Biography

One public historian who wrote about Susannah Lucretia Tanner Christensen Stevens for a Las Vegas history project suggested that her long life embodied “much of western history.” [1] A local newspaper reporter recounted the development of early Las Vegas and named Susannah Lucretia and her husband as “perhaps the most famous black pioneers of all” who helped settle the region. [2] In short, her life story touched on significant aspects of the frontier experience, including some that were atypical. She was connected to the gathering of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Utah, homesteading in rural Idaho, establishing Las Vegas, Nevada, and interracial marriage at a time and place where it was uncommon. 

Lucretia, as she was commonly called, was the biracial daughter of a pioneering Black Utah setter and a white Mormon convert who left Salt Lake City with their children to homestead in Idaho. There, Lucretia first married a white farmer and would-be miner. [3]

Their older sons became farmers and cowboys in Idaho and Nevada. After her first husband died, she remarried, this time to Black LDS pioneer Green Flake’s grandson. They left Idaho and relocated with their children to the small but burgeoning town of Las Vegas where there was plenty of opportunity for work in the defense industry and on the railroad. They then became Black pioneers themselves as they helped to build Las Vegas and contributed to the community. [4]

Susannah Lucretia was born on March 11, 1884, in Salt Lake City as the third child of Pennsylvania-born Ellen Susannah Hathaway and Missouri native, Thomas Tanner. The circumstances surrounding her parents’ marriage is notable itself: As a five-year-old child, Lucretia’s mother Ellen had traveled to Utah Territory in 1862 with her mother and brothers. Ellen’s father and mother were Latter-day Saint converts, but her father did not make it to Utah Territory. He died on the trail in Nebraska. By 1870, Ellen’s mother was living in the household of Isaiah Campbell, a man with several plural wives. Ellen and her mother were in fact both sealed to Campbell on July 8, 1872. Ellen was fourteen at the time, while Campbell was fifty-two. Family lore suggests Ellen was not happy in her plural marriage and within five years she left Campbell to marry Thomas Tanner, a Black Salt Lake resident. Their marriage took place in 1877. [5]

Lucretia’s father, Thomas, worked as a whitewasher in Salt Lake City and his descendants believe he was a talented musician. There is no evidence that Thomas ever joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the Tanners’ first three children were blessed and named by elders of the Church. Lucretia received her blessing on May 1, 1884, in the Salt Lake Third Ward. Soon after this event, the Tanner family moved into the Salt Lake Second Ward. [6]

Family tradition holds that members of the Salt Lake community viewed Thomas and Ellen’s interracial marriage unfavorably, prompting the couple to move with their children to a small farming community in Eastern Idaho, Fall River, later renamed Chester. While that could have been one motivation for their move, it is unlikely that community members of a small Mormon farming community in Idaho would have taken a more liberal view of their mixed marriage than Salt Lakers. However, Ellen’s brothers and families farmed in Chester, therefore the main reason for Tom and Ellen Tanner’s relocation might have been a desire to join with the Hathaways and begin a life of farming. Tom, Susannah, and their four children, Thomas George, William Leroy, Susannah Lucretia, and baby daughter, Daphene, left Utah Territory in 1890, and headed for Fremont County, Idaho. [7] The family worked hard to establish a farm and Tom Tanner made the final payment on their 154 acres of farmland on April 6, 1903. [8]

While living in Chester, Lucretia and her older brothers were baptized and confirmed as Latter-day Saints. Lucretia and her brother, William Leroy Tanner, received baptism on May 31, 1892. John Watson confirmed Lucretia a member of the Church a few days later on June 2. [9]

While living in Idaho, Lucretia met non-Mormon farmer Lawrence or Lars Christensen. [10] Lawrence was the son of a Danish father and Scottish mother. They married on May 3, 1899, so, like her brother, William, Lucretia chose a white partner and established a biracial family. [11] Lucretia gave birth to the couple’s first son, Ray Lawrence, on November 13, 1899. The next summer, the U. S. Census enumerator listed sixteen-year-old Lucretia as “Black,” Lawrence as “White,” and baby Ray as “White.” [12] Lucretia had two more boys with Lawrence, Thomas Ellis, born in 1902 and Leroy (Roy) Lyle, who was born in 1904.

