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ANNE LOUISA JONES (THOMPSON, PRESSET)
Anne Louisa Jones was born Jan 28, 1854, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, to Henry and Louisa Hill Jones. Her father was a wheelwright in England. As her two older siblings had died of pneumonia before she was born, she was raised as the oldest child.
Coming to America
Anne's parents also joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in England. It appears her mother joined in 1852 or 53, while her father did not join until Sept. 19, 1856, when Anne was 2.
When Anne was only 8, her family heeded the call to gather to Zion, and left England, on May 14, 1862, when they boarded the ship William Tapscott, in Livermore, which was carrying up to 807 Saints bound for America, to join the Utah Saints. They arrived June 25, 1962, in New York, after 42 days at sea.
A Description of their Ocean Passage
Of that trip, William Henry Freshwater wrote:
"May 13th. The ship raised anchor and left the dock with seven hundred and eighty-five Mormons on board and went into the River Mersey. Two accidents occurred today. One, a boy fell from the main deck to the lower and broke his leg very bad; the other, a woman, in coming down the hatchway, slipped and spilled some boiling water on the face of a child. The vessel was towed out of the river by steam tug into the Irish Sea. The weather is beautiful and warm.
"May 15th. A few of the passengers are a little seasick. There were two boys found in the hold, and Captain Preston is going to make them work their passage across the sea.
"June 8th. In the morning, wind very fair but during the day it increased until the sailors had to tie ropes about the ship to hold themselves on. They spiked all the hatchways down and would not let any of the passengers go on deck at all. The captain told us it was the worst storm he had ever witnessed although he had made many trips across the ocean.
"June 24th. We arrived in the mouth of the Hudson River, at four o'clock and dropped anchor at five. This is a very beautiful port. Far excels Liverpool, England.
"June 25th. We were all up at the first peep of day and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the examining doctor, who came at 8 a.m. and pronounced us all well except two, who remained on board the ship, the last we heard of them. The steam tug took us to Castle Garden, the New York immigrant landing where one can stay for ten days only."
Leah wrote:
"Mother told me the ship, a sailing vessel, got a leak and they were on the water from England to America 6 weeks, having to depend on the wind to guide the sails. She said there was a strong wind and they had made a plum pudding. The ship rocked so hard and the pudding went off the table down in the coal chutes. Away went their dinner."
Abandoned by her Husband
Anne had married John Richard Thompson, a fellow emigrant in the LDS Endowment
House in Salt Lake City on July 27, 1874. By 1879 she was abandoned to raise her two surviving children on her own. Her daughter, Leah, describes her trials.
"My poor mother went through many hardships and suffering the following winter with us two girls to keep from starving and freezing. I was then about 1 1/2 years and my sister 3 years, 3 months older than I. There was a little brother between us two girls who was laid away at the age of 9 months, who Mother grieved very deeply over."
Her daughter, Maud, wrote, "Not long after I was born my father left us. And as widows sometimes don't have the best of everything, so it was at our house. My mother was a good worker. She kept everything neat and clean. One day a lady said, 'Why do you make all your daughter's dresses just alike?' My mother was usually proud, but she confided in this good lady and told her she only had one good dress for her daughter, Leah, to wear to school, so at night, after she was in bed, she washed and hung her dress to dry during the night, then awoke early in the morning so she could iron it and have it ready for her to wear to school."
The Lord Answered Their Prayers
Maud continued, "One day there wasn't much to eat in the house. My Mother prayed and asked the Lord to help us obtain food. The next morning a friend came, knocked on our door, saying "I brought you a sack of flour. We have more than we need.! I thought you might be able to use a sack." My mother was very grateful to this good man and also to our dear Father in Heaven whom she knew had put it in the heart of this good man to want to bring her the flour.
A Frightening River Crossing
She wrote that her first memory was of their move to Sevier County: "When we were crossing the Sevier River at the age of two yrs. in 1880, with my mother and other relatives in a covered wagon. The water was very deep and a long way across. The horses had to swim and pull the wagon through.
"I was very frightened, and wanted to cry out. I did not, only wanted to, but was going to, but my mother told me I would frighten the horses and if I cried she would throw me in the river.
"I will never forget the awful sight of it all, and how fearful I felt, but never a sound did I make. If the horses had got frightened and confused they never would have been able to have forged their way through that powerful body of water with a covered wagon loaded to pull behind them, and although I was but two years old, I understood that my Mother's word was law and I believed what she said was the right thing to do and knew that I must be obedient.
"Then I remember after we were there how nice it seemed to be there and how I enjoyed myself.
"I was a very quiet child and understood my mother required strict obedience. But I think I appreciated what we had much better than had I been permitted and inclined to do otherwise, because children are not happy when they are unruly. Nor anyone else for that matter. We must do right to be happy."
Remarrying for Security
Anne thought that remarrying would give her and her daughters more security. So, on May 24, 1881, she married Louis Samuel Presset. But, alas, there was no financial security to be found with him. She not only ended up helping him raise his brood, but they brought 4 more children into the world: Ernest, Julie, Vasco, and Sebastian (a daughter who died as a baby).
Maud wrote:
"When I was about 4, or in the year of 1881, on the 24th of May, my mother married Louis Samuel Pres... MORE
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