Biography of Mary Ann Tucker By Norma Bailey Hadlock, February 1, 1990

Date: 16 Aug 1832 to 26 Feb 1881
Location: Utah Territory, Fillmore, Utah
Surname/tag: Mormon_Pioneer_Utah-Pioneer_Biography_Mary Ann_Tucker_Kenney_Bailey_Cook

This is a personal copy of mine to share of my 2nd Gr Grandmother's Biography with others in the family present and future.

Mary Ann Tucker Kenney

Biography of Mary Ann Tucker By Norma Bailey Hadlock, February 1, 1990

Mary Ann Tucker was born August 16, 1832, in Grove, Allegany, New York. Her parents were Daniel and Mehitable Tucker. It isn’t known if she had any brothers or sisters. Nothing is known of her childhood.

She lived with her spouse, James Bailey in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846. She was baptized in 1850 into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although this could have been a rebaptism.

In Hancock County, Illinois, we find more than one Mary Ann Tucker. One was married to a Nathaniel Pennock in 1845, but this was not our Mary Ann, because in the 1850 Census she was in Kanesville, Iowa, with the Kenney family, while the other Mary Ann was still in Hancock County with Nathaniel.

In this same Hancock County of Illinois lived some saints that Mary Ann came to know very well. They were Loren and Hannah Kenney of Shake Reig, and James Bailey of Nauvoo. In 1846 Brigham Young arranged with the Government to have five hundred men from the Saints to join the Mormon Battalion to fight the war with Mexico. Loren Kenney and James Bailey both joined the Mormon Battalion. Both men were about the same age. Both of these men later became her husband. Loren and James both had to travel across Iowa to Council Bluffs to report for duty and enroll in the Mormon Battalion July 16, 1846.

Actually it was John Nichols, Loren’s brother-in-law, that was signed to join the Battalion, but two days before they were to leave for Council Bluffs he had a fever and was too ill to go, so Loren went in his place. John was left to take care of the farms and to prepare to leave Illinois with his wife and Hannah his sister, and her four year old daughter, Ellen, and Mary Ann could have been a Mother’s helper for Hannah when they left Illinois. The Kenney family and Mary Bailey as she had become, are all in the Kenney household in the 1850 Census of Pottawattamie County, Iowa. Kenney’s have two children now. Eight year old Ellen and 4 month old Albert, but this may be a mistake in Albert’s age, because in the 1860 Census he is listed as fourteen years old, which would mean that he was born in 1846, about the time they would leave Illinois. This indeed would have made Hannah grateful to have Mary’s help on the journey across the plains of Iowa, especially because her husband had to go into the Battalion. In this 1850 census Mary also had a son James Bailey listed as four months old. The date of the census was September 4, 1850, but family records always record James W. Bailey’s birthday as August 2, 1850, and it was also this same date recorded on his death certificate.

Early in 1851 Mary and her son, James Watson Bailey got the opportunity to travel to the valley in a camp under the direction of Church officials. They arrived in the valley in July. Mary was probably anxious to see if James had returned from the Gold Fields, but July, August, and September passed away and James never returned.

Soon after Loren and Hannah arrived in the valley they found Mary Ann and apparently feeling that something had happened to James and that he wasn’t coming back, Loren took Mary Ann as a second wife, probably feeling the need to care for her and her young son. Hannah and Mary Ann were both sealed to Loren Kenney in President Brigham Young’s office October 5th, 1851.

Mary Bailey gave her age as 24 on this 1850 Census, and she was really only eighteen years old. Hannah have her age as 30, and she was 38 years old. Loren was thirty five years old. Perhaps Mary and Hannah tried to make their ages more compatible. The next time Hannah’s age was documented, which was in President Brigham Young’s Office, she gave her correct date of birth when she was sealed to Loren Kenney, but when Mary was sealed to Kenney as a second wife, she persisted in giving an older birth date of September 16, 1828, probably because she had to repeat it in front of the family, whereas when she was sealed to Kenney again, in the Endowment House, on April 4, 1857, she gave her correct age and birthday, which was August 16, 1832, and in these circumstances she had complete privacy. When she was with the Kenney’s she always used the older age. For some reason Mary Ann made herself an older fixed age, whether it was because she needed “to be of age” to accompany the Kenney’s to Iowa, being 14 or 15 years old at that time, or wanted to be older for James Bailey’s sake who later came back from the Mormon Battalion to marry her in Iowa, we don’t know.

