Llanrwst and Llanelian
Mary was born on 30 September 1810 at Llanrwst in the Conwy valley, a daughter of the Baptist minister Thomas Edwards and Elizabeth Davies. From the age of two she was raised by grandparents at Llanelian, a parish of 604 people in 1831. At eighteen she set out on her own. She was an excellent cook and had learned the English language, which led her to become housekeeper in the home of Lord Henry Mainwaring of Peover Hall, Cheshire. She became a well-loved member of the household and was particularly fond of the children.
Whilst she was with the family she visited many churches in search of something she felt she had been unable to find in the churches where she previously lived. She heard about men who were preaching that they had been chosen by God to spread the news of a restored Gospel, and that their church had a living prophet. These men were Latter-day Saints, and Mary chose to be baptised by Elder John Needham on 6 March 1842.
Lady Mainwaring was not pleased with Mary’s decision, feeling that she had been deluded. She tried to dissuade her, but Mary was adamant that she had found the true church she had been looking for. A bitter argument followed, with Lady Mainwaring insisting she had no alternative but to end Mary’s employment. Mary stood her ground. Mary later told her daughter that Lady Mainwaring had tears in her eyes as she dismissed her. The children missed Mary very much, and in later years one of them visited her in America.
Following various other positions, including that of cook in a large boarding school, Mary eventually made her way to Liverpool, where she met and married Joseph White, also a member of the Church. The pair felt drawn to follow the Saints to Utah, but Mary wished to visit her family in Wales once more before leaving. The visit was not as she would have hoped. Her father, minister of the Baptist church, was shocked to hear that she had made what he felt to be a mistake in joining the Church, and insisted that if she wished to visit them again she should leave it. This she refused to do, and returned to Liverpool with “a sore and bleeding heart”, knowing that she would probably never see them again.
Widowed on the way to Nauvoo
She emigrated with her first husband, Joseph White. He died before they reached Nauvoo. The Church Historian’s Press records Mary crossing in 1842 in the same company as the Cannon family of the Isle of Man — a voyage on which Ann Quayle Cannon also died at sea, leaving her husband George a widower with six children. Mary arrived alone, a widow in a strange land, but with one advantage over many of the other Welsh emigrants: she could speak the language, and many of them could not.
In Nauvoo, Mary stayed with John and Leonora Taylor. On 24 February 1844 she married George Cannon, a carpenter and joiner from the Isle of Man by way of Liverpool. Four months later, after the martyrdom at Carthage, it was George Cannon who made the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. He went to St Louis for work ahead of the birth of his youngest child, and died there unexpectedly on 19 August 1844.
Mary was widowed for the second time in six months. Her daughter Elizabeth Edwards Cannon was born in February 1845, six months after her father’s death. Through that marriage Mary became stepmother to George’s children by Ann Quayle — among them George Q. Cannon, later a member of the First Presidency of the Church.
The potato she put back
Mary was left with very little more than a half-finished house to live in. Life was difficult, and one day when she was in need of food she was tempted to go to a neighbour’s house and help herself to some potatoes. As her hand touched the potato she caught herself, saying aloud “The Lord can help me without stealing”. She left the neighbour’s and returned home, where she found a small sack of flour on the doorstep. She sank to her knees and thanked her Heavenly Father, not only for prolonging her life but also for saving her from committing a crime.
Driven out
When the Saints were driven from Nauvoo, Mary left the baby Elizabeth on the west bank of the Mississippi and crossed back into the ransacked city, hoping to recover a cow the family had left behind. Her granddaughter Alice C. Reay preserved the account. It is a family memory rather than a documented record, and is presented here as one.
On June 27, 1846 the Saints were attacked by an armed mob, ruthlesly driven from their homes at the point of bayonets. Brethern were taking care of their families then returning to help the widows and orphans across the river, by this was Granma got to the other side with her babe and a few clothes, all else left in a hurry to escape the violence of the mob. Then Grandma thought she would return and try and get her cow and left her child with a friend, she went back finding her cow missing and stood wondering half dazed with horror on the river bank not knowing how she could get back to her babe, when one of the mobcrats Louis Bidamon then asked her for her name, she told him Mary Cannon, then he laughingly said he was loaded with fire arms and one Cannon more would not make a difference, so he put her in this small room with all the fire arms and told her to be quite.
When the one in charge came by he stopped and asked Louis Bidamon, “what is in this room?”, he said, “Cannons Sir”. Her heart was filled with gratitude to this man and her Maker who had opened the way to be reunited with her baby again.
St Louis, and the road west
At St Louis in December 1847 Mary married for the third and last time: Charles Barber Taylor, a butcher from Stockport who had himself buried a wife, a child and a brother within eight days that autumn. He took on the two-year-old Elizabeth, and his diary records that he later adopted her.
Their son Charles Edwards Taylor was born in 1849, and the family of four travelled west with the pioneers in 1850. They had reached the Salt Lake Valley by September 1850, when a second son, Thomas Edwards Taylor, was born. A quilt block Mary made in 1857 survives.
Mary died in Salt Lake City on 7 October 1890, aged eighty, and was buried there the following day. Elizabeth married William Henry Piggott in 1869; neither of the Taylor sons married, and both are buried at Bloomington, Idaho.
Her needle, and her daughter’s melodeon
Among Mary’s talents was that of sewing. The quilt block she created in 1857 is a surviving example of her work, and it was a skill she passed on to her daughter Elizabeth, who in the same year created a block that has not survived in entirety. The similarities can be seen in the hive at the lower left, surrounded by bees.
Elizabeth became an adept musician, her instrument being the melodeon. Hers was only the second one to arrive in Salt Lake City, and was a gift from her stepfather. Her musical talent, coupled with her sewing skills, served her well: years later she became a teacher of music and a dressmaker, and also worked as postmistress.
A letter in Welsh, and a promise she could not keep
When grandmother died in Salt Lake my mother promised her that she would let her father know of her passing away. Mother tried very hard to keep that promise but, she had no address to go by. She had a friend in Liberty, Idaho, who had just returned from a mission in Wales. Mother went to him to see if he could tell her who she might contact in Wales who would likely help her to locate some of the family, if any were still alive. He told her as best he could who to contact that would help her if possible. She followed his instructions to the letter.
After a long, long wait she received a reply, but it was written in Welch. So that said she would again have to contact her friend in Liberty. This letter contained simply a few verses in poetry, signed, The Bairds Sister, mother knew she had a brother, John. When reaching the friend again he said, “Yes, Sister Piggott, I can read it but it will cease to be poetry.” I don’t know what became of these lines, but I do know she never was able to again reach him. This is all I can give you of my grandmother’s family.
A poem in Welsh, from a sister who signed herself for her brother the bard, sent to a granddaughter who could not read it — and a family connection that closed for good. It is the whole cost of emigration in a single unanswered letter.
The outline of her life is documented in the biographical register of The Journal of George Q. Cannon (Church Historian’s Press) and in the Cannon Family Historical Treasury. The baptism at Peover, the loss of her post, the Nauvoo cow and the 1857 quilt block come from family recollections and are marked as such.
Records differ. Joseph White’s death: accounts differ on whether he died at sea or after landing. Her third marriage is dated 25 December 1847 in Charles Taylor’s diary and 27 December 1847 elsewhere. Arrival in the valley: family accounts give 27 August 1850, the Church Historian’s Press “by September 1850”. Her emigration is dated 1842 by the Church Historian’s Press and 1843 in a family account.