Biography

Isabella Eugenia Jones Oberlander joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in 1860, at age ten, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and went on to live a remarkably long life. Her mother and sisters were likely born into slavery in Tennessee but had escaped to Ohio by the time Isabella was born. Isabella went on to marry, migrate to Utah with her husband, and raise her family there. She survived the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, and two world wars before she passed away at age 98. Isabella remained a Latter-day Saint throughout her life. In 1948, her grandson, then serving as a Latter-day Saint bishop, presided at her funeral, which was held in a Latter-day Saint chapel in Salt Lake City. The 1850 census had identifined Isabella as "Mulatto" but later records described her as white. By the 1880s Latter-day Saint leaders knew of her family’s mixed racial ancestry and were even aware that two of her sisters received full temple rituals. Her decendents in the twenty-first century continue to exhibit African ancestry in their DNA.

Over the course of two decades Isabella’s mother, a biracial woman named Maria Maxwell, and a man named Thomas J[ones] Reid had at least seven children together; Isabella Eugenia was the couple’s youngest child.[1] Isabella was born after Maria and her children settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is uncertain whether her older siblings were born in slavery, but Isabella was freeborn. Her father’s race is unknown, but he was likely white.

As a child, Isabella enjoyed the advantages of wealth as she lived with her older sister, Margaret, and extended family in Wisconsin. After her marriage, Isabella and her husband bought a farm in Iowa, so she experienced the hard work of farm life. Eventually, Isabella’s husband returned to industrial work and the family resettled in the Salt Lake Valley. With the support of her devoted and loving husband, Isabella was able to raise four children of her own to adulthood, as well as two stepdaughters. Even still, she experienced the loss of close family members, one of whom was her young daughter.

Isabella was born on October 28, 1849, in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1850, the U.S. Census enumerator counted the nine-month-old baby girl as a free person of color living in a household with her mother, her three older sisters, and her brother-in-law. Isabella’s mother and Isabella’s unmarried sisters are listed with the surname of “Jones.” During her early life, Isabella used the Jones surname, but she gave all her sons the middle name of “Reid” and even told her grandson that her last name was “Reid.”[2] In 1850, she and every other member of her immediate family were assigned the racial designation of “Mulatto.” Isabella’s father was not in the household and her mother was the acknowledged head of the family.[3] 

Isabella continued to live in Cincinnati for the next seventeen years with her extended family. In 1860, the make-up of the family remained the same as it had been a decade before, with the exception of a few notable changes. First, Isabella’s older sisters, Ellenor and Francis were absent that year. Ellenor had left Cincinnati for California and had married her first husband. Francis may have also married and left home.[4] Second, Jesse Beckley, Isabella’s brother-in-law, who had been very successful in a roofing business, was then counted as the head of the household and only he was designated as “Mulatto.” The other members of the family were assumed to be “White.”[5]

While Isabella lived in Cincinnati, she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Extant Church records do not list her mother, Maria, but later church records reveal that she was also a member of the faith.[6] Two of Isabella’s older sisters were baptized in the 1840s before Isabella’s birth, although the circumstances of their conversions do not survive. These sisters, Margaret Elizabeth Jones Beckley and Ellenor Georgeana J. J. Jones participated in Church life in Cincinnati. Both received second baptisms and confirmations in the Cincinnati Branch (a smaller ecclesiastical unit than a ward) in 1858. It is likely they were instrumental in seeing that their youngest sister Isabella was baptized, as well.[7]

Two years after her sisters’ rebaptisms, a local congregant, Robert Ellwood, baptized Isabella on August 26, 1860.Thomas Shores, another congregant, confirmed her as a member of the Church on the same day. Isabella’s niece (Margaret’s daughter), Cornelia Beckley, also became a member of the Church through baptism and confirmation on August 26. Isabella and Cornelia were born just a year apart. They had always lived together and must have shared more of a sisterly relationship than that of aunt and niece. Margaret was rebaptized and reconfirmed for the second time on the same day as her daughter and her niece received the ordinances for the first time.[8] The clerk of the Cincinnati Branch did not make any racial designations on the membership records of the family.[9]

