A HISTORY OF
ENOCH LEWIS AND JANE ANN MORGAN
Susan Duncan Clark, a granddaughter
My grandfather Enoch Lewis was the son of a Welsh collier. He was born in Pentre Estil
near Swansea, Wales, on February 2, 1819. His parents were John Lewis and Martha Evans
Lewis, and he was the second son of a family of seven boys and two girls. The girls and one boy,
Daniel, died in infancy. The older brother, John, was a Methodist deacon and was opposed to the
five younger brothers joining the Mormon Church. He stayed in Wales and died there some
years later, leaving several children and grandchildren.
Grandfather married Jane Ann Morgan and they had two children: John Lewis, born
February 18, 1848; and Martha Jane Lewis, my mother, born June 3, 1849.
My son Dale visited with both Grandfather's and Grandmother's relatives in Wales after
his mission for the L.D.S. Church in Germany, and again in 1944 when, as a naval officer, he
was stationed in Great Britain.
The following is taken from a letter he wrote me then:
June 2, 1944. Dear Mother: This morning I returned from
the house near Swansea where Grandmother Duncan was born. The
building has, of course, been changed--there is a slate roof
instead of straw--but the newer home rests on the foundation
of the old. There is a lot in the back of the house, in the
corner of the property there used to be a well and it was here
that Enoch Lewis and Jane "Glwyd Wen" Morgan Lewis were
baptized. The Well has disappeared now and near it is a small
family air raid shelter made of corrugated iron and earth.
The natives remember that there was a spring there and that
water cress grew on the spot--a remnant of the old well.
From the middle of the road in front of the house where the
children were playing ball (their names are Lewis, Morgan,
Evans, Davis) I could see out into the bay. It was a nice
view that Grandmother used to longingly remember. The house
stood on a hill a few miles back from the harbor.--It is
amazing to think of the continuity in a little place like
that. Descendants of the Lewis' still live on the site of
the home where Enoch and Alfred's Auntie Jane started their
married life.--As I went back to catch the train we passed
the lot where John Morgan lived and where his children Jane
Ann, Sally, Mary, David etc. spent their youth. This lot
had a white gate. The Welsh is Glywd Wen (gate white).
Alfred told me he had talked to an old timer about ninety
who remembered that Enoch was known as being outstanding
in politics and religion, and was a fine public speaker.
He had a Welsh nickname "Little Saint." Alfred Morgan was
raised in a house near the white gate.
Grandfather and Grandmother were baptized April 28, 1849, by Thomas Roberts, and in
April 1856 prepared to leave for America. Grandfather's mother died July 19, 1840, and his
father May 9, 1854. His brother Thomas worked in the coal mines and was killed in 1851.
Grandfather and Grandmother, their two children, and Grandfather's three younger
brothers, David, William J., and Elias, left Liverpool, England, April 18, 1856, on the ship
"Sanders Curling." They reached Boston May 23, 1856, and started to cross the plains June 23,
1856, in the Edward Bunker Company of three hundred. (Taken from David Lewis' Journal.)
They arrived in Salt Lake City on October 2, 1856.
Reviewing my grandfather objectively in retrospect, I see him as a great and good man.
Good with all the potentiality of greatness. His leadership was manifested, his brothers have
said, among the Collier companions, and when the handcart company was being organized he
was made captain of his group.
The Lewis boys, as was the custom of that time and place, were put in collieries to work
at an early age without the advantage of an education. Grandfather was intellectually ambitious
both for himself and for us. "Get an 'eddication' little ones, get an 'eddication'-- the Lord don't
want us to be donkeys," I have heard him say many times. Years after he came to Utah he bought
himself some first grade school books and taught himself to read. I see him now, sitting by the
stove in his arm chair, reading aloud to Grandmother from the newspapers or from one of his
many church books that stood nearby.
Grandfather was a market gardener. He and his brother David settled in Bountiful, while the two
younger brothers lived in Provo and Spanish Fork. I remember the bubbling little stream that ran
just outside the back door. We had to step over it to get to the green shoots of his tomato plants
in the spring. We liked to stand in that back yard and look towards the canyon about three or
four miles distant. Occasionally we would see Uncle John's folks coming down the bench from
his sawmill in the canyon.
Grandfather was a very retiring man, but I do recall his earnest testimonies borne each
Testimony Sabbath. He was ordained a Seventy on January 23, 1861, by Augustus Farnham in
the Twenty-ninth Quorum of Seventies.
During the diphtheria epidemic of 1878 and 1879 Grandfather was called on at all hours
of the day and night to visit the sick. As a precaution he kept an extra suit of clothes in a shed in
the upper part of the lot. This he would don to visit the ill, changing and bathing before coming
near us children. We were never stricken.
