Eliza Stewart Udall

Eliza Stewart Udall

Eliza Luella (Stewart) Udall (May 21, 1855 – May 28, 1937) was the first telegraph operator in Arizona.

A daughter of Levi Stewart, she was born in Salt Lake City in 1855.

In 1870, at the request of Brigham Young, she studied Morse code and moved to Pipe Spring, Arizona, to work for the Deseret Telegraph Company. Thus she became the first telegraph operator in Arizona. Later, working in Kanab, Utah she telegraphed the news of John Wesely Powell's Second Expedition to Washington, DC.

In 1875 she married David King Udall. They moved to Saint Johns, Arizona in 1880, where David was a LDS Bishop. Their marriage produced 8 children. A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she consented to her husband's participation in plural marriage, though David's second wife (Ida Hunt) lived in another town.

She died in 1937 in Saint Johns.