MARGARET FOUTZ
Margaret Foutz was born on July 31, 1870 in Pleasant Grove, Utah to Mormon pioneer, Joseph Lehi Foutz, Sr., and Caroline Amanda Child. (Joseph was born at Hauns Mill, Missouri, and told his children stories of the persecution the Saints suffered.) Margaret was the seventh of nine children.
Before Margaret was two years old her family moved from Pleasant Grove, where they settled when her parents married in 1857, to Richfield, in the southern part of Utah. She was baptized when she was eight years old.
Margaret married Edmond Nelson, on March 14, 1888, when she was eighteen and he was 37, in the St. George Temple. He lived the law of plural marriage and she was his second wife, the first was Mary Caroline Brinkerhoff. The two wives learned to love each other dearly and were willing and able to live in peace in spite of the federal officers seeking plural marriages. Ed always invited the officers to stop for a meal and to rest and feed their horses. Maggie, as she was called, would be introduced as "my wife's sister."
A few years before her death, Margaret said, "I loved (Mary Caroline) more than any other person on earth next to our husband. There was never a cross word passed between us." Mary Caroline Brinkerhoff, died when Maggie was nineteen, leaving eight young children for Margaret to raise. Her step children called her "Aunt Maggie". Margaret had seven children of her own, and managed this household by herself when Ed was called to Kentucky on a full-time mission in 1898.
Maggie's grand-daughter Elaine remembers her as "a white haired lady, a little taller than me (Elaine). She always had a dress on and she always wore an apron over her dress, sort of a bib apron that had pockets. Her hair was combed back, just straight back like a man's. She had it bobbed off in the back. She had two combs, one on this side and one on the other side. She had a big nose, like mine, and she had big round eyes and always had a smile on her face. Once when I was visiting her she picked an apple off the tree and asked if I would like to have it. I said yes and I ate it. When I got down to the core I started to throw it away. She said, "Elaine, don't ever throw the apple core away, don't ever throw away any part of the apple but the stem because the other parts are good for you and, besides, that is being wasteful."
Margaret died on October 3, 1939, at the age of sixty-nine at Eagar, Apache County, Arizona and was buried there.