In the Spring of '54, the Davis family and the Chittendens decided to be baptized. Rumors, and false reports had been rapidly spread about the Latter-day Saints, and their enemies sprang up like magic. Many sarcastic and insulting remarks were made about the "dipping" (as the baptism was called) of the two families. Mr. McArthur was a bitter enemy to the new sect.
One day the Davises were over to Chittenden's and remarked they were going to be baptized the following Monday in the river near their house. William decided to come over with his family on the same day. So on the 24 of April 1854 William and Mary were baptized by John Eldredge in Camden, Australia. From the moment of their baptism until now no faltering or doubt has ever been in the hearts of these true Saints. In the evening of the same day, the girls were all baptized by the Elders into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The gospel once having been received the spirit of "gathering" soon follows. And with Mary, who had always wished to go to America, how much more intense that spirit was now!
As she sat and listened to the Elder's description of Zion being built up in the bleak mountains, of the pretty streets lined with shade-trees, and watered by swift-running streamlets she turned to her husband and told him that this must be the place of her dream.
William was a very quiet, determined man, who could not be turned from the way he had chosen.
The days, when through the long summer evenings, they all sat and listened to the various principles and the new and lovely doctrines unfolded one by one, by the Elders, like the petals of a glorious flower, were the very happiest Mary and her family ever knew. Poor Mary! They were the light which shone over her dreary oncoming future, sometimes brightly, sometimes faintly, but always shining over the wretched, darksome road of the next twenty years.
One little circumstance, which will illustrate Mary's simple but powerful faith will perhaps be worth mentioning and may strengthen some other one's faith. Just before the birth of her eighth girl, which occurred in the Fall after their baptism, she felt low and miserable, scarcely sick enough to be in bed, but too ill to work. One evening Bro. Eldredge was talking to her and said that if she had any sickness or bodily ill, it was her privilege as it was of any member of the Church, to call upon the Elders to administer to her, and then if she exercised faith, it would leave her. Mary had never read a word in her life, and so this came to her as a new and very precious truth.
"Well, Bro. Eldredge, if I can be ministered to and get well, I want to now," said Mary.
So the ordinance was performed, and she was indeed instantly healed. From that day for many months she never felt one moment of illness. And she says to me to-day in her simple quaint way,
"I have never been ministered to in my life since, that I did not get better."