Back to Main Page   See Photos from Book

LIFE & TIMES OF HENRY EYRING & MARY BOMMELI

   MARY SLEEPS IN A PRISON CELL

In the days when Mary was in Berlin earning her way to Zion, there were no large factories weaving cloth, no fine stores where lovely materials could be bought nor suits and dresses bought already tailored.
    It was the custom for the more well-to-do folks to hire first a weaver and spinner to spin the yarn, then weave it into the type of cloth they needed for the garments they wanted to make. Then they would hire a seamstress to make it for them. Many of the women from wealthy homes made their own clothes by hand, embroidering them beautifully. The women wore many clothes too, then, so it must have been quite a chore to make an outfit from underthings to voluminous petticoats and pantalettes to their wide-flounced dresses.
    However, the cloth woven by these hand looms was very durable and one outfit lasted many years. Usually where there was a large family the children’s clothes were handed down from one child to the next and might last through the family, at least the very nice clothes did.
    When a girl was to be married, she and her mother worked many, many months on her "dowry," so many sheets, so many cases, so many tablecloths and napkins. You should see the napkins, they were as large as some of our lunch cloths are for they must cover a wide expanse of front. The men especially needed large napkins to cover their lacy fronts. They hadn’t the useful type of forks and spoons we have to eat with and used their hands where we wouldn’t think of doing. They therefore needed napkins to wipe the fat from their fingers whenever they were eating meat.
    When Mary found a home where there was an expectant bride or one who in a few short years might be betrothed, she found a place where she might work a good share of the winter. As we learned in the last chapter, Mary found, on arriving in Berlin, that a city ordinance had been passed prohibiting any Mormon Elder from coming to Berlin to preach. In fact, a short time later it became a national law, so all teachers of the restored Gospel must do so at the peril of imprisonment or fine.
    But you could no more stop those who had heard the glad tidings from telling all they came in contact with than stop a river from flowing downhill.
    Mary, especially, was a born teacher and she knew the prophesies from the Bible prophets, and was fast learning those from the Book of Mormon prophets by heart, so that as she wove cloth at her loom she taught those who were willing to listen, the truths which from the modern ministers were rarely understandable to the lay person and often not to the minister himself.
    Ladies and their daughters would sit hemming napkins or ruffles while Mary would tell them the story of Joseph’s vision of the Gods, then of the visitations of Moroni. She then would launch out on the story of the Nephites and Lamanites as told in the Book of Mormon.
    Then, when she came to the story of Alma and the truths he taught about the resurrection, the tears of joy that would run down her face as well as those of her listeners threatened many times to dampen the articles they were working on.
    In those days, most folks like Mary’s mother, lost baby after baby before it had hardly learned to walk and then if it did survive babyhood, the children’s diseases took many six and seven year olds. According to their belief, if the baby was not baptized before it died it would be left in Hell to burn forever. So that is why babies were taken to their minister as soon after birth as possible and baptized. If the infant was at all feeble in its crying, they sent for the minister at once, sometimes the baby died while it was being sprinkled.
    When Mary explained that children were without sin and did not need baptism but were in God’s Kingdom by right of birth until they did do wrong, some of the ladies who had lost babies that had not been baptized and were so anxious to know that they would see them in Heaven with Christ, believed right off and wanted her to tell more of the Hereafter as Alma explained it.
    "Where do we go when we die? What does happen to me when I see my body lowered in the grave?"
    You and I can read Alma’s story, too, and find comfort in it and have assurance he spoke the truth for he said, "How do I know it is true? I left my body once, I saw it lifeless and I visited that glorious place where everyone goes when they die. I saw those who had done wicked things mourning and crying, ‘Why did I do that,’ or, ‘Why did I not use my money that God gave me in doing good to others instead of just piling up goods I had to leave behind.’ I saw the folks who had done good all their days, the light of Heaven in their eyes going about teaching and giving comfort and encouragement to those who sorely needed it there, even worse than any need it here."
    Of course, these comforting things could not be kept locked in the hearts of these folks. Although Mary cautioned them not to betray her, for she was breaking the law in that she was preaching Mormonism, they, like her, had to tell others. They just couldn’t help it, and then they had to tell who told them the story.
    One night, long after Mary had gone to sleep, she was awakened by a loud knocking on the street door two flights below her small room. She jumped from the bed in time to hear the landlady say, "Yes, a girl, a Swiss girl lives in one of my apartments. Her name is Mary Bommeli."
    By the light of the moon, Mary saw the metal hat of a policeman and I can imagine her heart began to pound and her knees to shake, but uttering a swift prayer to Him who protects the innocent, she called down and her voice did not shake.
    "Here is Mary Bommeli, why do you ask for me? It is late and you will waken the whole house with your loud talking and knocking."
    "We arrest you in the name of the law for teaching in the homes of our city the pernicious doctrines of the Mormons. You must dress and come at once to the jail."
    Mary said, "May I not come in the morning to answer this accusation?"
    "Ha, ha, ha, do you think we trust folks who break the law to keep their word? Come down at once or we will come and get you."
    "Very well, I will be right down, but don’t waken any more folks."
    While dressing, Mary prayed for inspiration to guide every word she might say that she might not be confined and be unable to finish her task of earning the way to Zion.
    As she walked beside the officers, she asked, "What is the name of the Judge I am to appear before? 
    They told her his name. She repeated it several times. Then she said, "Has he a family?"
    They replied, "Yes, a very nice family, a wife and a son and daughter."
    "Is he a good father? Is he a good husband?"
    "If you mean, does he provide well for them, I would say, ‘yes’ but if you mean good morally, I guess he is like most men who have money for wine and women, he uses it to have amusement."
    As they were leaving her at the door of her cell, she asked if they would give her some paper and a pencil. She wanted to give the Judge some information to read before Court convened. The policeman smiled.
    "You can do more with your smile than you can with a pencil," but he got her the paper and pencil. All night long Mary wrote to the Judge. She first told him that others beside himself knew of the wrong things he did, and how unhappy his wife would be if someone told her, and how ashamed his children would be. Then she went on to tell him how badly he himself will feel in the great Hereafter when we will all have such a long time to think and repent. She told him much of the same story of the Gospel as taught in the Bible by Christ, and in the Book of Mormon by Alma, and Nephi, Helaman and Mosiah and yes, by Christ Himself to the Nephites here after His death and return to life. In the morning, the policeman who had learned to like Mary’s smile, her pleasant ways, and feel her beautiful spirit came early as he had promised and took her letter, put it in an official looking envelope and gave it to the Judge before Court convened. It wasn’t long before he was called and told to take the girl, the Swiss girl and tell her she was dismissed on the conditions she had asked in the letter.

