Effie Isabelle Merrill

Effie Isabell Kimball Merrill, daughter of David P. Kimball and Caroline Williams Kimball, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, May 4, 1849. Until she was four years of age the Kimball's lived there. The first move was to Bear Lake, Idaho, where they remained three years, moving back to Salt Lake City. They built them a good home and were very happy when her father was selected by Brigham Young to help colonize Arizona. consequently in 1877, they began this journey.

When they reached Hayden's Mill at what is now Tempe, he directed them to a place named Lehi. Here they began building homes and getting out water for irrigation and there began Effie's first real schooling, though her mother had begun teaching her children their letters and multiplication tables and other rudiments of education. Pioneer mothers found this a very effective means of preventing quarreling that might result from too much being thrown together as were the children on those long journeys. This first school was taught by Zulu Pomeroy whom Effie learned to love sincerely.

After about three years at Lehi, her father again moved, this time to Cochise County, to a little settlement called St. David in his honor. Soon about sixty families settled there and a pretty little town was the result. First a large fort was built of white stone. Here the newcomers lived until they had homes of their own to move into. The Merrill family were among the first white people to settle here and it was here Effie met a dashing young man whom everyone liked, who was destined to become her future husband. It did not take them long to decide they were meant for each other, for at 14 years of age she became the bride of Orrin Merrill. Effie was the mother of 13 children, five girls and eight boys. She had lost two grown sons, two grown daughters and one baby.

Source: In Our Own Words: The Lives of Arizona Pioneer Women, by Barbara Marriott