in the gospel. 

Family Converts up to 1876

Philippe Cardon and Marthe Marie Tourn (1854)
John Paul Cardon and Susanne Goudin

Lorenzo Snow had been serving as a missionary in Italy, but had met with little success until he found the Waldensians in northern Italy.  One family story says that before the missionaries arrived, Philippe had a dream where he saw two men who brought a book to him. His daughter, Madeline also had a dream of the coming missionaries, and when they arrived the Cardons accepted the gospel. They were baptized in 1952, and immigrated to Utah in 1854. They settled in the Logan area where they stayed for 24 years.  Philippe was a stone mason and a builder.  He built many of the fire places and chimneys in the new homes in the growing community.

Marthe Marie Tourn

Along with Philippe and Marie, several of their family and children also joined the church.  We are descended from John Paul Cardon who married Susanne Goudin. She was away to school when her family to join the church, but when it came time for the saints to emigrate to Utah, she was the only one of her family that decided to go. When their group arrived in St Louis, the church had just decided to bring converts to Utah by handcart. Susanne, now 23, was in the first handcart company. Being unmarried, Susanne pulled her own handcart most of the way. She often had a little passenger, Madeline Beus, who was 2 the daughter of another Italian convert family, and was years old at the time. Ironically, Madeline later became a sister wife to Susanne. Once in Utah, other converts from Italy who had emigrated earlier, took in the new arrivals and helped them get settled. John Paul Cardon met Susanne at this time and they were married. They started a silk making industry in Cache Valley. 

Sarah Ann Littlewood, Joseph Wilson and Mary Anne McCornick

Sarah Ann Littlewood was born in 1815 in the Isle of Man but was raised in Cheshire England.  In 1835 she married Thomas Wilson in 1835. In 1840 they heard about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Parley P. Pratt, and Sarah joined the church, even though Thomas did not. Joseph Wilson was their 4th child, born in 1844. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Andalucía in Spain, where Thomas managed a cotton mill. The family moved back to England 4 years later. Joseph was baptized at the age of 16.  He moved to Leeds to work in a cotton mill, and there met Mary Ann McCornick. 

Joseph Wilson and his daughter Florence

Mary Ann McCornick was born in 1846. By the time she was 14 she was already working in the mills. There she met Thomas, in 1865, and in 1866 joined the church. They decided to immigrate to Utah 1868 with the help of the Perpetual Immigration fund. Once in Utah, they settled in Cache Valley in a humble log cabin in Clarkston.  The weather there was severe, so in 1874 they decided to move to Logan.  Joseph was a machinist, and worked for the foundry the casted the statues of oxen that supported the original Logan Temple baptismal font.

Mary Anne McCornick

William McDonald (1875)--Christina Wallace (1876) and Mary McDonald (1866)

William McDonald was born in 1822 in Angus Scotland. He worked as a tenant farmer and sheepherder.  In 1844 he married Christina Wallace. They had 5 children in Scotland.  In 1855 Mormon missionaries came to Scotland, and Christina decided to join their church.  She was afraid William would disapprove, so she sneaked away to a different town to be baptized.  When she returned she told her husband what she had done. The next year, their 10 year old daughter, Mary,  was also baptized without her father’s knowledge. When Mary was 16 she married James Mowberry.  They had a child in 1862 but shortly thereafter James went to sea and never returned. In 1866 Mary left her son, James Jr, with her parents and migrated to Utah. Mary urged her brothers, and finally her parents to come to Utah with her son in 1874. In 1875 William, Christina, and Mary’s son, James, were all baptized. William set up a farm and an orchard in Holladay, Utah. Christina died just a year later, but William worked the farm and orchard with the help of his sons and son-in-laws until he died in 1910. 

Christina Wallace

William McDonald

Mary McDonald

More Ancestors

 I have decided to go ahead and add the rest of our "ancestors who joined the church" over the next few weeks until the end of the month.  These are people who joined the church after the Doctrine and Covenants, and I will just do short bios on each of them. 