So it was, Mary slept in a prison cell in the city of Berlin.

Top 

   FOUR YEARS AMONG THE CHEROKEES

In the days of which I am writing, one of the enemies of man, especially in the country near the waters of the great Mississippi was malaria, or ‘shakes’ as it was known by the pioneers of the Middle West. It literally shook folks to death or weakened them so that tuberculosis would set in and finish the work the mosquito had begun. Of course at that time no one knew that the tiny grey mosquito, whose home and breeding place was swamps such as were formed by the overflow of great rivers, was the carrier of this disease.
    Henry, like all the other missionaries, became a victim of this fever. In the fall of 1856 he was so ill it was difficult to get from place to place, and finally he got so weak that he had to stay in bed and try with the help of some quinine to check it. How trying it was to lie in bed when there was so much to be done in preaching and teaching the precious Gospel to these folks living without its hope and comfort.
    One day Elder John Richards called saying that President Miller had called a conference, the last one at which he was to preside for he and Elder Case were to leave for Zion very soon. Though both Henry and Elder Richards were so weak they could hardly walk, they started on the journey to the appointed place. They had hardly gone a day’s journey when they both began to shake and shake with fever and chills and it was impossible for them to go on. It just happened that they drew near to the farm belonging to a good friend of the elders who, as always, took them in, gave them food and a bed.
    After taking the quinine for a few days, they were able to proceed, and they arrived in time to attend the conference and raise their hands to sustain the new president, Elder W. N. Cook, a man of God. Elder Cook was so zealous in his labors going about sick or well, ministering to the Indians when ill and teaching the Gospel to those who were well, he wore himself out. He died truly a martyr as if killed by a mob as others in those southern states were. On the death of Elder Cook, Henry was sustained as president, but it was about this time that Buchanan’s Army was sent to Utah, and the feeling against the Church was so strong that many elders filled a martyr’s grave.
    We know it was at this time that Apostle Parley P. Pratt was killed not far from where Henry was laboring. In fact, just a few weeks before he was killed he had attended a conference, the one in which Henry was sustained president of the mission. Henry says in his journal:

"His (Parley P. Pratt’s) mind was filled with gloomy forebodings."

