#52 Ancestors - Week 1 - BEGINNINGS

I’m receiving emails once a week beginning this year that gives a theme prompt to write about ancestors in an effort to share with others what we know or what we’ve learned through research.  I started receiving these last year also (and probably other years) but have never followed through.  Here’s hoping 2021 is a new beginning.

Week 1 – Beginnings

“Beginnings” made me wonder about the beginnings of church membership of my ancestors.  Our course of study in church this year is the Doctrine and Covenants and these first couple of weeks have concentrated on the restoration.  I wondered who was my first ancestor to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?  I’ve not started putting church ordinance dates in my RootsMagic database yet so I didn’t have that information readily available.  I did a quick search on FamilySearch and found:

Name                                         Baptism Year

John Burt Sr                              1848

William Clayton                         1837

Caroline Knowles                      1841

Charles Cottrell                         1850

Raphael Henry Cottrell             1850

Charles Layton                          1849

Sarah Ambrosine Crockett        1849

Sarah Rogers                             1849

Some ancestors had baptism dates after they immigrated with the saints to Utah.  Did they come without being a baptized member?  

Caroline Knowles

I’m not sure that the baptism date is correct.  It doesn’t quite match up with the dates given in the history Sketch of Life of Caroline Knowles Webb, a Utah Pioneer of 1850 found in Family Search: “In the year 1847 [?], during the gold excitement of California, her father and mother and sister, Sarah, left the East to locate in California.  Caroline, who was then nineteen years old – and her two brothers, Thomas and Henry – became interested in Mormonism, and decided not to go to California, and against their parents wishes, who were very bitter towards Mormonism, Caroline and her brothers joined the church.”

William Clayton

From An Intimate Chronical: The Journals of William Clayton:  "On July 20, 1837, the six members of the first Mormon foreign mission landed in Liverpool amid both economic recession and national excitement; England’s newly-crowned Queen Victoria was preparing to name her cabinet.  The mission went directly thirty miles northwest to Lancashire, the scene of the textile mills which were an early expression of the Industrial Revolution.  The missionaries began preaching in the church of Reverend James Fielding in the large factory town of Preston.” [Footnote: “One of the Mormon missionaries, Joseph Fielding, was a British emigrant who had been invited by his brother, Reverend James Fielding, to return there to preach.  The Reverend cancelled his welcome to the Mormons”.]  “Twenty-three-year-old William Clayton, who lived across the river in the area of Penwortham parish, became an early convert to the new church.  On October 21, 1837, mission leader Heber C. Kimball baptized Clayton in the River Ribble.”

A quick check of the “Memories” on FamilySearch does not give much information concerning the baptism of the others listed above. 

I’m appreciative of my ancestors who joined the new church, immigrated to the United States and Utah and built a foundation upon which my faith would be laid.