Mary Isabell Pettit Green

After a break from posting due to vacation time, a family reunion in Virginia, summertime schedules, and some unexpected illness, here is a little anonymous history of Mary Isabell Pettit Green. I am leaving it exactly as typed and have not bothered to mark each [sic].

Mary Isabell was the first child of Edwin Pettit and Rebecca Hood Hill. She was born at 237 South 2nd West Street in Salt Lake City. This was the propoerty her father purchased from W. W. Phelps in 1858 in return for property he had owned in San Bernardino, California.

She had a half sister Alice and two step brothers, Richard and John Bush. Her father was absent from home a great part of the time traveling as a teamster between Salt Lake and Southern California. Consequently as she grew up as the oldest member of the family she developed an unusual sense of responsibility.

The next oldest member of a family of seventeen children, she early learned that hard work was the lot of the girls in pioneer families. The younger members of the family looked upon her as a second mother.

When six years of age, the family moved to 908 South 2nd West where they started a new home on the margin of a swamp that was under water in the early month's [sic] of each year. She lived to see that swamp reclaimed and developed into a desirable residential subdivision. She was always active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and was baptised when eight years old. She served as secretary to the ward sunday school and was an officer in the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association.

She worked for sometime as cashier at the Walker Department Store. Upon graduation from the University of Deseret she became a teacher in the 5th Ward District School.

On December 9, 1891 she married Henry Green who was born on October 7, 1867 at Brampton near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. He had joined the Mormon Church in England and migrated to Salt Lake City arriving on July 7, 1887 with several brothers and sisters. He joined Jack Reeves and his brother Will to from the Green and Reeves Plumbing Company. They installed the plumbing and heating in some of the first large buildings in Salt Lake including the L.D.S. Hospital, the Temple, the Tabernacle, Hotel Utah, Walker Bank Bldg, Office buildings, and the Church Schools.

Their first home was a small house in the center of the block between 8th and 9th South and 3rd and 4th West. In 1896 they built across the street from Mary's parents at 915 South 2nd West where they lived until Mary died on April 1, 1905. [Added in Beverly's handwriting: *Mary whom Henry called May, died ^by hemmorhaging^ in giving birth to her sixth child Mildred.]

They were always active in Church work. Her husband was the President of a branch of the 4th Ward that met in a small building on the north side of 13th South East of 2nd West. later he was counselor to Charles Cottrell when the 30th Ward was organized.