MARY LAVINIA LEE MOULTON

Mary Lavina Lee, daughter of Thomas O. and Ellen Tadwell Lee, was born in Worsper, England, on August 26, 1846. While Mary and her brothers, John and Orson, were small, their father was called on a Church mission to Barnsley, England. They, with their mother, lived in the Social Hall at Sheffield, while the mother cleaned the hall and took in washing and ironing for their support.

In 1863, Mary, her father and brother came to America on the ship “Amazon.” Her mother and brother John had come to Utah three years previous. They traveled under the leadership of George Q. Cannon by train, box car and handcart across the plains, arriving in Salt Lake City just after Mary’s seventeenth birthday. The family was happy to be united again and soon moved to Heber. Sorrow was to strike soon though, for Mary’s father was killed in a rockslide in March, 1865, while quarrying sandrock for a home. They prayed for strength and courage.

Mary became the bride of William Denton Moulton on July 24, 1865, and her brother Orson lived with them, and her mother and John returned to Salt Lake for employment. Soon, on January 18, 1868, death was to claim John as a result of being frozen in a winter storm.

A few years later, Mary and William moved on a ranch nine miles north of Heber, at Moultonville, later named Elkhorn. On December 15, 1868, they were sealed for time and eternity in the Endowment House in Salt Lake. In seven years of marriage no children had blessed this couple. William married Mary Ann Davis, as plural marriage was practiced at that time. Within a year both women gave birth to sons, but on September 23, 1877, Mary’s baby died.

On January 14, 1883, William Moulton died when only 40 years of age, leaving Mary with four children, one a baby of three months, and his second wife and her four children.

Mary continued to live on the ranch, working hard. Her eight-year old son Ranch died December 12, 1888. After the marriage of her three living children she sold the ranch and moved to Heber to be near them. She was active in Church organizations all her life and was a member of the “Forget-Me-Not” camp of the Utah Pioneers of Heber, and was a faithful Red Cross worker, especially during World War I.

Mary had a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and defended plural marriage. The two Marys loved each other and were life-long friends.

On March 10, 1923, her daughter, Sarah Ellen (called Nellie) died, which was one more trying experience for her. She was then 77 years old. In the summer of 1927 her health was poor and she gave up her home to go to Idaho to reside with her daughter, Bertha Bowman, and family.

She died December 03, 1931, and her body was brought back to Heber for burial.

(How Beautiful Upon The Mountains” by the Wasatch DUP p. 459)