Mary Fielding Smith's Legacy
submitted by: Tsephorah Wilberg
SUP CC Chapter 4th Grade Ancestor Awards |
Mary Fielding Smith drawing |
Mary Fielding Smith Widows Mite Statue |
By Tsephorah Wilberg
South Elementary School Second Place
Mrs. Beverly Sherratt
Michael & Rivkah Wilberg
My great great great great grandma was Mary Fielding Smith. I chose to learn about her because she is a famous pioneer. She was an intelligent person, she was nice and she did amazing things in her life. I really love my great great great great grandma.
She was born July 21, 1801. I was so happy to learn that she has the same birthday as me. She born in Honidon, England. Her parents were John Fielding and Rachel Ibbotson. Mary was the sixth child in a family of ten children.
She was very smart. Her mother was a very smart woman and she taught Mary very well. Her family was Methodist. And her father was a preacher at Halifax. She had a lot of talent. She could sing, write, sew, cook and do art and music. She lived in a country farmhouse.
Mary immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1834 when she was 33 years old to be with her brother, Joseph Fielding, and her sister, Mercy. That is where she joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the spring after her baptism they moved to Kirtland, Ohio. People from the church were forced from their homes but Mary did not give up.
Mary was tall, slender, fair and a proper English gentlewoman. She was very beautiful. On Christmas Eve 1837, she married a widower named Hyrum Smith. He had six children to care for and Mary was a good mother to all of them.
With her husband she had two children of her own. The first was a boy named Joseph Fielding. She named him after her brother. He was born in the worst time of mob attacks. She was also extremely ill when he was born. The church members were forced to leave their homes and go to Far West, Missouri.
Mary was very sad when her husband was arrested and the extermination order was issued. The people moved again to Nauvoo, Illinois. Hyrum was released from prison and they built a home there. Then she had a little girl named Martha Ann, who is my great great great grandmother on May 14, 1841 in Nauvoo. They lived there for five years.
In 1844 Hyrum and his brother, Joseph Smith, were in Carthage Jail when they were shot and killed. Mary was now a widow with 8 children to take care of. The new prophet, Brigham Young, told the people that it as time to travel all the way across the country to Utah. Mary led the way and cared for 18 people and 9 wagons.
They stopped to rest and prepare in a place called Winter Quarters. Mary had to trade many of the things that she had left to keep going. By the time she was ready to start across the plains she had only 9 people to care for.
She was in the Heber C Kimball party and her group was the fourth company with Captain Cornelius P. Lott in charge.
On the way over the plains they met some Indians. The Indians really liked her daughter, Martha Ann's, golden hair. The Indians tried to buy her hair for a pony. Mary did not sell her little girl's hair.
Three days into the journey Mary asked the captain for some help. He told her that she should go back because she was too poor and weak to make it all the way to Utah. He saw her as a burden to slow down the company. She straightened p and said, "I will beat you the valley and will ask no help from you either." In the journey of 1,000 miles the captain tried many times to make problems for Mary, but she never let it hold her back or asked him for help. She just kept on going and praying to the Lord for help.
The night before the whole party was to enter the Utah valley all the animals were ordered by the captain to allow them to graze. The next morning Mary could not find her oxen. Captain Lott ordered the group to head out without her and her family. Mary knelt down and prayed that the Lord would guide her to her animals. She found them tied to tree so they could not come back to her.
At the same time, up ahead where the rest of the party was, a thunderstorm made the ground so muddy that they had to release the animals and block the wagons so they would not roll backwards. The thunder made the animals run away into Parleys Canyon.
Mary passed be them and was able to reach Old Fort at 10 PM on September 23, 1848. She did beat Captain Lott to the valley and she didn't ask him for help.
Mary Fielding Smith was an intelligent woman who was kind even when others were not kind to her and she was able to do amazing things in her life through her prayers and faith in the Lord. I have been amazed by her strength, and want to be just as strong as she was.