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Guardians of the Hearth

February 26, 2012/4 Comments/in Commentary, Homemaking/by Katherine Cowley

For an LDS woman, being a “guardian of the hearth” is about much more than cooking food on a fire (or on the stove)–it’s about the entire spiritual responsibilities and divine roles of women in the home. (Frederick Childe Hassam’s “The Fireplace”) This month’s visiting teaching message is titled “Guardians of the Hearth,” quoting President […]

Sarah Jane Adams: A Love Story

February 14, 2012/3 Comments/in Family Stories/by Katherine Cowley

I love family stories. They’re so interesting and compelling. For Valentine’s Day I wanted to publish a tale of love. Robert Pemberton and Sarah Jane Adams Here’s the story of one of my ancestors, Sarah Jane Adams, as told by another descendant, Bertram Adams (in the book The House of Benjamin: Ancestors and Descendants of […]

Guardians of the Hearth

February 26, 2012/4 Comments/in Commentary, Homemaking/by Katherine Cowley

Sarah Jane Adams: A Love Story

February 14, 2012/3 Comments/in Family Stories/by Katherine Cowley

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Guardians of the Hearth

February 26, 2012/4 Comments/in Commentary, Homemaking/by Katherine Cowley

(Frederick Childe Hassam’s “The Fireplace”)

This month’s visiting teaching message is titled “Guardians of the Hearth,” quoting President Gordon B. Hinckley, who said the following in a 1995 address to women:

You are the guardians of the hearth. You are the bearers of the children. You are they who nurture them and establish within them the habits of their lives. No other work reaches so close to divinity as does the nurturing of the sons and daughters of God.

It’s insightful to read this quote in the context of the woman and her relationship with the historic hearth. Recently, I’ve been reading the book Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. The educational yet entertaining book spends most of its pages talking about the development of electricity and how it changed Western culture and society, but the first quarter of the book is about what life was like before electric light.

(Photo of tenant farmer and family in front of fireplace taken as part of the FSA project in 1939.)

The hearth–the fire–was often the figurative center of the home. It was used for cooking and the heat for ironing. In the evening, candles and lamps were often used sparingly, because of their expense, so the hearth was often the main source of light. It heated the home–or at least the portion of it closest to the fire. Without the other evening diversions and entertainments made possible by electric lights, families congregated in the evening around the hearth–it was a place of warmth and a place for stories and for the shared weaving of lives.

I don’t have a fireplace in my home, but I still can be the guardian of the hearth. I can be a guardian of light, of time spent together as a family, of warmth, of safety, of food, of shared stories. As a wife and mother, I am not the only one with responsibilities for the hearth–others often light and tend to our home’s fire. But I am the guardian–a guard and protector of light and spirit, one who preserves the fire and makes sure its embers do not go out.

(Helen Allingham’s “In the Nursery”)

Sarah Jane Adams: A Love Story

February 14, 2012/3 Comments/in Family Stories/by Katherine Cowley

I love family stories. They’re so interesting and compelling. For Valentine’s Day I wanted to publish a tale of love.

Robert Pemberton and Sarah Jane Adams

Here’s the story of one of my ancestors, Sarah Jane Adams, as told by another descendant, Bertram Adams (in the book The House of Benjamin: Ancestors and Descendants of Benjamin Adams of Boaz, 1980).

Sarah Jane Adams[,] the auburn-haired daughter of Hannah Rhinehart and her husband Benjamin Adams[,] was born 18 Oct. 1847 in Grant county, Indiana, and there grew to womanhood. On a Saturday, 25 Aug. 1866, three couples gathered in front of their school mates and friends to be married in one ceremony on the long porch of the home of Isaiah Pemberton at Back Creek, near Jonesobro, Grant co., by Alfred C. Barnard, J.P. (MC)

Robert Pemberton to Sarah Jane Adams

Charles Baldwin to Melinda Newby

Axum Newby to Hannah Pemberton

Within ten days after they were married, the three couples started their 500 mile journey to Iowa, in five covered wagons loaded with all their possessions. The young brides all cut their hair and wore bloomer suits for convenience in traveling, in spite of numerous unfavorable comments. No incidents of the 23 days of travel to Hartland, Iowa have been recorded, except for some rainy days at the beginning.

Hartland, in Marshall co. Iowa, was a Quaker community, and some of the Quaker Pembertons had already settled in that vicinity. Since Robert and Sarah Jane had been married out of the Quaker Church, the Quakers objected and were about to “church” Robert, but his wife quietly converted and all was peace. She remained a staunch and faithful member until the end of her days. (141)

I love that Sarah Jane had auburn hair. Apparently, she was also a “small woman, not over five feet tow inches tall and quite slender; she had light complexion with blue or grey eyes; there was no silver in her curly dark auburn hair until shortly before her death.” Her husband “was a tall bearded man and some said he much resembled General Robert E. Lee” (142).

Sarah and Robert had 9 children; their first and third children died as infants.

(Their 9 children, in birth order, were Orilla, Tacy Jane, William R. (or H), Charles Benjamin, Perle C., Jeannette, Delbert H., Myrtella, and Wynn Robert. I have no idea who is who in the picture.)

Sarah Jane Adams Pemberton was a widow for the last 28 years of her life. She lived in West Los Angeles: 11567 Santa Monica Boulevard. At her death, on February 19, 1940, she was 92 years old.

When I get the chance, I’ll upload a copy of a note that she wrote, with her signature.

Cutting off your hair and wearing bloomers to move across the country, making sacrifices to make things work, having 9 children and living faithfully together for your entire lives–if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.