Norris Grandparents: William and Harriet

William Norris

William Norris

William Norris was born on September 17, 1835 in Bristol, Gloucester, England to a family of laborers. His parents, William, Sr. and Cecelia, hailed from Gloucester, as well. William, Sr. worked as a shoemaker, and his wife as a shoe binder. William, Jr. was the middle child and only son in a family of five children, including sisters Cecelia, Sarah Ann, Deborah and Charlotte.

Back in the United States, Kirtland, Ohio formed the center of the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like the rest of the country, the saints felt the burden of the widespread financial panic of the late 1830s. The financial situation, combined with religious persecution, taxed the fragile faith of the saints and apostasy began to spread. “In this state of things,” recorded Joseph Smith, “God revealed to me that something new must be done for the salvation of His Church.”

That “something new” involved sending missionaries to Great Britain to open the first overseas mission of the Church. In 1837, Heber C. Kimball and six other missionaries landed in Liverpool, England to begin the work. Thus began a long and fruitful missionary effort. In the 1840s alone, 64 missionaries from the United States, assisted by native-born British missionaries, baptized over 34,000 people.

William Norris, Sr. and his wife were among the early British members of the church, accepting baptism in February and March of 1844. By the mid-1850s at least four of the children had joined their parents in being baptized. The records of the Bristol Conference, British Mission indicate that William, Jr.  was baptized on May 20, 1854 by Elder J. Barker. He would have been 18 years old, having enjoyed close association with the Mormon Church for a decade prior to his baptism.

In fact, family memorabilia includes an early LDS Hymnal from 1850 inscribed to one Mariah Clark as follows, “presented to her by her much beloved friend and companion William Norris as a token of love and friendship.” Family legend suggests that 15-year old William was in love with Mariah, but that she rejected him because of his religious affiliation.

The records show little of the Norris family’s time in Britain. At 16 years of age, William lived with his aunt and uncle in Salisbury and worked as a porter. An obituary for him indicates that he served for a number of years as a traveling elder for the Church in and around Bristol.

Not long after William, Jr. was baptized, his older sisters, Cecelia and Sarah Ann, left for the United States in company with over 700 Mormon immigrants on the ship Thornton. They embarked from Liverpool on May 4, 1856 and arrived in New York six weeks later. The women, aged 26 and 22 at the time, crossed the plains as part of the James G. Willie handcart company. Cecelia’s husband, Theophilus William Cox died on November 7, 1856, just two days before the company reached the Salt Lake Valley. Within a year or so after arriving in Zion, both of the sisters married and settled in Parowan.

While the older sisters gathered to Zion, the rest of the Norris family relocated to Bath, in the county of Somerset, England. The 1861 census shows William, Sr. and his wife working as bookmakers, with Deborah and Charlotte binding books. William, Jr. styled himself less prosaically as a photographic artist. On April 21, 1861, he married Mary Ann Cannings (the widow of James Elkins) in Thomas a Beckett Church in Bath. They had a child named Frederick on January 19, 1862 in Bradford on Avon. Mary Ann presumably died shortly after her son’s birth.

In April 1863 William, Jr. left his young son in the care of his parents and followed his older sisters to Utah. He left Liverpool on April 30, 1863 on the ship John J. Boyd, arriving in New York on May 29 along with 767 LDS immigrants traveling under the direction of William W. Cluff. Unbeknownst to him at the time, exactly one year earlier, the woman who would become his wife traveled to New York on that very same ship.

Harriet Jackson

Harriet Jackson Norris

Harriet Jackson was born on August 13, 1842 in Mattersey, Nottinghamshire, England to William Jackson and Sarah Smith. Her parents and perhaps some of her older siblings joined the Mormon Church in the early 1840s. When Harriet was just 12 years old, her father died in Wakefield, York, England, leaving Sarah a widow with seven children. Harriet was baptized in April 1861 at the age of 18.

One year after her baptism, the family boarded the ship John J. Boyd for America. They landed in New York on June 1, 1862 and traveled across the plains with the Homer Duncan Company. By this time, the family included Harriet’s mother Sarah, George and his wife Martha, John, Harriet (age 20), Thomas, Emma, Elizabeth, and 7-year old Sarah.

William and Harriet Build a Family
At some point after William Norris arrived in Utah in 1863, he met Harriet Jackson. Apostle Wilford Woodruff performed the sealing of the two in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City on October 10, 1864. Church leaders assigned William the trade of shoemaking, and Brigham Young sent him to set up the trade in Parowan. The couple arrived in Parowan by 1865, where they raised their family of eleven children.

Their first son, William Thomas, was born on September 14, 1865. He was followed by seven sons and three daughters. Two of the children, Delbert and Eva, died as very young children. Another brother, Irvin Lamont, died in 1896 at the age of 11.

