Western Maine Saints

Martha Fifield Wilkins, author of Sunday River Sketches, at the
Sessions-Chapman-Bennett House near North Newry in 1931

Patty Bartlett Sessions was the first in her family to be baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was born in Bethel 4 February 1796, the first child of Anna Hall Bartlett, second wife of Enoch Bartlett, who had come from Newton, Massachusetts, to Sudbury Canada (incorporated as "Bethel" in 1796) sometime after the War for American Independence. He settled on a farm in the Middle Intervale section of Bethel. A number of Newton residents had an interest in this area; W. B. Lapham, in his History of Bethel, records that the rights of nine proprietors had been bought in 1774 by Aaron Richardson and Jonathan Clark of Newton. Nathaniel Segar, a resident of Newton and brother of Enoch Bartlett’s first wife, Eliza Segar, had come to Sudbury Canada in 1774, remained through the summer, then returned to Newton. The American Revolution began in the spring of 1775, and Segar served first in the defense of Boston, then re-enlisted for a mission to Ticonderoga and Canada. By the spring of 1779, the battlefront had moved to the southern states, and Nathaniel Segar again traveled to Sudbury Canada, this time accompanied by Jonathan Bartlett, a half-brother of Enoch. They took kettles for boiling down maple sap to make sugar, and after the sap stopped running, spent their time clearing land and building shelters for the winter. Segar’s land was on the north side of the river in what is now Hanover, and Jonathan Bartlett later settled on the south side of the river, below Bean’s Corner. Four other brothers of Enoch also settled in Sudbury Canada. Perrigrine Sessions, writing about his grandfather, recalls being told that Enoch, with one or two of his half brothers, brought their wives and possessions on hand sleds from Fryeburg fifty miles to Sudbury Canada, the youngest child not yet born. Enoch’s first wife died about 1789. In 1790, Enoch was listed as a resident of Sudbury Canada, and in 1794 he married Anna Hall of Standish and brought her to his home there. On 7 April 1800 (according to his grandson Perrigrine), Enoch moved from Bethel to Sunday River Plantation (Bostwick), and he is listed there in the 1800 census. His oldest daughter, Anna, born 4 November 1766 in Newton, married in 1790 Asa Foster, who was born around 1765. Asa was a son of Abner Foster, one of the early pioneers in the Sunday River Valley. Asa Foster owned land bordering Sunday River to the east, and in a deed dated 1812, he sold twenty nine acres bordering Sunday River to Enoch Bartlett, reserving twenty four acres to the north for himself and his wife Anna. It is possible that Asa Foster had built the older part of the Bartlett house either before or after his marriage in 1790, and Enoch Bartlett added the newer portion of the house to accommodate his growing family. After moving to Sunday River Plantation (which became part of the town of Newry in 1805) Enoch and Anna Hall Bartlett had six more children, in addition to Patty, Elisha, and Naomah who had been born in Bethel: Jonathan in 1800, Polly in 1802, Aphia in 1804, Lydia in 1806, Lorania in 1808 (d. 1811), and Enoch, Patty’s youngest brother, in 1811.

In 1812, at age 17, Patty Bartlett married David Sessions, whose family had come from Vermont and settled in Riley Plantation. They lived for a few years in a log cabin on the Sessions farm. David’s mother, Rachel Stevens Session, was obese and suffered from rheumatism. She was a midwife, and Patty began learning this profession by helping her mother-in-law. In December 1815 (after the birth of their first child, Perrigrine, on 15 June 1814) David and Patty bought a farm about nine miles to the northeast in an unorganized territory called Andover Gore (1820 census) or Andover West Surplus (1830 census). Their new farm bordered Bear River and was more fertile than David’s parents’ land in Riley Plantation.

After the move to Bear River, Patty, in reading her Bible, began to feel that baptism was necessary. Most of her neighbors were Methodists, so she chose that church and was baptized 1 October 1816, becoming a member of the Methodist Church. In 1820, her husband David also became a Methodist. The first Methodist house of worship in the Bethel circuit was built in 1814 on the north bank of the Androscoggin River near Dustin’s Ferry, which connected Newry with East Bethel. This church was twice struck by lightning; in July 1819, lightning killed Rebecca York McGill of East Bethel during a service in the church.

Additional children were born to David and Patty as the years went by; in 1816, a son, Sylvanus, was born, and in 1818, a daughter, Sylvia. After the birth of Anna in 1820, a larger home was needed, and David built a fine new house into which the family moved in November of that year. In the spring of 1821, David’s parents moved in with them. By this time, Rachel Sessions was so crippled with rheumatism that she was unable to do anything for herself, so Patty now had her mother-in-law to care for as well as her husband and children. At this time, David’s father was receiving a pension for his former military service of $96 per year. This cash income must have been welcome in an era when most transactions were by barter. In May 1823, another son, David, was born. During September of that year, Anna, aged three and one half, died of cholera. Two days later, Rachel, Patty’s mother-in-law, became ill from the same ailment and died on 1 October. A year later, in the fall of 1824, Rachel’s husband went to visit a neighbor and died suddenly, probably from a stroke. In the next ten years, three more of the Sessions children died as epidemics of typhus and whooping cough struck the area. It is not known where David’s parents and the four children are buried. As an unorganized territory, Andover West Surplus had no town burial ground, so it seems likely a family burial plot was set aside on the farm. In March of 1837, a good portion of Andover West Surplus became part of Newry, and at a Newry town meeting in March 1854, the three town selectmen were authorized to choose land for a burying ground in the former Andover West Surplus. One of the selectmen at that time was Moses Kilgore, a brother of Perrigrine Sessions’ wife, Julia Ann, and another selectman had recently married as his second wife a sister of Julia Ann. It seems likely that these selectmen would have chosen the burial ground where there were already graves. The present cemetery on Route 26 in North Newry, called "Head O’Tide Cemetery," is probably on land that was part of the Sessions’ 400 acre farm in the 1820s and 1830s. In the 1960s, when the gravestone inscriptions were recorded by a Bethel Historical Society volunteer, there were no grave markers bearing the Sessions name, but the recorder noted there were some unmarked graves.

How did an area seventy miles from the ocean and now containing part of the Appalachian Trail happen to have a school and cemetery named “Head O’Tide?” N. S. Baker, Newry Superintendent of Schools in the 1890s, wrote a letter to The Bethel News that was published on 5 August 1896; in the letter, which spoke of Newry's past, Baker commented that “Squire Paine began at the Tides.” Daniel Paine’s house was a short distance north of the Sessions home. Possibly one of the Paine family, looking at the water from the spring snow melt as it poured down Wight’s Brook into Bear River, might have been reminded of a tidal bore. Wherever the name came from, it seems to have been in use as early as 1839; in his missionary diary of 1 October 1839, Perrigrine Sessions wrote “. . . thence to the head of the tide and I preached to Paine’s school house. . . .”

In August 1833, LDS missionaries Horace Cowan and Hazen Aldrich came south from Letter B through Grafton Notch and stopped at the Sessions home to preach the Mormon doctrine. According to Perrigrine Sessions, his mother believed as soon as she heard the preaching of Cowan and Aldrich, but David thought it was best to consider the matter for a time, so she waited until July 1834 to be baptized. In September of that year, at age twenty, Perrigrine Sessions married Julia Ann Kilgore, the youngest daughter of John and Anna York Kilgore. On 15 August 1835, Brigham Young and Lyman Johnson visited Newry. They held a conference at the home of David and Patty Sessions, and Brigham Young crossed the Androscoggin River to preach at the Middle Intervale Meetinghouse, which at the time was without a settled pastor. At the meeting in the Sessions home, Young spoke of “establishing Zion” somewhere in the west, a place where Saints could live together and practice their religious beliefs without fear of persecution. He encouraged the local Saints to sell their farms and travel to Missouri to join others in this endeavor. On August 21 of the same year, the Sessions were visited by another Mormon elder and missionary, William McLellin, who recorded in his journal that he had preached about two hours at a “bro Cessions.” By 16 September 1835, Perrigrine was convinced that he should be baptized, and he asked Edward Partridge to baptize him. On September 22, Perrigrine’s and Julia Ann’s first child was born and named Martha Ann.

