Martha Spence was the third wife of
Joseph Leland Heywood. They had two
children, Joseph Neal, and Sarepta.
Martha is the great grandmother of the contributor, Richard Neal
Heywood.
Martha Heywood:
Diary Relieved Life of Illness. Loneliness
By Jane Edwards, Executive director of
the Salt Lake YWCA, 1985-1997
---------------
Six weeks before the wedding day, Martha's
appraisal had not warmed."How much Mr. Heywood reminds me of my
brother whose peculiarities I never could endure. But Mr. Heywood is less of the critique
and also less interesting."
By her own admission, Martha Heywood felt greater kinship to her co-wife Sarepta than she did with the husband they shared.
By her own admission, Martha Heywood felt greater kinship to her co-wife Sarepta than she did with the husband they shared.
“Mrs. Heywood is much reserved in her manner toward me, but I admire her
very much. She is the personification of
a good wife and in such matters I feel very small beside her.”
Not surprisingly, Martha
Heywood wasn't a match for the woman she so admired. She acknowledged
that she had never washed her own clothes until she was 30 years old, nor had
she ever cooked or kept house before her arrival in Utah.
Her choices had been different. Through her admiration of Sarepta Heywood,
Martha Heywood also judged: “It pains me
to see a woman in the prime of her youth tied down to the responsibility of a
large family.”
For a year Martha Spence’s writing had sustained her, first releasing
expectancy about being allowed to travel west.
An Irish-born immigrant to America at age 22 against the advice of her
parents and friends, she traveled in New York and Canada as an Advent preacher
before joining the LDS Church in 1848.
The company of 70 wagons often traveled 17 miles a day, stopping
Saturday, Sunday or Monday to recognize the Sabbath. Loss of cattle, stampedes caused by a
combination of accident and mismanagement and breaking of a wagon tongue or
axle tree resulted in occasional delays.
The Sabbath was not a day of rest, as noted by Heywood’s writing on a
mid-August Sunday in 1850.
“Preparing meals and washing dishes is not pleasant work in a rainstorm
outdoors. During the day Brother
Campbell called to get some medicine for his wife who was dangerously ill from
jumping out of the wagon when coming down a bad place in Ash Hollow and since
has continued feverish and in great pain.
She had her infant in her arms.
Considerable illness and numerous deaths on the westward journeys were
punctuated by Heywood’s caretaking of Frank Heywood, nephew of her soon-to-be
husband, who lay sick in the back of the wagon on the duration of the trip.
His death from consumption five weeks after arrival in the Salt Lake
Valley was yet another of many deaths that followed the pioneers west. Heywood’s thoughts jumped further back to
steamboat travel with 240 Mormons from St. Louis, Mo., to Council Bluffs, Iowa,
preparatory to the wagon trip to Utah.
She remembered the 58 deaths from cholera during the journey, recalling
the makeshift graves on the river banks.
She could have taken time to ask more questions about those buried along
the trial. The stories she never told
were not lost forever.
The magnitude of the stories Martha Spence Heywood did tell will never be
known to her.
Historians consider her diary of the years 1850 to 1856 one of the best
personal accounts of that period in Utah.
Her ambivalence about her marriage, honest appraisal of her husband’s
leadership in settling Nephi and her rigorous self-examination demonstrated
more than Heywood’s integrity.
Her writing preserved in the best way—through a woman’s voice—the vital
roles women assumed in settling Utah. The
courage, sacrifice and stamina of women are reflected in every entry. Heywood’s journal helps even the score.
Women have been slighted in Utah’s history books.
Perhaps Utah does better than other states. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Wilford
Woodruff tower at the top of This Is the Place Monument, which pictures a total
of 65 men who were significant in Utah history.
The pioneer travelers on the east of the monument include a woman and two
children. On the west side of the
monument, three women and one child are represented among the men.
Of the original pioneer party that left Nauvoo on April 7, 1847, three
women and two children arrived in Salt Lake Valley. Seventeen members who joined the wagon train
at Fort Laramie (in present Wyoming) included women.
An additional 60 women marched with the Mormon Battalion from Fort Leavenworth,
Kan., to Santa Fe, N. M., spending the winter of 8146-47 in Pueblo, Colo.,
before arriving in Salt Lake Valley a few days behind the first party.
They were joined by 20 women from Mississippi and Illinois who had
wintered with the battalion women in Pueblo.
