History of Salt Lake City, Part 145

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company
Number of Pages: 1194


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He is the son of Miles Romney and Elizabeth Gaskell, and was born at Dalton, Lancashire, England, August 14, 1831. When he was two years old the family removed to Preston, and shortly afterwards to Penworthen, about two miles from that town. His father was among the first to em- brace the gospel in Great Britain in the last dispensation, having identified himself with the Church in 1837, under the administration of Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde, about a month after those two elders landed in that country. The two missionaries were in the habit of holding prayer meet- ing every Sunday morning at the Romney residence, and going from thence to the meeting at Preston, generally taking George with them, and returning regularly in the evening. This was donc so long as they remained in that section. George was baptized in the river Ribble as soon as he reached the age of eight years.


On the 28th of February, 1841, the entire family left Liverpool in the ship Sheffield, with a com- pany of Saints, and arrived at New Orleans after a voyage of seven weeks, that being the first instal- ment of Church emigrants that traveled via that port. From thence they were conveyed by steamer up the Mississippi, Nauvoo being their destination. When proceeding up the river the elder Rom- ney was taken dangerously ill and his condition became so precarious that his life was despaired of. On arriving at Nauvoo, Mrs. Romney, George's mother, went ashore and purchased a small log room, giving in payment for it a Paisley shawl. To this humble shelter her husband, being too


149


GEORGE ROMNEY.


feeble to walk, was carried in a blanket. He soon afterwards revived, however, and went to work on the Temple. While thus engaged, he carved one of the twelve oxen upon which the baptismal font rested. During the same season of the arrival of the Romneys there was great sickness in Nau- voo. It took the form generally of fever and ague, which carried off about one-third of the com- pany with which the family had traveled. The people also suffered greatly from poverty, food and clothing not only being scarce, but it was very difficult even to procure lights. This was exceedingly distressing in case of sickness, there being, in many instances no taper to give a cheering ray while the anxious watchers sat by the bedsides of the afflicted and dying. This was the case with one of George's sisters, who, after a severe illness, finally expired, and as she died in the night, the sorrow- ing family, being without a light, were unable to note the moment when the spirit left the body and was wafted to a brighter world. George worked on the Temple with his father, and there learned his trade of carpenter. That building was erected under great hardships, but Romney and son re- mained at work upon it until it was completed, and in it the elder Romney received his annointings. The family also shared the persecutions that were directed against the Saints. In 1846 all of the Romneys except George went to Burlington, Iowa, on a steamboat, for the purpose of going to work and accumulating enough means with which to purchase an outfit to enable them to move west- ward with the main body of the Church, driven from Nauvoo by mobocrats. George started for the same destination overland, accompanied by another boy named Robinson and a man named Ralph. They took with them a number of cows and horses. On the first night out, at a point about twelve miles distant from Nauvoo, the trio reached a deserted log cabin, which showed numerous in- dications of having been but recently occupied, the late tenants having left behind them a cat, a number of chickens, etc. They afterwards learned that the family who had fled were " Mormons." and had made their escape on account of mobocratic persecutions and their lives having been threat- ened. The three travelers took up their quarters in this cabin for the night, but soon repented hav- ing done so. Near midnight they were awakened by a violent knocking at the door, and loud de- mands for admittance. A dog on the inside kept up an incessant barking, the terrified trio trying to induce it to be silent by calling " whish." The mob"on the outside became more and more furious. and fired a shot through the door, at the same time threatening that if those within did not come out they would batter it down, enter the cabin and kill them. Still the scared inmates refused to speak The mob procured a log and used it upon the door as a battering-ram. Seeing that their case was becoming more and more desperate, Ralph, Romney and Harrison concluded to go out and did so. When they emerged from the doorway they were confronted by a howling mob armed with swords, guns and pistols. They were told that the mob understood them to be " Mormons " and it was the intention to kill them.


Ralph, being the only grown man among the three, acted as spokesman for the other two. He told the mobocrats they were laboring under a mistake ; that they were travelers and had come fromn La Harpe, giving an alleged name of a street of that town where he said they had resided. He finally made the mob believe that they had committed an error, and they left without further molestation.


