1.) Obituary. PIONEER LADY DIES IN CALIFORNIA
Marietta Walker Ceases Eventful Life, Following Birthday Marked by Great Homage
Mrs. Marietta Walker, 96, author, editor, and pioneer church and civic worker of Lamoni, died April 12, at the home of her grandson, Walker Davis, in Brea, Calif. The remains were expected to arrive in Lamoni last evening and funeral services will be held today at 10:30. Elder J.W. Davis will deliver the sermon assisted by Patriarch F. A. Smith. A delegation of Saints and friends will accompany Mr. Davis from Independence to pay a last tribute to this noble woman.
Marietta, the youngest of 13 children born to Curtis and Lucy Hodges, first saw the light of day at Willoughby, Ohio, April 10, 1834. This place had been a temporary stopping place for the family in their migration from New York to Missouri.
From the troubles which came upon the Saints in Far West, Caldwell county, Mo., Mr. Hodges fled with his family in 1839 to Pike county, Ill., and later to Nauvoo, where they resided until 1846, having passed through the dark and cloudy day which attended the martyrdom of the leaders two years before. Elizabethtown, Pa., became their refuge after leaving Nauvoo, and here Mr. Hodges died and was buried.
Following the loss of her father, Marietta went with her mother and a brother to St. Louis to make their home with an older sister Mrs. Lucy Ann Billings. There she attended a girls' school conducted by a Mrs. Avis and here she later taught as an assistant.
Upon the death of Mrs. Billings, Mrs. Hodges and her daughter, Marietta, went to live with another one of the family, the wife of Elijah Banta, in Franklin, Ind. Here the young girl was given opportunity to pursue her studies at Oxford, Ohio, one of her instructors being Dr. John Witherspoon Scott, founder and president of the Oxford College for women, with whom she kept up a correspondence until that kindly old gentleman was more than 90 years of age.
Soon after her graduation at Oxford in 1859, Marietta went to San Antonia, Tex., to care for two children left motherless by the death of her sister, Eliza Jane Lyons, the mother of Lucy Lyons Resseguie, well known to and beloved by many Lamoni people.
In 1861, she became the wife of Robert Faulconer, who died in the second year of the war leaving to her care a tiny daughter, Lucy, who later married Caleb Stafford of Lamoni.
During the war, she was in charge of a college in San Antonio later known as Westmoreland.
In 1865, Mrs. Faulconer returned to her mother and sister, Mrs. Banta, then living at Sandwich, Illinois. Here she renewed her friendship with the late President Joseph Smith [III] begun in their childhood in Nauvoo.
Becoming interested in various phases of church work she taught groups of children on Sunday morning and contributed stories and other articles to the children's paper, Zion's Hope, then being printed at Plano nearby. Her mother died and was buried in Sandwich.
It was here in 1869 that the young widow became the wife of Samuel Frye Walker, a student, philosopher, writer and ranchman, and a little later they made their home in Smoky Valley, Nye county, Nevada.
In this far western home, two daughters were born to them. Two visits were made back to Sandwich and during the second visit the sister, Mrs. Banta, died.
In 1877 Mr. and Mrs. Walker established their home on a farm in Iowa just outside the present town of Lamoni, which farm has since been included in the Graceland College lands.
In 1885 the family removed into the town, their home becoming a center of church activity and sociability through a long period of time. From here Mr. Walker was carried to his long home in 1889.
Here the daughters were given in marriage and here was wielded the prolific pen which for many years kept the Zon's Hope, the Autumn Leaves and the Mother's Column in the Saints' Herald supplied with educational material and gave shape and life to various books for girls, young people, and parents, all worthy children of her busy brain.
She was a prime mover in the work of organizing the Sunday school department, the Religio, the Prayer Union, the Children's Home, the Christmas Offering Missionary Fund, and other forward movements which have marked the history of the church.
She donated some of the first ground given for Graceland College and was honored by having the first dormitory named for her, Marietta Hall. The title "Mother of Graceland" was also conferred upon her. The cause of education ever found in her a loyal and active champion and she expressed her support in material ways.
Through early loss of hearing and a more recent failure of sight, Mrs. Walker was made a veritable prisoner of the senses, but a cheerful one. Through all the afflictions which this condition imposed upon her, she kept a buoyant faith and a shining armor of courage, undimmed by the passing of time.
Her indomitable will recognized no obstacles that could not be surmounted and even in her last days, she was planning to write a book on the fullness of the atonement.
After the death of her niece, Mrs. Resseguie, who was always devoted to her, she was faithfully attended by Miss Mary Banta and she clung to her home even after her failing powers made her daughters feel she should be receiving their care. She spent some time with her daughter, Mrs. Albert Ackerly, in Des Moines and finally consented to make her home with her daughter, Mrs. Frances Davis, in Iowa City. Mrs. Davis' son, having lost his wife, she was called to California to keep house for him and to mother his two little daughters.
With unfailing courage, Mrs. Walker, at the age of 95, made this journey with her daughter and kept her interest in life, her intention being strong to write her book.
In the new home, the devotion of her daughter and her grandson and the two little girls gave her all the comfort that human love can give. Varying conditions of health made her prostrate at times but always she rallied until at noon on Friday, April 11, a sudden change announced the end was near and she slept until she passed from this life Saturday night at 11:30.
On Thursday, April 10, she was 96 years old. She received a telegram of greeting from the [RLDS} centennial conference [in Independence, Missouri] and showers of greetings by mail and in person. In the evening, she sat in her chair and received a delegation of 60 young people from Santa Anna and Long Beach who laid flowers in her lap and touched her hand as they passed, knowing she could not discern their faces nor distinguish their voices. But she acknowledged the honor most graciously and was happy in all the day had brought to her.
She passed a comfortable night and seemed as well as usual the next forenoon. At noon when the change came she went to sleep to awaken in the happier world, free from the infirmities of the flesh. A wonderful ending for a wonderful life.
Of her family surviving there are three daughters, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, two infant sons of grandsons having preceded her in recent months.
Source: The Lamoni Chronicle, published in Lamoni, Iowa on Thursday, April 17th, 1930, pgs. 1, 10
2.) Biography. Marietta Walker Accomplishing the Impossible
by Joni Wilson
It's difficult to use the word "impossible" and mean it. Impossible means that something is incapable of being done because it is extremely difficult. But that is exactly what Marietta Hodge Faulconer Walker did throughout her life. Not once but several times, this exceptional woman accomplished the impossible. In the words of one of her daughters: "The thing that couldn't be done—she did it."2
Marietta was born in 1834 in Ohio as the youngest child of thirteen in the Hodge family. Her family had converted to the Mormon religion, and they were following the well-worn trail from the East to the Midwest. After settling in Caldwell County, Missouri, the family was among those who fled in 1839 under Governor Lilburn Boggs's extermination order (Marietta would have been about five years old).
[The family] settled in Petty, near Nauvoo, Illinois. Marietta was ten years old when Mormon religion founder Joseph Smith Jr. and his brother were murdered. Her father took her to see the bodies as they lay on display.3 Less than two years later, three of her brothers were dead and a fourth disappeared, due to trouble associated with a theft and murder. In her young life, it was not likely that the Mormon religion had been much comfort to her.
Marietta relocated to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, in 1844 with her parents and a brother to live near one of her sisters. After her father died, the three went to live in St. Louis, Missouri, with another sister, until the cholera epidemic took her sister and brother.
Marietta and her mother were uprooted again, and the 1850 federal census shows them living in Indiana with still another sister and brother-in-law, Emaline and Elijah Banta.4
By 1859 Marietta had graduated from Oxford College for Women in Ohio (later Miami University), completing four years of study in just three. There were less than twenty women in her class. Elijah Banta helped pay the bill for her college expenses.
This experience had a great effect on Marietta's later association and passion for excellence in education with Graceland College and the Reorganized Church. She received and found value in a quality education and expected no less for others. While at Oxford she was taught and became friends and corresponded for years with Reverend Doctor John Scott, who became the father-in-law of U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, her first near-brush with a president.5
In 1860, Marietta's life changed again. Yet another sister died in Texas leaving two small girls motherless. Marietta moved to Texas to help care for her nieces. While there she was asked to become principal of San Antonio Female College. This was at the beginning of the Civil War, and most men were going to support the Southern cause. Marietta was in support of the Confederates, although she was against slavery. On August 2, 1860, Marietta and Robert T. Faulconer were married in Texas. In July 1861, daughter Lucy was born.
Faulconer became ill while soldiering in the war. Marietta was anxious to be with him and received a presidential pass (after much badgering on her part) to break through the fighting line to be with him. This first husband died of yellow fever in 1862 while home on furlough.6
Marietta received word in 1864 that her mother was not well, and she decided to move back to Illinois. However, she couldn't go home by a direct route because of the Civil War federal blockade. Marietta traveled with her three-year-old daughter to Mexico, then Cuba, and on to New York to get around the blockade. She was in New York at the time of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession, her second near-brush with a president.
She finally made it to Sandwich, Illinois.7 There Marietta Faulconer renewed her childhood acquaintance with Joseph Smith III and became interested in the Reorganized church work. She was apparently skeptical at first of this Mormon religion after her childhood memories. But Marietta was reported to have said, "If I receive a testimony of the truthfulness of this work ... I will do all in my power to further the interests of the church. But if, on the contrary, I do not receive it, I will work just as hard in opposition to it."8 Evidently, she received confirmation, for after her death in April 1930 second president of the Reorganized Church Frederick M. Smith said of her, "No person has done more for the developments of the work of the Restoration than has Marietta Walker."9
Some of this work is as follows: She worked with Mark Forscutt as a copyist on the 1867 Joseph Smith Jr. New Translation transcript of the Bible. She began in 1867 writing the Little Folks column in the Saint's Herald, the Reorganized Church's official periodical. She began the Society of Gleaners, a women's group, in 1867. She wrote a church-wide children's paper, Zion's Hope, beginning in 1869, after teaching children in local Sunday school. She was also active in the Daughters of Zion and the Women's Auxiliary for Social Service, which later became the Women's Department of the church.10
In 1885 Marietta started writing The Mother's Home Column (for women and children) in the Saint's Herald. This was in response to a request for communication space for the women of the church to share words of encouragement and provide a support system. She funded with her own money and wrote a magazine for young people called Autumn Leaves (later renamed Vision) in 1888 and was editor for seventeen years. She pushed for educational standards in the General Sunday School Association in 1891. She helped organize the Zion's Religio Literary Society for Youth in 1893. She (with others) coordinated publication of Stepping Stones for junior age youth. She wrote several books for the church. She also was responsible and largely on her own raised funds beginning in 1891 for the South Seas islands "gospel boat" Evanelia, which was dedicated in 1894. Through her column in the Herald, she initiated the "Christmas Offering" fund for missionaries. The amount raised in 1900 kept five elders in the field that year.11
Marietta's mother died in October 1869. She was married in November 1869 by Joseph Smith III to her new husband, Samuel Fry Walker. Less than a week later Joseph Smith was married to Bertha Madison.12 One daughter stated in later years that both Marietta and Joseph could have done better. It was suggested in several sources that Joseph had wanted to marry Marietta.13 Perhaps this close friendship could have been deepened through marriage. In Joseph's memoirs, he stated, "I often visited .. . and greatly enjoyed the companionship ... of the members of the Hodges family."14
However, the choices had been made and Marietta, husband, and daughter went to Nevada for seven years. She continued her writing contributions to the church from the isolated ranch on which the family lived. Two more daughters were born there: Frances and Lois. The family moved to Lamoni, Iowa, in 1877 to be the first Saints to settle in that area. Correspondance indicated that they moved because a daughter was beginning to speak and act like an Indian, the only playmates around for the children.15
While in Lamoni, Marietta was quite a remarkable dairy farmer, making and selling butter that eventually paid for the 160-acre farm. She invented a unique cooling system for the milk and butter that consisted of an 8 by 10 by 3 feet high chest, which was cooled by an underground tunnel. A special handlebar lever opened and closed the huge chest.