Before the end of July 1847, there were almost as many women in Utah as
there were men.
So where are their stories.
Underplayed, hidden and silenced, the diaries and letters that have
survived are valuable finds of historians and academicians, surfacing
sporadically for public review. The
journal of Martha Spence Heywood was edited by Juanita Brooks and published in
1978 under the title Not by Bread Along.
Heywood’s confessions were honest and bold.
“As to myself I feel remarkable depression in reference to my arriving in
the Valley. When I think of it, a sober
feeling comes over me that I cannot control.
I never experience this feeling that I know of on going to any place
previous.”
The rest of her years took Heywood to many places she had not experience
previously.
“September 21—Sunday—Started from the city on Wednesday (17th)
afternoon, one o’clock in company with my husband and his nephew for the new
settlement of Salt Creek with buoyant spirits and hope in full exercise.”
Within a year of this 1851 entry in Heywood’s journal, the settlement—later
named Nephi—had grown to 44 families.
Amid the labor of building a city and warring with Indians, Martha
Heywood founded Mount Nebo Literary Association, opened the first school to 17
scholars and gave birth to a son and a daughter.
Having been on her own most of the time in Nephi, making hats and
teaching for a living and a community that was divided over her husband’s
leadership, her bitterness toward Joseph Heywood grew.
“And to know how lavish he has been all this winter, and so stringent
towards me and my health so poorly all winter is a trial for a woman that hs so
little stamina as if have got.”
Perhaps her children brought Martha Heywood her greatest joy. Three months after her marriage, she
noted: “Since I last wrote in my journal
I have had but poor health. I have
reason to think it is in consequence of a change going on in my system giving
me some hope of in due time becoming a mother, for which indication I bless the
Lord in my inmost soul.”
In 1852, after neglecting her journal for two month, Heywood wrote: “My darling little boy was born on the 18th
of Nov. about half past nine forenoon in the wagon.”
The account of her second birth came two years later to the day: “My little daughter was born August 8th,
a very healthy child. Mr. H. was not
here at the time but arrived two days after her birth. I did not suffer quite so much as I did with
my boy.”
In early 1856, her son Nealy, almost 5, became seriously ill. His 2-year-old sister, Sarepta, seemed unaffected. Heywood recounted her caregiving: “Having four nights watching with Nealy and
he on the gain I relaxed my efforts in sitting up at night, nor thinking that
there was any particular danger in my dear little girl’s case until she was
sick one week—March 4. Then I began to
realize her real state which was dangerous to say the least.”
So commenced Martha Heywood’s death watch. Her daughter died two weeks later only hours
after Joseph Heywood, who was a U.S. Marshal, returned from of his long
absences that typified the marriage.
“I washed her little body myself on my lap and dressed her in her own
clothes and the last sewing I did for her was to make her a pair of shoes of
which cloth.”
It was her daughter’s death, her own deteriorating health and Joseph
Heywood’s release as president of the settlement that brought them back to Salt
Lake City in early spring 1856.
The company of women and her writing again sustained Martha Heywood. She began attending meetings of the
Polysophical Society, an organization formed in 1854.
One of the groups original members, Elliza Roxey Snow, described a
typical gathering as “a magnificent moral, intellectual and spiritual picnic.”
Martha Heywood’s thirst for learning bubbled up elsewhere. Early in 1861,, 303 families representing
various skills and trades were called to establish the city of St. George.
Joseph L. Heywood was on the list as a hatter, and he and Martha traveled
as far as Washington where they took possession of a vacant adobe home, a
sturdy home with a solid lumber floor and shingle roof to preserve warmth in
the winter and cool in summer.
Martha lived out her life in Washington where she died in 1873 at age
61. Wives Sarepta and Sarah had remained
in Salt Lake City and outlived Martha by eight years, both dying in 1881.
Joseph lived to age 95 with his fourth wife, Mary Bell Heywood, 24 years
his junior, who survived her husband by 5 years.
Martha Spence Heywood’s life was characterized by isolation, ill health
and loneliness, relieved by withdrawal into an internal world, which she called
“enjoying my mind.”
These words are sadly reflective of a woman who had no idea she had given
the people of Utah—especially women—a timeless gift.
******
Her Journal: Not by Bread Alone - The Journal of Martha Spence Heywood,
Digital Copy via Utah Division of State History (1850-1856)
Digital Copy via Utah Division of State History (1850-1856)
