Biography

Four-year-old Harriet’s life changed dramatically when, in 1847, she was compelled to leave her mother and the only home she had ever known. By a stroke of a pen, Samuel Bryan, Harriet’s enslaver, changed the course of Harriet’s life. Bryan’s last will and testament bequeathed enslaved Harriet to Bryan’s daughter, Nancy Maria Bryan Church.[1] Harriet grew up in Tennessee serving Nancy and likely caring for the six children that Nancy and her husband, Thomas Holiday Church reared. Beyond that, Harriet would give birth to two or three of Thomas Church’s children while enslaved to him and go on to have nine more children with him after she was freed. She went on to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, move to Utah Territory, and there receive full temple rituals in her new faith, one of only three known formerly enslaved women to do so.[2] It is a life story made all the more remarkable by the fact that Harriet married and then was sealed to her former enslaver, Thomas Church, in the Salt Lake Temple.[3]

Sometime after Nancy Bryan Church died in 1861, Latter-day Saint convert Thomas Church married Harriet.[4] Harriet also converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1876 while living in Maury County, Tennessee. Within a year or two after her conversion, she, Thomas, and their children migrated to Utah Territory to homestead and farm in Millard County. Harriet remained a faithful adherent to her religion for the remainder of her life. She was endowed in the Salt Lake Temple and sealed to Thomas, making her former slaveholder her eternal husband and companion.[5]

Biracial Harriet Elnora Burchard Church was born on February 23, 1843, in Hickman County, Tennessee, to an enslaved mother.[6] Harriet later remembered her mother’s name as Maria Warnock, a woman who was enslaved to Samuel and Charlotte Greer Charter Bryan.[7] Harriet believed her father to be a man named Remeus Burchard, although some family and church records use “Birch,” “Burchet,” or even “Burgess” as Harriet’s surname. Nothing more is known about her father, including whether he was enslaved or free. Census data suggests Harriet’s mother was biracial and her father may also have been biracial or even white.[8]

On March 30, 1847, when Samuel Bryan wrote his last will and testament, he disposed of his slave property, leaving “a negro girl named Harriet aged about five years” to his married daughter, Nancy Maria Bryan Church “and to her bodily heirs forever.”[9] It would have been very soon after the probate was completed that Nancy took possession of Harriet. Under Thomas H. Church’s name, the slave schedule for the 1850 U.S. Census for Hickman County, Tennessee, lists a seven-year-old “mulatto” female along with an eleven-year-old black female in his household.[10] The younger, biracial girl is most likely Harriet.

Thomas and Nancy Church lived in a rural area of central Tennessee on the county line between Hickman and Maury Counties. In 1860, the slave schedule for the Thomas Church household counted four enslaved people: two “mulatto” girls, one fourteen years old and one sixteen years old, as well as one black male, thirteen years old, and a “mulatto” baby girl, eleven months of age.[11] The older biracial girl is likely Harriet and the baby could be Harriet’s first child, Laura.[12]

It is impossible to know when Thomas Church began a sexual relationship with Harriet, but it was several years before the death of his legal wife, Nancy. According to the birth date that Harriet claimed on her temple endowment record, Harriet would have been a young girl of only fifteen when she became pregnant with her first child. Thomas was in his mid-thirties.[13]

Nancy Maria Bryan Church, Thomas’s first wife, died on January 9, 1861.[14] Four months later the Civil War began. On November 29, 1861, Thomas enlisted to fight on the side of the Confederacy. He advanced from the rank of private to that of brevet 2^nd lieutenant with the 9^th Tennessee Cavalry, known as Gantt’s after field officer Lieutenant Colonel George Gantt.[15] He was captured at the Battle of Fort Donelson in Stewart County, Tennessee and imprisoned on February 16, 1862. The Union released Thomas in a prisoner exchange in September of that year. He resigned three weeks later, giving his age as a justification; he was thirty-eight, and thus beyond the age of conscription.[16] He returned to his home in Maury County where the following year, Harriet gave birth to another baby girl, Mary Ann, on November 23, 1863.[17]

