I remember Grandma Lucinda Stewart Brown

I remember Grandma Brown. She it was who raised me my first four years in Alamo while my parents taught school. How well I remember her never-failing gentleness and love, her magic healing touch, and her delight and curiosity in the world around her, in people, in good books. For these things have made me, and taught me what to love and what to seek.

She lived in a primitive one-room frame house practising nursing and midwifery in the desert outpost of Alamo, Nevada until her school¬teacher daughter Margery--Mama--bought for her, for $400 delivered, a miner's cabin from Hiko. So this was our home. It had two steps in front, four small rooms, and a hand-pump in the kitchen sink so that she did not need to go outdoors to pump water. It had wallpaper inside and was unpainted outside so that the wood was weathered a nice uniform grey. Young Uncle Ben slept in "the old house."


There was a pleasant old dog, and I suppose a cow, for we always had plenty of milk. Grandma had no horse nor carriage; she either walked or someone transported her. Meat, perhaps once a week, was most often chicken which she raised, though Uncle Tommy and others occasion¬ally brought her a piece of beef or a slab of bacon.

One day she called to me to come see something. She had a myster¬ious smile and a twinkle. My hand in hers, we walked past the wired-in chicken yard, past the chicken coop and shed and around in back where there was a hidden hole in the ground near the supporting post. Grand¬ma reached in and lifted out a tiny kitten, half naked, with its eyes shut. Then she brought out another, and another, and five in all, while the mother cat stood by anxiously, yet schooled to trust in Grandma's gentleness. "Aren't they cunning!" she said, as the child chirped delight.

She used this one word, "cunning," in a way peculiar to herself. She used it as one might say "cute" or "adorable" to describe a baby's dress or the pretty baby herself. Whether it was humorous irony--not typical of her--or simply ignorance--certainly not typical--or a habit learned from her mother or stepmother, I never found out.

One spring day she showed me, on a low limb in her orchard, a tiny hanging nest of a hummingbird. Inside the nest was a baby bird, so incredibly tiny that it would occupy only a quarter of a teaspoon's bowl. She fed it sugar water with a medicine dropper at frequent intervals.

She delighted in every baby she saw and cared for; her eyes would brighten and she would smile and talk to the little creature. She found much enjoyment in her austere life of service. I never knew a human being so untouched, so seemingly unaware' of worldly considera¬tions. Her minimal two or three blouses and long dark skirts, her austere food, her plain worn wooden bed, table and chairs, her few dishes and cooking utensils, and her two coal-oil lamps and a few books, she seemed to think were all one really needed and not worth further thought.

And yet--her father's large home in Salt Lake City had contained a bedroom set which he had ordered to be shipped by wagon from St. Louis, which had cost him $500, a fortune in those days. Her father had been Kanab's first bishop, loved and honored, and he had gained much property by his industry. The VT Ranch on the Kaibab was formerly his summer range. In Salt Lake he had owned a grist mill in the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, and had been one of the organizers of ZCMI. Of his large home built west across from where Cottonwood Mall now stands, the two white stone pillars at the front of his entry lane still stood in the 1960's. The earlier large home was west across from Immigratiion Square where the old City and County Building now stands; this was where Lucinda was born on January 6, 1864, of Margery Wilkerson Stewart and Levi Stewart. The old original shingled roof, or the main section of it, still could be seen in the 1940 sand 1950's. Some 22 children, adopted household members, and countless guests were graciously accomodated in these large homes.

Did Lucinda think of the contrast? As the far younger plural wife of a man afflicted much of his life with a weak heart, who had no sons to support her until her last child, she always lived in the poor¬est house in town. Yet if there was a sense of contrast, of stepping down from a place of honor and prosperity to one of abject poverty, if ever there was a struggle within her to accept the change graciously, we never knew of it.

Levi Stewart, Lucinda's father, had started with the first group of pioneers from Nauvoo, had been assigned to raise crops in Garden Grove for those to come, and had entered Salt Lake Valley with his young family in 1848. He had been sent by Brigham Young to be its first bishop, giving up the fruits of his industry to pioneer again, this time in the forbidding desert, the red rock country of the south. His children ran free on the Kaibab summer range and loved the Ponderosa forest, its beauty, coolness and pristine wilderness, and they enjoyed the abundant venison and wild raspberries.