In 1867, Isabella’s brother-in-law, Jesse Beckley, left the roofing business to buy a gas company in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. As a member of the household, Isabella relocated to Wisconsin along with the Beckley family. Jesse’s business prospered and he soon sold the gasworks in Fond du Lac to finance his purchase of a gas company in nearby Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He then expanded that company into a gas light provider for the city. Isabella continued to live in Fond du Lac with her sister and her family until her own marriage in 1878. During that time, she would have lived in comfortable circumstances given Jesse and Margaret Beckley’s wealth.[10]

By the time the 1870 census was taken, Isabella’s mother, Maria, was no longer counted as a member of the household, but the Beckleys and Isabella shared their home with some of Jesse Beckley’s employees, Isabella’s niece, Cornelia, and Cornelia’s husband and young daughter.[11]

According to her descendants, Isabella learned to play the piano very well and learned to sew in her youth. She visited New York City in January 1875. After Isabella died, her grandson found a diary she had kept while she stayed in Manhattan. In it, she kept track of expenses and her correspondence. Its contents confirm that she worked as a seamstress.[12]

A few years after her return to Fond du Lac from New York, on August 22, 1878, Isabella married widower John Oberlander. John’s parents were Prussian immigrants. On their marriage certificate, John listed his occupation as “Gas Maker.”[13] A later family history reports that John worked for Jesse Beckley, the man who would become his brother-in-law, first in Cincinnati in the roofing business and then relocated to Wisconsin to work for Jesse at the gas works.[14]

Several months before his marriage to Isabella, in December 1877, John Oberlander accompanied Jesse Beckley to Salt Lake City where they were both rebaptized and reconfirmed as Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Eleventh Ward. The Record of Members for the ward does not list a first baptism for John, nor is it possible to know if or when he first joined the Church. The record could be in error and his 1877 baptism could have been his first.[15] Isabella and all her immediate family were Mormons. In fact, even some of Jesse Beckley’s employees and unrelated members of his household had chosen to be baptized as Latter-day Saints, so John was not alone in making this commitment. Regardless of their membership in the Church, Isabella and John chose to be married in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Fond du Lac. Latter-day Saint missionaries proselyted in Wisconsin in the 1870s, but there were no dedicated chapels nor was there a Mormon ecclesiastical organization in Fond du Lac at the time of their marriage.[16]

On the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, John recounted his life history for a newspaper article published in The Salt Lake Tribune. He related his memory of his first meeting with Isabella, which had taken place in Cincinnati and also spoke of Isabella’s father, Thomas Reed (Reid). His mention of Thomas is the only firsthand account of Isabella’s father that has survived to the present. John recalled that Thomas was a first cousin to James K. Polk and kept a general store in Cincinnati. John was twenty-one when Isabella was born. While she was still very young, he “often hitched [the horse] Dobbin to the family wagon and took the baby riding. Friends chided him saying, ‘Why don’t you get married, John?’ The reply was, ‘I’m going to wait for her.’” The article concludes the tale by reporting, “And he did.”[17] The reporter failed to tell his readers that it was a long time before John married Isabella and their marriage took place after his two previous wives had passed away. In 1863, he married a woman in Cincinnati with whom he had two daughters. After her death, in 1868, John married a second wife. She, too, died prematurely. John then married Isabella. By the time of their marriage, Isabella was nearly twenty-nine and her groom was forty-nine.[18]

Isabella immediately became mother to John’s two teenaged daughters from his first marriage, Laura and Martha. John’s mother also moved in with the couple. Isabella and John had five more children over the course of the next eight years. When asked by the census taker in 1900 how many children she had, Isabella replied, “seven.”[19] Furthermore, her obituary named her stepdaughters simply as “daughters,” indicating that Isabella seems to have made no distinction between John’s daughters and her own biological children, but rather, treated them all with equal regard.[20]

After their marriage, Isabella and John relocated to Iowa where they tried farming for a time. While living in Muscatine County, on February 13, 1880, Isabella gave birth to their first daughter, Marguerite Elizabeth, who they often called “May.” Their first son, Arthur Reid, was born in 1881, in Muscatine. By the next year, they had moved west to Liston Township, in Woodbury County, Iowa. Their second daughter, Adelaide, joined the family in September 1882; Felix (Phil) Reid, the Oberlander’s second son was also born in Liston in 1884.[21]

According to family reminiscences, while living in Iowa, John signed a note for a good friend who got into serious financial difficulties. John did not have the cash to pay the debt and unfortunately, had to sell the farm to cover his friend’s losses. The family moved to Utah Territory around 1886 hoping to find work.[22] They traveled to Utah by the Union Pacific railroad. They stopped, first in Logan where Isabella’s sister, Ellenor lived. While there, on May 12, 1886, Isabella gave birth to her fifth child and youngest son, John Reid.[23]

