HISTORY OF RALPH NEPHI ROWLEY,
WRITTEN BY HIS SON, GEORGE ARTHUR ROWLEY
My father, Ralph Nephi Rowley, was born April 1, 1824, at Handley, North Staffordshire, England. My mother Mary Ann Thompson Rowley was born on July 14, 1925 at Glasgow, Scotland.
Father, Ralph, and Mother, Mary Ann, were married at Glasgow, Scotland. Father, Ralph, died June 7, 1901, at Fillmore, Millard County, Utah.
Ralph Nephi Rowley’s father was John Rowley who was also born in Handley, North Staffordshire, England. He married Sarah Wright, my grandmother Rowley, who was my father’s mother. Grandfather John Rowley died at the age of 45 at Handley, North Staffordshire, England.
Ralph Rowley was born in 1766 at Handley, North Staffordshire, England. He was my great-grandfather, my father’s grandfather.
My grandmother, Sarah Wright Rowley, was born at Handley, about the year 1785. She came to Utah with others of her family and remained about ten years and then she left the church and went back to England. I, George Arthur Rowley, the writer of these records, can remember my Grandmother Rowley well at Fillmore.
George Wright was my Grandmother Rowley’s father and my great grandfather. George Wright was born at Handley, North Staffordshire, England about the year 1765.
North Staffordshire, England for a long time had been, and I suppose still is, a big pottery center and a large portion of my ancestors were potters by trade or by professional occupation.
My father, Ralph Nephi, had a pottery in Fillmore, Utah. In the early days Father discovered the sulphur beds at South Millard County, near Cove Fort. He hauled and sold sulphur to Brigham Young. On one occasion Brigham Young paid him a yoke of oxen for a load of sulphur.
Ralph Nephi Rowley and Mary Ann Thompson Rowley, his wife, and three children (John Thompson, Hugh Thompson and and Ephraim George Rowley) called from Victoria Dock, England on February 11, 1852 on the ship “Ellen Maria” with Captain Whitmore in command. They were on the Atlantic Ocean seven weeks and three days. They landed at New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America and were transferred to a small river steamer sailing in the Mississippi River between New Orleans and St. Louis, which took one week after a stop of two days at that city, they took another steamer, the “St. Ange”, for Kansas City, where arrived three days later. After a brief delay, owing to the lack of wagons, they started on their westward journey for Utah.
Loony Lunts and Company 