The Ann Dawson Letter: The Only Extant Document by the First Female Baptized in Europe

On November 10, 1840, Ann Dawson, a recent convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Preston, England, wrote to apostle George A. Smith. The letter is significant for several reasons. It is the only extant document written by Dawson and provides a unique window into the relationship between missionaries and early converts in the British Isles. Moreover, Dawson identifies herself within the letter as “the first Female that was baptised in this Land,” offering firsthand testimony that helps clarify what has long been a debate over who holds claim to that honor.To understand the full significance of the only extant document by the first woman baptized in Europe, historians must first look to the first decades of Dawson's unheralded life. She lived in Preston, where they labored alongside their eight children in the cotton mills. They moved more than five times until they were ultimately situated in a middle-class neighborhood. In 1835, her husband, John, passed away. In the years following his death, widow Dawson attended Vauxhall Chapel. There, an independent, non-conformist preacher named James Fielding read letters to his congregation from his Latter-day Saint siblings, Joseph, Mary, and Mercy, in Canada. These letters were Dawson's first introduction to the church then known variously as the Church of Christ, Church of Jesus Christ, and Church of Latter Day Saints. The letters prompted “some to petition the Lord to send them his authorized servants.”1When Latter-day Saint missionaries first preached to Dawson on Sunday, July 23, 1837, she felt prepared to be the first female to enter Lancashire's River Ribble. The following Sunday, July 30, while two of the men took off in a footrace to be the first person baptized in Europe, running would have been highly improper for the old established widow. Nonetheless, she was the first woman baptized in Europe. Her 24-year-old son-in-law, Miles Hodgson, was also baptized that day. When Reverend James discovered that the best of his flock had been baptized into his brother Joseph's church, James closed his chapel and his home to the missionaries. Undaunted, Dawson fed and housed the missionaries for the next few years.Ann Dawson established her home as a sacred space where she and her children prepared meals for church leaders and new members of the church. When apostles arrived in Preston in 1840, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, and George A. Smith all gathered in Dawson's home for the first meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve apostles outside of North America and the apostolic ordination of Willard Richards. Two months later, then-British Mission President Joseph Fielding claimed that Dawson, indeed, was a “Mother in Israel.” The title “Mother in Israel” carried deep significance to the founding women of the early church. It meant so much to Lucy Mack Smith, at the October 1845 General Conference in Nauvoo, that Brigham Young put the title to a vote, to which the congregation responded, “Yes!” With the title of “Mother in Israel,” Mother Smith's efforts in the foundation of the church were validated.2Mother Dawson formed a deep mother-son attachment with the youngest apostle, George A. Smith. A few factors contributed to this bond. First, Smith was easy to get along with. According to Leonard Arrington, “George A. was popular with every group with which he associated and was a favorite missionary and an astute administrator.”3 Smith was also the same age as Dawson's son, John William. She could relate to him as a matronly figure. For his part, Smith recorded that the poor, like Dawson, had a certain willingness to give the little they had, whether it was a piece of bread or cheese.4 As a property-owning woman, Dawson was more financially stable than the poorest. Nonetheless, she donated what she had—her time, her talents, and her home. Both Dawson and Smith longed to journey across the Atlantic to America. That shared connection allowed Dawson to confide in Smith her religious accomplishments and aspirations.On Saturday, September 4, 1840, Smith marked in his journal the day he began his correspondence with Dawson. He followed the notation with details of his London tour that day, “We went to Westminster Abbey Saw the Tombs of the Kings, Queens, and Lords of Britain.” It is curious that the same day Smith commenced writing to the first female baptized in Europe—a woman of profound influence—he visited the mausoleum of other notable figures in Europe. On November 12, apostle Wilford Woodruff was the first to receive Dawson's letter to Smith.5 Woodruff wrote, “I have had a lettr today from Sister Dawson directed to Brother Smith [it's] nothing special. . . . ”6 Readers may discover that the Ann Dawson Letter is quite special.Dawson begins her letter with responses to Smith's inquiries.7 It is apparent from the handwriting that Joseph Fielding acted as scribe to write her letter. It was common for Lancashire women to be educated in reading. However, it was less common for them to know how to write. Dawson's text emanates a tone of annoyance and powerlessness from not having Fielding there to act as her scribe at her command.8Dawson's updates on the health of those under her roof are also noteworthy. Trained in Thomsonian medicine by Dr. Willard Richards, Dawson also practiced women's blessings of healing, a fact confirmed in contemporary missionary journals and the local newspaper.9 Both Rachel Fielding and Mary Dawson, under Ann's care, did improve in health, and both Rachel and Mary eventually emigrated with other British Saints to the United States sometime before 1845. Dawson follows with a report on church business.As property owner of the church headquarters outside of North America, perhaps Dawson enjoyed these firsthand accounts her position provided. Fielding's correspondence with church leaders often passed through her hands and came frequently through her home and was sent out again to apostles and missionaries throughout Great Britain. Alternatively, she might have also found this church business tedious and distracting. And she may have wanted to move on to the main objective of her letter to Smith: her petition for passage to America.Dawson's letter reflects the urgency she felt to gather with the Saints in America.10 She believed that Nauvoo was a spiritual attraction where the prophet of the Restoration lived. She believed that the imminent millennial reign of Christ would commence in the land of Zion, the New Jerusalem, in America. While the escape from poverty motivated most British subjects to leave their homeland, this was not the case for property-owning Dawson.Finally, Dawson lists in the next section her qualifications for church sponsorship