At Burlington, during the winter of 1846-7, the elder Romney, not being able to procure work at his own trade, got employment, at a mere pittance, cutting ice; while George engaged himself to a farmer as a sort of boy-of-all-work, feeding about a hundred pigs being one of his duties.


In the following spring the head of the family was awarded a contract to build a church, and George worked with him. In the fall the two went to St. Louis and obtained employment, the rest of the family following soon afterwards, all remaining there for some time.


On the fifteenth of March, 1850, George married Jane Jamieson. The entire family then pro- ceeded to Alton, Illinois, where they purchased two ox teams, with which they started westward. They met with considerable misfortune on the way. Corn, which was selling at ten cents a bushel when they bought their outfit, immediately raised to a dollar and a quarter. The result was that their purchasing power was soon exhausted, and so were the oxen, most of them dying before they reached Council Bluffs. At that point, however, they were furnished with fresh animals by Bishop Hunter. They started with the first Perpetual Emigration Fund company from Bethlehem-now Council Bluffs-and camped twelve miles west from that point. On the 5th of July the real start for Salt Lake Valley was made, and the company reached this city on the 11th of October, 1850.


George camped near the spot where the Temple now stands, a wagon box being the habitation of himself and wife, and in it their first child, a daughter, was born, on the fifteenth of December. The weather was at the time cold and stormy, the ground being covered with snow.


The subject of this sketch labored on the Temple Block till the spring of 1852, when he re- sponded to a call for carpenters to proceed to Fillmore to build a State house He worked there


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[ HISTORY OF SALT LAKE CITY.


till fall and then returned to this city. He resumed upon the public works and continued thus en- gaged till the spring of 1855. In the latter year he formed a co-partnership with Michael Katz and George Pricc, and this firm erected the County Court House, the residences of Judge Elias Smith. A. W. Babbit, and other buildings. The following year he returned to the public works. In the fore part of 1856, his father, Elder Miles Romney, was sent on a mission, and having been foreman of the carpenters on the Temple Block, he was succeeded in that position by James Stevens. The latter held the post about six months, when it was offered to George, who accepted it. He re- mained in that situation until 1864, when the shops were temporarily closed.


Going back some years in order to enumerate other incidents in George's career, it is necessary to say that, in 1857, when the Territorial Militia was thoroughly organized, he was appointed captain of the First Company of the Third Regiment of Infantry, of Major Blair's battalion. He went to Echo Canyon the following winter, in charge of a company of men, and remained there two months, until called in by President Young, in order to build a number of granaries in the rear of the 'Tithing Office.


In the spring of 1858, the move south was inaugurated. George's family joined in the general exodus, but he remained constructing storing facilities for flour and grain, When the family reached Lehi hiis son Heber J. was born in a wagon box. Some time afterward George went to Provo. After completing some building operations at that place he returned to this city. He had been, for a considerable time previous to this, identified with the Twenty-ninth Quorum of Sev- enties, of which he was made one of the presidents.


In 1864 he formed a co-partnership with William H. Folsom, the firm erecting a large number of the principal buildings of the city, among them being the City Hall, Ransohoff's, Woodmansee's and other buildings. In the fall of 1868 he identified himself in the business of steam wood-work- ing, lumber dealing, contracting, building, etc., with Latimer & Taylor.


In 1869 he went to England on a mission, and labored for one year as president of the Liver- pool conference, and the remainder of his stay abroad as president of the London conference, being absent about eighteen months. He came home in 1870.


Among the first of his achievements in connection with the firm of which he was a member, was the erection of the Deseret Bank block, probably the finest structure in the city of its class at this date. The firm has undergone quite a number of changes, being, as now constituted, Taylor, Romney & Armstrong.


In February, 1882, Brother Romney was elected a member of the city council of Salt Lake City, and served in that capacity two years. He has also been for some years one of the directors of Z. C. M. I., and has served the people of the Twentieth Ward, of which he is an old resident, in various capacities.


