Letter from Grandpa Marchant

This is a letter that Grandpa Marchant wrote Barbara in April 1956.  Grandma Marchant died in October of that year.  Grandma lived in Ephraim with Aunt Linnie prior to her death and may have been there at that time.  It seems that Grandma Marchant spent some time at the Utah State Mental Hospital but Barbara doesn't know exactly why, when, or how long.  Grandpa Marchant died in May 1957, a little over a year after writing this letter. 

Playing with the numbers

I was just reading about Joseph Fielding Smith while simultaneously thinking of how my grandmother, Agnes Taylor and her siblings were taken in by him and his wife Mary Schwartz (who was the half-sister of my grandmother's mother). Mary's mother (therefore my grandmother's grandmother) Agnes Taylor Schwartz also lived there. She is the sister of John Taylor. Mary Schwartz was Joseph Fielding Smith's 6th wife. She was born in 1865, the year before Joseph Fielding Smith became an apostle at the age of 28. They were married in 1884.

Anyway, back to my grandmother. She was three when her father died and so probably did not remember him. Joseph Fielding Smith was six when his father died and never forgot the events surrounding his father's death. Grandmother was fifteen when she was orphaned, Joseph Fielding Smith was thirteen when he was orphaned. He probably had a lot of sympathy for Grandmother and her siblings, because of the extra dimension of having suffered the same losses at roughly similar ages.

Agenes Taylor Marchant