Mitt Romney's Mormon roots in northern England
By Cordelia Hebblethwaite BBC News, Preston
It's well-known that Republican contender for the US presidency Mitt Romney is a Mormon - but not that his family was converted in England. He doesn't mention it on the campaign trail, but his great-great-grandfather, a Preston carpenter, became one of the first British Mormons, 175 years ago.
"This is the spot - this is where it all started," says historian Aidan Turner-Bishop pointing down to a small, unmarked and unprepossessing, shingle beach.
The sun is just starting to set over the banks of the River Ribble in Preston. The birds are singing gently. It is an idyllic scene.
"On a hot summer's day, this is where the kids come to play," says Turner-Bishop.
This is the site where the very first Mormon baptisms outside North America took place.
And it is almost certainly the spot where the Romney family were baptised into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the late 1830s, at the start of a wave of 19th Century Mormon conversions in England.
"In order to compete to be the first people to be baptised, some of the men began to run, to race each other, down to the little beach… People were just carried away by the sheer excitement of it," says Turner-Bishop.
There would be crowds on top of the bridge and crowds around here. It was a big event. And they'd stand and watch these exciting, unusual American evangelists baptise people in full immersion in the waters of the river."
The church, founded in the US in 1830 by Joseph Smith, faced intense persecution in its early years, so it was a bold move, when - just seven years later - it sent missionaries across the Atlantic Ocean.
Mormon beliefs
- God, Jesus and Holy Spirit are separate entities
- Founder Joseph Smith was a prophet
- Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, along with the Bible
- The dead can be baptised, as well as the living
The first country they came to was England, and the first place they preached was Preston, in the summer of 1837.
According to a family history, one "fine day" as Mitt Romney's great-great-grandparents, Miles and Elizabeth Romney, were on their way to the market, they saw a crowd gathered around a Mormon preacher, and stopped to listen.
"They beheld a group of people assembled on a street corner," wrote Thomas C Romney, their grandson, in 1948.
"Their curiosity led them thither and they discovered that it was a religious gathering and that the preacher was a Mormon Elder from America... They were much impressed with the message delivered."
It was this chance encounter that set off a chain of events that has culminated in Mitt Romney's challenge to Barack Obama in November's US presidential election.
- Miles Romney- married Elizabeth Gaskell
b. England, 13 July 1806
d. Utah, US, 3 May 1877 - Miles Park Romney married Hannah Hill Hood
b. Illinois, US, 18 August 1843
d. Chihuahua, Mexico, 26 February 1904 - Gaskell Romney married Anna Amelia Pratt
- b. Utah, US, 22 September 1871
d. Utah, US, 7 March 1955 - George Wilcken Romney married Lenora Lafount
b. Chihuahua, Mexico, 8 July 1907
d. Michigan, US, 26 July 1995 - Willard Mitt Romney married Ann Lois Davies
b. Michigan, US, 12 March 1947
Have not looked at your posts in a long while but have went back and caught up Michele. While camping Joe and I watched a DVD "Mafia to Mormon". I got it at a yard sale and thought it was a movie but it is like a fireside about a man that was in the mafia and ended up joining the church.Have you seen it. It tells a wonderful story about George Romney and what an upstanding man he was. No wonder his son is such an awesome man.Was so sad when he lost.
ReplyDelete