Ann "Annie" Luce

Anne or Annie Quarmby was born 20 January 1842, in Ashton-Under Lyne, Yorkshire, England. She was the daughter of John and Ann (Wagstaff) Quarmby.

Her parents converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, then emigrated through the Port of New Orleans in June 1845. Her father died at Nauvoo, and her mother at Winter Quarters.

She was adopted by the family of Joseph Bates Noble and Mary Adeline (Beaman) Noble. Many genealogists have confused her as their biological daughter. The connection is notable because her adoptive father performed the first recorded plural marriage, of his wife's sister Louisa Beaman to Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. After Smith's death, Louisa married Mormon leader Brigham Young. Another sister, Artimesia Beaman married Mormon apostle Erastus Snow.

Annie came west to Salt Lake City with her adoptive parents in 1847 when she was 5. The only memory she had of her parents was a steamer trunk with the name "Quarmby" engraved on the handle, which her parents brought from England. This trunk remained in the possession of the Noble family when Anna left home, and repeated attempts to retrieve it have failed (Marker). In 1980 it was in the possession of Delbert Noble, of Woods Cross, Utah (J. Noble).

The Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database says, "She was the orphan daughter of John and Elizabeth Quarmsby who was adopted by Joseph B. Noble." It gives her birth date as 22 June 1840. She was not sure of her birth date, or even of her parents' names. She knew that her birth name was Quarmby, and thought that her father was named William or John and that her mother might have been Elizabeth. Growing up, she used the surname of her adoptive father, Joseph Noble. Her death certificate gives her name as Annie Noble Luce, and Noble is given in many records as her maiden name. Research has shown that she was almost certainly the daughter of the John Quarmby, a Seventy who died at Nauvoo in September 1845. Her death certificate gives her father's name as "John Quamsby, " which indicates that at the time of her death this was the prevailing belief in the family. James Marker believed that she was the daughter of John and Anne Quarmby, and that William and Elizabeth were her older brother and sister who must have died shortly after coming to America.

Anna used four different dates as her birth date, all of them birth dates of her childhood friends. Her date of birth is given variously as 22 June 1840, 2 May 1841, and 15 October 1841. The date on her death certificate is 22 June 1840. The actual date seems to have been 20 January 1842.

She was certainly born in England, as she herself believed. However, her son Wilford told his children that she was Irish, and a favorite song of hers and her husband's - which might have given her son that impression - was "Pity the poor Irish stranger who's wandered so far from his home." Anna had the bright red hair common among the Irish, and this might have fostered the notion. However, red hair is also common in Yorkshire. Mormon missionaries do not seem to have reached Ireland until a later date. Moreover, her son might have taken the story only half seriously -- on the 1910 census he stated that his mother was born in "Wales England."

Her grandson James Marker went to extensive efforts to trace the parents of Anna Quarmby. He examined the 1841 and 1851 censuses for every Quarmby family in England under all the alternate spellings of the name. He was able to eliminate those families which appear on both censuses because Anna's parents emigrated before the 1851 census. For the remaining families, he searched birth records at Somerset House and was able eventually to identify John and Anne Quarmby of Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire as Anna's parents. Marker thought that this couple might have been the John Quarmby and Anne Wagstaff who were married at Huddersfield, Yorkshire in 1821, which would make them the children respectively of Joseph Quarmby and James Wagstaff. The only alternative to this identification seems to have been a John Quarmby and Elizabeth Stedd, who likewise appear in English vital records at the proper times. There are quite a few Quarmbys on the IGI in Yorkshire, and presumably also in other places this family lived, Stayleybridge, Oxford and Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. Civil Registration began in 1837 so it ought to be possible to re-construct Marker's research on this family from the birth records of their children.

Anna's subsequent life is well documented by Marker's research. Her parents converted to Mormonism shortly after she was born and emigrated to America, settling at Nauvoo. Her father died in Nauvoo and her mother apparently died 1846/47 at Winter Quarters, Iowa.

After her mother's death, Anna was adopted by Joseph Bates Noble and his wife Mary Adeline Beeman. Anna's adoptive mother was a sister-in-law of Joseph Smith, Erastus Snow, and later of Brigham Young. Anna's adoptive father was Bishop of Nauvoo's 5th Ward and performed the first recorded polygamous marriage among the Mormons: Joseph Smith to Noble's sister-in-law Louisa Beeman. On a list of those departing Nauvoo, Anna Quarmby was listed in the household of Joseph B. Noble as Anna Noble, age 5, born in Montrose, Iowa. On the same list is her adoptive mother "Mary A. Noble, age 36" and her "brothers" Edward A., age 6 (and also recorded as having been born at Montrose, Iowa), and George P. age 3, and Susan, age 14.

The Joseph Bates Noble Company, with 171 people, left Elkhorn River, Nebraska on 17 June 1847 (Journal History, 21 June 1847, 28-32). Noble was a Captain of first Fifty in Jedidiah Grant Hundred; that is, he led 50 families across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. Anna walked across the plains with the Noble family and arrived in Salt Lake in the first year of Mormon settlement there, on 29 September 1847. Others in the Company, including Noble himself, arrived on 4 October 1847.

