I asked my Dad last night if I was a essentially giving a 100 years late eulogy, as I wasn’t given a ton of direction with this. He’s simply asked me to share things about Hannah’s life that perhaps go unnoticed.
I’ll admit it’s rather intimidating to be asked to speak about someone I’ve never met. My dad told me this morning that Sister Mendenhall remembers Grandma Hannah, and perhaps some of you may also. Although I’ve never met her, I’ve invested a great deal of time in becoming well acquainted with her.
Hannah was not a stranger in our home growing up. My youngest sister shares her name (which is actually a family name on my Mom’s side as well). A picture of Hannah hanging her wash with her experience and revelation documented beneath it was hung on our wall. In fact, I remember sharing that quote while holding up that picture as a primary talk I gave while growing up. Also, Hannah’s autobiography was always floating around the house. I finally sat down and read it in Junior High and afterwards claimed it as my own, keeping it with my scriptures and talking it to church with me every Sunday. Somewhere between then and university, I lost that copy - so last year I took the time to compile my own copy of her history and to complement it with other related histories, like that of John Lye, Sarah, and Jesse and Raymond Knight. So, although I’ve never met her, I have definitely come to love her and am deeply humbled to be asked to speak about her magnificent life.
Early on in her history, Hannah notes that she caught what she called “black canker” at the age of 2. From what I can tell, this is what diphtheria was called back then, referring to the hallmark sign ulcerous coating in the back of the mouth and throat. The diphtheria toxin can also affect the heart, causing abnormal heart rhythms and even heart failure. It can also affect the nerves and lead to paralysis in parts of the body. So when Hannah spoke of being an unhealthy child, she very likely was suffering from the side effects of her bout with diphtheria.
During her growing up years, it was clear that she had to learn to work as her family suffered from a poverty that often left them hungry. I can think of two stories off the top of my head where Hannah’s testimony was strengthened by the charity of others who had brought her and her family food in a time of desperate need. And although her family may have struggled, she grew up into a young woman with an incredibly powerful testimony that kept her safe and helped her direct her course through her young adult years.
At age 18, Hannah moved to Salt Lake City to work at the Walker House Hotel. She often describes herself as being “green” and naive upon moving to the city from her home town of Lehi. This was something I definitely related to when I turned 18 and moved to Edmonton for school from small-town Raymond. The working environment of the Hotel definitely proved to be an eyeopening experience for Hannah as she observed fluid morals, cruel and unrighteous attempts at harming her or other young girls, and the ease at which so many denied or condemned the gospel. Yet Hannah was steadfast, held firm to her testimony, and completed her work at the hotel unharmed and all the wiser.
The next way Hannah displayed her firm testimony through story in her autobiography was her acceptance and faith in plural marriage. I’ll admit I know very little about the necessity and implementation of plural marriage in that segment of church history, but Hannah makes it very clear in her words that this was a law that was upheld by the truly faithful and righteous. She states “I had always said I would not marry a man who would not live plural marriage, but I wanted to be the first wife.” The year before she married John Lye, Hannah also had many spiritual experiences that prepared her for entering into a plural marriage.
January 1878 was when Hannah married John Lye. Hannah was only 22 years old. John was 29 and Sarah was 32. John and Sarah already had had 5 children, 4 of which were living, the oldest being 6 and the youngest 5 months old. 9 months later, Hannah gave birth to her first child, Frank.
For roughly 10 years, John Lye, Sarah, and Hannah lived without any trouble from the state due to their plural marriage. At this point, Hannah was 32 years old, and had had 5 children, 4 of which were living. So that John Lye could live “legally” and not be kept in prison, Hannah took her children and went on what she called “the underground.” During the next 14 years of her life, all while still having babies, Hannah took her mother’s name and moved a total of 36 times. In fact, when grandpa, or to me, great-grandpa George was born, Hannah was forced to move again when he was only nine days old.
