I want to be saved from everything which hinder[s] my loving the Lord my God with all my heart and soul & strength. O save me in Thine own way – I am blind – helpless – ignorant. In thy light let me see light.

I want to walk according to thy word. May I learn of thee.

– Margaret Hutchinson, December 1842

Margaret Hutchinson was born 3 July 1819 in New Radnor, Powys, on Wales’s border with England. Her family had strong establishment ties and considerably more wealth than most of their neighbors, but like her mother, Margaret leaned toward religious dissenters and away from the established church. Her youthful diary is filled with pious thought and religious turmoil as she struggled to discern and follow the will of God.

In mid-October 1845, Margaret attended a meeting in her neighborhood where Elijah F. Sheets, a Latter-day Saint missionary preached despite threats from the local minister that he would be jailed if he persisted. Margaret sent Elder Sheets a note asking him to call on her; he did, for two or three hours, at the end of which Margaret asked for baptism. In his diary, Elijah notes a bit of skepticism about whether Margaret would be able to live the gospel, due to her family’s standing and the local opposition.

On her side, however, Margaret’s diary entry – the last she recorded – seems calm and sure, very different from the turmoil of earlier entries. Her resolution is firm, and she has already determined to gather with the Saints.

Oct. 12th 1845.

Was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter day Saints by Elder Sheets. I feel thankful that the Lord has opened my heart to receive and obey the fulness of the everlasting gospel. This love has gently led me on even from my infant days. My soul is in his mighty hands. And he shall keep me there and I trust I shall go from strength to strength till I appear before him in Zion. Even to America.

Margaret and Elijah corresponded over the next two weeks, and when Elijah returned to the neighborhood at the end of October Margaret opened her home for him to preach in. After the preaching, the pair strolled around the neighborhood “and talked over matters & things.” “Matters & things” progressed to the point that on December 4 Elijah had a personal interview with Margaret’s father – but does not record the subject nor outcome of their discussion in his diary. At the end of the month, Margaret and Elijah made their ways, separately, to Liverpool. “My harte rejoices to see hurr,” Elijah noted; he found a place for her to stay with an LDS family until their ship was ready to sail. Elijah continued his preaching in the neighborhood during that time; sometimes he took Margaret with him, and sometimes the young couple spent evenings with Wilford and Phoebe Woodruff.

On 16 January 1845, their ship was ready to sail, 45 of the 77 passengers on board being fellow Latter-day Saints. Phoebe Woodruff was returning to America with that company, but Wilford Woodruff was continuing his mission in England, so Wilford and a few other local leaders sailed with them for a few miles, then transferred to another boat to return to Liverpool.

Wilford’s diary describes that brief sail this way:

I went on board the Ship Liverpool with my family & about 40 other Saints. Elders Hedlock, Fielding, Mechacie & myself went out with [th]e ship abot 10 miles. We then took the parting hand with my family & all the saints & returned in a small boat & left them floating before a good breeze. I returned to Liverpool & was vary busy the remaind part of the day.

Elijah’s diary, however, records an incident that Wilford didn’t mention:

Bro Woodruff married me and Miss Margaret Hutchinson of Prestiegn Radnorshire England on borde of said vessil. And I can asshore you that there was but very litel prepperation ore fuss made by either one of us fore the wedding fore we ware married in the very same close that we wore on the pasage over the Sea yet we had a very comfortabell weding. And all things was done in [decency] and in order. And it will be a day long to be remembered.

The first part of the ocean voyage was stormy, but the company was able to hold several meetings on deck in the latter part of the trip. After just over two months at sea, the ship approached New Orleans, but as a steamer towed the ship over the sandbars at the mouth of the Mississippi, their ship struck another ship, causing severe damage. Finally the company landed on 25 March. There they learned for the first time that Nauvoo was in the process of being deserted, its people fleeing west and its temple abandoned.

Still, Margaret and Elijah boarded a riverboat with a few dozen of the Saints and they proceeded to Nauvoo, reaching the city on 6 April. “Oure eyes soon coot sight of the Temple of the Lord,” Elijah recorded; “it looked grand to me after being away fore near two years in England.” Grand though it may have looked, “It did not seem much like home either as the Saints were leaving dayle.”

