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Morgan Family Pioneer Heritage
Pioneering In Utah

Thomas Morgan helped to establish a number of communities in Utah

The Echo Canyon War, 1857

Family tradition states that Thomas Morgan participated in the "Echo Canyon War." The so-called Echo Canyon War was not a war in and of itself but rather a part of a larger military campaign called the Utah War which took place during the winter of 1857-58. President James Buchanan, choosing to believe rumors that Brigham Young and the Utah Mormons were fomenting a rebellion against the United States, sent an army on its way to Utah in the fall of 1857.

Upon hearing that the U. S. Army was on its way to Utah to crush the Mormons, Brigham Young called the Nauvoo Legion (the territorial militia) from rank and file Mormons and sent troops of Mormon men to Echo Canyon and to Wyoming to put up a defense in advance of the Army. Echo Canyon is the main route into Utah from southwestern Wyoming and was the route taken by essentially all emigrants that came to Utah across the Great Plains. Interstate 80 now runs its length.

Daniel H. Wells, the leading Mormon commander, recruited the men, especially from the Provo area, to go to Echo Canyon to prepare to fight the U. S. Army should that army enter Utah from Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his "History of Utah," page 513 writes that in late September of 1857...

"Daniel H. Wells, in command of 1,250 [Mormon] men, supplied with thirty day's rations, established his headquarters at Echo Canyon .... Through this canyon, the Mormons supposed, lay the path of the invading army, ... On the western side of the canyon dams and ditches were constructed, by means of which the road could be submerged to a depth of several feet of water; at the eastern side stone heaps were collected and boulders loosened from overhanging rocks so that a slight leverage would hurl them on the passing troops, and parapets were built as a protection for sharp-shooters. "

In late 1857 a small Mormon guerrilla force managed to burn the U. S. Army's Fort Bridger, before the U. S. Army reached there and burned many of their advance wagons of supplies, stole many of their cattle, and set fire to range land to be used by the army's livestock.

In the meantime the Mormon people of Northern Utah were being prepared by Brigham Young to burn their homes and crops and flee to the south if the U. S. Army succeeded in reaching the Salt Lake Valley. Some 35,000 settlers of Northern Utah did in fact flee temporarily to areas south of the Salt Lake Valley. Some sources on our Morgan history claim that this was the time Thomas Morgan moved south to the Provo area and was called to the Echo Canyon War while there.

Later, in 1858, diplomacy on both sides won the day, the U. S. Army entered Utah peacefully, and based itself at Camp Floyd on the western side of Utah Lake. The army at Camp Floyd, known as Johnston's Army, after its commander Albert Sidney Johnston, remained at its Utah camp until 1861 when the soldiers went back East to fight the Civil War.

No shots were ever fired in Echo Canyon and there was really no hot war there where Thomas Morgan might have been. But the Utah War had an effect on all the Utah Mormons, as once again they were shown to be vulnerable to the threats of their enemies. Once again they had to face the possible destruction of their homes and farms and all that they had put into the land as pioneers. Once again they might have had to be moved by force. Regardless of whether Thomas Morgan was or was not among those men called to defend Echo Canyon, the Morgan family would definitely have felt and feared these trying times in the winter of 1857-58.

The Morgans in the Goshen Valley 1857-1865?

The book "Memories That Live" compiled by Emma Huff and others contains details about the founding of two towns, Santaquin and Goshen, located in southern Utah County just south of Utah Lake and about 30 miles south of Provo. Thomas Morgan is identified in the above source as a founder of both of these communities, which are only about seven miles apart. He first appears in a list of settlers arriving in 1856 in what is now Santaquin to help build a fort and settlement there, then called Summit. Because of Indian hostilities at that time the settlers were required to build their homes close together and to construct a wall around the whole to form a fort.

"This fort was very well arranged and enclosed all the houses....In this year, 1856, a rock school house was built in the fort. This building was 32 feet by 18 feet and the roof was made of cane[reeds] hauled from the shores of Utah Lake. In 1856 farming was begun south and east of the fort.... "

This pioneering effort took place more than a year before the Echo Canyon war. But records seem contradictory about where Thomas Morgan was in 1856. His first Utah-born child was born in Kaysville in December of 1856. Obviously Ann was in Kaysville. A special census of Utah in 1856 lists the Thomas Morgan family as residents of Kaysville that year. Some family sources say that the Morgans moved south at the time of the Echo Canyon War (1857). It is possible that Thomas went down to Santaquin ahead of his family, where he found work for a short time. The Morgan family is not listed in any other sources as ever having a residence in Santaquin.

In 1857, Thomas was listed among the first pioneers of the town of Goshen, about seven miles to the west of Santaquin. In the book "Memories That Live," page 484, we read that:

"In the early spring in 1857, a little band of pioneers [including Thomas Morgan] entered the Goshen Valley and began to build homes for themselves....They built a few log houses of one room each, but most of the people had dugouts. [But because] Indians roamed the valley [the settlers] were forced to build a wall around their homes." It was located about two miles north of the present Goshen townsite.

According to author Raymond Steele:

"Old Fort Goshen enclosed about two acres laid out in a square....The walls were built of large cedar posts and filled in between with sod from the nearby meadow, ..., thus it jokingly came to be known as 'Fort Sodom.' The buildings inside the fort were mostly log cabins with sod chimneys with gunny sacks hung up over the windows in place of glass. Some of the other dwellings inside the fort were merely dugouts. At nights what cattle, horses, and sheep the people had were locked up in the enclosure."

According to granddaughter Martha Morgan Eames the Morgan family at first lived in a dugout outside of the fort. If Thomas was indeed called to Echo Canyon it would have been during the fall of 1857, perhaps while the Morgans were in the process of making a home in Goshen. In 1859 the settlers of Goshen were ready to abandon the fort. Over the next two years various settlers selected and settled on different but nearby townsites. But eventually the current townsite of Goshen was favored over other sites.

In 1859 the LDS Bishop of Goshen, Phineas Cook, following church advice, had a "genealogy" record made of all members of his ward. The Morgan family members are listed in this record, which includes their names, birth date and place, names of their parents, original baptism date, and their 1857 rebaptism date (all pioneers were asked to be rebaptized), and other data. This is a most important beginning source of genealogical information on this family because it tells where to begin our Herefordshire ancestral research. The record also includes the Gourley and West families who had children that later married Morgan children in Goshen. Oldest daughter Elizabeth married Robert Gourley in 1862 in Goshen. Oldest son Edward married Sarah West in Goshen. She was a native of England.

