Jane Robison Pack Biography

Rufus and Jane Robison Pack Biography
John Pack as Revealed in the Records

1866, October 11. John’s Older Brother Rufus Dies

Rufus Pack was born July, 20, 1803, in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. He was baptized into the LDS church on March 6, 1836, and was endowed on January 8, 1846, in the Nauvoo temple. He married, successively, three wives: Betsy Green, Hannah Draper, and Jane Robison. He died on October 11, 1866 in Mills, Iowa, and was buried in the Van Eaton Cemetery, Mills, Iowa.

Kansas Cyclopedia of State History:
“Mr. Campbell was married November 29, 1867, to Julia P. Pack, daughter of Rufus and Jane (Robison) Pack, the former a native of New York and the latter of Michigan. Mr. Pack was engaged in farming and stock raising. Mrs. Campbell was born in a prairie schooner in Fremont county, Iowa, and was raised in Mills county, attending the common schools. Her father [Rufus] was killed by a mowing machine in Iowa, and her mother died while in Utah.”1

  1. Frank W. Blackmar, editor, Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, Etc., with a Supplementary Volume Devoted to Selected Personal History and Reminiscence, transcribed October 2002 by Carolyn Ward (Chicago: Standard Publishing Co., 1912), 3:45.

1870, July 20. John Is Sealed for Time to Jane Robison

John Pack was sealed for time only to Jane Robison Pack (widow of his brother Rufus Pack) July 20, 1870 in the Endowment House.2 However, the 1870 Census records in both Utah and in Iowa indicate that Jane is living in Iowa at the time of this sealing. Furthermore, in the 1880 census, Jane lists her status as widow, and not married. In addition, we find no record that John‘s children say that John and Jane were ever married. Finally, it is obvious that although Jane is still living, John does not include Jane in his will like the other wives.3

  1. Lyndon W. Cook, Nauvoo Marriages / Proxy Sealings 1843-1846 (Provo, UT: Grandin Book Co. 2004), 20.
  2. Wendell LeVon Pope, Joseph Robison and Cornelia Guinal: Their Children and Grandchildren (North Logan: Wendell LeVon Pope, 2001, rev. 2003), 97, 107, FHL, Salt Lake City.

“History of Hinckley”:

“One of the first families to settle in Hinckley was a widow [referred to as “Mrs. Pack” in this history] and her family.”4

  1. Colby Bliss, “History of Hinckley”

Find a Grave Memorial :

“In 1876, Jane and her children moved down to Millard County by the Sevier River. The town of Deseret had been settled there in 1860 only to be washed out by the river. Deseret 2 was rebuilt and the settlers dammed the River and built a bridge. In 1868 another flood came and wiped out the settlement again. In 1874 the town was resurrected again when miners came in and rebuilt the dam and began a large farming operation. West of the river in the northwest section is where Jane moved with her children and became the first settler in Deseret #3. The area was later known as Bloomington, then Hinckley.

“Jane and Rufus, Jr., age 14, took up some land one mile south of where the post office stands. Here they built the first house in Hinckley. It was a one-room log cabin which stood until about 1989 when it was destroyed by fire. They hauled the logs 30 miles from Oak Creek Canyon and had them split at the saw mill. They made a roof out of willows and mud and used chalk and sand to fill in the cracks. While building the home they lived in a dugout. Jane and Rufus, Jr. harvested 800 Bushels of grain. The second family in Hinckley was Jane’s daughter, Amanda Jane and her husband Erastus F. Pack, son of John Pack.”5
Sealed for time to Jane Robison Pack (widow of Rufus Pack) 20 Jul 1870 Endowment House.”6

  1. Gus Pendleton, Find A Grave Memorial 31769448, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31769448, accessed April 2012.
  2. Lyndon W. Cook, Nauvoo Marriages Proxy Sealings 1843–1846, 20.

Jane Robison

“Jane Robison was born February 17, 1828 in Onadaga County, New York. Her father was William Henry Robison and her Mother was Elizabeth Squires. By 1836 the growing family and relatives had moved from New York to Michigan where they heard the gospel from Mormon missionaries. The family moved to Nauvoo in 1842, shortly after they joined the Mormon Church. They lived across the River in Montrose, Iowa among other of her father’s siblings.

“On April 17, 1845, at the age of 17, Jane married John Ackerley, whose wife had died. Jane became the stepmother of John’s daughter who was about 2 ½ years old. John and Jane’s first child, Emily E. Ackersley, was born in 1846 in Montrose, Lee County, the year the Mormons were expelled from their homes and were driven out of Nauvoo. Jane’s husband John, apparently died 24 October 1846 in that exodus from Nauvoo. Jane, now a widow with two children (aged 4 and 1), went with her parents to Winter Quarters. Here her father died in November 1846, leaving Jane’s mother pregnant and with five children. Jane’s mother and several family members crossed the plains to the West in 1949, but without a husband, Jane was not in a position to go with them. The following year, at age nineteen, Jane found a husband in Rufus Pack, whose first wife Elizabeth (Betsy) Greene died in February 1841, leaving Rufus with five children. His second wife Hanna Draper died at Panca, Nebraska in 1846 leaving him with 2 more. Jane married Rufus Pack in 1847, and with her two and his seven, she suddenly had nine children to make into a family—at age nineteen!

“After Rufus married Jane Robison he took his family across the Missouri River and south to Fremont County in the southwest corner of Iowa and did not cross the plains to the west.

“They settled about 30 miles down stream from Winter Quarters at Bartlett, Mills County, Iowa. Jane bore 7 children all in Bartlett or nearby Egypt, Lyons Township. . . . Rufus and Jane stayed in Iowa and became affiliated with the Nephi Branch of the Reorganized LDS Church in Mills, Iowa. . . . Rufus was killed in a farm accident in 1868.”1

Subsequently, in 1870, Jane Robison Ackerley Pack was sealed to John Pack for time.


1 Wendell LaVon Pope, Joseph Robison and Cornelia Guinal: Their Children and Grand-children (Logan, Utah: W. L. Pope, 2001).

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