Biography

Grace Samantha Ritchie was the tenth of twelve children born to her parents Annie Cowan Russell and Nelson Holder Ritchie. Her father Nelson was born into slavery in Missouri, the son of an enslaved woman and a white enslaver; he eventually escaped slavery and went on to fight in the Civil War on the side of freedom. Her mother Annie was white. Grace thus descended from at least two generations of mixed-race ancestors. Her mother converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kansas while her father converted after the family moved to Utah. As a result, Grace was born into a Latter-day Saint family and raised in the faith that her parents had adopted. In 1909, her parents were denied temple admission because the leader of their Latter-day Saint congregation concluded that Grace's father Nelson “had negro blood in him.”[1]

Grace nonetheless passed as white and attended the Salt Lake Temple as a single woman in 1927. She married four times, one of which was solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple.[2] She then served as a missionary from 1951 to 1953 in the Central States Mission.[3] She is the first documented woman born to a formerly enslaved parent to serve as a missionary. (In 1921 her niece, Annie Ellen Cleverly (Nelson and Annie’s granddaughter) became the first known woman of Black African ancestry to serve a mission).[4] Grace outlived all of her siblings and was the last member of her immediate family to die. She passed away in Utah in 1993, at age 96, the daughter of a formerly enslaved father.[5] Her life thus represents the long shadow that slavery cast well into the twentieth century as well as the sometimes-porous nature of Latter-day Saint racial policies and the mutability of “race” over time.

Annie Ritchie gave birth to Grace on 11 July 1896 in Bountiful, Utah, north of Salt Lake City. The family had moved from Great Bend, Kansas in 1892, and Nelson received baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that fall.[6] As a result, Grace was raised as a Latter-day Saint and came of age in the first decade of the twentieth century. Her family moved frequently when she was young, especially as her father changed jobs and attempted to establish himself financially. When the family attended the Farmers Ward near West Temple and 1700 South in the Salt Lake Valley, Grace received baptism at the hands of fellow congregant John T. Thorup on 7 August 1904. It was less than a month after she turned eight years old, the earliest age at which Latter-day Saints can be baptized. The following day, R. F. Turnbow, another congregant confirmed her a member of the Church.[7] She remained committed to the faith that her parents had adopted for the rest of her life.

Even though pubic documents variously described Grace’s father as “colored,” “Black,” “mulatto,” “white,” and “Indian,” Grace only appears in census records and public documents as white. In the twenty-first century, Ritchie family descendants continue to exhibit African ancestry in their DNA, along with a lesser degree of Native American ancestry.[8] By the time that Grace’s father was denied temple admission and priesthood ordination in 1909, Grace was thirteen years old, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had adopted a “one drop” policy designed to prevent any one of Black African descent—“it matters not how remote a degree”—from priesthood ordination or temple admission.[9] In fact, just one year before Grace’s parents applied for temple admission, Latter-day Saint apostle and Salt Lake Temple president George F. Richards recorded in his journal a decision on the matter that Church leaders made in August 1908. He wrote that “a man known to have in his veins Negro blood of any degree what so ever is not entitled to the Priesthood” and then added “Neither are they entitled to temple blessings.”[10] It was a decision that no doubt shaped the response that Nelson and Annie received when they appealed for temple admission the following year. It was a decision that was meant to deny Grace and any of Nelson’s descendants priesthood ordination and temple admission as well. However, in the case of the Ritchie siblings, including Grace, it did not work. They all slipped past the racial barriers and received priesthood ordination and temple admission well before June 1978 when the restrictions were finally lifted.

It is impossible to know if Grace was aware of her parents’ efforts to enter the Salt Lake Temple and have their love for each other “sealed” in a ritual that Latter-day Saints believe binds such unions for eternity. Her father passed away in 1913 which meant that the physical reminder of his mixed racial ancestry faded from public memory over time. Two of Grace’s older sisters had already been married in the Salt Lake Temple when her parents made an appeal for temple admission.[11] Grace’s mother simply waited eleven years and then attended the temple and had her husband sealed to her by proxy, even though Latter-day Saint policy attempted to prevent such rituals for people of African Ancestry, even by proxy after death.[12]

