HISTORY OF JANE MARIA SHEARER Note: I am indebted to Wanda Snow Peterson for her permission to use excerpts from her book, William Snow, The first Bishop of Pine Valley. Mrs. Peterson is one of the few remaining granddaughters of William Snow who are still alive.
My own additions to her history are shown as regular print - not bold.
Jane Maria Shearer was born 12 February 1819, in Lucern, Saratoga County, New York, a daughter of Daniel and Jane McCutcheon Shearer. Her grandparents were William S. and Lititia Langdon Shearer.
When Jane Maria was four years old~ her mother died, and her father married Lucy Noble. She barely remembered her own mother and always said she could not have had greater love or care shown her by her own mother than she received from Lucy Noble. Maria’s son, Mason Levi Snow, said he was a grown lad before he knew that Lucy Noble was not his real grandmother.
Jane Maria received a good education with the help and insistence of her father. He planned for her to become a school teacher, but she fell in love with and married Ira Doty Wines before she had the opportunity to teach. They were married 29 May 1834, and lived in Fairplay, Indiana, where he earned a good living. She had five sons by him: Leonard, Daniel, Alvin, Norman and Ira Doty Jr. Daniel and Avin died in infancy, but the other boys lived to cross the Plains with their mother and spend the rest of their days in Utah and other western states.
Jane Maria had a brilliant mind, and it was said of her by her daughter, Mary Lorena Snow Rencher, that she could spell any word in their huge dictionary Her granddaughter, Maud Rencher Thomas, said her grandma at age ninety could answer any question about English c grammar and could diagram any sentence presented to her.
Jane Maria’s first husband, Ira Doty Wines, never joined the Church. He died 28 December 1844, leaving Maria well off with valuable property. The family had been introduced to Mormonism but had not yet joined. After her husband’s death, Maria moved to Nauvoo with her father and step-mother, taking her three sons along. The date is not certain, but they lived there and went through the many trials and persecutions the mobs heaped upon the Saints.
Jane Maria and her eldest son Leonard, who was then eleven years old, were baptized 3 February 1846. Her father, Daniel Shearer, was ordained a High Priest by William Snow. It is not known when or where Lucy Noble died.
Not much else is known about Marias activities until she arrived in Winter Quarters with her three sons, ages six, eight and fifteen. Her father must have been with her there because he was with her later in Salt Lake City. When she started across the Plains, Jane Maria was assigned to the William Snow company of one hundred. Maria had two yoke of oxen and a sturdy wagon of her own. Her son Leonard helped her care for the animals and drive the oxen.
The food this company had to eat was common fare, but it was plentiful and no one of them suffered hunger. They arrived in Salt Lake City on 3 August 1850, and Jane Maria was married to William Snow ten days later.