Agnes Smith Burgess

Agnes Smith Burgess was the mother of Susan Isabelle Burgess Leavitt. It is always fascinating to learn stories about our ancestors. Here is a little bit about Agnes.


After Agnes Smith immigrated to the United States, she first worked as a domestic servant living in Box Elder County, Utah. Sometime between the 1870 United States Federal Census and 1872 she met Hyrum W. Burgess. According to Agnes Smith’s headstone in Mesquite, Clark, Nevada, she married Hyrum W. Smith 6 March 1872 in Utah. Unfortunately, marriages were not required to be recorded until 1887.

Agnes Smith died on 23 March 1933 in Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada. Agnes Smith was in a house fire where Agnes Smith received severe burns. She did not die immediately from her injuries but was in great pain. The Salt Lake Tribute reported on Saturday, 25 March 1933 an article entitled “Aged Women Burned While Starting Fire.” The report was from Las Vegas, Nevada. It reads as follows,

“Mrs. Agnes Burgess, 83-years-old pioneer women of Mesquite, Nev. was in the hospital here Friday suffering from second degree burns. According to word from the farming community where Mrs. Burgess lives, she was building a fire in her kitchen when her dress caught fire. Physicians feared her age might retard her recovery.” 


In an Oral History from Voices of Remembrance by "Allene (Hughes) Carter Jones, she told the following account about Agnes Smith Burgess:

"My great-grandmother [Agnes Smith Burgess] very plain; my Grandma Burgess. She was burned to death down here on the corner. In those days, they used to start their fire with kerosene. She got up in the morning to start her fire. She had long hair [and would] unbraid it at night and it would hang down. She started her fire that morning [and] was pouring a little kerosene over it. There were some hot colas from the night before and it blew up and caught her on fire. I was only nine or ten years old [when] she died. I remember going to my grandmother's [house where[ they had her in the coffin. [I remember] seeing her the night before they were to have her funeral at the schoolhouse. That was before we had a chapel. We always had church in the old schoolhouse over here. [The night before they buried her], the schoolhouse caught fire and burned a hole in the roof. It damaged the roof. So many people thought it was quite a coincidence. She had lost her life through fire and then they had her funeral in this burned schoolhouse."