ELIZABETH CLARK HAWS — Not much has been written on the life of Elizabeth Clark Haws, companion to Joseph Smith Tanner. Her life was filled with hardship. She grew up in the home of Elijah and Catherine Floyd Pease Haws. She was one of eleven children. Her parents were born in the state of New York at the same time the prophet Joseph Smith was born. Her roots go back to the colonization of America.
Her parents were married in 1829 in Marietta, Ohio. It was while in Ohio that they heard the voice of the Spirit declaring the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. By following the places of the birth of their children, one can tell that they followed the body of the Saints in their westward migration. Elizabeth was born on February 23, 1843, in Van Buren County, Iowa. No doubt, the Haws family knew the John Tanner family. Each family lived on the west of the Mississippi River across from Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Saints lived after being driven from their homes in Missouri.
It was while in Iowa that her younger brother Joseph Smith Haws was born, two years after her own birth. His life was not to be long upon the earth, much like the lives of many of Elizabeth’s own children. Her brother, Joseph Smith Haws, died before his fourth birthday and prior to the family immigration to Utah. Elizabeth’s father and mother, Elijah and Catharine Floyd Pease Haws, with their six children: Lydia Catherine (16), Mary Eliza