I love the pioneer ancestor story of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Ann Elizabeth Hodgkinson Walmsley Palmer.
In 1837, Elder Heber C. Kimball of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was called to preach the gospel in England. When he arrived in Liverpool, England, in July 1837, he felt impressed to travel to Preston. In Elder Kimball’s words from the book “Life of Heber C. Kimball”:
“I had visited Thomas Walmesley’s house, whose wife was sick of the consumption [tuberculosis] and had been for several years; she was reduced to skin and bones, a mere skeleton; and was given up to die by the doctors. I preached the gospel to her, and promised her in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ if she would believe, repent and be baptized, she should be healed of her sickness. She was carried to the water, and after her baptism, began to amend, and at her confirmation she was blest, and her disease rebuked, when she immediately recovered, and in less than one week after she was attending to her household duties.”
On July 30, 1837, in the River Ribble, Ann Elizabeth Walmsley was one of the first nine converts to the Church in the British Isles and the first woman baptized in the country.
This miraculous healing after her baptism is where I usually end this story, but I found more through the memories section of her FamilySearch entry. (A note, Walmsley was spelled three or four different ways in the provided historical records.)
Thomas and Ann Elizabeth Walmsley sailed from England in 1841 to join the Latter-day Saints in Missouri. The family later moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. On Nov. 16, 1842, Thomas Walmsley died and was buried in the woods there. Two years later, in 1844, she married Isaac Palmer.
Isaac and Ann Elizabeth Palmer joined the exodus of Latter-day Saint pioneers fleeing Nauvoo. Ten days out of Winter Quarters, she gave birth to a son Journal. He is my great-great-great-grandfather. Ann Elizabeth drove an ox and two cows across the plains and settled in 1849 in Salt Lake City, where the family worked to build a home and endured hardships like others of the day. Isaac Palmer abandoned the family to join the California gold rush.
Ann Elizabeth then moved to Bear Lake Valley, went back to going by Walmsley and settled in Bloomington, Idaho. In a book on pioneers of Bear Lake, a great-granddaughter wrote: “Grandmother, I have been told many times, was neat and orderly, a splendid housekeeper who kept her home at Bloomington, though a crude one, extremely clean. She was a fine lady and a humble, devoted member of the Church. My mother has told me many times that she and her sister … used to read the Bible to her after her eyesight failed. They purposely missed verses but always had to go back and read the verse they had missed. She knew her Bible so well she knew they had missed them in reading it to her.”
She died in Wardboro, Idaho, probably on Nov. 16, 1888, after sustaining injuries from falling from a wagon a few months earlier.
After learning about the rest of her life, I was struck by the fact that Ann Elizabeth Walmsley lived a hard life. But what everyone remembered was her humility and faith.
Her obituary read, “Sister Walmsley was ever ready to bear her testimony to the truth of this work and that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God, having seen a great many of his prophecies fulfilled.”
Her life and testimony remind me of 2 Nephi 31:19-20: “And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save. Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.”
My great-great-great-great grandmother exemplified what Nephi taught. Her faith and testimony have become more of a miracle to me than what happened at her baptism. She’s the kind of role model I will look to as I face my own challenges and trials.
My hope is that as we celebrate Pioneer Day, we take a closer look at the whole lives of the pioneers of our lives, not just the quick, retold stories. Enduring to the end isn’t easy, but there is much to learn from the experiences of those who did.
— Valerie Walton is a reporter for the Church News.
