I am satisfied for myself

Meet my Great, Great, Great, Great Aunt Tirzah Chase. She was the daughter of Elisa Wells and Tirzah Severance, the eighth child in a family of thirteen. The family was of the Quaker faith.

She married Ezra Chase when she was twenty two years old. They worked hard together as their family grew. Eventually they moved and became business partners with Ezra's brother Isaac and became very well-to-do citizens.

Nearly thirty years after they were married a Mormon missionary came to their area preaching the gospel and they, along with their four oldest daughters were baptized.

In response to the urging of the Prophet Joseph Smith they sold their property and moved to Nauvoo. Although many of their family members were converted to the gospel, some were skeptical of its truthfulness and remained behind.

I thoroughly enjoy Tirzah's letter home to some of these skeptics after she arrived in Nauvoo and met the Prophet. A copy of this letter to her daughter and son-in-law Mr. and Mrs. Charles Marsh is in the LDS Church Historical Department Archives. It reads in part:

"We got here the last day of July all in good health and spirits. To think we all arrived safe and sound with the travel time slowing our journey down it passed all of our expectations, but the Lord has blest us in obeying his commandments in gathering with the saints and helping on the work of the latter-day which you think is not the work of the Lord but, my child, it is the work of the Lord for no man ever could bring about so great and so marvelous a work and now I tell you I am stronger in the faith of the work than I was when I was there ...

We are well satisfied that Joe Smith, as you call him, is the one the Lord has chose to be a prophet to lead this people in these last days. I have seen him and heard him preach and I am satisfied for myself."