Because of these strong feelings of enmity, it was deemed prudent that all proselyting cease for the time being, until the feelings against them were softened some. At a little town called Deep Forks, where mostly Cherokees lived, Henry found a man running a small store. He applied and was hired to run the store. Thus he earned money enough to purchase a new suit of clothes, of which he was in great need, and enough to pay his expenses. He was also able to learn to speak the Indian language much better while working in the store. But most of all, he learned to know the Indian personality, his ideals, his attitudes, his philosophy of life.
    Henry must have looked pretty attractive to the young Indian maidens as they came to purchase supplies at the store. He was pleasant to them all, but one pretty little maiden especially showed her pretty white teeth in broad smile when she came to the store. When she saw the collar of his shirt was dirty, she said, "Go put on a clean shirt and I will make this one clean for you. Bring your stockings and other clothes, too. Anna will wash them for you."
    Elder Richards, watching her attentions one day, said, "Henry Eyring, why don’t you marry the pretty little Anna? The Church has advised us to marry out here for it gives the Indian more confidence in us. I find it much more comfortable with my Mona to cook my meals and wash my clothes. She knows the herbs which keep down this blasted fever, too."
    Anna was really an attractive little maid, and if the Church expected him to live his life out here, she would make as nice a wife as any Indian maiden he had seen. She was more than willing and so the two were married in that year of 1858. Henry had two nice log houses built, one for himself and one for his father-in-law. He clerked in the store in the daytime and went about teaching his Lamanite neighbors in the evening, baptizing so many that he soon had a nice size branch of some fifty families organized.
    Being president of the mission, Henry had to leave his home a great deal and hold conferences in the different branches the other elders had set up. Often when he would return, he would find not a smiling little wife but a sullen taciturn woman, seldom speaking and not giving Henry any idea what was causing her ill feelings. On speaking to her mother about this change in Anna, her mother scolded him.
    "You leave her too much. You find other women. You don’t like Anna anymore."
    Henry explained that he must teach the Gospel first, be husband second. Anna must be content. However, when their baby was born in August 1859, Anna was almost herself again. The baby, so small, with tiny fists curled round her fingers, brought a delight the little mother never felt before, but her joy was short-lived for the little one went back to the One who gave it life.
    In the depths of despair, Henry was her only joy; but if he so much as shook the hand of one of the maidens in his branch, Anna flew into a rage of jealousy. Henry had taught her the Gospel and thought she understood his duties in the Church, but when he found he could not be a good missionary, do the work sent to he Cherokees to do, and still live with Anna, he had to tell her that the Church came first in his life. Elder Ritchey, who had boarded with them whenever he was in their village, told Anna she would have to change or she would lose her Henry.

In the spring of 1860, when Anna had been particularly sullen and disagreeable when he returned from a long missionary tour, he said, "Anna, I cannot help leaving you. That is the work I must do. Perhaps you had better find another if you do not like ours." Angrily, she rolled up her blankets, her clothes and trinkets and ran to stay in her parents’ home.
    Elder Ritchey and Henry left the village and moved to another part of the mission, Henry being sick in body and mind. One evening, shaking and chilling then burning in fever, Henry turned to Elder Ritchey, also burning and chilling, and said, "How long do you think President Young expects us to stay in the mission field? We have been out here some four and one-half years. I do not want to die out here and I don’t think the Lord requires it either. If I read the scriptures right, we should cling to this life as we can and get as much experience as we can."
    "I-I-I agree, Brother Eyring," Brother Ritchey chattered through crackling teeth.
    Several weeks later, on arising, Henry seemed quite serious. As he washed himself, he spoke to his companion, "Brother Ritchey, last evening I had a dream that was so real it seems as if it actually happened. I seemed to be standing in the office of President Young. I said, ‘Brother Young, I have been in the mission field for many years. I have labored among the Lamanites to the best of my ability, but I have suffered with the shakes, chilling and burning until I was afraid I would follow Brother Cook into the eternal worlds. I have come home without a release, but if I have done wrong I will return immediately.’ Brother Young replied, ‘You have done just right. You were released long ago, but I suppose because of the poor mail service you failed to receive it.’ Now, Brother Ritchey, do you think that dream was an answer to our fasting and prayer? Is that the Lord’s answer?"
    "I do, Brother Eyring, I do. Let us have conference, appoint someone to take over our duties and go to the Rocky Mountains and test the dream’s truth and fallacy."

So it was the two sick men, some few weeks later, fitted up together an outfit and started west.

