Mary Park Horne

Biographical Sketch

Excerpt from "The Salt Lake City 14th Ward Album Quilt, 1857", by Carol Holindrake Nielson

Mary Park Shepherd was born in Cumberland County, England on November 13, the same year Mary Isabella Hales and Joseph Horne were married, 1836. She was fifth of the nine children of Ann Eltringham Henderson and Richard Shepherd. From the time the Elders of the Latter-day Saints brought the restored gospel to her doorstep, Ann wanted to gather her family to the Salt Lake Valley. Richard was a sea captain and understood the perils of the anticipated journey. Nonetheless, since embracing the church cost them family and friends, their immigration probably seemed much less onerous. Besides the immediate family, their party included two married daughters and their husbands, an uncle and aunt and their son, cousin Frederick, whom the family anticipated would become Mary Park’s husband.

They carried with them ample stores of linens, glassware, books and clothing—vestiges of the comfortable lifestyle they left behind. All was well from Liverpool to New Orleans, but on the riverboat to St Louis they added unanticipated baggage: cholera. Ann, mother and driving force behind the entire undertaking, succumbed.

From this point, the family dispersed, each finding his own way in the promised land. Richard and his two daughters, Mary Park and Margaret, saw the venture on to the Salt Lake Valley. They arrived as crickets were devouring the wheat fields. Cousin Frederick, Mary Park’s intended, settled in California. She waited fruitlessly his beckoning while working as a household servant for John Taylor.

In the Taylor household, Mary Park became acquainted with John’s good friend, Joseph Horne. “Just twenty years of age, Mary...was a charming and intelligent young woman and Joseph finally persuaded her to marry him and become his second wife. They married November 30, 1855 in a ceremony performed by President Brigham Young. Multiple records avow Mary Isabella’s approval of this marriage twenty years past her own. “Joseph Horne provided a home for his new bride, Mary, in a house he built on the corner of First South and Second West streets, next to the home of Isabella.”

Mary Park and her sister Margaret, now both married, shared the wondrous booty brought from England in the homes they created in the Salt Lake Valley. Comfortable again after the initial disappointments, Mary brought her genteel upbringing to fruition creating a home remembered as filled with charm and hospitality. This was Mary’s area of expertise; she delighted in her home. Unforgettable was her special New Year’s Eve plum pudding served by candlelight. She and Joseph had ten children: Annie Elizabeth, William Joseph, Edward, George Henry, Emma Eliza, Thomas Richard, Frederick Andrew, Albert Shepherd, Margaret Nettie and Lillian Mary Horne, four of whom died young.

Mary Park did “fine sewing” as her quilt blocks attest. “Mary’s interest in her fine handwork increased as she found time to devote to it, and always her needles were flying.... For many of her granddaughters there were beautiful white, woolen shawls, and for her friends, lovely laces and doilies.”

Mary’s grandchildren also remembered her as a wonderful conversationalist and a quick wit. She devoted her later years to temple work and genealogy, traveling back to her English homeland to gather records when she was sixty-eight years old. Widowed for more than twenty- five years, Mary died at her daughter’s home in California, April 27, 1924. She was buried next to her husband and Mary Isabella in the Horne family plot, next to the John Taylor family plot, in the Salt Lake City cemetery.

The faded ink of Mary’s signature is an inappropriate finale to the fine stitches of her block. The hurried placement of the signature is the best indication that either the other half of her block was inadvertently left off (with its embroidered signature!) or that the partially completed block was signed in the available bare space. Mary’s exquisite sewing is the cause of all the fuss and ado. Her block is a sampler, combining all facets of needlework. The workmanship makes any viewer wonder why the other half Cannot be seen.

Immigration

Mary along her parents and sisters sailed aboard the ship Old England departing from Liverpool 5 Mar 1854 and arriving in New Orleans on 26 Apr 1854.

She entered the Salt Lake Valley with her sister Margaret and father Richard in 1854 with the Job Smith Company.

Links:

• Mormon Migration
• Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel