A History of Eliza Jane Pulsipher Terry
By Granddaughter Vera Lee Brinley
An early pioneer to the west, our precious Grandmother Terry was respected and admired by everyone who had the good fortune to be associated with her and dearly beloved by her family and close friends. It is a great honor for one to be loved by the people who know him best.
Eliza Jane Pulsipher was born July 26th, 1840 in Nauvoo, Adams County, Illinois – the tenth child (sixth daughter) of Mary Brown and Zerah Pulsipher.
Eliza Jane was born in the midst of many hardships and persecutions. Often there were heart break and despair. Her father (Zerah Pulsipher) helped to guard the Prophet Joseph Smith and had close companionship with him. Eliza Jane remembered going to the temple with her mother to see and hear the Prophet Joseph speak at the dedication. She was about four years old. She recalled what a nice-looking man he was. (Grandmother often told us stories of her life).
After the death of the Prophet, the Pulsipher family left with the rest of the saints for the west. President Brigham Young appointed Father Pulsipher to be a leader over one hundred wagons. Often, he went ahead to prepare the way for his group to follow. The Pulsipher family tasted of the sorrow of the loss of their dear Grandmother Pulsipher, who died and was buried on the plains. Great was the development of that courageous band of noble men and women. They endured many privations. The journey was long and hard but happiness and genuine satisfaction abounded among them. Many were the spiritual manifestations enjoyed during their journey, shared by old and young alike.
On September 23rd, 1847, they reached the valley of the Great Sale Lake, a barren desert to be cultivated. They found the only houses to be the fort which had been built by Saints arriving earlier. They had left their homes and possessions to seek a home where they could live in peace. They loved their new homes and worked hard to make it livable. Father Pulsipher built the first grist mill, also the first sawmill the valley. Thus, this family with the other Saints, helped to make “the desert blossom as the rose.”
Eliza Jane was in her eighth year when she arrived with her family in the West. Her schooling began at nine years of age, but the greater part of her education was received while learning to perform the many duties in the home of her pioneer parents. Her parents were hard working and energetic and Eliza Jane was anxious to learn. A kind and loving mother taught her children to work while they were very young.
Eliza Jane mastered well the many tasks she learned to perform, as was evidenced by the industry of her more mature years. She was well prepared for the life of an efficient, hard-working, but happy, pioneer wife and mother.
Thomas Sirls Terry asked her to become his bride, having known her since she was a child. He was fifteen years her senior. She had admired this gentle, kind, intelligent young man from their earliest acquaintance. They were married May 6th, 1855, just before her sixteenth birthday. When the Endowment House in Salt Lake City was completed, Eliza Jane and Thomas Sirls Terry were sealed, August 8th, 1856.
Eliza Jane’s first child, a son, Zera Pulsipher Terry, was born March 16th, 1856. Thomas Sirls Terry received a call to go to the States on a mission. (Utah was then a territory.) He left for his mission October 1856.
At the time Thomas Sirls Terry left for his mission, Eliza Jane was living with mother and father Pulsipher in Salt Lake City, Utah. Eliza Jane was now eighteen years old. She moved from home to a little farm in Cottonwood to earn her living.
Many were the prayers she uttered at the privacy of her little hearth, the solitude of her days being spent with the babe she loved and cared for.
The snow was so deep that she walked on snow shoes. She fed the stock, digging with her hands, the frozen stalks of corn from under the heavy snow. She froze her feet and suffered much before they were healed. She ground corn and wheat in a hand mill to make flour for her bread. Through the long winter months of 1856, she worked and prayed and waited, living miles from a neighbor, and twelve miles from Salt Lake.
Throughout her life, she was thrifty and industrious, finding time to make clothes for her family, besides fashioning men’s suits and men’s straw hats. A son, Thomas nelson, was born September 11th, 1858, her second child, and a daughter, Eliza Jane, on December 23rd, 1860.
The family lived happily in the Salt Lake area for fourteen years. Then, Apostle Snow called the Pulsipher, Terry and Alger families to settle the Dixie country. They, again, left their homes and possessions and traveled without question to Southern Utah. The children had whooping cough on the way. It was a cold winter, but they arrived in Dixie in January 1862, the first white settlers there. There they homesteaded all winter. Eliza Jane’s fourth child, a daughter, Aluna, was born January 30th, 1863, in a wagon box bedroom that cold winter.
