Lucy Jane Stevens

1848 – 1923

Life Sketch

Lucy Jane Stevens, daughter of Samuel Stevens and Rhoda Brixey, was born in Portsmouth, England, on January 1, 1848. Her father was a shipwright and her four brothers followed the same trade. Fortune had favored them considerably by way of worldly goods.

The Stevens family belonged to the Methodist Church. While Lucy Jane was still a girl, her mother came in contact with Mormon Elders. Lucy’s mother listened to the message and was very much impressed. Lucy’s father, however, gave the Elders orders not to visit his home any more. A few years later, when Lucy Jane was just fourteen, her mother died, but prior to her death, she had impressed upon Lucy Jane the importance of the Elders’ message. One night after her mother’s death, she had a very strange dream. Her mother came to her, sat at the foot of the bed, and urged Lucy Jane to accept the Gospel and be baptized and do the work for her dead ancestors. She was now in a confusing predicament—a father who bitterly opposed any such action, and the desire to carry out the wish of her dead mother.

Her father remarried, and thereafter Lucy lived with an aunt. From the allowance her father gave her, plus the money her aunt gave her, she saved enough for a voyage to America. At the age of seventeen, in company with
three other girls, she ran away from home, joined a company of LDS converts, and traveled to America. At Council Bluffs they were able to buy their own outfit to cross the plains. Their company was one of the last ones to come before the coming of the railroad.

Lucy Jane lived for a year in Salt Lake City at the home of Archie Hill, a former missionary to England. During this time she went to school. Leonard Rice, in charge of the relief wagons sent to meet Lucy’s company, had apparently been impressed with Lucy, and she with him, since they were married a year after her arrival in Utah. Lucy Jane Stevens became the third wife of Leonard Rice and moved to Farmington, Utah, opposite the Old Courthouse.

Leonard and Lucy Jane became the parents of three girls and four boys. At the age of thirty-seven, Lucy was left a widow due to the untimely death of her husband. Her youngest child was only two weeks old. During the years her father had urged her time and again to return to England, offering her money as an inducement, but to no avail. She had adjusted herself to pioneer life and had learned the arts needed to finish raising her family by herself, which she did. She worked and struggled, running a farm with the help of the older children, until one by one, the children all married and left home.

In 1911, her burdens eased and for the first time since arriving in Utah, she left her home state and went to California, where she lived with her daughter, Rhoda, for five years.

She returned to Utah and died March 20, 1923, after suffering four years from a broken leg. Lucy Jane Stevens Rice was survived by all her own children, thirty-six grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren.

Source

“Rice Pioneers: Family Groups and Stories,” compiled by David Eldon Rice. Pocatello, Idaho. 1976. No copyright information listed.