• Great-great-great-grandfather Harrison G.O. Peck. He was born in Massachusetts in 1811 and married Margaret Reed Angier there in 1836.

In Massachusetts, he was a successful carpenter and cabinetmaker, and his family was considered well-to-do. However, biographies say they gave up or lost almost everything when they joined the LDS Church and immigrated to Utah in 1852. In hard times, their children gleaned harvested fields for left-behind wheat kernels to have enough to eat.

Biographies say that when the family was becoming comfortable again, Harrison and his family were called by Brigham Young to St. George in 1861 to help settle that area. Because of trouble from flooding during their trip, they again lost all their seed grain, chickens, cows, pigs and most of their furniture. "Father and Mother Peck never complained but went to work all over again," a biography says.

Peck became a farmer. He fought in Utah's Black Hawk War. He was also an LDS high priest.

---

E-mail: lee@desnews.com