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Rachel and Joey Courtship

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Biography of Elizabeth Mills Whitaker

Compiled by: Carol Whitaker DeLand

elizabeth

I have in my possession two accounts of Elizabeth’s life.  One was given to me by Violet Chase in about 1957.  I had contacted her by letter asking for information about the Whitaker Family line.  After a Whitaker Family Reunion, she mailed me a brief history of Elizabeth which had been given out at the reunion.  I also have an account which appears to be typed by my father, Ron Whitaker, when he was the secretary of the Whitaker Family Organization during approximately 1925 through 1937.  I have his notes from these yearly meetings from 1928 – 1934.  Elizabeth was alive at the time this account was typed, and Ron knew her.  So I am assuming it to be the most accurate.  I am including both rather than trying to merge the two accounts.

Life History of Elizabeth Mills Whitaker

(Taken from an account recorded 23 January 1925)

          Elizabeth Mills was the second daughter of Elizabeth Halls and John Mills and was born on the Isle of Man 7 March 1839.

John Taylor, with others, preached the gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Isle of Man in about 1841.  They made their home with the Mills family.  The Mills were among the first to be baptized by John Taylor.

In the mid winter of 1843, Elizabeth (3 years old), her father, mother, and baby brother left England in a sailing vessel to go to be with the church members in Nauvoo, Illinois.  They were eight weeks on the water before reaching New Orleans.  Then they came up the Mississippi River in a steam boat.  They reached Nauvoo, Illinois several months before the Prophet Joseph Smith was killed.

When they arrived June 1844, they had their first dinner in Nauvoo at the home of John Taylor, and the two families became very dear to each other.  Later Elizabeth’s son, John Whitaker married John Taylor’s daughter, Ida.

Elizabeth’s father was a tinsmith by trade.  He opened a shop in Nauvoo and began making the horns and ears for the oxen which were to hold up the baptismal font in the Nauvoo Temple.  He also made cast iron ovens for the people to bake bread and corn.  During this period of time, the Prophet Joseph would often come to their home to give instructions and see how the work in the tin shop was progressing.  He would take little Elizabeth on his lap and sing to her and tell her stories.  She well remembers going with her parents to the Nauvoo Temple and seeing all the workmen with their guns by their sides.  These were perilous times.  The Saints realized conditions were fast reaching a crisis, and everyone had to be on guard.

A baby brother was born at this time.  After the Prophet Joseph was killed, Elizabeth was among the Saints who were turned out of Nauvoo and sent over the Mississippi River.  There was ice on the river at that time so they camped at Mount Roe until they could get to Fort Madison.  There they built a home and stayed for about two years.  A baby sister was born there.  They then moved on to Des Moines River and lived awhile.  Then they moved to Council Bluffs and bought a home where they lived there until Elizabeth was about 12 years old.  Apostle Hyde presided at this place.

About 1851, their company was formed with William Wilkes as Captain.  They crossed the Missouri River, and several other companies joined them to save themselves from the Indians.  A short time before, some gold seekers had killed some Indians, and it caused much trouble for the pioneers.  They had guards all the time, and they traveled every day but Saturday and Sunday.  They would wash on Saturday and worship all day Sunday.   One day they found a whole company of gold seekers had been massacred.  Everything was burned but the wagon tires.  After that the Saints had double guards.

At the Platte River, they met missionaries who had come from Salt Lake to meet them.  They began to prepare a party to celebrate meeting the missionaries.  The men all went in bathing and a brother by the name of Roberts was drowned.  They worked hard to obtain the body, and instead of a party, they held a funeral with a coffin made of barrel staves.

They traveled on the North side of the Platte River and found three nude bodies of men who had been murdered by Indians.  They did not dare to camp but would feed oxen a cracker and would carry water to them.  When they came to the place that they thought was safe, the men took the oxen to a ravine and left all the women and children alone in camp.  Three hundred Sioux Indians in war paint and feathers on their pretty ponies came and began helping themselves to the cakes and teasing the children.  Elizabeth was caring for the widow Robert’s children.  She hit one Indian on the hand with an ox yoke because he tormented the baby she was holding.  The Indian pulled her onto his horse and took her to the Indian camp.  The company parleyed all day to get her back and gave sugar, tea, crackers, and blankets.  Finally, the Captain fired a cannon and frightened them away.  The Indians followed them for several days.  The oxen stampeded, and they lost sixteen horses and several wagons were destroyed.

They reached the Salt Lake Valley August 1852 and settled in the 7th Ward.  They rented rooms from Ron Quail and lived there the following winter.  In 1853, Elizabeth’s father went to the gold diggings in California and was hurt in an explosion.  He died several weeks later.

Elizabeth met William Oakden at a 4th Ward party.  She was courted by him, and they were married in 1854 by Bishop Loghund when she was 15 years gold.  The following year, he was drowned in the Jordan River.  This was a very severe blow to her.  It was the season of the grasshopper plague, and they were compelled to live on cornmeal and roots.  Her little son was born three months after her husband was drowned.  A neighbor, Susan Moore, nursed her back to health again.

Her husband’s brother Charlie Oakden courted her.  She was advised to marry him, but she didn’t love him so refused to listen to his suit.  She owned her home and a stove and felt capable of sustaining herself and babe.  The Reformation took place at this time, and Charlie Oakden and neighbor, Mr. Moore apostatized from the church and went back East.  She was grateful that she didn’t marry Charlie.

