Percy Amanda Pettibone, Early Mormon Convert

 Percy Amanda Pettibone (1787-1876)

     One evening, Dan and Percy Amanda Goddard agreed to host her nephew at a missionary meeting in their home in Charleston, Illinois. Young Lorenzo Snow had been called on a mission for the recently-formed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Days Saints, popularly known as the Mormons. He wanted to preach to them and whatever friends and neighbors they could gather. Lorenzo was nervous and unsure what he was going to say. 

     Decades later, Lorenzo would become the fifth president of the church. But of course, he didn’t start out that way. 

     “I was quite bashful then,” he later wrote. “It was a very difficult thing for me to get up there and preach to my kindred and the neighbors who were called in. I remember I prayed nearly all day preceding the night I was to speak.” 

     Lorenzo believed the Holy Spirit gave him the words he eventually spoke. They must have been powerful as Aunt Percy, Uncle Dan, their children and some of the neighbors were so convinced of the truth of his message that they were baptized into this new church. 

     Many people speak of their conversion to a particular branch of Christianity as life-changing. In the case of early Mormons, it brought truly profound changes as members gave all or many of their assets to the Church, moved to live in Mormon settlements and towns, and faced prejudice and harassment from non-members. Theirs was not a “go to church on Sunday and read the Bible during the week” kind of church. It was a lifestyle commitment. Later too, membership brought the challenge of plural marriage to members. Two of Percy’s daughters would enter into plural marriage, one daughter, Adaline, marrying Lorenzo himself.

     The murder in 1844 of church leader Joseph Smith created a succession crisis in the Church, and members had to decide who they were going to follow - Brigham Young or some other contender. As the Church began an exodus out of the United States to Utah, then owned by Mexico, the decision of whom to follow meant possibly never seeing one’s family again. Percy, her children, and her niece and nephews made a variety of different decisions. 

Percy Amanda's Early Life

     Born in Simsbury, Connecticut in 1787, Percy Amanda was the daughter of Jacob Pettibone, Jr. and Rosetta Barber. Her father was a veteran of the Revolutionary War and owned a distinguished house on Hopmeadow Street in Simsbury, the town where the Pettibone and Barber families had lived for generations. The home still stands, in use today as a bank.

     The families both descended from Puritans – the Barber side from an indentured apprentice carpenter named Thomas Barber. Percy’s parents’ generation was the last to be exclusively members of the Congregational Church. In fact, her Uncle Daniel would lead what was once famously known in the Catholic Church as the ‘Barber Conversion.' 

      Percy married Daniel “Dan” Goddard in 1807 at age 20 in Granby, Hartford County, Connecticut. They stayed there and had their first five children in Granby. Dan served in the War of 1812, which would later give Percy a small widow’s pension. By at least 1822 they moved to Haven, Pennsylvania where their next five children were born.

      Sometime after the 1832 birth of their son Lewis they moved to Charleston, Coles County, Illinois. 

Church Involvement

     Percy’s sister Rosetta, her husband Oliver Snow and their children had pioneered in Ohio around 1810. Rosetta and Oliver Snow, converted to the new Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints beginning in 1831. Their son, Lorenzo, was called on his first mission for the church in Ohio. Missionaries then traveled without “purse or script.” It was a difficult challenge – walking miles on foot, stopping to ask people for a free meal and a free place to spend the night. There were freezing nights in barns, skipped meals, rejection and slogging through snow or mud. Understandably, for his first couple of days, Lorenzo traveled to his relatives, where he could be sure of a welcome. He went first to his aunt Charlotte Snow Granger, who lived in Aurora, Ohio. Aunt Charlotty was happy to see her nephew, but she was not converted.

      Next he traveled to the home of Uncle Dan and Aunt Percy in Illinois, and there they met and hosted him. Unfortunately, there is a lack of information about their newfound involvement in the Church after their conversion and Lorenzo’s departure. The Goddards most likely worshipped with the neighbors who were converted with them.