in her passage to America. She knew she was skilled in the art of hospitality. In addition to her service skills, Dawson wanted it documented on paper that she was the “first female that was baptised in this Land.” This timely title as “first” augmented her authority and value to the church in building up Nauvoo.11 She made it known that she was obedient in the call to gather, despite homespun opposition. She also documented her testimony: she knew the church to be the “Truth of God.” Dawson's plan was simple. She would do in Nauvoo what she did in Preston: minister to church leaders and their wives and families. Then, when Jesus Christ returned, she would “wait on him.” Dawson felt compassion for her friends, family, pastor, and acquaintances that rejected the “good Part.” With resolve, she concluded her letter with her testimony of the truthfulness of this new religion with the grassroots evidence she witnessed.It is unknown how George A. Smith responded to Dawson's only known text. The fact that future church historian Smith retained Dawson's letter in his papers suggests that the document was of some significance to him personally and to the early church globally. Smith retained the letter for decades, carrying it with him all the way across the Atlantic, the Plains, and ultimately landing in the Church History Library in Salt Lake. The letter, like most of the George A. Smith papers, likely came into the possession of the Historian's Office during George A. Smith's tenure as Church Historian (April 1854–October 1870).Sixteen months after Dawson wrote her letter, the prophet Joseph Smith advocated for more women to practice blessings of healing in foreign lands—a practice she initiated during the early years of the successful British mission. At the April 28, 1842, Relief Society meeting in Nauvoo, Willard Richards witnessed Joseph Smith say, “Go ye into all the world! Healing the sick . . . should follow all that believe whether male or female. Respecting the female laying on hands . . . there could be no devil in it if God gave his sanction by healing.”12 The church's founder continued, “I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time . . . this is the beginning of better days to this Society.” Joseph Smith championed women as healers. Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and later church leaders advocated for women to bless the sick. The tradition of women's blessings of healing continued well into the twentieth century before its gradual declension.13 While this historic female ritual is unfamiliar to most modern-day believers, for Dawson, women's blessings of healing was a key component to the practice of her new religion.In May of 1843, Dawson's petition for passage to America achieved its desired effect. The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles voted to bring “Ann Dawson and family” over from England.14 Despite Wilford Woodruff calling it nothing special, historians should feel immense gratitude he still chose to send the letter on to Smith, who preserved and valued it for years.The Ann Dawson letter is, at its core, the voice of a woman speaking about herself with her own religious thinking. Dawson's letter provides the social historian with an opportunity to study one of the masses of people who so often do not make it into major histories. While all of Dawson's children and, in some cases, their entire families did emigrate to America, Dawson never did. She remained in England as a pioneering authority until her passing in 1849 in her Pole Street home—her sacred space—in Preston. The legacy of Dawson still permeates today. The branch that was organized in her home still stands as the oldest, longest continuously running church unit in the world.Preston, Nov 10—40Dr. Brother SmithIt is not because I have been unmindful of your kind letter that I have not written you again before now but because I find it difficult to get a Letter written. I was waiting for Bro. Fielding to come home, he is now come, He is well and Sis F, is well but their little girl is unwell, she has been very ill but is likely to get better, Bro Fielding has been away 15 Days, he has not been very successful, but he thinks you got a Letter from him that he wrote to Brother Kimball there has been 7 baptised while he has been there and others are likely to be soon, he thinks he has sown some Seed that will bring forth Fruit here-after, he does not know where he will go next he has not seen any of the 12 yet, but he hopes the Lord will direct him, he does not care where it be, his wife says she hopes it will not be far off,—My Daughter Mary has been very Sick 5 weeks, but is now getting better, the Lord has blessed us very much while she has been sick, and we feel very thankful, and I am confident he will be kind to us always if be faithful to him, I feel thankful to God that you get something to eat every Day and that you are enabled to persevere in the midst of such difficulty I know your work is with the Lord weather it be received or not, I want to know when you are going back to America, and if you interest to come to Preston again before you go, I feel quite ready to go as soon as the Lord opens my Way—Please to pray that God may open it soon, I long to be off from this Place and fulfill the Commandment of the Lord in gathering with the Saints to the Place which he has appointed and I hope there to see you and your black-Eyed Susan, and I should like there to wait on you again, for I love to serve the Servants of God. I should wish to do so till the Saviour comes and there to wait on him if he should account me worthy of such an honor—do you think I shall the work of God is going on well here we feel very comfortable, some are baptised every week, I do rejoice in the work of the Lord, I was the first Female that was baptised in this Land, many said I was a Fool but I feel that I have chosen the good Part and no one can deprive me of it if others reject it, it is because they don't know what it is, the best way to know what it is, is to try it, I know it to be the Truth of God, the greatest Blessing that God ever blessed me or my Family with, and if others do not know it we do, and bless God for it and there is great Joy among the Saints here, they rejoice as well as myself, I long to see all the honest in Heart gathered together into the new and ever-lasting Covenant, I know these things must be done in spite of all the Power of Satan or Men Please give my Love and that of my Family to Bro Woodruff and all the Saints with you, and also Bro and Sis Fielding, and Bro and Sis Pratt—I pray the Lord to bless you and open your way and give you Health and all Blessings amen, from your Affectionate Sister Ann DawsonMr. George A. SmithCare of Joseph Tate. 25 Park StBirmingham

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