Lucinda was seven when they were called to Kanab. "They" consist¬ed of the father and two wives who were also sisters--Margery Wilkerson Stewart and Artimacy Wilkerson Cassidy Stewart, (Levi's first wife, Ma¬linda Howard, had died in childbirth in Salt Lake) and 22 children including two of Malinda's. Levi left his comfortable home and busi¬nesses without question when his name was announced in Conference, because he had the witness of the Spirit that Brigham Young was God's prophet, as he had known from the first concerning Joseph Smith. So the family lived with the other families, crowded into the fort for protection against the Indians. Every drop of water had to be hauled five miles. One night after the children were in bed, a huge fire exploded in the room where five little boys lay sleeping. The kerosene fuel had been stored in that same room, and had probably burst into spontaneous combustion.

Margery, the mother of most of the boys, could not be restrained from rushing into the conflagration to try to save them. She perished with them. The seven-year-old Lucinda suffered such emotional trauma that she never could walk past that spot. Her father would have to carry her while she hid her face on his shoulder with eyes tight shut. This was the early outward symbol of her life¬long inability to face reality. But her loving, affirmative disposi¬tion turned that flaw into something beautiful, at least in one aspect she refused to admit imperfectiions in persons she loved, which was most everyone.

She said of the event, "I lost not only my mother but my father too, for her grieved his life away. When he was out working in the mountains or in the desert, the men would sometimes come upon him praying and weeping. He died within five years."

Aunt Macy, the remaining wife, raised the seventeen children who were left with such loving diligence that no stranger could guess which of the children were her own. Lucinda's acceptance and appreciation of life in a polygamous family is reflected in the names she gave to her own children: Emma, the name of her husband's first wife, was given to her first child who died at birth, and Macy was her first child who lived.

In addition to grieving for the loss of his wife and five children, Bishop Stewart carried other heavy burdens. He was president of the United Order there in Kanab, which was failing as in most other places because of human selfishness. Also, a nephew of Brigham Young came to give special guidance, an officious young man who did not follow the revealed principles laid down by Joseph Smith, which Bishop Stewart was trying to follow. The line of authority became obscured, and the people of the town became divided on which leader to follow. So there were constant conflicts and frustrations, a stressful condition which also could have contributed to his early death.

As a teen-age girl, Lucinda enjoyed friends and fun, and espec¬ially the weekly dances. Dancing in those days was vigorous and fast, with the pianist and fiddlers, and sometimes a brass horn, increasing in speed to challenge the dancers. One after another of the dancers would drop out in exhaustion. Slim and slight Lucinda often would be the remaining champion and would even "dance the music down"--would outlast the stamina of the musicians.

She married Abia William Brown, the schoolmaster of the "Arizona Strip." He had raised a petition for a school there in Fredonia with signatures of the townspeople, and became the first schoolmaster. She delighted to share his love of books and learning. She had offers for marriage from two young men of good Kanab families, one a grandson of Apostle Jacob Hamblin. But she chose the older man who already had a family, whose mind and spirit she admired.

To one whose life has been built on the enduring mutual devotion growing from a total kind of youthful love and romance, it is difficult to imagine that she did not have regrets and heartaches concerning her marriage. Though she enjoyed the jolly association of her peers, yet books and learning were also a passion. This middle aged schoolmaster had taken special interest in his eager, quick student and asked her to be his second wife in plural marriage. Like the true child of a valiant and faithful pioneer, she sought the answer in earnest prayer. Then she dreamed she followed a guide and walked through the milk house of one young man, then the other. In each case the milk house was dirty, full of flies, and the milk in the pans was spoiled. Then she walked through Will's milk house, and it was spotlessly clean with no flies, and the milk was wholesome. This was her answer, and she accepted it wholeheartedly then and ever after. Romantic feelings were not a part of her marriage, but she honored and reverenced Will for his integrity, sensitivity and fine mind.

The same guide who took her through this dream came into her dreams at various times in the vicissitudes of her life to give help. My memory is that she spoke of that guide as "he." Was he a kinsman, assigned as her guardian, and was he there helping at other times though unseen?

Her life was always hard and austere, with some disappointments, but not a tragedy. She was full of curiosity for her world and of the joy of living. She loved people and delighted in them. Her love for Will deepened during her lifetime. She would speak of him to her children with reverence: "Your Father would like ••• ," or "Your Father thinks ••• " After his death she was not given a certain corner lot in Fredonia which he had said he wanted her to have, nor was she given any inheritance. If ever one of her children mentioned this fact, she would hush them up, saying, "There now--your Father would rather not leave anything at all to his children than to have any hard feelings over it."

