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Descendants of Martha Maria Hughes

First Generation


1. Martha Maria "Mattie" Hughes 1, 2 was born on 1 Jul 1857 in Llandudno, Caernarvon, n. Wales. She died on 10 Jul 1932 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Ca, USA. She was buried on 14 Jul 1932 in Salt Lake City Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA.

Martha Hughes Cannon
Martha Hughes Cannon is widely known for many achievements among women of the West. Among
these distinctions she was the first woman to be elected state senator in the United States. After the Democrats had nominated her in 1896 for her first term of office, her husband was nominated for the same office by the Republican Party. But it was the wife who was victorious in the ensuing election. Two years later she was re-elected for a second term.  This young woman of unusual abilities and driving ambition was born July 1, 1857, at Llandudno, Wales, the second child of Peter Hughes, a
Welshman, and his English wife, Elizabeth Evans. The family embraced the Gospel and later sailed for the United States. In the trek across the plains, Annie, the third baby, died; and three days after they reached Salt Lake Valley, the father also succumbed. His widow later married James P. Paul.  Fired by the desire to relieve the sickness she saw about her, Martha, or "Mattie' as she was called, set out to become a doctor. To accomplish this end, she worked at typesetting for five years and sold her organ, one of the first to be brought across the plains. In 1878 she presented her diploma from the University of Deseret to the University of Michigan, applying for admission to its Medical College. There she washed dishes and made beds in the dormitory to help pay her way. Two years later she graduated as an M.D., then practiced medicine to gain the needed funds to enter the University of Pennsylvania, where she took a Bachelor of Science degree, the only woman in a class of seventy-five men. To help her in the public speaking she planned to do to educate the public the need for better health standards, she also took a Bachelor of Oratory degree.
On her return to Utah in 1882 Dr. Hughes became resident physician of the Deseret Hospital. There she served for three years. On October 6, 1884, she became the fourth wife of Angus M. Cannon, president of the board of the hospital. The following year, to avoid religious persecution, she took her infant daughter to Europe. While there, she helped in the Church mission under Daniel H. Wells. She also visited hospitals in Britain, France, and Switzerland, obtaining textbooks that she later used in the first nursing school established in the intermountain country, which she founded .  Skilled, well groomed, and popular, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon conducted a large practice, first from an office on State and South Temple streets, and later from her home on South Temple and First West streets in Salt Lake City. To make her calls on her many patients, she drove a carriage drawn by fast horses from her husband's well-stocked stable. Once a horse she was driving ran away, tipping over her buggy and causing her to have a miscarriage.  With the birth of her son, James Hughes Cannon, May 19, 1890, she took her children and again went into exile, this time going to San Francisco for more than two
years. On her return to Salt Lake City, she specialized in women's ailments and nervous diseases.
During the two terms she served in the State Senate, she introduced bills to prohibit the sale of liquor to minors and to require merchants to provide seats for their saleswomen. She sponsored a pure food law and an appropriation for a hospital for the deaf, dumb, and blind. She also successfully sponsored a state medical bill that put the sanitation of the entire state on a working basis and created the State Board of Health. Dr. Cannon later served with distinction on the State Health Board and on the board of the Utah School for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, which she had helped to create.
Accompanying William Jennings Bryan, she spoke throughout the West in the interest of his free silver program. She also delivered an address at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago on the subject of woman's suffrage. Later she appeared before a congressional committee in Washington to defend this cause.
In 1920 she became vice-president of the American Congress of Tuberculosis and was appointed to the overseas Medical Service by the Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, two days before the armistice that brought fighting to an end in World War I in November 1918.  The birth of her daughter Gwendolyn on April 17, 1899, marked the end of Dr. Cannon's political career, but she never regretted giving it up. She always took excellent care of her children. During the various changes of personnel among the cooks and "hired girls," her children were sent as paying guests to their Grandmother Paul. Dr. Cannon's later years were divided between her daughter's (Elizabeth Porter) husband's ranch in West Salt Lake Valley and the home of her inventor son, James H. Cannon, in Los Angeles. In the final five years of her life she maintained and managed her own home in Los Angeles. She worked at the Graves Clinic. She also raised substantial sums for the orphans of the Middle East.  Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, M.D., B.S., B.O., was always a devout Latter-day Saint and a lifetime Sunday School teacher. She died July 10, 1932, in Los Angeles, aged 75 years, leaving a mark seldom matched and never surpassed among Latter-day Saint women of her time.