In the spring of 1863, they were asked to move to Shoal Creek, Washington County, Utah, to help take care of the cattle of the Dixie settlers. Other than the families of Eliza Jane’s two brothers who had gone earlier, they found no one but wild Indians in Shoal Creek. Three years later, at the request of President Snow, again they moved five miles west from Shoal Creek to make a settlement which they called Hebron, (named for the Hebron of the Bible days).
Eight more children were born to Eliza and Thomas Sirls Terry, all at Hebron, Utah. There was first a girl, Sarah Mariah, born September 13th, 1865. Twin sons born March 29th, 1868 who died in infancy from whooping cough. Olive Amelia was born June 26th, 1869. Another daughter Josephine Rebecca was born on the 20th of June, 1870, then Frank Durmoth on December 18th, 1872 and Tacy Roselee (a girl) on January 18th, 1875. My mother, Eva Elthera, was born June 28th, 1877, the youngest child of Eliza Jane Pulsipher and Thomas Sirls Terry.
Thomas Sirls Terry had a great vision, and he saw many possibilities for a large ranch to be built six miles from Hebron. It was known as Terry’s Ranch. It stood on a main road between Utah and the rich mining camps of Nevada. It was a stopping place for the United States Mail Carriers. The stage coach came each day from one direction and the buckboard from the other, meeting at the ranch. Drivers were stationed at the ranch to relieve the other drivers as they came. Passengers often came in on the mail coach from Silver Reef and Pioche, Nevada, thus greatly increasing the already heavy duties of Eliza Jane. She fed many people. Many came to her door and none were turned away hungry. The ranch always held fond memories for her.
Added to these duties, Eliza Jane had the great ability of serving the sick. In far distant Hebron and the ranch there was great need for a midwife, and she felt the need for training for this new task so she went to dixie to study with a trained nurse and midwife who had joined the Church and come from the East and was giving training in obstetrics. From this study, she returned home to her loved ones, well prepared to carry on this necessary work. Through the years, she gave freely of her time and energy to relieve the suffering of childbirth. She traveled by horse and wagon to the far distant (for that time) town of Panaca, Nevada, to assist her two married daughters who lived there. This work and these hard trips took great toll of her strength. Her daughter, Sarah Mariah, died from a weak heart following confinement, leaving two small children, so she (Eliza Jane) moved to Panaca, Nevada, to care for this little family. Her services were in great demand in that area so she still carried on this great service, asking so little and giving so much. Her joy was the satisfaction of a task well done. Many people came to depend on her for advice and help. In later years, she assisted the doctors, seemingly as capable as they. She attended her church duties, setting a fine example for her children and grandchildren, while earning her own livelihood.
Grandma Eliza Jane seemed to have no unkindness or hardness in her heart – no murmur of such ever escaped her lips throughout the years of my life with her. She was present at my birth. When my mother, Eva, married, grandmother requested that my mother never leave her, the last of her twelve children, so my mother and father remained in her home with her. Later, Father purchased the home from her with the understanding that she lived with us always, having accommodations of her own. When we first three children were born, grandmother relieved Mother greatly, caring for us where’re she was needed. I seemed at times to be her charge much of the time through those happy years. When my fathers work too the family away for a few months at a time, mother left me to be company for grandmother. We all had the privilege of her companionship.
Great was the need in those early days when there was a dearth of medical aid. Ready she was to assist, be it in the dark of night or the heat of a summer day or cold of winter. Her service extended not only to Panaca but to the neighboring mining town of Pioche. An angel of mercy was she, as she answered the call of the sick. I’m certain that the “Great Physician” was at her side. Thus she was a woman of great service, having been called, as it were, by God.
One day, while walking home from helping a friend, grandmother hurried to avoid the rain storm. She became overheated. Then the rain drenched her and she contracted pneumonia. She lived only a few days. She passed from this life May 5th, 1919 at the age of 79 and was buried May 6th, 1919 on the anniversary of her wedding day, at Panaca, Lincoln County, Nevada cemetery.
