Thomas Carr family joining the LDS Church in St. Helier, Jersey Island, Channel Islands in 1849.
Thomas Carr was Richard Smith’s 2nd great grandfather.
From Donnette Smith - August 11, 2010
This is a small addition to the Thomas Carr biography that was written in 1979. There was some interesting information on a BYU-TV program in 2009 about the history of the LDS Church in France that answers the question of how it was that there was such a large branch of the LDS church in the Island of Jersey when the Carrs moved there and were converted.
Thomas Carr had run away from home at age 15 to become a sailor in the British Navy. He later married Louisa Butler at Gosport, Hampshire. They had six children there in different towns on the south coast of England as the family moved around a good deal to be near the harbor when Thomas' ship would come in. Then Thomas’s ship was stationed at St. Peter's Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands. The Islands were within a few miles of France but had belonged to the British since William the Conquerer came to England in 1066. Thomas and Louisa had two more children in 1838 and 1843 while they were living in Guernsey. Then Thomas’s ship was stationed at St. Helier, Jersey Island. There they found a nice branch of the LDS Church into which Thomas and, Louisa were baptized and confirmed Sept. 26, l849 by Elder William C. Dunbar. A month later on October 31, three of their children were also baptized: Susan, Elizabeth and George.
The BYU-TV program explained that some LDS missionaries were sent to France in the early 1840s and were able to open several branches there. Elder William C. Dunbar was among those missionaries on mainland France. Then there was a lot of unrest in France, and when revolution and civil war was imminent, the church leaders advised the members to move to Jersey, in the Channel Islands which was only about 17 miles off the French shore. That was why there was a nice LDS Branch on the Island of Jersey when the Carr’s moved there, heard about the church, and were baptized in 1849.
Thomas' ship was anchored in the Channel Islands when he retired from the Navy. After some time he moved the family to France because they could live more cheaply there than they could in England. Elizabeth told her children she went to a French school when they lived in France. The family left the L.D.S. branch at St. Helier in February, 1853. They may have moved to France at that time. Elizabeth said that her father would go by boat to the Island to collect his pension payments. She could remember him coming back one day all upset because the men at the office where he went to collect his payments had found out he had left the United Kingdom. They stopped his pension payments and kept all his papers. Her father walked the floor and could not sleep, he was so worried. He moved his family to the suburbs of London, closer to the Admiralty Offices, to endeavor to get his pension reinstated. After losing his pension Thomas had to go back to being a seaman, this time with the merchant service. It was a long time before his pension was started again.
Thomas Carr’s daughter, Elizabeth, married William Bean. They lived with and took care of Thomas Carr and Louisa Butler Carr, and after their deaths, the Bean family and Elizabeth Bean’s sister’s family, Thomas and Susan Carr LePage, left England for Utah. They were able to cross the plains on a train in 1877.
According to the TV program, a few years after the Carrs moved to the London area, many of the LDS church members in St. Helier, Jersey Island sailed to the United States and traveled across the plains to Utah.