      In April 1839 agents of the Church purchased land in and around Commerce, Illinois on the banks of the Mississippi. By August, they had a considerable amount of land and were ready for members to gather there as the new church headquarters. Joseph Smith renamed the city Nauvoo, which he said was of Hebrew origin and meant 'beautiful.' January 1841, Joseph received a revelation identifying Nauvoo as a temple city and the gathering places for the Saints, as Church members called themselves. It was where the faithful would want to be. Here, they could see a living prophet walk among them, and receive current revelations from the Lord. How thrilling that would be to believers! As historian James Allen said, Nauvoo was the stepping stone to eternal life. It was nearly 250 miles from Dan and Percy in Charleston, but that was nothing compared to the journeys of converts from England and Denmark who crossed the ocean and the United States to get to Nauvoo.

Dan died in July 1841 before they could move together. The next records for Percy are in 1842, when she was assessed for taxes in Nauvoo. Who did she move with? Who did she live with in Nauvoo? How did she support herself? Three of her children, Adaline, Hannah and William, were recorded as residents by 1845. Hannah and William were still teenagers and were surely with her all along. Adaline left her husband, George "Geer" Hendrickson sometime after the birth of her third child in 1839. Geer may have joined the church, but if he had, it is likely that he was no longer in sympathy with it. Other members left in this time period, tired of the constant turmoil and financial hardship of being driven out of Ohio and Missouri. How did Adaline support herself and her children? It seems likely that she an her mother would have pooled their resources and lived together. It was 1845 in Nauvoo when she married her cousin Lorenzo Snow as a plural wife. 

After Nauvoo

So what happened to Percy after Joseph Smith’s 1844 murder, when the Saints were in turmoil, fleeing from Nauvoo, church leadership in dispute? What decisions about her faith did she make? As historian Allen said, the church Percy joined in the 1830s was not the same church in 1844. There had been so many revelations, with profound life-changing, and eternal consequences. There was a "secret Nauvoo," which only a trusted circle was in on.

Some church members accepted Brigham Young’s leadership and migrated to Utah. Adaline and William did right away. Hannah would later. Percy had four children who died before or by 1850: Daniel, Rosetta, Jane and Henry. That left only one non-member child, daughter Susan Amelia, who married John Harrison Head in 1843 in Knox County, Illinois. 

      Members made different decisions about the church. About half went to Utah. There were break-off groups, like the one led by Joseph Smith’s family that became the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There was the Church of Christ (Cutlerites), which some family members, like her niece Lucy Leavitt Whiting, joined. There were other smaller schism groups, and there were those who simply left anything to do with Mormonism.

     When the Saints left Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi, Lorenzo traveled with three of his wives in February 1846, leaving a newly-pregnant Adaline behind in Nauvoo. Adaline’s oldest child, 12-year old Hiram, stayed with her, as did her mother Percy. They joined Lorenzo on June 5th in Mt. Pisgah, Iowa. It was one of three way stations the church established when it became clear that thousands of members could not immediately make a three-month, fully-provisioned trip to Utah, especially in winter. Also with Lorenzo was Percy’s 17-year old daughter Hannah Maria Goddard, and Adaline’s two younger sons Orville and Jacob Hendrickson, who were six and 10.

  Lorenzo and his family would stay in Mt. Pisgah until spring 1848 when Brigham Young called him to the Salt Lake Valley. At its peak it was a community of 2,000 to 3,000 people, with many more passing through. Lorenzo was appointed leader. There were two log meeting houses and numerous log cabins. They planted crops such as buckwheat, corn, turnips, potatoes, pumpkins, squash and beans. The way station provided food, rest and refuge for those headed to Deseret. But it was also beset with illness and a high death rate, including Lorenzo’s first baby. His and Adaline’s daughter, Rosetta Adaline, was born November 7th.

  When Lorenzo was called to Utah, why didn’t Percy go with him Adaline? How did she end up in Illinois with her one surviving non-member child? There is a clue in a little diary Lorenzo kept in Iowa. He wrote:

 

  Porter and Calvin [Squires – Lorenzo’s brothers-in-law] had gotten uneasy and wanted to return home to Ohio. I tried to reason with them upon the impropriety of leaving the church and promised them a home and fare as good as we had as long as they would continue with the saints, but it was all to no purpose, so I let them go. Hannah, who had been a member of my family, left Pisgah the forepart of Sept. contrary to my council and went back among the Gentiles thro’ the persuasions of her mother.