John C Dewey and Harriet Roseann May

John Cook Dewey was born in Lincolnshire England and joined the church at age 17.  He left for “Zion” in 1850, but didn’t arrive in Salt Lake until 1853. Invited to join polygamy by Brigham Young, he married two women the same day, our ancestor, Harriet May and Mary Allen.  He was directed by Brigham Young to settle in a place called Empey Springs, which, in 1864 became Deweyville. 

Harriet May’s family received the gospel from Lorenzo Snow in England.  As they were migrating to America, her parents both died of cholera. She was only 12 years old, so Lorenzo Snow took care of her until they reached Salt Lake.  She lived with different families until she married John at age 19. 

Abram Reeves and Bessie Widdowson

Abram and Bessie were born in Derbyshire England. Abram was a lace maker. They joined the church in England in 1851 but didn’t migrate to America until 1865. They settled in Kaysville Utah where Abram continued making fine lace until his death. (I couldn't find a picture of them)

John Thompson and Margaret Smith

John Thompson was baptized in 1852 in England, and married Margaret Smith in 1853.  They were leaders in their branch in England until 1862 when they immigrated to Utah.  While Margaret was crossing the plains, she got sunstroke and was blind for three weeks.  She would tie herself to the wagon and trudge along carrying a baby. Once in Utah, they were assigned to settle in Franklin Idaho, and later moved to Hooper. 

Phebe Whittemore Carter 1834

Phebe Whittemore Carter was born in 1807 in Maine. In 1834, at the age of 27, she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Her family did not approve of her decision and were not happy when she decided to move to Kirtland, Ohio to be with the Saints. I had a hard time finding a source that said who taught and baptized her, and when, exactly, she moved to Kirtland, but we know that in 1837 she met and married Wilford Woodruff who was also 27.

A few months after their marriage, her husband was called on a mission to the Eastern United States and, since Phebe’s family lived there, she decided to go along. They were not very rich, so when it was time to buy a coach ticket for the last leg of the journey to Hartford, they only had enough money for one ticket. Wilford bought one for his wife, and he walked the 137 miles on foot. 

Soon Phebe was pregnant with her first child so they decided to stay in Maine until after the baby was born. In 1938 they decided to return to Kirtland, and on the way she became very sick. She thought she would die, and even had an out-of-body experience during which she spoke with a heavenly being and was given a choice whether to return to her body or not. She received a blessing from her husband and was revived.

By the time she was ready to travel again the Saints had already been driven out of Missouri  and Kirkland. Wilford was leading a group of about 50 saints from Maine and they decided to stop in Rochester, Illinois, and stayed there until 1839 when they moved to Quincy Illinois. Wilford was called to serve a mission in Great Britain, and while he was gone, Phebe’s baby daughter died. She also had another child, a son, who is named after his father. 

When Wilford returned from Great Britain in 1841, they moved to Nauvoo and stayed there until 1844. During that time they receive their temple endowment and are sealed by Hyrum Smith. 

In 1844 Phebe and Wilford moved to England so that Wilford could preside over the British Mission. While there, Phebe had another baby. They returned to Nauvoo in 1846, in time for the Nauvoo Temple dedication, but soon needed to leave Nauvoo along with the rest of the saints due to persecution.

In 1846, Wilford and Phebe were taught about the principle of plural marriage. At first Phoebe was opposed to the principle, but later gained a testimony of it. Wilford took on a total of nine  additional plural wives, though a few of the marriages were short lived. 

Wilford was in the first wagon train to travel to Utah in 1847.  He returned to Council Bluffs the same summer, but arrived three days after Phebe had given birth. Wilford was called to preside over the Eastern States missions and Phebe and the children went with him.  Phebe’s new baby died not long after they arrived. 

