Biography

William Franklin Church was the first child born to Harriet Elnora Burchard Church after her emancipation. As a young boy, William traveled across the United States with his parents and siblings to join with other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah Territory. He lived the rest of his life in Utah and California as a practicing member of his faith. William’s racial identity changed from “Black” in Tennessee to “White” in the West. Although he successfully passed as white in his adult life, he potentially did not escape the LDS Church’s attempts to enforce a “one-drop” racial policy. He and his siblings were predominantly white; however, because they inherited Black African ancestry through their mother, they sometimes bumped up against their faith’s priesthood and temple bans in effect until 1978.

William’s biracial mother, Harriet, was enslaved to his white father, Thomas Holiday Church, until the Civil War ended and the nation ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.[1] Harriet’s eldest children were born into slavery in Maury County, Tennessee. William, born on January 25, 1866, was Harriet’s first child born free and her first son. He and his family continued to live in rural Tennessee until late in the 1870s.[2]

William’s father converted to the Church of Jesus Christ in 1847 and his mother was baptized in 1876. William, like his brothers and sisters who were old enough, was baptized and confirmed while living in Tennessee. He later gave the date of his baptism as 1875, which would have made him about nine years old when he adopted his new faith. After the death of his father’s first wife, Thomas and Harriet married and decided to take their family to Utah Territory to be with other members of the Church. William’s father, mother, and seven siblings settled in Millard County in the small town of Deseret around 1878. William, along with other members of his family received a second baptism and confirmation upon arrival in Utah on July 29, 1878.[3]

 A few years later, in 1883, when he was about seventeen years old, William received the Aaronic or lesser Priesthood and was ordained to the office of priest, despite his racial heritage.[4] His local church leaders may not have known that he had Black African ancestry at the time of his ordination. By 1900, however, his brother John Taylor Church was denied ordination, an indication that LDS leaders in Millard County became aware of the family’s racial ancestry at some point. Perhaps as a result, William did not receive the Melchizedek Priesthood until many years later and in another location.

William, like his father, took up farming. On December 1, 1888, he married his first wife, Myra Amelia Barron. She gave birth to a daughter named Mary Myra on November 9, 1889. Sadly, nineteen-year-old Myra died ten days after her baby was born.[5]

After the death of his young wife, William must have relied on his family to help care for his newborn daughter until he remarried in 1890. On August 7 that year, twenty-five-year-old William married a thirty-three-year-old Mormon woman from Fillmore in Millard County, Mary Amelia Hawley.[6] This happy event was followed by another tragedy when William’s baby girl, Mary Myra, barely twelve months old, died in November 1890.[7]

William and his new wife, however, were not left childless after the death of his baby girl. Mary Amelia had previously been the plural wife of Joseph Edward Ray with whom she had one son, Frederick Edward Ray. After separating from Joseph Ray, but before her marriage to William, she gave birth to another son in 1884. His name was Burton John Phillips. William and Mary raised Burton along with the three children they had together.[8] They had two daughters, Wyla May, born May 4, 1891 and Blanche Amelia, born May 3, 1893, followed by a son, Evan William, born on October 12, 1895. All of William and Mary Church’s children were born in Deseret and all were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[9]

By 1910, William, Mary, and their children had moved north to Utah County.[10] William farmed on the Provo Bench and continued to worship in the Church while raising his family. While living in the Sharon Ward, he was ordained to the office of Elder in the Melchizedek Priesthood on January 29, 1912, at the age of forty-six.[11] There is no indication that those who performed William’s ordination were aware of his racial ancestry. It is not clear what William himself knew about his failure to be ordained to his faith’s higher priesthood in Millard County as a young adult.

William and Mary stayed in Utah until around 1919. By that time, their children were grown and living on their own. Their daughter, Blanche, married and moved to Los Angeles, California, which might have prompted the couple’s subsequent move there. By 1920, William had given up farming and began working in a gravel pit in Los Angeles.[12] In 1930, the Churches lived next door to Blanche and her family.[13] Eventually, all of William and Mary’s children relocated to Southern California.

William lost his wife, Mary, in 1938. She died on January 1 and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.[14] Mary’s funeral was not held in a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse or under the direction of a bishop, which may indicate she had not remained committed to the Church in her later life.[15] After her death, William continued living next door to his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson and worked as a watchman at a public dump.[16]

In the fall of 1940, William traveled to Salt Lake City to visit his younger brother, John. During his stay, he suffered a heart attack and died on October 9, 1940.[17] His body was shipped back to California where he was buried next to his second wife, Mary. His grave marker bears the inscription, “BELOVED.”[18]

William did not receive an endowment or marry either of his wives in a Latter-day Saint temple while he was living. There is no indication that his racial heritage was the reason he did not participate in temple ordinances, but there is also no indication that it did not play a part in his failure to obtain an endowment and marriage sealing in his lifetime. After his death, he received a vicarious temple endowment and was sealed by proxy to his first wife, Myra Barron Church, on November 7, 1941, this despite LDS policies in place at the time designed to prevent such rituals for those of Black African ancestry, even by proxy after death.[19] A vicarious marriage sealing for William and his second wife, Mary Hawley was performed on September 26, 1957, over twenty years before the racial and priesthood ban for people with Black African heritage was rescinded.[20]

In the end, William received priesthood ordination in life and proxy temple rituals after death well before his faith lifted its racial restrictions. William’s life story thus offers a lens into the challenges that enforcement of those restrictions created, especially for people of mixed racial ancestry.

By Tonya S. Reiter

[1] United States, 1860 Census, Schedule 2, Slave Inhabitants, Tennessee, Maury County.

[2] United States, 1870 Census, Tennessee, Maury County.

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

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

[5] Mary Amelia Barron Church, Findagrave.com.

[6] Utah, County Marriages, 1871-1941, Mr. William F. Church and Miss Mary E. Hawley, 7 August 1890.

[7] Mary Myra Church, Findagrave.com.

[8] United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Millard County, Oasis Precinct.

[9] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Sharon Ward (Utah), microfilm 26,310, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[10] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Utah, Provo Bench Precinct.

[11] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Sharon Ward (Utah), microfilm 26,310, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[12] United States, 1920 Census, California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles.

[13] United States, 1930 Census, California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles.

[14] “California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994,” Mary Amelia Church, 1 January 1938; California, Department of Public Health, Certificate of Death, District No. 1901, Registered No. 4, Mary Amelia Church, DPH, Los Angeles, California

[15] “Church,” Lincoln Heights Bulletin-News (Los Angeles, California), 13 January 1938, 3.

[16] United States, 1940 Census, California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles.

[17] Utah, State Board of Health, Certificate of Death, File No. 1571, Registrar’s No. 1637, William “W” Church, Utah Division of Archives and Record Services Salt Lake City, Utah: “William W. Church,” Salt Lake Tribune, (Salt Lake City, Utah), 10 October 1940, 19.

[18] William Franklin “Will” Church, FindAGrave.com.

[19] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Temple Records Index Bureau, Endowment index, 1846-1969, microfilm 1,262,788, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings for the dead, couples, 1893-1942, microfilm 1,239,598, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[20] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Temple, Sealings for the dead, couples and children 1942-1970, microfilm 457,208, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

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