On Friday, March 26, 1954, the Idaho State Journal printed the obituary of Liza Rose Iversen Infanger of Pocatello, with her photograph. She had died that morning, on her 56th birthday. She had lived in Pocatello for many years, but the notice tells how she came to Arbon Valley as a girl, when her brothers were taking up homesteads there, and how she met her husband in the valley.
From Hyrum to the Arbon floor
Liza was born at Hyrum, Utah, on March 26, 1898, the daughter of Bernhart M. Iversen, a Norwegian Latter-day Saint convert, and Tirzah Griffiths, who had come from South Wales. Her parents took her from Utah to a farm at Moreland, in Bingham County, Idaho, when she was a year old. Their later homes were at Blackfoot and Tyhee, and then in Arbon Valley.
The obituary does not say when they came. The site's family research, working from land records that spell the name Iverson, shows four of her brothers, their widowed mother and a brother-in-law, Rudolph Thyberg, holding a block of homesteads on the south-west Arbon floor and toward Summit. The brothers' first entries were probably made in 1910, when Liza was about twelve. One of the Thybergs' sons was born at Arbon in 1913, and the Pilgrim's 1917 column describes the log cabin of an R. Thyberg, probably Rudolph, whose homestead lay among the Iverson claims.
The homesteader next door
John Joseph Infanger was born at Denver in 1886. His own obituary, printed in 1949, says he came to Idaho about 1908 and took up a homestead at Arbon. His mother and stepfather, Daniel and Franziska Roberts, farmed the land next to his, west of the Davis store. In April 1914 the American Falls Press printed his name among the Arbon signers backing the Double-P monorail plan.
That same month, on April 21, 1914, Liza Iversen and John Infanger were married at Malad. She had turned sixteen a few weeks before; he was twenty-seven. John's 1949 obituary gives the year as 1913, but Liza's obituary and, as the site's research found, the Idaho marriage index both say 1914.
On the farm
The American Falls Press gives a few glimpses of the young household. On September 2, 1915, the Arbon column reported:
Mr. and Mrs. John Infanger are rejoicing over the fine baby boy which arrived to gladden their home a few days ago.
This was probably Benjamin William, though his draft card, as the site's research found, gives his birth at Arbon as August 1, a month before the item. (The same column is reprinted in The long road to the doctor.) Liza's obituary mentions a son who did not outlive her. The family research finds an infant, Arnold John Infanger, who was born and died on August 17, 1914, so he was probably the one. Find a Grave lists him at both the Arbon Valley Cemetery and Snowville, Utah.
In November 1917 the Press's roving correspondent, the Pilgrim, described the Infanger farm, about two miles west of the Davis store and "well up against the foothills," at 5,500 feet. That year its Turkey Red wheat tested 62 pounds to the bushel. Mrs. Infanger had a flock of Rhode Island Red chickens that laid more eggs than the household needed; the surplus was sold, and eggs for the winter were kept in the cool cellar. The column's print is worn, but it seems to say that coyotes were bold in those hills and that John went after them with rifle and traps.
The farm did not last. The Infangers had mortgaged their land in 1915 and 1917, and in 1924 the Union Central Life Insurance Company was suing to foreclose both mortgages, one of many such suits in the valley's foreclosures of 1920–1925. John's obituary says he moved to Pocatello about 1924 and worked there as a carpenter.
Later years
Her obituary also ties her to Crystal, though without dates: she was the Relief Society's secretary there for several years. In 1934 she took her endowments in the Logan temple, and over the years she also did genealogy, visiting teaching and Sunday School teaching. John died in March 1949.
Her family stayed tied to the valley in other ways too. Her sister Sarah's husband, William H. Mathews, farmed at the Summit end, where a cabin, probably his, burned in 1911. Their daughter May married Eddie Davis in 1917. When her brother George Henry Iverson died at American Falls in 1953, the Salt Lake Tribune, which named him Henry Iverson, called him an "Arbon Valley pioneer."
Some details remain unclear. By the obituary's count, she had already lost five brothers and five sisters. That does not match the twelve children the family research lists for her parents, and the difference has not been resolved. It is also not known how long the Iversen family lived on the Arbon floor before the wedding.
On this site: the Arbon area and Ed and Esther Davis, whose store stood a short way east of the Infanger farm.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, March 26, 1954, page 12. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A Pocatello woman whose family had settled in Arbon Valley when she was young died on March 26, 1954, the day she turned 56. According to the paper, Liza Rose Iversen Infanger had been sick only briefly, and the end came that morning in a Pocatello hospital. Funeral plans had not yet been set; the paper said word of them would come from the Manning Funeral Chapel.
Mrs. Infanger was a native of Hyrum, Utah, born March 26, 1898. Both her parents, Bernhart M. Iversen and Tirzah Griffiths Iversen, were immigrants. He was from Norway, where his family became Latter-day Saints. In 1868, at age 11, he emigrated to America with his parents and his brother John, according to the paper, and the family went on by land to Utah. Tirzah Griffiths was 14 when she emigrated from South Wales.
The Iversens left Utah for Idaho when Liza was a year old, and her childhood was spent on their Moreland farm. They spent several years at Blackfoot after that and then lived at Tyhee, on what the paper called the Frank Dekay ranch, before making their home in Arbon Valley, where her brothers had taken up homesteads. In the valley she came to know John Joseph Infanger, and on April 21, 1914, the couple married at Malad. She received her endowments at the Logan LDS temple on November 8, 1934, twenty years after the wedding. Her husband's death in March 1949 left her a widow.
According to the obituary, she belonged to the LDS church her whole life and took a full part in it. For several years the Crystal Relief Society had her as its secretary. She also did genealogical work, taught Sunday School for a long time and went out as a visiting teacher, and when she died she held a calling as a stake missionary.
Five children survived her: Benjamin William Infanger and Ray Edward Infanger, both of Pocatello; Reece Iversen Infanger of Seattle; and Tirzah Mary Harris and Twila Marie Thomas, both of Pocatello. So did two sisters, Martha Thyberg of Inkom and Hannah Matthews of Pocatello, and 16 grandchildren. She had outlived one son, five brothers and five sisters.