    

       There was gossip in the church about Hannah, claims that she was sealed in marriage to Lorenzo, though unconsummated, and had an affair with Joseph Ellis Johnson. In fact, Johnson had to go before a church council to repent for getting Hannah pregnant; any marital claim Lorenzo had on her was severed, and he married Hannah as a plural wife. Eventually, the Squires brothers rejoined the Church and went to Utah. Percy must have had doubts.

A definitive record of where she was after 1847 in Mt. Pisgah

      There is a big gap from September 1847 in Mt. Pisgah to the 1860 census when Percy's trail picks up again. In 1860, Percy lived with her youngest child Lewis and his new wife in Crescent City, Iowa, where Lewis was appointed postmaster in 1854. Interestingly, Crescent City was laid out by Joseph Ellis Johnson – Percy’s son-in-law. Mormons were the majority of the population until 1852. Joseph Ellis Johnson and Hannah Goddard didn’t move to Utah till 1860 – another chance for Percy to join the Saints, had she wanted to. Scholar Danny L. Jorgeson, an expert on the Cutlerite Church, a schismatic group, says Percy affiliated with the Cutlerites in Iowa. As a Cutlerite, she certainly wouldn't go to Utah with Jospeh and Hannah Johnson. It seems she turned to another daughter for support.

A Grandson's Visit

      On the 1870 census, Percy lived with daughter Susan and her husband John in Sciota, Illinois.[1]

      However, shortly before her death, she expressed a wish to be taken to Utah. Her grandson, Oliver Goddard Snow, was the son of her daughter Adaline and her nephew, Lorenzo Snow. He was serving his first mission for the church in Illinois in 1875 and went to see her. She asked him to take her to Utah when he completed his mission, which he promised to do. Was this a senile request, not quite in her right mind? Was it a desire to see her other children? Was it a late change of heart towards the Church?

      The following year, he said, “I went out of my way” to return to the home of his Aunt Susan, who was Grandma Percy’s caretaker. She was in very “feeble” condition, Oliver wrote, and though she still strongly expressed a wish to accompany him to Utah, Susan and neighbors talked her out of it. All her strength seemed to fail after that, he said, and she died two weeks later. Oliver preached Percy’s funeral, and accompanied her remains to the gravesite.

 

      Percy had a famous descendant – the Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard, a great-great-granddaughter. Paulette, born Marian Goddard Levy in Salt Lake, was the daughter of Alta Mae Goddard. Alta’s father was Percy’s grandson, Leslie, whose father was Lewis Jackson Goddard.

Percy Amanda Pettibone's great-great granddaughter, Paulette Goddard

Note: How does Percy Amanda Pettibone fit in my family tree? We are both descendants of Daniel Barber and Martha Phelps. Daniel and Martha’s daughter Rosetta is Percy’s mother. Their son Roswell is my fourth great-grandfather. My 3rd great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour is a first cousin of Percy’s. I have written blog posts about the following relatives affiliated with the Mormon Church:

• Lucy and Almon’s Choice: After the Exodus

• The Deepest Faith: Cornelia Leavitt’s Life, a Pioneer and Plural Wife’s Story

• Hannah Maria Goddard: Mormon Pioneer, Plural Wife

• A Prophet’s Brother: Samuel Pearce Snow

     Samuel Snow was Percy’s nephew. Hannah Goddard was her daughter. Cornelia and Lucy Leavitt were her nieces. 

Sources:

 

      Allen, James B. “One Man’s Nauvoo: William Clayton’s Experience in Mormon Illinois,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 6 (1979), pp. 37-59. 

Beecher, Maureen Ursenbach. “The Iowa Journal of Lorenzo Snow,” BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 24, Issue 3, July 1984.

      Bergera, Gary James. “Illicit Intercourse,” Plural Marriage and the Nauvoo Stake High Council 1840-1844,” The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, Vol 23 (2003),pp. 59-90.

      Jorgeson. Danny L. "Early Mormon Marriage, Family, and Networks of Kinship: Begats and Horizontal Genealogy in the Case of the Later Cutlerites at Nauvoo," The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2014), pp. 127-150. 

      Utah State History. “Divorce among Mormon Polygamists: Extent and Explanations,” Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 1, 1978.

      Snow, Eliza R. Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, One of the Twelve Apostles,

Deseret News Company: Salt Lake City, 1884.

Copyright by Andrea Auclair © 2023