While living in Goshen Thomas and Ann had their second Utah-born child, James John, born 1 Feb 1860; and their third, Everal Hannah, born 27 June 1862. In the 1860 Census of Utah, dated October 5, 1860, the Morgan family was listed as follows: Thomas, age 38, a farmer, with real estate valued at $150, and personal property valued at $500. Ann in the census was also 38; Edward, 17; Elizabeth, 15; Eliza, 10; Priscilla, 6; William Thos., 2, and James John, 7 months. The real estate value indicates that Thomas owned his own home, which as an original pioneer he would have been entitled to. But no land records for this period in Goshen have been found.


SOURCES USED FOR ECHO CANYON AND GOSHEN VALLEY PERIOD

Bancroft, Hubert H. "History of Utah" 1540-1886.
1982 (reprinted from original) Las Vegas, Nevada Publications.

Eames, Martha Morgan. "Family History" a typescript of stories about her grandfather, Thomas Morgan, which she told in 1943.

Federal Census of Goshen, Utah, 1860.

Goshen Ward LDS Membership Records, 1859. FHL Film #0025982.

Huff, Emma N. et al. "Memories That Live, Utah County Centennial History," 1947. Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. See Santaquin p. 476; and Goshen pp. 484-485.

Smith, Lot "Lot Smith Story, the Echo Canyon War."
1954 University of Utah Special Collections Library.

Steele, Raymond Duane, "Goshen Valley History"
Privately published.

Utah State Census, 1856. Davis County.

The Morgans in Millard County, Utah 1865-1888

In 1866 the Morgan family made another move, this time to the newly founded settlement of Deseret in Millard County, central Utah. Deseret is located less than 10 miles from the present-day town of Delta, now a fertile farming area on a flat plain traversed by the Sevier River. The Deseret pioneers who first came to this site in 1860 had selected a potentially fertile area, but one subject to frequent flooding from the Sevier River. These first families lived in makeshift dugouts for many months until better homes could be built. The vast sagebrush and willow flatlands were too far from a source of woods to obtain building logs. Consequently, sun-dried adobe brick made from the clay of the Sevier was a favored building material for their cabins and houses.

The settlers in Deseret by early spring of 1866 had become increasingly insecure from the Pahvant Indians, a local band of Utes, who frequently camped in the Deseret area, and who regarded Deseret as part of their traditional territory.

The Morgan families, in fact, made this move to Deseret during the so-called Black Hawk War. This war developed in 1865 when the Ute Chief whom the Mormons called Black Hawk took the lead in an effort of discontented Indians to take back their traditional lands and help their people survive. The Ute Indians, who had never been farmers, hunted and gathered their resources from native habitat. They had seen their traditional lands turned into Mormon towns and farms, dramatically reducing the food supply of the Indians. In the mid-1860s Mormons in settlements over much of central Utah were being attacked by organized Indian war parties as well as by small bands who, out of desperation and want of wild game, stole and butchered Mormon cattle. The Pahvant band of Utes on the western side of Millard County resorted to stealing cattle from the Deseret settlers, and clashes often occurred between these usually friendly Indians and their white neighbors.

Brigham Young ordered the Mormon settlers of Deseret to organize a militia to protect themselves from the Indians. In the spring of 1866, when Morgans were making the move, 45 Deseret militiamen hurried to an abandoned Mormon campsite six miles north of Deseret. Indians had butchered stolen cattle there. The militia hurried back to Deseret just as the Indians were approaching the town. Despite threats from the Indians, a peace conference was arranged with Black Hawk and his 72 painted warriors. The Indians accepted an offer from Deseret negotiators that they could have all the cattle they could use or they could choose war with the Deseret militia. In the end the Indians agreed to the offer. The militia followed the Indian party until it disbanded and headed in separate directions, thus ending the only real Indian threat to the Deseret residents. Indian threats continued, however, in other central Utah towns. Some descendants of our Morgan and Radford families believe it likely that at least some of our ancestors were in the Deseret militia, but records have not been found.

To prepare for their defense, Brigham Young ordered the men of Deseret to build a fort. After a site was selected, work on the fort began in June 1866. John Whitlock Radford was the construction supervisor of the fort which involved a crew of 98 men. To encourage the rapid construction of the fort, Mr. Radford divided the workers into companies, and the company that completed its section first was to receive a dinner and dance from the others. Indeed when the fort was completed on July 25, 1866, after 18 days of hard work, the settlers celebrated under a willow shelter inside the fort with a heifer barbecued for the occasion.

Careful records were kept of the work done by the 98 men who labored on the fort. The amount of time each worker applied to the effort was listed as a dollar value. For instance, Thomas Morgan's work was valued at $89.00, while that of his son Edward Morgan was valued at $12, Robert Gourley (Elizabeth Morgan's husband) $4.50, Franklin Radford $10.50, and John W. Radford $75. But these men were never paid in money. In the founding of Mormon settlements it was standard practice to pool labor in cooperative efforts to build public works projects like this fort. The value of each worker's labor would instead be applied toward acquiring rights to land, water, or other resources

It is enlightening to visit the remains of this fort today near the present town of Deseret and see what hard work our ancestors had to perform while under the threat of attack. It is amazing that some of the walls of this fort still remain today even though they were built of material that does not preserve well. The walls, called by the settlers "Spanish walls," were made of adobe mud dug from ditches just outside of the fort walls, leaving depressions along the outside of the walls which probably added to their deterrence against any enemy that might approach the fort. The mud was mixed with straw in pits employing the feet of oxen to do the mixing. The structure measured 550 feet square with corner bastions ten feet high and walls three feet thick at the bottom, tapering to a foot and a half at the top. The fort never became a walled village, as did Goshen and many other Mormon towns, because shortly after it was finished Indian hostilities abated because of a treaty. On several occasions the fort was used as a corral to protect cattle from continued Indian rustling.

Deseret settlement was a long way from woods or forests for harvesting logs. So once again, as they had done in Goshen, our Morgan ancestors first lived in crude dugouts. These looked like half-buried cabins, the floor of which was four or five feet below the ground with steps going down into usually one or two rooms. In Deseret no stones or logs were easily available, but adobe bricks were formed and dried in the sun. In Deseret adobe bricks were sometimes used for the portion of the walls above ground. In better dugouts dirt walls below ground could be lined with adobe, but often just remained dirt. Small willow branches from the river were plentiful and could be bound together and placed on rafters above to form a roof. Willow roofs covered with dirt sod helped keep out the sun and storms.

