 Her mother's parents left Boston in 1849 and headed west to Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska, arriving in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1881.Elsa's maternal grandfather, G. W. Benton, was a medical missionary who was "trained as a Baptist minister, doctor and dentist".Her father, Willis Spear, arrived in Wyoming with his family in 1874 from Connecticut and eventually settled next to Elsa's grandfather.