Jacobina Osborne Paton Williams

 By Elaine Corbett

Jacobina

This is from a great, great great grandson of James Paton, posted on Ancestry;

James Paton (1811-1853)

Early Scottish Convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Son of :​John Paton & Ann Allan – their third child

Born:​1 April 1811​Burnhead, Galston, Ayrshire, Scotland

Died:  28 April 1853  Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland  - “white death” or cholera plague

 

James Paton was a clockmaker who joined the Mormon Church in Scotland as a young family man.  He had married Jacobina Wills Osborne (b. 15 May 1813) sometime in 1839.  At the time they joined (date uncertain) this faith, most of their eight children had probably already been born. James was ordained an Elder by Wilford Woodruff and George Q. Cannon, two early LDS missionaries to the British Isles.  These men were very prominent figures in early Mormon history.  Woodruff later became the fourth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

James and Jacobina had prepared to migrate to America before James and a number of his children died during an epidemic.  Burial expenses now consumed all of those savings.  Jacobina had to work and save another nest egg.  This money also was lost, this time through the dishonesty of a church Elder who used the money for other purposes.  She again set out to reach her goal of bringing herself and her two remaining children, Annie and James Osborne to Utah’s Zion.  In April of 1855, she and those two children finally set sail for America from Liverpool, England on the ship “Samuel Curling,” landing in New York a month later.

 

Jacobina Wills Osborne was a farmer’s daughter from Killochside, Ochiltree. Her story is well documented by her family in Utah, and her many descendants. What isn’t examined in any detail is her life here in Scotland leading up to her epic journey across America, and the reasons for her drive and determination. The extract above gives some indication.

James and Jacobina had already lost one daughter in 1851, Margaret aged 11. The Cholera epidemic that raged through Glasgow in 1853 seems to have claimed all but the remaining two of her children, and also took her husband. There were seven burials that year.

Already converts to the Mormon way of life, it is easy to see that Jacobina was fulfilling the wishes of her late husband in choosing to pursue that plan. She seems to have taken her children back to Ochiltree at one point, where her family are said to have tried to prevent her carrying out her wish to go out to Utah. 

Pause now to think of her Ochiltree family in all this. It is well known that the journey itself is hazardous, and the destination itself no safer. As well as natural disasters, there were disgruntled native Americans that were not happy at the loss of their lands. The family must have feared for her, in her unquestionably vulnerable state after suffering such personal trauma.

They had physically restrained her at one point, by locking her in a bedroom to ‘come to her senses’ and pointing out to her how she would have to forfeit her legacy from the farm - unsurprising considering that transfering money to Utah would be nigh on impossible at that time.

The efforts of her family to dissuade her from going seem to have strengthened her resolve, and go she did!

Life certainly went on apace for Jacobina. From reading the notes recounting her life on Ancestry from members of her Mormon family;

1853 she used her savings to bury her family.

By 1857 she had;

saved again,

been robbed of her savings, 

saved yet again,

fallen out with her family and escaped from them,

secured her passage, 

travelled to Utah, 

found a job,

married Mr Williams, 

and had another child by him.

Read her remarkable story of endurance using the link on her Cumnock Connections profile.

There are one or two inaccuracies in that tale - for example, tuberculosis usually was a lingering illness not usually the cause of sudden death of several members of a family; and some locations and dates of their life in Scotland seem a bit suspect, but as a whole it is a fascinating account.

In the extract above, the cause of death of James Paton is described as ‘White Death’ or ‘Cholera Plague’, White Death is another name for Tuberculosis.