Margaret Ann Taylor Goodman

England: conversion and separation

Margaret Ann Taylor was born on June 20, 1841, in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England, the daughter of George Edward Grove Taylor and Ann Wicks Taylor. When she was seven, two missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held meetings in their city. The Taylor family attended, believed, and converted. Her father and mother were baptized in July 1848; Margaret Ann was baptized the following year, at the age of eight.

The conversion would fracture her family. In 1851, her father married Jane Baxter as a second wife. The polygamous marriage was "against the direct wishes of Ann Wicks," and the resulting separation divided the household. Ann and her children emigrated to Utah in 1855, arriving in Salt Lake City without her husband. Margaret Ann, still a teenager, had already learned to manage without a complete family structure.

Her father eventually followed in 1866, bringing Jane and her children. Margaret Ann, by then a young woman, had "come to very much love her stepbrothers and sisters." The family reconstituted itself across the ocean and across a decade.

Walking to Utah (1863)

In September 1863, Margaret Ann arrived in Utah. She walked the entire distance across the plains. She found her mother and two younger sisters, Martha and Maria, already settled. Martha had married George Edwin Little in January 1862; Maria had married Joseph McRae the following March.

Margaret Ann was "very industrious and did all kinds of honorable work." The life sketch catalogs her skills with the density of a census record: gathering potatoes, drying squash, spinning, weaving, knitting, gathering straw for hats, gathering herbs, seamstress work for herself, her family, and others. In harvest season she gleaned sheaves, corn, and grain.

Marriage and the carpenter (1864-1885)

On February 27, 1864, Margaret married William Nicholas Goodman, whom she had known in England. William was a carpenter who assisted with work on the Logan and Salt Lake Temples. They began their family in Salt Lake and then moved to Minersville, Utah.

She was the mother of eleven children, six girls and five boys:

• Margaret Maria (1865-1866), died in infancy
• William (1866)
• Joseph (1868)
• George Edward (1870), who would become the Goodman family patriarch
• Francis (1873)
• Lily May (1875-1876), died in infancy
• Clara (1877)
• Gertrude (1878)
• Herbert (1880)
• Elizabeth Taylor (1882)
• Theresa (1885)

William's health was poor. He suffered from asthma, and they hoped a warmer climate would help. In 1881, he sold their home in Minersville and the family moved to Arizona. They stayed briefly in Mesa, then went on to St. David in February, where Margaret found her sister Maria living in a two-room house on homesteaded land. Maria moved into one room and gave them the other. The boys slept in the wagons.

William, a carpenter by trade, hired a Mexican worker to help the boys make adobes and soon had two large rooms built. He intended to add partitions for bedrooms on the south side. He never finished them.

On January 23, 1885, Theresa was born. Shortly after, William suffered a stroke. He could write a little and managed to tell them what to name the baby. After a second stroke, he died on March 8, 1885. He was buried in St. David.

Five dollars and a front room (1885-1926)

Margaret Ann was a widow at forty-three with nine children, a newborn, and chills and fever. She sold their only cow to pay the funeral expenses. She had five dollars.

With those five dollars she bought a few bars of soap and small articles and sold them from one of her rooms. She added inventory, piece by piece, and eventually purchased Mr. Beebe's store. She ran a mercantile business for thirty years.

She became the second postmaster of St. David and held the position for twenty years. She boarded and roomed schoolteachers. On holidays and dance nights, she served refreshments and suppers. She drove to Fairbank, Tombstone, and Benson for store supplies, making the rounds by horse and buggy. Her daughter Theresa recalled going with her to peddle goods: "Would take some articles from the store and go among the people, with horse and buggy, selling them in that way." Theresa and her sister gleaned grain from wheat fields and gathered mesquite beans to feed the horse.

In May 1897, Margaret moved the store and the post office to Marcus, with the approval of government officials. Old St. David had been nearly deserted because artesian water had been struck at Marcus. The settlement was renamed St. David, and Margaret lived there for the rest of her life. She planted a palm tree next to her artesian well around 1902. It should not have survived the cold mornings of the high desert, but the well's warmth kept it alive. That tree is still standing today, across Highway 80 from the Mormon Battalion Monument.

Character and faith

The life sketch paints Margaret Ann with unusual precision. She was "a kindly dispositioned woman, very cultured, refined and modest." She never spoke ill of anyone and would not allow her children to do so. She was "very plain spoken" and if someone said something to hurt her, she went to them directly rather than talking behind their backs. There was, the sketch notes, "not a spark of hypocrisy about her."

She held multiple leadership positions in the LDS Church: President of the Primary, then President of the Relief Society from August 10, 1893, until May 7, 1919, when she resigned due to poor health. She taught Sunday School for years. She went "among the sick, taking care of them day and night" and said it was a joy to help those in need.

Her home was a gathering place. She entertained apostles, stake and mission presidents, and church workers of every organization. Her brother-in-law, Nathaniel Goodman, stayed with them for a time and would ask her to host socials, clearing furniture from one room for dancing and games. Margaret knew Brigham Young personally and danced in the same set with him at quadrilles.

The secret of her endurance, as she told it, was simple: family prayer. She believed it had held her family together and that she was greatly blessed.

The last years

In 1920, Margaret fell and broke her hip. She spent four months in bed, then spent the last six years of her life in a wheelchair. She could take only a few steps. She did her own work. She was, the sketch insists, "very independent." She once traveled alone by train to Salt Lake City in her wheelchair.

Margaret Ann Taylor Goodman died on March 29, 1926, at 2 p.m., at her home in St. David, after one week's illness of pneumonia. She was eighty-four years, nine months, and nine days old. She had been a widow for forty-one years.

Her posterity at the time of her death numbered 139: eight living children, sixty-eight grandchildren, and forty-eight great-grandchildren. All of her children and several of the grandchildren were at her bedside, where she gave them encouragement, advice, and urged them to live the Gospel. She was buried in St. David, beside William.