Elizabeth Hayward's Notebook

Elizabeth Ann Pugsley Hayward left a notebook detailing the vital information for all her children: birth dates, LDS ordinances, the death dates of the six children who died as children, and the marriage information for the three children who survived. I have transcribed the text from a photocopy and added pictures, most of them provided by cousin Emily.

Henry John Hayward (1852-1927) and Elizabeth Ann Pugsley Hayward (1854-1942) with two of their children.

Henry Gammon Hayward

Son of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born October 16th 1876

Blessed by T McKean December 7th 1876

Died December 23rd 1879 Aged 3 years 2 months and 7 days

Our first born his Fathers image his mothers pride and joy

Emily Inez Hayward

Daughter of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born February 11th 1878

Blessed by T McKean April 4th 1878 

Died December 18th 1879 Aged 1 year 10 months and 6 days

Our first girl

Elizabeth Hayward with Philip Pugsley Hayward (1880-1891). Picture taken in San Francisco.

Philip Pugsley Hayward

Son of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born June the 5th 1880

Blessed July the 1st 1880 by T. McKean

Baptised September 4th 1888 by Joseph Keddington

Confermined September 6th 1888 by Bishop [Frederick] Kesler

Died April 23rd 1891

Aged 10 years 10 months and 18 days

Oh Phil Phil child of hope given to me in time of sorrow and trouble

Left: Sidney Allen Hayward (1883-1886). Right: Philip Pugsley Hayward (1880-1891). 

Sidney Allen Hayward

Son of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born September the 4th 1883

Blessed October the 4th 1883 by Bishop Kesler

Died February the 4th 1886

Aged 2 years and 5 months

This is the mother life

To bear to love to lose

Martha Hayward (1885-1886)

Martha Hayward

daughter of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born July 8th 1885

Blessed September 4th 1885 by Bishop Kesler

Died August 27th 1886

Aged 1 year 1 month and 19 days after four weeks of suffering our baby went

suffer little children to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven

“Oh the stillness of the room

Where the children used to play,

Oh the silence of the house,

Since the children went away.

This is the mother life—

To bear, to love, to lose;

Till all the sweet sad tale is told

In a pair of little shoes,

In a single broken toy

In a flower pressed, to keep,

All fragrant still the faded life

Of them who fell asleep.”

Left: Leah Merle Hayward (1889-1905). Right: Hazel Jean Hayward (1887-1959).

Hazel Jean Hayward

Daughter of Henry J. and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born March the 30th 1887

Blessed June 5 1887 by Bishop Kesler

Baptised June 6th 1895 By Elder Hilton

Confermd August 1st 1895 by Bishop Kesler

Married November 25th 1908 To Henry R.E.Wessman

Leah Merle Hayward (1889-1905)

Leah Merle Hayward

Daughter of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born December the 8th 1889. Blessed February [missing] 1890 By Bishop Kesler

Baptised Feb 5th 1898 by Elder Thomas Maycock Confirmed Feb. 5th 1898 by Concilor William Langton

Died Nov 12th 1905

Endowed Dec 21st 1906 her Mother acting

Elizabeth "Bess" Cripps Hayward (1892-1989)

Elizabeth Cripps Hayward Daughter of Henry J. and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born June 12th 1892

Blessed November 1892 by Bishop F. Kesler

Baptised July 1905

Married July 18th 1917 to Lewis Robert Edwards. Married by Bishop F. S. Tingey

John Ewing Hayward (1895-1988)

John Ewing Hayward

Son of Henry J and Elizabeth A Hayward

Born June 19th 1895

Blessed August 1st 1895 by Bishop Kesler

Baptised July 1903

Ordained a Deacon April 1908

Married Nov 1925 To Mildred Corson

Amanda Hall Wessman Gravestone

While we're talking about all things Wessman, I thought I'd mention that cousin Emily and I are going to be heading an effort to provide a grave marker for Amanda Hall Wessman's grave in Salt Lake City. Here's the draft of the proposal we'll be sending to family members this spring.