Living in dugouts, however temporary, was not pleasant. People had to share these hovels with bugs and vermin of all kinds living in the dirt. Sanitation was a problem. Death rates were high, especially among children, as will be discussed later. The roofs did not entirely shed heavy rains, so the dugout roofs would leak and drip mud down onto the dirt floor and the familys possessions. They would, however, protect the occupants from cold weather and they were safer and preferable to sleeping in wagon boxes outside.

But housing and Indian threats were not the only problems faced by our ancestors at Deseret. While the Sevier River was a good source of water for irrigation, and the soil good in the area, harnessing the water for irrigation was a challenge. The Sevier River at Deseret is in a sandy and clay-filled channel that made building permanent dams difficult. The shallow riverbanks there had no rocks or hard surfaces on which to anchor a dam. Dams built to divert irrigation water were washed away with every flood, usually in spring or early summer of every year, often after crops were already planted. Every time a dam was lost the very existence of Deseret was threatened, for in this dry country food could not be produced without irrigation.

Early records from Deseret list members of our families working on various community projects and record how much they worked. For instance, working with a gang of more than 30 men in May and June of 1866, Thomas Morgan is credited with digging 24 feet of an irrigation ditch, J. W. Radford 27 feet, and Francis Rysert 9 feet. Again in 1866, for building a corral, John W. Radford was credited with 10 feet, Thomas Morgan 6 feet, and so on.

In the founding of Mormon settlements it was a tenet of the Mormon faith that men and women throughout the Mormon-settled West would pool their labor in cooperative efforts to build up the new Zion. They were not paid in money as they were not motivated by the "rugged individualism" which so often characterized the "cowboy culture" image of the founding of the West. Early Mormons took community cooperation even further when they temporarily experimented with a form of communalism called "The United Order of Enoch." The United Order, practiced for a few years in many Utah towns, required all members of a community to turn over to the ward Bishop all of their goods as well as to pool their labor. All residents were to receive goods as needed, and there was to be no rich or poor among them. Oak City Ward records show that Morgans and Radfords did sign up for the United Order for a brief time. This extreme form of communalism did not work well anywhere in Millard County, so efforts to implement it were discontinued within a few months. The common pooling of labor did continue, however, as our families were to move again.

The Founding of Oak City

In 1868, after the main dam at Deseret broke for the fourth time, settlers there began looking for a new place to live. In fact, by the end of 1870 Deseret had been completely abandoned and left as a ghost town. (It was re-formed again as a new town in 1875.) Our Morgan families were among the first Deseret settlers to look for new opportunities on higher bench lands east of the Sevier River plain and closer to mountain canyons and grazing lands.

By 1866 or 1867 Thomas Morgan and his friend John Whitlock Radford were among a few who began grazing cattle during the summer in the Oak Creek Canyon area located about 20 miles northeast of Deseret. The Oak Creek area had already became a source of firewood and fencing material for the settlers at Deseret. In the spring of 1867 a sawmill was built at Oak Creek and a road was opened to the timber of the adjacent canyon. By 1868 the Morgan and Radford men set up camp in the Oak Creek area to ranch on a more permanent basis. Together they, with two other men, fenced in 10 acres north of the future townsite where they planted a wheat crop. After the main dam at Deseret broke from floods in 1868, Millard LDS Stake President Thomas Callister and other officials visited the families at Oak Creek and "conducted a survey for a new town large enough to settle between fifty and one hundred families."

In a relatively short time Oak Creek (later called Oak City) became a typical nucleated Mormon town of farmers who lived on town lots rather than on farmland out away from town. Each town lot was a farm home. Barns, granaries, chicken coops, and other farm buildings were built on town lots behind the owner's houses, while farmlands away from town remained clear of buildings. Each lot in town had to be fenced because the livestock, which were herded in common, were sometimes pastured on the town's unimproved wide streets. Gardens also needed protection. Since fencing wire was not yet available, many of the fences were "bull" fences made of cedar posts fastened cross-member style to form a continuous line of Xs, as shown in the photo in the "Historical Pioneer Works" section of this website.

Most of the former residents of Deseret moved together to Oak Creek and its new town, Oak City, showing again the level of community cooperation. Labor was pooled for community projects like building common fences such as the bull fence. Irrigation projects required pooled labor as did herding cattle and sheep on common lands, gathering logs, making adobe for houses, and the construction of churches and schools. Their reward (besides knowing they were helping in the building of Zion) was a house lot in town and farmland outside of town.

Diverting the local stream, Oak Creek, and digging the necessary ditches were among the first tasks of Oak City citizens, according to authors Leo Lyman and Stella Day. The pioneers began hauling logs from the canyon, digging dugouts, making adobes and building homes before the coming of the frost and snow. Some of the people brought the doors and windows from their homes in Deseret. Others completely dismantled their Deseret house and hauled the material to the new settlement and reassembled it on their newly acquired lot. None of the houses had more than two rooms, and some were one room with a lean-to. All the houses had dirt roofs and many had dirt floors. The dugouts were like good-sized cellars so they had dirt walls and floors, with a door and steps that led down below ground level. Many lived in dugouts in the hillsides while they were hauling logs from the canyons and dismantling houses at Deseret to provide material for their new residences. There is a picture of a dugout in the "Historical Pioneer Works" section of this website.

The Oak City townsite was laid out in a typical Mormon grid pattern with wide streets running straight north, south, east, and west. The official Mormon survey divided the site into 24 blocks, with 8 lots in a block and each lot 10 by 20 rods (1 rod = 16.5 feet). The streets were 8 rods wide, equal in size with the original survey of Salt Lake City and most other officially surveyed Mormon towns. Almost two dozen families from Deseret and some single men filed for ownership on lots in the new town of Oak City that first year, 1868, as Deseret was being abandoned.

Mormon towns founded under church auspices before 1880 such as Oak City were surveyed in a grid street pattern, with each street aligned straight north, south, east and west.

oakcitytownsite.jpg

Founding pioneers who prepared the town site earned the right to draw one or more lot numbers from a basket or pot. Several members of our Morgan families and some of their friends who drew lots here in 1871 are identified on this Oak City Map. In addition to town lots, farmers also obtained farm land outside of the town, but their homes were built on their town lots.

Thomas Morgans first property in Oak City was lot 1, block 11, located on First Street North on the west side of Main Street. In 1871 he filed on lots 1, 6, and 8 in block 11 north in Oak City. John Whitlock Radford's place was lot 5 on Block 3, located on the south side of Center Street between Main and First West. Among the settlers that first year were other members of our families who got lots as well, including Edward Morgan; Joseph H. Lovell and wife Leah Ellen Radford; George Morrison and wife Eliza Morgan; and John Franklin (Frank) Radford. John Whitlock Radford's stepsons, Melvin Ross and Richard (Dick) Ross, also got lots in Oak City.

