Elizabeth Thompson Groesbeck's last year. 1883.

This concluding post on Elizabeth Thompson Groesbeck’s life is continued from here.

1883 was the last year of Elizabeth’s life, and on her August 16th birthday that year she turned sixty-three.  Earlier in the year Elizabeth hired Mary Hansen, an exceptional dressmaker,  to fashion a dress for her to wear to the April 11, 1883 (NFS) wedding of Priscilla Paul Jennings to William W. Riter. Elizabeth and her daughter Mellie assisted dressmaker Mary Hansen make the exquisite dress that is described and pictured here.

Elizabeth assisted her daughters and watched over their children in their parents absence. In June of 1883, Mellie accompanied her husband, John Morgan, in his travel to Manassa, Colorado and it’s very likely their children were left in the Groesbecks care. The children were with their grandparents in October when Mellie accompanied John on a month long trip to the Eastern States and the Southern  States Mission.

John Morgan wrote in his journal in early October that he had dinner at the Groesbecks and there discussed plans to travel east with his wife, Mellie, to visit his family and the Southern States Mission. It appeared that travel plans included brother-in-law John A. Groesbeck and his wife Ann.  

John and Mellie left their children home with the Groesbecks and a couple of weeks into the trip John wrote that he’d received a telegram from Nicholas informing him that all was well at home with their children.

That October daughter Josephine also needed her mother ’s help. She left her five-year-old daughter Sara in Elizabeth’s care.  In 1882 Josephine’s husband, Apostle John Henry Smith, was called to preside over the European Mission. A year later [1883] “he sent for Josephine to take charge of the mission home in Liverpool [England]. She left Sarah [born 1878], her first child, with her parents and took Nicholas [born 1881] with her. She had been in England only a few months when her mother died 28 December 1883. Six months later, 29 June 1884, her father passed away. With the death of both parents she felt she had to return to the little daughter she had left behind with her folks. She arrived in Utah August 11, 1883 [84]”.

On November 20, 1883 John and Mellie arrived back in Salt Lake. John wrote in his journal, "Arrived at Salt Lake at 6 a.m. and drove to brother G's [Groesbeck] for breakfast. Had dinner there and in the p.m. brought wife and children down home."  On December 16 he wrote that he "visited Sister Groesbeck who is quite sick."                 

I've gathered and posted information on Great Great Grandmother Groesbeck’s passing that can be read here and here and here. 

Elizabeth Thompson Groesbeck 1868-1872

Continued from here
It is very possible that Mellie met John Morgan before she enrolled in The Morgan Commercial College in January, 1868. John roomed in Serepta Heywood’s boarding house across the road from the Groesbeck home. According to the early Salt Lake Valley mock-up in the Church Museum, an orchard separated the two properties, and both households were members of the 17th Ward.

John Hamilton Morgan and a friend arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1866 and delivered a large herd of cattle they had contracted to drive from Kansas City to Salt Lake. They had to wait it out a week or longer in Salt Lake to receive payment for their work. John liked Salt Lake so much that he stayed.

Following his Civil War service (1861-1865), John attended and graduated from Eastman’s Commercial College in New York. Salt Lake didn’t have a commercial college. John recognized a need and an opportunity. With encouragement from Robert L. Campbell, Territorial Superintendent of Schools, John developed and established The Morgan Commercial College. In January 1867 John opened his school in a small downtown Salt Lake Building. On November 26, 1867 Robert L. Campbell baptized John Morgan into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

By January 1868 John moved his school to larger quarters he rented from Nicholas Groesbeck at 257 South Main Street. In exchange for rent, Nicholas sent some of his children to John Morgan’s school. Fifteen-year-old Mellie, was included--however, not for long--because Elizabeth needed her help at home. 

Family history tells us that Elizabeth was pleased to have John Morgan call on her daughter, Mellie, and encouraged their courtship. Elizabeth’s home and graciousness beckoned to John, perhaps reminding him of his own mother and comfortable home. Mellie played the piano, and John wrote his mother earlier how he felt about the warmth and attractions he found in an Alabama home. Perhaps he found the same at the Groesbecks.