Proceedings having been entered against him for unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Act, he was indicted and, on October 10th, 1885, he withdrew a plea of not guilty formerly entered, and pleaded guilty to the charge. On the same day he was sentenced to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, imprisonment in the Utah penitentiary for six months and to pay a fine of three hun- dred dollars and costs. He entered the prison the same day, satisfied the judgment, and emerged from confinement on the 13th of March, 1886.


151


HENRY DINWOODEY.


HENRY DINWOODEY.


Our respected and enterprising citizen, Henry Dinwoodey was born at Latchford, Cheshire, near Warrington, a town 18 miles from Liverpool, on the 11th of September, 1825. His father's name was James Dinwoodey ; his mother's maiden name Elizabeth Mills, she was from Somerset- shire. The Dinwoodeys were from Scotland, from which country they went to the Isle of Man.


This subject of this sketch was apprenticed to the trade of a carpenter and builder ; and, after he was out of his time, he went to cabinet making. Henry Dinwoodey was married to Ellen Gore, February 8th, 1846. She was a native of Warrington and was the daughter of John and Alice Gore. He was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on the 24th of January, 1847. She also came into the Church about the same time, both belonging to the Warrington branch of the Liverpool Conference. They sailed from Liverpool September 5th, 1849, on bcard the ship Berlin. During the voyage cholera broke out and forty-three of the passengers were buried in the sea. They arrived at New Orleans, October 20th, and remained there during the winter and in the spring of 1850 went to St. Louis. There Mr. Dinwoodey tarried till the year 1855, having gone into business as a pattern maker for machinery. He with his wife emigrated to Salt Lake City, arriving September, 1855. He came in one of the independent companies, commanded by Captain John Hindley. His business career in Utah has already been sketched among our chief industrial men in Chapter LXXIX.


Mr. Dinwoodey is one of the wealthiest and most substantial busness men of Salt Lake City, and but few have done so much as he in building up the industries of the city and contributing to its material growth. This very fact (seeing that his property has been acquired in developing the industries of the country and the employment of labor) shows how ill the city could spare such men as he, and how much this judicial crusade, which has thrown a George Romney and a Henry Dinwoodey into the penitentiary, interrupts the business of the city, and strikes at some of our chief labor-employing industries and home enterprises. In their incarceration the community at large has suffered.


Mr. Henry Dinwoodey was indicted for unlawful cohabitation, or, in the language of the court, for " holding out " his wives, and sent to the penitentiary for six months and sentenced to pay a fine of three hundred dollars and costs.


During the incarceration of Mr. Dinwoodey his first wife (the Ellen Gore already named) died. A few days before her death he was permitted to leave the penitentiary and come to his home for a few hours, to visit her sick bed. The next time he saw her was just before her corpse was taken to the Seventh Ward meeting-house, preparatory to burial. Her bereaved husband was allowed to attend the funeral service, but was not permitted to follow the remains, to their last resting place.


Of the public services of Mr. Henry Dinwoodey to Salt Lake City, it must be noticed in closing this sketch that he served our City seven years. He was first returned in February, 1876, as alder- man of the Second Municipal Ward. In 1878 he was again returned as alderman, also in 1880 and in 1882. At these elections he carried the largest vote, many of the Gentiles supporting him. He was popular with both parties, relying on his business sagacity and official integrity. He went out of office February 16th, 1884, having served during the entire terms of Mayor Feramorz Little and Mayor William Jennings.


In the Territorial militia he held the position of major's adjutant, ranking as captain, and for several years was the assistant chief engineer of the fire brigade, preferring that position to being its chief on account of his defective hearing.


Alderman Dinwoodey was usually appointed by the council upon the most important commit- tees, in matters where business experience and financial prudence and knowledge were particularly required. He was retired from office by the Edmund's bill ; nevertheless, in the history of our mu- nicipal government, the name of Henry Dinwoodey will stand as one of the most efficient, trust- worthy and popular in the list of the aldermen of Salt Lake City. He is decidedly to-day one of the most influential and representative of the citizens of Utah Territory.


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HISTORY OF SALT LAKE CITY.


ELIAS MORRIS.


