How it came to be that George Andrew Brown, a Mormon, was in
the right place at the right time to meet, court and marry Ruby Vilate
Spilsbury, also a Mormon, so that they could have a daughter named Fern Vilate
Brown (my mother) is a long and complicated story, but here are the essential
elements (and this may take more than one blog post):
George
and Fanny Spilsbury
In 1842 a young 18-year-old girl named Fanny Smith living in
Cradley, a village in Herefordshire in the West Midlands of England, was
invited by some of her girlfriends to go with them to hear “some funny men from
America” preach about a “gold bible.” It was a lark, a chance for a little fun
watching these silly people. And, being teenagers, it was also a little act of
rebellion. Their local Church of England minister had told all to avoid the
Mormon missionaries. The wrath of that minister, and likely their parents,
would come down hard on them if they were found out. Fanny and her friends went
giggling to the meeting that evening. As the meeting unfolded, however, Fanny
did not find the missionaries laughable or their message funny; she was not
amused but interested, experiencing a feeling of “peace and hope” and being
“touched to the depths of her soul.” She sought out these missionaries to learn
more about this religion and, becoming convinced of its truthfulness, was
baptized. To avoid persecution and harassment the baptisms were done at night
at a secluded place on a river. On the evening Fanny was baptized it was so
cold that the ice on the river first had to broken by one of the missionaries,
a young man named George Spilsbury.
This missionary, George Spilsbury, from Leigh Parish in the
neighboring shire of Worcester, was himself only 19 years old at the time and
had only been a member of this church for less than two years. George was a
bricklayer and plasterer with his father. The family were devote members of the
Church of England. When he was 16, however, George had had a remarkable
experience where, while resting under a shade tree, a voice came to him saying,
“you will become a preacher of the Gospel.” George thought the experience
strange since in the Church of England you were not allowed to preach unless
trained for it and, as a practical matter, that training was not open to George.
A few months later he attended a meeting and heard some Mormon missionaries
from Utah in America preach. After more meetings and study he became convinced
of the truthfulness of this message and was baptized a member on October 11,
1840. Two months later he attended a conferenced presided over by Brigham
Young, then the leader of the British Mission. After the conference, at Brigham
Young’s direction, he was conferred the Aaronic Priesthood and ordained to the
office of a Priest and shortly afterwards called on a mission to teach this
gospel. He and two others then spent the next year traveling by foot in
Herefordshire and Wales preaching this gospel. George baptized 17 souls into
this church, including Fanny.
Fanny and George later became better acquainted, fell in
love and decided to marry and follow the Prophet Joseph’s call to gather in
Zion – Nauvoo, Illinois. This was not an easy decision. Both of their families
objected to this new religion and considered their desire to join these Mormons
in Zion foolish and imprudent, but it was especially difficult of Fanny.
Fanny’s father was a tailor and solid member of the growing English middle
class. Fanny’s mother had died a few months after she was born. With her mother
gone, her father had lovingly doted upon her. He had hired a housekeeper,
mostly to train Fanny in the art of being a refined and cultured English lady.
There was also a young male admirer, suitable middle class, but whose affection
she had not then reciprocated. This was a promising future for a young middle
class English girl to walk away from. Fanny had been baptized in secret because
she had expected her father would disapprove. She was right. He strongly
objected to her involvement in this church and her marriage to George and their
plan go to across the ocean to join other members in this “Zion” in America.
Her father declared that she was “a bamboozled fool and would be sorry” and
further ordered that until she realized it herself she was not to enter the
home and was not allowed to take any of her things from the house.
George and Fanny, however, had made their decision and
weren’t looking back. They were married on September 5, 1842. Fanny went to
work as a milliner and George went back to working in his trade and in a few
months they had saved enough for passage to America. Finally, on March 8, 1843,
they left Liverpool on the Yorkshire
for America. After a difficult and perilous voyage they arrived in New Orleans
and made their way up the Mississippi to Nauvoo arriving on May 31, 1843, absolutely
penniless. However, with George’s trade and with Fanny helping out with sewing
where she could they soon began to settle in with the Saints in Zion.[1]
Samuel
and Lydia Brown
When Fanny and George Spilsbury arrived in Nauvoo 1843 there
were also some others in Nauvoo who are important to this family history,
including a shoemaker named Samuel Brown and his wife Lydia Maria Lathrop.
