The Hadwen Family of Lancashire

I wish to pay tribute to him by summing up his life's activities as I can recall them from memory, personal contact, and his progressive ambitions. Quoting from the speech of Harmon Sowards at the funeral. "he was born July 14, 1859 at Salt Lake City, a son of Nelson Merkley Sr. and Sarah Jane Sanders.

Early in his life, the family moved to Cedar Valley or Cedar Fort, Utah, and in the year 1879 came to Ashley Valley with his elder brother, Nelson Jr.

They located homesteads on the most choice land of the valley. As one travels west from the center of Vernal to the Central Canal, and then turns north he is travelling on the line which separates the two homesteads, George D. on left, Nelson on the right.

He married Phebe Ann Hacking of Cedar Fort Oct. 10, 1881. I first saw him a few days after we arrived in 1883. I being a lad of 10 years. By then he and his young wife were getting their first lessons in home building.

They lived in a dirt-roofed cabin with the chink and daub finish, as was the style then. While in my plastic age I heard him give his first orginal maxim to a friend in a crowd of threshers. It was the custom that the merchants "carry' a farmer through the season, and when threshing time came the merchant would send a wagon to the machine and collect his store bill. Sometimes he would take take all the farmer had. George D. told this young man that that was a poor way to do, saying that nobody has or ever will do that way with him. This young farmer then asked him how he made it the first year without going in debt. Where-upon Mr. Merkley answered. "We starved the first year."

From the first year there was always wheat in this man's bin.

The first time I saw George D. Merkley, was at his home out at the yards, where was a man from Dry Fork who had brought him a load of cedar posts, and was sacking up wheat in payment for the posts. As a young inquistive boy I ask him what he was going to do with all these great piles of posts and poles. Said he "I am going to fence my farm. I make my wheat fence my farm."

I also saw around his yards some very nice cattle, horses and large fat hogs. He was ·beginning to develop inwardly those potentialities with which all men are possessed which in time determine one's greatness. I believe him a man of great vision, whom while riding a sulky plow in his conquest of the desert had day dreams wishing some day his horizons could be pushed out a little further, that he might enjoy life even beyond the lines of his homestead.

Time marches on They move into a new house on the corner.

This was a good experience and fit him for future usefulness which came later.

As his brother Christopher reached his majority he gave him 20 acres of his homestead and Chris got married and built a home. The same thing happened when Charlie was ready to build a home.

In 1892 when Bishop Shaffer was called on to furnish a man from his ward to go to England on a mission he was inspired to submit his name, and George D. accepted the call gladly.

I attended his farewell party and he laughed as he bade us goodbye. Next Sunday Bishop Shaffer said in meeting. "It is proposed that we sustain Elder Dan Alien to act as second counselor during th absence of brother George D. Merkley or until he returns from his mission."

So Bro. George was a missionary and counselor at the same time.

His period of missionary work was in those hectic days in England when the oppostion was at its highest pitch. Argument and debate were the yard stick. There is where George D. wanted it to be, and it was such experiences that made him a wonderful theologian, and a seemingly master in quoting scripture from memory.

Well, "the wheat fenced the farm, no debt, no notes." therefore there must have been a cash reserve in the making which his later adventures proved.

During the years following he acquired more land in different places, brought on a condition different than formely. He decided the farm was a place for the younger men, and when he moved to Vernal City I called in and asked what he was doing, Said he "I am trying to keep out of the way of the young generation, the won't need me sticking in their way."

In the following field he was counted the most liberal stock holder and promoter. Ashley Co-op, Uintah State Bank, Raven Oil. Emerald Oil, Vernal Investment and Amusement Co. Vernal Milling and Light, and Uintah Telephone Co.

George D. was a stout healthy person most all his life, yet it changed in his later years. In his reclinning years it was his lot to experience physical pain, pain that would have depressed the spirit of a young husky man. There developed an infection in his right hand that finally necessitated an amputation which he survived surprisingly well. It was in the last month of his career, that he fell and broke his leg. This shock he did not survive, and on the 8th day of Dec. 1946. ended the labors of one of our great human land marks. by J. Wm. Workman