During the winter of 1868-69 the community founders combined efforts and fenced an additional 360 acres of farmland directly west of town. During the first year Oak City residents held school and church services in individual homes. The next summer (1869) they returned to Deseret and dismantled the school/meetinghouse that had been dedicated just before abandonment of Deseret. They reassembled the building in Oak City where it served as the communitys first public building.

The Founding and Move to Leamington

A natural consequence of the limited water supply provided by Oak Creek was that it led people to search other possible settlement sites in the county. In the summer of 1871 several Oak City residents scouted out an area on the Sevier River 12 miles north of Oak City and tried again to build a dam on the soft river channel, as they had done in Deseret a few years before. Again the dam washed out a day or so after it was built.

In the spring of 1872 original Oak City resident Thomas Morgan surveyed another dam and ditch site in the same area on the Sevier River about 12 miles north of Oak City. Work immediately began on both the new dam and ditch by people, mostly from Oak City, who eventually were to become residents of yet another pioneer community; this one was later called Leamington, after a town by that name in England. The ditch, when finally finished, differed from previous ditches in that its intake waters were far enough upstream on the Sevier River that it did not need a dam. It is still in use today and is known as the Morgan Ditch.

Hereafter, Thomas Morgan found other opportunities to survey for ditches. According to the Floyd Bradfield notes, Morgan used a device known as a "spirit level" attached to a board six feet long and about a foot wide. In 1884 he was hired by a rancher from Texas named Samuel P. McIntyre to survey the much larger McIntyre Ditch which diverted water on the north side of the Sevier to the McIntyre Ranch in Leamington. This ranch was the largest in Millard County, employing up to 50 people, especially during summer, to care for the herds, and to grow hay and haul it into the state's largest barn. Some Leamington women worked on the ranch as cooks.

Unlike Oak City, Leamington was never officially surveyed by a Mormon Church official so it never took the grid pattern street form. Leamington, to this day, is primarily a one-street town with scattered farms outside of town. Thomas Morgan, considered the leading founder of Leamington, first built a dugout there in about 1872, above which he later built a log cabin. This is the year after he married Nancy Jane Radford as a plural wife. A few years later, perhaps by 1878, he built an adobe house just to the south of his cabin. The Morgan adobe is still there. Morgan's cabin also still survives but has been moved to Leamington's LDS meetinghouse property and restored as a museum piece. It is made of cedar logs cut from the mountain slopes to the east.

The Morgan adobe house remains on its original site on what is now the property of the Finlinson family, whose ancestor George Finlinson bought it from Tom Morgan in 1888. The current owner uses the old house for his tool shed. It is a one-and-a-half story, two-room house which had a lean-to kitchen on the back (north) side. The lean-to (no longer there) contained a small staircase that led to the upper half-story bedroom area. The house, with front door to the south, measures about 21 feet by 17 feet. With reference to the USGS topographic map of Leamington, Thomas Morgan's adobe house and land are in the NE quarter of the NE quarter of Section 10, Township 15 South, Range 4 West. The Morgan Ditch runs to the west, traversing his property just a few feet north of the adobe house.

There are more pictures of the Thomas Morgan adobe house, including a picture taken before the kitchen lean-to was removed, in the "Historical Pioneer Works" section of this website. (see the navigation links at the top of the page)

morganadobelon.jpg

Lon Morgan in front of the Thomas Morgan adobe house in Leamington, Utah. There are more pictures of this adobe house, and Thomas Morgan's original log house, in the Historical Pioneer Works section of this website.

This house, the most important physical artifact of the Morgans in Millard County, stands as proof that the English-born Tom Morgan had learned abobe making, a craft unknown to him in Herefordshire, and one that Mormons had learned only after coming to the dry lands of Utah. The walls are about 12 inches thick and contain two tiers of sun-dried adobe bricks, somewhat larger than standard modern kiln-baked bricks. The walls contain no wood studding or built-in supports of any kind, so the walls had to be thick in order to support their weight and the weight of the roof. The house originally had a dirt floor, but some walls inside were at one time whitewashed with a thin white lime plaster as a means of making them look better.

For the first few years in Leamington, Thomas Morgan functioned as an unofficial presiding elder of the approximately 75 LDS Church members there. In 1876 he was designated the Branch President under the jurisdiction of the Oak City Ward and its Bishop. But Branch members were hampered in the 1870s without a building to meet in.

On one of his frequent visits to Leamington, Bishop Platte D. Lyman of Oak City and its Leamington Branch wrote in his journal, page 5, on January 29, 1877, that he held a meeting at Thomas Morgan's place for about 75 people. He was accompanied on that trip by Millard Stake President Thomas Callister and a choir from Oak City. The relative small size of Morgan's house and cabin would require that such a meeting be held outside, on this occasion, on Morgan's property. On September 22, 1877, Elder Lyman wrote on page 16 that he and his companion John W. Dutson "put up at Edward Morgan's, and held a meeting the next day in Melvin Ross's home and had a very good time." The next week, on page 17, Elder Lyman wrote that he reorganized the Leamington Branch presidency making Lars Neilson president, with Ole Jensen and Edward Morgan as counselors. On February 28, 1878, Elder Lyman writes, on page 28, that he "broke the road through the snow for several miles . . . to Leamington where we stayed overnight with sister Ann [Watkins] Morgan." By this time Ann had a home separate from Nancy Jane, as was typical of most polygamous families.

LDS Branch meetings continued to meet at the homes of the residents until 1880 when Leamington got its first church building. Built of logs, it was replaced by a stone and brick church completed in 1903. At that time Leamington was organized into a ward separate from Oak City.

Sometime in the 1870s Thomas Morgan, having land squatter's rights as an original Leamington pioneer, became the legal title holder and owner of at least 160 acres of land, possibly more, on the south bluff and channel of the Sevier River in Leamington. Over the years he sold some of it, usually in small parcels. For instance, on September 25, 1882, he sold about 34 acres to his former son-in-law, George Morrison, for $250. Also in September 23, 1882, he sold just over 3 acres to Nels P. Nebel, and on that same day another 2 acres to Silas Smith, the grandfather of his son William's future wife, Sarah Lovina Ross.