It is possible that Grace was unaware of any controversy surrounding her family’s racial identity. At age 75 she wrote a family remembrance and did not mention it. She did recall her father working as a fruit peddler and his affection for her and her siblings. “Father had a little spring wagon and sold fruit and nearly every night when he came home the children came running to see what he had left and always received some little thing, apple or fruit. Father was good to all children,” Grace recalled. “He was very tender hearted and would always say, ‘Let your mother take care of you’ when we were bad.”[13]

Grace remembered that her father’s health deteriorated in the years preceding his death. Her mother worked outside the home to help provide for the family.[14] These circumstances likely account for the fact that Grace lived for a time with her older sister Bessie and her husband Willis Rogers in Grayson, Utah, (later renamed Blanding) in San Juan County, in the far southeastern corner of the state. The 1910 census taker found her there at age thirteen living with her sister and brother-in-law and their three children.[15]

It is not clear how long Grace lived in Grayson but she remembered being at home when her father died in 1913. As she recalled, she had stayed up late on the evening of 27 January, into the early morning hours of the next day. She was reading The Wizard of Oz, she later explained, and found it so captivating that she “could not leave it alone and forgot what time it was. I was reading by an oil lamp when Father said, ‘Grace, go to bed. It's one o’clock.’ I said, ‘All right,’ and in the morning when I got up at 7:00 a.m. to get ready for school, Mother said, ‘Girls, your father is dead.’”[16] It was a memory that stayed with her for the rest of her life.

At some point thereafter Grace met Victor Hugo Paul Gerhardt, the son of German immigrants who was born in Chicago in 1895. Victor was an electrician who likely came to Utah for work. The young couple wed on 13 October 1917 when Victor was 22 and Grace was 21. A Latter-day Saint elder performed the ceremony although Victor was not a Latter-day Saint.[17] Their first child who they named Grace was born ten months later and another daughter, Ruth, followed two years after that. The young family lived with Grace’s mother in 1920. Victor was unemployed and Grace did not work outside of the home either.[18] Financial strain no doubt put pressure on their marriage and by the end of that year, on 29 December 1920, a local judge granted Grace’s petition for divorce.[19]

At age 24, Grace found herself a single mother with two young children in her care. Fortunately, she had family nearby and her mother Annie to rely on. By January 1921, Grace had moved to the Burton Ward, a Salt Lake City congregation, and was listed in that ward’s census as a divorced single mother along with two-year-old Grace and ten-month-old Ruth.[20]

Grace married again two years later. This time she wed Adelbert W. Searle, who was born to Latter-day Saint parents in Salt Lake City, although he was not a Latter-day Saint himself. They wed on 26 December 1922 and had one child together, Peggy Searle, born 26 September 1923, nine months to the day from the date of their wedding.[21]

Just two years later unimaginable tragedy struck the young family. Grace’s second daughter, Ruth, died at age five under heartbreaking circumstances. Ruth and her four-year-old cousin, Rex Olson, attempted to light a family bonfire without adult supervision. Ruth’s dress caught fire and she “ran screaming toward the house” where her mother Grace “extinguished the flames with her hands, suffering severe burns” in the process. Little Ruth however, was already burned so badly that she did not recover. She died in a Salt Lake County hospital from her injuries later that same week.[22]

No doubt burdened by a profound sense of loss and her own emotional and physical scars from the incident, Grace must have anguished over Ruth’s death. In the wake of the accident, her second marriage did not last. She divorced Adelbert Searle on 10 May 1927 and Grace found herself again living as a single parent. Grace had moved to the Salt Lake City 16th Ward by 1925 where she remained following her divorce. She stayed there and raised her two surviving daughters as a single parent over the following decade.[23] The 1930 census lists her as a “domestic servant” working for a “private family” in Salt Lake City.[24]

Grace remained connected to her faith community over the same time span and was consistently counted on Latter-day Saint census records.[25] She ensured that her daughters Grace and Peggy were both baptized into the faith at age eight. Both daughters went on to raise their respective families as Latter-day Saints.[26] Grace also deepened her own commitment to the faith. Just over three months following her divorce from Searle, Grace attended the Salt Lake Temple where she received her washing and anointing and endowment rituals as a single woman. She returned to the temple three years later where she was sealed to her parents, a ritual denied her father in 1909 because of his race. There is no surviving indication that Grace met opposition over her racial heritage. Her father had been dead for over a decade by the time Grace attended the temple and her local leaders likely had no knowledge of his racial ancestry or of the controversy that had prevented him temple admission while he was alive. Grace and her siblings were known and accepted as white and that was enough.[27]

