David and Rose Turner

On the way to St. George we stopped at the cemetery in Washington, Utah to find the graves of my great-great grandfather and grandmother.  I love these ancestors and so appreciate the sacrifices and contributions they made.  They were pioneers and the first people in my Turner line to join the Church.  

David was born in Pudsey, England and she was born in Leeds, England.  They both worked as weavers in England. After coming to America David worked with his uncle, Isaac Moorhouse in a mill.  One day Isaac said to David, "They have killed old Joe Smith so that will do away with the Mormons."  David had never heard of the Mormons, but decided to find out who they were.  John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff visited that part of the country not long after David started his investigation and they taught him the gospel and he was baptized.  Rose joined the Church five years later.  

They crossed the plains from Florence, Nebraska in the John R. Murdock Company in 1861.  They had a family of 11 children with them ranging from the age of 21 years to 1 month old.  They first settled in Fillmore, but were called to settle Deseret where, for five hard years, they were flooded out and they finally moved to Holden.  In 1874 Apostle Erastus Snow called them to Washington, in Dixie country, to work in the cotton mill.  There David weaved fabric for the upholstery to be used in the new St. George Temple and the cloth for the clothing worn by the temple workers. The St. George Temple was dedicated April 6, 1877.  David and Rose Turner did a great deal of temple work for their kindred dead.