The 1870 census was the first time formerly enslaved people had the opportunity to state their full names on a United States census. Harriet, still living in Maury County Tennessee, used “Church” as her surname. She was not living in the same home as Thomas Church, but nearby. The census taker counted five children in Harriet’s household, all listed with the surname of “Church.” In addition to her daughter, Laura, four other children appeared, but each was listed only by the initial of their given name. Three of them are easily identifiable: Mary Ann, William Franklin, and Robert Robins. Another person identified only by the initial “R” represented an eight-year-old girl in the household. She appeared only in the 1870 census. All sources that report the total number of Harriet’s children agree that she had eleven, all of whom survived to adulthood. If “R” was Harriet’s daughter, that would raise the total number of children to twelve. A Black female farm laborer also appear in the household with Harriet and her children. R. Church may have been connected to that female farm laborer, rather than being Harriet’s daughter.[18]

On that census, Harriet and all of her children were described as “Black” in the “color” category, although the children would have had predominantly white ancestry. Regardless, a Southern census enumerator would not have categorized Harriet, a formerly enslaved woman with African lineage, along with her mixed-race children, as “white.” The census taker further listed Harriet and Laura’s occupations as “domestic servants.” Now emancipated, they may have continued to work for Thomas Church in that capacity. Thomas’s only surviving son from his first marriage, an unmarried student, was living with Thomas that year.[19]

Thomas Holiday Church belonged to a large closely-knit family, the members of whom were sympathetic to Mormonism. Neither Thomas’s father nor mother joined the Church, but Thomas and all of his siblings became members. Thomas was one of the earliest converts in the family, being baptized in March 1847.[20] He held the lay priesthood and was ordained to the office of Elder. His father’s home, situated in an area called Shady Grove, provided a gathering place for Southern States missionaries who often held meetings there. The extended Church family supported missionaries with meals, transportation, and beds, and otherwise offered a safe haven for them.[21] Harriet, therefore, would have been very familiar with Latter-day Saints and the Church’s teachings, but she did not join the Church until 1876, about the same time that some of her children received baptism.[22] Mission records are incomplete, so it is not possible to verify all of the baptismal dates of the Church children, but based on their later recollections, it seems that Thomas and Harriet’s eldest four children received baptism and confirmation in Tennessee between 1875 and 1877.[23]

According to an item in the local newspaper, Thomas began preparing to leave Tennessee to go West in 1875: “Thos, H. Church, Esq…. informed our reporter that he had sold his land and would move to Utah in the Spring of 1876,” one newspaper announced.[24] It appears Thomas and his family delayed their trek until after the birth of their daughter, Arizona, who was born on March 16, 1877, in Tennessee. It seems likely that Thomas and Harriet departed the South early in the spring of 1878. They traveled to Utah Territory with a baby and seven other children.[25] The Church family likely arrived in the summer of 1878 and settled in the small farming community of Deseret in Millard County where, over the next six years, they added three more children to their already sizable family.[26] They made a living as farmers in Utah, just as they had in Tennessee.

In the summer of 1878, like many of the newly arrived Saints, Harriet, Thomas, and their previously baptized children, received rebaptisms in “Zion.” William S. Black rebaptized Harriet and H. Dewsnup confirmed her on July 29, 1878.[27] As they settled into their new home, the family continued to practice the faith they had adopted in Tennessee. The Church children born in the town of Deseret received blessings in the local ward and all were baptized and confirmed as members of the Church. All but one of the couple’s children retained connections to and some level of activity in the Church throughout their lives.[28]

The culture of the Church must have been strong in Thomas and Harriet’s household. Ten of their children carried on the faith tradition and brought up their own children in the Church. Even the names that Harriet and Thomas chose for their children demonstrated their commitment to the faith. They named one son after a Latter-day Saint Church president (John Taylor) and another after a Southern States missionary (Henry G. Boyle).[29]

