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Show 187 ROMANIA BUNNELL PRATT PENROSE, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATE Romania, as a classmate, the only regular Latter-Day Saint contact for Ellis in Philadelphia, and as a colleague entering upon her practice in Salt Lake City about when Ellis did, is a logical professional associate to examine. Who was this woman who figured so prominently in Ellis's diary of her medical college experience but who was always called, with some formality, "Sister Pratt?" She was born a Bunnell in Indiana in 1839. Her father went alone to California for the gold rush. Although he found gold, he contracted typhoid fever and died while there. Mother and children came to Utah in 1855 when Romania was 16. She studied German, French, Spanish, and music-taught in Brigham Young's school, and may have been there when Ellis was. Married at 19 1/2 to Parley P. Pratt, Jr., Romania's childbear-ing began only nine months and two weeks later when she had her first son, Parley P. Pratt III. Luther was born two years later but lived only three days. After an interval of nearly four years, Louis arrived. He was followed, sixteen months later, by Corinne (Carinne?-the record is hand-written), Romania's only daughter, who lived less than two years. Her last three sons were born at two-year intervals, so that the births of the seven children encompassed *-i 17 fourteen years, a fairly normal profile. Her remaining family, then, was five sons whom she left in the care of her mother while she was studying medicine. The youngest, |