Biography

When Latter-day Saint pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley at the peak of summer in 1847, they planted what few crops the short growing season could sustain. By the next spring, acres of tender grains and vegetables blanketed the landscape. The James family—parents Isaac and Jane E. Manning and sons Sylvester (10) and Silas (2)—added to this season of anticipation by welcoming their first daughter on May 8, 1848. Midwife Patty Sessions, who also attended Silas’s delivery, assisted with the birth. “Put black Jane to bed with a daughter,” Sessions recorded in her diary.[1] Jane and Isaac named their baby Mary Ann.

Mary Ann’s birth captured a time of cautious optimism for the James family. After years of persecution and displacement, Latter-day Saints believed they had founded “Zion,” a religious refuge that offered peace and unity.[2] Jane and Isaac James held to this promise of Zion. Like other Latter-day Saints, they sought religious self-determination and prosperity. As one of a small number of Black Latter-day Saints, the James family likely also hoped that Zion would not abide the familiar prejudices they encountered elsewhere.

Like other children born into Latter-day Saint families, Mary Ann would have received a baby blessing from a bishop or church elder, although no record of Mary Ann’s blessing could be discovered in surviving sources.[3] This ritual named and recognized children as new members of their religious communities and invoked spiritual and physical blessings to follow the child throughout their lifetime.[4] Some girls in Mary Ann’s ward, for example, received blessings to “become a Mother in Israel that [they] may raise up sons and daughters to thee.”[5]

These milestones would have fortified Mary Ann’s belonging in her Latter-day Saint community.

Mary Ann spent her infancy and early childhood in Salt Lake City’s Eighteenth Ward where her parents worked for church President Brigham Young. Despite steady employment, the realities of settling an isolated, arid region brought seasons of hunger for the James family. Mary Ann was just a few weeks old when a plague of crickets threatened the once-promising harvest. As crickets devoured the newly planted crops, Mary Ann’s father Isaac likely took to the fields alongside his neighbors to drive off the pests with any means they could devise. With a newborn at home, Jane likely joined church-wide efforts of prayers and fasting to save the harvest. As an answer to their prayers, countless seagulls amassed in the fields and devoured the crickets, saving the crops from complete destruction.[6]

Yet for periods of Mary Ann’s early childhood, plagues would return. “We were in a prosperous condition,” her mother Jane recalled, “until the grasshoppers and crickets came along carrying destruction wherever they went, laying our crops to the ground, striping the trees of all their leaves and fruit, bringing poverty and desolation throughout this beautiful valley.” Yet the loss did not compare to Jane’s sorrow at “hear[ing] my little ones crying for bread, and [having] none to give them.”[7] By the mid-1850s, these “little ones” included Mary Ann’s two younger sisters, Miriam (b. 1850) and Ellen Madora (b. 1853).[8] In the spring of 1854, Jane delivered a premature son, Isaac, who lived just one day.[9]

Despite their tender ages, seven-year-old Mary Ann and her siblings shouldered an economic and social label that no white Latter-day Saint child would carry. An 1855 document detailing the occupants of church president Brigham Young’s household finds “Isaac James, wife & children” under the title of “Help.”[10] Within a year, however, the James family would leave this arrangement.

As she grew, Mary Ann would have learned domestic skills—cleaning, laundry, cooking, childcare—from her mother. When Mary Ann was about eight years old, the family moved to the First Ward in the southeast corner of Salt Lake City. With a plot of land of their own, the James family raised crops and acquired a few animals, including oxen, hogs, and chickens.[11] As a growing figure in the family economy, Mary Ann likely spent many early mornings milking cows, gathering eggs, and feeding chickens. As the oldest daughter, her labor provided substantial support to her mother.

Jane’s fidelity to her Latter-day Saint faith suggests that she would have led Mary Ann and her siblings in the everyday devotions of prayer, hymn-singing, and church attendance. As a six-year-old, Mary Ann may have witnessed her brother Silas’s baptism and probably looked forward to the day when she would do the same. Mary Ann became eligible for baptism in 1856, but the family’s relocation to the First Ward may have complicated the timing of this ritual.

