MARRIOTT COMMUNITY NEWS October 1, 1996 MOSES AND NANCY TRACY: FIRST SETTLERS During the spring of 1851, Marriott was an uncultivated region, flooded by the Weber and Ogden Rivers. Hard work awaited anyone who had the courage to settle the area. Pioneer Moses Tracy and his wife Nancy were the first to face the challenge. After having built three homes in Nauvoo, Moses and Nancy were forced westward with other Mormon pioneers in 1846. Along the route, they lost their eleven-year-old son. Unwilling to bury him in a blanket, as most trail burials were done, the family took the side boards from their wagon and made the young boy a coffin. They refrained from traveling further until 1850. On a spot somewhere near present-day West Seventeenth Street and the Weber River, the Tracy family built their log home. This home was later moved to the area which is now the entrance to the Defense Depot on Twelfth Street. Between 1852 and 1853 the family transferred the structure to Bingham Fort due to a fear of Indian attacks. The family again took apart the cabin and returned to Marriott in 1856. In 1857 news of Johnson's Army came to Utah. It was said that the soldiers were bragging of the terrible deeds they would do to the Mormons when they arrived. In an attempt to avoid a tragedy, most of the early settlers took their families south in 1858, as they had been told to do by church leaders. Moses and Nancy Tracy were among those who fled to Payson. They had no time to complete spring planting before they left. After hearing that Johnson's Army came in peace, they were the first to return to Marriott in August 1858. The journey and hardships proved too much for Moses, who died that same month. He had a lonely funeral procession of only three wagons, since most of Marriott's people had not yet returned from the south. 467