Excerpts From Cannon Family Historical Treasury
Children of Martha Hughes Cannon:
Elizabeth Rachael Cannon (Mrs. Roy Stillman Porter, later Mrs. George A. McCrimmon), born September 13, 1885.
James Hughes Cannon, born May 19, 1890; died March 20, 1950.
Gwendolyn Hughes Cannon (Mrs. Gerald Churchill Quick), born April 17, 1900; died December 28, 1928.
By Elizabeth Cannon Porter McCrimmon

MARTHA HUGHES CANNON—AMERICA´S FIRST WOMAN STATE SENATOR W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, February 1995
It just may be the most memorable year in Utah politics. Not only was 1896 the year of Utah's admission to the Union, but Utahns also voted the first woman state senator in the United States into office. Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon was one of five Democrats running for the five seats in the Sixth Senatorial District in Salt Lake County. The fact that Angus M. Cannon, her husband, was one of five Republicans vying for the same positions added to the publicity surrounding the campaign. Only the top five vote-getters would win. Martha, who received over 4,000 more votes than her husband, and the other Democrats all won.
Martha was born July 1, 1857, in northern Wales to Peter and Elizabeth Evans Hughes. After converting to the Mormon faith the family immigrated to Utah and settled in Salt Lake City. From a young age Martha set high goals for herself and even dreamed of becoming a physician. After a period of frugal living she had saved enough money to enter the University of Michigan medical school in 1878. She graduated two years later at age twenty-three and then entered the University of Pennsylvania's department of medicine for additional training. At the Pennsylvania school she was the only woman in a class of seventy-five when she graduated in 1882. She also studied at the National School of Elocution and Oratory to improve her speaking skills.
Upon returning to Utah she opened a private practice but was shortly called to be resident physician of the Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City. In this position she met Angus Cannon, who was serving on the hospital board, and became his fourth wife on October 6, 1884. Martha put her medical career on hold for extended periods of exile in Europe and California to help prevent her husband's arrest under federal anti-polygamy laws. After government prosecution of polygamy largely ended, she felt free to begin her public life and soon became an active voice in the woman suffrage movement. With woman suffrage achieved in Utah, she traveled in 1898 to Washington, D.C., to deliver a rousing speech to a congressional committee in favor of granting women the vote nationally.
In her career as a state senator Martha directed most of her efforts toward promoting public health. She introduced legislation providing for the education of deaf, mute, and blind children and for the creation of a State Board of Health. Naturally, Governor Heber M. Wells appointed her as an initial member of the newly created health board where she helped shape its purpose and direction.
Dr. Cannon spent the remainder of her life near her children in Los Angeles where she worked at the Graves Clinic and in the orthopedic department of the General Hospital. Her eventful life as mother, state senator, physician, suffragist, and public health advocate ended on July 10, 1932, at the age of seventy-five.
Sources: Jean Bickmore White, "Martha H. Cannon," in Sister Saints, ed. Vicky Burgess-Olson (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), pp. 385-97; Annie Laurie Black, "Our Woman Senator," Salt Lake Herald, November 11, 1896; Constance L. Lieber, "'The Goose Hangs High': Excerpts from the Letters of Martha Hughes Cannon," Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (winter 1980): 37-48.