Their move also coincided with a period of intense religious fervor known as the Mormon Reformation—a movement that culminated in the re-baptism of many Latter-day Saints. On its heels, tensions between the church leaders and the US government boiled over into the Utah War of 1857-1858. Although this conflict did not result in bloodshed, thousands of Latter-day Saints endured displacement and economic stress. In many cases, these events disrupted regular church services and frustrated record-keeping efforts. Mary Ann was likely baptized during this period between 1856 and 1857, but the congregational record of baptisms abruptly ends just one month before her eighth birthday.[12]

In some ways, the abilities Mary Ann developed as a child and young adult reflected her mother’s experiences. In addition to daily household chores, Jane probably taught Mary Ann how to weave cloth, sew clothes, and piece quilts.[13] Perhaps Mary Ann herself assumed the role of teacher and minder to her younger siblings. By 1860, twelve-year-old Mary Ann would have two more siblings: Jesse Boam (b. 1856) and Vilate (b. 1859).[14] As an adolescent, Mary Ann’s capabilities would have proved useful in obtaining paid work outside the home. Like her mother, Mary Ann may have been hired to provide domestic help in another household.[15] Or, perhaps Mary Ann remained home with her parents and siblings. It would be a few more years before Sylvester would leave home to marry, but until then, the James home would never be livelier and more crowded.

While in the First Ward, Mary Ann’s social and educational worlds also expanded, but perhaps in different ways than her peers. Census records from 1860 suggest Mary Ann and her siblings first learned to read and write in the home. In the early decades of territorial Utah, schools operated within a religious domain. Meetinghouses doubled as schoolrooms where Latter-day Saint teachers taught children during the winter months. While most children attended some school, tuition requirements and the demands of home enterprises made attendance sporadic.[16] Of the forty-nine school-aged children in the First Ward in 1860, thirty-six—nearly three-quarters—had received some form of schooling. The four James children in this demographic—Silas, Mary Ann, Miriam, and Ellen—were among the thirteen who had not. Still, the census enumerator who recorded these details indicated that the James children could read and write, suggesting that Mary Ann’s primary education came from her parents, Jane and Isaac.[17]

The absence of the James children from school conveys more than just a gap in education—it suggests a social, economic, and even religious separation from the rest of their peers. It is hopeful to imagine that Mary Ann did have playmates, friends, and confidants among the dozen or so girls her age that resided in the First Ward. If they didn’t meet at school, perhaps the girls mingled at worship services and church socials. Unfortunately for Mary Ann, church programs tailored explicitly for children and young adults did not gain momentum until she reached adulthood.[18] Yet her mother’s regular church attendance and distinction among Latter-day Saints as a servant to Joseph Smith may have opened some social opportunities for Mary Ann.

As Mary Ann got older, however, her social interactions would become increasingly scrutinized. Anti-miscegenation laws in Territorial Utah outlawed interracial marriage, dampening opportunities for Mary Ann to form relationships with other individuals in Salt Lake City.[19] For Latter-day Saints, marriage was the foundation of both earthly and heavenly relationships. Some church members who practiced polygamy justified the practice because it offered unmarried women social legitimacy and economic stability in this life and exaltation in the life after. Yet as Black women, Mary Ann and her sisters would be confined to marrying Black men or remain outside of the realm of material and spiritual safety that both monogamy and polygamy claimed to offer. Even if they married a Black Latter-day Saint, church policy barred them from receiving marriage sealing rituals that would bind their relationship after death.[20]

Mary Ann’s options for employment likewise presented few alternatives outside of domestic and farm labor. By the mid-1860s, however, a steady stream of immigrants and entrepreneurs—Latter-day Saint and otherwise—began to change the religious, racial, and economic makeup of Utah’s towns and cities. Mining towns sprung up seemingly overnight, and the impending railroad junction in Ogden further opened the floodgates for enterprising Americans of all backgrounds. While church president Brigham Young fought to maintain religious and economic isolation, others—including some Latter-day Saints—welcomed a free market untethered from the region’s dominant religion.[21] Mary Ann may have observed these debates with interest and considered what opportunities might be hers if she were to start anew elsewhere. By her eighteenth birthday in 1866, Sylvester had married and moved with his wife Mary Ann Perkins to a nearby lot in the First Ward.[22] Mary Ann would not be far behind.

The timing and circumstances of her departure, along with Mary Ann’s initial destination or place of employment remain a mystery. Perhaps Mary Ann first set out for Ogden to work at one of the town’s many hotels or saloons. She may have gone alone, or perhaps she brought a younger sister along. It’s possible she left with her parent’s blessing, but her departure may have been under more grim circumstances. If Mary Ann endured discrimination or abuse, perhaps leaving Salt Lake City promised an escape from such harm.

