Biography

Robert Robins Church was born in Maury County Tennessee ten years after the Civil War ended on June 13, 1875.[1] He was the fourth son born to his white Latter-day Saint father, Thomas Holiday Church, and his biracial mother, Harriet Elnora Burchard Church. Robert was likely named after his paternal uncle, Robert Robbins Church, who together with the extended Church family, played an important role in supporting Latter-day Saint missionaries and contributing materially and spiritually to the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Shady Grove community in central Tennessee. Robert spent his early childhood in Tennessee, until around 1878 when he and his family migrated to Utah Territory. Young Robert continued his uncle’s legacy in Utah. He remained a committed Church member, received the priesthood, participated in temple rituals, and served a mission, all decades before June 1978 when the Church formally lifted its racial priesthood and temple restrictions. His relationship with the Church was the least complicated of Thomas and Harriet’s sons.

Robert’s mother, Harriet, was born in slavery. Robert’s father, Thomas, and Thomas’s first wife, Maria Bryan Church, inherited four-year-old Harriet as a bequest from Maria’s father when he died in 1847.[2] After the death of Maria, Thomas and Harriet eventually married and had eleven or twelve children together, all of whom were baptized as members of the Church. In 1876, shortly after Robert’s birth, Harriet joined the Church and the family prepared to leave Tennessee to unite with the Saints in Utah Territory.

Upon their arrival in the West, Thomas, Harriet, Robert, and the other Church children traveled south of Salt Lake and Utah Counties to a small farming community called Deseret in Millard County.[3] They made their home there until around 1901 when they homesteaded in nearby Oasis.[4] After arriving in Utah Territory, all the members of the family, including formerly enslaved biracial Harriett were listed on all documents as “White.”[5]

Robert was baptized on July 5, 1883 in the Deseret Ward by Samuel W. Western and confirmed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Joseph S. Black on the same day.[6] The Deseret Ward Record of Members also documents Mahonri M. Bishop conferring the Aaronic Priesthood on Robert that same year. Bishop ordained him to the office of deacon on December 3, 1883, when Robert was eight years old.[7] Robert’s experience obtaining the priesthood was unlike that of his younger brother, John Taylor Church, whose 1900 patriarchal blessing promised priesthood ordination and a mission, but leaders in Oasis denied him both because of his racial ancestry.[8]

As a young man, Robert, like his brothers, left the family farm to try mining in the Tintic Mining District in Juab County. Robert lived in Mammoth, Utah, at the time he and his prospective wife applied for a marriage license in June, 1896. Robert was twenty-one when he married twenty-year-old Mary Catherine Nielsen of Lake Shore, Utah County. Mary was a Utah-born daughter of Danish Mormon immigrants. A bishop married the young couple on June 26, 1896.[9] They moved to Eureka, Utah where their first child, a son, was born the next June. As the eldest son, he carried his father’s first name and his paternal grandfather’s middle name, Robert Holliday Church, although he used the nickname of “Holl” all through his life.

In 1900, Robert, Mary, Holl, and their second son, Elwood Davis, born in 1899, still lived in Eureka where Robert worked in a quartz mill. Robert and Mary’s third child, Anders, was born on May 31, 1901, but lived only five months before he died that November. In 1903, a fourth son, Rulon Thomas, followed Anders’s birth.

After Robert moved to Juab County, it seems likely that his Church leaders were ignorant of his racial heritage and he passed as white in his work, social world, and his church. Robert’s Church membership record in Eureka documents his ordination to the office of elder in the higher or Melchizedek Priesthood, but the date of his ordination is not listed.[10] Robert’s right to hold the lay priesthood was evidently not questioned, either early on in Deseret or later in Eureka, this despite his mixed racial ancestry. Even more remarkably, after Robert received the Melchizedek priesthood, he and his wife, Mary, traveled to Salt Lake City to receive endowment rituals and be sealed as a couple in the temple. Since this event took place on October 9, 1901, Robert would necessarily have been ordained an elder in the higher priesthood before that date. Robert and Mary took their three little boys, Holliday, Elwood, and Anders with them in order to seal the family together.[11]Sadly, the next month, on November 26, five-month-old Anders died from water on the brain.[12]

Two years after losing their baby son, Mary gave birth to the couple’s fourth son, Rulon Thomas, who survived childhood and lived a long life of 87 years. The family continued living in Eureka for the next few years.