Thanks to John’s earlier experience running the gas works in Wisconsin, the superintendent of the Germania smelter in Murray, Utah offered him a job.[24] For the first few years after their arrival in the territory, the Oberlanders lived in South Cottonwood.[25] That changed when their neighborhood, situated in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, was incorporated into the newly created city of Murray in 1903.[26] In another change, the Germania Smelter was sold and expanded into the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASRC). After the new owners took over the company, John continued to work there. Isabella and John lived in Murray for the remainder of their lives. John worked for the ASRC smelter until he was ninety-four. Sometime in his early seventies, John transitioned to a courier job, carrying ore samples from the Murray plant to the company office and assay facility in downtown Salt Lake.[27]

According to John, he and Isabella were a congenial couple. When interviewed for The Salt Lake Tribune, John spoke of Isabella’s good health. He said he had spent only $11 on treating illnesses for her through the years. He went on to say that they always consulted each other when making plans and had never argued. John boasted of Isabella’s habit of rising each day at 4:00 am. It was as “regular as the sun comes up over those mountains,” he said. She called to him at 5:00 each morning, saying, “Daddy, your coffee is ready.” He described her as “the best woman in the world.”[28]

Isabella and John enjoyed a happy marriage, but it was not without adversity. In 1890, shortly after moving to Utah, they lost one of their children to an early death. Their second daughter, seven-year-old Adelaide, died from a congenital heart defect. She is buried in the Murray City Cemetery.[29] Happily, their eldest daughter and their sons lived until adulthood, married, and all but one had children of their own. In addition, John’s two daughters from his first marriage survived and married while the family lived in Iowa. Although both Isabella and John were baptized Latter-day Saints, they did not choose to baptize any of their children. Their Latter-day Saint grandson recalled that his grandfather, John, “spoke of the theory of Darwin when approached about the origin of man and did not care to discuss religion.” It appears that as long as John lived, the couple retained their membership in the Church and lived by its moral values, but did not participate in the life of the Church in Utah.[30]

Marguerite was Isabella’s only child who was baptized and confirmed as a Latter-day Saint. Her conversion did not take place until 1904 when Marguerite was an adult and about to be married.[31] One month after her baptism, she was endowed and sealed in the Salt Lake Temple to her husband, John Benbow Erekson. His family came from white Mormon pioneer stock. Marguerite and John were faithful members of the Church all their lives. John Erekson was called as the patriarch of the Cottonwood Stake in 1932. A stake patriarch gives prophetic council in the form of blessings to people in his ecclesiastical area, called a stake. It is a calling usually given to older men who have demonstrated a lifetime of devoted adherence to the Church and its principles. Evidently, Marguerite’s racial heritage was not an impediment to her husband’s calling. It is likely that their local Church leaders did not know that she was descended from mixed-race ancestry.

Isabella’s sons lived adventurous lives outside the United States. They all worked in the mining and smelting industry. Her eldest son, Arthur, became the general superintendent of the Bawdwin Mine in the Shan States of Burma. He was something of a legend in the British Raj.[32] Arthur, or A. R. O., as he was known, brought his youngest brother, John, to Burma where he became the director of the smelter that A. R. O. constructed. John retired to Scotland with his Scottish wife and their twins. Isabella’s second son, Felix, worked in the Garfield Mine (later renamed the Kennecott Mine) as an electrical engineer followed by a short stint in Peru working for a copper mine there. He also spent a year in Burma working with his brother, Arthur. Only Felix returned to Utah during his mother’s lifetime.[33]

On May 1, 1927, Isabella’s husband John Oberlander died and Isabella moved in with her daughter, Marguerite, and her family.[34] While living with Marguerite, Isabella again began attending Latter-day Saint services with her daughter’s family.[35] In 1940, Isabella’s name was included in the Church Census taken by the Presiding Bishopric. This is the only ecclesiastical census in which she appears.[36]

When Marguerite died suddenly in 1943, Isabella moved in with her son, Felix and his wife. Shortly after Felix died in 1944, Isabella lived for a short time with a grandson before she entered a rest home located in the Salt Lake Second Ward in downtown Salt Lake.[37] She lived there until her death on March 5, 1948, at the age of ninety-eight.[38]