By 1870, Mary Ann had a two-year-old son, Isaac, and had a home in the new railroad town of Corinne, Utah.[23] The census worker recorded both mother and son with the last name, Robinson, indicating that Mary Ann had married. The absence of a husband in the household record, however, suggests that he may have worked with the railroad or another transient job.[24]

The 1870 census also obscures a tragic loss. That February, Mary Ann welcomed a second son, Joseph H. Robinson. He would live just three months before succumbing to pneumonia.[25] How would Mary Ann, with an ailing baby in her arms and a toddler at her knee, have endured this alone? Would she have time or means to telegraph her mother a short, desperate plea for help? In Corinne, there would be no visit from the Female Relief Society or ward bishop, but perhaps a friend or neighbor brought food or fetched a doctor.

Although Mary Ann’s circumstances suggest that she distanced herself from her Latter-day Saint faith when she left her family home, Joseph’s worsening condition surely brought this young mother to her knees. Perhaps in the end, Jane did catch the train to Corinne. We can imagine Jane lifting the crying baby from her daughter’s exhausted arms and setting about the room washing and laundering while her daughter slept. Would Jane have been present to console Mary Ann as Joseph took his last breaths, to wipe the tears from her face, or to dress the baby for burial in an unmarked corner of the cemetery? We can hope for such things.

There is no record of Joseph’s burial at the Corinne Cemetery. Nor did The Corinne Daily Reporter mention Joseph Robinson’s passing. Infants born in Utah Territory faced difficult odds, but in places like Corinne, they were particularly vulnerable to diseases such as dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and measles. As a Black woman living alone with two children, Mary Ann would also contend with racial, social, and economic barriers to health care. Contaminated water, close living conditions, and a lack of medical resources would mean that of the six deaths recorded in Corinne in 1870, five would be infants. In nearby Ogden City, where a smallpox epidemic shuttered churches and schools, young children faced similar risks.[26] Mary Ann, likely uneasy of this danger, left Corinne and rejoined her family home in late 1870.

The James household looked different from when Mary Ann moved out three years prior.

Mary Ann’s parents divorced that spring, and Isaac left Utah Territory for other pursuits. Following Isaac’s departure, Jane sold her farm property in the First Ward and relocated to a smaller, more centrally located plot in the Eighth Ward.[27] When Mary Ann and her two-year-old son Isaac returned, she would join a household consisting of her mother Jane, brother Silas (24), brother Jessie (15), sister Vilate (11), and sister Ellen Madora (18), who also had a young daughter of her own.[28] Mary Ann herself was also expecting a baby—a factor that surely influenced her decision to remain close to family.

Under the circumstances, Jane and her children likely cherished Mary Ann’s return. For Mary Ann, these final months of her pregnancy offered a reprieve from hard conditions of the past three years. She may have allowed herself to hope for a future where she could raise her children in good health and prosperity.

In early April 1871, Mary Ann delivered another son whom she named Henry. The delivery may have been a difficult one. Following Henry’s birth, Mary Ann’s condition deteriorated over the course of several days. Henry, too, struggled for breath. Jane may have called on an experienced midwife or nurse to attend to her daughter. Or perhaps she requested a ritual healing blessing from Relief Society sisters or ward elders. Mary Ann, however, would not recover, and passed away on April 9, 1871. Henry followed his mother one week later, succumbing to “lung disease.”[29]

The condition of Mary Ann and her son elicited sympathy from the women in the congregation where her mother Jane attended. Women in the church’s Relief Society had a mandate to care for the poor and needy through donations of food, clothing, and other materials. Many women also trained as midwives and offered both physical and spiritual care to women in confinement. By extension, their presence both at birth and death brought certain death rituals—washing, dressing, and laying out the body, making funeral clothing, etc.—within the scope of their responsibilities.[30]

While we don’t know if the Eighth Ward Relief Society women attended Mary Ann during her confinement and post-partum care, we do know that they recognized the needy condition of the James household. A small receipt tucked within the pages of the Eighth Ward Relief Society Minutes reveals that they paid for Mary Ann and Henry’s burial clothing, coffins, and other funeral expenses.[31] On the day Mary Ann died, these women would dress her in white clothing and lay her out in the coffin before conveying her to the family plot at the Salt Lake City Cemetery. A week later, Mary Ann’s family returned bearing her infant son Henry in a small coffin of his own. Mother and son would rest in the same grave.[32]

There is a persistent unknowability in Mary Ann’s life. The circumstances of her early departure from home and the circumstances of her return home three years later leave a variety of questions unanswered. Her relationship to her faith community is unclear and while there are few things we can be sure of, we know that in death, her Relief Society sisters befitted her as a “mother in Israel,” never again to be parted from her loved ones.