After entering Utah Territory, Harriet and all of her children appeared as “White” on all subsequent federal census records.[30] There is no indication on Latter-day Saint records that neighbors considered the family to be anything other than white. However, by at least 1900, local church leaders must have discovered Harriet’s racial heritage. It was at that time that the Church’s racial priesthood ban affected her son, John Taylor Church. Ira N. Hinkley, the Millard Stake president (a regional ecclesiastical leader) appealed to the Church’s highest governing body, the First Presidency, to decide what should be done about ordaining John Taylor Church to the lay priesthood and sending him on a mission. They denied him ordination and missionary service at that time, even though he later received the priesthood and died as an ordained High Priest.[31]

While all of Harriet’s children who married chose white spouses and blended into their social and work environments, it is possible that some of them might have encountered problems as they sought to participate fully in the Church. Five of Harriet’s children received temple endowments and marital sealings during their lifetimes while the other six did not. Some of her sons were ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood, but none received the Melchizedek Priesthood while they lived in Millard County.[32]

The first of Harriet’s children to attend a temple was Mary Ann Church (Clegg) who traveled to St. George with her father in 1879 to participate in temple rituals.[33] Mary Ann had a light complexion and may have easily passed as white. It is possible that local Latter-day Saint leaders were not yet aware of Harriet’s Black African ancestry or that she was a formerly enslaved woman. There is no indication why Mary Ann, rather than Harriet, went to the St. George Temple with Thomas. Since her biracial daughter had access to the temple, it seems unlikely that Harriet’s racial lineage would have prevented her from receiving an endowment at that time, but for whatever reason, it was over two decades later before she too obtained temple blessings.[34]

The Church family first belonged to the Deseret Ward, but subsequently moved a short distance away to Oasis, also in Millard County. In 1892, Thomas Church recorded a homestead patent for acreage in Oasis; meanwhile, the Church family attended the newly organized Oasis Ward beginning in 1891.[35] Harriet was a faithful Relief Society attendee. The organization’s records list her many monetary contributions. She donated money to the general fund and special causes like the hospital fund, the wheat fund, and the temple. She also made “in kind” donations of eggs and even contributed quilt blocks. She bore her testimony on several occasions from 1891 to 1895. On March 15, 1892, for example, Harriet expressed her desire, “to do right at all times.” The next year, on July 7, 1893, she asked the sisters to pray for her as she tried to do right.[36]

By 1902, a newly called stake president replaced Ira Hinkley, the Millard Stake president who had been instrumental in denying Harriet’s son, John, the priesthood and a mission call. During the first decade of the new century, Harriet, her son, Robert, and two of her daughters, Hattie and Arizona would all receive temple endowments and marriage sealings.[37] It is not clear if the new stake president was simply not aware of the family’s racial ancestry or if he was aware and applied a more liberal standard than Hinkley had done in enforcing the Church’s racial restrictions.

The finally completed Salt Lake Temple opened in 1893. Harriet and Thomas Church chose to make the trip of one hundred and thirty-nine miles to attend the Salt Lake Temple in 1903 to be sealed in marriage. On April 8, 1903, Harriet received her endowment ritual and afterward was sealed to Thomas as an eternal wife.[38]

Upon returning to Millard County, Harriet actively participated in the Church for the remainder of her life. She continued to attend Relief Society and regularly gave to the causes that the Relief Society sisters espoused. Shortly after she received her endowment, Harriet bore testimony in the women’s meeting, but the recorder did not document her exact words.[39] In 1907, she offered a prayer in a Relief Society Teachers meeting, an indication that she volunteered as a visiting teacher.[40]

A granddaughter remembered Harriet as “a sweet little person, about 5 feet 2 inches and the kindest person I have ever known.” The same granddaughter described the Church home as one of “hospitality and love and with a definite Southern dialect.” The house was small, but eventually Thomas and Harriet were able to add a room that gave the family a place to host dance and music parties. Some of the Church children played musical instruments; they provided the music while Harriet made cookies and lemonade for the grandchildren and guests.[41]

