Leslie William Peirce, Jr

Grandpa was born not breathing and with no heartbeat but the midwife refused to let the baby die. She performed mouth to mouth and hit him on the back in hopes to bring him back to life, but with no results. Quickly, she prepared two tubs of water, one hot and one cold. SHe dunked him in one and then in the other. The shock to his body started his heart and started his breathing.

Kathleen Marjorie Critchley

Grandma was born without a heartbeat and was labeled a "blue baby". Her mother refused for this to be the case so she beat on her back unil she started to breat and her heart started to beat again. Grandma had a lot of health problems throughout her life and she attributes them to her rough start.

Interview with Grandma July 24, 2004
My mother wasn't healthy, she was sick all the time. I can see her close now. My mother was slender and my dad was short. That's why I am short. I don't remember if my mother was tall. She was about the same size as he was I guess. She was sick and I remember being in the hospital with them. They came out and told me she had died. It was a neighbor that live on the next street, on Common Wealth Avenue, somebody from mutual. She heard about it and she came over and got me and sat me down and talked to me. I don't know what she talked about but she tried to make me feel better. I think she was telling me that my mother had gone to heaven. She told me the good things, and it made me feel a lot better. But I knew that she was gone and it was awful (sobbing).

Pett Family

Jennette Wilson Pett & Henry Herbert Pett

At the Brigham City Cemetery

Jennie Pett Peirce

Love this photo of Jennie Pett Peirce! 

??? & Jeanette Wilson Pett

Jennie Pett Peirce

Eli Thomas Peirce and Annie Margrett Olsen

Eli Thomas Peirce was the son of William and Jerusha Smith Peirce.

Barden Family

"Tracing the Barden geneology is difficult because the Barden family moved often, bought no land, left no wills, and forgot to erect headstones. They also managed to avoid the census taker. Another reason they are so hard to trace is the name itself; when the name Barden is spoken it may be misundersood by a clerk of census taker.
Another fact that confused early historians and genealogists was that the first Bardens, and Bordens in Massachusetts, both lived in the southern part of the state adn had the same given nams, like John, William, and Joseph." -Leon R. Brown and Mary R. Porter.

Jerusha descends from honest, humble ancestry. William Barden, who was born about the year 1624, came to American from England in 1638 as the covenant servant of Thomas Boardman. The Barden family settled in the part of Middleboro Mass today called Barden Hills. William Barden reputedly became quite wealthy in that he became an "owner in nearly all of the purchases from the Indians in town. William Barden died in Middleborob early in 1692/3.

Jerusha Smith Peirce

Jerusha Smith Peirce
January 13, 1836 - June 27, 1912 Daughter of Hyrum Smith and Jerusha Barden Smith

From the eyes of her Granddaughter, Helen Jerusha Peirce:

I was standing at the foot of grandma's bed the day she died. Everyone said Uncle John had come to get her because they had heard her talking to him earlier in the afternoon. I also believe Uncle John came to get her.

Grandma and Uncle John, who was her brother and Patriarch to the Church, loved each other very much. During their entire lives they never said a harsh work to each other. As a matter of fact grandma never had an unkind work for anyone and anytime. It was such a virtue with her that President Joseph F. Smith remarked about that when he spoke at her funeral.

Grandma's mother, Jerusah Barden Smith, died in Kirtland before grandma was quite two years of age. Her father, Hyrum Smith, remarried a lovely woman named Mary Fielding. Grandma would tell you, "Mary was a kind, loving, gentle mother to us all." Even so, her tender young life was filled with mobs, persecutions, moving from place to place, culminating finally in the long arduous journey West. The consequence of this trauma was for grandma to spend the entire rest of her life plagued with terrible dreams.

One night I awakened her from one of these dreams hoping to calm her. When she was awake she told me the story of the martyrdom. They had brought the bodies of her father and her Uncle Joseph back from Carthage. Grandma said, "The family was so worried because we knew the mob was coming to get the head of the Prophet and burn Nauvoo. So she told me the family had lookouts who were to beat on drums if they saw the mob coming, the mob is coming." Everything seemed to be in chaos with dogs barking, wild-eyed cattle looking in every direction, and thunder and lightning filling the air. The family was afraid, not knowing what to do when, as grandma said, "We saw a cloud forming over our heads. It was just a small one but it started to grow and grow until it was over the heads of the mob down poured a torrent of rain soaking them to the bone and destroying their ammunition. Despite their best efforts they were forced to turn back."

Grandma bore her testimony to me of that experience. She told me that she had, "seen the power of the hand of the Lord in that cloud that day, doing for us what we could no do for ourselves." She told me that of all the experiences she had ever had this was the most powerful, and humbling and one that would be with her forever.

Grandma was a quiet person. She spoke only when she had something to value to say. You can be sure when she said something we listened.

I'll always remember her in the big black gathered skirts she liked so well, with the white pocketed apron and black slippers that had the elastic in the sides. Oh what a privilege it was just for me to have known such a noble woman as grandmother Jerusha.

After crossing the plains Jerusha lived with mary Fielding until Mary's death. Jerusha was 16 years of age at the time. Her beloved brother John assumed guardianship of the family. At age 18 she married William Peirce. She and William moved four miles north of Brigham City to a place we now call Harper. William and Jerusha had 9 children, 5 of whom survived her at her death. Her husband William had passed away four years earlier.

Jerusha Barden Smith

I am a direct descendant of Hyrum and Jerusha Smith. My line comes through their daughter who is also named Jerusha.  I have included here a few tidbits of information about Jerusha.

