Biography

LDS missionary Franklin Albert Gerber from Alberta, Canada, baptized Ardella Bickham Magee into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 15 April 1909, four months after her husband Samuel was baptized. The couple’s four oldest children who were above the age of eight were then baptized two months after that. The parents became devout members of the church and when the remaining children turned eight they were also baptized. [1]

Ardella was born October 24, 1875, in Washington Parish, Louisiana. She married Samuel Magee in 1891 and together they resided in Tylertown, Walthall County, Mississippi where they raised a large family of eight children. [2] According to Freda, Samuel and Ardella’s fourth child, the family had an enjoyable home life. “Our home was a happy home,” she reflected. “We always had prayer morning and night and scripture study before going to bed. Once in awhile missionaries would come by and spend some time teaching us more about the gospel.” [3]

Freda also recalled that her mother was a seamstress but that she became ill when Freda was in the sixth grade so that Freda had to quit school in order to take care of the younger children until Ardella recovered. [4]

Samuel died in 1922 leaving Ardella a widow until her death in 1964. When Adella’s son Wilkie and his wife died young, Ardella raised their three children, Margarette, Luther, and Wilkie Jr. She lived for a time with her daughter Etta in the Berkley, California area in the 1940s. It was there at Berkley on 14 December 1947 that Ardella and Etta joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a divergent LDS tradition based on the claim that Joseph Smith Jr.'s son, Joseph Smith III, was the rightful successor to his father, not Brigham Young. [5] Ardella passed away in Tylertown, Mississippi in 1964.

By W. Paul Reeve

Primary Sources

Beaulieu, Freda Lucretia Magee. Address, 1982 January 16. MS 6938. Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. CR 375 8, box 4256, folder 1, images 246 and 451. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Magee, Ardella Bickham. Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Deceased Membership Files, 1877-1995. Film 1993518. Family History Library. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

United States Census, 1880. Washington Parish, Louisiana.

United States Census, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940. Pike County and Walthall County, Mississippi.

Secondary Sources

Embry, Jessie L. Black Saints in a White Church: Contemporary African-American Mormons (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3.

Documents

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