Showing posts with label Morley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morley. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
TERREL MORLEY SEELY
Terrel Seely
May 15, 1944 — March 13, 2026
Mount Pleasant
Listen to Obituary
Terrel Morley Seely (81) passed away Friday, March 13th, 2026 after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He passed away peacefully surrounded by his wife and family.
Terrel was a husband, father, business owner, traveler, tennis player, golfer, pilot and friend to all those who knew him.
Terrel was born May 15th, 1944 to Ray Edwin Seely and Mildred Morley Seely. He was the youngest of 8 children and was the first of his siblings to be born in a hospital. His older siblings were Cherron Ray, Miriam Adela, Norma, Marlane, Robert Edwin, Marilyn, and SueAnn.
At 6 years old, Terrel contracted Polio and was flown to Salt Lake City Hospital by his doctor. Several years later, Terrel would get his pilot’s license and continue to fly for decades.
He served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Zealand. Later, in 1966, he joined the National Guard and served his country for 7 years.
In 1968, he was attending Brigham Young University in Provo when he met the love of his life, Glenda Westwood. They dated for over 2 years before getting married on August 28th, 1970.
He graduated with a degree in Zoology with plans of becoming a fish and game officer. However, in 1973, an opportunity came up to purchase the Red and White Grocery store in Mt. Pleasant. Terrel, Glenda, and their oldest two children at the time began the family business. Later, he would purchase the Safeway building which became Terrel’s Foodtown. In 1991, he moved the store into its current location and called it Terrel’s Market. He always valued integrity, honesty and genuine care for others in his business ventures.
Serving his community was always important to Terrel. He served as Bishop of the Mt. Pleasant 4th Ward in 1980. He also served as a director and board member of Associated Foods, and Chairman of the Board for the Utah Grocers Association.
He served a second mission with Glenda in 2004 which was split between South Africa’s Area Office, and St. George, UT’s historic sites.
In 2012, he and Glenda were the Grand Marshals of the Hub City Days Parade. They felt so honored by the community they love.
Terrel is survived by his sister Marlane, his wife Glenda, and their 7 children. Robert (Elisa) Seely, Jennifer (Chris) McIff, Joe (Julia) Seely, John (Jordan) Seely, James (Shannon) Seely, Michelle (Vern) Akauola,, and Natalie (Rex) Hansen. They have 24 grandchildren and 2 great-grand children.
Terrel leaves behind a legacy of love for family, faith and community.
The family would like to thank all of the wonderful medical doctors and staff that have helped Terrel over the past several years. Your efforts and compassion have been a blessing and we are very grateful for you.
There will be a viewing the evening of Friday, March 20th, from 6 to 8 PM. This viewing will be held at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints located at 461 N 300 W, Mt Pleasant, UT 84647.
Another viewing will be held Saturday, March 21st, from 11AM to 12:30PM at the same church building.
This will be followed by funeral services at 1 PM at that same location. Interment in the Mt. Pleasant City Cemetery.
To Watch Funeral Services Live, Click Here. The Live Zoom Link will Activate at 12:45 a.m. MST prior to service.
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
THE PROPHET MORONI DEDICATED THE SITE OF THE MANTI TEMPLE ~~~Gerald Henrie, Provo, Utah~~~ First Honorable Mention Essay ~~~Saga of the Sanpitch Vol. 2
Father Isaac Morley and others were trying to decide in the spring of 1850 on a suitable place to recommend to President Brigham Young as a site for a Latter-day Saint Temple, when my great grandmother, Betsy Bradley, and her three-year-old son, Hyrum, saw a personage in white on a white horse mysteriously appear on the hill to the north east of Manti and then just as mysteriously disappear.
Others may have seen this same manifestation. Great Grandma Bradley told about this mysterious appearance to everyone who desired to listen and one of the Sagas of the Sanpitch was born: Everyone said, “This personage dressed in white on the white horse is the same personage that constrained Father Morley to point with a prophetic finger to an eminence rising in the distance and say, “There is the termination of our journey; in close proximity to that hill, God Willing, we will build our city,’ and that person is the Prophet Moroni! And he wants a Latter-day Saint Temple built on the Manti Stone quarry!”