The level of Lucretia’s involvement in the Church after her marriage appears to be low. Her youngest son, Leroy (Roy) was her only child to receive a baby blessing in the Chester Ward. Hyrum Brown, a counselor in the bishopric, blessed and named him on August 21, 1904. The ward record does not list a blessing for Ray or Thomas and none of the three sons was baptized and confirmed as Latter-day Saints. [12]

In 1906, only seven years after his marriage to Lucretia, thirty-two-year-old Lawrence died, leaving his twenty-two-year-old widow to care for their three little boys. Lawrence died in the Teton Mountains while attempting to access a mining claim that he shared with his brother, father, and a family friend. A snowstorm hit the canyon in August and Lawrence died after the second night in the mountains. [14]

After her husband’s death, Lucretia moved to Idaho Falls. She began a relationship with Mormon-Black-Pioneer Green Flake’s grandson, Earnest (Earn) Louis Stevens and gave birth to his son, Orien Earn Stevens, on February 10, 1908. Lucretia and Earn married four years later in Blackfoot, Idaho. [15] The Stevens couple and their children continued to live in Idaho Falls until they moved to Twin Falls around 1918. [16] Earn worked as a general laborer. [17]

All four of Lucretia and Earn’s children were born in Idaho. After Orien, Lucretia gave birth to Susie Violet in 1913, Lloyd George in 1917, and Juanita Lucretia in 1919. All of Lucretia and Earn’s children survived until adulthood, except Lloyd, who died of Pertussis as a one-year-old baby. [18]

As an illustration of how fluid race designation could be for interracial families, the 1920 census described the entire Stevens family as “Mulatto.” This meant that Lucretia’s first three sons, who were likely three-quarters white, were assigned the same racial category as their younger siblings who had a Black father instead of a white one. [19]

In 1923, the Stevens family undertook a major and lasting shift when they permanently moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. [20] From the time of their arrival until the 1950s, Earn and Lucretia lived on the east side of the railroad tracks in the community of downtown Las Vegas. Even as informal segregation efforts in the 1930s and beyond pushed many Black families to the neighborhood known as the Westside, located on the west side of the tracks, the Stevens couple remained in the more integrated part of the growing city. [21]

Las Vegas had a tiny Black population when the Stevens family arrived and Lucretia and her children made a big mark on the growing town. In addition to Earn and Lucretia’s children, two of Lucretia’s sons from her first marriage settled in the small town consisting of just a few blocks at the time. [22] Lucretia worked for several “pioneer” families, while her daughter, Juanita, was the first Black child to be educated from kindergarten through high school in the Clark County School District. Her grandson became the first Black mail carrier in Las Vegas. In 1938, Lucretia’s son, Roy and his wife, Carrie, built an imposing house, partly out of salvaged rock that still stands and is on the national historic register. The Christensens hosted social events for the Black community of the Westside at the home. Orien worked on the railroad that ran through Las Vegas from the age of fifteen. Her son, Ray, who was called “Cowboy,” ran his own stable from which he provided horses and buggies for the annual Helldorado parade. [23] In recognition of such important contributions, a site marker on the recently created Las Vegas Pioneer Trail remembers and memorializes Lucretia and her family’s histories. [24]

At least by the time of her marriage to Earn, Lucretia had moved away from her childhood faith. Although Earn’s mother, Lucinda Flake Stevens, was a Latter-day Saint, he was not, and there is no evidence that he and Lucretia participated in the Church after their marriage. None of their children were blessed or baptized into the Church. The final break came in Las Vegas when Lucretia became a member of the Pilgrim Church of Christ Holiness. She was active in church work, even serving as president of the ladies’ auxiliary. Her church was one of the first Black churches built in the area and has continued to serve the community until the present. Lucretia likely found a comfortable home with other Black worshippers who welcomed her full participation. [25]

