An undated photo of Rebecca Jane Finch, first wife of Joseph Argyle.

Essentials
Born: 29 February 1824; Dudley, Stafford, England
Daughter of: William FINCH and Rebecca WOODALL
Married: Joseph ARGYLE; 24 December 1840 or 1841; Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Died: 22 February 1890; West Bountiful, Davis County, Utah

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One-minute history

BY DARYL JAMES
FROM 'JAMES/HATCH ONE MINUTE HISTORIES' (1994)
     Rebecca Jane Finch (often called Jane) was born February 29, 1824, in a small town outside Birmingham, England, called Dudley. Her parents, William Finch and Rebecca Woodall, operated an inn at Birmingham while Rebecca was a teenager.
     On Halloween night 1840, young Rebecca returned to the inn late after being out with friends. She and her friends shared a superstition that a woman who walked backward to her bed on Halloween night would marry the next man she saw. Rebecca returned to her room that night determined to test this notion. To her surprise, when she backed up to her bed and sat down in the dark, she sat directly on a sleeping stranger. The stranger was Joseph Argyle, a tinsmith's apprentice from Market Bosworth, England. Joseph had stopped at the inn earlier in the evening and taken Rebecca's room by mistake. True to the promise of Rebecca ritual, she and Joseph were married, less than two months later on Christmas Eve 1840. Rebecca was 16 and Joseph was 22.
     They settled in Birmingham and had four children over the next nine years. However, their lives changed forever when the fourth child, William, died in 1851 at two years old. Rebecca and Joseph turned to their church for comfort but were told by their clergyman that William had gone to hell because he had died unbaptized. Unsatisfied with this doctrine, Joseph began studying doctrines of other faiths and invited Latter-day Saint missionaries to his home about two months later. He and Rebecca were baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints almost immidiately, and their children were baptized later as they reached the age of accountability. By 1851 the Argyle family had decided to immigrate to Utah to be with the Saints.
     Accordingly, Rebecca, Joseph and their six surviving children traveled to Liverpool in March 1856 and boarded a ship called Enoch Train headed for Boston. The children were Joseph Jr., 14; Benjamin, 12; Mary Ann, 10; Francis, 5; Lorenzo, 3; and Priscilla, 17 months. Rebecca was in the early stages of her eighth pregnancy at this time. Enoch Train carried 534 passengers and many were converts to the LDS Church. Wards were organized on board and life carried on as normal. Four women gave birth before the ship docked in Boston 39 days later on May 1, 1856. The Argyles traveled to the western frontier of the United States and joined the first handcart company to cross the Great Plains. The company was called the Ellsworth Company, named after a man whose family had crossed the Atlantic aboard Enoch Train with the Argyles.
     Walking day after day pregnant with Hyrum and carrying Priscilla in her arms became too tiring for Rebecca, and she finally fell behind the rest of the company and found a secluded spot in which to die. However, when Rebecca sat down she heard wolves howling in the distance. The thought of wolves eating Priscilla's body was too much for Rebecca, and she got up and made another effort to catch up with the company. By this time Joseph had noticed his wife missing and had turned back to find her. When he saw Rebecca in the distance, he fired shots over her head to frighten away the aggressive wolves.
     The Argyles arrived in Salt Lake City in the winter of 1856 and Rebecca bore Hyrum a short time later. The family settled in West Bountiful, Utah, where Rebecca died on Feb. 22, 1890, at age 65.

-- Sources: 1. The Journal of John Henry Standifird. (On record at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.); 2. 1992 interview with Merle Kartchner Shumway, a great-granddaughter of Mary Ann Argyle who helped publish John Henry Standifird's journal (interview too place in Provo, Utah); 3. Handcarts to Zion, pp. 63 (at Harold B. Lee Library, BYU, Provo, Utah).

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