A Modern Cain and Abel Story. A life she termed half joy and half sorrow.
Born to parents who had childhood memories of the Civil War, Maud’s life began in 1892; just two years after the Mormon Church Manifesto had forbidden plural marriage. Educated in the LDS High School in Salt Lake City, she, paradoxically, gained a love for that controversial principle. In Salt Lake Maud read newspaper reports telling that President Joseph F. Smith had paid a $500 fine for a son who was born years after the Manifesto; yet the church continued to deny its practice. She married Dayer LeBaron, helped him get a plural wife, fled to Mexico to avoid his arrest, and continued giving birth to children. Dayers family lived nearly twenty years in Colonia Juarez, ostracized for living plural marriage, in a town that early Mormons had made as a place of refuge for polygamists. With grown sons, Maud and Dayer left the Mormon colony to pioneer a remote area on homestead land. There her son Joel began a church and became the beloved leader of a new community. Ervil, a younger brother, enraged at Joel success, no longer supported him. A modern Cain and Abel story ensued, breaking Maud’s heart.
