Story of the Week 6-3-2008: The Conversion of Jane Heath

Informational Notes:
Jane Heath is my 3rd Great Grandmother. Here is the break down:
Jane Heath is the mother of Almira Silcock, who was the mother of Nicholas Thomas Henderson, who is the father of Jay Henderson--the greats depend on you!

Jane Heath was born November 6, 1826 in Handley, Staffordshire, England. She was the eldest daughter of John Heath and Barbara Hulme. Her father was a decorator of china by trade. When she was about two years old her father was stricken with typhus fever, which left a nerve disability from which he never fully recovered. As a means of support her mother bought a baking business, which she personally conducted. After school and in holiday time, Jane worked in the shop or ran errands. At a very early age Jane would assist her mother when hired help would fail. She was a strong, healthy girl and matured early. She was educated in the schools at Handley and received a good common schools education together with plain and fancy needle work. She also learned knitting, plain and fancy stitches and shoe binding. She learned button hole making from a tailor. Dancing was one o f her many accomplishments.

In the winter of 1840 and 1841, the Latter-day Saints came to Staffordshire, preaching the gospel as revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith. A great many people in the different towns and cities of Staffordshire investigated and embraced the gospel. One of the first families in Handley to accept the gospel was Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Poole. Mrs. Poole was a patron of the bakery shop. She would often stay and chat with Jane when she found her not busy. The gospel had made so much difference in their lives that Mrs. Poole interested Jane in the new faith. Mrs. Poole was anxious for the young girl to hear her husband read the Bible for she was sure that it sounded much different since the new gospel had come to England.

One day Jane went to hear Mr. Poole read in company with Thomas Silcock, a young man who had made his home with the Heath family for the past six years. His mother died when he was a small child. He and five other brothers and sisters lived with their father until he died, then Thomas went to live with the Heath family and worked at carpenter work and any kind of labor he could find to make a living. When Mr. Poole read of the Savior’s baptism, Jane was converted to the necessity of baptism by immersion. It was necessary for the Savior to go down into the water and be baptized by John it was also necessary for her. Thomas Silcock, was a convert and was baptized, but Jane was young and had to wait for the consent of her parents.

John Heath was strictly moral religious man and Jane did not dare go to meetings or apply for baptism without her father’s consent. When thoroughly convinced that it was her duty to be baptized, she asked her father’s consent and he replied, “Jane, you are too young to think of religion.”

She said, “No father, I am not.” In her soul Jane felt she was right, but she adored her father, so would not oppose him. In solitude she besought her Heavenly Father, asking him to soften her father’s heart to the new creed. Jane returned to her father and asked for his consent, but was again refused. Not wholly disheartened Jane waited until along in the afternoon when she for the third time made the question a matter of prayer. The third time she asked, her father said, “Yes, Jane you may go.”

That evening early in the month of March 1841, Jane in company with Mrs. Poole, went to Burslem, an adjoining town. Jane went down into the water and was baptized by one who had authority to perform that ordinance in this dispensation of the Gospel. Later on in the same evening she was confirmed a member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Elder Wilford Woodruff.

Taken from a Biographical Sketch by Martha Silcock Pixton

Next Week: Marriage & Journey to Nauvoo