Elizabeth Evans Parry, “The Other Mother”

Special thanks to the "Sunflower Lady" for sending me this article about ELP's first wife.

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Elizabeth Evans Parry, “The Other Mother”
Written by Harriet and Emma Parry, daughters of Ann & Edward Lloyd Parry

Elizabeth Evans Parry was born in the year 1817 at Anglsey, North Wales.  Her parents were Hugh and Ellen Evans.  Before her marriage she was Head House Maid for a wealthy family in Chester, England.

In her youth she was very beautiful with piercing black eyes and dark hair.
   
She married Edward Lloyd Parry 16th August 1846 at Chester, England.

She was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the summer of 1848 and with her husband kept an open house for Elders and Saints, providing them with food, shelter, clothing and money to pay their traveling expenses.  Their home was in St. George, North Wales.

At one time her husband went to work building cottages for a Light House at Point of Air, where he became acquainted with Samuel Brooks and family, after which their small son George Brooks visited at their home in St. George, North Wales, and they having no children of their own and being great lovers of children, became very much attached to him.

She and her husband like many others were desirous of gathering with the body of the Church in Utah, U. S. A. and when Orson Pratt, then President of the European Mission counseled all those who could to go to Utah and to do so in 1853, they decided to take his advise.  They with eleven others from the same branch of the Church, left Liverpool, England the 5th February 1853 on the sailing ship Jersey, commanded by Captain Day.  Elder George Halliday being in charge of the Saints.  It took them six weeks to reach New Orleans.  They went by steamboat from there to Keokuk, Iowa, arriving there the first of April.  They stayed there eight weeks, and by this time they had procured the necessary ox teams and wagons to commence the journey across the Plains.  Joseph W. Young was Captain of the company.  They arrived in Salt Lake City 10th October 1853.

They moved to Ogden in the fall of 1855.

In the year of 1856 Samuel Brooks and family immigrated to Utah from North Wales, crossed the Plains with handcarts in Edward Bunker’s company.  The mother died on the way and the father died on reaching Salt Lake City.  The young boy George made his home with the Parry’s.  He was treated in that home like a son and brother and remained there until his marriage.
   

Ann Parry, her husband’s cousin, came from Wales in the same company with the Brooks and went to visit the Parry’s.  Edward was not home at the time.  When he came home Elizabeth said to him, “You do not know who is here, it is your cousin Ann, and she has come to be your wife.”

She thus gave Ann to him willingly and they were married in the Endowment House, 19th February 1857.
   
In the spring they all moved back to Salt Lake City where he was called to work on the Salt Lake Temple.

They went through all the trials of the Echo Canyon War.  In the beginning of the month of May 1858, when the people were counseled to move south for Johnston’s Army was coming in, they went as far south as Springville, where they lived in their wagon-box and willow shed.  They moved back to Salt Lake City about the 4th of July the same year.

In April 1862 her husband was called to go to St. George in southern Utah to settle.  He with his wife Ann and his small son, Edward Thomas and foster son George Brooks left for St. George, arriving there 5th June 1862.

Elizabeth and their small daughter Elizabeth Ann stayed in Salt Lake City until August 1863, when he returned for them and moved them to St. George.

When Ann’s first child was born which was on 4th March 1858, she gave her to Elizabeth and weaned her at nine months so the child could sleep with her foster mother.  They named her Elizabeth Ann for both the mothers and she was almost grown before she knew that Ann was her real mother.

They lived in St. George until 1877 when Brother Parry was called by President Brigham Young to go to Manti to take charge of all the stone work on the Manti Temple.  He took with him his first wife Elizabeth and Elizabeth Ann, leaving Ann and the other six children in St. George.

Elizabeth never had any children of her own, but she was called mother, by all of Ann’s children.  They called Ann, Ma.  They all loved Elizabeth, dearly, and never knew while they were small but what they could have a mother and a ma.

The two wives always lived together and Elizabeth weaned all the children, and always spoke of them as “Our Children.”  When she had been in Manti three months she told her husband, “I cannot stand it any longer without Ann and the children.”  She chanced her way back to St. George where she stayed until the fall, when the family all moved to Manti.

On her way back to St. George she met John, a boy of thirteen years going to Manti, and he said that when he met mother, it was a question with him, what to do, whether to go back to St. George with Mother, or on to Manti to his father, he went to Manti.

At one time one of the little boys did something that was not quite right and Elizabeth said to him, “I do not like you.”  Then he cried and said, “Mother don’t like me, Mother don’t like me.  Nobody likes me.”

A playmate of one of the little girls said to her, “You cannot have a mother and a Ma, one of them is your Auntie.”  Where upon she answered and said, “Oh, no, then my Pa would be my uncle.”

At one time when Elizabeth was correcting one of the boys, he said, “You are not my mother,” and then and there Ann chided him severely for what he had said.  The children were all taught to obey Elizabeth, just the same as they did their Ma.

Elizabeth was sick for sometime before her death and Ann nursed and cared for her, as a daughter would care for her mother and said she had been like a mother to her.

She died 11th August 1880 at Manti and is buried there.

This short history was typed by Alice K. Hatch, Historian D.U.P. 20th December 1937. 
Retyped by Karen Maria Jewkes Barker, Great-great granddaughter of Edward Lloyd and Ann Parry, June 2000.  (Some punctuation was corrected.)

Minor corrections made August 2001 by Tammy Rae Cox Thomson, a third great granddaughter of Edward Lloyd & Ann Parry.