Epilogue

After her death, Jane James faded into obscurity until the late twentieth century, when she gained new fame. Mormons used her story to reimagine their church as racially diverse and Joseph Smith as racially egalitarian. For historians of American religion and others, James’s story gives the history of Mormonism from below and shows the limits of Mormonism’s democratizing impulse. It illustrates the variety of Mormon religious experience and shows the limits of focusing on temple rituals and priesthood. James’s Mormonism differed from that of other Latter-day Saints and thus illustrates how race and gender shaped ways of being Mormon. James also shaped Mormon history in subtle but crucial ways. Her presence in present-day LDS discourses suggests that she has finally achieved what she worked so hard for during her life: Mormons of all races now hold her in “honourable remembrance,” as her second patriarchal blessing promised her.

Is There No Blessing for Me?

By the 1880s, Jane James began a campaign to get permission to perform the temple rituals she believed were necessary to reach the highest degree of glory after death. She wanted to be sealed to Joseph Smith as a child and to receive her endowment, requests that church leaders denied. In 1888, James received a temple recommend to do baptisms for the dead in the Logan Temple. James’s children, meanwhile, made their ways out of the church. She received a second patriarchal blessing in 1889, which may have encouraged her to persist despite her disappointments. Her ex-husband Isaac James returned to Salt Lake in 1890 and lived with Jane James until his death in 1891. The following year, Jane James’s brother Isaac Manning came to live with her. In 1894, church leaders created a temple ceremony to seal Jane James to Joseph Smith as a servant rather than a child.

The Beautiful Nauvoo

Jane Manning’s first job in Nauvoo, Illinois, was as a servant in Joseph and Emma Smith’s Mansion House, where she had access to many aspects of Mormonism that were otherwise tightly controlled. While doing the laundry, she later said, she went into a trance-like state in which the Holy Spirit told her about temple rituals. Manning learned about the LDS practice of polygamy from some of Joseph Smith’s plural wives. Joseph Smith’s mother allowed Manning to handle objects she said were the Urim and Thummim, seerstones Smith used as conduits for divine communication. According to her later statements, the Smiths also offered to adopt Manning as a child. This offer may have been motivated by Manning’s fatherlessness, a problematic state in the strongly patriarchal religion that may also have motivated her reception of a patriarchal blessing. This period in her life ended decisively with Joseph Smith’s 1844 murder.

We Walked

Jane Manning experienced the gift of tongues shortly after her conversion, an event she took as a confirmation of her decision to join the Mormons. The rest of the Manning family appears to have converted to Mormonism after her and, together with white converts from the area, they all left Connecticut for Nauvoo, Illinois, under the direction of LDS missionary Charles Wesley Wandell. The practice of racial segregation on boats and railways meant that for much, if not all, of their journey from Connecticut to New York City and then up the Hudson River and west on the Erie Canal, the black and white members of the group were separated from one another. At some point during the trip, the black members of the group were refused further passage, so the Mannings walked the rest of the way. Jane’s memory of this portion of the journey emphasized God’s providence. When they arrived in Nauvoo, they found a bustling city that was struggling to accommodate newly arrived converts, many of whom were poor and vulnerable to the diseases that plagued the city.

Introduction

African American Biddy Mason’s story is relatively common in texts on American history, whereas Jane James’s story is all but absent from the same literatures. James’s story appears to follow a very different trajectory than Mason’s that makes it fit less well in the grand narratives of American history. The stories of both these women are necessary to understand American history. James’s experience enhances our understanding of African American history, the history of American women, and the history of the American West. It also reveals a form of Mormonism that de-centers priesthood and temple rituals and focuses instead on supernatural religious experiences and a sense of divine favor.

Isaac James, Wife and Children

In Salt Lake, the Jameses initially worked for Brigham Young. Their family continued to grow, eventually including seven living children. The Utah Territorial Legislature passed “An Act in Relation to Service,” requiring that those brought to Utah in slavery be made indentured servants. Although the James family was not directly affected by this act, it illustrated the race-based social hierarchy in which they lived. By the mid-1850s, the Jameses owned property and were prospering. A small African American community developed in the Salt Lake Valley. The US Civil War had little immediate impact, though Jane James’s oldest son enlisted in the local militia. Mormons largely remained outside the conflict, but some African Americans in Utah were more open about their hope that the Union would win. In the late 1860s, Isaac James and a woman believed to be Jane James posed for photographs by a Salt Lake photographer.

We Got Along Splendid

After Joseph Smith’s death, Jane Manning worked for his successor, Brigham Young, and she married another black convert, Isaac James. When the Mormons left Nauvoo in 1846, Jane and Isaac James traveled with them. Jane James gave birth to her second child as they crossed Iowa. After spending the winter with other church members near Council Bluffs, the Jameses were in one of the first pioneer companies to enter the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in the fall of 1847. The Jameses initially made their home on land belonging to Brigham Young. Jane James gave birth to her third child in May 1848, just before the Mormons faced the first of several cricket infestations that would challenge their ability to raise crops in the Valley. Nevertheless, Jane James later recalled, she and her family “got along splendid” in their new home.

That Was Faith

Jane James performed her last baptism for the dead in the Salt Lake Temple in 1894. Health concerns began to arise more often as she aged, but she remained active and regularly attended women’s meetings and special events. Her daughter died in 1897, leaving only two of her children alive for the last decade of her life. James was one of few remaining Mormons who had known Joseph Smith personally, so the community valued her memories and gave her regular opportunities to talk about them. James obliged, partly because this allowed her to press her case for temple privileges. James was regularly referred to as “Aunt Jane,” a title that conveyed respect but also reinforced the racial hierarchy and kept her at arm’s length. James’s 1908 death was front-page news. Her funeral was well attended and included remarks by the LDS Church president.

Desired to Do Right

Jane and Isaac James divorced in 1870. Their reasons for doing so are unknown, but may have been related to Jane’s devotion to the LDS Church and Isaac’s inability to live up to LDS standards of masculinity. Jane reported that Isaac left her for a white fortune teller. After the divorce, Jane moved closer to the center of Salt Lake City; Isaac left Utah. Jane James lost several children and grandchildren to death. The Relief Society, the LDS women’s organization, supported Jane financially and spiritually in this difficult time. She got remarried to Frank Perkins, a black Mormon widower. In 1875, along with several other black Mormons, Jane and Frank Perkins went to the Endowment House—a temporary ritual space used until the LDS temple was completed—to perform baptisms for the dead. The Perkins’s marriage dissolved within two years.

When a Child

Jane Elizabeth Manning was born in southwestern Connecticut, the child of a freed slave. Although Jane’s family owned their home, her father’s death in 1825 was an economic blow. This may have been the reason that Jane was sent to work at a young age, likely as an indentured servant. As a young woman she gave birth to a son. She never identified the child’s father, and her silence suggests that her pregnancy was the result of sexual assault. Jane joined the Congregational Church in 1841, and then joined the Mormon Church in the winter of 1842–1843 after hearing an LDS missionary preach.