Jane Elizabeth Manning James

Jane Elizabeth Manning James (1822 – April 16, 1908), fondly known as "Aunt Jane", was one of the first recorded African-American women to enter Utah. She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and lived with Joseph Smith and his family for a time in Nauvoo, Illinois. She traveled with her husband to Utah, spending the winter of 1846–1847 at Winter Quarters. She petitioned the First Presidency to be endowed and sealed; as a result of her requests she was adopted as a servant into the Joseph Smith family through a specially created temple ceremony. Not satisfied to be an eternal servant in the Smith family, she continued to petition to receive her own temple endowment but was denied these rites during her lifetime. She was posthumously endowed by proxy in the Salt Lake Temple in 1979.

Early life in Connecticut

Jane Elizabeth Manning James was born in Wilton, Connecticut, to Isaac Manning and Eliza Phyllis Mead. Although late in Jane's life her brother Isaac gave her birthday as 1813, there are source discrepancies that place her birthday anywhere from September 22, 1812, to the year 1820 or 1822 (the latter being asserted on her gravestone). The Mannings were a free family living in rural Connecticut, and Jane had at least five siblings including Isaac, Lewis, Peter, Sarah, and Angeline. At the age of six, Jane was sent to New Canaan to live with Joseph and Hannah Fitch, a wealthy white family. She was raised by the Fitches' daughter and lived with them for the next thirty years. Little is known about Jane's life with the Fitches other than she worked as a servant: cooking, cleaning, and ironing, etc. While with the Fitches, Jane was also brought up as a Christian. She was baptized into the Presbyterian Church when she was about 14 years old. On March 1, 1835, Jane gave birth to a son, Sylvester.

Conversion and relocation to Nauvoo

In the fall of 1842, two LDS missionaries, one of whom was Charles Wesley Wandell, were preaching in the area. Although forbidden by her Presbyterian preacher, James recorded that she "had a desire to hear them. I went on a Sunday and was fully convinced that it was the true Gospel." James was baptized into the Latter Day Saint Church the following Sunday, and later acquainted many friends and family members with her new beliefs as well. A year later, James and eight other members of her family, including her mother, three brothers, two sisters, and a brother and sister-in-law- decided to sell their home in Wilton and move to Nauvoo, Illinois, in order to live among other members of their new faith. The group of nine began their journey with other recently converted Latter Day Saints under the direction of Wandell, and traveled from Fairfield, Connecticut, to New York City, then on to Albany and Buffalo. In Buffalo, however, the James family was separated from the rest of the group. There is dispute as to whether the split took place because James and her family could not afford to pay the fare from Buffalo to Ohio, or if the black Saints were denied passage due to their race. Wandell made arrangements to transport their luggage while James and her family traveled the remainder of their journey (approximately 800 miles) on foot, arriving in late fall of 1843. James later recalled that the group "walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground."

Living with the Smith family

When James and her family arrived in Nauvoo, they were welcomed by Joseph Smith himself. Over the next year, her mother and siblings would establish their own homes nearby, while James lived with the Joseph Smith family and worked as a domestic servant in the Mansion House until Smith's assassination in 1844.

James had several unique experiences while living with the Smith family in Nauvoo. She recorded that often, as she went about doing the washing and cleaning for the Smiths, either Emma (Joseph's wife) or Lucy (Joseph's mother) would stop her and talk with her. One day while James was in Joseph's mother's room, the woman told her to "bring me that bundle from the bureau and sit down here." According to James, she was on one occasion allowed to handle the Urim and Thummim, the tools used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon. Lucy then said to her, "You will live long after I am dead and gone and you can tell the Latter-day Saints that you was permitted to handle the Urim and Thummim". On another occasion, Emma asked James if she would like to be adopted by and sealed to her and Joseph in the Nauvoo Temple as their spiritual child. Not understanding at the time, James said nothing, and Emma encouraged her to think about it. Emma asked James again two weeks later, at which time she said "no ma'am". James would say later that she did not understand what the question meant at the time, or she would have taken the couple up on their offer.

