Elizabeth was an immigrant frontier housewife, originally Welsh speaking and reputedly illiterate, whom life took far from her origins in the Brecons.

In the 1860s, after bearing several children in Pennsylvania's coal regions, she and her family traveled by train to the end of the line and then by ox cart and on foot to Samaria, ID, where her son Thomas was the first non-Indian child born in the Malad Valley area of Idaho. She had a total of ten children, of whom three died at birth in Wales.

One branch of her great-grandchildren are the world famous, musical Osmond Family. Others are farmers, teachers business people and web nerds, scattered across America and beyond.

Her son Edwin rose to prominence as a scholar of constitutional law and once ran for governor of Idaho. Her youngest son Ephraim Rees Davis was my grandfather.

Although by today's standards she appears older, this photo may have been taken before the US Civil War when she was under 40. That guess is tempered by the background of the larger photo from which this is taken, which shows stylistic elements that came along later among commercial photographers. And your guess?

(BTW, if you happen to be the owner of an original print or even the negative of this image, I will be happy to re-scan it and share the results at my own expense, returning the original to you.)

Errata: An earlier version of this page incorrectly stated the Ephraim R. was my great-grandfather; he was in fact my maternal grandfather.