Mormons

Primary Source

The April sun at daybreak cast long, lonesome shadows across William Grant’s hometown village, Willenhall, Staffordshire, in England. A 28-year-old convert of sixteen years, he clutched the cornet that had won him prominence in the brass band, checked his pockets for hard-earned savings, and turned toward Liverpool and the ship that would take him, his wife, and their three children to Zion.

“I took one long look Back, … Thousands of Circumstances Crowding my mind of things in the past,” he wrote, “but they were soon forgotton in thoughts for the great future. Some 9000 Miles of Travel was here before us.”

William would live out his life in American Fork, Utah, a bandleader, choirmaster, music store owner, and part-time farmer. When he arrived in 1866, he owned only the belongings he had packed into a small cart in Willenhall. “Economy was the motto,” he remembered. “We denied Ourselves all Luxury and barely took the Necessaries of life.” 1 They had not even been able to afford cooking utensils for the ocean voyage. Like thousands and tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints who repeated the process between 1840 and the end of the century, William Grant sacrificed property, friends, family, and familiar surroundings because of his faith in the principle of the gathering.