Marietta was a gardener, artist, nurse, midwife, and taught music lessons in addition to performing the other daily necessities of life. Her second husband died in 1889 after twenty years of marriage.16
In 1891 she donated twenty acres, along with others, for Graceland to begin building its college. She was honored in later years by two namesake dormitories (Marietta Hall and later Walker Flail) and in 1923 was named "Mother of Graceland."17
In a letter to Oxford College she wrote: "Into my heart came the strong desire to see a school similar to my alma mater established upon the broad top of the rolling hills of our home farm among the violets and breezes of our own Iowa prairies, and I gave myself, and my friends who were in any way able to help or to have more influence than I, little rest until Graceland had opened her doors to the young of our church and all who wished to enter. It was always with me a very hard matter to give up as hopeless anything I greatly desired to see done, because it seemed to me it ought to be done."18
Marietta Walker had contact with the early prophet/presidents of the church. As previously stated, she saw the body of Joseph Smith Jr., and she worked intimately with Joseph Smith III. She knew Frederick M. Smith but was against him being president of the church. This was largely due to the Supreme Directional Control difficulties in which Fred M. attempted to gain sole leadership of the church over the control wanted by the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. However, they were friends, as Fred M. protected her editorial job when the Board of Publication wanted to let her go. She corresponded with Israel A. Smith before her death in 1934. Her communications with the leadership of the church undoubtedly influenced them.
During Marietta Walker's closing days, she resided with a daughter and grandson in California. She was nearly deaf and her vision was poor, but she was alert and entertained visitors. Just two days previous to her death, she received greetings for her ninety-sixth birthday from the RLDS Centennial General Conference in session in Independence, Missouri. There were many write-ups about her contributions to the church, but perhaps her daughter summed up her influence best: "One of the things I learned from my mother was courage. Courage is to do the right thing, to dare, to attempt—and to achieve against any difficulty."19
Marietta Walker was the most significant woman in the nineteenth-century Reorganization, even more so than Emma Smith, who was a symbolic figure. Her desire for quality education was coupled with her desire for the spiritual care of the members and friends of the Reorganized Church. There was no disconnect between the secular and religious for this remarkable woman, who gave so much of her energy to mentor and lift up others. Marietta especially touched the lives of women and children in ways that the male hierarchy of the church could not. Her dedication and passion for living was expressed in her living example that continues to touch the lives of others today.
1.) Joni Wilson works in Communications Services at the Community of Christ world headquarters in Independence, Missouri. This paper was presented at the 2002 Mormon History Association and the 2002 John Whiner Historical Association annual meetings.
2.) Frances Walker Davis, 15 May 1930, entry in book in Marietta Walker papers P3, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri.
3.) Roy Cheville, They Made a Difference (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1970), 237-238.
4.) Junin Braby, "Marietta Walker—A Study in Devotion," Saints Herald 122 (September 1975): 568.
5.) Vida E. Smith, "Distinguished Women." Journal of History (July 1930): 313.
6.) Ibid.
7.) Cleo M. Hanthome, "Marietta Walker: A Woman With a Clearer View," The Saints' Herald 90 (April 1943):
8.) James W. Davis, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep," Vision (July 1930): 329.
9.) Hanthorne, 452.
10.) Richard P. Howard, "Marietta Walker: A Testament of Devotion," Saints Herald 121 (June 1974): 372.
11.) Cheville, 244.
12.) Hanthorne. 463.
13.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
14.) The Memoirs ofJoseph Smith 111(1832-1914). (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1979), 131.
15.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
16.) Ibid.
17.) "Marietta Walker. Honored," The Saints' Herald 70 (30 May 1923): 522.
18.) Letter to Miss Olive Flower, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (23 January 1929) from Marietta Walker quoted in The Saints' Herald 77 (23 April 1930): 454, 455.
19.) Frances Walker Davis, P3 Marietta Walker papers, Community of Christ Archives.
Source: The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal
2002 Nauvoo Conference Special Edition (2002), pp. 59-61 (3 pages)
Published By: John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA)
Interesting Quotes from Marietta's Life
1.) When war erupted between the Saints and other Missouri settlers, Marietta's father and two of her older brothers helped defend the Saints in the Battle of Crooked River. Father Hodges was near Apostle David Patten when they were fired upon—both men were hit and fell. Brother Hodges was wounded in the side but lived. Apostle Patten died from his wounds shortly thereafter. Marietta was only four and a half at the time. However, the wounding of her father and the death of Apostle Patten made a sad and melancholy impression upon her bright, young mind.
2.) Marietta was ten when Joseph and Hyrum were murdered. Her father took her to the Mansion House to view their bodies. Marietta later described her experience that day in an article entitled, "A Picture from Memory's Wall." She related:
Among those [mourners] . . . was the bent form of an aged man to whose band a little girl [Marietta], a child of some nine or ten summers, was clinging. As they came to the head of the coffins the man bent slowly down and tenderly raised the child in his arms that she might see more clearly the faces of the dead." (Journal of History 3:194, April 1910)
As they journeyed homeward Brother Hodges became so ill that he had to stop and rest. He talked of Joseph and Hyrum and said in an anguished voice: "0, that I ever should have lived to see this day!"
3.) Sister Hodges and her children were living in Pittsburg when Emeline, who was then unmarried, met a young man named Elijah Banta. He had been baptized in the fall of 1844 after hearing George M. Hinkle preach the gospel. Emeline and Elijah were married December 6, 1846. Elijah tenderly cared for Emeline, and Mother Lucy, as if he were her own son. Elijah was blessed financially and he provided for the entire family, treating Marietta as his own sister.
4.) She founded the Children's Home at Lamoni for orphans and children whose parents could not care for them, and arranged for the former home of Bishop Elijah Banta, where she had lived, to be used for that purpose.
5.) Many young people benefited from her love and guidance. Among them was Elbert A. Smith, son of David Smith and grandson of Joseph the Martyr. He had very little formal education, but by following Marietta's wise council Elbert became editor of Autumn Leaves and the Saints' Herald. He also served twenty-nine years in the First Presidency as a counselor to Joseph Smith III and Frederick M. Smith. He was the presiding patriarch of the Church at the time he penned these words of tribute to Marietta.
Sister Marietta Walker [was an] old-time friend of my father [David H. Smith] and mother [Clara Charlotte Smith]. . . . I was fortunate to inherit the friendship of Marietta Walker. . . . Very soon after my arrival in Lamoni, Sister Walker took me in hand. With her very black and penetrating eyes upon me and her sparkling personality at its best, she reminded me that my education had been all too limited. I was to do a work in the church, I must study and study hard to prepare myself. She put it bluntly, I should foreswear a lot of pleasant things—parties and dances and loafing—and study, study, and then study some more.
Next to Emma Smith, "the elect lady," I consider Marietta Walker the most distinguished woman in our history. Her works still live after her in the many movements that she sponsored. I was only one of many young people that she inspired and helped by actual personal contact, and many thousands have been helped by her indirectly—perhaps some who have never even given her a thought.
Someone said to me, "If we were Catholics we would canonize Sister Walker—she would be 'Saint Marietta.'" We would canonize her for her piety, her many good works for the church, her saintly character. Come to think of it, she is and was "Saint Marietta"—Latter Day Saint, one hundred percent. Her singleness of purpose and vision, her complete conversion to the Latter Day Restoration, plus her remarkable personality, made her outstanding and unforgettable.
I took Sister Walker's advice rather seriously. . . . My hours of work were ten a day, six days a week, and there was always work at home . . . a big garden, a cow to milk. . . . But for long hours at nights and on Sundays I studied—when not engaged in church work. (Elbert A. Smith, On Memory's Beam [lndependence, Missouri: Herald Publishing House, 1946], 92, 104–105)
6.) These words by Vida E. Smith summarize Marietta's life: Her association with the church had been of a character to make its memory undesirable. Her heritage so far had been a sad one. Upon her parents had fallen the glory of the Restoration, and they followed its light until the shadows fell. The youth and beauty and strength of their home went out, and dead sea ashes lay upon the altar of their faith. And yet she drew from eternity many blessings for the church and withheld not her hand. A favorite motto with her was: "Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready and God will send thee flax," and she was a living example of its truth. (Journal of History, July 1920, pp. 314–315)
7.) In San Antonio, Marietta opened "a select school for young ladies in her home. She seemed an instructress of unusual ability and offered to teach all branches of a thorough English education as well as give instruction in subjects pertaining to a regular collegiate course if it was desired. She also gave lessons in drawing, painting, and music."
________________________
1ST HUSBAND: Robert T. Faulconer
m. 2 Aug 1860 Bexar County, Texas
He was a student, philosopher, writer, and rancher.
Daughters: Francis and Lois
2ND HUSBAND: Samuel Frye Walker
m. 7 Nov 1869 - Sandwich, DeKalb, Illinois
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:
Questions of the Holy Scriptures(1869)
A Compendium of the Faith...(1888) with H Stebbins
Questions, answers and brief stories on and from the Holy Scriptures(1889)
With the Church in the Early Day(1891)
The Indian Maiden(1907)
Our Boys( nd )
Fireside Chats With Our Girls(1901)
Brief Sketch of the Life and Death of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans( nd )
Gospel Story and Footsteps of Jesus (1904)
Object-Lessons on Temperance(1907)
FURTHER INFORMATION:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43200393
Marietta Walker Ceases Eventful Life, Following Birthday Marked by Great Homage
Mrs. Marietta Walker, 96, author, editor, and pioneer church and civic worker of Lamoni, died April 12, at the home of her grandson, Walker Davis, in Brea, Calif. The remains were expected to arrive in Lamoni last evening and funeral services will be held today at 10:30. Elder J.W. Davis will deliver the sermon assisted by Patriarch F. A. Smith. A delegation of Saints and friends will accompany Mr. Davis from Independence to pay a last tribute to this noble woman.
