James Wrathall (1828-1896) of Grantsville

• History of Charlotte Amelia Peck Marsh , written by her daughter, Charlotte May Marsh Burleigh.
  
  

  My mother, Charlotte Amelia Peck Marsh, was born in Hoytsville, Utah, on Saturday, January 23, 1864, to Martin Horton Peck and Charlotte Amelia Van Orden. Father was born in Lambeth, Surrey, England, on April 26, 1854, to James Marsh and Sarah Sutton. Father came to this country in 1864 at ten years of age. He walked most of the way across the plains and entered Salt Lake City on October 26, 1864, in Captain William Hyde's Company.
  
  Mother and father were married on November 20, 1878, and to this union were born nine children -- William Henry, Sarah Amelie (Sadie), Dorr, Martin Horton, Ross Alton, Eugenia (Jennie), Helen Marie, Scott Everett, and Charlotte May (Lottie).
  
  When they had five children, the man my father was working for, James Wrathall, in Grantsville, offered him a chance to get started in the sheep business. If father would herd his sheep for one year, he would give him every third lamb. Father talked it over with mother and they decided to do this. It meant hard work and frugal living, but it finally paid off and father became a very prosperous sheepman. Mother would go out with father in the summer in the sheep camp.
  
  

• This account by James Port (of Oakley, Utah) is taken from an article in the Oakley Herald, published in the Port Reunion website:
  
  

  [Born in Hampshire, England, in 1857], I left Liverpool the 24th of May, 1870, bound for Salt Lake, celebrated my birthday on the Atlantic ocean. I brought a sister and three children along; she had lost her husband in London. My mother and two younger sisters had come to Salt Lake a year or two previous. I arrived in Salt Lake City some time in June, no home and pretty badly broke. That meant go to work. I heard of a job on a ranch at Grantsville, 40 miles west from town. I hiked out there and got the job. That was my first experience at farming. I met up with some nice people there. I got a returning missionary to bring me a cornet from London and joined the brass band. It helped to keep me from getting homesick. I worked in and around Grantsville till the fall of 1881, when a man by the name of James Wrathall hired me to help move two bands of sheep out to this country [the Weber River valley, east of Salt Lake City]. (By the way, he married the sister I brought across.) We left with the sheep, where all winter on the desert, never saw a soul but our own bunch. This was quite different to living in London. After lambing and shearing on the Muddy, we came over the mountain down past the John Lind ranch.

• Life History of John Thomas Despain , written by his Granddaughter Mary Jane Clarke Leathem.
  
  

  Grandfather was offered a job cutting and hauling logs at Soldier Canyon, Utah. So, he picked up his family and moved them there. When the job was finished they moved to Grantsville, Utah where my Great-grandfather, James Harris Despain had settled. They joined him in logging activities in the mountains southwest of Grantsville.
  
  On July 22, 1882 a good part of the population of Grantsville, that were members of the LDS Church, felt a need to be re-baptized. Among the group were several members of my Grandfather's family who were baptized by Edward Hunter and confirmed by James L. Wrathall.