My grandmother, Amy
Elizabeth Webster Leigh, was the eldest of great grandfather Francis
Webster's children. She was born September 27, 1856, while her parents
(members of the Martin Handcart Company) were camped at Wolf Creek, a
tributary of the Platt River, Nebraska.
They arrived in Salt Lake
City, Utah on the 30th day of November, 1856. Two days later, they
left Salt Lake City for Cedar City; Francis had been called to assist
in the pioneering of the Iron Industry. They arrived in Cedar on
December 15, 1856.
Grandmother had only three
years of formal schooling, after which time she remained at home to
help care for the smaller children while her mother sewed. She
received only what further education her mother gave her. She was an
avid reader, and throughout her life reading was her greatest
pleasure. She especially enjoyed reading about current events and
about history.
She was a devoted church
worker throughout her active life. She was secretary in the first
Mutual Improvement Association of the community, being set apart as
one of the counselors to the President of the Young Ladies
retrenchment Society of Cedar City on December 9, 1875. She was
baptized many times for the dead at the St. George Temple, and after
receiving her own endowments on April 12, 1877, she did a great deal
of ordinance work at the Temple for her progenitors. On the 22nd of
May in the St. George Temple, she married
Henry
Leigh of Cedar City.
For many years grandmother
was President of the Cedar City Relief Society. It was during this
time that there was a severe epidemic of typhoid, and she gave of
herself freely, never thinking of her own needs, but went to homes all
over the town to nurse the sick. She was ever-ready to go to the aid
of the sick and the needy.
Grandmother was small in
stature, and it was always her ambition to weigh at least 100 pounds.
She was very kind, and I never remember her using a cross word. She
was a humble, retiring, prim, and proper person.
When I was in the 1st and
2nd grades at school, my parents lived on a farm, and during the
school week I lived at grandmother's home at 220 West 200 North in
Cedar. I remember going with grandmother, after the evening meal was
over, to one of the homes of her brothers or her married children, to
take some special tid-bit or something she knew they needed. I
especially remember that when we came out of a home where we had been
visiting, an old brown and black family dog, Old Bob, would always be
waiting to escort us home. The roads were lighter, and often smoother
to walk on, than the sidewalks, and the three of us would trudge home
together down the middle of the road.
During her active life, I
never remember anyone in the family ever being ill that grandmother
wasn't on hand to help out. My first trip to St. George, over the old
Black Ridge road, was with grandpa and grandma Leigh, to take grandma
to care for her sister, Ida Linder, during and after the birth of one
of Ida's younger children.
Some of my memories of
Grandmother Leigh are: her warming rocks in her oven to keep
mother's, dad's and my feet warm when we went to the farm on cold
winter evenings in an open buggy; her making linseed tea, sweetened
with honey, when I had a bad cold; her giving us sugar, butter, and
ginger, or onions baked in honey, for a cough; her using mustard
plasters for anyone having a chest cold; and her soaking our feet in a
hot mustard foot bath, to make us perspire to take down a fever. I
remember that when we were on the mountain , we would always gather
some angelica to take home for grandmother to dry and later use to
make tea, which was used to reduce fevers. My outstanding visual
picture of her is of her reading a newspaper in front of her hearth,
with her feet stretched out to get them warm. I have fond memories of
her mustard pickle, her boiled raisin cakes, and of the boiled
puddings she used to make -- she boiled them in a flour sack. I
remember, too, the Christmas breakfasts and the New Year Eve dinners
we had in honor of grandfather Leigh's birthday.
The obituary notice of her
death, which appeared in the Iron County Record of August 9,
1934, states: "Cedar City lost one of its earliest and most
respected pioneers when Amy Elizabeth Leigh, 78, succumbed to chronic
nephritis Thursday, August 2nd....Impressive funeral services were
held for Mrs.. Leigh Saturday afternoon and internment was made in the
Cedar Cemetery."
Generations of Websters, Amy L. Van Cott and Allen W.
Leigh, Thomas Webster Family Organization, Cedar City, Utah, 1960, pp. 83-85.
Minor changes made.
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Amy
Elizabeth Webster was the first child of Francis and Betsy. Amy Leigh Van
Cott gave the following sketch of Amy Elizabeth Webster.
