A Brief Biographical Sketch of W. M. and Mary B. Timmins William Montana Timmins was born April 26, 1894 in Butte, Montana. He was on his maternal side, grandson of Robert Thornley, an early LDS convert from Ulnes Walton, Lancashire. Robert Thornley was an oxcart Pioneer and first settler of Smithfield, the second town in Cache Valley, Utah -- not far from what is today the Idaho border. Mont's father William James Timmins was a Cornish-born mining engineer who was working at the copper mines in Butte, Montana where he met Mont's mother Helen, daughter of Robert Thornley. Helen was working with her sister Annie in a boarding house in Butte supplied and operated by the Thornley sons who were in the business of trucking Cache County food and other supplies to the Montana mining community. When Will Timmins asked Helen Thornley to marry him, she insisted that he first visit Utah to meet her parents and be instructed in the gospel by her father Robert. One of Helen's brothers later commented, "Will Timmins wouldn't have been baptized just to marry Ellen" (as she was affectionately called by her family), "He had too much integrity for that. My father (Robert Thornley) was an outstanding missionary and Will was truly converted and had a strong testimony of the Restoration by the time he joined the Church." Will Timmins became first engineer at the newly established sugar factory in Logan, just five miles from the town settled by his father-in-law. Mont grew up and was educated in Cache Valley, being one of the early students at Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University). His father placed great stress on education. Mont and his siblings knew all Shakespeare's plays (many by heart), and could quote poetry by the ream. The two Thornley sisters Ellen and Annie were famous for their dramatic readings at community social events. After serving in France during the First World War, where he was engineer or a supply train operating between Orleans and Verdun, Mont returned to Utah to marry Salt Lake City-born Mary Brighton whom he had met when she was visiting cousins in Cache Valley, and who had waited for him during his service in France. Mary was granddaughter of William Stuart Brighton, an early Scottish convert who had succeeded his father (who had been first President prior to his death in a mining accident) of the Airdrie Branch in Scotland. William Stuart Brighton was founder of what is today Brighton Resort in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City. Mary remembered milking her grandfather's cows and making butter and cheese during the summers in the Brighton valley and lighting her grandfather's resort hotel guests to their rooms at night. Mary later served for many years on the Board of the Brighton LDS Girls Summer Home which was eventually built in the beautiful Brighton Basin, today one of the best-known and popular ski areas in Utah. Prior to her marriage, Mary was secretary to the Presiding Bishop of the Church. During WW II the Presiding Bishop's Office was approached by the US Army in search of qualified office staff.. The PBO recommended Mary Brighton Timmins as outstandingly qualified for service. She was thus called to patriotic wartime service as Office Manager at Fort Douglas located on the east Bench of Salt Lake City, not far from her home. Fort Douglas, in mountain girt Utah, was Center for the Pacific Command when it was thought that the Japanese might invade the American West Coast. At the end of the war, with her family now sufficiently grown, Mary was asked to return to the Church Office where she was secretary to Apostles Callas, Bowen, and Merrill. President George Albert Smith then asked her to take over the office of his nephew Eldred G. Smith (who had during the war worked at the Los Alamos where he worded on the development of the world's most important instrument of destructive -- the atomic bomb), but who had just been called as the Presiding Patriarch of the Church. Patriarch Smith had found his office files in a deplorable disarray. With her extraordinary organizing skills, Mary soon had the files in order, all untyped patriarchal blessings caught up, and with her age and wisdom (and experience as wife of a Patriarch herself) guided the new, young Patriarch to the Church to fulfill his calling with confidence and success. During the interval between his marriage and the move to Salt Lake City, Mont served as Cache Stake Superintendent of Sunday Schools. At this time he became friends with Elder David O. McKay during this newly appointed Apostle's periodic visits to Cache Stake as the Church's General Superintendent of Sunday Schools. As a result of this friendship, Mont and Mary named their firstborn son David. While still living in Cache Valley, and a few years after the birth of their daughter Margaret, Mont was called to serve a full-time mission in Canada where he was President of the Toronto Conference. As a missionary Mont had a number of the deeply spiritual experiences which characterized his life (as they had that of his grandfather Robert Thornley). He also had considerable proselyting success, and is still remembered by some older members who were children at the time of his mission. Upon returning from his mission and relocating to Salt Lake City to pursue a career in insurance, Mont moved with his wife Mary and his (now five) children into a newer and larger home in one of the original Salt Lake Wards established by Brigham Young. His first calling in Salt Lake was as one of the Presidents of what was in the old system of nomenclature the Second Quorum of Seventy, then located in the Ensign Stake. He took the calling of his quorum to prepare its members for missionary service seriously. A son recalls visiting Seventies' meetings