The settlers of the Sanpitch had shown how the power of the Lord is manifested to a people and had seen the fruitation of their Saga fulfilled in the summer of 1850 in the words on page 436 of Orson F. Whitney’s “Life of Heber C. Kimball”: “One of the Elders laboring in the Manti Temple writes: ‘In an early day when President Young and party were making the location of the settlement here, President Heber C. Kimball, prophesied that the day would come when a temple would be built on this hill. Some disbelieved and doubted the possibility of even making a settlement here. Brother Kimball said, “Well, it will be so, and more than that the rock will be quarried from that hill to build it with, and some of the stone from that quarry will be taken to help complete the Salt Lake Temple.” On July 28, 1878, two large stones, weighing respectively 5,600 and 5,020 pounds, were taken from Manti stone quarry, hauled by team to York, the U.C.R.R. terminus then, and shipped to Salt Lake City to be used for tablets in the east and west ends of the salt Lake City Temple.’”
Why did the General Authorities of the L.D.S. Church and President Brigham Young hold so tenaciously to insisting that a Latter-day Saint Temple be built on the Manti stone quarry if they didn’t have the assurance that the Prophet Moroni had dedicated that site for a temple?
This test of President Heber C. Kimball’s prophecy took place June 25, 1875 at a conference held at Ephraim, Utah. Before the above mentioned conference was held in Ephraim, the resident of the city of Ephraim had quarried enough stone that was suitable to build the foundation for a temple and this stone had been taken from the Ephraim stone quarry and had been deposited on the spot where the Noyes Building of Snow College now stands. The residents of Ephraim had hoped to have the temple built on the ground where Snow College now stands in the center of Ephraim. This same stone is at the present time still in good condition in the foundation of the Noyes Building at Snow College.
Whitney’s “Life of Heber C. Kimball” states on page 435, “At the conference held in Ephraim, Sanpete County, June 25, 1875, nearly all the speakers expressed their feelings to have a temple built in Sanpete County, and gave their views as to what point and where to build it, and to show the union that existed, Elder Daniel H. Wells said, ‘Manti,’ George Q. Cannon, Brigham Young, Jr., John Taylor, Orson Hyde, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richard, Lorenzo Young, and A.M. Musser, said, ‘Manti stone quarry.’ I have given the names in the order in which they spoke.
At 4 p.m. that day, President Brigham Young said, ‘The Temple should be built on Manti stone quarry.’” I testify from what I have read and have had handed down to me through family tradition and otherwise that Brother Warren S. Snow was an honest man and I believe wholeheartedly his following statement. Whitney’s “Life of Heber C. Kimball” says on page 436, “Early on the morning of April 25, 1877, President Brigham Young asked Brother Warren S. Snow to go with him to Temple hill. Brother Snow says, ‘We two were alone, President Young took me to the spot where the Temple was to stand. We went to the southeast corner, and President Young said, “Here is the spot where the Prophet Moroni stood and dedicated this piece of land for a Temple site and that is the reason why the location is made here, and we can’t move it from this spot, and if you and I are the only persons that come here at high noon today, we will dedicate this ground.’” I am predicting that the sage of the Prophet Moroni dedicating the site for the Manti Temple is a saga that will live a long time in the hearts and memories of the people who live in Sanpete County or in the Valley of the Sanpitch!
1. Additional reference to great grandma, Betsy Bradley, (Mentioned in para. 1) can be read on page 60, para. 2, in the book, Descendants of William Henrie, by Manetta Prince Henrie, Chapter Five: Myra Elizabeth Henrie Oldson: Quote: “Grandma Betsy also told Myra of how she and her three-year-old son, Hyrum, had seen a personage in white, on a white horse, mysteriously appear on the brow of the stone quarry when President Isaac Morley and others were trying to decide on a suitable place to recommend to President Brigham Young for a site for the Latter-day Saint Temple. It disappeared just as mysteriously. Everyone said they thought it was the Angel Moroni, but little Hyrum said, “It was the Lord.”
2. Additional reference to Father Morley pointing a prophetic finger (mentioned in para.2) is mentioned in history of “Early Manti” in the story of Mrs. A.B. Sidwell, “Reminisences of Early Days in Manti,” para 3, para. 2: Quote: “On the arrival of the last detachments, Father Morley being among that number, (He having been unavoidably detained) – a council was held relative to the advisability of remaining where they were then encamped. Father Morley felt constrained to proceed about three miles southward and pointing with a prophetic finger to an eminence rising in the distance, said, ‘There is the termination of our journey; in close proximity to that hill, God willing, we will build our city.’”
Friday, June 13, 2025
Monday, March 31, 2025
MARY LOWRY ~ CHIEF WALKARA'S CHOIC FOR LIFE ~~~ (from our archives)
Although there are other photographs claiming to be of Chief Walker,
this is said to be the only one that is positively documented as him.