Top  

   HENRY MEETS MARY

The little wagon which Henry and his elderly companion, Brother Ritchey, were able to obtain from a villager was rather frail and shaky, but with bolstering here and there, they thought it would carry them to the destination if the rawboned horse would be able to pull it over the prairies and through the mountains. Feeling fairly well when they started out, the two men bid farewell to their many Indian friends and the remaining elders and started lightheartedly toward the West and Zion. They made their bed in the bottom of the wagon and took turns resting and driving. The very fact that they were going home and would see their loved ones soon, would attend the meetings of the Saints, would hear the voices of the beloved leaders seemed to put renewed vigor into their wasted bodies.
    We who have traveled in quick-moving cars know that crossing Kansas and Nebraska, even now, is a dry uninteresting journey. Imagine in the heat of a hot July sun with no cover and jolting in a shaky, springless wagon how long that road must have stretched as day after day they urged the old horse to trot a little faster. Often the fever would attack one or the other, and for some merciful hours one might lose consciousness and at the same time lose some of the discomfort and heat.
    One day in the last days of July, both elders sat talking; Elder Ritchey hugged a blanket around him for he chilled even in the boiling sun, and Henry drove.
    "I wonder how much farther it is to Omaha, Brother Eyring. Maybe we can get some quinine there. I thought when we left the Nation we would be free from this-this-this awful fever and st-st-stop shaking."
    "They told us down the river that is was only twenty-five miles, but it seems like we have gone fifty, though I know we haven’t," said Henry. "But it won’t be long, Brother Ritchey, and the Lord has been good to us. We have found friends all the way, haven’t we, for we have had at least one good meal a day ever since we left."
    At Omaha the weary men rested a few days until Elder Ritchey had time for the quinine to bring down his fever. Here they learned that a company of Swiss emigrants traveling under the leadership of a Captain Murphy had just left for Salt Lake City just two days previous and they might catch up with them and accompany them across the plains. President Young had given strict orders for folks to travel in companies well organized.
    So though still weak and shaky, the two worn, weakened men set out in order to catch up with these Saints. Both of them, being natives of Germany, looked forward to hearing their native tongue spoken. Henry insisted on his companion laying in bed while he drove, but on the second day out he too began to chill and shake. His fever rose, and he was forced to stop for a moment, so he thought, until he could sit up once more. He lay down. He didn’t remember just what he did with the reins, but the next thing he knew, he heard voices speaking German, a Swiss German but German, his own native language.
    He heard them say, "The Father above must have guided them to us. There was no one driving. Both are hot with fever."
    Henry knew that God had guided the old horse to the camp of the Saints and before speaking, he uttered a silent prayer of gratitude. Rising on his elbow, though hardly able to speak because of the clattering of his teeth, he said, "We are elders from the Cherokee Nation and were told at Omaha that we might travel with your company to the Valley."
    Exhausted with the effort of speaking, he dropped back on his rude bed. Soon he felt cool, kind hands bathing his face, brushing his hair and beard. Then buttermilk, the best he had ever tasted, was held to his lips. The sweet face and kind gray eyes of a rosy-cheeked young woman looked down into his eyes as she administered to his needs. Is it any wonder that Henry fell in love with that dear woman then and there? Yes, that is the first time Henry Eyring and Mary Bommeli saw each other out there in Iowa at Loupis Fork on the Missouri River.

We do not wonder that both Henry and Mary, commenting on the experience of crossing the plains, both testified it was one of the most pleasurable of their lives. With good, well-cooked meals, regularly served, plenty of rest, Henry was soon his own healthy self again. He and Mary walked side by side, two young people enjoying each moment of each other’s company. As they walked ahead of the company, the dry sand and grass of the Midwestern desert was changed to the green grass-covered hills of Switzerland as Mary pictured her old home, her loom which had stood before a window through which she could see the tall Alps with their snow-clad peaks.
    "But, Henry, with all its beauty, I wouldn’t change places with the folks I left back there who did not, could not understand, or at least would pretend they didn’t understand, the wondrous truths of the restored Gospel of Christ. To know what I have learned, to feel what I have felt since Elder Miller first knocked on our door that rainy night some four years ago would make the driest desert green. To live where we can hear prophets of God tell us of His mind and will, to have a home presided over by the Holy Priesthood of God with the consequent peace, contentment and happiness that it will give if we live worthy of it and honor it, is worth going through fire if necessary to obtain."
    How Henry laughed when Mary told him how she had bluffed a German policeman into freeing her from a term in jail! When Mary looked especially exalted as she spoke of her joy in belonging to Christ’s Church, her eyes sparkling and some of her rebellious ringlets escaping from her bonnet as she threw her head high, Henry would be moved to sing some lovely German love song, making the pink in Mary’s cheeks still pinker. How she loved to hear him repeat some of Schiller’s poetry or quote from some Greek philosopher, or some chapters from her beloved Book of Alma, and she thought, "Oh, to have been able to study as he has studied, what wouldn’t I give."
    The days were too short when the lofty peaks of the Rocky Mountains rose in the distance and they knew this happy pilgrimage was over and they must bid each other goodbye.
    "But, Mary, it won’t be too long, for as soon as I can find a bit of land and work to build us a home, I will find you and we will be married for time and eternity."

Mary trembled with joy as she visioned a never ending life with this handsome, intelligent person. No matter how much privation this life together had for her, she always reverenced and loved this man of God–for that is what Henry Eyring truly was.

  Back to Henry Eyring Main Page

Top