Biography

Maron was an enslaved woman who lived in the mid-nineteenth century in Monroe County, Mississippi, toward the northeast corner of the state, on the border with Alabama. If she was not born there, she likely arrived with westward moving white Southerners who had colonized the area, bringing with them the people whom they had enslaved.

Latter-day Saint missionary John Brown identified her simply as “a black woman by the name of Maron.” He did not name Maron’s enslaver, a fact that leaves her existence in the historical record even more tenuous than other African Americans he named. Only whispers of connections suggest the context of her life. The fact that Brown did not record a last name for Maron like he did for the white women he baptized on the same day, combined with the fact that Maron does not appear by name in census records for Monroe County, indicate that she was enslaved even though Brown failed to say so.

Maron accepted baptism on Sunday, April 21, 1844, joining herself with the Buttahatchy Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with three white women, Nancy Bankhead, Sarah Smithson, and Margaret McKown.[1] Tradition states that many Buttahatchy members were baptized at Mormon Springs, a site in Monroe County near or on land owned by the Crosby family, local members of the LDS Church who themselves were enslavers. According to the 1840 census, John Crosby held 27 slaves, his widowed mother Sarah Crosby had 5 slaves, and his son William Crosby had 6 slaves.[2] John Crosby and his mother Sarah had died by the time of Maron’s baptism and their land, equipment, and enslaved people were divided among survivors. John's widow Elizabeth then became an important leader in the Buttahatchy Branch and his son William became the branch's presiding elder.[3]

Maron probably accompanied one of the three white women to the baptismal service or came from the nearby Crosby plantation. Of the three white women, Bankhead and McKown owned slaves and eventually migrated to Utah with their families as well as some of the people they enslaved, although Margaret McKown died in Wyoming before making it to Utah.[4] However, Latter-day Saint records do not indicate that Maron accompanied the Bankhead or McKown families, or any of the other migrating southern Saints. The McKowns did take an unnamed woman to Utah who ran away after her arrival but no evidence indicates that the runaway woman was Maron. The third white woman, Sarah Smithson, was an elderly widow who hired free white labor for her fields, but kept several enslaved women in her household, half of whom were unable to work because of youth or old age. Among these were women who may have matched Maron’s profile, although Brown did not indicate Maron’s age so it is impossible to know.[5]

While a connection to Smithson is a possibility, it is just as likely that Maron labored on a Crosby plantation. The Buttahatchy Branch usually met in Elizabeth Crosby's home and the majority of its members were from the Crosby family. A recollection of one of her descendant’s described the Crosby holdings as “extensive plantations with colored servants to operate them. Each of these plantations was a community of its own.” Wherever Maron lived, her life probably resembled that of the enslaved people on Crosby plantations, where she might have cleaned laundry by beating it “with a wooden paddle over a stump…[boiling it] in a massive kettle over an open fire,” and sudsing and rinsing the clothes in “homemade tubs and troughs.” She would have cooked some kind of fowl, hoe cakes, collards, and a variety of foods over a “large fireplace [with] swinging cranes and massive andirons.” Or she may have worked in the fields picking cotton from sunrise to sunset.[6]

Many Crosby family members who converted to the LDS faith, including the Bankhead and Lay families who married into the Crosby family, took enslaved people with them to Utah, but migrant records do not indicate that Maron accompanied any of these families west. Her name is not found on Mormon pioneer company reports or in the Utah slave schedules of 1850 or 1860. However, migrant company lists did not always name enslaved people but sometimes only indicated a total number of enslaved in a migrant group. It is possible that Maron accompanied her enslavers on the westward trek, especially given that there were more African Americans numbered at the beginning of the trek than there were those who were named after they arrived in Utah.[7] It is thus possible that Maron died on the migrant journey from Mississippi to Utah. It is also possible that her enslaver did not move to the Great Basin or sold Maron before moving west. Whatever her fate, Maron’s name in Brown’s journal shines through a foggy past, indicating that something about the Christian message as preached by the Latter-day Saints attracted her devotion and she joined the upstart faith.

By Ami Chopine

Primary Sources

Brown, John. Reminiscences and Journal, vol. 1, 1843 May-1860 April. MS 1636. Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Camp of Israel schedules and reports, 1845-1849; Mississippi company, report, 1848 May. MS 14290. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Camp of Israel schedules and reports, 1845-1849; John Brown's company of 10, report, 1848 June. MS 14290. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

United States. 1840 Census. Mississippi, Monroe County.

United States. Utah Territorial census, 1851. Census Returns (Original). Great Salt Lake County, schedules 2-6. MS 2672. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

United States. Utah Territorial census, 1851. Census Returns (Original). Utah County, schedules 2-6. MS 2672. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Image of Mormon Springs: Malina Duff, May 2017.

Secondary Sources

Brown, John, John Zimmerman Brown, and Harriet Rose Ann Brown Hayes. Autobiography of Pioneer John Brown, 1820-1896. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Stevens and Wallis, Inc. 1941).

Boone, David F. “The Mississippi Saints: A Unique Odyssey of Southern Pioneers,” in Far Away in the West: Reflections on the Mormon Pioneer Trail, edited by Scott C. Esplin, Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Craig K. Manscill (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 161–86.

[1] John Brown, Reminiscences and Journal, vol. 1, 1843 May-1860 April, MS 1636, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, 28.

[2] David F. Boone, “The Mississippi Saints: A Unique Odyssey of Southern Pioneers,” in Far Away in the West: Reflections on the Mormon Pioneer Trail, edited by Scott C. Esplin, Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Craig K. Manscill, (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 161–86.

[3] John Brown, Reminiscences and Journal, 22, 27-28.

[4] Nancy Crosby Bankhead and her husband took at least eleven African Americans with them, arriving in Utah in 1848. Margaret McKown and her husband had two enslaved people with them on the trail. See Camp of Israel schedules and reports, 1845-1849; Mississippi company, report, 1848 May; MS 14290, Church History Library.

[5] “Sarah Smithson,” United States, 1840 Census, Mississippi, Monroe County.

[6] John Brown, John Zimmerman Brown, and Harriet Rose Ann Brown Hayes, Autobiography of Pioneer John Brown, 1820-1896, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Stevens and Wallis, Inc. 1941) 49-50.

[7] Camp of Israel schedules and reports, 1845-1849; Mississippi company, report, 1848 May; MS 14290, Church History Library; Camp of Israel schedules and reports, 1845-1849; John Brown's company of 10, report, 1848 June; MS 14290, Church History Library; United States, Utah Territorial census, 1851; Census Returns (Original); Great Salt Lake County, schedules 2-6; MS 2672, Church History Library; United States, Utah Territorial census, 1851; Census Returns (original); Utah County, schedules 2-6; MS 2672, Church History Library.

Documents

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