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Jane Manning Biography & Facts

Jane Elizabeth Manning James (1822 – April 16, 1908), fondly known as "Aunt Jane", was an early African-American member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and traveled to Utah as a pioneer. She lived with Joseph Smith and his family for a time in Nauvoo, Illinois. She traveled with her family to Utah, spending the winter of 1846–1847 at Winter Quarters, and was among the first of the pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. As a black woman, Jane was not allowed to enter the temple during her lifetime and petitioned the First Presidency of the church multiple times to be endowed and sealed. As a result of her requests she was adopted as a servant into the family of Joseph Smith through a specially-created temple ceremony. She was posthumously endowed by proxy in the Salt Lake Temple in 1979. Early life in Connecticut Jane Elizabeth Manning James was born in Wilton, Connecticut, to Isaac Manning and Eliza Phyllis Mead. Although late in Jane's life her brother Isaac stated that she had been born in 1813, there are source discrepancies that place her birthday anywhere from September 22, 1812, to the year 1820 or 1822 (the latter being asserted on her gravestone). The Mannings were a free family living in rural Connecticut, and Jane had at least five siblings including Isaac, Lewis, Peter, Sarah, and Angeline. At the age of six, Jane was sent to New Canaan to live with Joseph and Hannah Fitch, a wealthy white family. She was raised by the Fitches' daughter and lived with them for the next thirty years. Little is known about Jane's life with the Fitches other than she worked as a servant: cooking, cleaning, and ironing, etc. While with the Fitches, Jane was also brought up as a Christian, and she was baptized into the Presbyterian Church at about 14 years old. On March 1, 1835, Jane gave birth to a son, Sylvester, whose father is unknown. Conversion and relocation to Nauvoo In the fall of 1842, two LDS missionaries, one of whom was Charles Wesley Wandell, were preaching in the area. James was forbidden by her Presbyterian preacher to listen to the missionaries, but recorded later that she "had a desire to hear them. I went on a Sunday and was fully convinced that it was the true Gospel." James was baptized into the Latter Day Saint Church the following Sunday, and acquainted many friends and family members with her new beliefs as well. A year later, James and eight other members of her family—her mother, three brothers, two sisters, and a brother and sister-in-law—decided to sell their home in Wilton and move to Nauvoo, Illinois, in order to live among other members of their new faith. The James family began their journey with other recently converted Latter Day Saints under the direction of Charles Wandell, and traveled from Fairfield, Connecticut, to New York City, then on to Albany and Buffalo. In Buffalo, the James family was separated from the rest of the group; there is dispute as to whether the split took place because James and her family could not afford to pay the fare from Buffalo to Ohio, or if the black Saints were denied passage due to their race. Wandell made arrangements to transport their luggage while James and her family traveled the remainder of their journey (approximately 800 miles) on foot, arriving in Nauvoo in late fall of 1843. James later recalled that the group "walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground." Living with the Smith family When James and her family arrived in Nauvoo, they were welcomed by Joseph Smith himself. Over the next year, her mother and siblings established their own homes nearby, while James continued to live with the Smith family and worked as a domestic servant in the Mansion House until Smith's assassination in 1844. James recorded that Emma (Joseph's wife) or Lucy (Joseph's mother) would often stop her and talk with her as she went about doing the washing and cleaning in the house. On one occasion, James was in Joseph's mother Lucy's room and was allowed to handle the Urim and Thummim, the tools used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon. Lucy then said to her, "You will live long after I am dead and gone and you can tell the Latter Day Saints that you was permitted to handle the Urim and Thummim". On another occasion, Emma asked James if she would like to be adopted by and sealed to her and Joseph in the Nauvoo Temple as their spiritual child. James said nothing at the time, and Emma encouraged her to think about it. Emma asked James again two weeks later, at which time she said "no ma'am". James would say later that she did not understand what the question meant at the time, or she would have taken the couple up on their offer. After Joseph Smith's assassination in 1844, James resided in the home of Brigham Young. It was there where she met and married her husband, Isaac James, a fellow employee of the Young family. Isaac was born a free man and grew up in rural New Jersey; at the time of his baptism he was 19 years old, and was one of the earliest immigrants to Nauvoo. Journey west and life in Utah When the Latter Day Saints began to migrate west in 1846, James prepared to move as well. Although many of her immediate family members had joined the church, James and her husband were the only ones who chose to move West with the main body of church members from Nauvoo. At the time of the family's departure, James was pregnant with a second son, Silas James, who was born in Iowa in June 1846. James, with her husband Isaac and oldest son Sylvester, were part of the original group of Latter Day Saints to spend the winter of 1846–1847 at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. They were also part of the first Mormon pioneer company to enter the Salt Lake Valley in September 1847. At the time of their settlement in the Salt Lake Valley, the James family made up a third of the black population in Utah, and were the only ones who were free. The James family lived just north of Temple Square in Salt Lake City on a lot owned by Brigham Young, who employed both Isaac and Jane through the mid-1850s. In May 1848 James gave birth to her daughter Mary Ann—the first black child born in Utah. The family's first years in the valley were difficult: they lived in poverty and often lacked the bare essentials for survival. Despite hardships, James displayed a commitment to serve and help others. In 1849, James' neighbor Eliza Partridge Lyman had sent her husband Amasa on a mission to California and was left with no food to sustain her and her children until the harvest. Lyman records that "Jane James, the colored woman, let me have two pounds of flour, it being half of what she had." By the mid 1860s the family were able to build a comfortable home in the southwest corner of Salt Lake City and had acquired both farmland and animals, including an ox, horses, and a small flock of sheep.... Discover the Jane Manning popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jane Manning books.