LYDIA LOVARA CROCKETT
Lydia Lovara Crockett was born on October 21, 1858 in Payson, Utah County, Utah to Alvin Crockett and Mary Sophia Reed. Church and civil records show her middle name being spelled both Lovara and Lavera. When she was two years old her family moved to Logan, Utah. Her grandmother Crockett was a midwife, and whenever she was called out to deliver a baby, Lydia went to her grandfather's house to be with him.
When Lydia was eight years old they went to Farmington, Utah to visit her father's second wife's folks, the Peals, staying for two months. On the return trip the wagon tipped over and Lydia was injured, developing rheumatism from which she suffered for the rest of her life. Also, she developed heart disease as a teenager.
Lydia was active in the Church, serving as a Sunday School teacher in the Logan 1st Ward and then called to be the secretary of Logan's first Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association. When she was nineteen she taught school for a year in a one room rock school house in Logan.
Lydia married Archibald Orrell Lamoreaux when she was twenty years old in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, Utah on December 26, 1878.
The young couple settled in Logan, Utah where they had two children, then moved to south-eastern Idaho where they had five more children. In 1894, three months after giving birth to Nora, and while Lydia was very ill, the family moved from Dingle, Bear Lake County, Idaho by covered wagon to the Gila Valley in Arizona. This twelve week trip, in her almost bedfast condition, was very difficult for Lydia. They had trouble with indians and for a while an outlaw, who they did not know was escaping the law, joined their party.
A year later, while living in Thatcher, after the birth of Muriel, her eighth child, Lydia was very ill and for days her life hung on a thread. The doctor gave her little hope of recovery. She was diagnosed with malaria, no doubt contracted in Dingle from living near the swamps, combined with rheumatism and dropsy of the heart. However, her life was saved by priesthood administrations and her own strong faith in God. She went on to have two more children and lived for another thirty years.
Two years before she died, Lydia and Archie went back to Logan, Utah for the July 24th Pioneer Day celebration. Lydia was honored by the Chamber of Commerce as a pioneer.
They moved to Mesa, Arizona to be near the new temple and Lydia did genealogical work at the library there. She died on May 30, 1930 in Phoenix and was buried in Mesa.