The Norrises led a much more quiet life than the Deckers, and they left a much smaller footprint in Parowan history. Perhaps due to their British heritage, the family was reserved in manner, not mingling much in the community. Fae Decker Dix describes Harriet as “of a melancholy nature, withdrawn but genteel.” Part of that melancholy nature came as the result of burying three of her young children. According to a family story, the Christmas Day after her 11-year old son Irvin died, she wrapped herself in a warm cloak and spent the day grieving at his graveside. Late in the afternoon, William found her and brought her home.

William, a quiet man, held several civil positions in Parowan, acting in turn as justice of the peace, city treasurer, and county treasurer. His obituary indicates that he was also active in church duties and was a kind and indulgent father and a faithful and devoted husband. During his final illness, he lived with his daughter Harriet. Fae, nine at the time, remembers his yellow canary and the afternoon thunderstorms that frightened him. The Parowan Times reported that “he was an upright, unassuming, industrious man, and highly respected by all who were acquainted with him.”

Fae said of the Norrises, “If mother’s family were too fragile for their world, they survived it anyway and kept their peace with grace. They were said to be people who thought of people and could extend understanding sympathy in any human plight.”

Uncle Fred

Frederick and Mary Norris

And what of William’s first son, the man William’s grandchildren referred to as “long lost Uncle Fred”? Frederick William Norris lived in England with his grandparents and aunts until 1872, when they sailed to America on the ship Manhattan. The 10-year old boy and his family then traveled overland to Utah, where he was reunited with his father.

Frederick lived in Parowan with William and Harriet for a time and was baptized there in 1873, although, like many of the Norris children, he eventually left the Mormon faith. By 1880 he was again living with his Aunt Charlotte and her husband John Thomas. Frederick’s passport indicates he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1891 and considered Utah his home from 1872 to 1894, although he went away for school. In 1888 Frederick graduated from St. Stephen’s College, presumably in New York, and in 1890 he married Mary E. Cherry, an accomplished world traveler and Shakespearean scholar.

Returning to Utah, he began his tenure at St. Mark’s in Salt Lake City in 1891, serving first as Assistant Rector and eventually as Dean of the Cathedral. Frederick’s second wife later said that he spoke little of his time in Utah, and that it seemed to be a painful subject for him. The Norrises left Utah in 1894, when Frederick won a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England.

From 1895-1900, Frederick was Rector of Trinity Church in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Following their time in Connecticut, the couple moved back to New York City, where Frederick served as Rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn from 1900 until his retirement in 1929. His wife said that Dr. Norris “read the service better than anyone since had done…that he had a captivating voice and a way of reading scriptures, as if he had a feeling about them, so that they didn’t sound read.”

Mary Cherry Norris died on January 21, 1929, less than a week after her husband resigned from his parish. Frederick married again in November of that year, this time to Margaret Fernie Eaton, the widow of Hugh M. Eaton. Margaret and her first husband were both artists of some note in New York. On November 22, 1931, Frederick died of Bright’s disease (historic term for conditions related to kidney disease) at the age of 69.

Blanche Decker, Frederick’s niece, visited Margaret Norris in 1942 in New York City and found her “most charming…an artist, intelligent in a pleasing, flexible way.” Blanche writes of attending a gallery showing of her watercolors. For Blanche, Frederick Norris and his wives must have represented so much of the cosmopolitan culture and the intellectual and artistic credentials to which she had aspired all of her life.

Notes
1. A Century of “Mormonism” in Great Britain, by Richard L. Evans
2. William Norris, Sr. Family Timeline, compiled by Cindy Norris
3. Baptismal dates for the Jacksons come from Family Search. Note that for Harriet’s parents the record shows confirmation dates two years before their baptismal dates.
4. Church History Library, Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database gives information on the James G. Willie Company and the Homer Duncan Company.
5. Family information from document in possession of Judy Liddle. From Fae Decker, perhaps?
6. Birth and death dates for Delbert, Eva, and Irvin come from the Parowan graveyard on the family marker.
7. “Mother, Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker,” by Fae Decker Dix.
8. Harriet Elizabeth Norris Decker, pg. 140 (from where?) gives details of her parents.
9. Further information on Frederick William Norris from “Some Notes on the Norris Family” compiled by Jennifer Dix and from “Who’s Who in New York City and State (1907)”.
10. "An Appeal of Art to the Lovers of Art." by Mrs. Frederic W. Norris [Mrs. Mary E. Cherry Norris], published in Eagle, Mary Kavanaugh Oldham, ed. The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U. S. A., 1893. Chicago, Ill: Monarch Book Company, 1894. pp. 674-678.
11. Letter from Blanche Decker to her father, April 1942.
12. Letter from Blanche Decker to Fae Decker Dix, probably 1942.
13. Obituary for Rev. Dr. F.W. Norris in the New York Times November 1931.