Morgan Pioneer History Binds Us 'Together A Short Biography of Ellen Masser Carter I'lien Masser Carter Ellen Masser Carter was born on January 7,1836, in Token, Tipton, Staffordshire, England. Her own mother died when she was very young, possibly six or eight years old. Soon afterward, her father married again, but the stepmother was most unkind and mistreated the motherless girl. So while very young in years she went to work as a servant girl, as she called it, for a family by the name of Cheer; they treated her kindly. She lived in England during the reign of Queen Victoria. Wealtha P. Heiner, a granddaughter, says, "I have heard her relate many stories about England, and how people would gather on the streets to see the queen pass by in her carriage drawn by beautiful white horses. She said, 'Queen Victoria was a gracious, lovely lady and reigned for many years as England's Queen'." While Great Grandmother was still in her teens, she had a strange dream which impressed her greatly. She couldn't get it out of her mind. Many times in her life she was warned by premonitions or hunches of things that were going to happen. In the dream, a young man came to her and said he had a message and asked if she would listen. She was told in the dream that this young man was her future husband, whom she would marry; and she saw him so plainly in the dream that she recognized him when he passed the window a few days later and knocked upon the door. He, Samuel Carter, introduced himself as a Mormon missionary and was bearing the message of the Gospel, a plan of life and salvation, to all who would listen and accept it. She did accept the message of truth, and he baptized her on April 2,1859. Ashort time after they were married, they began to make plans to sail for America and join the Saints in Zion. When they left England, Charles Turner and his wife came on the same ship with them. (Charles Turner is known to us as Bishop Turner.) There was always a close friendship between them and their families. While Samuel Carter and his wife were not with the original pioneers of 1847, nevertheless they were pioneers and suffered many hardships. Their first child, a girl, Eleanor, my grandmother, was bom August 17,1860, in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, enroute to Utah. She was a premature baby and weighed less than five pounds. The day after the birth of the baby, Great Grandmother rode all day in a wagon, sick, sore, tired, and homesick for loved ones across the sea. Yet with hope in the future, they wended their way to Utah. Great Grandmother rode the rest of the way to Utah in the jostling wagon still ill from the birth of her baby. On their arrival September 25, 1860, they lived first in Kaysville, Davis County. It was while there that the first great trial of her young life came when she was asked to share the love and companionship of her husband with another woman. She was carrying their second child, Samuel John, when Great Grandfather courted and married Sarah Davis Roberts, a young widow with a small daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Roberts. Polygamy was a bitter pill for Ellen just as it was for many more women in the Church who were asked to live with this principle. But his love for Ellen was not less because of his marriage to Sarah. Far from it, those three loved, worked, and pulled together. Animosity and bitterness were unknown in the years that came and went. From Kaysville, they moved to Round Valley, Morgan County. Great Grandfather taught school for two winters there. In 1867-68, the Union Pacific Railroad came through. Some of the railroad employees boarded at their home. The money received for meals helped to see them through another year or two. In 1874 they moved to Porterville and settled on Woods Creek, which is known to us as East Canyon Creek. The farm had to be cleared of willows and oak brush with only a grubbing hoe and ax as tools, a slow process compared with today's machines. During one or two years, the grasshoppers took most of their crops. These were mighty lean years for the Carter family which totaled about nineteen in all. During those lean years, corn bread, shorts, and molasses were about all that kept the wolf from the door. Two homes were built exactly alike for Ellen and Sarah with just a passageway between them. Each one had the same comforts and had identical furniture. To .'>>.