Graham guardian. (Safford, Ariz.) 1895-1923
May 03, 1918, Image 5
Image provided by Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records; Phoenix, AZ
Persistent link: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95060914/1918-05-03/ed-1/seq-5/;words=John+Monroe+Moody#
(Below is an excerpt from: The John Wyatt Moody Family ~ Past and Present, pg. 541)
Daughter of Daniel and Betsy Miller Pool, Elizabeth was born in Manchester. England, September 6, 1838 (Note: a Certified copy of an Entry of Birth CF444139 from St. George Manchester, Lancaster Co. England gives the name POOLE). Her mother joined The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints in 1838. Her father would not join the church, so Betsy Pool took her three children to Nauvoo, Illinois with the first company of English Saints, arriving in 1840. Betsy married John Blazard and died soon afterward, in Nauvoo, in 1843.
Betsy's children lived with relatives in St. Louis and were there when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed in 1844. In the confusion of leaving Nauvoo and starting west. Elizabeth was shunted from place to place, stopping for a year at the Punca River near the Punca Indians, traveling by wagon to Winter Quarters. then back to Savannah. The now ten-year-old Elizabeth had somehow gained and held a firm conviction of the gospel despite her homelessnessand orphaned condition. She was offered a home and an education if she would stay with one family, but she refused and finally got to cross the plains in the fall of 1852.
In the Salt lake Valley she worked out for her living, until as her journal states, "January 23, 1856 I was married to John M. Moody by consent of his first wife Margaret. Like Sarah of old, she wished her husband to take another wife. We lived in the same house, cooked and ate at the same table, but set up in separate rooms." To the end of her life Elizabeth strongly attested to the divinity of this principle of "spiritual" wives. Her first child John Monroe Jr. was born while his father was on a mission in Texas.
Elizabeth was a witness to the plague of crickets in 1857. In the spring of the next year, the families moved to the south while Johnston's Army marched through Salt Lake City. John was in Echo harrassing the army when he sent word to his wives to get someone to plant ten acres of grain on Cottonwood Creek. With Margaret's sons to help, the two women plowed the land with oxen and planted the grain themselves.
John married a third wife and these two women were left together in Pine Valley while John made a home in St. George with Margaret. The two women stayed there a year and a half and both gave birth to children. Then they moved into St. George where Elizabeth had her own home for the first time. First she was in a partly underground dugout. She bore her fifth child there. When a flood drove her out, she lived in a rented room, then moved into a two-room rented house. Here she had her sixth child. Her next three children were born in a little larger house. still with two rooms. Her son William suffered with "gravel" or kidney stones. Elizabeth took him and her two youngest children to Lake City for treatment, making the journey with five dollars, her own courage, and the strength of her prayers.
This resourceful woman managed to provide food, clothing, and medical treatment for William, though she had barefoot children and hardly any money when she arrived in the City. Moreover, when William had been treated, she managed to get them all home virtually without money feeding the team with two sacks of corn which were refilled in Fillmore and drawing from the Tithing Office.
John Monroe built a two-story house near the Tabernacle where Margaret Moody, (her children grown), could live comfortably. Margaret's larger house was then used by
Elizabeth and her growing family, her tenth child, Charles Daniel, being born March 29, 1877. In August, Sarah Damron Moody died, and Elizabeth took her two living children in. The birth of Henry Owen February 10, 1879 gave her eleven children, plus Sarah's two children to care for. Only Urilda was married so far.
John Monroe's decision to marry a fourth wife in 1878, probably the catalyst for Margaret's divorcing him, also severely tried Elizabeth. She said, "It seemed as though I had all I could stand. but Patriarch William McBride laid his hands on my head and blessed me, which gave me strength to overcome my trials to the extent that I could content myself and put my trust in the Lord, The Lord had promised that my last days should be my best days." But those "best days" were yet to come. When Margaret sued for divorce, she received Elizabeth's house forcing Elizabeth to move into a rented house until the family moved to Arizona in February of 1881.
They settled Thatcher, and not only was Elizabeth's husband the first bishop of the ward, but she was the first Relief Society President. She rejoiced when her first son John Monroe moved back to be with them in 1883 after having lost his wife and baby in St. George. But she lost her husband January 27, 1884 and her eldest son March 23, 1888, a double blow. Elizabeth continued to live in Thatcher surrounded by her children, until her death April 18, 1918. Her grandson Francis Winfred Moody, Jr. said of her, "She was the grandest old lady I ever knew."
The John Wyatt Moody Family
Past and PresentPublished by Dr. Thomas Moody Family Organization Inc.
President, E. Grant Moody
1424 South College Avenue
Tempe, Arizona 85281
Copyright 1985
US & CAN 929.273 M771j
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