When I moved to Salt Lake City in 1977 one of the first things I did on a day off was walk over to the Pioneer Monument on Main Street and South Temple. I wanted to see if there were any Luces on the list of the pioneers. The list is short, just the very…
Category: Genealogy
Stephen Luce in Nauvoo, 1840
Stephen Luce must have been in Nauvoo in April 1840. I’m happy to have that piece nailed down. The confusion here is from an index card in the Early Church History Information file. It says Stephen Luce was ordained a Seventy on 9 April 1840 by Wilford Woodruff. That can’t be right. Woodruff was on his…
Stephen Luce on a Jury
Stephen Luce (1801-1872) served on a grand jury in Salt Lake City in 1858. There’s an interesting story there. This was at the end of the Utah War. Stephen had served in the re-activated Nauvoo Legion. He appears on a 20 July 1857 muster roll as Sgt. Stephen Luce, 3rd Platoon, Company B, of the…
Utah Freighters’ Last Haul
The following is a transcript of a 1910 article about Utah freighters, including Bill Luce. Photos and photo captions are omitted. The year 1868 was known throughout this whole Rocky Mountain region as the big railroad year. The screech of the Union Pacific locomotive was heard upon the plains, and the great road was soon…
A Distant Cousin visits Vinalhaven
When our Luce ancestors converted to Mormonism, they were living in Vinalhaven, Maine. Nowadays Vinalhaven means South Fox Island, but in those days it was both the north and south islands. The Luces came from North Fox Island, then part of Vinalhaven, now called North Haven. A few days ago I came across a brief…