Samuel was from New Hampshire, where he was born in 1801. When he was 29 he met
and married an English girl named Harriet Cooper. They had a son named Samuel,
Jr. Harriet died shortly after the baby’s birth. Samuel, then a widower with a
small son, accepted the gospel message from some Mormon missionaries and
immediately joined the main body of the church then in Kirtland, Ohio. He was
one of the faithful. He was part of the Zion’s Camp trek to Missouri in 1834,
and he helped in building the Kirtland Temple. While serving as an usher at the
temple he met Lydia Maria Lathrop, who was also working in the temple.
Lydia was a fourth great-granddaughter of the Reverend John
Lathrop, the immensely influential Pilgrim minister in New England. Not
surprisingly, she was a refined, religious woman and schoolteacher and also an
excellent seamstress and glove maker. Her father Grant Lathrop and her mother
Sybil Bliss had been married in Connecticut. They continued to live in
Connecticut and had six children, including Lydia. Grant, however, died in
1823. The then widow Sybil and her family moved with her father to the Palmyra,
New York area. They were in this area in 1830, just in the right time and place
to hear about Joseph Smith and this new religion. Sybil and three of her
children, including Lydia, joined the church and then followed the Saints to
Kirtland, Ohio. There, while working in the temple, Lydia met this widower
Samuel Brown and his five-year-old son Samuel, Jr.
Samuel and Lydia were married in 1837, with Lydia becoming a
mother for Samuel, Jr. Samuel and Lydia were witnesses to the marvelous
spiritual experiences of that temple’s dedication, but they were also witnesses
to the apostasy and dissension within the church and persecutions that shortly
followed. They, however, remained faithful and followed the main body of the
saints to Missouri. But in Missouri they found only find more dissension and
persecution. Fleeing the persecution in Missouri, the Browns had gathered with
the other Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois.[2]
John
Lowe and Caroline Skeen Butler
John Lowe Butler and his wife Caroline Skeen Butler and
their family were also in Nauvoo at this time. The Butler and Skeen families
had lived within a few miles of each other on the Tennessee and Kentucky
border. Both families were early and prominent settlers in the area and were
well acquainted. The Skeens were slave owners. John, then a tall handsome
22-year-old young man, was a teacher, blacksmith and farmer, but suffered from
bouts of rheumatic fever which often left almost wholly incapacitated. John
married Caroline Skeen, an attractive southern belle, in 1831 in a wedding linking
these two prominent area families. Caroline’s father, Jesse Skeen, a moderately
wealthy plantation owner, gave the couple three weeding gifts – an expensive
sidesaddle so Caroline could ride in a style proper for a well bred southern
woman and two slaves. Caroline had grown up being served by slaves and the
family tradition was that until her marriage she had never combed her own hair.
The slaves would allow her to continue that lifestyle. The Butlers, however,
although having lived for years in slave states, did not believe in slavery and
had never owned slaves. John and Caroline graciously accepted the gifts but
then shortly after they freed both the slaves, much to the displeasure of
Caroline’s father.