They stayed in the Eastern United States until 1850, when they finally migrated to the Salt Lake Valley.  They built a home called The Valley House and Phebe lived there the rest of her life. She ended up having nine children in total but only five lived past age 2. 

In 1879 Wilford Woodruff went into hiding because of polygamy. He spent a lot of time in or near Saint George where he had served as temple president. Meanwhile, Phebe served in the presidency of the SLC 14th Stake Relief Society. In 1885 she became ill.  When Wilford heard that Phebe was ill he came to Salt Lake and was by her side when she died in November of 1885, but was unable to attend her funeral for fear of capture and incarceration. In 1889 Wilford Woodruff became the 4th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in 1890 he issued the Manifesto ending the practice of Plural Marriage.

Thomas and Catherine Foy 1836

(There are some discrepancy in the records of the Foy family.  The ordinance record shows that they were baptized in 1842, but as I read through their family records, they were actually baptized in 1836. It may be that they were baptized in 1836, but then rebaptized in 1842, which was a common practice in the early church.) 

Thomas Birk Foy and Catherine Rebecca Fink Foy 1936

There are a lot of family legends about Thomas Foy and his family, but not a lot of historical evidence to back it up. Thomas Birk Foy was born in 1802 in Pennsylvania, but some family histories say his father was from France, and others from Germany.  One family story is that one of Thomas’ ancestors was a general to Napoleon, and another was married to King Charles of Spain.  I asked my mother about his line, and she thought they were Huguenots, who fled France and lived for a time in Germany before migrating to America. Family legend suggests that Thomas’ father came to America as an indentured servant, and that he drove a supply wagon in the Revolutionary War. Other accounts say that he was a cooper, and made barrels for a living. One story says Thomas was the last of 12 children born to his parents.

Thomas seems to have had no formal education. His father died when he was 17, but older brothers and sisters looked out for him. In 1820 or 1821 he moved with his brother to Indiana County, PA, which was considered frontier at that time. There Thomas met Catherine Fink, the daughter of German immigrants, and they were married in 1828.  They lived next door to Catherine’s parents and Thomas worked as a wheelwright. 

After the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, the new Mormon church sent out missionaries throughout the United States.  Erastus Snow went to Pennsylvania and there met and baptized the Foys. The church grew in Pennsylvania, and the Foys stayed there until 1840 when they moved to Warsaw Illinois, near Nauvoo. Catherine, by that time, was expecting her 5th child. The census of 1842 required that people list their taxable goods.  From that census we know that the Foy Family were living near poverty.  Warsaw was a portage town, where people would unload their boats, haul everything upstream to avoid rapids, and then re-enter the river. By 1840 it became a meeting place for those who were persecuting the church. The Foy’s must have been victims of some of the harassment because when the church asked members to record their grievances against the mobs, Thomas and Catherine had losses to report. 

In 1841 Thomas was ordained an elder by Willard Richards, and Catherine obtained her patriarchal blessing from Hyrum Smith. Thomas received his patriarchal blessing in 1842, and it states that he would “have an inheritance with the remnants of the seed of Jacob, not of Joseph, but of Issachar.”  

In 1845 mob violence had increased so the Foys, who now had 7 children, moved to Nauvoo for safety. The records show the exact plot they bought and it put them in the same ward as Joseph Smith, Wilford Woodruff, Brigham Young and other well known persons in church history. Maybe for this reason, Thomas and Catherine were part of the first endowment session in the Nauvoo Temple in January 1846. 

There is no record of when they left Nauvoo due to persecution, but by 1848, when their eighth child was born, they were in Council Bluffs. Later that year they were sealed by Heber C. Kimball in Winter Quarters. 

