In the Spring of 2002, I was sitting in the Draper Temple looking at the endowment card for the lady whose work I was doing. She was listed without her parents, so no Sealing to Parents could be done. I wondered about that because I knew from my Family History training that she was from a place and in a time when good census records existed which would show her with her parents. They could be known!

With that thought, another came right into my head that this lady was African American, and first generation out of slavery, so she never knew her parents. Then I got a strong impression that I needed to do Mrs. Linnie Wells’ temple work. She was the black lady that my mother had hired to tend the house and us children while she helped father with his business, after he was diagnosed with a bone disease.

I was about 5 years of age and had never seen a black person before, so mom told me in advance of meeting her what to expect. When she arrived at our home, I was very shy and hid behind mom’s back and peeked around at her. She was dressed all in a crisp white uniform. She had rather dark skin, which was set off by the uniform. Her hair was very neatly done up in a bun at the back of her head.

Mrs. Wells leaned over close to me, realizing my shyness, and asked if I had any questions. I nodded my head and asked, “Is your tongue black too?” She picked up the corners of her apron and pulled it up over her face, throwing her head back, laughing a hearty laugh till tears came. Mom and I laughed too, me just a little nervously. Then Mrs. Wells leaned back down to me and stuck her tongue way out. It was bright pink, just the same as mine. So I knew that even though we looked different on the outside, on the inside we were just the same. She became a favorite of mine right there!

So, after the temple prompting, I set about to find Mrs. Wells’ vital information so I could do her work, since she and her husband, Jesse James Wells, had no children of their own. I considered myself, along with my brother and sister, her only children, and she treated us with such kindness through the years, we felt that she was our second mother. She stayed in our home working until I was about 18. And as we children left the home, so did Mrs. Wells, and we lost track of her. 

So, then I went to the Utah State Vital Records department, where I had gotten my children’s birth certificates for their scrapbooks. I went up to the lady at the counter and asked for the death certificate of Linnie Wells or Mrs. Jesse James Wells. Mom died the 10th of July 1984, and Mrs. Wells had died several months earlier. That much I had learned so it narrowed down which Mrs. Wells to look for. The lady left for about 5 minutes and then came back with the certificate, but she was looking at it with a frown. She looked up at me and said, “You are not related to her, are you?” She could tell that because I wasn’t black. I said no, and she said I can’t give it to you then. And she turned away from the counter.

I sat down on a chair in the waiting area in sadness. Suddenly a lady sitting across from me, whom I had not noticed earlier, said with some urgency, “Ask her if the name of the funeral home is listed on the certificate.” I jumped back up and called the lady back, asking her about the funeral home. She replied yes, it is Colonial Mortuary. I thanked her and went around the corner, put a quarter into the pay phone, and after looking up the number, called the mortuary.

I asked the lady who answered if she had any information on Linnie Wells, for whom the mortuary had handled the funeral and burial arrangements in 1984. She said just a moment, and I held on. When I looked back around the corner to thank the lady in the waiting room, she was gone. Hmmm. That seemed odd, and like a special spiritual event.

The mortuary lady on the phone came back and started telling me all that was written on her card. She gave me Linnie’s full name, which was Linnie Mae Horn, born the 18th of January in Oklahoma, to John Horne and Eleanor, and she died on the 8th of February 1984, and was buried in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery, just south of the University of Utah. Her husband was Jesse James Wells. Wow! That was all I needed to get her temple work done, which I did right away in November 2002. I felt I needed to do this since I knew she had no one else who could.

On the 22nd of November 2002, I went to the Jordan River Temple to do Mrs. Wells’ work. I was very excited and very emotional. I went into the baptistry waiting area, dressed in white, and while I was waiting there, a temple worker asked me about the lady I was getting baptized for. I told her briefly my relationship to her and started to cry. So did the temple worker.

When I went into the baptistry proper, I sat on a bench waiting for Mrs. Wells’ name to come up on the computer display. As I saw Mrs. Well’s name come up, I started to rise to my feet, when I sensed a large, white double door open up right behind my head, and in my mind’s eye I could see a group of about a dozen black people, dressed in white, coming into the room, singing and praising the Lord. It was indeed a celebration, and I almost could sense confetti being tossed in anticipation. I knew Mrs. Wells accepted the work, and so had her family. From there on, to the confirmation, initiatory and endowment, it was a beautifully sweet experience, and filled me with great peace and joy.

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But that’s not the end of the story because every time I went to the temple from then on, every time anyone said anything in the temple about a spouse, I felt a definite nudge in my side, and knew that Mrs. Wells wanted to be sealed to her husband. So my search began for him.

I went back to the Mt. Olivet Cemetery, and after visiting with the sexton, and looking through their card files, I found Mrs. Wells’ gravesite. It was almost all covered over with grass and I had to clean it off and cut back the grass. It was a simple stone with very little information on it, and in a section of the cemetery for poor people. I was hoping to find her husband‘s grave there too, but it wasn’t there. That seemed odd to me, but I did remember that he had died sometime earlier than she did in 1970. I remembered going to his funeral at the Calvary Baptist Church. Mrs. Wells had been alone for 14 years, and had no children to bury her. So whoever buried her, probably did not even know where her husband was buried.

So what next? I went to the Salt Lake City cemetery to see if I could find Jesse James Wells there. The sexton found his plot and gave me some information about when he was born and died, but I was not sure it was him. Could there be two Jesse James Wells? I wasn’t sure. So, I waited and did nothing.

Several months later I got a most unusual Church calling from a Stake President at the University of Utah working with the students at the LDS Institute of Religion. After he had called and got approval from my bishop and Stake President, this gentleman called me to be an Advisor to the Lambda Delta Sigma, Chi Chapter sorority of returned missionary women at the Institute. It was a three year calling, and it was tons of fun and growth. But the most amazing thing happened the very first night I went to meet with the girls.

It was about 2 weeks before Christmas. The outgoing advisor was there, and she said the girls had been fellowshipping two ladies and their friends, and that for the night’s activity, the girls were going to split up into two groups. She would go with half the girls, and I was to go with the other half. She said the girls knew where to go, and what to do. So my group piled into my station wagon and off we went. We drove to the suburb, Rose Park, where the lady to be visited lived. We knocked on the door and a black lady answered the door. She led us in and two of her black friends were there to meet us too.

We sang some Christmas songs, and talked a little. The girls read the Nativity story from Luke, then gave them Pass-along cards. This took about an hour, and we got ready to leave. Just as we were about to stand up, I got an impression to ask them if they had known Linnie and Jesse Wells. They got very animated and said, oh yes, they were delightful people. They were all in the Calvary Baptist Church together and were good friends. I got excited and inspired and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know what Jesse’s birthday was, do you?” And one of the ladies said, “Oh yes, it is the same day as my husband’s – the 12th of December. The same as her husband’s!!! What is the likelihood of that!

That was all the information I needed to know to confirm that the data I got from the headstone in the Salt Lake City cemetery was the same for our Jesse James Wells. Now I could get his temple work done too, and get them sealed to each other. Now that was truly some kind of amazing coincidence!

Yes, I had fun for the next 3 years in that calling, but I KNOW that the reason I got that call was so I could meet these ladies to get Mr. Wells’ correct birth date!  So in August of 2003, my husband and I went to the temple, and got all Jesse’s work done, and he and I kneeled across the altar and got sealed for Linnie Mae Horne and Jesse James Wells. What a blessing this whole experience has been for me and for them. And I believe it was truly more than just serendipity.

-Catherine Pearce Anderegg, Patron, Granite Family History Center