Emma Lucinda Holmes

History of Emma Lucinda Holmes

Sarah E., Marietta, Phebe Louisa and Emma Lucinda Holmes grew up together, were helpful on the farm and in the home, went to school and were busy, happy people.
A young popular widower, Job Welling, lived in Farmington with his two children. Marietta readily recognized his fine qualities and her heart went out to him and she accepted his proposal of marriage, happy to be mother to his children. Their marriage was always a very happy one and little Willard and Annie had the most tender of care.
By Roxy Taylor

In due course of time, vivacious young Phebe Louisa, herself a popular teacher, now did what she had always vowed she would never do: Never would she marry an Englishman, a widower nor one who was wed to another. But now she proudly accepted the proposal of Job Welling and became his plural wife with Marietta’s unselfish approval. Then after a time, Emma Lucinda, youngest of the three, a tall and slender girl with lovely hair and eyes, also trained to be a teacher and a bit independent in nature, was nineteen and mature, and her thoughts turned to marriage. Job Welling had his mind made up that no other man should win her hand if he could do so himself. It is a fact that both of her sisters joined him in this hope, not only giving him their consent, but loving persuasion.
Job and Emma were attending General Conference in the Tabernacle in April, 1875, when to their surprise, President Brigham Young read the name of Job Welling to preside over the Australian Mission. Decisions were made promptly. They were married in the Endowment House on April 20, 1875. When he left to go on that foreign mission the following June, he left three wives and seven children, all dedicated to the united support of a great missionary in their love and prayers, their faith and work. The farm income, teaching, carpet weaving, nursing, dress making had a great impetus. They would succeed.

These three mothers were always busy. Intricate patterns of rag carpets were created--some plain, some satin striped, occasionally even a check design, always
well done. Stockings were knitted and sometimes neck scarfs, ear warmers and even fancy lace patterns in cotton thread for pillowslips or dresser scarfs changed the
interest.

When Job Welling returned from a successful mission, he wrote to his brother
in England that he found much to do to catch up, but that no other boy of eighteen years could have done a better job than Willard had done in his absence. When he died suddenly in his fifty-third year, he left three wives and twenty children as united as ever before.

Those three mothers organized their duties again, and fed and clothed us, sent us to school and on missions; helped many of us begin our families. They taught us to honor all Church authorities and obey their counsel. We must obey the Sabbath Day. We must have good habits, clean language, high ideals, choose good companions and be obedient at home and learn to do honest work. In later years it was necessary to move up on land immediately joining the home, east of the street. This was done in Emma’s name, and we now boasted of three homes or houses-- each home was home to all of us. There were no favorites in this large family. All were highly favored, I say, in humility and gratitude.
Written by Roxy U. Taylor

If these women ever had a misunderstanding or a disagreement, I never saw it or heard of it. If a voice was ever raised in anger, in the high command of this family, then or during the next fifteen years, I do not know it. Neither does any other living man. There must have been many midnight conferences and anxious decisions, but at dawn we were on the march—always forward--under the dauntless leadership of these pleasant—faced, quiet, heroic women.

Aunt Marietta had her own home. Aunt Phoebe had her home. My mother had both homes. She was the shock—troops who led this family into the world. All three of these women were of superior education. However, they knew there must be added professional training if they any future in the schoolroom. My mother, perhaps because she was the youngest, was sent to the State University. I have no idea whether she regarded this as a blessing or a hardship-- perhaps both. To me and the family, she was just a soldier going to war. She received sound professional training, and for the rest of her life was the public man of this family. Meanwhile, I and my brother and three sisters lived with our Aunts. We had as much as the others had, and if a hairline decision had to be made, just to show that they were utterly and unselfishly just, I always fancied I, at least, got the best of it. I had a fight with one of my half—brothers because he called me his mother’s pet.

My mother, as a school teacher, traveled all over the north end of Davis County -- from old Stake Academy at Farmington to the Weber County Line. Sometimes she taught near our home in North Farmington; sometimes as far away as Syracuse, twenty miles northwest. I never knew her to murmur or complain. In every kind of weather, rain or snow, over wretched roads, always in an old rattly open buggy, frequently with a borrowed horse, this dauntless spirit came and went. At this time of my life I did not think of a school as a warm, comfortable, well- equipped classroom. To me, school represented a phantom institution from which my mother came home late Friday night on four rickety wheels, or to which she went on Monday morning. I see her frail body, cold and weary at the end of these journeys coming into a warm home for shelter and rest; and I feel again the sorrow which I then knew, because this self-forgetting human sacrifice was necessary.

This money that my mother was making was our chief income. It was perhaps from $30.0O to 45.OO per month .She was our banker and taxpayer. Some of the older boys were earning money by this time, but when I worked I was paid in molasses or potatoes or milk or beans or other farm produce. At the end of the day or week these heroic women would divide up the “spoils of war” and plan together next week’s campaign.

One decision of that council was fundamental. Every child must go to school whenever possible. It may be a short term for the elder boys, a month or two longer for those my age, but school was regarded as much a necessity as food or clothing.
Aunt Marietta, as long as she lived, was the head of the house. She was the oldest and by right of experience the wisest. I think no gentler spirit ever lived. She had a title as definite and distinctive as any other ruler. I do not know, but I think the title must have originated with her sisters themselves. At any rate I regarded it as their acknowledgement of her regal state. She was “Auntie.’ The others had to be “Aunt Phoebe” or “Aunt Emma”. She was the Chief Justice. There was no appeal from her decision. She was more remote to me than the others. She had Kingship. She could do no wrong!

Aunt Phoebe, the second in command, was the prodigious worker. She could move mountains and did --from day to day. I might think of the others as frail or tired. She was tireless She was sturdy. She had a fighting heart. I am sure she gloried in taking the hardest physical tasks and shielding wherever possible the others in high command.
My mother was without doubt the frailest. She was the tallest of the three and probably the lightest. I used to fear that her thin body would wear in two. My mother was the first to go. Without warning she awoke one morning in June, 1901, and calmly announced that she was going to die. There were two or three days of bitter struggle against death; but the fighting was all done by her sisters. With a tired smile, she waived them all aside. She knew that she going out alone, as she had done so many times before, on her last journey. She died beautifully in her forty fifth year. She had let them know that loved ones were beckoning and inviting her though open doorways and that she wanted to go.
Aunt Marietta died on August 8, 1905, four years later while enjoying a pleasant visit at the home of her son, Joseph Harriman, at Riverside. She was 56 years old. I felt again the loss of a great mother—the most gentle and strong spirit I have ever known. Aunt Phebe was still alive when this was written 35 years later. Written by Milton