So it was that Zemira’s widowed mother Phebe, with four or five of her children, (Eliza had died, and Asahel, age 15, may not have come until later) and also her parents William Sr. and Lydia Lathrop Draper, and some of her brothers and sisters left their homes in Canada and made the journey to Kirtland, Ohio in the United States. (See Map 3) At that time Phebe’s son William George was age 13; Lydia Elizabeth 6; Zemira 2 ½ years, and then there was baby Rhoda Ann who was born 2 ½ months after her father died. What a blessing it must have been to the widowed Phebe, to have the help of her loved ones bringing her young children on that long trip.
Phebe’s oldest daughter Lovina stayed in Canada. She had married Henry Munro in that same year. She and her husband and their son, and her great-uncle Thomas Draper Jr. came to Kirtland in 1838.
In September of 1834, the Draper group arrived in Kirtland which was the headquarters of the Church at that time. It was the responsibility of the presiding Bishopric to help find places for newcomers to live, and also to see that their temporal needs were met. They counseled all the members to share their means and their work with each other, thus the poor were provided for.
The Saints knew that Kirtland wasn’t the place where their land of Zion would be, for the Prophet had received a revelation two years previously that Missouri was to be their Zion. A group of Saints had gone there at that time, had dedicated that area, and had established a branch of the Church in Independence in preparation for future growth.
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