On this day in 1814

Caroline LeSueur (born Le Gresley) was a latecomer to Mormonism, but she embraced the religion wholeheartedly and became one of its founder members in the rapidly developing United States congregation.

She’d been introduced to Mormonism by her husband, John, while they still lived in Jersey and, initially, she was reluctant to follow his interest. However, in 1849, aged 35, she was baptised into the faith and, six years later, the couple packed up the small grocer’s shop that Mrs LeSueur ran from the family home in Jersey and moved with their children to Utah.

LeSueur is widowed

Life was good for the LeSueurs, who prospered in the state and raised cattle on a 30-acre holding, until John died and Caroline was forced to move to a log cabin in Idaho. Despite being a lone mother, Caroline once again prospered and quickly moved up the social scale until, when she moved to a Mormon settlement in Arizona 13 years later, she sold not the log cabin, but the grand house into which the family had moved.

LeSueur never returned to Jersey. She died in St Johns, Arizona, in 1891. She was 74 years old.