In 1879 Thomas Morgan sold about 2 acres of right-of-way land to the Central Utah Railroad. The new railroad was completed in Leamington in August of 1879, making Leamington the first Millard County town to have a railroad. In that year residents of the County would travel to Leamington to board the train for Salt Lake City and other places. The railroad (now the Union Pacific) runs east and west through Leamington and passes within a few tens of yards south of Tom Morgan's adobe house. In 1885 Tom Morgan sold right-of-way land to Millard County for a road which today runs east and west on the south side of the railroad.

By the early 1880s Leamington farmers were cultivating nearly a thousand acres, including some along the new McIntyre Ditch, which was dug in 1884 and ran along the north side of the Sevier River. Farming remained precarious in Leamington, with the dam and canal occasionally washing out. In addition to agriculture and work on the railroad, the community's economy flourished from the cutting of cedar posts and the making of charcoal in four dome-shaped kilns east of town, two of which today remain as landmarks. These kilns, built in the 1880's in part by Eliza Morgan's husband George Morrison, are less than two miles east of the old Morgan property. Much of the charcoal made from cedar wood cut in the Leamington area was baked and charred in the kilns east of Leamington and was probably shipped by rail to fuel the Beaver County mining camp at Frisco in south central Utah.

The Forming of a Clan: The Morgans and Radfords

It was while living in Deseret and Oak City that the Morgans and Radfords became close associates. From the mid-1860s into the 1890s members of these two large families joined in several marriages, a result of which today are thousands of Morgan/Radford descendants. The two families largely remained together in the founding of other towns in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. Records of their movements strongly indicate that the two male elders, Thomas Morgan and John Whitlock Radford, were good friends and perhaps persuasive leaders of their families. Both were polygamists, further adding to the size of their families.

John Whitlock Radford was born in 1814 in Franklin County, Tennessee, where his mother's family, the Petty family, lived. But when he was a young boy Johns family moved to Cumberland County, Kentucky, near his father's relatives. His ancestors are known and well documented back to the 1600s in Colonial Virginia. As an adult John moved to southern Illinois, where he married his first wife Jane Whyte. But this first marriage failed and produced no known children. In 1846, now a Mormon convert, he married Leah (or Rachel Leah) Smith Ross in Nauvoo, Illinois.

Leah Smith was born on the frontier backwoods of Gibson County, Tennessee, daughter of Richard Smith and Dianna Braswell Smith. Her ancestors are also well documented and extend to the Appalachian frontier of western Virginia and South Carolina. She married first Andrew Jackson Ross, who later died in an accident. Two sons of Mr. Ross and Leah, Richard (Dick) and Melvin Ross, survived to adulthood and became fellow Utah and Idaho pioneers and were part of the Radford family. Leah's parents, Richard and Dianna, and her uncle James Agee Smith all became early Mormon converts and Utah pioneers

John Whitlock and Leah had a family of seven children, the oldest of whom was Nancy Jane Radford, who in 1872 became a plural wife of Thomas Morgan. She was born in 1847 at the Mormon waystation of Mt. Pisgah, in present Wapello County, Iowa. Nancy, born on a frontier, lived all of her life in pioneer locations. By 1850 her family lived in the newly founded town of Provo, first in a fort. As a young girl her family moved to Fillmore in 1853. When she was 13 years old, she married Frances Fredrick Rïsert, a German immigrant who, according to family tradition, first worked in Utah as a civilian butcher for the U.S. Army at Camp Floyd near Utah Lake.

Nancy Jane and Frank Rysert (English spelling) had two daughters born in Fillmore, but both had died before they moved to Deseret in 1866. While at Deseret, before 1870, they had three sons, all of whom were still living when the 1870 Census was taken in June of that year. (Their surname is spelled Resek in the 1870 Millard census, page 333.) In about 1871 young Melvin Rysert died in Oak City, followed in 1873 by his brother Don Carlos, leaving only Francis Daniel (Frank) Rysert to reach adulthood. Frank Jr. and his mother became part of the Morgan family when Nancy married Thomas Morgan as his plural wife in 1871.

In about 1870 Frank Rysert Sr., according to oral tradition, left his wife Nancy Jane, ostensibly to look for work at a mine in Wyoming. We have no documentation as to how this "desertion" occurred, but this same Frank Rysert was in the 1880 Wyoming census in Smith Fork (present Cokeville), Wyoming area, living with another wife Mary, a young daughter Addie, and stepdaughter Mary Wilson.

Descendants of Frank Rysert Sr., as represented by Helen Simper of Taylorsville, Utah, and Clayton Conn of Springville, Utah, state that information handed down to them by oral tradition suggests that Mr. Rysert was going to come back for Nancy Jane after he found a job in Wyoming, but that "only his horse came back without Frank," leading his wife and family to believe that he had been killed, perhaps by Indians. After more than a year Nancy Janes father John Whitlock Radford and her Oak City Bishop John Lovell, convinced that Frank Rysert was dead, persuaded Nancy to marry Thomas Morgan as a plural wife. Rysert descendant Helen Simper claims her ancestors believed Nancy Jane was not happy about this forced marriage, nor was Thomas's first wife Ann.

We will never know with surety what was in the minds and hearts of our ancestors about their marriage arrangements, but records show that the Morgan polygamous family remained together, traveled together, and raised their families together for the rest of their lives. Ann and Nancy Jane lived in separate houses, however, as discussed below.

Other marriages between Morgans and Radfords also occurred. John Franklin (Frank) Radford, the third child in John Whitlock and Leah's family, married Priscilla Morgan, daughter of Thomas and Ann, while living in Oak City in 1871. Daniel H. Radford, sixth child in John W. and Leahs family, married Everal Hannah Morgan, Thomas and Ann's youngest in 1878, probably in Leamington. Frank Rysert Jr., son of Nancy Jane (last name later changed to Ryset), married Sarah Priscilla Morgan, daughter of Edward (Ted) Morgan and Sarah West and granddaughter of Thomas and Ann. William Morgan married Sarah Lovina Ross, daughter of Melvin Ross, and granddaughter of Leah Smith Ross Radford. Most of these families and others stayed together, traveling in about 1888 and 1889 to Wyoming and later to Idaho to pioneer new areas and raise large families of their own.

Polygamy in the Morgan-Radford Clan

In the 1870s and 1880s the Federal Government passed new laws to crack down on Mormon men who were practicing polygamy. Indeed polygamy was a federal offense, and federal marshals were scouting Utah territory to catch polygamists. The marshals expected Mormon women to assist them in catching the polygamists, but no such help was forthcoming. In fact the LDS members, both men and women, did everything they could to forewarn, hide, and protect polygamist men when marshals were in town. As far as is known, Thomas Morgan and John Whitlock Radford were the only men in our families to have had polygamous marriages. Apparently they were never caught by federal agents.

