by her daughter Iletta Reynolds
Our Mother, Martha Jane, was the second child of James and Elizabeth Smith. She was born October 9th, 1880 and was named after her father's twin sisters, Nancy Jane and Martha Ann. Although she was born in Paria, her early child hood was spent in Arizona and Utah. When she was thirteen years old she and her mother were subpoenaed to court to testify that her father was a polygamist. He was convicted and went to the state penitentiary. Being one of the last in the state to do so. She never forgot that trauma in her life, because she felt she had done her father an injustice. She lived with that heartache all the days of her life.
Once when camping out with her family on a trip from Arizona to Utah, her three little sisters went out picking flowers and wandered so far from camp they became lost. He oldest sister and her were getting supper while their mother was in the wagon tending to a crying baby. When it became dusk her mother asked where the little girls were and when they couldn't be found, Martha Jane and brother Allen took a lantern and frantically started searching for them. Being a very spiritual person she prayed every minute to God to guide her to them. It was late and very dark when she found them under a big Joshua tree. They were all crying for joy when their father rode up on a horse. He had been crawling on his hands and knees striking matches to follow their tracks. That very night as she and her sister Sabina were sleeping on a grassy spot Martha was bitten by a poisonous Tarantula. She was so very ill they were afraid she wasn't going to live, but after a long siege she recovered knowing that it was because of the care and faith of her mother and father.
When she was eighteen she married Joseph Edwin Littlefield in the Manti Temple. They were the parents of five little girls, Dora, Maude, Nellie, Vera and Eva. Her husband died with Brights Disease at the age of twenty nine. She had no means of support but worked for anyone at anything to support those five little girls. She was a widow for nine years when she met, fell in love with, and married James Reynolds from Tropic who was a widower with tree children. Sterling, Leah, and Thella. They put their eight children together and moved onto a big ranch near Tropic Reservoir. They had four more children together, Lane, Iletta, Gale, and Elizabeth. They moved to Escalante for a few years then bought a farm in Orem, Utah. She buried her second husband James after twenty years of marriage. She lived five years more and died at age sixty-four. She is buried in Henrieville at the side of her first love.
Our mother was a hard working, out-going, kind person who had many friends. She had healing power in her hands and could actually rub pain away. She was a very religious person, she knew and understood the Scriptures, and loved her Heavenly Father with all her heart.