Because Thomas Foy was a wheelwright, family legend states he was asked to stay in Iowa to help build wagons for those crossing the plains. Though there are no records when they themselves crossed, it was probably in 1850 when the church called all remaining saints in Iowa to migrate to Salt Lake. There is one letter that states that Catherine got Cholera on the trip west, and was also four months pregnant, but she survived. (Catherine went on to have 12 children total.) The Foys show up in the 1850 census as living in Salt Lake City. They later moved to Ogden, where Thomas married a second wife, Louisa Potterrill (who was only 20, 11 years younger than Thomas’s oldest daughter. Louisa ended up having eight children with Thomas). They were eventually called as part of the “Cotton Mission” and were sent to Saint George to grow cotton. they stayed there until Thomas’ death in 1873. Catherine died in 1870, but Louisa lived until 1920.

Francis and Esther Bathsheba Fletcher 1842

 Our family has several ancestors who joined the church in 1942.  I plan to blog about one couple a week for the next couple of weeks. This week we get to meet the first members of the church on the Fletcher line. Luckily, Esther kept a journal and it is from her journals that we get this information. (via Family Search)

Francis Fletcher was born Massachusetts in 1818.  He met and married Esther Bathsheba Wright in 1839 (she was born in 1823 so was only 16 when married).  In 1842 they were introduced to the church and were baptized by members in the Lowell branch in Massachusetts. Their parents didn’t join the church and in 1847 they decided to move west with the Saints. When they arrived on the frontier, in August 1847, members of the first Mormon Pioneer group were returning from the Great Basin and gave reports of the Salt Lake Valley.  

Francis and Esther stayed at Winter Quarters over the winter but it wasn't a very nice place, so in spring 1948 moved to Harris Grove, Iowa. Francis made money by building a log cabin and then living in it for a while while he built the next.  By 1851 they had made enough money for the trek west.  They left in June and arrived in Salt Lake in September. A year after settling in Utah, Francis took a polygamous wife, Mary Ann Loring.  

Francis Fletcher was a carpenter and stone mason. He worked with Truman Angell to open up the stone quarry the was used to build the Salt Lake Temple and was present at the laying of the cornerstone.  Unfortunately, In 1854 he contracted pneumonia, probably from breathing in the stone dust, and died, leaving Esther with five children and one on the way. That baby died shortly after childbirth. After Francis' death, Mary Ann Loring left Salt Lake to travel to California to visit family, but died there in 1856 at the age of 27.  She had no children.

The next few years were very difficult for Esther.  She struggled to get enough food for her family. During an especially bad year in 1856 she would go out and dig up sego lilies for her family to eat. Then a neighbor allowed her to glean his field after his harvest and she was able to get enough wheat to last the winter. 

Esther started a school in her home and was able to earn a little money that way.  In 1857 she became the 5th wife of a man she had met in Winter Quarters.  He was not able to support her completely because of having to support his other wives, but she did bear him two children. Esther was among those who left Salt Lake City to hide when Johnston’s army entered the valley in 1858.

Later she recorded a time when she was in a choir that went to sing to the prisoners in the penitentiary.  Many of the prisoners were church leaders arrested for polygamy.  In her journal she wrote about how strange it was to see Lorenzo Snow locked up in a prison. 

She served many years as a ward Relief Society president in Salt Lake and was invited to attend Eliza R. Snow’s 70th birthday party. There was some rumors that Brigham Young, who was trying to evade arrest because of polygamy at the time, would attend the party (as Eliza Snow was one of his wives).  Esther didn’t believe he would chance it, but he did, and spent the day enjoying the party. 

In Spring, 1893, Esther wanted to climb into the tower of the Salt Lake Temple to touch the statue of the Angel Moroni.  She receive permission to climb into the tower, but wasn’t able to touch the statue.  The temple was dedicated on April 6th, 1893, and she wrote an effusive praise of the Lord and his goodness in her journal that day.  Esther died a few months later on September 30.  She was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

P.S. 

I think Francis was the most handsome of our ancestors that I have found.  I wish I had a picture of Esther when she was younger.  I imagine she was very beautiful and that they made a striking couple.

