SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF LUCINDA ARAMINTA STEWART BROWN
by Margery Brown Cottam and Glenna Cottam Sanderson
Lucinda Araminta Stewart was born January 6, 1865, daughter of Levi Stewart, first bishop of Kanab, and Margery Wilkerson Stewart, in a large and comfortable home, west across from Immigration Square, near the City and County Building Square, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Part of the original roof with weathered wood shingles could still be seen there in the rear of the Hotel Noxum until about five years ago. A bedroom set for this home had been ordered and shipped from St. Louis at a cost of $800.
Levi Stewart founded several successful businesses in Salt Lake. As a young man in Vandalia, Illinois, he had heard a little about the Mormons from a neighbor, and determined to find out the truth. He journeyed to Missouri where the Saints were settled in the north counties at that time. He at once knew their story was the truth, and he joined their community at Far West with his wife and one or two young children. One night evacuating in terror and in haste at the hands of the mob, their infant son was bounced from his mother's arms as the wagon hit a rock, and the wheel crushed his head flat as a pancake; but by their faith he was instantly and completely healed. They lived through the peace and joy and then the terrors of persecution in Nauvoo. Levi being a large, strong man, sometimes wrestled with the prophet Joseph Smith. They started west with the first group of pioneers in 1847, then Levi was appointed to stay and raise crops in Winter Quarters for those who should follow. In Salt Lake he met and married the Wilkerson sisters, Margery and Macy (Artimacy). His first wife died in childbirth not long after.
A memorable event in the life of the Stewart's was the coming of the handcart companies, in such a pitiable state of suffering, to Immigration Square across the street. The Stewart's took in several of them including a father and his twelve-year-old girl whose legs had been frozen off below the knees; they ground salt by the hour to try to earn their keep. Brigham Young visited Levi Stewart soon after and said to him, "Brother Levi, the Lord will bless you for what you have done. You shall never be in want so long as you do not waste." I remember hearing Grandma tell us this story many times: her mother would go to make bread and there was just enough flour in the big bin for one batch, for the pioneers' crops had failed that year and there was no more to be had anywhere. Yet the next time they needed bread, the mother opened the bin and there was just enough flour for one batch: and so it continued all through the winter. Hence, "waste not, want not" has been a strong tradition in our family.
When Lucinda was five, her father was called by Brigham Young to settle Kanab and to be it's first bishop. With no hesitation they left their comfortable home and prosperous businesses and pioneered this barren, remote land. The pioneers all lived in a log stockade, or fort, in tiny rooms along the outer protecting wall. Suddenly one evening a huge fire lit up the sky; there were
barrels of kerosene stored in the room where five little Stewart boys were sleeping, and here the fire was most furious. Though it was unconquerable, the mother, Margery, could not be restrained from trying to rescue them, and she died with them. This tragedy left a scar on the soul of the sensitive, gentle five-year-old Lucinda. She never could be persuaded to walk past that spot again. When it was necessary to take her past there, for it was the main road in and out of town, her father would carry her with her head buried on his shoulder so that she would not see it.
In mothers' childhood there was an incident that brought home sharply to her how great had been the scar upon Grandma's soul of the terrible fire: Mother, as a child, was walking on the side of town furthest away from their home when suddenly she saw a house on fire. The parents were
away, the older child was able to move the younger children to safety, but the house was fast going up in flame and no adults knew of it. Mother raced wildly from house to house, summoning the town. When she reached her own home, she gasped the news to her mother who told her to calm herself for she was nearly hysterical; then Grandma who was always first to help, last to weary of service, turned and put her face in her hands and said, "I can't - - I can't go!"
The other mother, Macy, always loved her sister's children the same as her own, and now she raised these three huge families as if they were her own. When Grandma was thirteen, her father died. She adored him and always spoke of him with reverence and pride.
Lucinda was a slender young girl with delicate features, fair glowing complexion, and blue eyes. though serious and studious, she loved to dance lively dances, and sometimes wore out the fiddlers. There were two young men whom she was seriously considering, when a schoolmaster moved into town, and now her one thought was that now she would have a chance to learn. She had a brilliant mind, and now in this great teacher, Abia William Brown, a middle-aged man whose children were older than she was, she found a kindred spirit. Romance did not enter into this marriage. Her first thought toward him concerning marriage was, "I would like my children have a father with such a great mind and soul." Emma Sibley Brown, his first wife, the love
of his youth, rode with them to be married at the St. George Temple. This presents to me a heroic picture. What heartaches did this brown-eyed gentle English woman, well past the glow of youth, hide as they rode along? Or did her loyalty to the Church and to her husband overcome any such feelings? The fact that Grandma named her first daughter Emma might indicate that she felt herself to be kindly received. Grandma many times said that no cross word ever passed between
two wives. In her old age she always smiled with pride as she spoke of Grandpa, and she said, I never met a man whom I admired so in every way, and especially his command of learning and literature. "
Due to Grandfather's ill health, his wives had to look primarily to their sons or to themselves for their support. Aunt Emma had grown sons who took good care of her, but Grandma's lot was
always barest poverty. She had many miscarriages, then her first two children, Emma and Jacob, died soon after birth. (I presume this difficulty resulted from the RH negative blood factor since it has shown up in so many of her descendants.) Imagine her sadness and despair as she left her husband to go teach school in Paris Valley, south of Bryce Canyon. Remembering how thrilled she always was at anything beautiful in nature, I wonder if she might have ridden a horse up into the overwhelming delicacy of the weather-carved limestones down to Meadow Valley Wash in the dead of winter and at night to deliver a baby with complications. She would get the convalescing mothers to read to her while she cooked, nursed, cared for the house and family.
