(pictures submitted by Judy Price Hinton)

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT -

HEADSTONE PROJECT FOR JOHN B. PRICE

In 1857 John Buren Price and Eliza Jane Adair Price were among those who were called by Brigham Young to settle Utah’s Dixie and raise cotton.  John Price was a stone mason and made headstones.  As he died a year after Eliza Jane we believe he made this joint headstone.  The City of Washington (UT) contacted family members and together we have made an effort to preserve this beautiful stone.  However the stone is deteriorating because of the moisture.  Some of the family members would like to buy a new stone for these beloved ancestors and also a new stone for Hyrum Wiley and Eliza Jane Price, their children who are buried beside them and do not currently have a headstone.  We would like to preserve the original headstone and contacts are being made with museums who might be interested in placing it on exhibit.
 

That was accomplished in 2004 and here is a photo of the headstone:

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(Pictures are courtesy of Judy Price Hinton)

Eliza Jane Adair

The following history was written by Merle Skougard Rasmussen. (Great granddaughter of Eliza Jane Adair Carson Pearson Price). The facts and stories were told to her by her mother Elizabeth Carson Skougard, who was a daughter of Valentine Carson. It was submitted to me by Judith Price Hinton. This history varies to some degree from what I already had, so I'm showing both of them.

Eliza Jane Adair was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the 11th of November, 1810. She was the (3rd) daughter of Rebecca Brown and Thomas Jefferson Adair. She met and married Samuel Carson in Tennessee or Alabama. She had four children by her first marriage. They were John Carson born Mar 22, 1830. He died when a baby. Valentine Carson, my grandfather was born November 8, 1831 in Pickens County State of Alabama. Then Elizabeth Carson born Aug 10, 1833 (who became the mother of Samuel Mortensen). William was born July 23, 1835.

Her husband Samuel Carson died leaving her a widow for two years. She married a man by the name of Moses Pearson. He was thrown from a mule and killed. She had one daughter by him who was Margaret Jane Pearson. She was again left a widow with four children for six years. Then she met and married John Price, who was born the 20th of  November, 1815 in Lynchburg, Lincoln, Tennessee. He was the son of George Price and Phetnay Ann Hodge.

After their marriage, John Price moved the family to Mississippi where they lived for two years. They then moved two miles west on the Rigby River. They made a new farm and remained there until the fall of 1843. While there, two Elders came from Nauvoo preaching the Mormon Gospel. They accepted the gospel and most of their children were baptized into the church.

That fall the people of this neighborhood became hostile and came in mobs and compelled the Saints to leave their homes. Driven out, they then crossed on the east side of the river, where there was a small branch of the Mormon Church. They remained there until the fall of 1845. They started to move from that county about the first of November. They arrived in Nauvoo on the 6th of March, 1846. They joined the other saints and started their trek to Utah.

They started for the valleys of the mountains in the spring of 1851 and landed in Salt Lake early in 1853. They remained in Salt Lake until the year 1857 when they were called with the rest of the southern people to move to southern Utah on the Rio Virgin River, by President Brigham Young, to help develop the resources of that country .They settled in Washington, Washington County, Utah in 1857. Here they went through many trials and hardships of pioneer life.

Grandmother Price had six children by John Price. Rebecca Ann born Aug. 22, 1845, George Thomas born July 8, 1847, John Wesley born April 29, 1851, Joseph Smith born May 2,1853 and Eliza Jane born Jan. 31,1859.

Grandmother Price, my great grandmother, was a mid-wife and family doctor for many years to the people of Southern Utah and the Dixie country. She blessed many homes helping to bring many a bundle of joy into the homes, many babies were born with her as mid-wife and nurse.

Grandma traveled in many distant parts alone with her team and buggy. She had eleven children, in all, of her own and loved all children. She would go to Nevada as far as Pioche and nurse the sick and bring their babies into the world. She did so many kind deeds for the poor when they were in trouble and needed help. She never expected much pay, never did she take anything from the really poor families. She brought about three hundred babies into this world.

They lived in Washington the rest of their days, about thirty five years. They did so much to build up that part of the state. John Price, her husband was a stone mason and carrier. He made so many head stones, monuments that are still standing in the Washington and St. George cemeteries. They both remained true and faithful to their religion in the Mormon Church until their deaths.