Grace next married Orvis Israel Mann, a recently widowed Latter-day Saint with nine children of his own. Mann was in fact the son of William C. Mann, the missionary who had taught and baptized Grace’s father, Nelson. Mann’s first wife Myrtle Holbrook died on 28 June 1939 and he and Grace then wed less than six months later. Grace married Mann in the Salt Lake Temple and was sealed to him on 1 November 1939. Grace and Orvis remained married for nearly a decade before death, not divorce, ended her marriage. Orvis died on 12 August 1949 of cancer; he was 62 years old.[28]

Grace remained single for the next twenty years and found meaning and purpose in her children and grandchildren as well as in her church service. In 1950 she lived close to her married daughter, Grace, in Centerville, just north of Bountiful, where she worked as a cleaning woman for a local furniture company.[29] Within a year, however, she decided to serve a mission for her faith. She was called to the Central States Mission and was honored with a farewell testimonial in her West Bountiful congregation on 14 October 1951.[30] Levi Edgar Young, a Latter-day Saint general authority, set her apart for her mission. She was 55 years old at the time and became the first known woman born to a formerly enslaved father to serve as a Latter-day Saint missionary.[31] She served for twenty months before being released on 13 June 1953.[32]

When Grace returned from her mission, she found work in the pharmacy at the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. She served her church congregation for many years as Gospel Doctrine teacher in the Sunday School.[33] At age 76, she decided to try marriage one more time. She wed Wilford Ashton on 11 August 1972 and the couple made their home in Roy, Utah, a community 25 miles north of Bountiful and Woods Cross where Grace had been living before she married again.[34] It was Ashton’s second marriage; his first wife Leila Cottam had died earlier the same year. He was six years older than Grace and lived another decade before he passed away in 1982 at the age of 92.[35]

Grace again found herself alone. She was now 86 years old and lived another decade before she also passed away. She died on 1 March 1993 at the age of 96. Her two daughters Grace and Peggy survived her as did 14 grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren, and 13 great-great-grandchildren.[36] She outlived her eleven siblings and was the last of the Ritchie family to die. Those who attended her memorial service in March 1993, likely failed to realize that they gathered to pay their respects to the daughter of a formerly enslaved man who had fought in the Civil War on the side of freedom, an indication of how far into the twentieth century slavery cast its shadow.

More remarkable, the fact that Grace was understood to be white meant that she did not face the same rejection that her father had when he sought Latter-day Saint temple admission in 1909. Her life thus illustrates the impossibilities of policing racial boundaries and demonstrates that mixed race Latter-day Saints with more than “one drop” of African ancestry received full temple privileges well before June 1978, despite Latter-day Saint policies meant to prevent that very thing.[37]

By W. Paul Reeve

[1] W. Paul Reeve, “Nelson Holder Ritchie,” Century of Black Mormons.

[2] Grace Samantha Ritchie (KWCX-RJ2) Ordinances, FamilySearch.org; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, West Bountiful Ward, Form E, 1939, microfilm 27,425, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3] Grace Samantha Ritchie Mann, Missionary Department missionary registers, 1860-1959, Book I, 1950 January 31-1954 October 17, CR 301 22, image 108, Church History Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[4] Annie Ellen Cleverly (KWCJ-DLV) FamilySearch.org; Annie Ellen Cleverly, Church History Biographical Database.

[5] “Grace R. Mann Ashton,” Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) 4 March 1993, 34.

[6] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Sugar House Ward, CR 375 8, box 6743, folder 1, image 469, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City.

[7] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Farmers Ward, CR 375 8, box 4049, folder 1, image 207, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[8] W. Paul Reeve, “Nelson Holder Ritchie,” Century of Black Mormons.

[9] Extract from George F. Richards, Record of Decisions by the Council of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles (no date given but the next decision in order is dated 8 February 1907), in George A. Smith Family Papers, MS 36, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; see also The Journal of George F. Richards,

[10] George F. Richards, Journal, 26 August 1908, The Journal of George F. Richards, Church Historian’s Press.

[11] W. Paul Reeve, “Elizabeth Bessie Ritchie Rogers,” Century of Black Mormons; W. Paul Reeve, “Olive Ellen Ritchie Cleverly,” Century of Black Mormons.