Lucinda and Will were married in the St. George Temple when she was just 16, younger than several of his children by Emma Susan Sibley Brown, his English wife, the love of his youth. Lucinda lost her first six children either through miscarriage or at birth. She had four who lived: Macy, Abby, Margery, and Benjamin Levi.

It was absolutely necessary for her to have a way to support herself, so she went to Salt Lake City for two years to study nursing and midwifery from Dr. Middleton, whom she soon respected and admired greatly. She was set apart as a nurse and midwife by Apostle Rudger Clawson. He blessed her that she would be inspired to know how to help the sick beyond what she learned in her brief training.

One summer on the Kaibab range, camping among the great pines, tiny Abby tipped over in her high chair and fell into the camp fire. She was terribly burned on her face and arms. Lucinda, there alone with her, prayed earnestly for guidance to know how to treat the burns.

The thought came to her to make a paste from some of the white wood ashes by the camp fire. Afterwards, she felt that this thought was given to her and that the treatment minimized the injury and scars.

Lucinda's older brother, William Thomas Stewart, "Uncle Tommy," was the founder of Alamo and its bishop for many decades. He had left Kanab to find room for his almost 20 children to establish homes with
range land for cattle. Lucinda followed him there some years later because work was scarce in Kanab which already had several nurse-mid¬wives, and she had no choice but to support herself somehow. Alamo was a remote and desolate desert outpost, but it had the security of the delightful Ash Spring as a permanent source of water. Tommy was a man of integrity, tenderness, and deep spirituality. He became her dearly loved associate as well as the priesthood head she looked to for support.

With the publishing of the Manifesto by President Wilford Woodruff, Will Brown felt somehow let down by the Church who had asked of the people the difficult sacrifice of adjusting to plural marriage; now they were asked to abandon those wives and families, or so it seemed to him. He never afterward so much as took off his shoes in Lucinda's home, though he visited occasionally. A little grandchild vaguely remembered a visitor with long, pure white untrimmed beard, deep-set quiet eyes, and few and quiet words.

Grandma dressed in a long dark skirt to her ankles, and an austere blouse. She drew her straight light-brown hair back severely into a bun, as did most pioneer women. Her skin was fair and wrinkled early, her eyes blue and deep-set, her nose small and fine, her forehead high, her mouth broad but not full, her bones fine and well formed, her chin firm but delicate. Her eyes sometimes crossed ("from too much reading," she said) and she wore glasses. Her hands were work-worn when I knew her, and wrinkled, but to me they were something beautiful in a spiritual way, like "The Praying Hands" by Albrecht Durer. When just a small child, I realized that their character came from her heroic loving service. If I were ever sick, her gentle, soothing hands on my brow gave swift comfort, and I did not doubt that the Lord had blessed those hands with healing power.

She was paid "in kind" more often than with money for her servi¬ces. Her fee for delivering a baby was five dollars, which included pre-natal and post-natal care and staying on for two weeks to cook, launder and care for the family. But often those people on the desert frontier did not have five dollars, so they would pay her with a sack of potatoes or some other food.

On one occasion a burly frontiersman whose wife had just given birth decided to exercise his rights as a husband too soon, and he met the little midwife at the door, her eyes flashing fire. She ordered him to the cot on the back porch.

She was comparatively young when she contracted a serious pneumo¬nia which kept her in bed one winter. But in the midst of this afflic¬tion, in the middle of the night, there came a man banging at her door, urgently calling for help, pleading that his wife in early pregnancy was in terrible pain. Lucinda rose from her bed weak and shaky, dressed and rode horseback with him for several hours in a cold wind, coughing all the way. She arrived and soon determined that the woman had a Fallopian pregnancy which was near to rupturing, and it required immediate surgery to save her life. The woman was saved, but Lucinda had a crippled heart ever after from that night's work.

Dr. Middleton, her esteemed mentor, advised her that the only way she could continue working was to take a stimulant such as coffee, which she did for the rest of her life--"only as medicine," she would say. Better to break the Word of Wisdom than to fail those for 200 miles around who had no medical help but hers. She remembered the boy Nephi who had to kill Laban, and how Adam and Eve chose to break the lesser law to fulfill the higher command.