A word picture and character sketch by Anna Marie Terry Andrew
Eliza Jane Pulsipher Terry
Born July 26th, 1840 at Nauvoo, Illinois
Died May 5th, 1919, buried in the Panaca Cemetery
Daughter of Zerah Pulsipher and Mary Brown
Married Thomas Sirls Terry on May 6th, 1855
Eliza Jane’s hair was parted in the middle and drawn to the back. All the other Pulsipher family members were white-headed, but Eliza’s hair was brown. She was average in height and build. Her long black skirt touched the ground as she walked, and it had two deep pockets. In these pockets, this kind and generous woman could always find a dollar to help some member of the family.
There was a time when Eliza Jane herself had asked for help and was not turned away empty. This is the story of the flour box, and demonstrates her faith in God and its fulfillment:
It was in Little Cottonwood – – 12 miles from Salt Lake City. Her husband had left to go on a mission, and Eliza Jane, a young mother, 18 years old, was left on the farm with her young child. Uncle Will Pulsipher was to have stayed on the farm to look after things while Thomas Sirls Terry was away, but the Church called for volunteers to take teams and go to help the stranded handcart company. Upon returning, he had a severe cold and his sweetheart had died of smallpox. His hardships and sorrow caused him to have brain fever and he was very ill for a long time, so Eliza Jane remained alone at the farm to do the chores.
The snow that winter was up to the window sills. She had to dig roots along under the creek bank for food and she froze her feet. That winter the wooden flour box became empty. Nevertheless, Eliza Jane would take her cup to get flour for another meal. As she banged the spoon or hammer against the boards of the flour box she prayed, and she could always get enough flour to help make a meal.
Brigham Young called the Pulsipher and Terry families to help settle Southern Utah and this they did. Eliza Jane and her people went into a new part of the country to make their home.
Eliza Jane had 12 children of her own and waited on all the other women in the county when they gave birth to theirs. This is how she came to undertake this nursing or doctoring career: When Uncle Will Pulsipher’s wife, Esther, was about to give birth to her baby, the midwife was ill and couldn’t attend the expectant mother. Eliza Jane’s father, Zerah Pulsipher, came to her and said, “Eliza, you are the only woman that can handle the job.” He gave her a blessing and started her out on this new career. Many people came to depend upon Eliza Jane, and feeling the need of further training, she went to St. George and took a course in obstetrics.
Her services were much sought after. People would come for her from far away, night or day, in all different kinds of conveyances. She always went where and when she was needed. These journeys took her over long stretches of rough road in all kinds of weather. Her children gained the experience of caring for the home and family while she was gone.
Eliza Jane was very independent. From her nursing she always had money of her own and even bought and maintained her own home in Panaca. If she needed work done, there were men who owed her for doctor bills that were glad to do it.
She dearly loved her husband. They lived in the day when polygamy was taught by the Church, and he endeavored all his days to be a good husband and father. Thomas Sirls Terry married first to Eliza Jane’s older sister, Mary Ann. He married Eliza Jane second when he was age 30 and she was 15. To his first marriage, only girls had been born, and it was Eliza Jane who presented her husband his first son (This child was Zera Pulsipher Terry).
Since Mary Ann’s first children were all girls, her family lived in the town of Hebron. Eliza Jane lived on the Terry Ranch so that the boys could help their father. Later, when Mary Ann’s family of boys came along, she moved to the farm and Eliza Jane moved to Hebron until her children were almost all married. Then she bought a home in Panaca, Nevada, where she followed her medical work the rest of her life.
Thomas Sirls Terry married again to Hanna Leavitt, by whom he raised another nice family of six – three boys and three girls. Because he had the three families to watch over, Eliza Jane could only have her husband with her part of the time. She never complained over this or any of her hardships during her life. When her husband came, he usually brought fruit that she needed. Eliza Jane was cheerful and even-tempered. She prepared the finest meals and kept her home lovely and clean. She was a devoted wife and loving mother.
This is a picture of my great grandmother, Eliza Jane Pulsipher. Born in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, she crossed the plains when she was only seven years old. This daughter of leaders, wife of a leader and mother of leaders, stands in her own right as a leader in the early days of Southern Utah. This industrious woman kept busy serving her family and others as long as she lived. In the declining years of her life she was lovingly cared for by her daughter Eva. And when she died, her funeral was held in Panaca where she had spent the later years of her active life.
