She initially traveled to the Valley in 1848 with her husband, Jesse Turpin, and their children. At some point, they all returned to the East. They were at Fort Leavenworth, preparing to travel back home to Utah when Jesse died of cholera. Eliza Ann and the children must have made the journey in 1854 or 1855 because Eliza remarried in Salt Lake City in February 1856. Again, the family made a trip to the East, this time with her second husband, Peter Van Valkenburg and family, returning in 1862.