On March 13, 1850, Manti Bishop Isaac Morley baptized Walkara. Membership in the LDS Church, however, did not change Walkara's basic nature. He traded on the membership when it was convenient. His ties to the church, he concluded, entitled him to two things - priesthood "medicine" and a white wife. Several years passed before Walkara and three other Indians were ordained elders in the church priesthood organization.
He was not so successful in obtaining a white wife. At one juncture, he decided that Bishop Lowry's daughter, Mary, was a good choice. He dressed to the nines and went to the Lowry home when he thought Mary would be alone and placed a blanket, some moccasins, a beaded headband and other items on the table, followed by a crude proposal. He offered her furs and cowhides with hoofs and long horns - even a "white man's teepee."
Terrified of antagonizing the chief, Mary blurted that she was promised to another man. The name that came to mind was her brother-in-law, "Judge Peacock," who had married her twin sister. Walkara, according to several accounts, plunged his knife hilt-deep into a table and said he would take the matter to Brigham Young.
Young, in fact, promised Walkara that if Mary "is not already married, you may have her." Young knew what the chief did not - that Mary and her brother-in-law had rushed to Nephi immediately and wed. With polygamy in full sway, it was a logical solution to the problem.
The Walker War ended through an understanding personally negotiated between Young and Walkara during the winter of 1853 and finalized in May 1854 in Levan, near Nephi, Utah. In his contemporary work Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West (1857), photographer and artist Solomon N. Carvalho gives an account of the peace council held between Walkara, other native leaders in central Utah, and Brigham Young. Carvalho took the opportunity to persuade the Indian leader to pose for a portrait, now held by the Thomas Gilcrease Institute, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Although immediate hostilities ended, none of the underlying conflicts were resolved. Walkara died in 1855 at Meadow Creek, Utah.
At his funeral, fifteen horses, two wives, and two children were killed and buried along with him.
| Mary Artimesia Lowry Peacock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thursday, December 12, 2024
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Friday, October 27, 2023
Denice Blackham Madsen
Denice's children from left to right.:
Tom, Paul, Cheryl, David, Chris, and not pictured Jim.
Denice's children from left to right. Tom, Paul, Cheryl, David, Chris and not pictured Jim.
Thursday, July 20, 2023
MORONI FEED COMPANY
Saga of the Sanpitch
Ida O. Donaldson
Professional Honorable Mention Historical Essay
Moroni Feed Company, Sanpete's largest employer, in 1998
celebrates the 60th anniversary of its incorporation. Gross sales of
the company are in excess of $125 million. In addition to the
independent growers and their employees, Moroni Feed has 850
employees, with an annual payroll of over $13 million.
Moroni Feed is a fully-integrated co-operative, including a
feed mill, hatchery, processing plant, breeder farms, propane gas, a
service station and convenience store, a further-processing plant, a
Nutrimulch plant, and a hardware store. The feed mill mixes and
delivers over 150,000 tons of feed per year. The hatchery hatches
over 5 million turkey eggs annually. The processing plant
processes 75 million pounds of Norbest turkey products annually.
The breeder division includes six breeder farms located in Sanpete,
Juab, Sevier, and Washington Counties, as well as in Orosi,
California.
A service station was added in 1940. An all-new service
station and convenience store were opened last October. Included is
the propane business which provides propane to the growers.
The Nutrimulch division produces and sells over 45,000 yards per year
of nutrient-rich soil conditioner made from recycled turkey litter.
Jolley, Joseph Prestwich, Ray Seely, Jake Anderson, George Faux,
Leo Morley, Dan L. Olsen, John M. Olsen, Wilford B. Olson, and
William Prestwich. These men formed the association and worked
out an agreement with Bent Monson, a Moroni flour miller, for the
grinding and mixing of their turkey mash on a cooperative basis.
The first mill was located in the Pioneer Opera House, which still
stands on Moroni's Main Street. Later, the abandoned People's
Sugar Company plant, located two miles south of town was
purchased and the feed division was moved there in 1940.
Moroni Feed Company was officially incorporated under
the cooperative statutes of Utah on January 20, 1938.
The first officers and directors were Leo Morley, president;
Ray Seely, vice president; and Marion Jolley, secretary-treasurer.
W.L. Morley was the buyer, a position he held for twenty years.