She would bathe sitting in a round tin tub with water heated on the iron range in the large teakettle, with her precious temple gar¬ments on her knee. That was the furthest she ever was away from them. She was meticulous in paying her small tithing, attending meetings, and obeying the commandments in every way.

After her oldest daughter Macy had married Hiram Robinson and moved away, Lucinda determined to take her two teen-age daughters, Abby and Margery, to Salt Lake City to attend L.D.S. High School for there was no high school available in the Kanab area. But those two years brought illness, heartache, and extreme penury. Margery at age 16 had a series of illnesses beginning with scarlet fever and culminating in near-fatal pneumonia and impiema. When Dr. Middleton had given her up, Lucinda stayed by her side all night in the L.D.S. Hospital, praying and rubbing her cold hands and feet. By her love and determination, she transferred to the weary girl the will to live and to fight for her life.

Portrait of Lucinda's Daughter Abby

As a girl, she was considered to be the plain one of the sisters, although today her high cheek bones and broad mouth, together with the fine-boned nose, unruly straight brown hair and an exceedingly thin figure could be considered beautiful, certainly fashionable. She was quiet, sensitive, and had a prodigious capacity for painstaking, intricate handiwork, her only claim to public notice. Being poor, she went to work at a tender age in a Salt Lake City department store. At a party once, she was curious about a strange game which consisted of asking questions of an Ouija board, which seemed to have some occult power to give answers. She determined to ask it something that had been troubling her: "Was Joseph Smith a true prophet?" She watched breathless, and as it formed the answer "No", something crumbled inside of her.

At seventeen she found additional employment as a tutor for the young son of a Chinese family who owned an importing store near where she worked; their name was King. The son was her same age. He and his parents were genteel, refined and gracious. She found, first, that she was a very good tutor to an able pupil, and, second, that they were falling in love. While she was living in a world apart from her rigor¬ous Mormon culture anyhow, these two seemed to communicate in a language all their own. The parents looked on with tenderness and approval. U.S. laws at that time forbade marriages with Oriental aliens, but the Utah colony of Mormons had fled there to escape U.S. legal tyranny and unlawful persecution, and the Chinese family lived by their own traditions. The venerable patriarch gave her to his son in the ancient sacred ritual, performed in their apartment with Margery present.


But, continuing to work and to live with her mother for she could not reveal her secret, she came head-on into the wall of reality: she was with child. Her family must not know!

She and Margery were invited to a party in the home of a prominent family. was ashamed to wear her old black serge skirt and white batiste blouse but she had no party dress. At the party were several young men Army uniform from nearby Ft. Douglas. Here was her way out! She flirted with them all, but with one handsome one in particular. The soldier was fascinated and they departed together.

A few nights later her mother waited up in anguish until morning. She came in at last with an intent look on her face and said, "It's right. I'm married." The soldier was shipped out soon after, to return briefly a year later. He saw in his wife s arms a plump Chinese baby

This time, when he left, he never returned. The Chinese King family had returned to China. After celebrating the baby's first birthday, Margery alone had witnessed the events of the year with Abby.

She married again several years later, a rough-finished mining camp bachelor some ten or fifteen years her senior. He was devoted to her, but would not have her Chinese child, who remained with the gentle grandmother. She appreciated his devotion and tried to be a good wife although her heart was torn. Her mind became disoriented, and she suddenly died at the age of thirty-three.

Lucinda must have had clues and some awareness of these happenings but she never in her life mentioned them. She raised Helma, Abby's child, in Alamo with her characteristic love and gentleness. But to Helma her father was the New England soldier, James Franklin Harvey. She apparently grew up with no suspicion otherwise, nonwithstanding her Oriental features. But a few wondered.

Abby and Margery had one skirt and two blouses each for their two years at L.D.S. High School. Salt Lake was full of surplus nurses and wives, and Lucinda could not find work. They moved from a modestly comfortable house, where Lucinda had planned to bring in convalescent patients, into a very small bare one. Margery was sociable and a top student, and her friends were school leaders, the children of General Authorities. But when she felt it was necessary that she have a turn entertaining, she would plan a picnic with games in a park or canyon so that they would not know how poor her home was. But at last Lucinda found some work for two weeks. Her pay was the sum of $10. Did she use it for much-needed food or clothing? No, she bought a fine her-bound volume of the complete works of Shakespeare. Aunt Elzade, ,a sister-in-law, was visiting them at the time. In Margery's words,

"She was fit to be tied." She chastised Lucinda, "Here these girls hardly a rag to their backs, and you go and buy a book!" Lucinda answered, 'I'd rather put it in their heads than on their backs any day."

