Morgan Pioneer History Bind> Us 'together Biographies of Hyrum Phillips and Maria Lovina Durrant Phillips Hyrum Phillips, a son of Edward Webb Phillips and Ann Drinkwater Phillips, was born on December 27,1851, at Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England. His father was a canal boatman, traveling to many parts of England, including large cities like Liverpool, Birmingham and London. The family lived much of the time on the boat, hence very little schooling was had for the children. Hyrum was baptized May 1,1864, and confirmed the next day by his father. On June 2,1864, the family set sail for America, from London on the packet ship Hudson with a thousand other Latter-Day Saint immigrants and arrived at New York about July 4th. The company was in the charge of John Kay and George Halliday. After unloading in New York, they came by boat up the Hudson to Albany, then by rail to St. Joseph, Missouri, via Canada. Leaving St. Joseph in Captain Warren Snow's wagon train, they traveled to the Platte River and from there Hyrum worked his way across the plains to Utah with the McCam & Metcalf Freighting Company. By the time the company reached Fort Bridger, the weather was very cold and, as a night herdsman, Hyrum nearly froze to death. He arrived in Great Salt Lake City on November 1,1864; the rest of the family arrived shortly after. Hyrum lived with them part of the time, and part of the time he hired out to the neighbors herding cows and doing chores. In 1868 when Hyrum was seventeen, he moved with his family to Porterville, Morgan County, Utah, where his father had purchased a farm from Milton A. Musser. When not working on the farm, Hyrum spent his time at saw mills and railroad camps, and was present at Promontory Point at the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869. On June 21, 1875, he was ordained an elder by Elias Smith and the same day was married to Maria Lovina Durrant in the Salt Lake Endowment House by Wilford Woodruff. They built and lived in a one room log cabin in by the creek in Porterville, about a mile from Uncle Tom Phillips. During thunderstorms, she became so frightened she would take her baby, Will, and run to Uncle Tom's to be near someone. 'Their first child, Hyrum William, was bom April 7, 1876, and their second child, Charles Edward, was bom June 25,1877, at the home of her father, James Durrant. In these first years, the winter brought sometimes from two to four feet of snow, making it necessary for them to travel about a mile from their cabin to the main road on foot. During the spring thaw, the boulders coming down the creek seemed to vibrate the cabin on the bank. In 1878, with two small children, an ox team and wagon, a small herd of sheep, they left for Curlew Valley, Idaho. Maria drove the ox team and Hyrum and Tom drove the sheep. After about a week they arrived in Idaho, where the last they saw of the sheep was their backs bobbing up and down as they ran over a hill. In the spring of 1878 they moved to St. Thomas, Oneida County, Idaho, situated about eight miles northeast of Snowville, Box Elder County, Utah. Here they homesteaded land and build another one-room log cabin. About 1884 a branch of the church was organized and he was chosen as presiding elder over the ten or twelve families that made up the little Mormon hamlet. With poor land and scanty water, farming did not prove successful. So in the fall of 1886, after eight years of hardship, they moved back to Porterville with five more children, and built a two- room log house on a small farm purchased from Thomas Phillips. Here two more children were born, making nine living and one buried at Snowville. Back in Porterville, he again followed the occupation of a farmer. With others, he purchased and ran the first self-binder in the community, and was teamster on the horse-powered threshing machine. He served as Horticultural Inspector of Morgan County for a number of years. On December 6,1899, he was ordained a seventy by George Teasdale and went on a mission to the Southwestern States, traveling on foot in Texas, Arkansas, Indian Territory (Oklahoma) without purse or script, depending upon the goodness of the residents for food or lodging. Another missionary, Amos Dearden, of Henefer, Utah, said that Hyrum always