While researching Margaret Tweed from Sadsbury, Pennsylvania yesterday, I found her death notice in the 1866 Deseret News. Utah has digitalized their old newspapers under Utah Digital Newspapers. I was able to find Margaret's death notice within 5 minutes. It would be stupendous if more states did this because trying to find something in a newspaper on Ancestry.com is very time consuming.
Sad to say that I have no photo of either wife. Below is their combined tombstone. I descend from the first wife Charlotte and of course there are no children from Margaret. I wrote her story for our upcoming DUP (Daughter's of the Utah Pioneers) meeting.
Her two brothers were killed during the war between the states. She joined the Mormons trekked to Nauvoo, Illinois where she met Charlotte Meguire who was her age. Charlotte and her husband William had also come from Pennsylvania.
Margaret moved in with the Meguires, perhaps to help out with
their two small daughters but she did have her own property in 1852 when they reached the Salt Lake Valley: 1 cow $25, 1 cow $20, Heifer $15; all
equal to $60.
In 1857 William Meguire was sealed for eternity to his wife Charlotte Babb Meguire and was asked to take Margaret Tweed as a second wife. He agreed but he married Margaret in name only so that in the eternity, she would have a husband. She was 53 years old and had never been married. This is what he wrote in a letter because the State of Utah was not allowing any polygamist to vote:
Gentlemen:
I
wish to present to you my case, and inquire whether or not I have been unjustly
dealt with, by being prevented at the last election from voting. I married a
second woman March 26, 1857. Not that she should be a wife, for she was aged,
but that she might be a married woman (in order to be “exalted” in the
hereafter). She lived with us till she died, Oct. 12, 1866. Consequently I
consider (conscientiously) that I have never violated a United States law, nor
do I intend to. I have voted the Republican ticket for many years, and my
father voted it for many years before me. I would like to vote, and if I can,
or cannot, please send me a line answering my inquiry. Yours to serve truly and
humbly,
William W. Meguire
