I can't recall how many times I've read on Mormon websites that Ann Pitchforth (nee Hughlings)was Jewish. On the LDS site, there is an article by Paul Thomas Smith about John Taylor's mission to the British Isles. He says that "Elder Taylor rented quarters in the North Quay home of Mr. Solomon Pitchforth, a prosperous Jewish businessman" and later described Ann as Taylor's Jewish landlady.
Why did this error develop and perhaps more importantly why is it still being perpetuated 160 years after Ann's death?
Ann was the daughter of John Hughlings, a Collector of Excise, and had been born in 1801 at Grantham, her mother's home town. She had been educated as the daughter of a gentleman and was proficient at the piano having been taught by ‘the best German teachers’. For John Hughlings to have been a government official in the early nineteenth century, he would have had to be a communicant member of the Church of England.
Solomon was the son of Solomon Pitchforth and his wife Mercy Crowther. Solomon and Mercy's marriage took place in Halifax Church on August 10th 1789 and Solomon's baptism was recorded on May 25th 1781 and his marriage to Ann Highlings took place in Elland Church on October 3rd 1825.
All the children of Solomon and Ann were baptised in Brighouse Church except the youngest who was born in the Isle of Man.
So all the evidence is that both the Hughlings and the Pitchforth families were solidly Christian.
The erroneous claim about Ann's religion stems from a letter she wrote to the LDS newspaper the "Millennial Star" after she arrived in America in which she described her “Jewish unbelieving heart.” But as David J. Whittaker in "John Taylor and Mormon Imprints in Europe, 1840–52" says it seems she was speaking figuratively rather than identifying her genealogical heritage.
Why does the error still persist after so long? Only the LDS can explain that!
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