from time to time, finding the group viewing training films on the languages and customs of remote areas of the world. Mont was often invited by Elder B. H. Roberts of the First Quorum of Seventy to accompany him on his hospital visits to bless the sick. Later, as Stake Mission President, Mont also took his duties more to heart than most, and Stake baptisms increased notably during his tenure. As time went on and these older wards grew in population, pressure mounted on chapel facilities so that people often had to sit on folding chairs ranged in the halls and entries. In the mid-nineteen forties many of these wards were divided so that two smaller congregations could meet in the same facility on alternating schedules -- a practice which has become standard in the Church today. Mont Timmins was ordained first Bishop of the North Twenty-first Ward, one of the first double wards so created. Following his term as bishop, Mont was ordained Patriarch of the Emigration Stake, a post he continued to hold until his death, despite five further intervening missions. In 1962 Mont and Mary Timmins were called on a mission to Great Britain. Mont's first assignment was as Branch President in Wrexham, North Wales. A year later, after a major reactivation program and seeing the Wrexham Branch relocated to a new purpose-built chapel, he was called by British Mission President James Cullimore as President of the Cambridge Branch. When the Mission was later divided, and the Cambridge Ward building had been completed, Mont was reassigned to Mission Headquarters in London, while Mary was called by President Duff Hanks to serve as Counselor to Sister Hanks in the British Mission Relief Society Presidency. It should be mentioned that while still in Cambridge, the building missionaries lodged with the Timmins', where Sister Timmins willingly undertook the extra cooking and house-keeping chores associated with boarding several young men. At the time of their arrival in Cambridge, construction of the new chapel was underway, but the local share of financing had not been raised. As a Bishop with considerable past experience in ward budgeting and administration, and warm human skills, Mont soon succeeded in retiring the local financial obligation so he could turn attention to training future leadership to take over when the Branch was elevated to full Ward status. As noted in the January 1987, and later update of this history, "President Timmins led the branch with wisdom and inspiration." Cambridge Ward members will be interested to know that in a letter to his children in America, Mont described the tricky and difficult task of raising the Cherry Hinton Chapel spire, with which he helped even at his relatively advanced age. As an aside, it may be of interest to readers to know that District President Larry Wimmer mentioned in the Cambridge Ward History, was as a proselyting missionary before his calling as District President, often invited to the home of Mont's son David when Elder Wimmer was working in the Manchester District and David was American Vice Consul in Manchester. As a further element in this saga, while in Wrexham, Mont and Mary Timmins casually met and reactivated Brigadier Philip Stevens and his wife Molly who had been among their son David's converts in Scotland eleven years earlier. As a result of this reactivation, the Stevens' daughter Judith, who had been a wee six year old at the time of her parents' baptism, accepted a call as a full-time missionary herself, serving in the Australia Mission. Nor is this yet the end of the story. A future Cambridge Ward Bishop Jerzy Mladkeivitz and his wife Liz have also been guests at the David Timmins table while the two families were living in Geneva, Switzerland in the late 1990's. The LDS world is indeed a marvelously small and miraculously intertwined community.. . Mont Timmins passed away peacefully in his bed in Salt Lake City in 1975, aged eighty-one Mary crossed to the other side in the home of a daughter in Murray, Utah in 1981, aged eighty-two, leaving five married children, twenty-five grandchildren, and more great and great great grandchildren than the writer can calculate. It will be of interest for British readers to note that the Mont Timmins family, having lived in the United States for seven generations, and it being the rule that anyone having five generations of descent in America is almost certain to share some American Indian blood, two branches of Mont and Mary's descendants are also of the bloodline of Father Lehi. Among Mont and Mary's descendants, or in-laws, are a noted musician, military aviators, a fire department captain, medical doctors, certified public accountants, school superintendents, principals and teachers, a reporter on a noted large city newspaper, engineers, builders (one of whom is in charge of building the new, smaller temples, including the one in Palmyra, computer technicians, an airline pilot, a talented post-production film editor, public servants, two university professors, and two diplomats. Mont's brother was Mayor of the city founded by his Grandfather. And in 1996 s son stood (unsuccessfully) for a seat in the American Congress. Mont's descendants have served more missions that one can count, in Canada, Scotland, England, Wales, Alaska, Norway, Sweden, France, Italy, Greece, Australia, and a dozen Latin American countries. As a result of the extended genealogical work done by Mont Timmins during the otherwise unoccupied years of his retirement,, his son David has received letters of inquiry from virtually every continent requesting help in making connections to the date base Mont compiled. David has referred all such inquiries to his own son Mark who has inherited his grandfather's interest and skills in this connection.