Electa Caroline Briggs 1841, and Daniel Randall Williams 1842

Electa Caroline Briggs 1841 and Daniel Randall Williams 1842

Mother of Emily Electa Williams

Mother-in-law to Edward Stevenson

Electa Caroline Briggs had a lot of difficult things happen in her life. She was born in 1805 but in 1807 her mother died.  Her father, not wanting to take care of his three children, left each of them with different relatives and then disappeared for 16 years.  Electa was placed with her grandparents who raised her.  After 16 years, (Electa would have been 18) her father returned with a wife and four children. Came to his parents home and wanted to have Electa come and live with him and his new family.  Of course, he was a total stranger to him, but her grandparents urged her to go with him. 

She only lived with her father and step family for one year before married an older widdower.  He called her his “Child Bride” but the marriage seemed to be a happy one.  She had a baby two years after the marriage, but only 6 years after the marriage, her husband died.  She was pregnant at the time of his death, and delivered her second child two months later.

Someone else was assigned to administer her husband’s estate when he died, and in the end Electa was left with nothing. She and her children jumped around from one family member to another. While staying with her sister, Polly, she came in contact with the church. She went to a few meetings, but didn’t join at that time.

She began working with a doctor, and soon became a nurse.  While nursing typhoid patients, she became sick with the illness and nearly died.  Then her daughter became sick as well.  Electa heard that the prophet Joseph Smith was in the area visiting relatives, so she sent for him to come and administer to her daughter.  He came with his brother and they blessed the child. By the next day the child was well.

Electa met and became engaged to a man called Daniel Williams.  She told him when he proposed that she would only marry him if he agreed to take her to where the Mormons were.  He agreed and but they were not able to go immediately.  Electa’s father had seized her possessions, (he was not a nice man) and they sought legal action to have them restored.  He had hidden them, and it took a while to find out where they were. He then tried to sue her for room and board, but the issue was settled when he died to small pox later that year.  After her father’s death, Electa married Daniel Williams and they moved to Michigan where Electa’s brother had a farm.  They lived there a few years.  While there a Mormon Elder Simeon Dunn visited the neighborhood.  Electa invited him to preach, but soon they heard that a mob planned to do him harm.  Her husband agreed to help him escape. Although they had not been baptized yet, helping the missionary made them a target of persecution. They finally left to travel to Nauvoo in 1841.  When they arrived, they decided to settle on the other side of the Mississippi River in Zarahelmla (the settlement mentioned in this week’s Come Follow Me reading). While there they were finally baptized. 

In her autobiography that can be found on Family Search, she has an account of their experience the night Joseph Smith was killed. They had eventually moved to Nauvoo, where Electa was part of the first Relief Society. They were driven out of Nauvoo with the rest of the saints. They moved to Council Bluffs and stayed there until 1852 when they finally traveled to Salt Lake City in an ox cart. They settled in North Ogden.

Charles Dutton Miller, July 1839

While saints were being driven out of Missouri in 1839, missionaries were busy preaching the gospel in England.  It was during this time that Charles Dutton Miller Joined the church.

Charles Dutton Miller was born in Manchester England in August, 1816. He was the youngest of seven children, and his father died when he was two years old. His widowed mother was very poor, but managed their scant money with frugality. His mother was good at herbal remedies, and once treated princess Victoria of England. After that she received patronage as a healer from many grand families of England. 

Charles only attended a few years of school, and then became an errand boy for a hat maker.  Later he became apprenticed to a clog maker, and later went into business for himself. He also became a methodist minister.  He married Jane Marshall and together they had four children. 

In 1837 missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints came to England.  Because of persecution of church members, John didn’t join the church until 1939. He was baptized by Joseph Fielding and William Clayton in July just before he turned 23.  After he joined the church, business at his shop dropped off so much and he was forced to close.  He became an itinerant missionary for the church, traveling and preaching without purse or scrip. He was ordained a high priest by Brigham Young in 1840 and was made president of the Manchester Conference with 1200 members.  He later became the president of the Bradford Conference, which was even larger.  They often hosted missionaries in their home. 

