Titus Billings History By Diantha Worsl?? with Eunice B. Snow


Written Under the Direction of Eunice B. Snow, August 1914, by Diantha Worsl?? Worsley

Grandfather Titus Billings

Titus Billings with his wife and two children, George P. who drove a team for H.C. Kimball as a pioneer, and Eunice B. W. Snow, left Nauvoo. in 1847 with Vincent Shurtliff, came as far as Council Bluffs, but being too late to cross the plains wintered at Punckaw (?) Ponca then went back to Winter Quarters and then to St. Jo and earned means to come to the Valley, leaving their son Alfred Nelson at St. Louis to come later.

The statement that they “wintered at Punckaw (?)� is Ponca, a place way north of Pawnee Village where the Running Water River (now called Niobrara River) branches off of the Missouri River. At the invitation of the Ponca Indians, Bishop George Miller led a group of saints to that location. Titus Billngs was sent as a Branch President to bring the group back to the main camps.

They arrived in Salt Lake after a jouney of three months, staying there over winter in the canyon eight miles north of Salt Lake, where I, Eunice was married to John E. Warner. There he put up a log house, in July building another log house, sawing the logs with an upright saw and making the shingles with a drawing knife. Then after completing the hosue, ate only one meal when we were called to Manti and settle the country where the Indians were the first settlers. (At October Conference)

We prepared for our journey and started in the latter par of October. The trip occupied three weeks, which is strange to say when one thinks we make a continuous journey, only camping overnight and making our own roads as we traveled along. On our way mother was quite ill and I had to prepare the meals when I was not driving a yoke of cattle. My father drove the other yoke of cattle and my husband was busy attending to the loose which we had with us.

We reached Manti on the 21st of November.

Thomas Morley and Editha Marsh History

Brief Sketch of Thomas E. Morley

Thomas E. Morley was a man of large stature, weighing over two hundred pounds. He was a wheel wright by trade, was considered a temperate man, though he used tobacco and drank tea. He took no intoxicants. His family belonged to the Presbyterian church. In the year of 1829 he moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where he and his wife Editha spent the last 17 years of their lives on a farm. He worked mostly at his trade.

A short time before his death he walked five miles to see his oldest daughter, Arthusa… Returning about dark that night he retired to his bed never to rise again. It was the first time he had ever been ill. In a few days he died, being 78 years old. In six weeks his loving wife died.

In a noble ship with wide spread sails our Morley ancestors came to this land. As their ship came plowing through the rough waves of the mighty Atlantic, roughest of all the oceans, they landed in the salem harbor of Massachussets Bay. They had come here to America to make a home and to live their religion as they saw fit. Because of the tyranny of King Charles the First of England. Thousands left their native land to come here for the freedom this country offered. A latter govenor of New England said of this great movement: “God sifted, a nation that he might send choice seed to this wilderness.” Dr. Muzz’s history of the US, and what a choice seed: The Morley Ancestry have great characters and our Novle Grandfather Isaac Morley was of this stock.