Sherman Christensen was hired as a bookkeeper. Marlin Cloward
was hired to take his equipment to the hay fields in Leamington and
Lyndell to chop hay. Albert Cloward worked with Marlin. As
more men were interested in becoming members, they were charged
a $1 membership fee.
Royce Johnson, daughter of W.L. Morley remembers as a
young child, that her father raised twenty to twenty-five turkeys.
About the middle of November, the turkeys were killed, dry-picked
and hung in an empty house next door. The heads and feet were
washed and left on the bird.
The weather was cold this time of year, so they were preserved
till they could be sold.
Independent buyers would go around to the growers and buy their birds.
After incorporation, W.L. Morley was able to raise 500
turkeys. "This became a family affair," Royce said. "All feeding
and watering were done by hand. When the night began to fall, the
entire family would go in to the coop and get the turkeys to bed
Sitting on their roosts, we put turkeys beside us so as to encourage
other turkeys to jump up and take a place. When it was dark and all
the roosts were full, we would tip-toe out of the coop!"
Don Prestwich, son of Joseph Prestwich, also remembers
the early days. "We put a rack on a wagon and, with a shovel,
tossed grain from one side to the other as a way of mixing it. Each
poult was taken by hand and its beak was dipped into water or milk
to help it learn to drink. Now, the poults are just dumped out in the
coop. We used to feed the turkeys twice a day. Now, everything is
automated and feeders are filled once or twice a week according to
the age of the turkeys. At noon we used to pour water on the
mash and feed the turkeys wet mash thinking it would help them eat
more. We used to slip in barrels of buttermilk and feed the turkeys,
as well as ship in blocks of whey from the dairy processing
places. We used to run our turkeys alongside the river and they
waded and drank in the river. I remember dipping water out of the
river in fifty-gallon drums and hauling it to the turkeys in an old
Model T which held three or four barrels."
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
TOUCHES ON TIME ~~~ Wilma Morley Despain ~~~ Centerfield, Utah ~~~ First Place Essay ~~~ Saga of the Sanpitch
Like a mill dam opened, some of my prized memories of early childhood flood the beaches of my valley home today. Here in this, one of few, quiet places where the whine of freeway has not reached suburbia, I look into my valley and see simulated cowboys and Indians playing at pioneering. They do this one day a year to commemorate the day our brave settlers of so long ago reached this oasis, this haven from the persecution of mobs, of being driven from county to county and from state to state.
The day Brigham Young, a second Moses, looked down upon another valley and said, “This Is The Place! This is the place at last, where the devil cannot dig us out!” These loved ones, who have never really left us, needed more room, more land, and more products that could be supplied from new areas, new land, to complete the economy and provide jobs for all. This ‘second place’ for many of my own, this valley was not founded or settled by men, or Mormons, who felt they were “Holier than thou,” but by those who were ‘thriftier.’ There was no ‘placed domesticity’ waiting for them here, they had to build it and dig it out of a vast sage plain that had giant steps that fell from the mountains.
Then, as now, the compensations of just seeing ‘this place’ of wild beauty, of unbroken silence, of lilac mountain guards, with white shawls upon their big shoulders, paid enough then to those who endured until they found it. Like all pioneers, they had heard the clock of history strokes and they had counted the strokes, everyone!
There were told to ‘go,’ and they did just that, with little else but willing hearts and their newfound faith. Though the time of year was premature and in the dead of winter, they started their new homes at a sacrifice of lives and equipment and finances. They were cold, hungry, and in despair many times. Yes, some even dared to doubt, but they beat their doubts into plow shares and plowed them under the desert earth. They used dung of cattle and buffalo for fuel when snows were so deep that they could not log from nearby hills. Their adobes, made of prairie mud and sod of valley were called ‘desert marble,’ their hard-packed dirt floors were swept with corn husk brooms. Their floors, like their adobes, were concrete hard because they were baked by desert wind and sun.
They heard the fluting of the frogs and the whine of desert insects that rose from belly-high, lush grasses in summer. They heard the lonely howl of wolves and coyotes, and other animal predators, who also hunted to seek out a living in winter. The barbed wire did not ring their portioned-out land then, like protective moats. Fences were not used until land grabbers and homesteaders killed off most of the cowboys and turned them into ranches. Herds roamed at will and everything was shared.
Against the odds of nature they planted, they reaped and they succeeded. They learned to hold the water, after high places had released it from winter storage, then turned it into ditches and furrows to relieve the blistered earth, all this they did at a given time and given day for their water turns. They built on firm foundations from nearby logs and from stone from ‘soon to be’ holy, oolite hill. They built schools, Temple, churches, and homes until it became the most beautiful city in the world, to them, and not in just the West.
