Sunday, February 8, 2015

Elizabeth Haven Barlow


I have written the last couple of weeks about Israel Barlow. Today, I would like to write about his incredible wife, Elizabeth Haven Barlow. I am amazed when I read about everything she went through and experienced in her life. Her mother died when she was only nine years old. This was very difficult for little Elizabeth and she wept and refused to be comforted for many days. As she grew, she developed a passion for reading. Her favorite book was an old family Bible that her ancestors had brought from England in 1645. She quickly became very acquainted with the stories and teachings of the Bible and began teaching Sunday School in her father’s Congregational Church.

Elizabeth wanted with all of her heart to become a school teacher but finances were difficult at that time, so she learned to braid straw hats, sew delicate laces and dresses to earn money for her education. While attending Amherst College, she would lead many lengthy discussions about religion and began searching for a church that held all the truths of the Bible. She graduated with a teaching degree in 1836.

Shortly after returning home from college, her two cousins, Brigham Young and Willard Richards came to her house from Kirtland, Ohio, bringing a new book called “The Book of Mormon” and preaching a strange gospel, based on angels and revelations. After several visits and bearing their testimonies, they left. Elizabeth’s father shook his head, being sorry that his family relations had been led astray. Elizabeth, however, being of curious nature, shut herself up with the strange book and within a week of reading and praying, announced to her father that she had received a religious experience and knew, for sure, that “The Book of Mormon” was divine and that her cousins taught the true Gospel. She and her brother were soon baptized by Parley P. Pratt. She desired to join the Saints and to meet the Prophet, Joseph Smith, so at age twenty-six she left her family and set out on the 1,500 mile trip to Missouri.

Brigham Young, who knew of Elizabeth’s college training quickly assigned her to be a school teacher and she taught his children along with Joseph and Hyrum’s children and many others. Joseph Smith was aware of Elizabeth’s writing abilities and suggested to her that she save all of her letters and journals. She took the prophet’s advice and her writings have been used in many references in Church History as well as being preserved in the family book, “The Israel Barlow Story and Mormon Mores”.

At age 27, she met Israel Barlow, a stalwart man of thirty-three years in Quincy, Illinois and they were married the next year. They settled in Nauvoo where they anxiously awaited their firstborn child, but sadly, little James Nathanial only lived a few short hours. She did have three more children in Nauvoo, but she was forced out of their Nauvoo home by mobs only one month after giving birth to her fourth child, Ianthus. Less than two years later, while expecting her fifth child, she and her family were also forced out of her Illinois home by mobs and she delivered little John Haven Barlow on the trek towards the Rocky Mountains.

Only five short years after getting settled in the Great Salt Lake area, her husband, Israel, was called to serve a mission in England. She was supportive of his call, even though she was expecting another child within months. She was prompted inside to ask her husband to stop at their old Nauvoo farm on his way to move their firstborn’s grave to the Old Nauvoo Burial Grounds. You can read about this touching account of a mother’s and father’s love for their child in last week’s post, “Daddy, Do Not Leave Me Here”. The child she was expecting while Israel was on his mission turned out to be twins. One of the twins died 9 months after birth and the other twin, Wilford, was my Great-Grandpa Barlow’s father.

Elizabeth was called as Relief Society President and served in that capacity from 1857 to 1888, three years before her death. Her daughter wrote this about her: “To mother, the gospel meant everything. No sacrifice was too great in order to send her husband or kindred into the mission field. Nothing stirred her soul more than repeating the events she had passed through in Missouri and Nauvoo. The gospel, coupled with seeing her family live righteously, was the joy of her life.

http://neelfamilyhistory.com/ui45.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Barlow

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