"I have seen Mother come home just exhausted and fall into bed, and we would take food to bed to her. Whenever we would hear the dog bark in the middle of the night we always knew it was someone coming for mother for an emergency. One night she had just come home exhausted and had to go right to bed, then in the night the dog barked, and sure enough, someone had come to her for help. I protested. She had never spoken crossly to me in her life before, but now she said, "Margery, I am ashamed of you!" She always said she had been set apart for the work and so had the promise that she would be sustained in it!" (End quote Margery B. Cottam)
Grandma's mother, Margery Stewart, had a gift of the healing art. Because of her care of the Navajos around Kanab, many had named children Margery, and they grieved when she died in the fire. Now Grandma was set apart by George F. Richards to care for the sick and to be a midwife, and this became the main work of her life. Her patriarchal blessing said she had this gift, "Healing in her hands."
One of my earliest impressions is of the touch of her hands, brown, wrinkled, and worn ... how it brought peace to a child's fevered brow. The touch was the gentleness, the love and the sympathy of her great heart, and yet more, it was a divine gift, and healing was in that touch. As a young girl, I looked at my own hands, smooth and white, and thought, "Grandma's are more beautiful. 1 hope mine someday might show such character, such a story of service." She had studied a year with the great Dr. Middleton, beloved of Church leaders. She had a heart condition, and Dr. Middleton told her that for her strenuous work, day and night, that she must have a stimulant, so he told her to take coffee, which she did for the rest of her life, for medicine. Yet she was strict in obeying all the laws of the Church as she understood them. She even bathed with her garments on her knee.
My mother, as a young school teacher, bought $400 worth of lumber and supplies from which was built Grandma's little unpainted house in Alamo, Nevada, in which I was born. Weathered gray lumber, it soon became. No plumbing or electricity graced it, but a huge silver cottonwood sheltered it from the desert sun. A chain weighted with iron closed the wooden front gate automatically.
To bare feet, the fine soft sand of its paths felt pleasant, and to me it was the most beautiful spot on earth. It was an island of perfect harmony. Those three adults with whom I lived shared the tenderest devotion to each other and a childlike zest for learning, for nature, for all beauty. Since my parents taught school, Grandma mostly raised me my first four years. I slept with my parents on Friday, but the rest of the time with Grandma. It was she who taught me to pray. We would kneel at the side of the bed; I would say my prayers aloud, then she would say hers, her lips Moving but with no sound. I said once, "Grandma, how can God hear you if you don't say it out loud?" "Oh, He hears all right ... He hears and knows everything that is in our hearts." The ,serene certainty of that answer has always stayed with me. My father, Clarence Cottam, has many times said that he loved Grandma Brown as much as his own mother ... indeed he admired her and had so much in common with her that it was a special and beautiful friendship. She, of course ,was very proud of him.
At an early age I went to visit relatives in St. George. I was awed at the splendor of the great house, red carpets and upholstered sofa, intricate crystal prism chandeliers, Dresden figurines on a mirrored mantle, drawn velvet drapes; and as I went to touch something, a sharp voice chastised me. Heartbroken and shocked, for this was the first time anyone had ever spoken crossly to me, I thought, "Grandma Brown wouldn't speak like that - - she would just gently explain and I would do what she said."
Grandma had, instead of a back porch, an arbor made of one enormous grapevine. The base of this vine was like the trunk of a big tree, and the grapes were green seedless, marvelously sweet. Tamarix grew in the chicken yard. Being without playmates, I sat beneath the bushes and patiently tamed the hens, toads, and rabbits.
Grandma visited us in Washington, D.C. for several months in about 1935. The Washington Evening Star sent a photographer, pictured her, quilting on her lap with a quilting hoop, the beautiful yellow star quilt which she gave to me, and carried an article about this frontier midwife who had delivered some 5,000 babies, never losing one.
Grandma told me of an incident in which her baby, Abby, tipped over in her high chair and fell into the fire and was severely burned. Grandma was all alone in summer camp with no medicines, so she prayed for help. A voice came to her mind and told her what to do. As I remember, it involved an ointment made with browned flour, and severe though these burns had been, they healed quickly with almost no scars.
Unselfish and modest as she was, only twice did I hear her speak with a trace of pride. Once telling me of cooking specialties, her fruit cobblers she was known for, and her sugar cookies, and the other time she told of being visited by one of the Twelve apostles who talked to her and
I
admired her grape vine, and told her that she probably knew the Book of Mormon better than
anyone in the Church. She read it every year of her adult life. If she had a fault it was that she would not see nor admit a fault in another person. She would not hear criticism of others, and she taught her children that no gain was worth hard feelings or harsh words.
In 1940, we visited her in Alamo before my entering B.Y.D. She had obtained a house to accommodate our family, and in cleaning it up before our arrival, she had become ill, which she vainly tried to hide from us. She had not been very well for three or four years, since suffering a black widow spider bite. Dad had not been able to stay for the visit, yet she kept referring to him as if he were in the next room, and mentioned that she would have to cook some special biscuits for Clarence's breakfast. Mother realized in horror that grandmother had suffered a stroke.
The boys of Alamo put on a rodeo as a courtesy to me, her grandchild. I hoped they did not know how terrified the eastern city girl was of the animals or of their dangerous antics, nor how amazed I was at their rough talk, but I was pleased at the eager deference they showed my grandmother and the respect with which they spoke of Aunt Luna.
Grandma died in November 1941, three month after I was married. I had severe flu and the car was being fixed, so I could not go to her funeral. Grieving and numbed, I was shocked to see that the world kept on as before, the clock still ticked its steady tick; but I resolved that the world and I should be better because of her life.
Glenna C. Sanderson, granddaughter
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