Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 7, Number 1-4, 1939

PERSONAL MEMORIES O F T H E U N I T E D ORDER O F ORDERVILLE, UTAH*

By Emma Carroll Seegmiller Cedar City, Utah The United Order in Orderville, Long Valley, Utah, virtually had its beginning in the breaking up of the Muddy (Nevada) L. D. S. mission. The people who comprised the Muddy Mission were called to that place in 1865, from Salt Lake, Provo, Farmington, Spanish Fork, Nephi, and other Northern Utah towns. These people founded the towns of St. Joseph, St. Thomas, and Overton, Nevada, situated in the Muddy Valley about one hundred miles southwest of St. George.

They were thought at the time to be in Utah.

The people had paid taxes to the Territory of Utah and were suddenly, in 1870, confronted with the disheartening probability of being compelled to pay back taxes to the State of Nevada; this they were unable to do.

A meeting was called at Overton which resulted in a vote to disband. President Brigham Young left it optional with the people as to their future direction, but suggested Long Valley as a refuge.

Accordingly a delegation of nine men consisting of Captain James Leithead, A. H. Kimball, Daniel Stokes, William Heaton, John S. Carpenter, Andrew Gibbons, Lyman Lavett and Warren Foote, was appointed to explore the valley and report its facilities for making one or more settlements. "The only practical way of reaching the valley at the time was by traveling a distance of eighty miles from St. George over a desert the greater part of which is covered with heavy drifting sands," the committee reported, (via Short Creek, Pipe Springs, Moccasin Spring, and Kanab.)

The advance explorers entered the Valley on Christmas Day 1870. *The author (who nowadays usually signs her name "Emma S. Higbee"), says of this manuscript: "Information contained in this sketch is from men and women who lived in the United Order, from my own memory of experiences as a child and a very young woman living at Orderville, and from the original records of the United Order."

Of herself she says, "My father, Charles N. Carroll, was one of the three men who explored Provo Valley in 1857. In the autumn of 1859, he with his wife and two children, together with fifteen to twenty families, settled there, establishing Heber City. Twenty years later, in 1878, father moved his family to Orderville and joined the United Order, as set forth in the paper herewith. There I grew up, and as the United Order left a wholesome influence on my life, I have always wanted to preserve some of its history and its impressive memories." c-j "*i? first husband was Daniel Seegmiller, who at his death, was associated with Ldwin D. Woolley, in the Kanab Stake Presidency. I was widowed at thirty, with five children between the ages of four months and eight years, and my chief occupation for many years wa* raising the children. My outside activities have been concerned chiefly with the Church; as President of the Orderville Relief Society thirteen years; teacher in Sunday School and the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association many years' Secretary of the School Board six years; and since moving to Cedar City twenty-two years ago I have continued similar activities, and was for a period of time, Counselor in the Refief Society Presidency, and a member of the Board for a number of years of the Parowan Stake Relief Societies My present hobby is making a family scrap book consisting principally of newspaper clippings that mention by name any member of my family to oreirve a record of their activities and connections." *' prc*'™