[12] W. Paul Reeve, “Nelson Holder Ritchie,” Century of Black Mormons; Devery S. Anderson, ed., The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 2011), 82, 101-102, 361.

[13] Grace Ritchie Ashton, “An edited history of Nelson Holder Ritchie” (accessed 20 March 2026).

[14] Ashton, “An Edited history of Nelson Holder Ritchie.”

[15] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, San Juan County, Grayson.

[16] Ashton, “An Edited History of Nelson Holder Ritchie.”

[17] Utah, Salt Lake County, Marriages, 1917, Grace Ritchie and Victor Hugo Paul Gerhardt, 13 October 1917, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[18] United States, 1920 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City.

[19] “Grants Three Divorces,” Salt Lake Telegram (Salt Lake City, Utah) 30 December 1920, 2.

[20] “Gerhardt, Grace Samantha Ritchie,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1920, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[21] Utah, Salt Lake County, Marriages, 1922, Grace R. Gerhardt and Bert Searle, 26 December 1922, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; Adelbert W. Searle (KWCG-6B2) FamilySearch.org; Peggy Ann Searle (KWCX-RJD) FamilySearch.org.

[22] “Burns Prove Fatal to Gerhardt Child,” Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah) 14 August 1925, 1; “Burns Prove Fatal to Gerhardt Girl, 5,” Salt Lake Telegram (Salt Lake City, Utah) 13 August 1925, 2; Utah, Certificate of Death, Registered No. V-1175, Ruth Victona Gerhardt, 12 August 1925, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[23] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Salt Lake 16th Ward, microfilm 26,682, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Searle, Grace Ritchie,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1925, 1930, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[24] United States, 1930 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City.

[25] “Searle, Grace Ritchie,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1925, 1930, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Ritchie, Grace Samantha,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1935, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Mann, Grace Samantha Ritchie Searle,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1940, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; United States, 1940 Census, Utah Davis County, Woods Cross.

[26] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Salt Lake 16th Ward, microfilm 26,682, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, West Bountiful Ward, microfilm 27,425, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Grace Josephine Gerhardt (KWCF-PLY) FamilySearch.org; Peggy Ann Searle (KWCX-RJD) FamilySearch.org.

[27] Grace Samantha Ritchie (KWCX-RJ2) Ordinances, FamilySearch.org; Reeve, “Nelson Holder Ritchie,” Century of Black Mormons.

[28] Orvis Israel Mann (KWCD-FC7) FamilySearch.org; “Orvis Israel Mann,” Salt Lake Tribune, (Salt Lake City, Utah) 14 August 1949, 23; Utah, Salt Lake County, Marriages, 1939-1940, Grace Samantha Ritchie and Orvis Israel Mann, 1 November 1939, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, West Bountiful Ward, microfilm 27,425, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Utah, Certificate of Death, File No. 45-0600, Registrar’s No. 65, Orvis Israel Mann, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[29] United States, 1950 Census, Utah, Davis County, Centerville.

[30] “A Farewell Testimonial for Grace Richie [sic] Mann Sunday, October 14th,” as archived at Grace Samantha Ritchie (KWCX-RJ2) Memories, FamilySearch.org.

[31] This conclusion is based on research at Century of Black Mormons. For a history of women as missionaries in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints see Matthew McBride, “‘Female Brethren’: Gender Dynamics in a Newly Integrated Missionary Force, 1898-1915,” Journal of Mormon History, vol. 44, no. 4 (October 2018), 40-67.

[32] Grace Samantha Ritchie Mann, Missionary Department missionary registers, 1860-1959, Book I, 1950 January 31-1954 October 17, CR 301 22, image 108, Church History Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[33] “Grace R. Mann Ashton,” Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) 4 March 1993, 34.

[34] Utah, Salt Lake County, Marriages, 1939-1940, Grace Samantha Ritchie and Wilford Ashton, 11 August 1972, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Last Minute News,” Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah) 8 September 1972, 17.

[35] Wilford Salisbury Ashton (KWC8-YGR) FamilySearch.org; “Wilford S. Ashton,” Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) 4 September 1982, 36.

[36] “Grace R. Mann Ashton,” Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) 4 March 1993, 34.

[37] W. Paul Reeve, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (Deseret Book, 2023), chapter 13. Devery S. Anderson, ed., The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 2011), 82, 101-102, 361.

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