When Margaret Shelton Kinsey was 4 years old in 1879, her mother died, leaving her to be reared by her aunt, Polly Faucett, a widow with nine children. So Margaret grew up in the high mountain Heber Valley, east of Salt Lake City. Her home was near what is now Midway, Utah. In this area the children, including Margaret, learned to work hard and develop a deep love for the gospel.
One day at Church their stake president, Abram Hatch, stood and made a strong appeal to the saints to contribute to the Salt Lake Temple fund. He said the Church badly needed more money.Margaret, then in her teens, wanted to contribute but she had no money. Her clothes and shoes were in poor condition. In fact, she usually went without shoes in the summer.
But in the valley were many sheep. They often crawled under barbed wire fences or through dense brush. Little balls of wool collected on the fences and twigs behind them.
She was impressed to begin gathering the wool left behind by the sheep, wherever she could find it. She gathered wool until she had a sack too large for her to carry. She donated the wool to her bishop for the Salt Lake Temple fund.
Many years after the temple was dedicated, she told her children and grandchildren that she always had a warm feeling when she would see the beautiful temple and knowing that, in her own way, she had helped pay for it.