Isabella, who, as a child, saw Abraham Lincoln and remembered the sorrow of families who lost loved ones in the Civil War, lived to witness the Atomic Age. She outlived all of her children, with the exception of her youngest son and her stepdaughters. Her obituaries name her as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[39] Her grandson, Arion Erekson, who served as a bishop at the time, officiated at her funeral, which took place in a Mormon chapel.[40] She is buried in the Murray City Cemetery.[41]

Isabella must have been aware of her racial heritage. Her family was known as biracial, at least in 1850. During the years she lived with her sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Jesse Beckley, she undoubtedly would have known that Jesse was a racial activist, and belonged to a Black family engaged in abolitionist efforts. Margaret, however, received a temple endowment in Salt Lake. Once Isabella and the Beckleys moved to Wisconsin, the census takers always listed them as “White.” It is possible they passed at that point. If Isabella’s husband, John, knew Isabella’s mother and father at the time of Isabella’s birth, there is a strong possibility that he knew she and her mother were biracial, but made no mention of the fact. In Iowa and Utah, Isabella and her children are listed on all official records as “White.” Isabella’s daughter, Marguerite, obtained full temple blessings. Isabella’s sisters, Margaret and Ellenor, and Ellenor’s daughter, Nellie, also received temple endowments and sealings in the nineteenth century. By 1885, Latter-day Saint leaders knew Isabella’s sisters had Black ancestry, but local leaders in Murray, Utah may not have been aware of Isabella’s familial connections to Ellenor and Margaret.

Many of Isabella’s descendants through Marguerite were and are committed Latter-day Saints and did not know until recently that they had Black African ancestry. That heritage has been verified by genealogical DNA tests that show they carry Sub-Saharan African DNA. One of them states that knowing her family shares Black lineage together with a faithful commitment to the Church and knowing that her grandfather, a patriarch, was married to a biracial woman demonstrates God’s acceptance of that race.[42]

By Tonya S. Reiter

[1] There is no documentary evidence for some of Isabella’s siblings. Records for Margaret, Ellenor, and Francis still exist, but family descendants did proxy temple ordinances for children thought to have been born to Maria Maxwell and Thomas J. Reid that are not named in other sources.

[2] Arthur B. Erekson, Autobiography of Arthur B. Erekson: first period of 25 years, 1906-1931, of his presence on planet earth (Self-published, 1986), 268; Her grandson, Arthur Erekson, did not know that she had ever used the surname, “Jones,” until after her death. She left a diary in which she wrote her name as “Belle Jones.”

[3] United States, 1850 Census, Ohio, Hamilton County, Cincinnati, Ward 4. It is possible that Maria and Thomas never married. On some censuses, Isabella said that her father was born in England. On others, she said he was born in Tennessee.

[4] Among Isabella’s papers found after her death, there was a letter written in 1868 from a man who called himself her brother, but may have been her brother-in-law, telling her of the death of his wife, Fanny. Fanny could have been her sister, Frances. See: Arthur B. Erekson, Autobiography of Arthur B. Erekson: first period of 25 years, 1906-1931, of his presence on planet earth (Self-published, 1986), 272-273.

[5] United States, 1860 Census, Ohio, Hamilton County, Cincinnati, Ward 4; The enumerator who visited the Beckley home only filled in the “Color” column if the person counted was other than “White,” and each member of the family had a blank by their names, except Jesse and the Beckley’s Black domestic.

[6] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Logan Temple, Endowments for the dead, 1884-1970; heir indexes 1884-1961; baptisms for the dead, 1943-1970, microfilm 177,955, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Ellenor Jones performed a vicarious endowment for Maria Maxell on March 4, 1885, in the Logan Utah Temple. The records lists Maria as “in the Church,” with no baptism date.

[7] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Cincinnati Branch, 1856-1861, microfilm 1968, Family Search Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[8] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Cincinnati Branch, 1856-1861, microfilm 1968, Family Search Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[9] It was not Church policy to note race on the membership record, but many clerks did so anyway if the member was Black.

[10] “Jettings Here and There at Fond du Lac,” Semi-Weekly Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), 20 June 1868, 2.

