SILAS WILSON MORRELL was born August 11, 1851, in Cottonwood, Salt Lake County, Utah, to William Wilson and Sarah Jane Richards. He married Virginia Morrell while living at Union Fort. Virginia died on August 2, 1875.Silas moved to Rabbit Valley (Wayne County) with his father in 1876. On July 12, 1876, he married Luzernia Allred in Fremont, Utah, daughter of Andrew Jackson Allred and Chloe Stevens. They were parents of seven children. Their daughter Chloe Jane Morrell was the first white child born in Wayne County.
While working his father’s sawmill Silas was injured and was unable to do manual labor after the accident. He and his wife owned a farm just east of Fremont where they built a two-story, log house. They also had a dairy farm east of Fish Lake, later known as Silas Springs where in the early summer they herded milk cows to the mountain spring to graze during the warm months. Summers were spent making cheese, and in the fall they took it to Richfield to sell. March 1891 Silas and Luzernia decided to go to a warmer climate in New Mexico, hoping his health would improve.
Luzernia was pregnant and they stopped at Bluff. She gave birth to her baby in the wagon bed. The next morning when they moved it, there were three rattlesnakes beneath it in the sand. Although they stayed in New Mexico for some time, Silas’s health never improved, so they decided to return home. They reached Fremont in the latter part of September and hadn’t been home long when Silas died on September 26, 1893, in Fremont, Utah, and was buried in the Fremont Cemetery.
Raising a family as a widow is difficult, especially in the “wild west.” A year after her husband’s death, Luzernia married William Henry Long (Bill) on November 14, 1894. He was a crack shot and took care of the Morrell family. They had two daughter born to them at Fremont, Viola in 1896 and Evinda Ann in 1898.
Luzernia and Bill (pictured to the right) later moved to Duchesne, Utah where they lived until their deaths. Bill was a colorful character and is suspected to have once belonged to the Butch Cassidy outlaw gang. On his death certificate, it states that Henry William Long died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head “two miles east of Duchesne,” Utah on November 27, 1936. Luzernia Allred Morrell Long died a few months later in Duchesne on March 11, 1937. Here is a website for information on this theoryTo see the headstone for Luzernia Allred and William Long click this link:
To view the headstone for Silas Wilson Morrell click this link:
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