[December 21, 1863 letter from Maysville, Alabama battlefield] “There is a pleasant little village close to camp and I have formed some pleasant acquaintances there. There is one particular friend, a Mrs. Hall. It appears more like home than anywhere else that I have been in the South. I have passed several pleasant evenings there and the little Yankee soldier boy always receives a kind and polite invitation to call again. Well, besides that, Miss Jennie Hall and her piano are not the least of the attractions of this kind family.”

John and Mellie were sealed in the Endowment House on October 24, 1868, and that night the Groesbecks held a reception for them at their home.

According to the 17th Ward Relief Society records for the February 20, 1868 meeting, Mrs. J. Morgan was among the members listed.

Elizabeth's son John Amberson was married to Ann Dilworth Bringhurst on September 27, 1871. The following year Elizabeth and her 14-year-old daughter Josephine, traveled with her son Nicholas Harmon and his wife Rhoda, to New York City and Maysville, Kentucky. Their they visited Elizabeth's father, John Amberson Thompson and Elizabeth's oldest sister, Mary Thompson Dunlap. After their six-seven week trip, they returned to Salt Lake in August of 1872.

Note: the January 2012 DUP (Daughters of Utah Pioneers) lesson is The Pioneer School Room. Pages 208-212 discuss the "Morgan College," which I will post here soon.


Thank you to John Morgan descendant, cousin Gail H., for this additional picture of John Hamilton and Mellie Groesbeck Morgan at the time of their marriage.

Bessie Morgan Rex Part 2

Today the Assembly Hall on Temple Square is nestled beneath the rising City Creek skyscraper south of it in Salt Lake City, Utah. Bessie Morgan’s graduation exercises were held here when she graduated from the eighth grade [about 1906]. J. Spencer Cornwall played the organ for their march. He was just a fourteen-year-old boy playing the pipe organ and she was always so impressed.

In 1906, when Bessie was 15-years old, the Y.L. M. I. A officers and teachers remembered her at Christmas time. And Bryan Avenue was still York Street.

The R. K. Polk Directories for Salt Lake City list Bessie as follows.

1907 bds 359 York, student U of U
1908 bds 359 Bryan Ave, student U of U
1909 b 359 Bryan Ave, Stenog Warm Springs Foundary
1910 b 359 Bryan Ave, Steno State Dairy and Food Commr
1911 b 359 Bryan Ave, Stenog W V Tel Co
1912 b 359 Bryan Ave, Steno MST & T Co

Bessie became a stenographer. She told her children she worked in Governor William Spry’s office [republican governor 1909-1916].

During the summer of 1910 Bessie’s brother, John [Jack] Hamilton Morgan and cousin Glenn Smith [John Henry and Josephine Groesbeck Smith’s son] worked for the Rex Brothers in their Randolph, Utah hay fields. In 1911 brothers, Percy Harold and John Oseland Rex, visited their friend Jack Morgan in Salt Lake City while attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Say Saints’ June Conference at the Tabernacle. During their visit Bessie met Percy. She always called him Perce. On their first date they went to Saltaire where they had supper, bowled, and danced.

After Percy returned to Randolph he and Bessie corresponded. That fall he invited her to Randolph for a visit. She traveled by train to Evanston, Wyoming and Percy met her at the station with his horse and buggy. They spent the night in separate hotel rooms in Evanston. And the next day he returned to Randolph with Bessie, in his horse drawn buggy. They must have enjoyed her 8-10 day stay. He and his brother Oseland came to Salt Lake City to attend the LDS High School that fall and boarded for a time with Bessie’s mother, Sister Morgan.

Bessie and Percy were married in the Salt Lake Temple on June 12, 1912. The newlyweds lived first on the Ranch [Uncle Sam Rex’s] twelve miles north of Randolph. As remote as Randolph might appear, Bessie’s cousin Elizabeth [Bess] Smith [John Henry and Josephine Groesbeck Smith’s daughter] was already living in Randolph. She had married Percy’s older brother Samuel earlier that same year

I took the picture of the Assembly Hall this week. Bessie Morgan postcards from Helen Rex Frazier collection. R. K. Polk Directories, Utah State Historical Society. History, Descendants, and Ancestry of William Rex & Mary Elizabeth Brough of Randolph, Utah, compiled by Ronald D. Rex, 1999, pgs. 221, 266, 267, picture of horse & buggy p. 113.