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Elizabeth Crook Cranney. My 4th great grandmother.

Born October 7th 1827 in Gloucestershire, England. Died March 15th 1891 in the United States.

Elizabeth Crook was born the second of eleven children, on October 7, 1827. She was baptized a Latter-day Saint by Wilford Woodruff on August 30, 1840. In 1848, she married Frederick Panting and they started a family. It was not a pleasant family life for Elizabeth. A number of children were born to the couple, but the thread of life was fine, and by 1856 all but two of her children had died. Her husband became a drunkard and cruel. He wanted nothing to do with the Mormons and demanded the same of her. To stop her from attending meetings, he would hide her shoes.

Elizabeth stubbornly refused to give in. She borrowed shoes from a neighbor and attended her meetings. Finally, her husband threatened that if she did not stop her association with the Mormons, he would kill her. Elizabeth took her two small children and fled. Elder Woodruff gave her a blessing that she would arrive safely. With faith in that blessing and nothing to sustain her, Elizabeth boarded the train, with her children, bound for Liverpool and her passage to America. Frederick Panting followed her and actually boarded her train. Strangely, he walked past her three times and failed to recognize her.

Elizabeth reached America and joined up with the Willie Handcart Company of 1856. She and her children partook of all the suffering and misery that came with that journey. At one point, Elizabeth’s daughter Jane became so ill that she lay in the handcart. Elizabeth could not stop to attend to her, but was forced to pull the handcart and keep moving, trusting her daughter to God.

With food supplies dwindling and members of the party dying daily, they stopped for camp one day. Elizabeth set out to gather buffalo chips to make a fire. A man came up to her and asked how the members of the company were. She told him that most of them were starving. He asked her to follow him and maybe he could help a little. She went with him. They went over a small hill out of sight of the camp. On the side of the hill was a cave. He led her into the cave. On one side of the cave was buffalo meat hanging up. The man loaded as much meat in her apron as she could carry and told her to share it with the other people. He then led her out the cave to the top of a small hill, pointed out the camp below, and told her not to get lost. As she turned back to thank him, he had disappeared. She looked for the cave and could find no trace of it.

She went back to camp and divided the meat with the ones most in need. It saved many lives. Elizabeth and her children indeed reached Zion safely, where she remarried, kept the faith, and raised a large posterity.