In 1848 he was feeling desires to unite with the saints in America, but at the time they had just been driven out of Nauvoo. He was told to stay in England and strengthen the church there. Finally in 1849 he and his growing family boarded a ship for America. Eight weeks later they arrived in New Orleans. They moved on to St Louis, where they stopped so that he could work and earn enough money for the trek west.  In 1851 the saints in that area received a letter from the First Presidency urging them to gather to Utah. Some sources say that his wife, Jane refused to go to Salt Lake, but others say she died in St. Louis, along with one of their children.  Either way, Charles and one of his sons started off for Utah alone. They joined a wagon train in 1852, and arrived in Utah that fall.

Once in Utah,  Charles met and married Alice Ashton, a widow with three children. They moved  to Lehi, and then settled in Provo. He lived there until his death from pneumonia in 1878. 

Oliver and Lorenzo Snow 1836

 Lorenzo Snow and his father, Oliver Snow, were not the first on this line of genealogy to join the church. As I have recorded, Lorenzo Snow's mother joined the church after hearing Joseph Smith preach in 1831, and his sister, Eliza, joined in 1935. I am focusing on Lorenzo Snow here for two reasons.  The most obvious is that he later became the president of the church in 1898. The second is that he joined the church because of the preaching of a man mentioned in this week's reading for Come Follow Me, David W. Patten (Section 114). The rest of this article is a summary of the life sketch about Lorenzo Snow found here in The Life and Ministry of Lorenzo Snow.

In 1835 Lorenzo was riding his horse in his home town of Mantua, Ohio, when he happened upon David W. Patten who was a newly ordained apostle and was on his way to Kirkland after serving a mission.  The two men rode together for about 30 miles.  Lorenzo later wrote, “Our conversation fell upon religion and philosophy, and being young and having enjoyed some scholastic advantages, I was at first disposed to treat his opinions lightly, especially so as they were not always clothed in grammatical language; but as he proceeded in his earnest and humble way to open up before my mind the plan of salvation, I seemed unable to resist the knowledge that he was a man of God and that his testimony was true.”

Lorenzo had been studying religion at Oberlin College, but after meeting Patten, and hearing his sister Eliza's experiences in Kirtland, he decided to leave Oberlin and join his family in Kirtland.  There he studied Hebrew along with some of the church leaders, and eventually was baptized in June 1836.  Soon after his baptism he received a strong witness of the truth of the Gospel and prepared to serve a mission. He served two missions back to back that spanned 1837-1840. By then the saints and his family had moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. He joined his family there  but soon after was called to serve a mission in England. During his mission he delivered copies of the Book of Mormon to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. 

There are a lot of other good stories about Lorenzo Snow.  He helped on Joseph Smith's campaign to become President. In 1845 Joseph Smith taught him the principle of plural marriage, and in response he married two women Charlotte Squires and Mary Goddard. He crossed the plains when the saints moved to Utah and in 1849 became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. That same year he left for his mission in Italy. The work there went slowly until he came across the Waldenses in the Piedmont region of Italy, some of whom are our ancestors. He lead a group of Italian converts to Utah.

in 1853 Brigham Young called Lorenzo snow to lead a group of families to settle the northern Utah county of Box Elder. There he helped establish Brigham City.  He lived there when not on assignment from the prophet, until Wilford Woodruff's death in 1898.  On hearing of the prophet's passing, he took a train to Salt Lake City and went to the temple to pray. While there, the Lord appeared to him and told him to reorganize the 1st presidency immediately. He was sustained as prophet on October 10, 1898.  He was already elderly when he was sustained, and he only served for three years, but during that time he received important revelations, including one about using the principle of tithing to help the church get out of debt. Lorenzo Snow died in 1901 of pneumonia and was barried in Brigham City. 