Mattie married Angus Munn Cannon 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, son of George Cannon and Ann Quayle, on 6 Oct 1884 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah. Angus was born on 17 May 1834 in Liverpool, Lancashire, England. He was christened on 2 Feb 1835 in Saint Peter, Liverpool, Lancashire, England. He died on 7 Jun 1915 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA. He was buried on 11 Jun 1915 in Salt Lake City Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA.

ANGUS
MUNN
CANNON.
PROMINENT in various ways and in business a successful farmer and stock-raiser, Angus M. Cannon, President of the Salt Lake Stake of Z ion, is given the right of precedence in this group of biographies. He has been a resident of Utah since the fall of 1849, when as an orphan boy of fifteen he entered Salt Lake Valley, having trudged afoot almost the entire distance from the Missouri river. Though of Manx parentage, he is of English birth; his native place being the city of Liverpool, where he was born May 17, 1834. His parents were George and Ann Quayle Cannon. At the age of three and a half years he went to live with his maternal grandmother on the Isle of Man, where he remained until he was five. Angus was the second son and fourth child in the family; the other children, named in their order, being George Q., Mary Alice, Ann, John Q., David H. and Leonora. The parents were baptized Latter- day Saints February 11, 1840, by Apostle John Taylor, who had married in Canada, Leonora Cannon, the father's sister. Angus was blessed by the Elders of the Church the same year. In September, 1842, the family started for America, taking passage in the ship " Sidney,'' with a company of Saints presided over by Elder Levi Richards. The second day out from Liverpool the mother, Ann Quayle Cannon, was taken sick, and after an illness of six weeks she died and was buried in the ocean. She had anticipated such a fate, but could not be dissuaded from undertaking the voyage, so desirous was she of gathering with her children to the bosom of the Church. Such was the exalted religious nature of this heroic woman, whose sons were destined to become leaders in the Church, and whose daughters have been noted for their genuine womanly qualities and unswerving devotion to the principles for which their martyr mother gave her life. After a voyage of eight weeks the family reached New Orleans, whence they proceeded to St. Louis, and there passed the winter. In the spring they went up to Nauvoo on the "Maid of Iowa," a steamboat owned by the Church and commanded by Captain Dan Jones. Owing to the change of climate, several members of the household were prostrated with fever and ague. During the succeeding year the father, George Cannon, married Mary Edwards White, a widow from North Wales, who bore to him his daughter Elizabeth. He subsequently went to St. Louis to obtain work, and while there suddenly fell sick and died. The remainder of the year (1844) Angus was cared for by his father's widow, and in the autumn was baptized into the Church by Elder Lyman O. Littlefield. The next year he with his brother David and his sister Leonora went to live with their sister Mary Alice and her husband Charles Lambert. The fall of 1846 found the orphan boy and his relatives on the west bank of the Mississippi, with their faces toward the Rocky mountains. With the remnant of the Saints they had been driven by the mob from Nauvoo, enduring the trials and witnessing the scenes incident to that tragic episode. Proceeding to the Missouri river, where the main body of the exiled Church had halted, they built for themselves a humble home for winter shelter. In 1847, after the departure of the pioneers for the West, the eldest son, George Q., and his sister Ann journeyed also from Winter Quarters, with their uncle, John Taylor, and the emigration of that season. The rest of the family, who later went into Missouri, remained behind to prepare for their further pilgrimage.
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FARMERS AND STOCK-RAISERS.
