For more than 200 years, my father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family has lived in western New York, centered between Canandaigua and Palmyra. Whenever anyone publishes a description of Joseph Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neighborhood and the neighbors who knew him or hired him or harassed him, I scour the writing for familiar names. Surely my ancestors knew or knew of the Smiths, and surely they were aware of gossip about gold plates and a strange new religion in their midst. What did they think of it all? I have no idea. The past is filled with characters like my ancestors who were tickled by the fringes of Mormon history, whose stories we will never know. <\/p>\n
One woman whose life brushed Mormonism is Harriet Rogers Grandin, wife of Egbert Bratt Grandin, who printed the Book of Mormon at Palmyra. <\/p>\n
Eighteen-year-old Harriet married Grandin in December 1828; in November 1829, about midway through the presswork on the Book of Mormon, her first son, Carlton Rogers Grandin, was born. Carlton died about 1835 of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153typhus fever and swelling in his leg,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a diagnosis familiar to the parents of Joseph Smith, who had nursed their son through the same illness a generation earlier.<\/p>\n
Harriet bore five other children \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Mary Sophia (born 1831), Ellen Amanda (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nellie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d born 1833), William Edward (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Willie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d born 1834), Harriet Aurelia (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hattie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d born 1837), and Carlton Pomeroy (born 1840). These children all lived to adulthood.<\/p>\n
Harriet was widowed in 1845; in 1848, still in Palmyra, she married Stephen Titcomb, a widower and relatively wealthy businessman of English birth, living in Waterford Village, far to the east of Palmyra on the Hudson River north of Albany. Harriet and her children moved to Waterford to the large home Stephen shared with his adult children. She lived there until her death in 1875, when her body was returned to Palmyra for burial in the Grandin plot.<\/p>\n
What did Harriet think of Mormonism? Not much, apparently, or at least not often:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mr Brigham Young or Mr Joseph Smith Jun I dont know which I ought to address \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she began an 1856 letter, revealing that she had not followed news of Mormonism even cursorily. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No doubt you have a distinct recollection of Mr E.B. Grandine the man who printed your Bible.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
She went on to outline the course of her life, perhaps exaggerating its difficulties. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am now living with a second husband who is now weary of my children and unwiling to have them with him any longer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Regardless of Mr. Titcomb\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s willingness, Harriet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s children in fact continued to live with the couple until they married, the youngest daughter living under Mr. Titcomb\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roof until she was 37 years old. <\/p>\n
Then she came to the real point of her letter: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The thought occured to me that your people might take pleasure in contributing out of their abundance something which would help me to give my daughters advantages so as to enable them to maintain themselves \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I would like to give them a little more education so as to fit them for teachers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The oldest one has a fine talent for music \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with a little more instruction she could maintain herself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I can imagine how unimpressed Brigham Young would have been by such a plea. In Utah, his own people were ending two years of hunger approaching famine, with a prospect of the first decent harvest in years. Clothing was in such short supply that visitors commented on the near nakedness of many of the Mormons they encountered. Beyond Utah, Brigham struggled with finding the means to bring thousands of American and European Saints to Zion \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this plea from Harriet Titcomb for music lessons was delivered by a mail carrier who would have sped past the Martin and Willie handcart companies in the early weeks of their travel. Despite Harriet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assurance that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we would be thankfull for even a very small favor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and her calculated play on past associations and a bid for sympathy (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153my mind often resorts back to the time your Bible was printed when I was not a Widow and my children fatherless \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), Brigham Young ignored her letter.<\/p>\n
Harriet tried again the year before her death, reminding Brigham Young of her identity as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the wife of E B Grandin. The man who printed your Golden Bible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and asked once more for a donation. Her husband was ill (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 His cure is hopeless, being softening of the brain\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How I would like to visit your people,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she claimed, closing with the realistic admission \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but probably never will.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
So ended Harriet Rogers Grandin Titcomb\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s series of small brushes with Mormonism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For more than 200 years, my father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family has lived in western New York, centered between Canandaigua and Palmyra. Whenever anyone publishes a description of Joseph Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neighborhood and the neighbors who knew him or hired him or harassed him, I scour the writing for familiar names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}