Loren was not one of the Mormon Battalion members who stayed in California after they were mustered out of the Battalion on July 16, 1847 to work. He came back with the main part of the Battalion in 1847, but probably stayed in the Valley for that winter, and then proceeded to return to his family in Iowa in the spring of 1848.

James was one of the Battalion members who stayed in California to work. He made bricks for a short time in San Francisco, in fact he was one of the first two men to make bricks in San Francisco. After gold was discovered James went to the gold fields, and from a list of the Battalion members who mined gold, James deposited the second highest amount of gold dust with Brigham Young. James returned to the Valley late in 1848 with the remainder of the Battalion members. He stayed in the Valley through the winter of 1848-1849. James was expected to return to the gold fields in California in 1849 with other members of the Battalion after the April Conference, but he couldn’t have because the 1850 Census shows that he went back to Iowa, because he had returned to Utah in time to be in the Utah Census, and then we see he had apparently kept his commitment to return to California, because we find him in a Mormon Community on a list of tithepayers in Greenwood Valley (in or near the gold fields) listed as Baley (Bailey), James – MB.

Even if James Bailey had promised to return, it seemed too hard for Mary Ann and the Kenney’s to believe that he was going, probably, for any other reason than the lore of the gold fields, and didn’t believe he would come back, because she then became Loren Kenney’s wife. We don’t know how soon after she married him, but after the Kenney’s and Mary returned to Utah in 1851 with the Isaac Allred Company between July and October, Mary became sealed to Loren on October 5, 1851 in President Brigham Young’s Office.

Mary had three children with this marriage. They had two daughters, Mary Deseret born December 19, 1853, who married Peter Christian Borreson, and Elsie Salena born December 9, 1858, who married Gidden Geroux, and one son, Amasa Loren Kenney, born April 9, 1858, who married Kanny Christene Tullgren who died, then married Ann Eliza Gledhill.

Family records say that Mary left Kenney in 1859. Mary was not in the 1860 Census with Loren and Hannah Kenney, but three of Mary’s children were there in the Kenney family. James W. Kenney, 10 years old, and the last time his name was found as Kenney, was named and blessed as James W. Kenney in December 1851, but after Mary left Loren Kenney, she gave James his rightful name back, James W. Bailey. The two daughters of Loren and Mary on the census were Mary Deseret 7 years, and Salina 4 years old. Mary apparently had taken her baby Amasa with her, who was probably 1 or 2 years old.

About 1860 Mary married James Benjamin Cook. James had served in the United States Army from 1848 to 1858. He was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Apparently he was not a member of the Church. They had five or six children. Benjamin James was born April 8, 1861, and married Hannah Marie Borreson. Anna Rosetta was born April 6, 1862, and married Franklin Richard Hitchcock. Alexander was born about 1865 and died about 1866. Roselia (Rosilia or Rozelia or Adelia) was born July 2, 1866, and died October 6, 1881, and is buried in the Fillmore Cemetery beside her mother Mary Ann, in the Loren Kenney grave block. She died of Inflamation a little more than 7 months after her mother died, at age 15. A record states that Mary had a daughter named Fedelia born about 1867 and died about 1882. All the children were born in Deseret, Millard County, Utah, except her last son John Henry Cook, born October 9, 1869, in Fillmore, Utah.

By 1870 Mary’s husband James Benjamin Cook had left her, and had gone to live in Meadow Valley, Lincoln, Nevada, where he was in the 1870 Census, and listed as James Cook, Laborer, born Pennsylvania. Mary was also in the 1870 Census in Fillmore, Utah. In the census Mary was living in one house with her son James Bailey, and Mary Deseret Kenney living in the next house with the Cook children and her own baby listed as 1 year old Charles Loren Cook, but later when Mary Deseret married Peter Christian Borreson, this son became Charles Loren Borreson. The Cook children listed at this time were Benjamin 9, Anna R. 6, Roselia P. 3 and John age 1. When the census was taken Mary Ann was probably working to support her family, so that her daughter Mary Deseret had to give the information, and probably because she couldn’t remember her mother’s age, she gave an approximate age, which 40 sounds like, because it is neither Mary Ann’s real age or her older age. Probably most descendants think that Adelia and Fedelia Cook were names for Roselia, while others think Adelia and Fedelia could have been twins or even triplets.