Marietta, the youngest of 13 children born to Curtis and Lucy Hodges, first saw the light of day at Willoughby, Ohio, April 10, 1834. This place had been a temporary stopping place for the family in their migration from New York to Missouri.
From the troubles which came upon the Saints in Far West, Caldwell county, Mo., Mr. Hodges fled with his family in 1839 to Pike county, Ill., and later to Nauvoo, where they resided until 1846, having passed through the dark and cloudy day which attended the martyrdom of the leaders two years before. Elizabethtown, Pa., became their refuge after leaving Nauvoo, and here Mr. Hodges died and was buried.
Following the loss of her father, Marietta went with her mother and a brother to St. Louis to make their home with an older sister Mrs. Lucy Ann Billings. There she attended a girls' school conducted by a Mrs. Avis and here she later taught as an assistant.
Upon the death of Mrs. Billings, Mrs. Hodges and her daughter, Marietta, went to live with another one of the family, the wife of Elijah Banta, in Franklin, Ind. Here the young girl was given opportunity to pursue her studies at Oxford, Ohio, one of her instructors being Dr. John Witherspoon Scott, founder and president of the Oxford College for women, with whom she kept up a correspondence until that kindly old gentleman was more than 90 years of age.
Soon after her graduation at Oxford in 1859, Marietta went to San Antonia, Tex., to care for two children left motherless by the death of her sister, Eliza Jane Lyons, the mother of Lucy Lyons Resseguie, well known to and beloved by many Lamoni people.
In 1861, she became the wife of Robert Faulconer, who died in the second year of the war leaving to her care a tiny daughter, Lucy, who later married Caleb Stafford of Lamoni.
During the war, she was in charge of a college in San Antonio later known as Westmoreland.
In 1865, Mrs. Faulconer returned to her mother and sister, Mrs. Banta, then living at Sandwich, Illinois. Here she renewed her friendship with the late President Joseph Smith [III] begun in their childhood in Nauvoo.
Becoming interested in various phases of church work she taught groups of children on Sunday morning and contributed stories and other articles to the children's paper, Zion's Hope, then being printed at Plano nearby. Her mother died and was buried in Sandwich.
It was here in 1869 that the young widow became the wife of Samuel Frye Walker, a student, philosopher, writer and ranchman, and a little later they made their home in Smoky Valley, Nye county, Nevada.
In this far western home, two daughters were born to them. Two visits were made back to Sandwich and during the second visit the sister, Mrs. Banta, died.
In 1877 Mr. and Mrs. Walker established their home on a farm in Iowa just outside the present town of Lamoni, which farm has since been included in the Graceland College lands.
In 1885 the family removed into the town, their home becoming a center of church activity and sociability through a long period of time. From here Mr. Walker was carried to his long home in 1889.
Here the daughters were given in marriage and here was wielded the prolific pen which for many years kept the Zon's Hope, the Autumn Leaves and the Mother's Column in the Saints' Herald supplied with educational material and gave shape and life to various books for girls, young people, and parents, all worthy children of her busy brain.
She was a prime mover in the work of organizing the Sunday school department, the Religio, the Prayer Union, the Children's Home, the Christmas Offering Missionary Fund, and other forward movements which have marked the history of the church.
She donated some of the first ground given for Graceland College and was honored by having the first dormitory named for her, Marietta Hall. The title "Mother of Graceland" was also conferred upon her. The cause of education ever found in her a loyal and active champion and she expressed her support in material ways.
Through early loss of hearing and a more recent failure of sight, Mrs. Walker was made a veritable prisoner of the senses, but a cheerful one. Through all the afflictions which this condition imposed upon her, she kept a buoyant faith and a shining armor of courage, undimmed by the passing of time.
Her indomitable will recognized no obstacles that could not be surmounted and even in her last days, she was planning to write a book on the fullness of the atonement.
After the death of her niece, Mrs. Resseguie, who was always devoted to her, she was faithfully attended by Miss Mary Banta and she clung to her home even after her failing powers made her daughters feel she should be receiving their care. She spent some time with her daughter, Mrs. Albert Ackerly, in Des Moines and finally consented to make her home with her daughter, Mrs. Frances Davis, in Iowa City. Mrs. Davis' son, having lost his wife, she was called to California to keep house for him and to mother his two little daughters.
With unfailing courage, Mrs. Walker, at the age of 95, made this journey with her daughter and kept her interest in life, her intention being strong to write her book.
In the new home, the devotion of her daughter and her grandson and the two little girls gave her all the comfort that human love can give. Varying conditions of health made her prostrate at times but always she rallied until at noon on Friday, April 11, a sudden change announced the end was near and she slept until she passed from this life Saturday night at 11:30.
On Thursday, April 10, she was 96 years old. She received a telegram of greeting from the [RLDS} centennial conference [in Independence, Missouri] and showers of greetings by mail and in person. In the evening, she sat in her chair and received a delegation of 60 young people from Santa Anna and Long Beach who laid flowers in her lap and touched her hand as they passed, knowing she could not discern their faces nor distinguish their voices. But she acknowledged the honor most graciously and was happy in all the day had brought to her.
She passed a comfortable night and seemed as well as usual the next forenoon. At noon when the change came she went to sleep to awaken in the happier world, free from the infirmities of the flesh. A wonderful ending for a wonderful life.
Of her family surviving there are three daughters, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, two infant sons of grandsons having preceded her in recent months.
Source: The Lamoni Chronicle, published in Lamoni, Iowa on Thursday, April 17th, 1930, pgs. 1, 10
2.) Biography. Marietta Walker Accomplishing the Impossible
by Joni Wilson
It's difficult to use the word "impossible" and mean it. Impossible means that something is incapable of being done because it is extremely difficult. But that is exactly what Marietta Hodge Faulconer Walker did throughout her life. Not once but several times, this exceptional woman accomplished the impossible. In the words of one of her daughters: "The thing that couldn't be done—she did it."2
Marietta was born in 1834 in Ohio as the youngest child of thirteen in the Hodge family. Her family had converted to the Mormon religion, and they were following the well-worn trail from the East to the Midwest. After settling in Caldwell County, Missouri, the family was among those who fled in 1839 under Governor Lilburn Boggs's extermination order (Marietta would have been about five years old).
[The family] settled in Petty, near Nauvoo, Illinois. Marietta was ten years old when Mormon religion founder Joseph Smith Jr. and his brother were murdered. Her father took her to see the bodies as they lay on display.3 Less than two years later, three of her brothers were dead and a fourth disappeared, due to trouble associated with a theft and murder. In her young life, it was not likely that the Mormon religion had been much comfort to her.
Marietta relocated to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, in 1844 with her parents and a brother to live near one of her sisters. After her father died, the three went to live in St. Louis, Missouri, with another sister, until the cholera epidemic took her sister and brother.
Marietta and her mother were uprooted again, and the 1850 federal census shows them living in Indiana with still another sister and brother-in-law, Emaline and Elijah Banta.4
By 1859 Marietta had graduated from Oxford College for Women in Ohio (later Miami University), completing four years of study in just three. There were less than twenty women in her class. Elijah Banta helped pay the bill for her college expenses.
This experience had a great effect on Marietta's later association and passion for excellence in education with Graceland College and the Reorganized Church. She received and found value in a quality education and expected no less for others. While at Oxford she was taught and became friends and corresponded for years with Reverend Doctor John Scott, who became the father-in-law of U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, her first near-brush with a president.5
In 1860, Marietta's life changed again. Yet another sister died in Texas leaving two small girls motherless. Marietta moved to Texas to help care for her nieces. While there she was asked to become principal of San Antonio Female College. This was at the beginning of the Civil War, and most men were going to support the Southern cause. Marietta was in support of the Confederates, although she was against slavery. On August 2, 1860, Marietta and Robert T. Faulconer were married in Texas. In July 1861, daughter Lucy was born.
Faulconer became ill while soldiering in the war. Marietta was anxious to be with him and received a presidential pass (after much badgering on her part) to break through the fighting line to be with him. This first husband died of yellow fever in 1862 while home on furlough.6
Marietta received word in 1864 that her mother was not well, and she decided to move back to Illinois. However, she couldn't go home by a direct route because of the Civil War federal blockade. Marietta traveled with her three-year-old daughter to Mexico, then Cuba, and on to New York to get around the blockade. She was in New York at the time of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession, her second near-brush with a president.
She finally made it to Sandwich, Illinois.7 There Marietta Faulconer renewed her childhood acquaintance with Joseph Smith III and became interested in the Reorganized church work. She was apparently skeptical at first of this Mormon religion after her childhood memories. But Marietta was reported to have said, "If I receive a testimony of the truthfulness of this work ... I will do all in my power to further the interests of the church. But if, on the contrary, I do not receive it, I will work just as hard in opposition to it."8 Evidently, she received confirmation, for after her death in April 1930 second president of the Reorganized Church Frederick M. Smith said of her, "No person has done more for the developments of the work of the Restoration than has Marietta Walker."9
Some of this work is as follows: She worked with Mark Forscutt as a copyist on the 1867 Joseph Smith Jr. New Translation transcript of the Bible. She began in 1867 writing the Little Folks column in the Saint's Herald, the Reorganized Church's official periodical. She began the Society of Gleaners, a women's group, in 1867. She wrote a church-wide children's paper, Zion's Hope, beginning in 1869, after teaching children in local Sunday school. She was also active in the Daughters of Zion and the Women's Auxiliary for Social Service, which later became the Women's Department of the church.10
In 1885 Marietta started writing The Mother's Home Column (for women and children) in the Saint's Herald. This was in response to a request for communication space for the women of the church to share words of encouragement and provide a support system. She funded with her own money and wrote a magazine for young people called Autumn Leaves (later renamed Vision) in 1888 and was editor for seventeen years. She pushed for educational standards in the General Sunday School Association in 1891. She helped organize the Zion's Religio Literary Society for Youth in 1893. She (with others) coordinated publication of Stepping Stones for junior age youth. She wrote several books for the church. She also was responsible and largely on her own raised funds beginning in 1891 for the South Seas islands "gospel boat" Evanelia, which was dedicated in 1894. Through her column in the Herald, she initiated the "Christmas Offering" fund for missionaries. The amount raised in 1900 kept five elders in the field that year.11
Marietta's mother died in October 1869. She was married in November 1869 by Joseph Smith III to her new husband, Samuel Fry Walker. Less than a week later Joseph Smith was married to Bertha Madison.12 One daughter stated in later years that both Marietta and Joseph could have done better. It was suggested in several sources that Joseph had wanted to marry Marietta.13 Perhaps this close friendship could have been deepened through marriage. In Joseph's memoirs, he stated, "I often visited .. . and greatly enjoyed the companionship ... of the members of the Hodges family."14
However, the choices had been made and Marietta, husband, and daughter went to Nevada for seven years. She continued her writing contributions to the church from the isolated ranch on which the family lived. Two more daughters were born there: Frances and Lois. The family moved to Lamoni, Iowa, in 1877 to be the first Saints to settle in that area. Correspondance indicated that they moved because a daughter was beginning to speak and act like an Indian, the only playmates around for the children.15
While in Lamoni, Marietta was quite a remarkable dairy farmer, making and selling butter that eventually paid for the 160-acre farm. She invented a unique cooling system for the milk and butter that consisted of an 8 by 10 by 3 feet high chest, which was cooled by an underground tunnel. A special handlebar lever opened and closed the huge chest.