Many people today trace their ancestry to this colorful pioneer figure. Let these words be the measuring stick for the life of Eliza Jane Pulsipher:
“By their fruits ye shall know them…”
Brief History of the Life of Eliza Jane Pulsipher Terry
Compiled by Nora and Terry Lund
Eliza Jane Pulsipher Terry was born in Nauvoo, Adam’s County, Illinois on the 26th day of July, 1840. Her parents were Zerah and Mary Brown Pulsipher.
May I go back and give just a little history of Eliza’s parents, as a little background of her life. They accepted the Gospel in New York State as it was taught by Elder Jared Carter. In 1832, Zerah sold his farm and prepared to gather with the Saints. The family, after moving to different places, finally arrived in Kirtland, Ohio in 1835, and there saw the Prophet Joseph Smith, and helped work on the Temple.
Father with another Elder (Jared Carter), had the privilege of converting and baptizing Wilford Woodruff in New York State before coming to Nauvoo. In Nauvoo, Zerah was chosen as one of the First General Seven Presidents of Seventy.
Eliza’s mother was steadfast and helpful through all the terrible persecutions that the saints endured in the early rise of the church.
Eliza, with the rest of the family, arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley on the 22nd of September, 1848. Her father began immediately to prepare food and shelter for the coming winter. Their first home in Salt Lake City was on the 4th block west of the Temple Block. Her schooling commenced in 1849 at the school in the old 16th Ward. She was a likeable person and had many childhood friends.
Eliza was the 10th child born to this note-worthy couple. She was seven years old when the trek across the Plains was made, so no doubt she could remember many of the hardships endured by the family. Her father was Captain of a company consisting of 100 wagons, with this added responsibility, perhaps his own family was looked after by the older boys, John and Charles.
She probably had her share of boyfriends, but we must remember that plural marriage was being practiced by the Church at this time. I imagine Eliza Jane had a great deal of respect for her sister, Mary Ann’s husband, Thomas Sirls Terry.
I don’t suppose the fact that he was 15 years her senior bothered her very much when he started courting her. She knew him to be a good, kind man; he was strong in the faith of the Church in which they had under-gone such hardships for. This marriage was performed by President Brigham Young on the 6th of Mary, 1855. She was just 15 years of age at the time. When the Endowment House was completed, she received her endowments on the 8th of August, 1956.
Following is what Eliza Jane’s daughter wrote about her mother’s life in 1953:
“At the time father left for his mission in 1856, Aunt Mary Ann was on her farm in Little Cottonwood, 12 miles from Salt Lake City. My mother, Eliza, was in Salt Lake City with Grandmother Pulsipher but as time went on, Aunt Mary exchanged places with mother and went to Salt Lake to stay with her mother (Grandmother Pulsipher), as she was expecting her 4th child.
Uncle Will Pulsipher was to have stayed on the ranch to look after the chores while father was away but the Church called for volunteers to take teams and go to help the poor handcart saints who were stranded in the snow. Uncle Will went, which left my mother, a young girl of 18 years, on the farm alone with her young child, she was one and a half miles from any neighbors.
The snow that winter was up to her window sills. While doing her daily chores, her feet froze until they came out in blisters and formed sores. She had to dig her corn fodder and any other hay feed from under the snow to feed her animals. She also had to grind corn on the coffee mill to make bread.
One night she heard someone come tramping up to the door on snow shoes and she wondered who could be coming there. Of course, it frightened her some, being so young and alone. But she put her trust in her Heavenly Father as she always did. Finally a man called her name. She was thankful to know it was Uncle John Alger, her sister Sarah’s husband. They had become worried about her down there in the deep snow alone and he had volunteered to put on snow shoes and see how she was doing.
When Uncle Will returned with the Hand Cart Company, he had a very severe head cold. His sweetheart had taken ill with small pox and had died while he was away. Altogether, his hardships and sorrow caused him to have brain fever and he was very ill for a long time, so mother still stayed alone on the farm.
After Aunt Mary Ann’s child came and she was able to return to the farm, she and mother again exchanged places. Mother never did complain any of her hardships. I am just wondering what any of our girls now a days, at that tender age, would have done under those circumstances. It is worthy of mention, I feel.
Later in life when the Pulsipher family was called to come out of St. George to care for all the cattle of the St. George people, father moved his family out to Shoal Creek as it was then called, along with the Pulsipher’s.