In the 1880 Census we find Mary Ann living in the same place as her son James Bailey again, but this time in the boarding house of his in-laws, Niels and Johanne (Hannah) Borreson, his wife Nancy’s parents. James and Nancy have two little girls at this time. In this 1880 Census of Spring City, Sanpete County, Mary Ann has the married name of Chaney, although Mr. Chaney is not on the census with her. She has a son named Morgan Chaney 3 years old. We do not know what happened to this marriage or have any other information about it. In this census Mary Ann gave New York as her birthplace and also the birthplace of her parents, which is true for Mary Ann Tucker. She gave her age as 46 and this too is her real age within the census year, which was June 1, 1879 to May 31, 1880. Also on this census was a grandson of Loren and Hannah Kenney, the son of Ellen and George Sears, age 20.

Within the census year of 1880 we find Mary and this George Sears on it again, only in another county, in Fillmore, Millard County, and in the home of Loren Kenney. Loren’s first wife Hannah had died August 10, 1879, so it was after this time that Mary returned to Kenney to appear as his wife on the census. The information appears confusing, because the name of the wife looks like the name of May, and her age is 53, born in Ohio, and her parents born in Ohio, but this is Mary Ann. When the census is enlarged one can see an “R” in her name, the same kind of “R” as appears in the name of George Sears. As for the age 53, this would have been the age Loren knew her, because she was 24 to him in the 1850 Census. When one ads 24 and 30 (years between 1850 and 1880) you get 54, but since she was on the census before her birthday she was 53 years. Her real age would be 47. Mary persisted in using her older fixed age. There is one plausible explanation why her birthplace appeared as Ohio on this part of the 1880 census. Ohio came from George Sears. He was on both the 1880 Sanpete County Census and the Millard County Census with Mary. On the Sanpete County Census George had given the wrong birthplaces for both his parents. Georg’s mother was not born in ohio, but Illinois, and his father wasn’t born in Michigan, but New York. Therefore in the Kenney household, George Sears confusion about his mother being born in Ohio, may have led them to be confused about Mary and her parents being born in Ohio. Mary could have thought that her birthplace was being documented correctly, because New York was brough up in the census taking inasmuch as it was the birthplace of George Sears father. George’s grandfather, Loren Kenney would have helped George to get the birthplaces straight. One thing on the census that did make it look like Mary Ann was the fact that two of her Cook children were also in the Kenney household, Roselia 13, and John 11, and both had Ohio as their mother’s birthplace.

Mary Ann and Loren Kenney had their sealing cancelled January 25, 1861, after Mary Ann left the Kenney’s. when she returned to Loren Kenney, she lived only about a year with him before her death February 26, 1881, and their sealing was never reinstated. The Fillmore Cemetery or Kenney must have figured out Mary Ann’s age at death from her “fixed” birth year of 1828, because she is 52 years and some months at death. She was really only 48 years old. Mary Ann Tucker Kenney kept her secret well.

In 1984 the descendants of Mary Ann had her sealed to all her husbands.

The descendants of Mary Ann can be grateful to Ren Cook for preserving a photograph of her. This picture shows an attractive lady with natural beauty, who also loves beauty. She is wearing pretty ear rings and a necklace. Her dark hair is parted in the middle and combed neatly with a ribbon to hold it back. Her hair-do is simple and elegant falling softly on her shoulders. She has large beautiful dark eyes. Her complexion is fair. Her face is thin, but not drawn. Her face is sober, but not sullen. She is probably of medium build. Her face has a thoughtful sad look, especially about the eyes. What could be more true for Mary Ann. She lived through a lot of unhappiness and trials. She took on the responsibilities of marriage in her young tender years. She had the hardships of crossing the plains with a year old child. She lived unsuccessfully in a polygamous marriage, with the first wife being 29 years older, from which she fled leaving 2 of her children in the Kenney home. Perhaps Mary was a person who fled contention and this may have influenced her other unsuccessful marriages.

She suffered from desertion or divorce from 3 or possible 4 husbands. She had at least 10 and possibly 12 children and suffered the death of one or more of these children. She was left to support four Cook children when the youngest was only a year old.

It is too bad that Mary Ann didn’t keep a journal of her life, so her life with all it’s problems and troubles could be appreciated more by her descendants. Her lifetime of troubles seems to be more than many lifetimes could occupy.

Mary Ann Tucker Bailey, Kenney, Cook.

Mary Ann Tucker Bailey, Kenney, Cook