Biography

Annie May Ritchie died young, at age 25, just over a year after her marriage. She was the daughter of a formerly enslaved father and a white mother. Her parents were denied temple admission in 1909 because the family’s bishop, the leader of their local Latter-day Saint congregation, deemed that her father, Nelson Holder Ritchie, “had negro blood in him.” Annie May thereafter lived out the legacy of her parents’ mixed-race marriage. The same bishop who denied her parents temple admission, officiated at Annie May's civil ceremony less than three years later as she wed Ivard Rathburn, a man not of her faith. Overlapping social systems thus shaped her life as she navigated the color line in the United States and in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Annie May’s mixed racial ancestry made it possible for her to pass as white at the height of racial segregation in the United States but it did not shield her from the racial policies of her chosen faith.[1]

Nelson Holder Ritchie, Annie May’s father, was the son of a Black enslaved woman and a white man named Wiley Holder. Annie May’s father was born into slavery, navigated the world as a young man differently than his peers, fought in the U.S. Civil War, and may have never fully understood his own racial ancestry. Following the Civil War, Nelson met and married Annie Cowan Russell, a white woman. They opened a hotel and livery stable in Great Bend, Kansas, and started to raise a family together. Annie Cowan gave birth to Annie May on 19 December 1886, in Great Bend. Annie May was one of the couple’s twelve children, nine of whom survived to adulthood.[2]

Latter-day Saint missionaries met the Ritchie family when they took room and board at the Ritchie hotel. They baptized Annie Cowan in 1890 and her conversion soon led to other family members joining the faith. In September of 1891, Annie Cowan had her children—Elizabeth, Annie May, Blanch, and Esther—blessed at an LDS church conference in Kansas. At the same conference, missionaries baptized Annie Cowan’s older children (Olive and James Alvie). After Nelson’s businesses failed in Great Bend, the Ritchie family moved to Salt Lake City to settle among fellow Latter-day Saints. In 1892, Nelson was baptized at Beck’s Hot Spring in Salt Lake City, and Annie Cowan, Olive, and James Alvie were re-baptized at the same time.[3]

By the time Annie May turned eight years old, the family had moved north of Salt Lake City to Centerville, a small agricultural village at the time. It was there that Johnathan A. Parrish, a member of the Centerville congregation, baptized Annie May into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 30 June 1895, six months after she had turned eight. A man named Joseph Smith then confirmed her on the same day.[4]

Both the 1900 and 1910 U.S. census records show Annie May living with her family. The 1900 census describes the entire family as white while the 1910 census lists Nelson Holder as Indian, Annie Cowan as white, and all the children as Indian, but only after the census taker crossed out “w” for “white” and replaced it with “I” for Indian.[5] While still living in Kansas, Nelson had attempted to claim membership in the Cherokee Nation, but his application was rejected by the tribe.[6] His assertion of Native American identity in 1910 was most likely calculated to help him gain Latter-day Saint temple admission in the wake of his bishop’s rejection the previous year on the grounds that he had Black African ancestry. In the twenty-first century, descendants of Nelson Holder Ritchie and Annie Cowan Russell do demonstrate some Native American ancestry in their DNA but African ancestry is more prevalent.[7]

There is no surviving evidence to indicate that Annie May was aware of this context or even aware of how she was defined in the 1910 census. Her LDS church records indicate no race (which held white as the default) and her death certificate lists her as white. Ironically, Nelson died just ten months after Annie May. His 1913 death certificate also describes him as white, another indication of the family’s evolving effort to navigate a fraught racial context, both nationally and within their faith community.[8]

In 1909, when Annie May was 23 years old and still living at home, her family’s racial identity became a matter of concern in their Latter-day Saint congregation. Her parents went to their bishop, John M. Whitaker, the leader of the Sugar House Ward in Salt Lake City, to begin the interview process to enter an LDS temple. Nelson discussed his ancestry at length with Whitaker, claiming his father was full Cherokee, that he never met his mother, and that a white woman with the last name of McNeill had raised him. Whitaker refused temple access, stating that as soon as Nelson had entered his home, he, “felt that he had negro blood in him,” and was never convinced otherwise. Nelson Ritchie and his wife were thus denied temple admission.[9] After Nelson died in 1913, Annie Cowan went to the temple to be sealed to him by proxy well before 1978 when the ban on Black men and women from performing temple rituals was lifted.[10] It is difficult to imagine that Annie May was not privy to some of the difficult conversations that must have played out in the Ritchie home in the wake of her parents’ denial, but what she thought of their rejection or how she understood its ramifications escapes the written record.

