Elizabeth Wright was the daughter of Arron Wright and Nancy Pritchard Wright. Elizabeth was born August 31,1827 and came to Missouri with her mother Nancy and brothers Robert, Thomas, Joseph and sister Katharine in 1844. Some of Nancy’s brothers William and Levi Pritchard were in the group that came here from Fentress County, Tennessee ferrying the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois.  Arron Wright died in Tennessee before the rest came to Missouri and is buried there. Nancy and her sons Thomas and Robert settled on Dry Crane creek in what is now Stone County. I don’t know much about my Great Great Grandmother Nancy but it must have took a lot of courage to make the trip to a strange country after just burying your husband. And it surely was quite an adventure for Elizabeth to make the journey from Tennessee to Missouri in a wagon at age16. Some in the family think the Wright’s stayed in Zack Hayes cave until cabins could be built in the fall of 1844.

My Great Grandmother Elizabeth met and fell in love with John Henry Anderson and they got married in 1848. I have been told Elizabeth was a small woman and was pretty . When she was going to get married she had no pretty shoes to wear so her brothers who were tanners, went out into the woods and shot squirrels and tanned them  and made her a beautiful pair of wedding shoes. The shoes were made with the fur on the inside for softness and fur trimmed on the outsides for looks. The lady who told me this, Laova Curbow, said her mother Bessie Hanifin, who was a cousin of Elizabeth’s, said these shoes were really small and pretty. I understand Elizabeth was a very petite lady, maybe that is where we all get our shortness. To some people this story probably  won’t mean much, but to me it’s another chapter about my Great Grandparents which I love to hear about.

They had six children, David and Nancy Jane died as infants, then they had Thomas Benton and Adam and Martha Ann.  John and Elizabeth last child was stillborn. My Grandfather was Thomas Benton.

I think they lived in William’s (John Henry’s dads) log home when they were first married, then they built a new home on the Anderson homestead in 1871 in the horseshoe bend of Crane Creek surrounded by big hills. The lumber to build this house was hauled up from mills near present day Kimberling City by wagon. I can remember this house as a child. Of course, John and Elizabeth were dead but the house was next to where I grew up and the house is still there. In fact it still stands behind Henry Anderson’s place but is about to fall in (1998). They had lamps that were blue and white with glass chimney and you pulled them down from the ceiling to light them. They burned kerosene. She had beautiful dishes that were blue and white. Blue must have been her favorite color. They had a big wash stand which had a marble top and it had some kind of blue trim. The fireplace wasn’t too big, it had a big mantle made out of some kind of hard wood. Loyd Anderson sold  the fireplace stones to someone from Springfield several years ago.

Elizabeth died third of July,1880 and is buried in the Anderson Cemetery which is on the homestead where she and John lived all their life, and where her husband John and all their children except Adam and Martha Ann are buried. Unfortunately many stones have been removed from the cemetery and no records have been kept.  Stones no longer can be found for the infant children of Elizabeth who died.