Emeline Crandall Bird

Emeline Crandall Bird is my great-great grandmother.  She was born in the state of New York on June 27th, 1824.

After embracing the New and Everlasting Gospel, Emeline emigrated to Kirtland, Ohio with her family when she was eleven years old. She was baptized, and in 1838 she went to Missouri, and the following spring was driven out to Illinois by a ruthless mob. Her family settled in Quincy, Illinois and remained there for five years.  She was married at the age of nineteen to Richard Bird in March of 1845. 

They spent the winter in Nauvoo, and in the spring of 1846 after having their wheat stacks and homes and goods burned, was expelled from Nauvoo, together with the Latter Day Saints, to seek an asylum in the wilderness.  In July they landed in Iowa and there underwent many hardships such as sickness, cold and hunger and death.  In the spring of 1850 they took up the line of march not knowing whither they would go, to seek an asylum in the Rocky Mountains, and after a long and dreary march of one thousand miles through a desert country which took three months of hard traveling and passing through very many trying scenes they landed in Salt Lake City.  The first day of October they commenced a settlement in Springville and built a fort to protect from the savage Indians which roamed over the valleys.

In the spring of 1851 an organization of a branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was organized by Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball.  Soon after a female Relief Society was organized.  Emeline joined and was a member the rest of her life. 

Emeline wrote, "I, Emeline Bird, am the mother of six sons and four daughters. In November 1879 a Primary Association was organized in the different wards of the city of Springville and I was set apart as President of the Third Ward and served for ten years."

She continued, "In the year 1853 the Saints commenced a temple in Salt Lake City, a very costly and magnificent building, costing about two million dollars.  On the sixth of April 1892, at twelve o'clock the last stone will be laid."

Emeline died in Springville, Utah, at the age of 74.

Ancestral Line:  Janeal Kindred Smith... Kent Lewis Kindred... Fred Lewis Kindred... Luanna Mariah Bird... Emeline Crandall