(The grave marker will look different than the one shown; we're planning on including an engraving of the Salt Lake Temple on the marker.)

Henry and Jean Wessman's Stillborn Son

The family records have never had a birth or death date for Henry and Jean Hayward Wessman's stillborn son, but I just chanced on a burial record for him, and have updated his information in Family Tree (the replacement for NewFamilySearch). His birth, death, and burial date is September 23, 1913.

Here is his death certificate. It was filed under "Wissman."

Here is the page showing his entry in the Utah Death Register.

The baby is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery in plot J-12-12-W-2 (or J-12-12-2-W). Is this by the graves of Henry and Jean Wessman?

It was a little emotional for me to suddenly come upon this record due to a similar loss in the Wessman family this past week; our thoughts and prayers are with our cousin and his wife and children.

Mary Ellison Birth Record

I've been spending some quiet time on Christmas Day looking at the hints in Ancestry, and saw this new document, the birth and baptismal record for Mary Ellison.

It shows her birth on August 13, 1799, and her christening on September 15, 1799. Her parents, Adam and Ellen Ellison, were from Welch Whittle, three miles southwest of Chorley, the town where the LDS Temple is currently located.

Mary and her husband, John Sutton, were baptized in 1851. They emigrated two years later, crossing the ocean in the Elvira Owen, and crossing the plains in the Joseph W. Young Company.

Here is some other information about John and Mary Ellison Sutton.

Ann Prior Jarvis in Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Vol. 2

Deseret Book is producing a series of biographies called Women of Faith in the Latter Days. Until recent decades, historians have mostly written about the male experience, so this series is shining some much-needed light on the experience of the women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The editors are calling for submissions, asking primarily for stories of women who left their own accounts of their experiences. My fourth-great grandmother Ann Prior Jarvis was a good candidate for the series since she left several interesting autobiographies and a lengthy journal, so in January 2011, I submitted a proposal for a chapter about her. I was delighted to get an email saying that the editors accepted my proposal for Volume 2.

Not long after the chapter was accepted, I became ill and fainted and hit my head and suffered a serious concussion. I could barely focus on the computer screen for several months, and I still needed to convert Ann's most interesting autobiography from a holograph (handwritten) copy to a digital copy. My parents and brothers and sisters and sisters-in-law came to the rescue. From their locations all around the United States, they each downloaded several pages of the autobiography and typed them and sent the text to me by email.

Then the hard work began: condensing 18,240 of Ann's words down to less than 3,500 words, and trying to keep the story cohesive and true to Ann's experience and voice. To help with the process I summarized the major themes in her story: conversion, the experience of gathering to Zion, the gift of healing, and the pain of separation. And complaining! She tended to complain and she had very good reason to do so, so I wanted to make sure the story had a flavor of that, as well as her humor and her elegant turn of phrase despite her lack of education.

Along the way I had a delightful time visiting with the president of the Washington County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, since that organization has a nice picture of Ann Prior Jarvis in their collection, and although copyright has long since expired, it was necessary to get permission to publish the picture.

It was a real pleasure working with the editors at Deseret Book. I've never worked with an editor before, and I was impressed by their professionalism and attention to detail.

* * *

My husband gave me a copy of Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Vol. 1 for Christmas last year (link), and Volume 2 was recently released and is available at Deseret Book (link). I'm reading through a copy now, and as I read through the biographies, I've been touched by the experiences, and I've also been touched by the affection the authors seem to have for the women they write about. 

It's quite a collection, subjects and authors both. The authors include a number of academics and well-known authors in the field of Mormon studies as well as many descendants (like me) familiar with their ancestors' life writings.

The authors approached the material differently. A few chapters, like mine on Ann Prior Jarvis, consisted almost entirely of the life story; others, like Todd Compton's chapter about Mary Dart Judd, framed her writings in context and provided a survey of the academic literature on the topics raised by her life story.

