Page -2- BAP address at Slaterville Meeting House Dedication most daring, God fearing people was reached. A people willing to endure the hardships, and incident to the settlement of a country, uninhabited, except by Indians and wild animals. The settlement was first in and around Salt Lake. Later, in the year 1852, was the arrival of the first settlers in Slaterville. Thomas McCann, Thomas Virgo, and John Phelps. These men with their families, battled with the hardships, until the following year, 1853, when Richard Slater, Jeremiah Bateman, John Knight, Sen., Alexander Kelly, Stephen Perry, Sen., Thomas Corbett, and others came. It is well to mention here, that Richard Slater, while at Winter Quarters, (now Florence Nebraska) the year he started immigration westward, 1846, was summoned with 500 others, to go and assist the United States in their trouble with Mexico. Hence seven years later (1853), he settled in Slaterville; which was named after him, for what reason is not learned at this time; though his being a liberal minded and generous man. These families, though forming quite a colony in numbers, found it hard to make a living, and more difficult to keep peace with the Indians. In the fall of 1853, they were compelled, by the unpeaceful actions of the savages, to move east (of what is now the short line track) to a place called "Bingham Fort", called so because of this means the settlers provided to protect themselves. The settlers remained here for a while, returning to Slaterville again in 1854. This year the crops were devastated by grasshoppers (locusts). There was almost a famine at hand. Shortage of grain and hay caused much suffering among the people and animals. In the following year (1855), many new settlers came and joined them, sharing the same scanty living; not much more than existing; for the prospects in crop production, which appeared promising during the earlier part of the season, were blighted. The grasshoppers came as in the previous year, and swept everything. Again, another hard winter was staring them in the face; but through the untiring efforts of a frontiersman, who braved the battle of life with starvation, they were again delivered through a cheerless, dreary winter. The hardships they were called to endure, the suffering they passed through, made them more humble, and more united. No matter how hard, how difficult it was to make a living, they were true to their religious convictions. They met regularly in a worshiping capacity, and December 25, 1855, Thomas Richardson, Sen., was appointed by Bishop Bingham, to preside over the meetings here, this being only a branch. In 1856, there was a serious drouth; this with the failure of crops the two previous years, made the country appear more desolate and devastated than ever. There was nothing, (not even as much as the previous year), to warrant a more comfortable winter. Everything pointed to another season of privation and suffering. The winter came, one of the most severe ever known in Utah. Hundreds of animals died of starvation. Men, women, and children suffered alike for the want of food. The following season of 1857, the people saw fit to establish 389