It is official. My husband and I are the oldest members of the trek team this summer in the Sandy Granite Stake. While we will not be walking the miles with the youth and their Ma’s and Pa’s, we will be involved in the food committee, feeding all the support staff and preparing food boxes for the families. Having done this same assignment four years ago, we are at least familiar with the process.
What will help us in this challenge? The youth of the stake have been asked to find and take an ancestor on trek with them. In order to have that same experience with the youth, I have found and identified my ancestor to bring on trek. Her name is Elizabeth Ann Thomas Covington.
Elizabeth Ann Thomas was born 21 April 1820 in Marlboro, South Carolina, to John Pledger Thomas, Sr., and Sarah Covington. Her upbringing included lessons on how to manage the household of a plantation. She met Robert Dockery Covington in the her early years of growing up. The Covington and Thomas families were related. Robert’s family lived just across the border in Rockingham, North Carolina. They were married 2 February 1839 in Rockingham, North Carolina.
Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Somerville, Mississippi, where her family had moved and established new plantations. With the help of slave labor, Robert and Elizabeth soon established their own plantation.
While living in Somerville, they had three children: John Thomas, Emily Jane (my 2nd great grandmother), and Sarah Elizabeth. It was while in Somerville that they first heard the gospel taught to them by Benjamin Clapp, Samuel Hurley, and an Elder Hulett. One of Elizabeth’s family members, Samuel, found the strange religion interesting and brought home a Book of Mormon. After listening to the missionaries for three weeks, reading, and praying, Robert, Elizabeth, and members of the Thomas family joined the Church on 3 February 1843.
When the call for Saints to gather in Nauvoo came, they left their life in Mississippi behind and made the move to Nauvoo, arriving in 1845 just prior to the exodus west.
During their stay in Nauvoo, both Elizabeth and Robert received their patriarchal blessings from Patriarch John Smith, and received their endowments in the Nauvoo temple on 20 January 1846. They departed Nauvoo shortly after and spent the remainder of 1846 in Winter Quarters. It was in Winter Quarters their youngest daughter Sarah Elizabeth took also ill and died on 6 November 1846. She was buried along with the many other Saints who perished in Winter Quarters that year.
The Covington family spent over a year in Winter Quarters before several companies were organized following Brigham Young’s initial party. On 17 June 1847 Elizabeth and her family left Winter Quarters in the Edward Hunter company. Elizabeth was heavy with child, and this proved to be a difficult journey for her.
On 1 August 1847, Elizabeth gave birth to a boy, Robert Laborus Covington in what is now Council Bluff, Nebraska. The party entered the Salt Lake Valley on 1 October 1847, the third group to enter the valley.
Given Elizabeth’s frail condition following the birth of her baby on the trail and the birth and death of Sarah Elizabeth, she contracted a severe respiratory infection and passed away on 7 December 1847. She was buried in the first pioneer cemetery, Pioneer Fort, now known as Pioneer Park. During construction in 1986, 32 pioneer bodies were uncovered, Elizabeth among them, and they were reinterred in the Pioneer Trail Cemetery in Salt Lake City, which is located in This is The Place Park.
Even though Elizabeth received her endowment in Nauvoo, she was not sealed to her husband until 1856 in the Endowment House. All four of her children were eventually sealed to her.
The question still stands: Will I survive trek this year? I certainly plan on surviving and making it a pleasant experience for those around me. While Elizabeth didn’t survive to join her husband in Washington, Utah, for the Cotton Mission where he served as bishop of the Washington ward for many years, she was instrumental in being part of my heritage. If I don’t survive, then I haven’t learned anything from my grandmother Covington. –Liz Kennington