Brigham Young and other members of the Twelve Apostles visited Newry again in August 1836, and once more preached in at Middle Intervale. He again urged the members of the Newry branch to sell their farms in Maine and travel to Missouri where the Saints were gathering. Over the years, the Sessions family had acquired a farm of 400 contiguous acres along the Bear River. They had a saw mill and a grist mill using water power from the Bear River, and their home was large enough to serve as a public house for the region. Leaving all this seemed like a hard thing to do, but in May 1837, David and Perrigrine Sessions sold their farm to Almon and Eli Grover, who the next day sold it to Timothy Hilliard Chapman, a son of Timothy Chapman and grandson of Rev. Eliphaz Chapman, an early settler of Bethel.

T. H. Chapman was a young man, only nineteen years old at the time. It is difficult to know whether he ever lived on the farm in North Newry; in the 1840 census, the only Chapman on Bear River was George Granville Chapman. By the summer of 1848, Eliphaz Bradford Chapman was living there. In her Sunday River Sketches, Martha Fifield Wilkins writes that her mother, Lucelia Elizabeth Chapman, was born on the farm 31 July 1848. In 1857, Lucelia’s father sold the farm to Jonathan Bennett in exchange for a farm on the Magalloway River. Lucelia’s mother did not want to move to Magalloway, and refused to sign the deed, but the exchange of farms happened anyway. According to Paula Wight, in her Newry Profiles, Jonathan Bennett built the front part of the present house in 1860. Whether the recently demolished kitchen ell went back to the time of the Sessions family, we don't know. The farm was passed from Jonathan Bennett to his son Frank, and then on to his son Roy. In 2000, the property was sold by the heirs of Roy Bennett to Keith Durgin.

In May 1837, the Sessions family packed their possessions for the trip west, and on 5 June, they left their home in Newry, accompanied by Patty’s sister, Lucy Bartlett Powers, her husband Jonathan Powers, and their two sons. The Sessions family at this time included David and Patty, their son Perrigrine and his wife and daughter, their daughter Sylvia and son David. The Sessions family started with five two-horse teams and one single, and the Powers family had two horses. They passed through Shelburne and Lancaster in New Hampshire, then south to Hanover, where they crossed the Connecticut River, then on to Rutland, Vermont, Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs, New York, and across New York State to Buffalo, where they boarded a steam boat to Fairport, Ohio, and thence to Kirtland, Ohio. Here they met Joseph Smith and heard him preach, and suffered through an epidemic of measles for seven weeks. Then they bid farewell to the Powers family who returned to Maine, and continued their journey to Far West, Missouri. The Ohio settlers were becoming unhappy with the increasing numbers of Saints in Kirtland, and Joseph Smith had chosen Far West, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, as the next gathering place for the Saints. The trip between Ohio and Missouri was made easier by the National Road, a project begun in 1811 that, when completed, led from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, and was an important link to the West until railroads were developed. The Sessions family arrived at Far West in November 1837. Patty had been pregnant for the entire trip, and her last child, Amanda, was born after their arrival in Missouri on 14 November 1837.

[to be continued]

The Courier

Volume 29, No. 3 (2005)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 2, continued]
A Newry Family Who Joined the Latter-Day
Saints in Seeking a Home in the West

by Mary E. Valentine

In Missouri, the Sessions family bought land, including two block houses, and after settling in their new homes, acquired additional land and plowed about forty acres for spring planting of corn, potatoes and grain. After the arrival of Joseph Smith, work began on a new temple, and Perrigrine left to return to Maine to collect the additional money owed the family for sale of their property. He became ill on the trip and after arriving at his father-in-law’s house, spent six or seven weeks recuperating before completing his business and returning to Missouri.

When Perrigrine joined his family in Missouri on 28 November 1838, he found a desperate situation. Some of the Saints had been murdered by Missouri mobs. Instead of protecting the new immigrants, the state government issued an extermination order authorizing the other settlers and state militia to kill any Mormons they found still in the area. Again, the family packed what they could carry with them, abandoned the land and homes they had purchased, and fled north along the Mississippi River in mid-winter. The river was full of ice and difficult to cross, but they finally made it to the other side in Quincy, Illinois, where the townspeople were at first sympathetic and helpful. Joseph Smith had been arrested and imprisoned in Missouri, along with some of the other Mormon leaders, but after five months he and his companions escaped and joined the Saints in Illinois.

Again Joseph Smith looked for a new gathering place for the Saints, and chose a site north of Quincy, within a bend of the river. The land was swampy, infested with malaria-bearing mosquitos, but the Saints bought land there, drained the wet land, and laid out a city which Joseph called Nauvoo. As more and more new converts came from Europe, Canada and the eastern United States, Nauvoo grew to rival Chicago as the largest city in Illinois. During the years they lived in Nauvoo, Patty’s youngest daughter, Amanda, died; her husband David was given permission to take a plural wife, Rosilla Cowan, and Perrigrine was sent on another mission to Maine. Perrigrine traveled “without purse or script,” staying with Saints wherever he could, but often without adequate food, and, thus, the trip took a long time. When he reached Newry, he found the branch there no longer thriving since most of its devoted members had left. Perrigrine visited friends and relatives in Newry, but spent much of his time in the Rumford-Mexico-Dixfield area, where his missionary efforts seemed to be more appreciated. When Perrigrine arrived back in Nauvoo about a year later, he found he had a second child, a son, but his wife was weak from tuberculosis, and Julie Ann died in January 1845. The next June, Perrigrine married two sisters, Lucina and Mary Call. Although Nauvoo had received a charter from the state, the neighbors were again becoming alarmed by its rapidly increasing population. Joseph Smith and his brother were again arrested and imprisoned, but this time a mob attacked the prison and killed them. Brigham Young was selected as the new leader of the Latter-day Saints, and as mob violence increased, he realized the Saints would have to move again, this time to a place not yet occupied and far enough away for the Saints to feel safe from persecution. After studying maps and sending out an exploratory party, he decided on the valley of the Great Salt Lake as the Saints' final destination. On 10 February 1846, Patty assisted with a birth in the morning and another in the afternoon. At this time, she began a diary which she continued writing almost every day during the journey to Utah. After arrival there in September 1847, she chronicled the record of the Saints as they settled the land in the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

The crossing of Iowa, beginning in February 1846, occupied the next three and a half months. When they arrived in Council Bluffs, on the bank of the Missouri River, a representative of the U.S. Army came to ask the Saints to recruit 500 able bodied young men to march to California during the war with Mexico and take possession of that territory for the United States. The general feeling was that the Saints did not owe anything to a federal government that had refused to protect them when they were driven from their homes in Missouri and Illinois, but Brigham Young took the longer view and saw this as an opportunity to prove the Mormon’s patriotism and perhaps secure more protection from the government in the future. The loss of 500 young men would mean the Saints would have to spend the next year on the banks of the Missouri before going on to Utah, but the government assured them they would not be attacked while their men were gone. So a settlement was established on the west bank called Winter Quarters, and others settled near Council Bluffs on the east bank. After the discovery of gold in California, some of the Saints chose to remain here to help future travelers on their way.

On 5 June 1847, ten years to the day since leaving their home in Newry, the Sessions left the settlement on the Missouri River and followed Brigham Young’s company toward Utah. David and Patty Sessions arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in September.

[to be continued]

The Courier

Volume 29, No. 4 (2005)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 2, continued]
A Newry Family Who Joined the Latter-Day
Saints in Seeking a Home in the West

by Mary E. Valentine

After the Sessions family arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in September 1847, Patty Bartlett Sessions wrote in her diary that it was a beautiful place and she was thankful that she and her husband, as well as her son, Perrigrine, his two wives and two children, had arrived safely after their long journey, and with no serious accidents to themselves or their wagons.

After their arrival, David and Perrigrine took responsibility for finding grazing for the Saints’ cattle and guarding the herd. When they were relieved of this duty, they cut logs for their new house, and hauled them to the site. They moved into their new home on 18 November, none too soon, since a windstorm on 1 November destroyed the tent where they had lived since arriving. Patty was continuing her work as a midwife and healer, and enjoying meeting with the other women in the colony.

