Biography

On July 18, 1884, biracial Harriet Elnorna Burchard Church gave birth to her last child, a daughter named Della Ada Church. Della was born in Deseret, a small agricultural village in Millard County, where the Church family first lived and farmed after settling in Utah Territory around 1878. After spending the first part of her life on farms in central Utah, Della would move to Salt Lake City and then to Los Angeles, California, with her second husband. Della inherited Black lineage through her formerly enslaved mother but passed as white throughout her life.

Around 1892, Thomas, Harriet, and their family became members of the new Oasis Ward, or Latter-day Saint congregation, when they relocated a few miles from Deseret to Oasis. The following year, just before her ninth birthday, on July 6, 1893, Della was baptized by William P. Hawley. The same day, Niels Peterson confirmed her as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Oasis Ward. Her parents, as well as all of her living brothers and sisters, had been baptized before her.[1]

As a girl, Della attended the Oasis school with her brother John and sister Hattie.[2] Della was musical and played the piano and harmonica while her brother, Henry, who played the cornet, accompanied her. She composed a piece of music that she called her “Dream Tune” because she dreamed the melody one night and when she awoke, she wrote down the tune from her dream.[3]

Della married Charles Henry Hartley, a Mormon boy from nearby Oak City, shortly before she turned twenty-one. The couple was married by a Latter-day Saint elder on May 17, 1905, in Fillmore, another farming community in Millard County.[4] After their marriage, Charles and Della farmed in Oasis, as Della’s family had.

On July 17, 1907, Della gave birth to a premature baby girl.[5] The Hartleys brought their baby to the Oasis Ward chapel to receive a blessing and be officially named by the elders. She was called Verna May Hartley. Sadly, Verna only lived seventeen days and died on August 2, 1907.[6]

Della’s marriage did not last long after the death of Verna. By 1910, she again lived with her parents in Oasis, where she worked as a candy maker at a retail store. She described herself on the census that year as a widow, but Charles was still living, so they must have separated and eventually divorced.[7] By the autumn of 1911, Della had met a widower in Salt Lake, Thomas Hutchinson Cornwall. He was forty and had a twenty-year-old son from his first marriage. His wife, Martha, had died in 1903, and he lost a younger son to diphtheria the following year.[8] A Latter-day Saint elder performed the marriage ceremony for Thomas and twenty-eight-year-old Della on October 24, 1911, in Salt Lake, where they lived for the first years of their marriage. Thomas, who was born in Belfast, Ireland, came to Utah with his Mormon convert parents around 1869.[9]

After their marriage, Thomas and Della lived in Salt Lake where Thomas worked as a laborer, mostly in the field of masonry. Census records describe him as illiterate, which likely limited his work possibilities.[10]Thomas’s son, Oscar, lived with his father and stepmother for a period before he served in WWI.[11] Soon after his return, Oscar lived in a rooming house in Salt Lake, but by the end of 1920, he lived in his father and Della’s household. The family resided in the Salt Lake 8th Ward when the Church census was taken that year.[12] By 1924, Oscar had entered a home for disabled veterans in Los Angeles, California. Della and Thomas had moved to Los Angeles, as well, possibly to be near Oscar.[13]

After leaving the veteran’s home, Oscar returned to his father’s home. He remained single until after the deaths of Thomas and Della and lived with them in Los Angeles throughout the remainder of their lives. Oscar worked as a mail carrier and by 1940, owned the home the family lived in and must have supported his father and stepmother.[14]

The Cornwall household was listed in several Church censuses taken by the Presiding Bishopric and their names appear in the membership records of some of the Latter-day Saint wards in which they lived. While it seems Oscar remained a committed member of the Church, it may be that Della and Thomas were less involved after relocating to California. Thomas held the office of teacher in the lower, Aaronic Priesthood, but Oscar held the higher, Melchizedek Priesthood. In addition, Della was incorrectly named in both the Manchester Ward and Matthews Ward’s membership records. They list Thomas Cornwall’s wife as Adelia Brunson, who was actually Della’s sister-in-law. The ward clerk did not know her well enough to correct her name in the record.[15]

Thomas died in 1940, but Della lived another three years. She died on November 13, 1943.[16] Thomas and Della are both buried in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California. “Love is Everlasting” is engraved on each of their headstones.[17]

Before 1978 when the Church rescinded the temple and priesthood bans barring members with Black African ancestry from receiving temple ordinances, Della Ada Church Hartley Cornwall was the recipient of three proxy temple rituals. On June 26, 1947, a vicarious initiatory ordinance and an endowment were performed in her name in the Salt Lake Temple. Prior to these, on October 4, 1946, she was sealed in a proxy marriage sealing to her second husband, Thomas Hutchinson Cornwall.[18]

By Tonya S. Reiter

[1] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Oasis Ward, microfilm 26,314, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[2] “School Days in the Old Oasis Church, 1896,” Millard County Chronicle Progress (Delta, Utah), 3 September 1891, 3.

[3] Ella Lorraine Petty, “Thomas Holiday and Harriet Church,” Harriet Elnora Burchard (KWJ6-Z9P), FamilySearch, Family Tree Memories Page (accessed 15 September 2025).

[4] Utah, County Marriages, 1871-1941, Entry for Charles H. Hartley and Della A. Church, 17 May 1905.

[5] Utah, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Birth, File No. 68, Verna May Hartly [sic], Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[6] Utah, State Board of Health, Department of Vital Statistics, Death Certificate, Nil No. 26, Verna May Hartley, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[7] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Millard County, Oasis; Charles remarried in 1910. See Colorado, U.S., Select County Marriages, 1863-2018, Entry for Charles Henry Hartley.

[8] Utah, State Board of Health, Department of Vital Statistics, Death Certificate No. 1103, George T. Cornwall, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Matheirfather'srtha Ellen Cornwall, Findagrave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130170/martha-ellen-cornwall.

[9] Utah, County Marriages, 1887-1937, Entry for Thomas H. Cornwall and Della Church, 24 October 1911.

[10] United States, 1920 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City. Thomas had worked as a hod carrier in 1910. See United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Ward 3.

[11] “Oscar W. Cornwall,” Salt Lake City, City Directory (Salt Lake City, Utah: R.L. Polk & Co., 1914), 266.

[12] United States, 1920 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City; “Cornwall,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1914-1940, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1920 census.

[13] United States, National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 1866-1938, Entry for Oscar W. Cornwall, 1924.

[14] United States, 1930 Census, California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles; United States, 1940 Census, California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Eighth Ward, [1847]-1923, microfilm 26,847, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[15] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members, Matthews Ward, 1923-1948, microfilm 2556, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members, Manchester Ward, 1923-1948, microfilm 2555, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Cornwall,” Presiding Bishopric, stake and mission census, 1914-1940, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; The Cornwalls moved often and their Church records may not have been transferred from ward to ward in a timely manner. There seems to be a good deal of confusion about where they came from when they moved into a new ward. Their LDS leaders in California may have asked the Oasis Ward for Della’s records, but at one point, she appeared as “Adella” on her Church records and the clerk in Oasis sent Adelia Brunson Church’s record instead of Della Ada Church’s record to California.

[16] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Matthews Ward, 1923-1948, microfilm 2557, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; When Della died, her name was accurately listed in the Church membership record. California, Department of Public Health, Certificate of Death, Registrar’s No. 392, Della Ada Cornwall, California State Archives, Sacramento, California.

[17] Thomas H. Cornwall, Findagrave.com; Della Ada Cornwall, Findagrave.com.

[18] Della Ada Church (KWVH-R8Z), FamilySearch, Family Tree Ordinance Page (accessed 22 September 2025).

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