Elias Morris, the Salt Lake mason and builder, was born at Llanfair, Talhairn, Denbigshire, North Wales, June 30th, 1825. He was the son of John Morris and Barbara Thomas, both of the some village. His father was a builder and contractor; he was for many years engaged in build- ing bridges and prisons for the counties of North Wales. Elias served his time under his father, and, then, at the age of nineteen, he went over to England to get more experience in the bricklay- ing line and furnace building.


The parents were Calvanistic Baptists, but the Congregation church, to which they belonged, minister and all went over to the Campbellite church, to which Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt, and numerous others of the earliest disciples of the Mormon Church in America, originally belonged.


On the 17th of March, 1849, Elias Morris joined the Mormon Church. He was the first man baptized in the town of Abergele, in his native county, by John Parry, who years afterwards had charge of building the Logan Temple. The same summer his father, mother, his brother Hugh and sister Barbara, also jomed the Church ; and in less than a year he, in connection with others, raised up a branch of about sixty members, among whom was his brother, R. V. Morris, the Jate bishop of the Nineteenth Ward. The following spring he went to Manchester to visit his brother Price, and to Liverpool to visit his brothers William V. and John, all three of whom were baptized.


In the year 1850, he was called to travel through the Flintshire Conference as a traveling elder. He was also appointed first counselor to William Parry, president of that conference. There he labored till the fall of 1851, when Apostle John Taylor visited that conference, having in view the organization of the sugar company to send to Utah. Elias Morris was called as one of its me- chanics, and at this conference, held at Holywell, September 28th, 1851, he was released to emi- grate with the sugar company in the spring.


Meantime he returned to his trade to provide an outfit ; and, while thus engaged as a mason, on a three story building at Abergele, November 20th, 1851, pointing the front of a building, on a hanging scaffold, on the third story window, the scaffold gave way and he fell down into the street, alighting on his thigh ; with presence of mind as he touched the ground, he put his hand on a course of rock, under the large shop window, and leaped inside of the building, barely escaping death from the scaffold, which was falling after him. Strange to say, he was uninjured by the fall ; and, after he got over the fright, he assisted in putting up a new scaffold.


In the spring of 1852, Mr. Morris met the sugar company at Liverpool, and was put in charge of it. There were among them experts in the manufacturing of sugar, several of whom were selected in Liverpool. In this company there were L. John Nuttall and his two brothers and father and mother, who were kinsfolk of President John Taylor.


While waiting at Liverpool for the sugar machinery, Mr. Morris sent on his betrothed wife, Mary Parry of New Market, on board the ship Ellen Maria. On the 28th of March his own company sailed fron Liverpool, on board the ship Rockaway; and, after a tedious voyage of eight weeks, they arrived at New Orleans, where President Taylor met the company. Having discharged the machinery at Leavenworth, the President requested Mr. Morris to accompany him to Council Bluffs, to fetch the wagons down. At Council Bluffs he met his betrothed, and they were married there, by Apostle Orson Hyde, at the house of the bride's uncle, Joseph Parry, May 23d, 1852, In due time the sugar company proceeded on their journey, and reached Salt Lake City in the latter part of November. Mr. Morris immediately proceeded to Provo, and there the company turned over the sugar machinery to the Church, the enterprise having resulted in a failure. He re- mained at Provo during the winter; and, in the spring of 1853, he walked to Salt Lake City to attend the April conference, to see the laying of the foundation stone of the Salt Lake Temple. While at this conference he was requested by the authorities to go to Cedar City, Iron County, to take charge of the masonry on the iron works and blast furnaces. There he labored for seven years, off and on, till the failure of those works, when he returned to Salt Lake City in the spring of 1860.


After his return from the South, Mr. Morris went to work on the Temple Block. He took a contract with Henry Eccles to cut the flagging of the foundation of the Temple.


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ELIAS MORRIS.


In the year 1864, on the 7th of February, Elias Morris and his men commenced work on the Eagle Emporium ; in June he commenced Wm. S Godbe's Exchange Buildings, and in July Ransohoff's store, south of Jennings'. It was at this date that Main Street began to assume fully the imposing appearance of a merchant street. On these buildings Mr. Morris paid to his masons fron five to seven dollars per day ; but, at that time, flour was selling in Salt Lake City at from $25.00 to $30.00 per hundred.


