(Many of the early Mormon pioneers came from humble circumstances and had little education. The recollections of George Morris show a life of hard labor but honest dedication to principle. Spelling and grammar are as he recorded them.)
I was born in Handley, Chesire, England, of poor parents in a poor country on Aug. 23, 1816. My father was a jornyman shoemaker and would make five to six shillings per week and had a family of six children. I loved to go to school dearly and was sent some little when very yong. I could read exelently when five years old. I afterward learned to write so that I cold make out to write my own name and that was the extent of my schooling.As early as 7 years of age, I was put to hard work. I was chiefly employed amongst the farmers during the summer season to scare the birds off thare grain fields. Armed with a pair of clappers, my business was to travel around the fields from morning till night, ratteling them with all my might and hollering at the same time. For this I got my meat.
As time rolled on, they putt me to higher branches of business such as driving the cows to pasture and back and driving team for the plowman - 3 or 4 horses hitched up single file. This was very perticuler business for the furrows had to be as straite as a line. If any little crook was made, the lad was blamed. If a horse should happend to make a misstep, very likely I would be struck with a hard clod between the shoulders and have my breath nearly knocked out of me, or be knocked down then to be kicked for falling and had to go through this kind of ordeel 12 hours a day from 6 in the morning till 6 at night . . . (He worked in succession at farming, coal mining, shoemaking and textile man-u-facture.)
I was now about 21 years of age. I had always been religesly inclined from my childhood and a great lover of books and lived quite a morrol life all thro my youthful days and kept myself prity clean from the most of the vices to which youth is subject. I never imbibed the habit of drinking liquire, smoking or chewing tobaco but spent all my lesure days in reding and study.
My wife's name was Jane Higginbotham, an orphan girl. We lived very agreable togather for about two years and three months when she died in child birth. The child was a girl. I named her Jane. She lived nine months, then died . . .
I now come to the time when I first heard the sound of the everlasting Gospel. It was in the month of March 1841. Some Mormon elders found their way into the town of Deckonfield where I lived. And one day whilst I was sitting at work by the door, some little children came along and stoped to play and began to talk about some people they called "dippers . . . " The elders took great pains to patently instruct me. One of them offered me the use of a Book of Mormon to read . . . And soon I was throughly convinced of the truth of the work. I was baptized Sunday morning, 28 June 1841.
The princaples of the gathering having began to be preached in the branches, I soon caught the spirit of it and not a single sixpense pased out of my hands from that time forth that could possable be avoided untill I had acumulated sufficant means to buy my passage across the sea and up to Nauvoo. I arrived in Liverpool on the 4 of Feb. 1842 on my way to America without as much as sheding one teer at my departure.
(In Nauvoo, he worked in the brick yard, married Hannah Maria Newberry and set up housekeeping in a lean-to added to the home of William Anderson. He was among those who saw the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith after their martyrdom.)
One would think that when the mob had suckeceded in murdering the prophat of God and his brother that they would have been satisfied at least for a time. But no, they continued to clamer for blood and to burn houses and stacks of grain and to steal cattle and other property of the Saints. I have lain many a night upon the preyeries between Nauvoo and Cartage on guard with my brethern to prevent the Mob from coming in the night to set fire to the city. I have lain in the temple night after night upon those hard wooden benches with my rifle by my side, expecting every minit an atack from the mob. I have lain in my bed with my cloths on and my gun laining against my pillow where I could lay my hand on it at any hour . . .
About that time I had engaged to dig a well for a Mobacrat by the name of Flinn, who had bought Father Bents farm. I had received no pay yet, so I went where he was plowing near by to ask for some pay when I had struck water. But in place of giving me any pay, he picked up a pronged root which he had plowed up and threw it at my and then put his fingers into his mouth and wistled three times. Soon I saw 2 or 3 men runing from the other side of the field as fast as they could towards me. So I thought it best to be getting away from there and took to my heels and ran in good earnedst down by the well and took my brotherinlaw, who was helping me and we made for the woods . . . We thought we were prity fortunate in getting away without having our heads broken after having dug the well for nothing.
(After suffering through the confrontations with mobs in 1845 and 1846, he finally left Nauvoo July 12, 1846. The family experienced serious illness and abject poverty in Iowa. He earned what money he could to "fit out" for the trip across the prairie by digging wells. In the spring of 1848 they finally arrived in Council Bluffs, where Saints were working as fast as they could to continue on to Salt Lake Valley.)
On arriving there (in Council Bluffs) I met an intimate friend from England. He came to the river and hollowed out, `Hale, George. Come on. We want thee in our ten . . . ' My outside appearance was prity good, but if the inside of my wagon had been examined, I certainly would have been sent back . . . (By living off the land and using ingenuity to make clothing from animal skins, they arrived in the valley on Sept. 20, 1848.)
I had picked about a thimble full of apple seeds out of some dried apples before we started. I put them into the ground as early as possible and about a dozen of them came up. But the crickets kept eating them off. Still I saved 5 or 6 of them by circleing them around with paper. And one of them bore 2 or 3 apples the third year from the sead. Those were the first apples raised in Salt Lake Valley . . .
Sept. 20 1850 President (Brigham) Young was appointed governor of Utah. The first and only one worth having, from my standpoint. We have had about a bakers dozen of them since. Some of them whare more fit subjects for a lunatic asylum than to make governors of. Alfred Cumings was the next best. He was a prity good fellow when warmed up with liqor. He used to say he governed the territory and Brigham governed the people . . .
And so I go on turning my hand from one thing to another: farming, building houses, digging wells, going to the canyon (for lumber), making and mending shoes and doing almost everything that is needed in a new country. I have built about 50 houses and dug about 75 wells since I came into the valley and to put it in a few words, my spear (sphere) of operations is anywhere between the bottom of a well and the top of a chimny. I hardly know what a leasure hour is. There is mountains of labour always before me and the days are not half long enough to suit my circumstanses. I often ear men say `I'm out of work.' I never saw the time when I could say that, for I always have more laid out than I have time to do . . .
(Morris served as one of the city's first policemen and was among those arrested for practicing polygamy. His families had problems because of the practice, and there was some bitterness. Morris died Jan. 29, 1897 after a long and toilsome life.)