George Glover's Youth

 

Excerpts of GEORGE GLOVER'S Autobiography

Completed 30 September 1907

     I was born at Barrington, Somersetshire, England, on 2 February 1846, the oldest son of James and Mary Rowswell Glover.  I had three brothers and six sisters.

     I lived at Barrington until about seven years of age when the family moved to Glastonbury, England, my father working at his trade of blacksmith.

     In 1855, when I was nine, my father moved to Victoria, Monmouthshire, Wales, and the family followed a year later.  It was here the family heard the gospel and I was baptized 29 March 1857 at the age of eleven. 

     At the age of twelve years, I worked in the coal mines, earning five shillings per week and later on I worked in the Iron Stone Mines at Victoria and attended night school.

     In 1866 when I was twenty years old the family immigrated to America, starting from Liverpool, England, departing May 30th, sailing on the "Arkwright."  We arrived on 6 July 1866, and not having sufficient means to proceed on our journey to Utah, the family journeyed to Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where my father obtained work as a blacksmith at Mill Creek, a short distance from Pottsville.  I and my brothers worked in the coal mines at which place I had several narrow escapes from death.

     The following year we moved to McKeesport where I worked in an iron plate mill and then in a railroad blacksmith shop.

     In August of 1868, at the age of twenty-two, I sent money to New York to obtain a ticket from Pittsburgh to the terminus in Wyoming.  I received my ticket but the church agent in New York failed to notify me at what date to meet the company of Saints, so I lost the money ($25) and the company, so I started out alone, never having left home before in my life.  I paid my way to Omaha, and then obtained employment from the Union Pacific R.R. to go to Red Desert and was one of the first to work on that section at that place, each man taking his rifle to work each day to defend himself from the Indians.

     In the latter part of October, I started again westward for Utah, and after many hardships arrived in Salt Lake City on 3 Nov 1868.  I slept the first night in a haystack on the Eighth Ward Square where the joint county and city building now stands.  The next day I found my sister, Sarah Ann Cunlick, who had emigrated from Wales several years before the rest of the family started. 

     I worked that winter for the Union Pacific Railroad and that fall

 assisted the rest of my family to come to Salt Lake from McKeesport.  They arrived 6 October 1869.  I then worked at the Silver Mines in Cottonwood Canyon, obtaining better wages at that work.