During John’s frequent periods of illness he would often
think deeply about religion. This search included profound personal struggles
and prayers. He had been disappointed with the strife and confusion among the
various sects in the area and had found them all lacking. John recounted that
on one occasion while praying alone in a field a voice spoke to him saying,
“stand still and see the salvation of God and that will be truth.” He said he
was then content to let the truth find him.[3]
In 1835 Mormon missionaries came to the area. John and Caroline listened to
their message. Thinking of his earlier experience, John recognized their
message as a fulfillment of that promise. When he asked Caroline about her
thoughts on the missionaries, she said she thought, “they were men of God, and
that it was the only true church of God and the only way to be saved.”[4]
John and Caroline were baptized March 9, 1835. Following their baptism they
endured bitter persecution from ministers, neighbors and friends and, sadly,
most harshly from Caroline’s own father, Jesse Skeen. Skeen was bitterly
opposed to Mormonism, spread false, but especially vicious and scandalous,
rumors about the couple and the Mormon missionaries. After enduring this
persecution for a year, John and Caroline and their family left Kentucky in
March 1836 and joined the body of the saints in Missouri. There they suffered
with the Saints the Missouri persecutions and depredations and fled Missouri
for Nauvoo, Illinois in 1839. The Butlers would have 11 children, but the
third, a daughter named Keziah Jane, born on February 25, 1836, during that
difficult year in Kentucky following their baptism, is the most significant to
our story.[5]
John
Hardison and Elisabeth Hancock Redd
There was also another southern family important to our
story visiting in Nauvoo at that time, John Hardison Redd and Elisabeth Hancock
Redd. The Redds were originally from Onslow, County, North Carolina, where the
Redds and Elizabeth’s family, the Hancocks, were prominent and financially
successful members of the community. Elizabeth was a descendent of John
Hancock, the one with the bold signature on the Declaration of Independence. As
part of the westward growth of the country, John and Elizabeth and their family
moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1838 and purchased a large plantation and
along with a few African American slaves to work it. At the time of this move
John and Elizabeth had six children, including a then two-year-old son named
Lemuel, who is particularly important in our story. Four years later the family
was taught the gospel by John D. Lee, a powerful Mormon missionary who would
later become a prominent church member. John and Elisabeth accepted the gospel
message and were baptized and confirmed members of the church. Southerners at
that time were not particularly welcoming to Mormons and the decision to join
the church took some courage. They came to Nauvoo to meet Joseph Smith and
receive patriarchal blessings by Hyrum Smith. Following his conversion, John
freed his slaves by an act of court and made a financial provision for each.
However, two of former slave women, Venus with her son Luke and Chaney her two
daughters Amy and Miranda, decided to stay on with the family.[6]
[1]
Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, Mother Jane’s Story (Shafer Publishing
Company, Inc. Wasco, California 1964) 65-72; MayBell Harmon Anderson, “ Fanny
Spilsbury Story,” undated history available at familysearch.com under the stories
entry for Fanny Smith (LHZS-YLB).
[2]
Irene Brown Martineau, “Samuel Webster
Brown 1801 & Lydia Maria Lathrop 1815,” undated history available at
familysearch.com under the entry for Samuel Brown (KWJX-SDP); Emily Brown
Hatch, “Lydia Maria Lathrop Brown 1815-1852” undated history available at
familysearch.com under the stories entry for Lydia Maria Lathrop (KWJX-SDG);
Ruby Brown Bradfield and Della P. Ware, “Samuel Webster Brown,” (undated
history available at familysearch.com under the stories entry for Samuel Brown
(KWJX-SPD)); Mavis Buchanan, "Pioneer Sybil Bliss Lathrop Jacobs and her
Pioneer Family,"(undated available at familysearch.com under the stories
entry for Sybil Bliss L44V-15Z)).
[3]
Hartley 23
[4] Hartley, 25.
[5]
Hartley, 28-31; “John Lowe And Caroline Skeen Butler — Of Courage And Faith,” 3-11
(This unpublished manuscript is included in “Redd Review,” a compilation of
Redd family histories made in1996 and is available at familysearch.com in the
documents section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Hatch, 7-10.
[6]
Hatch, Mary Jane’s Story, 6-7; Lura Redd, “John Hardison And
Elizabeth Hancock Redd,” 46-60 (This unpublished manuscript is included in
“Redd Review,” a compilation of Redd family histories made in1996 and is
available at familysearch.com in the documents section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Nelle Spilsbury Hatch,
“Lemuel Hardison Redd,” in “Stalwarts South of the Border,” compiled and edited
by Nelle Spilsbury Hatch and B. Carmon Hardy (published 1985) 559-563. The
Redds never actually reside in Nauvoo. After meeting Joseph Smith and receiving
these blessings they return to Tennessee, sell their plantation and leave from
Tennessee to join the Saints in Missouri for the move west.
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