From https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/ :
Marinda and her husband, Alex, lived in a little adobe house in Spanish Fork, Utah. “Along the front of the house they planted asparagus which grew tall in the summer… to the top of the walls of the little house.” A neighbor remembered Marinda as “a wonderful cook and very freehearted. Many times she brought freshly baked bread to our home.” This idyllic picture of her married life belies the turbulent years she spent before her marriage to Alex Bankhead, who also had been formerly enslaved.

Marinda’s enslaver Elizabeth died in 1853, followed by John Hardison Redd in 1858. When Redd’s property was divided among his descendants, Marinda received equal shares of land, animals, grain, and household goods with the rest of his heirs at law. She and two other of Redd’s enslaved people were given a house to share. Redd’s heirs took no court action to free Marinda, but by giving her this inheritance, they declared her to be emancipated.

Alex and Marinda were known as faithful Latter-day Saints during their married life. A black newspaper publisher, Julius Taylor, interviewed the elderly couple in 1899 and described Marinda and Alex as “devout and strict Mormons. She belongs to the Ladies’ Relief Society of her Ward.”

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