In 1906, Robert received a mission call from the First Presidency. He wrote to Joseph F. Smith, accepting his call, and was set apart to serve a mission to the Central States on November 6, 1906.[13] He was thirty-one years old when he departed, leaving Mary to care for three young boys and a five-month-old baby girl, Neta Christine, who had been born on June 14, 1906. While serving his mission, Robert wrote an essay about order in God’s church and the necessity of adherence to His laws. It was published in the Spanish Fork Press. Robert asserted that, “In God and his laws we see a perfect system, order, organization.” He concluded his sermon by writing, “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one church, and God in his mercy has restored it in our day.”[14] Robert returned home on December 10, 1908, twenty-five months after he departed.[15]

After his mission, Robert, Mary, and their children continued to live in Eureka for a few more years where Robert returned to quartz mining. They lived next door to Robert's brother, John, and his family.[16] Mary gave birth to two more girls in Eureka, Harriet Leone, born in 1910 and Mary Deon, born in 1912.

At least by 1914, the Robert Church family moved to Spanish Fork in Utah County. Robert was still participating in the Church and had been ordained to the office of Seventy (a missionary quorum at the time, not a general authority quorum) as recorded on the Church Census of that year.[17] While living in Spanish Fork, Robert and Mary had two more boys, William Foster in 1916, followed by Jack F. in 1917. The family didn’t reside very long in Spanish Fork, but instead, relocated once more—this time to begin farming in Burley, Cassia County, Idaho.[18]

One more Church child was born after their move to Idaho. Jennie Church was born on April 9, 1919, but lived only eighteen days before succumbing to bronchitis. Jennie was Robert and Mary’s tenth child and their second to die as a baby. The other eight children received baptisms and confirmations while living in Robert and Mary’s household. Those eight survived to adulthood and by 1920 began to marry and establish their own families.

Robert spent the rest of his life on the farm in Burley. At the relatively young age of fifty-nine, he suffered from gallstone complications and died on October 26, 1934 from the infection that ensued. He entered St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City, where he underwent surgery and was treated for a few days before his death. He had, evidently, been in Utah for five weeks, possibly for medical treatment.[19] His funeral was held in the Burley Latter-day Saint Tabernacle on October 29, 1934. Friends and family from Idaho and Utah took part in the funeral program. Bishop A. T. Gee presided.[20] He was buried in the Pleasant View Cemetery in Burley, Idaho.[21] Robert remained a faithful member of the Church until the end of his life, successfully avoiding the priesthood and temple restrictions in place for members of even limited Black African ancestry.

By Tonya S. Reiter

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

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

[3] United States, 1880 Census, Utah Territory, Millard County, Deseret.

[4] 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.

[5] The first census taken after the Church family relocated to Utah Territory was the tenth U.S. Census, taken in 1880. On it and on all subsequent censuses, all the members of the family are listed as “white.”

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

[7] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, Record of Members Collection, microfilm 25,938, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Until 1909, there was no specific age specified for boys to receive the priesthood. See: “Here’s a quick timeline of when young men have been ordained to the priesthood over the years,” Deseret News, Church News (Salt Lake City, Utah) 14 December 2018, (accessed 2 May 2025).

[8] See Tonya S, Reiter, “John Taylor Church,” Century of Black Mormons.

[9] Utah, County Marriage, 1871-1941, Mr. Robert Church and Miss Mary C. Nielson, 23 June 1896.

[10] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Eureka Ward, microfilm 25,938, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[11] See: Robert Robins Church (KWZS-6J8) FamilySearch, Mary Catherine Nielsen (KWZS-6JD) FamilySearch, Robert Holliday Church (KWJ6-LGS) FamilySearch, Elwood Davis Church (KWJ6-LGS) FamilySearch, and Anders N. Church (KWVP-6VD) FamilySearch.

[12] Register of Deaths, Utah County, Utah, 1895-1905, Anders Church, entry 1012, p. 32.

[13] First Presidency missionary calls and recommendations, 1877-1918 / 1906-1910 / Chu-Cl, 1906 / Robert Church letter, Spanish Fork, Utah, to Joseph F. Smith.

[14] “We Need Organization,” The Spanish Fork Press (Spanish Fork, Utah), 20 August 1908.

[15] Robert Robins Church, Church History Biographical Database, (accessed 14 July 2025).

[16] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Juab County, Eureka, District 55.

[17] “Church, Robert R.,” Presiding Bishopric, stake and mission census, 1914-1960, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[18] United States, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Idaho, Cassia County, Burley.

[19] Utah State Board of Health, Certificate of Death, File No. 1669, Robert Robins Church, Utah Division of Archives and Record Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[20] “R. R. Church is Summoned at Utah Hospital,” South Idaho Press (Burley, Idaho) 1 November 1934, 1.

[21] Robert Robins Church, FindAGrave.com.

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