Mary Ann Clements blogs at Wheat and Tares.

It has long been known that the story of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales began with the establishment of the Overton branch in October 1840. It is not as well-known that the story of the Overton branch began with a twenty-three-year-old woman named Martha Thomas.

Martha Thomas was born 12 August 1816 in Overton, Flintshire, Wales. She was the oldest child of John Thomas and Elizabeth Williams who were married in 1814. John was a blacksmith, and the couple resided in Cloy. A scholar of Welsh Mormon history, Ron Dennis, observed, “Cloy was hardly more than a string of farm-houses situated on the outskirts of Overton. And Overton itself consisted of fewer than two thousand inhabitants.”[fn1] John and Elizabeth had at least eight children while living in Cloy: four daughters and four sons.

Martha was likely the first member of her family who learned to read and write. Based on the marks on their marriage record, Martha’s parents, John and Elizabeth, were illiterate. Martha was fortunate that only a few years before she was born, the first free primary school in Wales was established in the nearby town of Penley. The second Lord Kenyon, Baron of Gredington, founded the school in 1811 and patterned it after a system of teaching he’d observed in India. It was the first free school in Wales. Perhaps Martha’s parents wanted her to get the education they didn’t have, or maybe Martha begged her parents for permission to attend. Regardless, Martha graduated from the school in 1830. She received a bible as a gift with a personalized inscription from the “Right Honerable” Lord Kenyon himself.

At some point, Martha made her way to the large city of Manchester in Lancashire, England, sixty miles away from her hometown in Wales. Manchester’s population exploded in the nineteenth century as the Industrial Revolution transformed the town into the center of the textile industry. Martha was likely among the thousands of rural citizens attracted to the higher-paid employment opportunities in the newly built factories and mills.

It was in Manchester that Martha was likely introduced to the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1839, twenty-three-year-old Martha was baptized and confirmed there by Elder Joseph Fielding, then president of the British Mission. It seems likely that she was excited to share her new-found religion with her family members back in Wales, but it may have taken some time for them to become receptive. This was a difficult time for her family. From March 1839 to May 1840, Martha lost all four of her little brothers. They ranged in age from ten to nineteen. In May 1840, John and Elizabeth Thomas had to bury two of their sons just days apart.

Eventually, Latter-day Saint church leaders felt there was enough interest in Flintshire to warrant assigning missionaries. At a conference in Manchester on 6 October 1840, two recent British converts, Frederick Cook and Henry Royle, were assigned to labor at Martha’s hometown of Cloy in Flintshire. Martha was probably ecstatic.

Frederick Cook wrote that he and Elder Royle arrived in Cloy on 16 October 1840 and went directly to the home of John Thomas, Martha’s father. Two days later, Elders Cook and Royle began baptizing converts in the River Dee. By the end of October, the missionaries had baptized over thirty individuals and established a branch at Overton. Within months, the number of members in the area jumped to over a hundred, and two more branches were organized nearby at Hawarden, Flintshire, and Ellesmere, Shropshire. By March 1841, there were ninety-nine members reported in the Overton branch, twenty members in the Ellesmere branch, and thirty-five members at the Hawarden branch.

A few months later, Martha and her family were among the earliest Welsh members to immigrate to the United States. They did not travel in a chartered Latter-day Saint company, but they did sail with a few other recent converts from Flintshire and Shropshire. Martha, her parents, and two of her little sisters arrived at New York City on 30 June 1841. They soon made their way to Nauvoo where they resided in the Third Ward.

It appears that Martha likely used some of that travel time to teach her fifty-nine-year-old father, John Thomas, and a seventy-six-year-old fellow Latter-day Saint passenger, John Colemere, how to read and write. The crude signatures of both Colemere and Thomas are on a February 1842 petition at the Joseph Smith Papers website.[fn2] The first names of each are nearly identically shaped, having clearly been practiced repeatedly.

Those familiar with church history in North Wales know that while the missionaries had initial success, they also dealt with significant opposition. That opposition likely expedited the immigration of new converts to America in the following years. By March 1845, the Overton branch reported only twelve members.

As for Martha, she married British convert John Rigby on 17 August 1842 in Nauvoo. The couple lived in Nauvoo for several years before moving north to Scott County, Iowa, with Martha’s married siblings. John Rigby died there about 1854, and Martha married again in 1855 to William Houghton. In the 1860s, Martha and her sisters joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and were founding members of the Davenport RLDS branch. Martha remained active in that tradition until her death on 27 October 1890 in Davenport, Scott County, Iowa.

[fn1] Ronald D. Dennis, Welsh Mormon History, “Who Were the First LDS Missionaries in North Wales?”.
[fn2] Joseph Smith Papers, “Petition from Jonathan Taylor and Others, 10 February 1842,” ID #12135.