Eliza McKee Fausett (Ivie)

Eliza McKee Fausett (Ivie)

 

 

My 4th Great-Grandmother

 

Birth Date: 5 July 1808

Birth Place: Duck River, Bedford, Tennessee, USA

Parents: Richard Fausett and Mary McKee

Death Date: 8 Aug 1896

Death Place: Scipio, Millard, Utah, USA

 

Spouse: James Russell Ivie

 

 

 

Geneology Line:

Max Gerry Frampton--Verle Ivie--James Ammon Ivie--Benjamin Martin Ivie--Eliza McKee Fausett

 

Eliza and her husband were converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in early 1830.  Parley P. Pratt was one of the elders who came to their home often and helped baptize some of her family.  they assisted him in his escape to Illinois after he was able to break out of jail in Missouri.

 

Eliza served as a midwife while at Winter Quarters and when crossing the plains in Brigham Young's wagon company.  Her oldest son and two son-in-laws served in the Mormon Battalion.

 

After their arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley, they spent the winter.  Then they moved to Bountiful and later to Provo where she served as a midwife and nursed the sick.  They were called to settle Mt. Pleasant and later Scipio where she also met their needs as a midwife and nurse.

 

After Eliza's husband was killed by the Indians in an early morning raid on Scipio, Eliza continued to live there with her son, Alexander, until her death at age eighty-nine.

 

Hettie M Robins gives us the following description of Eliza M Ivie’s last years.

“After the death of her husband, the care of Eliza fell on the shoulders of her son Martin and his wife, Martha Ivie. Her son moved a one-room log house onto his lot so his mother would be near them. When her son bought a larger home his mother was given a large sunny room to live in. I imagine I see it now with its fireplace and one or two pots hanging from hooks over the flames of coals. There was a very small cook stove in the corner. Her table was next to the fireplace. Just under the window was the large black box or chest that came across the plains with them. Next was the four-poster bed with rawhide stripes crisscrossed for slats or springs. The floor and hearth were scrubbed clean enough to eat on. White short curtains were at the windows. The white cover on the black box and cover over the bed pillows all with knotted edging and made out of course white cotton yarn. I remember her telling everyone once that although she was dead and laid out of the cooling board, she said, "But I fooled them, I came back to life again because my mission on earth was not finished." She would sometimes get a little out-of-sorts at some of our pranks and say: "If you youngans don't behave yourselves when I die I will come back and haunt ye."

 

"Both Grandparents had received their patriarchal blessings. I can remember so well, seeing dear little Grandma going to the old black box, or chest, as she called it. She would reach in, bring out her blessing, hand it to mother, and ask her to read it. It seemed such a source of strength and comfort to her in her last days. The one thing I remember in it, was that their posterity should be as Jacob's of old, and as numerous as the sands of the sea. Of their 13 children, 12 grew to maturity, marrying and are parents of large families. A host of grandchildren, some over 125 in number. I am happy to be counted among their great-grandchildren."

 

Here is the cemetery in Scipio where James R. Ivie and Eliza McKee Fausett Ivie are buried. There are actually two different cemeteries in Scipio.  James and Eliza are buried in the old Pioneer Cemetery.