And that answer sank deep into their minds and hearts, and became part of their tradition of hungering and thirsting after learning and good books.

Will visited them briefly in Salt Lake, but returned home to Kanab he became ill from his heart ailment.

Reading was Lucinda's passion, but she loved the Book of Mormon above all other books. She read it through every year of her adult life. Once a General Authority in Alamo for a Conference visited with her and they discussed the Book of Mormon. He remarked that she probably knew it better than anyone in the Church; she cherished that tribute. She also loved and lived with the Bible, Shakespeare, and all

English classics she could obtain. I have an old volume of McCauley's Essays which she gave me. In the years of close association with Helma and her first husband, Mac McQuistian who was not a member of the church, she sometimes talked to him about it and entertained him with stories from it.

Another claim to fame was her giant grape vine. It was like the trunk of a mature tree with branches spread to form a huge arbor which took the place of a back porch. It produced in abundance small Thomp¬son seedless grapes, the sweetest on earth, we thought.

Margery was offered a position teaching in Alamo when she was only 17; she did well on her certification test and special provision was made for her to teach at that young age. Then and in years which followed, she taught all elementary grades in one room. She lived in the one-room house with her mother and in due time bought the larger house for $400. She taught for a number of years in Alamo. Then she felt compelled to go to St. George, Utah to teach even though the pay was much less. Here she met Clarence Cottam and knew he was the eter¬nal companion she had dreamed of, and he knew also, from the first. They were married May 20, 1920 in the St. George Temple by President Thomas P. Cottam, Clarence's father. Shortly after, he was called on mission to Texas, and Margery returned to Alamo to teach school and to give birth to her first child.

Lucinda watched through the night as slight contractions showed on the face of her sleeping daughter. About noon it became evident that her time of delivery was at hand. But Ben came home for dinner, and Lucinda, always part of her Victorian age, thought it not seemly to mention to a man that his sister was about to give birth. So Margery restrained the contractions, and when Ben left, the birth happened swiftly and she was badly torn. The two women greatly enjoyed the baby girl and raised her with gentleness and indulgence.

Clarence returned from his mission to teach school in Alamo also. He quipped that they had to hire him in order to keep Margery. At any rate, he became the first principal of the Alamo Unified School District and one of the three teachers of the high school. Clarence and Lucinda found that they were kindred spirits and had a deep love an admiration for each other; Clarence remarked at times that he loved her as much as his own mother. Lucinda delighted in learning the birds and all she could about nature, and he delighted to teach her.

As a cook, Grandma had meager means and materials to work with, and felt her time better spent at other things, but still she enjoyed the acclaim of her specialty, large crisp sour cream cookers which were given in the tribute the name of "Melters." Another dish she prided herself on was her vegetable soup. She told of stopping at a kinsman's unoccupied cabin on a rigorous desert journey and finding only a very few, not fresh, supplies -- a few withered carrots and other vegetables and a little dried meat. She made for her group a delicious soup, and they marveled at her magic. "Anyone ought to be able to make a good soup with good ingredients, but the test of a cook is to make something from nothing," she said. She had ample opportunity to develop that skill. She enjoyed her grapes and fruits and vegetables in season, but her cooking was most simple.

In her later years she lived part of the time with Helma and Mac in Las Vegas.

Clarence and Margery with the first three of their four daughters moved to Washington, D.C. in 1929. About ten years later they were able to send for Lucinda to come visit them, and it was a memorable and heart-warming experience for the family. The Washington Star newspaper carried and article with her picture about the frontier nurse and midwife who had delivered more than a thousand babies and never lost one. The picture showed her quilting on a huge hoop in her lap. That quilt became the Texas Star quilt that she gave me for a wedding present, of fine workmanship and all in shades of yellow and white. I never knew of her crocheting, knitting, or embroidering , or even sewing beyond the necessary mending; she was too occupied with her nursing.

We visited her in Alamo in late summer of 1941. She was not well, we learned later; a black widow spider bite had exacerbated her heart condition, yet she was determined to have the house ready for our visit, and to prepare special food. She passed away about three months later, November 1941 at Helma's home in Las Vega.

Her life was given in loving service, and she hungered and thirsted after the word of the Lord and after all righteousness. She lived with love and light, with peace and delight--as Nephi said, "after the manner of happiness."