Elizabeth Thompson Groesbeck's last year. 1883.

This concluding post on Elizabeth Thompson Groesbeck’s life is continued from here.

1883 was the last year of Elizabeth’s life, and on her August 16th birthday that year she turned sixty-three.  Earlier in the year Elizabeth hired Mary Hansen, an exceptional dressmaker,  to fashion a dress for her to wear to the April 11, 1883 (NFS) wedding of Priscilla Paul Jennings to William W. Riter. Elizabeth and her daughter Mellie assisted dressmaker Mary Hansen make the exquisite dress that is described and pictured here.

Elizabeth assisted her daughters and watched over their children in their parents absence. In June of 1883, Mellie accompanied her husband, John Morgan, in his travel to Manassa, Colorado and it’s very likely their children were left in the Groesbecks care. The children were with their grandparents in October when Mellie accompanied John on a month long trip to the Eastern States and the Southern  States Mission.

John Morgan wrote in his journal in early October that he had dinner at the Groesbecks and there discussed plans to travel east with his wife, Mellie, to visit his family and the Southern States Mission. It appeared that travel plans included brother-in-law John A. Groesbeck and his wife Ann.  

John and Mellie left their children home with the Groesbecks and a couple of weeks into the trip John wrote that he’d received a telegram from Nicholas informing him that all was well at home with their children.

That October daughter Josephine also needed her mother ’s help. She left her five-year-old daughter Sara in Elizabeth’s care.  In 1882 Josephine’s husband, Apostle John Henry Smith, was called to preside over the European Mission. A year later [1883] “he sent for Josephine to take charge of the mission home in Liverpool [England]. She left Sarah [born 1878], her first child, with her parents and took Nicholas [born 1881] with her. She had been in England only a few months when her mother died 28 December 1883. Six months later, 29 June 1884, her father passed away. With the death of both parents she felt she had to return to the little daughter she had left behind with her folks. She arrived in Utah August 11, 1883 [84]”.

On November 20, 1883 John and Mellie arrived back in Salt Lake. John wrote in his journal, "Arrived at Salt Lake at 6 a.m. and drove to brother G's [Groesbeck] for breakfast. Had dinner there and in the p.m. brought wife and children down home."  On December 16 he wrote that he "visited Sister Groesbeck who is quite sick."                 

I've gathered and posted information on Great Great Grandmother Groesbeck’s passing that can be read here and here and here.