(LUKE) Ann Kirkman – Emigration to Utah

Ann Kirkman Howarth

Ann Kirkman, my great-great-grandmother, was born in 1850 in Darcy Lever, England (near Manchester). Her family were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At that time, members of the Church, “Mormons,” were persecuted throughout the world. Accordingly, many traveled to Utah or “Zion” to live in peace with other Mormons. Ann Kirkman had a strong desire to emigrate to Utah.

Her mother, however, believed some of the rumors spread about that settlement and did not want Ann to go. “When she first told her mother she wanted to come, her mother told her she would cut her throat before [she] would permit it and [Ann] was quite frightened and couldn't sleep for many nights for fear her mother would carry out her threats.”

Regardless of her fear, Ann somehow gathered the funds needed to make the voyage. Her mother, seeing that she was really determined to go, went to the dock with her and gave her a shilling, which Ann kept until her death.

At age 23, Ann courageously left her native home, alone. She sailed to the United States aboard the Wyoming, a ship chartered for Mormon emigrants, which left Liverpool on Wednesday, September 2, 1874. For the first three or four days of the voyage, just about all of the passengers were sick and ate very little. But by the time they arrived in New York, on the 14^th, most of them were in good health. The next day, the company boarded a train in Jersey City, arriving in Utah on September 23^rd. Ann lived in this new home until her death in 1927.

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Quoted text is from "The Life of Ann Kirkman Howarth," a short biography written by her daughter, Sarah Jane Howarth Luke, available at http://sharing.ancestry.com/2735972?h=9453a3

 

Other sources: mormonmigration.lib.by.edu (search for Ann Kirkman) - Includes descriptions of the ocean voyage taken from letters and journals.