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Dear Ellen in coming years and it seemed as it I should need him so much that it must be I should raise him but I suppose God knows best. I must tiy and be willing to say "Thy will be done: but is a hard lesson to learn .... When William and Ellen separated, he proclaimed his love for Ellen and vowed a reunion if he had to wait seven years. .• He did not wait that many months, for on March 7, 1868, he was sealed to Margaret Caldwell Clark in the Salt Lake Endowment House. It is doubtful that William and Ellen had been married by more than a civil ceremony, and now William was sealed "for time and eternity" to another. Ellen was altogether crushed; all hopes of a reconciliation with her husband were gone. In December 1868 her fourteen-month-old daughter Aurora Frances died of scarlet fever. Of Ellen's four children, she now had but one alive, Nellie, age seven. In Beaver, Ellen lived with her mother and was neighbor to Aunt Caroline Crosby and family. Her sisters, Lois Hunt and Ann Louise Willis, lived near. Ellen was among friends dating from Nauvoo and San Bernardino days. She continued to teach school for a living. The family letters and journals are filled with references to the social life of the families in Beaver - the visits, parties, travelers stopping by, of singing and dancing, of sickness and health, of the long winters, and of the short summers. Frequent mention is made of the children of the Crosbys, Lois, and close friends. Lois's children (Ida and May, frequently mentioned) attended Ellen's school and did well. There were occasional trips, too, to Salt Lake City and visits there with old friends. There must have been occasional contacts between the two Ellens, by letters or by visits and more likely by Ellen Pratt calling on Ellen Clawson. Ellen Pratt was in Salt Lake City during the winter of 1869-70 and visited with her friend. When Addison Pratt was in Salt Lake City in 1863-64, he put his journal of his Polynesian mission in the Church Historian's Office. Ellen was to pick it up later. An entry in the Histori- 66 |