Elizabeth went out to Big Cotton Wood to nurse the sick and cared for a lady with twin boys.  She stayed there until Johnson’s Army came, and they were advised to move south.    In Provo, she met Thomas Whitaker, an English convert.  He was raising flax and was also a carpenter and ship builder.

They moved back to Salt Lake in August 1858, and Elizabeth and Thomas Whitaker were married 1 September 1858.  The ceremony was performed by President Brigham Young in his office in Salt Lake City.  Elizabeth and Thomas moved to Centerville to live and raised the first peaches in the valley.  They sent to London for silk worm eggs and started the silk industry in the valley.

Elizabeth made sewing silk, hair nets, and stockings.  She made a silk scarf for President Young.  President Young advised her to continue making silk.

When Elizabeth had five children, her husband obeyed the law of polygamy.  Six more children were born to her.  She was the mother of six sons and six daughters.  At the time of this writing, she had sixty grandchildren and twenty great grandchildren.

She lives in her home at Centerville doing embroidery work of many kinds.

Added by Ron Whitaker June 1937:

Grandma (Elizabeth) died on Monday evening 7 June 1937 in Centerville, Davis County, Utah at 8:30 PM at the home of her daughter.  She was 98 years and 3 months of age to the day.  Funeral held in the Centerville First Ward Chapel on Sunday June 13, 1937 at 2 PM.  Bishop Wesley E. Tingey presiding.

(At end of this account is the following:  “SO/RW – 23 January 1925.”  This would indicate that someone dictated or wrote the account and someone typed it.  I don’t know who “SO” was but “RW” was Ronald G.Whitaker secretary of the Whitaker Family Organization

Added by Carol Whitaker DeLand – October 2005:

“My grandmother, Ivy Goddard Whitaker, who knew Elizabeth, told me that Elizabeth never minded that her husband took several plural wives.  She was kind to them, and they got along and worked together.  She respected Thomas Whitaker, her husband, but never got over losing her first husband when 16 years old.  He was always her first love.  She always called Thomas, Brother Whitaker.”

Elizabeth Mills Whitaker

(Taken from a pamphlet given at the Whitaker Family Reunion, 18 July 1953)

            Elizabeth was born to John Mills, a tinsmith and coppersmith, and Elizabeth Hall on the Isle of Man 7 March 1839.  She was the oldest of two brothers and three sisters.

John Taylor and George Q. Cannon brought the gospel to John and Elizabeth Mills.  Shortly thereafter in 1841, the family boarded the sailing vessel “Rochester” and set sail for America.  Blown off their course, they decked 12 weeks later at New Orleans.

The family then headed for Nauvoo where John Mills worked on the Nauvoo temple molding the horns and ears of the oxen which supported the baptismal font under the personal direction of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  Often she brought her father’s lunch.  Here she talked with the Prophet.

She forever remembered her last look at the burning Nauvoo Temple – a smoking reminder of lost hopes and of a new life to make.  The temple was burned 19 November 1848.

After two moves, the family settled in Council Bluffs for two years where Elizabeth attended school.  They then sold their home, bought two yoke of oxen, two yoke of cows, two wagons, and started west.  Her two brothers died enroute, one of Mountain Fever and one from the bite of a rattlesnake.

The company averaged 20 miles a day.  At six AM, the bugle sounded, and everyone gathered for prayer.  At 8:00 AM, they were traveling.  In the evening when the routine chores were done, they sang and danced; and when the lookouts reported “All is well,” they returned to their tents, wagons, or beds under the stars.  Saturdays they stopped for repairs to the wagons and to wash and cook.  Sundays they attended to their church duties.

On a particular occasion, Elizabeth (who was 13 years old) was stolen by a group of Sioux Warriors.  She had a proposal of marriage from the chief and was released only after her company had paid heavily in horses, sugar, flour, blankets, and similar goods.

Later in the summer of 1854, the wagon train reached the Salt Lake Valley.  Her family moved into a log cabin located in what is now the Seventh Ward.  Shortly thereafter, she met William Oakden; and in October 1854, she married him.  In June of 1855, he was drowned in the Jordan River.  At only 16 years of age and in the space of one year, Elizabeth had been married, widowed, and bore a son.

Elizabeth then went to live with her uncle, William G. Mills.  Here she met Thomas Whitaker and was married to him 16 September 1858.  They went to Centerville to live in a log cabin.  From their own sheep she washed, carded, dyed from native plants, and spun the wool into clothes and blankets.  She wove the silk from her own silk worms, made lye from ashes and combined it with grease to make soap.  She made molasses and sugar from sugar cane, starch from potatoes, candles from tallow.  She dug sego roots when food was scarce, gathered weeds for greens, and gleaned wheat from the fields.

After the death of her husband, Thomas Whitaker, she learned nursing and supported her large family.  She had the strength of purpose, wit, and wisdom seldom given to any woman.  Each year of her life multiplied the number of people who loved and respected her.  Everyone who knew her remembers her proud carriage, her independence, and the strength and vitality of her personality.

            She lived 99 years and spanned 5 generations.  Her life was never marred by pettiness or small things.