Elizabeth Jones by her daughter

Contributed By Lane · Aug 27, 2013 2:45 PM · 0 Comments

BIOGRAPHY OF ELIZABETH JONES REESE by Elizabeth S. Reese Price My mother, Elizabeth Jones Reese, was born March 8, 1844 in Pentre Bloyden, near Pentyrch, South Wales. [The 1841 and 1851 censuses both show the family living at Dinas, Llantrissent, Glamorgan, South Wales.] She was married to William Johns in South Wales. She became the mother of Mary Jane, David, Ann, Thomas and William. Her husband and daughter Ann died in Wales. Her husband died [8 Feburary 1875] one week before William was born [18 Feburary 1875]. When they took her husband to the cemetery, she was sick. She had the lock-jaw and didn't know anything about it. Her father and mother, Llewellyn and Mary Jones, and children immigrated to Utah in the year 1868 [16 October 1872 on the Minnesota]. Their children's names were David, Jeanette, Elizabeth, Susanna, Tabitha, Mary, Ephraim and Lydia. They lived about a mile southwest of town on which is known as the "five acres" in a home that my father, George Reese, built for them, just across the lane from where he lived. He gave this home to them. Some time after, my father's first wife, Margaret Hughes, died and he married Tabitha, the daughter of Llewellyn and Mary Jones. Tabitha was my mother's sister, and she became the mother of Mary Jane Reese Allen. Tabitha died at the age of 25 in 1879. My grandmother (Mary Jones) died in 1879 [11 April]. That left two widowers. So my grandfather, Llewellyn Jones, wrote to his daughter, Elizabeth, in Wales and asked her to come out and take care of him. She came to America, bringing her three children with her, Mary Jane, Thomas and William. They were on the ocean thirteen days. She was sick all the way and had to be carried to deck every time she got there. From New York to Evanston they came by train, and from Evanston to Bloomington, Idaho with a team and wagon. A short time after, her father passed away. That left my mother on one side of the lane with three children and my father on the other side of the lane with two children. My mother was a widow and my father a widower. My father and mother were married on Feb. 2, 1880. From that union, three children were born: George Llewellyn, born Nov. 5, 1881, died Feb. 1882; Elizabeth Susanna, born Nov. 9, 1882, and Lotwick Lazarus, born Oct. 7, 1885. My mother died Nov. 29, 1907 at the age of 63, and was buried in the Bloomington cemetery. My mother was a very beautiful woman and a very good singer. She was industrious, religious, kind-hearted, and a good wife and mother. Her father had her baptized into the Mormon Church when she was eight years old, but for some reason she lived with a family that were Baptists when she was a small child, and they poisoned her mind against the Mormons. She believed what they told her and later joined the Baptist Church. Her father was a staunch Latter-Day Saint, and the first thing he would do when he got his check was to pay his tithing and the family lived on the rest. My mother had been used to living in a city where people passed by her door all the time and brass bands playing passed by often and people were sociable with each other. When she came here, everything was so different. She lived a mile from town and she had no neighbors, and she missed the association of other people like she had had before. The winters were severe and there was much sickness and death. She longed to go back to her native land. Her health was poor for years, and she died Nov. 29, 1907 in Bloomington, Idaho. modifications by Lane Pendleton