1 A new life in Utah

Eliza Brazier Batt (1864–1926) wrote her life story sometime in 1917 or 1918 when she was 53 years old. It focuses primarily on her early life in England before she and her husband accepted the restored gospel, joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and immigrated to America. This is the last of nine installments (see Batt & Lee Ancestors, 13–14). Eliza was the mother of William B Batt (1888–1959) and the grandmother of Dorothy Batt Cleverly (1915–1982).

After eight days and nights we arrived in Logan, Cache County, Utah Territory. The third day after we arrived Charles left me, with our little girl, in Logan and went with some men to Ross Fork to work on the rail­road. The people told me that Charles had gone to work among a lot of Indians and might get killed. I wrote to him, and my letters were returned. Surely I felt a stranger in a strange land—lonesome, homesick, and lonely.

A week after Charles left for Ross Fork, I visited my sister-in-law, Jane Winn, at Smithfield, Cache County.

In the fall of 1887, we moved to Lewiston, where my husband rented a farm belonging to Isaac Blair. Sister Blair, having a large house, let us live with them in ex­change for my doing the house­work, cook­ing, washing, and ironing. The fol­low­ing spring, on 27 April 1888, a baby boy came to cheer us. He was named William.

After trials too many to mention, we moved into a log house having two nice, large rooms, which seemed a mansion. Charles plowed 50 acres of land for the log house. We were proud of our first posses­sion in Zion, it being so nice to be alone with our child­ren.

Another son came to bless us, which we named Ernest. The follow­ing spring we moved to live in the Logan Fifth Ward, Charles having been employed at the Utah Agricultural College, which was then in erection.

Time sped swiftly along, and we were blessed with five sons and four daughters. As the years passed, the children grew. Cecily was married to George Edward Adams, William to Hazel Jane Lee, Glad­stone to Nettine Tennant, Ruby to James Adams, Pearl to William Hulse.

So time passes swiftly by with its pleasures and trials. And as the little English girl—now a sedate woman of 53 years—I look back on all the varying scenes I have passed through since we left the shores of old England, and my heart swells with grati­tude to my Heavenly Father for the many bless­ings bestowed on me.