The first documentation to place Martha in Utah is the 1850 Utah census, taken in the Spring of 1851, where she appears with her sister Elizabeth Calvert Chase. Her mother had died in Feb. 1846 in Winter Quarters, and her father died in Sep. 1846 in Florence, Nebraska. She may have come to Utah with her sister Elizabeth Calvert in the 1848 Brigham Young Company. Further research is needed to confirm the year she came to Utah and the name of the company she traveled with.

Her death certificate shows her name as "Martha Jane Calvert Dodge," but the name on her gravestone is simply "Martha Jane Calvert."