The Scoop from Nauvoo

And May Goes Flying By

It is hard to believe it is the 22nd of May.  Friday will be five weeks since we came to Nauvoo.

Sunday I sent some of you a picture from the Sarah Granger Kimball home.  Hiram Kimball was a wealthy business man in Nauvoo and was attracted to this beautiful girl Sarah, who had moved to the area with her family from Kirtland when she was 15.
Hiram was 34 and Sarah was 21. They lived in the home Hiram had bought earlier to live in but had now fixed up suitable for his new bride.

Sarah later had hired a seamstress lady, Miss Margaret Cook, to sew for her and they began to consider how they could combine their efforts to perhaps make new shirts for the men working on the temple. Miss Cook said she had the skills but had no means.  Sarah told her she would furnish the material if Miss Cook would sew the shirts.  They felt some of their neighbors might be interested in helping too, combining their means and efforts. The neighboring sisters met in Sarah's parker (March 4, 1842) to organize a Ladies' Society.  After a constitution was written they presented it Joseph Smith who said "Tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord, and He has something better for the than a written constitution." He said, "I will organize the women under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood."

He later said, " The church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized." Hence began the Relief Society. First organized officially on March 17, 1842, and is now the largest, and longest lived women's in the world.

From small beginnings can come great things.

Sarah's husband was later baptized a member.  Sarah went with the body of the church when they left Nauvoo with her children, some family members, and her mother and without Hiram who was on an extended business trip. He joined her later.

She led a very public life in Utah. She loved politics. She was, in 1882, an active participant in the Utah Constitutional Convention. In 1891 she was a leader in the Utah Woman Suffrage Association. She always "said what she felt forcibly and always with effect." She was almost 80 when she died.

Hiram, at 62, and some others were killed when a boiler blew up aboard a small boat transporting them to a ship which would have taken them to serve a mission in Tahiti.

'Nite for now, Sister Boyle (Mom, Grandma)