In 1898, John Lye accepted a call to move to southern Alberta. He took Sarah and their family with him and they settled in Magrath in 1899. Hannah followed two years later on her own and settled in Raymond. Worth noting is that only three men can be proved to have brought more than one wife to Canada. Although John Lye and Hannah Simmons are included on this list, it should be clear that John Lye brought Sarah up, and that Hannah followed later on her own. The majority of men who had been practicing it simply took one wife with them and left the other(s) in Utah, visiting them at the time of the LDS General Conference in April and October. Others never returned to see the wives they left behind. I’m so grateful Hannah had the courage to venture up here. I love this land so very much and our history could be so different if she hadn’t.
When Hannah moved up, her oldest son was 23 and youngest daughter was 6. I’ve always been proud to say that my ancestors helped settle Raymond. My dad would blame it on what he calls “Raymonditis” or an unhealthy love and obsession for a self-obsessed small town. I disagree. Although Raymond brags about many things, it often forgets one of the neatest things about itself: that it was settled by the son of a man who was close personal friends to Joseph Smith. Jesse Knight, the founder of Raymond, was the son of Newel Knight, a close friend of Joseph Smith. After the Smiths, the Knight family may be the “second family of the Restoration” as they believed and accepted Joseph’s claims before Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, or David Whitmer knew him. They are also what I would call “lesser known” because they never wavered in their faith or loyalty to the church like several other key players in the Restoration. Comparable maybe to Alma’s son Shiblon, the faithful middle son who never wavered and who is only addressed in a small chapter in the Book of Mormon. Newel was baptized early on, was called as one of the first branch presidents of the church, and served on several high councils. I could definitely go on, as I find this aspect of town history quite fascinating, but that’s for a different speech or eulogy.
It is this part of her life that I wish more was documented, however she only briefly summarizes her life from when she settled in Raymond to the end. I’ve searched two of Raymond’s history books and felt so ripped off that not more about my great-great-grandma is written. Don’t they know how amazing she was? Perhaps more isn’t said because Hannah and her family only lived in Raymond for roughly 10-11 years. It was around 1912 that they moved to Hill Spring.
Although little was said, one thing is certain - Hannah worked as a midwife for the town, delivering hundreds of babies into the world. A testament to Hannah’s skills and intelligence in the delivering of babies is the fact that Aunt Wanda lived. George and Ellen’s very first child, Wanda, was born very premature, weighing in at only 3 lbs. This weight is consistent with being only 30 weeks gestation, or 10 weeks premature. Most babies born before 32 weeks need to have highly specialized treatment and breathing assistance. Grandma Hannah was able to keep Wanda alive by closely watching her and keeping her warm in the oven of the coal burning stove.
I realize this is a poor place to end things, but I believe from this point in her history, many of you may have had stories told to you by your parents and are even more familiar than myself, as I’ve said Hannah documented little from this point on. I hope I was able to maybe point out something interesting you hadn’t realized before or at least not bore you completely. I have a very strong testimony in the power of not only doing family history work, but in the power of taking the time to KNOW our family history and the history of members of our family. If you think about it, when a newly married couple stands up from the altar in the temple and is asked to look at the reflections in the mirrors, which are symbolic of their posterity and ancestry, there would be no reflections to the future without the mirror behind them reminding them of the past. Although they may not be here with us today, our ancestors play a key role in our lives and in the lives of our posterity.
I leave you with a quote from President Joseph F. Smith that I inscribed in my parents copy of Hannah’s autobiography I printed.
“I believe we move and have our being in the presence of heavenly beings and of heavenly messengers. We are not separate from them… we are closely related to our kindred, to our ancestors… who have preceded us into the spirit world. We can not forget them; we do not cease to love them; we always hold them in our hearts, in memory, and thus we are associated and united to them by ties that we can not break… If this is the case with us in our finite condition, surrounded by our mortal weaknesses, … how much more certain it is… to believe that those who have been faithful, who have gone beyond… can see us better than we can see them; that they know us better than we know them… we live in their presence, they see us, they are solicitous for our welfare, they love us now more than ever. For now they see the dangers that beset us; … their love for us and their desire for our well being must be greater than that which we feel for ourselves.”
I have a testimony…
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