Marietta was a gardener, artist, nurse, midwife, and taught music lessons in addition to performing the other daily necessities of life. Her second husband died in 1889 after twenty years of marriage.16
In 1891 she donated twenty acres, along with others, for Graceland to begin building its college. She was honored in later years by two namesake dormitories (Marietta Hall and later Walker Flail) and in 1923 was named "Mother of Graceland."17
In a letter to Oxford College she wrote: "Into my heart came the strong desire to see a school similar to my alma mater established upon the broad top of the rolling hills of our home farm among the violets and breezes of our own Iowa prairies, and I gave myself, and my friends who were in any way able to help or to have more influence than I, little rest until Graceland had opened her doors to the young of our church and all who wished to enter. It was always with me a very hard matter to give up as hopeless anything I greatly desired to see done, because it seemed to me it ought to be done."18
Marietta Walker had contact with the early prophet/presidents of the church. As previously stated, she saw the body of Joseph Smith Jr., and she worked intimately with Joseph Smith III. She knew Frederick M. Smith but was against him being president of the church. This was largely due to the Supreme Directional Control difficulties in which Fred M. attempted to gain sole leadership of the church over the control wanted by the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. However, they were friends, as Fred M. protected her editorial job when the Board of Publication wanted to let her go. She corresponded with Israel A. Smith before her death in 1934. Her communications with the leadership of the church undoubtedly influenced them.
During Marietta Walker's closing days, she resided with a daughter and grandson in California. She was nearly deaf and her vision was poor, but she was alert and entertained visitors. Just two days previous to her death, she received greetings for her ninety-sixth birthday from the RLDS Centennial General Conference in session in Independence, Missouri. There were many write-ups about her contributions to the church, but perhaps her daughter summed up her influence best: "One of the things I learned from my mother was courage. Courage is to do the right thing, to dare, to attempt—and to achieve against any difficulty."19
Marietta Walker was the most significant woman in the nineteenth-century Reorganization, even more so than Emma Smith, who was a symbolic figure. Her desire for quality education was coupled with her desire for the spiritual care of the members and friends of the Reorganized Church. There was no disconnect between the secular and religious for this remarkable woman, who gave so much of her energy to mentor and lift up others. Marietta especially touched the lives of women and children in ways that the male hierarchy of the church could not. Her dedication and passion for living was expressed in her living example that continues to touch the lives of others today.
1.) Joni Wilson works in Communications Services at the Community of Christ world headquarters in Independence, Missouri. This paper was presented at the 2002 Mormon History Association and the 2002 John Whiner Historical Association annual meetings.
2.) Frances Walker Davis, 15 May 1930, entry in book in Marietta Walker papers P3, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri.
3.) Roy Cheville, They Made a Difference (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1970), 237-238.
4.) Junin Braby, "Marietta Walker—A Study in Devotion," Saints Herald 122 (September 1975): 568.
5.) Vida E. Smith, "Distinguished Women." Journal of History (July 1930): 313.
6.) Ibid.
7.) Cleo M. Hanthome, "Marietta Walker: A Woman With a Clearer View," The Saints' Herald 90 (April 1943):
8.) James W. Davis, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep," Vision (July 1930): 329.
9.) Hanthorne, 452.
10.) Richard P. Howard, "Marietta Walker: A Testament of Devotion," Saints Herald 121 (June 1974): 372.
11.) Cheville, 244.
12.) Hanthorne. 463.
13.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
14.) The Memoirs ofJoseph Smith 111(1832-1914). (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1979), 131.
15.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
16.) Ibid.
17.) "Marietta Walker. Honored," The Saints' Herald 70 (30 May 1923): 522.
18.) Letter to Miss Olive Flower, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (23 January 1929) from Marietta Walker quoted in The Saints' Herald 77 (23 April 1930): 454, 455.
19.) Frances Walker Davis, P3 Marietta Walker papers, Community of Christ Archives.
Source: The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal
2002 Nauvoo Conference Special Edition (2002), pp. 59-61 (3 pages)
Published By: John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA)
Interesting Quotes from Marietta's Life
1.) When war erupted between the Saints and other Missouri settlers, Marietta's father and two of her older brothers helped defend the Saints in the Battle of Crooked River. Father Hodges was near Apostle David Patten when they were fired upon—both men were hit and fell. Brother Hodges was wounded in the side but lived. Apostle Patten died from his wounds shortly thereafter. Marietta was only four and a half at the time. However, the wounding of her father and the death of Apostle Patten made a sad and melancholy impression upon her bright, young mind.
2.) Marietta was ten when Joseph and Hyrum were murdered. Her father took her to the Mansion House to view their bodies. Marietta later described her experience that day in an article entitled, "A Picture from Memory's Wall." She related:
Among those [mourners] . . . was the bent form of an aged man to whose band a little girl [Marietta], a child of some nine or ten summers, was clinging. As they came to the head of the coffins the man bent slowly down and tenderly raised the child in his arms that she might see more clearly the faces of the dead." (Journal of History 3:194, April 1910)
As they journeyed homeward Brother Hodges became so ill that he had to stop and rest. He talked of Joseph and Hyrum and said in an anguished voice: "0, that I ever should have lived to see this day!"
3.) Sister Hodges and her children were living in Pittsburg when Emeline, who was then unmarried, met a young man named Elijah Banta. He had been baptized in the fall of 1844 after hearing George M. Hinkle preach the gospel. Emeline and Elijah were married December 6, 1846. Elijah tenderly cared for Emeline, and Mother Lucy, as if he were her own son. Elijah was blessed financially and he provided for the entire family, treating Marietta as his own sister.
4.) She founded the Children's Home at Lamoni for orphans and children whose parents could not care for them, and arranged for the former home of Bishop Elijah Banta, where she had lived, to be used for that purpose.
5.) Many young people benefited from her love and guidance. Among them was Elbert A. Smith, son of David Smith and grandson of Joseph the Martyr. He had very little formal education, but by following Marietta's wise council Elbert became editor of Autumn Leaves and the Saints' Herald. He also served twenty-nine years in the First Presidency as a counselor to Joseph Smith III and Frederick M. Smith. He was the presiding patriarch of the Church at the time he penned these words of tribute to Marietta.
Sister Marietta Walker [was an] old-time friend of my father [David H. Smith] and mother [Clara Charlotte Smith]. . . . I was fortunate to inherit the friendship of Marietta Walker. . . . Very soon after my arrival in Lamoni, Sister Walker took me in hand. With her very black and penetrating eyes upon me and her sparkling personality at its best, she reminded me that my education had been all too limited. I was to do a work in the church, I must study and study hard to prepare myself. She put it bluntly, I should foreswear a lot of pleasant things—parties and dances and loafing—and study, study, and then study some more.
Next to Emma Smith, "the elect lady," I consider Marietta Walker the most distinguished woman in our history. Her works still live after her in the many movements that she sponsored. I was only one of many young people that she inspired and helped by actual personal contact, and many thousands have been helped by her indirectly—perhaps some who have never even given her a thought.
Someone said to me, "If we were Catholics we would canonize Sister Walker—she would be 'Saint Marietta.'" We would canonize her for her piety, her many good works for the church, her saintly character. Come to think of it, she is and was "Saint Marietta"—Latter Day Saint, one hundred percent. Her singleness of purpose and vision, her complete conversion to the Latter Day Restoration, plus her remarkable personality, made her outstanding and unforgettable.
I took Sister Walker's advice rather seriously. . . . My hours of work were ten a day, six days a week, and there was always work at home . . . a big garden, a cow to milk. . . . But for long hours at nights and on Sundays I studied—when not engaged in church work. (Elbert A. Smith, On Memory's Beam [lndependence, Missouri: Herald Publishing House, 1946], 92, 104–105)
6.) These words by Vida E. Smith summarize Marietta's life: Her association with the church had been of a character to make its memory undesirable. Her heritage so far had been a sad one. Upon her parents had fallen the glory of the Restoration, and they followed its light until the shadows fell. The youth and beauty and strength of their home went out, and dead sea ashes lay upon the altar of their faith. And yet she drew from eternity many blessings for the church and withheld not her hand. A favorite motto with her was: "Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready and God will send thee flax," and she was a living example of its truth. (Journal of History, July 1920, pp. 314–315)
7.) In San Antonio, Marietta opened "a select school for young ladies in her home. She seemed an instructress of unusual ability and offered to teach all branches of a thorough English education as well as give instruction in subjects pertaining to a regular collegiate course if it was desired. She also gave lessons in drawing, painting, and music."
________________________
1ST HUSBAND: Robert T. Faulconer
m. 2 Aug 1860 Bexar County, Texas
He was a student, philosopher, writer, and rancher.
Daughters: Francis and Lois
2ND HUSBAND: Samuel Frye Walker
m. 7 Nov 1869 - Sandwich, DeKalb, Illinois
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:
Questions of the Holy Scriptures(1869)
A Compendium of the Faith...(1888) with H Stebbins
Questions, answers and brief stories on and from the Holy Scriptures(1889)
With the Church in the Early Day(1891)
The Indian Maiden(1907)
Our Boys( nd )
Fireside Chats With Our Girls(1901)
Brief Sketch of the Life and Death of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans( nd )
Gospel Story and Footsteps of Jesus (1904)
Object-Lessons on Temperance(1907)
FURTHER INFORMATION:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43200393
1.) Obituary. PIONEER LADY DIES IN CALIFORNIA
Marietta Walker Ceases Eventful Life, Following Birthday Marked by Great Homage
Mrs. Marietta Walker, 96, author, editor, and pioneer church and civic worker of Lamoni, died April 12, at the home of her grandson, Walker Davis, in Brea, Calif. The remains were expected to arrive in Lamoni last evening and funeral services will be held today at 10:30. Elder J.W. Davis will deliver the sermon assisted by Patriarch F. A. Smith. A delegation of Saints and friends will accompany Mr. Davis from Independence to pay a last tribute to this noble woman.
