Catherine Curtis Spencer (1811-1846)

Catherine Curtis and Orson Spencer home in Nauvoo, Illinois

Catherine Curtis was not only highly educated, but she was “brought up in affluence, and nurtured with fondness and peculiar care as the favorite of her father’s house” (MS, 60). In 1830 she married a well educated man by the name of Orson Spencer. Orson and Catherine Spencer had eight children in total: Catharine Curtis (1831–1833), Ellen Curtis (1832–1896), Aurelia Read (1834–1922), Catherine Read (1836–1922), Howard Orson (1838–1918), George Boardman (1840–1924), Lucy Curtis (1842–1867), and Chloe (1844–1845) (LSOS, 202).

While Orson supported the family as a Baptist minister in Massachusetts in the early 1840s his brother, Daniel visited the family with a copy of a Book of Mormon. Daniel already converted to Mormonism and after long discussions and pondering Catherine urged, “Orson, you know this is true!” (LSOS, 16). The Spencer's quit the Baptists and joined the Mormons in Nauvoo.

After giving birth to Chloe in Nauvoo, Catherine suffered a terrible illness, and was not “prepared to stand the cold weather and rough roads” required upon the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo (LSOS, 35).

“After leaving Nauvoo, [Catherine], ever delicate and frail, sank rapidly under the ever accumulating hardships. The sorrowing husband [Orson] wrote imploringly to the wife's parents, asking them to receive her into their home until the Saints should find an abiding place. The answer came, ‘Let her renounce her degrading faith and she can come back, but never until she does’” (MJRY, 17).

“When asked if she would go to her distant friends that were not in the church, who had proffered comfort and abundance to her and her children, she replied, ‘No, if they will withhold from me the supplies they readily grant to my other sisters and brothers, because I adhere to the Saints, let them. I would rather abide with the church, in poverty, even in the wilderness, without their aid, than go to my unbelieving father's house, and have all that he possesses’” (MS, 60).

Catherine “asked her husband to get his Bible and to turn to the book of Ruth and read the first chapter, sixteenth and seventeenth verses: ‘Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God’” (MJRY, 18).

“Under the influence of a severe cold, she gradually wasted away, telling her children, for time to time, how she wanted them to live and conduct themselves, when they should become motherless, and pilgrims in a strange land. To her companion she would sometimes say, ‘I think you will have to give me up and let me go.’ As her little ones would often enquire at the door of the wagon, ‘How is ma? Is she any better?’ She would turn to her husband, who sat by her side endeavoring to keep the severities of rain and cold from her: ‘Oh, you dear little children, how I do hope you may fall into kind hands when I am gone.’ A night or two before she died, she said to her husband, with unwonted animation, ‘A heavenly messenger has appeared to me tonight, and told me that I had done and suffered enough, and that he had now come to convey me to a mansion of gold.’ Soon after, she said she wished me to call the children and other friends to her bedside, that she might give them a parting kiss, which being done, she said to her companion, ‘I love you more than ever, but you must let me go. I only want to live for your sake, and that of our children.’ When asked if she had anything to say to her father's family, she replied emphatically, ‘Charge them to obey the gospel.’ The rain continued so incessantly for many days and nights, that it was impossible to keep her bedding dry or comfortable; and, for the first time, she uttered the desire to be in a house. The request might have moved a heart of adamant. Immediately, a man by the name of Barnes, living not far from the camp, consented to have her brought to his house, where she died in peace, with a smile upon her countenance, and a cordial pressure of her husband's hand about an hour previous” (MS, 60–61).

“Her remains were conveyed to the city of Nauvoo, and … buried, in the solitude of the night, by the side of her youngest child that had died six months before” (MS, 61).

Sources: Orson Spencer, “Obituary,” Millennial Star (MS) volume 8, no. 4 (February 15, 1847): 60–61; John R. Young, Memoirs of John R. Young (MJRY) (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1920), 17–18; Aurelia Spencer Rogers, Life Sketches of Orson Spencer and Others, and History of Primary Work (LSOS) (N.P.: George Q. Cannon and Sons Company, 1898), 34–35, 202.