Records indicate that while in Millard County, Thomas Morgan's two wives, Ann and Nancy Jane, had separate houses, a most common practice for polygamous men who could afford it. In the 1880 Census Ann is listed with Thomas as part of his household, comprised of those two, enumerated as household number 9 in Leamington. Nancy Jane and her children Francis (Frank), John Thomas, Martha, and Joseph Charles comprised a separate household enumerated as household 11. Also living with Nancy Jane was 44-year-old Ann Gustin, mother-in-law of James John Morgan, who married Amberzine Gustin, discussed below.

Further evidence that Nancy Jane and Ann lived in separate houses is provided by the Floyd Bradfield history notes on Leamington. Bradfield, an early lifetime resident of Leamington, wrote that "Thomas Morgan built the adobe house for his second wife [Nancy Jane]." Rich Finlinson, grandson of George Finlinson who bought the Morgan property in 1888, believes that Thomas Morgan maintained a home for one wife in Oak City and another home for the other wife in Leamington. Bradfield notes say at a later time that, "Thomas Morgan had two wives, one lived with him on the Morgan place and the other lived across the street to the east."

Birth records for Nancy Jane's children born in the 1870s all list Oak City as their birthplace. Leamington Ward membership records show that Nancy Jane Morgan's records were forwarded to Leamington from Oak City in 1883. Nancy's last child, Lydia Almeda, was born in Leamington in 1888, and her son Joseph Charles was baptized at age 8 in Leamington in September 1888. Clearly Nancy Jane lived in Leamington in the 1880s, but the Bradfield records and the census indicate that she did indeed have a separate house.

It appears from records that Thomas Morgan may have had a third wife in Oak City and Leamington. The 1870 Census of Millard County shows a person named Elizabeth Morgan, age 66, listed in household number 17, close to Thomas Morgan, age 48, in household number 19 in the District of Deseret [actually Oak City]. The 1880 Census of Millard County shows Thomas Morgan, age 60 [actually 58], with wife Ann, age 62 [actually 57], wife Nancy Jane, age 34, and wife Elizabeth Morgan, age 80. Elizabeth is enumerated by herself in household 10 between wife Ann and wife Nancy Jane. All three women are identified as Thomas Morgan's wives.

Researcher Connie Morgan and others believe this elderly wife was Elizabeth Rock Dutson, born in Herefordshire, England, in about 1802. This Elizabeth had had several children by her first husband James Dutson before moving to Goshen, Utah (as shown on her family sheets at familysearch.org). While living in Goshen with her youngest daughter, she apparently got acquainted with the Morgans. The Ancestral File shows she married somebody named Thomas Morgan in Goshen in 1865, but the birthplace and age do not correspond to that of our Thomas Morgan.

But obviously no children were born to this elderly Elizabeth and Thomas even if her marriage to our Thomas ever took place. This appears to have been a caretaker marriage that he had with Elizabeth. It was not uncommon for polygamous Mormon men to marry older women with whom they may or may not have had a conjugal relationship. Brigham Young and many top leaders of the church married elderly widows in addition to younger woman of childbearing age. Elizabeth Rock Dutson died in 1886 and is buried in the Goshen Cemetery next to her daughter Elizabeth.

There are other indications that Thomas had "caretaker" intentions with another woman. In the 1880 census of Leamington, living in the household with Thoma's wife Nancy Jane was a 44-year-old widow named Ann Gustin. She is identified as a person with "senility" and is crippled or bedridden. According to Millard County court records in 1882, Thomas Morgan wrote a letter to Millard County Court, saying that he had an "old insane woman" living with him from Juab County; he asked the court for some money to help cover the costs of taking care of her. The court declined, advising him to take up the matter with Juab County. Ann Gustin was born Martha Ann Green, in Indiana, and was the widow of Thomas Gustin and the mother of Amberzine Gustin, wife of James John Morgan. There are no indications that Thomas ever married Ann Gustin. Records indicate instead that he had the heart and generosity to take care of an invalid at his own expense (and the help of Nancy Jane).

John Whitlock Radford also had a plural wife named Polly Stevens Adair. He and Polly were married by Brigham Young in 1853 while President Young was on an official visit to Fillmore. She was a widow whom he had known for many years. Her husband had died in Iowa before their trek to Utah, leaving her with two young children (Thomas and Susannah Adair). The 1860 Census of Fillmore County shows that Polly and her children lived next to the Radfords in her own household. Polly died in Fillmore in 1862, after giving birth to the last of her four children with John Whitlock Radford. Two of Polly and John's children, Martha and Melissa Radford, survived to adulthood and were raised in the Radford household. But after these daughters were married, they no longer remained with the Morgan-Radford clan. Daughter Martha and her husband William Bader settled in Nampa, Idaho, where they raised a large family. Melissa first married William McKee, sheriff of Pioche, Nevada; but after his death in 1883, she came back to Leamington and married a local man, Joseph Huff.

On 15 November 1868, John Whitlock Radford married another woman as a plural wife. Her name was Mariam Elizabeth Sampson Killian, a widow formerly married to Thomas Killian, who had died 15 September 1862 in Parowan, Utah. She and Thomas Killian had a large family. In 1870 Elizabeth and her two young sons John and Daniel lived next to the Radfords in Oak City. She was a native of Ohio. No known children were born to her and John Radford. She and John later divorced.

Melvin Ross, Nancy Jane's half brother, in the 1880 Census was in the territorial penitentiary in Sugar House, Salt Lake County, Utah. That prison was especially used for nonviolent offenders and polygamists. But no record has surfaced to show if he had a plural wife or what offense he might have committed that landed him in prison. He was a High Priest in the Mormon lay priesthood and believed to be a person of fine character. His wife Julia Elizabeth Smith Ross, according to records, was the first schoolteacher in Leamington, beginning in 1877.

Bishop Platte D. Lyman of Oak City kept a diary, now available on microfilm. Lyman used to visit the Leamington Branch of the church and sometimes stayed over Saturday nights so that he could tend to the needs of Leamington Branch members on Sundays. He sometimes spent the night with Mel Ross and his family. Bishop Lyman, a proponent of polygamy, chose to stay with families who were active in the church when coming to Leamington.

