Electa Caroline Briggs (1841) and Daniel Randall Williams (1842)

Electa Caroline Briggs 1841 and Daniel Randall Williams 1842

Mother of Emily Electa Williams

Mother-in-law to Edward Stevenson

Electa Caroline Briggs had a lot of difficult things happen in her life. She was born in 1805 but in 1807 her mother died.  Her father, not wanting to take care of his three children, left each of them with different relatives and then disappeared for 16 years.  Electa was placed with her grandparents who raised her.  After 16 years, (Electa would have been 18) her father returned with a wife and four children. Came to his parents home and wanted to have Electa come and live with him and his new family.  Of course, he was a total stranger to him, but her grandparents urged her to go with him. 

She only lived with her father and step family for one year before married an older widdower.  He called her his “Child Bride” but the marriage seemed to be a happy one.  She had a baby two years after the marriage, but only 6 years after the marriage, her husband died.  She was pregnant at the time of his death, and delivered her second child two months later.

Someone else was assigned to administer her husband’s estate when he died, and in the end Electa was left with nothing. She and her children jumped around from one family member to another. While staying with her sister, Polly, she came in contact with the church. She went to a few meetings, but didn’t join at that time.

She began working with a doctor, and soon became a nurse.  While nursing typhoid patients, she became sick with the illness and nearly died.  Then her daughter became sick as well.  Electa heard that the prophet Joseph Smith was in the area visiting relatives, so she sent for him to come and administer to her daughter.  He came with his brother and they blessed the child. By the next day the child was well.

Electa met and became engaged to a man called Daniel Williams.  She told him when he proposed that she would only marry him if he agreed to take her to where the Mormons were.  He agreed and but they were not able to go immediately.  Electa’s father had seized her possessions, (he was not a nice man) and they sought legal action to have them restored.  He had hidden them, and it took a while to find out where they were. He then tried to sue her for room and board, but the issue was settled when he died to small pox later that year.  After her father’s death, Electa married Daniel Williams and they moved to Michigan where Electa’s brother had a farm.  They lived there a few years.  While there a Mormon Elder Simeon Dunn visited the neighborhood.  Electa invited him to preach, but soon they heard that a mob planned to do him harm.  Her husband agreed to help him escape. Although they had not been baptized yet, helping the missionary made them a target of persecution. They finally left to travel to Nauvoo in 1841.  When they arrived, they decided to settle on the other side of the Mississippi River in Zarahelmla (the settlement mentioned in this week’s Come Follow Me reading). While there they were finally baptized. 

In her autobiography that can be found on Family Search, she has an account of their experience the night Joseph Smith was killed. They had eventually moved to Nauvoo, where Electa was part of the first Relief Society. They were driven out of Nauvoo with the rest of the saints. They moved to Council Bluffs and stayed there until 1852 when they finally traveled to Salt Lake City in an ox cart. They settled in North Ogden.