Edward Stevenson, December 1833

 Here are the first converts to the church on the Cardon side of the Family.  Elizabeth and Edward were baptized at the same time, but most of the information here is about Edward. I will do a post for Elizabeth next time.

Edward Stevenson 1833

Stevenson was born on May 1, 1820, in Gibraltar, the fourth son of Joseph Stevenson and Elizabeth Stevens. In 1827, at the tender age of seven, he immigrated with his family to the United States, settling first in New York and then in Michigan. In 1831 his father passed away, leaving him in the care of his mother and siblings. In 1833, three years after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in upstate New York, missionaries Jared Carter and Joseph Woods evangelized in Michigan. Although still a young man, Stevenson believed their words and embraced their teachings. He was baptized on December 20, 1833, and his mother and several siblings also joined the church. As a family they gathered with the Latter-day Saints in Missouri and endured the trials that followed the church and its members across that state. While living in Far West, Stevenson became more acquainted with Joseph Smith, having first met him while living in Michigan. Stevenson was eventually exiled from Missouri with the body of the church and moved to the temporary safety of Nauvoo, Illinois. There he married his first wife, Nancy A. Porter (the sister of his future missionary companion Nathan T. Porter), in 1845 and was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple in 1846. He crossed the plains in the Charles C. Rich company in 1847, his first of nearly twenty crossings over the plains on behalf of the church as a leader and missionary.

Stevenson also made six missionary journeys, for up to five years at a time. These included three missions to Europe, two missions to the southern United States, and one mission to Mexico. 

Stevenson was a polygamist and had four wives, and we are descended from the third, Emily Electa Williams. All together, Edward Stevenson had 28 children according to Family Search (Wikipedia says he had 7 wives, and 24 children). 

In 1870, Edward Stevenson traveled to Ohio to meet Martin Harris.  He helped him move to Utah, and there rebaptized him. 

Stevenson wrote and self-published a biography of Joseph Smith in 1893, entitled Reminiscences of Joseph, the Prophet.  It is available on Project Guttenberg. 

In October 1894, Stevenson was called to serve as one of the first seven presidents of seventies, a position he honorably fulfilled until his passing in Salt Lake City on January 27, 1897.

Wilford Woodruff, December 29, 1833

Between section 101 and 102 we come to the time of the conversion of the next ancestor on our first ancestors to join the church list. It was an interesting time to join the church.  There were extreme persecutions of the saints in Missouri, though the church in Kirkland was still stable and growing. Here is a short introduction to Wilford Woodruff.

Wilford Woodruff was born on March 1, 1807, in Farmington, Connecticut, to Aphek Woodruff and Beulah Thompson Woodruff. When he was 15 months old, his mother died of spotted fever. About three years later, Aphek remarried. Wilford and his two older brothers were raised by their father and by their stepmother, Azubah Hart Woodruff.

“At an early age my mind was exercised upon religious subjects.”

“I could not find any denomination whose doctrines, faith or practice, agreed with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or the ordinances and gifts which the Apostles taught.”

On December 29, 1833, he heard a sermon preached by Elder Zera Pulsipher, a Latter-day Saint missionary. In his journal he described his response to Elder Pulsipher’s sermon: “He commenced the meeting with some introductory remarks and then prayed. I felt the Spirit of God to bear witness that he was the servant of God. He then commenced preaching, and that too as with authority, and when he had finished his discourse I truly felt that it was the first gospel sermon that I had ever heard.”

Wilford Woodruff invited Elder Pulsipher and his companion, Elijah Cheney, to stay in the Woodruff home. Two days later, having spent some time reading the Book of Mormon and meeting with the missionaries, Brother Woodruff was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

By April 1834 he had moved to Kirkland OH, and that June participated in the “Zion’s Camp” march to Missouri. When he returned to Ohio, he served two different missions before meeting and marrying Phoebe Carter in 1837.  I am descended from this marriage.

