Hope, Roseanna

Biography

Roseanna Hope was the oldest child of Len and Mary Hope, converts to the LDS Church from Alabama. She was born in Mulga, Alabama and moved with her parents to Ohio before 1930. [1] LDS missionary Sterling W. Sill blessed her on 15 September 1925, when she was three years old. Sill also blessed her sister Maryzell, while his companion, William O. Clouse, blessed another sister Izetta. On the same day that the missionaries blessed the three children, Clouse baptized their mother, Mary, and Sill confirmed her a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [2]

LDS clerks failed to record the date of Roseanna’s baptism. It likely took place in Birmingham, Alabama after she turned eight in November 1929. By July 1930, the family had moved to Lockland, Ohio and the LDS Census record taken that month listed Rosanna as a baptized member. The rest of the Hope children were baptized when they turned eight, some of them on their eighth birthdays. [3]

Roseanna appears with her family in a 1935 LDS census, but is not listed in Len and Mary’s household in the 1940 U. S. Census. She would have been almost nineteen by then and was likely living on her own or may have gotten married. At some point she may have moved to Philadelphia, which is where her mother moved in order to be close to her children, after her father’s death in 1952. One Mormon bishop later remembered that Len and Mary’s children were musicians and became Muslims, though to date no confirming evidence has been found for either statement. No evidence of Roseanna has yet been found after she last appeared in the 1935 LDS census. [4]

By Joseph R. Stuart

Primary Sources

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. Ohio. CR 375 8. Box 34, folder 1, image 264-265. Box 36, folder 1, image 400. Box 5009, folder 1, image 303. Box 5010, folder 1, image 20, 49, 307. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

"Hope." Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1914-1935. CR 4 311. Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Hanks, Marion D. Oral interview. MSS 7752. Charles Redd Center for Western Studies oral history project records. L. Tom Perry Special Collections. 20th Century Western & Mormon Manuscripts, 1130. Harold B. Lee Library. Brigham Young University. Provo, Utah.

Stephenson, Loran. Oral interview by Jessie L. Embry. 1989. Charles Redd Center for Western Studies oral history project records. L. Tom Perry Special Collections. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

United States. 1930 census. Ohio, Hamilton County, Sycamore.

United States. 1940 census. Ohio, Hamilton County, Sycamore.

Secondary Sources

Coleman, Ronald G. and Darius A. Gray. “Two Perspectives: The Religious Hopes of ‘Worthy’ African American Latter-day Saints before the 1978 Revelation.” In Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith, eds. Black and Mormon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004, 50-59.

Embry, Jessie L. Black Saints in a White Church. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994.

Documents

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