Earn Stevens died in 1952, but Lucretia lived on in Las Vegas until her death on Christmas Day, 1971. She is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery, Las Vegas, near other members of her immediate family. [26]

By Tonya S. Reiter

[1] The Historical Marker Database, Downtown Las Vegas in Clark County, Nevada-The American Mountains (Southwest), Christensen House “The Castle” 1935, (accessed 22 April 2025).

[2] “Historical look at West Las Vegas offers insight,” Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice (Las Vegas, Nevada), 10 February 2000, 8.

[3] Susannah Lucretia used her middle name throughout her life and most documents listed her by that name, rather than Susannah.

[4] Historical Marker.

[5] United States, 1900 Census, Idaho, Fremont County, Fall River Precinct. Thomas and Ellen reported that they had been married for 23 years on the census.

[6] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Third Ward, Part 1, CR 375 8, box 6960, folder 0001, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[7] Daphene Tanner was born in 1890 in Salt Lake, but was blessed in the Chester Ward in Idaho on 7 August 1890, so the Tanners had relocated by the end of the summer of 1890. See: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Chester Ward, microfilm 7426, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[8] Idaho, County Court (Fremont County), Deeds, 1880-1928, general index, 1891-1973, Deed record 5-8, 1908-1917, Deed 425, microfilm 8,578,042, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[9] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Chester Ward, microfilm 7426, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Lucretia’s elder brother, William Leroy was baptized and confirmed on those same days.

[10] Although Lawrence’s grandfather had immigrated to Utah Territory as a Mormon pioneer, bringing his five-year-old son, Lars, who would eventually be Lawrence’s father, Lars never joined the Church or baptized his children.

[11] The Black population of the entire state of Idaho was very small, only consisting of 293 people in 1890 and some of them would have been Lucretia’s relatives.

[12] United States, 1900 Census, Idaho, Fremont County, Chester.

[13] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Chester Ward, microfilm 7726, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[14] “Teton Pioneer Recalls Early-Day Experiences,” Idaho Post Register (Idaho Falls, Idaho) 20 December 1971, A-5. Family members attributed Lawrence’s death in the canyon to untreated injuries he sustained while riding bucking broncos in a 4^th of July event held the month before his death.

[15] Idaho, County Marriages, 1864-1962, Earn Stevens and Lucretia Christenson, 24 January 1912.

[16] United States, World War I Draft Registration Card, 1917-1918, Earnest Louis Stevens, 12 September 1918.

[17] United States, 1920 Census, Idaho, Twin Falls County, Twin Falls, Ward 1.

[18] Idaho State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, file no. 20636, Lloyd Stevens, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, Boise, Idaho.

[19] United States, 1920 Census, Idaho, Twin Falls County, Twin Falls, Ward 1.

[20] “Pioneer Las Vegan Sees Town Grow,” Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, Nevada), 9 February 1965.

[21] Claytee D. White and Peter Michel, “How the Westside Began,” Documenting the African American Experience in Las Vegas, A Project of the UNLV University Libraries, (accessed 23 June 2025).

[22] Ray and Leroy went to Las Vegas with their mother and stepfather. Thomas stayed in Idaho.

[23] The Helldorado celebration began in 1931 as a fundraiser for the local Elks fraternity.

[24] The City of Las Vegas, Clark County, Preserve America and the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act placed historical markers on important sites in the Westside neighborhood in Las Vegas and commissioned a brochure to lead visitors to the sites. The Christensen House built by Roy, Lucretia’s son, is site #10 on the trail. See: Las Vegas Pioneer Trail (accessed 19 April 2025).

[25] “Pioneer Las Vegan.”

[26] Susanna Lucretia Tanner Stevens, Findagrave.com.

Documents

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