Life History of Mary Ann Webster

Children: Marlon W., Marinda (Hardy), Lyman, Sheridan, Grant W., Laura (Hill)

By Dean Andrus (great-grandson of Mary Ann, grandson of Marion, son of Marion Edwin).

Mary Ann Webster, fifth wife of Milo Andrus, was born in Windle, Lancashire, England, July 30, 1834, the seventh child in a family of fifteen children born to Henry and Ann Rigby Webster. The family joined the Latter-day Saints Church in Lancashire, England. Mary Ann was baptized March 21, 1848, at fourteen years of age. Her name was entered on the St. Helen’s Branch of the L. D. S. Record along with other members of the Webster family. She with her parents and brothers and sisters crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the ship, Josiah Bradley, that sailed from Liverpool, February 18, 1850.

After a pleasant voyage, the company arrived in New Orleans, April 18, 1880. The family sailed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri, and from there they traveled to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where her father and sister, Rachel, age eighteen, died in December 1880. Her brother, Henry Edward, age fourteen, died in July 1881, from the effects of sun stroke.

The spring of 185~ she and others of her family prepared to cross the plains. Margaret, age fifteen, was working for David Dixon’s family. The Dixon’s crossed the plains in one of the early 1852-pioneer companies, taking Margaret with them and arriving in Salt Lake valley before the Webster family. Mary Ann, with her mother and five younger children, crossed the plains in the Uriah Curtis Company. The family went to live at Big Cottonwood, Salt Lake County, and while living there Mary Ann became acquainted with Mito Andrus and his family. She became his fifth wife on December 28, 1882.

Dean Andrus writes: “Mary Ann Webster Andrus’s life was an unassuming one, but full of sacrifice in the pioneer development of this state.” He also explains: “In pioneer days, she resided at what was called the half-way house on the state road south of Salt Lake City.” Again: “Due to the constant service for the Church by Milo Andrus, much of the responsibility of raising the family rested on the shoulders of Sister Andrus, and in addition to working out means of providing the daily necessities, she instilled within the hearts of her children a deep-seated and unwavering faith in the Restored Gospel which was the guiding light of her soul. She accepted Mormonism wholeheartedly at her conversion in England in 1850, and, in turn, this was the impelling force which brought her to Utah within a short period.”

From Kate B. Carter compilation we learn: “She accompanied her husband when he was called to go to Green River on a mission in 1881. Shortly after they arrived May 14, 1881, she sent her twelve-year-old daughter, Minnie, to the river for water. Minnie lost her balance, fell into the river and was drowned. This was a great sorrow to Mary Ann.” (Green River is in the state of Wyoming. ) Quotation also from the Garter account says: “She also lived for a time at Oxford, Idaho, when her husband moved to that locality. She was well acquainted with President Brigham Young, and often enter- rained him in her home on his travels from place to place.” Dean Andrus states: “She has related many interesting experiences of these visits of President Young to her granddaughter, Maude Hardy Spiers.”

The Carter record concludes: “Mary Ann Andrus spent her later years with her daughter, Marinda Andrus Hardy, in Salt Lake City where she was a Relief Society worker in the Twelfth Ward. She was unassuming, faithful and a true pioneer mother. She died in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1902.”  (References to Kate B. Carter’s work are from Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. XIV, pp. 24q-248.

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