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Elizabeth Francis Williams Yates

Mary Ann Voss Cordon Cole

 

BIRTHDATE: 2 Aug 1842

Rugby, Wanvickshire, England

DEATH: 8 Mar 1884

Willard, Box Elder Co., Utah

PARENTS: Thomas Voss

Lucy Haddon

PIONEER: 26 Oct 1864

William Hyde Church Wagon Train

SPOUSE I: Alfred Cordon

MARRIED: 22 Apr 1865

Salt Lake, Endowment House

DEATH SP: 13 Mar 1871

Willard, Box Elder Co., Utah

 

CHILDREN:

Ralph Roland, 23 Feb 1866

Lucy Elizabeth, 4 Jan 1868

Phoebe Ann, 9 Mar 1869 (died at age 10)

Salina Geneva, 6 Jan 1871 (died at age 8)

 

SPOUSE: John Cole

MARRIED: 1873

Willard, Box Elder Co., Utah

DEATH SP: 20 May 1909

Willard, Box Elder Co., Utah

 

CHILDREN:

JohnAlfred, 31 Jan 1874

Richard, 15 Sep 1876 (died in infancy)

Edwin "Voss," 19 Oct 1878

Alice Haddon, 11 Jul 1883

 

Mary Ann Voss was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, in the same area where her mother was born. She had five brothers and sisters.

Her parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1851, in England, along with Lucy's mother, Mary Barnett.

Mary Barnett began preparations to emigrate to the United States and had purchased her ticket when she became ill and died. Grandmother Mary's ticket was given to her daughter, Lucy, so she and Thomas started making plans to bring their family to Zion. All of the family except Mary Ann and her older brother, John Edwin, left England on the ship "Emerald Isle," in 1855.

Mary Ann had been baptized and confirmed on November 21, 1854. Mary Ann remained in England and nine years later, she sailed on the ship, "Hudson" for America.

The journey was a long and tedious one lasting forty-seven days. The ship carried 863 Saints under the direction of John M. Kay. The company was organized into fourteen wards, with a teacher for each.

Due to the crowded conditions, there was much sickness and death. The Hudson sailed into New York Bay and landed at Castle Garden on July 20,1864.

John Lines purchased railway tickets to take the family and Mary Ann to the Missouri River where they were to meet a church wagon train. Because of damage to the train tracks and bridges caused by the Civil War, the last part of their train journey was very difficult. Part of the way they were travelling in open, filthy cattle cars with no shelter or protection from the germs left by the cattle. Some of the family became ill. Fourteen year old John Hyrum Lines died and was buried in St. Joseph, Missouri.

From St. Joseph Missouri, the company travelled by steamboat to Wyoming, Nebraska. Here they became out-fitted for the joumey to Salt Lake. They left in the Hyde Wagon Train leaving on August 9, 1864.

Captain Hyde's Company reached Salt Lake City on October 26, 1864. When Thomas and Lucy Voss received word that their daughter, Mary Ann, was arriving in Salt Lake, they left Bear Lake country where they had acquired land to go to meet her.

On the way back to Bear Lake, they stopped to visit Bishop Alfred Cordon in Willard, Utah. Mary Ann married Alfred Cordon April 22, 1865, in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, Utah, becoming his fourth wife.

They had four children, all bom in Willard with only Ralph Roland and Lucy Elizabeth growing to maturity and marrying. Mary Ann's husband, Alfred, was the third Bishop of the Willard Ward, serving until his death at the age of fifty-four, in 1871.

Early in 1873, Mary Ann married John Cole, a very prominent man in the community of Willard. He also had four wives. From this marriage was born four more children with John Alfred, Edwin "Voss," and Alice Haddon all surviving and marrying. However again she had a young son, Richard, who lived just a few short months.

The hard frontier life, the birth of her children, the death of her first husband in 1871, her parents death, and the deaths of several children took their toll on Mary Ann's health and she died on March 8, 1884, less than one year after her last child, Alice Haddon, was born. She died in Willard and is buried at the side of Alfred Cordon and his other wives.

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