After Joseph Smith's assassination in 1844, James resided in the home of Brigham Young. It was here where she met and married her husband, Isaac James. Isaac was born a free man and grew up in rural New Jersey; at the time of his baptism he was 19 years old, and was one of the earliest immigrants to Nauvoo.

Journey west and life in Utah

When the Latter Day Saints began to migrate west in 1846, James prepared to move as well. Although many of her immediate family members, including her mother, three brothers, and two sisters, had joined the church, she was the only one who chose to move West with the main body of saints from Nauvoo. At the time of the James family's departure, she was pregnant with a second son, Silas James, who was born in Iowa in June 1846. James, her husband Isaac, and Sylvester were part of the original group of Latter Day Saints to spend the winter of 1846–1847 at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. They were also part of the first Mormon pioneer company to enter the Salt Lake Valley in September 1847. At the time of their settlement in the Salt Lake Valley, they made up a third of the 12 African Americans living in Utah, and were the only ones who were free.

The James family lived north of Temple Square in Salt Lake City on a lot owned by Brigham Young, who employed both Isaac and Jane through the mid-1850s. The family's first years in the valley were difficult: they lived in poverty and often did not even have the barest essentials for survival. Nevertheless, James exhibited remarkable charity and strength of character. In 1849, Eliza Lyman, a neighbor of hers, had no food to sustain her and her children until the harvest after she sent her husband Amasa on a mission to California. She records that "Not long after Amasa had gone, Jane James, the colored woman, let me have two pounds of flour, it being half of what she had."

Despite trials, James's life in Utah was punctuated by moments of joy. A daughter, Mary Ann, was born in May 1848—the first black child born in Utah. Eventually things began to get better for the Mannings: by the mid 1860s they were able to build a comfortable home in the southwest corner of Salt Lake City and had acquired both farmland and animals, including an ox, horses, and a small flock of sheep. By the end of 1865 the James family, while not wealthy, were fairly prosperous. The family was growing quickly as well. Between 1848 and 1860 five children were born: Miriam, Ellen Madora, Jessie Jeroboam, Isaac, and Vilate. James's oldest son Sylvester was listed as a member of the Nauvoo Legion in Utah in 1861.

Jane and Isaac James divorced in 1870, and when Isaac left Utah shortly after Jane was given custody of their children and of most of the couple's property and assets. Within four years of the divorce James was remarried to her son Sylvester's father-in-law, Frank Perkins. The marriage lasted less than two years, after which time she reverted to her former married name. Throughout the next few decades, James struggled to care for the remaining children at home as a single parent. She sold the family farm in 1872 and moved closer to the city in order to save money. During these years James both managed a household of children and small grandchildren, and also worked as a domestic servant in order to make ends meet. In addition, she made the family's soap, clothing, and raised vegetables in a small garden. Half of her children had predeceased her by 1875, and two of her grandchildren had passed away as well. After a twenty-year absence, James' first husband Isaac returned to Utah very ill, and lived with Jane until his death in 1891, and though the two never remarried his funeral was held at her home.

James remained active in the church, and participated extensively in the Relief Society and other church-affiliated women's organizations. She also contributed financially to the building of the Logan, Manti, and St. George temples. In her later life, both she and her brother Isaac J. Manning received reserved seats near the front and center of the Salt Lake Tabernacle for church services. James remained a strong supporter of Joseph Smith throughout her life, calling him "the finest man I ever saw on earth."

Jane Elizabeth Manning James died April 16, 1908, in Salt Lake City. Church President Joseph F. Smith spoke at her funeral, where he declared that she would receive all her temple blessings in the eternities and become a "white and beautiful person," reflecting the theology of the Church on race at the time. According to ''The Deseret News'', her funeral was attended by many.