On October 20, 1871, Grandfather returned to Wales on a mission for the L.D.S. Church,
arriving home again June 10, 1873. He brought back with him about forty names, births, deaths,
etc., of relatives of the Lewis, Evans, and Morgan families, and I find in his temple record
book that he and Grandmother did the temple work for them in the Logan Temple between 1888
and 1896. ,
My grandmother, Jane Ann Morgan Lewis, was born December 3, 1824, in Llandsi,
Carmarthen, Wales. She was the daughter of John Morgan and Mary Jones Morgan. She had
left her native when a young married woman, with her husband and two small children, leaving
forever so much that was dear to her--the parents, sisters, and brothers she was never
to see again. I have heard Mother tell of her being hidden by her doting young aunts when they
were about to leave, hoping that it would delay them.
I am sure that Grandmother always had a longing for her home and loved ones, but I
never heard her express a regret. In her later years I did her correspondence for her and some
writing to them on my own account. Grandmother never learned to read or write and I remember
how eagerly she would listen to a letter read to her from those dear ones so far away.
Grandfather was kind and considerate, but I don't believe he ever fully sensed her utter longing
for her home folks across the sea.
Grandfather had always been so grateful for the "rare" privilege of "coming to Zion."
Once here, he couldn't understand one feeling anything but joyful. I remember telling him at one
time how I sympathized with a woman who had recently come to our town from England and
was suffering the pangs of homesickness until she became ill, and he chided me, "Tut' Tut' little
girl; what a great blessing and privilege is hers."
Grandmother would sometimes tell us of her life in Wales. It seems she lived on a slight
hill where she could look off into the distance towards the sea, only five miles away. She was a
little woman with flashing near-black eyes. Grandfather was her lover and she his sweetheart all
the days of their lives. They must have been an attractive young couple, she so sparkling and full
of life, and he, with his high and unalterable standards, still had a streak of humor that made
him an interesting personality.
I used to like to hear Grandmother tell us of crossing the plains with the handcart
company. Her stories made me happy and sad by turns. I liked to hear that mother, then a little
girl of six, ran along by the sides of handcarts and would sometimes be picked up and given a
ride for a short distance to rest her weary legs; and of Grandfather's heroism, for in
Grandmother's rehearsals he was always a hero. Knowing Grandfather, I could believe that he
would do more than his part while fording the streams to assist others and in other ways to do
more than his share. One night she told us he was late getting into camp. His brothers, getting
worried, went back to meet him. They met him coming on his hands and knees to ease his poor,
chafed and blistered feet. When they arrived in Utah, they were so near starved they had to be
put on rations. "Your Grandfather carried some of the company supplies," said my Grandmother,
"but never would he hand out to his own anything out of turn."
When we went to Grandmother's after Father's tragic death in February 1878, she and
Grandfather moved into the south part of their house and we took over the north part--an extra
large room with an adjoining summer kitchen. Our bedrooms were in an upstairs over
Grandmother's part of the house. It must have been hard on my grandparents, but I never heard a
hint or a complaint from them.
Grandmother had only two children, but she and Grandfather raised from infancy the
baby girl of Uncle David Lewis, whose wife had died during the child's infancy. Mother and
Uncle John were married at the time and I never witnessed greater filial affection than existed
between the three--my grandparents and Lizzie. It was, I suppose, that Lizzie, the infant, had
come into their unselfish lives when they were older and had more time to devote to her.
Jonetta had been born at Grandmother's after Father's death. A few years later, after we
had moved back to our own home, Uncle John's wife. Aunt Villa, died leaving two children
whom Grandmother again took into her home and heart until Uncle's remarriage. It seemed a
perfectly natural thing for her to do. I never heard her refer to it and, though I was married and
had children of my own before Grandmother passed away, never once did it occur to me to tell
my grandparents what a noble part I felt they had played in life or express my appreciation of
their unselfishness.
One day, coming home from her Relief Society "Beat," she had some apples that had
been given her on her rounds. We sat around the stove enjoying them and she told us of the first
apple she had after coming to Utah. It was just one red apple. "To make it go further," she said,
she had cut it in four sections and made four apple dumplings, one apiece for them. Food was
scarce, she said, and she used to go to the benchland to dig sego lily bulbs to piece out their
frugal meals. I have dug and eaten the sego bulbs just out of curiosity and thought them ____.
Grandmother wore glasses only for close work--knitting the long white woolen socks for
Grandfather and her own stockings of the same warm material. When she needed new "specs" as
she called them, she would go to our general country store and try on a pair without the aid or
expense of a specialist.
The Gila flowers that grew by the south wall of their home, the house that still stands in
Bountiful, was reminiscent of her early home. Grandfather had brought the seeds from her
garden in Wales when he came from his mission. Their deep gold and brown color, velvety
texture, and heavy fragrance is something to remember. Grandmother nursed them tenderly.
They were more than just flowers to her, they were a part of her home transplanted.
Grandfather died May 5, 1901, after being ill about a month with asthma. Grandmother
died May 5, 1912.