Back in England, Margaret’s extended family were aware of, or suspected, her departure with the Mormon emigrants. On 3 February, while Margaret was a few weeks into her ocean crossing, her uncle William Wordsworth, husband to Margaret’s aunt Mary Hutchinson – the poet whose lines “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar” figure our premortal existence – had received word of his niece’s disappearance and sought information from his American publisher, Pennsylvanian Henry Hope Reed:

Do you know anything of a wretched set of religionists in your country, Superstitionists I ought to say, called Mormonites, or latter-day saints? Would you believe it? a niece of Mrs. Wordsworth’s has just embarked, we believe at Liverpool, with a set of the deluded followers of that wretch, in an attempt to join their society. Her name is Margaret, a young woman of good abilities, and well educated, but early in life she took from her mother and her connections a methodistical turn, and has gone on in a course of what she supposes to be piety till she has come to this miserable close. If you should by chance hear anything about her, pray let us know.

Reed responded on 30 March, as Margaret and Elijah were traveling up the Mississippi toward Nauvoo:

I was indeed grieved as well as astonished to learn of the connection with the Mormonites, which your note informed of. I know nothing of those wretched and wicked fanatics, except the accounts, which from time to time have reached us, of the scenes of tumult in the region occupied by them. They are at a great distance in the West and since the death of their chief leader – the Prime Imposter – they have moved off in mass to a more remote West. It would be only by some lucky chance that I should be likely to hear anything of a person who had joined them. There seems from your expression some doubt whether the deluded person you mention had actually sailed: it is possible I may be able to ascertain the fact of her arrival in this country if it has taken place. But I write chiefly to suggest that if her friends in England receive intelligence of her destination, it might be well to communicate it to me – some opportunity might occur to me of ascertaining her condition. If correspondence is continued with her, it might be desireable to put her in possession of my address – as one she might apply to as a friend of yours: experience may dispel her unhappy delusion, and she may unexpectedly find herself, when at a remote distance from her family, in great want of friendly counsel and assistance.

Margaret could have known nothing of this exchange; even had her family attempted to write to her, they would not likely have known to address a letter to Nauvoo. The Sheets were not there long, in any event. As soon as they were able, Margaret and Elijah purchased a wagon and a pair of oxen and crossed the river to the Iowa side. There they camped until late May, when Wilford Woodruff, returned from England, arrived and organized a wagon company – loosely speaking; those early trains across muddy Iowa bore little resemblance to the well organized companies established by Brigham Young after receiving the revelation recorded in D&C 136. They arrived at Council Bluffs on 9 July, and soon crossed the river to help build the refugee camp at Winter Quarters, where Margaret and Elijah would spend the next autumn and winter.

It was a terrible time of poverty and sickness. Margaret suffered from the cold and damp, and from pregnancy. On 26 December, the noted Mormon midwife Patty Sessions delivered Margaret’s child, a daughter they named Margaret Hannah, in Winter Quarters. Margaret did not recover from her combined illness and childbirth; a month later Elijah wrote, “My wife was very porly. Not likely to live long, fore shee had been sick and bed fast fore beter then tow months, so that shee count hardley turn hire self.”

On 24 January, Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff came to visit Margaret, giving her a blessing, and then, knowing she would die, performed a ritual to seal Elijah and Margaret for eternity, “withe the Blessings of Abraham Isac & Jacob.” A week later, Wilford Woodruff, ever a friend to the couple, sat up with Margaret through the night. She died about 3 a.m. on 1 February.

Shee Died easy without a strugel. And hire happy spirit has gon to the manshions of bliss where she will rest till the morn of the Resurection of the Ritious, when I shall have the unspeakebell joy of seeing and having hire a gain, whare Deth will never separate us a gain.

Wilford stayed the morning with Elijah, lending what comfort he could.

Elijah took Margaret’s infant daughter to a woman named Malin, whom he had known in his native Pennsylvania. Three weeks later, the grief-stricken husband and father wrote,

And about that time the Litel Deare took a bad coald & coff. And had it aout five weaks Night and day and on the 14th of April about 2 O clock in the after Noon she Died and went home to the world of spirits with hure Dear Mother. I Disired fore the Deare littel thing to of lived. But it seamed other wise determened so I try to feell rickinsiled to the will of God.

Her baby buried near her, Margaret’s name appears on a monument to those who died during that terrible season at Winter Quarters. Elijah traveled West, where he married and raised families, and served as a bishop for 50 years. Margaret’s diary, its blank pages used by Elijah to make notations regarding his pastoral work, has made its way to the Church History Library, perhaps the final physical connection on this earth to a young woman whose final two years were lived as a Latter-day Saint, leaving behind her comfortable home and doing her best to reach Zion.