Since I don't see a list of the chapters online, here are the contents of Volume 2:

• Patience Loader Rozsa Archer (Andrew Ventilla)
• Sarah Maria Mousely Cannon (Madelyn Stewart Silver Palmer)
• Hannah Last Cornaby (Craig C. Crandall and Cathleen C. Lloyd)
• Cordelia Calisa Morley Cox (Patricia H. Stoker)
• Janetta Ann McBride Ferrin (Rebekah Ryan Clark and Marcus Patrick Ryan)
• Lucy Hannah White Flake (David F. Boone)
• Mary Jane Dilworth Hammond (Alisha Erin Hillam)
• Elizabeth Anderson Howard (Steven L. Staker)
• Jane Elizabeth Manning James (Margaret Blair Young)
• Ann Prior Jarvis (Amy Tanner Thiriot)
• Jane Cadwalader Brown Johnson (Patricia Lemmon Spilsbury)
• Mary Minerva Dart Judd (Todd M. Compton)
• Susanah Stone Lloyd (David R. Cook)
• Rosa Clara Friedlander Logie (Marjorie Newton)
• Elizabeth Graham MacDonald (Lowell C. "Ben" Bennion)
• Julia Sophia Raymond McKee (Jennifer Pratt Reidhead)
• Mary Goble Pay (Christine Banks Bowers, Virginia H. Pearce, and Patricia H. Stoker)
• Sarah Ann Nelson Peterson (Jennifer L. Lund)
• Esther Romania Bunnell Pratt Penrose (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich)
• Emeline Grover Rich (Rosaland Thornton, Deborah R. Otteson, and Teresa S. Rich)
• Aurelia Read Spencer Rogers (RoseAnn Benson)
• Margaret Condie Sharp (Emily B. Farrer)
• Rachel Emma Woolley Simmons (Laura F. Willes)
• Bathsheba Wilson Bigler Smith (Heidi S. Swinton)
• Anstis Elmina Shepard Taylor (Andrea G. Radke-Moss)
• Emmeline Blanche Woodward Wells (Carol Cornwall Madsen and Cherry B. Silver)
• Helen Mar Kimball Whitney (Jay A. Perry)
• Catherine Elizabeth Mehring Woolley (Jay G. Burrup)
• Emily Dow Partridge Young (Sherilyn Farnes)
• Zina Diantha Huntington Young (Jennifer Reeder)

Early British Mormon Emigrants

A question arose on an LDS website about the concentration of emigrants from northern vs. southern England, so I quickly made the following using data from the website Early LDS. As I understand it, the database would just show the Nauvoo-era emigrants, so just those who were in America by 1846. It is not a particularly elegant database, but I can't think of any other site which provides similar data.

This is a Creative Commons 1851 map of English counties.

Yellow shows the lowest concentration, followed by orange, red, purple, blue, and green. The counties of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire had the highest number of converts emigrating to Nauvoo. Wales, Ireland, and Scotland had similar numbers, but I did not break them down by county.

Other counties of note with higher concentrations of emigrants include Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Cheshire and Lincolnshire.


A couple of notes about the shortcomings of this map:

1) There is not a single county without at least a handful of emigrants, but some of the emigrants may have been born in those places but joined the Church in London, Manchester, Birmingham, or Canada, which could skew the data.

2) I know there were significant early missionary efforts in London, because I have a variety of ancestors who joined the Church there in the early days. And of course, there is also Susannah Mehitable Rogers Sangiovanni [Pickett Keate] who joined the Church in London in 1840 due to the missionary work of Wilford Woodruff, Heber C. Kimball, and Parley P. Pratt. Even though many converts joined the Church in the 1830s and 1840s, many didn’t emigrate until the 1850s or 1860s, and some left their native land as late as the 1880s, so they wouldn’t show up on the map.