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the canyon. In the spring of 1852 he was ordained to the office of a Seventy, and the same year he became a printer's apprentice in the "Deseret News'' establishment. The year 1854 brought with it a call to a mission in the Eastern States, to preach the Gospel and assist in the publication of "The Mormon," a paper edited and published by Apostle John Taylor in New York City. After laboring for some time in that city and in Brooklyn, Elder Cannon was sent to Hartford and other parts of Connecticut, and subsequently labored in New Jersey and in the Philadelphia conference. In Franklin county. Pennsylvania, and other places, he baptized many, and in this work was joined by his cousin, Elder George J. Taylor. In the spring of 1856 he succeeded Jeter Clinton as president of the Philadelphia conference, comprising Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, ' and Eastern Maryland. The following spring he became first counselor to Elder William I. Appleby, who had been appointed to preside over the Eastern States Mission. In addition to his other duties Elder Cannon superintended the Church emigration. Honorably released, he left Philadelphia for home in March, 1858. He had suffered from sickness before starting, and on the way west was detained at Crescent City, near Council Bluffs, for about a month by an attack of fever. He arrived at Salt Lake City on the 21st of June. Finding the place deserted by most of its inhabitants, who had moved south at the approach of Johnston's army, he proceeded to Fillmore and there met his brother, George Q., after a separation of eleven years. He returned to Salt Lake the same summer. The next year he became one of the presidency of the Thirtieth Quorum of Seventy. In 1860, under the firm name of Cannon, Eardley & Brothers, he founded a pottery business, but the new enterprise was barely on its feet when the head of the firm was called, with others, in the latter part of 1861, to settle in Southern Utah. With his usual promptitude he responded to the call, and traveled to the banks of the Rio Virgen. He was associated with Erastus Snow and Jacob Gates, on a committee to locate the city of St. George. He was the first mayor of that town, holding the office for two terms. For four years he was prosecuting attorney for Washington county, and for two years district attorney for the Second Judicial District. In the fall of 1864 he went with Anson Call and others to locate a warehouse at the head of navigation on the Colorado river. They founded Callville, and brought a steamboat fifteen miles above Roaring Rapids, beyond which point Colonel Ives, of the United States army, had declared no such boat could ascend. In a regiment of militia known as the "Iron Brigade," Angus M . Cannon was elected major, and later lieutenant-colonel. He was one of ninety men, all members of that regiment, who searched for and recovered the bodies of Dr. J. M. Whitmore and Robert Mclntyre, killed by Indians at Pipe Springs. This was in midwinter, 1866; the snow covering the ground. Dr. Whitmore, formerly of Texas and afterwards of Salt Lake City, was on a mission in "Dixie" and owned a ranch at the Springs. Mr. Mclntyre was in the doctor's employ, and they were out on the range hunting cattle, when they were surprised and murdered a few miles south of the ranch. The militia was notified and the ninety men under Colonel D. D. McArthur, Lieutenant- Colonel Cannon and Major Pierce, all mounted, set out to search for "the bodies, and if possible to apprehend and punish the murderers. They captured a Piute Indian who confessed to having witnessed the killing of Dr. Whitmore and his companion, but blamed it upon the Nava- joes. Subsequently he conducted them to the scene of the murder, where the bodies, pierced with bullets and arrows, were found under the snow. While a portion of the party stood gazing on the ghastly sight, another squad under command of Captain James Andrus rode up, having other Indians in custody. These were also Piutes, and it appeared that they had done the deed of blood. They were therefore executed on the spot where the crime had been committed; all save the informer, whose life was spared, according to promise. Ill health, caused by the malaria of the southern country, compelled Mr. Cannon to come north in 1867, when he made a trip into Montana, having charge of a train of freight wagons. Later in the year he was released from the Dixie Mission to take charge of the business department of the "Deseret News." It was under his management that the " News'' was first issued as a daily paper. He held that position until 1874, but meantime, in 1869, fulfilled another mission to the East, upon which he was gone six months.

They had the following children.

+ 2 F i Elizabeth Rachel Cannon was born on 13 Sep 1885. She died on 11 Jul 1972.
  3 M ii Peter Cannon was born in 1889 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA.
+ 4 M iii James Hughes Cannon was born on 19 May 1890. He died on 20 Feb 1950.
+ 5 F iv Gwendolyn Hughes Cannon was born on 17 Apr 1899. She died on 28 Dec 1928.

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