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Life and Testimony of Mary Ann Barker Virgin

Mary Ann Barker was born 25 July 1831, in Marsten Moretain, Bedfordshire, England.
She later liked to tell people she was born one year after the church was organized.

She married George Thompston Virgin, 19 September 1852. He worked in another church in England, but accepted the gospel. He encouraged Mary Ann to go hear the elders. While she was satisfied with her religion, there were some questions she had unanswered. He promised her they would be answered.

She and her sister Mercy fasted and prayed before going to hear the elders. The speaker had prepared a speech, but said, “I can’t keep to my subject.” Mary looked at Mercy, and Mercy looked at her. They decided to pray again silently, and he began to talk on the subject they had been praying about, and explained the subject to their great satisfaction. He and his companion also explained other scriptures which the sisters’ ministers could not explain.

They accepted the gospel, and soon faced severe persecution. They found they had to walk in the middle of the streets because the contents of vessels from above were poured out on them if they walked along the sidewalks. Also, her husband was discharged from his work at the church. Then, Mary Ann’s husband was eventually killed when a train without lights or a signal backed over him in a darkened tunnel. The family always felt this was not accidental.

Mary had born three sons, though one son had died, and then a baby girl was born shortly after her husband was killed. The minister of her former church tried to get Mary Ann to come back to church and sing in the choir. He promised to see to it, “I got help to educate my children, and also he would see that I got a dress for a year or two.”

Instead, in May 1862, the widowed Mary Ann, her two sons and her infant daughter, Mercy, took passage on the ship “William Tapscott, and sailed from Liverpool for America. Francis R. Lyman and other leaders were on the ship with 378 other Saints.

They arrived safely, The Saints all traveled together as far as the Missouri River. There, Mary Ann prepared to cross the plains in the Company of Horton Hiatt. Amos Moses walked and helped prod the oxen.

When they reached the Wyoming/Utah line, a fever struck the company. Mary Ann became so ill she could not care for her baby. There was a young man in the company named Ephraim Barton, who took care of the baby for her. Mr. Barton and the baby both took the fever and died the same day, and were buried in the same grave 6 October 1862.

The company arrived in Salt Lake City 19 October 1862. Mary Ann and her two sons went to Tooele, Utah, to where her sister, Mary Keetch had immigrated. They stayed there with her sister about two years, then moved to St. Charles, Bear Lake, Idaho.

Eventually, she acquired ¼ of a city block, about 2 ½ acres, where she lived in a neat two-room house. At first she had a dirt roof, but later it was replaced with lumber. Her house had a good red pine floor, which she kept scrubbed clean and smooth. The rooms were good sized, with an upstairs. She also owned a piece of meadow land in the “bend of Big Creek.”

Amos aided his mother by fishing and trapping. After he grew up and married, he and his wife lived with his mother until his first daughter, Sarah Frances was born. They moved into their own house the next year

Mary Ann had a good voice, as did Amos Moses.

She was also very fond of flowers, especially nasturtiums and asters.

She eventually moved to Sugar City, Idaho, with many of the rest of her family.
Sarah remembers as a child hearing her Grandmother Mary Ann, Mercy and her family, and Sarah’s father, Amos, singing Christmas carols, They also sang with gusto English songs such as “Brittania, Brittania rules the waves, Brittains will never be slaves.”

Mary Ann made yards of beautiful lace, which she sold to sustain herself. She made it from English linen thread. Her great granddaughter, Jennette, and others could remember vividly the pillow lace she had spent so many years making and selling. Some of it was purchased by the Queen of England. The pieces of lace which has been inherited by her descendants is greatly treasured.

Jennette also remembers visiting her great grandmother Virgin. She was always there reading her scriptures. She used them as she taught Sunday School.

As Sarah Shirley said, “Grandmother wasn’t rich, only in the reading and study of the scriptures and the church works. She had Parley P. Pratt and Orsen Pratt’s books, Voice of Warning, etc. She could quote Isaiah and other prophets. It was hard to get away from her, she was so anxious to tell us grandchildren about what was coming in the last days.

Mary Ann she lived in a small home behind her grandson, Charles, until she died in Salem, Idaho, January 14, 1922. She left a great heritage of faith and courage to all her descendants.

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