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A most worthy peer of sister Woodruff was Leonora, the wife of Apostle John Taylor. She was the daughter of Capt. Cannon, of the Isle of Man, England, and sister of the father of George Q. Cannon. She left England for Canada, as a companion to the wife of the secretary of the colony, but with the intention of returning. While in Canada, however, she met Elder Taylor, then a Methodist minister, whose wife she afterwards became. They were married in 1833. She was a God-fearing woman, and, as we have seen, was the first to receive Parley P. Pratt into her house when on his mission to Canada. In the spring of 1838 she gathered with her husband and two children to Kirtland. Thence they journeyed to Far West. She was in the expulsion from Missouri; bore the burden of her family in Nauvoo, as a missionary's wife, while her husband was in England; felt the stroke of the martyrdom, in which her husband was terribly wounded; was in the exodus; was then left at winter quarters while her husband went on his second mission to England; but he returned in time for them to start with the first companies that followed the pioneers. Sister Leonora was therefore among the earliest women of Utah.
When the prospect came, at the period of the Utah war, that the saints would have to leave American soil, and her husband delivered those grand patriotic discourses to his people that will ever live in Mormon history, Sister Taylor nobly supported his determination with the rest of the saints to put the torch to their homes, rather than submit to invasion and the renunciation of their liberties. She died in the month of December, 1867. Hers was a faithful example, and she has left an honored memory among her people.
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Marian Ross, wife of Apostle Orson Pratt, is a native of Scotland, and was reared among the Highlands. When about seventeen years of age she visited her relatives in Edinburgh, where Mormonism was first brought to her attention. She was shortly afterwards baptized near the harbor of Leith, on the 27th of August, 1847. A singular feature of Mrs. Pratt's experience was that in a dream she was distinctly shown her future husband, then on his mission to Scotland. When she saw him she at once recognized him. She made her home at Apostle Pratt's house in Liverpool, for a short time, and then emigrated to America, in 1851. After being in Salt Lake City a few months she was married to Mr. Pratt. She testifies, "I have been in polygamy twenty-five years, and have never seen the hour when I have regretted that I was in it. I would not change my position for anything earthly, no matter how grand and gorgeous it might be; even were it for the throne of a queen. For a surety do I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God."
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Another of these apostolic women, who with their husbands founded Utah, is the wife of Albert Carrington. She was also in the valley in 1847. Her grand example and words to Captain Van Vliet, when the saints were resolving on another exodus, have been already recorded. A volume written could not make her name more imperishable.
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Nor must Artimisa, the first wife of Erastus Snow, who is so conspicuous among the founders of St. George, be forgotten. She is one of the honorable women of Utah, and the part she has sustained, with her husband, in building up the southern country, has been that of self-sacrifice, endurance, and noble example.
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