On 7 November 1847 Anna's adoptive father was appointed Bishop of the North Addition to the Old Fort. On 28 January 1848 he was involved in a dispute over who should pay for the two oxen (at $20 each) used to pay Rasharo, east of Laramie, for redeeming other oxen. The cost was assessed in equal shares among Noble's Fifty, and Noble was appointed to collect the money. When land in the valley in 1849 was divided Joseph Noble received the lot at the northwest corner of the intersection of 100 South and 200 East, Salt Lake City, and it was here that Anna grew up. Anna's adopted mother died in 1851 and she was subsequently raised by her "step-mother" Mary Ann Washburn until about 1857, when Mary Ann left Bates Noble and married Edwin Whiting.

Anna was listed on the 1851 census of Salt Lake in the household of her adoptive parents: Joseph B. Nobles (46), farmer, born in Massachusetts; Mary Ann (26), born in Massachusetts; Edward (10), born in Iowa; Anna (9), born in Iowa; George (7), born in Iowa; Eliza (3), born in Deseret; Benjamin (2), born in Deseret; and Elizabeth (1), born in Deseret.

She remembered a difficult childhood. When she was a girl, her step-mother threw an iron at her, leaving a scar on Anna's forehead. She later told her children she could forgive, but she could never forget.

When Anna was 15 she ran away from home to avoid marrying her foster father as his polygamous 8th wife. She spent the first night in a wagon and woke up to find herself covered with a layer of snow. At age 15 she married for the first time, becoming the 4th wife of 57-year-old polygamist Will Camp. Annie might have been a friend of one of Camp's younger daughters, Harriet, as the two were the same age. She divorced Camp less than a year later, in January 1858, in the Office of the Church President. To support herself she took up dress making, buying a dress which she cut apart to make a paper pattern. She remarried, this time as only wife of Will Luce.

I have not been able to find her on the 1860 census of Utah, when she would have been divorced from Will Camp but not yet remarried to Will Luce.

In 1897 she was certified by the Semi-Centennial Commission as being one of the surviving pioneers of the Mormons' first year in Salt Lake Valley and received a gold Silver Jubilee pin (Clawson). She is recorded in the Book of the Pioneers, 1:410.

Litigation involving her husband's title to land in Wyoming mentions that she was a registered voter in 1900. Probably the issue of her citizenship never arose.

She and her husband moved back into Salt Lake City in March 1904 to live with her daughter Harriett Marker at 418 East 800 South, where she died of senile pneumonia and was buried two days later in the Marker Plot (Park 5) in City Cemetery. Her death certificate calls her Annie Noble Luce, her obituary in Improvement Era mistakenly calls her Annie D. Luce. Her gravestone calls her Annie E. Luce.

Anne or Annie Quarmby was born 20 Jan 1842, in Ashton-Under Lyne, Yorkshire, England. She was the daughter of Ann Wagstaff & John Quarmby. The family converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and ended up in Nauvoo by way of St. Louis. John died in Nauvoo 22 September 1845, and was buried in Nauvoo. Ann (mother) apparently died a short time later, either in Nauvoo, or Winter Quarters.

Annie was adopted by Joseph Bates Noble's family, after their death.

Married Williams Washington Camp, they were later divorced. Married Wilford Woodruff Luce Sr., they had 8 children together.

Clara Emma Luce (1862-1901) Wilford Woodruff Luce (1864-1948) Frank Luce (1867-1868) Annie Eliza Luce (1870-1956) Mary Elizabeth Luce (1872-1872) David Wheeler Luce (1874- ) Harriet Marie Luce (1876-1946) Louise Luce (1880-1896)

• Immigration: June 1845 - New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana
• Immigration: Oct 2 1847 - Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co, Utah
• Census: 1851 - Salt Lake Co, Utah
• Census: 1870 - 6th Ward, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co, Utah
• Residence: South Cottonwood, Salt Lake, Utah, USA - 1880
• Census: 1880 - South Cottonwood, Salt Lake Co, Utah
• Residence: Abbey, Fremont, Wyoming, USA - 1900
• Census: June 1900 - Abbey Pct, Fremont Co, Wyoming

Sources

• Easton, Dr. Susan Ward, comp. Pioneers of 1847. [Brigham Young Univ., 1980]: p. 117 (Anna Noble, born 2 August 1842 in Montrose, Iowa).
• "Family Tree," database, <i>FamilySearch</i> (http://familysearch.org : modified 30 March 2017, 15:33), entry for Anna Quarmby(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:KWJD-49C); contributed by various users.
• Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel: Anna Noble.
• * Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 14 2016, 18:49:27 UTC
• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Mar 29 2017, 1:56:11 UTC
• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: May 21 2017, 15:47:21 UTC