"Jerusha lived with her parents near Palmyra, born 15 Feb 1805, the youngest of a family of five children. As a pretty girl of 21 she married Hyrum Smith in Manchester, Manchester NY, 2 Nov 1826. She was baptized by David Whitmer in Seneca Lake on 9 June following the first confernece of June 1930. They had 6 children: Lovina, Mary, John, Hyrum, Jerusha, and Sarah in the years 1827,1829, 1832, Hyrum 1834, Jerusha 1836, and Sarah 1837. In the year 1837, when the hardships of the Saints were at their worst, when her husband was called away on Church business, Jerusha and her child Mary dies. Hyrum was left with 5 children, the oldest Lovina, 11, and the youngest Sarah, only 11 days old. Later, Hyrum married mary Fielding, another noble women in Church history. Mary Fielding raised Jerusha's children as if they were her own along with her own children Joseph F. Smith & Martha Ann Smith." Earl H. Peirce 1997

Jerusha Barden Smith in Palmyra (by Jerry C. Roundy)
"The woman who was destined to become the helpmate of the Mormon Patriarch and mother of the Patriarchs was born at Norfolk, Litchfield County, Conneticut, February 15, 1805. As a child, she moved with her parents to Green, Chenago County, New York. Other than knowing of this move with her parents, her life history is not known until 1826 when she became the bride of Hyrum Smith.
The name Jerusha seems to be a popular name in the Barden Family as there are no less that eight Jerusha's in the family history.
Jerusha, along with three sisters, probably Lovina, Lucinda, and Sarah, and a brother, Seth, arrived in the vicinity of Palmyra, New York some time between 1823 and 1826, but it is not know under what circumstances they arrived or the reason for their arrival, Seth was apparently married by this time and it is possible that he had taken under his wing the care of his three sisters.
Whatever the year of arrival in the Palmyra area, the Barden's must suerely have been greeted with juicy tales of the Smith family, one member claiming to have talked to the Almighty. One could hardly have casually passed through Palmyra between the years 1823 and 1826 without hearing stories of "Joe" Smith's heavenly visitation.
Jerusha seems to be a young lady with a strong mind of her own, much more disposed to prove the truth than to believe a lie, for there is no record that she ever let any of the gossip turn her head in her relations with the Smith family. Although it was Joseph who was the center of ridicule and persecution, the evidence is that the entire Smith family suffered and were put upon by the towns people as being "touch in the head".
Prior to the marriage, Hyrum had been busy securing a place for the new bride and groom to live and had found a place close to his parents home. After the marriage he and Jerusha moved into their home and began a life together that was to bring them much happiness because of each other's company, but much sorrow because of religious persecution and loss of loved children.
Shortly after Hyrum and Jerusha were married, Joseph also took a bride, Emma Hale, of Harmony Pennsylvania, and he was now making plans to retun to Palmyra to obtain from the Hill Cumorah the Golden Plates, according to his instructions from the angel Moroni.


Sometime during the spring of 1827, Joseph had apparently begun thinking of plans to keep the plates safe from theft after they were delivered into his hands. Accordingly he asked his brother, Hyrum to construct a wooden chest that might be used as a repository for the Golden Plates.
On one of the visites to Jerusha by her sisters, the box, newly completed, had been left inthe front room. Her sisters seeing the box inquired as to what it was for. Jerusha, having been told by Hyrum the purpose of teh box, didi not want tit recognizable at a later date, adn quickly grabbed some baby clothes saying, "Oh, Hyrum made that to hold the babies clothes." She quickly took it in the bedroom. It was not long before the chest played its role in the story of the Restoration. (This is a hand me down story related by Mary E. Prorter in 1969)
On Sept 16, 1827, Jerusha presented her husband with a baby girl whom they christened Lovina. Five days later while Jerusha was still in bed recovering from the birth of the baby, Joseph Smith made a secret night time trip to the Hill Cumorah where he was met by the Angel Moroni who delivered into his hands the sacred Nephite record. Somewhere between the Hill Cumorah and the Smith home Joseph secreted the plates in a hollow birch log. Several days later, Joseph went to retrieve the plates from the hollow log and was attacked three times by individuals lying in wait to wrest the plates from him. Reaching home breathless from his narrow escape he requested his mother to send Don Carlos to Hyrum's to tell him to bring the chest. The story at this point is best told in Mother Smith's own words.
"I did as I was requested, and when Carlos arrived at Hyrum's, he found him at tea with two of his wife's sisters. Just as Hyrum was raising a cup to his mouth, Carlos touch his shoulders. Without waiting to hear one work from the child, he dropped the cup, sprang from the table, caught the chest, turned it upside down, and empting its contents in the floor, left the house instantly with the chest on his shoulder.
"The young ladies were greatly astonished at his singular behavior and declared to his wife, who was then confided to her bed, her eldest daugher Lovina, being but four days old, that he was certainly crazy. His wife laughed heartily and replied, :Oh, not in the least; he has just thought of something which he has neglected; and it is just like him to fly off on a tangent when he thinks of anything in that way."

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It might be said of Jerusha Barden Smith that she truly gave her all in following her husband and accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ., Perhaps, the greated tribut that could be paid to her is that she never once looked back and in her dying breath professed a burning testimony in the Atonement of Christ.
She had stood faithfully by her husbands side, through happy times and sad times, for eleven years, and I think it is safe to day, had she live she would have continued to sustain her husband until his death, and then still have remained faithful.
She may well be proud of her posterity, for from her descendants can be found, Bishop's, stake President's, High Counsilor's, and of course Patriarch's.