General Notes

Married Name:<_MARNM> Silcock
Ancestral File Number:<AFN> 1T93-3L
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JANE HEATH AND NICHOLAS THOMAS SILCOCK
By Martha Silcock Pixton

Jane Heath was born November 6, 1826 in Hanley, Staffordshire, England.  She was the eldest daughter of John Heath and Barbara Hulme.  Her father was a decorator of china by trade.  When she was about two years old her father was stricken with typus fever, which left a nerve disability from which he never fully recovered.  As a means of support her mother bought a baking business, which she personally conducted.  After school and in holiday time, Jane worked in the shop or ran errands.  At a very early age Jane would assist her mother when hired help would fail.  She was a strong, healthy girl and matured early.  She also learned knitting, plain and fancy stitches and shoe binding.  She learned button hole making from a tailor.  Dancing was one of her many accomplishments.

In (the) winter of 1840 and 1841, the Latter Day Saints came to Staffordshire, preaching the gospel as revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith.  A great many people in the different towns and cities of Staffordshire investigated and embraced the gospel.  One of the first families in Hanley to accept the gospel was Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Poole.  Mrs. Poole was a patron of the bakery shop.  She would often stay and chat with Jane when she found her not busy.  The gospel had made so much difference in their lives that Mrs. Poole interested Jane in the new faith.  Mrs. Poole was anxious for the young girl to hear her husband read the Bible for she was sure that it sounded much different since the new gospel had come to England.  One day Jane went to hear Mr. Poole read, in company with Thomas Silcock a young man who had made his home with the Heath family for the past six years.  His mother died when he was a small child.  He and five other brothers ansd sisters lived with their father until he died, then Thomas went to live with the Heath family and worked at carpenter work and any kind of labor he could find to make a living.  When Mr. Poole read of the Savior's baptism by John, (Jane knew) it was also necessary for her.  Thomas Silcock was a convert and was baptized, but Jane was young and had to wait for the consent of her parents.

John Heath was (a) strictly moral religious man and Jane did not dare go to meetings or apply for baptism without her father's consent.  When thoroughly convinced that it was her duty to be baptized, she asked her father's consent and he replied, "Jane you are too young to think of religion."  She said, "No father I am not."  In her sould Jane felt she was right but she adored her father so would not oppose him.  In solitude she besought her Heavenly Father, asking Him to soften her father's heart to the new creed...Jane returned to her father and asked for his consent but was again refused.  Not wholly disheartened, Jane waited until along in the afternoon when she, for the third time made the question a matter of prayer.  The third time she asked her father, (he) said, "Yes Jane you may go."

Early in the month of March 1841  Jane, in company with Mrs. Poole, went to Burslem an adjoining town.  Jane went down into the water and was baptized by one who had authority to perform that ordinance in this dispensation of the Gospel.   Later on in the same evening she was confirmed a member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by Elder Wilford Woodruff.

On April 14, 1841 Jane became the wife of Nicholas Thomas Silcock.  After they were married they continued to live with Jane's family and Jane still helped her mother with the business.  During the summer her father's last illness came and lasted for many weeks.  All during that time her father clung to her and thought no one could lift or wait on him like Jane.  In September of 1841 John Heath passed away, having been an invalid for twelve years.  Jane continued to help her mother with the business.