Jane Elizabeth Manning James

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Jane Elizabeth Manning James (1822 - 1908) was an early African American member of the Latter Day Saint movement who lived with Joseph Smith, Jr. and his family for a time in Nauvoo, Illinois.

James was the first documented African American woman to come to the Utah Territory as a Mormon pioneer. With her husband Issac James, she had eight children. Their daughter Mary Ann was the first black child born in Utah. During her long affiliation with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 19th century, she repeatedly petitioned early LDS leaders for temple privileges.

A few years before her death, James dictated a brief life story to Utah biographer Elizabeth J. D. Roundy, including information on her childhood, religious conversion, interaction with the Joseph Smith family in Nauvoo and with the Latter-day Saints in Utah. The document is held in the Wilford Woodruff Collection in the LDS Church Archives.

A 20 minute documentary based on James' life, "Jane Manning James: Your Sister in the Gospel," premiered in 2005, and has been shown at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 2005 annual conference of the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR), and on public television (PBS). The film was directed by Margaret Blair Young, co-author with Darius Gray of the "Standing on the Promises" trilogy of historical fiction that draws on the facts of James' life. Documentary filmmaker Scott Freebairn produced the film.

In June 1999, a monument to James' life was dedicated near James' grave in the Salt Lake Cemetery by the Genesis Group (an official organization begun under LDS President Joseph Fielding Smith to support Latter-day Saints of African descent) along with the Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation. The original headstones of Jane and Isaac James were supplemented with a granite monument faced with two bronze plagues. One side of the monument commemorates an incident documented in 1850, by Mormon pioneer Eliza Partridge Lyman, who wrote:

April 13: Brother Lyman [Eliza’s husband] started on a mission to California with O. P Rockwell and others. May the Lord bless and prosper them and return them in safety. He left us . . . without anything to make bread, it not being in his power to get any.

April 25: Jane James, a colored woman, let me have two pounds of flour, it being about half she had.

A second bronze plaque, containing quotations from James' and significant dates and events from her life, was placed on the back of the monument. In April 2005, the graves and monument were again cleaned and sealed. The inscription on her grave marker reads:

Jane Elizabeth Manning James

"I try in my feeble way to set an example for all."

Born free in 1882 [sic], Fairfield County, Connecticut

Baptized LDS in 1841, she led a group of family members to Nauvoo, Illinois in 1843

"Our feet cracked open and bled until you could see the whole prints of our feet with blood on the ground."

Jane lived with Joseph, Emma and Mother Smith

"Brother Joseph sat down by me and said, 'God bless you. You are among friends."

Married Isaac James around 1845

Arrived in Salt Lake September 22, 1847

"Oh how I suffered of cold and hunger, but the Lord gave us faith and grace to stand it all."

Shared half her flour with Eliza Partridge Lyman, who was near starving.

Died April 16, 1908, outliving all but two of her eight children.

"But we went on our way rejoicing, singing hymns, and thanking God for his infinite goodness and mercy to us."

[edit] References

• James, Jane E. Manning. “My Life Story,” as dictated to Elizabeth J. D. Roundy. Wilford Woodruff Papers. Historical Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, "Jane Manning James," Ensign (Aug. 1979), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Smith, Becky Cardon "Remembering Jane Manning James," Meridian Magazine, accessed 8 May 2006.
• Inscription found on Grave Marker.