When Melvin Ross' wife Julia died from an accident in November 1878, Mel had no other known wife at that time. He remarried in July 1879 to Mary Ellen Hadden. When he went to prison in 1880, two of his young sons, Don Carlos and James Melvin, went to live with their grandparents, John Whitlock and Leah Radford, who at that time were living in Kanosh, Millard, Utah, as recorded in the 1880 Census. Two other of his children, Silas and Emma, lived with their other grandparents, Silas and Sarah Smith in Leamington, according to the 1880 Census.

If Mel in 1880 had had a plural wife in addition to his second wife, one would think that at least one or more of his children would have gone to her household rather than that of their grandparents. His wife, Mary Ellen Hadden Ross, in 1880 lived in Star, Beaver County, Utah, with her single half-sister Cecilia and near her parents. The only child she had with her at the time was two- month-old Effie, fathered by her husband Mel Ross, but born in April 1880 while he was in prison.

Among the women of the Morgan-Radford clan, only Polly Stevens Adair Radford and Nancy Jane Radford Ryset Morgan had children while living as plural wives. Ann Watkins Morgan's youngest child was 10 when Nancy married Thomas Morgan in Oak City in 1872. Leah Smith Ross Radford was no longer having children when her husband John Whitlock Radford married Polly Stevens Adair. Polly had had two other children (Thomas Adair and Susanah Adair) by a previous marriage but they were no longer part of the family by 1870.

The Morgan-Radford Clan in 1888

The year 1888 was a most important year for the Morgan-Radford clan because that autumn many of them began leaving for a new frontier in Wyoming. By 1889 more than 50 people of the Morgan and Radford extended families had moved to Freedom, Wyoming. Exactly why they decided to leave communities they had lived in for more than 15 years is a mystery. What follows is a summary of members of the Morgan-Radford clan before they began leaving Utah in 1888.

The children of Thomas and Ann Watkins Morgan included the following in 1888. Family group sheets of all of the following families are available at familysearch.org.

The oldest Morgan son Edward (Ted) Morgan and his wife Sarah West had moved their family from Leamington in 1881 to the frontier community of Neeley near what is now American Falls, Idaho. Edward and Sarah were the second members of the Morgan family to split from the main group and leave their parents behind. Edward and Sarah left a long record of pioneering in Goshen, Deseret, Oak City, and Leamington, staying with the main Morgan clan until new opportunities took them to Neeley in 1881. He and Sarah had nine children, three of whom died in childhood.

Sometime before 1888 Edward and Sarah came back to Leamington, bringing their family. In that year their daughter Sarah Priscilla got aquainted with Frank Rysert (son of Nancy Jane Morgan) and married him in Leamington in August of 1888. Two other of their daughters, Annie and Hannah Elizabeth, also married before leaving Leamington, as discussed below.

The oldest Thomas Morgan daughter, Elizabeth Morgan, and her husband Robert Gourley, lived their lives in Goshen where they had 11 children, all of whom reached adulthood and married. This is the only Morgan family that never lost a child.

Eliza Morgan married George Morrison in Deseret in 1868. They lived in Oak City and Leamington where they had five children, four of whom died of diphtheria in an epidemic in 1882. Their three living children in the Oak City 1880 Census were Ann J. 11, Amy 5, and George 3. Author Margaret Roper reports three other children: Izabelle who died at age 6, Nettie, and Eliza who died in infancy. Eliza Sr. herself, according to Roper, was a crippled lady who died in Oak City in 1882, leaving her husband George Morrison entirely without his family. The 1880 Census of Oak City did not identify Eliza as being crippled or sick.

George Morrison later married a woman named Lestra Stewart and moved to Leamington, where he built and owned the town's first store on former Morgan land and where he also helped build the landmark stone charcoal kilns, two of which are still there less than two miles east of Leamington. He later staked a claim on a lead mine at Fool Creek near the mountains above Leamington. His second wife was a schoolteacher in Leamington.

Priscilla Morgan married John Franklin Radford in 1871 in Oak City. They had five children, two of whom died young while living in Leamington. In about 1887 they left to pioneer in a new community in Oregon. John Franklin died in Vale, Oregon, in March 1889. In about 1891 Priscilla migrated to Rudy, Idaho, where she remarried and raised her family in the home of her second husband Isaac Chase. The marriage between Isaac and Priscilla produced no children. She and her family were not involved in the move to Wyoming.

William Thomas Morgan married Sarah Lovina Ross, daughter of Melvin Ross, in Leamington in 1880. In about 1881 they went to Neeley, Idaho, where they settled with older brother Edward. Sarah Lovina had 13 children, three of whom died young in Idaho. They were living in Neeley when the main Morgan family migrated to Wyoming.

James John Morgan married Amberzine Gustin in Leamington in 1879. They had 12 children, seven of them born in Leamington. At least four of their 12 children died young, but they had four with them when traveling to Wyoming, one just a newborn infant.

Everal Hannah Morgan married Daniel H. Radford in 1878 in Leamington. Three of their seven children were born in Leamington before 1888. They took their then three children on the journey to Wyoming along with the main clan. According to Star Valley membership records, this couple had a child, Priscilla Geneva, on 23 April 1889 in Freedom, Wyoming.

Nancy Jane Radford Ryset Morgan, Thomas' plural wife, also had children with her on the trip to Wyoming. These included Frances Daniel (Frank) Ryset, her oldest living son by her former husband. Frank had just married Sarah Priscilla Morgan, daughter of Edward and Sarah, in Leamington in August 1888, just before the trip to Wyoming. Their first child Nora was born in Freedom, Wyoming, on 6 September 1889.

Nancy Jane's other living children at the time of the trip in 1888, all fathered by Thomas Morgan, included John Thomas, age 15; Martha Veletta 11; Joseph Charles 9; and Lydia Almeda about 6 months.

John Whitlock Radford was about 75 years old in 1889, and his wife Leah Smith Ross Radford, was about 67. Though elderly, they decided to take the trip to Wyoming to be with their families.

James Richard (Dick) Ross, the older of Leah's two sons by her first husband, his wife Susan Potter and family of seven children, also migrated to Wyoming. They spent most of their married lives living close to his mother, including in Deseret, Oak City, Leamington, and Kanosh, Utah. There is an excellent 1880 photograph of the Radford and Ross family on the "Nancy Jane Radford" page of this morganclan Web site.

