Martha Ann Kingsbury

Martha Ann Kingsbury was born Oct 17, 1850 to Joseph Corrodon and Loenza Alcena Pond Kingsbury.

History

"My mother, Loenza A. Pond, the daughter of Stillman Pond and Almira Whittemore, died at the age of twenty-three of acute consumption when I was only two and a half years old."

Soon after Martha's death, she went to live with an old couple by the name of Woodbury. Soon after she turned six, Martha was adopted by Beason Lewis, possibly at the request of Martha's aunt Elizabeth Almira Pond, who had married Beason in 1853. In 1860, the Lewis family moved to Richmond.

"I attended school a one or two short terms in Salt Lake City before we moved to Richmond. The first school I went to after we came here was taught by a Mr. James Freeze. He taught for two or three years. I do not remember who my other teachers were. I was fourteen or fifteen years of age when I finished school; we had only about six months of school a year."

"...When I was grown and getting to the marriageable age (polygamy of course was practiced at that time) Aunt Betsy and Uncle Beason wanted us to marry in polygamy and those were days in which we didn't have much courting. They thought there was no one like William C. Lewis and that he would make a good mate for me. We were married in the old Endowment House in Salt Lake City on Nov 15th, 1869. I was nineteen; he was twenty years older than I and had eight or nine children, so you see I was going into quite a family.

"... At the time the crusade was on and the U.S. officers were after all the polygamists' wives. Since I was one I had to leave my home in Sep of 1890, and I went to Riverdale, Weber County, where my sixth child was born on Jan 27th, 1891—Ray Crawford Lewis. When he was four moths old I had to take him and go down to Arizona. I stayed there for nearly two years, leaving my two oldest girls in Riverdale all of that time. I came back to Salt Lake City in April of 1893 at the time of the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple. I went one day to that and then came home after having been gone for two years and a half."

Martha served as a Relief Society Teacher for 50 years in the Richmond Ward.

Epilogue