Martha Rebecca Hyde

Liverpool to New Orleans Ship: Echo Departure: 16 Feb 1841 Arrival: 16 Apr 1841

Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847–1868 John B. Walker Company (1852) Age 33

Departure: 26-30 June 1852 Arrival: 2-7 October 1852

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Birth: Jun. 15, 1817 Fairford, England

Death: Oct. 30, 1904 Salt Lake City Salt Lake County Utah, USA

Born in the Hamlet of Tewksbury at Barton Street. Daughter of Martha Pullham and Thomas Browett. Christened 16 Oct 1825.

Baptized into the LDS Church, March 1840 by Apostle Wilford Woodruff. Sailed from Liverpool to New Orleans with her brother, Daniel and the Harris and Bloxham families aboard the ship Echo. The ship manifest of 16 February 1841 listed her as a "seamstress".

Upon arriving at Nauvoo, she resided with her brother and his wife, Elizabeth Harris Browett. Because of the persecution of the Saints in 1845-46, they prepared to migrate west.

Daniel, her brother and Robert Jr. Harris left with the Mormon Battalion march to the War with Mexico. Family lore has it that Martha was sealed to Apostle Orson Hyde to insure her celestial future should she perish before reaching the Salt Lake Valley. At 26, she was considered a "spinster" and he was 14 years older. Nauvoo endowment: 17 Dec. 1845, sealing 11 Jan. 1846. They excaped across the Mississippi within days. Apostle Hyde spent the next year on a mission in England.

Migrating to Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie, Iowa, sickness was ever with her. In April of 1850, their only child, a daughter, was born and lived only three months. Hyde was often absent on church business.

He left for Salt Lake City with a fast moving group of three other men in July. When Hyde decided to leave her with Elizabeth and her other sisters-in-law at Winter Quarters, she obtained an annulment of the marriage, the spring of 1850.

By winter of that year, Martha married widower, Thomas McKenzie, who had three children. They came to the Utah valley with the John B. Walker Wagon Company, taking three long months in 1852 to arrive.

After reaching the Salt Lake Valley, she divorced McKenzie 26 October 1852 and resided primarily in Salt Lake City. She continued to work as a seamstress, preparing many garments for opera productions and those in high society.

She once told family members that she especially prospered by sewing for "ladies of the evening" because they preferred their under garments very fancy and the seams of their "frocks" to be finished as lovely inside as they were on the outside. They were willing to pay for lace, french seams and other detailed hand work!

It is not know if she worked for, or roomed with, the Gillette family, but she was buried in the Gillette Family Lot at "City Cemetery", now known as Salt Lake City Cemetery, SL, Utah. Her last know address at the time of her death was, "Rear - 542 8th Street, Salt Lake City, SL, Utah."

Family links:

Spouse:

• Orson Hyde (1805 - 1878)

Children: Adella Marie Hyde (1850 - 1850)*

Note: Hyde marriage annulled, 1850, Md . Thomas McKenzie; SLC Cemetery Record shows last name of "Browitt".

Burial: Salt Lake City Cemetery Salt Lake City Salt Lake County Utah, USA Plot: J-11-7-3E

Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847–1868

McKenzie, Martha Rebecca Browett

Birth Date: 22 June 1819 Death Date: 30 Oct. 1904 Gender: Female Age: 33 Company: John B. Walker Company (1852)

Pioneer Information:

SOURCE: http://lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneerdetails/1,15791,4018-1-...