Beyond being a kind and giving grandmother, Harriet was a capable and hard-working mother. She cared for her daughter, Violetta, who had disabilities while raising ten other children. Her children excelled in many areas. Two of her sons, Major Dorimus Church and John Taylor Church, served as mayors of Eureka, Utah. One son, Robert Robins Church, served a Latter-day Saint mission to Texas in the early days of his marriage. Many of her children had their own large families. Two of her daughters, widowed with young children, were obligated to support their families; Laura Church Oldfield owned a small business while Mary Ann Church Clegg worked as a nurse.

In addition to the difficulties her children overcame, Harriet suffered her own troubles. In 1909, her husband Thomas had a close brush with death. While working as the local mail carrier, he accidentally received a dose of formaldehyde thought to be cough syrup.[42] He survived and lived over eight more years. Harriet received a mention in the newspaper when she became seriously ill with an unnamed malady in 1913. She also recovered and lived nine more years.[43] After their children were grown and living in various places, most of the family was able to reunite one last time for Thomas’s 91st birthday in 1915.[44] 

After Thomas’s death on January 4, 1917, Harriet became the sole support for her daughter, Violetta. She continued to attend Oasis Relief Society meetings and appeared in that organization’s donation records until her death. She died of pneumonia on February 1, 1922.[45] She is buried next to Thomas in the Oasis, Utah, Cemetery.[46]

It was not long after Harriet’s death that her descendants lost the knowledge of their racial heritage. When someone in the twenty-first century asked Harriet’s youngest living granddaughter if she knew Harriet had been an enslaved woman of color, she answered in the negative. When members of the Church family discovered their progenitor’s racial ancestry, they realized that Harriet Church, as a woman of Black African descent, stood at the head of multiple generations of committed Latter-day Saints. Mormon belief and practice was strong enough in the extended family to prompt Harriet’s descendants to ensure that each of her children was vicariously sealed to her and Thomas. One of her great-great- grandsons questioned how his family’s history might have played out differently had Church leaders prevented or discouraged his predecessors and their relatives from temple attendance because of their Black African ancestry. Because many members of the Church family passed as white and enjoyed temple access before the lifting of the priesthood and temple bans, his family has remained in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as fully participating and committed members.[47]

By Tonya S. Reiter

With research assistance from Sarah Day

[1] Tennessee, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1779-2008, Wills, 1807-1950, Miscellaneous Papers, 1807-1899, Last Will and Testament of Samuel Bryan, 30 March 1847, Maury County, Tennessee, District and Probate Courts

[2] The first formerly enslaved woman to receive temple rituals was Rebecca Henrietta Foscue Bentley Meads in 1863 (see Tonya S. Reiter, “Rebecca Henrietta Foscue Bentley Meads,” Century of Black Mormons); the second was Mary Ann Church Clegg, Harriet’s daughter, who received temple rituals in the St. George Temple in 1879 (see Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, St. George Temple, Endowments of the Living, 1877-1956, Indexes, 1877-1956, microfilm 170,577, entry no. 735, Mary Ann Church, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah); Harriet was third in 1903 (see Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah). For Harriet’s baptismal information see her endowment record and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, [1877]-1945, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings of living couples, 1893-1956, microfilm 1,239,565, item 2, page 4, entry 63, Thomas Holliday Church and Harriet Burgess, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[4] No record of Harriet and Thomas’s marriage is currently available. It is likely they were married in Tennessee, possibly by an elder in the Church. Rarely did a white slaveholder legitimize a sexual relationship with a Black woman who had been enslaved to him by marrying her. Thomas’s own brother, Robert Robins Church, developed a longstanding relationship with Mary Church, a woman enslaved to him. They had three children, all of whom Robert acknowledged, but when she was emancipated, Mary married a Black man who raised her biracial children. See: Evan Church, “‘Uncle Rob’ The Life of Robert Robins Church (1826-1884),” FamilySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, Robert Robins Church (KWVP-6T6), accessed 10 September 2024.

