A Mormon in the Family Tree

I know little about Nancy Ann Childress (sometimes Childers) beyond the barest genealogical facts:

She was born 10 September 1848 in Clark County, Missouri, the daughter of John Milton Childress and Nancy Conyers.

She married three times, first to James Osburn on 11 February 1868 in Lewis County, Missouri; he disappears from her life within a couple of years, and I don’t know what happened to him. Nancy married again to George W. Armour, on 12 November 1871, in Lewis County. She raised seven children with him before he died on 12 September 1890, still in Lewis County. And third, she married James T. Turner on 21 December 1897, in Lewis County. Nancy outlived this third husband by many years – he died in 1907, and she lived until 1924, when she died in Illinois.

James T. Turner was no stranger to Nancy when they married – he had been married to Nancy’s sister Sarah Catharine (1844-1897) in 1861, and they raised to adulthood nine of the ten children born to them.

In February 1877, James and Sarah Turner had became members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and both of them remained true to their conviction of the gospel restored by Joseph Smith to the end of their lives. Sarah’s obituary notes that “she has been one of [that church’s] most active and valued members” in the family’s hometown at Deloit, Iowa. James’s obituary identifies him as a teacher, as a traveling elder, and finally as “president and pastor” of the RLDS branch at Deloit. “He loved the religious and Sunday school work and was teaching a class of young people in the Sunday school … He always attributed [his] success on the farm to Christianity, his motto being “to live honestly and upright before all men and to owe no man.” At his funeral, “the draped pulpit showed the vacancy left by the Pastor.”

When the widowed Nancy Ann Childress Armour married the widowed James T. Turner, she and her youngest child moved to James’s Deloit home. Nancy joined the RLDS church; her RLDS membership record followed her for the rest of her life, and so far as I have any reason to believe, she was a sincere member of that church and a follower of Joseph Smith through the rest of her life.

So what? I don’t usually highlight members of Restoration churches other than The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why this exception?

Well, it has to do with those bare genealogical facts.

By her marriage to George W. Armour, Nancy Ann Childress was the mother of

Harry Ellington Armour (1874- ), who was the father of

Ruth Lucille Armour (1900-1926), who was the mother of

Stanley Armour Dunham (1918-1992), who was the father of

Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-1995) who was the mother of

A son born in 1961 … who was recently inaugurated as President of the United States of America.

Cross-posted from Keepapitchinin — click here for comments.