In the summer of 1849, Patty learned that her daughter Sylvia’s husband had died in January at age 39. Sylvia had married Windsor P. Lyon during the family’s residence in Missouri. When the Saints settled in Nauvoo, Windsor had opened a pharmacy there. When the Saints were driven out of Illinois in the winter of 1846, Patty had hoped Sylvia and Windsor would join in the journey across the plains to Utah Territory, but Windsor had chosen to join his brother in Iowa City, where they became business partners in a pharmacy there. Patty’s younger son David had also chosen to stay with his sister in Iowa City. Patty and her daughter tried to keep in touch, but delivery of mail depended on finding someone traveling between Iowa City and Utah. Sylvia had suffered much sorrow as one child after another had died before reaching age four. When Windsor died, Sylvia’s only surviving child was Josephine, probably fathered by Joseph Smith. When Patty learned of Windsor Lyon’s death, she hoped Sylvia and Josephine would leave Iowa City and join her in Utah. In the middle of October 1849, Perrigrine started for Iowa City to bring his sister, Sylvia, and brother, David, home to Utah. But when Perrigrine arrived in Iowa City on 1 January 1850, he learned that Sylvia was about to marry again, this time a banker and businessman, Ezekiel Clark, so she would not be going to Utah. However, Perrigrine's younger brother David agreed to join Perrigrine on the return to Salt Lake. They left Iowa in April 1850, well equipped for the journey, thanks to Sylvia’s new husband. They were accompanied on the return trip by a group of travelers on the way to California, attracted by the discovery of gold there. Perrigrine, an experienced traveler by that time, led the group safely to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, where they thanked him for his guidance thus far, and went on their way.

Meanwhile, in December 1849, Patty’s husband, David, told her that he had again received permission to take a plural wife, this time a nineteen year old woman, Harriet Teeples Wixom. At the end of July 1850, David had a stroke and came to Patty to be cared for. He died on 11 August and the next December Patty was called to assist in the birth of David and Harriet’s son. Patty tried to help Harriet, but relations between the two wives were strained and the baby died in 1851.

After her first husband’s death in the summer of 1850, Patty Bartlett Sessions’ diary entries indicate that she still continued the work ethic learned growing up in the Sunday River valley in Maine. Besides ministering to the sick and attending births as a midwife, Patty wrote of planting, weeding and harvesting her garden, tending her orchard, harvesting and drying the fruit in the fall, sewing and mending for herself and others, and knitting, spinning and weaving rag rugs. Sometimes she provided room and board for transients; they sometimes helped with fencing and cutting firewood, but one boarder left no money, only two kinds of bed bugs! In December 1851, Patty married again, and wrote in her diary that she was thankful to have a man to cut firewood for her. John Parry had come to the valley of the Great Salt Lake with a group of eighty-five Welsh converts in the 1849 emigration with the George A. Smith Company. John’s Welsh wife, Mary Williams, had died crossing the plains, but some of his children had come with him. The Welsh converts, with their Welsh choral singing tradition, were a great asset to the choir that sang for the Saint’s conference in Salt Lake City, where the new Tabernacle was dedicated on 11 April 1852. Brigham Young asked John Parry to direct the choir, and he continued in this work for some years. In 1865, George Careless, a talented musician who had studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, arrived in the Salt Lake settlement and was appointed “Chief Musician of the Church.” After John Parry’s death in 1868, Careless became the next director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

In September 1852, Perrigrine Sessions was sent on a mission to England. He arrived in Liverpool in January 1853. The missionary work of the Saints in England had been very successful; between 1849 and 1852, about 14,000 inhabitants had been added to the Utah territory population, many of them poor people who hoped for more opportunity in America than they had in England. Those who had no money were helped by the Perpetual Emigration Fund. When it became too expensive to provide wagon trains, many of the poorer families walked from Iowa City, where handcarts were built for them, and food was provided for the trip. Perrigrine’s health was poor during most of the time he spent in England, and he returned to the U.S. by steamboat instead of sailing vessel, leaving England on 2 March 1854, and arriving in Portland, Maine, on 17 March. He spent the night in Portland with a former Bethel resident, Orange Frost, then took the train to Bethel, where he stayed with one of his mother’s relatives. On Sunday morning, he went to a Methodist meeting at Middle Intervale, then visited Bartlett, Kilgore, and Sessions relatives in the area. Early in April, Perrigrine took the train to Portland, a boat to Boston, then train, boat, and stagecoach to Iowa City. This time his sister Sylvia was willing to go to Utah with Perrigrine. Sylvia’s husband, Ezekiel Clark, apparently respected her desire to be with her mother in Utah, and provided the equipment and supplies they needed for the trip. Sylvia’s daughter, Josephine, ten years old, and the three children she had with Ezekiel Clark, Perry, age 3, Phoebe, age 2, and Martha, less than a year old, went with her. Ezekiel asked her to send the boy, Perry, back in a few years for his education. This she did, but Perry returned to Utah in his adulthood and died there.

[to be continued]

The Courier

Volume 30, No. 1 (2006)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 2, concluded]
A Newry Family Who Joined the Latter-Day
Saints in Seeking a Home in the West

by Mary E. Valentine

In March 1854, while Perrigrine was in Maine, John Perry told his wife Patty that he had Brigham Young’s permission to take a young, plural wife; although John had four sons and three daughters before leaving Wales, his marriage at age sixty-five to a thirty-two-year-old woman enabled him between 1855 and 1862 to father five more children, four boys and a girl. John Perry died in 1868; like David, he came home to be cared for in his last illness.

On 10 May 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific sections were joined with the driving of a golden spike at Promontory, Utah. The next year, Perrigrine accompanied his mother on a trip to Maine which she had left thirty three years ago. Her only living sibling by this time was her youngest brother, Enoch. She had hoped to entice him and his wife to join the Saints in Utah, but although he visited Patty, he and his wife chose to stay in Maine. However, in 1878, Patty sent $125 to pay for Enoch’s sons, Warinton and Herbert, to come to Utah, hoping their parents would follow. The boys arrived in October, joined the Latter-day Saints, and found work.

In December 1883, Patty dedicated the Patty Sessions Academy, a school she had commissioned and funded in Bountiful to provide educational opportunities for her grandchildren and others. After John Parry’s death, Patty sold her property in Salt Lake and had built a home for herself in Bountiful, near her children. Since Perrigrine Sessions had eight or nine wives, and fifty-four children, Patty had many grandchildren.

In March 1886, Perrigrine Sessions set out on his last trip to Maine, this time to obtain genealogical information. He arrived in Bethel on 29 March and found two feet of snow. He spent the night at Hiram Twitchell’s on lower Main Street and had dinner at noon with Charles Harris (father of Broad Street residents Hattie and John). On 1 April, he continued on to Newry, where he stayed with Elisha Bartlett in the home where his mother had lived as a child. In Newry, the snow was four feet deep in the woods. He visited some of the local industries—a furniture factory in Walker’s Mills, and Bartlett’s spool factory. On 23 May, he took the stage to Upton, and visited Levi Stone Heywood, who had expressed an interest in the Latter-day Saints. In June, Perrigrine returned to Levi Heywood’s. Levi had arranged for Perrigrine to talk with a Presbyterian minister about plural marriage. After hearing the debate, Levi and his wife were baptized in Abbott’s Mill Pond in Upton. In December 1889, Levi Stone Heywood and his wife arrived in Utah and were welcomed by Perrigrine’s wife Esther.

Patty’s last entry in her diary was in May 1888. She died in December 1892, and Perrigrine died 3 June 1893.

[Editor’s note: The published version of Patty Bartlett Sessions’ diary and other historical resources relating to this article may be found in the Society’s Research Library.]

[end of part 2]

The Courier

Volume 30, No. 3 (2006)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 3]
A Bethel Family (Frost)

by Jayne W. Fife, with Roselyn Kirk

Mary Ann Frost Stearns Pratt. Photo courtesy of Jayne Fife

Mary Ann Frost Stearns was a small determined woman, a widow with one child, when she married LDS Apostle Parley Parker Pratt, a widower, in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1837. That decision resulted in her bearing their first child, Nathan, in a one-room log cabin near Far West, Missouri, and being abandoned when Parley was arrested, charged with murder and sentenced to death. When reprieved, he was held in the Richmond and Columbia, Missouri, jails for eight months. During that period, Mary Ann spent time with him in jail from the beginning of December 1838 to March 17, 1839. There she cared for Parley and her two children. When she left, she carried Parley's writings out in her clothing, thereby risking her life so they could be published.

