Saints (74 page)

Robert Kirkham was one of the richest men in England by the age of forty. He served in Parliament for many years, and it was thought by some that if he had not died before Gladstone he might have been Prime Minister.

John Kirkham did quite well as a painter in Chicago, and eventually had exhibitions in Boston and New York. He was planning a London exhibition when he died in Philadelphia at the age of seventy. His reputation did not long survive him.

Emma Smith eventually married a man named Lewis C. Bidamon, and was very happy. Her son, Joseph III, became president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and Emma claimed until she died that her husband never taught or practiced polygamy.

Heber Kimball, always Brigham’s closest friend, served as President Young’s First Counselor from 1847 until he died in 1868 at the age of sixty-seven, a year after the death of his first wife, Vilate.

Sally Clinton Kirkham survived her husband by only two years.

According to the Charles Banks Kirkham Family Organization, there are now more than seven thousand living descendants of Charles Kirkham, more than four thousand of whom still bear the Kirkham name.

Matthew Handy was still an executive in Robert Kirkham’s railroad organization when he died of pneumonia in 1881.

Valiant Handy became a newspaper publisher in Manchester. He died in a railway accident at the age of fifty.

Honor Handy married a barrister named Hartman and lived in London until her death in 1926. She learned in 1919 that her mother was still alive, but too late to communicate with Dinah before she died.

LaDell Kirkham Richards now lives in Salt Lake City, where she is retired from medical practice. Her husband is professor emeritus at the University of Utah. She is still active in local politics, and has written a children’s book.

Dinah Kirkham visited LaDell in New York City in 1919; during their time together they were reconciled, and Dinah was writing an affectionate letter to her surrogate daughter when she died on the train home, about two hours outside of Ogden, Utah. At first the Mormon Church tried to keep notices of her death small—her first obituary in the
Deseret News
ran only eight lines. Presumably the authorities were not anxious in 1919 to remind everyone of Dinah Kirkham, who had been such a prominent figure during the polygamy era. But the non-Mormon Salt Lake
Tribune
ran a full-page article on her, and after that the
Deseret News
ran four pages of reminiscences of “Aunt Dinah.” Though her last official service was forty-three years before, she had not been forgotten. Her funeral was attended by an estimated thirty thousand mourners. According to some observers, most of those who came were far too young ever to have known her. She was one hundred years old when she died.

This book would have been impossible without the help of Jared B. Ames, who tracked down the endless details of nineteenth-century life; Steve Knight, who provided insights about the practice of plural marriage; the helpful employees at the LDS Church Archives; the Charles Banks Kirkham Family Organization; an agent and an editor who share the annoying belief that perfection can be improved on; and my wife, who read everything as it came from the typewriter, made me rewrite most of it twice, and in the meantime kept the children alive and taught them that once they had a father, and someday would have a father again.

And special thanks to LaDell Richards, who was my only living bridge to the past. Without her hours spent answering questions and telling memories, I could not have come so close to knowing Dinah Kirkham.