Pioneer Stories - James & Mary Ann Mellor

James and Mary Ann Mellor were faithful, long-time members of the Church who had been too poor to emigrate until assistance was provided through the Perpetual Emigration Fund. They were the parents of nine children, seven still living, ages 2 to 16. Mary Ann was about seven months pregnant when they arrived in Liverpool to begin their journey.
   
James Mellor had grown up in a very poor family with a father who was nearly deaf and a mother who was nearly blind. Of necessity, he began working as a yarn winder to help support the family when he was only six years old. He continued working various jobs in the fabric industry for most of his life in England.
   
During his early life, James had many narrow escapes with death. Once he was run over by a mail coach. Another time he was nearly burned to death. Yet another time he fell headfirst into a cistern. Soon after he was married, he had a serious factory accident. "The machine that I was working at . . . flew all to pieces," he wrote, "and the spikes caught me in many parts of my body. . . . I was lying all covered with blood as though torn all to pieces. . . . They took me off to the infirmary or hospital. . . . Their patients and all that saw me said, 'That poor fellow will not trouble [us] long.' For three days and nights I lay and heard the clock strike its rounds and tell the hour, for I could not close my eyes to sleep for pain."
   
Concerning these brushes with death, James later wrote, "[It] seems as though . . . the Devil was trying to destroy me, but that God in His mercy was determined to save me for some other purpose." That purpose began to make itself clear in 1844, when James was 25 years old. He had moved from Leicester to Yorkshire the previous year to work at wool combing, and there he first heard the elders preach the gospel. He investigated earnestly: "I read the Bible through from Genesis to Revelations, and the more I read the more I was convinced of the truth of the things they preached. . . . I went regular on Sunday to hear the Elders and came home and told my wife the things they preached. [I] read to her out of the New Testament . . . to show her it was the same as was preached by the Apostles of Jesus Christ."

Both James and Mary Ann Mellor were baptized in April 1844. They soon moved back home to Leicester, where James thought his friends would eagerly receive the gospel because, in his words, "it [was] so plain and scriptural." To his great surprise, most of them disapproved. "Many of my friends began to oppose me and looked shy at me as if I were something to be shunned," he recalled.
   
For a few years the Mellors went back and forth between Yorkshire and Leicester as James searched for employment. While in Yorkshire, he was appointed to watch over the Saints in the Bradford area. After returning to Leicester in 1850, he was ordained an elder and set apart to preside over the nearby Blaby Branch. Two years later he was released and appointed president of the Leicester Branch, a position he held until he emigrated. While serving in these callings, he said, "I preached in and around all the villages," walking many miles each Sunday to do so. Some he baptized, and many more, in his words, he "reclaimed."
   
When the family was finally preparing to emigrate in 1856, Mary Ann grieved because of concern for her widowed father. Her oldest daughter, 16-year-old Louisa, recalled: "The hardest [part] was to leave my poor grandfather. . . . He was a good man. He wept and offered money to his daughter, my dear mother, but relief was offered too late, for the gospel was more than anything else."

Mary Ann became ill after arriving in Liverpool and gave premature birth to conjoined twin daughters. They lived only seven hours, and Mary Ann was so near  death herself that she could not board the ship. She told her husband to leave her and take the children to America, saying she would go later.

The Mellor family faced an agonizing dilemma. Their ship, the Horizon, would be carrying the last large company of Latter-day Saint emigrants to leave England that season. Unless the Mellors got on board, they would have to wait until another year to emigrate. But waiting would create other predicaments. The family had already given up their home and employment in Leicester and had sold most of their possessions. Having lived in poverty all their lives, they did not have the resources to wait out another year.

Another problem with waiting was the uncertainty of future emigration opportunities. Despite being industrious, the Mellors had not been able to save enough money to pay for the passage of their nine family members to America. Only by receiving a loan from the Perpetual Emigration Fund were they able to emigrate in 1856. There was no guarantee that such assistance would be available the next year. In 1856 the fund had been in debt—and its availability in doubt—until Brigham Young sold some of his own property to help replenish it.

Even in her weakened physical condition, Mary Ann Mellor was so committed to Zion that she saw only one way to resolve this dilemma. Although she could hardly bear to have her family leave, particularly in her time of need, she urged her husband to keep their places on the ship. Their passage had been arranged; their possessions were packed and ready for loading; she would go to America, somehow, when she recovered.

James Mellor reluctantly complied with his wife's request and took five of his children to the docks in Liverpool, where they boarded the ship. Two of the children stayed behind—16-year-old Louisa, who would look after her mother, and one of Louisa's 2-year-old twin sisters. Describing that 16th birthday on May 23, 1856, Louisa wrote, "A sad one it was for me, as I was left with a sick mother and a little sister 2 1⁄2 years old, as my father had to take the rest of the family and go aboard."

Louisa did not know when she would see her father again. She likely thought it would be at least a year—and maybe never. She likely worried that her mother might die, leaving her and her little sister on their own. But then to her great surprise, two days later her father returned to the hospital and said the ship's departure had been delayed. The ship had left the dock and was anchored in the River Mersey, but it would not be tugged out to sea until later that day. Although Mary Ann was still seriously ill, she decided she did not want her family to leave without her after all. Over the doctor's protests, James took her from the hospital on a stretcher and carried her onto the ship. The doctor predicted that sharks would follow the ship until she died. Seeing her condition, the captain predicted she would soon be food for the sharks. Because Mary Ann was in such precarious health, some of the mission leaders who came aboard to bid the Saints farewell administered to her. In the blessing, Elder Cyrus Wheelock told Mary Ann that her mission on earth was not completed and that she would "see her seed in Zion."  The family sailed to Zion together after all.

Mary Ann regained some of her strength, but during the handcart journey she often felt like quitting. Her 16-year-old daughter Louisa recalled the following experience that gave her mother both the physical and spiritual strength to continue another day:

"My mother, still being weak, finally gave up and said she could go no further. The company could not wait for her, so she bade my father goodbye and kissed each one of the children Godspeed. Then my mother sat down on a boulder and wept. I told my [14-year-old] sister Elizabeth to take good care of the twins and the rest of the family, and that I would stay with mother. I went a few yards away and prayed with faith that God would help us, that He would protect us from devouring wolves, and asked that He would let us reach camp. As I was going back to where Mother was sitting, I found a pie in the road. I picked it up and gave it to mother to eat. After resting awhile we
 started on our journey, thanking God for the blessings. A few miles before we reached camp, we met my father coming out to meet us. We arrived in camp at 10:00 P.M. Many times after that, Mother felt like giving up and quitting, but then she would remember how wonderful the Lord had been to spare her so many times, and offered a prayer of gratitude instead."