With Parley still in jail, she was forced to leave Far West on penalty of death. Having no means of transportation, a kind Church member took her to Quincy, Illinois. When they reached a swollen creek that ran parallel to the Mississippi River, she got out of the carriage to lighten the load. Crossing the narrow bridge, she looked back to see her daughter, Mary Ann's, bonnet bobbing in the water. By a miracle, the child's life was saved. Later, as one of the last to leave Nauvoo, Illinois, as the Saints were once again driven from their homes, farms and sacred temple, she endured abandoning the graves of two small children, Nathan and Susan. Parley had already reached Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the main body of the Saints, including his now six other wives and several infant children.

Making the decision to leave Parley and relying on her own resources to support her own children, she remained true to the promises she made in the spring of 1835 when she joined the Church of Latter-day Saints in western Maine. She wrote, "I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ, being converted to the truthfulness of its doctrines by the first sermon I heard. And I said in my heart if there are only three who had to endure, I have everfelt the same, my heart has never swerved from that resolve."

Mary Ann was born in Groton, Caledonia County, Vermont, to Aaron and Susan Gray (Bennett) Frost on 14 January 1809. Her brother, Orange Clark, and sister, Naomi, were also born in Groton, respectively, on 23 February 1813 and 25 January 1814. Aaron and Susan's first child, Lidania, was born on 10 October 1802 at Berwick, Maine, where Aaron's parents lived. The next three children, Aaron (10 March 1804 - 15 October 1804), David Milton (b. 28 July 1805) and Lucretia Bucknam (b. 24 November 1806) were born in North Yarmouth, Maine, where Susan's parents lived. The last four children were born in Bethel: Olive Gray on 24 July 1816, Sophronia Gray on 3 October 1818, Nehemiah on 4 March 1821, and Huldah Alvina in 1825.

Aaron was a descendant of George Frost, originally from Binstead, Hampshire, England, who came to Winter Harbor/Biddeford Pool near the mouth of the Saco River between 1623 and 1629. George's son, John, was killed during the early stages of the Indian Wars and his other son, William, who owned land in Saco, fled with his family to Salem, Massachusetts, where he lived until 1679, when he purchased land in Wells and returned. On 7 May 1690, William and his brother-in-law, James Littlefield, were killed by Indians, who carried away William's son, Nathaniel.

Three succeeding generations of George Frost's family lived in Berwick, Maine, including great, great, great grandsons, Moses and Eliot, who served in the Revolutionary War. After the War, six of Moses' children moved to Sudbury Canada (later known as Bethel): Moses, Thomas, Dominicus, Nathaniel, Lydia, and, eventually, Aaron.

Mary Ann often told her children about her early life. One story they loved to hear was called, "Needles and Pins." When she was a child, she had to walk a mile and a half every day to an Androscoggin River crossing where workmen waited to row a group of children across the river to a little schoolhouse. After school, the children waited until the men returned from work to row them back. While waiting, they often played in the boat. Sometimes, they let it out into the river as far as the rope would allow and then pulled it back to shore. Once, when it struck the shore very hard, Mary Ann was knocked into the deep water. The other children ran screaming for the workmen. When they arrived, Mary Ann, who had struggled valiantly until overcome, was rescued and quickly rolled in the grass as water drained out of her ears, nose and mouth. She was carried to a nearby house, wrapped in a warm blanket and put to bed. When she finally opened her eyes, she said, "Oh, I feel so funny, just like needles and pins poking all over me."

As Mary Ann grew older, she became an expert in spinning, dyeing and weaving fabric, and knitting and sewing clothing. When she was twenty three, she married Nathan Stearns, son of Charles and Thankful Bartlett Stearns. A descendant wrote that Mary Ann "fell in love with young Nathan Stearns who courted her for four years, beating a path through the woods to come every Sunday to see her. She had knitted enough socks to last a lifetime by the time they were married," which was on 1 April 1832, Nathan's twenty-third birthday.

The Charles Stearns homestead in the Mayville section of Bethel.
The buildings were owned by Henry Enman when they
were destroyed by fire on 6 June 1936

In an autobiography written by Nathan and Mary Ann's only child, in 1896, she related, "My father, a well-beloved son, was the chosen one to inherit the paternal homestead and to nurture and comfort the declining years of his aged parents." Accordingly, the newlyweds settled into the Mayville home and farm [above] where Charles and Thankful Stearns had raised their nine children, and that is where their only child was born on 6 April 1833. Continuing her remembrances, daughter Mary Ann wrote, "My father and mother were lovers in the true sense of the meaning and she often said that she never received a cross word from him or saw a cross look on his face when turned to her, but always a smile of love and approbation. But earthly happiness is fleeting and this happy couple knew not the change that was so soon to come and that their plans so well laid were never to be realized.” Nathan died at age twenty-four, only one year and five months after they were married. Their baby was only four and half months old. Nathan had been working in the hay field on a sultry July day when he became ill with typhoid fever, then prevalent in the community. After being "blistered, cupped and bled" for four weeks, he died. Soon after the funeral, his wife and two sisters were stricken. For three weeks, Mary Ann lay unconscious and tiny Mary Ann "was taken by a kind neighbor, Mrs. Thaddeus Twitchell, and her daughters, Roxanna and Mary Elizabeth, to be weaned."

"After a few weeks, when I was taken to the bedside of my mother and she was asked if she knew whose baby it was, she shook her head and when asked to look again, she still could not think, but as her eye wandered down to the little dress she had fashioned in love and anticipation, the truth dawned upon her and she clasped me to her bosom with tears of motherly love and affection."

Continuing with the reminiscences, Mary Ann wrote, "With the return of memory came the great weight of sorrow that had come to my mother, and she mourned as one not to be comforted, but taking up the burden of life for my sake, she wandered wearily on—still clothed in garbs of deep mourning until two years had passed away, when the glorious fight of the Gospel burst forth to illumine the souls of all who would accept its glad message."

On 4 May 1835, twelve newly ordained LDS Apostles left Kirtland, Ohio, on a mission to New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine as well as Ontario, Canada. They spent the next five months traveling singly or in changing pairs instructing and bolstering existing branches and proselytizing. They taught that Joseph Smith, Jr., through revelation, had restored the Church as it had been at the time of Jesus Christ. A typical day consisted of walking, hitching a ride in a wagon or taking a canal boat to a new village where, if possible, they made contact with a known member who could help find a meeting place for an evening's instruction. They usually stayed overnight and in the morning moved on to another village. According to Apostle Parley Pratt, they preached, exhorted, taught, organized, blessed the sick, baptized, confirmed and ordained.

In the early part of the summer, Apostles Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, David W. Patten and Thomas B. Marsh spoke to a small group at Rumford Point before moving to Bethel where they held a conference. During this time, Mary Ann Frost Stearns and her mother, Susan Gray Frost, were baptized by Apostle Patten. Four other members of the family eventually became members. Mary Ann's daughter said one of the most appealing facets of the Gospel for her mother was the redemption of the dead, for she deeply mourned the death of her beloved Nathan and the thought of being reunited with him was consoling.

There is also a reference to Mary Ann in a biography of David W. Patten based on his journals: "While a conference was being held at Bethel, Maine, a young woman, Mary Ann Stearns, who had been troubled for five years with an extremely aggravated case of heart disease, sent for the Elders, and upon investigation asked for baptism. David, the mouth of the confirmation, as well as in administering to her afterward for her health, made her a promise that she would be entirely restored to perfect health and soundness. She afterward became the wife of Apostle Parley P. Pratt and endured all the hardships through which the Saints were called to pass, but from that time till the time of her death in 1891, at the age of eighty-two years, she never again complained of heart trouble."

In August 1836, six apostles, including Brigham Young, Lyman Johnson and William McClellin came through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. They held conferences in Andover West Surplus (now part of Newry) and Bethel. They were in the area for more than a week and strongly encouraged members to gather with the main body of the Church in Kirtland, Ohio, and Far West, Missouri. In response, on 16 August 1836, David Sessions took Mary Ann and her three year old daughter to Portland in the middle of the night in a carriage because she was fearful of being prevented from leaving with other local converts who were "gathering" in Kirtland. She gave up the dowry left to her daughter by Nathan because the child's guardian refused to let her "take it to the Mormons." The next day, she joined other Maine converts and missionaries on the boat to Boston, where more members had gathered to journey to Ohio.

