Eliza Brown was born in West Lavington, Wiltshire, England on January 30, 1847. Her mother died when she was three and her father remarried. When Eliza was just eight years old, she was working in the village of Potterne, a few miles away from West Lavington, where she lived with a grocer and his wife and worked as their household and business help. Her stepmother found out that the grocer and his wife were starving Eliza; she was given only one piece of bread a day to eat, with something on it, and her stepmother rescued her and brought her home to nourish her back to health. (This story comes from an interview Eliza's granddaughter Ruth did with Eliza about 1920.) At the same time, the stepmother, Jane, needed help with a new baby. Jane then died within a few months. When Eliza was 9 years old, she and her father and one brother were baptized "Mormons" and in 1863, when she was 16, they left England to go to Utah, leaving her older sisters behind. She always said she was the girl interviewed on board ship by Charles Dickens before the ship sailed, which was recorded in Dickens' "The Commercial Traveler." The family traveled by ox team across the plains, arriving in Salt Lake City in October 1863. She became the the wife of John White the next month and had three daughters with him: Mary Eliza, Sarah Jane, and Anne Louise. John died, and Eliza married Thomas Brown, who had been married to John White's sister. Eliza and Thomas had the following children: John Henry, Ellen Jemima, George Edward, William Chase, Emily Elizabeth, Harriet Lydia, and Nephi James. She lived in North Ogden, Utah from 1863 to the end of her life. She died January 28, 1929.

Her obituary reads as follows: "Odgen- Funeral services for Mrs. Eliza Brown, 82, an ox team pioneer, who died Monday night at her home in North Ogden, will be held Friday at 1 p.m. at the North Ogden meeting house.

"The body may be viewed at the family home Thursday afternoon and evening and Friday until 12:30 p.m. The interment will be in North Ogden cemetery under the direction of Lindquist & Sons.

"Mrs. Brown was born at West Lavington, Wiltshire, England, January 30, 1847. She became a convert to the L.D.S. church and left England for Utah June 4, 1863, and came from the east by ox team, arriving in Salt Lake in October, 1863.

"She was married to John White in November, 1863, and after Mr. White's death she married Thomas B. Brown. Surviving are two children by her first marriage, Mrs. Warren Campbell and Mrs. J. Alta Montgomery of North Ogden.

"Six children survive from her last marriage: John H. Brown of Tremonton; Mrs. Arthur G. Berrett, George E. Brown, Mrs. Joseph Folkman, Mrs. Thomas F. Berrett, all of North Ogden, and Nephi J. Brown of Ogden. Fifty-eight grandchildren, seventy-nine great grandchildren and one great great grandchild."

Source: Salt Lake Tribune, The (Salt Lake City, Utah) January 30, 1929 page 25.