Mary Jacobsdotter

Biography

Mary first met the missionaries,  Elders Jonas Eliason Lindberg and Nels Fyrbds, while working at a tailor shop. She was the first female in her city to be baptized though none of her family joined her. Six years later she sailed for the Americas in April of 1862 marrying Jonas, the missionary who had taught her, on the ship. They crossed the nearly 1000 miles of plains on foot in a company of mostly fellow Scandinavians. 

After spending their first summer working in Salt Lake as a tailor, the couple were sealed in the Endowment house 1863 by George Albert Smith and settled in Tooele, Utah three months later. Following Swedish custom, they plastered and whitewashed the inside and outside of the house resulting in it being called “the white house.” 

Mary was pregnant with her fourth child in 1874 when Jonas took a second wife, Anna Jonasson. It is recorded “the two [women] thought the world of eachother” and three years later Jonas was called on a mission. This resulted in the two sharing a home and traversing through much difficulty in his absence. Despite their impoverished conditions, Mary provided for the family through tailoring while Anna tended to the children, seven between the two of them. She taught her oldest daughter sewing and the two would sew wedding gowns and fancy dresses of the people of Tooele. 

She was active in the Tooele Relief Society and served as first and second counselor of the Relief Society Presidency throughout the 1890s.