Kirtland was very crowded with new members. The growth was amazing and had started to cause problems with non-members as well as members. During the next eight months, Mary Ann and her daughter boarded with five different families, including those of Brigham Young and Hyrum Smith. Hyrum was Joseph Smith's brother. One woman, who lived with her husband temporarily in the same tiny home as Mary Ann, wrote in her diary the following about Mary Ann: "I admired her very much, thought her an amiable, interesting woman." That home, belonging to Sabre Granger, was one room with a dirt cellar, small pantry and closet, as well as an outdoor stove room. Mary Ann later wrote, "During this time my mother, at one of the prayer meetings in the temple received her patriarchal blessing and I received my childhood blessing into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints."

Finally, they moved into a portion of the home vacated by Hyrum and his family when their new home was built. The Stearns then had their own private space. Several stories about Mary Ann survive from this time as later recorded by her daughter. Young Mary Ann was taught her ABC's by her mother cutting out the letters and pasting them around the fireplace. Her mother also taught her, at three, how to knit. She later recorded, "I had a pair of stockings nearly done and mother wanted me to finish them by my fourth birthday. I knit very tight and mother had knit around every other time to loosen up the stitches, but I had them done in time, and was very glad for a number [of] reasons—it is quite a task for a little active girl to sit down and knit very long at a time, and it was a great relief to have the job off my hands, as well as a pleasure to see what I had done."

Nathan Stearns had been an Ensign in the Maine militia. Mary Ann kept his blue broadcloth uniform with bright brass buttons. She often showed it to her daughter while talking about him. One day a friend told her that a Church member had been called on a mission, but was hindered by having no suitable clothing. At first she refused even to consider parting with Nathan's clothing, but her conscience would not allow her to withhold something she had that was needed by the Church. She replaced the military buttons on the jacket with regular ones and in tears gave the uniform to the missionary.

Another story reflects her character. Taking snuff was common in those days. Mary Ann was in the habit of taking a pinch at dinner from a pretty snuff box given her by her husband, Nathan. After being taught the Word of Wisdom and admonished in her Patriarchal Blessing to keep it, she placed the snuff box on the fireplace mantle and sat down to read the Book of Mormon until all desire had passed.

Young Mary Ann recorded other aspects of their live in Kirtland: "During this time we were constant attendants at meetings in the temple, and I can especially remember the fast-meetings, and can recall at this day the great power and good spirit that were experienced on those occasions—and it was generally known that Father Joseph Smith (Sr.), the Patriarch, would not break his fast and partake of food for that length of time, and that he must surely be like Abraham, the faithful that mother had told me so often about." She continued with her recollections: "I remember partaking of the Sacrament of bread and wine in the Kirtland Temple, and when I would have liked more of the wine, mother explained to me that it was in memory of the blood of our Savior when he was upon the cross. After that I was always satisfied to partake of the proper quantity—and with reverence in my heart."

Then Mary Ann's life changed radically. On 9 May 1837, six weeks after the death of his wife Thankful Halsey Pratt, Apostle Parley Parker Pratt, age 30, married Mary Ann Frost Stearns, age 28, in Hyrum Smith's home. They were married by Frederick G. Williams, first counselor to Joseph Smith. Mary Ann was described as "very tiny and very pretty." Another description recorded at that time described her as an "affectionate, well-educated, refined and ambitious woman, equal to any and every occasion." Little Mary Ann, now 4, was dressed in her newly made French lawn dress with tiny, blue flowers that matched her mother's dress. They moved into Parley's small home, a block from the new temple, for six weeks.

On 29 May, Parley and four other Church leaders were summoned to a Church Court to answer charges that they had made false accusations against Joseph Smith. These charges revolved around the failure of a Church-organized bank, the Kirtland Safety Society, and inflated Kirtland property prices. No judgements were made, and after reconsidering, Parley went to Joseph and begged for forgiveness, which was immediately granted. A month later, Parley, his new wife and daughter, left Kirtland to introduce the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of New York City.

[to be continued]

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 3, continued]
A Bethel Family (Frost): New York and Far West Years

[to be continued]

The Courier

Volume 31, No. 1 (2007)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 3, continued]
A Bethel Family (Frost): Nauvoo, England, and Back to Nauvoo

by Jayne W. Fife, with Roselyn Kirk

Parley P. Pratt home and store at Nauvoo, Illinois,
as it appeared in 1909. Courtesy of Jayne Fife

Dramatically escaping from the Columbia, Missouri, Jail on 4 July 1839 with his brother Orson’s help, Parley immediately headed for Mary in Quincy, Illinois. Having been informed of his escape, she kept the table set for five days and nights, and a candle burning in the window. She agonized that he had been recaptured, but on the fifth night she heard a sound at the door and there he stood. She flew into his arms—both weeping tears of joy and relief. At this point, they were devoted to each other, their love made bright by the agony of suffering and separation. How then did they move through a slippery slope in their relationship so that a little more than six years later—after the birth of three more children—they became alienated from one another, with Mary refusing to accompany Parley on his westward trek?

In early July 1839, Parley wrote that he spent his first days of liberty in “the enjoyment of the society of family and friends.... After a few days spent in this way, we removed to Nauvoo, a new town about fifty miles above Quincy.... It had been appointed as a gathering place for the scattered Saints and many families were on the ground, living in the open air, or under the shade of trees, tents, wagons, etc., while others occupied a few old buildings, which had been purchased or rented.” Additional members had settled in abandoned log buildings on the opposite side of the Mississippi, in a place called Montrose, that had formerly served as a barracks for soldiers.

Parley and Apostle Heber C. Kimball cut logs and each built a small cabin on five acres of wilderness purchased from a local landowner. On 21 July, Mary wrote to her parents in Bethel, Maine: “Our healths are good, the children grow and are very play ful. I hope you will not give your selfs [sic] so much trouble about us as you have done. I presume you have more trouble about us than we have for ourselves. These light afflictions which are but for a moment will work out for us a far more exceeding [sic] and Eternal wait of glory. I have our oxen and Cows, the Lord has blest us.” She again suggests they come west and concludes with “it is towards eve and I must attend to my little babes.”

By August 29, there was a big change in plans. Parley, along with brother Orson and Hiram Clark, left Nauvoo to join other apostles on a mission to England. Mary, her two children, Mary Ann (age six) and Nathan (age one), as well as two and a half-year old Parley, Jr. (retrieved from a woman who had cared for him since the death of his mother), accompanied the three missionaries in a two-horse-drawn carriage. They were headed for New York City, where other missionaries were gathering to sail for England. After visiting Parley’s parents in Detroit, they sold the horses and carriage and steamed down Lake Erie to Buffalo, then the Erie Canal to Albany, and finally down the Hudson River to New York City—a journey of 1400 miles. Mary Ann later remembered that they first traveled over “flower decked prairies. Best of all we were free and happy—not afraid of mobs and violence—in a land of friendliness, meeting sympathy at every hand.

On 9 March 1840, Parley sailed for Liverpool, England, with Apostles Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Orson Pratt, as well as two others. Parley wrote in his journal, “We were accompanied to the water by my family, and by scores of the congregation.... We bade them farewell amid many tears, and taking a little boat were soon on board ship—which lay at anchor a short distance from the shore.” Mary and children traveled on to Bethel to visit her parents, returning later to New York to conduct Parley’s book selling business, including the collection of money already owed.

On 6 April 1840, Parley penned a letter to Mary giving her advice about preparing to join him by June or July. He wrote, “Here is a boundless harvest for the next 15 or 20 years...if the Lord will I expect to spend five or ten years at least.” He continued, “I wish you as soon as you get this letter, to sell every thing except beding [sic] and wearing apparel and fill two chests and a trunk and get ready to come to England the first opportunity.” He advised her to collect what was due on books and pay the printer. “Do not let the Books go without pay in and, for they cost me much money and I owe for them; and I need the remainder after the debt is paid, to support my family.” If this plan didn’t work out, he suggested she borrow money from “some good friend.... Courage Mrs. Pratt, you have performed more difficult journeys than this, and if you will take hold with Courage the Lord will bless and prosper you and our Little ones and Bring you over in Safety.”

