Nancy Booth was born April 11, 1826 in Brown County Ohio, the first child of William and Sarah Amelia Booth. Not much is known about Nancy, but the time she was 11 the family was living in Indiana where her sister, Susan, was born. By the age of nineteen she was living in Nauvoo, where on Jan. 21, 1846 she was sealed as John Pack’s second wife in the Nauvoo temple. She was almost twenty and John was 36. That same day John was also sealed to Ruth Moser and Elisa Jane Graham.
Just two weeks later on February 4, 1846, John took his mother, wives and children and they ferried across the Mississippi River. They camped at Sugar Creek for three weeks and then went on the Winter Quarters. Nancy stayed at Winter Quarters while John was heading west with the Vanguard company. John returned to Winter Quarters from the Salt Lake Valley in October of 1847 and over the winter made preparations to take his family west and they left April 1, 1848. Nancy and Ruth drove their own wagon and the Young-Kimball company arrived in the Valley on September 24, 1848. Although Nancy was expecting her first child, she and Ruth spent their first winter in the Valley living in their wagon boxes while Julia and her children lived in the home John built on the lot of what is now West Temple and First North.
Nancy’s baby named Sarah Amelia Pack was born June 2, 1849. On October 6, 1849, John was called to go to France on a mission and left less than two weeks later. On February 16, 1850, from St. Louis, John wrote Nancy a letter, “I hav bin three weeks in this place and I want to get away and be preaching in France. I am wating on Br. Taylor. We expect to start this week for Newyork. I cold write you a litter in french, but you cold not read it….I love to write to you for when I write it allmost seemes that I am in your presence, but alass it is not so. A long distance sepparates us in person but not in feelings…. I remane your kind and affectionate companion in time and to all Eternity.
Another letter written a little later states, “Prepare yourself for many a kiss when I get home. O how sweet will be our meeting.” He urges her not to be in a hurry “to ween your babe but let it nurce a good while. Kiss the little blue eyed girl for me on both cheeks and tell hir she has got a father that will be home one of these days and will kiss hir on the end of the nose.”
John returned from his mission in France arriving in the Valley on August 8, 1952, and his reunion with Nancy must have been as he wrote because Nancy’s second child, Adelbert Beaumont, was born just nine months later on May 4, 1853. This child was the first of the ABC children and John’s other wives also had babies over the next three months-4 babies in three months.
Nancy died on August 14, 1853 and was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, leaving her two young children to be raised by the other wives.