Item Detail
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Durrant, Ada Augusta Dawson Rendell
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1842-1879
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MSS SC 865
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Biography
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Ada Augusta Dawson Rendell Durrant was born March 29, 1842 in St. John's, Newfoundland to Elias Rendell and Elizabeth Mary Howe Rendell. Ada's mother died giving birth to her second child when Ada was very young. The baby lived only a month, and Elias was left desolate by their passing. He sent Ada to live with her grandmother in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When Ada was six years old, her father called her back to live with him. He remarried four years later to a Mrs. Steer who had a seventeen-year-old daughter, Mabel. Ada never got along well with her stepmother, and resented the intrusion on her relationship with her father. Ada spent her time as a young woman working in a store run by her good friend, Henry Hawkins. After her father died in 1862, Henry proposed to Ada, but she refused his offer. Instead, she went to live with her cousin Mary's family in New York City where she enrolled in Rutgers Female Institute. Then, she went to work for the Cadwell family as a governess for three and a half years. When they no longer needed her services, she moved to Brooklyn to board with friends and eventually found a teaching job in a public school. She taught there until she was almost thirty, and was sometimes lonely without relatives there or a family of her own. One of Ada's students, Letitia, came from a wealthy family. Her father needed to go to San Francisco for a year on business, and he asked Ada to come along as Letitia's governess. When they traveled through Salt Lake City and stopped in Fairfield, Utah, Ada learned a little about the Mormons and about their religion; she was attracted especially to their belief in eternal families because of her parents' and sister's deaths. She decided to stay in Fairfield to learn more about their faith. Sally Saye, a kind widow, took Ada in. Ada became the town school teacher, and was baptized into the Mormon Church on July 17, 1873. A few months after her baptism, William W. D. Durrant asked Ada if she would join with him in a plural marriage. He was a farmer from Vernon, in Rush Valley, who occasionally boarded at Sally's house. Ada agreed, they were married in Fairfield, and later sealed in the Endowment House in May 1875. Ada continued to live with Sally and teach school until her first child, Walter Henry Fitzgerald, was born. William bought Ada a house in Vernon, and they brought Sally along. William married Sally for time only as part of the move. William also had two other wives, Lavinia and her daughter Charlotte, who lived in Vernon. His marriage to Lavinia was only a business arrangement to allow her to buy property; with Charlotte he had several children. However, Charlotte and Lavinia both divorced him shortly after this move. In Vernon, Ada was active in church service. She also gave birth to two more boys: William Rendell and Adam Augustus. Ada died of complications shortly after giving birth to Adam on June 8, 1879, and Adam died three months later. Sally stayed in Vernon to raise Walter and William.
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This biography, entitled 'The Legacy of the Trunk,' is a fictionalized account of Ada's life written by Verna Durrant Humphries. Ada collected important personal belongings such as photographs, letters, poetry, and mementos belonging to her parents in a hair trunk. In her dying moments, Ada asked Sally to pass this trunk on to her sons. Humphries used the information in this trunk to construct a novel-like account of Ada's life. The manuscript is bound and typewritten; it is 227 pages long and is divided into 21 chapters and an epilogue. On the title page, there is a picture of the author holding the hair trunk. The narrative begins with the meeting of Ada's parents and their marriage. Then it recounts Ada's childhood in Halifax and Newfoundland, her move to New York and her teaching job there, her conversion to the LDS church, and her marriage and family life. Humphries uses a great deal of fictional dialogue to tell the story, but she also uses excerpts from items in the trunk. For example, Ada corresponded with her relatives after her conversion to the church, but they were very opposed to Mormonism. Humphries uses their letters back to Ada in the story. She also uses some direct quotes by Ada on her testimony of the gospel which she gave in church meetings. Throughout the manuscript these items are included: a map of St. John's, a picture of Ada at about age four and a picture of her as an adult, a sketch of her father, a picture of her husband William as an adult, and a picture of her sons William and Walter as adults.