Elizabeth Jane Wilson was born in Grover, North Carolina, 13 Mar 1876, a daughter of Lawson and Elmina Green Wilson.  She lived with her family, on a farm and the children learned to work hard early in life.  She spent much of her time, as a child, picking cotton and tending babies.  She and her sister Mary Lee had to card the cotton, which was made into rolls and then spun into hanks.  A hank would weave about a yard of cloth.  The girls also learned to card and spin wool from their little flock of sheep, which their thrifty mother dyed and wove into cloth.

She attended school, which was about 5 miles from their home.  She and her sister walked the distance every day.  They couldn't attend much as they had to help at home.  The Wilson home was built of hewed logs, covered with weatherboards on the outside and chinked and plastered on the inside.  The house was built on a slope of the ground and on the low side were stilts, the height of a grown-up, which supported it.  It was a large home with three bedrooms upstairs.  In the living room was a large fireplace.  As was customary in the south, the kitchen was a small building by itself, built about 40 feet from the main house.  There was a milk house down by the creek in a grove of trees.  In the life story of Mary Lee, there is a full description of the tasks around the home.  Elizabeth Jane, known as Jennie, became an excellent seamstress, like her mother.

Along with the hard times they had much fun, at the corn huskings, corn poppings, candy pulls and dancing.  The furniture was shoved back, and the young folks enjoyed a regular hoe-down.  They had quilting bees. Her father was strict with them.  His orders were that the girls were to come home from the parties alone, and not with the boys.  The girls would march ahead with a pinnion pine torch, but the boys marched close behind.

The family belonged to the Baptist Church and attended meetings regularly.  A few years later the missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints came to their home and told them about the Gospel.  At first the parents listened with interest, but when relatives heard of this they warned the Wilsons that the Mormon Elders were there to win his wife and daughters away from him.  Then other Elders came and the parents listened and believed their message and were baptized.  Their friends turned on them and would have nothing to do with them.  In fact they made it so miserable for them that they moved to South Carolina to join a colony of Mormons, for by then, mob violence was becoming stronger.  It was hard for Jennie's grandparents and relatives to understand why the Wilsons wanted to be Mormons. 

In March 1891, the Wilson and Bolin families, along with a number of other saints from the Southern States, emigrated to Utah.  They boarded the train at Cowpens, a town made historic for having been the site of a battle of the Civil War.  Traveling from Monday till the following Sunday, they arrived in Ogden, Utah 15 Mar 1891.  The Bolins stopped off at Lehi.

They would never forget the cold ride from Ogden to North Ogden in an open hay wagon, clad in thin cotton clothes, as they were used to the warm climate of the south.  It year they arrived, the sugar beet industry was beginning in Lehi and farmers advertized for Southern people to come and help with the hoeing.  Jennie's father and brother went to Lehi to get work.  They introduced the long-handled hoe, which made the work much easier.  That winter the whole family moved to Lehi.  The next spring they rented a farm in Highland and moved up there.  Pioneer life in Highland was not easy.

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