Fortitude: A Birth Story from an Early Mormon Midwife

Fortitude 

\ˈfȯr-tə-ˌtüd, -ˌtyüd\– strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage.

Upon learning of Patty Bartlett Sessions, I had to own the book containing her diaries.  She was an avid journal writer.  She worked and served among many of the well known members of church history.  She was highly regarded as a skilled midwife.  In the early days of the church to be a midwife was a calling that one was set apart to do.  I also learned that she gave birth to a baby girl shortly after reaching Far West.  This baby girl died at eighteen months old when the Mormons were ordered out of Missouri.  Patty carried her while she herself was so very sick with ague.  Fortitude comes to mind when I think of her.  She is one of those people I look forward to meeting after this life.  This is an excerpt from the Introduction of Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions,:

On the 26 September 1847, two days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Patty rejoiced that she put Lorenzo Young’s wife Harriet to bed with a son, “the first male born in this valley it was said to me more than 5 months ago that my hands should be the first to handle the first born son in the place of rest for the saints even in the city of our God I have come more than one thousand miles to do it since it was spoken.”  The prophesy had been pronounced in a meeting with her “sisters” in Winter Quarters before the 1847 trek to the Great Basin. 

One of the things I take away from reading her journals is how consistent she is.  Her entries were usually very brief but she always wrote something.  And years later each word is savored as preserving church history.  It is a great reminder to myself of how important it is to keep a journal.  Just these few words cause me to rejoice in the power of the birth she recorded here.  The birth of a child in that barren valley was a great reminder of God, the Giver of Life, and that He would not forget them.

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