Description

Catherine Curtis Spencer

March 12, 1846, Indian Creek Camp, near Keosauqua, Iowa. Catherine Curtis Spencer was very ill. Still weak from childbirth, and afflicted by a severe cold, she sank lower and lower. For days it had rained, rendering the prairies of Iowa an impassable mess. What had brought her here?

Catherine was born and reared in Massachusetts, “the youngest daughter of a numerous family…nurtured with fondness and peculiar care as the favorite of her father’s house.” When she came of age she married Orson Spencer, a man of great intellectual and spiritual gifts. Together they had six children. Over time, Catherine proved herself “the glory of her husband and the solace and joy of her children.”

When the Latter-day Saints were preparing to leave Nauvoo for their journey West, Orson wrote to Catherine’s parents, asking if she might come for an extended visit. In the meantime, a child was born to them that lived only a short time and died.

Then February 4, 1846, under the necessity of escaping the mobs, the Saints began crossing the Mississippi River for their journey to the West. Orson and Catherine were among them. Not far into Iowa Territory, the temperature plummeted to twelve degrees below zero. Then it warmed and the rain began to fall turning the roads into a quagmire. In the midst of these soaked and miserable conditions Catherine became ill and grew weaker and weaker. It seems that she sensed that she would not live; saying to her children, “Oh, you dear little children, how I do hope you may fall into kind hands when I am gone.”

Then, a letter came from parents. She asked Orson to read it to her. They refused to allow her visit or render any aid or comfort until she denounced the religion they so much detested.

Catherine then asked her husband to read to her from the Bible. This was the passage she asked him to read;

Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: for thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God: where thou diest, will I die and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me and more also, if aught by death part thee and me. Ruth 1:16-17

Soon after, Catherine asked to see her children. She gave each of “them a parting kiss.” Then, turning to her grieving husband, she said, “I love you more than ever, but you must let me go. I only want to live for your sake and that of our children.”

Shortly thereafter, “she died in peace, with a smile upon her countenance.” She was 35 years-old. Orson returned her to Nauvoo, and in “the solitude of the night,” buried her by her youngest child. It was said of her “She was a kind mother to her beautiful children; a lady in every respect and left a beautiful family.” Years later, Catherine’s daughter, Aurelia Spencer Rogers, would organize the children of the Primary.  (Source: E Cecil McGavin, The Mormon Pioneers.)