(Later when plural marriage became a practice among leaders of the church Wilford Woodruff wed a total of nine more women.  Four of the marriages were short lived and ended in divorce, but six of his wives bore him a total of 34 children.)

In 1839 he was ordained a member of the Council of Twelve Apostles, and then was sent on a mission to England.  His work in England is almost legendary.  When he returned he migrated with the saints to the Great Salt Lake valley. In fact, President Brigham Young was lying sick in Wilford Woodruff’s wagon when he uttered the famous words, “This is the right place, drive on.”  

In Utah he served in many positions until he finally became president of the church in 1889.  While he was president, the Salt Lake Temple was completed and dedicated, and the Manifesto was given, ending the practice of Plural Marriage. 

One of the great contributions Wilford Woodruff made to the church was that he kept a daily thorough diary.  Much of what we know about the early church we know from his journaling.

A good introduction to his life can be found here.

Rosetta Leonora Pettibone Snow

 I decided in January that I would discover the dates of when my and my husband's ancestors first joined the church. Both of us have ancestors who joined the church during the time period covered in the Doctrine and Covenants.  I wanted to tie in the baptisms of our ancestors with what was happening in the church and in the Doctrine and Covenants.  In the sections we read in Come Follow Me this week there is a passage that I think leads directly to the first person in our genealogy to join the church, Rosetta Leonora Pettibone Snow, wife of Oliver III and mother of Lorenzo and Eliza Snow. The passage is 37:1-2 "Behold, I say unto you (Joseph Smith and Sydney Rigdon) that it is not expedient in me that you should translate any more until you shall go to the Ohio, and this because of the enemy and for your sakes. And again, I say unto you that ye shall not go until you preached the gospel in those parts."  I believe Joseph and Sydney were following this directive when they visited and baptized Rosetta.

There is a lot of information about Rosetta on Family Search.  I can't include it all here but here is a mini-biographical sketch:

When Rosetta Leonora Pettibone was born on 22 October 1778, in Simsbury, Connecticut, her father, Captain Jacob Pettibone Jr, was 25 and her mother, Rosetta Amanda Barber, was 20. Captain Pettibone and his wife, Rosetta, both claimed to be descendants of the original pilgrim settlers of 1620. Captain Pettibone served in the Revolutionary war. 

Rosetta was raised to be a wife and mother and was accomplished in the homely arts.  Her daughter Eliza said in her biography, that Rosetta “considered a practical knowledge of housekeeping the best, most efficient foundation on which to build a magnificent structure of womanly accomplishments-that useful knowledge was the most reliable basis of independence”. 

Rosetta L married Oliver Snow III on 6 May 1800, in Becket, Berkshire, Massachusetts, United States. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 4 daughters. 

Eliza said her parents were “free of bigotry and intolerance” and made their home a “welcome resort for the honorable of all denominations.”

In the early months of 1831 the Snow family was living in Mantua, Ohio when a family friend, Sidney Rigdon, introduced them to the prophet, Joseph Smith. Rosetta responded immediately to the message of the restored gospel and was baptized by Joseph Smith himself” (Eliza, the life and faith of Eliza R. Snow, by Karen Lynn Davidson and Jill Mulvay Derr)

She later moved with the saints to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1839. She died on 12 October 1846, in Walnut Grove,  Illinois, at the age of 67, before the saints migrated to Utah.

One of the things that impressed me about Rosetta is that she joined the church long before anyone else in her family. Eliza R. Snow joined in 1835 and Rosetta's husband, Oliver, and son Lorenzo didn't join until 1836.  I have to ask myself, if Rosetta had not joined in 1831, would any of her family ever joined? If she had not joined it would have been easy for other members to forget about Joseph Smith and his church.  Her brave and faithful decision to be baptized ensured that the rest of the family would be in contact with other members over and over again. Unfortunately, I could not find a picture of Rosetta, but here is memorial marker at the site of her home in Mantua, Ohio.