Marietta, the youngest of 13 children born to Curtis and Lucy Hodges, first saw the light of day at Willoughby, Ohio, April 10, 1834. This place had been a temporary stopping place for the family in their migration from New York to Missouri.
From the troubles which came upon the Saints in Far West, Caldwell county, Mo., Mr. Hodges fled with his family in 1839 to Pike county, Ill., and later to Nauvoo, where they resided until 1846, having passed through the dark and cloudy day which attended the martyrdom of the leaders two years before. Elizabethtown, Pa., became their refuge after leaving Nauvoo, and here Mr. Hodges died and was buried.
Following the loss of her father, Marietta went with her mother and a brother to St. Louis to make their home with an older sister Mrs. Lucy Ann Billings. There she attended a girls' school conducted by a Mrs. Avis and here she later taught as an assistant.
Upon the death of Mrs. Billings, Mrs. Hodges and her daughter, Marietta, went to live with another one of the family, the wife of Elijah Banta, in Franklin, Ind. Here the young girl was given opportunity to pursue her studies at Oxford, Ohio, one of her instructors being Dr. John Witherspoon Scott, founder and president of the Oxford College for women, with whom she kept up a correspondence until that kindly old gentleman was more than 90 years of age.
Soon after her graduation at Oxford in 1859, Marietta went to San Antonia, Tex., to care for two children left motherless by the death of her sister, Eliza Jane Lyons, the mother of Lucy Lyons Resseguie, well known to and beloved by many Lamoni people.
In 1861, she became the wife of Robert Faulconer, who died in the second year of the war leaving to her care a tiny daughter, Lucy, who later married Caleb Stafford of Lamoni.
During the war, she was in charge of a college in San Antonio later known as Westmoreland.
In 1865, Mrs. Faulconer returned to her mother and sister, Mrs. Banta, then living at Sandwich, Illinois. Here she renewed her friendship with the late President Joseph Smith [III] begun in their childhood in Nauvoo.
Becoming interested in various phases of church work she taught groups of children on Sunday morning and contributed stories and other articles to the children's paper, Zion's Hope, then being printed at Plano nearby. Her mother died and was buried in Sandwich.
It was here in 1869 that the young widow became the wife of Samuel Frye Walker, a student, philosopher, writer and ranchman, and a little later they made their home in Smoky Valley, Nye county, Nevada.
In this far western home, two daughters were born to them. Two visits were made back to Sandwich and during the second visit the sister, Mrs. Banta, died.
In 1877 Mr. and Mrs. Walker established their home on a farm in Iowa just outside the present town of Lamoni, which farm has since been included in the Graceland College lands.
In 1885 the family removed into the town, their home becoming a center of church activity and sociability through a long period of time. From here Mr. Walker was carried to his long home in 1889.
Here the daughters were given in marriage and here was wielded the prolific pen which for many years kept the Zon's Hope, the Autumn Leaves and the Mother's Column in the Saints' Herald supplied with educational material and gave shape and life to various books for girls, young people, and parents, all worthy children of her busy brain.
She was a prime mover in the work of organizing the Sunday school department, the Religio, the Prayer Union, the Children's Home, the Christmas Offering Missionary Fund, and other forward movements which have marked the history of the church.
She donated some of the first ground given for Graceland College and was honored by having the first dormitory named for her, Marietta Hall. The title "Mother of Graceland" was also conferred upon her. The cause of education ever found in her a loyal and active champion and she expressed her support in material ways.
Through early loss of hearing and a more recent failure of sight, Mrs. Walker was made a veritable prisoner of the senses, but a cheerful one. Through all the afflictions which this condition imposed upon her, she kept a buoyant faith and a shining armor of courage, undimmed by the passing of time.
Her indomitable will recognized no obstacles that could not be surmounted and even in her last days, she was planning to write a book on the fullness of the atonement.
After the death of her niece, Mrs. Resseguie, who was always devoted to her, she was faithfully attended by Miss Mary Banta and she clung to her home even after her failing powers made her daughters feel she should be receiving their care. She spent some time with her daughter, Mrs. Albert Ackerly, in Des Moines and finally consented to make her home with her daughter, Mrs. Frances Davis, in Iowa City. Mrs. Davis' son, having lost his wife, she was called to California to keep house for him and to mother his two little daughters.
With unfailing courage, Mrs. Walker, at the age of 95, made this journey with her daughter and kept her interest in life, her intention being strong to write her book.
In the new home, the devotion of her daughter and her grandson and the two little girls gave her all the comfort that human love can give. Varying conditions of health made her prostrate at times but always she rallied until at noon on Friday, April 11, a sudden change announced the end was near and she slept until she passed from this life Saturday night at 11:30.
On Thursday, April 10, she was 96 years old. She received a telegram of greeting from the [RLDS} centennial conference [in Independence, Missouri] and showers of greetings by mail and in person. In the evening, she sat in her chair and received a delegation of 60 young people from Santa Anna and Long Beach who laid flowers in her lap and touched her hand as they passed, knowing she could not discern their faces nor distinguish their voices. But she acknowledged the honor most graciously and was happy in all the day had brought to her.
She passed a comfortable night and seemed as well as usual the next forenoon. At noon when the change came she went to sleep to awaken in the happier world, free from the infirmities of the flesh. A wonderful ending for a wonderful life.
Of her family surviving there are three daughters, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, two infant sons of grandsons having preceded her in recent months.
Source: The Lamoni Chronicle, published in Lamoni, Iowa on Thursday, April 17th, 1930, pgs. 1, 10
2.) Biography. Marietta Walker Accomplishing the Impossible
by Joni Wilson
It's difficult to use the word "impossible" and mean it. Impossible means that something is incapable of being done because it is extremely difficult. But that is exactly what Marietta Hodge Faulconer Walker did throughout her life. Not once but several times, this exceptional woman accomplished the impossible. In the words of one of her daughters: "The thing that couldn't be done—she did it."2
Marietta was born in 1834 in Ohio as the youngest child of thirteen in the Hodge family. Her family had converted to the Mormon religion, and they were following the well-worn trail from the East to the Midwest. After settling in Caldwell County, Missouri, the family was among those who fled in 1839 under Governor Lilburn Boggs's extermination order (Marietta would have been about five years old).
[The family] settled in Petty, near Nauvoo, Illinois. Marietta was ten years old when Mormon religion founder Joseph Smith Jr. and his brother were murdered. Her father took her to see the bodies as they lay on display.3 Less than two years later, three of her brothers were dead and a fourth disappeared, due to trouble associated with a theft and murder. In her young life, it was not likely that the Mormon religion had been much comfort to her.
Marietta relocated to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, in 1844 with her parents and a brother to live near one of her sisters. After her father died, the three went to live in St. Louis, Missouri, with another sister, until the cholera epidemic took her sister and brother.
Marietta and her mother were uprooted again, and the 1850 federal census shows them living in Indiana with still another sister and brother-in-law, Emaline and Elijah Banta.4
By 1859 Marietta had graduated from Oxford College for Women in Ohio (later Miami University), completing four years of study in just three. There were less than twenty women in her class. Elijah Banta helped pay the bill for her college expenses.
This experience had a great effect on Marietta's later association and passion for excellence in education with Graceland College and the Reorganized Church. She received and found value in a quality education and expected no less for others. While at Oxford she was taught and became friends and corresponded for years with Reverend Doctor John Scott, who became the father-in-law of U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, her first near-brush with a president.5
In 1860, Marietta's life changed again. Yet another sister died in Texas leaving two small girls motherless. Marietta moved to Texas to help care for her nieces. While there she was asked to become principal of San Antonio Female College. This was at the beginning of the Civil War, and most men were going to support the Southern cause. Marietta was in support of the Confederates, although she was against slavery. On August 2, 1860, Marietta and Robert T. Faulconer were married in Texas. In July 1861, daughter Lucy was born.
Faulconer became ill while soldiering in the war. Marietta was anxious to be with him and received a presidential pass (after much badgering on her part) to break through the fighting line to be with him. This first husband died of yellow fever in 1862 while home on furlough.6
Marietta received word in 1864 that her mother was not well, and she decided to move back to Illinois. However, she couldn't go home by a direct route because of the Civil War federal blockade. Marietta traveled with her three-year-old daughter to Mexico, then Cuba, and on to New York to get around the blockade. She was in New York at the time of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession, her second near-brush with a president.
She finally made it to Sandwich, Illinois.7 There Marietta Faulconer renewed her childhood acquaintance with Joseph Smith III and became interested in the Reorganized church work. She was apparently skeptical at first of this Mormon religion after her childhood memories. But Marietta was reported to have said, "If I receive a testimony of the truthfulness of this work ... I will do all in my power to further the interests of the church. But if, on the contrary, I do not receive it, I will work just as hard in opposition to it."8 Evidently, she received confirmation, for after her death in April 1930 second president of the Reorganized Church Frederick M. Smith said of her, "No person has done more for the developments of the work of the Restoration than has Marietta Walker."9
Some of this work is as follows: She worked with Mark Forscutt as a copyist on the 1867 Joseph Smith Jr. New Translation transcript of the Bible. She began in 1867 writing the Little Folks column in the Saint's Herald, the Reorganized Church's official periodical. She began the Society of Gleaners, a women's group, in 1867. She wrote a church-wide children's paper, Zion's Hope, beginning in 1869, after teaching children in local Sunday school. She was also active in the Daughters of Zion and the Women's Auxiliary for Social Service, which later became the Women's Department of the church.10
In 1885 Marietta started writing The Mother's Home Column (for women and children) in the Saint's Herald. This was in response to a request for communication space for the women of the church to share words of encouragement and provide a support system. She funded with her own money and wrote a magazine for young people called Autumn Leaves (later renamed Vision) in 1888 and was editor for seventeen years. She pushed for educational standards in the General Sunday School Association in 1891. She helped organize the Zion's Religio Literary Society for Youth in 1893. She (with others) coordinated publication of Stepping Stones for junior age youth. She wrote several books for the church. She also was responsible and largely on her own raised funds beginning in 1891 for the South Seas islands "gospel boat" Evanelia, which was dedicated in 1894. Through her column in the Herald, she initiated the "Christmas Offering" fund for missionaries. The amount raised in 1900 kept five elders in the field that year.11
Marietta's mother died in October 1869. She was married in November 1869 by Joseph Smith III to her new husband, Samuel Fry Walker. Less than a week later Joseph Smith was married to Bertha Madison.12 One daughter stated in later years that both Marietta and Joseph could have done better. It was suggested in several sources that Joseph had wanted to marry Marietta.13 Perhaps this close friendship could have been deepened through marriage. In Joseph's memoirs, he stated, "I often visited .. . and greatly enjoyed the companionship ... of the members of the Hodges family."14
However, the choices had been made and Marietta, husband, and daughter went to Nevada for seven years. She continued her writing contributions to the church from the isolated ranch on which the family lived. Two more daughters were born there: Frances and Lois. The family moved to Lamoni, Iowa, in 1877 to be the first Saints to settle in that area. Correspondance indicated that they moved because a daughter was beginning to speak and act like an Indian, the only playmates around for the children.15
While in Lamoni, Marietta was quite a remarkable dairy farmer, making and selling butter that eventually paid for the 160-acre farm. She invented a unique cooling system for the milk and butter that consisted of an 8 by 10 by 3 feet high chest, which was cooled by an underground tunnel. A special handlebar lever opened and closed the huge chest.
