“I was brought up a Baptist,” Eva Rowe Salway wrote to a granddaughter in 1946, “and was always interested in religion, but somehow I could not swallow hell, and the three-in-one doctrine. … After my marriage I stopped that church and tried many others.”

Eva tried Evangelist meetings, and, after leaving her native Guernsey for Southampton, England, she went to the Church of England. She was bitterly disappointed when the preacher of one congregation told her she was “saved,” when she felt no different from before. “I left his home broken-hearted. I had asked for bread, and he had given me a stone. … When my brother was baptized, I felt that if I was baptized I would then feel saved. Perhaps that was what I was missing. I was baptized, but I was in deeper despair than ever after the excitement and novelty was over. I took a class in Sunday school, went to prayer meeting and took part, but gradually fell away.”

She again“went to the Baptist church, but they talked over my head. Went to Plymouth Brethren – I think I liked them best as they seemed more sincere as a congregation. I did not bother with the Catholics then, as I had often gone as a visitor with friends. I tried Wesleyan – they had a good choir, a good preacher and was close to home. … Then I went to an undenominational church. … How I longed for a church! I was surrounded by them, but could find none for me.”

Then, – you see it coming – “One day [in 1905] a tract was left at my door. My little hired help brought it to me. I saw the word ‘Mormon’ – that was enough for me. I gave it to the baby to play with.” A few weeks later another tract was left, and again the hired girl handed it to Eva. She glanced at it and noticed the first Article of Faith. She was struck by the phrase “separate personalities,” a note that was often added next to that Article of Faith in printed tracts of the early 1900s. “Wasn’t that what I was unconsciously looking for? Mormon or not, I read more. … The next time the Elders called I opened the door. I was afraid to let a Mormon enter so we talked at the door. He told me of the Angel Moroni, of Joseph Smith, and other things, and invited me to a meeting.

“I told Grandpa [her husband Alfred] about it when he came home. He laughed and said, ‘What? Another one?’ but he did not mind me going to meeting the following Sunday. The meeting house was a long way from home. I walked quickly, and as I walked I prayed for wisdom. I prayed to know if this church was right. As I entered the building, I knew I had found the true church. I was the first one there. … The meeting following was wonderful. I learned something every sentence and knew it was all true.

“A few weeks after, I was baptized in the Southampton public baths, in a white blouse and holland skirt. Grandpa was there. I have never once doubted but that this was the only true gospel.”

So Eva began her new life as a Latter-day Saint. Soon her husband Alfred was converted, and they raised their nine children as Latter-day Saints. The family moved every year or two to take care of family members or for work opportunities – Alfred was a barber and could use his skills wherever they went. They were living in the city of Poole, Dorset, on the south coast of England when World War I broke out. Business declined rapidly, as so many of Alfred’s customers were joining the army. So, leaving his family for a while, he followed the soldiers to Bovington Camp, a long-established infantry training center in Dorset. His barbering business there thrived, and soon he sent for his family … but he could find no housing for his family other than a gypsy wagon parked on the edge of the camp, so Eva and the children camped along with him for a time. Then some of Eva’s family followed them there, and they built a small building – the “clock hut” – where they both lived and carried on a watch repair business.

Alfred was in his mid-30s and had a large family, but the Salways knew he would be needed in the army. So Alfred taught Eva the barbering business – and after he went into service, she carried on the trade.

Eva carried on in other ways. When most of the missionaries from North America were called home, and most of the men in the British Mission were called into service, Eva accepted an appointment as a local missionary. She took her calling seriously. She tracted in the neighborhood, and far afield – her son Jack (named for John Barlow, the missionary who had called at Eva’s home shortly before her son’s birth) remembered that his first missionary activity was to accompany his mother on a long bicycle ride into Wales, to distribute tracts.

She started a Sunday School, too, first meeting in the woods near Bovington Camp, and later in the clock hut. Her first classes were composed of children from nearby cottages, some Gypsy children, and a few soldiers from the military camp itself. Soon soldiers from the camp began joining the Church. Conference President James Gunn McKay visited the Sunday School, and seeing the success Eva was having, he formed a branch from her Sunday School – ordaining one of the soldier-converts a priest, and Eva’s son Jack a deacon. The branch could now add the Sacrament to Eva’s lessons and the members’ talks. The branch continued to grow – Eva taught the adults in the family kitchen, and her oldest child (also named Eva – the toddler who was given the first missionary tract to play with) taught a children’s class, with the children seated on the floor in the bedroom. As more people continued to join the Church, the branch’s priest baptized them in a river running through the forest near the camp.

As the Great War finally ended, Alfred was discharged from the army. He and Eva had decided to emigrate to Canada, and Alfred went ahead to establish a home there, leaving Eva and the children to carry on alone for another year. Bovington Camp shrank, no longer receiving new troops to train, and Eva’s barbering business shrank along with it. She sold the business, then no longer had any income at all. She needed to sell the clock hut to be able move her family to Canada, but in the business lull following the war, she had little chance for a sale.

Nevertheless, after fasting to know what to do, Eva traveled to Poole to book the family’s passage to Canada. On her long walk to the train station, and then on the train to Poole, the words “three weeks” … “three weeks” kept running through her mind. When she reached the travel agent’s office, he greeted her with the words, “I am glad you have come. There is a good boat leaving in three weeks.” “I’ll take it,” Eva said. “Have you sold your hut?” the agent asked. “No, but I will.” Eva did find a buyer and collected her money in time to catch that boat three weeks later.

Eva never slowed down. Her family continued to grow – her last three children were born in Cardston. She was busy in both Relief Society and genealogical work from the moment she arrived in Cardston. Alfred died in 1955; in 1959, Eva wrote of her Church service, regretting that she had had to give up her teaching because of ill health. “I am now 77 years old. I rode a bicycle all my life up to three years ago, when I moved into town and no longer needed one.” Eva passed away in 1963.

Eva Rowe Salway is another of the countless examples of Latter-day Saint women who push forward the work of the Church without a lot of fanfare, without neglecting their families, without high office. She raised and provided for her family, she served in women’s traditional callings in the Church – Sunday School and Relief Society teacher, genealogical work. Indeed, her mission call, coming as it did in response to the shortage of elders able to serve in that time and place, was the only unusual calling she had – and even that calling became common for women during her lifetime. Not many of us, though, can report that we converted an entire branch.

Photos, top to bottom: Eva Rowe Salway, in 1917; an image from a missionary tract published in England, in 1904, like the one delivered to Eva (note the annotation “separate personalities”); the Bovington Camp branch raised by Eva, in about 1917; Eva and Alfred and their family in Cardston in the early 1920s (two of their children died in 1918; the timing is right for the flu pandemic, but Eva’s papers don’t say that was the cause); and Alfred and Eva in the early 1950s.