In England, Parley’s major assignments were to edit and publish a monthly periodical, as well as a hymn book and the Book of Mormon. Brigham Young had borrowed 350 British pounds from two converts to finance the printing of 2000 Millennial Star periodicals, 3000 hymn books and 5000 Books of Mormon. While attending a general church conference in Manchester on 6 July 1840, Parley was given a letter from Mary informing him that the children were seriously ill with scarlet fever. He wrote back to her, “Behold your Letter comes with the sad news of your Sickness; and that you are not coming. This is more than I can bear. Here I must live alone, my Chamber desolate. And you still confined at home where I Could assist and comfort you and aid you continually in the care of the little ones, if I only had them here.... Why must we live separate? Why must I forever be deprived of your Society and my dear little Children? I cannot endure it.” He ended by writing that he had no prospect of coming to America for years.

Then conditions changed. His colleagues, knowing that he was slated to remain in England for several years as editor and publisher, decided he should go back to the United States and return with his family. Brigham Young gave Parley 60 British pounds to cover the cost. By the time he arrived in New York, Mary and the children had recovered. And before they set sail for England, they journeyed to Maine to visit Mary’s family. An unusual experience occurred before the arrival of the Pratt family in Maine. Mary’s sister, Lucretia Bean, told her family one day that Parley and his family would arrive at their home the next evening. In response, the next day, she changed the bedding in the best room. Her family laughed at her. They reminded her that Parley was in England and Mary in New York, but just as they were preparing for bed, the Pratts knocked on their door. As a gift, they presented a quilt that Parley had brought from England. It is now at the Bethel Historical Society.

Handmade Adam and Eve Quilt given by Parley P. Pratt and Mary Ann (Frost) Pratt
to her sister, Lucretia (Frost) Bean, and husband Samuel R. Bean in 1840.
Presented to Bethel Historical Society by Polly Ann Johnston in 2002

When they left, they took Mary’s sister Olive, age 24, with them to help care for the children. She had recently been baptized. They arrived in Manchester, England, in October. Their home at 47 Oxford Street became a meeting and lodging place for those coming and going to preach the Gospel. Parley resumed his editorship and publishing duties, and also presided over the Church in Great Britain. Mary and Olive helped in the office and assumed some missionary responsibilities.

In a letter to Church leaders in Nauvoo just after the first British edition of the Book of Mormon was published in 1841, Parley wrote, “The work is increasing in every step. I t is now prospering in Ireland and Wales, as well as in Scotland and England.” Although he missed the Saints in Nauvoo, he wrote, “I can truly say that I was never more contented, or more happy than of late.”

On 2 April 1841, at a conference held in Manchester, it was reported that there were now 8,000 to 9,000 converts—5000 just in the last year. A thousand new members had already immigrated to the United States. Passage costs were from 3 pounds, 15 shillings to 4 pounds, including provisions. Passengers were to take their own bedding and cooking utensils. All their luggage was free. On arrival in New Orleans, a passage up the Mississippi River—fifteen hundred miles by steamboat—cost 15 shillings, freight free.

In June 1841, Olivia Thankful Pratt was born and named after her aunt, Olive, and Parley’s first wife, Thankful. In 1842, the Pratts moved to Liverpool to supervise the emigration process more closely. Then, on 29 October 1842, they themselves left with 250 converts for Nauvoo. It was a challenging journey with “difficulties, murmurings and rebellions.” Parley wrote, “We then humbled ourselves and called the Lord, and he sent us a fair wind and brought us into port in time to save us from starvation. Daughter Mary Ann reported that water was so scarce that she learned to “take a bath in a teacup.”

They arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi on 1 January 1843, where they transferred to a steam-powered tugboat for the 100 mile journey to New Orleans. From there, a chartered steamboat carried immigrants to St. Louis, dropping off the Pratt family at Chester, Illinois, about 80 miles south of St. Louis, where they rented the bottom portion of an old warehouse as they waited for the river to open up to Nauvoo. Parley had been threatened with arrest if he should be caught on Missouri soil.

Near the middle of March, they took a steamer to St. Louis, gathered their group of immigrants, and boarded a small steamboat for the final 300 miles to Nauvoo. Unfortunately, they had to wait several more weeks before the ice on the river was sufficiently broken up to travel north. Finally starting, it took them two more weeks. Mary gave birth to a daughter, Susan, on the little steamboat full of converts on 5 April. They arrived at Nauvoo at 5 p.m. on 12 April. The Prophet met their boat and invited Parley, Mary and the baby to his home. Olive and the older children went to Patty Bartlett Sessions’ home.

On 15 April, Parley wrote in an article for the local newspaper, “I had been absent about three years and half during which all the improvements had been made and that by a people almost without means. Judge my feelings then, in riding through a regular town, for some three or four miles, with streets opened, lots fenced out and buildings almost innumerable, many of them were neatly built of frame or brick. I gaze, I wondered, I admired. I could hardly refrain from tears.”

In late June, Aaron and Susan Frost, Mary’s parents, arrived from Bethel, Maine, with their daughters, Sophronia and Huldah, all now members. Aaron, a skilled carpenter, began work on the Pratt’s new home, eventually laying the floors, building the stairs and fashioning the woodwork with the assistance of an English builder and carpenter, Nicholas Silcock, who had recently arrived with the Pratts. The large, two-story, nine-room home, which included a store, was built of red brick with stone window caps and sills which trimmed the 27 large windows [see photo, above]. Four-foot-square stone pillars supported a stone cornice at the entrance. There was a deep cellar in the basement. It was considered one of the finest homes in Nauvoo. It still exists on the southeast corner of Young and Wells Street, with significant revisions implemented by the Catholic Church that bought the property after the Nauvoo exodus. Mary Ann later wrote, “Before the roof was quite finished we commenced moving in and kept going from one part to the other until it was all completed.” The now large family had been living in a one room cabin across the street.

Shortly after their arrival, Joseph Smith discussed the relatively new plural marriage principle with Parley, which included the concept of marriage for Time and All Eternity, not just Time. Joseph’s restoration of ancient Church doctrine included the renewing of the traditions of Abraham and Solomon, who, he said, were commanded by God to marry plurally. He had introduced, with varying degrees of acceptance, this principle to selected leaders during the Pratt’s absence. Joseph had already chosen Elizabeth Brotherton, an English convert, to be Parley’s plural wife. Before finalizing the arrangements, he had to leave Nauvoo to visit relatives, leaving Parley and Mary to struggle with this new concept. According to Pratt family history, Parley begged Joseph before he left to not insist on his entering a polygamous marriage, but the Prophet was adamant, saying it was his duty to be an example to other leaders. He was told to pray about it. In a dream, his first wife, Thankful, came to hm and indicated that by having more wives, he would be adding to his stature in the next world, and she would be over the other wives, thus elevating her stature as well.

Mary “raged” about plural marriage, but not the sealing of couples for Time and All Eternity. After praying, she reported that “the devil had been in me until within a few days past, the Lord had shown it (plural marriage) is all right.” In the meantime, Joseph Smith had been arrested by two deputies from the Missouri governor for the reinstatement of the 1838/39 charges of treason. He had previously escaped Liberty Jail with the seeming complicity of his guards “who felt him innocent...which he was...but the vengeful governor wanted him back.”

On 24 July 1843, Hyrum Smith, recently given authority by Joseph to perform celestial marriages, sealed Parley to his first wife, Thankful, with Mary as a proxy. Then Mary was sealed and finally she “gave” (a term signifying a wife’s acceptance), to Parley, twenty-six-year-old Elizabeth Brotherton as his plural wife. She had no idea of the impact of the new arrangement.

Little Nathan Pratt, age five years and four months, died 21 December 1843 of “fever on the brain.” He was buried in the yard near the south fence of the Pratt home just seven months after the family returned to Nauvoo. Parley wrote a very poignant elegy to his son.

In the spring, Parley and other church leaders left to proselyte and electioneer for Joseph’s candidacy for President of the United States. Joseph’s decision to run was partly due to President Van Buren’s refusal to help Church members obtain compensation for the violation of their rights as American citizens and the seizure of their extensively developed land two times in Missouri. He informed church representatives, “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.”

On 27 June 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered in the Carthage Jail. They, and the citizens of Nauvoo, had been promised protection by the governor of Illinois if they surrendered willingly, which they did. The charges made against them were later proven illegal, as other charges against them over the years always had been.

