Another very devoted woman in the Temple work is Sister Catherina Z. Schuler. She is also a native of Switzerland, having been born in Glarus, May 22, 1834. She not only sacrificed her home there for the Gospel's sake, but left her husband also because of his determined opposition to her religion.
Bringing her son with her, she came to Utah and located first at Logan, where she remained for several years, and where her son subsequently died. She was present at the dedication of the Logan Temple, and did a good deal of work there for her dead kindred, of whom she had or subsequently obtained a very extensive list.
She removed to Salt Lake City in 1892, and witnessed also the dedication of the Temple in this city. She was dependent entirely upon her own earnings, and went out sewing as she found opportunity, and did Temple work occasionally. Since 1898 she has devoted herself exclusively to her Temple work, in which she has been assisted by many friends, and devoted every cent she could save to hiring men to work for her male kindred. In all, she has done, or had done, the work for fully 2,400 of her kindred dead.
A look at Sister Schuler's face is sufficient to convince any person that hers is a joyful work. Though she is now past eighty years of age, and has always been used to hard work, she is well preserved and active, and, though not mirthful, she is ever good natured, patient and contented. As in the case of many others who are active in Temple work, that labor has doubtless added years to her life, and rendered her declining days in mortality about the happiest she has ever spent. The consciousness of being a savior of others has brought her more joy than the possession of wealth or worldly honors ever could.
Sister Annie Davis Watson, widow of the late Joseph M. Watson, was a worker in the Temple for seventeen years, and only gave up the work because of her hearing growing so bad that she could not continue. Her husband died in the year 1895. She never had any children, and her life would have been extremely lonely if she had not interested herself in the work for the dead. She had a desire to devote herself to working for her husband's dead kindred, and mentioned the matter to President Snow, telling him if she could not so labor she had no desire to live; also that she had no genealogy of her husband's kindred farther back than his parents, for whom the work had already been done. He told her she would be able to obtain the genealogical information necessary, advised her to take up the work and promised there should be no end to it. He also told her that her husband in the spirit world would be familiar with every circumstance connected with the work as it progressed.
She has since devoted her life and her income to the work, and either officiated herself, or employed others to officiate, for 15,247 dead persons, most of whom are her husband's kindred.
She says it is the most glorious work she ever engaged in, and she has felt the presence of her husband's spirit upon many occasions.
There is one special class to whom the vicarious work in the Salt Lake Temple must be a very great boon. The blind, of whom there are quite a number of both sexes, in daily attendance, seem to find special comfort in the work. The opportunities people have of making themselves useful to their fellows, after being deprived of the priceless gift of sight, are extremely limited. People of independent minds dislike to be always treated as objects of charity. They like to feel that they are of some use in the world, and it is doubtful if there is any other work in which the average blind person can engage with so much satisfaction as that in the Temple. It is usually conceded that the loss of sight by a normal person has the effect of quickening and strengthening his remaining senses, and it is quite possible that the most of the sightless workers in the Temple get more enjoyment out of the work than the average person who retains his sight. He is perhaps able to think more profoundly, and is more susceptible to the impressions of the Spirit than if he had the use of his eyes.
Perhaps no man that ever labored in the Temple enjoyed the Spirit of the work more and shed a better influence among his associates than did Samuel W. Jenkinson, a blind brother of rather unusual intelligence and devotion, who died about three years since, and of whose experiences more may be said hereafter.