Melvin Ross, the younger brother, had seven children by his first wife Julia Elizabeth Smith (not related to his mother Leah Smith above), two of whom died young. Julia died from an accident in 1878. Melvin next married Mary Ellen Hadden, with whom he had six children. Melvin, his second wife, and children and the children by his first wife lived in Leamington until about 1882, after which they lived for a short time in Neeley, Idaho, where their second child was born in 1883. Their third child was born in Leamington in 1885, and then they moved to Joseph, Sevier County, Utah, until migrating to eastern Idaho where they joined the larger Morgan/Radford family after 1891. They were not part of the Wyoming experience.

Other members of the Radford family were:

Leah Ellen Radford Lovell, sister of Nancy Jane Radford, who married Joseph Hyrum Lovell in 1869. They were pioneers in Oak City and had 11 children, 10 of whom were born in Oak City before they migrated to Wyoming in 1889. Nine of their children were living at the time of their move to Wyoming. They moved again with the larger group when the final move to Idaho took place in 1891.

Diana Rebecca Radford Woolsey, sister of Nancy Jane Radford, married Abraham Mitchell Woolsey in 1878 in Kanosh, Utah. They had eight children, five of whom were born before the 1888 trip to Wyoming. They were residents of Leamington from about 1880 to 1888. According to Star Valley Stake membership records, this couple had a child named Everal on 23 April 1889 in Freedom, Wyoming.

Other grandchildren of Thomas and Ann Morgan were married by 1888 and having children. These include:

Annie Lydia Morgan, daughter of Edward and Sarah, who married Willard Cook Moore in Leamington in 1879. Willard Moore was orphaned as a youth and had lived with the Edward and Sarah Morgan family for about seven years before he married their daughter. He and his family went with her parents to Neeley, Idaho, in 1881 but returned to Leamington in about 1887. He and Annie had two surviving children when they went to Wyoming. On September 10, 1889, they had a child named Ira in Freedom, Wyoming.

Hannah Elizabeth Morgan, daughter of Edward and Sarah, married John Russel Hadden, a brother of Mary Ellen Hadden, the second wife of Melvin Ross. According to Star Valley Stake membership records they had a child born in Freedom, Wyoming, on 22 May 1889. Hannah died from complications of this birth, and the child also later died. But John Hadden remained with the larger group in 1891 when the migration to eastern Idaho took place.

A High Child Mortality Rate

The Morgan/Radford clan lost many children and adults to premature death caused mainly by contagious diseases due to poor sanitation, the rawness of pioneer life, and a lack of health-related knowledge or professional care. Diphtheria was possibly the most common cause of death in young children. Accidents also took a few lives. Probably the biggest loser in the death of children was Eliza Morgan Morrison, who lost all five of her children as well as her own life in 1882; she has no descendants today. Nancy Jane Radford Ryset Morgan had 14 children by two husbands, only five of whom reached adulthood. She herself died at the age of 53 of "nervous prostration," according to a record handed down to her descendants. All of our families lost at least one child except Elizabeth Morgan Gourley, who with husband Robert raised 11 children in Goshen, Utah, all of whom reached adulthood and married.


SOURCES USED TO COMPILE THE MILLARD COUNTY PERIOD:

Ancestral File. Computer database comprised of family group sheets and pedigrees of families whose names were voluntarily submitted by relatives or other researchers. This is not intended as an official primary source of information. Though it contains mostly accurate information, the Ancestral File cannot be cited by scholars as an accurate source of information. It is best used for indicators and clues for further research.

Bradfield, Floyd. Bradfield collection of Leamington Histories in the possession of his widow Jene Bradfield, Leamington, Utah.

Census of Utah, 1870, Millard County, Deseret, pages 333 and 334.
The 1870 Census of Millard County adds some confusion to our Oak City history, because it shows all residents of Oak City counted in the Deseret census enumeration district, taken in June of 1870. All residents on pages 333 and 334 of that census are actually in Oak City.

Census of Utah, 1880, Millard County, Leamington, page 19; Oak City, Kanosh.

Census of Wyoming, 1880, Uintah County, Evanston, page 355 (Frank Rysert).

Day, Stella H., and Sebrina C. Ekins. "Milestones of Millard: A Hundred Years of History of Millard County." 1951. Art City Publishing, Millard County, Utah.

Deseret Ward Records FHL Film # 25885, items 1-3. Contain vital information but not complete.

Ekins, Sabrina C., and others, "History of Deseret" in Stella Day, Milestones of Millard ... pages 421-434.

Fillmore Ward Records, FHL Film # 0025 947 and Film # 1059 486. Contains vital information on Radfords and Ryserts from 1853 to 1863.

Flack, Dora Dutson and others, "Dutson Family History."
1998. Privately published by the authors.

Freeman, Rebecca, "A History of John Whitlock Radford and Rachel Leah Smith and Their Families." Unpublished typescript. Undated. Ririe, Idaho.

Geersten, Jane Rawlinson, "History of Oak City," in Stella Day, Milestones of Millard ... pages 473-495.

Journal History December 31, 1686. FHL Film #1259784. Contains a brief newspaper account of Leamington in 1886.

"LEAMINGTON 1871-1974," Vol. 1, number 1. A special edition of a 30 page newspaper featuring Leamington history and biographies of many of its early settlers.

Leamington Ward Records, early to 1905. FHL Film # 0026119 Item 1. Contains vital information on some of our ancestors in the 1880s but is not complete.

Lyman, Edward Leo. "A History of Millard County."
1999 Salt Lake City, Utah State Historical Society.

Lyman, Platte D. "Journal of Platte D. Lyman," typescript of the original on FHL Film #485337

Millard County Probate Records, 1870-1887. FHL Film 0482034. Includes identification of lots in Oak City obtained by Morgans, Morrisons, Radfords, Lovells and others, pages 102-110.

Millard County Index to Land Deeds and Mortgages, FHL Film 1654356.

Millard County Land Records, Deeds Books E & F. FHL Film 0920282.

Nielson, August, and others, "History of Leamington," in Stella Day, Milestones of Millard.... pages 496-507.

Oak City [Oak Creek] Ward Records Film # 0026313 Contains births, deaths, and other vital data on some of our ancestors and some of their children while in Deseret and Oak City but is incomplete. Contains details of the building of Fort Deseret and a list of men who worked on the project. Lists and discusses Deseret settlers that moved to Oak Creek in 1868.

Roper, Margaret W. 1970 "Echoes of The Sage and Cedars: A Centennial History of Oak City, Utah, 1868-1969." 1970 Published by Oak City Ward.

"Shadows of the Past, Homes and Historical Places of Interest in Oak City, UT, 1868-1950"
2002, Oak City Town Council.

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The Move To Wyoming 1888-89

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Thomas Morgan