SARAH ELLENOR BINGHAM was a true pioneer woman, born of pioneer parents at Mt. Pisgah, Pattomatomic County, Iowa, April 15, 1850, where her parents Jeremiah Bingham and Sarah Keele had been driven at the time of the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois. She spent the first two years of her life there, until her mother died in 1852 as a result of the hardships she had to endure. That same year, her father resumed his journey to Utah, having in his charge a four-year old and a two-year old daughter. Later Jeremiah married his first wife Sarah Keele's sister Susan.

On October 30, 1871, Sarah Ellenor married John William Jackson, who had immigrated from Manchester, England in 1856.

During her husband John William's mission experiences, he had learned what it meant to depend for one's life upon the hospitality of strangers, so he advised his wife to never turn anyone away from her door who was in need of her help, even if she must sit and guard them with a gun. On one occasion she actually did keep a man for several days who she later learned was a murderer, fleeing from justice.

As further evidence of her friendship for the Indians was when an old grandfather called Old Tom among the Ute tribe was left as sole guardian of an infant girl because of venereal disease brought in by the whites. For weeks Old Tom carried the baby on his back "Squaw fashion" in an Indian cradle going from one white home to another trying to get someone to take the baby due to his age and poverty. He was a pathetic figure in his rags and blankets trudging from door to door seeking help for the infant granddaughter. Finally the Indian baby was taken into the home of the family of John Ellenor Jackson who lived in a rough stone house in Old East Loa (the town was later moved to higher ground and renamed Lyman. Before the Jacksons took the Indian child, she had been reduced to skin and bones from starvation and disease. The will to live and the fortitude to suffer so inherent in the Indians made her survival possible. Sarah was about fifty-five years old when the little girl became part of their household. They named her Eliza.

On April 1, 1928, Sarah Ellenor was riding in a car with Eliza, the Indian girl she raised and Eliza's husband, Paul Chase. The car was wrecked, and Sarah Ellenor's leg was broken. She never recovered from the injury and for several years was bedridden, living with her son Jeremiah and his wife Chloe Jackson. She died on April 9, 1936 and was buried next to her husband, John William Jackson in the Lyman cemetery, Wayne County, Utah.

Sarah Eleanor Bingham descends from the early royalty of England, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Sweden and Vikings. Some of these ancestors included Reverend John Lothrope, William the Conqueror, John Lackland, King of England, Henry I and Henry II, Kings of England and Charlamagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.