At the April conference, 1865, Elias Morris was called to take a mission to Wales. There he stayed four years and one month, during which time he was a conference president and the last year was president of the Welsh mission. He again left his native land in May, 1869, in charge of a company of Saints (365 souls) who were mostly helped by the Church and their friends in Utah. 'This was the first company that came through after the completion of the railroad in the year 1869.


After his return from this mission, Elias Morris, in the spring of 1870, entered into partner- ship with Samuel L. Evans. This partnership, which existed for eleven years, was of a very pecu- liar and unique kind. They entered into an agreement that all their earnings should be left in their business, each family being allowed to draw out what they severally needed. Donations, etc., were paid in like manner by the firm, neither of the partners questioning the doings of the other. Thus they went on for eleven years, in the conduct of their business, in their private buildings and im- provements for their families; in the supplies and money for their families; in pocket money for themselves ; in donations, taxes, etc., indeed, in every other private or public draw on their united finances. This they did to the last, when death ended their partnership, without disagreement or a question ever being raised as to which family had received the least or the most. In this respect they never even so much as investigated their accounts. Their method from first to last was upon the pure United Order principle-each partner simply drawing or building according to his personal or family needs. Samuel L. Evans was the bookkeeper and cashier of the firm ; and Elias Morris the superintendent of the practical work and of their men employed. Mr. Evans died March, 1881. Administrators were appointed to appraise the property belonging to the firm, which paid all the debts of the deceased. Mr. Morris offered to buy or sell the half of the business and property, and the family of the deceased partner very properly sold out, Mr. Morris purchasing for $10,000 in money and property, Evans' family being allowed their choice of property. Of the history of their business it may be thus summarised : Morris & Evans opened up the first marble monumental yard in Salt Lake. Soon after this the mining operations opened throughout the Territory and from Mr. Morris' past experience in furnace building their firm obtained the run of the business in building nearly all the furnaces throughout Utah and the adjacent Territories. At about this time they bought a fire clay mine in Bingham, and commenced the manufacture of fire brick of every kind, and supplied Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, giving great satisfaction. Morris still manu- factures this brick. The firm took a contract for the Ontario Mill, and Mr. Morris has done all the mason work of that company, including the Cornish pump in No. 3 shaft, which is considered by experts to be equal to anything in the Comstock mine, Nevada. He built two Stetefeldt furnaces at the Ontario, another for the Marsac on an improved plan, and another for the Bullionville Smelting Company ; also two of the same kind at Butte, Montana, and the two White & Howell at the Alice mill, and one at the Moulton mill. His work in No. 3 shaft of the Ontario, in putting in the Cor- nish pump, attracted the attention of every visitor to that wonderful mine. The Salt Lake Herald, at the time, thus described the work :


" In order to reach a firm bed it was necessary to dig a pit fifty-two feet deep, when solid rock was encountered, and from this they are building a piece of masonry that will stand till the end of the world, defying earthquakes and grimly smiling at mundane convulsions. The average depth of the foundation is forty-five feet, and the width twenty-one feet, and when finished it will contain 6,000 tons of rock, firmly united by 600 bushels of Portland cement. Not only this but it is tied together by numerous iron anchor bolts, three inches in diameter, and 36.5 feet long. The coping is of cut Cottonwood granite, transported by rail, the massive blocks being from five to seven feet long, two to three feet wide and two feet thick. Other large blocks of rock have been brought from the sandstone quarries at Croydon, in Weber Canyon, while the bulk of the stone came from a quarry below Park City. That the foundation will be firm it is only necessary to remark that it is being laid by Mr. Elias Morris, who has been the Ontario mason from the beginning, and who does nothing by proxy. For two months Mr. Morris and his gang of masons have been at work on the foundation which will be ready for the machinery in about five weeks. This piece of masonry is simply for the bed of the pumping engine to be used for hoisting water. Much of the engine is




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