This is my Great Great Great Grandfather on my Mother's side. Elisha Hildebrand Davis was born October 22, 1815 in West Township, Ohio. He was the oldest of ten children. Elisha was baptized into the Mormon Church on August 19, 1838. He served many missions, the first being east of the Allegheny mountains, less than 6 months after joining the church. He traveled 300 miles on foot in the middle of the winter wearing only a pair of thin calf-skin boots and a suit of homemade clothing which had been made by his Mother and Sisters clipping the wool from a sheep's back, then washing, carding, and spinning it into yarn, weaving it into cloth, and then making it into the clothes he wore. Elisha assisted in establishing many branches of the Church in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. He also served in Iowa, Illinois, and Liverpool England (where he presided over the mission).
Elisha Hildebrand Davis was a MILLER by trade. He had operated and managed several grist mills in the different places that he lived. He also built most of his houses and farmed and stock raised.
Elisha married Mary Ann Mitchell on December 25, 1846 in England (shortly after his mission), and they left the very same day for the United States on the first ship available. Almost immediately upon arrival, Elisha was ordained a Seventy by Wilford Woodruff. He was later made president of the 36th Quorum of the Seventy. In his older years, Elisha presided over the High Priest Quorum and continued to do so until his death at the age of 82 years.
To My Posterity:
During a life of nearly 82 years, 59 of which time having spent in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I can testify to the happiness of a life of moral honesty and religious devotion. Experience has taught me the high value of moral purity and religious sentiment, as reaching far above earthly pleasures, and the gratification of appetite and passion, which cannot produce lasting joy.
My success in life has come through not borrowing money or mortgaging my home, but through always living within my means, and sustaining myself and family by the sweat of my face. When I owned little, I lived on little and was satisfied.
My married life of 46 years has been a happy one. My wife was always true, gentle, faithful, kind, and wise, a help mate in very deed to me. During our entire married life of 46 years, we never had a hard feeling, or cross word, but lived in love together, always adopting the rule of speaking gently and kindly to and of each other; and now, at the the advanced age of 82 years, standing as it were on the verge of eternity, my great desire and advice to all of you is to be faithful and true to our holy religion, to never depart from the faith and turn against God.
Every day that I live, I rejoice more and more in the great work of the Lord, and in the hope of Eternal Life.
Your loving father and grandfather,
Elisha Hildebrand Davis
That's a beautiful testimony that he would leave for you!
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought that I was getting married close to Christmas!