By Cathy Gilmore

[1] Patty Bartlett Sessions and Donna Toland Smart, Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions (Utah State University Press, 1997), 54-55. Sessions had also attended Silas’s delivery under more precarious circumstances when Jane delivered Silas in a temporary camp in present-day Iowa.

[2] Latter-day Saints described Zion as a place “of one heart and one mind,” where they could “dwe[ll] in righteousness; and there [would be] no poor among them.” See Pearl of Great Price, Moses, 7:18.

[3] No record of Mary Ann’s blessing could be discovered within Eighteenth Ward records. With the exception of Sylvester, who was born prior to Jane’s baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only two of the seven blessing records for Jane and Isaac’s remaining children could be discovered. Gaps in ecclesiastical records were not uncommon during the early settlement years in the Salt Lake Valley. Latter-day Saint leaders did not formally organize congregations (i.e. “wards”) in Salt Lake City until 1849—one year after Mary Ann’s birth.

[4] Early Latter-day Saint practices indicate that baby blessings were given to infants as early as eight days old. In Mary Ann’s ward, however, older children were also blessed. See Eighteenth Ward general minutes, 1854-1976 LR 2523 11 LDS Church History Library, 10 Jan 1850. “President Young wished the Wards to have meetings on Sundays for the Blessing of Children, till they were all blessed, that is children under 8 years of age.” For information on the origins of and changes to the baby blessing ritual, see Jonathan Stapley, “Baby Blessing,” in The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (Oxford University Press, 2018), 57-78.

[5] For contemporaneous transcripts of baby blessings from Mary Ann’s ward, see “Eighteenth Ward General Minutes (1854-1976),” 1854-1857 minutes, LR 2523 11, roll 1, LDS Church History Library.

[6] William G. Hartley, “Mormons, Crickets, and Gulls: A New Look at an Old Story,” Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (Summer 1970): 224-39; David B. Madsen and Brigham D. Madsen, “One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison: A Revisionist View of the Seagull ‘Miracle,’” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 30 (Fall 1987): 52-67.

[7] Jane Manning James, “Jane Manning James Autobiography,” Salt Lake City, Utah, ca 1902, MS 4425, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, 7.

[8] United States. 1850 Census. Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, 65.

[9] Birth and death records for Isaac James are inconsistent. Salt Lake and Utah cemetery records list a birth date of July 10, 1851, in Big Cottonwood. However, Salt Lake County Death Records and Utah Death Registers show Isaac living just one day (April 22, 1854-April 23, 1854). See “Utah, Salt Lake County Death Records, 1849-1949,” FamilySearch, Entry for Isaac James and Isaac, 23 April 1854.

[10] A List of President Brigham Young’s Family Residing in the 18^th Ward, 19 March 1855, Brigham Young office files; Miscellaneous Files, 1832-1878, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. The James family are enumerated separately under the title of “Help.” The arrangement to work for Young began about three years prior following the expulsion of Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo following the assassination of their leader Joseph Smith, Jr.

[11] Jesse C. Little, Tax Assessment Rolls (Salt Lake City (Utah) Assessor, 1856), Series 4922, box 1, folder 1, Utah State Archives.

[12] Paul H. Peterson, “The Mormon Reformation of 1856-1857: The Rhetoric and the Reality,” Journal of Mormon History 15 (1989): 59-87; Eighteenth Ward general minutes, 1854-1976 LR 2523 11, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. Of the seven James children eligible for baptism, only two baptismal records (Silas and Jesse Boam) could be discovered in ward records. Gaps in ecclesiastical recordkeeping were not uncommon; circumstantial evidence suggest that all of the James children were baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[13] Quincy D. Newell, Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019), 73; James, “Autobiography,” 7.

[14] United States, 1870 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Ward 1.

[15] Newell, Your Sister in the Gospel, 11-14.

[16] C. Merrill Hough, “Two School Systems in Conflict: 1867-1890,” Utah Historical Quarterly 28, no. 2, 1960.

[17] Enumerators for the1860 United States Census in Utah Territory did not specify whether or not a child was “in school,” but they did indicate whether or not a child had ever attended school, and if the child could not read or write. For numbers cited from First Ward, “school age” is defined as children aged six to sixteen. United States, 1860 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Ward 1.

[18] Lisa Olsen Tait et al., Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization 1870-2024 (The Church Historian’s Press, 2025), 20-23. The Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association (YLMIA) was established in 1870, and the Primary Association for children began in 1878. Both organizations did not enjoy regular, churchwide practice until around 1880.