The night of the June 29 funeral, the people of Nauvoo were horrified by the appearance of a mob gathering a short distance away with the intent of terrorizing them and destroying the city. Parley and many of the leaders were away. The available men had few weapons to protect the city because Governor Thomas Ford had forced the people to surrender their weapons to his army when Joseph and Hyrum surrendered in Carthage. Now, the Governor and his army were nowhere in sight. Mary and her children, plus other neighborhood women and their children, huddled together in her large cellar room. They were certain that the horrific agony they had experienced five years previously in Missouri was about to be repeated. Then, they had been driven into the freezing countryside in the middle of winter after having been robbed, beaten, women abused, crops and homes destroyed and some killed. Young Mary Ann later recorded that her Mother softly said, “If we have to be killed, let us all die together.”

One woman later wrote about a drum beat that penetrated the night, “Every blow seemed to strike to my heart...the women...were weeping and praying.” Near midnight, there was a sudden flash of lightening and a crash of thunder, followed by a violent storm. Amazingly, the mob dispersed.

Amidst all the tumult of that time, little daughter Susan, aged one year five and one half months, died of disease of the bowels on 28 August and was buried next to her brother who had died just eight months before. Mary’s sister Sophronia had died in May. The murder of Joseph and Hyrum had also taken their toll on Mary.

On 9 September, twelve days after Susan’s death, Parley took his fourth wife (second plural wife), Mary Wood. Mary Pratt did not participate in this marriage as before, so she may not have been aware of it. For whatever reason, Mary was not present at any of Parley’s marriages other than that of Elizabeth Brotherton. Could Parley have decided that Thankful Halsey Pratt held the position of “first wife” even though she was deceased and he therefore did not require Mary’s approval and participation? Although the approval of the first wife was common in Nauvoo, it was not firmly established by Brigham Young until the arrival in the Salt Lake valley.

In November 1844, Parley married twice more and took his new wife, Belinda Marden, with him on a mission to New York. Mary gave birth to her last child, Moroni, six days after he left. About a week later, she received a letter from Parley. He wrote, “I never left home with more intense feelings, nor under more trying circumstances than present, except the time I went to prison and to death leaving you sick of a fever with a babe three months old and to the mercy of savages and scarce shelter or food. I was sorry to go and your tears quite overcame me. But I tore myself away and here I am. And where I hope to go I hope you will soon be also. I shall then be happy; so cheer up. The time will soon pass with you, surrounded as you are with Mother, children, and friends. But with me it is far different. I not only have to part with one but all. Time drags slowly and solitude is sickening to me....” Tellingly, there was no mention of Belinda—only solitude.

After eight and a half months, Parley and Belinda returned. She later wrote, I “went to Mr. Bench’s tavern to board while Parley went home. After a little time, it was arranged for his wife Mary (Wood) and me to commence keeping house in a room upstairs in Mr. Pratt’s house.”

This was a tumultuous time in Nauvoo. As early as the winter of 1844, Joseph Smith had begun plans to search for an additional gathering place in the West. In September 1845, church enemies set fires to settlements surrounding Nauvoo, causing refugees to stream into the city. Parley was active in planning for the exodus. At the General Council meeting he provided a list of necessary items for a family of five to cross the plains. In early October, a formal government document called the Quincy Convention demanded that the Saints leave Nauvoo by May 1846. Earlier, on 6 October 1845, at the first conference held in the Nauvoo Temple, those attending were given instructions for a spring departure. Several companies were also organized.

[to be continued]

The Courier

Volume 31, No. 2 (2007)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 3, continued]
A Bethel Family (Frost): Nauvoo, England, and Back to Nauvoo

by Jayne W. Fife, with Roselyn Kirk

During that harried time, Mary had other things on her mind. Her sister, Olive Frost, who was only thirty, died. She had never been strong and her health deteriorated in England. On 25 September, she became ill with malaria and after two weeks of chills and fever, she died of pneumonia.

On 10 December, leaders and their wives received the sacred ordinances given to worthy members. Even though they would have to leave soon, receiving these blessings was of great importance. Mary was one of about twenty women to supervise the preliminary ordinances in the women’s area.

On 27 December, a Marshall appeared in Nauvoo with warrants for the arrest of the Twelve Apostles.

Word was received on 17 January that Governor Ford was intending to place Nauvoo under martial law, and on the 29th state troopers arrived in Nauvoo seeking to arrest church leaders. Two days later, the leaders met and agreed that they had to start westward immediately. Boats were made ready and all their families were told to be ready to leave within four hours of being notified. The first exodus group with six wagons crossed the Mississippi on February 6.

Parley married his eighth wife, and sixth plural wife, on February 8. He left Nauvoo on 14 February with his family of seven wives and six children: Nephi (six weeks), Alma (six months), Mary Ann (13), Parley, Jr. (9), Olivia (4 ½ ) and Moroni (fourteen months). It is probable that Mary did not know of the existence of most of these wives. The group also included teamsters for their three ox-driven wagons. They also had a one-horse drawn carriage. Crossing a river on ice, they slept for several nights in tents and wagons. There were two to three inches of snow on the ground, and it was very cold.

They then moved a few miles to a log granary which had been a tithing collection building. There was a bin full of corn at one end and a pile of potatoes in the basement that supplied needed food for them and their animals. The main group was located more than a mile ahead of Sugar Creek where Brigham Young was waiting for more members in order to organize traveling companies. Parley traveled back and forth for meetings. It was bitter cold, alternatively raining and snowing. Most people slept in tents and wagons, or under wagons. Almost a week out, Parley decided to return to Nauvoo for some wagon fittings he would need for the long journey. He took Mary and little Moroni, who had been suffering with a bad cough, to see her parents and sister who remained in the Pratt’s home. Aaron was still laboring on the interior of the Temple. When it was finished, they intended to return to Maine.

The blacksmith was too busy to fill Parley’s request that day, so he left Mary and returned to camp. Two days later he returned for her, but the river was full of icy mush and impossible to cross by ferry. As there were many people going to and from Nauvoo at that time, when the river conditions improved Mary was able to reach their camp on her own. She had left Moroni with her parents. Gathering her two daughters, Mary Ann and Olivia, she returned to Nauvoo, telling Parley that they would catch up when the frigid weather was over. She had lost two children and two sisters to illness in the last two years. She was taking no chances. Her surviving children were her main concern now. One might also assume that living in such close quarters with six other wives proved a difficult, if not unbearable situation for her.

By the end of May, according to Mary Ann’s autobiography, “The main body of the Church had left Nauvoo and for a time, peace and quiet reigned in the city. We individually were waiting for our house to be sold that we might pursue our journey....”

On 10 September 1846, a mob advanced on the city to drive out the last remnant of the Mormon population, which generally consisted of the poorest citizens. The city was only lightly fortified. There was a battle, during which three male residents were killed. For safety, a large group of women and children had gathered at the Pratt home. Anson Pratt, Parley’s brother, asked Mary to supervise the baking of bread for the defenders to last throughout the crisis. Finally on 15 September, it was agreed that the remaining Mormons would leave the city in three days. Only a few men, their clerks and their families were allowed to stay to continue to try to sell property, but, as in Missouri, most residents received nothing. After they left, people came in and took what they wanted.

Three days later, Mary and children were picked up and deposited on the edge of the Mississippi River where they spent the night. As they were preparing their camp, they heard a martial band and members of the mob marching their way. Young Mary Ann later recorded, “Just as they were opposite our camp, they halted an instant, and the captain shouted, ‘You’re a d–d pretty looking set, ain’t you? . . . My Mother took a step forward and replied, ‘Gentlemen, it is your day now, but it will be ours by and by.’ He called back, ‘Shut up that, or we will have you under guard.’ She returned, ‘I do not fear you, Sir,’ just as they were passing.”

The next day they crossed the river to Iowa on a flat boat where they camped on the riverbank a mile above Montrose with Parley’s mother, Charity, his two brothers, Anson and William, their families, and about three hundred refugees. Supplies were scant. A flock of birds landing nearby provided immediate relief and then a boat with flour, sugar, coffee, rice, dried apples and bacon came up the river from St. Louis, kind people there having been alerted to their dilemma. Word also had reached Brigham Young, and he dispatched teams, wagons, tents and provisions.

