I posted this on the She Shall Be an Ensign Facebook page this morning. I’ve added a bit of a detective story at the end as a bonus for Keepa readers.

In stories here, I have focused on moments when individual women were active participants in forwarding the mission of the Church: a woman might be the wife or mother of some prominent man, but it is *her* acts, *her* words, that matter here.

This story, however, has to be a little different (and a little longer, to present the context), because I don’t know anything specific about Janet Russell Hetherington’s activities as a Latter-day Saint. I know she was born about 1836 in Lanarkshire, Scotland; that she married in 1866; that the family emigrated to New Zealand in 1879 (Janet gave birth during the journey, and gave the name of the ship to her daughter for a middle name). This scene of the town of Huntly and the Waikato River on New Zealand’s north island would have been familiar to Janet in a less modern form. In June, 1917, the local newspaper reported: “DEATHS. Hetherington.– On June 3, at Ngaruawahia, Janet, beloved wife of Robert Hetherington: in her 83rd year. The funeral will leave her late residence for the Huntly Cemetery to-day (Wednesday), at 1 p.m.”

That’s pretty much all I know of her.

In 1918, after Janet’s death, the Hetherington family played a small but important role in Mormon history. For a number of years, the entry of missionaries into New Zealand had been severely restricted. Theoretically, the New Zealand government would allow the Church to bring in one new missionary whenever an outgoing missionary returned home. But during World War I, the New Zealand government seemed reluctant to allow new elders, and by 1918 there were so few missionaries that the Church could barely function. Work by Senator/Apostle Reed Smoot in Washington, and by James N. Lambert, mission president in New Zealand, had failed to persuade the government to allow incoming missionaries.

Then, on February 7, 1918, James Russell Hetherington, Janet’s son, a prominent farmer and businessman in the Huntly region, involved himself by writing a letter to a family friend: G.W. Russell, Minister of Internal Affairs at the New Zealand capital.

“It has recently come under my notice that some difficulty has arisen between your Department and the N.Z. Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, usually referred to as Mormons … I am not, as you know, a member of the Church referred to, and never have been, but in this district there are several very highly esteemed citizens who have for many years been staunch adherents of the church. My mother also, whom you knew well, was baptized in the Church over 20 years ago and remained a staunch adherent until her death a few months ago. You will recognise therefore, that I have had opportunities of becoming personally acquainted with most of the Elders labouring in this District for many years.”

“Their Church has been a greater factor for good in this district than any other church or denomination during the last 20 years. You know, Sir, that I would not lightly make such a statement to you, and when I state that I am not even in the habit of receiving visits from them since my Mother’s death, you will realise the feelings which have actuated me to address you on this question …

“Respect for the memory of my dead Mother compels me to appeal to you on behalf of a people who are not appreciated in New Zealand only because their teachings are not properly understood.” He asked that new elders be allowed to enter New Zealand to replenish the ranks of the mission.

The next day, Mr. Russell responded to Janet’s son: “I have received your letter, and note the good words you are able to speak in favour of this denomination.

“In reply I may say that I have given instructions that the Mission is to be allowed to maintain its present strength by bringing to the Dominion as many Elders as may be necessary to replace those whose time is up.”

Probably the letter by Janet’s son was not the only factor in the Minister’s decision, but that letter – written to honor a Latter-day Saint mother and the people she had chosen to join more than 20 years earlier, was *one* factor in aiding the Church to progress – even to stand even – in New Zealand.

Fifteen or more years ago I became interested in the 1879 efforts of the U.S. State Department’s efforts to curtail Mormon immigration into the United States. The effects of that effort were especially long-lasting where New Zealand was concerned – even into World War I, the State Department’s files show that New Zealand’s practicing of restricting missionary entrance into that company were based in part on that old 1879 request by the United States.

The shortage of missionaries in New Zealand increased during that war, in part because the United States did not want its military-age men leaving the United States, and New Zealand, along with the rest of the British Commonwealth, desired to have the United States enter the war – able-bodied young men preaching religion instead of carrying weapons were not looked upon with favor.

So I noticed when I found the pair of letters to and from J.R. Hetherington when they turned up as part of this ongoing effort to send elders to New Zealand. The mentions of Mr. Hetherington’s mother were especially interesting … but there was a problem, from the point of view of telling anything about her personal story.

He doesn’t tell us Mama Hetherington’s name.

Even though J.R. Hetherington tells us he was not LDS, I still turned to Family Search looking for him as the first step in identifying Mama – maybe J.R. joined the Church later, maybe he had LDS nieces and nephews who eventually did temple work for him. Since it is unprofitable to search Family Search with initials, I plugged in simply the surname Hetherington and the death place New Zealand – I wouldn’t have tried that had the name been more common – and scanned down the hits, hoping to find a man in the right generation whose given names were J– R–. No luck. There were too many of them.

I did the same sort of searching on Ancestry.com, with the same non-results. The search was simply too vague.

Next I thought of the New Zealand Mission magazine from that era, Te Karere. Maybe Mama’s passing was noted in that magazine, since she was such a long-term member of the Church. The Church History Library has scanned all those old mission papers and posted them at Archive.org, making searching easy. But in 1917, it turns out, Te Karere was entirely a Maori publication. The Hetherington name did not appear in a search.

Okay, maybe Google could help me identify J.R. Hetherington so I could research him and perhaps find his mother’s name that way. There were hits on “J.R. Hetherington,” and the search produced a few place names associated with his family. I kept track of those. I searched again with combinations of the family name, the place names, and Mormon terms. More hits, more place names, more potential helps, but nothing definite.

Next I turned to PapersPast, the online newspaper database maintained by the National Library of New Zealand. I tinkered with the search there, looking for the name Hetherington (it’s surprisingly common, after all), and other search terms I had used in Google. Too many hits to open and read them all, but it still seemed worth looking more closely.

J.R. Hetherington had referred to his mother as having died in recent months; he wrote his letter early in 1918, so I set the newspaper search parameters for 1916-1917, and started scrolling down the list of hits, opening any article that seemed to refer to a death. There were quite a number of such articles – Hetherington soldiers died bravely on the battlefields of France; some recently deceased had lived on Hetherington Road; Miss Hetherington, a popular local soprano, sang at numerous funerals.

And then, there it was, in the middle of a long column of death notices:

.

.

That seemed so very promising – Huntly and Ngaruawahia were both places I had seen associated with J.R. Hetherington on Google searches – that I immediately went back to Family Search and Ancestry.com and Google and ran most of the searches I had already tried … but this time with one or both of the given names Janet (Jane, Jeannette, Jean, Jeannie, etc.) and Robert, and eventually with J.R.’s full name – James Russell – and found the family group and pointers to genealogical sources, searching the internet for Janet just as I would if I were looking for my own grandmother. I’m disappointed at not yet finding a baptismal date for her – she appears in Family Search by name only when temple work for family members or through the extraction program has been done in recent years, but I have not yet discovered a full Family Search record for Janet herself. It may be there, but I haven’t found it. Sooner or later, I will look for membership rolls of the New Zealand Mission, and may eventually find Janet’s baptism date.

The first trick in doing Mormon or women’s history is noticing when a Mormon or a woman shows up in the records. And then the fun really begins.