Jedediah Morgan Grant
1853-1933

Jedediah Morgan Grant the second was a Pioneer. He was born on the 9th of October 1853. He was the son of Jedediah Morgan Grant and Rosetta Robison Grant.

Anthony W. Ivins remembers that when he and Morgan were children they would ride stick horses and almost think they were real. Anthony Ivins also remembers going up into Davis County and spending a week or a few days with Hyrum (son of Susan Noble and Jeddy Grant) and Morgan on the farm and helping them with the hay, and going down in the bottoms and hunting geese. Morgan and Anthony were a good deal alike, Hyrum did not care so much about those geese, but Morgan and Anthony had the hunting instinct, and Anthony can remember sometimes when it almost rained geese down in those fields, when they would lay there together as they passed over them.

Morgan endured many of the hardships of a pioneer life as he grew to manhood in the Salt Lake Area. In his early twenties he married Lucy Fackrell of Bountiful, Utah on the 29th of May 1876 in the Salt Lake Endowment House. For about six years the young couple lived in Woods Cross near Bountiful, Utah. Then they with their three children moved to Randolph, Rich County, Utah to help settle the area. It was pioneering; Morgan's wife Lucy stood by him and helped him to build the first home, shared his hardships, and encouraged him day by day.

For almost twenty years they pioneered in Rich County, and then there was another new country opened further east. It was in the spring of 1900, that Morgan was called by President Lorenzo Snow, to take his family and go help colonize the Big Horn Basin. The church sent a colony under the direction of Apostle A.O. Woodruff to this new country in the Big Horn Basin. There were groups of men, many of them young men, a few middle aged, who left Morgan County, Rich County, and some of the other counties near by, and drove their teams, through canyon defiles, across bridgeless streams, out into a new country in Wyoming.

There were about 500 people who went to the Big Horn Basin in 1900 and quite a few more followed the next two years. The Grant family at that time consisted of Morgan-46, Lucy-47, Morgan Jr.-20, Joe-17, Henry-15, Estella-13, Jem-12, Lita-11, Austin-8, Wesley-7 and Lucy's youngest brother William Henry Fackrell-39. (Their oldest daughter Alfa-23 joined them a year later. She began teaching school in Lovell the fall of 1901.)

The Grant family left their home on the 27th of April 1900. They went as far as Hams Fork, a small river that empties into the Bear River above Cokeville. There the group that left Randolph was organized into a company, just as the pioneers were that crossed the plains in 1847, with a captain, Alfred Nebeker, a Chaplain, Morgan Grant, and a hostler, George A. Peart. (Family histories report that the family did not travel with the assigned company. They had some difficulty and ended up traveling alone.) Apostle Woodruff was there to do the organizing. There were several other companies, from other parts of Utah, organized at the same place. 

 About three and a half weeks later they arrived in the Big Horn Basin on the Byron flats, they were greeted with a barren land; many of the Grant children describe the place as being just 'sand and salt sage brush.' They recall that they could hardly get a meal prepared that wasn't filled with sand. On very hot days when they saw a heavy cloud gather in the southwest, they sometimes thought maybe they would get a heavy rainstorm, but when it got there it would be just dust and they would quickly put everything away in a food box. If it was just a whirlwind and they were eating they would cover everything and wait until it passed before they could finish their meal.

It was necessary for a canal to be built to irrigate the land. The Grants along with many others lived in a ditch camp for the first four or five months as the Sidon canal was being built. There they lived in tents or what ever they could make do with.

By the end of the summer the colony was running out of money, a source of income was needed, the people fasted and prayed. And then an answer to their prayers came; the railroad needed help building grade for their new branch of the railroad into the Big Horn Basin. Many of the men of the colony went and helped build the grade. As winter was about to set in the people left the ditch camp and went and built homes for their families.

Because the Grant family had many boys they were asked to go down the river and rent a farm with lots of hay on it and raise hay for the colony. The Grant family rented a farm three miles east of Lovell from Mr. J.J. Marshall, the surveyor for the canal. A few years later the Grant family bought the farm, which from that time on became their home.

As the need for hay was no longer needed for the colony after they built the canal, Morgan decided to explore other crops to grow. Morgan was the first man, in the Big Horn Basin to raise Sugar Beets.

In 1905 Morgan and his family began learning how to grow sugar beets. Because of all the work involved in loading and unloading and hauling the sugar beets to the railroad to be transported to Billings, Morgan decided it would be easier to have a sugar beet factory in Lovell. But to have a factory you had to have so many acres of sugar beets. So Morgan turned his whole farm over to sugar beets and he began working on getting other farmers to turn more of their land over to sugar beets. And finally his dream was fulfilled the Great Western Sugar Company built a Sugar Factory in Lovell in 1916.

Morgan was not only involved in the Sugar Beet industry, but for a time he went into the dairy business and had a cheese factory. By hard work and the sweat of his brow Morgan was beginning to show progress he was beginning to prosper.

 In 1918 the flu epidemic hit the Lovell area, Morgan's wife Lucy went form home to home caring for the sick and then she too succumbed to the flu. On the 12th of January 1919 she left this earthly life. Morgan sorrowed greatly over the loss of his wife. Lucy was a hard worker and believed in politeness. Two of her favorite sayings are "Idle hands are the devils tools, if you haven't anything to do gather sticks and scatter them again; and Doors like these, open with ease, to very little keys, two of these are, I Thank You and If You Please."

Not long after the death of his wife Morgan moved to a brick house in town, while his son J. Morgan Jr. ran the farm. Morgan succumbed to the charms of Mrs. Pheobe Steer Pidcock, a widower with two daughters; they were married on the 1st of April 1920. This marriage was not successful and lasted but a short time. In 1922 Morgan sold his farm to his son Morgan Jr. Morgan lived in the Big Horn Basin for about twenty-five years, after which time he returned to his place of birth, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

 In addition to his activities as a farmer and rancher, Morgan took an active part in church work. He became a first counselor in the Shoshone branch in 1900. Later he was appointed presiding Elder in the Lovell branch and at the organization of the Lovell Ward he became first counselor in the bishopric. He was the first stake clerk of Big Horn stake, and later served several years on the stake high council. In 1919 Elder James E. Talmage, of the Council of the Twelve ordained him patriarch of the Big Horn stake. Morgan spent the remainder of his days in the Salt Lake Area.

Following several weeks of illness Morgan's spirit left this life to once again be reunited with his wife Lucy. Morgan was 79 years of age when he departed from this life on the 11th of January 1933 in a Salt Lake Hospital. During his funeral services Elder David O. McKay spoke on how he had been impressed with J. Morgan Grant (II) as a pioneer and a home-builder. Elder McKay spoke of Morgan as a pioneer in developing the west and as a pioneer in the church, and in looking after the spirituality of his family.

Elder McKay and Pres. A.W. Ivins spoke of Morgan's many sterling qualities, of his honesty and frankness, his kindly spirit, his sincerity, integrity, and fair-dealing. Pres. Ivins spoke of Morgan as a man who made his way up by the sweat of his own brow, made it honorably and uprightly, until he was among the foremost of farmers and ranchers with whom he was associated. Jedediah Morgan Grant (II) was laid to rest beside his wife Lucy Fackrell Grant in the Lovell Cemetery, Lovell, Big Horn, Wyoming.

Taken from:

Life story of Lucy Fackrell Grant

Life History of Joe Grant

Funeral Service of J. Morgan Grant (II)

Obituary of J.M. Grant (II)

Story of Alfa Grant Showalter