William Pratt’s little daughter, Martha, was ill and soon died. It was decided to take her back to Nauvoo to be buried in Parley and Mary’s yard with the other children. When they did this, the were amazed at how quiet Nauvoo was. The mob, having accomplished their purpose, had disappeared, so Mary and her children returned. This time they lived with one of the church agents left to arrange the sale of property.

[to be continued]

The Courier

Volume 31, No. 3 (2007)

WESTERN MAINE SAINTS
[Part 3, concluded]
A Bethel Family (Frost): Nauvoo, Bethel and Across the Plains to Utah

by Jayne W. Fife, with Roselyn Kirk

On 7 October 1846, Brigham Young sent a letter from Winter Quarters, Nebraska, to Mary Pratt, who was living in a tent on the western shore of the Mississippi River. Young wrote that he had authorized one of the Church’s agents left in Nauvoo to arrange for her to travel to Winter Quarters. But Mary chose to cross the river back to Nauvoo and remain there all winter. She moved, with others, into the former home of John D. Lee, who later wrote: “My large house, costing me $8000 . . . I was offered $800 for. My fanaticism would not allow me to take that for it. I locked it up, selling only one stove out of it, [for] which I received eighty yards of cloth. The building with its twenty-seven rooms, I turned over to the committee, to be sold to help the poor away. The committee informed afterwards that they sold the house for $12.50.”

In early June 1847, Mary and her children traveled to Winter Quarters, to tell Parley that they were returning to Maine. Parley had just started the journey west as one of the leaders of the second company, but rode a horse back to meet with her. He authorized his agent to provide her with some funds when their house sold, which he later accused her of taking and wasting. Mary remained in Winter Quarters.

Ten months later (April 1848), Mary was given $200 by Church authorities. This was half the money left from the sale of their home after Parley’s debts had been paid. The other half was given to Parley’s brother, Anson, for the care of their mother, Charity, and his family.

On receipt of these funds, Mary and her three children, Mary Ann (age 15), Olivia (age 6) and Moroni (age 3 ½ ) left for Bethel, Maine, where they lived with her parents. Daughter Mary Ann joined her cousins, Melvina and Nancy, daughters of Theodore Stearns, at the Gould Classical and English Academy. Family tradition indicates that her grandparents, Charles and Thankful Bartlett Stearns, paid each term’s tuition of two dollars and fifty cents with the hope that she would not go back to the Mormons.

The Academy had been reopened in 1848 under the administration of its founder Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True (1812-1887). The fall of 1849 catalogue listed 160 students from many towns in Maine, as well as New Hampshire and Massachusetts. There were three departments: Classics, Common English and High English. The Classics Department included the study of Greek and Latin literature and languages. The Common English Department classes included Exercises in Reading and Declamation, Smith’s Geography, Smith’s and Weld’s Parsing (grammar) Book, arithmetic, bookkeeping and penmanship. Finally, students in the High English Department had a variety of class choices, different each year. Each term, one or more of the following lecture courses were taught. In the natural science were offered courses in human and comparative physiology, mineralogy, geology, physical geography, botany, astronomy, and chemistry. Mental and moral science courses included rhetoric, philosophy, and moral science, while mathematics courses alternated among algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, navigation, analytic geometry, and mechanics. French, Spanish, Italian and German were available to all. The fall 1849 catalogue announced that during 1850, “Lectures, and such other exercises will be introduced, as shall best fit Teachers for the duties of the schoolroom.” It made an additional assurance that “students have access to the most valuable works on teaching, which have been published in this country.”

There are no records of Mary Ann’s classes, but it is probable that she was in the Common English program and took advantage of the teaching course because she became a well-known central Utah teacher.

According to Mary’s son Moroni’s biography, their New England relatives were very kind to them and offered “land and money if they would give up the Mormon religion and remain with them.” But, in 1851, she and her three children left Bethel, possibly on the newly established Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, which had first arrived in Bethel from Portland on 10 March of that year. The one way fare was $2. Stopping with friends in St. Louis, Missouri, long enough for the children to attend school, they arrived in Kanesville, Iowa, in January of 1852, determined to cross the plains to the Utah Territory.

They had no idea how they could afford the wagon and supplies required for the three month journey. In the meantime, they supported themselves by baking bread, and then slicing and drying it in an oven. It was sold to California bound emigrants for food when it was not convenient to cook. They also made cotton flour sacks for emigrants to store food supplies in, which they sold at 75 cents per hundred. They made orange and blue calico shirts with ruffled necks and wrists for a group of Native Americans being taken by a church member to Washington, D.C., to meet the President.

At the beginning of May 1852, they were assigned to a wagon train, the 12th to be leaving that year. Within days, two friends who were not yet traveling west appeared at her door to inform her that they had put enough money in the Emigration Fund to supply her with a wagon and necessary provisions. A non-member grocery store owner sent word that if she would come personally to his business, he would give her $10 worth of food. Despite the fact that she had never been in his store because he sold liquor, she did go this time and was given cornmeal, bacon, rice, dried codfish, dried fruit, soap, and a few other things. Days later she was introduced to a Scottish emigrant, David Murie, and his twelve year old son, Jimmie, who managed to buy a yoke of untrained oxen, but had no wagon.

On 10 June, they started west with members of the Harmon Cutler Company, which eventually included 262 persons, 63 wagons, 17 horses, 231 oxen, 171 cows, 154 sheep, and 20 dogs. Early on, they found that their load was too heavy. This presented the difficult task of choosing which items to leave behind. They also were given a second yoke of oxen which turned out to be as untrained as their original team. The four animals were soon out of control, alternately stopping still or running wildly in circles, while David hung on valiantly and Mary frantically ran alongside the wagon picking up supplies falling in all directions. Once, the cattle turned quickly and sharply, nearly crushing her between their bodies and the wagon. They had fallen behind the rest of the group. Finally, a young teamster/scout, Oscar Winters, whom they had known in Nauvoo, found them stalled in the middle of the road. He took over both of the teams and insisted on driving them to the river crossing. By the time they arrived, David had a better understanding of how to control them.

Cholera struck the company one evening after a rope-ferry crossing. Several men had been in the warm river all day steadying the raft and had liberally drunk the water. Mary used her homemade concoction of “charcoal and molasses, landanum and paregoric, camphor and a little cayenne pepper with as much raw flour as charcoal, and it proved to be a good remedy, for all that took it recovered except one older man.”

A group, with about twenty wagons, including Mary and her family, decided to move ahead as more and more members of the larger group were suffering with cholera. Despite occasional violent rain and wind storms, they “plodded on day after day, sometimes making a fifteen mile drive but oftener twenty—no hurry—you could not change the gait of the oxen, but had to wait patiently their motion.” It was clear that there was “no danger of getting left [since] most anyone can walk as fast a yoke of oxen can travel.” The others never caught up. It was later reported that the group behind was attacked by Indians, and all their horses were stolen, leaving them frightened, but alive.

Oscar Winters and Mary Ann Stearns Winters
Courtesy of Jayne Fife

Mary Ann wrote in her autobiography that their team had settled down and finally made steady progress. The women could now knit and sew comfortably in the wagon, as the ground was quite level and the oxen were under control. She acknowledged the change: “Our morning’s milk we put in our tea kettle, placed a cloth under the cover, put a cork in the spout, tied a cloth over that and tied it to the reach under the wagon; and no matter how hot the day was, the draft under the wagon made it very comfortable for our dinner, for there was a piece of butter the size of a teaspoon which was very fresh and sweet and the children took turns having it on bread.”

On 16 August 1852, just before reaching their destination, the group came to a beautiful grove of trees at Deer Creek, now in Wyoming, where they discovered a primitive wooden stand and benches. The “sight of it was inspiring to the emigrants for it really looked like going to meeting again as they were used to doing in the groves and boweries before they started on their journey, and all moved around with cheerful quietness and reverence for it seemed a visible testimony that God was with us and leading us on. There was a sacredness about it all that subdued all sounds and strengthened and encouraged to renew diligence. All labors were hastened to prepare for the Sabbath; the tires were wedged and tightened, the repairs completed, washing and cooking done and all retired to rest, but with the early dawn all were stirring again for the birds were singing a Sabbath chorus of praise.

“In the grove every heart was light and joyous for we no