[19] For a discussion on interracial relationships and their prohibition outlined in Section 4 of “An Act in Relation to Service,” see W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), 144, 170-171.

[20] Brigham Young, February 5, 1852, CR 100 912, Church History Department Pitman Shorthand transcriptions, 2013-2021, Addresses and sermons, 1851-1874, Miscellaneous transcriptions, 1869, 1872, 1889, 1848, 1851-1854, 1859-1863, Utah Territorial Legislature, 1852 January-February, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. While Latter-day Saints taught the doctrine of eternal families, Black church members were denied access to the temple rites that would “seal” their family members together. Mary Ann’s mother Jane would take up this cause. For the last three decades of her life, Jane petitioned church leaders for access to temple rites that would afford her the same blessings as white Latter-day Saints.

[21] For a discussion on the conflict between Brigham Young and laissez-faire capitalist William Godbe, see David Walker, “Godbeites and the Capital of Dissent,” in Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West (The University of North Carolina Press: 2019) 83-113.

[22] Cathy Gilmore, “Sylvester James,” Century of Black Mormons.

[23] United States, 1870 Census, Utah Territory, Box Elder County, Corrine City; MaryAnn gave the surname “Robinson” to the enumerator although it is unclear if a marriage had taken place. Towns like Corrine symbolized this change with the promise of free commerce, a railroad hub, and amusement free from Mormon influence. For more on the forces that shaped these tensions, see: Walker, Railroading Religion.

[24] For a discussion on Mary Ann’s use of the surname, Robinson, to potentially cover illicit activity, see Newell, Your Sister in the Gospel, 94-95; Amy Tanner Thiriot, “Mrs. Nellie Kidd, Courtesan,” Keepapitchinin, the Mormon History Blog, January 6, 2015.

[25] U.S., Federal Census Mortality Schedules, 1850-1885, M1807, Archive Roll Number: 1, 1870, Corinne, Box Elder County, Utah Territory.

[26] U.S., Federal Census Mortality Schedules, 1850-1885, M1807; Archive Roll Number: 1, 1870; mortality numbers extracted from reports in Box Elder, Weber, and Salt Lake counties, ancestry.com. In the Box Elder and Weber counties, infants and children less than ten years old comprised of nearly eight in ten deaths in 1870. Infants in Salt Lake City fared somewhat better, the same populace representing 66% of all deaths.

[27] Elias Smith, Jane E. James v. Isaac James (Salt Lake County Probate Court March 1870); Jane and her children Silas, Jessie, and Vilate moved from the Eighteenth Ward to the Eighth Ward. Jane joined the Eighth Ward Relief Society on November 1, 1870. Eighth Ward Relief Society Minutes and Records (1867-1969), LR 2525 14, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[28] For an account of the Jane E. James household, see United States, 1870 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Ward 8. Mary Ann’s sister Miriam married Joseph Williams and now lived in the nearby Seventh Ward with their two young daughters, Estella Elizabeth and Josephine Isabel; see United States, 1870 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Ward 7. Sylvester and Mary Ann James would remain in the First Ward with their children Henry William and Esther Jane; see United States, 1870 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Ward 1.

[29] Utah, Salt Lake County Death Records, 1849-1949, FamilySearch, entry for Mary Ann Robinson and Isaac, 09 April 1871; Utah, Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Cemetery Records, 1847-1976, FamilySearch, entry for Marie Ann Robinson and Isaac James, 1871. Death record lists no attending physician.

[30] See Susanna Morrill, “Birth and Death Rituals: Women at the Gates of Mortality,” Journal of Mormon History 36, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 128-159.

[31] Eighth Ward Relief Society Minutes and Records (1867-1869), Book ‘A,’ 1867-1877.

[32] Latter-day Saints during this era dressed church members in white burial clothing sewn expressly for this purpose. For church members who had undergone the Endowment ritual in Latter-day Saint temples, the clothing would include sacred robes used in temple rituals. Children and church members who had not participated in this temple ritual may have worn temple underclothing (i.e., a “temple garment”) that did not contain the sacred markings. In 1877 letter of instruction, church president Brigham Young wrote, “[d]ress them in white. If you desire to put a ‘garment’ on them you are at liberty to do so but if it must not have any ‘marks’ on it.” See Brigham Young letter, St. George, Utah to Eliza Cooper, Monroe, Utah, 1877 March 9, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. Utah, Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Cemetery Records, 1847-1976, FamilySearch, Entry for Henry Robinson and Mary Ann, 1871.

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