Shortly after her parents were barred from temple entry, Annie May met Ivard Morris Rathburn, the son of George and Flora Rathburn.[11] Around 1903, the Rathburn family had moved from Kansas and relocated to Petersboro, a rural community on the west-central edge of Cache County, in northern Utah. It was in Petersboro where George and Flora “conducted the Oregon Shortline Railroad lunch counter,” a small restaurant that they operated.[12] The 1910 census for Petersboro does not list Ivard with his parents and siblings, though.[13] He had likely moved to Salt Lake City when he was eighteen. The Salt Lake City Directory lists Ivard in the Marmalade neighborhood of the city in 1910 and 1911. He worked for the Oregon Shortline Railroad, a job his parents may have helped him obtain, and lived in a boarding house in Salt Lake City.[14] Ivard is listed as “Ives” Rathburn in the 1910 census, likely a nickname he used.[15]

There is no indication how Ivard and Annie May met, but less than three years after Bishop Whitaker denied Nelson and Annie Cowan Ritchie temple access, he performed Annie May and Ivard’s civil marriage.[16] Whitaker likely still remembered the lengthy conversations he had had with Annie May’s father and his adamant denial of temple admission. Certainly, Nelson and Annie Cowan remembered too. They must have put whatever hurt feelings they may have had aside to focus on Annie May and her special day. As Ivard was not a Latter-day Saint, Annie May and Ivard could not be married in a Latter-day Saint temple.[17] It is not clear how Whitaker would have responded had Ivard been a Latter-day Saint. Annie May’s two oldest sisters, Bessie and Olive, had already been sealed to their spouses in the Salt Lake Temple, but they did so after moving from the Sugar House Ward to new Latter-day Saint congregations where their bishops were not aware of their father’s mixed racial ancestry and readily approved their temple marriages.[18] In Annie May’s case, it is difficult to imagine that Bishop Whitaker would have allowed her temple access after denying her parents the same privilege less than three years earlier.

It is not known where Annie May and Ivard lived after their February 1911 marriage. The boarding house in which he had lived in 1910 listed well over a dozen other single men living there, less than ideal for a newly married couple. Wherever they briefly made their home , Annie May likely continued attending LDS church services. The Sugar House Ward over which Bishop Whitaker presided did not transfer her records to a new Latter-day Saint congregation, even after she moved with Ivard to Alabama.[19]

By December 1911, less than one year after Ivard and Annie May married, they had moved with Ivard’s parents to Copeland, Washington County, a remote area of Alabama where George and Ivard worked railroad related jobs.[20] Annie May felt isolated, with only her mother-in-law to keep her company while Ivard was at work. She was pregnant at the time of her move to Alabama and no doubt missed the close proximity of her family. There were no Latter-day Saint congregations established in the area and she may have found it difficult to develop a sense of community. The closest organized congregation of Latter-day Saints was the distant Quitman Branch, over forty-six miles one way across the Mississippi-Alabama state line. Two Sunday Schools in Peacock and Mobile (both in Alabama) would not be established until 1918 and 1928 respectively.[21]

On 3 December 1911, Annie May wrote a heartfelt and longing letter home to her mother. "I am here alone," she said, "but am staying with Mrs. Rathburn. She is very good to me but it is not like being with you or Ivard." "I know that the Lord will bless us and that we will be together again and I want to tell you I love you more than you will ever no." She anticipated returning home the following spring and set her hopes on it. "I do want to see you and have a long talk and if I once get back to you and Papa I just can't come away down here again and Ivard will just have to come out there." She assured her mother that Ivard "has sure been a dear to me and has been just as good as gold." Even still, "the only thing I lack is not being close enough to see you once in a while," she wrote, wistfully.[22]

Tragically, Annie died in Washington County, Alabama, less than three months after penning her letter. Annie had been diagnosed with Brights Disease, which today is more accurately called nephritis and is a result of kidney disease or diabetes. This, complicated by the birth of a child—during which both mother and baby died—was the cause of Annie May’s death. Her death certificate indicates that she “under went an operation for appendicitis and developed Brights 2 years ago,” as an added explanation.[23] Annie May thus died far removed from her intermountain home, her family, and her spiritual community. She is buried in the Jones Hill Cemetery in Copeland, Alabama. Her Latter-day Saint congregation back in Salt Lake City lovingly entered her death date on her membership record as if she had never left and indicated “appendicitis” as her cause of death.[24] Ivard remarried and lived in Texas for the rest of his life.[25]

Less than two months following her death, likely her sister Bessie or her sister Olive (or both) went to the Salt Lake Temple and performed initiatory and endowment rituals by proxy in Annie May’s behalf. In 1924, her mother Annie Cowan did likewise, this time ensuring that Annie May was sealed to her and Nelson in a proxy ceremony, also in the Salt Lake Temple. Then, in 1970, someone else performed a proxy sealing to Ivard, again in the Salt Lake Temple.[26] Annie May’s family thus gave her access to the rituals that Bishop Whitaker had denied her parents in 1909, and they did so despite policies in place designed to prevent such ordinances for people of Black African ancestry, even for those who had passed away.[27]

By Randell Hoffman

[1] For national context regarding how those of mixed racial ancestry navigated this same context see Martha S. Jones, The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (Basic Books, 2025); and for Nelson Holder Ritchie’s story see W. Paul Reeve, “Nelson Holder Ritchie,” Century of Black Mormons.

