Elizabeth Susan Burnett Brunt Takes Her Family To Zion

Burnett/Brunt/Groberg/Neeley/Cornwall

Elizabeth Susan Burnett was baptized in Kiaipoi, New Zealand in 1868 when she was 14 years old.  Her family had immigrated to New Zealand in 1857.   Her father, William, who had joined the Church in England received the first missionaries to New Zealand in 1867.  The Burnetts were the mainstays of the first little unit of the Church in the Christchurch area.  Elizabeth married in 1869 to recent convert, George Brunt.  They had their first baby, Mary Eliza a year later.  By 1878 the Brunts had 4 children.   Elizabeth Susan Burnett Brunt had a strong desire to emigrate from New Zealand and join the saints and most of her family who had already heeded  the call to 'Come to Zion'.  George half believed she would not really go with 4 young children, Eliza, 9, Will, 6; George, 3; and Annie in her first year.  She was determined to bring her children up surrounded by the Church

A tale of the trip was written by their son Little George.  “We left from New Zealand on a small steamboat and went by way of Australia to a larger steamer, the City of Sidney.  My mother now was just 26 years old, just being 15 when married.  Changing from one small boat to another before reaching Australia in the excitement of changing children and baggage from one boat to the other, Will was left on the first boat.  When Mother came to leave, they found Will missing.  When they discovered this, Will was thrown across the water from one boat to the other.”  They made a stop in the Hawaiian Islands where they encountered other saints including Zina Young, wife of Brigham Young who was there for her health".  Little George continues “We were on the water for six weeks and it was a month by the time we reached Farmington.  We landed in San Francisco, where we took an old-fashioned train to Farmington Utah.  Here we were met by my uncle James Burnett.” 

For the first year Elizabeth and her four children lived with Elizabeth's father and other family members and missionaries she knew from New Zealand. Eventually they moved into a one-room house.  In the spring of 1880 Elizabeth was coming out a meeting of the Farmington Ward and was met by a tall, dark, handsome and lonesome stranger - her husband George.  Their separation of about a year was over.  George had ' Come to Zion' and the family was together.  Later that year all the children  and George, contacted measles.  Three year old Annie died. 

George moved from job to job offering his skills as an engineer and mechanic on mill equipment, in smelters, and molasses mills and the family moved from town to town.  In 1881 their 5th child Maude Elizabeth (our ancestor) was born in Cottonwood, Utah.  Elizabeth gave birth to two more children by 1886.  All the moving convinced Elizabeth it was important to find a secure home where she could rear her children and teach them to work.  Her idea was getting a farm where they could make a living.  They spent some time in Salt Lake, putting together finances, an old wagon and provisions and headed to Idaho in the fall of 1885.  The journey was miserable, in freezing rain and mud and uncertainty of exactly where they would end up.  They bought a little farm in Sand Creek, near Eagle Rock, Idaho. Farming that first year was not successful and George needed to find work so the family would have some money as they could not even raise enough hay to feed their plow horses.  His first job was cutting ice for the local saloons.  Then hearing of good work in Butte, Montana he left the family in Idaho to work in the smelters.  The family wondered of his condition until Elizabeth received a letter from the nurse attending him that he had died.

Elizabeth sold the farm and moved her and her 6 children, ages 16 to 5 months to a little rented home  in town which was not far from where the Idaho Falls temple now stands.  Elizabeth took in washing and did ironing to make money.  The children helped by walking down the nearby railroad tracks picking up coal that had fallen from the trains.  This coal was used to heat Elizabeth's wash water.  Once a high school was built in town, she took in boarders.

Maude Elizabeth was baptized in the Snake River in 1889.  As a bright, vivacious girl of "20 or 21" she met and married John Enoch Groberg, a school teacher visiting from Ogden.  They were married in the Logan temple 24 Dec. 1902.   

 Maude Elizabeth died 11 days after giving birth to her third child Maude Elizabeth Groberg (Dad's maternal grandmother).  A year later John Groberg passed away, some said of a broken heart.  The two older Groberg boys went to Ogden to be raised by paternal relatives.   Elizabeth/Grandma Brunt welcomed little Maudie and raised her as a daughter.  (The eldest son, Delbert Groberg, would one day come back to serve as the Temple President of the Idaho Falls temple, his widowed sister Maude* as a temple worker in the shadow of the little house where their grandmother took in washing to provide for her family.)

Little Maudie accompanied her grandmother as she served in the Stake Relief Society Presidency or board for 34 years, traveling hundred of miles by carriage to visit the wards spread throughout the upper Snake River Valley.  Maudie remembers her grandmother as a "refined lady, neatly combed who taught her grand daughter "the finer things of life.. using pretty dishes she brought with her from New Zealand."

Maude* with her husband Kenneth Neeley and 6 month old baby Lenore (dad's mother), visited Grandma Brunt on Christmas 1929 just 2 months before Grandma Brunt passed away at 76 years of age 14 Feb. 1929.  Elizabeth Susan Burnett Brunt died in peace, her large family raised in Zion and true to the faith.

Elizabeth Susan Burnett Brunt and her grand daughter Maude Elizabeth Groberg whom she raised

*Ironically, Maude became a widow at age 55, with 6 of her 8 children still at home when her beloved Ken passed away.