Elizabeth Jones John Reese
Elizabeth Jones John Reese
was born 9 March 1844 in Pentre Blydon,
near Pentyrch, South Wales.
She was married to William John 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 one week before William was born. 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. They lived about a
mile southwest of town on what is known as the five acres that George Reese
built for them just across the lane from where he lived. He gave this home to
them. Sometime after his first wife Margaret Hughes died he married Tabitha,
the daughter of Llewellyn and Mary Jones. Tabitha became the mother of Mary
Jane Reese Allen. She died at the age of 25 in 1879.
Mary Jones died in 1880. That
left two widowers (George Rees and his father-in-law Llewellyn Jones), so
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 afterwards her father passed away [11
August 1881]. This left Elizabeth
on one side of the lane with three children and George Reese on the other side
of the lane with two children. Elizabeth
was a widow, and George Reese was a widower. They were married 2 February 1880.
[The dates and the story are a bit confusing.] From that union three children
were born – George Llewellyn (born 5 November 1881, died February 1892),
Elizabeth Susanna (born 9 November 1882), Lotwick
Lazarus (born 8 October 1885).
Elizabeth
died 29 November 1907 at the age of 63 and was buried in the Bloomington cemetery. She 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 she 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. Elizabeth had been used to living in a city
where people passed by her door all the time, and the brass bands playing
passed by often, and people were sociable with each other. When she came here
everything was very different. She lived about a mile out of town with no close
neighbors, and she missed the association with people as she had had before.
The winters were severe, and
there was a lot of sickness and deaths. Because she didn’t like this country
she longed to go back to her native land. Her health was poor for several years
before she passed away.
[The following was written by
LaVina Reese Hunter Doerfler.]
My grandmother, Elizabeth Jones John Reese was a pretty little woman; she
weighed about 80 pounds. She was as straight as an arrow, and she had beautiful
white hair. When she came to this country she was a widow, her husband William
John having died in Wales.
Grandma came here with here three children. Grandma married George Reese (my
father’s brother) and lived up on the hill across from her parents. I used to
go up to see Grandma every Sunday, and she would say, “LaVina,
if you will pick some raspberries I will make some griddle cakes.” Oh boy, her
griddle cakes would melt in your mouth, and I would go like a whirl for the
berries.
I loved my Grandma so much. She
was one of the sweetest little women that I ever knew. She was pretty lonesome
after her parents died, so far from anyone, and they were quite poor. Mother
and I would walk up to see her about once a week in the evening, and mother
always took her a little sugar to put in her tea. She was not LDS then. When
she died my Uncle George (her husband) said, “There lies one of the best women
that every lived.” If she had lived longer I believe I could have converted
her, as she asked so many questions. She would ask, “Well, what did you learn
in Sunday School today, something about Joe Smith?” I
said, “Oh no, we learned about the parable of the Good Samaritan.” And the same
thing went on Sunday after Sunday. “We learned about the ten virgins today” or “About
Jesus in Gethsemane”, etc., and Grandma was so
surprised. If she had lived longer I feel sure I could have converted her, as
she asked so many question and seemed so interested. If
she had lived I would have learned the Welsh language. She talked Welsh to me
and had me figure it out with her help. She felt bad that we did not know our
own language.