Marietta was a gardener, artist, nurse, midwife, and taught music lessons in addition to performing the other daily necessities of life. Her second husband died in 1889 after twenty years of marriage.16
In 1891 she donated twenty acres, along with others, for Graceland to begin building its college. She was honored in later years by two namesake dormitories (Marietta Hall and later Walker Flail) and in 1923 was named "Mother of Graceland."17
In a letter to Oxford College she wrote: "Into my heart came the strong desire to see a school similar to my alma mater established upon the broad top of the rolling hills of our home farm among the violets and breezes of our own Iowa prairies, and I gave myself, and my friends who were in any way able to help or to have more influence than I, little rest until Graceland had opened her doors to the young of our church and all who wished to enter. It was always with me a very hard matter to give up as hopeless anything I greatly desired to see done, because it seemed to me it ought to be done."18
Marietta Walker had contact with the early prophet/presidents of the church. As previously stated, she saw the body of Joseph Smith Jr., and she worked intimately with Joseph Smith III. She knew Frederick M. Smith but was against him being president of the church. This was largely due to the Supreme Directional Control difficulties in which Fred M. attempted to gain sole leadership of the church over the control wanted by the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. However, they were friends, as Fred M. protected her editorial job when the Board of Publication wanted to let her go. She corresponded with Israel A. Smith before her death in 1934. Her communications with the leadership of the church undoubtedly influenced them.
During Marietta Walker's closing days, she resided with a daughter and grandson in California. She was nearly deaf and her vision was poor, but she was alert and entertained visitors. Just two days previous to her death, she received greetings for her ninety-sixth birthday from the RLDS Centennial General Conference in session in Independence, Missouri. There were many write-ups about her contributions to the church, but perhaps her daughter summed up her influence best: "One of the things I learned from my mother was courage. Courage is to do the right thing, to dare, to attempt—and to achieve against any difficulty."19
Marietta Walker was the most significant woman in the nineteenth-century Reorganization, even more so than Emma Smith, who was a symbolic figure. Her desire for quality education was coupled with her desire for the spiritual care of the members and friends of the Reorganized Church. There was no disconnect between the secular and religious for this remarkable woman, who gave so much of her energy to mentor and lift up others. Marietta especially touched the lives of women and children in ways that the male hierarchy of the church could not. Her dedication and passion for living was expressed in her living example that continues to touch the lives of others today.
1.) Joni Wilson works in Communications Services at the Community of Christ world headquarters in Independence, Missouri. This paper was presented at the 2002 Mormon History Association and the 2002 John Whiner Historical Association annual meetings.
2.) Frances Walker Davis, 15 May 1930, entry in book in Marietta Walker papers P3, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri.
3.) Roy Cheville, They Made a Difference (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1970), 237-238.
4.) Junin Braby, "Marietta Walker—A Study in Devotion," Saints Herald 122 (September 1975): 568.
5.) Vida E. Smith, "Distinguished Women." Journal of History (July 1930): 313.
6.) Ibid.
7.) Cleo M. Hanthome, "Marietta Walker: A Woman With a Clearer View," The Saints' Herald 90 (April 1943):
8.) James W. Davis, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep," Vision (July 1930): 329.
9.) Hanthorne, 452.
10.) Richard P. Howard, "Marietta Walker: A Testament of Devotion," Saints Herald 121 (June 1974): 372.
11.) Cheville, 244.
12.) Hanthorne. 463.
13.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
14.) The Memoirs ofJoseph Smith 111(1832-1914). (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1979), 131.
15.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
16.) Ibid.
17.) "Marietta Walker. Honored," The Saints' Herald 70 (30 May 1923): 522.
18.) Letter to Miss Olive Flower, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (23 January 1929) from Marietta Walker quoted in The Saints' Herald 77 (23 April 1930): 454, 455.
19.) Frances Walker Davis, P3 Marietta Walker papers, Community of Christ Archives.
Source: The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal
2002 Nauvoo Conference Special Edition (2002), pp. 59-61 (3 pages)
Published By: John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA)
Interesting Quotes from Marietta's Life
1.) When war erupted between the Saints and other Missouri settlers, Marietta's father and two of her older brothers helped defend the Saints in the Battle of Crooked River. Father Hodges was near Apostle David Patten when they were fired upon—both men were hit and fell. Brother Hodges was wounded in the side but lived. Apostle Patten died from his wounds shortly thereafter. Marietta was only four and a half at the time. However, the wounding of her father and the death of Apostle Patten made a sad and melancholy impression upon her bright, young mind.
2.) Marietta was ten when Joseph and Hyrum were murdered. Her father took her to the Mansion House to view their bodies. Marietta later described her experience that day in an article entitled, "A Picture from Memory's Wall." She related:
Among those [mourners] . . . was the bent form of an aged man to whose band a little girl [Marietta], a child of some nine or ten summers, was clinging. As they came to the head of the coffins the man bent slowly down and tenderly raised the child in his arms that she might see more clearly the faces of the dead." (Journal of History 3:194, April 1910)
As they journeyed homeward Brother Hodges became so ill that he had to stop and rest. He talked of Joseph and Hyrum and said in an anguished voice: "0, that I ever should have lived to see this day!"
3.) Sister Hodges and her children were living in Pittsburg when Emeline, who was then unmarried, met a young man named Elijah Banta. He had been baptized in the fall of 1844 after hearing George M. Hinkle preach the gospel. Emeline and Elijah were married December 6, 1846. Elijah tenderly cared for Emeline, and Mother Lucy, as if he were her own son. Elijah was blessed financially and he provided for the entire family, treating Marietta as his own sister.
4.) She founded the Children's Home at Lamoni for orphans and children whose parents could not care for them, and arranged for the former home of Bishop Elijah Banta, where she had lived, to be used for that purpose.
5.) Many young people benefited from her love and guidance. Among them was Elbert A. Smith, son of David Smith and grandson of Joseph the Martyr. He had very little formal education, but by following Marietta's wise council Elbert became editor of Autumn Leaves and the Saints' Herald. He also served twenty-nine years in the First Presidency as a counselor to Joseph Smith III and Frederick M. Smith. He was the presiding patriarch of the Church at the time he penned these words of tribute to Marietta.
Sister Marietta Walker [was an] old-time friend of my father [David H. Smith] and mother [Clara Charlotte Smith]. . . . I was fortunate to inherit the friendship of Marietta Walker. . . . Very soon after my arrival in Lamoni, Sister Walker took me in hand. With her very black and penetrating eyes upon me and her sparkling personality at its best, she reminded me that my education had been all too limited. I was to do a work in the church, I must study and study hard to prepare myself. She put it bluntly, I should foreswear a lot of pleasant things—parties and dances and loafing—and study, study, and then study some more.
Next to Emma Smith, "the elect lady," I consider Marietta Walker the most distinguished woman in our history. Her works still live after her in the many movements that she sponsored. I was only one of many young people that she inspired and helped by actual personal contact, and many thousands have been helped by her indirectly—perhaps some who have never even given her a thought.
Someone said to me, "If we were Catholics we would canonize Sister Walker—she would be 'Saint Marietta.'" We would canonize her for her piety, her many good works for the church, her saintly character. Come to think of it, she is and was "Saint Marietta"—Latter Day Saint, one hundred percent. Her singleness of purpose and vision, her complete conversion to the Latter Day Restoration, plus her remarkable personality, made her outstanding and unforgettable.
I took Sister Walker's advice rather seriously. . . . My hours of work were ten a day, six days a week, and there was always work at home . . . a big garden, a cow to milk. . . . But for long hours at nights and on Sundays I studied—when not engaged in church work. (Elbert A. Smith, On Memory's Beam [lndependence, Missouri: Herald Publishing House, 1946], 92, 104–105)
6.) These words by Vida E. Smith summarize Marietta's life: Her association with the church had been of a character to make its memory undesirable. Her heritage so far had been a sad one. Upon her parents had fallen the glory of the Restoration, and they followed its light until the shadows fell. The youth and beauty and strength of their home went out, and dead sea ashes lay upon the altar of their faith. And yet she drew from eternity many blessings for the church and withheld not her hand. A favorite motto with her was: "Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready and God will send thee flax," and she was a living example of its truth. (Journal of History, July 1920, pp. 314–315)
7.) In San Antonio, Marietta opened "a select school for young ladies in her home. She seemed an instructress of unusual ability and offered to teach all branches of a thorough English education as well as give instruction in subjects pertaining to a regular collegiate course if it was desired. She also gave lessons in drawing, painting, and music."
________________________
1ST HUSBAND: Robert T. Faulconer
m. 2 Aug 1860 Bexar County, Texas
He was a student, philosopher, writer, and rancher.
Daughters: Francis and Lois
2ND HUSBAND: Samuel Frye Walker
m. 7 Nov 1869 - Sandwich, DeKalb, Illinois
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:
Questions of the Holy Scriptures(1869)
A Compendium of the Faith...(1888) with H Stebbins
Questions, answers and brief stories on and from the Holy Scriptures(1889)
With the Church in the Early Day(1891)
The Indian Maiden(1907)
Our Boys( nd )
Fireside Chats With Our Girls(1901)
Brief Sketch of the Life and Death of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans( nd )
Gospel Story and Footsteps of Jesus (1904)
Object-Lessons on Temperance(1907)
FURTHER INFORMATION:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43200393
Marietta Walker Ceases Eventful Life, Following Birthday Marked by Great Homage
Mrs. Marietta Walker, 96, author, editor, and pioneer church and civic worker of Lamoni, died April 12, at the home of her grandson, Walker Davis, in Brea, Calif. The remains were expected to arrive in Lamoni last evening and funeral services will be held today at 10:30. Elder J.W. Davis will deliver the sermon assisted by Patriarch F. A. Smith. A delegation of Saints and friends will accompany Mr. Davis from Independence to pay a last tribute to this noble woman.