[11] United States, 1870 Census, Wisconsin, Fond du Lac County, Fond du Lac, Second Ward; Maria Maxwell lived until 1882. See: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Logan Temple, Endowments for the dead, 1884-1970; heir indexes, 1884-1961; baptisms for the dead, 1943-1970; When Ellenor Jones performed a proxy endowment for her mother on 4 March 1885, she dated Maria’s death as 10 May 1882.

[12] Belle Jones, Diary entries, January 14, 1875-July 1, 1875, held in private hands, quoted in Arthur B. Erekson, Autobiography of Arthur B. Erekson: first period of 25 years, 1906-1931, of his presence on planet earth (Self-published, 1986), 270-272.

[13] Wisconsin, U.S., Marriage Records, 1820-2015, entry for John Oberlander and Isabella Jones.

[14] Erekson, Autobiography, 261; United States, 1870 Census, Wisconsin, Fond du Lac County, Fond du Lac, First Ward.

[15] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Eleventh Ward, microfilm 26,716, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Near the end of his life, John said he visited the West in 1867, but the documentary evidence shows it was actually ten years later, in 1877.

[16] David L. Clark, “The Mormons of Wisconsin Territory: 1835-1848,” BYU Studies vol. 37 no. 2 (1997-98), 57-85.

[17] “Trail Blazer and War Vet Active at 95,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah), 10 June 1924, 8; Understandably, there are omissions and factual errors in John’s retelling of his life at the age of ninety-five, so his remembrance of Isabella’s father may not be accurate.

[18] See: John Oberlander (K2HM-J3N), FamilySearch, Family Tree (accessed 12 January 2026). John’s story of knowing Isabella her entire life may or may not have been accurate, but he was closely associated with her family, especially Jesse, and would likely have met Isabella when she was in her teens or early twenties.

[19] United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Murray.

[20] “Widow of Utah Civil War Vet, 61, Dies,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah), 6 March 1948, 29.

[21] United States, 1880 Census, Iowa, Muscatine County, Fulton Township; Iowa, 1885 State Census, Woodbury County, Liston Township.

[22] Erekson, Autobiography, 261.

[23] United States, Passport Applications, 1795-1925, Entry for John Reid Oberlander, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C., Roll 530, Certificates 20500-20749, 5 June 1918-6 June 1918.

[24] “Trail Blazer,” 8.

[25] United States, 1890 Census, Veterans Schedule, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Cottonwood; John served the Union as a secret service agent during the Civil War, carrying messages behind enemy lines.

[26] “History of Murray City,” https://www.murray.utah.gov/370/History-of-Murray-City, accessed 13 November 2025; United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Murray.

[27] “Trail Blazer,” 8.

[28] “Trail Blazer,” 8.

[29] Utah, State Archives, Records, 1848-2001, entry for Addleloree Oberlander, 19 December 1890; Adelaide’s name was spelled incorrectly on the death record.

[30] Erekson, Autobiography, 263; Church records in the Utah wards where they lived do not list them. United States, 1920 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City; United States, 1930 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Cottonwood.

[31] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Murray First Ward, microfilm 26,151, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[32] Arthur Reid Oberlander was so important in the mining world and to the British that when he died in 1939, a correspondent wrote a short article about his achievements in The Times of London. See: “Mr. A. R. Oberlander, An Appreciation,” Times (London), 20 July 1939.

[33] Erekson, Autobiography, 273.

[34] United States, 1930 Census, Utah, Salt Lake County, Precinct 1.

[35] Erekson, Autobiography, 273.

[36] “Erickson, John” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1940, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[37] “Erickson, John” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1940, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; Erekson, Autobiography, 273.

[38] Utah State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, File No. 420, Registrar’s No. 479, Isabella Reid Oberlander, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[39] “Widow of Miner Succumbs at 98,” Salt Lake Telegram (Salt Lake City, Utah), 6 March 1948, 8; “Widow of Utah Civil War Vet, 61, Dies,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah), 6 March 1948, 29; “Woman, 98 Dies in Salt Lake City,” Sunday Herald (Provo, Utah) 7 March 1948, 2.

[40] “Oberlander,” Salt Lake Telegram (Salt Lake City, Utah), 8 March 1948, 19.

[41] Isabella Reid Oberlander, Findagrave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/126048/isabella-oberlander.

[42] Tonya S. Reiter, interview, Rosalie Erekson Stone, June 2021, Telephone interview; her family had also assumed that Isabella was not a baptized member of the Church.

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