Petitions to be endowed and sealed

Later in life, James became increasingly worried about her eternal welfare. She began to petition the First Presidency to be endowed and to be sealed, along with her children, to Walker Lewis, a prominent African-American Mormon Elder. Lewis, like Elijah Abel, had been ordained to the priesthood during Joseph Smith's lifetime, and James therefore assumed that he would be eligible for temple ordinances. However, her petitions were consistently ignored or refused.

Sealing as a servant in the Smith family

James continued to ask that she and her family be given the ordinance of adoption so that they could be sealed together forever. Her justification for asking to be the exception to the church's rule was Emma Smith's offer in 1844 to have her sealed to the Smith family as a child. James was now reconsidering her decision, and asked to be sealed to the Smiths. Her requests were again refused. Instead, the First Presidency "decided she might be adopted into the family of Joseph Smith as a servant, which was done, a special ceremony having been prepared for the purpose." The ceremony took place on May 18, 1894, with Joseph F. Smith acting as proxy for Joseph Smith, and Bathsheba W. Smith acting as proxy for James (who was not allowed into the temple for the ordinance). In the ceremony, James was "attached as a Servitor for eternity to the prophet Josep Smith and in this capacity . . . connected with his family tobe obedient to him in all things in the Lord as a faithful Servitor."

James was dissatisfied with that unique sealing ordinance, and applied again to obtain the sealing that was offered to her by Emma. According to the diary of Franklin Richards, the LDS First Presidency met on August 22, 1895, to consider her appeal, but again turned her down. James would petition the leaders of the church for the rest of her life, but with no success. She continued to have trials: all but two of her eight children (Sylvester & Ellen) preceded her in death, as did 6 of her 14 grandchildren.

Posthumous endowment

In 1979, nearly 72 years after her death, James was endowed by proxy by a group of black and white Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Temple.

Legacy

A 20-minute documentary based on James's life, ''Jane Manning James: Your Sister in the Gospel'', premiered in 2005, and has been shown at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, at the 2005 annual conference of the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR), and on public television (PBS). The film was directed by Margaret Blair Young, co-author with Darius Gray of the ''Standing on the Promises'' trilogy of historical fiction that draws on the facts of James's life.

In June 1999, a monument to James's life was dedicated near her grave in the Salt Lake City Cemetery by the Genesis Group (an official organization begun under LDS President Joseph Fielding Smith to support Latter Day Saints of African descent) along with the Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation. The original headstones of Jane and Isaac James were supplemented with a granite monument faced with two bronze plaques. One side of the monument commemorates an incident documented in 1850, by Mormon pioneer Eliza Partridge Lyman, who wrote:

April 13: Brother Lyman liza's husbandstarted on a mission to California with O. P Rockwell and others. May the Lord bless and prosper them and return them in safety. He left us ... without anything to make bread, it not being in his power to get any.

April 25: Jane James, a colored woman, let me have two pounds of flour, it being about half she had.

A second bronze plaque, containing quotations from James and significant dates and events from her life, was placed on the back of the monument. In April 2005, the graves and monument were again cleaned and sealed. The inscription on her grave marker reads:

On October 12th, 2018, a feature-length film was released about James's relationship with Emma Smith, entitled '' Jane and Emma''. The film was directed by Chantelle Squires, with a screenplay by Melissa Leilani Larson and starred Danielle Deadwyler.

Notes

Sources

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Further reading

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Online reprint
with author updates)
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*Wolfinger, Henry J.
A Test of Faith: Jane Elizabeth James and the origins of the Utah black community
MSS SC 1069; 20th Century Western and Mormon Manuscripts; L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
Jane Manning James: Your Sister in the Gospel

{{DEFAULTSORT:James, Jane Elizabeth Manning
1822 births
1908 deaths
African-American Latter Day Saints
Burials at Salt Lake City Cemetery
Converts to Mormonism from Presbyterianism
Latter Day Saints from Connecticut
Latter Day Saints from Illinois
Latter Day Saints from Utah
Mormon pioneers
People from Wilton, Connecticut
Harold B. Lee Library-related 19th century articles