[5] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, [1877]-1945, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings of living couples, 1893-1956, microfilm 1,239,565, item 2, page 4, entry 63, Thomas Holliday Church and Harriet Burgess, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[6] When Harriet was endowed, she gave her full name as, “Harriet Elnora Burchard.” The Hickman and Maury County boundaries changed over time, so some censuses list Hickman County as Harriet’s home county, while others show her living in Maury County. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[7] Samuel Bryan’s will lists an enslaved woman named Maria who is thought to have been Harriet’s mother. On her endowment record, Harriet gave her mother’s name as Maria Warnock, so her mother may have married or taken the name “Warnock” from an owner after the Bryans. See Tennessee, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1779-2008, Wills, 1807-1950, Miscellaneous Papers, 1807-1899, Last Will and Testament of Samuel Bryan, 30 March 1847, Maury County, Tennessee, District and Probate Courts. See also, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[8] After Samuel Bryan died, his widow, Charlotte, retained ownership of Maria, who was described as mulatto. See: United States, 1860 Census, Slave Schedules, Tennessee, Maury County, entry for C. Bryan. Identifying Harriet’s father is more difficult. In 1850 there were people named “Burchard” living in Perry, Tennessee, the county next to Hickman; Remeus Burchard could have been associated with them. Once Harriet relocated to Utah Territory, her skin color was light enough for her to pass as white, an indication that her ancestry was likely predominately white. Her father, therefore, was likely also light-skinned and of at least partial European descent.

[9] Tennessee, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1779-2008, Wills, 1807-1950, Miscellaneous Papers, 1807-1899, Last Will and Testament of Samuel Bryan, 30 March 1847, Maury County, Tennessee, District and Probate Courts.

[10] United States, 1850 Census, Slave Schedules, Tennessee, Hickman County.

[11] United States, 1860 Census, Schedule 2, Tennessee, Maury County, District 17.

[12] Missionary Joseph Argyle documented Laura Church’s birth date as 7 March 1859 when he baptized her in 1877. See, Joseph Argyle, “Reminiscences and journal, 1870 May-1894 October, p. 107, MS 340, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[13] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings of living couples, 1893-1956, microfilm 1,239,565, item 2, page 4, entry 63, Thomas Holliday Church and Harriet Burgess, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[14] Nancy Maria Bryan Church, FindaGrave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26572531/nancy-maria-church.

[15] U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, American Civil War Research Database, Ancestry.com.

[16] U.S., Civil War Prisoner of War Records, 1861-1865, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, NARA film publication M598, Record Group 109, National Archives, Washington, DC; U.S., Confederate Officers Card Index, 1861-1865, Ancestry.com.

[17] Mary Ann Church Clegg’s birth date is somewhat uncertain. It varies between 1862 and 1866 on various documents, but given Thomas’s time as a Civil War prisoner, it seems unlikely that it was November, 1862.

[18] United States, 1870 Census, Tennessee, Maury County, District 17.

[19] United States, 1870 Census, Tennessee, Maury County, District 17.

[20] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, St. George Temple, Endowments of the Living, 1877-1956, Indexes, 1877-1956, microfilm 170,577, entry 732, Thomas Holiday Church, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[21] B. Allen, “A Place for the Un-Gathered: The Home of Abraham and Mary Church of Hickman County Tennessee,” Amateur Mormon Historian (blog), 5 June 2017, https://amateurmormonhistorian.blogspot.com/search?q=a+place+for+the+un-gathered accessed 10 September 2024.

[22] Joseph Argyle, “Reminiscences and journal, 1870 May-1894 October, p. 107, MS 340, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[23] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, [1877]-1945, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[24] “Williamsport Items,” The Herald and Mail, (Columbia, Tennessee), 19 November 1875, 3.

