BetsyCranson

Elizabeth "Betsy" Robbins Cranson

Elizabeth "Betsy" Cranson is born 20 Dec 1825 to Alvin Cranson and his wife Sylvia in Lenox, NY. By the time her parents died, her oldest sister Sylvia and husband came west to about where Chicago is now, on Lake Michigan, and Lydia kept writing to her sisters and finally got some of them to move out and finally Betsy went out. Betsy met a man in Michigan by the name of Howe. They were both young and they fell in love and were married on 23 Apr 1850 in Kane County, Ill. He was a carpenter. He got a job way up in the northern part of Michigan to build a house. He thought it would be six weeks at least till he could get back, so he went and that was the last she ever heard of him; whether he died or what happened to him, she never knew for sure. Subsequently Gertrude Isabel Howe was born 27 Jan 1851.

Betsy’s extended family got the gold fever and they all pooled their resources and made up a company. They induced Betsy to come with them and they came across the plains and landed in Salt Lake about 1851 in Captain Sessions company. When they got to Salt Lake, they decided to stay and winter there. They camped down at the end of the Oquirrh Mountains where it juts into the lake where Garfield is now. They were in camp all winter. The people from Tooele and Grantsville stopped off with them on their way to and from Salt Lake. The next spring, they went on to California.

Betsy was a good cook. She cooked in Placerville and Red Bluff. She got acquainted with Oliver Porter McCuistion, who was from Tennessee and married him on 28 May 1854 in White Oak Township, California. On 30 Apr 1855 Franklin was born. He died when he was about 2 years old. After McCuistion went into the gold fields, she never heard from him again. Betsy wanted to get back to Utah. She met a man, Baker, a Mormon at Carson, Nevada. He found out that she wanted to go to Utah so he made a bargain with her. He said, "My wife expects to be confined about the beginning of the winter, and if you want to come and take care of her, she will take care of you when you have your baby (Alvin James McCuistion)." So she stayed all winter and he was born on December 14, 1856. Then in about 9 or 10 months she went to Tooele, Utah. They stayed in the home of Francis Marion Lee.

In 1857 she met William Culbertson Gollaher whose wife had died previously. As he was a widower and she a widow and dependent for help with her little daughter and son, she married him in 1858. A son Joseph Tyson Gollaher was born to them in 1857. They were ordered to go to Lehi Utah and all the people in Tooele County were to concentrate in that valley around Provo and if Johnson's Army broke through their lines in Echo Canyon, they were to destroy their homes and flee to the south and go to California on the southern route. Johnson’s Army eventually left and they finally came back to Tooele.

Betsy died in Tooele on 3 July 1883 and was buried on 5 July in the Tooele Cemetery, Utah near William C Gollaher.