Marietta, the youngest of 13 children born to Curtis and Lucy Hodges, first saw the light of day at Willoughby, Ohio, April 10, 1834. This place had been a temporary stopping place for the family in their migration from New York to Missouri.
From the troubles which came upon the Saints in Far West, Caldwell county, Mo., Mr. Hodges fled with his family in 1839 to Pike county, Ill., and later to Nauvoo, where they resided until 1846, having passed through the dark and cloudy day which attended the martyrdom of the leaders two years before. Elizabethtown, Pa., became their refuge after leaving Nauvoo, and here Mr. Hodges died and was buried.
Following the loss of her father, Marietta went with her mother and a brother to St. Louis to make their home with an older sister Mrs. Lucy Ann Billings. There she attended a girls' school conducted by a Mrs. Avis and here she later taught as an assistant.
Upon the death of Mrs. Billings, Mrs. Hodges and her daughter, Marietta, went to live with another one of the family, the wife of Elijah Banta, in Franklin, Ind. Here the young girl was given opportunity to pursue her studies at Oxford, Ohio, one of her instructors being Dr. John Witherspoon Scott, founder and president of the Oxford College for women, with whom she kept up a correspondence until that kindly old gentleman was more than 90 years of age.
Soon after her graduation at Oxford in 1859, Marietta went to San Antonia, Tex., to care for two children left motherless by the death of her sister, Eliza Jane Lyons, the mother of Lucy Lyons Resseguie, well known to and beloved by many Lamoni people.
In 1861, she became the wife of Robert Faulconer, who died in the second year of the war leaving to her care a tiny daughter, Lucy, who later married Caleb Stafford of Lamoni.
During the war, she was in charge of a college in San Antonio later known as Westmoreland.
In 1865, Mrs. Faulconer returned to her mother and sister, Mrs. Banta, then living at Sandwich, Illinois. Here she renewed her friendship with the late President Joseph Smith [III] begun in their childhood in Nauvoo.
Becoming interested in various phases of church work she taught groups of children on Sunday morning and contributed stories and other articles to the children's paper, Zion's Hope, then being printed at Plano nearby. Her mother died and was buried in Sandwich.
It was here in 1869 that the young widow became the wife of Samuel Frye Walker, a student, philosopher, writer and ranchman, and a little later they made their home in Smoky Valley, Nye county, Nevada.
In this far western home, two daughters were born to them. Two visits were made back to Sandwich and during the second visit the sister, Mrs. Banta, died.
In 1877 Mr. and Mrs. Walker established their home on a farm in Iowa just outside the present town of Lamoni, which farm has since been included in the Graceland College lands.
In 1885 the family removed into the town, their home becoming a center of church activity and sociability through a long period of time. From here Mr. Walker was carried to his long home in 1889.
Here the daughters were given in marriage and here was wielded the prolific pen which for many years kept the Zon's Hope, the Autumn Leaves and the Mother's Column in the Saints' Herald supplied with educational material and gave shape and life to various books for girls, young people, and parents, all worthy children of her busy brain.
She was a prime mover in the work of organizing the Sunday school department, the Religio, the Prayer Union, the Children's Home, the Christmas Offering Missionary Fund, and other forward movements which have marked the history of the church.
She donated some of the first ground given for Graceland College and was honored by having the first dormitory named for her, Marietta Hall. The title "Mother of Graceland" was also conferred upon her. The cause of education ever found in her a loyal and active champion and she expressed her support in material ways.
Through early loss of hearing and a more recent failure of sight, Mrs. Walker was made a veritable prisoner of the senses, but a cheerful one. Through all the afflictions which this condition imposed upon her, she kept a buoyant faith and a shining armor of courage, undimmed by the passing of time.
Her indomitable will recognized no obstacles that could not be surmounted and even in her last days, she was planning to write a book on the fullness of the atonement.
After the death of her niece, Mrs. Resseguie, who was always devoted to her, she was faithfully attended by Miss Mary Banta and she clung to her home even after her failing powers made her daughters feel she should be receiving their care. She spent some time with her daughter, Mrs. Albert Ackerly, in Des Moines and finally consented to make her home with her daughter, Mrs. Frances Davis, in Iowa City. Mrs. Davis' son, having lost his wife, she was called to California to keep house for him and to mother his two little daughters.
With unfailing courage, Mrs. Walker, at the age of 95, made this journey with her daughter and kept her interest in life, her intention being strong to write her book.
In the new home, the devotion of her daughter and her grandson and the two little girls gave her all the comfort that human love can give. Varying conditions of health made her prostrate at times but always she rallied until at noon on Friday, April 11, a sudden change announced the end was near and she slept until she passed from this life Saturday night at 11:30.
On Thursday, April 10, she was 96 years old. She received a telegram of greeting from the [RLDS} centennial conference [in Independence, Missouri] and showers of greetings by mail and in person. In the evening, she sat in her chair and received a delegation of 60 young people from Santa Anna and Long Beach who laid flowers in her lap and touched her hand as they passed, knowing she could not discern their faces nor distinguish their voices. But she acknowledged the honor most graciously and was happy in all the day had brought to her.
She passed a comfortable night and seemed as well as usual the next forenoon. At noon when the change came she went to sleep to awaken in the happier world, free from the infirmities of the flesh. A wonderful ending for a wonderful life.
Of her family surviving there are three daughters, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, two infant sons of grandsons having preceded her in recent months.
Source: The Lamoni Chronicle, published in Lamoni, Iowa on Thursday, April 17th, 1930, pgs. 1, 10
2.) Biography. Marietta Walker Accomplishing the Impossible
by Joni Wilson
It's difficult to use the word "impossible" and mean it. Impossible means that something is incapable of being done because it is extremely difficult. But that is exactly what Marietta Hodge Faulconer Walker did throughout her life. Not once but several times, this exceptional woman accomplished the impossible. In the words of one of her daughters: "The thing that couldn't be done—she did it."2
Marietta was born in 1834 in Ohio as the youngest child of thirteen in the Hodge family. Her family had converted to the Mormon religion, and they were following the well-worn trail from the East to the Midwest. After settling in Caldwell County, Missouri, the family was among those who fled in 1839 under Governor Lilburn Boggs's extermination order (Marietta would have been about five years old).
[The family] settled in Petty, near Nauvoo, Illinois. Marietta was ten years old when Mormon religion founder Joseph Smith Jr. and his brother were murdered. Her father took her to see the bodies as they lay on display.3 Less than two years later, three of her brothers were dead and a fourth disappeared, due to trouble associated with a theft and murder. In her young life, it was not likely that the Mormon religion had been much comfort to her.
Marietta relocated to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, in 1844 with her parents and a brother to live near one of her sisters. After her father died, the three went to live in St. Louis, Missouri, with another sister, until the cholera epidemic took her sister and brother.
Marietta and her mother were uprooted again, and the 1850 federal census shows them living in Indiana with still another sister and brother-in-law, Emaline and Elijah Banta.4
By 1859 Marietta had graduated from Oxford College for Women in Ohio (later Miami University), completing four years of study in just three. There were less than twenty women in her class. Elijah Banta helped pay the bill for her college expenses.
This experience had a great effect on Marietta's later association and passion for excellence in education with Graceland College and the Reorganized Church. She received and found value in a quality education and expected no less for others. While at Oxford she was taught and became friends and corresponded for years with Reverend Doctor John Scott, who became the father-in-law of U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, her first near-brush with a president.5
In 1860, Marietta's life changed again. Yet another sister died in Texas leaving two small girls motherless. Marietta moved to Texas to help care for her nieces. While there she was asked to become principal of San Antonio Female College. This was at the beginning of the Civil War, and most men were going to support the Southern cause. Marietta was in support of the Confederates, although she was against slavery. On August 2, 1860, Marietta and Robert T. Faulconer were married in Texas. In July 1861, daughter Lucy was born.
Faulconer became ill while soldiering in the war. Marietta was anxious to be with him and received a presidential pass (after much badgering on her part) to break through the fighting line to be with him. This first husband died of yellow fever in 1862 while home on furlough.6
Marietta received word in 1864 that her mother was not well, and she decided to move back to Illinois. However, she couldn't go home by a direct route because of the Civil War federal blockade. Marietta traveled with her three-year-old daughter to Mexico, then Cuba, and on to New York to get around the blockade. She was in New York at the time of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession, her second near-brush with a president.
She finally made it to Sandwich, Illinois.7 There Marietta Faulconer renewed her childhood acquaintance with Joseph Smith III and became interested in the Reorganized church work. She was apparently skeptical at first of this Mormon religion after her childhood memories. But Marietta was reported to have said, "If I receive a testimony of the truthfulness of this work ... I will do all in my power to further the interests of the church. But if, on the contrary, I do not receive it, I will work just as hard in opposition to it."8 Evidently, she received confirmation, for after her death in April 1930 second president of the Reorganized Church Frederick M. Smith said of her, "No person has done more for the developments of the work of the Restoration than has Marietta Walker."9
Some of this work is as follows: She worked with Mark Forscutt as a copyist on the 1867 Joseph Smith Jr. New Translation transcript of the Bible. She began in 1867 writing the Little Folks column in the Saint's Herald, the Reorganized Church's official periodical. She began the Society of Gleaners, a women's group, in 1867. She wrote a church-wide children's paper, Zion's Hope, beginning in 1869, after teaching children in local Sunday school. She was also active in the Daughters of Zion and the Women's Auxiliary for Social Service, which later became the Women's Department of the church.10
In 1885 Marietta started writing The Mother's Home Column (for women and children) in the Saint's Herald. This was in response to a request for communication space for the women of the church to share words of encouragement and provide a support system. She funded with her own money and wrote a magazine for young people called Autumn Leaves (later renamed Vision) in 1888 and was editor for seventeen years. She pushed for educational standards in the General Sunday School Association in 1891. She helped organize the Zion's Religio Literary Society for Youth in 1893. She (with others) coordinated publication of Stepping Stones for junior age youth. She wrote several books for the church. She also was responsible and largely on her own raised funds beginning in 1891 for the South Seas islands "gospel boat" Evanelia, which was dedicated in 1894. Through her column in the Herald, she initiated the "Christmas Offering" fund for missionaries. The amount raised in 1900 kept five elders in the field that year.11
Marietta's mother died in October 1869. She was married in November 1869 by Joseph Smith III to her new husband, Samuel Fry Walker. Less than a week later Joseph Smith was married to Bertha Madison.12 One daughter stated in later years that both Marietta and Joseph could have done better. It was suggested in several sources that Joseph had wanted to marry Marietta.13 Perhaps this close friendship could have been deepened through marriage. In Joseph's memoirs, he stated, "I often visited .. . and greatly enjoyed the companionship ... of the members of the Hodges family."14
However, the choices had been made and Marietta, husband, and daughter went to Nevada for seven years. She continued her writing contributions to the church from the isolated ranch on which the family lived. Two more daughters were born there: Frances and Lois. The family moved to Lamoni, Iowa, in 1877 to be the first Saints to settle in that area. Correspondance indicated that they moved because a daughter was beginning to speak and act like an Indian, the only playmates around for the children.15
While in Lamoni, Marietta was quite a remarkable dairy farmer, making and selling butter that eventually paid for the 160-acre farm. She invented a unique cooling system for the milk and butter that consisted of an 8 by 10 by 3 feet high chest, which was cooled by an underground tunnel. A special handlebar lever opened and closed the huge chest.
