Maud's Story

Book excerpt: Mauds Story A Modern Cain and Abel Story A life she termed half joy and half sorrow. Born to parents who had childhood memories of the Civil War, Mauds life began in 1892, just two years after the Mormon Church Manifesto had forbidden plural marriage. Educated in the LDS High School in Salt Lake City, she, paradoxically, gained a love for that controversial principle. In Salt Lake Maud read newspaper reports telling that President Joseph F. Smith had paid a $500 fine for a son who was born years after the Manifesto; yet the church continued to deny its practice. She married Dayer LeBaron, helped him get a plural wife, fled to Mexico to avoid his arrest, and continued giving birth to children. Dayers family lived nearly twenty years in Colonia Juarez, ostracized for living plural marriage, in a town that early Mormons had made as a place of refuge for polygamists. With grown sons Maud and Dayer left the Mormon colony to pioneer a remote area on homestead land. There her son Joel began a church and became the beloved leader of a new community. Ervil, a younger brother, enraged at Joel success, no longer supported him and . A modern Cain and Abel story ensued, breaking Mauds heart.