[25] The children who traveled to Utah Territory with their parents are: Laura, born March 7, 1859, Mary Ann, born November 23, 1863, William Franklin, born January 25, 1866, Major Dorimus, born January 6, 1869, Violetta, born June 21, 1871, Henry Geboyle, born May 28, 1873, and Robert Robins, born June 13, 1875.

[26] The Church children born in Utah are: John Taylor, born January 28, 1879, Harriet (Hattie) Gertrude, born August 25, 188, and finally Della Ada, born July 28, 1884.

[27] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, [1877]-1945, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. The only one of their children not rebaptized in Deseret after a first baptism in Tennessee was their eldest daughter, Laura.

[28] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, [1877]-1945, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Oasis Ward, microfilm 26,314, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[29] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, [1877]-1945, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Oasis Ward, microfilm 26,314, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[30] United States, 1880 Census, Utah Territory, Millard County, Deseret; United States, 1900 Census, Millard County, Oasis; United States, 1910 Census, Millard County, Oasis; United States, 1920 Census, Millard County, Oasis.

[31] See Tonya S. Reiter, “John Taylor Church,” Century of Black Mormons. Despite the fact that the LDS church does not officially keep track of the race of its members, local clerks often noted the race on membership records when the member was known to be of Black African descent. For the LDS hierarchy’s deliberation over the case see George A. Smith Family Papers, 1931-1969, MS0036, box 78, folder 8, Council Meeting, 11 March 1900, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[32] There is no written documentation, except in John Taylor Church’s case, that race played a definitive part in whether or not Harriet’s sons received the Melchizedek Priesthood and her children participated in temple ordinances. For the documentation in John Taylor Church’s case see George A. Smith Family Papers, 1931-1969, MS0036, box 78, folder 8, Council Meeting, 11 March 1900, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[33] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, St. George Temple, Endowments of the Living, 1877-1956, Indexes, 1877-1956, microfilm 170,577, entry no. 735, Mary Ann Church, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[34] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings of living couples, 1893-1956, microfilm 1,239,565, item 2, page 4, entry 63, Thomas Holliday Church and Harriet Burgess, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[35] Homestead Final Certificates, 1876 - 1877, Thomas H. Church, NAID: 7551463, Department of the Interior, General Land Office, Beaver City (Utah) Land Office, Records of the Bureau of Land Management, 1685-2006, Record Group 49, National Archives, Washington, D.C; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Oasis Ward, microfilm 26,314, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[36] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oasis Ward Relief Society minutes and records, 1891-1971, LR 6370 14, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[37] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[38] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Endowments of the Living 1893-1956; indexes 1893-1956, microfilm 184,068, vol. B, Harriet Burchard, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings of living couples, 1893-1956, microfilm 1,239,565, item 2, page 4, entry 63, Thomas Holliday Church and Harriet Burgess, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[39] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oasis Ward Relief Society minutes and records, 1891-1971, LR 6370 14, page 267, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[40] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oasis Ward Relief Society minutes and records, 1891-1971, LR 6370 14, page 317, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[41] Ella Lorraine Petty, “Thomas Holiday and Harriet Church,” FamilySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, Harriet Elnora Burchard (KW16-Z9G), accessed 12 September 2024.

[42] “Oasis,” The Millard County Progress (Fillmore, Utah), 26 February 1909, 1.

[43] “Oasis,” The Millard County Progress (Fillmore, Utah), 12 September 1913, 3.

[44] “Oasis,” The Millard County Progress (Fillmore, Utah), 29 January 1915, 1.

[45] "Mother of Eureka Men Died," The Eureka Reporter (Eureka, Utah), 10 February 1922, 2; Utah State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, file no. 5, registrar no. 620, Church, Harriet, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah. Her death certificate lists her race as White.

[46] Church, Harriett Elenora Burchard, FindAGrave.com.

[47] Donald Mayne, “My Great-Great Grandmother was a slave,” FamilySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, Harriet Elnora Burchard (KW16-Z9G), (accessed 14 September 2024).

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