Eliza Jane Adair Carson Pearson Price died at Washington, Utah August 16,1892 and her husband John Buren Price died January 11, 1893, also at Washington, Utah. They are both buried in the cemetery at Washington, Washington County, Utah.
 

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    Eliza Jane Adair was a perservering pioneer woman who was born on 11 Nov 1811 in West Carthage, Tenn. She was one of eleven children, all of whom survived childhood, which was unusual in those days. The family moved several times in her youth, also living in South Carolina, where her older brother Samuel had been born, Indiana where her brother Thomas was born, and in Alabama where her youngest sisters were born, and where they apparently settled down. Her father ran a large cotton plantation.
    She married Samuel Carson and had four children by him in Carrollton, Pickens County, Alabama. Her first child John Carson lived only a few months, but the others survived. Then her husband died on her baby William's first birthday. She remarried to Moses Pearson and they had a daughter Margaret, also born in Pickens County.
    Later Eliza married John B. Price in about 1844. They soon heard the restored gospel of Jesus Christ taught and Eliza was the first of her siblings to be baptized into the church, along with her husband John, on her 33rd birthday. Most of the rest of her brothers and sisters followed within the next two months. John and Eliza's first child, Becky Ann, was born in Pickens County in 1845. They then relocated to be with the saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. Her mother Rebecca Brown Adair also joined the church and came with them.
    When persecution drove the saints west, the Price and Adair families went with them. Eliza gave birth to George in van Buren county Iowa in 1847, but her son William Carson died that year at age 12. They suffered greatly at Mount Pisgah, Iowa where her mother died and her brother Thomas Adair lost his wife Fanny and two of his four children. Many of their relatives died there, but Eliza's son Valentine Carson later married Thomas's surviving daughter, Mary Ann Adair. John and Eliza's third child John was born there in 1849 but he only lived 8 months and died in December of that year.
    Finally the opportunity to join the saints in Utah came, and they crossed the plains in 1851. Hyrum was born to them in Iowa just as they began the trip in April. In Salt Lake City, she and John had their marriage sealed for eternity in 1852, and on 2 Jul 1853 Joseph (Jode) was born to them there. But the adventure of crossing the plains was only the beginning of their pioneering efforts. At the October conference of the church in 1856, Brigham Young called ten families from the Southern States to found a community at a place he named Washington to grow cotton in southern Utah. This would be the first "Cotton Mission." Jacob Hamblin had shown earlier that year that cotton could be raised there. During the preparation for the move, Eliza gave birth to her second daughter, Eliza Jane Price in January, 1857.
    The families called included John and Eliza's and also the families of five of her siblings: Samuel, Thomas, George, and John Adair, and her sister Mary Ann Magnum and her husband John Magnum. Samuel Adair headed the group which left on March 3, 1857 and arrived the following April 15. Twenty-eight more families were called in April to join them that summer. Soon her son Valentine Carson and his wife Mary Ann Adair Carson, who was her niece, also joined them. They called the area "Dixie", which name still refers to all of that area of Southern Utah, including St. George which was founded four years later.
    Many serious problems plagued the new community. Many of them contracted malaria from the mosquitos there, but the cause was then unknown. They also got typhoid and dysentery from bad water. The ground was very alkaline which made it hard to grow cotton. Several families left after the discouraging first season. Three years lated, Eliza's daughter Eliza died before reaching her fourth birthday. Another very discouraging factor was their inability to tame the Virgin River for irrigation, which defied all attempts. It broke their dams seven times in their first three years there.
    In late 1861 when the group who were going to settle St. George passed through, Robert Gardner wrote that seeing the Washington saints "tried me more than anything I have seen in my Mormon experience. Thinking that my wives and children, from the nature of the climate, would have to look as sickly as those now around
me..." He noted how they were as blue as the homemade, weed-dyed cotton clothes they wore, and were all shaking with Malaria.
    Even as late as 1889, the dam gave way. Many inhabitants left at that time and the population dropped from about 600 to only 300. But Eliza lived to see a new dam completed in 1891 which finally succeeded. Cotton was no longer grown much after the arrival of the railroad, which brought inexpensive cotton from the South, but Washington City has continued to grow from that time, and is now thriving at 7,000, the legacy of these indefatigable familes. Eliza died in Washington, Utah, on 16 Aug 1892 at the age of 80, having been faithful to the mission where she was called.

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