Marietta was a gardener, artist, nurse, midwife, and taught music lessons in addition to performing the other daily necessities of life. Her second husband died in 1889 after twenty years of marriage.16
In 1891 she donated twenty acres, along with others, for Graceland to begin building its college. She was honored in later years by two namesake dormitories (Marietta Hall and later Walker Flail) and in 1923 was named "Mother of Graceland."17
In a letter to Oxford College she wrote: "Into my heart came the strong desire to see a school similar to my alma mater established upon the broad top of the rolling hills of our home farm among the violets and breezes of our own Iowa prairies, and I gave myself, and my friends who were in any way able to help or to have more influence than I, little rest until Graceland had opened her doors to the young of our church and all who wished to enter. It was always with me a very hard matter to give up as hopeless anything I greatly desired to see done, because it seemed to me it ought to be done."18
Marietta Walker had contact with the early prophet/presidents of the church. As previously stated, she saw the body of Joseph Smith Jr., and she worked intimately with Joseph Smith III. She knew Frederick M. Smith but was against him being president of the church. This was largely due to the Supreme Directional Control difficulties in which Fred M. attempted to gain sole leadership of the church over the control wanted by the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. However, they were friends, as Fred M. protected her editorial job when the Board of Publication wanted to let her go. She corresponded with Israel A. Smith before her death in 1934. Her communications with the leadership of the church undoubtedly influenced them.
During Marietta Walker's closing days, she resided with a daughter and grandson in California. She was nearly deaf and her vision was poor, but she was alert and entertained visitors. Just two days previous to her death, she received greetings for her ninety-sixth birthday from the RLDS Centennial General Conference in session in Independence, Missouri. There were many write-ups about her contributions to the church, but perhaps her daughter summed up her influence best: "One of the things I learned from my mother was courage. Courage is to do the right thing, to dare, to attempt—and to achieve against any difficulty."19
Marietta Walker was the most significant woman in the nineteenth-century Reorganization, even more so than Emma Smith, who was a symbolic figure. Her desire for quality education was coupled with her desire for the spiritual care of the members and friends of the Reorganized Church. There was no disconnect between the secular and religious for this remarkable woman, who gave so much of her energy to mentor and lift up others. Marietta especially touched the lives of women and children in ways that the male hierarchy of the church could not. Her dedication and passion for living was expressed in her living example that continues to touch the lives of others today.
1.) Joni Wilson works in Communications Services at the Community of Christ world headquarters in Independence, Missouri. This paper was presented at the 2002 Mormon History Association and the 2002 John Whiner Historical Association annual meetings.
2.) Frances Walker Davis, 15 May 1930, entry in book in Marietta Walker papers P3, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri.
3.) Roy Cheville, They Made a Difference (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1970), 237-238.
4.) Junin Braby, "Marietta Walker—A Study in Devotion," Saints Herald 122 (September 1975): 568.
5.) Vida E. Smith, "Distinguished Women." Journal of History (July 1930): 313.
6.) Ibid.
7.) Cleo M. Hanthome, "Marietta Walker: A Woman With a Clearer View," The Saints' Herald 90 (April 1943):
8.) James W. Davis, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep," Vision (July 1930): 329.
9.) Hanthorne, 452.
10.) Richard P. Howard, "Marietta Walker: A Testament of Devotion," Saints Herald 121 (June 1974): 372.
11.) Cheville, 244.
12.) Hanthorne. 463.
13.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
14.) The Memoirs ofJoseph Smith 111(1832-1914). (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1979), 131.
15.) Marietta Walker papers P3.
16.) Ibid.
17.) "Marietta Walker. Honored," The Saints' Herald 70 (30 May 1923): 522.
18.) Letter to Miss Olive Flower, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (23 January 1929) from Marietta Walker quoted in The Saints' Herald 77 (23 April 1930): 454, 455.
19.) Frances Walker Davis, P3 Marietta Walker papers, Community of Christ Archives.
Source: The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal
2002 Nauvoo Conference Special Edition (2002), pp. 59-61 (3 pages)
Published By: John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA)
Interesting Quotes from Marietta's Life
1.) When war erupted between the Saints and other Missouri settlers, Marietta's father and two of her older brothers helped defend the Saints in the Battle of Crooked River. Father Hodges was near Apostle David Patten when they were fired upon—both men were hit and fell. Brother Hodges was wounded in the side but lived. Apostle Patten died from his wounds shortly thereafter. Marietta was only four and a half at the time. However, the wounding of her father and the death of Apostle Patten made a sad and melancholy impression upon her bright, young mind.
2.) Marietta was ten when Joseph and Hyrum were murdered. Her father took her to the Mansion House to view their bodies. Marietta later described her experience that day in an article entitled, "A Picture from Memory's Wall." She related:
Among those [mourners] . . . was the bent form of an aged man to whose band a little girl [Marietta], a child of some nine or ten summers, was clinging. As they came to the head of the coffins the man bent slowly down and tenderly raised the child in his arms that she might see more clearly the faces of the dead." (Journal of History 3:194, April 1910)
As they journeyed homeward Brother Hodges became so ill that he had to stop and rest. He talked of Joseph and Hyrum and said in an anguished voice: "0, that I ever should have lived to see this day!"
3.) Sister Hodges and her children were living in Pittsburg when Emeline, who was then unmarried, met a young man named Elijah Banta. He had been baptized in the fall of 1844 after hearing George M. Hinkle preach the gospel. Emeline and Elijah were married December 6, 1846. Elijah tenderly cared for Emeline, and Mother Lucy, as if he were her own son. Elijah was blessed financially and he provided for the entire family, treating Marietta as his own sister.
4.) She founded the Children's Home at Lamoni for orphans and children whose parents could not care for them, and arranged for the former home of Bishop Elijah Banta, where she had lived, to be used for that purpose.
5.) Many young people benefited from her love and guidance. Among them was Elbert A. Smith, son of David Smith and grandson of Joseph the Martyr. He had very little formal education, but by following Marietta's wise council Elbert became editor of Autumn Leaves and the Saints' Herald. He also served twenty-nine years in the First Presidency as a counselor to Joseph Smith III and Frederick M. Smith. He was the presiding patriarch of the Church at the time he penned these words of tribute to Marietta.
Sister Marietta Walker [was an] old-time friend of my father [David H. Smith] and mother [Clara Charlotte Smith]. . . . I was fortunate to inherit the friendship of Marietta Walker. . . . Very soon after my arrival in Lamoni, Sister Walker took me in hand. With her very black and penetrating eyes upon me and her sparkling personality at its best, she reminded me that my education had been all too limited. I was to do a work in the church, I must study and study hard to prepare myself. She put it bluntly, I should foreswear a lot of pleasant things—parties and dances and loafing—and study, study, and then study some more.
Next to Emma Smith, "the elect lady," I consider Marietta Walker the most distinguished woman in our history. Her works still live after her in the many movements that she sponsored. I was only one of many young people that she inspired and helped by actual personal contact, and many thousands have been helped by her indirectly—perhaps some who have never even given her a thought.
Someone said to me, "If we were Catholics we would canonize Sister Walker—she would be 'Saint Marietta.'" We would canonize her for her piety, her many good works for the church, her saintly character. Come to think of it, she is and was "Saint Marietta"—Latter Day Saint, one hundred percent. Her singleness of purpose and vision, her complete conversion to the Latter Day Restoration, plus her remarkable personality, made her outstanding and unforgettable.
I took Sister Walker's advice rather seriously. . . . My hours of work were ten a day, six days a week, and there was always work at home . . . a big garden, a cow to milk. . . . But for long hours at nights and on Sundays I studied—when not engaged in church work. (Elbert A. Smith, On Memory's Beam [lndependence, Missouri: Herald Publishing House, 1946], 92, 104–105)
6.) These words by Vida E. Smith summarize Marietta's life: Her association with the church had been of a character to make its memory undesirable. Her heritage so far had been a sad one. Upon her parents had fallen the glory of the Restoration, and they followed its light until the shadows fell. The youth and beauty and strength of their home went out, and dead sea ashes lay upon the altar of their faith. And yet she drew from eternity many blessings for the church and withheld not her hand. A favorite motto with her was: "Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready and God will send thee flax," and she was a living example of its truth. (Journal of History, July 1920, pp. 314–315)
7.) In San Antonio, Marietta opened "a select school for young ladies in her home. She seemed an instructress of unusual ability and offered to teach all branches of a thorough English education as well as give instruction in subjects pertaining to a regular collegiate course if it was desired. She also gave lessons in drawing, painting, and music."
________________________
1ST HUSBAND: Robert T. Faulconer
m. 2 Aug 1860 Bexar County, Texas
He was a student, philosopher, writer, and rancher.
Daughters: Francis and Lois
2ND HUSBAND: Samuel Frye Walker
m. 7 Nov 1869 - Sandwich, DeKalb, Illinois
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:
Questions of the Holy Scriptures(1869)
A Compendium of the Faith...(1888) with H Stebbins
Questions, answers and brief stories on and from the Holy Scriptures(1889)
With the Church in the Early Day(1891)
The Indian Maiden(1907)
Our Boys( nd )
Fireside Chats With Our Girls(1901)
Brief Sketch of the Life and Death of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans( nd )
Gospel Story and Footsteps of Jesus (1904)
Object-Lessons on Temperance(1907)
FURTHER INFORMATION:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43200393
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Advertisement