The courage of ordinary people built an extraordinary city in spite of all these hostile elements! Like Samson, in his blindness, they were of the blind who will not see any fault in what they love, and they forged ahead in spite of all the obstacles that they should have seen, and given into. This “second place”, this unbearably picturesque valley, came to me, not on a silver platter, but on hard-won land made livable to tools used by my own. The land was preordained to be kept hidden and saved for those who would pay the price.
I do have not many landmarks in my great-grandparent's world, they take me too far back and many have been lost to us through neglect. Such lovely homes and businesses, Temples built in Nauvoo and Kirtland. Land and homes in Far West and Quincy and many more things that had been theirs Wealthy, they left it all behind or had given it to the cause of freedom to worship as they chose. They left it to carry this newfound, precious gift of life and light to me and mine.
We say we are grateful for it. But can our gratitude for all the aforementioned be portrayed in one day a year, in parades where bands play, where marchers march with proud steps and stances and chests out like proud, strutting, pewter pigeons? It is well to honor them publicity, it is only proper that we do, and to sing and dramatize their brave deeds, but what of the writing of these stories, tributes, and eulogies to their fair names? What about the research required for their history and genealogy? It can be lost if told only by word and action. Can the precious rooms of my dear, little grandmother, Anna Maria, be staged, with proper props, in the pageant? These rooms she flavored as her rose-petaled sachet bags flavored her handkerchiefs and under things. Could it ever portray her poetry of lace, quilting, rug-making, beaded gloves, and expert seamstress sewing and tailoring? No, it must be written down, for those who come after, to cherish and remember.
Can the spotlight show her leaning figure as it bent above the flame to make food sweet for loved ones, even in later years with her fine old hand and pain-disabled knees? Can beauty queens on floats show their gentility, inherited and incurable, and given freely to others? She walked like a queen in her hand-sewn calico gowns, her crown was of ebony-streaked silver when I first remember her. She was wrinkled even then, like a folded bulb, but her dark eyes and gentle laughter kept one from noticing that she was not as young as she sounded. Can simulated trials and hard labor portray her fashioning buckskin gloves from deerskins tanned by her own hand? By her working salt and the animal’s brains into the bloody hides and then twisting and chewing until it was soft?
Can I, one of the keepers of the keys, one of the beneficiaries of this unique legacy, ever write enough or light an eternal flame that is worthy of their love, their sacrifices, that the years cannot consume? These treasured memories that hearts and minds should not jettison, were given to us by love’s largess. Neither time nor rust can destroy them if we will keep them alive by writing and telling about them.
Sometimes, in the placid sweetness of my life, and of the writing of and reading the dear pages about my forebears I wonder if they came west to join their newfound religion or to endure it? They smoothed the way and our duty and way are clear. We should celebrate, yes, but also teach reverence, respect, and humility for the ones who have gone before. I try again to establish the present and the present moves on because before I can say, “I am,” “I was!” The wind has magic in it, and the air is full of birdsong because I hear the sweet shower of notes from them as they rise, to greater heights. Magpies fly about and return, like ranging dogs, to check on me, for they are sure that I am lost too! The sky is so hurtfully blue, with the sun at the summer solstice, and the days still roll across from canyon to canyon. Being a woman of all seasons I should not cling to each one and dread seeing them creep back and forth and watch the sun slowly creep southward again with the fear of a cold blast. Why? Because even in winter months my valley can keep gulping sunsets that are literally fired on high.
In this desert Eden of mine where these same indescribable unmatched anywhere, western sunsets will be mirrored like fire in the same tumbling streams that mirror deer that gather to drink from the banks. My little Grandma, my Maternal Love, used to say, “The latch string is always out, but for times when we need to pull it inside for safety and for solitude and rest.” On a day like today, she left her valley, her mountains, a tired little lady, but very well content. She just pulled in the “latch string” and went to sleep. So let it be here in our valleys, that is where peace begins, at home, and may we, in all our grasping and getting remember what we have got, by preserving it, preparing for those to still come, with welcome on the mat and “latch string never pulled in!”
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| Wilma Morley Despain, 77, died March 9, 1992 in Bountiful, Utah. |
Sunday, April 23, 2023
Random Photos From the Mt. Pleasant Pyramid
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| L to R: Kendra Jenson Kami Jenson, Milinda Morley ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lida Jensen 80th Birthday |
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