| Elizabeth Uren: from St Keverne to Salt Lake City |
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Page 3 of 5 A third child, Susan was born on 14th April 1856 and was blessed as an infant in May of that year. Another daughter, Eliza, who was born prematurely was also blessed as an infant but sadly died at the age of just two months in July 1859. The rift in his family caused by Elizabeth’s new Faith and now the death of his poor infant daughter had a profound effect on Emanuel. He could not accept these dramatic events and sought to find comfort in drinking heavily. This inevitably led to even more problems and Elizabeth tried in vain to help him and keep her family together but it was a hopeless undertaking. She sought the advice of Elder Nicholas Paul, by now Branch President and other Elders of the church. Their counsel was that she should leave Emanuel and journey to the Salt Lake Valley, centre of the Mormon Faith in Utah. This was a true test of her Faith. Emanuel realised what she had planned and he was so frantic to save his family and keep them in South Africa that he took his only son, Thomas away to the safe keeping of an elderly native woman. For a whole week Elizabeth made frantic enquiries of all her friends to try and find the child and finally she was able to discover his whereabouts and steal him back just in time to travel the three hundred miles east to Port Elizabeth and there on 26th March 1860 to set sail aboard the Alacrity, a barque bound for Boston in America with her three surviving children, Mary Jane, aged nine, Thomas, aged five and Susan, almost four years old. Boston was finally reached after seventy three days at sea and two weeks after this Elizabeth took the next stage of her journey, a train to St. Louis, then on to Florence, Nebraska. By this time she had used all of her finances and was left without the cost of passage to Utah by ox wagon. Her only alternative was to pull a handcart. These handcart journeys have become legendary in the chronicles of Mormon history. The two wheeled carts were about seven feet long overall and about half that in width with a rail across the shafts where one person stood and pushed on the cross rail to drive the cart forward.  A cart like the one pulled by Elizabeth Uren for 1,300 miles. |
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