[2] W. Paul Reeve, "Nelson Holder Ritchie," Century of Black Mormons.

[3] W. Paul Reeve, "Nelson Holder Ritchie," Century of Black Mormons.

[4] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Centerville Ward, CR 375 8, box 1157, folder 1, image 234, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[5] United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Third Precinct; United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Eighty-eighth Precinct.

[6] W. Paul Reeve, "Nelson Holder Ritchie," Century of Black Mormons., Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, to Nelson Holder, Great Bend, Kansas, 24 May 1892.

[7] W. Paul Reeve, "Nelson Holder Ritchie," Century of Black Mormons.

[8] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Centerville Ward, CR 375 8, box 1157, folder 1, image 234, 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, Sugar House Ward, CR 375 8, box 6743, folder 1, image 476, 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, Granite Stake, CR 375 8, box 2227, folder 1, image 62, 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, Salt Lake 30th Ward, microfilm 26,877, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; Alabama, Certificate of Death, File No. 381, Form No. 2, Annie May Ritchie Rathburn, microfilm 1,894,093, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; Utah, State Board of Health, Death Certificate, File No. 146, Registered No. 139, Nelson Holder Ritchie, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah; W. Paul Reeve, "Nelson Holder Ritchie," Century of Black Mormons.

[9] John Mills Whitaker, Memorandum from the daily journal of John M. Whitaker (December 1906 to March 1912), typescript of transcripts from John M. Whitaker journal, 150-151, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[10] W. Paul Reeve, "Nelson Holder Ritchie," Century of Black Mormons.

[11] George Morris Rathburn (1850-1915) and Florence Virginia “Flora” Ball (1858-1926) were both born on 13 September, but eight years apart. They married in Blue Mound, Kansas in 1885 and had four children there: Ivard (1886-1968), George Oakley (1888-1962), Florence Avis (1893-1976), and Zeena Glenn (1897-1988).

[12] “Funeral Services of Mrs. Rathburn,” The Journal (Logan, Utah) 13 November 1926, 4.

[13] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Cache County, Petersboro Precinct.

[14] R.L. Polk & Co., R. L. Polk & Co.'s Salt Lake City Directory 1910, page 876; R.L. Polk & Co., R. L. Polk & Co.'s Salt Lake City Directory 1911, page 827. 

[15] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City.

[16] Utah, County Marriages, 1871-1941, Annie May Marriage to Ivard Rathburn, 8 February 1911.

[17] Ivard was marked as “NM” (not a member of the LDS Church) when married to Annie May Ritchie by Bishop John M. Whitaker: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Granite Stake, CR 375 8, box 2227, folder 1, image 62, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah

[18] See, W. Paul Reeve, “Elizabeth Bessie Ritchie Rogers,” Century of Black Mormons; and W. Paul Reeve, “Olive Ellen Ritchie Cleverly,” Century of Black Mormons.

[19] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Sugar House Ward, CR 375 8, box 6743, folder 1, image 476, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[20] Flora Rathburn’s obituary states the family moved in 1912; see, “Funeral Services of Mrs. Rathburn,” The Journal (Logan, Utah) 13 November 1926, 4.

[21] Plewe, Brandon. "Quitman Branch (MS)." BYU Studies, Mormon Places, https://mormonplaces.byu.edu/data/entities/450329; Plewe, Brandon. "Peacock SS." BYU Studies, Mormon Places, https://mormonplaces.byu.edu/data/entities/47074; Plewe, Brandon. "Mobile SS." BYU Studies, Mormon Places, https://mormonplaces.byu.edu/data/entities/450310.

[22] Annie May Ritchie Rathburn, Coleman, Alabama, to Annie Cowan Russell Ritchie, Salt Lake City, Utah, 3 December 1911, courtesy Deena Porcaro Hill.

[23] Alabama, U.S., Deaths and Burials Index, 1881-1974; Alabama, Certificate of Death, File No. 381, Form No. 2, Annie May Ritchie Rathburn, microfilm 1,894,093, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[24] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Sugar House Ward, CR 375 8, box 6743, folder 1, image 476, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[25] Annie May Ritchie Rathburn, FindAGrave.com; Ivard Morris Rathburn Sr., FindAGrave.com. Flora Rathburn moved back to Utah, was living with her daughter Zeena in Ogden, died in Salt Lake City, and is buried in Logan. Flora’s funeral services were held in an LDS Church yet no records have been found to prove her membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was likely a well-regarded community member and local members of the LDS faith helped with her services. George Morris Rathburn is buried in Copeland, Alabama where he died.

[26] Annie May Ritchie (KWVZ-JX2) FamilySearch.org.

[27] Devery S. Anderson, ed. The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011), 82, 101-2, 361.

Documents

Click the index tab in the viewer to view all primary source documents available for this person.