When father decided to homestead the old Terry Ranch, he moved mother on the ranch to live as she had sons growing up to be of help to father in building a new home. Father built Aunt Mary Ann a home in what was then known as Hebron, five miles below the ranch. Her family were all girls at first.
At the ranch the pickets were cut for fencing, the land was cleared, the large rock barn was built. It was quite a hard laborious job with a family of that size to care for. There were also men hired to help to do the mason work on the barn. The stage coach came each day from one direction and the buckboard each day from the other way meeting at the ranch. The drivers who were going to take the place of the weary drivers each day, were stationed at the ranch. Besides this, there were passengers coming in on the stage and mail from Silver Reef and Pioche. So it was no easy life to care for such daily duties.
As Aunt Mary Ann’s boys began to grow, she could see the need of a future for them so she decided to go to the ranch to live and father moved mother to Old Hebron in the place there.
I will now add just how mother decided to become a trained midwife. Uncle Will Pulsipher’s wife, Esther, was about to give birth to a baby. The mid-wife was ill with pneumonia and couldn’t attend the expectant mother.
When Aunt Esther took ill, Grandfather, Zerah Pulsipher came and said, “Eliza, you are the only woman that can handle the job, so you go and care for her and I promise you, if you will, the Lord will bless you and all with go right!”
After that, the people of the surrounding county felt mother was capable and they depended on her. However, it was a source of worry to mother, so she finally told father it was too much and too nerve racking. She felt that she must have training.
In St. George, there was a lady who had come from the East as a convert to the Church, she was a trained nurse. She was teaching classes in obstetrics there. So father (Thomas Sirls Terry) moved mother to St. George to receive that training.
Back in Hebron, she went about her work of caring for the sick with renewed confidence. She was in much demand all over the county. The families living on Clover Valley sent for her and soon her ability as a nurse and mid-wife spread to Panaca, Nevada and her services were much sought after in that place. It was a long stretch of rough road between the two places and it was quite hard on her to be on the road so much in all kinds of weather but she always went where and when she was needed.
Clyde Terry, a son of Zera’s, and grandson of Eliza Jane’s, remembers what ambitious woman his grandmother was. Neither could she tolerate idleness in anyone else. To illustrate her industry and show what a masterful woman she was, Clyde tells how she used to go a bit early to the home of a woman who was to be confined and she was engaged as mid-wife. While waiting for the event, she would keep everybody busy. She usually had them bring out all the rags for a carpet, wash them, tear them in the proper strips, sew them and have a nice carpet woven before she left that family.
Her price for confinement was $10. After she moved to Panaca she worked with a doctor in Pioche and she got more money for her services. She was very independent, and from her nursing, she always had plenty of money of her own. In fact, she bought her own home in Panaca.
Clyde remembers that she always wore a long black dress with big pockets. She favored her grandchildren and always had a little reward of money for services rendered.
Again, he says, “When Grandma was alone in her seventies, there was a big canal project on to run the water out of the Santa Clara Creek. A cook was needed badly to prepare meals for the forty men on the job. When anyone else wouldn’t take the job of cook, Grandma said she would and did, preparing nourishing meals for the hungry men.”
He also said, “I have heard Grandma talk about when she was crossing the plains, they used to milk the cows they had along with them. Sometimes they would make cheese for the families to use by improved methods, even to pressing out the whey by the weighting of the wagon tongue.”
She used to tell us about her little log cabin home out at Union and how she dug roots to eat to keep from getting so hungry.
Eliza was a helpful, devoted wife and loving mother. She was privileged to be the mother of 12 children. 4 of them died in infancy, namely: John William and Charles Henry – twins; Oliver Amelia and Tracy Rosellee. The 8 growing to maturity, marrying and raising families were: Zera Pulsipher, Thomas Nelson, Eliza Jane, Aluna, Sarah Mariah, Josephine Rebecca, Frank Kermoth and Eva Elthera.
This good woman was lovingly cared for in the declining years of her life by her daughter Eva. She passed away peacefully on the 5th of May, 1919. Her husband was not there at the time, but upon receiving word of her death came immediately from Enterprise, accompanied by his son, Frank Durmoth Terry.
Funeral services were arranged to be held in the Panaca Ward where she had spent the later years of her life. Her husband talked at the funeral, which perhaps was unusual, but he gave a stirring sermon and bore a strong testimony on the occasion.
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