Dear Ellen: Two Mormon Women and Their Letters

Dear Ellen, Page 051

The Romance, and the Realities break of the Civil War drew the troops to a new front in the East. Six months after the refugees had returned to their homes, on February 6, 1859, Ellen's Lima Aurclia died, aged two years. Ellen wrote pathetic, brooding poetry, remembering, feeliim for the lost child, ending: "1 have no Luna now!" An- c* O other poem carries these lines: It is sad to see the light of beauty icanc aicaij The past, the past, I never can forget. The life of Ellen Spencer Clawson must have been absorbed mainly in the large plural family of her prosperous husband. She vvas the devoted "little mother" to all her family and more than wife to her husband, whose activities took the center of the stage. Ellen bore fourteen children over a span of twenty-five years, between 1851 and 1876. Of those fourteen children, five died in infancy - three girls and two boys. Nine of her children, two boys and seven girls, lived to maturity and married. The nine presented Hiram and Ellen with forty-five grandchildren. Margaret had eleven children, eight of whom lived to adulthood - four boys and four girls. She lost three girls. Alice bore seven children, six bovs and one girl. Four of the *• O boys lived to adulthood. The mother died November 2, 1874, aged thirty-five, when her four boys were ages ten, thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Emily, the fourth wife, was also a daughter of Brigham Young, her mother being Emily Dow Partridge. Hiram married her January 4, 1868. Hiram was fortv-one at the time and Emily was going on nineteen. Emily bore Tliram ten children, six girls and four boys. The girls and two of the boys lived to maturity. To support a family of four wives and forty-two children Hiram devoted himself fully and effectively to his businesses,