Originally posted at Keepapitchinin on February 19, 2014.
Ann Prior was born into a prosperous family in East London, but the family was reduced to poverty through a series of misfortunes including the death of her father. When Ann was eleven, she acted against her Scottish mother’s wishes and left school to become a dressmaker so she could help support the family.
|East London, 1856.|
She worked as a dressmaker for several years, and then when she was almost seventeen, she married George Jarvis, a sailor who had traveled around the world several times.
Between ocean voyages, George took care of ships in harbor. He and Ann were living on board a ship with their two children when George heard the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints preaching on an English street-corner. He hurried back to the ship to tell Ann what he’d heard about Joseph Smith and the restoration of the Gospel. Ann heard his explanation and replied, “George, it’s true!”
They were baptized in the Thames on Christmas Day, 1848. When George sailed on a voyage not long afterward, Ann moved in with her mother, Catherine Prior. She told about her subsequent experiences in her autobiography: 
I will write a few lines about the cholera. I was home with my mother when it was so bad that cards where posted about warning you that if any one was [taken] with it and you did not send word to persons apointed to take them to the pest house, you were under a heavy pena[l]ty. You were not allowed to have a docter at your home.