Patty Bartlett Sessions

Patty Bartlett Sessions (February 4 1795 – December 14 1892)cite news
url= http://udn.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/deseretn10&CISOPTR=511&CISOSHOW=556&REC=1
accessdate= 2008-06-26
title= Sister Patty Session
date= 1892-12-31
work= Deseret News
location= city|Salt Lake City|Utah] was a Mormon midwife. She was one of the wives of Joseph Smith, Jr. while still married to her first husband, David Sessions. [Brodie (1946), p. 335.] She was the mother of Perrigrine Sessions, founder of Bountiful, Utah. She is best known for her diaries, which recorded the daily activities of the Latter Day Saints during the first year of the Mormon migration to Utah, and the earliest days of their settlement there. These diaries document the physical, social, and religious circumstances of the settlers, especially of the women, and are frequently cited by historians. Her records are also a primary source of birth records in the LDS community during this period, and are highly prized for documenting almost 4,000 births.

Life history

Patty Bartlett was born in city|Bethel|Maine on February 4, 1795. She married David Sessions on June 28, 1812, and they cleared and ran a farm for some years, during which time she had 8 children. Around 1812, she delivered her first baby. A doctor came later, congratulated her, and said, "Must attend to the business." She subsequently continued delivering babies.

While she grew up Methodist, in 1834 she was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She and her family them moved to Missouri in 1836, where they lived in Far West until they were driven out by the Extermination Order. Leaving behind almost everything they owned, they traveled to Nauvoo, Illinois.

Session's diaries begin with a journal that she received from her daughter, Sylvia, on February 4, 1846. (Earlier diaries that she had kept since 1812 have been lost. [Temple (2001), p. 205.] ) Her diaries provide daily record for over 20 years, included every birth. After 1868, there are gaps in her record, but she continued to record entries in her diary until she was 94 years old, in 1888. [Madsen (1999).] Her journal also included recipes for ailments.

In 1846, Brigham Young instructed Mormons to head west, beyond the western frontier into what was then Mexico. He instructed Patty Sessions to go with the pilot company to care for the sick and afflicted, as well as to serve as midwife. She delivered nine babies on the banks of the Mississippi River, and many others on the pioneer trek. She spent the winter of 1846–47 at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and on June 15, 1847, at 52 years old, Sessions left Winter Quarters for “the mountains.” On September 24, 1847 she arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. “I had driven my wagon all the way, except for the last two mountain, and had walked 1,030 miles.”

Within one year of arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Sessions delivered 248 babies. She recorded 3,977 births with only “two difficult cases.” She made an average of $2 per birth and continued to deliver babies until she was about 85 years old.

When she died in 1892 at the age of 97, she was survived by two sons, 33 grandchildren, 137 great-grandchildren, and 22 great-great-grandchildren.

See also

*Joseph Smith, Jr. and polygamy
*List of the wives of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Notes

References

*citation
last=Brodie
first=Fawn
authorlink=Fawn M. Brodie
title=
year=1946
publisher=Alfred A. Knopf .
*citation
last=Rugh
first=Susan
editor=Vicky Burgess-Olson
contribution=Patty Bartlett Sessions: More than a Midwife
title=Sister Saints
year=1978
pages=303–322
publisher=Brigham Young University Press
isbn=0842512357
*citation
last=Sessions
first=Patty Bartlett
title=An Olive Leaf: We Blessed and Got Blessed
journal=Sunstone Magazine
volume=101
pages=80
date=March 1996
url=https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/101-80.pdf
accessdate=2008-06-28.
*citation
last=Sessions
first=Patty Bartlett
editor=Donna Toland Smart
title=Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions
year=1997
publisher=Utah State University Press
isbn=0874212278 :"Reviews:":*citation
last=Kimball
first=Violet T.
journal=Journal of Mormon History
volume=25
issue=2
pages=191–193
date=Fall 1999 :*citation
last=Madsen
first=Carol Cornwall
title=Review
journal=BYU Studies
volume=38
issue=4
pages=192–195
date=1999
url=http://byustudies.byu.edu/shop/pdfsrc/38.4Madsen.pdf
accessdate=2008-06-28.:*citation
last=Rugh
first=Susan Sessions
journal=The Western Historical Quarterly
volume=29
issue=4
pages=540–541
date=Winter 1998 :*citation
last=Temple
first=Judy Nolte
title=A Variety of Women’s Voices
journal=
volume=34
issue=3&4
pages=203-207
date=Fall/Winter 2001
url=http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/dialogue&CISOPTR=27897&REC=12
accessdate=2008-06-28.
*citation
last=Smart
first=Donna T.
editor=Colleen Whitley
contribution=Patty Bartlett Sessions (1795-1892), Pioneer Midwife
title=Worth their Salt: Notable but Often Unnoted Women of Utah
year=1996
publisher=Utah State University Press
isbn=087421212X

External links

* [http://flickr.com/photos/laraleepn/891896842/ Photograph of plaque quoting Sessions]
* [http://usu.edu/usupress/books/index.cfm?isbn=2747 Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Sessions] Utah State University Press catalog
* [http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneerdetails/0,15791,4018-1-967,00.html Pioneer Details:Patty Bartlett Sessions] , LDS.org
* [http://www.mhahome.org/pubs/TOC/Journal_TOC_96-99.pdf "What is Patty Sessions To Me?"] , Encounter Essay, "Journal of Mormon History"