"We arrived in Commerce on the 18th (May, 1839), and called upon Brother Joseph and his family. Joseph had commenced laying out the city plot.
"23d—I crossed the Mississippi with my family, and took up my residence in a room in the old military barracks, in company with Brother Woodruff and his family.
"September 14, 1839—I started from Montrose on my mission to England. My health was so poor that I was unable to go thirty rods, to the river, without assistance. After I had crossed the river I got Israel Barlow to carry me on his horse behind him, to Heber C. Kimball's, where I remained sick 'till the 18th. I left my wife sick, with a babe only ten days old, and all my children sick and unable to wait upon each other.
"17th—My wife crossed the river, and got a boy with a wagon to bring her up about a mile, to Brother Kimball's, to see me. I remained until the 18th at Brother Kimball's, when we started, leaving his family also sick."
Continue the picture, with the husband's absence, and the wife's noble, every-day struggle to maintain and guard his children, and we have her history well described for the next two years.
Taking up the thread again in September, 1841: "On my return from England," says Brigham, in his diary, "I found my family living in a small unfinished log-cabin, situated on a low, wet lot, so swampy that when the first attempt was made to plough it the oxen mired; but after the city was drained it became a very valuable garden spot."
The scene, a year later, is that of President Young at "death's door," and the wife battling with death to save her husband. He was suddenly attacked with a slight fit of apoplexy. This was followed by a severe fever. For eighteen days he lay upon his back, and was not turned upon his side during that period.
"When the fever left me, on the eighteenth day," he says, "I was bolstered up in my chair, but was so near gone that I could not close my eyes, which were set in my head; my chin dropped down, and my breath stopped. My wife, seeing my situation, threw some cold water in my face and eyes, which I did not feel in the least; neither did I move a muscle. She then held my nostrils between her thumb and finger, and placing her mouth directly over mine, blew into my lungs until she filled them with air. This set my lungs in motion, and I again began to breathe. While this was going on I was perfectly conscious of all that was passing around me; my spirit was as vivid as it ever was in my life; but I had no feeling in my body."
Mary, by the help of God, had thus saved the life of President Young!
It was about this time that polygamy, or "celestial marriage," was introduced into the Church. To say that it was no cross to these Mormon wives—daughters of the strictest Puritan parentage—would be to mock their experience. It was thus, also, with their husbands, in Nauvoo, in 1842. President Young himself tells of the occasion when he stood by the grave of one of the brethren and wished that the lot of the departed was his own. The burden of polygamy seemed heavier than the hand of death. It was nothing less than the potency of the "Thus saith the Lord," and the faith of the saints as a community, that sustained them—both the brethren and the sisters. Mary Angell gave to her husband other wives, and the testimony which she gives to-day is that it has been the "Thus saith the Lord" unto her, from the time of its introduction to the present.